Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. That is correct. The proposed relief would permit a short- term postponement of the losses that count toward the required funding in any two of the plan years beginning after June 30, 2002 and before July 1, 2006. The relief may be taken for no more than 2 years.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise in support of this piece of legislation. I join the Senator from Iowa, the chairman of the Finance Committee, along with the senior Senator from the Democratic party on my committee, Mr. Kennedy, and I believe Senator Baucus. We worked long and hard to address this issue--and it is a critical issue--of how we make sure the pension system in this country, or especially relating to defined benefit pensions, is maintained in a viable and strong way. The pension system in this country is, regrettably, in trouble. But the amendment being offered today is designed to restore stability to the pension system and give us the time to solve the broad, difficult problems facing the pension system. Last week, when the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation released its annual report outlining record losses, Labor Secretary Chao put the issue in proper perspective when she said: While PBGC [Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation] is not in crisis--the agency has sufficient assets to meet its obligations for a number of years into the future--it is clear that the financial integrity of the federal pension insurance system is at risk. It is equally clear that comprehensive reform of the nation's pension funding rules must be enacted to strengthen the financial health of the defined benefit pension system. Time is the key thing here. That is why we need to legislate today. The amendment gives critical players the time they need in the area of reform to accomplish the changes necessary to get through this period in front of us. There is in this bill a temporary interest rate fix which gives Congress time to review all of the options and make the right decisions on funding, reporting, and many other issues facing the troubled pension system. There is also in this bill something called the deficit reduction contribution relief area which gives airlines and steel companies the time they need to get their affairs in order after a unique and unusual period of pressure. Further, there is reform in the area of the multiemployer pension system which will give relief to management and labor to get their agreements in order relative to collective bargaining in order to make sure those funds are solvent. No one--Congress, employers, nor unions--is absolved of responsibility under this amendment. By granting time, we do not reduce--that should be stressed--anyone's debts nor allow anyone to avoid liability for debts they have voluntarily accepted. What we do is provide the necessary breathing room so reforms and repayments are made in a responsible and manageable fashion and not under the threat of ``the sky is falling'' situations we confront today. The amendment has essentially four elements, as I have outlined. First is reform of the 30-year Treasury note as being the vehicle by which we assess pension funding. Second is temporary relief for specific single-employer pension plans from deficit reduction contributions, such as airlines and steel. Third is a 2-year delay in the amortization of recent investment losses experienced by multiemployer pension plans and the imposition of significant improvements in the disclosure of information requirements of those plans to their participants, which is critical. Turning to the interest rate fix issue, this is the key issue for me. I have spoken about this a number of times on this floor. In fact, back in May I said: Now is the time to address this. I guess ``now'' has become now. But the fact is, we have today a system where 30-year Treasury bond rates are required in the current pension law for funding purposes. We will replace that with a conservative rate pegged to the high- quality bond corporate basket. The reason for this is that 30-year bonds essentially do not exist anymore so we have an artificial rate under which we were requiring companies and pension funds to be funded. The practical effect of that was that the bond rate was artificially low, which meant the return on these funds was artificially low and the funding requirements became, unfortunately, in real terms, extraordinarily high and inconsistent with what a realistic rate would be. By shifting to a corporate basket of high yield corporate bonds, we will correct this problem, significantly improve the viability of the pension system, and allow the corporations, for a period of 2 years, to use this temporary fix. It is a temporary fix. Two years is a risk, I admit. Whether or not we can put in place the necessary law changes and reach agreement between the various players that are involved at the table, including the unions, corporations, and the guaranteed fund is a question. It is a short timeframe to resolve this issue. I would have preferred more time so we could be sure we would reach an accommodation and a timeframe that were realistic, but that is not what others wanted. It was not what we were able to accomplish. As we all know, legislating is sometimes the art of compromise, and in this instance that was the case. So we have a 2-year hiatus using a basket of high yield corporate bonds as the new benchmark for funding. That will be positive relief, and it will mean, in practical terms, that funds which would have been artificially flowing into funding pension funds--and unnecessarily flowing into those funds as a result of having to use the low Treasury rate--will now be flowing into capital investment which translates directly into jobs. That is what this is about, protecting jobs and protecting pensions. The second area is the deficit reduction contribution relief function. The amendment grants 2 years of relief to the airline and steel industries from mandatory deficit reduction contributions. Other companies may also apply to the Treasury Department for similar relief. Companies getting relief must remain current on their pension obligations and cannot increase the benefits that they create under their pension funds during this period. Airlines are the main focus of the deficit reduction contribution relief. Airlines are the main focus because of the unique stress these companies have suffered. In recent years, profit pressures within the U.S. airline industry have been amplified by severe pricing competition, the recession, and, most importantly, by the effects of terrorism and the war in Iraq. Severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, also created pressure on the entire industry, especially those flying overseas. The industry is in transition. The public has been reluctant to return since September 11 to the level of travel we had before September 11. Two airlines have already filed for bankruptcy protection. Others may follow suit. It is our intention with this amendment to ensure that pension rules are not the determining factor in selecting which airlines survive and which fail. We should not be kicking airlines over into bankruptcy on the issue of pensions. If that happens, it should be a function of their operating activity in the area of competing for passengers. The PBGC is also concerned about the steel industry, especially two specific companies which have filed bankruptcy. Last year the agency absorbed the largest pension plan in its history when it trusteed the Bethlehem Steel plan. Only a few steel company pension plans still exist. The DRC portion of the amendment gives these plans in this troubled industry a chance to get their finances in order without the imminent threat of a takeover by the PBGC. The DRC provisions are important safeguards to the system and especially to the PBGC. Plans taking the relief must pay 20 percent of their obligation in the first year and 40 percent of their obligation the second year or the plan's expected current liability for the year, whichever is greater. This ensures that no plan will lose ground and become worse off than it was when we started this process. Plans that are funded at only 75 percent or less are also prohibited from increasing benefits during this 2-year moratorium. There is strict accountability. Furthermore, there has been talk of freezing the PBGC guarantee for these plans. The multiple employer benefit plan relief is another area that this bill addresses. What the amendment does is allow plans to suspend amortizing their experience losses for 2 years. Multis may amortize experience losses over 15 years under current law. Multiemployer plans also would be required, under the amendment, to send annual notices to all participants disclosing the funding status of the plan. This is an important reform. It will mean that we will have transparency in multiemployer programs--something we don't have today--so employees can find out the status of their plans. This reform will have a very positive impact. Without this relief, many companies participating in multiemployer plans will face significant taxes and monetary penalties. This is an attempt to address that problem over the next 2-year period. It is done as a result of pressure which we are seeing within the industry to move out of these types of plans and, in fact, abandon the field of pensions completely in the area of defined benefits plans. We understand that if we do not reform these plans and their funding more substantively over the 2-year hiatus being granted to us, we will have lost a huge opportunity to make available to employees effective pension benefits. Our goal is to make sure we don't arbitrarily force a number of employers out of the pension area simply because we have an artificial rate at which they have to fund their plans; that we don't create an atmosphere where, in the area of airlines and steel, we are essentially forcing these industries into bankruptcy because of their pension structure but, at the same time, not create an atmosphere where we unduly undermine their commitment to their pension structure; thirdly, not create an atmosphere where multiemployers basically abandon the field of pension activity and we end up with many employees not having the opportunity to participate in pensions. That is our goal. Our basic goal is to assure that we have a viable pension system for our employees and the option, as part of that viable pension system, that we have a strong defined benefit element of the system. We know, regrettably, that as we came out of the period of the bubble of the 1990s, tremendous pressure was put on these different pension plans because of their investment experience. It was not unique to pension plans. Many American citizens who invested in the 1990s found the same problem. At the end of the 1990s, most of these plans were extremely solvent and strong. Today they are weak. They need this type of relief in order to get through this period. We have been through this type of experience before. I point to the Chrysler bailout process as an example of how the Government, through intelligent approaches toward companies that are in stress, could maintain those industries and be sure that they work their way through the process during the hard times and, as we move back into a strong economy, have the opportunity to do the reform necessary to strengthen those plans so they get them back up to speed. This is a much more logical approach than the haphazard, sky-is- falling approach of forcing the plans through reorganizations, through dramatic funding events that are artificially created through the interest rates or by making the plans much less attractive because the pension costs are so high. So I think the bill makes sense. There is consensus on it and we should move forward with it. Before I yield the floor, I thank the chairman of the Finance Committee for his commitment to this effort and the strong work of his staff in this area, and the cooperation which the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee has had on this effort.

