Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will be very brief. I come from a landlocked State. We don't have a seaport in North Dakota. But I have taken the time to review some of the activities of seaports and learned a bit about seaports and related that to the issue of security in this new age of terrorism. I come today to support the amendment offered by my colleague from West Virginia. He has been relentless over some long period of time, being very concerned about seaport security. Let me also commend Senator Gregg as well for his work on the underlying legislation and also for his support of the amendment of Senator Byrd. I recall going to a seaport and being shown containers that come in, I believe between 5.5 and 6 million containers, stacked on ships that arrive at the shores of the United States. Then they are put on wheels and they are trucked around the country. I asked the question, How many of these containers are inspected? The answer at that point was around 3 percent. I believe now it is something just over 5 percent. They were showing me, at this particular seaport, a container they had opened. It turned out to be a refrigerated container with frozen broccoli from Poland, and it had in it giant bags of frozen broccoli from Poland. I said, ``What is in the middle of the container? I see you opened the back end and ripped open some bags, and there is frozen broccoli in this container. Is there anything in the middle of these bags?'' ``That we don't know. We haven't unloaded it. We don't unload most of these. We don't inspect most of these.'' Then they showed me the technology that exists by which they could inspect, effectively x-raying these containers. So there are ways to enhance greater inspection of these containers at seaports. Even though my State doesn't have a seaport, we in the Senate debate and provide funding now of about $10 billion a year for the antiballistic missile system so we can create a catcher's mitt in case some rogue nation or some terrorist group would fire an intercontinental ballistic missile at us that is tipped with a nuclear bomb. The likelihood of that is very unlikely. It is one of the least likely things on the threat meter against our country, that a rogue nation or terrorist group would acquire a nuclear weapon, put it on top of an intercontinental ballistic missile, and have the means to launch it at our country, but we spent about $10 billion to try to find a way to provide a catcher's mitt and intercept a bullet, with a bullet traveling at 18,000 miles an hour. A much more likely scenario to threaten this country will be a ship pulling up to the dock of a major American city at 3 miles an hour with a load of containers on board, one of which may contain a weapon of mass destruction. That has been my concern. I think we have done a lot of work to try to extend the envelope and extend the line of protection, going actually to other countries. That is included, in addition, in this amendment--to have inspectors overseas at the point of departure for some of these container ships and so on. But there is so much more we must do if we really are going to assure ourselves we are not going to allow, coming in at 2 or 3 miles an hour, some large ship carrying containers, one of which--out of some 6 million--one of which could threaten to blow up a major American city. That is the reason for being concerned about port security. It has the purpose of going the extra mile and making the extra investment to make sure that we can feel as if we have done everything possible to provide security at America's seaports. Let me again thank my colleague from West Virginia. As I said, he has been relentless. He has been on the Senate floor many times. I have tried to come and be supportive when he has offered these amendments because I feel so strongly about it. And let me again compliment Senator Gregg, the chairman of the subcommittee, for his work and also for accepting this amendment

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4560

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. My understanding is that perhaps next week the Senate will take up something called stem cell research, several pieces of legislation dealing with stem cell research. I want to talk for a few moments about that issue. It has been just over 1 year now since the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a piece of legislation called the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, with very broad bipartisan support. Those of us in the Senate and those across this country who have lost loved ones, and most of us have, to some dread disease--Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, heart disease, diabetes--the list is endless--cancer-- understand that the urgency to do the research to find the cures for these diseases really must be preeminent. I am not suggesting that urgency should suggest to us there are no ethical boundaries to research. There are ethical boundaries. But I also want to make certain that this Senate moves in a way that is expeditious and does the right thing. I want to show a picture. This is a picture of a young girl I have met a good number of times. She is in the middle. Her name is Camille. Camille is 13. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was 4 years old. I have met with Camille's mother and Camille a good number of times. I have told her story once before on the Senate floor, but it is worth retelling because Camille and her parents and so many others across this country are very concerned that we move forward on stem cell research and try to find ways to unlock the mysteries of this disease called juvenile diabetes. But not just diabetes; ALS and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and so many more. Type 1 diabetes, also called juvenile diabetes, occurs when a body's immune system attacks and destroys certain cells in the pancreas called beta cells. As a result, those beta cells that normally would produce insulin are not producing insulin. So when the beta cells are destroyed and no insulin is produced, the glucose stays in the blood and can cause serious damage to the organs of the body. So Camille, like many who have juvenile diabetes, will have to take insulin to stay alive. She has to maintain a carefully calculated diet. She checks her blood glucose level several times a day and takes insulin injections, as many as six a day, just to say alive. Her parents have told me about Camille and her schedule. They live by the clock. They wake up in the middle of the night every night to check on her, make sure her insulin levels are normal. Every hour of every day in this country someone is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. With Camille, she has had some very close calls. She has been in the hospital a great deal. Her diabetes has been pretty devastating, and she has had a lot of close calls. This young girl and her parents really want Congress to move forward on stem cell research. There is so much promise in stem cell research. I want to describe why this is necessary. We are talking about human embryonic stem cell lines available for use in Federal research. In August of 2001 when the President said he will make lines available, he made 78 lines available. Now there are only 22 of those lines available and all of these approved lines are contaminated in certain ways. That means that all of these stem cell lines will actually never be able to be used for human clinical trials. This August 9, 2001 deadline that the President had on research using these 78 lines is simply an arbitrary deadline. Let me describe that these cells, these stem cell lines come from discarded embryos, fertilized eggs that have been cryogenically frozen at an in vitro fertilization clinic. We had a person testify before the Senate Commerce Committee some years ago who believed that it was just wrong that there should be eggs that are fertilized in a test tube or in a Petri dish and then implanted in the mother, something called in vitro fertilization. That is just wrong, he said. That should never ever have happened. It should never have been done. There are now 1 million people living among us who were born as a result of in vitro fertilization, giving couples the ability to have children. Couples who previously have not been able to have children now are able to have children through in vitro fertilization. At these in vitro clinics, more eggs are fertilized than are actually implanted and used. There are roughly 400,000 of embryos that are now cryogenically frozen at these clinics. Somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 each year are simply discarded. They become waste. They are thrown away. Those who say that the use of those embryos is the equivalent of murder, then, I believe, also probably say that the discarding of embryos that are not going to be used any longer, that have been cryogenically frozen--my guess is they believe those represent 8,000 or 10,000 murders a year. I don't believe that. Those embryos can never and will never become a human being unless implanted into a uterus. The question is: Can we use these embryos to create stem cell lines to try to find cures to dread diseases? Here is what has happened in stem cell research since the President announced the limitation. Here is what President Bush said in 2004: Embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of life. I'm the first President ever to allow Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. I did so because I, too, hope that we'll discover cures from the stem cells. But we've got to be very careful in balancing the ethics and the science. And so I made the decision we wouldn't spend any more money beyond the 70 lines, 22 of which are now in action, because science is important, but so is ethics, so is balancing life. But these lines themselves were from in vitro fertilization clinics and would have been discarded and are being discarded routinely in this country, 8,000 to 11,000 a year. This is just an arbitrary decision. So let me just make a couple of additional points. This is my former colleague, Senator Jack Danforth, a former Republican colleague, as a matter of fact, and ordained Episcopal priest. He wrote this in the New York Times: It is not evident to many of us that cells in a Petri dish are equivalent to identifiable people suffering from terrible disease. I am and have always been pro-life. But the only explanation for legislators comparing cells in a Petri dish to babies in the womb is the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law. This from an Episcopal priest, a former Republican Senator. Finally, this from Nancy Reagan: Science has presented us with a hope called stem cell research, which may provide our scientists with answers that have so long been beyond our grasp. I just don't see how we can turn our backs on this--there are just so many diseases that can be cured or at least helped. We have lost so much time already, and I just really can't bear to lose any more. I believe that we ought to proceed with thoughtful, ethical guidelines on stem cell research. I understand that is a controversial position for some. In fact, in the last campaign for office for me, my opponent ran a television advertisement that was novel and fairly disgusting. In it was a fellow who was sitting around a campfire with some little children. One of the little children said to the camp fire leader: Tell us a scary story. And the camp fire leader said: Well, there is this man named Dorgan and he has a plan to put embryos inside the womb of a mother and grow them for body parts to be harvested later. An unbelievable television commercial, bearing no relationship to what has been discussed under any set of circumstances. But the controversy that exists these days with stem cell research, I understand; I am respectful to those who disagree with me on this subject. I am mindful that there should be solid ethical guidelines in terms of how it is dealt with. But I don't believe this is about harvesting body parts. This is about giving life. This is about giving hope. This is about unlocking the mysteries of dread diseases--to tell those who live with Alzheimer's or heart disease or cancer or juvenile diabetes or ALS or Parkinson's that we are doing everything we can to find ways to cure these diseases. That is what this research is about. I really believe it is about giving life--providing opportunity for those who are suffering from these dread diseases. That is why I am a cosponsor of the Senate companion bill to the House bill called the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which has 41 cosponsors. It is a bipartisan group of Senators who has cosponsored this legislation. I take some hope with the statement of the majority leader that it appears we will begin debating this issue within the next week or two. It is important to be clear that this bill only deals with stem cells--embryos that were created for fertility purposes by in vitro fertilization clinics that would otherwise be thrown away. That is all that is being discussed. As I indicated, there are about 400,000 of those embryos that are now frozen at in vitro fertilization clinics. I know there will be great controversy when we discuss this. However, I am comforted, as well, that there is a bipartisan group of Senators who believes this ought to be done and supports the legislation. It is a fact that sometimes those of us who serve here lament that we are taking lightly things that should be taken seriously, or taking seriously things that are light. This is a serious issue. And bringing this to the floor of the Senate means that we are sinking our teeth into a piece of public policy that is very important and that we recognize is controversial but nonetheless very important for us to make decisions about. I look forward to being a part of that discussion and that debate when it comes to the floor of the Senate, hopefully, next week if the information I have is correct, if not within a week or so following. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I listened to my colleague from West Virginia in his description of amendments he intends to offer. It is a description of the legislation. This Appropriations subcommittee is a very important subcommittee and raises a good many issues dealing with the security of our country. I want to talk about them briefly, and then I want to talk about something that occurred last week. First, with respect to homeland security, a book was written a while back about October 11, 2001. We talk about September 11, 2001. On 9/11/ 2001, a tragedy was visited on this country when airplanes loaded with fuel crashed into the Trade Centers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, and thousands died. It was a devastating terrorist attack against our country. That was on 9/11/2001. According to information in a book printed some while ago, on October 11 of that same year, a CIA agent with a code name Dragonfire reported, and apparently through the Presidential daily briefings, the head of the CIA, Mr. Tenet, reported to the President, that they had picked up a rumor or intelligence had gathered information that a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon had been stolen from the Soviet arsenal, or the Russian arsenal, and had been taken to New York City and was to be detonated in a major American city by a terrorist organization. Graham Allison, who wrote the book ``Nuclear Terrorism,'' described the plot that was told to the CIA by an agent called Dragonfire. As a result of that description 1 month after 9/11 that there might be a 10- kiloton Russian nuclear weapon in this country already set to be detonated in an American major city, there was great concern, obviously. Many people were apoplectic about what was happening. This did not become the product of news stories, for obvious reasons. But the administration and others responded to it with some concern. About a month later, it was apparently discerned that this was not a credible threat, or at least the circumstances that brought that threat were not credible. But as they post-mortemed that period, they discovered it was probably perfectly credible: We know the Russians had 10-kiloton nuclear weapons; they had built them. They don't have the best command and control of their nuclear weapons. It is perfectly plausible that someone might have stolen or purchased a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon and it was not outside the scope of probability that someone might have brought a nuclear weapon into this country and a terrorist organization could well have detonated a nuclear weapon, all of which caused great concern. We have roughly 30,000 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons in this world. The disappearance of one to a terrorist organization, in the hands of a terrorist organization will cause a terrorist act