Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, has the Senator provided his amendment?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for as much time as I may consume.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I listened to just a bit of the debate a few minutes ago by my colleagues. My colleagues are good Members of the Senate, and they offer interesting ideas on the floor of the Senate. I wish to point out, however, the issue of ``earmarks'' which they discuss and describe a lot is really legislative-directed funding, which is a very small percentage, in many cases, in bills. It is 1 or 2 or 3 percent of the funding. The rest of it goes downtown to some agency, and the folks in the agency make a decision where to spend their money. We have changed substantially the legislative-directed funding which exists. We are reducing almost in half legislative-directed funding. We have made it all transparent. The implication in the discussion I heard, and I have heard it many times, is there is no virtue and there is certainly no value in having any legislative-directed funding; let the agency downtown determine how every dollar is spent. The power of the purse in the Constitution rests with the United States Congress. We are responsible and accountable for how taxpayers' dollars are spent. Let me give one example which I think is important. We just finished in this country something called the Human Genome Project. A lot of people would not know what that means, perhaps, but it is an unbelievable success story. We unlocked the mystery of the genes. We now have for the first time in the history of the human race an owner's manual for the human body. For the first time, we have an owner's manual for the human body in the Human Genome Project. The Human Genome Project is done. It is going to dramatically change the way we treat diseases. It will, in many cases, allow us to determine how we prevent dread diseases. Already we are seeing substantial results from it. We had a briefing by Dr. Francis Collins recently, and he had just come from a meeting in Cambridge, England, where all the folks are using the breakdown of the genetic codes which have come from the Human Genome Project. He describes treatment for leukemia and other diseases that are breathtaking as a result of the Human Genome Project that creates the breakdown of the genetic code of the human body and provides us the first owner's manual for the human body. Guess what. Yes, that came from an earmark on the floor of the Senate. That is how the Human Genome Project started because someone in the United States Congress decided this approach had merit and should be done. No, it didn't come from some decision by some GS-13 or GS-15 downtown in some agency. It came from the United States Senate in legislative-directed spending. I say this only to point out that this pejorative term ``earmark'' is suggesting this is all a waste and it is all pork and so on. That is not the case. But I recognize, and we recognize, it got out of hand, so we cut it way back and made it all transparent. The point is, there are some good ideas coming from the Congress, and have been for a long time. One of them was the Human Genome Project, which started with an earmark or legislative-directed funding in the United States Congress. That is just one, but it is one that will affect the lives of virtually every American, perhaps everybody on this Earth, who in the future has one of the dread diseases or whose health is challenged. I wanted to make that point. I commend those who pointed out some of this legislative-directed funding ought to be cut back. We have cut it back very substantially, but that which remains, in most cases, represents good investment, and investment that complements what is done in the Federal agencies as well. I might also observe that the proposal today to increase the health insurance coverage for children, I believe, was 170,000 children. We just had a vote on increasing health care for children who are not covered by health care at this point for 3.8 million American children, and that failed. We passed it in the Senate, and it was passed in the House. It failed because the President vetoed it. Interestingly enough, now we have people coming to the floor of the Senate saying: Let's cover more children. We had a chance to cover 3.8 million more children, and it was fully paid for, but we couldn't get that done because the President vetoed it. It wasn't his priority, and he had sufficient support in the Congress for his position. I suppose we will see a lot of proposals that say we should cover more children, just far fewer. I respect my colleagues. I believe we should cover children. We certainly should perhaps revisit this vote and see if those 3.8 million children who are going to be left without coverage if the President and those who support him won't rethink their position and think that represents a priority. I don't know, as I have said often, what is in second, third, or fourth place in most people's lives. I know what is in first place, their kids. I know what is most important in people's lives--their children and their children's health. If that is not a priority, I don't understand. I have said often, in 100 years we will all be dead. Historians can take a look at what our value system was by determining on what we spent our money. What was our priority? What was our value system? What did we think was important? I hope they will look back at the Federal budget and how we voted on these appropriations bills and say: We are proud their priority was kids, providing health care coverage for children. What on Earth is wrong with a political system that doesn't believe that is the No. 1 priority? Indian Health Care I wish to talk about children's health care, but I want to focus mostly on Indian children, and I am going to talk about Indian health care, generally. The reason I am doing this, I am chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee in the Senate, and Senator Reid indicated we will have on the floor of the Senate, perhaps in a week or perhaps 2 weeks, for the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. It has been 15 years since that Act has been debated on the floor of the Senate, the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. Why separate categories, Indian health care? Why separate? We have a trust responsibility. This country promised through treaty, through other obligations, this country said to the Indian people: We have a trust responsibility to provide for your health care. It is not something that the Native Americans, the first Americans, said: We want you to give this to us; we insist upon it. It was an agreement, a treaty agreement by this country to say--in many cases, a treaty, in other cases, just a solemn promise--we will provide health care coverage to American Indians as part of our trust responsibility. The Indian Health Care Improvement Act expired in the year 2000 and has not been reauthorized. It is 7 years later. It doesn't mean there is no Indian health care. There is some, but it is horribly inadequate. In any event, we should reauthorize that Act and modernize it. With respect to Native Americans, we have fallen tragically short of what our responsibilities insist we do. Let me describe what we are spending and how well we are doing with respect to health care. With Medicare, we spend $6,700 per Medicare patient; Indian health care, $2,100 per capita. We spend twice as much on health care for Federal prisoners whom we incarcerate as we do for American Indians for whom we have a trust responsibility for health care. Someone incarcerated gets twice as much spent on their health care as American Indians for whom we have a responsibility. I am talking about children, I am talking about elders, and I will talk about some of them in just a moment. We can see ranging from Medicare to the VA to Medicaid to Federal prisons, all the way down, and here is the lowest, and the lowest is the per capita expenditure of health care for American Indians for whom we have a trust responsibility. American Indians die at a much higher rate than other Americans from tuberculosis, a 600-percent higher rate from tuberculosis; diabetes, 189 percent, but in some parts of the country, it is 400 percent and 800 percent higher than Americans. Alcoholism, 500 percent higher. The fact is, we have grim statistics coming from Indian reservations with respect to the health of the first Americans. The rate of sudden infant death syndrome among Native Americans is the highest of any population group in the United States and more than double of non- Indians. Indian youth suicide on the Northern Great Plains, where I am from, is 10 times the national average. Last night, I received a letter from a constituent on an Indian reservation. This constituent has had diabetes since she was 11 years old. Earlier this year, she received a kidney and pancreas transplant. She needs an anti-rejection medication to stay alive. When she went to the reservation clinic to get her medicine yesterday, she was told by the doctor: There goes our budget. There are two other tribal members who receive this medication, and when the funding is gone, there will be no more medication. The stories are pretty unbelievable. This is a picture of a young girl named Avis Little Wind. I have described the tragedy of this young girl previously. Avis Little Wind is 14 years old. Avis is dead. She took her own life. Mental