Mr. GREGG

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

Mr. GREGG

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I will speak on the issue of the education funding in this omnibus bill which is being held up by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, which is unfortunate. The issue of education, of course, is one of the priorities of our concerns in Congress. We have made significant strides under President Bush in addressing a variety of different areas involving education, and this omnibus continues that progress. It is interesting to note the commitment which we as a Republican Party and the President, under his leadership, have made since coming into office. The commitment to education, specifically, has been dramatic. For example, in the area of No Child Left Behind, which is funding for low- income disadvantaged students, as compared with the prior administration, in the last 3 years we have seen a 32 percent increase in funding, going from $18.4 billion up to $24 billion. In the Title I account, we have seen an increase of 41 percent, going from $8.8 billion to $12.3 billion. In the area of special education, we have seen a 59 percent increase in funding, going from $6.3 billion up to $10.1 billion. In the area of funds going to K through 12, totally, we have seen an increase of 36.5 percent, from $26 billion to $35 billion. In the area of Pell grants, we have seen an increase, going from $8.8 billion to $12 billion, or an increase of 37 percent. That is in the last 3 years of this President. This bill carries forward those initiatives. The fact this bill is not passed and the Democrats insist on holding it up will represent a very significant cut in the amount of money that would have gone into title I, which is education for underprivileged children, into special education, and into Pell grants. If we go under a continuing resolution, which is the other option to not passing this omnibus bill, it will mean title I will end up being cut by over $650 million. Those are dollars that go out to low-income kids, to schools that educate low-income kids, which is critical to bring these children up to speed so they can compete with their peers and have a chance at the American dream. In addition, in the special education area, if this bill is not passed, it will represent an approximately $1.2 billion cut in special education. Anyone who goes back to their State and spends any time with their local communities knows the cost of special education is one of the most difficult issues which the local education community faces because the Federal Government requires, as rightly it should, that children with special needs be educated and be educated at a level competitive with their peers who do not have special needs. Unfortunately, that is very expensive. Originally, the Federal Government said it would pick up 40 percent of the cost of that education, but it has not been doing that. However, since President Bush came into office, we have dramatically increased our commitment in the area of special education. As a result, we have been able to reduce the burden on the local property owner because more money has been going out from the Federal Government to bear its share of special education, thus relieving the local property tax owner from having to bear not only the local share of special education but also the Federal share of the special education. If this bill is not passed, that is $1.2 billion of additional spending for special education which will not occur, which will mean that burden will be thrown right back on to the local property tax payer. That is certainly not something we should do. We have an obligation to try to get to full funding of the Federal share of special education. The President has made that commitment and we are on that path. This bill is part of that effort. Pell grants is another example. We all know it has become very difficult for people who are going to college today to pay the cost of college because college tuition has increased so dramatically over the last 10 years, outstripping the rate of growth of inflation by a factor of about two and a half times. One of the ways we have tried to relieve that burden is to increase the amount of money or to increase the amount of people who participate in the Pell grant program, which is a grant program which helps kids who are in college pay for their college tuition. If this omnibus bill does not pass, the Pell grant program will be penalized with a loss of tens of millions of dollars which would be available for college students in order to help defray their cost of education so when they get out of college they can participate aggressively in the workforce and earn the rewards of participating in the workforce without having the huge burden of debt placed on them by having to pay for their tuition costs and borrow money to do that but, rather, by having a Pell grant, which is not a loan. This is a critical issue for us as a country. As the tuition rates go up and up, it has become more and more difficult for many people to participate in college education. We as a society cannot compete in the world unless we have a highly educated workforce. That highly educated workforce is conditioned on people being able to afford college. This bill allows a lot of people to participate in college who will not otherwise be able to. We can honestly say if this bill is held up, low-income kids who go to title I schools will not receive the support they need, kids who are special-needs children will not be receiving the support they need, and the local taxes of people will go up as their real estate tax burden will go up, and many kids who are attending college will be unable to continue their college because they will not be able to obtain the Pell grant. There are real lives at risk if this bill is not passed in its present form. There are other things this bill has that address education which are equally interesting and equally, in my opinion, significant. The most significant is the fact this bill includes the District of Columbia's efforts to pursue other options for their children in the area of education. The Mayor of the District of Columbia, the head of the school board of the District of Columbia, members of the city council of the District of Columbia came to Congress and asked those in a position to deal with education issues, Will you help us do some more creative things to try to address a very serious problem in our school districts? The serious problem is this: Washington, DC, spends the second most per child of any school district in the country. The only other school district in the country that spends more per child is New York City. Yet Washington, DC, has the worst performance for its children of any school district in the country; in fact, the worst in many categories. A lot of parents feel their children are trapped in schools that are not working. The Mayor appreciates this and wants to improve the school system but wants to give parents other options. They have in this town a private proposal, a private program for kids whose parents want to send their kids to a private school through a choice program, take them out of the public schools and put them in a private school. There are 7,500 kids waiting to participate in that program. The Mayor and the head of the school board and members of the city council came to us and said, We would like to try a demonstration program in the area of choice where we will basically set up a fund which allows parents--most of these are single parents, by the way-- from very low-income situations to take their kids, if they are not performing and they are not getting the support they need in the public schools, to a private school as long as that private school subscribes to the standards we as a city public school system set both in the area of accountability and in the area of teaching those children. It is a creative and courageous idea the Mayor has put forward along with the president of the education board and along with members of the city council--courageous, obviously, because it flies in the face of the professional education community, and especially the unions. But the mayor is committed to trying to improve the educational level of the kids in Washington. He simply is not willing to accept the idea of generation after generation of children here in Washington being left behind and not being able to participate in the American dream because they cannot get the education they need. When you have parents who are waiting, enthusiastically, to try to give their children an option, to try to give their children an opportunity, which does not exist today, by moving their child from a public school to a private school, when you have parents who are willing to take that risk with their children, and you have a mayor who is willing to do that, then you have a formula for maybe improving the lives of these children. The mayor came to us and said: Give us this program. We would also like a program which helps us support more charter schools in the city and helps us do more school improvement in the basic public schools. So we put together a package where we took $40 million out of other accounts within the Federal Government. I know because a significant amount of that $40 million came out of my own appropriations bill which has nothing to do with the city of Washington, and we moved that money into the city of Washington account. We divided it into three parts, and we structured it so that the mayor and the board of education and the council can set up three programs: One, to assist in the creation of charter schools; two, to add to the improvement of schools that already exist in Washington, the public school system; and, three, to have a choice program system. It is a creative and aggressive idea. But if this bill does not go through, that program will fail. The mayor and the people who are committed to this, and, most importantly, the children who would benefit from this and their parents--and it is heartrending to meet these parents. They have a lottery right now in this city where the private program--which is funded privately, which is the philanthropic program--every year draws out of a hat a group of names of kids who qualify to take part in the choice program. Literally thousands of parents, single moms in most instances, sit in that room and wait for their child's name to be drawn. When their child's name is not drawn, it is tragic, and the sense of loss is palpable. And when their child's name is drawn, the excitement that their child will have a shot at the American dream because they will get a decent education is electric. So the mayor has set up this program, working