in a major city unlike any we have ever seen. It is interesting that when the Defense authorization bill comes to the floor of the Senate, we spend billions and billions of dollars defending against a rogue nation or a terrorist acquiring a nuclear weapon, putting it on the tip of an intercontinental ballistic missile and shooting it at our country at 18,000 miles an hour. So we are spending billions on an antiballistic missile system to try to hit a bullet with a bullet. It is my judgment--and I think the judgment of most people who evaluate what is the most likely threat against our country--that the most likely threat is a container ship pulling up to a dock at a seaport in this country at about 3 miles with a container on board, with a weapon of mass destruction inside that container that has not been inspected. That is a far more likely threat to this country than a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile acquired by a rogue nation or a terrorist organization. Yet we are spending thousands of times more money on the antiballistic missile program than we are on port security. It is why port security is of such great importance to this country. We have a large border, and we had some discussion with respect to the immigration bill about border security--border security with respect to immigration, yes, but also with respect to keeping terrorists out. But our borders not only include the landmass between Mexico and the U.S. and Canada and the U.S, our borders include port facilities and a substantial number--I believe the number is close to 6 million containers on ships each year come into this country, with a very small percentage of them actually investigated or inspected. That is why port security is so very important. It is also the case, as my colleague from West Virginia has described, that first responders in this country will almost inevitably be first to respond to not only a terrorist act should one occur in the future, but first responders will likely be first in contact with the terrorists. It is a fact that one of the terrorists who flew an airplane into a building in this country on 9/11/2001 was apprehended for speeding in the State of Maryland but apparently was not on a watchlist and so was given a speeding ticket and then drove off. It is likely that the first acquaintance with a terrorist or a terrorist act will be someone in local government--local police, county sheriff, a local emergency crew, an ambulance. That is the first responder. We have just had testimony from sheriffs and local police officers about the issue of critical interoperability of communications. Is the local police organization able to communicate with the highway patrol? Can the highway patrol communicate with the fire department? Can the police communicate with the fire department? All of that is very important. Yet at the same time we ask these questions, the President is recommending very substantial cuts in these programs--Byrne grants, law enforcement block grants, COPS Program, and others. It is exactly the wrong time, in my judgment, to retreat. At the same time violent crime is increasing, by the way, the President is recommending those same cuts. With respect to this issue of the Department of Homeland Security, it is very important we get it right. My colleague, Senator Judd Gregg, I know works hard on these issues, as does my colleague from West Virginia, Senator Byrd. I hope this week, as we work our way through this legislation, we can thoughtfully consider amendments and evaluate those that will strengthen this bill and perhaps discard those that will not we will come out of it with legislation that will give us the feeling that we have improved substantially homeland security in our country. Homeland security is also about hometown security because that is where homeland security starts--with first responders. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business. I would like to speak for a few minutes about a drought tour I took last week.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we have a portion of North Dakota, and it extends down into South Dakota, parts of Missouri, Illinois, all the way down to Texas, where a very severe drought is occurring. I want to talk about meetings in Flasher, ND, Moffit, ND, and Zeeland, ND. Zeeland is a town of 118 people. I drove up to Zeeland the other day and 170 farmers and ranchers were there, in a town of 118 people. As we drove into that town and looked off to the left, we saw what looks like the gravel infield or sand infield of a baseball diamond, a field that is supposed to have grass where cows can graze. There is no grass. It looks like a bowling ball. That is because there is a devastating drought occurring in that region. We have a lot of folks who have cattle, and you either feed cattle or you have to sell them. It is just that simple. People are very concerned. No. 1, we need hay and grazing opened on CRP land so farmers can get at forage to feed these cows. I had people stand up at meetings and say: I have 200 to 300 cows, and I have nothing to feed them. The pasture is bare. Those cows are either going to be fed or put on a truck and sent to market immediately. There was a man, Wes Mastel, a 24-year-old rancher who just started 2 years ago. He had to sell his herd of 114 cows. He had nothing to feed them. The stories are pretty devastating. The thermometer on the MacIntosh County Bank the other day read 100, 101 degrees with wind just drying out the soil, sucking out the moisture--what little moisture that does exist in the soil. We have this developing, abiding drought that is devastating to ranchers. I raise the question because I have offered three times now disaster relief for 2006 when we had torrential rains and 2 million acres couldn't be planted or were planted and washed away completely. We had a disaster in the gulf region. That was called Katrina. The torrential rains in North Dakota didn't have a name, but they were torrential rains. They destroyed crops. The drought doesn't have a name. It destroys crops. The question is: What can we do about it? We have always, prior to this, reached out to family farmers and said: We want to help you; in times of trouble, we want to help. Last December, the Senate passed a disaster relief bill. The House would not accept it. The President, in fact, very frontally said: If it comes to me, I will veto it. Usually it is a Presidential adviser who recommends a veto. That wasn't the case. The President said: I will veto it, so it didn't go anywhere. A couple of months ago on the emergency supplemental, I attached, once again, a disaster relief bill. It got to conference with the House, and it was again jettisoned. The President again said he opposed it. So I attached a disaster relief bill to the Agriculture appropriations bill that was marked up in the full committee just recently. We are going to see again. Times change, things change. My hope is the President will understand this is a very serious problem and will relent and decide he wants to help. I am informing the chairman and ranking member of the full Appropriations Committee today that it is my intention to modify the amendment I added to the Agriculture appropriations bill to include the 2006 drought because we must, it seems to me, respond to this disaster. The failure to respond to it means that fewer and fewer people will be living out on the land in this country, and that takes something significant away from the character of this country. This is not new. We have always reached out in times of trouble. I would ask anybody who thinks there is not trouble out there to just take a drive--take a drive in the drought area and then ask yourself, if you had 300 cows that were your responsibility on your ranch, what on Earth would you feed them? And if there is nothing to feed them, you are going to market and you are out of business. It is that simple. So, first and foremost, my colleague, Senator Conrad, and I, and others, have asked the Secretary of Agriculture to release haying and grazing opportunities on CRP lands. That is very important. It is important that it be done now, not later. The Department of Agriculture always drags its feet and always opens CRP land for haying and grazing too late, after the major 4-H opportunities are gone or after the 4-H capability is dramatically diminished. So my hope is that the Secretary of Agriculture will heed the call this time and open that land for haying and grazing immediately to give some relief to those ranchers. As I said, this is not just about North Dakota. My colleague, Senator Bond from Missouri, and our colleagues from Illinois and others-- Illinois, last year, had the third driest year since 1895. There are other areas of this country that are suffering the ravages of drought. Again, my hope is that this Congress will understand the urgency. I was at this meeting in Zealand, ND, of 170 ranchers. They talked about the drought. Even without the drought, what is happening to them, the average farmer and rancher in North Dakota is spending $18,000 a year in additional energy costs. The big, major integrated oil companies are walking to the bank with bundles of money sucked right out of the pocketbooks of working Americans, ranchers, and farmers, especially because they are heavy users of energy. It is unbelievable the toll it is imposing all across this country. But when you add a drought, which has destroyed pastures and destroyed the ability to feed your cattle, and then continue to impose this additional burden of energy costs, in my judgment, it is a recipe for destruction all across rural America. Some people may think it doesn't matter. I have spoken before to my colleagues about a fellow named Rodney Nelson in North Dakota who is a cowboy poet and who wrote a long question for this country: Does part of this country's character depend on having folks on the farm and on the ranch as well? Farmers and ranchers, small towns and big towns, isn't all of that together part of the character of this country? He asked the question: What is it worth? What is it worth for a kid to know how to weld a seam? What is it worth for a kid to know how to overhaul a tractor, how to plow a straight furrow, how to teach a calf to suck from a pail? What is it worth for a kid to know all of these things? What is it worth for a kid to know how to grease a combine, how to hang a door, how to build a lean-to? What is it worth? There is only one university in this country where that is taught and that is on the family farm. Those kids who come off our farms and go to small towns and big cities, who bring with them that nourishment of family values from America's farms and ranches to small towns and big cities is what renews our country. If this Congress ever decides that farms don't matter, those Americans who live out under a yard light trying to raise a family and raise a crop and raise some livestock, if this Congress ever decides they don't matter, we will have lost something very substantial for this country. So for now, we need the Secretary of Agriculture immediately to release CRP land for haying and grazing so we can get some feed to those cattle in drought areas, No. 1. No. 2, we need this President to back away from his threat to veto disaster aid, and we need to amend the provision that I put in the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee to extend it to 2006, which I intend to do. Mr. President, we have a lot of choices to make in this country. Our country has a responsibility in this world to respond to all kinds of things. We are a world leader. I think that it is important for us to respond around the world. But first and foremost, it is important for us to respond here at home and take care of things here at home. I am just telling you when the sign at the bank and the sign downtown in your town shows 105 degrees or 102 degrees and the wind is blowing 30 miles an hour and the pasture looks like a bowling ball and there is nothing for the cattle to eat and you are suffering through a drought, this Congress has a responsibility to act--and sooner rather than later. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 10 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized at such time the Senator completes his statement.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I regret I do not agree with my colleague on the merits of this issue. But I do not regret coming to the Chamber to speak on behalf of American workers, on behalf of our country's interests. I come, once again, to talk about a trade agreement that I believe is not consistent with what our country should be doing. Let me talk about priorities. We have so many issues in front of us. The other day, I read that the price of prescription drugs has risen triple the rate of inflation in the first 3 months of this year with the advent of this new Government prescription drug program for Medicare recipients. Is there any action on that? No. That provokes a very big yawn here in the Senate. We have the highest budget deficits in history. We are going to add about $1.4 trillion in debt to this country's shoulders this year-- $700-plus billion of trade deficits this year. We are going to borrow, increasing the Federal debt $600-plus billion this year. We have significant challenges in education and health care. We have enormous challenges abroad. Obviously we are involved with respect to the war on terrorism. There is a war in Iraq. There is no proposition that anybody should pay for that war. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been brought to the floor of the Senate to pay for it, with the entire cost being added to the Federal debt. We send men and women to risk their lives in Iraq. Some make the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of their country and lose their lives. But there is no discussion here about whether anyone else should probably sacrifice some and be paying for the cost of this. In fact, the administration does not even put money in their budget, when they send their budget to us, for the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They do not put the money in because they know then they can ask for emergency funding and just add it to the top of the debt. We have a lot of challenges. We cannot get action on the floor by this Congress on the subject of stem cell research which will begin, I hope, to unlock the mysteries of dreaded diseases--Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and more. Unlocking the mysteries of those diseases is saving lives. It is pro-life. We can't get a bill on the floor of the Senate to deal with that because we are blocked from considering stem cell research on the floor of the Senate. We need reimportation of prescription drugs so we can put pressure on the drug companies to lower the price of prescription drugs for the American people. We pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, and it is unfair. The U.S. consumer pays double, triple, in some cases 10 times the price of prescription drugs that is charged to virtually every other consumer in the world, and we can't get a piece of legislation on the floor of this Senate to consider allowing the reimportation of the identical drug, often a drug that was made in this country and then shipped to Canada. We can't do those things. Those are not priorities for those who schedule the floor of the Senate. But we can bring to the floor of the Senate today a trade agreement, a free-trade agreement with the country of Oman. Here we have another chapter in a book of failures--a free- trade agreement with Oman. Oman is a country with 3 million people run by a Sultan. I don't come to the floor to in any way cast aspersions or to denigrate the country of Oman. I have not been to Oman. But I do know a lot about trade agreements. I have studied them. And this is what they are ultimately about: the exporting of American jobs to countries where people work for 30 cents an hour and you can work them for 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. This has caused at least 3 to 4 million jobs to be eliminated from this country. These free-trade agreements--and this Oman deal is yet another--these free-trade agreements have given the green light to say: Yes, let's ship American jobs overseas; and by the way, even as you ship American jobs overseas, you can bring in low-wage labor from our southern border; and by the way, you can run your income through the Cayman Islands so you don't have to pay taxes. My colleagues are tired of hearing about the Ugland House, but I am reluctant to mention it again. There is one little house on Church Street in the Cayman islands. It is, I believe, four stories. It is called the Ugland House. It is home to 12,748 corporations. They are not there, of course. That is their official address in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes. At any rate, these trade