Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I recently authored a column that appeared in The State newspaper in Columbia. In it, I offer my thoughts on the media's shoddy coverage of the budget deficit and Social Security, U.S. trade policy, and the War in Iraq. I ask that it be printed in the Record. The article follows. [From The State, Dec. 8, 2004.] There's Plenty for a Free Press to Report (By Ernest F. Hollings) In the beginning, Thomas Jefferson observed that if he had to choose ``between a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government,'' he would choose the latter. He envisioned the press would report the truth to the American people, keeping the Congress honest. The government wouldn't stay free long without a free press. Today the press--the media, now--has joined the political fray, and the watchdog has become the attack dog. As a result, Mark Twain's admonition has become the creed of both Congress and the media: The truth is so precious a commodity it should be used sparingly. Take Social Security. Both the Greenspan Commission and the Budget Act forbade using Social Security monies for any programs other than Social Security. But the government continues to spend Social Security surpluses on everything but Social Security. Then--presto!--the Congress and the media contend that Social Security is broke and needs fixing. Social Security is not broke; it's the government that's broke. One fix is political: Privatize Social Security to get the young vote. The other choice, raising the retirement age or taxes, merely means more money for programs other than Social Security. Moreover, Congress has made it a federal crime for a private company to pay the company debt with its pension fund. Yet the government constantly pays its debt with Social Security and other pension funds. The Congress and the media then cite a false deficit of $413 billion for fiscal year 2004 while the true deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is $593 billion. Take trade. The second bill to pass the Congress on July 4, 1789, was a tariff bill--protectionism. We financed the government and built this economic giant, the United States, with protectionism. But after World War II, we took up the chant of ``free trade,'' treating trade as aid to defeat communism with capitalism in the Cold War. Now after 50 years of draining our industrial strength, it's time to rebuild. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution provides that Congress shall regulate foreign commerce. To open markets we must control access to ours--practice protectionism. But the media acts as if protecting the economy was unconstitutional. Worst of all is the media's refusal to report the truth on Iraq. Saddam Hussein was no part of 9/11, had no weapons of mass destruction and was no threat to our national security. We invaded Iraq to implement a plan to democratize the Mideast for Israel. In 1996, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser submitted a plan to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a ``Clean Break'' from Arafat and to institute democracy in the Mideast by bombing Lebanon, invading Syria and replacing Saddam with a Hashemite ruler favorable to Israel. Rejected by Prime Minister Netanyahu, Perle and company joined Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, Stephen Cambone et. al. in the ``Project for the New American Century.'' They pressured Congress in the 1990s for a change of regime in Iraq, and when George W. Bush was elected president in 2000 ``Clean Break'' hit paydirt. Cheney became vice president; Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith took the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 positions in defense; Libby headed Cheney's staff; Cambone became Rumsfeld's right-hand man; and Perle, the architect of ``Clean Break,'' was made chairman of the Defense Policy Board. Upon winning the presidency and before his inauguration, President Bush sought a briefing on Iraq from President Clinton's secretary of Defense, William Cohen. After the inauguration, Paul O'Neill, the new secretary of the Treasury, tells of going to the first meeting of the Security Council prepared to discuss the impending recession, but the discussion was mostly on Iraq. When I served in World War II 60 years ago, we liberated Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, but they have yet to opt for democracy. We liberated Kuwait in the Gulf War, but it has yet to opt for democracy. But by 9/11 the president, intent on democratizing the Mideast, was asking Rumsfeld for a plan to invade Iraq. Bush was so determined to invade he disregarded his father's admonition in A World Transformed: ``We should not march into Baghdad. . . . To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us . . . condemning (young soldiers) to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerrilla war.'' If the media had reported the truth to the American people, we would have rejected ``Clean Break'' like Prime Minister Netanyahu. If the media had kept Congress honest, we would not be sending GIs to a war that most believe is a mistake and the top command says we can't win.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I wanted to thank the distinguished Senator from North Dakota. He has been in the vanguard. He headed up our policy committee and we have learned more. I was on the original policy committee under Senator Mansfield. But it has been quite an education. He has really put the program so we can learn about the issues. I thank him for that. But I particularly want to commend him for his leadership on trade because he has been leading the way on that score. I thank him very much.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, will the distinguished Senator yield?

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, my distinguished colleague has been more than generous, and I thank him not just for today but for the years to come. I do so genuinely in the sense that his coming here as a Senator is like going over on the wall and turning on the lights. Here I had somebody diligently working to get things done. That is why I came to the Senate, to get things done for South Carolina. And Senator Graham has not only worked hard--we all work hard; there is no lazy Senator in the 100 Senators--but he has that secret of making friends. After all, this is a political body, and you cannot get things done unless you make friends. He instantly came to the Chamber and started working with Democratic Senators, which was a surprise to me. Things are so confrontational at the present time in politics, to see that occur, I said: That fellow is going to be here a long time. And I believe it. He is going to be here a long time. Just this past week, he got on to my crusade of trying to get jobs and industry. He's following in the footsteps of, our distinguished former colleague, the senior Senator from Kentucky, Wendell Ford, who is on the floor and graces us. He makes me feel like old times when he was our whip, and no one, as chairman of the Rules Committee, did a better job. But Lindsey Graham went out of his way to get things done. This past week he has been taking around ambassadors from various countries to prompt their interest in investing in South Carolina. As Governor, I started going on trips in 1960 to encourage businesses to move to South Carolina, and now we have 134 German industries in South Carolina. We have French Michelin, and we have Japanese Hitachi, Fuji, and others. Now, Senator Graham is working the beat. He is a realist, and he knows how to get things done. I cannot thank him enough for being already distinguished, not just because we gave him the title, but because I have heard from colleagues on both sides of the aisle: That fellow, Lindsey Graham, is really a fine fellow. He is working, and you really ought to be proud of him. I address the distinguished Senator from South Carolina by saying that the only way I can show my gratitude is to make sure he gets this desk. I have the John C. Calhoun desk. You will laugh, Wendell. When I got here I told Senator Russell, I would like to have this desk. He said: Colleague, colleague, colleague--you know how he talked--I guess you would like to have this desk. My father sat at this desk, my mother sat at this desk, and I am sitting at this desk. I said: Excuse me, I didn't know all three of them had been there. He came to me the night before he left, and gave me the Calhoun desk, and I am going to make sure the Sergeant at Arms gets this desk to Senator Graham. This is my chance to thank my colleagues for putting up with me for 38 years. I thank the distinguished staff, not just my staff and the committee staff, but particularly this afternoon the floor staff, Marty and Lula and everybody else. We couldn't get anything done without their wonderful help. And I thank the poor reporters. If you can understand what I am saying-- (Laughter.) They are always asking later, Mr. President: What did he say and how did he say it? I will never forget politicking for President. I went up to Worcester, MA. I kept calling it Worcester. I knocked on the door and the lady said: Who are you? I said: Fritz Hollings. She thought it was a German trucking company. I do thank the reporters who have done an outstanding job for me over the many years. I started my career as a trial lawyer, and I made enough as a good trial lawyer to afford to come to Washington and be in the United States Senate. Senators don't make enough money. You ought to double their pay, and I say that before leaving. I have said that along with Ted Stevens for years. No little young fledgling lawyer, such as Hollings, can afford to run, keep up two homes, and everything else. It can't happen anymore. You all are just politically using the salary and not really attracting the best of the best. I don't leave with the idea that the Senate is not what it used to be in the sense of personnel. We have a way better group of Senators. We had five drunks or six drunks when I came here. There is nobody drunk in the United States Senate. We don't have time to be drunk and, more than that, we have the women. We had one woman. She was outstanding, but she was outstandingly quiet. That was Margaret Chase Smith from Maine, a wonderful lady. Now we have 14, and you can't shut them up. They keep on talking and talking and talking. If you get into a debate with Barbara Mikulski or Barbara Boxer, they will take your head off, I can tell you that. They know how to present a viewpoint, and that is very valuable. The Senators have done a wonderful job. The Senate itself is the greatest of institutions, but I know we can do better. As a trial lawyer, I was overjoyed. When I came here, we had the proceeding to learn the truth and we could hear the best of witnesses. I had better clients as a United States Senator, and obviously, I could make the final argument to the jury and then go in the jury room and vote. That, to me, is a trial lawyer. I had reached the ultimate. Yet as I am leaving, I am very sensitive to the full docket of unfinished business. I am constantly being asked about legacy, legacy, legacy. I am thinking the things we ought to have done long ago and have not done because rather than seeking the truth--and I say this advisedly--we have obscured it. Take right now the issue that is going to confront us tomorrow afternoon or Thursday of raising the debt limit. I read the business page of the New York Times this morning. We are spending at the rate of $600 billion more than we are taking in. That is a deficit. Don't give me this doubletalk of on-budget deficit, off-budget, or Government debt and public debt. We are spending $600 billion more than we are taking in, which is 6 percent of our GNP. In the European Union, if you exceed 3 percent of your gross national product, you are not eligible to be in the European Union. Here we are telling the world what they ought to do in diplomacy, international affairs, defense affairs, and fiscal affairs, and we would not even be eligible to be in the European Union. We have, Mr. President, the economy on steroids. Add it up. Add up the deficit of 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004--those 4 years--and you have $1.7 trillion that we have goosed into the economy with these tax cuts. We have not increased spending on the war $1.7 trillion. No, no. We have tax cut, tax cut, tax cut, and they still want more tax cuts. I am talking bipartisan because both sides are guilty. I am not talking in a partisan fashion. We have to do something about that deficit. I was here when we balanced the budget without Social Security in 1968. President Clinton got the Government back into the black when Bush came in. But he turned a $6 trillion projected surplus, to a $5 trillion projected deficit, and now we have to increase the debt limit. Now the dollar is in a deep dive. Interest rates are going to have to go up. We are depending on financing our debt some $700 billion by the Japanese, $170 billion by the Chinese, and $67 billion by Korea. Can you imagine going with a tin cup to Korea, begging: Please finance my debt because I need another tax cut? What about Social Security? Let's tell the truth about it because there isn't any question that we have been spending Social Security moneys for any and everything but Social Security, in violation of the law. And don't give me this thing about, oh, yeah, Lyndon Johnson used Social Security. He did not. Look at the record. He balanced it, and we did not spend Social Security moneys until the seventies when Wilbur Mills, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee on the House side, started giving these inordinate COLAs. We started draining the fund. We appointed the Greenspan Commission in 1983. The Greenspan Commission came out with an inordinately high tax to take care of the baby boomers in the next generation. Don't misunderstand me. They act like the baby boomers are coming along as a new problem. We foresaw that in 1983. We said, as a result of this high tax, do not spend this money on anything but Social Security. I fought like a tiger, but we finally got it into law. On November 5, 1990, George Herbert Walker Bush signed into law section 13301 that says that the President and the Congress cannot use for budget purposes Social Security moneys. I was talking a minute ago to my distinguished colleague from South Carolina. He is going to try, I guess, to raise taxes. I would support it so long as we are not raising taxes for anything and everything but Social Security. You are going to have to increase the age. You are going to have to get some revenues to make it fiscally sound. But if we started immediately with the Social Security surplus going to just the Social Security trust fund, we immediately have $160 billion, and with that $160 billion in 7 years, we would have a trillion dollars and you wouldn't have to worry until 2045 or 2050, and