with the president of the board of education and with members of his council, and they came to us and asked for this money. Unfortunately, Members on the other side of the aisle have tried, in all sorts of ways, to defeat this program. It is ironic that they have because there are not a whole lot of Republicans serving in the municipal government in the District of Columbia. In fact, I do not think there are any. I don't know. I suspect there are not. I think only 12 percent of the people in the city are registered Republicans. The mayor is Democrat. I know the board of education is democratically controlled. The council is democratically controlled. The whole administration is democratically controlled. It was, ironically, the leadership of the city, a Democratic leadership, that came to a Republican Congress and said: Give us this opportunity. We will take it. We will run with it. We will make these children's lives better and give their parents a chance to give their children something special. Unfortunately, they were stone-walled, regrettably, by the other side of the aisle, but we were able to get around that and we were able to put in this bill the language which accomplishes this. If this bill fails, then that program fails, and it will mean that $40 million-- which is a huge amount of money--which would flow into the educational efforts here in Washington to try to improve those educational efforts--not by putting more money after money that has not worked in the past but, rather, by putting more money in programs which have a potential of working, and which we know will work in specific instances, such as charter schools and choice--that money will not go forward. That money will be a benefit, and there will be real lives impacted in a very positive way. So we have seen a lot of crocodile tears from the other side of the aisle about their concern on education, about their concern about children. Where the rubber hits the road is whether this bill passes or not. A lot of children's lives here in Washington will be affected. If it does not pass, they will once again be put in a system which has failed them and failed their peers. And, regrettably, it has failed generations before them. If the bill does pass, there will be an opportunity, created by a creative and aggressive mayor who is willing to take chances. If this bill passes, there will be relief for many taxpayers in America who are paying the burden of the Federal Government's share of special education. There will be relief on their property tax bills. If this bill passes, people who are going to college will be able to stay in college, and they will not have to leave college because they can no longer afford to pay for it. If this bill passes, title I children, children from low-income homes, will have a better shot at not being left behind because the No Child Left Behind bill will be more aggressively funded. So there are real lives affected by whether or not this bill passes. I hope Congress will see fit, and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will see fit, to stop this filibuster and pass this bill so these students can get on with their education. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator from Iowa. Mr. President, I rise today to express my concerns about the proposal before us. I think it has to be put in the proper context. This is a $400 billion subsidy over the 10 years that it exists, but over the actuarial life of this program, it is a $7 trillion subsidy--$7 trillion. It is not paid for. Now, I have heard a number of speakers come to this floor and say this drug benefit is paid for by the senior citizens. Well, unlike the past, where seniors paid into their HI accounts, their health insurance accounts, and paid for their Medicare, that is not the case with this drug benefit. This drug benefit will be paid for essentially by working Americans who are working at the time that the seniors who benefit from the drug benefit receive that benefit. The real concern arises when the baby boom generation, which is my generation, retires, because at that point we are going to have a massive influx of seniors into our system, and the cost that we--my generation--is going to put on the system is going to be dramatic. It is so dramatic, in fact, that any child born today in the United States immediately arrives with a debt of $44,000, which is what that child will owe during their working life in order to pay for my and my contemporaries'--baby boomers'--benefits under Medicare, and we are going to take that $44,000 debt, which a child who is born today has, and we are going to add, with this bill, an additional $15,000--an additional $15,000--on top of the $44,000. That is why I have concerns about this bill. I believe we need a drug benefit for seniors, for low-income seniors who cannot afford the drugs which they are presently receiving. I believe we need a drug benefit which addresses the problem of a senior who ends up, because of their drug costs, being wiped out of all their basic assets; a catastrophic drug benefit, in other words. But while we move down the road toward that type of a drug benefit, we have to, at the same time, reform the underlying Medicare system so that it is affordable, so that my children and the children of other Members of the baby boom generation do not end up paying so much to support health care for us, the retired, that their lives are depredated, that their quality of life is reduced. Under the bill before us, unfortunately, although it has an attempt to address the low-income issue, and although it has an attempt to address the catastrophic issue, there is no significant attempt to address the reform issue. So the practical effect of this bill is that it puts in place a massive new benefit without any control over the costs of the underlying Medicare system. And the effect of that is that the children of the seniors of tomorrow--basically, my children and my grandchildren and the children of anybody who was born after 1940--will end up paying a huge amount in order to support us in our retirement. This bill, put quite simply, is the largest intergenerational tax increase in the history of this country, and it should not be sugarcoated. It is a massive tax increase being placed on working, young Americans and Americans who have not yet been born in order to support a drug benefit for retired Americans and Americans who are about to retire, without any underlying reform to try to control the cost so that tax is not so high that it overwhelms the ability of our children and our children's children to live the quality of life that we have lived. It seems incredibly unfair for one generation to do this to another generation, for us to use our political clout because we are in office to benefit our generation at the expense of our children and our children's children. Yet that is what, essentially, this bill does. It attempts reform, but it does not accomplish reform. It claims to have, in the year 2010, some sort of competitive model, but the competitive model is PPOs. It says it has cost containment, but it really does not have cost containment at all. Then, in one of the true ironies of the bill, it takes people who already have private plans which are paid for by the private sector and moves those people into public plans, so we end up paying almost $100 billion to subsidize private plans to stay private. What an outrageous approach. First we produce a plan that is going to cost our children $7 trillion over the next 10 years, and then we say we are going to pay $100 billion to the private sector to keep in place plans which they already plan to keep in place. They call that ``reform.'' Very hard to understand. The way the drug benefit is structured, utilization is obviously going to go through the roof because there is no incentive for people to be conscientious purchasers; there is simply an incentive to go out and purchase. I suppose that is because this is some sort of drug initiative that makes it more likely drugs will be purchased. But to have no cost incentives in place to control the rate of growth of the drug plan through control utilization is foolish. There are good parts to the bill. There is the savings account, but that is $6 billion. There is a physician increase payment. That is $6 billion. That is $12 billion over the 10 years. We could have afforded that. There is the rural initiative, $25 billion. That gets you up to $40 billion. That is still only one-tenth of the cost of the whole program. We are spending $400 billion over 10 years to do what the plan has valued at $40 billion of quality. We could have gotten where we wanted to go if we had put in place a reasonable plan for low-income seniors, put in place a catastrophic plan so seniors would not have their income wiped out, assets wiped out by the cost of drugs, and at the same time put in place significant Medicare reform so that at the end of the day our children would know that, yes, they were going to have to pay more for their parents' drug costs but their parents were going to have to be more conscientious purchasers of health care and the health care system that was delivering those drug benefits to their parents was going to be more efficient and of a higher quality. But that was not the process developed. The process developed, unfortunately, was developed to get us through the next election, to be able to say in the next election, we put in place a drug benefit at the expense of the children of tomorrow who will find during their working lives they are going to have to now pay $7 trillion of unfunded liability to support a program which has essentially no reform and no cost containment in it and, as a result, as I mentioned before, reflects the single largest tax increase in this country that one generation has put on another generation, a grossly unfair act and one that should embarrass us as a Congress and certainly does not fulfill the obligations we have as parents moving toward retirement. This bill may well be well intentioned. I happen to think it is politically driven. But in the end, the results will be the same, whether it is well intentioned or politically driven. We will have put on the books a program which is going to cause our children and our children's children to have a lower quality of life than we have had. And we, as the people taking advantage of that program, will have been asked to take no actions that are responsible in the area of containing the costs of our health care delivery system. As Republicans, we should be affronted by this. It goes against everything our party has always stood for, which is that government should be delivered in a responsible and efficient way--not in a way that simply throws money at an issue for the purposes of political gain. Unfortunately, we have chosen that second path in this bill and in the process we will be passing a tax increase that will cause our children and our children's children to have less of a quality of life than we have had. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I wish to continue what I think has been a fairly lively and informative discussion on the Energy bill which is before us. A lot of the time has been focused, of course, on the language which exempts the manufacturers of MTBEs from liability and which does it in a retroactive way which is extremely penal to those States that decided to use their rights to try to protect the ground water of the populace by bringing lawsuits and, as a result, will now be barred from those lawsuits, not only prospectively but actually ex post facto. That seems to be an outrage in and of itself, of course, coupled with the fact an additional $2 billion is going to be spent to subsidize the companies that are producing the MTBE. That just adds insult to injury. The list of issues involving MTBE goes on and on, and they have been explored at considerable length on the floor. I want to return to another element of this bill that concerns me, and that is the fact that it is extremely profligate in its use of Federal tax dollars and especially the manner in which those tax dollars are used. It would be appropriate to have an energy policy in this country. That is absolutely necessary, in fact. If we are going to have an energy policy, it ought to be based on three basic purposes: One, it should be based on reducing consumption through, hopefully, conservation; two, it should be based on producing renewables that can be used over and over and, therefore, reduce our reliance on international oil; and, three, it should be based on the need to create more production of resources that can be used for energy. All of those elements should have some sort of marketplace relevance. In other words, you can't suddenly go out and pervert the marketplace by essentially saying you are going to pick a winner and that winner, even though it may not be commercially viable and even though it may not be even environmentally viable, will be given a dramatic increase in support from the Federal Government simply because it happens to be the item of the day for those folks who happen to be writing this bill. Unfortunately, that is the way this bill is put together. It is a hodgepodge of little interests--some of them rather large interests, some of them extremely large interests--that were able to get to the table and get their interests taken care of but not in an orderly way, not in a way that had an overarching theme, such as creating conservation, creating renewables, and creating production but, rather, in a manner that says we are going to pick winners and losers; certain segments are going to be the winners, and certain segments are going to be the losers; certain regions are going to be winners to the detriment of other regions; and essentially we are going to try to logroll this bill through the Senate even though on its face it has no relationship to national energy policy. The list is quite long of items which you have to say, if you are going to try to be kind, are arbitrary--arbitrary at best--but they invade the taxpayers' wallet. Let me read a few of them: $2 billion for companies in Texas and Louisiana to compensate for their phaseout of the gasoline additive MTBE. I find that to be one of the most outrageous since those companies are also, at the same time, demanding they be held basically free of any liability for having produced MTBE which is such a huge detriment to the country--$2 billion in tax deductions for oil and gas companies for purposes of geological and geophysical expenditures; $500 million for a new loan program for the oil and gas industry to demonstrate and encourage new technology. The program leaves it to the discretion of the Secretary and the loan recipients to establish interest rates and loan repayment schedules. You have to admit, that is creative. The last time I went into a bank, I, as the borrower, did not get to pick my loan payment rate and my repayment schedule. These are very creative people who sat around this table taking care of your tax dollars. There is $2 billion in taxpayers' money to be used for cleaning up gasoline and chemical spills from leaking underground storage tanks, a worthy goal, until one learns this fund will even fund cases where the polluter can be identified, letting the polluting individual or company off the hook and putting the hook into the American taxpayer. There is $2.9 billion in corporate welfare for some of the wealthiest corporations in the fossil fuel industry; $800 million for a loan to build a coal gasification plant in Minnesota; $1.1 billion for the first-ever production tax credit for coal. The bill expands the solar energy and geothermal investment tax credit to include clean coal investment. That is a unique view of renewables. That is creative use of the term ``renewables''--to throw solar and geothermal in with clean coal; $1.5 billion for loan guarantees for coal plants, more than $1.4 billion over the next 5 years. The bill establishes a federally funded research and development program to ensure coal remains a cost-competitive source of electrical generation as a chemical feedstock and for transportation fuels. This is a classic example of trying to control the marketplace arbitrarily with tax dollars. Basically, what we are saying is even if it doesn't work competitively, we are going to subsidize it, and we are going to force it to work in the marketplace to the tune of these billions and billions of dollars. That list goes on. One of the most interesting ones is what they did with the abandoned mines land fund. This fund collects fees on all coal mines in the United States to clean up the dangerous mines abandoned before 1977. That is an extremely worthy goal. Obviously, we don't want the mines out there, and the damage they do to the environment is significant. Over $6 billion is needed to mitigate the environmental damage from these abandoned mines, but there is only $1 billion in the fund today. This proposal would reauthorize the fund for another 15 years, reduce the fee to mining companies by 20 percent, and transfer $275 million from the fund to address the deficit in the United Mine Workers Combined Benefit Fund and direct 10 percent of the Federal mineral leasing moneys to address the money owed from the AMI fund to Wyoming and Montana. Over the next 3 years, the proposal would cost approximately $1.4 billion, but the mines would not get cleaned up because the money would have been siphoned off for these special projects. That is what is called special interest governance. Two billion dollars in the provision could defray some of the costs incurred by utility companies in installing pollution control equipment in old coal-burning plants to comply with the clean air bill. That sounds reasonable except for the fact we have to realize that these plants have been exempt from the Clean Air Act now for over a decade and they were given the exemption so they could work their way into being clean. Other plants have come online, with the consumer paying the costs of having those plants be clean-air-producing plants. So consumers are paying for new plants but now they are going to get to pay twice--not the local consumers but the region of the whole country is going to get to pay twice for the old plants that do not meet the responsibility and have refused to upgrade their responsibility. Picking winners and losers again in the marketplace in a way that is extremely arbitrary and simply reflects the fact that certain interests were at the table that had the ear of the people who were effective in developing the bill. Ethanol is a program that has taken on a life of its own. Regrettably, that life is paid for by the whole country, especially by parts of the country which see no significant benefit from this product, at an extraordinarily high cost. Since 1978, the U.S. Government has granted a multitude of tax incentives and subsidies to promote the growth of the domestic ethanol industry. The industry and its supporters, including suppliers of ethanol--the primary input, corn--maintain that ethanol is an effective and environmentally sound way to substitute for gasoline. However, the huge subsidies given out year after year have benefited few besides the corn growers and the ethanol producers, which are often very large companies. Despite the claims, ethanol has neither reduced our dependence on foreign oil nor has it significantly reduced pollution. Taxpayers' repeated payments in the form of subsidies to corn growers and ethanol producers, and the opportunity it costs, serves no other purpose than to artificially prop up the price of corn and the ethanol industry. The list of subsidies that have been developed over the years is rather staggering. In the last farm bill, we put $26 billion into that bill over a 6-year period to assist people who grow corn. This is independent of the ethanol issue. That is $4.3 billion a year. Maybe that is legitimate. The farm program has some serious problems, but maybe that $4.3 billion was legitimate. It turns out that is just the beginning, because this bill doubles the mandate for the minimum use of ethanol to 5 billion per year, costing the American taxpayer, because ethanol is not an efficient way to produce energy, an extra $6 billion. That means that $6 billion comes from taxpayers across the country in the form of higher prices to pay for an ethanol product which was already subsidized under the farm bill to the tune of $26 billion. Then on top of that, we have to pay to create two new research programs in this bill for ethanol. One would think, after we had put $26 billion in the farm bill and $6 billion out of the taxpayers' pockets through the direct subsidy of the gasoline, they would have at least had the courtesy to pay for their own research. That is what most market-oriented products do; they go out and they research and determine whether they can produce the product. And they do not charge that research to the Federal Government. They charge it to their end product users, which is us again and we have to pay for it. But, no, that is not the case. We have to pay $12 million in this bill to create two new research initiatives. Then, on top of the $5.9 billion in subsidies, and the $26 billion in farm subsidies, we also have to give $750 million to the ethanol producers for the cost of building their production facilities. This is the most incredible program. First, we underwrite the