agreements, the so-called free-trade agreements, are agreements that in most cases are reached in secret negotiations, are then brought to the Congress under a procedure called fast track. The Congress has actually voted on it. I voted against it. It is absolutely preposterous that Congress decided to say, let's wake up in the morning and put ourselves in a straitjacket and pass legislation that makes sure we can't offer amendments to a trade agreement. That is unbelievable, that Congress has done that, but it has. So we now bring this to the floor under something called fast track. Fast track means this: Take it or leave it. Here is the agreement. You didn't have any participation in drafting this trade agreement, you have no ability to alter this trade agreement, but take it or leave it, vote up or down, yes or no. That is the process. With respect to this trade agreement, they actually have begun to do a procedure called a mock markup. In my hometown, you would know what a mock markup is: it is not a markup, it is just a mockery. So they had a mock markup here in the Senate Finance Committee. My colleague, Senator Conrad, and I believe Senator Bingaman, offered an amendment to the mock markup of a free-trade agreement that is going to be brought to the floor under fast track. That doesn't even sound like English, does it--a mock markup brought to the floor under fast track? So the mock markup is held, and my colleagues offer an amendment that would ban products coming into this country that is produced from sweatshops or slave labor. It passed unanimously in the Finance Committee, in the so-called mock markup. It turns out that the markup was a mock, or a mockery, because even though that provision passed unanimously, it is not in the trade agreement that emerged on the floor of the Senate. The question is, What has happened to that amendment which was offered in the Senate Finance Committee? Where in the world is Carmen San Diego? Where is this amendment? Maybe we ought to send teams out to look for this amendment. The amendment passed. It was unanimous. But it has just disappeared. Another famous disappearing act. This trade agreement with Oman is not the largest trade agreement. This is not CAFTA, this is not NAFTA, this is not the free-trade agreement of the Americas. Oman is a relatively small country, and in saying that I do not mean to offend Oman. This is not about whether I think Oman is a wonderful country or not a wonderful country. I want to talk about the ingredients of this trade agreement. Let me talk a bit about the major concerns I have with this particular trade agreement with Oman. First of all, let me talk about the organizations that oppose this trade agreement. The AFL-CIO, Communications Workers of America, Teamsters, League of Rural Voters, National Farmers Union, Presbyterian Church USA Washington Office, Sierra Club, United Methodist Church, United Steel Workers, Western Organization of Resource Councils, and many more. Like NAFTA and CAFTA and all the other acronyms that describe recent failures, this agreement fails to put any meaningful protections or any meaningful labor or environmental provisions in the labor agreement. So the lack of any effective provisions dealing with labor or the conditions under which goods will be produced to be sent to America means that it is just ``Katey, bar the door''; whatever happens, happens; we are not going to care much about that. But particularly recent revelations of massive labor abuses in Jordan should give everyone some pause. The agreement with Jordan was supposed to represent the gold standard with respect to labor standards. Now we have seen recent examples of what has happened in parts of Jordan; that is, human trafficking, 20-hour workdays, widespread failure to pay wages. Let me talk about last month's New York Times story, which described how a free-trade agreement with the country of Jordan was used to produce sweatshops all over Jordan. It turned out when the agreement was signed in 1999, companies began to fly in so-called guest workers to Jordan from countries such as Bangladesh and China to make products in Jordan to sell at stores in this country--Wal-Mart, Target, and so on. The conditions of these so-called guest workers can only be described as slave-like. Let me read from the New York Times piece: Propelled by a free trade agreement with the United States, apparel manufacturing is booming in Jordan, its exports to America soaring twentyfold in the last five years. But some foreign workers in Jordanian factories that produce garments for Target, Wal-Mart, and other retailers are complaining of dismal conditions--of 20-hour days, of not being paid for months, and of being hit by supervisors and jailed when they complain. Those are the conditions of sweatshop labor that manufacture products in Jordan--by the way, products that used to be produced in this country when we had a textile industry providing jobs to Americans, but that has all migrated. The question is, Should this sort of thing exist in sweatshops--not only in Jordan but in other parts of the world--to allow products to be produced under these conditions and sold in the United States? The answer to that is clearly no. Now, consider this: this agreement with Oman provides weaker labor provisions than existed with respect to Jordan. So with the supposedly good agreement in Jordan, we ended up seeing workers from countries like Bangladesh being flown to Jordan, and forced to work not a 40-hour workweek, but a 40-hour shift, $50 for 5 months of work for one worker, and frequent beatings of workers who complain. Let me show you some pictures--pretty ugly pictures--from Bangladesh. I will show them for a reason, because it relates to trade agreements that don't have labor protections, and it shows you the face of this global economy. These pictures were taken by a journalist who witnessed firsthand the beating of workers in Bangladesh. Here is an example of a picture taken by a journalist of the beating. This, tragically, is a man shot through the head--a worker subjected to violence and killing. This is another picture of the beatings. Let me show a picture of four young women, if I might, very young girls. You will notice that they are tied together--working in factories, tied together to prevent them from escaping. Should there be labor standards in trade agreements? Do we give a damn about this? Does this country care about this? I hope it does. But there is no evidence of it because we are going to pass another trade agreement today with no labor standards at all. So all of the folks in this country who lost their jobs because they wouldn't work for 30 cents an hour, all the folks in this country who saw their jobs moved to Bangladesh, Indonesia, to Sri Lanka, to China, and elsewhere because those who want to produce can find a way to produce it there for 30 cents an hour, not pay health care benefits, work people in unsafe factories, and work them in conditions of sweatshop labor, to all of those people, I ask this question on their behalf: Is this what competition is about? Is this what this country should allow--allow the import of jobs in these circumstances? The answer is clearly no. Yet this Congress will not put labor standards in a trade agreement. It will not require an administration to put labor standards in a labor agreement. The only one which included labor standards was Jordan. I just described to you the sweatshops in Jordan by which Bangladeshis and others were flown by the planeload into Jordan to work in sweatshops that produce products to be sent to American shelves. I believe it is an outrage. It ought to be corrected. But it is not going to be corrected with this kind of trade agreement. I recall the movie ``Casablanca.'' I guess everybody understands the famous words in ``Casablanca'' when the French police chief said he was ``shocked.'' He said: I am just shocked to find gambling in Rick's Cafe. Of course, he wasn't shocked. Everybody knew there was gambling in Rick's Cafe in ``Casablanca.'' These pictures ought to shock the sensibilities of everybody. But on some level, we all understand this is going on. It's just a question of whether we are willing to do something about it. Is this country willing to do something about it? And if so, when? If not now, when? Yet this trade agreement does not do a thing about it. The country of Oman has 3 million people, and half a million people in Oman are so-called guest workers. In fact, the majority of Oman's workers involved in manufacturing and construction are not from Oman at all. The majority of the workers in Oman are brought in from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and other poor countries under labor contracts to work in construction and factories. The State Department's 2004 Report on Human Rights cited Oman for cases of forced labor. And I quote: The law prohibits forced or compulsory labor, including children. However, there were reports that such practices occurred. The government did not investigate or enforce the law effectively. Foreign workers at times were placed in situations amounting to forced labor. They have changed the report just a little bit in anticipation of having an Oman free-trade agreement brought to the floor, but the fact is that this happens in Oman, and we know it happens in Oman. There are no labor unions in Oman. In 2003, the Sultan of Oman issued a Sultanic decree which categorically denies workers the right to organize and join unions of their choosing. Under some circumstances, I am told that workers in Oman can join ``representative committees,'' but they are not independent of employers. The Sultan of Oman has written to the USTR, our trade ambassador, and promised that he will improve Oman's labor laws by October of this year; that is, after the Senate has voted to approve a free-trade deal with Oman. The labor provisions in the Oman Free Trade Agreement are much weaker than the labor provisions in the Jordan trade agreement, as I indicated. They simply ask Oman to follow its own laws and its own self-policing. If the supposedly model agreement on labor with Jordan was such a disaster, think of what it will be with respect to the country of Oman. But under fast-track rules, no one has an opportunity to offer any amendment under any of these provisions. Now, let me describe another point with respect to Oman. After going through a heated debate some months ago over whether Dubai Ports World should be able to manage a half dozen of America's major seaports, we now find that there is a provision buried in annex II of this trade agreement with Oman, which says that Oman has the right to acquire companies that operate U.S. ports, and there is not a thing we can do about it. This provision in the agreement was added to a list of U.S. infrastructure functions that Oman can't be precluded from acquiring: It is as follows: [L]andside aspects of port activities, including operation and maintenance of docks, loading and unloading of vessels directly to or from land, marine cargo handling, operations and maintenance of piers, ship cleaning . . . There was a great deal of controversy about whether the United Arab Emirates and a company owned by that government called Dubai Ports World should be able to take over the management of a half dozen of America's seaports. The answer from this Congress was absolutely not; this country ought to have the capability to manage, for national security purposes and other purposes, its own seaports. Well, guess what. We have a trade agreement that comes to the floor of the Senate which says, it is going to be all right if Oman takes over our ports. Or for that matter, if a company from the United Arab Emirates that has a subsidiary in Oman takes over our ports. The folks at USTR say: Don't worry, be happy. There is an exception in the Oman trade agreement that allows us to block acquisitions for national security reasons. Well, sure, that national security provision is in the agreement. But it means nothing if the President is determined to let the deal go through. Here is what the President said about the managing of U.S. ports by the United Arab Emirates. He said this on February 2, 2006: Brushing aside objections from Republicans and Democrats alike, President Bush endorsed the takeover of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports by a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates. He pledged to veto any bill Congress might approve to block the agreement. The President quite clearly has told the American people that he thinks it is fine to have the United Arab Emirates run America's seaports. Do you think he would think it was not fine for a company owned by the Government of Oman to run America's seaports? It doesn't seem to me he would have great objection to that. What do the supporters of this agreement have to say to this point? So this is where we are. They have a mock markup and then create a mock trade agreement and have a mock disappearance of a provision dealing with sweat labor, sweatshop labor, and then you bring it to the floor, and we have a mock debate. Everybody is very quiet about it. Then we have a vote on the floor of the Senate, and then it passes. It always passes because there are not enough Senators here who care about this question. We import $2 billion a day from around the world above that which we export. Each and every day, we are going $2 billion more into debt to the rest of the world. Said another way, each and every day, we sell $2 billion worth of America to foreigners. Each and every day. And $700- plus billion a year in trade deficits. We shuffle around here like there is no hurry, no rush, no worry, be happy. It is unbelievable to me. This is a very serious, unsustainable problem. We cannot sustain this. It will cause a collapse of the dollar, and it will cause economic difficulties you can't imagine unless this Congress gets serious and this administration and this President get serious and decide this is a serious issue which must be solved. I have spoken often on the issue of trade, and I know there are disagreements about these things. Let me describe the other side of it because I can describe it easily. They say that all who raise these questions are a bunch of xenophobic, isolationist stooges; you do not have the foggiest idea what is going on. You can't see over the horizon. This is a globalized economy. The world is flat. Are you crazy? You want to build walls around our country? What are you thinking about? That is the other side. Therefore, they say, let's have free trade agreement after free trade agreement because it is a global economy and it will all turn out just fine. Of course, after each and every agreement we have reached, we have had bigger and bigger problems. We had a small trade surplus with the country of Mexico. We have a trade agreement with Mexico, and it turns into a huge deficit. So we are able to turn a small surplus into a huge deficit. By the way, those hotshot economists who gave us all that advice--I didn't take that advice, but the majority of my colleagues did--all that advice saying this is going to be just fine; you should understand this is a division of labor. What is going to happen in Mexico under NAFTA is the low-skilled jobs are going to migrate to Mexico and then we will get high-skilled, high-wage jobs back here as a result. Guess what our three largest imports are from Mexico: automobiles, automobile parts, and electronics--all products of high- skilled, high-wage labor. That is what migrated out of this country. We turned a small surplus with Mexico into a huge deficit. We turned a modest deficit with Canada into a large deficit. We turned almost a balanced trade deficit with China a couple of decades ago into the largest deficit in humankind. It is unbelievable what we have done. Europe, very large deficit; Japan, an $80 billion-a-year deficit; every single year with Japan, we have a large, recurring deficit. This country had better understand the consequences of this. This chart represents the trade deficit, and one would have to be colorblind to not understand the consequence of this. You would have to be in a situation where you can't see red. This is red, red, red, growing in a dangerous way, giant trade deficits It is not getting better, it is getting worse. This is simply one more chapter of a book of failures. What we have been doing is sinking this country into a sea of debt. All of this debt reflects, by the way, the shipment of American jobs elsewhere. We have nearly decimated our textile industry. We are taking apart our manufacturing industry. And it doesn't end there. I have told the story of Natasha Humphreys who was a software engineer, Stanford graduate. Her last job for her company was to train her replacement in India because an Indian engineer worked for about one-fifth of the price of a U.S. engineer. So she lost her job. This is not just