Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, this has been an interesting debate. I have had the opportunity to watch some of it and listen to more of it. I think we are finally debating a very important subject. From time to time, there is a tendency to treat the serious too lightly and the light too seriously here on the floor of the Senate. This is a serious matter being treated seriously. Our country is at war. Today, we have young men and women in America's military uniforms walking down alleyways and streets in Baghdad and other dangerous places in Iraq, risking their lives. Some, perhaps today, will give their lives. War is a serious subject, the most serious subject for our country. I wish to talk a little about the history of how we have gotten to this place and what I think we should do. I recall Memorial Day, shortly after 9/11. I believe it was the first Memorial Day after 9/11--perhaps the second--when a young man whom I had previously appointed to West Point came back. He was missing an arm, from combat. We had, of course, gone to Afghanistan, waging a war against the Taliban that had housed and harbored al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, and then shortly thereafter we went to the country of Iraq. This young man, who came from a small town in North Dakota and whom I was privileged to send to the West Point Academy, came back missing an arm but enormously proud of having served his country. I recall speaking at the outdoor event at the veterans cemetery. He was there. He spoke. I was enormously proud of him. He was proud of serving his country. I guess I described a verse I heard some long while ago--I don't even know the author--that: When the drums are heard and the lightning is seen and the knives are out, The patriots are always there, ready to fight and die for their country if necessary. We can name many patriots in this country who serve today and who have served this country--in world wars, conflicts--who serve today because our country asks them to serve. It is always the case that old men send young men and women to war. Wars might be different if the ages were reversed, but they are not. The question for me today is, What are our goals? My guess is every person serving in this Chamber, every man and woman, every Republican and Democrat, every conservative and liberal, wants the same thing for this country. We want our country to succeed. We are on our side, we are on the side of right, we are on the side supporting the greatest country that exists on this Earth. We made some serious mistakes. We went to Afghanistan. That was the right thing to do. It was, after all, Afghanistan that housed Osama bin Laden, who boasted about committing the terrorist acts of 9/11, murdering thousands of innocent Americans. They boasted about that. They said, ``We did it.'' Al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, al-Zarqawi--``We did it,'' they said. They were in Afghanistan, so we went to Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban government of Afghanistan, and the leadership of al-Qaida escaped. The leadership of al-Qaida went, apparently, to the hills in northern Pakistan. Then, with President Bush's direction, went to Iraq. A great deal of top-secret information was disclosed to those of us in Congress and some to the American people. The Secretary of State made a lengthy presentation with charts and slides to the United Nations, a presentation to the world. It turns out much of the intelligence upon which that was based was fundamentally wrong, some of it embarrassingly inaccurate. One single source, someone who we now know the Germans thought to have been a drunk and a fabricator, was used by the administration to suggest that Iraq threatened our country because it had mobile chemical weapons labs. This source, called ``Curveball,'' whom we now know to have been a single source and a source who lied, was the basis for substantial allegations to the Congress and the American people about evidence of a weapon of mass destruction program in Iraq. The source for yellow cake from Niger turns out to have been forged papers. Equipment to recreate a nuclear weapons program in the form of aluminum tubes--the Secretary of State and others gave us information about that, information that is now public but was imparted to us in top- secret sessions without disclosing something she was responsible to disclose: There were other parts of the Government that said no, these are not aluminum tubes to reconstitute a nuclear program, they are not that at all. They are thought to be for use in rocketry, and that is exactly what we found out later to be the case. Very substantial mistakes were made but, nonetheless, we cannot turn back the clock. American soldiers were committed. As a result of that, a number of things have happened in the country of Iraq. While the terrorists fled to Pakistan and Osama bin Laden and al-Zarqawi and the other leadership of the al-Qaida organization hid in northern Pakistan, now some over 2,000 days since they boasted about murdering thousands of Americans--while that was the case, we went to Iraq. Saddam Hussein was deposed. This man was a butcher. We have unearthed mass graves in Iraq that housed hundreds of thousands of skeletons of people murdered by the Saddam Hussein regime. Is it a worthy thing to have deposed a leader of Iraq with that kind of record? Yes. Saddam Hussein is gone. He was executed. The Iraqi people have now voted for their own Constitution. They wrote it and supported it. The Iraqi people have now elected their own government by their own hand. So there is no dictator, they have a Constitution, and they have a new government. The problem at the moment is they are not able to provide for their own security. In fact, there is a civil war occurring in the country of Iraq. We have just received the latest National Intelligence Estimate-- the latest National Intelligence Estimate, which is a compilation of whatever is said by the best minds that exist in the intelligence community. This is unclassified: Iraq has become a self-sustaining intersectarian struggle. If you take those words as part of what the National Intelligence Estimate says, this is a civil war. Now we end up with American soldiers right smack dab in the middle of a civil war in Iraq while Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida leadership exists in northern Pakistan directing al-Qaida's terrorist activities. Now why does this matter? Let me describe why that is important. On January 11, 2007, Mr. Negroponte who was then the Director of National Intelligence testified before Congress. He said: Al Qaeda is the terrorist organization that possesses the greatest threat to U.S. interests, including to our Homeland. Let me say that again. What is the greatest threat to our country's interests? Al-Qaida. That is not me; that is the head of American intelligence, Mr. Negroponte. This was reaffirmed 3 weeks ago by the current head of U.S. intelligence. The greatest threat to our country, the greatest terrorist threat to our country, is al-Qaida. They pose the greatest threat to our interests and to our homeland. Now an additional statement by Mr. Negroponte says this: [Al Qaeda] continues to plot attacks against our homeland and other targets with the objective of inflicting mass casualties. And they continue to maintain active connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders' secure hideout in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, northern Africa and Europe. All of this is a direct quote from the unclassified testimony of the head of intelligence in our country. Al-Qaida is the greatest terrorist threat to our country, No. 1; No. 2, they continue to plot attacks against our homeland from their leaders' secure hideout in Pakistan. Now let me ask the question: What is the goal here? What is the goal for this country? We were attacked on 9/11. Thousands of Americans were murdered by airplanes full of fuel, used as guided missiles to fly into office buildings, to the Pentagon. We were attacked on 9/11 by al-Qaida. They boasted about it. They said: We did it. Give us credit. We murdered innocent Americans. Where are they now, over 2,000 days later? They are, according to our top intelligence experts, in a secure hideout in Pakistan with the objective of inflicting mass casualties by continuing to plot attacks against our homeland. So what are we doing today? We are in Iraq going house to house, in Baghdad, in the middle of a civil war. What is the goal? Is our goal to fight terrorism? To take on the terrorists? To eliminate the terrorists? To eliminate the leadership of al-Qaida? Is it our goal to go after those who attacked our country and murdered thousands of innocent Americans? If that is our goal, let me ask this question: Why are they in a secure hideaway in northern Pakistan and our soldiers are going house to house in a civil war in Iraq, in Baghdad? Why? Maybe it is not our goal to fight the terrorists. Is it not our goal to take them on where they are? Yes, there are some al-Qaida in Anbar Province in Iraq. This resolution, by the way, will allow us to redeploy in Iraq to make an even greater effort against that al-Qaida organization that exists in Anbar Province. But our National Intelligence Estimate is quite clear: What is happening in Iraq, in the main, outside of Anbar Province has very little to do with al-Qaida and with terrorism. It has everything to do with a civil war and sectarian violence. So the question is: What should be our goal? I very strongly believe we should redeploy our troops and understand that our obligation is to take on those interests that want to attack us in our homeland, those interests that attacked us previously, those interests that represent the greatest threat to our country as described by the head of U.S. intelligence. Why on Earth on this day, Wednesday--2,010 days, nearly, following 9/ 11, after Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida boasted about launching attacks in our homeland and murdering the American people, murdering thousands of Americans--why on Earth would we not be in a full-court press to prosecute the war against terrorists? No, this situation in Iraq is not a proxy against the war on terrorism. It is not. It cannot be described that way. The National Intelligence Estimate tells us it is sectarian violence, by and large. The head of national intelligence tells us where the head of the greatest threat to our country is in northern Pakistan, the leadership of al-Qaida. We are going door to door in Baghdad in the middle of a civil war, and they are in northern Pakistan promoting continued attacks against our homeland. Is that a disconnect? It seems to me it is. Anybody in this Chamber who stands up and has a strong passion and opinion about these issues, I respect. The last thing I would ever do is suggest they are not patriotic, they don't love their country, they do not support soldiers. All nonsense. Every man and woman who aspires to come and serve, who is here in this Chamber, I know loves this country, supports our soldiers, and wants our country to succeed. That is a fact. This is not about anybody having bad motives. It is about our country trying to make a decision: Are we on the right path or the wrong path? Do we think the experience we have had in Iraq--now that this has become a civil war, in which we have made very little progress but seen many Americans killed and far more wounded--do we think that kind of situation can and should continue, or should we say to the Iraqi people the following: We want what is best for you as well. We have, with the blood and treasury of American soldiers and the American people, given you the following opportunities: You were able to get rid of Saddam Hussein. He does not exist anymore. He