raw material with tax dollars, probably to a point where we actually see the net income of the people who are actually producing the raw materials. That otherwise would be described as a national socialist approach to an economy, certainly not a market economy. Then we have to get people to pay to subsidize the purchase of the product to the tune of $6 billion, and then we have to pay $750 million to build the facilities to produce the product. The list just goes on and on. On top of all of this, there is another $2 billion of tax credit which goes to the producers of this product in this bill. They were not happy with the fact that the small producers were going to get this tax credit so they had to expand it, so they picked up a whole group of new producers which are much bigger people in the way of income. They essentially doubled the small producer language in this bill. So we now have fairly significant people getting this huge credit. On top of the farm subsidy, on top of the subsidy for purchasing the gas, on top of the subsidy for building the production facilities, on top of the subsidy for researching the production facilities, we have a tax credit. It is truly an amazing act of largess on the part of the American taxpayer. We all feel very good about this, I am sure. We have been able to pursue a policy in this bill that is essentially spending these types of dollars on our friends who produce this product and manufacture this product. The problem is that by doing this type of a commitment to this product and the producers of the product and the manufacturers of the product, we have totally perverted the marketplace. We have essentially picked a winner, ethanol, and we have said that winner is going to get so heavily subsidized, and then require that the product be used, plus used in a way that is extremely detrimental to an area such as New England because in New England ethanol cannot be shipped in. It does not transport through pipelines because it is too corrosive in the pipelines. It does not transport by truck or train because it is too explosive. So it has to be put on a ship in the gulf and taken around the Gulf of Mexico and brought up the coast into the ports in the Northeast. So on top of all of the other subsidy that is in this product, we pay a much higher price for this product which we are forced to buy under this bill. It is truly not energy policy. It is simply an initiative to take care of an interest group that may be very legitimate and they are very nice people, and they certainly have good representatives in the Senate and in the Congress generally, but they cannot defend this product as being a competitive product in the arena of what we should be looking at for various options for fuel with this type of subsidy level. There are no market forces at all involved in this product. It is totally a subsidized event, subsidized by all the taxpayers in the United States for the benefit of the few who produce the product. Truly, it is a classic example of how not to do an Energy bill because it totally takes the market out of the exercise. Then you get into the special interest projects in this bill. We have heard a little discussion of those. We have these green bond proposals. I think the Senator from Arizona pointed out that one of them would build a Hooters restaurant somewhere in Louisiana. That is paid for in this bill with taxpayers' money. You have $1 billion for coastal impact, almost all of which flows to Louisiana. That is basically a special interest initiative. You have a hydrogen research project for a Freedom Car, which is $2.1 billion. The President asked for $1.2 billion, but the lobbyists and somebody decided that just wasn't enough to take care of this interest group. That sort of reflects this whole bill. The President asked for $8 billion in tax credits, a reasonable number. It was within the budget. I want to come back to that. Instead, we ended up with a $25 billion tax credit bill, three times the price the President asked, and we don't end up with a better energy policy. We didn't get three times better energy policy than what the President proposed because those tax credits are all being used basically to artificially manage the marketplace and to create events within the marketplace which were not able to stand on their own, and as soon as the tax credit goes away, you will not have that production capability because those products are not viable and they are not competitive for the most part. In a speech I earlier gave on this bill, I pointed out I went through this once before. We all went through this in the 1980s. At the end of the oil crisis and an embargo in the 1970s, we tried subsidizing different forms of energy at extremely high levels to see if we could not bring them on line and make them competitive commercially. We did shale oil and solar and wind and geothermal. We even did something, I forget the name of it, where we put a ship out in the ocean and ran a pipe in the water and the pipe got cold and we piped it back around. There was some technical name for that. We were building ships to do that. None of these technologies, except maybe solar and wind, survived, and solar and wind survived in a much different framework than the direction the initial tax incentives pushed them. That is because they were not competitive because, even with those subsidies, they could not compete in the marketplace with the products that were out there beside them. So, once again, we are seeing that in this bill. It is not energy policy. It is picking winners and losers for the purpose of gaining economic advantage for one sector of the economy over another, one group of people over another, one manufacturing group over another. We have the $1.1 billion proposal to construct an advanced reactor hydrogen cogeneration project in Idaho--$500 million is for the construction, and then we pay $635 million, or as much as is necessary, in order to operate the plant. It is bad enough that we are going to pay to build the plant. But on the face of it, if you are going to have to spend $635 million to operate the plant, you have to conclude the plant isn't too viable as an exercise. We went through this all, by the way. Idaho had another one of these projects which I suspect is interrelated to this, although I don't know it, which didn't fly because it was too heavily subsidized. The window is open at the bank of the American taxpayer and their checkbook, with item after item of fairly questionable attempts to try to pick winners and losers in the nuclear industry and to do some things which are of questionable value. I could go through the list, but the list has become fairly public and it probably isn't necessary to review it. There are a couple of other specific ones. It has been reported that the bill for some reason effectively mandates permanent use of the controversial Cross Sound Cable between Connecticut and Long Island. You tell me what that has to do with energy policy. That is an issue between Connecticut and Rhode Island, and Connecticut is a little upset that we are suddenly stepping into their jurisdiction and making that decision for them. The Energy bill would build a project on the Iron Range, a $1 billion plus Excel Energy Powerplant for the Iron Range. Well, it is $800 million of loan guarantees for that project. It is probably a good project, but it is hard to understand why we should have picked that project, to put that level of tax dollars into this bill. The list goes on and on, regrettably, to the point of excess in the area of picking winners and losers, and doing it in a way which has no comprehensible relationship to what one might consider to be producing an energy policy that had a rationale behind it, versus an exercise in simply going into a room and listening to the people who are whispering in your ear on the day when you are writing the bill. That is a big problem, the fact that the bill is not structured very well as an energy policy bill and doesn't address in a thoughtful way or a comprehensive way consumption of renewables or production. There are some production initiatives in this bill which do make sense. I think the Alaska pipeline initiative would probably be very good for this country. I wish they had included ANWR. But overall this bill is just a hodgepodge, and it is excessive. The fact is that it exceeds the President's request by almost three times, which brings me to the next point. This bill is in violation of at least four budget points of order. That is how excessive it is. The bill violates a spending point of order, it violates a tax point of order, it violates a pay-go point of order, to say nothing of the fact that it violates rule XXVIII. Why? Because it is totally out of touch with our own budget as a Federal Government. We put in place a Federal budget. We put in place a plan for how much we could spend in developing an energy policy, and then we ignore it in this bill. There is no fiscal responsibility at all reflected in this bill but just the opposite in the way it spends money and in the way it treats the budget which we have passed as a Congress. It is hard for me to understand how the administration could endorse a bill which exceeds their level of spending and tax policy by such a significant number. We have heard numerous complaints about Congress overspending in a variety of areas. This bill just drives through that barrier as if it weren't even there and proceeds on down the road. The bill has a lot of problems. It has the problem that it is an attack on a region, New England specifically, in the MTBE language. It has the problem that it is not comprehensive in its approach, or at least coordinated in its approach. It is a hodgepodge of various interest initiatives, some of which may score well, some of which may not, but there is certainly no coherence with them. It is filled with initiatives which are clearly counterproductive to using a marketplace approach, which I think should be the approach we as Republicans would want to use, where we test the product and determine whether or not it can compete in the market, and then we give it support to draw it into the market. But we don't say you don't have to worry at all about the market, as we do in this bill, with a number of different initiatives and production capabilities. It is expensive. It exceeds the budget by a significant number. It is hard to defend a bill like this, it seems to me. So that is why I hope when we get around to the issue of cloture, or even the issue of points of order, people will take a very serious look at the failures of this bill on those various accounts. Madam President, I yield the floor and make a point of order a quorum is not present.