health treatment wasn't available for Avis. She lay in her bed in a fetal position for 3 months, and no one seemed alarmed by that, before she finally took her life. She wasn't in school, though she was supposed to have been. Her sister committed suicide, her father died by his own hands, and this 14-year-old girl is gone because, I presume, she felt that she was hopeless and helpless. Those on the Indian reservation dealing with mental health issues, including suicide. For suicide prevention, they have virtually no resources. A young lady on this Indian reservation, who testified at a hearing I held once, said she had a stack of files on the floor of her office dealing with abuse and health issues. She said: ``We don't have any resources to even investigate the files. We would have to beg to borrow a car to take one of these kids to a clinic someplace.'' Then she broke down weeping. About a month later, she resigned. The fact is people are dying. Avis Little Wind died of suicide because mental health treatment wasn't available on that Indian reservation. I was in Montana recently with Senator Tester, and a grandmother held up a picture of this beautiful young girl. She is 5 years old. Her grandmother described the picture of her granddaughter, named Ta'Shon Rain Littlelight. Ta'Shon Rain Littlelight loved to dance, and she danced in this regalia at all the pow-wows from the time she was able to walk a beautiful little girl with a sparkle in her eye. Well, Ta'Shon is gone. Ta'Shon lost her battle, as well. Between May and August of last year, she was taken many times to the Crow Indian Health Service Clinic for health services. They diagnosed the problem and they began to treat it. They said it was depression. A 5-year-old was depressed. Well, during one of the clinic visits her grandfather said: ``But there is something else going on. Take a look at the condition of her fingertips and her toes. There is something happening in this little girl's body.'' It suggests, the grandfather said, a lack of oxygen. Something is going on. But that concern was dismissed, and finally the grandmother asked a doctor to try to eliminate the possibility of cancer or leukemia, or something of that nature. But those concerns were dismissed. In August, this young girl was rushed from the Crow clinic to St. Vincent Hospital in Billings, MT. They airlifted her to Denver Children's Hospital where she was diagnosed with incurable, untreatable cancer. She lived for another 3 months after the tumor was discovered, in unmedicated pain. She died in September. The grandmother asked at our field hearing if Ta'Shon's cancer had been detected earlier, would it have made a difference? Would this little 5-year-old girl be alive? None of us knows, but the question of the quality of health care is a life-or-death issue. It was for Ta'Shon. Recently, on a Wednesday morning in my State, a young child on an Indian reservation was burned, severely burned, and rushed by the mother to the Indian Health Service clinic on the reservation, only to be told that the clinic was closed for the morning for administrative purposes. Even after the frantic pleas by the mother, this boy was refused care. So in her desperation, she contacted a doctor from another town outside of the reservation for assistance. They directed her to bring her young son immediately. She did. Thankfully, that young boy received treatment and has survived those severe burns. She didn't get the needed health care for him at the Indian Health Service clinic. Following the treatment she did receive off the reservation, after a frantic drive in an automobile, the Indian Health Service clinic refused to cover the costs of the young boy's treatment. So the mother is now faced with a substantial medical bill, a mother who should never have been placed in this situation and a mother who doesn't have the resources to pay it. When we held a hearing in the Indian Affairs Committee about methamphetamine, the intersection of methamphetamine and health care was pretty obvious. It was a courageous tribal leader who came to our hearing, Kathy Wesley-Kitcheyan, the chairwoman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona. She said she was embarrassed to talk about some of the things on her reservation, because they are not very positive and she said it was like airing her family's dirty laundry but, she said, I must. She talked about her 22-year-old son and her warning to him about the catastrophic effect of alcoholism and substance abuse. And she talked about losing her grandson. She broke down talking about her wonderful grandson, a rodeo champion who had won 26 belt buckles and 6 saddles as a rodeo rider, who made the wrong choices with drugs and drinking and lost his life. She talked about the methamphetamine problem. That is where it intersects so quickly, in a devastating way, with health care. She said on their reservation, in 1 year, out of 256 babies born on that Indian reservation, 64 out of 256 babies were born addicted to methamphetamine. Let me say that again. Of 256 children born on that Indian reservation, 64 were born addicted to methamphetamine. At the San Carlos emergency room, in 1 year, 25 percent of the patients who came to the emergency room tested positive for methamphetamine. And on it goes. I am describing circumstances that one would perhaps attribute to a Third World country, where health care doesn't exist. Yet these stories, in many ways, are even more heartbreaking because they happen here in this country. They happen too often to people who are living in Third World conditions on Indian reservations with inadequate health care--health care which was promised to them as a trust responsibility, but nonetheless inadequate health care. I recently learned of a young boy named Nicholas from the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin, who had a very rough start. He, like a high percentage of American Indian babies, was born premature--3 months premature. He weighed 2\1/2\ pounds. For the first 3 months of his life, he struggled in intensive care to stay alive. As part of a significant effort by his family, his doctors at the IHS facility and traditional health care practices, he persevered. As a young man, he was forced to face another health care challenge: adult onset diabetes. While this type of diabetes usually strikes Americans in mid life, it is showing up now in American Indians and Alaska Native youth at an increasingly younger age. In fact, there is a 77-percent increase in diabetes in Native children and youth under 15 years of age. Fortunately, this young man from the Menominee Tribe is receiving services from the tribal health facility and early screening at the tribal school, and has been able to control his blood sugar, which will prevent complications, one hopes. David Whitetail, with the Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota, was not so fortunate. He was diagnosed with type II diabetes at 17. He didn't receive the necessary care, and now he is 39 years old and a dialysis patient awaiting a kidney transplant, but is finally, at long last, beginning to get the care he needs. A couple of years back, a young woman--I guess she would like me to call her a young woman; she probably is a bit above a young woman in age--whose name is Lida Bearstail, went to the clinic in Mandaree, ND, because of knee pain. The cartilage had worn away and bone was rubbing against bone, causing her great, great pain. If that were to happen in this Chamber to any one of us or our families, we would, of course, get a knee transplant or get a new knee. But Mrs. Bearstail was denied this treatment because it was not deemed ``priority 1''--life or limb. If it is not life or limb, and you have run out of contract health money, you are out of luck. In fact, what happened to this woman, Ardel Hale Baker, is that she had chest pain that wouldn't end, and her blood pressure was very high, and so she was diagnosed at the IHS clinic as having a heart attack. She needed to be hospitalized immediately. They stuck her in an ambulance and rushed her to a hospital off the reservation, but they didn't have any contract health care money left to pay for anything, so the Indian Health Service taped an envelope to this woman's leg with a piece of tape. She was hauled in on a gurney to the hospital with an envelope taped with masking tape to her thigh, and as they unloaded her in the emergency room, the folks who unloaded her took a look at what was taped to her leg. They opened it up and it said--and I have a chart, I believe, of what it said. It said this patient is not going to be covered because there is no contract health money available. What they were saying was this patient is having a heart attack. They were saying to the patient and to the hospital, if this patient is admitted, understand there is no money. There is no money here. So they admitted her, she survived, but it is kind of a tragic thing to tell a story about a woman who is hauled into a hospital with a piece of paper taped to her leg that says, by the way, if you admit this woman, you are on your own because Indian Health Service contract care is out of money. I have had tribes tell me that contract health care was out of money after the first 3 months of the year. On one reservation they say: Don't get sick after June, because there is no contract health care money. If you are going to get sick, it has to be before June, otherwise this may happen to you. If you have a heart attack and