has been executed. You were able to write yourself a new constitution and you were able to cast your votes for a new government. The question now is this: This is your country, not ours. Do you have the will and the capability to provide for your own security? Iraq belongs to you, not us. If you cannot provide for your own security, the American taxpayer and the American soldiers cannot do that for a long period of time and should not be asked to do that year after year after year. We ought to redeploy, and that redeployment ought to be so our country can wage war against terrorists. We know where they are. Our National Intelligence Estimate and the head of the national intelligence organizations have told us. They are the greatest threat. We know where they are. Yet my guess is they do not feel terribly threatened today. What is the goal? What is our goal here? I would hope our goal as a country is to decide to go after and eliminate those terrorists who plot attacks against our country. Now there are many ways for us to manifest our love of country and our passion about these issues. But I think there is one other issue most of us would agree upon. One of the concerns I have had about what is happening these days with respect to the Iraq war is we have sent soldiers to war, but we have not asked our country to make a similar commitment. Just this morning I asked the Chief of Staff of the Army at a hearing, an Appropriations hearing, about a new personnel carrier we have developed. They say it will reduce deaths from improvised explosive devices by two-thirds in a country such as Iraq--new design, stronger, more capable. I asked: Were we ordering a lot of them? No, not really. At today's pace it will take about 6 years to replace the existing vehicles. I chaired a democratic policy committee hearing last year, and retired Marine Colonel Hammes came to the hearing. He said: You know, in the Second World War, at the end we were producing 50,000 warplanes a year. Do you know why? Because our country, by God, decided the whole country was going to make an effort to go to war, to commit and to produce and do everything there was to give our soldiers the opportunity to fight and win. We have not done that. The Army has ordered 2,500 of those new armored personnel carriers some estimate will save two-thirds of the lives that are now being lost to IEDs. Our country is told we are at war, you go ahead and go to the mall, go shopping. The soldiers will go to war. In fact, we won't ask you to pay for anything either. We have now spent $450 billion, plus or minus. We are on the way to spending over $650 billion in Afghanistan and Iraq and the war on terrorism without asking the taxpayer to pay one cent; add it to the debt. The country has not been asked to go with the soldiers. There is no sacrifice. It is just the soldiers. We have a resolution on the floor of the Senate. The resolution is S.J. Res. 9. I heard some of the debate a bit earlier. Some have suggested this resolution is about cutting and running. People will think we have left. I think most of the people in this world would take a look at us and say this is the strongest country in the world. It has got the biggest military in the world. We spend more money than any other country, any other series of countries, on defense. We spend more money than the top 30 countries combined on defense. Unbelievable. We were attacked by the leadership of al-Qaida and their operatives on 9/11/2001. It is now 2007. They are still alive. Our national intelligence chief tells us where they are. They are still the greatest threat to this country. They are still plotting attacks against our country. And we are this behemoth military Nation that has such capability. Why are we not using that capability for the goal I think is preeminent, and that is the goal of protecting our country and eliminating those who are plotting attacks against our country, the leadership of al-Qaida? The way to do that will not be to wait for President Bush to decide he wants to change course. He does not want to change course. He wants to keep doing what we have been doing. But the way to change course is to pass the piece of legislation that says: Let us redeploy our troops. Speaking only for me, I believe the redeployment ought to be to go after the greatest threat that exists to this country's future, the greatest threat described by our National Intelligence Estimate and the national intelligence chief. It is not a surprise, not a secret. We all understand where that threat is. And yet we reduced our forces in Afghanistan early so we could invade Iraq. Now we have got problems in Afghanistan. We have got bogged down in Iraq. We are now in the middle of a civil war in Iraq. The greatest threat to our country's interests is in a secure hideaway in Pakistan; a secure hideaway. That ought never happen. The head of intelligence in this country ought never be telling us there is a secure hideaway for the organization that wants to destroy our country, to launch attacks against innocent Americans. There ought not be a place that is secure on this planet for people who are doing that. What is the goal? Is not the goal to fight terrorism, to take on the terrorists? If that is the case, then let's heed the words of the head of intelligence, to know where they are, what they are doing, who they are, and find a way to bring them to justice. The sooner the better. After nearly 5\1/2\ years, it is past time, long past time for us to set our sights on those who represent the greatest threat to our country. That is the reason I will support this resolution. This is about redeployment. This is about establishing the goals we ought to have as a country. Finally, let me say this: I have enormous respect for the men and women serving in the military. They are an unbelievable bunch of young men and women. I recall speaking to a helicopter crew in Afghanistan. They were young men and women, average age 19, 20, 21, 22 years of age who were keeping those helicopters in the air. The officer said these are kids, but they are highly trained kids, highly motivated kids, these young people. You go in the field and watch what they do, and it is unbelievable. They love their country. When their country asks them to serve, they serve. But their country, it seems to me, owes them something too. Their country owes them the responsibility of clear, thoughtful policies, the ability to address what is important to our country. When we use military force, we ought to use military force not in the middle of a civil war some place, but instead use military force to confront the terrorists who threaten America. That is what military force ought to be used for at this point. We understand terrorism is awful. Most of us have never before understood there are plenty of people out there who are willing to die themselves if they can kill a few innocent people in order to make their point. That is something we have never before understood very well. That is modern terrorism. We have to confront that. We owe it to our soldiers to have a set of goals that represent the best interests of this country. So my hope, in short, is for us to be able to tell the Iraqis: This is your country, not ours. You need to provide for your own security. We are going to give you a sufficient time to do that, but we cannot keep American soldiers in the middle of a civil war for a great length of time. We intend to turn our attention to where it should have been all along; and that is, to confront the greatest threat that exists to our country, which is al-Qaida, its network around the world, and its plans to try to create terrorist acts in our homeland. That ought to be our goal. The way to achieve that goal is through the redeployment that would come with this legislation. Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 5 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I understand Senator Feinstein is on her way. As soon as she arrives, I will yield the floor. Fuel Efficiency Energy Act

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wish to comment very briefly on legislation that Senator Larry Craig of Idaho and I are introducing today. It is a bipartisan piece of energy legislation. I wish to describe it briefly. We are in the process, this year, of trying to put together another Energy bill. I am on the authorizing committee. So with the leadership of Senator Bingaman and Senator Domenici and others of us on the authorizing committee, we will try to write a new Energy bill. That bill has a lot to do with security--oil security, energy security but the security of our country as well. If we woke up some morning and terrorists had interrupted the supply of oil to our country, we would be in a desperate condition. On this Earth of ours, this planet, we stick straws in the planet and suck out oil--about 84 million barrels of oil a day. Of the 84 million barrels a day that is taken out of this planet, 21 million barrels is used in the United States. One-fourth of all the oil is used in this little patch of ground called the United States. Nearly 65 percent comes from outside our country, much of it from very troubled parts of the world--Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Venezuela. We are desperately dependent on oil from other countries-- again, in many areas, troubled countries in the world. We have to find a way to move toward energy independence. Senator Craig, a Republican, and I, a Democrat, have worked on a bipartisan basis to introduce legislation that has been put together for nearly 2 years now by an organization of retired business executives, retired military officers, to talk about reducing the oil intensity in this country, especially dealing with transportation. Nearly 70 percent of all the oil we use is used in transportation. We run it right through our vehicles, by and large, and 70 percent of it is used in the transportation sector; and that line is going up, up-- way up. We need to find ways to address this issue of our unbelievable dependence on foreign oil and the substantial increase in oil intensity in the transportation sector. So we are introducing a piece of legislation that does a lot of things. A, it demands that vehicles be more efficient. And we are not leaving out any vehicles. This includes big trucks. Get a car these days and compare it to a car you would have purchased 10 years ago-- identical models--and what you will find, I bet, is there has not been one bit of progress in fuel efficiency in 10 years. Oh, the car company will say: That is not true. This is much more efficient. It is heavier, but you get the same gas mileage, even though you are actually pulling more weight. That is all baloney. The fact is, in terms of how much oil we use, we are not making any progress on efficiency. As a result of that, I believe, finally, it is long past the time when we ought to demand increases in the efficiency in our vehicle fleet. Second, we believe we are going to have to find additional oil. I understand that digging and drilling, which I call ``yesterday forever'' as an energy strategy, is not the only strategy, but we do have to find some additional oil. We believe we should open up additional lands in the Gulf of Mexico, where the substantial quantity exists. We would do it by protecting beaches and protecting the viewshed, but there is substantial energy there we ought to be able to get. Third: a dramatic increase in renewable energy. Yes, cellulosic ethanol, biodiesel, and a whole series of areas of achieving substantial additional renewable energy--all of that is achievable if we decide as a country to establish that as a goal. We believe doing a number of things, some of which are very controversial, to both increase production and decrease use--that is through conservation and efficiency--can move us to a much less oil- intensive economy. Now, there is more to do. The larger, comprehensive bill will have to include the issues of electrogeneration and transmission, and all these other issues. We are dealing, in the legislation Senator Craig and I are introducing today, with the question of oil intensity in the transportation sector, which is a very substantial part of our oil usage. Now, we do not believe necessarily that somebody is going to say: Well, do you know what? Let's take this entire bill as it has been written and have a vote tomorrow. We understand that is not the way it works. But we do believe it is important for us to take a hard look at these energy issues from a security standpoint. We talk about energy in many ways too casually. Our country runs on energy. Especially the issue of oil is a very important issue because so much of it comes from off our shores. So much of it comes in circumstances that we have very little control over. From an energy standpoint, I was thinking the other day about a visit I had with our former colleague, John Glenn, who described to me, late one night on an airplane as we were flying over the Pacific on our way to Asia--I was pumping him with questions because I was a young boy as I listened on the radio about his space flight. I was asking John about all of this, and I had read about the time when the city of Perth, Australia, I think it was, decided to light every light bulb in the city as a signal to this astronaut flying up there alone circling the Earth. John Glenn told me, when I asked him the question: As you reached the dark side and looked, did you ever see Perth, Australia, because they lit all the lights of the town to signal you?