textiles and manufacturing. Half of the Fortune 500 companies have been outsourcing software development. That is what the lines on the chart mean. It started with textiles. Everyone knows Fruit of the Loom underwear: T-shirts, shorts, underwear. They would advertise with green grapes, red grapes, dancing down the street. Everyone was happy. Underwear was made here. People had jobs here. The grapes got jobs dancing on television. Now, however, we do not see dancing grapes talking about American jobs because there is no Fruit of the Loom underwear made in America. That is all gone. There is not one pair of Levis made in America. Huffy bicycles. That is all gone. I could go on forever, and I have gone on forever, as a matter of fact, in previous discussions about all of the brands. You may be wearing Tony Lama boots, but if so you may be wearing boots made in China. The list is endless. We built in 100 years in this country something very unusual, and we did it through pain and suffering and through agonizing and debate in the Congress. Part of it was to decide: What kind of country are we? How do we improve the standard of living? How do we build something here that is unique? It was encouraging entrepreneurs, helping people who had a vision to start a business, to take risks, to say go for it, absolutely, to create a hospitable environment where people started businesses and created jobs, and to say on behalf of workers: You have a right, too, a right to organize unions, a right to have a safe workplace, child labor laws. You cannot dump chemicals into the air or water as you produce those things. James Fyler was shot 56 times--56 times this man was shot. Do you know why? Because in 1917 he believed the people ought to be free to form a labor union to protest the conditions of coal miners deep in the coal mines of Colorado. For that he was shot and killed; 56 times that man was shot. This history of our country is replete with the people who have decided to exercise the bravery to help build this country and create the standards, the work rules, and the opportunities that we enjoy. Men and women who start businesses, men and women of the labor movement, and Members of Congress decided what the rules are. Now, in one swoop we can decide a company can move those jobs to China, just like that, shut their American plant, move the job to China--and, by the way, this Congress gives them a tax break for doing so--ship the product back to be sold in this country, run the income through the Ugland House on Church Street, and not pay taxes to the United States. None of that adds up. So today we have a trade agreement from Oman which persuades me to show, once again, a chart with dancing grapes. Does it relate? Yes, it does, because this is one more chapter in a book of failures. The question is, Will this country stand up for its economic interests? I say to Japan--we have had robust trade with the country of Japan for decades. Yet every single year we have these large deficits with Japan and the growing deficits with China which even dwarf the Japanese deficits, yet our country does not seem to care. All these deficits translate to lost jobs, they threaten this country's economic future and whether we progress and improve the standard of living and expand the middle class. Our government says, you know something, this is a global economy. Whatever happens, happens, and we do not want to offend anyone. We do not want to tell China: Look, the way we will trade with you is this: our trade must be fair trade; you open your markets to us, we open our markets to you; but the methods of production must be fair. We do not do that. We do not do any of that because we do not have the nerve and the backbone or will to stand up for this country's economic interests. Frankly, it baffles me that this will be passed this afternoon. There is no question about it. This Congress will, once again, snore through this discussion, and we will pass a trade agreement with the country of Oman. At the end of this year, we will see another record, the highest trade deficit in history. Alan Blinder is the former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. He is not some nut way off on the edge of the political debate. This is a guy who is a mainstream economist. He has written in the Foreign Affairs Journal that there are 42 to 56 million American jobs that are subject to outsourcing. Let me say that again: 42 to 56 million American jobs in manufacturing, and especially the service sector, that are tradeable jobs, subject to outsourcing. Not all of them will be outsourced, for sure, but even those that remain here will be subject to competing with those in other parts of the world who can do the job for less. Does that matter to anyone? Doesn't that say to all of us what this is really about? This is about reducing the standard of living in this country. It is not about raising other countries up, it is about pushing us down. That is why this trade strategy is wrong. I don't believe in building walls. I don't believe we ought to decide we should withdraw from the global economy. I just believe there ought to be rules with respect to the global economy that stand up for this country's interests. For the first 25 years after the Second World War, we were the biggest, the strongest, the toughest. We could beat anybody at almost anything, and we knew it. With one hand tied behind our backs we could trade with anybody and give concessional circumstances and win. It was not a problem. Then we saw the emergence of shrewd international competitors--yes, Europe, Japan, and others--things changed. But our notions did not change. Our trade policy is still a heavy dose of foreign policy that is, in my judgment, soft headed. We still are concessional. We still do not have the willingness to stand up for this country's economic interests. And we now are seeing the results of that with the highest trade deficit in history. If I might show that chart one more time, the trade deficits on this chart are the result of these trade agreements. Republicans and Democrats, together--administrations run by both political parties-- have failed to do what they should do. We have a trade deficit with almost every country. And those with whom we do not have a deficit, if we can just get an agreement with them, we will have a deficit. Every single agreement we have made produces a deficit. We have a huge trade deficit with Korea, which is another country with which we are negotiating a free trade deal. Here are the cars in Korea: 99 percent of the cars on the road in Korea are Korean-made cars. Why? The Korean government doesn't want other cars in Korea; 99 percent of the cars on the streets in Korea are Korean made. In Korea, they exported 730,000 Korean cars to the United States last year; 730,000 Korean vehicles were put on ships and sent to America. We were able to export 4,251 into Korea. We almost had a success with the Dodge Durango pickup, but they shut that down. And 95 percent of the cars on the road in Japan are Japanese-made cars in that country. Why? That is the way they want it. Our country says: That is fine. It does not matter to us. I suppose it is fine because nobody wearing a blue suit and suspenders is losing their jobs. I don't see any CEOs losing their jobs. I don't see any Members of the Senate losing their jobs. The folks making cars are losing their jobs. The textile workers are losing their jobs. Family farmers are having the rug pulled out from under them with bad trade agreements, but folks here are safe. And this administration is, I guess, probably the worst we have had for some while on trade. But having said that, the Democratic administration that preceded it was not particularly good on trade issues, and no one is very interested in doing anything to address a serious and growing trade problem, which if not addressed will cause havoc with this country's economy and will affect every American worker in a very serious way. It is probably clear to at least those hearing me that I will vote against the Oman Free Trade Agreement. I think it is a serious mistake. While I think it will pass today, we will await the next bad trade agreement and continue this fight. At some point there will be a tipping point on this issue. The American people will demand the Congress to finally start doing the right thing. No, not building walls, but demanding trade be fair, fair trade on behalf of this country. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, 17 years ago the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, struck down a Texas flag protection statute. The Supreme Court ruled that burning an American flag was a form of ``speech,'' and therefore protected under the first amendment of the Constitution. I disagreed with the Court's decision then and I still do. I don't believe that the act of desecrating a flag is an act of speech. And I believe that our flag, as our national symbol, can and should be protected by law. In the intervening years since the Supreme Court decision, I have supported Federal legislation that would make flag desecration illegal. Yet on several occasions, I have also voted against amendments to the Constitution to do the same. I voted that way because, while I believe that flag desecration is despicable conduct that should be prohibited by law, I also believe that amending our Constitution is a step that should be taken only rarely, and then only as a last resort. In the past year I have once again reviewed in detail nearly all of the legal opinions and written materials published by constitutional scholars and courts on all sides of this issue. After that review, I have concluded that there remains a way to protect our flag without having to alter the Constitution of the United States. That is why I have cosponsored S. 1370, a bipartisan piece of legislation introduced by Senator Bennett of Utah. S. 1370 protects the flag by criminalizing flag desecration when its intended purpose is to incite violence. This is the same standard which makes it illegal to falsely cry ``fire'' in a crowded theater. Reckless speech that is likely to cause violence is not protected under the ``fighting words'' standard, long recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States. The Congressional Research Service believes that this type of statute will be upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Last night, I voted for an amendment offered by Senator Durbin, which incorporates many of the provisions of S. 1370, the bipartisan bill of which I am a cosponsor. The Durbin amendment would also prohibit the disruption of military funerals by demonstrators. This amendment would protect the flag, but do so without altering the Constitution. I know that supporters of a constitutional amendment will be disappointed by my decision to support this statutory remedy to protect the flag, rather than support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I know they are impatient to correct a decision by the Supreme Court that they and I believe was wrong. I have wrestled with this issue for a long time, and I respect those who passionately believe that we must amend the Constitution to protect the flag. More than 11,000 constitutional amendments have been proposed since our Constitution was ratified. However, since the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791, only 17 amendments have been enacted. Protecting the American flag can be accomplished without amending the Constitution, and that is a critically important point. I believe that future generations, and our founding fathers, would agree that it is worthwhile for us to find a way to protect our flag without altering the Constitution.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. This is from a Backfire bomber. It used to be part of a wing strut on a Soviet Backfire bomber. This bomber, presumably, carried nuclear weapons to threaten the United States at some point. The bomber doesn't exist anymore. The bomber's wings were sawed off and it was cut into small metal pieces. We paid for that under the Nunn- Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program in which we spend American taxpayers' money to dismantle former Soviet nuclear weapons and their delivery systems--missiles, bombers, submarines. I also have in my desk some chewed-up copper from the electrical wiring from a submarine that once carried nuclear weapons aimed at the United States. We paid money to dismantle weapons of mass destruction in the arsenal of the Soviet Union. So we didn't shoot this airplane down. This piece of metal from a Soviet bomber was achieved because we paid for the saw that cut the wings off of the bomber. What a remarkably successful program to try to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons. I think the threat of nuclear weapons is the greatest threat that we face. We have roughly 25,000 to 30,000 nuclear weapons on this Earth. The loss of one nuclear weapon to a terrorist and the detonation of one by a terrorist in a major American city will cause a catastrophe unlike any of us can imagine. There are roughly 25,000 to 30,000 nuclear weapons in this world. Where are they? Are they safeguarded? Will someone steal one? Who is building more? Who wants nuclear weapons? What are we doing about that? These are critically important questions. A former Secretary of Defense says that he believes the question is not so much whether but when will a nuclear weapon be detonated in an American city? A former Secretary of Defense says he believes there is a 50-percent likelihood that within the next 10 years a nuclear weapon will be detonated in a major American city. I don't know whether that is true or not. I do know this: this world is full of nuclear weapons. More countries want to achieve the capability of possessing nuclear weapons. It is our responsibility--it falls to us as a world leader to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and begin to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. That is our job. I am not very encouraged, frankly, by actions in the Congress in recent years, turning down the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, suggesting that we want to reserve the right to test nuclear weapons again. The discussion in the administration and even some in Congress is that what we really need are new nuclear weapons, designer nuclear weapons, earth-penetrating bunker buster nuclear weapons. There is a suggestion by some that nuclear weapons are perfectly usable. They are not. The only success we can measure will be the success by which we prevent another nuclear weapon from ever being exploded in anger on this planet. That is the only success that can matter. I want to talk a little about the nuclear agreement the Bush Administration has reached with India, which I think undermines our nonproliferation policy of many years. It also undermines the Non- Proliferation Treaty that we have signed, and many other countries have signed. India has not signed it. It stops the proliferation of nuclear weapons. At least it says it is our resolve to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. I want to talk about this new agreement that Secretary Rice, on behalf of the President and others, has negotiated with India, and what it means for the job we have of stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. One of our major periodicals in this country described a story that was not reported much post-9/11. In the period post-9/11, my understanding from press reports was that our intelligence picked up some kind of a report from their sources that a nuclear weapon had been stolen by a terrorist organization from the Russian stockpile of nuclear weapons and was prepared to be detonated by terrorists, I believe they said either in New York City or Washington, DC--in any event, one of America's major cities. Those who picked up this rumor in the intelligence community were very concerned about it, very worried about it. After some period of time it was determined that this was not a credible rumor, but in retrospect the analysts determined that it is perfectly plausible. It is not unthinkable that a terrorist organization could acquire a nuclear weapon, or steal one from an existing stockpile. It is not implausible that having stolen a nuclear weapon they could have detonated it in a major American city. That ought to cause an apoplectic seizure in this country about the need to safeguard against nuclear weapons, reduce the number of nuclear weapons that now exist, and stop the spread of nuclear weapons. It is our responsibility to provide the leadership to do that. That doesn't fall to anyone else; it falls to us. Let me describe how the nuclear deal with India fits into this. Many countries want to possess nuclear weapons. North Korea, we believe, is now building them, and perhaps has them. I believe the administration said they believe that North