go to a hospital, they might haul you in and there might be a note attached to your arm or leg that says, by the way, if you admit this patient, you might have some difficulty because there is no money available. This last woman, Ms. Baker, survived and then received a bill for $10,000. She doesn't have $10,000. So what happens when they run out of contract health care, they warn the hospital you are on your own if you take them. Then when the patient is released from the hospital, their credit rating is ruined because they get a bill they can't pay. This is the result of our failure to meet our trust responsibility. That is a long description of why we need to reauthorize the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. That Act will come to the floor in the next week or two, according to Senator Reid. We have written that bill in the Indian Affairs Committee. The vice chair of the Committee, Senator Murkowski from Alaska, and I, and many other members of the Committee have written a bill we think advances the interests of Indian health care. My colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Coburn, who is on the Indian Affairs Committee with us, is a valuable member and a constructive member. He is a doctor, and that is extraordinarily helpful in terms of his knowledge. He will make the point that we need much broader reform, and I will agree with him when we have this discussion. We need much broader reform, and this is a step, a step in the right direction. Is it a step as broad as I would like to make? No. There is a reform step that is much broader that we need to take, and we will. And I will work for that when we move this bill, but at least we ought to move this legislation. I will work with Senator Coburn and others for much more substantial reform, but at least we need to start. This is since 2000, and 7 years later we need at least to move this legislation, but it has been 15 years since we last debated the issue of Indian health care on the floor of the Senate. So it is long past the time for us to do what we are required and have promised to do, and that is meet our responsibilities for health care for American Indians. I want us to do this in a way that makes us proud. After all, it is our responsibility. We made this promise long ago, and we need to keep it. We are a good country and a good society. We spend a lot of time on the floor of the Senate talking about what doesn't work. There is a lot that works in this country. We are blessed to live here and blessed to be a part of this great place. But we continue as a country to always look to find out what we can do to fix things that are broken, to improve things that don't work quite as well as we would like. That is what we are trying to do with this issue of Indian health care. I have described the failures. There are successes. There are folks working in Indian health care around the country who get up every day and work long hours and do a remarkable job. There are others who do not. I can tell you about a woman who has excruciating knee pain and goes to a doctor at the Indian Health Service, and she is told to wrap your knee in cabbage leaves for 4 days and it will be fine. It is unbelievable, but that sort of thing happens. I can tell you of other patients who go to an Indian Health Service doctor and get very good care. There are not enough resources. We need to respond, as we have done, to the issue of the cluster of teen suicides that exist on Indian reservations. There are so many things we need to do. Let me make the final point. These are the first Americans. These are not visitors. They were here first. Around the culture of Native Americans we have built quite a country. But Native Americans need to share in the great benefits bestowed upon the American people, and that includes opportunities for health care, opportunities for good jobs, opportunities for housing, and a decent education. We fall short in many of those areas. We fall short in many of them. I have not spoken about education today or housing, but those issues themselves are pretty unbelievable when you take a look at the conditions on many American Indian reservations. I look forward, in the next week or two, to having an opportunity to debate the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. It is long past the time for us to do this. This will advance the interests of Indian health care, and then, in addition, we will not be completed. We will need to do reform, reform in a significant way beyond this bill. But this bill is an awfully good first start in the right direction. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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. 3321

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this issue is not a large issue in the context of the bill that has been brought to the floor of the Senate-- it deals with $5 million of resources--but I want to talk just for a few moments about it. It deals with the issue of heart disease and stroke. There is no one in this Chamber, I expect, who has not been affected by heart disease in dramatic ways. I lost a beautiful young daughter to heart surgery, and I think of her every day. I have dedicated a lot of my time and interest in working with the American Heart Association and many others to find the resources to continue to invest in the research and unlock the mysteries of this terrible disease. It is estimated that about 80 million American adults--1 in 3 males and females--suffer from heart disease. It is estimated that an American dies from cardiovascular disease every 35 seconds in this country. It has a very steep price tag. I know it. My family knows it. Perhaps, I would guess, every Member of the Senate knows it from having lost a friend, an acquaintance, a family member. The medical expenses attributable to heart disease in this country are about $430 billion a year, including lost productivity. But the good news is that this is one of those diseases where we have made substantial progress. In the past 50 years, the fight against heart disease and stroke has been pretty remarkable. I recall Senator Harkin, and myself, and Senator Specter--I think there were five or six or seven of us who decided we were going to double the investment in the National Institutes of Health. As I recall, about then we were funding it at around $12 billion a year. A group of us decided: What better investment in this country's future than to decide to double the amount of money at the National Institutes of Health to research and to discover opportunities to cure these terrible diseases and treat these awful diseases. I am so proud of what has been done. It is pretty remarkable. I heard this morning at a hearing over in the Commerce Committee something I have heard so often that I am so sick and tired of. One of our colleagues said there is nothing the Federal Government does that is really worth anything, nothing the Federal Government manages that ever works out. Well, let me tell you something. Dr. Francis Collins is one of the significant people who engaged in something that, by the way, came from earmarked funding, started here in the U.S. Congress, right here in the U.S. Senate, the Human Genome Project. Do you know that? As a result of the Human Genome Project, we now have unlocked the mysteries of the genetic code. We now, for the first time, have an owner's manual for the human body. Do you know what that means? Well, not a lot of people understand it every day, but every single day, scientists and researchers are understanding those genetic codes and making giant strides in beginning to find cures for diseases. Dr. Francis Collins came back from Cambridge, England, about, oh, maybe 2 months ago, and I saw him at Dulles Airport when he landed. He had gone for a conference in England about how the researchers were using the genetic information from the Human Genome Project. He said: I thought it was going to take much, much longer. What is going on now is breathtaking in using the Human Genome Project to find the opportunity to treat and to cure some of these diseases. He said it is breathtaking. That is the Federal Government. This is a civil servant, by the way. As to the research that is going on at NIH, these are people on the Federal payroll. So to my colleagues who think nothing works, let me just tell you something: There is only one place on Earth where the Human Genome Project reached success. And, yes, it was a collaboration, but we did it. It is going to improve lives, and it is going to unlock the mysteries of terrible diseases. It was a good thing to do. But my point is, Senator Harkin and Senator Specter were two--and I think Senator Feinstein--and I was one who decided we were going to double the research funding at the National Institutes of Health. Guess what that has done for this country. It allows me to stand here and say we are making great progress on heart disease. We really are. The survival rates for cancer are up. So we are making progress. The reason I wanted to offer this amendment is this amendment deals with heart disease and stroke. We know the risk factors for heart disease and stroke. We know if you understand the risk factors, you can substantially reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke--by not smoking, by maintaining a healthy weight, and avoiding diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. We know you can do that. In fact, by taking these steps, individuals often can add 10 years to their lives. So we have made some progress by making investments. There is a long way to go. We have 105 million Americans who have high cholesterol and 72 million Americans have high blood pressure, so we have to do a much better job of educating the public about cardiovascular disease. That is the goal of what is called the State Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Program at CDC. What I have offered, very simply, as I close, is a $5 million addition to the State Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Program at CDC. It is a program that works. We know it works. It needs this additional funding to make it more widely available. This initiative will help States create the programs, the private-public sector partnerships, that will help individuals in controlling blood pressure, lowering cholesterol, and learning the signs and symptoms of heart disease and stroke. This is a program that we know works. I am hoping that finding an offset, which I have suggested in my amendment, would allow us to accept the amendment. I did not intend to take quite this length of time, but I needed only to say to Senator Harkin and Senator Specter how much I appreciate their work, and my hope is that having highly complimented them, they will be motivated to accept this amendment. I compliment them even if they do not accept it, but I have high hopes.