Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the chairman for taking a look at it. I hope it will meet his approval. Basically, as I said, the chocolate industry, I believe, is to be commended for taking positive steps in agreeing to do 50 percent of the farms by July 1 of 2008. We have to be vigilant. It is really a sense of the Congress commending them and then urging we stay on to meet those goals and eventually the ultimate goal of making sure that we don't have any forced labor and child trafficking on cocoa farms anywhere. It always struck me as really kind of telling, almost bordering on the obscene that so many of our kids in our country, in Europe, around the world enjoy eating chocolate. Who doesn't enjoy eating chocolate? We all love chocolate, hot chocolate, or chocolate of any form. And so I think many people who enjoy chocolate don't know that it is being produced by forced child labor in many cases, kids who are beaten, kids who are deprived of their childhood, kids who are basically child slaves. So I think this is something that we should pay attention to. As I said, we have been working on this now, this is our fourth year, working with the chocolate industry. We have this protocol. We have the framework. Progress is being made. We just need to make sure we don't slip behind, that we continue to support these efforts, to support the Governments, as I said, both Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana, in their efforts, and the chocolate industry, also. That is basically what this sense-of-the-Congress resolution is all about. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Chris Hall of my staff be granted the privileges of the floor for the duration of today's session.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Meat and Poultry Pathogen Reduction Act of 2005. This legislation, commonly known as Kevin's Law, is dedicated to the memory of 2-year-old Kevin Kowalcyk, who died in 2001 after eating a hamburger contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 bacteria. Passage of this bill is vital because on December 6, 2001, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld and expanded an earlier District Court decision that removes the Department of Agriculture's authority to enforce its Pathogen Performance Standard for Salmonella. The 5th Circuit's decision in Supreme Beef v. USDA seriously undermines the strong food safety improvements adopted by USDA in its 1996 Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point and Pathogen Reduction (HACCP) rule. In 2003, there was another court case that calls into question USDA's authority to enforce basic sanitation standards. A company called Nebraska Beef sued USDA after the Department tried to shut down the plant for numerous sanitation violations. USDA settled the case because it feared losing yet again in court and having another vital piece of its authority struck down. According to the 5th Circuit's opinion in the Supreme Beef case and the settlement in the Nebraska Beef case, today, there is nothing USDA could do to shut down a meat grinding plant that insists on using low- quality, potentially contaminated trimmings. These decisions seriously undermine the new meat and poultry inspection system. The HACCP rule recognized that bacterial and viral pathogens were the foremost food safety threat in America, responsible for 5,000 deaths, 325,000 hospitalizations and 76 million illnesses each year according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To address the threat of foodborne illness, USDA developed a modern inspection system based on two fundamental principles. The first was that industry has the primary responsibility to determine how to produce the safest products achievable. Industry had to examine their plants and determine how to control contamination at every step of the food production process, from the moment a product arrives at their door until the moment it leaves their plant. The second, even more crucial, principle was that plants nationwide must reduce levels of dangerous pathogens in meat and poultry products. To ensure the new inspection system accomplished this, USDA developed Pathogen Performance Standards. These standards provide targets for reducing pathogens and require all USDA-inspected facilities to meet them. In theory, facilities failing to meet a standard are shut down until they create a corrective action plan to meet the standard. So far, USDA has only issued one Pathogen Performance Standard, for Salmonella. The vast majority of plants in the U.S. have been able to meet the new standard, so it is clearly workable. In addition, USDA reports that Salmonella levels for meat and poultry products have fallen substantially. Therefore the Salmonella standard has been successful. The Supreme Beef and Nebraska Beef decisions threaten to destroy this success because they restrict USDA's ability to penalize meat and poultry plants that violate a pathogen standard. The other major problem is we have an industry dead set on striking down USDA's authority to enforce meat and poultry pathogen standards. Ever since the original Supreme Beef decision, I have spent untold hours trying to find a compromise that will allow us to ensure we have enforceable, science-based standards for pathogens in meat and poultry products. I have introduced bills to address this issue and I have worked with industry leaders trying to reach a reasonable compromise. However, despite repeated attempts to address industry concerns, industry has continually backtracked and moved the finish line. Many times, I have made changes in my legislation to address their ``pressing'' concern of the moment only to have them come back and say we hadn't gone far enough. We have to look out for the consumers of meat and poultry so our children, our families are not put at increased risk of getting ill or dying, because some in the industry want to backtrack on food safety. I plan to seek every opportunity to get this language enacted. I think it is essential, both to ensuring the modernization of our food safety system, and ensuring consumers that we are making progress in reducing dangerous pathogens. I hope that both houses of Congress will be able to act to pass this legislation without delay. The effectiveness of our meat and poultry inspection system and the public's confidence in it are at stake.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, as the Senate debates the Central American Free Trade Agreement implementing legislation today, we know that it has been more than 13 months since the United States and its six partner countries in Central American and the Dominican Republic formally signed the agreement. So what has taken so long? The reason I think for the long delay, obviously, is that supporters have had a hard time selling this agreement to the American people. The supposed benefits are murky, in the distance, while the flaws are all too obvious. This is a shame because we could have a much better agreement that would have won broad bipartisan support. I have evaluated CAFTA with a genuinely open mind, having supported most major trade agreements during my three decades in Congress. I have no philosophical or ideological bias for or against trade. Far from it. I take a strictly pragmatic approach, and generally I am in favor of trade. But that same pragmatism tells me that it is folly to load all of our economic and diplomatic hopes on the slender back of inadequate trade agreements. As has been my practice with past trade agreements, I have carefully weighed the prospective advantages and disadvantages of CAFTA. Under the fast-track procedure, our only option is to vote up or down. And late last evening, after thoroughly looking at this, I finally had to come to the conclusion that the problems with CAFTA, as we have it before us, clearly outweigh the very small benefits. On balance, the facts and reasons against CAFTA are significantly stronger than the arguments for it. Therefore, I must vote no on this implementing legislation today. As one would expect, proponents of CAFTA have presented a glowing picture of the agreement's benefits, but there has been an awful lot of overselling, in some cases outright exaggeration about how important this agreement really is. Let's take agriculture, for example. On paper, CAFTA appears to offer opportunities for some U.S. farmers and negatives for others, and the magnitude of these pluses and minuses is part of the debate. But while in theory agriculture should benefit overall, the projected benefits are strikingly modest, and they come many years in the future. Economists at the American Farm Bureau Federation estimate that U.S. agricultural exports would increase by about $1.5 billion a year when the agreement is fully effective. That is 15 to 18 years from now. So if we assume an average annual inflation rate of about 2.3 percent, that $1.5 billion increase by 2024 would be only about $930 million in today's dollars. That is about 1.5 percent of our total agricultural exports. So the benefits 15 to 18 years from now, calculated in today's dollars, are relatively small. There is one other aspect to this. The International Trade Commission of the U.S. Government also had a study. It showed that they predicted a $100 million decline in net annual exports from the United States to the six partner countries as a result of CAFTA. So we get a small 1.5- percent increase in agriculture in 2024. But the International Trade Commission says we are going to have a $100 million decline in net annual exports from the United States. Whether CAFTA's modest predicted benefits actually materialize is in dispute. Average per capita income in CAFTA countries is about $1,800 a year. Are they going to become good customers? About a third of the population there lives on $2 a day or less. How are they going to buy a New York strip steak or one of our delicious Iowa pork chops that some are so optimistic that we are going to export to those countries? Potential for big gains is further limited by the fact that we already dominate trade in those countries. In 2003, we accounted for about 45 percent of all merchandise exports to the region. The benefits that CAFTA backers optimistically predict are based on the assumption that CAFTA will spur economic growth in these generally poor and small countries. Right now, under existing trade preference programs, these six countries already face zero tariffs on 80 percent of the goods they ship to the United States, meaning that additional tariff reductions will not spur significant economic growth in those countries. Many are skeptical of these