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

Mr. GREGG. I thank the chairman of the committee.

Mr. GREGG. I was wondering if the tax provisions as scored violate the budget on that point.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question on that point?

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Is it, therefore, the Senator's position that the determination of whether or not the person who polluted the water in that home which is no longer livable, can't take a shower and can't drink the water, that the person who seeks redress on that should have the Congress unilaterally decide that a product which appears to have a fairly significant proximity to the problem should no longer be subject to liability simply because the product has been designed in a certain way, and that it should be the Congress--many Members of Congress never having even been in that home or a home of a similar nature--that should eliminate the capacity of that individual to have redress in a lawsuit? Would it not be a court's decision or jury's decision to make the determination if the product was produced without defect, that product should not be liable rather than the Congress unilaterally deciding that product should not be liable?

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield further?

Mr. GREGG. Is it the Senator's position that if a person cannot use their house, cannot use the water, cannot take a shower, that person should be barred from suing the potential people who are responsible for that and that a State that has brought an action on that issue should have a law passed by the Congress which says that action brought by that State will no longer be in existence?

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield for a further question?

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield for a further question?

Mr. GREGG. I didn't suggest that MTBE was cancer causing. The Senator suggested it is not a health hazard. I ask the Senator, if a person cannot live in their home, is that not a health hazard? If a person cannot take a shower, is that not a health hazard? If a person cannot drink the water, is that not a health hazard? Is that the Senator's position, that if you cannot live in your home, if you cannot shower, if you cannot drink the water you, therefore, do not have a health hazard? Is that the Senator's position?

Mr. GREGG. I suggest the Senator--Mr. President, I ask the Senator a question--I suggest the Senator might want to go to a home with MTBE pollution before the Senator makes the representation the home is livable.

Mr. GREGG. Has the Senator been in a home that has MTBE pollution?

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield at that point?