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I offer this amendment on behalf of myself, Senator Brown, Senator Stabenow, and Senator Casey. Mr. President, this amendment calls for a study and a report, and I want to describe the purpose of it and why I am offering it today. It requires the Department of Labor to determine in a study and report to the Congress the number of jobs lost to the North American Free Trade Agreement and the number of jobs created due to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Now, it is interesting. In an October 4 Wall Street Journal article, there was a story, front page, with the headline ``Republicans Grow Skeptical of Free Trade.'' Republicans grow skeptical of free trade. Actually, the story described skepticism by everybody about what is called free trade, but it was talking about the politics of it, and so the story described a poll which found that by a 2-to-1 margin Republican voters believed free trade deals have been bad for this country's economy. It turns out that the dissatisfaction with the current trade strategy is bipartisan, not just Republican. The poll found that 59 percent of polled Republican voters agreed with this statement: Foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy because imports from abroad have reduced demand for American-made goods and it has cost jobs here at home and produced potentially unsafe products. The poll also describes that all voters essentially feel this way; it is not just Republican voters. But as I indicated, it was trying to take a political look at an issue that is very important. We are going to have a number of free trade agreements come to the floor of the Senate soon. We will have one from Peru, Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. It is interesting that the Wall Street Journal describes how the American people feel about these trade agreements. I think it is not the case that people feel trade is not important. I believe in trade, and plenty of it. I just insist that trade be fair. I want to go back with this amendment to the North American Free Trade Agreement because that free trade agreement dates back almost-- well, it is over a decade now, and we have had substantial experience with it. Those who negotiated it--and, incidentally, it was negotiated beginning under the first President Bush, concluding under President Clinton. He sent it to this Senate, and I, at that point, was one of the leaders waging a fight against it. But when it was debated in Congress, it was alleged by economists and virtually everybody that it would result in the creation of 200,000 new jobs for our country. If we would pass this new trade agreement, 200,000 jobs would be created in our country. Well, what has happened with the trade agreement? Let me describe what has happened, and I will describe it in a way that the administration and the Commerce Department and Labor Department would describe it. They would say what an unbelievable success this trade agreement has been. How on Earth would you be critical of a trade agreement that has increased our exports from the United States to Mexico? It has increased our exports to Mexico. And it has. It sure has. But it has increased our imports from Mexico much, much, much more. What started prior to the North American Free Trade Agreement as a $1.5 billion surplus with Mexico--a trade surplus with Mexico--has now become nearly a $60 billion, close to $70 billion trade deficit. So it's a trade surplus converted to a big trade deficit. Now, I didn't take a lot of higher math, but I understand if you turn a trade surplus into a big trade deficit, that is not a positive outcome for your country. That is a negative approach, and it means lost jobs. It means you are going to have to repay that trade debt with a lower standard of living someday. In fact, the proponents of NAFTA some years ago relied on a study by Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott. It was called the Hufbauer/ Schott, and it was the one cited by everybody. They actually said it is going to create 170,000 new jobs in our country--net new jobs. That was rounded up by the proponents to 200,000. That was going to be nirvana. We would pass this trade agreement and get 200,000 net new jobs. That was how it would work. Except that we passed it and we went from a $1.5 billion trade surplus with Mexico to a nearly $70 billion trade deficit. Now, that is headed in the wrong direction, and that means lost jobs. I took a look at this, and I asked some while ago, 10 years after NAFTA had been approved, to commission a study from the Congressional Research Service to identify the top 100 American companies that had laid off U.S. workers as a result of NAFTA between 1994 and 2002, and here is the list of the top 100 companies. The list totals about 412,000 U.S. jobs that have been certified as lost. Now, this is not some speculation. This is a program at the Department of Labor that a company has to actually certify to in order to get some help for their employees--trade adjustment assistance. They certify that because of NAFTA these jobs are gone. The Congressional Research Service turned to the Department of Labor, which has this program, and they said: Can you give us this information? They gave us the information. This means we can directly attribute these job losses to NAFTA, because that is the certification. Of the roughly 412,000 jobs that have been certified, actually of the top 100 companies, 201,000 jobs are attributable to these 100 names. But if you look at the companies, it is very interesting. Levi Strauss is No. 2. Levi Strauss. I mean, you know, slip on a pair of Levis. Anything more all American than putting on a pair of Levis? There is not one pair of Levis made in the United States of America, not one. We passed NAFTA and Levis go south. We still wear them, all right. They are just shipped north so we can slip them on. So Levi Strauss: 15,676 people, some were proud, I bet, going to work in the morning to make a pair of Levis. But no more. I understand there is not one pair of Levis made in America. Kraft Foods. Kraft Foods is on the list. Kraft Foods decided they were going to shut down their cookie plant in Fair Lawn, NJ. They made Fig Newton cookies. So they moved Fig Newton cookies to Monterrey, Mexico, and 955 jobs were certified as lost. Fig Newton. Now, I don't know whether there is some inherent capability in Mexico to shovel fig paste in a more expeditious manner than exists in New Jersey. I doubt it. My guess is, just as Levi went south in search of cheap labor, so too did Fig Newton cookies. So the next time somebody says let's go out and buy some Mexican food, buy Fig Newton cookies. They left New Jersey and ended up in Monterrey, Mexico. Mexican food. What about Fruit of the Loom underwear? We all understand it; some wear it. Fruit of the Loom underwear--5,352 workers in Texas were certified and thousands more in Louisiana were certified to the Labor Department as having lost their jobs due to NAFTA. Actually, when that happened it was pretty big news around the country, because Fruit of the Loom laid off a lot of people, and I came to the floor and said: It is one thing to lose your shirt--and then I stopped, because I realized we shouldn't joke about jobs lost with Fruit of the Loom. But these were people who made underwear--probably, I am sure, very proud of their jobs. They probably worked for a career. Is there no market for underwear any more? People stopped wearing them? I don't think so. The underwear is made, it is just not made in America. Fruit of the Loom is gone, and it was certified to have gone and the jobs are lost. Mattel's western Kentucky plant, making Barbie playhouses and battery-powered pickup trucks for nearly 30 years, 980 employees went from a job in Kentucky to being unemployed. The plant went to Mexico to produce Mattel toys. John Deere, 1150 employees, lawn mowers and chain saws, jobs gone to Mexico. Well, all of these are just numbers. You know, you could pick any one of them. Nokia, 1,980. Make it 1,979 and talk about the person, the one person who came