claims about CAFTA and the economic growth in Central American countries. One of the reasons that has moved me to the ``no'' column on this is, I recently had a meeting in my office with a Catholic bishop, Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini, a senior Catholic prelate in Guatemala, who came to my office to lobby against CAFTA. I spent time with him. I quizzed him about it. I wanted to know why he felt so strongly that CAFTA would not be in the best interest of his parishioners. He said that he and other advocates for the poor in Central America opposed CAFTA because its benefits would go mostly to the economic elites and it would deepen the disparity between rich and poor. So if, as the bishop says, CAFTA would not raise incomes broadly for Central America's people, it won't help them and it won't help us. The previous speaker mentioned something about Daniel Ortega. Talk about a ghost out of the past. I am talking about the Catholic bishop of Guatemala who came to this country a few months ago to tell us that this would not be in the best interest of his small farmers, his campesinos, and their families. He said it would drive them off their farms and push them more into cities where there is no work for them. CAFTA will make it harder for U.S. workers, farmers, and businesses to succeed in the increasingly competitive global economy. We can compete on a truly level playing field. It is not fair competition if other countries allow their manufacturers or farms to disregard internationally recognized labor rights and child labor protections or if those countries have lax or nonexistent environmental rules. This CAFTA does virtually nothing to deal effectively with the competitive issues relating to labor and environmental standards. For labor, the internationally recognized rights are pretty basic, such as the right of association and bargaining, prohibition of forced or prison labor, and protection of children from working at young ages or in hazardous or exploitative jobs. I have worked for many years in the effort to eliminate abusive child labor around the world. It is morally wrong, and it leads to all kinds of other injustices and inequalities. Reports from our own Department of State and the International Labor Organization have documented labor rights and child labor problems throughout the six countries of CAFTA. Just yesterday morning, we learned that our U.S. Department of Labor had been hiding from us a report it commissioned that found serious labor violations in the countries that signed CAFTA. Right now--this is what is important-- under current U.S. law, if one of those CAFTA countries condones abusive child labor or other violations of internationally recognized labor rights, we can keep that country from shipping goods to us at low tariff rates. In other words, our U.S. trade law right now allows us to enforce international labor rights. This came about because in 2000, I worked with then-Senator Jesse Helms to modify our Generalized System of Preferences Program, the GSP Program, so that countries that allow abusive child labor are ineligible to ship products to the United States at low GSP tariffs. The other provision is in the Caribbean Basin Initiative. It allows our Government to deny the benefit of lower CBI tariffs to enforce the broader set of internationally recognized labor rights; that is, if a country is tolerating violations of international labor rights, we can take action so that goods from that country coming into the United States are subject to a higher tariff than is applicable to goods from other CBI countries. In fact, we have taken action under that CBI provision against violations of international labor rights. So right now, as pertains to these CAFTA countries, we have strong provisions in law to protect against child labor and internationally recognized labor rights. Guess what. CAFTA would supersede and abolish both of these labor rights enforcement features of our current U.S. law with respect to the six other CAFTA countries. Talk about a giant step backward. Five years ago, this Congress added--and the President signed it into law--provisions that protect children, protect people who want to organize and bargain collectively, protect against forced or prison labor in these countries. Guess what. CAFTA does away with it. What is happening? I thought we were supposed to be progressing in the world, in terms of recognizing basic, fundamental human rights. What could be more fundamental than the human right of children not to be exploited and find themselves in abusive types of labor situations and forced to work? Yet, CAFTA removes these countries from being covered by those laws. It says: Fine, if one of these countries were to use kids working in places where it would be in violation of internationally recognized human rights labor standards, we cannot do a thing about it--nothing. Today we could. When CAFTA passes and goes into effect, we won't. Not too many people know that. I guess that is the major reason why I am opposing this CAFTA--the giant step it takes backward in protecting against abusive child labor. Under this bill, we have no ability to hold a CAFTA country to internationally recognized labor rights and child labor protections if its own laws are weaker than the international standard. So we are faced with a contradiction. One of the big reasons that I keep hearing to support CAFTA is to boost economic and social progress in these countries. Yet, we are taking a giant step backward in our ability to press our CAFTA trading partners to combat abusive child labor practices and other violations of internationally recognized labor rights. Elsewhere, this administration insists on social and political reform as a condition for allocating aid to developing countries. For example, eligibility standards for the Millennium Challenge Accounts require progress on social and political fronts. Why should we jettison such requirements under CAFTA? Should free trade come at the cost of progress in combating abusive child labor practices? Of course not. It is not acceptable for me, and it should not be for any of us. That is the problem with the bill before us. Again, if the President would have worked with us and consulted with us in good faith and said we are going to keep these provisions that we put into law in 2000 and the provisions we put in the Caribbean Basin Initiative to protect child labor, well, you've got my vote. But they didn't do that. In discussions with U.S. negotiators before the text was completed on CAFTA, Members and staff made clear our concerns about all these issues. Unfortunately, little or no effort was made to address those concerns until after the agreement was completed and the White House recognized it might fall short of the necessary votes. At that point, it was too late; the final agreement had been negotiated. Mr. President, from a broader view, the modest benefits that we are theoretically promised 15 years from now under CAFTA simply do not offset the harm it will do to kids and poor people and small farmers in those countries. The modest benefits do not compensate for what is going to happen if our small manufacturers in this country rush down there for cheaper labor, lower environmental standards, make products down there, pay people low wages, don't give them decent benefits, don't recognize appropriate labor standards, use children as workers, dump the refuse out in the environment, and then ship the products back to the United States. That is what we are voting on here. Mr. President, I don't consider this agreement worthy of passage. Modest benefits, 15 years from now, may or may not be realized. But we are taking a giant step backward in terms of protecting labor rights and child labor and the environment. For that reason, I believe this CAFTA bill, as it is written, is a big mistake. I do not oppose all free-trade agreements with Central America. But for these reasons, I oppose this one. We can, and we should, do better for our people, our farmers, our small manufacturers but also for the poor people of Central America and the campesinos there who need to have their standard of living raised, not have their children working and not going to school, not have refuse dumped into the environment which threatens their health in the future. That is why this is unfair. That is why it ought to be defeated. We ought to have a better trade agreement than this one. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jane Siegel and Tiffany Gilbert of my staff be granted the privileges of the floor for the duration of today's session.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a piece of legislation to fix a huge oversight in pension policy. In the early 1990s, a large number of U.S. companies began a process of switching their traditional defined benefit pension plans to what's referred to as ``cash balance'' pension plans. A cash balance pension is insured, like a traditional plan, through the PBGC. However, it looks more like a defined contribution plan to participants because the benefit is expressed as some percent of play plus some guaranteed interest rate. This isn't necessarily a bad idea, in and of itself. However, in practice, many of the employees working for these companies were not told what these changes would mean for them. Some companies had their employees work for years without earning any more benefits. Many of those employees didn't figure that out for a very long time. Unfortunately, their lack of understanding in this situation was a key benefit to management. However, once they figured out what was happening, the retirees were furious. As two consultants who helped put these plans together said at an Actuaries conference in 1998: ``I've been involved in cash balance plans five or six years down the road and what I have found is that while employees understand it, it is not until they are actually ready to retire that they understand how little they are actually getting.'' ``Right, but they're happy while they're employed.'' One of the most abusive practices in cash balance conversions is known as ``wear away. `` The company freezes the value of the benefits employees already earned, which by law cannot be taken away once given. However, the employer opens a cash balance account for that worker at a much lower dollar level. So they end up working for years contributing to this lower cash balance account, not realizing that contribution is meaningless because their old benefits were higher. At the same time, younger workers do get money added to their account every day. This is clearly age discrimination, and