Korea has actually produced nuclear weapons. We understand that the country of Iran is doing things that would lead it to be able to produce a nuclear weapon at some point in the future. We are concerned about that. Our country and others have been trying to prevent that from happening. Our country invaded Iraq because we believed it had weapons of mass destruction. I heard a radio show this morning, with the fellow running the show saying that wasn't the case; that we invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. That is not true at all. Saddam Hussein is an evil man. We found him in a rat hole. He murdered people in his own country by the thousands, and he likely will, following trial, meet justice. I hope so. But we attacked Iraq because we believed, our intelligence community believed, and the American people were told, and the world community was told by Secretary Powell that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that threatened the world and threatened us. The point is that the threat of weapons of mass destruction is serious and real. It is serious and real because there are 25,000 or 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world. We have a lot of them. Russia has a lot of them. Other countries possess them. One of those countries is India. Nowhere is the threat of nuclear war or nuclear terrorism, or the need to safeguard nuclear weapons more important than in South Asia, the home to al-Qaida, who seeks nuclear weapons. It is an area where relations among regional nuclear powers--China, India, Pakistan--have historically been tense. India and China fought a border war in 1962. India and Pakistan fought three major wars and had numerous smaller skirmishes. After both detonated nuclear weapons in 1998 and declared themselves nuclear powers, the world held its breath as India and Pakistan fought a limited war in Kashmir. So this is a serious issue, one that is of great concern. It is almost incomprehensible to me that the administration has agreed to a nuclear deal with India, a country that did not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, that will gut the nonproliferation treaty and allow New Dehli to dramatically expand its stockpile of nuclear weapons and possibly ignite another regional arms race of nuclear weapons. Giving legitimacy to the nuclear arsenal that India secretly developed is not going to help us convince other countries to give up their secret nuclear programs. The nonproliferation treaty is a treaty that, if you describe it, puts people to sleep. ``Nonproliferation'' as a term doesn't even sound very exciting. But it is at the root of the determination of whether we will one day see nuclear weapons exploded in American cities. We have to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. The nonproliferation treaty isn't perfect, but there are a host of countries in this world who have decided to forgo trying to acquire or build nuclear weapons because of it. They have done that so that they can get access to peaceful nuclear assistance for nuclear power that is allowed by the treaty because the treaty would not allow access to technology for nuclear power to build nuclear powerplants unless the country signed the nonproliferation treaty and agree to forego nuclear weapons. That treaty has worked--not perfectly--but it has worked well enough. India, as I said, has never signed it. Instead, it secretly built nuclear weapons in the 1970s and 1980s, which they revealed only after the fact that Pakistan conducted its first test of nuclear weapons in 1998. India and Pakistan are both countries which are subject to U.S. laws--and international laws, for that matter--that prohibit sending nuclear fuel and technologies to states that are operating outside of the nonproliferation treaty. Because India has very little domestic uranium, the application of those laws has severely constrained its ability to expand its nuclear power industry, and it has restrained its ability to expand its stockpile of nuclear weapons as well. During this past year, New Delhi has stepped up efforts to get the assistance of our country to obtain nuclear fuel and reactor components so it can deal with an impending energy crisis. I understand their interest and concern about their energy crisis, but this was an opportunity, I believe, to get India to abide by and to become a signatory to the nonproliferation treaty and to cap its nuclear weapons program. Instead, the administration decided that it would initial an agreement that legitimizes India's nuclear weapons and which will make it substantially easier for India to produce more weapons grade material for more nuclear weapons. I don't understand this at all. I was dumbfounded to discover what the administration has done, in secret, with no consultation with Congress at all. But the fact is, I have here a copy of the legislation that the Administration wants Congress to pass so the treaty can be implemented even though the text of the agreement is not even complete. They have the skeleton of the agreement. They have decided we are going to say to India: It is OK that you have decided you are going to create nuclear weapons outside of the nonproliferation treaty, but we will not have you suffer the consequences of that so we will now begin to offer you technology and fuel so that you can have the ability to produce more nuclear powerplants for your own energy needs, and you will also be able to keep some of those behind the curtain and produce additional nuclear weapons. We have said they can do that. The agreement has not been written in its final detail, but even though its detail isn't complete, we already have legislation introduced in the Congress to say: That is OK. That is good. We approve. God bless you all. I don't understand this at all. The fact is, this is a huge step backwards for this country in providing leadership to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Here is what the deal does. The final text, I am told, has not been finalized, but the substance is this: President Bush's plan will allow India to buy from the U.S. and other countries sensitive nuclear technologies that are now forbidden to India under the nonproliferation treaty. That includes nuclear fuel, nuclear reactors, and advanced nuclear technology. In return, India has agreed to allow IAEA inspections and safeguards at 14 of its 22 existing and planned nuclear reactors. So 14 of India's reactors will be off-limits for the production of plutonium for India's nuclear weapons program. But the agreement allows India to keep 8 existing and planned reactors outside of the agreement and free from international safeguards. And it will allow New Delhi to decide entirely on its own which future reactors it will designate as civilian and therefore to submit to safeguards or not. So the agreement allows India to keep at least eight nuclear reactors behind the curtain and use them to produce nuclear weapons. So we have essentially said that unlimited amounts of fissile material for nuclear weapons can be produced at facilities not protected by these safeguards, and it is just fine with us. Well, that is not fine with me. It does not meet our responsibility as a world leader to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. By seeking exception to the rules for a country with which the United States wishes to build a special friendship, this nuclear deal would reinforce the impression that our country's approach to nonproliferation has become selective, self-serving, inconsistent and unprincipled. This deal will send a signal that the United States--the country the world has always looked to as the leader in the global fight to stop the spread of nuclear weapons--is now deemphasizing nuclear nonproliferation and giving it a back seat to other foreign policy and other commercial concerns. I think that is a huge mistake. If the United States is seen as changing or bending the rules when it suits us, others will want to follow suit. Pakistan has already said: Us, too. We would like some of that. We would like to seek comparable treatment. Not long after the United States-India deal was announced, China and Pakistan began discussing additional reactor sales. I believe the United States-India nuclear agreement very likely will reduce the constraints on other states that want to go nuclear. In calculating whether to pursue nuclear weapons, a major factor for most countries is, how will the United States react? What will the sanctions be if we decide to produce nuclear weapons to become part of the club that possesses nuclear weapons? The sanctions, at least suggested by the India deal, is: Don't worry. If we want your friendship at some point, we might waive all of that and say that the nonproliferation issue is much less important than your friendship. There is no question that what has happened is the administration, secretly--with Secretary Condoleezza Rice and Ambassador Burns and others--has negotiated a deal with the President's blessing that will make it much easier for a country that did not sign the nonproliferation treaty to greatly expand its illegal nuclear arsenal. It will allow India to access fissile material from overseas, buy foreign technologies and create a curtain behind which eight nuclear reactors can produce additional nuclear weapons in that region of the world. That is a profound mistake, just a profound mistake. I don't understand why this Congress will not decide that it has a voice as well. The Administration is asking us to rubberstamp the agreement even before the agreement is fully written. It is an insult. The legislation we are asked to approve is a rubberstamp. This Congress is being asked to say: Well, sign us up, yes, of course. Of course we agree. The geopolitics of this friendship is certainly more important than restraining the growth of nuclear weapons or the spread of nuclear weapons. Sign us up. It doesn't matter. I am a little tired of a town in which you have one view and one political party--the White House and the Senate--saying: Sign us up. We are all there. We are all hitched up. Whichever way you want to go, we want to go. I think this is the most significant mistake--and there have been very significant mistakes in recent years--but this is one of the most significant mistakes I can conceive of. Let me go back to where I started a minute ago. A colleague of mine yesterday said they found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Of course, they didn't. They didn't. But weapons of mass destruction, no matter where they are found in the future, ought to be of great concern to all of us. We just passed a Defense authorization bill that is going to spend about $10 billion on antimissile defense. Everyone is worried about North Korea testing a new long-range missile. So we are going to spend $10 billion on technology to try to hit a bullet with a bullet. If anyone looks at the threat meter--I don't think anybody does much anymore--they will understand one of the least likely threats our country will face is a rogue nation or a terrorist who acquires a nuclear warhead and puts it on top of an intercontinental ballistic missile and aims it at our country and shoots it at about 18,000 miles an hour at the United States. By far, the most likely threat is the stealing of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist organization, putting it on a container, loading the container on a ship, and having that ship pull up to a dock in a major American city at 3 miles an hour--not 18,000 miles an hour--and detonating a nuclear weapon in the middle of an American city. There are 25,000 to 30,000 nuclear weapons, we think, tactical and strategic, in this world, the loss of one of which will be catastrophic; the detonation of one of which in an American city will be catastrophic--one. I am not talking about 5 nuclear weapons or 10 or 30 or 100; I am talking about 1. In this new age of terrorism, our responsibility is to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, be a world leader in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, and reduce the number of nuclear weapons, trying to give teeth to the nonproliferation treaty. Instead, we are off making deals with India. Yes, India is a fine country. I want India to be a friend of ours. But I am not willing to abrogate the nonproliferation treaty and say to India: It is all right what you did to secretly produce nuclear weapons outside of the nonproliferation treaty. That is not all right with us. It ought not be a signal we send to the rest of the world that it is all right with us. Yet that is exactly what the deal with India is signaling: We will give you the technology and the capability. You allow inspectors into 14 plants in the future, you can have 8 plants that you have behind the curtain to produce nuclear weapons, and that is fine with us because the geopolitics of this deal lead us to believe it is more important to give you this agreement. I think that is just profoundly wrong, and it is going to injure this country's national security in a profound way. So, Mr. President, my understanding is there are people here already working on this legislation to approve the deal--it is already introduced--saying: Yes, yes, yes. There was a former Governor in a Southern State--I won't use names because most of my colleagues will recognize it--but he was put in place by a fellow who came to the Senate. But when he went back home on weekends he would kick the Governor out of the Governor's chair because he wanted the Governor's office and he wanted to tell him what to do, and the guy would say: OK, OK, OK. They named him Governor OK because that is all he ever said was OK. That is what is going on around here. Yes, even with the India deal. It is OK. It doesn't matter what you do, it is OK. It is not OK with me. It is not OK with me that we have legislation introduced to approve a deal that hasn't yet been written in all of its detail, but the architecture of which we know enough of to understand, at least from my standpoint, that this is a serious breach of faith for our responsibility to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. So, Mr. President, I don't know when the President or when our committees will decide they want to take a break from amending the U.S. Constitution. I understand beginning next week we will have the second opportunity to express that this Congress thinks that the work of Washington and Franklin and Madison and Mason was a rough draft and we have a lot of ideas and we ought to change the Constitution. If we can take a break from amending the Constitution, I assume someone will try to bring to the floor of the Senate legislation that will give a big rubberstamp to the India deal. I only wanted to be here today to say that when that happens, I will certainly do everything I can to slow it down. I prefer to stop it. I don't know if I can stop it. I will try to do that. If not, I will slow it down a lot, and we will have a long discussion about what the responsibility is of this country to stop nuclear weapons in this day and age of terrorism. Some don't care very much about that. They think there are other things that are much more important. There is nothing much more important in the day of terrorism, in this new age of terrorism, than making certain that we never, ever have a nuclear weapon detonated in a major American city. How do you do that? You stop the spread of nuclear weapons. You reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons. And you make sure that we provide the aggressive, assertive leadership to try to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists and safeguard existing stocks even as we try to reduce the number. That is our responsibility. The world looks to us for that leadership. And this, in my judgment, is not providing the kind of leadership that gives me comfort. For that reason, I will oppose the agreement that has been reached with India and that has been announced, much to the surprise of most of us; in fact, I think to the surprise of probably everyone in Congress who didn't know it was being negotiated. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am going to talk briefly about an issue I think is really very important dealing with the country of India and nuclear weapons that are possessed by India and other countries around the world. Yesterday, one of my colleagues in the Senate indicated that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. I guess he was referring to some inert artillery shells that were produced in the 1980s for the Iran-Iraq war. No one believes those are weapons of mass destruction. That is an absurd claim. I think it has been described as absurd by nearly everybody. But since the subject of weapons of mass destruction has been raised I want to make a few comments. I have in my desk in the Senate a piece of metal. I ask unanimous consent to show it on the floor of the Senate.