there would not be any crisis. We ought to study that. It is the same with trade. Everywhere in the land people cry: Free trade, free trade, free trade. There is no such thing; never has there been and never will there be free trade. I know about freer governmental restrictions, subsidies, and quotas, but that is not going to happen. People ought to remember that we built this industrial giant and power, the United States of America, with protectionism. The Brits corresponded with the Founding Fathers, and they said: Under David Ricardo's comparative advantage, what needs to be done is we will trade with you what we produce best and you trade back with us what you produce best. Free trade, free trade, free trade. Hamilton wrote the Report on Manufacturers. He said: Bug off, we are not going to remain your colony. We are going to maintain our own manufacturing capacity. The second bill that ever passed this Congress in history, on July 4, 1789, was a 50-percent tariff on articles and we started with protectionism, linking the steel mills with protectionism. Roosevelt came in with protective subsidies on agriculture. Our friend, President Eisenhower, had import quotas on oil--protectionism. President Kennedy came in with a 7-point program to protect textiles. More recently, our good friend President Ronald Reagan, put in voluntary restraint agreements on automobiles, steel, handtools, and semiconductors. Ask Andy Grove if he would have Intel today if President Reagan had not put in that protectionist measure. There would not be any Intel. We did that with Sematech and everybody knows it. But we were treating trade as aid in the war of capitalism versus communism right after World War II. We had the only industry. So we sent over, with the Marshall Plan, money, experts, equipment, and we started giving away my textile industry--giving it away. Right now 70 percent of the clothing I am looking at is imported; 86 percent of the shoes on the floor are imported. It is all gone. All that time they said: Don't worry. We are going to be a service economy. My light bill in South Carolina is administered in Bangalore, India. So we have lost the service economy. We have lost the manufacturing economy and capacity. What happens is your security is like a three-legged stool. You have the one leg, your values as a nation. Around the world we stand for individual freedom and democracy. We have the second leg, unquestioned, as a superpower. The third leg of the economy has been fractured intentionally and we are happy about it because capitalism has defeated communism in Europe, in the Soviet Union, and in the Pacific rim. And it is defeating it right now in China. Let's not disturb it and what have you, except to begin to compete. As Akio Morita says: That world power that loses its manufacturing capacity will cease to be a world power. What we need to do is to rebuild. We can begin to immediately rebuild by changing the culture, the mindset, the legislation. Around here we passed, 4 weeks ago, a $50 billion tax cut bill that was supposed to represent foreign credit sales. Instead, it subsidized the export of jobs, the outsourcing of jobs overseas. We are still treating trade as aid. If you are going to open up Sununu Manufacturing, before you open the door you have to have a minimum wage, clean air, clean water, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, plant closing notice, parental leave, OSHA, a safe working place, safe machinery, and I can go all the way down. And in Manchester, NH, your competition has moved to China because they can operate and produce there for 58 cents an hour and none of those requirements. If you don't move to China yourself, you are going broke. You will go bankrupt. The policy of the crowd that is hollering and wailing and moaning about the outsourcing of jobs is exactly the policy of the very crowd that is causing that outsourcing. If you head up a multinational, you are supposed to compete and make a profit. We are supposed to create a strong economy and produce jobs. The Congress of the United States, the Senate, we are the guilty parties. We have to put in a change of the culture. We need a Department of Trade and Commerce, and to put the Special Trade Representative over there and to do away with the International Trade Commission, because this is just a sop. The International Trade Administration--and not Commission should find the penalty rather than having that separate hearing and say there is no injury and everything else of that kind. I have worked with the lawyers. We need a Deputy Attorney General for Trade in the Justice Department. We have one for antitrust. We have one for civil rights. We have one for taxation. We don't have one for trade. We need somebody enforcing those laws. We need, by gosh, to turn around and start competing the way they have done. We need more customs and--but that is a long story. Let me just say what we need to do is get ahold of ourselves and realize we have a problem. I was at a meeting earlier today where one of the Senators was counseling the new Senators: Don't take too many committees. They are going to take all the committees. Our time has come. We want it all. So we want all the committees. The rules ought to say a Senator should not be on any more than two committees. You can't keep up with it. I am on the Appropriations Committee. They used to have 17 members; now they have 29 members. You know, the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense has 19 members. You can't hardly get a quorum for the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. We have a third of the Senate. Everybody wants to be on all the committees, so you have your staffs doing all the work, because you can't keep up. But the main culprit, the cancer on the body politic, is money: Money, money, money. When I ran 6 years ago, in 1998, I raised $8.5 million. That $8.5 million is $30,000 a week, every week, for 6 years. If you miss Christmas week, you miss New Years week, you are $100,000 in the hole and don't you think we don't know it and we start to work harder at raising money. As a result, the Senate doesn't work on Mondays and Fridays. We have longer holidays. The policy committee is adjourned and we go over to the campaign building because you can't call for money in the office. So we go over to the building and call for money and obviously we only can give attention to that. We don't have time for each other. We don't have time for constituents, except for the givers. Somebody ought to tell the truth about that. Unless and until we excise this cancer, the Congress and Government is going to languish alone because it has to be done. When I helped write the Federal Election Campaign Practices Act in 1973, we said each Senator would be limited to so much per registered voter. That meant that Strom Thurmond and I were limited to $637,000. Fast forward 25 years, add in inflation, and give me $2.5 million. Quadruple it, $2.5 million but not $8.5 or $10 million that you have to spend because all your time is on the campaign and not the country. I can tell you right now we are in real, real trouble. I worked with John McCain and Russell Feingold on the McCain- Feingold. I worked with Senator Biden on public finance. What really needs to be done, and I tried 20 years ago, is to put in a constitutional amendment that Congress is hereby empowered to regulate or control spending in Federal elections. Then we can go back to the 1973 act: So much per registered voter. When you are limited to $2.5 million, you have limited the campaign. You have limited the time of the campaign; you have limited the expenditures of the campaign. Then you have time for constituents. Then you have time for problems. When I came here, Mike Mansfield would have a vote at 9 o'clock just about every Monday morning and we would work to Friday at 5 o'clock. We all stayed here on the weekends and we didn't have all of these long holidays we have now. But if you want to limit campaigning and if you want to change--as Abe Lincoln said--disenthrall ourselves of the dogmas of the quiet past that are inadequate for the stormy present of money grubbing, then we have to think anew and act anew. We need to disenthrall ourselves from this money grubbing and go to work finally for the country instead of the campaign. That is our situation. I have watched it. I have studied it. I have seen it. They don't have me going to meetings. They have me going to the telephone and calling and calling, traveling all over the country for money. Money is a cancer on the body politic. Other than that, I have spoken seriously about trying to face up to some of these problems that we have confronting us. There are a lot of opportunities. They are talking now about immigration. Mexico is not a foreign country. They are our neighbor. All you have to do is put down the billions that we spend: Give them a Marshall Plan, increase their standard of living just like Canada. Then you don't have immigration. I can tell you right now, the money spent on immigration, drugs, and border patrol, and financing that government out of the banks in New York and then refinancing it on us taxpayers, we could have a Marshall Plan and solve the problem. There are a lot of problems that we can solve. But if there is a last word, it is one of gratitude. This has been the finest experience I have ever had. When you come right down to it, I was always worried that I couldn't make enough money to stay in Washington. Now I have looked at my trial lawyer colleagues who made a lot of money. Most of them are dead. Those who are alive are looking for a new golf course and a new drink and they don't know anything about what is going on and they are not interested in anything going on. If you really want to be enriched in your life be a United States senator. The best postgraduate course is to run and be in this Senate. It is with heartfelt gratitude I thank the colleagues for their indulgence this afternoon, particularly my colleague, Senator Graham. We just have a fine time working together, and I know he will be representing us in the Senate for years to come. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I would like to pay tribute to naval officer, and fellow South Carolinian, Captain Robert C. Wilkens. This fall, Captain Wilkens will retire from the United States Navy after 32 years of distinguished leadership, selfless service, and tireless commitment to our Navy and Nation. Captain Wilkens served right here in the U.S. Capitol, as the Director of Pharmacy in the Office of the Attending Physician to Congress from 1981-1985. He then entered advanced training as a pharmacy resident at the Navy's flagship hospital, National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, MD, 1986. Wilkens continued with his career as the Pharmacy Clinical Coordinator and director of inpatient services at the Naval Hospital, Portsmouth, VA. Upon completion of that assignment in 1990, he became a Doctor of Pharmacy Candidate at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. Captain Wilkens then served as the chairman of the Pharmacy Department at Naval Medical Center, San Diego, CA, from 1992-1999. By special request, he next served as the Specialty Leader and Consultant to the Navy Surgeon General for Pharmacy Policy at the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery in Washington, DC. Upon completion of that tour in 2001, Captain Wilkens returned to San Diego, and served once again as chairman of the Pharmacy Department at the Naval Medical Center. I send best wishes on behalf of the United States Senate, for continued happiness and success to Captain Wilkens and his wife Linda as they begin the next chapter of their lives, with thanks from a grateful Nation for their loyal and dedicated service.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the substitute amendment to H.R. 2608, the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program Reauthorization Act. I fully support this amendment. The first two titles in this substitute amendment were distinct bills, each extremely important to fighting the respective hazard. I want to thank Senator Bill Nelson and Senator Hutchison for their work in bring the wind title to the committee's attention. Earthquakes are deadly natural hazards that arrive without warning and can claim thousands of lives. For example, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake in Iran last year killed 30,000 people, while a similar magnitude quake in California killed two people. Thousands of lives have been saved as a result of the fine research conducted through the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. I support the earthquake title of the substitute amendment, but I want to reiterate that the National Institute of Standards and Technology needs greater funding if it is to fulfill its new role as the lead agency in this program. I hope that my colleagues will see to it that this excellent agency has the resources it needs to continue to develop standards that protect the public. Building codes work. The hurricanes we've seen in the past month prove that. According to the St. Petersburg Times, houses built before the building codes were revised in 1992, as a result of Hurricane Andrew, were blown off their foundations. Houses built after new building codes were in place are still standing. These disasters cost the country several billion dollars in damage each year. By establishing a national program to improve design and engineering to protect against windstorms, we can save not only money, but more importantly lives.