--and he said he did. He looked down. The only evidence of life on Earth on the dark side was to see a shining light that was then Perth, Australia. But that light was, of course, a product of energy--energy produced by human beings to make life better on this Earth. So now we come to the year 2007, living in the greatest country on Earth--but an unbelievable, prodigious consumer of energy--in a situation where we do not have a secure energy supply, with 60 to 65 percent of our oil coming from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Venezuela, and other parts of the world where there is great turbulence. So the question for this Congress is what to do about that. The answer is, as is the case in all areas of security, we need to be concerned and we need to take action to become less dependent and more independent, to the extent we can, on foreign oil. So working with a wide group of interests, with an organization that has been working now for several years to put this plan together, Senator Craig and I are introducing this legislation today in the Senate. I wish to take a brief moment to comment about what that plan is. We take--pretty much all of us take--energy for granted. We live a great life. For light, we simply turn on a switch. To move someplace, we turn a key and gasoline flows from the tank, through the carburetor, the fuel injector, and we do not think much about that. But it has given us a pretty unbelievable life. Through it all, we have never had to be very conscious about saving, economizing, efficiency, conservation, and we have not had to be as conscious as we should be now about where oil comes from. For that reason, we have introduced a piece of legislation that I think has substantial merit. We will work with Senator Bingaman and Senator Domenici and others on the authorizing committee to incorporate the provisions and the ideas that are represented in this plan as a new approach to energy in our country's future.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. I withhold the suggestion of an absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am pleased to be joined by Senator Craig to introduce legislation called the Security and Fuel Efficiency Act of 2007 or SAFE Energy Act. This legislation is a balanced plan with the overall goal to improve the energy security of the U.S. through a 50 percent reduction in the oil intensity of the economy by 2030. What that means, plainly, is that if we used more than 4 barrels of oil in 1973 for every one unit of GDP and are using just over 2 barrels of oil per unit of GDP today, then under the provisions of the SAFE Energy Act we are striving to get down to 1 barrel of oil per GDP by 2030. This is important to me because the United States remains dangerously dependent on foreign sources of oil. Today we import over 60 percent of our oil from Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other unstable regions of the world. This is very troubling to me. In the United States, we use about 67 percent of our oil to power our vehicles. This is the area where we are least secure and increasingly dependent. I am proposing along with my colleague, Senator Craig, a bipartisan, balanced approach to securing our future energy through reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Our proposal is grounded in four cornerstone principles. The first principle is achievable, stepped increases in fuel efficiency of the transportation fleet. The second principle promotes increased availability of alternative fuel sources and infrastructure. The third principle calls for expanded production and enhanced exploration of domestic and other secure oil and natural gas resources. Finally, the fourth principle improves the management of alliances to better secure global energy supplies. Senator Craig and I came together on this legislation because we believe that bolder energy security measures must be taken now to address our long-term security, economic growth and environmental protection. Producing much of our energy at home will also address other major challenges. There is no silver bullet to solving our energy dependence. Digging and drilling is a strategy I call yesterday forever. Conservation alone is not the answer. Renewable fuels hold promise, but we need to do much more here. We believe the combination of steps in the SAFE Energy Act sets the right pathway to U.S. energy security. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the Security and Fuel Efficiency Energy Act of 2007 be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am pleased to be joined by Senator Craig to introduce legislation called the Security and Fuel Efficiency Act of 2007 or SAFE Energy Act. This legislation is a balanced plan with the overall goal to improve the energy security of the U.S. through a 50 percent reduction in the oil intensity of the economy by 2030. What that means, plainly, is that if we used more than 4 barrels of oil in 1973 for every one unit of GDP and are using just over 2 barrels of oil per unit of GDP today, then under the provisions of the SAFE Energy Act we are striving to get down to 1 barrel of oil per GDP by 2030. This is important to me because the United States remains dangerously dependent on foreign sources of oil. Today we import over 60 percent of our oil from Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other unstable regions of the world. This is very troubling to me. In the United States, we use about 67 percent of our oil to power our vehicles. This is the area where we are least secure and increasingly dependent. I am proposing along with my colleague, Senator Craig, a bipartisan, balanced approach to securing our future energy through reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Our proposal is grounded in four cornerstone principles. The first principle is achievable, stepped increases in fuel efficiency of the transportation fleet. The second principle promotes increased availability of alternative fuel sources and infrastructure. The third principle calls for expanded production and enhanced exploration of domestic and other secure oil and natural gas resources. Finally, the fourth principle improves the management of alliances to better secure global energy supplies. Senator Craig and I came together on this legislation because we believe that bolder energy security measures must be taken now to address our long-term security, economic growth and environmental protection. Producing much of our energy at home will also address other major challenges. There is no silver bullet to solving our energy dependence. Digging and drilling is a strategy I call yesterday forever. Conservation alone is not the answer. Renewable fuels hold promise, but we need to do much more here. We believe the combination of steps in the SAFE Energy Act sets the right pathway to U.S. energy security. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the Security and Fuel Efficiency Energy Act of 2007 be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I believe this morning President Bush is in Brazil. A week ago today, I and a number of Senators met with the President at the White House. The issue of the Brazil trip came up. He no doubt will talk to the Brazilians about trade this morning. As he discusses the issue of trade, I wanted to make a couple of comments. Today we had a new trade deficit figure released, about 3 hours ago. It shows our merchandise trade deficit in the past month was $66 billion--in 1 month. I wanted to come to the floor to show what is happening to this country's trade. The reason I want to show the results of our trade policy is we now have proposals in front of us for free trade agreements. We have Colombia, Peru, negotiations with South Korea, Thailand, and others. We have been through a period when there has been this mantra, this chant, as it is, about free trade. This chart shows what is happening to trade. In 1995, 12 years ago, we had a $174 billion trade deficit. Now it is $836 billion. Think of that: Every single day we wake up in this country, we import over $2 billion more in goods from overseas than we are able to sell abroad. It doesn't matter what the good is, much, and it doesn't matter what the country is. I have been here with charts that show, for example, to cite one, last year we had automobiles put on ships in South Korea. Mr. President, over 700,000 automobiles were put on ships in South Korea and sent to America and sold in the United States--700,000 South Korean automobiles. How many American automobiles do you think we sold in Korea, Mr. President, 700,000? No, no--about 4,000. Fair trade? Hardly. Ninety-nine percent of the cars on the streets of South Korea are South Korean cars. Why? Because they don't want foreign cars sold in South Korea. They want to produce cars with jobs in South Korea and ship them to the United States. Should we allow that kind of one-way trade--700,000 going one way, 4,000 plus going the other way--to continue? I don't think so. Let me talk a little about the general area of trade. I want to put up a picture of a young girl named Halima. This is a beautiful 11-year- old girl. When I showed the chart of the $836 billion trade deficit last year, over $2 billion a day--well over $2 billion a day--the result of that statistic is American jobs being shipped overseas, products being produced overseas, in many cases with dirt-cheap labor, sent to a big box retailer in this country to be sold at a lower price. That is true, a lower price, so the American consumer gets a better price on a 12-pack of underwear or a gallon of mustard someplace. But what is the consequence of that to our economy, to our jobs? What ultimately is the consequence for our country? I frame all this in the context of the President saying: Let's do more, let's do more of this. It seems to me if we do much more of that, we won't have much of an economy left. At what point do we think a trade deficit matters? This isn't money we owe to ourselves. One can make that case in fiscal policy with the budget deficit. This is money we owe to other countries, over $1 trillion of which