Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 3233, previously agreed to, be modified with the changes at the desk. My understanding is both sides have cleared this request.

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator from Illinois has raised the issue of the override of the President's veto that will occur in the House this week. When the President vetoed the bipartisan legislation that would expand opportunities for health coverage for America's children-- another 3.8 million kids who don't have health coverage now would have it under that bill--the President referred to it as some kind of socialized medicine, some sort of big-government solution. Then he talked about the prospect of families with $83,000 in income. Isn't it the case that most States--my State included--receive a block grant and use the block grant to provide coverage by buying the coverage from BlueCross BlueShield? In other words, it is a block grant the States use to purchase coverage for children. Is that what the President was referring to as big government? If so, isn't the President misrepresenting what this bill does?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, last week I introduced some legislation in the Senate for which it is my hope my colleagues will join in. It deals with the issue of the Do Not Call List that is housed down at the Federal Trade Commission. I do not think there is much more irritating in life than to receive calls from telemarketers. Almost everybody has received bundles of calls from telemarketers--always during mealtime. They always wait until the family has been able to sit down to start a meal, and then the family gets a telephone call: Would you like to take our cable service? Would you like to take our cell phone service? Do you need new siding? We will have some people in your neighborhood tomorrow selling sheetrock or siding. So on and on and on, telemarketers are unbelievably annoying. So Congress passed a piece of legislation. It says: We are going to set up a list at the Federal Trade Commission called a Do Not Call List. You call in, put your name on that list, and it says to telemarketers: You may not call the names on that list. So the list has been very successful, except the Federal Trade Commission did one very inexplicable and dumb thing. I guess that is a gentle description. They said of the people who call in and put their names on a Do Not Call List, the list will expire at a certain time, so you would have to call back in. So we have had 149 million people call in. Think of this: 149 million Americans picked up their phone and called their Federal Government and said: Put my name on a Do Not Call List. I am sick and tired of getting telephone calls from telemarketers. I want my name on a list. That is the biggest vote in American history, isn't it? They just voted by picking up the phone. Mr. President, 149 million people voted to say: I do not want those calls anymore. Stop it. So the Federal Trade Commission put their names on a list. Then the Federal Trade Commission said: Oh, by the way, your name goes off the list at the end of 5 years. And by the way, next October, on or about the first day or so of the month--or within a couple of days of that time--we will have about 50 million people whose names come off the list. That makes no sense to me. If you put your name on a list saying, ``I don't want people making annoying calls to my house,'' that name ought to stay on the list. You ought not have to pick up the phone and recall the Federal Trade Commission. I do not know who made the decision but what a dumb decision. Let's put a list together. If you call and get your name on the list and say, ``I don't want irritating, annoying calls from telemarketers,'' your name ought to stay on the list until you decide to pull it off. So I have put in a piece of legislation that says if you put your name on a list, your name is going to stay on the list. You do not have to call in. There is not going to be an automatic expulsion. We did not provide for that in the Congress. The Federal Trade Commission came up with that goofy idea. So my legislation will say that idea is gone. If your name is on a list, it stays on the list. You deserve to have supper or dinner--or whatever you might call it at the end of the day-- without having your phone ringing by somebody wanting to sell siding or a new telephone service. My hope is every Member of the Senate might cosponsor the legislation--except for those Members of the Senate who love to get telemarketing calls. For those who do, I expect they would not sign on, and I will probably come and announce their names soon. But if we can get all of those to cosponsor it, we can get this passed quickly and solve a problem for all American families. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 3225, previously agreed to, be modified with the changes at the desk.

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator will yield for one additional question, the Senator from Illinois is on the Appropriations Committee with me. My understanding is the President is going to be sending down a second supplemental request within days. I understand the White House might not want to send it down before the override issue on the SCHIP program. But the SCHIP program would spend $7 billion a year for 5 years. That is $35 billion. All of it is paid for. None of it is contributing one penny to the debt. The result of that spending? The 3.8 million children who at this point have no health insurance coverage would now be fully covered with health insurance. The President seemed to, when he vetoed the legislation, be saying: I am going to be the guardian of the Federal Treasury and the taxpayers' checkbook. This is big-government bureaucracy--socialized medicine, in fact. This is fully paid for, $7 billion a year. Isn't it the case that the President has requested two things of us? One is already here, and the other will come next week. One is $145 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not a penny of it paid for all this year, and on top of that, we believe another roughly $44 billion supplemental. So that will be a $189 billion emergency supplemental this year. In other words, $7 billion for kids is too much; $189 billion, which will bring us somewhere close to two-thirds of a trillion dollars, the President has requested we spend, not a penny of it paid for. The implication of all that is, let's send soldiers to fight. When they come back, they can pay for the debt we have incurred because we don't intend to pay for any of it. Isn't it the case that the very same President who says $7 billion a year which is fully paid for and which will result in children's health insurance for 3.8 million children is the President who is sending us a $189 billion additional request for 1 year, none of it paid for?