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Well, two points quickly: I don't go back to 1947, but I go back to 1953 and 1954 under the Hoover Commission. And I would refer you to that report. They ask for a national intelligence coordinator. Allen Dulles would say--he was directing Central Intelligence--you can run the National Security Agency, you over at the Department of Defense, and you can direct and manage military intelligence and these different departments. But take those cold turkey facts of intelligence and information and have them coordinated--not superduper $40 billion. It sounds pretty on paper, but I can tell you right now, that is what was wrong with 9/11. The intelligence was directed, was managed. Why do you think the head of the CIA hammered and slammed his fist on the desk of the President and said, Slam dunk, Mr. President, we got all the information you need on weapons of mass destruction, when he didn't even have an agent in downtown Baghdad. We were about to invade Iraq, and we had not an agent. That was the same director who was the staff director before Gulf Storm and Senator Bill Cohen and I came back to be briefed on Iraq and Baghdad, against Saddam. And George Tenet, the staff director at that time, said: Gentlemen, we don't have an agent in Baghdad. We don't have one in Iraq. We will have to call over to the Defense Department. Here, 11 years later, we still don't have somebody down there. Now we have operative agents and everything else trying to manage elections and what have you. So the idea is to coordinate impartial, objective intelligence facts, not manage intelligence. Secondly, the Congress stays out of it, Senator Collins, most respectfully. The Congress stays out of the affairs of Condoleezza Rice. She is the National Security Adviser. We don't call her up willy- nilly before 15 different committees here on the Hill and say testify here and there. You don't want that. If you are the President, you want it coordinated subject to you. That is what you need. You don't call Karl Rove up here and ask him about political intelligence; you have him working around the clock. He has us Democrats on the run. I want the same kind of job done in domestic intelligence, foreign intelligence, and military intelligence. I want it coordinated for the President so the buck doesn't stop here because the dots were not joined. Now we are about to join the dots in this amendment. Of all people, they say let's don't join them, let's just manage; and we have $40 billion or $30 billion, whatever it is, and we are going to manage indirectly and we are going to screw up the Defense Department, the FBI, civil rights, and everything else, in the head-on rush we have here this afternoon. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I will use just 1 minute for the Hollings-Stevens-Inouye-Cochran amendment. It is my policy, and it is not to be treated casually. It is to be treated seriously because what we are going through is this exercise here. And if you had the Collins- Lieberman bill up, I would vote to get it to the House and let them try to hammer it out. They don't have the coordinator. I was just about to say, the reason they didn't have that coordinator is that the 9/11 Commission is even Stephen, Republican-Democrat. And they wanted to have a unanimous report, and I agree with that. So they didn't hammer and zero in or bull's-eye the real need and the real fault of 9/11. They didn't join the dots. They didn't have a coordinator. And if they were going to come out on that unanimously, they would have found fault at the White House level. It is just as simple as that. I know another time in the history of this Government where we knew full well that President Reagan knew about the Contras, at least I was convinced so. But you couldn't report it. You couldn't say it. You couldn't do it for the simple reason that these so-called commissions that are now sanctified are really politically balanced, and they leave out the necessary one. In this particular instance, we need a coordinator. You can get all of the directors. You can get all of the budgets. You can get all hammered out about the Defense Department. Just leave it all alone or put it all through. And you haven't satisfied and gotten a coordinator at the National Security Council. We had that amendment early on last year, and the vote was 49 to 48. We put him on. I had that amendment up. It was a partisan vote. Now I have worked yesterday and today to explain it to colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and it is bipartisan by the most responsible of Senators other than myself. I hope we don't treat it casually as something to be tabled and walk away and say: Let's have another amendment. We don't want to vote on Friday. Let's get some votes. We are all thinking about procedure and not thinking about the country. We are all thinking about the campaign and not the country. I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Let me reserve 10 minutes. I don't know if I will use it.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I support the Hollings-Stevens amendment, numbered 3795. My amendment strikes and replaces the underlying bill with language creating a national intelligence coordinator, or NIC. Important work since September 11th of the 9/11 Commission, numerous Senate committees and others has convinced all of us that we must enact intelligence reform. I am impressed by the efforts of my friends Senators Collins and Lieberman, and others, who have used their considerable skills to implement most of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. But I worry that the Senate is moving ahead with enormous restructuring, when we could address the main problem more immediately. 9/11 was clearly an intelligence failure, and we must act now to fix the most glaring problem--the lack of an intelligence coordinator. My amendment fixes this most obvious, most severe problem with our intelligence structure by creating a national intelligence coordinator, or NIC. It will be the NIC's responsibility to sift through the work of all of our intelligence entities, both foreign, domestic and military and keep the President abreast of the intelligence community's findings in a coordinated, complete way. As it exists, the intelligence community's communications with the President cannot help but be haphazard. The President needs to have the huge volumes of intelligence information coordinated by someone he trusts, so he can make informed policy judgments. Thus, my amendment allows the President to select an intelligence coordinator as a member of the National Security Council, not subject to Senate approval. Just as President Bush has Karl Rove, whom he trusts and who coordinates the political intelligence throughout this Administration, the President needs a Karl Rove for national security intelligence. This NIC will need sufficient staff and resources. So my amendment assigns to the NIC in his or her role as coordinator of intelligence activities, the staff and resources currently assigned to the Director of Central Intelligence, or DCI, that is now employed in the performance of his role as coordinator of the intelligence community, which he is not doing. Many of the dozens of provisions in Collins-Lieberman would likely improve our system of intelligence. The Senate should study each of these provisions carefully, and enact the best of these provisions after such consideration. My amendment fixes the main problem in the meantime--the lack of a coordinator. Collins-Lieberman creates a National Intelligence Director, or NID, and gives that person considerable power over budgets and personnel. The NID will control a new national counterterrorism center, and generally manage the intelligence community. The bill is problematic because the NID will wield unheard of influence over work of the intelligence entities, before that work even gets done. This is groupthink--personnel from 15 agencies work to get the Director the answers they know he wants. Personnel will neglect intelligence that takes them in directions they know the NID opposes. Reform should encourage more creativity, not less; more diversity within the intelligence community, not less. These agencies each do different things well--we need to take advantage of differentiation, not squelch it under the NID. The national intelligence coordinator created by my amendment is unlikely to lead to this problem of Groupthink. The NIC will not control personnel and budget decisions. He will not have the power to fire people in other agencies that he disagrees with, or promote only people who share his worldview. He will not be able to manipulate policy direction of intelligence agencies and centers we may create. The NIC will coordinate, not meddle in the work itself. The 9/11 Commission decided that part of the reason the 9/11 plot was successful is the lack of creativity in our intelligence community. Stopping complicated terror plots before they happen requires flourishing intelligence diversity, and Collins-Lieberman will undermine diversity by concentrating intelligence output in one manager--the NID. We don't need a Director of Intelligence. We need a coordinator. We need to change the NID to NIC, the ``D'' to ``C''. I would like to address concerns I have with the underlying bill related to Defense. In deciding what to do with the Department of Defense's control over most intelligence dollars, Collins-Lieberman splits the baby. The bill transfers control over the budgets and some personnel decisions of the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office, from the Secretary of Defense to the NID without transferring control of the agencies themselves to the NID. The NID will develop and present the President with an annual budget request for these and other intelligence programs. It is unclear whether the Secretary of Defense or the NID will control the actual payroll. Under Collins-Lieberman, ``tactical'' military intelligence and the Defense Intelligence Agency will remain under the DOD. But the bill does not define ``tactical.'' Obviously, DOD will seek to define that term broadly, and the NID will seek to define it narrowly. I understand Senator Feinstein may offer an amendment that would define ``tactical'' and provide some clarity, but even if that amendment is enacted, the battle will be waged over how to interpret the Feinstein definition of ``tactical.'' My friends Senators Specter, Roberts, Shelby, DeWine, Bond, Wyden, Bayh and others already think the NID should have even more control over agencies currently within the DOD than the Collins- Lieberman bill would allow, but their amendment failed. In short, there is confusion over what Collins-Lieberman transfers from the DOD to the NID and what it does not transfer. There is confusion over what ought to be placed underneath the NID, and what stays with the DOD. There is confusion over how budget, personnel and other types of authority can be bifurcated and trifurcated. This is a time for clarity, not confusion. The NID will also receive the appropriation for these and other intelligence programs, and in Collins-Lieberman the NID can transfer funds from one office to another as the Director sees fit. If the underlying bill is enacted as it is currently written, I forecast open warfare between the Secretary of Defense and the NID. Especially during a time of war, DOD will insist on funding defense/military-related intelligence work its way. This kind of turf war is bad for the country, and we should not enact intelligence that we can see is likely to pit the Secretary of Defense against the NID. If this painful transition needs to occur, we should at least consider waiting until after combat operations in Iraq have ended. I am also concerned about some potential problems with the underlying bill's blurring of domestic and foreign intelligence. While I support the concept of fusing foreign and domestic intelligence, because that is what modern investigating and technology requires, this is a very sensitive and tricky area. Our Nation's history of domestic covert governmental operations shows the need to be careful here. Collins- Lieberman places the FBI's domestic counterterrorism activities and those of the CIA and DOD under the NID. But it does not address problems with locating domestic covert operations outside the FBI. The NID would have the power to ask the CIA or DOD to engage in such covert domestic operations. Our current governmental arrangements keep the CIA from participating in domestic intelligence activities, yet none of this would apply to the NID. Who is to say that the NID will not begin using the CIA to conduct extensive covert domestic activities? This new role for the CIA may actually be appropriate, but we have to be careful to draw rules for CIA domestic conduct that respect our Bill of Rights and other basic traditions. Using agencies other than the FBI for these domestic tasks also removes the Attorney General from its supervisory function. The Department of Justice is qualified to make difficult Bill of Rights judgments, but these other agencies may not be. These other agencies may not even be inclined to exercise restraint when they are investigating Americans. We could ruin cases against suspected domestic terrorists, because our intelligence operatives do not conduct their investigations according to constitutional requirements, and the cases get thrown out. And unless the stovepipes we hear so much about are eradicated immediately under this bill, which seems unrealistic, we may even have multiple agencies conducting duplicate investigations against American citizens, trampling all over each other and the law. Collins-Lieberman also enacts the largest ever surveillance intelligence network, which can be data-mined by personnel in various levels of government. Senator Stevens and others point out that we do not even have the technology to meld all this intelligence in one database. While coordinating information among agencies is laudable, it is unclear that Collins-Lieberman addresses dangerous side effects of a new network database. Collins-Lieberman directs the White House to violate privacy protections, but of the three branches, the executive branch has the least incentive to balance individual rights concerns. Congress never held any hearings to address the civil liberties problems with such a network, or with turning over to the White House power to write privacy guidelines. Administration guidelines and a civil liberties board, contained in the bill, are not as likely to strike the correct balance over privacy issues as Congressional oversight and public debate would. At the very least, we need committee hearings to consider the consequences to our civil liberties of enacting a national network database. At this time I would like to say a few words about this underlying bill's possible impact on a couple of our intelligence agencies. Because of the bill's considerable scope, I will only raise a few of the potential problems with the bill's agency reforms. The bill hampers the FBI Director's ability to manage the FBI. The bill creates conflicting reporting requirements for the FBI's Executive Assistant Director for Intelligence, making her responsible to the FBI Director and the NID. She will support not only the FBI's counterterrorism and counterintelligence programs, under the NID, but also the FBI's criminal and cyber missions, which are not under the NID. The bill provides no clear way to separate FBI criminal investigations from its intelligence work. I would not want to be the Executive Assistant Director of Intelligence under this structure--with dueling bosses and duplicative reporting requirements. Also, will the National Security Council's role be weakened by the creation of a separate board chaired by the NID? Will the NID be allowed to deny the Secretary of State and other cabinet-level Secretaries personnel decision-making over their own subordinates? I understand Collins-Lieberman will give the NID authority over analysis. Where does this leave CIA analysts? The bill does not address what the new role for CIA analysts will be. Have these matters been worked out, or even discussed in a public forum? I have focused on several agencies I am particularly acquainted with