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the policy in Iraq is not working and must change. The current plan does not have incentives that encourage the Iraqis to take full responsibility for their own security or to make the difficult compromises necessary for a unity government to work. We have been in Iraq fighting this war for more than 3 years. The United States has sent hundreds of thousands of our finest troops to liberate Iraq from a brutal dictator. More than 2,500 have died for Iraq's freedom and close to 20,000 have been wounded, many very seriously. America has also spent more than $300 billion fighting the war in Iraq. Those sacrifices continue. We have about 130,000 troops in Iraq today and, regrettably, we will have more deaths and injuries before this war is over. We will also continue to spend tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars more in fighting this war. I believe that we need a change and we need a change now. That change is the Levin-Reed amendment currently before us. This amendment says that we will begin a phased redeployment of our troops by the end of 2006. This will force the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own security and to do so soon. They will have to replace our redeployed troops with Iraqi troops. This will create incentives to build their own police and military because some time soon they will not be able to count on Americans doing those jobs. This will also encourage them to put aside their political differences and agree on a government that works. This action will not come as a surprise to the Iraqis or anyone else. Last year, by a vote of 79 to 19, the United States Senate said 2006 ``should be a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with Iraqi security forces taking the lead for the security of a free and sovereign Iraq, thereby creating the conditions for the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq.'' What we are now saying is it's time for the phased redeployment to happen. The Levin-Reed amendment that I voted for says that ``the current open ended commitment of United States forces in Iraq is unsustainable and is a deterrent to the Iraqis making the political compromises and personnel and resource commitments that are needed for the stability and security of Iraq.'' Reducing the U.S. role in Iraq also reduces the arguments made by the insurgents and terrorists that they are fighting an occupying army. When Iraqis are in charge of security, they will be forced to decide if they are going to continue to fight their own government and their own military or work together to rebuild their own country. We are not pulling out or abandoning the Iraqi people. We are moving to a support role while the Iraqis take the lead. That is what phased redeployment means. It is time for the Iraqis to work together and build their future. We cannot do that for them. This amendment sets in place a plan to provide the conditions for them to do it themselves. We have done our part. They must do their part and they must do it soon

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am joined by Senators Grassley, Durbin, DeWine and Collins in introducing legislation called the Restitution for Victims of Crime Act of 2006. This legislation will give Justice Department officials the tools they say are needed to help them do a better job of collecting court-ordered restitution and other federal criminal debt. Over the past several years, the Government Accountability Office conducted at my request and the request of others a study of the amount of federal criminal debt owed victims and the reasons why much of it is still uncollected. The GAO's findings revealed what many victims already know, that the current system for collecting restitution and other federal criminal debt is failing those it is intended to help. Let me describe what criminal debt is. You go to court. Someone is convicted of a crime, and a fine is levied. The question is, Is that fine being paid? Or you go to court and the judge assigns guilt to a defendant and says: You must make restitution. So that becomes a debt. The problem is that the amount of uncollected restitution and other federal criminal debt has spiraled upward while the percentage of that debt ultimately recovered for crime victims has plummeted. The amount of uncollected federal criminal debt skyrocketed from $6 billion in 1996 to over $41 billion by the end of fiscal year 2005. That's a nearly sevenfold increase in uncollected criminal debt owed to the victims of federal crimes. Some $15 million in criminal debt ordered by federal courts in North Dakota remained uncollected at the end of 2005, according to information from the Justice Department. The percentage of debt that is collected or recovered for crime victims in the form of restitution has fallen to embarrassingly low levels. According to the GAO, Federal criminal justice officials collected an average of just 4 cents on every dollar that has been ordered in restitution and other criminal debt. This is restitution ordered by the courts to be paid to crime victims from those who perpetrated the crime. The victims of crime deserve better. At the very least, crime victims should not be concerned that their prospects for financial restitution are being diminished because criminal offenders are frittering away their ill-gotten gains on lavish lifestyles and the like. There is plenty of blame to go around for our failure to aggressively tackle this criminal debt problem. Some of the Nation's top law enforcement officials did not pursue a number of major recommendations made by the GAO in 2001 and again in 2004 and 2005 to boost our embarrassingly low criminal debt collection rate. These officials only started to take this matter seriously after I added language to an omnibus spending bill that required the Attorney General to establish a joint federal task force to develop a strategic plan for improving federal criminal debt collection. Second, Congress has not yet held extensive hearings about the federal government's recent track record on criminal debt collection and the related GAO reports. I understand that criminal debt collection can be a tough job. It may be impossible to collect the full amount of restitution owed to victims in some cases. Clearly criminal debt collections may be more difficult in cases where convicted criminals are in prison, ill-gotten gains are already gone or these criminals are without any other financial means to pay their full restitution. However, GAO's work also made clear that more financial assets could be recovered. Let me tell you why I and my colleagues have introduced this legislation. I had the GAO review a number of white-collar financial fraud cases and report what is happening with respect to these cases. I will cite some examples. One offender, someone who was judged to be guilty criminally in the Federal court system, and his immediate family owned and resided at property that was worth millions of dollars. Yet he was not making the full restitution that had been ordered by the court to the victim. Two offenders in Federal court cases who were ordered to make restitution to victims took overseas trips while on supervised release but had not made restitution to the victims. One offender and his family established trusts, foundations, and corporations for their assets about the same time that they closed many of their bank and brokerage accounts and had not paid restitution to the victims of their crime. Over the course of several years, one offender converted to personal use hundreds of millions of dollars obtained through illegal white- collar business schemes. Several years prior to one judgment, one offender's minor child, who is now an adult, was given the offender's entire company. As of the completion of the GAO's work, that company had employed the offender. Restitution still had not been paid to the victim. One offender and his family rented a very lavishly furnished residence--which they had previously owned--from a relative. The offender still had not made restitution he was ordered to pay. Again, unpaid restitution and other criminal debt has gone from $6 billion to $41 billion over the last decade. We think that is an outrage. We have worked with the Justice Department as a result of the three GAO reports, and because of that, we have put together a bipartisan piece of legislation. The legislation is comprised of the comprehensive package of recommendations by the Justice Department that stem in large part from the work of the Task Force on Improving the Collection of Criminal Debt. Justice Department officials believe these changes will remove many of the current impediments to better debt collection. For example, Justice Department officials described a circumstance where they were prevented by a court from accessing $400,000 held in a criminal offender's 401(k) plan to pay a $4 million restitution debt to a victim because that court said the defendant was complying with a $250 minimum monthly payment plan and that payment schedule precluded any other enforcement actions. Our bill would remove impediments like this in the future. This legislation will also address a major problem identified by the GAO for officials in charge of criminal debt collection; that is, many years can pass between the date a crime occurs and the date a court orders restitution. This gives criminal defendants ample opportunity to spend or hide their ill-gotten gains. Our bill sets up pre-conviction procedures for preserving assets for victims' restitution. These tools will help ensure that financial assets traceable to a crime are available when a court imposes a final restitution order on behalf of a victim. These tools are similar to those already used by Federal officials in some asset forfeiture cases and upheld by the courts. Our bill has the support of the administration, and the support of many victims organizations. I have a long list of them: The National Center for Victims of Crime, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, National Organization for Victims Assistance--all of these organizations support the legislation we are introducing today--the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, Parents of Murdered Children, Inc., Justice Solutions, the National Network to End Domestic Violence, National Association of VOCA Assistance Administrators. The list is rather substantial. It also includes U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley in Fargo, ND, who said this legislation ``represents important progress toward ensuring that victims of crime are one step closer to being made whole.'' That is the basis on which we introduce this legislation. Among other things, our bill would clarify that court-ordered Federal criminal restitution is due immediately in full upon imposition, just like in civil cases and that any payment schedule ordered by a court is only a minimum obligation of a convicted offender. It would allow Federal prosecutors to access financial information about a defendant in the possession of the U.S. Probation Office--without the need for a court order. This legislation would also clarify that final restitution orders can be enforced by criminal justice officials through the Bureau of Prisons' Inmate Financial Responsibility Program. Our bill would help ensure better recovery of restitution by requiring a court to enter a pre-conviction restraining order or injunction, require a satisfactory performance bond, or take other action necessary to preserve property that is traceable to the commission of a charged offense or to preserve other nonexempt assets if the court determines that it is in the interest of justice to do so. In addition, this legislation would clarify that a victim's attorney fees may be included in restitution orders, including cases where such fees are a foreseeable result from the commission of the crime, are incurred to help recover lost property or expended by a victim to defend against third party lawsuits resulting from the defendant's crime. It would also allow courts in their discretion to order immediate restitution to those that have suffered economic losses or serious bodily injury or death as the result of environmental felonies. Under current law, courts can impose restitution in such cases as a condition of probation or supervised release but this means that many victims of environment crimes must wait for years to be compensated for their losses, if at all. Let me make a couple of final points. First, while this legislation reflects the entire set of recommendations from the Justice Department to improve Federal criminal debt collection, it may not include every possible improvement to the current system. For instance, the GAO has suggested making willful failure to pay court-ordered restitution a criminal offense. This is already the case for criminal defendants who willfully fail to pay a court-ordered fine. It is my hope the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider this and any other helpful improvements when it reviews this legislation. In summary, Senator Grassley and myself and others believe that it is outrageous that unpaid criminal debt ordered by Federal courts to be paid by criminals now exceeds $40 billion. That is wrong and it ought to be dealt with. Our legislation will do so in a thoughtful, bipartisan way. It is legislation that is supported by the administration and by Republicans and Democrats who have joined in this legislation. With the Justice Department's help, we can make criminal debt collection a top priority once again. That is good news for the criminal justice system and great news for crime victims.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am joined by Senators Grassley, Durbin, DeWine and Collins in introducing legislation called the Restitution for Victims of Crime Act of 2006. This legislation will give Justice Department officials the tools they say are needed to help them do a better job of collecting court-ordered restitution and other federal criminal debt. Over the past several years, the Government Accountability Office conducted at my request and the request of others a study of the amount of federal criminal debt owed victims and the reasons why much of it is still uncollected. The GAO's findings revealed what many victims already know, that the current system for collecting restitution and other federal criminal debt is failing those it is intended to help. Let me describe what criminal debt is. You go to court. Someone is convicted of a crime, and a fine is levied. The question is, Is that fine being paid? Or you go to court and the judge assigns guilt to a defendant and says: You must make restitution. So that becomes a debt. The problem is that the amount of uncollected restitution and other federal criminal debt has spiraled upward while the percentage of that debt ultimately recovered for crime victims has plummeted. The amount of uncollected federal criminal debt skyrocketed from $6 billion in 1996 to over $41 billion by the end of fiscal year 2005. That's a nearly sevenfold increase in uncollected criminal debt owed to the victims of federal crimes. Some $15 million in criminal debt ordered by federal courts in North Dakota remained uncollected at the end of 2005, according to information from the Justice Department. The percentage of debt that is collected or recovered for crime victims in the form of restitution has fallen to embarrassingly low levels. According to the GAO, Federal criminal justice officials collected an average of just 4 cents on every dollar that has been ordered in restitution and other criminal debt. This is restitution ordered by the courts to be paid to crime victims from those who perpetrated the crime. The victims of crime deserve better. At the very least, crime victims should not be concerned that their prospects for financial restitution are being diminished because criminal offenders are frittering away their ill-gotten gains on lavish lifestyles and the like. There is plenty of blame to go around for our failure to aggressively tackle this criminal debt problem. Some of the Nation's top law enforcement officials did not pursue a number of major recommendations made by the GAO in 2001 and again in 2004 and 2005 to boost our embarrassingly low criminal debt collection rate. These officials only started to take this matter seriously after I added language to an omnibus spending bill that required the Attorney General to establish a joint federal task force to develop a strategic plan for improving federal criminal debt collection. Second, Congress has not yet held extensive hearings about the federal government's recent track record on criminal debt collection and the related GAO reports. I understand that criminal debt collection can be a tough job. It may be impossible to collect the full amount of restitution owed to victims in some