bad pension policy. In 1999, I introduced a bill to make it illegal for corporations to wear away the benefits of older workers during conversions to cash balance plans. I offered my bill as an amendment. Forty-eight Senators, including 3 Republicans, voted to waive the budget point of order so we could consider this amendment. We did not have enough votes then, but I believe the tide is turning. After that vote, more and more stories came out about how many workers were losing their pensions. In September of 1999, the Secretary of the Treasury put a moratorium on conversions from defined benefit plans to cash balance plans. That moratorium has been in effect now for over three years. In April of 2000, I offered a Sense-of-the-Senate resolution to stop this practice, and it passed the Senate unanimously. There are hundreds of age discrimination complaints currently pending before the EEOC based on some of these abusive cash balance conversions. Clearly, something must be done to address this issue that's been floating around now unresolved for over five years. Before, I said that wear-away is the least fair practice during conversion. And I have to say that now, public sentiment is really coming around to acknowledge that unfairness. However, aside from wear- away, there's another problem in shifting from a traditional pension to cash balance. In a traditional plan, you accrue most of the benefits toward the end of your career, because there's usually some kind of formula that multiplies top pay times years of service. People tend to earn more salary toward the end of their careers, and if that is multiplied times more years served, the pension grows quickly in later years. But in a cash balance plan, younger workers do better because they are given a flat percent of pay plus some guaranteed interest credit. Interest is good for young people, they have many years to accrue and compound it. So if you get caught in mid-life, mid-career in one of these transitions, you get the downside of both plans. Before I go any further, I want to be clear on one point--cash balance pensions can be a great deal for workers. Some. And they may help fill a needed niche in the pension world to cover the half of the workforce that currently has no pension. But I will continue my long battle to oppose the unilateral decision of a company to cut off a promise for an older worker, give that money to a younger worker, and not view it as age discrimination. That is what this issue is all about. It is fairness. It is equity. I know discussion of pension law can become very convoluted. But this can be boiled down pretty simply. It is about what we think a promise from an employer ought to mean. There is one thing that has distinguished the American workplace from others around the world. We have valued loyalty. At least we used to. That is one of the reasons pension plans exist--the longer you work somewhere, the more you earn in your pension program. Obviously, the longer you work someplace, the better you do your job, the more you learn about it, the more productive you are. We should value that loyalty. But here, companies are able to take away the benefits of the longest serving workers. What kind of a signal does that send to the workers? It tells workers they are fools if they are loyal because if you put in 20 or 25 years, the boss can just change the rules of the game, and break their promise. It tells younger workers that it would be crazy to work for a company for a long time, that it's best to hedge your bets and move on as soon as it is convenient. It's crazy to trade current pay for the promise of future benefits. So why even take into account the fact that you're being offered a pension plan? This is a very dangerous road to go down. This destroys the kind of work ethic we have come to value and that we know built this country. But some of these cash balance conversions counter all of that. Here is an analogy. Imagine I hire someone for 5 years with a promise of a $50,000 bonus at the end of 5 years of service. At the end of 3 years, however, I renege on the $50,000 bonus. But the employee has 3 years invested. Had they known that the deal was going to be off, perhaps they would not have gone to work for me. They could have gone to work someplace else for a total higher compensation package. Now imagine that they hire a new guy to join the team, and they give him part of that $50,000 bonus they promised me. Is that the way we want to treat workers in this country, where the employer has all the cards and employees have none, and employers can make whatever deal they want, but can change the rules at any time? That is why I am introducing this legislation. It is simple. It says that you have to give older, longer serving employees a choice, at retirement, when their pension plan is converted to a cash balance plan to get the benefits earned in the old plan instead. It also says that employers must start counting the new cash balance benefits where the old defined benefit plan left off, instead of starting the cash balance plan at a lower level than an employee had already earned. This isn't a radical idea. I was very pleased that in February of 2004, the Administration came out with a cash balance proposal that recognized that these transitions are hard on workers. It not only prohibits wear-away but provides for 5 year transition credits for workers caught in the middle of a conversion. Treasury reaffirmed its commitment to this approach in this year's budget request. I was excited when Treasury first came to the table with a proposal to do more to protect workers here. I was so encouraged by this that I convened a series of meetings over the course of last summer to get all interested parties to the table--everyone from participant rights advocates to industry groups to consultants. I heard some really great ideas, and some that I didn't agree with. But I think there is still room to find answers to this problem. So I'm putting my plan back on the table today. And I really hope that we can continue a meaningful dialog on this issue. If we do that, this year, we can enact meaningful participant protections moving forward so that there is another pension option out there to cover the roughly half of Americans with no pension at all. But I also want to make it clear that this Senator will never sit idly by as older workers get the rug pulled out from under them just as they thought they were on solid ground for their retirement. I won't stand idly by and watch their money redistributed in an age-discriminatory way. We can have this dialog and we can find a way to fix what's broken here, but not by blessing some of these blatant abuses.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a piece of legislation to fix a huge oversight in pension policy. In the early 1990s, a large number of U.S. companies began a process of switching their traditional defined benefit pension plans to what's referred to as ``cash balance'' pension plans. A cash balance pension is insured, like a traditional plan, through the PBGC. However, it looks more like a defined contribution plan to participants because the benefit is expressed as some percent of play plus some guaranteed interest rate. This isn't necessarily a bad idea, in and of itself. However, in practice, many of the employees working for these companies were not told what these changes would mean for them. Some companies had their employees work for years without earning any more benefits. Many of those employees didn't figure that out for a very long time. Unfortunately, their lack of understanding in this situation was a key benefit to management. However, once they figured out what was happening, the retirees were furious. As two consultants who helped put these plans together said at an Actuaries conference in 1998: ``I've been involved in cash balance plans five or six years down the road and what I have found is that while employees understand it, it is not until they are actually ready to retire that they understand how little they are actually getting.'' ``Right, but they're happy while they're employed.'' One of the most abusive practices in cash balance conversions is known as ``wear away. `` The company freezes the value of the benefits employees already earned, which by law cannot be taken away once given. However, the employer opens a cash balance account for that worker at a much lower dollar level. So they end up working for years contributing to this lower cash balance account, not realizing that contribution is meaningless because their old benefits were higher. At the same time, younger workers do get money added to their account every day. This is clearly age discrimination, and bad pension policy. In 1999, I introduced a bill to make it illegal for corporations to wear away the benefits of older workers during conversions to cash balance plans. I offered my bill as an amendment. Forty-eight Senators, including 3 Republicans, voted to waive the budget point of order so we could consider this amendment. We did not have enough votes then, but I believe the tide is turning. After that vote, more and more stories came out about how many workers were losing their pensions. In September of 1999, the Secretary of the Treasury put a moratorium on conversions from defined benefit plans to cash balance plans. That moratorium has been in effect now for over three years. In April of 2000, I offered a Sense-of-the-Senate resolution to stop this practice, and it passed the Senate unanimously. There are hundreds of age discrimination complaints currently pending before the EEOC based on some of these abusive cash balance conversions. Clearly, something must be done to address this issue that's been floating around now unresolved for over five years. Before, I said that wear-away is the least fair practice during conversion. And I have to say that now, public sentiment is really coming around to acknowledge that unfairness. However, aside from wear- away, there's another problem in shifting from a traditional pension to cash balance. In a traditional plan, you accrue most of the benefits toward the end of your career, because there's usually some kind of formula that multiplies top pay times years of service. People tend to earn more salary toward the end of their careers, and if that is multiplied times more years served, the pension grows quickly in later years. But in a cash balance plan, younger workers do better because they are given a flat percent of pay plus some guaranteed interest credit. Interest is good for young people, they have many years to accrue and compound it. So if you get caught in