home one night and said: Honey, I lost my job. They called me in and they told me my job was gone. Well, was it because you weren't a good employee? No, I am a good employee. They just said we are moving the jobs to Mexico. I have described other cases on the floor of the Senate of American workers who worked for careers and were making $11 an hour plus benefits. They all got fired in search of cheaper labor by a company that moved their jobs. In that case, the jobs went to China. But the reason I told the story previously is that all of those workers who lost their jobs because they made $11 an hour--and that was way too much money--on the last day of work, as they pulled out of their driving spaces in the parking lot where their car used to park at a job they cared about, they all left a pair of empty shoes. It was a plaintive way for the employees of that company to send a message to the owners of that company who shipped their jobs overseas. It was a way of saying: You can move our jobs to China, but, by God, you are not going to fill our shoes. It was a message from the employees who cared about their jobs and cared about their work. Well, Hufbauer/Schott and all the others who gave us those hifalutin estimates of new jobs with NAFTA, they said: By the way, there will be some jobs that will move south. But they will be low-skilled, low-wage jobs. But don't worry. Well, guess what. The three largest imports to the United States today from Mexico are automobiles, automobile parts, and electronics, all the product of high-skilled jobs. Now, that is completely at odds with what was represented to the Congress and the American people. I started this by saying the Wall Street Journal does a front-page feature story saying that Republicans don't believe free trade has been good for our country. They were doing a political story. But they needn't have said Republicans. Actually, the American people don't believe the so-called free trade agreements have been good for our country. Why is that? Because they are the ones who know. They are the ones who know, not the economists, not the folks who put on three-piece blue suits and suspenders every day and puff about what is going on in the world. It is the people who are working who lose their jobs and are facing downward pressure on income from these kinds of trade agreements. Now, I am not suggesting, and would not ever suggest, that we shouldn't trade. I believe we ought to trade. I believe trade is important, and plenty of it. I just insist that it be fair. Whether it is Mexico, or China--the bilateral agreement with China--or South Korea or any number of trade agreements, I can point to the examples of what has happened that undermines the support of the American people for these agreements. Let me give you a couple. South Korea. There is an agreement coming to the Senate Chamber dealing with South Korea. We have done other trade agreements with South Korea, and they have never met the commitments they made in those agreements, but nonetheless, an agreement with South Korea. Well, South Korea last year sent us roughly 700,000 automobiles. They put them on ships, sailed them across the ocean, and they offloaded them onto American docks and put them for sale in this country. We were able to sell about 5,000 vehicles in South Korea. So 700,000 one way, 5,000 the other way. Why? Is that consumer preference? It is because in Korea 99 percent of the cars on Korean roads are made in Korea, and that is the way they want it. They do not want American cars sold in Korea. They have all kinds of devices to keep them out. We open our market. One-way trade. The American people understand that, and they do not support that. I am going to mention one other thing. I have mentioned the bilateral agreement with China, with whom we have a giant trade deficit--$230 billion a year trade deficit. Not many people know that in the latest bilateral agreement with China--a country that is ramping up a very significant powerful automobile export industry. You will see Chinese cars on the streets in this country soon. They are aggressively ramping up an automobile export industry. Here is what our country decided to do with a country with which we have a very large deficit. We said to China: When you export your cars to the United States, we will impose a 2.5 percent tariff on cars you sell here, and it is okay for you, on any American cars we sell in China, to impose a tariff 10 times higher, at 25 percent. That is what we said to China. That is unbelievably ignorant of our own economic interests. Is it surprising the Wall Street Journal does a poll that says the American people don't believe in this nonsense? They are living it. They lose their jobs. There is not one person in the Congress who has lost his or her job due to a bad trade agreement. It is the other folks out there who go to work in the morning and care about their job, who are doing the best they can and are told, by the way, you have to compete with Monterrey, or Chihuahua, or someone in Shenzhen, or Beijing who is willing to work for 30 cents an hour. And if you can't compete with them, we are sorry. The result has been downward pressure on wages, fewer benefits, and problems for American workers. That is a very long description of why I wanted to offer an amendment. Finally, at long last, I wish to see a real evaluation done of what has been the net result of NAFTA, because we still have these folks running around here saying NAFTA has been a great success. I mean, I don't know if they are on their feet when they look at something and say it is successful or not, but you cannot take a sober look at this and say it is successful. Exports have grown, yes, but imports have grown much faster. The evidence is here. We have roughly 412,000 jobs that have been certified as having been lost to Mexico, certified by the Department of Labor as having been lost, because of the trade agreement--or at least been lost from the time the trade agreement was negotiated. What I have asked for is a study, a real study to determine the number and types of jobs lost due to NAFTA and the number and types of jobs created due to NAFTA. One final point. This administration has no problem figuring out how great trade deals will be for other countries. In fact, Wendy Cutler, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative, was touting the benefits that our trade agreement with Korea would offer to Korea. Let me quote her: An FTA with the United States is predicted to produce economic benefits for the Korean economy, increasing Korea's real GDP by as much as 2 percent, establishing a foundation to achieve per capita income to as high as $30,000, boosting exports to the United States by 15 percent, and creating 100,000 new jobs. That is what the USTR is saying, here is the nirvana that is going to exist if we can simply do this trade agreement: Here is what is going to exist for Korea. Ask them, what will exist for our country? What will be the consequences for our country? What are the comparable numbers for the United States? They make no similar projection. In fact, the Korean agreement comes to us now, not having addressed the issue of the imbalance in the bilateral automobile trade with Korea. Anyway, it is a case where I hope, perhaps, repetition will someday breed success. It is a case where I believe we should trade. I believe our country should be a leader in trade. I believe our leadership ought to say we aspire to lift others up in the world, not push our workers down. We spent 100 years creating standards--safe workplace, child labor law, minimum wage, a whole series of standards that we ought to be proud of. I believe in our trade agreements we ought to aspire to lift others up rather than push ourselves down, push our standards down. That has regrettably not been the case with NAFTA. It has not been the case with a number of other trade agreements and will likely not be the case with the next four agreements that will be brought to the Senate. My colleagues and I, several of us, will be proposing establishing benchmarks and accountability at long last attached to trade agreements. We ought to have benchmarks and some accountability attached to those benchmarks to find out what has happened. You can't go on forever with a bad trade agreement. You can't go on forever with one that doesn't work. When we are awash in debt, as we are, over $700 billion a year in trade deficit--which inevitably will be repaid with a lower standard of living in the United States--then we are headed for trouble. We need a better trade strategy, one that encourages trade but one that demands and insists on fair trade for our own economic interests. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. The town of Bryan, OH, was enormously proud of its product. It was the product that defined Bryan, OH. It was Etch A Sketch; every little kid played with Etch A Sketch. The folks in Bryan, OH, made Etch A Sketch and every kid played with them. Etch A Sketch is gone. They couldn't compete with China. And the Radio Flyer Little Red Wagon was made in Chicago for 110 years. It was made by an immigrant who started the company. Why was it called Radio Flyer, the Little Red Wagon? This immigrant was fascinated with two things. He liked Marconi, so he named it Radio, and he loved airplanes. So he decided to name it, the Little Red Wagon he crafted in Chicago, IL, as Radio Flyer, and virtually every kid in this country has ridden on Radio Flyer wagons.