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 at 5:15 today the Senate resume consideration of the Brown amendment No. 3260, with the time until 5:45 p.m. equally divided and controlled between Senators Brown and Mikulski or their designees; that no amendment be in order to the amendment prior to the vote; and that at 5:45 the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the amendment; that the amendment be modified with the changes at the desk.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, while we are waiting for the ranking member, to speak as in morning business for 3 minutes.

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is that we are in morning business, and the minority side is actually allocated certain amounts of time. They are not here. I ask unanimous consent that I may speak in morning business, with the understanding that if someone on the minority side comes to speak in morning business on their time, I will relinquish the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I believe midweek this week the House will take up the veto override of the President's veto on the Children's Health Insurance Program. There has been a lot of discussion about what this Congress has or has not done. I think despite all of the obstacles and roadblocks we have made progress in a wide range of areas. But the one in which we have made significant progress, which I am very proud of, is expanding children's health insurance coverage. Regrettably, we have a lot of children in this country who have no health insurance coverage at all. So the question of whether when they are sick they have a doctor to go to is a function, in many cases, of whether the parents have any income or any money in their checkbook or in their pockets. Many times those children get no health care. In 1997, we put in place the Children's Health Insurance Program. We know it works because we have had it for 10 years. In my State, for example, the Children's Health Insurance Program is not a government program that has created more bureaucracy. It is a block grant to my State that is used by State government to purchase health insurance from Blue Cross/Blue Shield and cover children who have no health insurance. Most States do that. This is not a big government program. This Congress passed a bipartisan piece of legislation. Let me emphasize that it is a bipartisan piece of legislation expanding health insurance coverage for children. I am proud that we have done that. In the Senate, we had 67 Senators vote in favor of it. Two Senators who were in favor of that bill were absent at that time, so that is 69 Senators who said, yes, let's expand the program. It was fully paid for. It doesn't increase the debt by one penny. It expands the program and would allow 3.8 million additional children in this country to have access to health care coverage. Mr. President, I don't know what is in second or third or even fourth place in terms of people's priorities. I know what is in first place for most people: their children and their children's health. The President says he vetoed this legislation because it is big government. He vetoed this legislation because he says it would cover kids at the family level of income of $83,000. The President knows better than that. He wasn't telling the truth. Let me just, if I can, speak a bit of truth to this issue. This is not big government. Contrary to most of what the President is sending down to the Congress, this is paid for. Contrast this children's health insurance--a proposal from the Congress that is paid for--with the proposals that sit in front of the Congress from the President for Iraq and Afghanistan to prosecute the war. Right now, we have a $189 billion request by this President to continue funding the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not one penny of it is paid for. We send the soldiers to war, and the President says let's send them the bill later when they come home and they can help pay for it. Contrast that with what we have done with children's health insurance. It is $35 billion over 5 years, all of it paid for, and 3.8 million children, who at this point don't have access to health insurance coverage, will get that coverage. Is that something we ought to be proud of? In my judgment, it is. Now, the President, when he vetoed this, he said this is going to provide coverage to kids whose parents are at the $83,000 level. That is not the poverty level. There is no $83,000 level. That was a level requested by the State of New York, which was not approved. It is true that there are a number of States that cover children from families who have incomes above the 200-percent level of poverty, but let me point out that this George W. Bush administration approved these expansions, and I will give an example. In 2003, New Jersey applied for a waiver to be able to cover parents in their program. Secretary Thompson of the Bush administration said: Absolutely. He signed the waiver saying: With this waiver, New Jersey will be able to expand health insurance coverage to thousands of residents who otherwise would be uninsured. California asked for a waiver. The Bush administration said: By giving parents of children with the CHIP program health insurance, we are providing quality health care to the whole family. This is the Bush administration that has actually approved these waivers, the very waivers the President seems now to be critical of. Let me also say this. The President campaigned--he campaigned--on expanding children's health insurance. In 2004, here is what he said: In a new term, we will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government's health insurance programs. We will not allow a lack of attention or information to stand between these children and the health care they need. So the President vetoed this bill. The sky is the limit when it comes to the other spending, but this bill, which is fully paid for, gets a veto. There are plenty of votes in the Senate to override the President's veto. The question is in the House. My hope is that Members of the House will understand the opportunity to override this veto and to establish a clear priority for this Congress on a bipartisan basis. My hope is they will round up the votes in the House to override this President's veto. This is about priorities. The fact is 100 years from now all of us will be dead and gone and the record of our service here and the record of this President's service, the record of this Government, will be in the history