mid-life, mid-career in one of these transitions, you get the downside of both plans. Before I go any further, I want to be clear on one point--cash balance pensions can be a great deal for workers. Some. And they may help fill a needed niche in the pension world to cover the half of the workforce that currently has no pension. But I will continue my long battle to oppose the unilateral decision of a company to cut off a promise for an older worker, give that money to a younger worker, and not view it as age discrimination. That is what this issue is all about. It is fairness. It is equity. I know discussion of pension law can become very convoluted. But this can be boiled down pretty simply. It is about what we think a promise from an employer ought to mean. There is one thing that has distinguished the American workplace from others around the world. We have valued loyalty. At least we used to. That is one of the reasons pension plans exist--the longer you work somewhere, the more you earn in your pension program. Obviously, the longer you work someplace, the better you do your job, the more you learn about it, the more productive you are. We should value that loyalty. But here, companies are able to take away the benefits of the longest serving workers. What kind of a signal does that send to the workers? It tells workers they are fools if they are loyal because if you put in 20 or 25 years, the boss can just change the rules of the game, and break their promise. It tells younger workers that it would be crazy to work for a company for a long time, that it's best to hedge your bets and move on as soon as it is convenient. It's crazy to trade current pay for the promise of future benefits. So why even take into account the fact that you're being offered a pension plan? This is a very dangerous road to go down. This destroys the kind of work ethic we have come to value and that we know built this country. But some of these cash balance conversions counter all of that. Here is an analogy. Imagine I hire someone for 5 years with a promise of a $50,000 bonus at the end of 5 years of service. At the end of 3 years, however, I renege on the $50,000 bonus. But the employee has 3 years invested. Had they known that the deal was going to be off, perhaps they would not have gone to work for me. They could have gone to work someplace else for a total higher compensation package. Now imagine that they hire a new guy to join the team, and they give him part of that $50,000 bonus they promised me. Is that the way we want to treat workers in this country, where the employer has all the cards and employees have none, and employers can make whatever deal they want, but can change the rules at any time? That is why I am introducing this legislation. It is simple. It says that you have to give older, longer serving employees a choice, at retirement, when their pension plan is converted to a cash balance plan to get the benefits earned in the old plan instead. It also says that employers must start counting the new cash balance benefits where the old defined benefit plan left off, instead of starting the cash balance plan at a lower level than an employee had already earned. This isn't a radical idea. I was very pleased that in February of 2004, the Administration came out with a cash balance proposal that recognized that these transitions are hard on workers. It not only prohibits wear-away but provides for 5 year transition credits for workers caught in the middle of a conversion. Treasury reaffirmed its commitment to this approach in this year's budget request. I was excited when Treasury first came to the table with a proposal to do more to protect workers here. I was so encouraged by this that I convened a series of meetings over the course of last summer to get all interested parties to the table--everyone from participant rights advocates to industry groups to consultants. I heard some really great ideas, and some that I didn't agree with. But I think there is still room to find answers to this problem. So I'm putting my plan back on the table today. And I really hope that we can continue a meaningful dialog on this issue. If we do that, this year, we can enact meaningful participant protections moving forward so that there is another pension option out there to cover the roughly half of Americans with no pension at all. But I also want to make it clear that this Senator will never sit idly by as older workers get the rug pulled out from under them just as they thought they were on solid ground for their retirement. I won't stand idly by and watch their money redistributed in an age-discriminatory way. We can have this dialog and we can find a way to fix what's broken here, but not by blessing some of these blatant abuses.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Alexander- Warner amendment. Again, this amendment proposes to usurp local control. I find it hard to believe that those who argue States rights at the same time want to impose additional Federal regulations over local, county, and State jurisdictions. This amendment is simply an assault on the continued development of wind energy. It singles out wind for additional scrutiny. If the sponsors are so concerned about protecting our scenic areas, shouldn't this amendment be applied to all technologies? Some may say these turbines are unsightly. The Senator from Tennessee may believe they are unattractive. But many others believe them to be visually attractive as they drive down the highway. I just recently drove through Oklahoma and saw all these wind turbines out on the prairies of Oklahoma, and they look beautiful spinning in the wind with no pollution, providing electricity for our homes, our schools, and our factories. Yet they are unattractive? Come on, give me a break. This is a pathway to our energy independence. More wind energy--we can put them up in Iowa. If the Senator from Virginia does not want them in Virginia, we will put them in Iowa. We will put them in North Dakota, South Dakota, and we will be glad to ship the electricity we are making from the force of the wind. I urge my colleagues to turn down this ill-advised amendment.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, how much time is left?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I just ask one question. Why single out wind power? I ask my friends from Tennessee and Virginia, why not apply it to coal, coal-fired plants? Why not apply it to oil or gas? Maybe some people don't like seeing a smokestack out there on the horizon. Maybe people don't like to see the cooling towers of nuclear plants. Why not apply it to everything? It seems to me some people are ready to drill in a wildlife area but not put a windmill within 20 miles. Why not apply it to transmission lines? We see big power transmission lines going across scenic areas, marring the views or vistas. Why not apply it to transmission lines? Clearly, this amendment is aimed at wind power. I don't know why, but it is. I just say to restrict the development of the largest nonhydro renewable resource takes us in the wrong direction. So I ask my colleagues to please oppose the Alexander-Warner amendment and get on with building the windmills in Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, and all of the places that will give us clean renewable energy.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I understand there is a parliamentary situation that I have 1 minute, and I guess Senator Alexander has 1 minute on the Alexander-Warner amendment.

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

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, we are on the eve of a turning point in the energy future of our country. As we move closer to voting on a comprehensive energy bill, we have a truly historic opportunity to transform the way we think about energy. We have an opportunity to make a decisive step away from dependence on foreign imports and fossil fuels and toward an independent future based on the abundant natural human and technological resources found right here within our borders. As we wean ourselves from the oil fields of the unstable Middle East and other parts of the world and rely increasingly on field crops and fuel cells produced in America's heartland, we will build an energy future that will make us more secure and a future of which we can be proud. This is the bottom line. When we talk about moving toward energy independence in this country, we are talking primarily about reducing America's dependence on imported oil. Petroleum accounts for more than 85 percent of our energy imports. As everyone is acutely aware, much of the 85 percent comes from some of the world's most unstable and, in some cases, openly hostile countries. Today, rising global demand for petroleum is driving prices for gasoline and home heating oil to record levels. This year, China passed Japan as the world's second largest consumer of energy. China's use of oil is expected to grow exponentially over the next few years. So the focus of any national energy strategy must be to reduce our dependence on foreign oil in a sustainable way and as rapidly as possible. By far, the largest use of petroleum in this country is in the transportation sector, and 97 percent of today's transportation fuel comes from petroleum. Thankfully, we know the solution. It is technologically feasible. We need to build vehicles that use less gasoline or no gasoline, and we need to make an aggressive transition to clean, renewable domestic fuels such as ethanol, biodiesel, and fuel cells. The goal is a future of vehicles powered by fuel cells. The hydrogen is used to create the electricity to turn the motors that turn the wheels. The power from the fuel cell comes from hydrogen that will be made by renewable resources such as wind, photovoltaic, and other forms of renewable energy. The biggest single step right now that we can take is to improve vehicle fuel economy. This bill takes a modest step in this direction, for example, by offering tax incentives for hybrid gas-electric vehicles, but we need improvements across the board, including raising the corporate average economy standard for vehicles. Another commonsense way to reduce reliance on fossil fuels is to make greater use of clean and homegrown fuels. This bill has several provisions that take us in the right direction on this front, starting with the robust 8-billion-plus renewable fuel standard first proposed by Senator Lugar and I and overwhelmingly approved by this Senate last week. It is very disturbing that even with the price of ethanol well below that of gasoline, fuel blenders are still turning their