Mr. DORGAN. They were here for 110 years but no more. Now they are made in China. We could go on at some length. Some people will say: Don't you understand, you two, the world has changed, for God's sake, the world has changed and they are going to make these things where you can pay 20 or 30 cents an hour. My question to them is this: If that is where the jobs are, who is going to buy the products? In this country, it seems we built standards for a century to provide good wages and working conditions for the American worker and that is what provided the income and development and expansion of the middle class and gave them the earning power to buy products. I know the Senator agrees with me. He agrees with trade. We come from agricultural States. We need to find a foreign market for what we produce, but trade has to be fair.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am going to offer an amendment in a few moments. First, I would like to spend a couple minutes talking about the amendment that was offered by Senator Vitter. I have a copy of the amendment. The amendment deals with the issue of drug reimportation. It says: None of the funds appropriated in this Act may be used to prevent an individual not in the business of importing a prescription drug from importing a prescription drug from Canada that complies with sections 501, 502, and 505 of the FDA Cosmetic Act. I don't have any particular problem with this amendment. It says that the FDA can't do what it is not doing. So that is largely irrelevant to me. It has an appearance of doing something, but it doesn't do anything. At the moment, if you are in Grafton, ND, and you go across the border to Winnipeg, Canada, and buy prescription drugs and bring them across, if you bring across a 90-day supply of prescription drugs for yourself, you are not going to have a problem. They allow a personal reimportation of prescription drugs because very few Americans have the opportunity to drive to Canada to access that. The one area where the Vitter amendment would allow reimportation where there needs to be some safety attached is with respect to Internet sites. But the fact is, those who are now accessing certain Internet sites are doing so, and the FDA is not intervening because they don't have the capability to intervene. We do have a piece of legislation that is bipartisan. Senator Snowe, Senator Kennedy, Senator McCain, Senator Grassley and myself, many of us, helped write the legislation that would allow the reimportation of prescription drugs on a much broader basis, in a manner that is determined to be safe, where we would actually require Internet sites to be registered and inspected. But let me talk about that in just a moment. Mr. President, I have kept in my desk here in the Senate something I want to show by consent. These are a couple of bottles of Lipitor. Lipitor is, I think, the most common and perhaps the most popular cholesterol-lowering drug. These two bottles contain 20-milligram tablets of Lipitor. As you can see, the bottles of Lipitor are identical, with the exception of the color--one is blue and one is red on the label. Both of these bottles of Lipitor tablets were made in Ireland. They put some in this bottle, they put some in this bottle, and then they start sending them around. They sent this bottle to the United States, and they sent this bottle to Canada. Now, understand this: This is an FDA-approved drug, produced in an FDA-approved plant in Ireland, sent to our country, sent to Canada--the same pill, put in the same bottle, made in the same place, FDA- approved. Difference? Well, one has a red label, one has a blue label. And there is another very big difference: one costs twice as much. There is a 96-percent higher price on the one the Americans get to purchase. Difference? Well, no difference in the pill, no difference in the bottle; it is just the American consumer gets to pay twice as much. Now, why is that the case? Well, I could hold up a dozen bottles of medicine and describe many popular brand names and tell you exactly the same thing. In fact, I will tell you a story. Sitting on a bale of straw once at the farmstead in central North Dakota on a Sunday afternoon, visiting with a group of people, was an 82-, 84-year-old farmer. I was in the farmyard visiting with some farmers at an afternoon stop, and this old codger, a wonderful old guy, said: ``One of the problems me and the Mrs. have had--yes, that is what he said--``One of the problems me and the Mrs. have had is being able to afford prescription drugs. My wife has been fighting breast cancer for a long time. For the last 3 or 4 years, she has been fighting breast cancer. And do you know what? Every 3 months we have had to drive to Canada to buy Tamoxifen to fight her breast cancer. Why do we do that? Because we save 80 percent on the cost, and that is the only way we can afford to buy the medicine, the Tamoxifen for my wife to fight her breast cancer.'' Isn't that something? This guy sitting on a bale of straw, talking to me about what he has to do every 3 months to be able to afford the medicine his wife needs to fight breast cancer. Now, that is Tamoxifen. We pay, in some cases, 2 times more or 3 times more for the same medicine, so we then have a woman fighting cancer and then fighting the issue of having to pay 2 or 3 times as much for the medicine. Now, first of all, this is unfair. There is no circumstance under which we ought to ask the American people to pay the highest drug prices in the world for FDA-approved drugs. It is not fair, and it should not happen. Now, how does it happen that they can enforce this, the pharmaceutical industry can enforce this? Well, they have a law that says the only ability to import drugs into this country is by the pharmaceutical manufacturer itself, the company itself. They are the ones who are able to import. Now, I just mention to you that as a matter of practice, they allow a personal supply of drugs to come across the border for about 90 days' worth of drugs. They do that. But, otherwise, if you are a licensed pharmacist or a wholesaler and you buy an FDA-approved drug, you cannot bring it into this country. By contrast, let me just describe this: 40 percent of the active ingredients in prescription drugs in this country come from China and India. Forty percent of the active ingredients in our prescription drugs come from China and India. Let me tell you another statistic that I think is interesting. In this country, we had 1,200-plus inspections of pharmaceutical plants that are producing medicines for the American people--1,200 inspections. Forty percent of the active ingredients for our prescription drugs comes from China and India, and we have had, in 2006, 16 inspections in China and 62 inspections in India--1,222 inspections in the United States. Isn't that interesting? I tell you all that as a bit of history just to say this issue of prescription drugs is not new. A bipartisan group of us has worked for a long while on this issue, and we are going to win this issue. It has taken us longer than we had hoped, but we are going to win this issue because it is not fair for the American people to be charged the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We have so far not been able to prevail, not because someone comes to the floor of the Senate and thumbs their suspender and tugs in their trousers and puffs out like a puff adder and says: I stand up here for the pharmaceutical industry; the American people ought to be charged the highest price in the world. Nobody has ever done that. There are other ways to try to derail legislation like this. But, ultimately, I think we will win. We have a wide bipartisan group of Senators who believe we must fix this. Now, how do we fix it? We fix it in a way that allows the reimportation of prescription drugs only from FDA- approved plants, only in circumstances where we apply pedigrees and lot numbers so you can track it back. For example, you could not import from an Internet site unless that Internet site had been inspected and certified to make sure this is a safe source from which to order prescription drugs. We have a piece of legislation we believe--and almost everyone who has testified in hearings believes--solves all of those problems, including dramatically increasing the security of all the other issues that are now being complained about with respect to counterfeit drugs. How does it happen we have counterfeit drugs? Well, it happens because we do not have enough inspections. We do not have enough attention to these things. We do not have a pedigree requirement. There are a number of things our legislation would require. But at that point, we would allow the American people to have access to this market and be able to shop for an FDA-approved drug from a country in which they pay one- half, one-fourth, and in some cases one-tenth the price the American consumer is charged. So let me say, I do not object to the Vitter amendment. I would hope they would just take it. It has been offered to other issues. I would just say, however, that it really does not do much because it is saying to the agency: Don't do what you are not doing. I do not have objection to that. But I do want to say this: There is a serious approach with respect to prescription drug issues that we need to get about the business of dealing with, and we are trying very hard to get it to the floor and get it passed. We will get that done at some point soon, in my judgment. Having said that, I would like to offer an amendment to the underlying bill. Before I do, I think this is not only an obligation but an opportunity for me to say to Senator Harkin and Senator Specter and others who have worked on the legislation that I think they have done an awfully good job in putting together legislation that invests in people's lives and invests in the health of this country, and I appreciate their work a lot. So I just want to say thanks. This is a big piece of legislation. It is hard to put together. It is not an easy job to carry this to the floor of the Senate, so thanks for what they have done. Amendment No. 3335 to Amendment No. 3325 Mr. President, if there is an amendment pending, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside so I might send an amendment to the desk.