books. They will be able to tell a bit about our value system by looking at how did we spend our money. They will see there was a time in October of 2007 that this Congress had a couple of choices: First of all, the President says, give me another $189 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan to prosecute the war; give me another $189 billion, and by the way, I don't intend to pay for a penny of it. Just add it to the debt. Another priority was the Congress saying, let's expand health insurance for children--$35 billion over 5 years. Let's expand health insurance for children and, by the way, we will pay for it in the bill, which we did. And the President says the second priority is the one that is inappropriate? What can he be thinking of? When historians look at this value system and determine that the value system said children are less important, children are not the priority, they are going to scratch their heads and wonder how on Earth we came to that conclusion. I hope that is not the lesson that will come from this effort to override the President's veto. I hope the lesson will be a bipartisan Congress saying to this President: Not this time. Not today. Your priorities aren't square with what we ought to be doing in this country today. Our priority is, No. 1, expand health insurance coverage for America's children. My hope is at the end of this week that will be the result from the House of Representatives. I know very soon the Senate will vote and easily override the President's veto. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency In a moment I will talk about General Sanchez's speech this weekend, which I read about in the Washington Post, but before I do that, there is some interesting news about what is happening at the Defense Department in advanced research in something called DARPA--Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The head of DARPA, Dr. Tony Tether, came and spoke at a technology conference I had in Fargo, ND, last week. His speech was extraordinary. He is a good presenter and a wonderful public servant. I know there are some who wonder if the Government ever does anything right. Well, the Government does a lot of things to improve and help the American people and advance this country's interests, and I will describe one of them. Dr. Tether described experiments that are going on in advanced research in DARPA, in which they have taken a monkey, and the monkey sits at a console with a joystick. He sees a red ball go across in front of him, and he uses the joystick to touch the red ball with the arm of the joystick, and he is then given a treat. That is learned behavior for the monkey. The ball goes across the screen, the monkey exercises the joystick, the joystick aperture touches the red ball, and the monkey gets a treat. Then they took the joystick away and instead put on the monkey a mechanical electrical arm they are working on for those who have lost their limbs. They implanted electrodes in the brain of the monkey. Now, when the red ball goes across in front of the monkey, the monkey has no joystick, but the monkey thinks about touching the ball and getting the treat and so the electrodes capture the thought. Think of that--the electrodes capture the thought, which sends the electric impulse to the prosthetic arm that has been developed, and the arm reaches out and touches the ball, all because the monkey is thinking about touching the ball. This is about breathtaking new technology and research into approaches that will help those who have lost limbs in warfare, yes, and in every other area of life. There is so much going on that is interesting and breathtaking in the advanced research area, and again I say to Dr. Tether that I appreciated his coming to North Dakota and giving such a wonderful presentation. It was extraordinary. Well, that is something called DARPA. Not a lot of people know about DARPA at the Department of Defense. Retired General Sanchez on Iraq Policy Now, let me go from DARPA to the issue of General Sanchez's speech on Iraq policy that he gave this past weekend. General Sanchez was in charge of the war in Iraq and he has now retired and General Sanchez has some very strong things to say about the war in Iraq since his retirement. He says the war began with: A catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan . . . Since the start of this war, America's leadership has known that our military alone could not achieve victory in Iraq. Starting in July 2003, the message repeatedly communicated to Washington by military commanders on the ground was that the military alone could never achieve victory in Iraq. General Sanchez said the ``surge,'' which he called the ``latest revised strategy,'' is, in his words, ``a desperate attempt by an administration that has not accepted the political and economic realities of this war and they have definitely not communicated that reality to the American people.'' As a result, the American military, he says: finds itself in an intractable situation. The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat. The war in Iraq has been a ``catastrophic failure.'' This, according to General Sanchez, who was in charge of the war in Iraq from mid-2003 to mid-2004. Over 20 other retired generals have spoken out after they have retired. General Eaton said: The military ethos is: Give your advice privately to those in a position to make changes, not the media, but this administration is immune to good advice. So retired General Eaton went public with his criticism of this administration's flawed policies. General Batiste--I had the opportunity to meet General Batiste--was one of the brightest stars in the military and was considered virtually certain for promotion to the highest ranks. But, he turned down his third star and retired rather than continue to implement a war policy that he felt, and that he had experienced firsthand, was flawed. He retired so he could ``speak out on behalf of soldiers and their families.'' The point is, General Sanchez has said, and the other retired generals have said--in fact, I believe that most believe--there is not a military solution in Iraq, there is only a solution that embodies substantial diplomatic efforts and efforts in the political system in Iraq as well. The military alone cannot possibly prevail in Iraq. I wish to make a point I have made before. We have now apparently trained about 350,000 people in Iraq to be soldiers or to be in law enforcement. To the extent that I have numbers, this was from the 2007 