Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. INHOFE. Well, Madam President, I will only respond to say that is my observation. I have not been here as long as the Senator has, but every year since I have been here, we have had this vote, and the people up there want us to drill, to explore, to produce. I remember the argument against the Alaska pipeline. They said: Oh, it is going to destroy the caribou. What it has done, if you go up there, as I have been with you at any time during the summer months, the warm months, the only shade the caribou can find is the pipeline. You see them all out there. It has actually had the effect of increasing the breed. But anyway, I keep thinking, if we had followed through with what we are talking about doing back in the middle 1990s, we would now be producing our own energy, producing our own oil, and we would not have these high prices at the pumps.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I would like to recognize Ms. Sandra ``Sandi'' J. Esty, one of our most distinguished civil servants who will retire from Federal service on June 7, 2008, after contributing over 35 years of dedicated service to our country. She serves as the Chief, Air Operations Division, Office of Legislative Liaison, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, the Pentagon, Washington, DC. She is responsible for managing, planning, developing and executing all facets of congressional travel matters for the Department of the Air Force. Ms. Esty also serves as the senior adviser and special assistant to the Director, Legislative Liaison and Air Force leadership with oversight of the Air Force Congressional Travel Program. Ms. Esty left Syracuse, NY, in 1972 to begin her illustrious civil service career as a clerk-stenographer in the Office of the Air Force Reserve, the Pentagon. After demonstrating remarkable competence in working congressional constituent inquiries, she was selected to work Air Force constituent issues in the Secretary of the Air Force Legislative Liaison Inquiry Division, in 1975. She was promoted and served a short tour as the Administrative Assistant for the Secretary of the Air Force Space Systems, Budget Office before being asked to return to the Air Force Legislative Liaison Branch in 1981, this time as the Administrative Assistant to the Chief of Air Operations Division in Legislative Liaison. She was promoted in 1983 and served as Administrative Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Electronic Warfare. In 1985, she returned to Legislative Liaison as the Administrative Assistant to the Director of Legislative Liaison and then was assigned as an action officer in the White House Liaison Branch, Legislative Liaison, where she established herself as one of the top leaders of Legislative Liaison. In 1988, she was promoted and selected as the Deputy Chief, Air Operations Division, Legislative Liaison, and then, in 1997, she was promoted as a GS-15 and continued to serve in her current position as Chief, Air Operations Division. During her tenure in the Air Operations Division, Ms. Esty was responsible for all the travel requirements of Members and staff of Congress arranged by the Air Force. Ms. Esty's calm, logical, thorough method of dealing with unique situations involved some of this country's most important citizens, its legislators. Her true dedication to ``doing it right,'' the absolute insistence on honesty and integrity, and the patience under extreme daily pressure are the standards that Ms. Esty leaves for all those who follow. She coordinated and executed over 10,000 congressional trips worldwide, to include the movement of approximately 70,000 Members and staff of Congress to 193 countries and 7 continents. I personally travelled on many of the trips with the Senate Armed Services delegations that Ms. Esty arranged, coordinated, and flight followed. Each was a complete success. I join my colleagues in expressing our sincere appreciation to Ms. Esty who has provided many years of dedicated and professional service to the Congress and the U.S. Air Force and wish her well in all her future endeavors.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, let me make one observation, that the guest pastor got his training at Rhema Bible College at Broken Arrow, OK. I was mayor of Tulsa, he reminded me, back at that time. So he had good training.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, let me respond, firstly, if I can, to the assistant majority leader. First, it is easy to point the finger at oil companies. That is the easiest ``out,'' because everyone has this perception that all oil companies are doing great. Here is the problem you have. If you were to take all profits from oil companies--let's forget about windfall profits; take it all, do not leave any at all for anything else, other than what they are putting into exploration--it would amount to 28 cents a gallon. If you slashed their profits in half, as they are proposing to do, that would be 14 cents. Fourteen cents does not help a lot, at least my wife says it does not. And I think you know we are kidding ourselves. There are solutions to this problem, but that is not one of them. Then as far as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we are putting about 50,000 barrels per day in there right now. If we were to halt that, over the course of a year it would equal less than one day of U.S. consumption. That is not what I call a fix. Fourteen cents a gallon is not a fix, one day of time is not a fix. But there are some things we can do. We do have an amendment, amendment No. 4720. It is by our leader, Senator McConnell, and by Senator Domenici. This actually was a bill. It was going to be the Domestic Energy Production Act of 2008, but we are offering it now as an amendment. This would handle a lot of the problems. First, if we had all of the production out there