we now owe to the Japanese and the Chinese. But what are the consequences? I mentioned lost American jobs. Where do these jobs go? Who is producing what is sent to our country? This beautiful young lady is named Halima. She worked at a factory in Bangladesh at age 11, and she made Hanes underwear. She worked long hours, very low pay, in sweatshop conditions. One would think if this is a world market in which we care about the circumstances of people working in sweatshop conditions, we would take a look at something such as this and say: Wait a second, we don't want to buy Hanes underwear made with the hands of an 11-year-old working in sweatshop conditions. Let me show my colleagues a certification of this plant in which Halima worked. ``Certificate of Compliance, February 21, 2007.'' It is hereby awarded to Harvest Rich Ltd., worldwide responsible apparel production. So they certified this company was doing just fine with international standards. An 11-year-old producing in sweatshop conditions, sending underwear to Americans? That is fine? I don't think so. So is this just an aberration? This just happens on the very unusual case, and I just happened to find the picture of Halima? Let me tell you how this picture came about. This picture came from a woman named Sheik Nazma. She was a former child laborer in Bangladesh. She was forced to start working in the textile mills at age 12--a sweatshop--and she described the conditions. She organized her coworkers for better conditions, saying: Let us, as a group of workers, organize to see if we can get better conditions. For that, she was beaten and threatened to death for organizing workers. Is that an aberration? No, not really. I can give you the names today of people sitting in prisons in China. Their transgression? Their crime? They tried to organize workers for better conditions, tried to organize workers to insist on backpay they were owed. For that, they are sitting in prison cells in China because you can't organize workers in China. What is happening with respect to these trade issues is we are sinking deep into this abyss of worsening trade debt. I know what the papers will say tomorrow--that $66 billion, the last monthly merchandise trade deficit, is about a billion dollars or so less than the previous month, and the newspapers will say: Nirvana. What a wonderful thing--our trade deficit is shrinking. These, of course, are the same newspapers that beat to death this chant of free trade. There is not enough of this free trade for them; the more the merrier. My only question about all of this is, When do you suggest that this represents failure? Is there never an opportunity to suggest that we need a change in trade strategy, a change that stands up for what we have built in a century in this country? Let me describe what it is we have built in this century. A man name James Fyler was shot in 1914. The previous accounts of his death say he died of lead poisoning actually, but he was shot 54 times. Do you know why he was shot and lost his life? Because he believed that people who went underground to dig in the coal mines ought to be entitled to two things: No. 1, a safe workplace, and No. 2, a fair wage. For that, he was murdered. In a century, from James Fyler forward, we had people who gave their lives and risked their lives to improve standards in this country, to insist on the right to organize, to insist on safe workplaces, to insist on a fair wage, and to insist on fair labor standards. It was tough. There were people beaten in the streets for it. There were people shot for insisting that we develop and lift those standards. But we did. We did. We expanded and created a middle class almost unparalleled in the world, which became the economic strength of this country. Working people understood they could get a good job, get some training, have a job that had a career ladder, an opportunity for a decent wage, an opportunity for benefits, and an opportunity to take care of their families. There is no social program in this Chamber that is as important as a good job that pays well for able-bodied workers. It is what allows everything else to work. So we did that for a century, and we expanded opportunities. Now, all of a sudden, we are told it is a new day because of the global economy. In fact, Tom Friedman wrote a book saying that not only is it a new day, but the world is flat. I have yet to see the globe that represents that. When you go to most offices or libraries and you see a globe of the Earth, it appears round to me. Of course, I only graduated from a high school senior class of nine students, so maybe I missed a part of the lesson. So now we have books that say the world is flat, which, of course, is nonsense because it is not flat. It is a global economy. What does that mean? What is the definition of what a global economy means for us and for our future? It means, according to some, that we ought to be able to understand that comparative advantage means you produce products where you can produce them at the least cost and then purchase them here and it is good for the consumer. The result is corporate executives flying around the world deciding where they can produce for the least cost. How many of my colleagues remember Radio Flyer's little red wagon, which was an American product for 110 years, a Chicago company--the little red wagon we have all ridden in? It was named ``Radio Flyer'' because the inventor loved Marconi and he loved to fly, so he named his product ``Radio Flyer,'' and his company built it in Chicago for 110 years. Not anymore. It is just gone. It is now built in China. Do you think that is because the Chinese build better little red wagons? No, not at all. It is because you can find somebody who will work for 30 cents an hour, and you can work them 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, and you can build a cheaper little red wagon. Similarly, you can do the same with Huffy bicycles and then eliminate all their jobs. You can do the same with Pennsylvania House furniture. In fact, with Pennsylvania House furniture, you can send the Pennsylvania wood to China. You can get rid of all the workers in Pennsylvania, send the Pennsylvania wood to China, and have them put it together and ship it back here, and that is exactly what has happened. About 3\1/2\ to 4 million jobs have now migrated to where you can pay pennies an hour and then ship the product back to our country. That is about enhancing corporate profits, but I think it is at the expense of our economic future. The former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Blinder, a mainstream economist, said this: There are 42 to 56 million American jobs that are tradeable, meaning outsourceable. Not all of them will leave our country, but even those that stay are competing with others in the world who will work for lower wages. Therefore, there will be downward pressure on American wages for working Americans. We see it every day. Open the newspaper and see how many people are losing their health care benefits, their retirement benefits, and the downward pressure on income. We see it every day. It is part of a strategy that says free trade, a global economy, produce where it is cheap, and sell to a marketplace like this. My point is that it doesn't add up in the long run. I am for trade. I am in favor of trade, and plenty of it, but I insist and demand that it be fair trade for this country that attempts to lift, not depress standards. I am very interested in engaging with the rest of the world. I am not an isolationist, I am not a protectionist, as they define it, although I want to plead guilty quickly to wanting to protect our country's economic interests. If that is being a protectionist, then just sign me up. I want to protect our country's economic interests. We will only do that, and we will do it well, if we understand the need to retain a broad middle class, a middle class that sees jobs here that pay well, with benefits and opportunities in the future. So how do we reconcile all of this? What will happen in the coming several months is--and I believe Senator Sherrod Brown spoke about this earlier today--what will happen in the coming months is we will be requested to debate an extension of something called fast-track authority. Fast-track authority. They are going to want to run through fast-track authority trade agreements with, yes, South Korea and Thailand and Peru and Colombia and many others. The same people who have given us this want to give us more of it, a deep canyon of red ink, downward pressure on American incomes, and substantial pressure on the movement of American jobs. Interestingly enough, we not only move American jobs overseas, we actually decide, for those who do it, that we will give them a big fat tax break. One of the most pernicious, ignorant pieces of public policy I can conceive of is when we said: Fire your American workers, close your American plants, move your jobs to China, sell your products back in America, run your income through the Cayman Islands, and we will give you a big fat tax break for it. Four times we have voted on eliminating that tax break, four times I have offered amendments to shut it down, and four times I have lost. Mark my words--we will be voting again and again on that proposition. The very last thing we ought to do as a country is decide we want to subsidize the flight of American jobs. We just introduced a piece of legislation that would deal with the issue of sweatshop labor in other countries. What are the standards of this so-called global trade in a flat world? Well, at least there is one standard. The one standard is that you can't sell tube socks from a prison in China at a big-box retailer in America. Why is that? Because it is presumed that if you make tube socks or shorts or whatever you make in a prison setting, then that truly is the ultimate sweatshop labor, I guess. So you can't send prison labor products to our marketplace. Well, if we all agree with that, and we do, because we already have a provision on that, what about the next step up? What about the product of an 11-year-old girl? What about the product of a company that hires an 11-year-old girl named Halima and works her in sweatshop conditions? Should we decide as a country that you cannot produce products in sweatshop conditions that abuse workers abroad and send the products here--which, by the way, then asks American workers working in plants in the United States to compete with that sweatshop labor. It not only abuses foreign workers, it also abuses domestic workers because we are saying: Compete with something that is completely unsavory. If this happened in our country, we would march down the street with law enforcement and say: Shut this down. We have heard the stories. I think my colleague, Senator Harkin, had hearings some several years ago about this with the international labor organizations--young kids in carpet factories having their fingertips burned with sulfur. They put sulfur on the fingertips, then light them on fire. Do you know why? They create scars on the fingertips so that as they use needles to sew the rugs, two things occur: They don't hurt themselves because they have scars from having had their fingertips burned and, second, they won't get blood on the carpets. Is this something we should accept? No, I don't think so. Is it something we should care about? You are darn right we should. But almost nothing--almost nothing--is acceptable to discuss in this mantra of free trade without being called a protectionist. Here is what I think is going to happen. In the last election here in this country, I think there were 6 or 8 or 10 Senate races in which the winning candidate said: You know what, we are on the wrong track here. It is not that we shouldn't trade. We should trade. The origin of this