report of the General Jones Commission, we have trained 152,000 members of the Iraqi Army--which incidentally, is about the number of American soldiers in Iraq--and 194,000 members of the Iraqi police. That is 346,000 Iraqis to be soldiers and police men and women. Now, I think one can reasonably ask the question, after we have been in Iraq longer than we were in the Second World War, that if we have trained over 350,000, or roughly 350,000 police men and women and soldiers, when will they have the will to provide for their own security? They have a new Constitution. The people of Iraq have seen Saddam Hussein executed. They have a new government. And they have had nearly 350,000 of their own trained to be law enforcement and military soldiers. Yet they cannot provide for their own security? My nephew went into the Marines about 10 months ago. He is fully trained and now in Iraq. We do it, and we can train 350,000 Iraqis. Yet they can't provide for their own security? Something is wrong with that. So, Mr. President, I only make the point that I read with interest General Sanchez's comments this weekend, and they mirrored comments we have heard previously from General Eaton, from General Batiste, from Colonel Hammes, and many others that the current strategy has been flawed all along and must change. We must understand that the solution in Iraq is not going to be a military-imposed solution, it is going to be a diplomatic solution and a solution within the political system in Iraq, the absence of which means there will remain in Iraq a protracted long-term civil war. While we are going door to door in Baghdad in the middle of a civil war with American soldiers, Osama bin Laden continues to send us messages over the internet and the airwaves. Our National Intelligence Estimate says that he is in a ``secure'' hideaway in northern Pakistan and has now rebuilt training camps and reconstituted the al-Qaida leadership. Now, think of that. Those who committed the acts of terror against our country and murdered thousands of Americans are now in a safe, more secure place, according to our intelligence estimates, and is reconstituting training camps and plotting new attacks against our country. We, on the other hand, have our soldiers going door to door in Baghdad in the middle of a civil war. I think General Sanchez's comments and the comments of over 20 other high-ranking military officers upon their retirement represent a basic body of thought most of us have long understood but is not understood at this point by the President. All of us want this country to succeed. We want our country to succeed in our war against terrorism. But the fact is we have to develop the right processes and the right policies to embrace that war against terrorism and to eliminate the al-Qaida leadership, which represents the greatest terrorist threat to our country. Again, the National Intelligence Estimate that we have all read says the greatest terrorist threat to our country, including to our homeland, is the leadership of al-Qaida and they are in a safe or secure haven and they are plotting additional attacks against our country and they are reconstituting their training camps to train the terrorists. Now, it should be clear to us what our obligations are. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I intend to offer an amendment. I have spoken at some length with the managers, and I will withdraw the amendment, but I want to offer the amendment and talk about it because I have received from them assurances of cooperation on this issue. It is a very important issue. What I would like to do is ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside so that I might offer an amendment.

Mr. DORGAN. I call up amendment No. 3240 which is at the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. DORGAN. I offer this amendment on behalf of myself and Senators Bingaman, Tester, Baucus, Cantwell, and Thune. This amendment deals with the issue of the criminal justice systems on Indian reservations. Before I talk about the amendment itself, I thank Senator Mikulski and Senator Shelby for the bill they have put together. The legislation they bring to the floor from the Appropriations Subcommittee is an important and marked improvement on what the President has requested. Let me describe what the President requested with respect to law enforcement activities on Indian reservations. Why is this important? Because we have a trust responsibility on Indian reservations, and we are not meeting it. For the tribal jails discretionary grants program in the year 2000, there was $34 million; the President requested zero this year. My colleagues, Senators Mikulski and Shelby appropriated $15 million. Tribal courts assistance, the same thing; tribal COPS, $40 million in the year 2000, zero in the Administration's 2008 request. Senator Mikulski and Senator Shelby restored that to $35 million. The list goes on. The question is this: Do we or do we not have a responsibility to fund these law enforcement responsibilities that we have on Indian reservations? Last week my committee, the Indian Affairs Committee, heard testimony. Let me describe a bit of that testimony. A recent report shows that 34 percent of Indian women will be raped or sexually assaulted during their lifetimes. One-third of Indian women will be raped or assaulted during their lifetimes. We heard from one retired Bureau of Indian Affairs police officer who worked on one of the Indian reservations: ``We all knew they would only take cases with a confession. We were just too loaded down. We were forced to triage our cases.'' When this type of violence becomes commonplace, so commonplace that the police have to triage rape cases, something is wrong. Somebody needs to take action. We had other testimony that the call to the police in an emergency, in a circumstance where there is a violent crime being committed or just was committed, in some cases it takes an hour or an hour and a quarter to receive a response from a law enforcement official. There are fewer than 2,000 Federal and tribal law enforcement officers who patrol more than 53 million acres of land. In North and South Dakota we have four police officers patrolling the 2.3 million acres of Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation. Survivors of violent crimes report waiting hours--in some cases days--for the police to respond to their urgent calls. The other issue is the lack of jail space, the lack of places to incarcerate violent criminals. Tribal jails face a $400 