through my experience on the Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations Subcommittee. I am sure my colleagues are raising similar problems with reforming the agencies under their Committees' jurisdictions, and I encourage them to come forward and help us understand these important issues. Mr. President, I'd like to say a few words about policy too. This administration is extremely reticent to spend money in Afghanistan, and it was trying to funnel to Iraq funds Congress allocated for Afghanistan long before the President started the Iraq war. Collins- Lieberman empowers the NID to transfer funds and personnel directed by Congress from one agency to another. For example, this body may substantially increase U.S. assistance to Afghanistan--I understand Senators McCain and Lieberman have advocated just such an increase. If we add funds for Afghanistan onto this bill, the NID could scrap the funds for Afghanistan and transfer them to fund a new operation in Syria or Iran. The NID would have a responsibility to inform Congress that he had moved this money, but these funds would be moved nonetheless. It is Congress's duty to allocate such funds. Empowering the NID to override Congress's funding priorities is bound to lead the NID to undermine Congress's powers, and instead use shift funds allocated by Congress to advance the administration's agenda. As we consider this bill under great political pressure and with the election looming, we have considerable analogous precedent to reference. Recent hasty Congressional enactments of Homeland Security legislation and the Patriot Act show the need for more measured action. Collins-Lieberman is thrown together in a matter of weeks. Surely most of us agree that at least some of its provisions are problematic. Much of the conversation I have heard on the floor this week sounds more like campaigning than legislating. The White House identifies problems throughout Collins-Lieberman--will the House version appeal more to the White House? A hastily thrown together conference resolving differences in the House and Senate versions will not be conducive to finding and fixing these inevitable problems. My friend Senator Stevens says, ``Do no harm''. Whatever comes back from conference will have a tremendous head of steam behind it. By acting too fast on Collins-Lieberman, the Senate may get stuck with House provisions in a conference report that are unpalatable. Once reform is enacted, fixing missteps is extremely difficult. Experiences of homeland security legislation, passed right before an election, and the Patriot Act, prove that hasty restructuring results in confusion, mistakes and paralysis. I conclude by asking my colleagues to support my amendment. Let's act now and enact my amendment, which fixes the main problem of the lack of a coordinator, and then let's continue to act as we learn. Let's sift through the litany of approaches being advanced by my colleagues in the underlying bill, and the rival approaches being advocated by others both within this body and outside it. My amendment starts us on the right track to improving our intelligence structure, and it avoids the potential to start us on the wrong track. I appreciate the outstanding work Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman have done and thank them for that. They met over the break in August and worked around the clock to produce a product so we could get something done before we leave in time for the elections in November. However, in those pressures of time, they have come out with a product that needs many more hearings, more deliberation, and more consideration. In essence, they have a national intelligence director who directs and manages. Immediately that raised the red flag for this particular Senator. When I say ``raised the red flag for this particular Senator,'' let me tell of an experience. It was 50 years ago we had the Hoover Commission Task Force investigating the intelligence activities of this Nation. We had the McCarthy days, McCarthy charging there were Communist spies and agents within the State Department, within the Defense Department, within the executive branch, and everywhere throughout the Government. President Eisenhower appointed the Doolittle Commission and they came out with what was considered generally in the Congress as a whitewash. The White House and Congress got together and agreed efforts should be conducted to reorganize the executive branch, thus, President Hoover's commission came to be. A task force was headed by General Mark Clark. I served as one of those members of the task force investigating the CIA, the FBI, the Army, Navy, air intelligence, Secret Service, Q clearance, atomic energy intelligence, and on down the list. We spent some 2 years. After hearings and consideration of the generally speaking minute intelligence information at that time--I say ``minute'' for the simple reason that the intelligence information now correlated by the various entities and departments and agencies is like drinking water out of a fire hydrant. You have much, much greater volume. But even then we found the need for a coordinator. I can see Allen Dulles of the Central Intelligence Agency. Director Dulles of the CIA said, I have my hands full trying to get the work done properly of the CIA, much less as the head of intelligence activities in the Government, namely the coordinator of all intelligence, the centralizer of all intelligence. That is why it was called the Central Intelligence Agency. He said, I have too much work to do. What we need is one single intelligence coordinator to coordinate all of it--my work, the FBI, Defense Department, military. In those days all we had was foreign intelligence and military to bother with. We did not have terrorism threats and counterterrorism within the continental limits. Now we have heaped upon the responsibilities of the intelligence community all kinds of duties that need further deliberation and estimation because, as I say, the director of the national intelligence, when they said ``direct,'' when they said ``manage,'' I said heavens above, here is a flaw of September 11 intelligence. It was directed. It was managed. Everyone knows that now after the hearings. The Vice President had his own little cabal in that Department of Defense. They had met with the head of the Defense Advisory Council, Richard Perle, and Scooter Libby and that group. They had submitted to the country of Israel in 1996--Benjamin Netanyahu was coming in as Prime Minister, and they submitted at that time that Saddam ought to be replaced with the Hashemite rule and they wanted to democratize Iraq back in 1996. When Netanyahu refused doing that, they came back and organized themselves into the Project for the New American Century and they have been pressing forward ever since. So when you direct and when you manage intelligence, you have a flawed product. We need coordination. You need to take the best of the best from the CIA, from the FBI, from the National Security Agency, from the National Reconnaissance Organization, and all these other entities and coordinate into a product to give to the President. Suppose you were President in the next 10 minutes and you heard about a terrorist threat, not only foreign but domestic. What you would want in line, you would want a Karl Rove on intelligence. Now, the President has a Karl Rove on political intelligence. Karl Rove can tell you for any section of the country what is going on in any particular State. He has pollsters. He can give a consummate judgment or alternative to the President to make a judgment. That is fine business. We have that without legislation. We need just that in security intelligence--not only foreign, not only domestic, not only military, but all three--security intelligence coordinator. So when I say the national intelligence director directing and managing, I am saying, here is a flaw of September 11. You know the group-think policy of the President. If you are directing and managing intelligence, what you do is go immediately and give that intelligence to the folks making the Presidential policy and you develop a group- think and a flawed product. We do not want, necessarily, a director, certainly with all the duties that this particular director is burdened with but, rather, we want a coordinator. He should be or she should be in the National Security Council, appointed by the President, without confirmation by the Senate. You have to have your own person in there. And you have to not have him or her running over to several committees in the Senate and several committees in the House testifying about this management, this direction, this decision, this or that policy. He will have his hands full just with what the President wants. Necessarily, we transfer those coordination responsibilities from the CIA over to this national intelligence coordinator. This is a short, two-page amendment by Senator Stevens, Senator Inouye, Senator Cochran, and myself. This was worked out this afternoon. I was trying to listen to the debate, and the more I listened, the more it impressed me that we needed much more deliberate work and consideration, and not the crunch of a national election to get all of us out of town and do something. So we are trying to respond to that edict of ``don't just stand there, do something.'' I am afraid we are going to enact the ``Alka Seltzer'' intelligence bill: I don't believe we passed the whole thing. Look what it does. It directs and manages, but what intelligence is under the Department of Defense and what intelligence is under the national intelligence director. I searched and I found conflicts throughout the particular Collins-Lieberman measure, especially during a time of war. I can tell you, you are going to find all kinds of conflicts there. There are conflicts going on right now with the war in Iraq and the Secretary of Defense saying he is not going to stand for it. The national intelligence director has the defense intelligence budget, but then the secretary of intelligence has the defense intelligence function and responsibility. And the Secretary of Defense does not have budget control over what he has responsibility. And then there is the ``ying'' and the ``yang'' of defense intelligence versus tactical intelligence. And I have listened to some, the distinguished Senator from California and others, on what they consider tactical intelligence. On civil liberties, there are real grave concerns there because there is within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, that investigates crimes and protects civil liberties, a culture, a paradigm, and a discipline. The Justice Department has developed that over the years of different FBI Directors. Now, with respect to the national intelligence director, he can direct covert activity to be taken on by the FBI with none of that discipline and none of those checks and balances. You have heard the distinguished Senator from Alaska with respect to the national intelligence director's transfer of funds, not only the reporting of funds. I can tell you now that will never happen where you can transfer funds because the Appropriations Committee has that responsibility. I can go down the different disclosure of funds and various other things. What I want to emphasize is that I am not trying to disparage any of the wonderful work being done by our Governmental Operations Committee. They have a product out here now that we can develop and work upon and iron out the differences. But it should not be under the pressure that we are in and having passed ipso facto the Collins- Lieberman bill. You would not satisfy the problem of 9/11, and that is coordination. You need the President's man or woman in that National Security Council, auditing, gaining, and getting. And mind you me, don't worry about getting it, now that you have a coordinator sitting there with the President. For example, that Arizona flight school information that did not get through the FBI to the coordinator, because they did not have one, is excused. That Minnesota terrorist who did not want to land the plane, all he wanted to do was fly it into a building; that came to the CIA but did not get to the White House. Known terrorists came into the country, passed the Immigration department, and the Naturalization Service. That did not get to the Director. But mind you me, if you have a coordinator, and the information of that importance does not get through to that coordinator, the opposite is going to be true. Rather than the old days when you held within your particular department or agency your intelligence and your information, and you did not tell the FBI, and the FBI did not tell the CIA, here you are going to try to regurgitate and spit up and throw out and report to that coordinator. Because if he does not get it at the White House level, heads are going to roll. So we have changed the culture and discipline by having one coordinator. That is all you need. We can go home and know that the job is done. The FBI is working. The CIA is working. The National Security Agency now knows not to wait until tomorrow to translate their go signal. As they went into the World Trade Towers, they were a day late in translating documents. We can go home and know that the President is equipped with a coordinator. And immediately, if I am running the CIA or FBI, I am going to start getting my information out rather than hiding it. That is the real difficulty: The dots were there, but the dots were not joined. With the Collins-Lieberman bill what you are instituting and legislating into law is the flaw of 9/11. You have a director of intelligence. You have a manager of intelligence. And that is how they got into the World Trade towers and into the Pentagon. It was managed. I can see the President on October 7, 2002, in Cincinnati. ``Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait until the smoking gun is a mushroom cloud,'' he said. Seven days later I voted for the authority to go to the war when the President asked--I did not sit on the Intelligence Committee. When my Commander in Chief says: ``Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait until the smoking gun is a mushroom cloud,'' I voted aye. Then I found out there weren't no smoking guns, there were no mushroom clouds, there were no facilities, there were no weapons, there were no terrorist threats. But that is another argument. I am trying to get something done where we in good conscience can protect our national security, protect us against domestic terrorism. And we can fix this bill. Now, let me add one little thing. I don't know whether Senator Stevens, my dear colleague, or Senator Inouye or Senator Cochran wants to talk. But I would agree, I don't need, unless I am questioned, another 10 minutes. And I know they have amendments of their own. So I would agree to a time limit on either side if the distinguished managers of the bill are trying to get to a vote.