great country was the shrewd Yankee trader. We were the traders, good traders, and so we should trade. But we shouldn't decide that this kind of a trade deficit can continue. It simply cannot. Let me pull up the chart with China. The largest trade deficit we have is with the country of China, with $232 billion last year alone. That is unbelievable. I have mentioned before that part of our problem is just incompetent trade agreements, just fundamentally incompetent, and I will give an example of one. I have threatened from time to time that trade negotiators should wear uniforms, like the jerseys they wear in the Olympics, so they can look down from time to time and, in a sober moment, they can see for whom they are working. It would say ``U.S.A.'' China. We did a bilateral agreement with China, a country with which we have a very large trade deficit--a very large deficit and growing. It is a country that is also developing a new automobile export industry, and they want to export automobiles aggressively to the United States. Here is what we said: If you export Chinese automobiles to the United States, we will impose a 2.5-percent tariff on your cars, but if we export American automobiles to be sold in China, China can impose a 25-percent tariff. We negotiated with China a deal that said: On a bilateral automobile trade, you ship a car to us and we will impose a 2.5-percent tariff, and if we ship a car to you, you can impose a tariff that is 10 times higher, and that is just fine. I am saying that is ignorant. That is ignorant of our economic interest. One little piece of information. Most people don't know it, but you can rip open the intestines of these trade agreements and find case after case where we have traded away our own economic interests. We are going to be confronting now, in the next 4 or 5 months, some very tough choices--not so tough for me but perhaps for some--choices about what do we do about fast-track trade authority. That is a mechanism by which the Senate decides in advance that when a trade agreement comes here that has been negotiated in secret, behind closed doors, with no participation of any of us, it comes here under an expedited procedure with no opportunity for anyone to make any change of any type. I don't support that. What has happened with China and the world is the deepening abyss of red ink, and what has resulted from the strategy that comes from fast track is expedited procedures and a straightjacket for the Senate. It has come from incompetent agreements. It has come from lack of enforcement. In fact, our trade authorities cannot even find some of the agreements they have previously negotiated. They can't even find them, let alone enforce them. I haven't talked here about the number of people who are working in our Government to enforce our trade agreements with China. It is fewer than 20. Enforcement is just the backwater of trade. Nobody wants to enforce anything. It doesn't matter. Yet, in my judgment, it does matter to this country's economic future. What are we going to do about fast track and the extension for fast track that President Bush is requesting? I did not support fast-track trade authority for President Clinton, and I do not support it for President Bush, although President Bush has had it now for some while. But I think there is a new group of Senators who will have to sink their teeth into this discussion. What does this mean? What does this expedited procedure, fast-track straitjacket, mean? What does it mean when we do bilateral negotiations, so-called free-trade negotiations, with the countries I previously described, and how do we resolve them? How do we deal with them? Many of my colleagues, myself included, believe when we negotiate trade agreements we should do so with an eye on what we have created and built in this country, lifting up standards for almost a century now. We should have labor provisions in the trade agreements. We should have environmental provisions in the trade agreements. We should have a shock absorber for currency fluctuation in the trade agreements. Some say that is radical. It is not radical. I will show you what is radical. It is the sheet that shows the combined trade deficit with the world. When you talk about what is radical, this is radical: the trade strategy that gives us this is radical. The trade strategy that gives us this morning's merchandise trade deficit of $66 billion, that is what is radical. There is an old saying: If you don't care where you are, you are never going to be lost. You know, we have gone on here for some long while with people apparently not caring, but it is time for our country to care. There is only one United States on this planet. If you spin this globe and try to find another equivalent place, with democracy and a market system that have come together to create opportunity for so many--there is only one place. But we are quickly losing it with this ``the world is flat'' approach, with free-trade agreements that tend to put downward pressure on wages in this country and strip away benefits and decide in this new market system that comparative advantage is not just who has the best natural resources to produce what product, but who has decided to have rules in their country that prohibit workers from organizing, that allow sweatshops to operate, that allows 11-year- old kids in carpet factories. That is not comparative advantage. Ricardo would roll over in his grave. It has nothing to do with comparative advantage. We have to confront these issues, the sooner the better, and there is no question we will begin to confront them in this year, perhaps in the next 4 or 5 months. The way we confront them and the decisions we make will have a profound impact on what kind of a country we have and what kind of economy we have in the coming years. That is why it is so important. I wanted to make a couple of comments today by pointing out that we are now confronted with choices, and those choices, I assume, will be imposed upon us in a very short period of time. I look forward to new voices in the Senate weighing in on these important issues. Not in a way that suggests we are not a part of the world economy, we are a significant part of the world economy; not in a way that suggests the world has not gotten smaller, it has. The world is not flat, but the world certainly is smaller. We are engaged in this information technology revolution. If something happens almost anywhere in the world, I will know about it 5 minutes later, and we will see pictures of it in a half hour or less. So things have changed. But what has not changed is our need and desire as Americans to look after the well-being of our economy and the opportunities that can exist for our citizens. That is not being selfish. That is our responsibility. We are stewards of this country's future, and that stewardship, in my judgment, is vastly compromised by this chart and what has happened with the shipping of American jobs overseas, with the decision that cheaper prices at home for products produced elsewhere for pennies an hour represent fair competition for American workers. It is not fair competition, and we do desperately need, now, a new trade strategy, one that reflects the economic interests of this country but one that still insists on being a significant part of the world economy even as we try to lift others up without pushing our standards down. Amendment No. 286

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I make a point of order, en bloc, that the pending amendments are not germane under the provisions of rule XXII, with the exception of the following: Reid No. 275, Landrieu No. 321, Schumer No. 336, Coburn No. 325, Coburn No. 294, Kyl No. 357, Biden No. 383, Schumer No. 367, Stevens No. 299, Schumer No. 337, Bond No. 389. Mr. President, I make that point of order on behalf of Senator Lieberman. I believe it has been cleared on both sides.

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

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I have an amendment pending, as my colleagues know, that I cannot get a vote on. I don't know whether the other side will relent and give us a vote on the amendment. I offered it a week ago today. The amendment deals with the issue of al-Qaida. This bill is about the recommendations by the 9/11 Commission. It has been, I am told, 2,002 days since 9/1/2001. I was sitting in the Capitol that morning at a Democratic leadership meeting on that side of the Capitol with windows that looked out to the east. We saw first on the television set the airplanes that attacked the World Trade Center. We saw the second plane fly into the second building of the World Trade Center. We then saw black smoke rising from the Pentagon that morning. Then this building was evacuated. That has been a long while ago. Yet it seems like only yesterday. We looked up into the real bright blue sky that morning and saw F-16 fighter jets flying air cover over this Nation's capital. We discovered later, because they boasted about it, that it was al- Qaida--Osama bin Laden, al-Zawahiri--who attacked this country and murdered several thousand of America's citizens. They boasted about it. They sent us videotapes, audiotapes telling us they were the ones who attacked our country. Well, it is not 9/1/2001 today. It is a couple of thousand days later. Those who boasted they attacked this country are now living in Pakistan. That does not come from me, that comes from the top terrorist official in our country. In fact, both of the top intelligence chiefs in our country in the last 2 months have said the following, and I will quote them: Al Qaeda is the terrorist organization that poses the greatest threat to U.S. interests, including to the Homeland. Think of that. Nearly 6 years after we were attacked by al-Qaida, we are told: The greatest threat to our country--and this is from open testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence by Mr. Negroponte, the top intelligence head in this country--is al-Qaida. Here is what he said--this was repeated a couple of weeks ago by his successor: Al-Qaida leaders ``continue to plot attacks against our homeland and other targets with the objective of inflicting mass casualties. And they continue to maintain active connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders' secure hideout in Pakistan . . . '' It has been 2,002 days. Those who killed thousands of Americans, those who are now the greatest terrorist threat to our country are living in a secure hideout in Pakistan. I would like to understand what is a higher priority for this country than to eliminate the leadership of al-Qaida, if, in fact, they represent the gravest terrorist danger to America. What is a higher priority? I offer this amendment with my colleague, Senator Conrad. Incidently, we offered and passed an amendment on this subject last fall that got dropped in conference. This amendment that is fairly simple. It asks the administration, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Secretary of Defense to give Congress, every 6 months, a classified report telling us three things. First, whether the al-Qaida leadership is still in a secure hideout in Pakistan and, if not, where are they? Second, tell us where they are, based on your knowledge. Incidentally, as I said, we have had testimony twice now from the top intelligence official in the Government that they are in a secure hideout in Pakistan. Second, whether the countries in which they reside are cooperating with us in our attempt to eliminate the al-Qaida leadership. Third, our report will require the head of our intelligence and the head of the Department of Defense to tell us what additional resources they need, if they need additional resources, to capture Mr. bin Laden, Mr. Zawahiri, and al-Qaida's leadership. We are having an