million backlog in funding. I have been to tribal jails. I have seen young kids lying on the floors of these jails. The detention centers are unbelievably deplorable, in many cases. One Federal official said that the lack of detention facilities means that this whole system is a catch-and- release jail system. The law enforcement officials of the tribe catch the criminals, and they are forced to release many of them right back into the community to commit another crime. We also heard testimony last week about the Indian reservations becoming soft targets for criminal organizations because of this neglect. That is not the choice of the Indian tribes. The fact is, they don't want this happening on the reservations. In May 2006, Federal officials seized a methamphetamine business plan. It outlined how the organization wanted to replace alcohol abuse with meth abuse on the Indian reservation because these are the most vulnerable citizens. It outlined how non-American Indians should handle the drugs, and it explained that tribal police couldn't arrest them while they are on the reservation. These stories are unbelievable. Again, a report that says one-third of Indian women during their lifetime will be raped or sexually assaulted, and we don't have adequate law enforcement protection. We have a couple million American Indians living on reservations. The system that was established over a century ago was that the Federal Government was going to have the basic law enforcement responsibility, and we have not met it. We have not met our responsibilities in health care, in education, in housing, and we have not met them in law enforcement. I have described on this floor ad nauseum the situation with health care. We have responsibilities for two groups of people for health care. We have responsibility for every one we throw into a Federal penitentiary. They are our prisoners. We provide for their health care. We have a trust responsibility for medical care for American Indians. That is because that is a decision our country made a long time ago. We spend twice as much per person providing health care for Federal prisoners than we do to meet our obligation to provide health care for Indians. Many of these kids, many of the elders go wanting for health care in a country like ours. I am talking now not about health care or housing or education where we have a full-blown crisis. I am talking about law enforcement, the basics. If your life is not free from violence, you are always afraid. The fact is, we have circumstances where we have inadequate jail space. We have in many cases circumstances where violent crimes are committed, and yet they must be investigated by the FBI. They must be investigated by the U.S. Attorney's Office and prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office. The fact is, resources do not exist. That is the problem. My proposal is simple. My amendment was to increase the funding in this legislation in two areas: one dealing with detention centers, and that is an urgent situation that is in need of a response. In the second area we provide a grant program to be increased, as it properly should, to deal with the issue of alcohol and methamphetamine. Methamphetamine is a scourge on Indian reservations. They are being targeted by gangs and by organized crime. They are being targeted by non-Indians. They don't have the law enforcement capability to take care of it. The question is, are we going to do that? Amendment No. 3240, Withdrawn My colleagues from Maryland and Alabama have been very helpful in saying they are willing to work with me to increase these accounts and find ways to fund these things. As a result, I will ask that my amendment be withdrawn because we have made progress in commitments from those two legislators. I thank them. I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. DORGAN. I look forward to working with them. In the next 5 or 6 months we are going to make some real progress.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I take the floor to speak in opposition to an amendment that is now pending, amendment No. 3144, offered by my colleagues, Senator Kyl, Senator Sessions, and Senator Thune. This amendment will add $10 million to be available for a program called the Space Test Bed. The space test bed is not a particularly great description of what it does, but that is the description of the program. I want to describe why I believe it would be a huge mistake for us to approve the amendment. First, let me say it deals with missile defense. There is about $8\1/ 2\ billion in the bill, the underlying bill, for missile defense programs, $8\1/2\ billion. We are, even now, buying and deploying national missile defense interceptors that have never been tested against realistic targets, such as targets with decoys and multiple warheads. We will, I think, continue to see, as we have seen before, dramatic cost overruns and test failures. I recognize the newspaper today, the New York Times, I believe, has a story that says: Missile defense system is up and running. That is because they apparently had a successful test last week. It hit a target. But it is not the kind of target that would be expected in a real missile attack, were we to have a missile attack. And despite the fact that we are rushing headlong to deploy this missile defense system to essentially create a catcher's mitt for intercontinental ballistic warheads, you find a catcher's mitt, except it is not as simple as a catcher's mitt. This is about hitting a bullet with a bullet. Now, we have spent a massive amount of money on this, over $100 billion so far. Contrast that with the needs that go unmet here at home. But to go to the amendment that has been offered, on the space test bed. It is a program to investigate the utility and the feasibility of space-based missile defense systems to complement the ground-based ballistic missile defense system. In other words, the program would begin to weaponize space. The idea is you can destroy a missile from a system orbiting in space. This program is designed to develop a space-based kill vehicle and to develop command, control, and battle management, communications structures for space-based missile defense. I am not talking about ground interceptors, I am talking about space- based missile defense, and about eventually launching a number of interceptors from space to test them against the ballistics missiles. Let me describe what has happened to this proposal. Both the authorizing committee in the House and the Senate