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

Mr. HOLLINGS. I call up my amendment numbered 3795.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the pending amendment be set aside so I can call up my amendment.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the 9/11 Commission released its report today on the events leading up to 9/11, and the security failures that precipitated this tragedy. The Senate Commerce Committee has spent a great deal of its time and attention on aviation security over the years. I have served in the U.S. Senate for more than 38 years. This institution can be slow to make decisions, but when needed, this body can move quickly and effectively. After 9/11, we acted immediately to create the Transportation Security Administration in an effort to force real change in our aviation security regime. Fast action to bolster our Nation's aviation security was critical to restore the trust of travelers in an air transportation system that was on the verge of collapse. Congress has often acted decisively during the deliberation of aviation security issues. For example, following the work of a prior presidential commission, a bipartisan group, led on the Senate side by Senator Lautenberg and former Senator D'Amato, investigated the 1998 destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and made numerous recommendations. We took up and passed many of them as part of the Aviation Security and Improvement Act, P.L. 101-604. I also was in the Senate as a wave of hijacking to Cuba in the late 1960s and early 1970s led to the wide use of metal detectors at commercial airports. Unfortunatley, the current threat to security is a more sophisticated one, and one that has forced our government to change the way we deal with security in general. Prior to 9/11, we had a poorly paid screener workforce, with a high turnover rate. Post 9/11, we have a better trained, better paid workforce with a relatively low turnover rate. Some, however, want to turn back the clock. We cannot let that happen. Even prior to 9/11, there are indicators that FAA was concerned with a number of events around the world regarding hijackings. Following Pan Am 103, we pushed to put bomb detection equipment in airports, but until TWA 800 blew up over Long Island in July of 1996, there was no real effort to fund aviation security. Today TSA is spending $5.3 billion annually on all transportation security, and it is not enough. We have underfunded capital construction at airports, causing a delay in the installation of Explosive Detection Systems. We have a cap on the number of security screeners that can be hired, causing huge lines at many of our airports because we will not provide the money needed to do the job right. But aviation, comparatively, is in far better shape than maritime and rail--areas that are woefully underfunded. I have made this point to the new head of TSA, Admiral Stone, but it is OMB and the administration that are stonewalling the security funding. Simple as that. With all we know about the threats, one would think that we would be able to fully fund our security needs, but OMB continues to play the types of games it plays with all agencies. Look at our Homeland Security Appropriations bill--no direction on how funds need to be allocated or which areas need greater attention. We have given the administration a blank check to spend the money on programs it believes will protect us, but it is not enough. If we keep refusing to take the proper actions to improve our transportation security, I am afraid that we will find ourselves once again responding to a national tragedy that could have been stopped with the proper actions and preparation. I ask unanimous consent to print a New York Times editorial on aviation security in the Record, as well as a memorandum detailing hijackings from 1983 to 1991.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I recently wrote a column on Mideast Policy for the Post and Courier in Charleston, SC. I want to share it with my colleagues and ask unanimous consent the July 9 article be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I am pleased that the conference committee charged with resolving the differences between the House and Senate versions of H.R. 2443 has reached final agreement on the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2004. Through this bill, Congress underscores our support for a strong and effective Coast Guard. The Coast Guard has always taken on an impressive array of tasks that are important for our national security, the protection of our resources, and the safety of our mariners. After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, we have asked the Coast Guard to take on even more responsibility for our maritime security, all the while continuing to excel in their traditional missions. This legislation provides an authorization of $8,167,610,000 for the Coast Guard's fiscal year 2005 budget, an increase of 19 percent over fiscal year 2004, and important new authority for the Coast Guard to better execute its missions. Of this, $5,404,300,000 is authorized for the Coast Guard's operating expenses, an increase of 14 percent over fiscal year 2004, with $100 million allocated to cover the costs of the Coast Guard's new tempo demands. This will assure that the traditional core missions of the Coast Guard--such as search and rescue of mariners in distress and protection of our living marine resources--are not compromised. Most importantly, we authorized approximately $300 million for port security that was not requested by the President. I believe the provision of these funds are essential to the security of our ports, our waterways, and our maritime transportation industry. In particular, the funds will help implement the Coast Guard's Automatic Identification System, AIS, to track the movement of foreign vessels operating in U.S. waters. I have always been a firm supporter of providing the Coast Guard with the tools it needs to get the job done. The Coast Guard needs to upgrade its core assets, in particular, its aging fleet of cutters. The Integrated Deepwater Program is the Coast Guard's program for achieving these upgrades, and the administration has not requested sufficient funding in its budgets to even keep this program on track. The bill authorizes $1.1 billion in fiscal year 2005 for the Deepwater Program. This sends an important signal we support the Coast Guard's modernization effort. I do have some reservations as to whether the Coast Guard can in reality absorb such a large increase over last year's levels, an issue that GAO raised in testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee this year. However, we can consider this issue further when we take up the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, appropriations bill. I am pleased the conference agreed to procurement management improvements by requiring the Coast Guard to report on how it intends to implement recent GAO recommendations, including measures to increase competition of subcontracts, and how it intends to alter the mix of legacy and replacement assets in the future, as well as expected costs of any changes to its original plan. Unless there are significant changes to the way the Deepwater contracting business is conducted, there will be enormous problems in the future that may ultimately undermine this program. I would also like to thank the conferees for supporting the inclusion of various measures that were addressed in S. 2279, the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2004, MTSA 2004, a bill that I introduced to enhance implementation of MTSA 2002. I remain very concerned about the current implementation of port security measures and will continue to demand review of implementation policies to ensure that we are aggressively implementing effective security measures. Specifically, the conference agreement includes important requirements to review and improve cargo security programs. We must have concrete cargo security programs in place to detect and prevent cargo containers from being used in a terrorist attack. In the event we are attacked through our ports, we then need to be able to reopen U.S. ports to the commerce that sustains so much of our Nation's economy, with some degree of confidence. We are far from where we should be. Cargo security programs must require that we can verify the contents do not include weapons of mass destruction. Similarly, cargo security programs must be continually inspected to ensure their compliance. Documentary evaluation of cargo information, while important, does not substitute for physical verification. Our motto should not continue to be: ``trust, but don't verify''. I also am pleased that the Coast Guard will be reviewing and reporting on Joint Operations Centers such as Operation SeaHawk. Operation SeaHawk, established in Charleston, SC, is providing law enforcement an opportunity to coordinate their law enforcement and security missions, and is being utilized to help implement the security and contingency response plans for the whole area. I feel confident that this model will be found to provide the best structure to coordinate law enforcement activities of the various agencies that are involved in port security and provide a model for the Coast Guard to utilize Area Maritime Security plans. I am also pleased that the final bill includes a number of important provisions to address important natural resource issues. For example, the bill includes a number of provisions regarding the Oil Pollution Act, including a program to provide loans to fishermen and aquaculture producers who are damaged by oil spills, a requirement for using electronic charts which will reduce oil spill incidents, as well as a report on a number of important issues such as the feasibility of speeding up the requirement for double hulls, and the state of health of the oil pollution trust fund. The bill also requires the Coast Guard to improve its coordination on fisheries enforcement with NOAA and State and local authorities. Finally, it mandates that the Coast Guard must cooperate with NOAA in analyzing ship routing measures for certain ports that would reduce ship strikes of the North Atlantic right whale.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, today, I submit an amendment to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act, S.2541, to offer a more pragmatic and sustainable approach to future space exploration, given the uncertainties that now confront the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Put simply, this substitute addresses three fundamental flaws with the approach contained in the underlying bill. Like the underlying bill, the substitute endorses human exploration of the Solar System but places it in context alongside other, equally important, elements of scientific discovery in space. Second, it states that a gap in U.S. human launch capability is unacceptable and requires NASA to accelerate the development of the next crewed launch vehicle. Finally, it authorizes the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, for one year, fiscal year 2005, and rejects the ``go-as-you-pay'' approach the Administration wants to employ in planning for human space exploration. Allow me to discuss this final point first. The underlying bill authorizes NASA at the President's requested level for five years. I took a different approach--if the agency is embarking on a broad new program, it is unlikely that estimates made now will have any fidelity three, four, or five years from now. After all, we were told in this past week--2 months before the new fiscal year will begin--that it will now take at least $450 million and possibly as much as $760 million more than was requested to fix the Space Shuttle just in fiscal year 2005. If the administration cannot make accurate budget predictions from one year to the next in a 20-year old program, I am not confident that we have any idea what a new exploration program will take. The go- as-you-pay approach is reckless and allows us to avoid difficult questions regarding costs, timetables, and reaching a consensus on the future of human space exploration that will generate not only the support of the space and scientific communities, but of the Congress and the American people, too. It's a license to throw fiscal discipline out the window and drag out projects until they never finish. Under the substitute I am introducing today, fiscal year 2005 will become a year of planning for a new program of human exploration. The substitute authorizes NASA a single year's funding to plan for the decades of exploration ahead and to begin work on new space transportation and robotic solutions. These solutions are the pathfinders that will enable us to use earth's moon as a test-bed for developing and demonstrating the know-how we need to conduct extended operations on another world's surface beginning by the year 2020. The substitute attempts to put the proposed program of exploration in context. It embraces the principles of exploration and embraces the human exploration of deep space as a core mission of NASA, including the demonstration of the human beings' abilities to explore and inhabit worlds far beyond the earth. It also embraces the ideals of space flight as expressed in 1958, when the original Space Act and NASA were founded, and restates them in a way that makes them relevant for today--with clarity, division of purposes, and the claim that the United States shall have a U.S. space agency whose chief purpose shall be to contribute to life on earth, learn more about the universe and the mysteries of time and space, and provide leadership for our human pursuits in space. Under the President's plan, NASA will have a 4-year gap in our ability to launch humans into space. The underlying bill calls for a study of the launch gap. My substitute declares it to be a matter of U.S. policy that any prolonged period of a year or more interruption in U.S. crewed space transportation shall cause the administrator of NASA to report and submit to the Congress a request for supplemental appropriations to resolve those circumstances. Since that is exactly the posture we are headed into in the next decade, we require the administrator to make such report and request within 60 days. In addition, my substitute calls on NASA to immediately begin work on the crew exploration vehicle the next human-capable rocket even in the planning year of FY 2005. In addition to these three main pillars, the substitute calls for several reports to be prepared to lay the foundation for future