backs on this cleaner, cheaper, homegrown alternative and turning instead to imports of refined gasoline. This chart illustrates that. Right now, going back to 5 years ago, there has been a steady increase in the imports of gasoline. This is weekly total gasoline imports--thousands of barrels per day. From April 28 of 2000 until March of this year, gasoline imports increased 66 percent. This is not oil, this is gasoline. This is oil that has been refined in some foreign country, put on a tanker, and shipped to this country. So right now, we are up to just about a million barrels a day. Think about that, that is just gasoline. Not too many people know that. Most people think we are just importing oil. We are importing about a million barrels a day of refined gasoline into this country. That is at the expense of American dollars and jobs. This is taking us in the wrong direction. A recent report by the Consumer Federation of America found consumers would be saving up to 8 cents a gallon at the pump if refiners were instead adding it to the gasoline at just 10-percent blends. My consumers in Iowa, right now, are saving as much as 10 cents per gallon on ethanol-blended fuels, for an average savings of at least $100 a year for a typical family. I believe Americans all across the country deserve the cost and clean air benefits that ethanol-blended fuels provide. It is imperative we insist on our strong 8-billion-gallon renewable fuels standard when this Energy bill goes to conference with the House. In addition to the renewable fuels standard, this bill in front of us includes tax incentives for alternative motor vehicles and fuels. This is very important. But we need to act more aggressively. For example, I believe we need to mandate that gasoline vehicles sold in this country be flexible-fuel vehicles that can run on E-85; that is, 85 percent ethanol or some other biofuel. Now, flexible-fuel vehicles only cost maybe, right now, between $100 and $200 per vehicle. That is with just a small amount that are being made. If every vehicle was a flexible-fuel vehicle, the cost per vehicle would drop way below $100 per vehicle. The savings a consumer would get on that few dollars extra added to the sticker price of a car would be more than made up for, probably within the first year or so of buying flexible fuels. So I am saying, right now we do not have that many flexible-fuel vehicles. We need to mandate that cars sold in America--not made here, sold in America--be a flexible-fuel vehicle. You might say: Is that possible? Well, Brazil is planning on having all of its new cars flexible-fuel ready by 2008. I want to ask the question: If the Brazilians can do it, why can't we? If the Brazilians can do it, of course we can do it. Now, of course, consumers need access to the renewable fuels. So I am glad the bill in front of us includes incentives for the installation of flexible-fuel pumps at fueling stations. So now the bill has in it, as I said, incentives for installing flexible-fuel pumps at fuel stations. But we do not have a mandate to build flexible-fuel cars. Right now, there is a fuel savings credit that auto manufacturers get for making E-85 vehicles. It is called the CAFE credits. But it is on the assumption that these vehicles will run on E-85 at least half the time. In other words, an auto manufacturer gets the credits for building a flexible-fuel vehicle on the assumption the vehicle will use E-85 half the time. But the truth is, most people who own flexible-fuel vehicles do not even know it. So E-85 does not get used at all for that reason, and for the reason there are not many pumps out there. So we call this the dual-fuel loophole because carmakers get the credit for alternative fuels even if no alternative fuel is used. We should close that loophole now by tying CAFE credits to the amount of flexible fuel that is actually used, or by simply letting the credit expire. So what I am saying is we need a three-pronged approach. We have the incentives in the bill to add flexible-fuel pumps at fueling stations. Secondly, we need to provide these credits will go only--only--on the amount of flexible fuel that is actually used. Third, what I am saying is we actually need a mandate that cars sold in America be flexible fueled. Now, another important provision of the Energy bill extends the income tax credit for the production of biodiesel, another excellent renewable fuel. Biodiesel offers tremendous energy savings by providing 3.5 times more energy than is used to produce it, and by offering improved air quality over traditional diesel. In addition to investment in today's biofuels, we also need a strong investment in the future of bio-based fuels and products of all kinds. New technology is making it possible to produce biofuels and a host of industrial and commercial products out of biomass; that is, agricultural material such as corn stalks and wheat straw and switchgrass and wood pulp and things like that--dedicated energy crops that together are expected to produce 10 times the current volume of ethanol at prices equal to or less than that of gasoline, and, again, with tremendous benefits to our environment and our rural economy. A recent study found that farmers can expect to earn an additional $35 per acre just by selling the excess biomass--the stalks and the straw--from traditional corn and wheat operations. Now, ethanol made from this residual biomass is expected to have near zero or even negative net carbon dioxide emissions. How can that be? If you are using it, you are burning it, burning the fuel in a car, you put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That is true. But as these plants grow, they take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere more than what is burned in the automobile. So biomass is a vital part of combating climate change. Now, the biorefineries that produce this ethanol will also give us bio-based products to supplement or replace everyday products now made from petroleum. I have a couple of posters that indicate that. Shipping materials, building construction materials, roofing materials, elastomeric-type roofing materials, paints, hand sanitizers, and even carpets are made from renewable resources, biodegradable resources. For home and automotive use, just think of all the plastic cups, all these containers made out of petroleum now. And there are lubricants, soy oil. Even rubber tires are made out of renewable resources which are biodegradable. All of these things can be made from the biorefineries that will be producing the ethanol and the biodiesel that we will use in transportation. Many of these products are on the market, not in the future but today. Tripling the use of bio-based products could add $20 billion in economic benefits just by the year 2010--5 years from now. Replacing the Nation's petrochemicals with bio-based equivalents would save some 700 million barrels of petroleum a year. Just replacing plastics with bio-based counterparts would save another 100 million barrels or more. So there is great potential here. We need to get serious about supporting these bio-based products, and the Federal Government needs to take the lead. Now, I know we are talking about the Energy bill, and that is what I have been talking about. But I am just going to digress for a minute and talk about a provision that was in the farm bill that was passed in 2002 because it has a lot to do with this Energy bill. Keep in mind what I have been saying is, by getting the biorefineries going and making more ethanol and biodiesel, we have byproducts that can also be made. As I mentioned, they are the plastic containers and the building materials and things like that. There is an important provision in the farm bill, section 9002, that we worked very hard to get in the farm bill, passed and signed by the President 3 years ago this month. Section 9002 requires all Government Departments and Agencies to give a purchasing preference to bio-based products. Now, here is the exact wording. This is section 9002. This is law. It has been the law for 3 years: Each Federal agency . . . shall-- It does not say ``may''-- shall, in making procurement decisions, give preference to such items composed of the highest percentage of bio-based products practicable . . . unless such items (A) are not reasonably available; (B) fail to meet performance standards; or (C) are available only at an unreasonable price. So price, performance, and availability--as long as it meets those three criteria, each Federal agency shall buy them. That is what it says, period. Think of all the plastic cups and forks used every day in the Senate cafeteria alone. Think of the Department of Defense, think about all of the plastic materials they use in serving the troops every day. Think of the millions of gallons of metal-working fluids, lubricants, and paint used by the Department of Defense. Yet 3 years after the passage of the farm bill, we still do not have a bio-based procurement program in place in the Federal Government. That has been there. It has been the law. And we are still not doing it. McDonald's can go buy plastic cups made out of renewable resources. Good for them. Why can't the Department of Defense? Why can't the Department of Interior that operates in our national parks? Why aren't they using more biodegradable materials? The law says they are supposed to, but they are not doing it because USDA has yet to issue the rules. Again, I bring that up because this is part and parcel of the Energy bill. This saves us energy because right now all this material is made from imported oil, or most of it. It could be made by homegrown products here in America. We need to have the Federal Government setting an example and leading the way in reducing dependence on products made from foreign oil. I am sorry to say that 3 years later we still are not doing it. We also need to invest in research and commercialization of bio-based fuels and products. That is why a few weeks ago, I, along with Senators Lugar, Obama, and Coleman, introduced the National Security and Bioenergy Investment Act of 2005. Our bill promotes targeted biomass research and development in order to expand the cost-effective use of bio-based fuels, products, and power. It provides incentives for the production of the first 1 billion gallons of biofuels from cellulosic biomass; that is, crop residues like corn stocks and wheat straw, or wood chips from lumber mills. It provides bioeconomy development grants to small bio-based businesses. It creates a new Assistant Secretary position at the Department of Agriculture to carry out energy and bio- based initiatives. It