have rejected it. Neither Appropriations Committee has accepted this proposal to spend $10 million. In fact, both Appropriations Committees, as I understand it, have explicitly rejected spending this $10 million. There is no authorization for this program. Does anybody here recall having a debate about an authorization to proceed with a space-based missile program? It has not been authorized. The disappointing thing about this debate--and we have had this before in the Senate--is this: If you take a threat meter, and look at what are the greatest threats to our country--and, yes, there is such a thing as a threat meter. Our intelligence folks have it. They have it over in the Department of Defense. If you evaluate what are the greatest threats to our country--well, let's think of some threats. An intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead. Is that a threat? Yes, sure could be. They exist. Russia has a lot, China has some, a few countries have them. But we are told the most likely threat to this country comes from rogue nations and terrorist groups. Does anybody think they are going to launch an attack against this country with an intercontinental ballistic missile? Not likely at all. Yes, the threat meter would show that the lowest possible threat to our country at this point is an intercontinental ballistic missile aimed at our country. A much greater threat than the threat of an intercontinental ballistic missile at 14,000 miles an hour aimed at an American city, a much greater potential threat that almost everyone will admit is a greater threat, is a ship pulling up to the dock of a major American port at 3 miles an hour--not 14,000 miles an hour, 3 miles an hour--with a container on it that might include a nuclear weapon or weapons of mass destruction sent here by a terrorist set to detonate in a major American city. Contrast, if you will, what we spend to defend against that proposition, that much greater threat, as opposed to the billions and billions, well over $100 billion we have now spent for one of the least likely threats. I am not suggesting missile defense is irrelevant; it is not. We should work on missile defense. But once we put in place a star-spangled, gold-plated ballistic missile defense system, then we will understand that a much greater threat than a ballistic missile is going to be a cruise missile traveling low to the ground at a lower speed, and then we will decide: Well, I guess this catcher mitt we have developed for over $100 billion cannot defend against that, and yet that is a much greater likely threat to our country. My only point is this: We are spending a lot of money on missile defense. It is money that well could be used in other areas to protect against much greater threats on the threat meter against this country. But as much as we are spending, it is not enough for some. My colleague comes to the floor and says: We need $10 million more, because we need to begin this process of weaponizing space, believing, apparently, that space belongs to us exclusively. It does not. My hope would be that in a world in which we have thousands, yes, thousands of nuclear weapons--the best guess is perhaps 20,000, perhaps 30,000 theater and strategic nuclear weapons, the loss of one of which to a terror organization will be a catastrophe for the world. In a world in which we have thousands of these weapons, it seems to me that part of our responsibility as a country is to provide international leadership, moving to try to, No. 1, prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to others, and, No. 2, to reduce the number of nuclear weapons that exist in this world. Only then will we feel that perhaps at some point we will eliminate the capability of someone to detonate another nuclear weapon. You know it has been many decades since a nuclear weapon has been detonated against humans. We hope it never happens again. We used nuclear weapons in Japan. There were many casualties who were not soldiers. But, it ended the war. There was great debate about that. But we have, as a country, tried in every way possible to make sure that nuclear weapons have not been used again. So rather than have an amendment saying, let's spend $10 million to see if we can ramp up some kind of a space-based test module so we can weaponize space, would it not be much nicer if we could actually bring to the floor of the Senate and debate once again the issue of this Senate ratifying the comprehensive test ban treaty. Do you realize that has never been ratified by this country? One of our leadership responsibilities, I think, ought to be to ratify that treaty. We tried some years ago. Guess what. It lost because of people who apparently did not think we have the responsibility to lead the world away from the use of nuclear weapons, away from the testing of nuclear weapons, to lead in a way that prevents others from achieving nuclear weapons, and to begin to reduce the number of nuclear weapons we have in this country. This issue, this amendment, is not about all of that. It is about one additional piece of the nuclear weapon puzzle and the defense systems that some want to create. All of us want defense against those kinds of things that would attack this country or do harm to this country, and that includes defenses against missiles. But, as I said, we have spent over $100 billion. We now have a system that, while we are told it has been deployed, has not ever been tested against a realistic threat. And it is a defense against the least likely threat against this country. But to go one step further and decide that what we want to do is create a space test bed to eventually develop a space kill vehicle, and to about $300 million between now and 2013 on the program, makes no sense to me at all. It has not been authorized. It has been explicitly rejected by the Appropriations Committees for both the House and the Senate. In my judgment, it would be a giant step in the wrong direction, sending a signal to the world that this country is going to embark unilaterally on something that is, in my judgment, very dangerous to our efforts at nonproliferation and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and finally beginning to end that arms race. Those are the reasons I strongly oppose the amendment that has been filed, amendment No. 3144. I hope if there is, in fact, a vote on it, the Senate will express itself similarly. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I did speak prior to Senator Kyl. I would like to speak for about 5 minutes in response, but I will be happy to wait.