programs. It calls for a plan of objectives, capabilities, costs, and milestones that will be used to manage the new program of human exploration. The substitute requires an independent report on the changes to NASA's safety, operations, engineering, and management cultures to ensure that these changes meet the requirements of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and the Nation's expectations of the U.S. space program. It requires NASA and the Departments of Defense and Transportation, each of which plays a key role in managing U.S. space transportation, to report on the state of the U.S. launch industry and to propose how the United States can achieve reliable, affordable, and safe space transportation by 2015. I also call for NASA to report on how the NASA and the United States should be organized to best achieve our broad national goals for space, including the role of industry and international collaboration in the future. In addition, consistent with the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report, we apply its primary recommendation, to establish independent technical and safety controls over human space flight, to all U.S. organizations conducting human flight in space. Finally, we call for reports on the Hubble Space Telescope, peer- review assessment of NASA's science programs, and grants to institutions of higher education offering advanced programs in aeronautics and aeronautics-related disciplines. While our legislation attends to the primary matter at hand--the future of human space exploration--it does not ignore the importance of having a balanced program and view of the contributions of space and aeronautics to our economy and society. Mr. President, our mission to demonstrate humanity's future role in space cannot be founded upon goals without solutions, means that are intangible and unknown, and resources tied to timelines that have no definite end-point or objective. Just this morning, the House VA-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee reduced NASA's FY 2005 appropriation by over $1 billion, which makes it clear there are many doubts about this program and no consensus on how to move ahead. The Congress must act now to ensure that our bold visions do not take the place of the hard work of planning, budgeting, and executing programs. Let us not pursue the folly of go-as-you-pay, but substitute a reasoned course of ``pay and prove''-as-you-go, harnessing the proper capabilities and assigning the necessary resources to the journey of human exploration needed to make it successful, affordable, and safe.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, right to the point with respect to the Australia trade agreement, I join my friend from Tennessee in endorsing this particular trade agreement. Trade is what we say it is, a trade for the benefit of the particular countries involved. It is not aid. People wonder why we are in such difficulty. The difficulty lies in the proposition that the old David Ricardo doctrine of comparative advantage has been superseded now, not by any doctrine of natural advantages, such as Ricardo had in the early 19th century when he enunciated that particular doctrine, but it is contrived and we are the contrivers. We are looking at them, my colleagues in the Senate and the House, the Government itself. If anybody wants to improve our position on trade, we can go right to the particular beef with respect to the distinguished Senator from Ohio. He said he called the Secretary of Treasury and asked that there be a petition for an investigation of China's trade practices, a 301 proceeding. He didn't get any results. I see the distinguished ranking member, former chairman of our Budget Committee, on the floor. If you looked at 11 o'clock this morning, the public debt to the penny is $484 billion. Last year we ran a deficit of $562 billion. Don't give me this off-budget and on-budget, public budget, Government budget, private budget, or whatever else. No, that is how much more we spent than what we took in. It is already $484 billion and I will take all bets it will exceed $600 billion. In fact, although they talk about the war and everything else of that kind, during the 5 years of World War II from 1941 to 1945, during that 5 years we added to the debt $200 billion, in the war to end all wars. We add that every 4 months under this administration, some $200 billion. I mean, we are up, up, and away. So when you call over to the Secretary of Treasury and the Secretary of Treasury calls over to the Minister of Finance in Beijing, China, and he says: You know, you have good Senators. They are on my back. They are complaining. We have to get something done. He says: Well, I am sorry, but we will have to quit, we will have to stop buying your bonds, quit financing your debt. Japan has $400 billion of this Treasury. The Chinese have over $150 billion. So when we do not pay the bill and everybody says tax cuts, got to have tax cuts to get reelected--you now meet yourself coming around the corner. That is why you can't get the Secretary of Treasury to do anything on trade. But let me go to Australia. The general measure of a good trade agreement is that it is with those countries that have relatively the same standard of living. The reason I point this out is because they would be amazed for me to come up in favor of a trade agreement. They have me down as a textile protectionist, and I have passed four textile bills that have gone through the House and Senate and been vetoed by Presidents Carter, Reagan, and George Herbert Walker Bush. But be that as it may, yes, I voted for the Canadian Free Trade Agreement but against the Mexico Free Trade Agreement on NAFTA. Why? I can see my friend Senator Moynihan from New York saying: Wait a minute, down in Mexico they have to have a free market before they can have free trade. There was the common market approach in Europe. Before they allowed Greece and Portugal into the common market, they taxed them as members of the European Union over a period of years for $5 billion, so that it could develop the entities of a free market, labor rights, respected judiciary, property rights, and the other things that go along with capitalism. Obviously, Australia, we always whine. I can hear my labor friends: We have to have labor rights, we have to have environmental protection. They have better labor rights in Australia and better environmental protection in Australia. But they have relatively the same standard of living. Right to the point: We have a plus balance on trade. You don't get every one of the protections. There are some protections in there for beef, and there is a gradual opening. They phase out the tariff rate quota on dairy products over an 18-year period. And they import sugar. It is not liberalized in any way. That has been protected for the United States. Australia has maintained its monopolies on wheat, barley, and rice. They receive the right to maintain or restrict the foreign content of television programs. In other words, they protect local production and the pharmaceuticals. We thought a bill was coming up shortly with respect to pharmaceuticals in Australia. They subsidize the drugs for the population there. Therefore, they wanted to restrict drugs coming from Australia into the United States because they didn't want to start subsidizing American consumers. There are a few exceptions. But it is a solid agreement. We don't have a better friend--whether we were going into Korea, whether we were going into Vietnam, whether we were going into Iraq. I am telling you right here and now that the best friend we have ever had is Australia. We have relatively the same standard of living with different restrictions here, there, and yonder. If we can't get an agreement with them, who? Let me talk about another particular point. There is none better in the Senate than my distinguished colleague from North Dakota, Senator Byron Dorgan. He was talking about fairness. After World War II, we started the Marshall Plan, and financed the development of Europe and the Pacific rim countries. We sent the equipment, the expertise, the money, the technology, and it worked. We spread capitalism. It has prevailed over communism in the Cold War, and everybody is happy. But in that 50-year period, instead of following our example by giving up a good part of the textile industry, giving up a good part of the automobile industry, giving up a major part of the electronics industry--and I could go right on down the list, steel and otherwise--they didn't follow suit. When they talk about free trade, it is interesting to look at the 1992 foreign trade barriers. Some act like we have to set the example. We tried that for 50 years and flunked. We have flunked the course. In 1992, they had 265 pages of restrictions in the foreign trade barriers--the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Then in 2002, 10 years later, they had exactly 455 pages. It went up by 200 pages. Since I have been doing this, the Trade Representative has put out a newer one in smaller print. No kidding. They are clever over there. They don't think you are watching. The movement is to protectionism. How in the Lord's world do you think we are going to survive in a trade war? That is what we are in-- protectionism for free trade. The question before this body is how to get there. Come on. It is like world peace. Everybody is for world peace, but the best way to preserve the peace is to prepare for war. The best way to attain free trade is raise the barrier to a barrier. We then remove both. It is competition. It is trade. The word ``trade,'' free trade is an oxymoron. There is nothing free. There is no free lunch. I can tell you now in this globalization, come on. Senator, you don't know anything about globalization. You don't want to compete. You don't understand. We have globalized. We have globalization going on. Did you know that the United States of America invented globalization? We invented it under Alexander Hamilton. We had just won our freedom as a fledgling colony. The Brits said, Wait a minute, to Hamilton, we will trade with you what Britain produces best, and you in the new United States of America trade back with us what you produce the best. Hamilton started globalization. He told the Brits to bug off in his Report on Manufacturers. We started globalization, and we have continued it. Do you know what it takes for protectionism? We didn't even pass an income tax until 1913. We financed government for 100 and some years. Theodore Rex said, on page 21--this is the turn of the last century under Teddy Roosevelt. This first year of the new century found her worth twenty- five billion dollars more than her nearest rival, Great Britain, with a gross national product more than twice that of Germany and Russia. The United States was already so rich in goods and services that she was more self-sustaining than any industrial power in history. Indeed, it could consume only a fraction of what it produced. The rest went overseas at prices other exporters found hard to match. As Andrew Carnegie said, ``The nation that makes the cheapest steel has other nations at its feet.'' More than half the world's cotton, corn, copper, and oil flowed from the American cornucopia, and at least one third of all steel, iron, silver, and gold. Even if the United States were not so blessed with raw materials, the excellence of her manufactured products guaranteed her dominance of world markets. Current advertisements in British magazines gave the impression that the typical Englishman woke to the ring of an Ingersoll alarm, shaved with a Gillette razor, combed his hair with Vaseline tonic, buttoned his Arrow shirt, hurried downstairs for Quaker Oats, California figs, and Maxwell House coffee, commuted in a Westinghouse tram (body by Fisher), rose to his office in an Otis elevator, and worked all day with his Waterman pen under the efficient glare of Edison lightbulbs. ``It only remains,'' one Fleet Street wag suggested, ``for [us] to take American coal to Newcastle.'' Behind the joke lay real concern: the United States was already supplying beer to Germany, pottery to Bohemia, and oranges to Valencia. We walked into the World War II Memorial and over on the right-hand side you see a saying by President Roosevelt in 1942 of how we won that war. He gave tribute to Rosie the Riveter, the American production machine. That is how we built it, with protectionism. Now for 50 years, we have given it away. We continue to want to give it away and put ourselves in the hands of the Chinese and Japanese by not paying our bill. They are financing our debt. There you are. That is the reason for the situation we are in. We are the ones to blame. Before you open up Smith Manufacturing, you have to have clean air, clean war, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, minimum wage, plant closing notice, parental leave, safe working place, safe machinery, the Americans with Disabilities Act--I can keep on going. But you can go to China for 58 cents an hour and have none of those requirements. America is leaving and organized against us and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has turned into the International Chamber of Commerce. The multinationals are taking it over and they are all hollering, ``free trade,'' ``free trade,'' continuing to produce overseas, dump back into the United States. And we are in the hands of the Philistines; namely, WTO. Every time we bring a dumping case, they say it is violative of WTO. You can't sell a product at less than cost in the United States but you can take a foreign Lexus automobile and sell it for $35,000. That same automobile sells for $45,000 back in the Tokyo market. The competition is market share; it is not profit. This is a very complicated subject. We have to come to grips with it. There are going to be exceptions to those countries that have the same standard of living. You have your national interests and national concerns. I voted for free trade with Jordan. She is our only friend out there helping us with Israel in the Middle East. So you make those exceptions because it is in our national interest to do so. But the general rule of thumb is, it is the standard of living, and on trade itself, we have to get organized. We need, instead of a Department of Commerce, a Department of Trade and Commerce. We need to transfer the special Trade Representative over there. We need to start enforcing our laws, get a U.S. attorney, an assistant U.S. Secretary of the Department of Justice as we have on the antitrust division and put him in there in