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

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

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. How much time remains in morning business?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the front page of a recent New York Times article and front page of a Wall Street Journal issue said: ``Ethanol's Boom Stalling As Glut Depresses Price.'' Wall Street Journal article says: ``Ethanol Boom Is Running Out of Gas.'' Last night on ``NBC Nightly News,'' featured a piece about the closing of ethanol plants and the problem with the production of ethanol as a substitute for oil. Mr. President, I want to talk a moment about that because we are unbelievably dependent on foreign oil. If anybody thinks they should nap through this or sleep through this vulnerability, they are dead wrong because 60 percent of the oil we need in this country and use every day we get from outside of our country. We stick little straws in this planet of ours and suck oil out. We suck out about 84 million barrels of oil every single day. We use one-fourth of that in this country every day, or about 21 to 22 million barrels of oil. So of all the oil we suck out of this planet every day, we use one fourth of it just in this little space called the United States of America. The problem with using one fourth of it is that 60 percent of that oil which we use comes from other countries, much of it from troubled parts of the world, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Venezuela. Well, if tomorrow, God forbid, somehow the import of oil into this country were interrupted, we would be flat on our back economically. We get up in the morning and just take it all for granted. We get up, we get out of bed and rub our eyes, then flick a switch, and the lights go on. We get in the car, turn the key, and the engine starts. We take it all for granted. But what happens at some point if we shut off the petroleum, shut off the electricity, and see what life is like, see what our economy is like? So we decided to do something about that. If we are unbelievably dependent on and vulnerable when it comes to foreign oil, what do we do? We begin to produce energy in our farm fields. We produce biofuels. That is not a new thing. It has been around over a century. I was at a biodiesel plant the other day. It was a grand opening. I pointed out there that the first known use of vegetable oil as fuel for a diesel engine was a demonstration at the World's Fair in the year 1900. Rudolf Diesel later experimented with fuel made from peanut oil or biodiesel for engines he was developing. So this is not new. All of a sudden our country has decided we should produce biofuels-- ethanol, for example--and we have begun to do that. Oil companies don't like it very much. The OPEC countries don't like it very much. The last thing they want to see is for us to begin to produce not only the fossil fuels in our country, including oil and natural gas, but also biofuels and the renewable energy that can grow in our farm fields. We can take a kernel of corn, and from that kernel of corn with various processes produce fuel that will substitute for fuel oil we now get from troubled parts of the world. That makes a lot of sense to me. We use about 140 billion gallons or 145 billion gallons of fuel a year. If every single gallon of fuel were blended with ethanol, our total market for ethanol would be about 14.5 billion gallons. The President says let's go to 35 billion gallons. I agree with that. So do most of my colleagues. The Senate has already voted on a bill to produce 36 billion gallons. But how are we going to use 36 billion gallons if we are only blending ethanol at 10 percent? We have to have the E85 pumps. They are producing flex-fuel vehicles in Detroit now, and they have said they are going to get to 50 percent of all the vehicles they produce being flex-fuel vehicles so we can run a fuel that is 85 percent ethanol. E85 they call it. You might have a flex-fuel vehicle right now--in my State there are about 16,000 to 18,000 flex-fuel vehicles--and there are 23 places in the entire State where you can pull up to a pump and get E85. In California there are over 270,000 flex-fuel vehicles, and there is one reported gasoline pump in the entire State of California that pumps E85. Think of that, one pump. Let me describe what some of the obstacles are. I have long been concerned if we are going to produce ethanol--and we should and we must--we have to not only produce it, we have to market it. We have to produce it, then we have to run it through the carburetors and fuel injectors of vehicles. If we don't have the market, that whole industry collapses. Let me give some examples of why we don't have more E85 pumps. No. 1, we have some folks in here who want to produce ethanol and support all that, but they don't support any kind of mandate that would require that we have an infrastructure out there to actually use the ethanol. We are now starting to see the results of that. Let me describe that with an article in the Wall Street Journal: ``Fill Up With Ethanol? One Obstacle Is Big Oil.'' April 2, this year: Oil companies employ a variety of tactics that help keep the E85 fuel out of the stations that bear the company name. For instance, franchisees are sometimes required to purchase all the fuel they will sell from the oil company. Since oil companies generally don't sell E85 That is, 85 percent ethanol that you would use in a flex fuel vehicle-- the station can't either. Let me describe some of the ways the major brand retailers are trying to prevent the widespread marketing of ethanol. ExxonMobil and BP require their franchise stations--and this is directly from the Wall Street Journal article--require their franchise stations to buy fuel exclusively from them. Neither company offers E85. So the station owners must apply for an exception if they wish to sell E85, or 85 percent ethanol. A ConocoPhillips memo to franchisees says the company doesn't allow E85 sales on the primary island, under the covered canopy where gasoline is sold. Stations must find another spot. As a result, it isn't quite as simple for a driver to decide on the spur of the moment to fill up with

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I don't have enough time, but I want to show my colleagues something I find absolutely fascinating. Let me suggest on a different subject I will consume the 3.5 minutes. This is the Nail House. This house is in the middle of a whole dug- out excavation area. This is in China. The Chinese Government, the developers, decided we are going to go in, and we are clearing this whole place out. One family said: No, you can't do that to me. It is not legal. It is not fair. We are not going to move. So they came in and excavated around the entire house. Here is the little house in China. I tell you that because we just released, last week, the Congress Executive Commission on China Annual Report. It is the 2007 annual report. I am a cochairman, Sandy Levin, Congressman Sandy Levin, is the chairman. I am the cochairman of the Congressional Executive Commission on China. This describes a whole series of things on China, those who are in prison today in China as a result of advocating for human rights and other related issues. I will tell this story about the Nail House. They call it the Nail House because it is stuck right up out of the excavation. The story did not have such a happy ending for the Nail House. The Chinese, eventually--they must have thought this was funny, the Chinese authorities, by digging around this fellow's house--but they eventually came in and tore the whole thing down and this property was lost. It is pretty hard to take on the Chinese Government. But one of the things in this report we talk about is what is happening with technology in China, and the ability, outside of the purview of the Communist Government, to control everything; the ability of people to communicate. Now, the Chinese have thousands of thought police trying to figure out who is visiting the Internet and trying to prevent them from visiting certain sites on the Internet. But there is a trend that is going on in China that is very interesting. Internet use rose from 620,000 in the last 10 years, 620,000, to 160 million Internet users. Mobile phone ownership went from 3 million to 500 million in the last 12 years, 500 million. China has an estimated 20 million blogs, where people are talking among bloggers' personalized Web pages. In the entire year of 2003, about 4 years ago, the Chinese people sent 137 billion text messages. Now, I tell you all of that because I think it is going to change things in China. Part of this China Executive Commission is trying to understand what is happening in China. What does that mean for our future? But there are some striking examples of citizen activism these days which are very interesting. This is one, the ``nail house,'' this family, that did not end so well. But the local officials ignored the mass complaints. But what happened was this picture was on all of the blogs in China, it stirred up a hornet's nest of people willing to demonstrate in the streets on behalf of this family. But there is one other issue, chemical factory protests in the southeast corner of Xiamen. The local government planned to build a hazardous chemical plant near the center of town. They publicized the information on Web sites and blogs, and citizens responded by overwhelming the local Chinese officials with a million text messages. Later they used blogs and text messages. They organized massive protests and marches that attracted thousands, and finally the local officials suspended the building of a chemical factory in the middle of Xiamen. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. Another use of the Internet in China was on a slave labor scandal. In May and June of this year, citizen activists broke open a scandal that rocked China. Thousands of brick kilns were using kidnaped slave labor. They were men, boys, mentally ill, forced to work under heavy guard, often with no pay and very little food. Parents looking for their missing sons organized on the Internet in China, and they were pleading for Government assistance. They were forced to cover the story in the Chinese press because there was such a mass uprising here. Finally, the Chinese Prime Minister ordered an investigation. Five hundred workers were freed. One hundred sixty people who ran the kilns were arrested. Very few party officials were seriously punished. But the point is, things are changing. The technology is changing in China. The Burmese monks protest, the activism continues right up to today. While the Chinese Government is attempting to shut down this open and free communications with the thought police, they have got thousands of people trying to regulate Internet use, the fact is, it is not working, and technology and communications are having a profound impact and I believe will continue to have a significant impact in the future. But I would say to my colleagues, we have some very skilled people who have worked with Congressman Levin and myself on the Congressional Executive Commission on China, the Annual Report, 2007. We have the most complete list of those who are being held prisoner in China, particularly as a result of human rights issues. This booklet, if you have a chance to read it, is a great description put together by some very skilled people on exactly what is happening in China. There is some progress, and there are areas that are of great concern. We continue to monitor and work on these issues. I yield the floor, and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator would yield for a question.