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to raise my serious concerns with this piece of legislation. I appreciate the excellent statement of the Senator from Oregon which touched on a number of the issues this legislation raises. The purpose of an energy policy should be, obviously, to make our Nation more independent of international fuels, to allow energy to be more readily available, and allow more productivity in our society as a result of having energy at a reasonable cost. There are a number of ways to approach this. Any energy policy should be balanced. First, it forces conservation. Any energy policy should significantly encourage Americans, and Americans in business especially, to use appropriate conservation which does not undermine lifestyle dramatically and does not undermine efficiency but, rather, improves efficiency in order to reduce the amount of energy used. Second, after conservation, we should use energy products which are renewable, things we can use over and over or at least produce over and over and as a result not be so dependent on international sources of oil. Third, of course, is production. We should increase production, especially production within the United States or within regions which the United States has a relationship which is more positive and constructive than the Middle East and other areas of significant international attention. Good energy policy requires those three elements. However, the bill before the Senate does not accomplish that. It does have some conservation. It does have some renewable language and it does, obviously, have some production language but on balance it does not have any of those at a level of intensity or effort, at least in a constructive way, that outweighs what is basically a grab bag of special interest projects directed at benefiting one segment of the economy or one segment of the population at the expense of other segments of the population. There are a lot of examples of this. The most significant is the overall cost of the bill. This bill was suppose to have $8 billion of tax credits in it and it is up to $25 billion. That difference between $8 billion and $25 billion is almost entirely filled not by a broad approach to energy policy but by very targeted, very specific programmatic initiatives directed at certain interest groups in order to give them benefits to pervert the marketplace, to basically say: Here is a winner; everyone else is a loser. The most classic example is the ethanol package which makes up one of the biggest initiatives in this bill. It is hard to figure out how much subsidy is in this bill for ethanol but it is huge. We know there is at least $5.9 billion, which is double the present subsidy, and we know on top of that there is probably $2.5 billion of tax credit. That is probably not all, and as people review this bill, we will find it is even more obscene than that. This is more a product which cannot stand on its own, a product which essentially has been brought to the marketplace because it has been subsidized at such a high level and because it is now, by law, required to be used, it therefore becomes viable. It does not become viable because it can compete in the marketplace--even with lower subsidies. Some modicum of subsidy might make sense but to basically take a product and say, we essentially are going to pay more for it than it probably costs to produce and we are going to require that it then be used, is hardly a subsidy. It is basically, to be honest, a socialistic approach to managing an economy. The ``pick a winner'' and decide that winner, whether it works or not, will be paid for, and then you subsidize it at an extraordinary level. There are, of course, a variety of different projects in here which are essentially projects in home States, projects of people who are friends of somebody, projects of people who happen to be able to get into that room that the Senator from Oregon mentioned was closed to most Members. We have the advance reactor hydrogen cogeneration project for $1.1 billion. This appears to be not only for building of the plant but for the operating of the plant, which is an incredible concept. First, the taxpayers will pay to build this plant and then the taxpayers are going to pay to operate the plant. I am wondering what the purpose of the plant could be that has any commercial interests at all and the taxpayers are picking up $1.1 billion for construction and building costs. We have $2 billion to pay for companies to assist them in phasing out MTBE, which is something I will get back to, but there is an irony in that because, of course, the bill limits the liability of those customers and then it pays out the program. We have authorized loan guarantees for using certain types of coal that come from the Midwest and to build a plant in the Midwest which does not even exist. Basically, we are going to say, there will be a plant out there somewhere and we will put this money into it to build it. We do not know where the plant will be. We suspect it will be in North Dakota. It is a new concept in taking care of one's constituency to essentially create a plant somewhere in theory. It is a virtual plant that we are going to spend all this money on, and I guess in today's world of virtual reality it is probably appropriate that this bill have some virtual things in it because it does not have much else because the rest of the bill is equally unsubstantive. As to the abandoned mines provision in this bill, we are essentially going to take an account which was supposed to help in cleaning up the mines which were used in the West, and we are going to take the money out of that account and we will redirect it so, basically, none of those dollars will flow into the cleanup which they are allegedly being raised for. We have a proposal to build some sort of green shopping centers, whatever those are. That is a great concept. I always wanted to build a green shopping center. I like blue, purple, yellow. Why did we leave those colors out? We are gone to build a green shopping mall in Shreveport, LA. We are going to build a green shopping center in Atlanta. We are going to build a green shopping mall in Syracuse. And the taxpayers are going to pay for that. Building shopping centers is a new concept for energy, for having a national energy policy. We will spend a lot of time on this over the next week as we debate this bill, because it will take at least a week to do this bill. The most significant detriment in this bill is the fact that it is essentially structured to benefit one region of the country significantly over another region of the country. It is almost a gratuitous attack on the Northeast from the standpoint of the way it has been put together. The most glaring example of that is the way this MTBE issue is handled. MTBE is an additive put in gasoline. It was decided by the EPA, in the early 1990s, that this additive should be put in gasoline to make it oxidate faster, thus getting cleaner burning gasoline and reducing air pollution. It turns out one of the unintended consequences of this legitimate desire to make gasoline burn faster is it is an incredible pollutant, an extremely difficult pollutant to deal with if it gets in the groundwater. So States which were put under the authority of the EPA to clean their air, and which were then required, in order to accomplish this, to essentially use this additive, now find that although their air may be marginally cleaner, their groundwater is dramatically more polluted. If you have ever been in a house--and I have been in a number of them--that has an MTBE pollution issue, it is essentially unlivable. You cannot use the shower, you cannot use the sinks, the smell is just overwhelming, and the water cannot be drunk. It cannot be put on your body to clean. It is a horrific situation. People in community after community in my State--small communities, cul-de-sacs, groups of homes--have found they are basically unable to live in those houses until the water system has been fundamentally repaired. Sometimes you have to bring in new water because they are on wells in order to address the pollution coming from MTBE. Thirty-three percent of one of my counties has a serious problem of MTBE pollution, and the percentages are in the midteens and higher in other towns, counties. So it is a serious environmental hazard. Yet this bill says we will continue to use it and States that are under these orders will have to continue to use it for another period of years, increasing the amount of pollution. Then this bill does one more thing that is really--I already used this term once, so I hate to use it again, but really is a gratuitous shot. It says States which have pursued a legal remedy for the damage caused by MTBE will no longer be able to pursue those lawsuits. This bill--because somebody got in that room the Senator from Oregon was talking about got somebody's ear--has language in it which specifically goes back before the lawsuits were brought by some of the New England States and eliminates the ability of those suits to go forward. Now, when I was in law school that would be called an ex post facto law and would be subject to some significant debate. However, obviously, the people who drafted this have figured out a way around that ex post facto attack, and they figure they are going to survive this attack and, therefore, they are going to eliminate the capacity of States such as New Hampshire to try to get redress on the issue of the fact that in some counties, up to 33 percent of the water is not usable because of the MTBE pollution. It is a truly ironic situation that this has happened, that a bill proposed to reduce our reliance on energy would have innumerable special initiatives in it that have no relationship to actually increasing energy production but actually perverts the marketplace, and, on top of that, would take a policy which is being debated in the court system between the States and the producers and essentially wipes that policy, which is in an environmental fight, off the books in an attempt to protect those industries which produce this product. We heard the Senator from New Mexico defend the position on the grounds that--I believe he used the term--I have it right here; I wrote it down because it is a unique term. Well, I guess I can't find it right now. Anyway, it was a term that I found interesting because it basically implied that well, really, States should not be able to bring these lawsuits. These people should just have to have this groundwater pollution. And, what the heck, why not do it? Why not protect these companies from that sort of pollution forever? Well, I think you do not protect them because, as a practical matter, you let the court decide whether the liability exists in this instance. This is not a question that is appropriate to this Energy bill, to say the least. It is, in fact, a question which should have been allowed to be resolved by the New England States as they dealt with this question of MTBE pollution in groundwater. So this bill has some very serious problems independent of the fact that it is philosophically wrong, that it takes a marketplace, and does so much tweaking of the marketplace that you have no longer any semblance of market force in the issue of the production of energy. You simply have a grab bag of winners and losers. The grab bag is unique. It really is unique. I would have loved to have had a fly on the wall in that room because there must have been just a parade of people coming in and out who had their special projects. I remember this happened once before back in 1979 or 1980 when we were just coming out of the energy crisis of the 1970s, and we had the Arab oil embargo, and we decided to put money into trying to pick winners and losers in oil production. We put money into shale oil and we put money into wind and we put money into solar. At the time, I supported a lot of that exercise and said, well, that is something we ought to try. Unfortunately, what we failed to recognize was unless the market makes the product viable, it usually never works. That has been proven because all those initiatives--synthetic fuels, shale oil, things like that--have fallen by the wayside simply because they were not competitive in the marketplace. So to abandon the market and to pick winners and losers is not that great a policy approach to the issue of energy. It is better to level the playing field and give the producers the opportunity to choose those products which are going to make sense. That happens to be why I was for opening ANWR, for example. But if you had been in this room, it would have been an interesting experience because as you go through this bill you find it is replete with these little special, targeted items. Here is one. I just opened the bill because I finally got a copy of it. I just opened it. I arbitrarily opened it to a page. This is so amusing--it is not amusing; it is horrible. But the interest is so apparent and so outrageous you have to smile about it. It is so obscene in its attack on the American taxpayers. This section is called the Geothermal Steam Act. Basically, what it says--and I am almost tempted to read the whole thing--is anybody who wants is now going to be able to apply to go on to Federal lands and produce geothermal energy. Well, geothermal energy probably has some productive capability that makes sense. I am not sure it does because no one, other than icelandic countries, has been able to make it efficient. They have an efficiency with it because they have so much of it, and they are so small. But basically what this bill says is, all right, you can go on public lands--let's say Yellowstone Park--where there is a lot of geothermal, and you can have the Federal Government evaluate whether or not geothermal energy should be produced there. Obviously, they are not going to do it in Yellowstone Park. That was an excessive statement, but that is where we know there is geothermal power. Then, if you, the person getting a fairly significant subsidy in this bill for geothermal production, want to, you can then decide you are going to pursue energy there. The Department is under some significant direction to actually give you a permit, at which time you have to go through something called a NEPA process, which means you have to go out and prove there is an environmentally sound way to produce this geothermal power. All that is outrageous in and of itself because it is basically putting a put to our national lands for geothermal power that is independent of just determining whether or not that is the appropriate use for those natural lands. This is where it gets very entertaining. Then they say, you--us, the taxpayers--have to pay for the NEPA study. We have to pay to reimburse the company that wants to do the drilling or use the geothermal power for the environmental study which they are required to produce in order to prove that the power can be produced in that area. That is a very interesting concept. That is like saying to a drug company, we, the Federal Government, must pay to produce the research to produce your drug, even though you are going to get the profits from selling the drug, or any other business that has to make a basic investment to get the asset which they are going to then sell and make money on because the only significant cost for determining whether or not they are going to get their geothermal power will be the environmental impact study. So to ask the taxpayers to pay for it is, to say the least, an unusual approach. In the context of this bill, it is very mainstream. It is very much consistent with the rest of the bill, the fact that you are going to have $1 billion worth of land or purchases made in order to protect the shoreline. But where is it all going to be purchased? Louisiana. Ninety percent of the $1 billion is going to be spent in Louisiana; or the fact that you are going to have these shopping centers in various locations; or the fact that you are going to have an ethanol program which will probably cost more in tax subsidy than what it cost to produce the product, certainly more than what the net income is going to be of that product, no question about that; or that you are going to have a subsidy for a variety of initiatives which are now allegedly commercially competitive--the list goes on interminably of tax credits which are now going to be put in place for different industries which already are, theoretically, producing a competitive product. But we have to expand that tax credit. I won't read them all, but a few of them: There is a credit for production for advanced nuclear power; to repeal the 4.3-cents motor fuel excise tax on railroad and inland waterways; a credit for natural gas distribution; a credit for electric transmission properties--that this is an expensing item--an expensing for capital costs incurred in complying with EPA sulfur regulations; modifications to special rules for nuclear decommissioning costs; treatment of certain income as expenses; arbitration rules not to apply to prepayments for natural gas; a temporary suspension of limitation based on 65 percent of taxable income and extension of suspension of taxable income limit with respect to marginal production--that is stripper wells, I presume-- amortization of delayed rental payments--that, I presume again, is a stripper well type of thing--amortization of geological and geophysical expenditures--these are all significant tax benefits--temporary repeal of the alternative minimum tax preference for intangible drilling costs--again, a significant tax benefit--credit for clean coal technology units--that is a tax credit. Then, of course, relative to the natural gas business, there is a dramatic change in the way they account for their taxes. There is even a credit in here for ceiling fans, for certain steam generators and certain reactors and vessels used for nuclear technology. The list goes on and on: Energy production incentives; there is a special tax credit for granular mine tailings. Maybe that is not tax. I just noted that because it seems as if that may be a misapplication of that or the use of that. The tax credit section, which makes up the difference between the $8 billion requested and the $25 billion that is actually being incurred here in tax credits, is just replete with special interest efforts to try to pervert the marketplace for the purposes of picking winners and losers in the energy production business. That might work at some level. There is no question there may be a legitimate need to do some of that. But this bill is excessive. It is also clearly not being driven by energy policy but, rather, by parochial interests and by interests who see the opportunity to have significant gain at the expense of others--specifically, the general taxpayer. We will spend a lot of time talking about these various issues. I think the more light shown on this bill, the better. I think we do need to spend a few days discussing the issues within the bill. Most specifically, we want to spend more time on this issue of MTBEs and the fact that this bill has essentially been structured to target one region of the country in a manner which seems highly inappropriate and punitive and which is clearly inconsistent with what historically has been the case, which is that you don't pass a law which says the legitimate activity of a State or group of States, in trying to defend the quality of their environment, will be wiped off the books. That is something the Federal Government should not be doing. It should certainly not be being done by a Republican-dominated Congress which theoretically still believes there are States out there that have some rights. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Chair.