requires the Capitol complex to lead by example by procuring bio- based products. This bill has the support of a broad coalition of agricultural producers, clean energy and environment groups, and national security experts. I have a number of letters from these organizations supporting the bill. I ask unanimous consent that the letters be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am excited about this new bill. I hope my colleagues will get behind it. In fact, we may be offering an amendment to the Energy bill that would take a small part of that and add it to the Energy bill. I hope we can get that done this week. America's dangerous dependence on fossil fuels extends beyond oil. Natural gas prices have skyrocketed, hurting everyone who uses gas to heat their home or fuel their appliances or to make fertilizer for our farmers. Americans now pay two to three times what Europeans pay for natural gas due to our ever-growing demand and limited availability. Farmers are hit hard. Our farmers rely on natural gas not only to heat homes and run much of their equipment but also for fertilizer in the fields. These impacts on farmers are severe and getting worse. We need an energy bill that looks for sensible ways to lower natural gas costs for all Americans. We need to look for environmentally sensitive ways to increase our supply. That is why I keep saying, the House put in a bill to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but we all know that oil doesn't amount to anything. Most of that oil--I could be corrected--I believe all of that oil is going to go to Japan. It is a drop in the bucket compared to what we use. But what else they have in Alaska is a lot of natural gas, and we need to pipe that natural gas from Alaska down to the lower 48. That has been on the drawing boards in the past to get that natural gas down here. And for various and sundry reasons that I don't need to go into here, it has been held up. I call upon the Governor of Alaska to move expeditiously to reach the agreements that are necessary to get the natural gas pipeline constructed and built to deliver the natural gas down to the lower 48. They have been talking a lot about how they would pipe it down--they would liquefy it and then send it down to the west coast, or maybe to the Gulf States. That costs a lot of money when you liquefy natural gas, when we could build a pipeline that could be environmentally safe and bring that gas right down to the Midwest where it is needed, not only for the Midwest but for the upper part, the northern part of the United States. So we need to move ahead aggressively on that, and we are not doing it. We need to look for all environmentally sensitive ways to increase supply, and we need to look for solar and biomass and wind. I am glad so many colleagues from both sides of the aisle joined together in approving the amendment offered by Senator Bingaman requiring 10 percent of this country's electricity to come from renewable resources by 2020. Wind power in particular has tremendous potential to provide clean, abundant energy in many parts of the country. Wind power generation can provide thousands of dollars in additional revenue to our farmers and ranchers and people in rural areas, while continuing to allow for crop production and grazing. Valuable incentives for wind power production exist in the section 45 wind production tax credit. However, development of this vital industry has been tied up by Congress's refusal to provide a long-term extension of this incentive. In 2004, when extension of the production tax credit was delayed, more than $2 billion in wind power investment was put on hold. I am pleased a 3-year extension of the production tax credit for wind has been included in this bill. We could do more, much more. It should be extended longer than that, but at least this minimal amount should provide developers the certainty they need to move ahead with wind power projects. We also need to make sure farmers and farmer co-ops can be full participants in wind power projects. The farm bill's energy title, section 906, is providing grants and loans to farmers and rural small businesses to install wind and other renewable energy systems on their property. It also supports energy-efficient improvements to farm and small business operations. This program has been a real success over the past several years. We expect it to grow substantially in the years ahead. I have also introduced a bill, S. 715, to help more farmers and other rural citizens become active investors in wind energy by removing restrictions that are in the production tax credit. This bill I am sponsoring includes a pass through of the wind production tax credit to cooperative members, just like the small ethanol producer credit pass through right now. This will provide another needed boost to rural America's wind power development. Right now, if a co-op builds an ethanol plant, they can get the production tax credits passed through to their members. If a co-op wants to build windmills, however, they can't pass it through to their members. Hopefully, we can lift this restriction, and we can do it on this Energy bill before us. Finally, we need to look to the longer term future, and we need to do it now by laying the groundwork. To deliver truly sustainable energy that will not add to climate change and global warming, that will not pollute the environment, we must invest in clean technologies. What I am talking about is hydrogen. It offers real potential for a clean, domestic, sustainable energy future. But only if it is produced from renewable resources. That is why we need to support research and demonstration of technologies to produce hydrogen from ethanol and other renewable resources. My bill, S. 373, the Renewable Hydrogen Transportation Act, would do just that, by funding the installation of an ethanol-to-hydrogen reformer, as well as the operation of hybrid electric vehicles converted to run on renewable hydrogen instead of gasoline. Making hydrogen from ethanol and other renewable fuels makes a lot of sense for transportation--one, because we can use the existing ethanol production and distribution network; two, because it could well be the least expensive renewable hydrogen option available. I appreciate the willingness of the chairman and the ranking member to work with me to put this modest, but meaningful, initiative in the bill. Again, to get to that sustainable future, we have to think about making hydrogen from renewable resources. You use the wind power. When the wind blows at night and you don't need all that electricity and you cannot store it, what do you do with it? You waste it. It is gone. But if you can use that wind at night to turn a turbine that makes electricity, and you can use that electricity to hydrolyze water-- remember the old chemistry experiment where you put positive and negative in water, and off of one comes oxygen and off of the other comes hydrogen. There are two atoms for oxygen for every atom of hydrogen. As long as those turbines are turning, we can make hydrogen. You can store hydrogen. You can save it. You can compress it. You can pipe it. So, therefore, at times when you don't need a lot of electrical power and the wind is blowing, you can make hydrogen. You can store it and take the hydrogen and put it through a fuel cell to make the electricity when you need it. The beauty of doing that is you only get one product--H2O, water. Nothing else. It doesn't pollute, doesn't add to global warming or anything. So that is the cycle that we need. Use the Sun, use the wind, hydropower, whatever is renewable, take that and make hydrogen, store it, compress it, put it through a fuel cell, and make the electricity, and the cycle starts all over again. I know a lot of this is some years down the pike. We cannot do it tomorrow. But we can start now by building assistance that will enable us to move to a renewable hydrogen-based economy in this country. Mr. President, let me close by thanking Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman for the extraordinary job they have done during the past months and during floor consideration of the bill. The bipartisan cooperation we are seeing is due largely to their example and impressive leadership, and the entire Senate owes them a debt of gratitude for a job well done. Of course, we are not done yet. Hurdles remain. We are headed, though, toward concluding a strong, bipartisan bill that leads America decisively into the new world of clean, renewable, home-grown energy. When the time comes, we need to stand firm for the Senate provisions when we go to conference. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 June 9, 2005. Re The National Security and Bioenergy Investment Act of 2005. Hon. Tom Harkin, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC. Hon. Richard Lugar, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC. Dear Senators Harkin and Lugar: The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA), the American Soybean Association (ASA), and the Renewable Fuels Association are writing to express our support for the National Security and Bioenergy Investment Act of 2005. In particular, we strongly support the increased procurement of biobased products by Federal agencies and all Federal government contractors. Biobased products represent a large potential growth market for corn and soybean growers in areas such as plastics, solvents, packaging and other consumer goods to provide markets for U.S.-grown crops. The biobased product industry has already started to grow, bringing new products to consumers, new markets to growers and new investments to our communities. The procurement of biobased products promotes energy and environmental security. Products made from corn and soybeans could replace a variety of items currently produced from petroleum, and aid in reducing dependence on imported oil. Already the production of ethanol and biodiesel reduces imports by more than 140 million barrels of oil. The production of biobased products generates less greenhouse gas than traditional petroleum-based items. There are also tremendous opportunities for grower-owned processing facilities and rural America and agriculture as a whole. New jobs and investments will be brought into rural communities, as new processing and manufacturing facilities move into those communities to be near renewable feedstocks. NCGA, ASA and RFA applaud your continued efforts to promote the use of biobased I products that will encourage the development of new markets for corn and soybeans and ultimately help to revitalize rural economies and the agriculture industry as a whole. We have been avid supporters of the biobased products industry, and we look forward to working with you as you continue to provide vision and direction for this emerging industry. Sincerely, Leon Corzine, President, National Corn Growers Association. Neal Bredehoeft, President, American Soybean Association. Bob Dinneen, President, Renewable Fuels Association.