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, first of all, I certainly respect the views of my colleague from Arizona. He and I have had these discussions before. I do not come to the floor suggesting there are not a wide range of threats against our country. I recognize there must be a general who would support this program. You show me any program in the Pentagon, and I will show you four or five generals who are involved in it and whose careers are attached to it in many ways. It is why many programs continue long after they perhaps should. But with respect to this issue of the use of space, my colleague, when he began his statement, said this: The space test bed program is not solely--``not solely''--for the purpose of developing a space-based kill vehicle for missile defense. I respect that. But most people understand this space-based test bed is, in the longer term, being developed for a space-based kill vehicle and for space-based missile defense. Yes, it would have satellite capability and antisatellite capability, for that matter, which will cause some real consternation around the world, in my judgment. But I wonder what would happen if today on the floor of the Senate we were here and we read in the newspaper that the Chinese or the Russians--either--have just passed legislation embarking on a project to develop a space test bed which can be used for the purposes of ballistic missile defense or, perhaps, antisatellite operations? We would have people on the floor of the Senate having an apoplectic seizure: The Chinese or the Russians are trying to weaponize space. How dare they? Yet we are being told we need to proceed with a program that is not authorized, a program that is not appropriated in either the House or the Senate, because it is just research. The problem is, I have seen this ``just research'' sort of thing go on with all of these programs and projects. We know where this ``just research'' is leading to. The ``just research'' is the desire of some to develop a space-based antimissile program. It is not enough to have a ground-based system; they want to put it in space. I am just telling you this: Do you think the rest of the world is going to sit by and say: OK, that is all right. Just stick a test bed up there. Do a little research. Then put a kill vehicle up there. That will be all right. It won't bother us very much. Look, we have thousands of nuclear weapons. We have nuclear delivery vehicles all around the world. I am, frankly, at this moment much less concerned about a delivery vehicle that is traveling 14,000 miles an hour than I am a rusty Yugo car sitting at a dock in New York City with a smuggled small-yield nuclear weapon from the Russian arsenal in it. That is what I am concerned about. Look at the threat meter against this country--and, yes, there is really a threat meter. People have evaluated: What are the greatest threats and what are the lesser threats? Look at the threat meter and evaluate what the greatest threats are against this country. Those are the threats we are spending the least amount of money defending America against. Yet we spend over $100 billion for ground-based interceptors in the national missile defense program as it has morphed into other programs to protect against an intercontinental ballistic missile. We are told the great threat against our country comes now from rogue nations and from terrorist organizations. Does anybody really think a rogue nation or a terrorist group is going to attack us with an ICBM? Isn't it more likely, isn't it increasingly likely the threat will come in other ways? And isn't it true we are responding to that with much less money? We are responding to the lesser threat with more money, the greatest threat with less money. I do not understand that. My colleague indicated that laser technology, for example, is more effective against a satellite if it is space-based laser technology. So we put up a test bed, do a little research, put some technology up there with laser capability, and so do the Chinese and so do the Russians. Now you have two other systems up there much more effectively able to knock down a satellite. Wouldn't it be much smarter for all three of us to decide we are not going to weaponize space, we are not going to take an arms race to space? That is why I say we have responsibilities in the world as a leader, the preeminent nuclear power in the world. We have responsibilities to decide this has to be an international discussion. I believe our greatest responsibility right now as a country is to lead in the direction of deciding we are going to try to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, prevent other countries from getting nuclear weapons, and try to shut down this potential to move weapons into space. That ought to be our responsibility. That is what will make this a safer world. So my hope is we will defeat this amendment. I think this is a program which has justifiably been ignored by the authorizing committees and the money for which has been deleted by the appropriations committees. I appreciate very much the work of the appropriations committees to delete the $10 million that has been requested for the space test bed. I think that is the right choice for our country. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have a couple of minutes of comment. I know Senator Kyl withdrew his amendment. But I do want to have the Record corrected, because I was listening to part of the debate when I was back in my office. I think it is important to have an accurate Record. My colleague from Arizona indicated that the space-based test bed program which I oppose is not a program that would primarily be a space-based missile defense program. He said it is about protecting satellites. That the space test bed is about protecting satellites. That is what my colleague was saying. Let me read the unclassified portion of the Pentagon budget justification for the program. The space test bed is being explored as a potential solution to enhance ballistic missile defense. I guess you can come to the floor and say: Well, that is not what it is. But you probably would have to ask the Pentagon to cut out this page from its budget justification book. I want the Record to reflect something that is half way accurate. All of us understand what that program was intended to be. This is what the Defense Department says it was intended to be. So when I come to the floor and talk about why this program ought not proceed, it is