that we needed to take care of America's needs, we still could not do anything, because we do not have the refining capacity. Two years ago I introduced the Gas Price Act. I could not believe it went down right on party lines. The Democrats flat do not want to increase our refining capacity. This happened in the Environment and Public Works Committee. It was actually a pretty smart approach to it. We were taking a lot of the closed bases and using them and allowing EDA grants to take place so that adjoining communities could turn those into refineries, and also streamlining the process and all of that. Well, it went right down on party lines. So this amendment we are going to be talking about is one that will do something about the refinery capacity. The one we introduced, the amendment, streamlines the permitting process so there would be a maximum on any new refinery of 360 days on a new refinery or an expansion of 180 days. We have not increased our refining capacity. We have not had a new refinery in 30 years. Other countries are doing it. China is doing it. Mexico is doing it. But we are not. So that is the first thing we need to do, increase refining capacity. Secondly, everybody hold on, because this is something I know is very foreign to our thinking nowadays, it is an old concept called supply and demand. We have a lot of demand for gas out there. We know that. We know when we go to the pump. The problem is the supply. I hate to say it. Is there a chance? I am kind of excited that the public now has the attention of the high prices and realizes we are going to have to do something besides the gimmicks the assistant majority leader talked about. That would be to increase our drilling capacity. We could do it on ANWR. People talk about the fact that this is pristine wilderness. First of all, I challenge anyone to look at this area. It is not a pristine wilderness. The main thing is, if you take that little area that we have, with huge reserves, we have been trying to do something with it. It compares as a postage stamp does to a football field. It is such a small amount. All the Natives there want it. All the Alaskans want it. It is their land. That would be the first thing we should do to increase our capacity. We tried this. We passed this 10 years ago. Then President Bill Clinton vetoed it. If he had not, that would be flowing today. All the people who are complaining about that are the same ones who complained about the Alaska pipeline. They said it was going to kill all the caribou. Go up there now during the summer months, and they have increased the number of caribou up there primarily because in some parts of Alaska, the only shade they can find is the Alaskan pipeline. They are all lined up there. So it is not a problem. The other major area of production potential would be to go offshore. It is interesting. One of the things in this amendment is to allow States to determine what they want to happen offshore. It is interesting, some of the States, such as Virginia, south of where we are standing right now, very much wants to. I have talked to Senator Warner. They are talking about allowing production offshore. Several other States have wanted to do that. It is a wake-up call we have right now that we are going to have to do some of these things. It is interesting that Canada allows offshore drilling in the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Great Lakes. Cuba is also looking to expand drilling, which could occur 45 miles off parts of Florida. If this happened, they would be doing it with technology that is much less environmentally friendly than we have right now. So we have the possibility the Cubans are going to be doing something without any emission controls, without any environmental precautions, and we would be allowing it. Another part of this amendment is to repeal section 526. This is something that should not have been in before. This was actually put in in the Energy bill that was passed in December of 2007. Section 526 prohibits Federal agencies from contracting to produce nonconventional alternative fuels that emit higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions than conventional petroleum sources. The scope of the fuels that could be prohibited is left wide open to interpretation, including fuels such as Canadian oil sands, E85 ethanol, the coal and natural gas-to-liquids fuels. This was an experiment I had something to do with, as did the occupant of the chair, in the Senate Armed Services Committee. We now have a B-52H bomber that is actually running on gas-to-liquid fuel. So we know this is something that works. We know it can help our situation. What I don't have time to get into because I only had 5 minutes, but I wish to do it later, is the ethanol mandate that came with the December of 2007 bill. Right now we know that ethanol--and quite a few of the far-left environmental extremists were behind this thing to start with; in fact, former Senator Al Gore, Vice President Al Gore has stated he cast the deciding vote to allow ethanol in the first place-- is not environmentally sound. It is expensive. It is not good on engines, and it is competing. In my State of Oklahoma, our livestock people say we can't continue to have the biomass fuels competing with our feedstocks. Almost everything you see that is high priced now in the grocery stores you can trace back to the ethanol mandate. One of the things we will be wanting to do--and I will elaborate on it later-- is to exercise the part of that bill that gives the EPA the opportunity to be involved in a waiver of the ethanol mandate. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, as one of the Senate's commercially licensed pilots, I wish to talk about an issue near to my heart-- flying. As many in this Chamber know, I have flown thousands of hours, I attend the well-known AirVenture aviation event in Oshkosh, WI, every year, and I have even recreated Wiley Post's trip around the world. Today, I am here to acknowledge a group of people who share my love of flying--volunteer pilots and nonprofit, charitable associations called Volunteer Pilot Organizations, VPOs, that provide resources to help these self-sacrificing pilots serve people in need. I have introduced an amendment, S.A. 4606, to provide much needed liability protection to these pilots and nonprofit organizations. My legislation is supported by the American Red Cross, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, and many volunteer pilot organizations throughout the Nation. Unfortunately, the majority has used a procedural tactic to restrict my ability to offer this amendment to the bill we are currently debating, the FAA Reauthorization Act. However, I would like to take this opportunity to discuss my amendment and to encourage my colleagues to join me in seeking to pass basic liability protection for volunteer pilots into law at the first opportunity. There are approximately 40 to 50 VPOs in the United States--ranging from small, local groups to large, national associations. Air Charity Network, ACN, is the Nation's largest VPO and has seven member organizations that collectively serve the entire country and perform about 90 percent of all charitable aviation missions in the United States. ACN's volunteer pilots provide free air transportation for people in need of specialized medical treatment at distant locations. They also step in when commercial air service is not available with middle-of-the-night organ transplant patient flights, disaster response missions evacuating special needs patients, and transport of blood or blood products in emergencies. ACN and its more than 8,000 volunteer pilots use their own planes, pay for their own fuel, and even take time from their ``day'' jobs to serve people in need. These Good Samaritans provided charitable flights for an estimated 24,000 patients in 2007 and their safety record is phenomenal. In more than 30 years of service, the pilots of ACN have flown over 250,000 missions covering over 80 million miles and have never had a fatal accident. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, ACN aircraft were the first to be approved to fly in disaster-response teams and supplies. Similarly, in 2005, ACN pilots flew over 2,600 missions after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, reuniting families torn apart by the disaster and relocating them to safe housing. Their service was invaluable to thousands of people. My own State of Oklahoma is served well by a number of volunteer pilot organizations, including Angel Flight South Central and Angel Flight Oklahoma. On a daily basis, they selflessly serve my constituents by flying individuals to get surgeries and treatments. I would like to share comments from two of my constituents with you. Angela Looney, from Norman, OK, says that, ``I could not have received the care I've gotten without Angel Flight. No one in Norman or anywhere in Oklahoma could perform my surgery. I had to get to M.D. Anderson.'' Tonya Dawson, from Broken Arrow, OK, travels with Angel Flight to treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. She reports, ``The pilots are great. I can't say enough good things.'' Despite this goodwill, there is a loophole in the law that subjects these heroes and charitable organizations to frivolous, costly lawsuits. Currently, although volunteer pilots are required to carry liability insurance, if they have an accident, the injured party can sue for any amount of money. It would be up to a jury to decide on an amount. If that amount is higher than the liability limit on a pilot's insurance, then the pilot risks being held personally responsible, potentially bringing him or her financial ruin. Additionally, the cost of insurance and lack of available nonowned aircraft liability insurance for organizations since the terrorist attacks of September 11 prevents VPOs from acquiring liability protection for their organizations, boards, and staff. Without this insurance, if a volunteer pilot were to have an accident using his or her own aircraft, everyone connected to the organization could be subject to a costly lawsuit, despite the fact that none of those people were directly involved with the dispatch of the flight, the pilot's decisions, or the aircraft itself. Exposure to this type of risk makes it difficult for these organizations to recruit and retain volunteer pilots and professional staff. It also makes referring medical professionals and disaster agencies like the American Red Cross less likely to tell patients or evacuees that charitable medical air transportation is available for fear of a liability suit against them. Instead of focusing on serving people with medical needs, these organizations are spending time and resources averting a lawsuit and recruiting volunteers. In order to close this costly loophole, I have introduced Senate amendment 4606. My amendment expands the Volunteer Protection Act of 1997, which was passed into law to increase volunteerism in the United States, to protect from liability volunteer pilot organizations, their boards, paid staff, nonflying volunteers, and referring agencies, should there be an accident. It also provides liability protection for individual volunteer pilots over and above the liability insurance that they are currently required to carry. My amendment will go a long way to help eliminate unnecessary liability risk and allow volunteer pilots and the charitable organizations for which they fly to concentrate on what they do best-- save lives. I ask unanimous consent to have Senate amendment No. 4606 printed in the Record.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I would like to inquire as to how much time I have.