the trust division with us in trade. We have to get more Customs agents. We have to get in and start competing and quit whining against each other and understand we are not getting anywhere. We are going out of business every day. Exports and imports have been going up years on in, but, for the first time, our exports, now, have gone down in the last 4 years, rather than up. Yes, thank Heavens for the farmer. I see the American farmer on the floor of the Senate. Thank Heavens we have the plus balance of trade there. Other than that, we are not making anything anymore. Of course, in Europe, which was a good market, they do not want to buy anything from us on account of Iraq. We have turned them off. We are not only having to pay for Iraq in human tragedy and otherwise, but we have to pay for it in our trade balance now with Europe. I could go right on down the list. Just one word. Yesterday, I picked up the article with respect to William Safire. Safire said we had no agents in Iraq, none. I have seen one figure $30 billion and another figure $40 billion intelligence effort and we had nobody in Iraq. It reminds me when I served for 8 years on the Intelligence Committee and we came back in before the gulf storm--the ``we'' being Senator Bill Cohen and myself--and we wanted to get briefing on Saddam going into Kuwait. They told us the CIA didn't have anybody that could brief us. We had to send over to the Defense Department. George Tenet was the staff director at the particular time. Here, some 10 years later, we still don't have anybody. Do you know what they told me why we didn't have anybody? Because Israel will tell us. Mossad is the best intelligence in the world. And all of this dog chasing its tail about whether the intelligence was distorted or misinterpreted or pressured or what have you, I can tell you now the survival of Israel, our best friend, depends on having intelligence on what is going on in downtown Baghdad, all over Iraq, all over Syria, all over Iran, and in Egypt. They know. They got to know. And therein you do not need intelligence. That is the dog that didn't bark. My friend Bob Novak was talking about the dog that didn't bark. If there had been any weapons of mass destruction, our friend, Israel, would have said: Go there, go here, go there. They knew it. And George Herbert Walker Bush said: I firmly believe we should march into Baghdad. . . . It would take us way beyond the imprimatur of the international law bestowed by the resolutions of the Security Council, assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability and destroy the credibility we were working so hard to reestablish. It would turn the whole Arab world against us. That is where we are. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 20 minutes of the time under the control of the Democratic manager.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I wish to recognize and congratulate Dr. Robert K. Stuart for his accomplishments in the fight against cancer. He is a long-time leader in the medical cancer community on a professional and personal level. For his devotion to make a difference in the lives of others, Dr. Stuart deserves to be honored. He has fought cancer on many levels and is a model of inspiration to his community. I ask that a recent Post and Courier article be printed in the Record, so that all my colleagues can see the extraordinary accomplishments of this man. The material follows: [From the Post and Courier, July 10, 2004] Cancer Doctor, Survivor to Join Lance Armstrong on Tour (By David Quick) Cancer survival and cycling were forever linked when Texan Lance Armstrong survived testicular cancer and won not one, but five consecutive--and perhaps six--Tour de France races. But long before Armstrong would become a household name, oncologist Dr. Robert K. Stuart was in the trenches fighting the war on one of humankind's most deadly diseases and using cycling as an escape and a way to stay strong physically and emotionally. This October, the worlds of Armstrong and Stuart will come together for a week during the Bristol-Myers Squibb Tour of Hope, a 3,200-plus-mile relay from Los Angeles to Washington, DC. Stuart is one of 20 cyclists selected to participate in the tour from among more than 1,000 applicants. Besides riding four hours every day, Stuart and the other cyclists, along with Armstrong, will be making stops along the way, spreading the message of hope and encouraging cancer patients to participate in new treatments, often referred to as clinical trials. Stuart certainly has earned the honor. In addition to being an avid cyclist, cancer doctor and researcher, he survived kidney cancer himself in 1991 and was the primary caregiver to his wife, Charlene, who recovered from leukemia after being diagnosed in 2000. And he's been a leader in fighting cancer in South Carolina for nearly two decades--starting the hematology/oncology division at the Medical University of South Carolina in 1985, leading a surgical team in performing the state's first bone- marrow transplant in 1987, and being one of two who wrote the proposal for federal funding of what later would be called the Hollings Cancer Center. ``He's just done so much for MUSC,'' says Dr. Rayna Kneuper Hall, who heads the research hospital's breast cancer program. ``I'd say he is a true pioneer in the fields of hematology and oncology here. He had a vision of it (the division) and was able to make it come true.'' Despite his monumental resume, Hall says Stuart is humble, has deep compassion for his patients, and continues to be a good teacher and mentor to medical school students. ``He has an amazing memory. He can remember every patient he's ever seen and is able to recall a specific case to demonstrate a (cancer) situation. For students, it really helps to hear it in the context of a patient.'' For Stuart, his proudest accomplishment is having a hand in training 40 specialists in the fields of hematology and oncology, as well as having helped his patients. ``At this stage in my career, my legacy is more about people than it is publication. I have more than a hundred papers, but to me, the people are so much more important.''

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, today I rise to introduce the Ocean Research Coordination and Advancement Act, which is cosponsored by my colleagues Senators Stevens and Inouye. The oceans remain one of the least explored and understood resources on our planet. Our Nation needs a coordinated research and education program staffed by a skilled scientific and technical workforce to further our knowledge of the oceans and ensure their health and vitality well into the future. NOAA, the lead civilian Federal agency for oceanic and atmospheric affairs, is the linchpin to this effort. However, this is also a job that the entire Federal Government must take on, since NOAA will need the cooperation and resources of a variety of other Federal agencies to achieve our common scientific and educational goals. The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, established by the Congress and President pursuant to the Oceans Act of 2000, issued its Preliminary Report in April and is set to release its final report later this summer. The Preliminary Report identifies ocean research and education as a high priority and calls for the doubling of ocean research funding over five years. It also recommends formal ocean research and education programs to cultivate a new generation of ocean scientists, educators, technicians and decision-makers. This bill directly responds to the Ocean Commission's recommendations by establishing ocean research and education priorities both within NOAA and across the federal government. First, the bill establishes a Federal Government-wide Ocean Science Committee to provide advice on ocean science and education to two high- level entities: the existing National Science and Technology Council and the new Council on Ocean Stewardship, to be established by the National Ocean Policy and Leadership Act, which I am also introducing today. A model for such a committee already exists at the NSTC, chaired by NOAA and NSF, and this would further define the Committee's tasks. This Federal Ocean Science Committee would oversee implementation of many cross-cutting ocean science and technology needs, including an integrated ocean and coastal observing system and improved cooperation among Federal agencies. The bill also calls for the development of a government-wide National Strategy for Ocean Science, Education and Technology, which is to include a doubling of the Federal ocean research budget. To assist in meeting this goal, the bill strengthens and focuses the multi-agency National Oceanographic Partnership Program, which is currently chaired by the NOAA Administrator, renaming it the National Ocean Partners Program. The bill also recognizes the need to focus Federal priorities in ocean education by establishing an interagency Ocean Education Program and an Ocean Science and Technology Scholarship Program to recruit and prepare students for ocean-related careers with the Federal Government. I am particularly pleased that the bill specifically addresses NOAA's research and education programs. It directs the NOAA Administrator to prepare a 20-year research plan, as well as a plan for ocean education. Such a long-term vision is necessary to enable the agency to take the federal lead on an effective, integrated and coordinated national ocean research, operations, and management. The Commerce Committee has already taken action on important components of this research program, including S. 1218, the Oceans and Human Health Act, which passed the Senate unanimously earlier this year. The bill also breaks new ground, placing NOAA at the head of a 10- year national marine ecosystem research program patterned on the approach we took in creating the Global Change Research Program. We have immense and critical information needs, specific questions, and management decisions to make concerning our oceans and their resources. Responding to these needs will require a coordinated and focused Federal effort. By pulling together Federal scientific data and expertise on this specific topic, and partnering with the external research community through a research grant program, we can really get some results that will make a difference to Federal and State managers and decision-makers. The bill also promotes and encourages NOAA's ocean education activities, which have been conducted for many years under programs such as the National Sea Grant College Program, the National Marine Sanctuaries Program, the Ocean Exploration Program, and the Educational Partnership Program. It is high time that NOAA fully and publicly take a leadership role in this area, and the bill directs the Administrator to prepare a long-term ocean education plan that will help achieve this goal. It is critically important that we invest in improving our understanding of the oceans, as they are the lifeblood of this planet. No greater resource exists on Earth or in space that has such a tremendous impact on our economy, weather and climate, or our environment and overall quality of life. I hope my colleagues will join me in sponsoring this important piece of legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, today I rise to introduce the National Ocean Policy and Leadership Act, which is co-sponsored by my colleagues Senators Stevens and Inouye. The passage of this bill would mark a brand new day for our oceans and an important new chapter in Federal management of these waters. Our oceans are critical to the economic and environmental security of our Nation. This is why I sponsored the Oceans Act of 2000, along with several of my distinguished colleagues. The Oceans Act created a Commission of national experts to conduct a rigorous assessment of ocean and coastal issues and offer their recommendations for a coordinated national ocean policy. The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, chaired by Admiral James Watkins, released its preliminary report in April and will issue its final report later this summer. The Ocean Commission strongly urged us to pay more attention to our ocean planet. Our oceans cover seven-tenths of the Earth's surface and are home to 80 percent of all life forms on Earth, holding incredible promise of new medicines, technologies, and ecological resources. However, 95 percent of the deep ocean remains unexplored and the Federal government spends only 3.5 percent of its research budget on oceans. Each day, more than 3,000 people move to coastal areas and these population and development pressures are resulting in degraded coastal habitat, polluted estuaries, and an increased risk of damage from coastal storms. Our fish stocks are being depleted, our corals are dying, and the number of oxygen-starved ``dead zones'' in our coastal waters have doubled in the past 15 years. The Ocean Commission appropriately acknowledges the importance of the oceans to our Nation. It champions the notion that major changes are needed now if we are to preserve our marine resources for future generations. Among these urgent changes is a need to invest in ocean research and education in order to lay a foundation for the future. Even more importantly, the report stresses the need to improve the management framework governing our oceans and coasts, starting with the strengthening of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) into the Nation's premier civilian ocean agency. These were some of the themes Admiral Watkins testified to at hearings on the preliminary report before the Committees on Commerce, Science and Transportation and Appropriations Committee on April 22 and 23, 2004. The preliminary recommendations of the Ocean Commission were heard loud and clear in the Senate. I could not be more supportive of the need to strengthen NOAA and improve Federal coordination on ocean and coastal issues. That is why I am pleased to be introducing the National Ocean Policy and Leadership Act today. The National Ocean Policy and Leadership Act provides a vision to guide this Nation's management of the oceans. It outlines a National Ocean Policy that articulates national oceanic and atmospheric policy goals to guide all federal agency activities. These include concepts such as ecosystem-based management, integration of land-water-air activities, and preservation of marine biodiversity. This vision also includes preserving the role of the United States as a global leader in ocean, atmospheric and climate-related activities. The National Ocean Policy and Leadership