not authorized, it has not been funded in either the House or Senate appropriations bills and, besides, it is a program that will eventually weaponize space by putting ballistic missile defense interceptors in space, I have the facts on my side. Then to have someone say: Well, that is not what it was. Gosh, you must not understand it, Mr. Dorgan. Well, I am sorry; I do understand it. So does the Pentagon. They say again: The Space Test Bed is being explored as a potential solution to enhance ballistic missile defense capability in the future. I went to a small school, but I can understand this. And I read fairly fast. There is not a lot of reading on this page. So I wanted the Record to reflect what is accurate about the issue of the space test bed. I think this country has an enormous responsibility with the question of nuclear weapons, stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, attempting to find ways to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles to protect this country in dozens of different ways against threats that exist against our country. I think it would be a profound mistake for this Congress to decide, without authorization, with very little debate, to begin funding a program that eventually will provide weapons in space. We would be apoplectic if we believed a program existed or was begun today in the Duma or in China, because we would believe it would be a threatening approach for them to weaponize space. I think they would view the same with activities we would undertake. My hope is we can work with others in the world with respect to nonproliferation and with respect to protecting all of us from those who would be aggressive in our future. By the way, my colleague suggested, because I said you can almost always find a general to support a program at the Pentagon--that I denigrated generals. My point was not to denigrate generals. But every program that exists, and every idea, has sponsors and support. You show me a program, I will show you a number of people who are involved in that program, believe in that program, and want that program to move. It is the generals and colonels and captains and lieutenants, and that is the way the system works. Now, I promised I was going to compliment the manager and the ranking member. I did it before, but let me do it again. This is a big piece of legislation, hard to put together, and not easy to manage. But they have been on the floor now for some while trying to move this legislation through. Much of it is very important for this country. I hope we can move to final passage in an expedited way.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I come to the floor to talk about the underlying appropriations bill. First, let me thank the chairman and the ranking member of the subcommittee. I think the work they have done on this bill is very important. I wish to talk especially about the issue of the bomber fleet in this country: B-2s, B-1s, B-52s. I do that for a very specific reason. Right now a lot of our soldiers are in the field, in harm's way. They strap on body armor in the morning, get shot at that day. We are at war. All of us want to make certain our soldiers who have answered the call have everything they need to do what they need to do. I do think, however, there are times in the Pentagon when a substantial amount of money is spent, far more than is necessary, and there is some waste. I wish to describe one of the things I find interesting and also somewhat troubling. Our bomber force is a part of the force that gives us air superiority. When you provide air superiority and have control of the air it has a tremendous impact on our ability to fight a war. We have seen some recent examples about what impact that has. Part of that force is made up of B-52 bombers. They were produced decades ago. They are kind of the ``gray beards'' of the bomber fleet. They are essentially bomb trucks that will haul weapons to various parts of the world. The newest ones were built in the 1960s. But, of course, most of the plane has been rehabilitated and changed, the electronics and so on. Former Air Force Chief of Staff GEN John Jumper said the B-52 and other aircraft will have greater access to targets in the future because of the F-22. With its stealth and supercruise characteristics, the F-22 will be able to precede other aircraft into combat zones to clear out any threats. So we have been told we should fund the F-22. I have supported that. The F-22 is an unbelievably effective next-generation fighter. We are told we should support that because the F-22 goes in and essentially clears out the airspace; knocks out the radar and knocks out all things that could be a threat to our bombers and other aircraft, at which point the airspace is owned and you can bring in a bomb truck, for example. Well, here are the costs of flying our bombers. The cost is: $78,000 an hour to fly a B-2, $48,000 an hour to fly a B-1, and $34,000 an hour to fly a B-52. We are told the B-52 will be usable for another 30 years. Yet we are told by the Air Force planners that what they would like to do is retire the least costly bomb truck. That way, after we have cleared the air threat and have air superiority, they want to fly the most expensive bomb trucks in and have the least costly bomb truck retired. It makes little sense to me, from a taxpayer standpoint, but that is what we would try to do. It also doesn't make sense when we look at the new bomber the Air Force is planning on. The earliest date it might be available is the year 2018. Of course, that will slip. They all slip. The new bomber, we are told, that when completed, would have an unrefueled range of 2,000 miles. The B-52 has double that and more. The new bomber will have a weapons payload of 14,000 to 28,000 pounds; the B-52, 70,000 pounds. Not only does the B-52 have more endurance and more payload than the new bomber. The B-52 is also fully paid for. It is usable for three more decades, and it flies at much less cost than the other two bombers we now have. But the Air Force wants to take a good number of B-52s and retire them at Davis-Monthan. I make the point that the authorizing committee has indicated the Air Force should keep 76 of the B-52s. As we work through this and look at what our bomber fleet should look like, I think it will become clear that keeping the B-52s makes sense both for our defense capabilities and for the effect on the American taxpayer.

Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield. Amendment No. 3126, As Modified