aggressive debate in this country about Iraq. We should. It is an unbelievably difficult situation. In the shadow of 9/ 11, in the shadow of the terrorist threat that emerged immediately from 9/11, we were told by our intelligence community, by the administration, in top secret briefings, that Iraq posed imminent danger to this country and possessed weapons of mass destruction. It turns out the intelligence was not accurate. There are many reasons for that, some very troubling. But it turns out the intelligence was wrong. Nonetheless, the President committed troops to battle, and we are in Iraq and have been in that war in Iraq longer than for the Second World War. It is a lengthy period. It has lasted longer than the Second World War. In fact, the National Intelligence Estimate was just released a couple months ago. A portion has been declassified. It says that most of what is happening in Iraq is sectarian violence. Yes, there are some al-Qaida in Anbar Province, but the bulk of what is happening in Iraq is sectarian violence. Translated, it means there is a civil war going on in Iraq. That does not surprise anybody. Watch the evening news. Read the newspapers. We understand and see the evidence of this civil war. The question now for our country is, what do we make of a circumstance where we now find ourselves having substantial numbers of American soldiers in the middle of a civil war in Iraq? How do we respond to that? And how do we deal with that? President Bush, some months ago, presented false choices to our country. He said the issue is just stay the course or cut and run. He said: I am for staying the course and they are for cutting and running--a completely false choice, and he knew it. Later, he said he never said ``stay the course,'' but, in fact, he did many times. But it was never the proper choice, stay the course or cut and run. The question is, What is a smart choice for our country? What represents our best interests, the best interests of our troops, the best interests of our own national interest with respect to the country of Iraq? We are going to leave Iraq. That is not in question. The question is, when and how. The American people are not going to have American soldiers in the middle of civil strife in Iraq for 6 months, 6 years, 16 years. We are leaving Iraq. The question is, how and when, and that is a worthy debate to have. We have soldiers risking their lives. Our country has asked soldiers to risk their lives for deployments-- many of them multiple deployments. Yet the country has not gone to war with those soldiers. We send soldiers to Iraq to fight, and we are told: Go shopping. Soldiers go to war; we go to the mall. This country has not asked to be--excuse me, I should say it differently. No one has asked this country to be engaged in this war. We are told: Do you know what? In this war we should have tax cuts. In fact, we have already spent somewhere close to $500 billion on the war--none of it paid for. We send soldiers to war and then are not willing to pay the costs. The cost in lives and treasure for this country is substantial. The question that we are coming to grips with in this Chamber, finally, at long last, is, what do we make of all of this? What kind of strategy do we develop? How do we approach this in a way that begins to decide what makes the best sense for this country's national interest? We have had many discussions about that. I think we have arrived at some points in that discussion that will make a great deal of sense for this country. But even as we discuss Iraq, which is not the central front in the war on terrorism, we have people coming to the Congress and testifying before our committees and telling us the greatest threat to our country--the greatest threat to our country--is al-Qaida. Then we go home, as we talk about Iraq in the Senate, and we turn on the television set and see that al-Qaida is reconstituting training camps in Pakistan, and we see that al-Qaida is ramping up an opportunity with the Taliban to begin operations in Afghanistan to threaten the Government of Afghanistan. So what do we make of all of that? Well, there is a giant yawn, it seems to me--just a giant yawn. Nobody cares. Nobody says much about al-Qaida. If this is the greatest terrorist threat to our country, why is it not No. 1 on this country's agenda--eliminating the leadership of al-Qaida? The President says: I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority. ``I am truly not that concerned about him,'' the President says. His intelligence chief comes to us and says, ``Al-Qaeda is the terrorist organization that poses the greatest threat to U.S. interests. . . .,'' and we are not concerned about Osama bin Laden, the man who boasted about murdering thousands of American citizens? Then we read this in the morning papers: Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re- established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials. American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. How many warnings do we need? How often do we have to be told? Who has to tell us before we understand what are priorities are? I have offered, with my colleague, Senator Conrad, a simple amendment saying: Let's keep our eye on the ball. Every 6 months we should receive a classified report to say what is being done about this, where is the leadership of al-Qaida. Are they still in a secure hideout or hideaway in Pakistan? If so, are the leaders of this country helping us to try to eliminate that leadership? What kind of resources are necessary? The President said some long while ago the issue with respect to terrorism is not just the terrorists but also those who harbor them. If the leadership of al-Qaida is in northern Pakistan, are they being harbored by the Government of Pakistan? Oh, I know, I am worried about President Musharraf. Sure. We all are. But is the Government of Pakistan--reportedly a government that has just made some sort of commitment with the Taliban, sort of a nonaggression pact with the Taliban, a Taliban that is likely protecting and hiding the leadership of al-Qaida--is that in our national interest? I don't think so. So I offer an amendment, a simple, tiny, little amendment that says: Let's keep our eye on the ball. If this is the greatest threat to our country, why is it not ranked No. 1? Why is it relegated to an ``I don't care; I don't know where he is or they are; it does not matter''? How about deciding this is a priority. Why are we not able to get a vote on this amendment? Why, after a week, are we not able to get a vote? Why would someone vote against this amendment? Why would someone oppose an attempt by our country to decide this is a priority? Why don't we have a vote and see if there are those who are opposed? I don't know. It is very frustrating. We bring a bill to the floor of the Senate dealing with 9/11. Madam President, 9/11 was very simple and tragic; 9/11 was the day that a terrorist organization named al-Qaida hijacked airplanes, used those airplanes, full of fuel, as guided missiles, low-tech weaponry, to murder thousands of Americans. We know who did it. They claimed they did it. They boasted about it. Now we are told by the top intelligence chief in our country we know where they are. And 2,002 days later, they are still there. By the way, we still receive messages from them from time to time. They send an audio tape or a video tape to Al Jazeera, and they speak to us. So they exist. Our intelligence chief says we know they exist and where they are. The question is, why is this country not doing what it is required to do to deal with the highest and most significant terrorist threat that exists to the United States? I do not understand it. So the question will be, I guess, in the coming hours, who is blocking this amendment? Why are they blocking this amendment? Why on Earth would anyone oppose such an amendment? Is the U.S. Congress willing to debate these issues, make decisions on these issues? I thought it was the great deliberative body in our country. You come to the floor of the U.S. Senate and exchange views, and you have a debate, a competition of ideas, and you select the best from each rather than the worst of both. That is what I thought this was about. I am enormously proud to be here. This is a great place. But it is enormously frustrating to spend a week on an amendment such as this and then discover that there are people who will decide you cannot have a vote on an amendment. Why? Because they are worried it might make somebody look bad. This amendment is not about making anybody look bad. It is about turning this country to aim at the greatest terrorist threat that is described by our top intelligence chief and deciding to do something about it. I come to the floor a third time now talking about this in the context of the other issues of Iraq and other matters we will discuss, including trying to pass the 9/11 bill. I do so recognizing a lot of people have a lot of ideas around here--some good, some bad. We vote on many of them. This is an idea we ought to vote on, and we ought to do it soon. Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, let me inquire of the Senator from Maine. The ranking member is here, but the manager of the bill is not here. She has heard my presentation, I guess, three times now and perhaps is long tired of it. But let me ask if there is an opportunity for me to propound a unanimous consent request to get a vote on this amendment. I know I visited with the Senator from Connecticut and with the Senator from Maine yesterday and, I think, the day before about this amendment. Could I get some expression from the ranking member of the thinking of the chairman and the ranking member about getting a vote on this amendment?

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, my understanding is my amendment is not on the list from the minority side. I do not know whether that is true or not, but I am told it is not on the list. If it is on the list, I am enormously heartened. As always, my colleague from Maine is very cordial, and I have always enjoyed working with her. My only inquiry is to try to find a way, after a week, to be on the list so we can move this amendment. I would say to my colleague--and I know she would agree with this--it is often the case, as they say, where appearances are deceiving. That is not necessarily the case in the Senate. When it looks as if we are not doing much, in most cases we are not doing much. I remain hopeful that behind the scenes we will get a list in which we will be able to clear a number of amendments. At the end of that, I will be the first to come to the floor to congratulate the chairman and the ranking member, who have exhibited enormous patience. I have complained about coming here now for a week, I guess three times. They have been sitting on the floor all week. So they show even greater patience with respect to the bill itself. My impatience is about my amendment. My hope will be that as lists are exchanged, I will find the name of this amendment on the list and that it will be cleared at some point.

Mr. DORGAN. Let me thank the Senator from Connecticut and the Senator from Maine. No one that I know of ever has accused the Senate of speeding. We have never been accused of speeding. It is a slow, deliberate, frustrating process to get legislation done. I understand that. No one has to have more patience than those who have managed the bill on the floor. Let me look ahead with great anticipation of coming to the floor and thanking both of them for allowing me to get my amendment passed. I would much prefer that than coming to the floor in a crabby mood about an amendment I couldn't get done. I thank them for their patience and thank them for their work, and I hope later today we will be able to clear some of these amendments.