Mr. GREGG. Does that qualify as having the bill before the Senate for purposes of debate?

Mr. GREGG. Parliamentary inquiry: I have not been able to locate this bill. I understand under rule XI the bill should be printed. I understand it may be printed in the House calendar, but I am interested to know whether or not printing in the House Journal represents having the bill before the Senate.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, this January, Burnham A. Judd will be stepping down from his position as chairman of the Board of Selectmen of Pittsburg, NH. Bing, as he is known to all throughout New Hampshire's North Country, has served on the board in Pittsburg for 34 years, since 1969, and I rise in tribute to his outstanding service to his community, its residents and the State of New Hampshire throughout this time. Pittsburg is New Hampshire's largest town in area and its farthest north, sharing borders with Canada, Maine, and Vermont. Located well north of the notches through New Hampshire's White Mountains, Pittsburg contains the majestic Connecticut Lakes and Lake Francis, headwaters of the Connecticut River, and areas of unparalleled scenic and wild beauty. It is a community with a rich heritage of residents skilled in the ways of the woods and with a passion for life in the outdoors. Throughout its rich history, no one has been more true to the community, its residents, its landscape, and its lifestyles than Bing Judd. An avid and skillful sportsman, knowledgeable in the woods and with an uncanny knack of always knowing where the fish are, his vast experience includes a varied and accomplished record of service to the public: A Pittsburg road agent in the 1960s, a New Hampshire State Representative in 1974, 17 years of service as a forest ranger for the State of New Hampshire from 1975 to 1992, a New Hampshire fish and game commissioner for 10 years, on the Pittsburg Police and Fire Departments for many years and service continuing to this day as Pittsburg health officer, as a Coos County commissioner since 1997 and on the State of New Hampshire's Water Resources Council and New Hampshire Wetlands Board. In addition, as chairman of the Connecticut Lakes Headwaters Citizens Advisory Committee, Bing has been, and continues to be, instrumental in assisting to guide policy for preserving and protecting the vital water and woodland resources of this important region, especially in the recent successful effort to preserve for future generations and traditional uses over 170,000 acres of area woodlands. In my time of service to New Hampshire as Second District Congressman, Governor and U.S. Senator, I have had no higher privilege than to count on Bing Judd for his sound judgement, sage advice and friendship. I know of no individual more dedicated to his community and his region or more able in its governance. The Town of Pittsburg, Coos County, and the State of New Hampshire have been fortunate he has been willing to share his wisdom and experience on our behalf for so well and for so long. While he will continue to serve his town, region, and State in many roles, it is important his longevity of quality service to his town as selectman be recognized and honored. It is because of the outstanding community service performed by citizens like Bing Judd that civil needs are met, our communities prosper, and our Nation hands to future generations a landscape and a society better off for his selfless and committed participation. I thank Bing Judd on behalf of his many constituents and neighbors of Pittsburg, NH, who he has served and helped throughout the years.