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have come to the floor today to celebrate a landmark achievement for former nuclear weapons workers in Iowa. Today marks the completion of an administrative process whereby workers from the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, who assembled some of the most significant nuclear weapons in this Nation's history and subsequently developed devastating forms of cancer, will become eligible for automatic compensation. Reaching this point has been an example of both the best and the worst in our system of government. I first started working on this issue back in 1997 when I received a letter from a constituent, Bob Anderson, who wrote about how he and many of his former coworkers had become ill after working on nuclear weapons in Burlington, IA. I shake my head every time I think of what Bob's reaction must have been when he got a letter back from me, telling him that the Department of the Army had assured my office that they never made nuclear weapons in Burlington! In fact, the list of weapons that were made by Bob and 4,000 other Iowans includes many familiar names: Polaris, Titan, Pershing, Minuteman the list just goes on and on. It's a tribute to the workers in Burlington that while the Cold War was going on, no one beyond the workers at the plant--including me--ever had a clue about the work that was occurring. They did their job with excellence, and they did it at great personal peril. The men and women of Burlington truly were on the front lines of the Cold War. They received no medals, no thank-you's, no special pay. Instead, they paid a terrible price. The levels and types of cancer that have afflicted this workforce are shocking. And along with these illnesses have come financial hardships--pain and suffering--which family members have witnessed and nursed loved ones through--and, in too many cases, premature death. Today, finally, workers from IAAP, including Bob Anderson, at long last, will receive compensation. Equally importantly, at long last, they have some measure of justice. This has been a long process. It seems like more than seven years since I brought then-Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson to the plant to meet with workers. It seems like more that six years since I got a team from the University of Iowa School of Public Health to track and analyze the illnesses that workers had developed. And it has been almost five years since Congress passed the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act to actually provide compensation to these workers. For almost five years we have struggled through one of the worst bureaucratic processes that I have ever seen. We have been required to demonstrate that no documents existed that would allow the radiation doses the workers received to be accurately reconstructed. It has been mind-boggling that a program designed to compensate people who had been deceived by the government, could put those same people through a second bureaucratic nightmare. But today is a day to celebrate. It is also a time to say thank you for the marvelous team effort that has made this day possible. IAAP was the first facility to file a petition for automatic compensation, and only the 2nd in the Nation to be approved. While I have worked hard to make that happen, it simply could not have happened without the workers themselves, as well as the University of Iowa scientists. I would like to say a special thank you to Jack Polson, Sy Iverson, Paula Graham, and Vaughn Moore. It was their willingness to repeatedly challenge the assumptions that were made about the work performed at the plant, and about how that work was done, that forced the Government to acknowledge that the documents from the plant were just inadequate to accurately reconstruct the levels of radiation that workers were exposed to. I also want to thank Joe Shannon, Laska Yerington, Sharon Shumaker, Marge Foster and Nancy Harman for there service on the Advisory Board here in Burlington and Shirley Wiley and Ed Webb for their help with the petition. No thank-you is complete without acknowledging how fortunate we were to have the help of the University of Iowa team: Laurence Fuortes, Bill Field, Kristina Venske, Howard Nicholson, Christina Nichols, Marek Mikulski, Phyllis Scheeler, Stephanie Leonard, and Laura McCormick. I would also like to thank my own staff. Alison Hart, my staffer in Davenport, Iowa, has put her heart into helping hundreds of workers and their families navigate this whole process. I would also like to thank Peter Tyler, Lowell Unger, Michelle Evermore, Jenny Wing, Ellen Murray, and Beth Stein of my Washington, DC, staff for their years of sustained work on this effort. And a special thank you is owed to Richard Miller of the Government Accountability Project for his assistance and his commitment to making this compensation program work. Finally, I would like to thank Bob Anderson and his wife Kathy. Bob and Kathy have weathered the ups and downs of this process with patience, good humor, and great fortitude. It will be a proud day for me when they actually receive a compensation check in hand from the Treasury. It speaks volumes that a letter from one Iowan can set in motion a monumental process that, in the end, will bring acknowledgement, compensation, and a measure of justice to so many. While more than 700 former workers are still seeking compensation, today marks our first significant victory. The people who will now be receiving compensation include at least 364 of those who got the most serious illnesses from their work at IAAP. Unfortunately, this group includes far too many workers who are no longer with us. In their honor and in their memory, I thank all of the former workers of the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant for their patience, their persistence, and their service to America. They are genuine patriots.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, with the passing of former Senator Jim Exon on Friday, a giant oak in the forest of public service has fallen. Political historians will remember him as a dominant force in Nebraska politics across nearly 3 decades, serving two terms as Governor and three as Senator. Those of us who were privileged to be his friend remember him, first and foremost, as a man of enormous decency, integrity, and common sense. We remember his quick mind; his slow, gravelly voice; his Midwestern directness and unpretentiousness. Here on the Senate floor, I am privileged to sit at the same desk that Senator Exon used during the last of his 18 years in the Senate. I inherited it upon his retirement in 1996, and I have always considered it a special honor to carry on where he left off. Of course, for people in Iowa, Jim Exon was a next-door neighbor. Over the years, Iowans got to know him well as a stalwart friend of family farmers; as a tireless promoter of rural economic development; and, a time when the bioeconomy was in its infancy, as a true believer in the future of ethanol and other home- grown, renewable sources of energy. Jim Exon was not just present at the creation of the ethanol industry, he was an important midwife of that industry. He took office as Governor in 1970, and in 1971 he created the Nebraska Ethanol Board. In the ensuing years of ethanol's infancy, it was Nebraska and Iowa that led the way in establishing this industry. At every step, Jim Exon was there as an advocate and champion. I will always remember my partnership with Senator Exon and Senator John Melcher of Montana on the 1985 farm bill. We fought long and hard to fend off attacks on safety-net programs for family farmers. Night after night, we kept the Senate in session into the early hours of the morning. And, thanks to Jim's leadership and sheer relentlessness, we carried the day. Throughout his political career, Jim Exon prided himself on reaching across party lines and forging bipartisan consensus. This is very much a Nebraska tradition, going back to the legendary George Norris, who founded the State's unicameral Legislature. Jim succeeded as a Democrat in an overwhelmingly Republican State because he knew how to reach out, how to unite people around shared interests. Senator Ben Nelson, a long-time friend and protege of Jim Exon, prides himself on continuing this tradition of bipartisanship and bridge-building. They didn't call him Big Jim for nothing. He was big physically, tall and imposing. He was big politically--the only Nebraskan since George Norris to win five consecutive statewide elections. And Jim was big- hearted, a tough, relentless man, but also a compassionate person who cared deeply about other people and their wellbeing. As a public official, he was an old- fashioned fiscal conservative. He railed against what he called ``wild-eyed spenders.'' As Governor, he repeatedly vetoed the Legislature's spending bills, 141 vetoes in all. And, here in the Senate, he took on Republicans and Democrats alike who, in his eyes, were being reckless with the taxpayer's dollar. Senator Jim Exon has been lying in state in the Rotunda of the Nebraska Capitol. Funeral services will be held this afternoon at the same location. So, today, the Senate says farewell to a truly distinguished former member. Jim was a good friend to me, and he was much beloved in this body. Today, our thoughts are with him, his family, and the people of Nebraska. May Jim rest in peace.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield for another question?

Mr. HARKIN. My friend talked about the transporting of ethanol going down the Mississippi and then on barge around this and that. Has my friend ever considered how you get the oil from the Mideast over here? You have to go over there with a big tanker. You have to load it up. Then that tanker has to go across the oceans, and it has to come into New York or wherever the port is and unload it. Then it has to be shipped to a refinery to refine it. Then, in order to protect that oil pipeline from the Mideast, we have to send 130,000 troops, our military. We have to protect our sea lanes--the billions of dollars that it costs to protect shipping that oil from the Mideast and all that. I can assure my friend from New York that they will never have to send our young men and women to Iowa to fight.