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator has a right to object to anything at any time. In fact, there are some professional objectors, as we know, here in the Senate.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I am in favor of pushing this from time to time. Yesterday we had a vote on something that was very instructive and I appreciate the majority leader pushing it to a vote. We had for 2 years--2 years--a vacancy in the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs position--for 2 years. This is shameful. People are living in Third World conditions in this country and the head of the BIA had not been confirmed. For 2 years it was vacant. This was a nominee by the President, and I supported the nominee. He sent it up last fall. We didn't get it done. He sent it up earlier this year, and I immediately moved it out of my committee. This is President Bush's appointment, and a good one, I might add. There was a hold on it. We finally forced it to the floor of the Senate a couple of days ago, and guess what. The vote was 87 to 1. One person in the Senate puts a hold on something and the whole thing grinds to a halt. Let's force it in a vote, as my colleague Senator Reid did, and we will discover who is trying to hold things up. Let's move ahead on these amendments and have votes, and we will get the best of what both sides have to offer. I yield the floor, and I make a point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I'm pleased to be joined by Senators Snowe, Kerry, Smith, Schumer, Lincoln and Coleman in re-introducing legislation we call the Public Good IRA Rollover Act. This legislation allows taxpayers to make tax-free distributions from their individual retirement accounts (IRAs) for gifts to charity. Last summer, the Congress passed and the President signed into law a major bill to reform our pension laws. This 392-page bill contained a little noticed but important new charitable giving tax incentive. For the first time, taxpayers who have reached age 70\1/2\ are allowed to give money directly from their IRAs to qualifying charities on a tax- free basis without worrying about complicated adjusted gross income and other restrictions that otherwise apply to tax deductible charitable contributions. The charitable IRA rollover provision in H.R. 4 applies only for direct IRA gifts, is capped and it is available for a limited time--expiring at the end of this year. In fact, the charitable IRA rollover provision in H.R. 4 adopted the same general approach of legislation for direct IRA gifts I have been working on called the Public Good IRA Rollover Act with several of my Senate colleagues for a number of years. Before I authored this legislation, I was told by many charities that potential donors frequently asked about using their IRAs to make charitable donations but decided against such gifts after they were told about the potential tax consequences under then-current tax law. I am pleased to report that the charitable community is already feeling the positive impact of the new charitable IRA rollover measure. According to a limited survey conducted by the National Committee on Planned Giving thousands of IRA gifts totaling nearly $60 million have been made to eligible charities since the tax-free IRA rollover provision was enacted into law last August. I'm told that the IRA rollovers have resulted in significant gifts in North Dakota. It reportedly inspired a donor to Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota to contribute $15,000, an amount higher than the donor's typical gift. This charitable gift will help the organization to continue its diverse programs in such areas as adoption services, counseling for at-risk youth, economic self-sufficiency for refugees, and services for farmers and ranchers. Lutheran Social Services believes that the IRA rollover provision encourages people to give more and to continue giving. University of Mary reportedly received IRA gifts of over $250,000 in 2006. The Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation received an IRA gift of $80,000. Ducks Unlimited received eleven IRA gifts in 2006 totaling nearly $190,000 and expects even more in 2007. Jamestown College reportedly received nine IRA gifts in 2006 totaling over $112,000. Other North Dakota charities, including Catholic Health Services for Western North Dakota, have benefited from IRA gifts as well. The charitable IRA rollover has resulted in similar stories across the Nation. For example, Goodwill Industries of West Michigan has received several contributions as a direct result of the rollover provision and believes the provision is resonating with donors. A local physician made the single biggest IRA rollover donation of $10,000. The physician was not previously a Goodwill donor. This $10,000 donation will completely support a homeless family for up to six months in the organization's transitional housing and employment program for homeless families. This is just one example illustrating the success of the charitable IRA rollover but there are dozens of similar stories across the country. The results are undeniable: the temporary charitable IRA rollover incentive is working well and making a difference in the lives of people who are assisted by the Nation's charities. And the Public Good IRA Rollover Act that we are re-introducing today builds upon last year's temporary measure by removing its current dollar cap, expanding it to allow taxpayers who have attained age 59\1/2\ to make life-income gifts and by making it a permanent part of the Tax Code. As a Nation, we depend on a strong, active network of charities, small and large, to offer financial and other support to families and individuals who need help when government assistance is unavailable. That is why I think it's critically important for Congress to do everything possible to help encourage the work of worthy charities. Permanently extending and expanding the temporary charitable IRA rollover in current law will go a long way in that direction. A senior official from a major charity once said the charitable IRA rollover would be ``the single most important piece of legislation in the history of public charitable support in this country.'' The reason is the Public Good IRA Rollover Act eliminates major tax obstacles to charitable giving. Specifically, our bill would allow individuals to make tax-free distributions to charities from their IRAs at the age of 70\1/2\ for direct gifts and age 59\1/2\ for life-income gifts. These changes to the Tax Code will put billions of additional dollars from a new source to work for the public good in the years ahead. The charitable IRA rollover approach in this legislation has been endorsed by over 530 charitable organizations operating in 46 States and the District of Columbia, including: AARP, the American Cancer Society, the American Red Cross and American Heart Association, America's Second Harvest, American Association of Museums, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, Ducks Unlimited, Easter Seals, Goodwill, Lutheran Services of America, March of Dimes, the Salvation Army, United Jewish Communities, United Way of America, Volunteers of America, YMCA of the USA, Prairie Public Broadcasting, the North Dakota Community Foundation and many others. In addition, the U.S. Senate is previously on record in support of the Public Good IRA Rollover Act. In doing so, the Senate recognized that the charitable IRA rollover is an important tool for charities to use to raise the funds they need to serve those in need, especially when government assistance is not available. The Bush Administration supports charitable IRA rollovers. In his fiscal year 2008 budget submission, President Bush has proposed making permanent the limited tax-free charitable IRA distribution provision passed last summer that is scheduled to expire at the end of this year. While the President's charitable IRA proposal has merit, the Public Good IRA Rollover Act is superior in one important respect: by allowing tax- favored life-income gifts from an IRA whose owner has attained the age of 59\1/2\. In addition to direct IRA gifts, many charities use life-income gifts to secure funding commitments today to meet their future needs. Life- income gifts involve the donation of assets to a charity, where the giver retains an income stream from those assets for a defined period. Many people would like to give part or all of their IRAs to charity, but need the retirement income from their IRAs. Allowing them to roll over their IRAs at age 59\1/2\ or older to a charity's life-income plan would allow them to secure retirement income and make a charitable commitment. The charities could plan on receiving the gift after the life interest terminates. The benefit of allowing life-income gifts at an earlier age is two- fold. First, the life-income gift provision in our bill would stimulate additional charitable giving. Second, the evidence also suggests that people who make life-income gifts often become more involved with charities. They serve as volunteers, urge their friends and colleagues to make charitable gifts and frequently set up additional provisions for charity in their life-time giving plans and at death. Life-income gifts are an important tool for charities to raise funds, and would receive a substantial boost if they could be made from IRAs without adverse tax consequences. But life-income gifts are not part of the Administration's proposal. Again, the Public Good IRA Rollover Act permits individuals to make tax-favored life-income gifts at the age of 59\1/2\. In closing, I urge my Senate colleagues to review and consider cosponsoring this bill. With your help, we can permanently enact into law tax-free IRA rollover provisions that charities say is needed to encourage billions of dollars in new giving that will provide assistance to those who need it most. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the bill and a letter from charitable organizations that have endorsed the Public Good IRA Rollover Act be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I'm pleased to be joined by Senators Snowe, Kerry, Smith, Schumer, Lincoln and Coleman in re-introducing legislation we call the Public Good IRA Rollover Act. This legislation allows taxpayers to make tax-free distributions from their individual retirement accounts (IRAs) for gifts to charity. Last summer, the Congress passed and the President signed into law a major bill to reform our pension laws. This 392-page bill contained a little noticed but important new charitable giving tax incentive. For the first time, taxpayers who have reached age 70\1/2\ are allowed to give money directly from their IRAs to qualifying charities on a tax- free basis without worrying about complicated adjusted gross income and other restrictions that otherwise apply to tax deductible charitable contributions. The charitable IRA rollover provision in H.R. 4 applies only for direct IRA gifts, is capped and it is available for a limited time--expiring at the end of this year. In fact, the charitable IRA rollover provision in H.R. 4 adopted the same general approach of legislation for direct IRA gifts I have been working on called the Public Good IRA Rollover Act with several of my Senate colleagues for a number of years. Before I authored this legislation, I was told by many charities that potential donors frequently asked about using their IRAs to make charitable donations but decided against such gifts after they were told about the potential tax consequences under then-current tax law. I am pleased to report that the charitable community is already feeling the positive impact of the new charitable IRA rollover measure. According to a limited survey conducted by the National Committee on Planned Giving thousands of IRA gifts totaling nearly $60 million have been made to eligible charities since the tax-free IRA rollover provision was enacted into law last August. I'm told that the IRA rollovers have resulted in significant gifts in North Dakota. It reportedly inspired a donor to Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota to contribute $15,000, an amount higher than the donor's typical gift. This charitable gift will help the organization to continue its diverse programs in such areas as adoption services, counseling for at-risk youth, economic self-sufficiency for refugees, and services for farmers and ranchers. Lutheran Social Services believes that the IRA rollover provision encourages people to give more and to continue giving. University of Mary reportedly received IRA gifts of over $250,000 in 2006. The Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation received an IRA gift of $80,000. Ducks Unlimited received eleven IRA gifts in 2006 totaling nearly $190,000 and expects even more in 2007. Jamestown College reportedly received nine IRA gifts in 2006 totaling over $112,000. Other North Dakota charities, including Catholic Health Services for Western North Dakota, have benefited from IRA gifts as well. The charitable IRA rollover has resulted in similar stories across the Nation. For example, Goodwill Industries of West Michigan has received several contributions as a direct result of the rollover provision and believes the provision is resonating with donors. A local physician made the single biggest IRA rollover donation of $10,000. The physician was not previously a Goodwill donor. This $10,000 donation will completely support a homeless family for up to six months in the organization's transitional housing and employment program for homeless families. This is just one example illustrating the success of the charitable IRA rollover but there are dozens of similar stories across the country. The results are undeniable: the temporary charitable IRA rollover incentive is working well and making a difference in the lives of people who are assisted by the Nation's charities. And the Public Good IRA Rollover Act that we are re-introducing today builds upon last year's temporary measure by removing its current dollar cap, expanding it to allow taxpayers who have attained age 59\1/2\ to make life-income gifts and by making it a permanent part of the Tax Code. As a Nation, we depend on a strong, active network of charities, small