Act also provides a NOAA Organic Act to strengthen, clarify and codify NOAA's missions. Specifically, it confirms that NOAA is the lead federal agency responsible for oceanic, weather, and atmospheric issues. Consistent with the original recommendations of the 1969 Stratton Commission, the bill also establishes NOAA as an independent agency, and legislatively establishes a coherent and accountable line office structure headed by the NOAA Administrator. As recommended by the Commission, the bill would also encourage NOAA to streamline its line office structure, focus on integrated approaches, and organize its regional activities around common eco-regional boundaries. It also gives NOAA a firm hand in working with other agencies to reduce programmatic overlap, conflict and duplication. Making NOAA independent is a tall order, and has raised questions from some of my colleagues, including those who believe that NOAA should one day be independent. I believe in the long term, the Nation will need an agency dedicated to addressing our oceanic and atmospheric environments--whether an independent NOAA or a Department of the Oceans and Environment. This bill thus provides for a transition period for reorganization of the agency, as well as a Presidential plan for future action. I look forward to working with our Chairman, Senator McCain, and other colleagues on options for moving forward on this bill that will minimize disruption for the agency, but ensure we achieve our shared long-term goal. Strengthening NOAA is only one piece of the puzzle. More than half of the Federal cabinet-level departments, plus four independent agencies, conduct programs or activities that affect oceans and coasts. Title III of the bill establishes formal mechanisms to force Federal agencies to coordinate budgets and programs and work cooperatively on cross-cutting activities that cannot be addressed by a single agency. It establishes a Council on Ocean Stewardship in the White House to bring Federal agencies together. It also adopts the Commission's recommendation of creating a non-Federal Presidential Panel of Advisors on Oceans and Climate to provide advice to the Council and NOAA. This title also sets the stage for future improvements in Federal ocean policy by directing the President to submit a plan to further strengthen NOAA, including elevation of the agency to departmental status and by transferring relevant ocean and atmospheric programs to NOAA. The National Ocean Policy and Leadership Act provides the vision and management framework to guide Federal ocean policy well into the 21st century. The valuable work of the Ocean Commission has provided us with an extraordinary opportunity to re-shape federal ocean policy and meet the challenges that lay before us so that future generations may enjoy the same marine resources we enjoy today. It is critically important that we do not delay implementation of the Commission's recommendations. We can start right now with passage of this bill. I hope our colleagues will join us in co-sponsoring this measure. I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, today I rise to introduce the Ocean Research Coordination and Advancement Act, which is cosponsored by my colleagues Senators Stevens and Inouye. The oceans remain one of the least explored and understood resources on our planet. Our Nation needs a coordinated research and education program staffed by a skilled scientific and technical workforce to further our knowledge of the oceans and ensure their health and vitality well into the future. NOAA, the lead civilian Federal agency for oceanic and atmospheric affairs, is the linchpin to this effort. However, this is also a job that the entire Federal Government must take on, since NOAA will need the cooperation and resources of a variety of other Federal agencies to achieve our common scientific and educational goals. The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, established by the Congress and President pursuant to the Oceans Act of 2000, issued its Preliminary Report in April and is set to release its final report later this summer. The Preliminary Report identifies ocean research and education as a high priority and calls for the doubling of ocean research funding over five years. It also recommends formal ocean research and education programs to cultivate a new generation of ocean scientists, educators, technicians and decision-makers. This bill directly responds to the Ocean Commission's recommendations by establishing ocean research and education priorities both within NOAA and across the federal government. First, the bill establishes a Federal Government-wide Ocean Science Committee to provide advice on ocean science and education to two high- level entities: the existing National Science and Technology Council and the new Council on Ocean Stewardship, to be established by the National Ocean Policy and Leadership Act, which I am also introducing today. A model for such a committee already exists at the NSTC, chaired by NOAA and NSF, and this would further define the Committee's tasks. This Federal Ocean Science Committee would oversee implementation of many cross-cutting ocean science and technology needs, including an integrated ocean and coastal observing system and improved cooperation among Federal agencies. The bill also calls for the development of a government-wide National Strategy for Ocean Science, Education and Technology, which is to include a doubling of the Federal ocean research budget. To assist in meeting this goal, the bill strengthens and focuses the multi-agency National Oceanographic Partnership Program, which is currently chaired by the NOAA Administrator, renaming it the National Ocean Partners Program. The bill also recognizes the need to focus Federal priorities in ocean education by establishing an interagency Ocean Education Program and an Ocean Science and Technology Scholarship Program to recruit and prepare students for ocean-related careers with the Federal Government. I am particularly pleased that the bill specifically addresses NOAA's research and education programs. It directs the NOAA Administrator to prepare a 20-year research plan, as well as a plan for ocean education. Such a long-term vision is necessary to enable the agency to take the federal lead on an effective, integrated and coordinated national ocean research, operations, and management. The Commerce Committee has already taken action on important components of this research program, including S. 1218, the Oceans and Human Health Act, which passed the Senate unanimously earlier this year. The bill also breaks new ground, placing NOAA at the head of a 10- year national marine ecosystem research program patterned on the approach we took in creating the Global Change Research Program. We have immense and critical information needs, specific questions, and management decisions to make concerning our oceans and their resources. Responding to these needs will require a coordinated and focused Federal effort. By pulling together Federal scientific data and expertise on this specific topic, and partnering with the external research community through a research grant program, we can really get some results that will make a difference to Federal and State managers and decision-makers. The bill also promotes and encourages NOAA's ocean education activities, which have been conducted for many years under programs such as the National Sea Grant College Program, the National Marine Sanctuaries Program, the Ocean Exploration Program, and the Educational Partnership Program. It is high time that NOAA fully and publicly take a leadership role in this area, and the bill directs the Administrator to prepare a long-term ocean education plan that will help achieve this goal. It is critically important that we invest in improving our understanding of the oceans, as they are the lifeblood of this planet. No greater resource exists on Earth or in space that has such a tremendous impact on our economy, weather and climate, or our environment and overall quality of life. I hope my colleagues will join me in sponsoring this important piece of legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, today I rise to introduce the National Ocean Policy and Leadership Act, which is co-sponsored by my colleagues Senators Stevens and Inouye. The passage of this bill would mark a brand new day for our oceans and an important new chapter in Federal management of these waters. Our oceans are critical to the economic and environmental security of our Nation. This is why I sponsored the Oceans Act of 2000, along with several of my distinguished colleagues. The Oceans Act created a Commission of national experts to conduct a rigorous assessment of ocean and coastal issues and offer their recommendations for a coordinated national ocean policy. The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, chaired by Admiral James Watkins, released its preliminary report in April and will issue its final report later this summer. The Ocean Commission strongly urged us to pay more attention to our ocean planet. Our oceans cover seven-tenths of the Earth's surface and are home to 80 percent of all life forms on Earth, holding incredible promise of new medicines, technologies, and ecological resources. However, 95 percent of the deep ocean remains unexplored and the Federal government spends only 3.5 percent of its research budget on oceans. Each day, more than 3,000 people move to coastal areas and these population and development pressures are resulting in degraded coastal habitat, polluted estuaries, and an increased risk of damage from coastal storms. Our fish stocks are being depleted, our corals are dying, and the number of oxygen-starved ``dead zones'' in our coastal waters have doubled in the past 15 years. The Ocean Commission appropriately acknowledges the importance of the oceans to our Nation. It champions the notion that major changes are needed now if we are to preserve our marine resources for future generations. Among these urgent changes is a need to invest in ocean research and education in order to lay a foundation for the future. Even more importantly, the report stresses the need to improve the management framework governing our oceans and coasts, starting with the strengthening of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) into the Nation's premier civilian ocean agency. These were some of the themes Admiral Watkins testified to at hearings on the preliminary report before the Committees on Commerce, Science and Transportation and Appropriations Committee on April 22 and 23, 2004. The preliminary recommendations of the Ocean Commission were heard loud and clear in the Senate. I could not be more supportive of the need to strengthen NOAA and improve Federal coordination on ocean and coastal issues. That is why I am pleased to be introducing the National Ocean Policy and Leadership Act today. The National Ocean Policy and Leadership Act provides a vision to guide this Nation's management of the oceans. It outlines a National Ocean Policy that articulates national oceanic and atmospheric policy goals to guide all federal agency activities. These include concepts such as ecosystem-based management, integration of land-water-air activities, and preservation of marine biodiversity. This vision also includes preserving the role of the United States as a global leader in ocean, atmospheric and climate-related activities. The National Ocean Policy and Leadership Act also provides a NOAA Organic Act to strengthen, clarify and codify NOAA's missions. Specifically, it confirms that NOAA is the lead federal agency responsible for oceanic, weather, and atmospheric issues. Consistent with the original recommendations of the 1969 Stratton Commission, the bill also establishes NOAA as an independent agency, and legislatively establishes a coherent and accountable line office structure headed by the NOAA Administrator. As recommended by the Commission, the bill would also encourage NOAA to streamline its line office structure, focus on integrated approaches, and organize its regional activities around common eco-regional boundaries. It also gives NOAA a firm hand in working with other agencies to reduce programmatic overlap, conflict and duplication. Making NOAA independent is a tall order, and has raised questions from some of my colleagues, including those who believe that NOAA should one day be independent. I believe in the long term, the Nation will need an agency dedicated to addressing our oceanic and atmospheric environments--whether an independent NOAA or a Department of the Oceans and Environment. This bill thus provides for a transition period for reorganization of the agency, as well as a Presidential plan for future action. I look forward to working with our Chairman, Senator McCain, and other colleagues on options for moving forward on this bill that will minimize disruption for the agency, but ensure we achieve our shared long-term goal. Strengthening NOAA is only one piece of the puzzle. More than half of the Federal cabinet-level departments, plus four independent agencies, conduct programs or activities that affect oceans and coasts. Title III of the bill establishes formal mechanisms to force Federal agencies to coordinate budgets and programs and work cooperatively on cross-cutting activities that cannot be addressed by a single agency. It establishes a Council on Ocean Stewardship in the White House to bring Federal agencies together. It also adopts the Commission's recommendation of creating a non-Federal Presidential Panel of Advisors on Oceans and Climate to provide advice to the Council and NOAA. This title also sets the stage for future improvements in Federal ocean policy by directing the President to submit a plan to further strengthen NOAA, including elevation of the agency to departmental status and by transferring relevant ocean and atmospheric programs to NOAA. The National Ocean Policy and Leadership Act provides the vision and management framework to guide Federal ocean policy well into the 21st century. The valuable work of the Ocean Commission has provided us with an extraordinary opportunity to re-shape federal ocean policy and meet the challenges that lay before us so that future generations may enjoy the same marine resources we enjoy today. It is critically important that we do not delay implementation of the Commission's recommendations. We can start right now with passage of this bill. I hope our colleagues will join us in co-sponsoring this measure. I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.