Mr. HARKIN. You will never have to worry about that.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I join with the Senator. We will do a little educating for him.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, this is, indeed, an exciting time and moment. We have an 8-billion-gallon national renewable fuel standard that is going to be part of the Senate Energy bill. A previous bill I sponsored with Senator Lugar and 18 other Senators serves as much of the basis for what we now have before us. This amendment takes us a bold step closer to improving the Nation's energy security, domestic and farm economy, and our environment. To say we have a growing problem with energy in this country is an understatement. Today, about 97 percent of our transportation fuel comes from oil, two-thirds of that from foreign sources. This excessive dependence on petroleum undermines our national security, as we all know, and it reeks havoc on consumers who are now dealing with record- high gasoline prices. Our policy today costs us jobs. There are 27,000 lost U.S. jobs for every $1 billion in imported oil. Our present policy damages our environment with fully one-third of the greenhouse gases now coming from vehicle emissions alone. And the truth is, the problem is not going away, it is only getting worse. Right now we are importing 60 percent of our oil from foreign countries. That percent is expected to increase, not decrease, to about 70 percent by 2025. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, America spends $200,000 per minute on foreign oil, or $13 million an hour. And more than $25 billion goes to the Persian Gulf imports alone. A study by the Department of Energy found that our dependency on oil from unsteady regimes outside our borders has cost the country an astonishing $7 trillion over the last 30 years, measured in current dollars. If these figures are not disturbing enough, here is one more. According to the National Defense Council Foundation, the economic penalties of America's oil dependence are between $297 billion to $304 billion annually. The Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, using this data, calculated the hidden costs at the gas pump. Everyone thinks we are paying around--I heard my friend from New York say in New York the price of gas is $2.25, in Iowa it is around $2.03, $2.05, and around here it is about $2.10 a gallon. That is what we think we are paying. But the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, using the data about the hidden costs, has determined that the real cost of a gallon of gas at the pump is more than $7 a gallon. A typical tankful of gas really would cost more than $140. What are those hidden costs? Add up what we are spending in the military alone in the Mideast and you come pretty close to the figure. We have a choice. We can stand by, feed our addiction to foreign oil, or we can make a decisive shift now toward clean domestic renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. This will allow us to wean the U.S. economy from its dangerous level of dependence on foreign oil that is a clear and present danger to our economy and national security. The renewable fuels standard will more than double the amount of ethanol and biodiesel in our fuel supply by 2012. It will firmly commit our Nation to clean, secure, diversified sources of domestic energy, not in some distant future but immediately in the years ahead. Domestic ethanol production grew 21 percent in 2004 to more than 3.4 billion gallons. I might just add, ethanol was introduced seamlessly in California and New York, where it helped to buffer rising crude oil prices. I know my good friend from New York had to leave, but I have since found out that right now there are two large production ethanol plants planned for construction in the State of New York; two big ones, one that is 100 million gallons a year, the other a bit smaller, being constructed right now in New York and more to come online later on. Why is that? Because the technology is developing at a rapid pace to produce ethanol, not just from corn or sugar but from underutilized materials such as cornstalks, wood waste, cellulosic material, all kinds of biomass feedstocks. So what we are doing makes sense. With an 8-billion-gallon renewable fuels standard, we establish a strong floor for the time frame under consideration. The fact is, we will have no trouble whatsoever producing enough ethanol to meet this standard. As I said, the industry already has the capacity to produce nearly 4 billion gallons of ethanol a year. I will be frank. A lot of this does come from my State of Iowa. We lead the Nation in biofuels production. I am proud of that. I am proud of the fact that 11 of the 16 ethanol plants in my State are predominantly owned by farmers. We have biodiesel plants as well. Biofuels plants are being built in many other places, too, but also in my State. These farmer-owned biofuels plants are adding value to our rural economies. According to a recent study, each typical ethanol plant creates 700 jobs, expands the local economic base by more than $140 million, and provides an average 13-percent annual return on investment over 10 years to a farmer investor. Iowa's 16 ethanol plants and 3 biodiesel plants, with more on the way, serve as local engines of economic growth. Our ethanol plants are expected to contribute $4 billion annually to the State's economy once all are in production, with more than 5,000 direct and indirect jobs. Once all of the plants are online, the industry will utilize about 500 million bushels of Iowa corn each year. That was just for Iowa. Nationally, this renewable fuels standard is expected to create over 200,000 new jobs and add nearly $200 billion to our gross domestic product. Within 10 years, this standard will replace more than 3 billion barrels of foreign oil, more to reduce import dependence over this time than the economically recoverable oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, before production even begins there. I say again to my friend from New York, there is a choice. We can continue to spend our money--approximately $25 billion a year--in the Persian Gulf, or we can start spending it at home, not just in Iowa but in Georgia, New York, Illinois, and all over this country, where we are going to see these plants being built. So we know that renewable fuels are good products. We know we can meet the demand. We know that it will help us in a lot of ways. The Consumer Federation of America came out with a study just a month ago that found consumers could save as much as 8 cents per gallon if more ethanol were blended into the Nation's fuel supply. Well, I bet my friend's moms who are driving kids to school, as he mentioned, would like to save 8 cents per gallon as they buy their gasoline. A story in the New York Times over the weekend reported that consumers in my home State of Iowa are saving up to 10 cents per gallon with ethanol blended gasoline. I will bet consumers in other States would like to have that same savings. I have heard one other comment made about this renewable fuels issue saying it is going to be bad for the environment. That is not true. First, it is renewable. It is made from homegrown renewable materials, not pumped out of wells half a world away and shipped to us. When is the last time one ever heard about an ethanol spill killing birds, marine life, or polluting coastlines? The answer is never, and it never will happen because ethanol is nontoxic and it is biodegradable. Here is something else that my colleagues hear a lot about, that it takes more energy to produce it then is gotten out of it. Again, nonsense. Ethanol is energy efficient. Every 100 Btus of energy used to produce ethanol--that includes the planting, the harvesting, the cultivating, the processing--yields 135 Btus of ethanol. So 100 Btus in, 135 out. By comparison, the same 100 Btus of energy used in the transportation, shipping, and refining of oil yields only 85 Btus in gasoline. Someone might ask: Well, why is that? Very simply, sunlight is free. The rain is free. These things grow. Sunlight and nature are being used as free assets to get ethanol. So just from an energy efficiency standpoint, we ought to be moving ahead aggressively. Lastly, my friend also said something about emissions. Well, the fact is ethanol reduces key emissions such as carbon monoxide, particulates that cause smog. In a recent study by the Argonne National Lab, ethanol was found to significantly lower carbon dioxide emissions, the main gas contributing to global warming. A lot of people in this body want to address the issue of climate change. Yet some fail to see how biofuels are an essential component of any greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategy. Keep in mind, when ethanol is burned, is carbon dioxide being put out there? Yes, it is. So you might say that adds to greenhouse gases, but keep in mind, that the corn plant or that tree or whatever it is that is grown that one gets the ethanol out of, it is taking carbon dioxide out of the air. Not true of the oil that is pumped out of the ground. It puts carbon dioxide into the air but never takes it out. That is why renewable fuels are so important for our environment. Yes, it would put carbon dioxide in the air, but as it grows, using that sunlight and rain to grow, it takes carbon dioxide out. The renewable fuels standard is sound public policy. It is a key part of any plan to wean our Nation off of foreign oil. Contrary to what my friend from New York said--I am sorry he had to leave--there is a built-in flexibility through a system of tradable credits for oil refiners who exceed their minimum requirement. It includes waiver language from the requirements of the renewable fuels standard for a region or a State if circumstances warrant it. It rewards production of emerging biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol that provide tremendous value to our country, our farmers, and the environment. Again, these and other provisions are all in the renewable fuels standard amendment that is being offered to the energy bill. That is why it is so important that we keep the standard in there, that we move ahead, wean ourselves off of Persian Gulf oil, clean up the environment, and put the money in this country. Let us spend our money developing energy in America rather than over in the Persian Gulf. I yield the floor, and I thank my colleague from Illinois.

Mr. HARKIN. That is right.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Stephen Butschi of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's session.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I understand the Senator from Connecticut has a short statement. I ask the Senator about how long?