and large, to offer financial and other support to families and individuals who need help when government assistance is unavailable. That is why I think it's critically important for Congress to do everything possible to help encourage the work of worthy charities. Permanently extending and expanding the temporary charitable IRA rollover in current law will go a long way in that direction. A senior official from a major charity once said the charitable IRA rollover would be ``the single most important piece of legislation in the history of public charitable support in this country.'' The reason is the Public Good IRA Rollover Act eliminates major tax obstacles to charitable giving. Specifically, our bill would allow individuals to make tax-free distributions to charities from their IRAs at the age of 70\1/2\ for direct gifts and age 59\1/2\ for life-income gifts. These changes to the Tax Code will put billions of additional dollars from a new source to work for the public good in the years ahead. The charitable IRA rollover approach in this legislation has been endorsed by over 530 charitable organizations operating in 46 States and the District of Columbia, including: AARP, the American Cancer Society, the American Red Cross and American Heart Association, America's Second Harvest, American Association of Museums, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, Ducks Unlimited, Easter Seals, Goodwill, Lutheran Services of America, March of Dimes, the Salvation Army, United Jewish Communities, United Way of America, Volunteers of America, YMCA of the USA, Prairie Public Broadcasting, the North Dakota Community Foundation and many others. In addition, the U.S. Senate is previously on record in support of the Public Good IRA Rollover Act. In doing so, the Senate recognized that the charitable IRA rollover is an important tool for charities to use to raise the funds they need to serve those in need, especially when government assistance is not available. The Bush Administration supports charitable IRA rollovers. In his fiscal year 2008 budget submission, President Bush has proposed making permanent the limited tax-free charitable IRA distribution provision passed last summer that is scheduled to expire at the end of this year. While the President's charitable IRA proposal has merit, the Public Good IRA Rollover Act is superior in one important respect: by allowing tax- favored life-income gifts from an IRA whose owner has attained the age of 59\1/2\. In addition to direct IRA gifts, many charities use life-income gifts to secure funding commitments today to meet their future needs. Life- income gifts involve the donation of assets to a charity, where the giver retains an income stream from those assets for a defined period. Many people would like to give part or all of their IRAs to charity, but need the retirement income from their IRAs. Allowing them to roll over their IRAs at age 59\1/2\ or older to a charity's life-income plan would allow them to secure retirement income and make a charitable commitment. The charities could plan on receiving the gift after the life interest terminates. The benefit of allowing life-income gifts at an earlier age is two- fold. First, the life-income gift provision in our bill would stimulate additional charitable giving. Second, the evidence also suggests that people who make life-income gifts often become more involved with charities. They serve as volunteers, urge their friends and colleagues to make charitable gifts and frequently set up additional provisions for charity in their life-time giving plans and at death. Life-income gifts are an important tool for charities to raise funds, and would receive a substantial boost if they could be made from IRAs without adverse tax consequences. But life-income gifts are not part of the Administration's proposal. Again, the Public Good IRA Rollover Act permits individuals to make tax-favored life-income gifts at the age of 59\1/2\. In closing, I urge my Senate colleagues to review and consider cosponsoring this bill. With your help, we can permanently enact into law tax-free IRA rollover provisions that charities say is needed to encourage billions of dollars in new giving that will provide assistance to those who need it most. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the bill and a letter from charitable organizations that have endorsed the Public Good IRA Rollover Act be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for up to 30 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, this morning in the Washington Post newspaper, there is a story that is headlined: It Is Just Not Walter Reed. Soldiers Share Trouble Stories of Military Health Care Across the U.S. I read that story and have read the previous stories in the Washington Post about the issue of outpatient health care at Walter Reed. I have visited Walter Reed many times, and I have visited Bethesda many times, and I have visited with wounded soldiers. I have spoken to doctors and nurses, health care professionals, people who work at Walter Reed and Bethesda. I have to tell my colleagues that I come away from those experiences thinking how unbelievably dedicated the people who are working in those hospitals are to save lives. There are a lot of them. I hope the efforts and the work they do tirelessly 24 hours a day are not in any way diminished by these stories. The stories the Post has published are accurate. The stories about the outpatient buildings at Walter Reed needing repair and not being repaired are accurate. The stories about the system well beyond Washington, DC, are accurate stories. But I would say there are a lot of dedicated people working in that system who are trying to do the best they can to work as hard as they can work to save lives and help our veterans. Their role needs to be understood and applauded as well. Even as I say that, let me describe something else. As the headline says: ``It Is Just Not Walter Reed.'' It was over a month ago I was on the floor of the Senate, and what brought me to the floor of the Senate to talk about these issues was this story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The story says in the headline: This Marine's Death Came After He Served in Iraq. When Jonathan Schulze came home from Iraq, he tried to live a normal life, but the war kept that from happening. The story talks about this young man who went to Iraq when America asked him to go fight for his country, was engaged in some bitter, difficult fighting, and when he came back from Iraq, he had very serious problems; very significant, serious difficulties, and he couldn't deal with them. As they buried this young man who committed suicide, on his casket was recognition of his two Purple Hearts earned from his service in Iraq. He was a real soldier in some of the bloodiest battles of Iraq. I have spoken to his family and they told me of this young man seeing the head of one of his best friends being blown off, some of the most unbelievable things a person can see in battle. He came back from Iraq with very serious problems. He tried very hard to get those problems resolved. He was in and out of the VA system. This story describes his circumstances. I happened to be in Minneapolis the day this story was published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It was on a Saturday. When I came back to Washington, DC, the following week, I came to the floor of the Senate and said I was going to write the inspector general with a request: Would you investigate what has happened here? This is a man, according to this story and according to his family with whom I have spoken, who went to the VA system and said: I am suicidal. I have been thinking about committing suicide. I need help. In fact, the second time he went to the VA system asking to be admitted to the hospital, he had packed his bags and brought them with him, hoping to be admitted. His family, standing behind him during the interview at the hospital, heard him tell them he was suicidal. They said: We can't do a prescreening for you today. You will have to come back. The family had driven some 70, 75 miles to get there that day. The next day he called and was told he is No. 26 on the list to be admitted. Three days later he hung himself. This young man fought for his country, came back seeking help, and he didn't get the help. So they had a funeral for this young man, Jonathan Schulze, who cried out for help and didn't get it. At the funeral was a picture of this young marine with his two Purple Hearts, a proud young man who served his country with great valor and great distinction. But his country didn't serve him very well when he came back with very serious problems. I came to the floor of the Senate and said I was sending the inspector general a request that he investigate what has happened here. What happened when this young man goes to a hospital and says: I am thinking of committing suicide, I need to be admitted to your hospital, and is turned away? How does that happen? Is it an isolated instance? Last week a mother called me. She told me her son had come back from Iraq and he had very serious problems. They went to the VA hospital. This is a young man coming back from soldiering in Iraq with very serious emotional problems, a substance abuse addiction, he couldn't sleep, and at night would pull the covers over his head and scream, wake up from nightmares. So they went to the VA system and his mother said: We really didn't get much help. They had very limited capability to help; not enough staff. So she said: We worked through the private sector with some psychiatrists and others for a year, and my son finally improved and got much, much better, after a long year. She called me last week because she said her son had received an alert notice that his unit was to be activated in June, likely to go back to Iraq. That is why that mother was calling me. But her message was in many ways about the issue of care in the VA system. Let me say again, I have great admiration for a lot of men and women who work in that system. I think there are a lot of soldiers who get some good help. But I do think the VA is understaffed. I don't think there is much question about that. I think very significant mistakes are made when there are not the resources to help. When this young man comes back from Iraq, Jonathan Schulze, who earns two Purple Hearts and cries out for help and this country doesn't help because somehow he falls through the cracks--he goes to the hospital and says: I need to be admitted, I am thinking of committing suicide-- and they send him home, there is something dreadfully wrong. Yes, the Washington Post was right this morning; this is not just about Iraq; this is not just about Walter Reed. This is also about the VA system, and whether this President is asking for enough funding for that system. I was reading the transcript this morning of a hearing that Senator Akaka, who just spoke, recently chaired. He asked about the President's budget that proposes a cut to inpatient care for mental health in the VA system. That is exactly the wrong thing to do. It is precisely the wrong direction to go. I received a letter from the inspector general 3 days after I had written to him, on February 9. He writes this: In response to your letter, my office has opened an inquiry and will provide you with the results upon completion. So the inspector general is now investigating. Let me also say I worry about the leadership there. I don't know what causes this, but here is what the head of the VA said at the Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing on February 13. He says: There is no veteran who is in need of, as I say, emergent or emergency care that doesn't get it immediately. Let me say that again. This is a quote from Mr. Nicholson, who runs the VA system: There is no veteran who is in need of, as I say, emergent or emergency care that doesn't get it immediately. Well, Jonathan Schulze didn't get it. He showed up with his bags packed and told the VA he was thinking of committing suicide and needed to be admitted, and he was sent home. He didn't get the help. That was emergency help that was needed. I don't understand how the Secretary can say this. Clearly there are soldiers around the country who are released from inpatient care at Walter Reed and Bethesda, who transfer out of the active-duty system and become a veteran, and all of a sudden the standard of care, the standard of rehabilitation is different. That is quite clear. That is not in dispute. That shouldn't be the case. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars going to war. There is no difference between a soldier on active duty and a wounded soldier who comes back home and leaves the acute care facility of Walter Reed or Bethesda. There is no difference, and they ought not be treated differently. Their standard of care ought to be identical. I don't understand a circumstance where the head of the VA says: There is no one in need of, as I say, emergent or emergency care that doesn't get it immediately. That is clearly not accurate. He is the Secretary and should know it is not accurate. I do not understand it. As I have indicated, I asked the inspector general to investigate the Jonathan Schulze situation, this young man who committed suicide, took his life when he showed up with his bags packed, asking to be admitted to the hospital. I hope what has happened recently will persuade the President, the Secretary, the Congress to get this right. We owe it to those young men and women. The number of people coming back-- 24,900 American servicemen have been wounded, 11,200 seriously. Virtually all of us here have seen those soldiers lying seriously wounded. Does anyone think they don't have the highest claim on this country's resources to reach out and help them with everything that is available to us? Does anyone believe there is something more important than that? If so, I want to know what it is. I hope very much, whether it is the Jonathan Schulze case or any of the other cases, this investigation is thorough, complete, urgent, and is completed in a way that says to this President: You can't seriously continue to consider cutting inpatient care for mental health in the VA system.