cases. Clearly criminal debt collections may be more difficult in cases where convicted criminals are in prison, ill-gotten gains are already gone or these criminals are without any other financial means to pay their full restitution. However, GAO's work also made clear that more financial assets could be recovered. Let me tell you why I and my colleagues have introduced this legislation. I had the GAO review a number of white-collar financial fraud cases and report what is happening with respect to these cases. I will cite some examples. One offender, someone who was judged to be guilty criminally in the Federal court system, and his immediate family owned and resided at property that was worth millions of dollars. Yet he was not making the full restitution that had been ordered by the court to the victim. Two offenders in Federal court cases who were ordered to make restitution to victims took overseas trips while on supervised release but had not made restitution to the victims. One offender and his family established trusts, foundations, and corporations for their assets about the same time that they closed many of their bank and brokerage accounts and had not paid restitution to the victims of their crime. Over the course of several years, one offender converted to personal use hundreds of millions of dollars obtained through illegal white- collar business schemes. Several years prior to one judgment, one offender's minor child, who is now an adult, was given the offender's entire company. As of the completion of the GAO's work, that company had employed the offender. Restitution still had not been paid to the victim. One offender and his family rented a very lavishly furnished residence--which they had previously owned--from a relative. The offender still had not made restitution he was ordered to pay. Again, unpaid restitution and other criminal debt has gone from $6 billion to $41 billion over the last decade. We think that is an outrage. We have worked with the Justice Department as a result of the three GAO reports, and because of that, we have put together a bipartisan piece of legislation. The legislation is comprised of the comprehensive package of recommendations by the Justice Department that stem in large part from the work of the Task Force on Improving the Collection of Criminal Debt. Justice Department officials believe these changes will remove many of the current impediments to better debt collection. For example, Justice Department officials described a circumstance where they were prevented by a court from accessing $400,000 held in a criminal offender's 401(k) plan to pay a $4 million restitution debt to a victim because that court said the defendant was complying with a $250 minimum monthly payment plan and that payment schedule precluded any other enforcement actions. Our bill would remove impediments like this in the future. This legislation will also address a major problem identified by the GAO for officials in charge of criminal debt collection; that is, many years can pass between the date a crime occurs and the date a court orders restitution. This gives criminal defendants ample opportunity to spend or hide their ill-gotten gains. Our bill sets up pre-conviction procedures for preserving assets for victims' restitution. These tools will help ensure that financial assets traceable to a crime are available when a court imposes a final restitution order on behalf of a victim. These tools are similar to those already used by Federal officials in some asset forfeiture cases and upheld by the courts. Our bill has the support of the administration, and the support of many victims organizations. I have a long list of them: The National Center for Victims of Crime, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, National Organization for Victims Assistance--all of these organizations support the legislation we are introducing today--the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, Parents of Murdered Children, Inc., Justice Solutions, the National Network to End Domestic Violence, National Association of VOCA Assistance Administrators. The list is rather substantial. It also includes U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley in Fargo, ND, who said this legislation ``represents important progress toward ensuring that victims of crime are one step closer to being made whole.'' That is the basis on which we introduce this legislation. Among other things, our bill would clarify that court-ordered Federal criminal restitution is due immediately in full upon imposition, just like in civil cases and that any payment schedule ordered by a court is only a minimum obligation of a convicted offender. It would allow Federal prosecutors to access financial information about a defendant in the possession of the U.S. Probation Office--without the need for a court order. This legislation would also clarify that final restitution orders can be enforced by criminal justice officials through the Bureau of Prisons' Inmate Financial Responsibility Program. Our bill would help ensure better recovery of restitution by requiring a court to enter a pre-conviction restraining order or injunction, require a satisfactory performance bond, or take other action necessary to preserve property that is traceable to the commission of a charged offense or to preserve other nonexempt assets if the court determines that it is in the interest of justice to do so. In addition, this legislation would clarify that a victim's attorney fees may be included in restitution orders, including cases where such fees are a foreseeable result from the commission of the crime, are incurred to help recover lost property or expended by a victim to defend against third party lawsuits resulting from the defendant's crime. It would also allow courts in their discretion to order immediate restitution to those that have suffered economic losses or serious bodily injury or death as the result of environmental felonies. Under current law, courts can impose restitution in such cases as a condition of probation or supervised release but this means that many victims of environment crimes must wait for years to be compensated for their losses, if at all. Let me make a couple of final points. First, while this legislation reflects the entire set of recommendations from the Justice Department to improve Federal criminal debt collection, it may not include every possible improvement to the current system. For instance, the GAO has suggested making willful failure to pay court-ordered restitution a criminal offense. This is already the case for criminal defendants who willfully fail to pay a court-ordered fine. It is my hope the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider this and any other helpful improvements when it reviews this legislation. In summary, Senator Grassley and myself and others believe that it is outrageous that unpaid criminal debt ordered by Federal courts to be paid by criminals now exceeds $40 billion. That is wrong and it ought to be dealt with. Our legislation will do so in a thoughtful, bipartisan way. It is legislation that is supported by the administration and by Republicans and Democrats who have joined in this legislation. With the Justice Department's help, we can make criminal debt collection a top priority once again. That is good news for the criminal justice system and great news for crime victims.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Virginia for his courtesy. This is a vote that we had before in the Senate. It is a vote on the establishment of a type of committee called a Truman Committee. The Truman Committee was established in the early 1940s to try to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in military contracting. That was done when there was a Democrat in the White House, a Democratically controlled Senate, and a Democratic Senator named Harry Truman. He decided there ought to be a special investigation of waste, fraud, and abuse with respect to military contracting. They established a bipartisan committee to do that. They found a massive amount of waste, fraud, and abuse. I think it is clear that perhaps the most significant amount of waste, fraud, and abuse that has ever occurred in this country is occurring right now. I think the American taxpayers are being fleeced. I don't think the Congress is doing nearly enough about it. Let me go through a couple of charts that I have shown before on the floor of the Senate. This is from the highest ranking procurement official in the Corps of Engineers, which does all the procurement for the Department of Defense. She lost her job. She was demoted for being honest. She said: I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to the contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career. This from the top civilian contracting official in our Government at the Corps of Engineers. She is being demoted for being honest. She was always given the best recommendations, the highest performance evaluations, and when they saw that the ``old boy'' network decided to give big sole-source contracts, no-bid contracts and do it in a way that violated procurement rules, she spoke out. ``The most blatant and improper contract abuse'' she has ever seen. Let me describe one contract--the Custer Battles contract. Two guys-- Custer Battles--show up in Iraq. They know there is a lot of money. The American taxpayers are funding not only reconstruction of Iraq but also funding Army contracts. Two guys show up in Iraq with nothing. And $100 million later, they got $100 million of the taxpayers' money for contracts. The first contract was to provide security at the Baghdad Airport. There is a criminal inquiry as a result of that. Here is what Bagdad Airport security said about this company, Custer Battles--Mr. Custer and Mr. Battles. Custer Battles have shown themselves to be unresponsive, uncooperative, incompetent, deceitful, manipulative war profiteers. Other than that, they are swell fellows. They received 100 million in American taxpayer dollars. By the way, they took the forklift trucks off the Baghdad Airport and put them in a warehouse. They painted them blue and then sold them back to the Coalition Provisional Authority--forklift trucks which didn't belong to them. There are now criminal proceedings about this contract. But this is the tip of the iceberg. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to show an item on the floor of the Senate.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, a man named Henry Bunting worked for KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton Corporation, in the area of Kuwait where Henry Bunting was in charge of procurement. He had to buy things. Let me show the Senate what he bought. He brought this to a hearing we held. This is a hand towel. He was charged, on behalf of Halliburton's KBR subsidiary, to buy hand towels. He would order a hand towel for the American troops at a certain price, but his company said: Don't do that. We want you to have a hand towel that has the embroidered logo on it, the name of our company. So double the price to the American taxpayer for hand towels for the troops. So you have KBR embroidered on the hand towel. He says: Why should we do that? It doesn't matter. It is cost-plus. The American taxpayer is paying the bill. Don't worry about the cost. Same guy, $7,500 a month for an SUV; $45, $43 for a case of Coca Cola. He said: Don't worry, be happy. The taxpayer is going to pay for all of this. Don't worry about the cost. Yes, I know this towel is one small issue. But when you buy thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of towels and double the price so you can put the logo of the contractor on it because it is a cost-plus contract, that relates to $100 million contracts, and it relates, in my judgment, to billions of waste, fraud, and abuse. Regrettably, the Congress doesn't care enough. I suggest we remedy this by creating a Truman-type committee. It worked, it was bipartisan, and it began to root out the waste, fraud, and abuse that is so prevalent. I am not going to go through the whole list again. But let me describe it. If you are in the right place of the country of Iraq, you can stumble onto 50,000 pounds of nails, 25 tons of nails, lying in the sand. Why? Because somebody ordered the wrong size nails. So you throw them out in the sand. Doesn't matter, the American taxpayer is going to pay for that. Or you can see a brandnew $75,000 truck that was set on fire because it had a flat tire, and they run it off the road. They didn't have the capability to fix it and just left the truck. Doesn't matter, the American taxpayer is going to pay the bill. I think this is unbelievable. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars at this point. I understand that our responsibility is to do everything we should do, and must do, to support the troops who are fighting in Iraq. We cannot send American men and women abroad wearing our country's uniform and not do everything that is humanly possible to provide all of their needs, equipment needs, weapons needs, and so on. I understand that. That is a responsibility we have. I believe the chairman of this committee and the ranking member of this committee have done a great job. I am impressed with that. The one area where all of us have failed in this Congress, however, is oversight. We have not done the oversight. I think part of it is because we have one-party rule in this town--the White House and the House and Senate. Nobody wants to embarrass anybody. But the fact is there is such massive amount of money that is going out the door in support of these contracts--sole-source, no-bid contracts that have promoted waste. And nobody wants to take a second look at it. Nobody wants to see what is going on. There are whistleblowers coming forward saying this money is being spent. It is being spent in an unbelievable way. This is a slightly different picture. By the way, this is $2 million in $100 bills wrapped in Saran Wrap. This money actually belongs to the Iraqi people that was spent by us in something called the Coalition Provisional Authority. That was our responsibility to spend this appropriately. This money went to Custer Battles and is the subject of a criminal inquiry. This $2 million wrapped in Saran Wrap in $100 bills was a part of a substantial stash of cash in the basement of a building where they were standing. This particular fellow came and testified. He said: We used to throw these around as footballs. We wrapped up $100 bills in Saran Wrap and threw them as footballs in the office because the message in this office was this: You bring a bag because we pay in cash. Bring a sack. If you want some money, bring a sack, we pay in cash. The stories are unbelievable. The American taxpayer is going to pay to air condition a building. It went to a subcontractor, to another subcontractor, and then to another subcontractor, and pretty soon we pay the bill. The American taxpayer paid the bill, and that building now has a ceiling fan--not an air conditioner. What is going on is unbelievable. Yet nobody seems to care very much. Nobody seems to be willing to do anything. I suggest, given the unprecedented amount of waste, fraud, and abuse, that now is the time for us to decide we are going to take action. We will create a Truman Committee, bipartisan, and sink our teeth into this and investigate on behalf of the American taxpayer--investigate and expose the waste, fraud, and abuse. The fact is we turned down, regrettably, a bill which I offered previously that would have prevented the no-bid, sole-source, huge contracts going to just a couple of companies. That is one way to solve this problem. We should have accepted that. But notwithstanding the decision by the Senate to turn down that amendment, this amendment stands on its own. Are we going to decide that when the highest civilian procurement official in the Corps of Engineers responsible for all these contracts says that she can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse she has witnessed during the course of her professional career, are we going to decide that is serious? We are going to do something about it? I know people will say we have done this or that. The fact is we haven't scratched the surface--not a bit. It is time for the Senate to ask itself whether it is serious about oversight and doing the job. I am not standing here trying to pull the ground out from under this committee--or any committee. I am saying we have never spent this much money so quickly, never given the kind of sole-source, no-bid contracts that we have offered. We have never shoved money out the door as quickly as we have for procurement and in support of contracts for the troops. Again, let me show this towel as a small hand-towel symbol of a massive amount of waste, fraud, and abuse that I believe we ought to correct, and we ought to begin today by approving my amendment.