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I listened to the Senator's presentation. I have indicated to my colleague from South Dakota that I share his instinct and we need better law enforcement on Indian reservations. I do not think there is any question about it. I appreciate the fact that Senator Mikulski and Senator Shelby added back funds that had been eliminated in the President's budget. But we have a long way to go and we have talked about that here. The instinct is right to try to provide more funding so we are able to deal with those issues. I held a hearing last week. A report shows that 34 percent of Indian women will be raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetime. That is unbelievable. We have serious law enforcement problems. But I must vote against this amendment for the following reason: I cannot support an amendment, even though it adds money we need, that we will pay for by eliminating--by reducing funding for legal services, precisely because, as the Senator from Iowa says, legal services are the access to the legal system for low-income folks. It is the only opportunity they have, in many cases, for them to access the legal system. That budget has been cut, and cut repeatedly. Now we are trying to add some back. To cut it now would be the wrong thing. I appreciate the Senator yielding to me. I am very interested, I know the Senator from Iowa is very interested, in working with Senator Thune and others, Senators Shelby and Mikulski. I have talked to them to try to find ways to add back to these accounts in the future. We must do that. It has been partially restored in some of these areas by Senators Mikulski and Shelby. I thank the Senator from Iowa for allowing me to weigh in. I say I certainly support his presentation. I support the instinct of the Senator from South Dakota in wanting to try to improve this area of funding. But we cannot do it by taking away from such important funding as Legal Services.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator will yield further for a question, the President, when vetoing the legislation, referred to some families with $83,000 who will be getting this largess so that their children can get subsidized health insurance coverage. My State, as an example, covers children at 140 percent of poverty, most States at around 200 percent of poverty, which I believe is around $44,000 gross income, and the $83,000 to which the President referred does not exist. It was a request from the State of New York which was not granted. In any event, all those requests that have been granted for above the 200 percent have been approved willingly and in a way that allowed this administration to boast that they had approved them. Now the President objects to the very thing they had approved. The other point is, didn't this President actually campaign in the year 2004 saying he supports expansion of this very program? I ask the question about the $83,000. That clearly must be a misrepresentation. Is that the judgment of the Senator from Illinois as well?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, Senator Mikulski, the chair of the subcommittee, will be here at 4 o'clock. I know Senator Shelby is here, and I believe he will be out momentarily. I have agreed to be on the floor until Senator Mikulski returns. I did want to take a moment to talk about an amendment I was discussing when we were previously in session on this bill, dealing with law enforcement on Indian reservations. I did not actually offer the amendment. I had filed the amendment. The subcommittee itself restored some funds that the President had cut. I indicated to the subcommittee that I hoped we could work between now and next spring, when we begin the new fiscal year legislation, so we could add some funding for these critical areas. I want to make note that Senator Mikulski and Senator Shelby already added funding to accounts the President had decided to zero out. These accounts are accounts dealing with law enforcement on Indian reservations. We just held a hearing on these issues in the Indian Affairs Committee here in the Senate. It is pretty stark, when you hear from folks who talk about the crisis on reservations with respect to law enforcement. The U.S. Government made a decision a long time ago, well over a century ago, that law enforcement on Indian reservations is a responsibility of the Federal Government. Our country has a legal obligation to be involved in preventing crime on Indian lands. That obligation is a result of treaty provisions and Federal laws that grant the United States the responsibility and the authority to investigate and prosecute major crimes on Indian reservations. That is not the choice of Indian tribes; that is a decision our Government made over a century ago. The tribal governments on our Indian reservations rely on the Federal Government--specifically, the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office--to investigate and prosecute violent crimes on Indian reservations. We had a hearing 2 weeks ago. There was testimony at that hearing from some research that had been done that 34 percent of Indian women will be raped or sexually assaulted during their lifetime. One-third of the Indian women will be raped or sexually assaulted during their lifetime. That is the state of violent crime on Indian reservations. A retired BIA police officer who worked on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation said we do not have the resources. ``We all knew they only take cases with a confession.'' If there wasn't a confession, there wasn't a case. ``We were forced to triage our cases,'' he said. When this violence becomes so commonplace that the police have to triage rape cases, there is something dreadfully wrong. One of the big factors in the rise of violent crime on Indian reservations is the lack of a police presence or law enforcement presence on Indian lands. There are little more than 2000 Federal and tribal law enforcement officers who patrol 56 million acres of Indian land. In North and South Dakota, we have two police officers who patrol the 2.3 million-acre Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation. We have heard from people who called to report a violent crime as it was occurring, and they waited an hour and 15 minutes for the police to show up. In other cases, they wait days for the police to show up. The lack of tribal jails and bedspace also adds to the problem because there is no place to put criminals. I have been in tribal detention facilities. I have seen kids lying on cement floors in tribal detention facilities because there was not a juvenile facility and the other detention facilities did not have proper beds and didn't have enough space, so young children were lying on the floor of a detention facility. There is a $400 million backlog for construction for tribal jails. One Federal official said that there is what is called a catch-and- release system--just catch the criminals and release many of them back into the community because there is no space to put them. Because of that, the Indian reservations have become soft targets for organized crime and particularly for organized efforts dealing with methamphetamine. In May of last year, Federal officials seized a huge methamphetamine organization's business plan, and the business plan outlined how that organization wanted to replace alcohol abuse as it infiltrated Indian reservations with methamphetamine abuse on Indian reservations. The plan also outlined how the tribal police could not arrest them while on the reservation. They described in the business plan how they were going to introduce and use the reservations as the basis for their methamphetamine distribution to run their business. After creating a system in which we said law enforcement is the Federal Government's responsibility, the administration in its budget now wants to tell the tribes: We are too busy, so you are on your own. The statistics I have described are really sobering: crumbling jails. What does the administration propose to spend for detention facilities, Tribal Jails Discretionary Grants Program? Well, the administration proposes we spend nothing. Not a thing. Assistance to the tribal courts, what does the administration propose that we spend? Nothing. Those are all programs that have always been funded. These are programs for which the Federal Government has a responsibility by previous agreement. Tribal COPS Program, the President says let's fund it at zero. Tribal Youth Program, fund it at zero; Indian Alcohol and Crime Demonstration Program, zero. Every single one of those, all except the last, have always been funded. The President says: Not my responsibility, not this administration; we do not intend to provide funding. Now, let me thank Senator Mikulski and the ranking member as well, Senator Shelby, because they have provided some funding in this subcommittee mark. It is not as much as I would like. It is not as much as I am sure they wanted to do, but they should be complimented for rejecting the President's recommendation at a time when we have a serious problem, and at a time when that problem is our responsibility to deal with because we have made agreements and required that we will be responsible for dealing with it. The President says: Let's not do it. And Senator Mikulski and Senator Shelby said: We reject that. We have a responsibility. I was intending to offer an amendment 2 weeks ago--I did not do that--to add even further because Senator Mikulski and Senator Shelby indicated they want to work with me. But, first and foremost, I want to compliment them for rejecting the President's suggestion that we ignore our responsibility, and for Senators Mikulski and Shelby deciding these programs are exactly what we should be funding; it is our responsibility to do so. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN

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