Mr. DORGAN. Might I ask consent to point out to my colleagues that Senator Harkin, Senator Durbin, and Senator Clinton are cosponsors. I did not mention that.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is that we are to end morning business and go on to the bill at 10:45. The hour of 10:45 has arrived, and I note that the chairman and ranking member are not here. I believe they are at a briefing. They are expected to be here shortly. But what I would like to do is ask consent that I be allowed to speak in morning business for up to 10 minutes. When the chairman of the committee and the ranking member arrive, I will ask them for permission to continue, if necessary, but if they have other business, I will understand that. I think the priority is the Defense authorization bill. So I ask unanimous consent to continue in morning business for 10 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have come to the floor today to talk about the Indian Health Care Improvement Act and some frustration--I should say enormous frustration--that I and Senator McCain have about what is happening with a piece of legislation that is so very important. In this country, we have responsibility for health care for two groups of people: Federal prisoners who are incarcerated in prison--we are responsible for their health care. If they get sick, they go to an infirmary, they go to a hospital, we are responsible. We provide health care for Federal prisoners. We also have trust responsibility for providing health care for American Indians. That is our trust responsibility. It is interesting and enormously disappointing to me that we spend twice as much per person on health care for Federal prisoners as we do in providing health care, as is our obligation, for American Indians. I want to talk a little about that because we have written a piece of legislation called the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, which builds on a piece of legislation that was passed some while ago. I want to talk about what American Indians are facing out in the country with respect to health care. Let me describe it first with respect to a story. This is a very typical story about a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, which is called the Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota. It is a story about a fellow who had diabetes. By the way, I held a hearing some years ago on that reservation. On that reservation, the rate of diabetes is not double, triple, or quadruple the rate of diabetes elsewhere. At that reservation, at that point, it was 12 times the rate of diabetes that existed elsewhere. The person I am speaking about on the Three Affiliated Tribes or Fort Berthold Reservation is Laidmen Fox, Sr. He was a Native American who had struggled, as other members of his family had, with diabetes. He had his feet amputated. Later he had his knees amputated. Finally, his entire legs were amputated. He was on dialysis. And, finally, the doctors told him he would have to have his hands amputated. At that point, Mr. Fox said he wanted to be taken off of the dialysis machine and to be taken home to die. He died 2 years ago. He went home to be with family and friends, having lost his feet, his knees, then his legs, and then told he would lose his hands. He died, was taken off dialysis. Just this last February, his daughter--who was 41 years old, and blind from diabetes, and also on dialysis--chose do have herself taken off the machine and went home to die in a similar manner. We now have in this country something nobody wants to talk about. We ration health care for American Indians. Yes, there is health care rationing. There is something called contract health services. That means that when American Indians show up at a clinic or a hospital and, through the Indian Health Service, seek treatment for their problems, the only treatment they will get and the only reimbursement they will get for that medical condition is if it means ``life or limb,'' threatening ``life or limb.'' Otherwise, in most cases, under the contract health provisions, there is no health care available. Let me talk about some other examples, if I might. A member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in my State was suffering from cancer. He went through chemotherapy, and went through chemotherapy again for a number of years through referral from the Indian Health Service to the University of Minnesota. All of a sudden the Indian Health Service said to him: We don't have any more funding. And they refused to pay for any additional treatment, even after he had a number of relapses. This is not unusual for American Indians to face this sort of thing. Another American Indian fell as a result of insulin shock at his home. He hit his hip, and hurt his hip badly in the fall. He was taken to a hospital by ambulance, given a shot for the pain and told he was to be released. His father objected because he said: My son can't walk. You can't release him. And the father said: I can't carry him. He can't walk. He must stay here. The doctor said he could stay in the hospital for one night's observation. The next day, when the pain did not subside, they gave him an x-ray, found out his hip was broken, and referred him to another facility. And because so much time had elapsed since the accident, he had to have a full hip replacement. Another tribal member was a Vietnam veteran and should have had the services of both the Indian Health Service and the VA available to him. He died after the Indian Health Service denied his request for a referral for him to be seen by a lung specialist at the Mayo Clinic. The IHS told him they had no money to send him to a specialist, and this Vietnam veteran died as a result. In Montana, an Indian man went to the Indian Health Service clinic seeking assistance for gallstones. He was told it was not a ``life or limb'' situation, which would get him referred to a health provider off the reservation under the contract health provisions I have just described. Subsequent to that, his duct ruptured and he became infected. He had to have part of his pancreas removed, and now he is on dialysis. Several months ago, a 24-year-old man at the Spirit Lake Nation went to the IHS clinic complaining he had abdominal pain. He was given some medicine and was sent home because he was not considered a ``priority'' patient. He ended up in the emergency room in a nearby hospital, off the reservation, and then transported to a larger medical center 125 miles away. His appendix had raptured. That was 3 months ago, and he is still in the hospital 3 months later, as they attempt to try to control his body temperature and other related matters. He was determined not to have a ``life or limb'' emergency medical need, and so his actual condition was overlooked, with the results of several months now of acute care in a hospital. Mr. President, I have spoken a number of times on the floor of the Senate about a young girl named Avis Little Wind. I brought her picture to the floor of the Senate. I did that with the permission of her relatives. She was 14 years old, and she hung herself. She killed herself 2 years after her sister had killed herself. I went to the reservation because we have had a cluster of suicides of young teenagers on Indian reservations. I talked to this young girl's teachers, school administrators, people in the mental health area, tribal council folks, to try to understand what is wrong here. What I discovered is this little 14-year-old girl, named Avis Little Wind, laid in a bed for 90 days in a fetal position. Clearly, something was seriously wrong with this young woman. Yet, it did not send a signal to anybody. Her father killed himself. Her mother was dysfunctional, a substance abuser. This young girl somehow just slipped through the system, and she got up one day out of that bed and took her own life. Avis Little Wind is one person, but a person whose future was stolen from her because she felt hopeless or helpless. And the fact is, on that Indian reservation--as is the case for most Indian reservations-- there is no mental health treatment available. There are not enough people available just for the diagnosis of serious problems. You would think someone who misses 90 days of school at age 14 would send alarm bells all over, but it did not. There is not enough money in the Indian Health System to deal with it. Senator McCain and I have passed some legislation recently dealing with the issue of Indian teen suicide and trying to begin to address that issue. But there is a serious lack of attention to the health care needs of Native Americans and, yes, teenagers like Avis Little Wind and the tragedy that resulted in her death. It is not uncommon to see 75 people stand in line waiting to have a prescription filled. It is not uncommon for them to stand in line only to find out they can't get the prescription filled because the medicine is not available there. I have been to a health care facility where one dentist is working in a small trailer house serving 5,000 people. Is that fair? Is that the right thing to do? We can do better than that as a country. Yet, somehow, this issue of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act is not a priority. The administration has dragged its feet, and dragged its feet for months and months. Senator McCain and I have just written the administration a letter saying: How about some help here? How about some cooperation? Let's find a way to solve this and fix it. While we talk and while we dither and while the administration decides to delay, we have people losing their lives, and we have people going to health care facilities with very serious problems being told: We don't have the money to refer you. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Mr. DORGAN. The tribal chairman for the Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota says: Everybody up there on the reservation understands, don't get sick after June. Just don't get sick after June because the money has run out on contract health services. If you get sick after June, there is no money. They are not going to send you to a hospital. Or if you go to the hospital, the hospital will charge back to you because they won't get the money from the Indian Health Service. It will ruin your credit, and you will have to file for bankruptcy. But don't get sick after June because the money won't be there. What kind of message is that to the American people, especially the most vulnerable in our society? These reservations are where there is substantial poverty, great difficulty. I have not mentioned methamphetamine. We have had hearings about that. It is unbelievable what is happening with respect to these reservations and health care, and yet somehow there is no urgency here. Senator McCain and I are asking for a little cooperation from the administration and some cooperation here in the Senate to move this bill. We had a witness just the other day at a hearing about methamphetamine on reservations. Methamphetamine is a scourge all across this country. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. One of the witnesses at that hearing on methamphetamine on reservations, who is the chairperson of an Indian tribe, lives on a rural reservation with 13,000 Native Americans who live on that reservation. She told us that one-half of the babies who have been born to tribal members on that reservation--one-half of the babies--have tested positive for alcohol or drugs, including methamphetamine. Think of that. I was in a hospital one day when they showed me a young baby that was born with a .12 blood alcohol content lying in the nursery. This baby was born with a .12 blood alcohol content, and the mother was down the hall and refused to see the baby because she did not want the baby. She checked into the hospital dead drunk. The fact is, we have serious problems with methamphetamine and substance abuse and teenage suicide, and all of these issues, and we have a health care system on Indian reservations that is a rationing system. When the chairman of the tribe in my State says, ``All the Indians know: don't get sick after June because the money is not there under contract health to help you,'' that is a serious problem. All I am asking for and all Senator McCain is asking for is a little help and a little cooperation from the administration and, yes, from our colleagues to move this legislation called the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. It is the right thing for this country to do. Mr. President, I see the chairman of the committee is here, and I will, at this point, yield the floor. I do have an amendment I wish to offer on the Defense authorization bill today, and I am available to do that when it is convenient. But the chairman and ranking Member are here, so at this point I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.