Mr. INHOFE. First of all, let me say to my friend from West Virginia, we have done a good job in the areas you are talking about because it was not too long ago that all the AIP concentration was going to big regionals. Due to our efforts, we now have given greater power to the State aeronautic boards, who have a better idea as to what the needs are in the State of West Virginia, my State of Oklahoma. I think we have come a long way. I would certainly echo what you say. I am a little privileged to be the last active commercial pilot in the Senate, so I take a personal interest in these things. But there is nothing that can help a community be more viable than a good general aviation airport, an airport that can serve the commercial community. In fact, you can look through our State and see where the communities are not doing well and tie that to the capacity they have-- air traffic capacity. So I think we are going to be doing a good thing by addressing that this afternoon. That is not why I am here though.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, we are in the midst of global food difficulties. You have been seeing it on television, and it is the result of decades of misguided environment and energy policies. As worldwide food availability decreases and prices continue to skyrocket, decades of ill-conceived planning by politicians and bureaucrats right here in Washington, afraid of expanding our energy supplies, are now bearing ugly fruit. American families and the international community continue to suffer from these misguided policies, and Washington has to take the first step to begin to address these problems. I think we know what the problem is right now. We have mandated certain things to take place in terms of our fuels, it has had a result of increasing prices of food, but it has another unintended consequence; that is, it is diverting the use of corn to go to fuel as opposed to food. Now, I am here today to demand two dramatic and necessary actions to help mitigate our current biofuel policy blunder. I have always supported all forms of energy, including biofuels, for a diverse and stable energy mix, but currently policy has skewed common sense and violated the principles of sound energy policy. These effects are being felt in my home State of Oklahoma, where I am hearing concerns regarding ethanol. Scott Dewald, with the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association, described one aspect of biofuel's unintended consequences on April 28. He said: Cow-calf producers all the way to the feeding sector are feeling the pinch of high corn prices. Today's biofuels policies have completely ignored the costs to the livestock sector. Now, first, Congress has to revisit the recently enacted biofuel mandate, which can only be described as the most expansive biofuel mandate in our Nation's history. The mandates were part of last year's--it was December it was taken up--Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Congress has to have the courage to address this issue and to address it now, to recognize we made a mistake in December. Second, the EPA--this is something people are not aware of, even though this is mandated. EPA has the Congressionally-given authority to waive all or a portion of these food-to-fuel mandates as part of its rulemaking process. The EPA has to thoroughly review all the options to alleviate the food and fuel disruption of the 2007 Energy bill. A lot of people do not realize and did not think--at the time they thought, well, this is very helpful to the corn States. We all want to help the corn States. My State of Oklahoma also grows corn. But they did not think about the unintended consequences of the cost of all fuel and everything you see on the shelves in the grocery store. Last summer, when I offered an amendment to the Energy bill that would have put in place a stocks-to-use mechanism to provide the EPA Administrator more flexibility in waiver authority in the instance of crop shortages, I was told by the majority whip my amendment was not necessary. Incidentally, The Hill newspaper reported yesterday the same majority whip who said my amendment was not necessary now acknowledges that: U.S. ethanol policies may be partly to blame for a global food crisis threatening to leave millions hungry. I am glad to have his support in this concern I am expressing today. During the 2007 floor debate, he said: There is already a waiver provision in the bill that offers protection to consumers if corn prices or availability become unsustainable. Last June when I offered this amendment, corn was trading at $3.70 a bushel. Less than a year later, corn is now trading at $6 a bushel. Corn prices and availability are now unsustainable. I ask my colleagues who opposed my amendment to now join me in calling for the EPA to exercise its waiver authority provided in the underlying bill. I am working with my colleague from Texas, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, to urge the EPA to take action. Senator Hutchison also announced she is introducing legislation that will freeze the biofuel mandate at current levels, instead of steadily increasing it through 2022. Senator Hutchison correctly noted this is a commonsense measure that will reduce pressure on global food prices and restore balance to America's energy policy. The whole world is now reacting to the consequences of overzealous biofuel mandates. While I supported realistic mandates in the past, I continue to support the development of cellulosic ethanol. I was one of eight Senators who voted against the 2007 Energy bill, with its restrictive biofuel mandates, last December. On Tuesday, December 4, I joined with several Senators, including Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, Ben Cardin, Bernie Sanders, and Susan Collins, in writing a letter to the President to: . . . urge the administration to carefully evaluate and respond to unintended public health and safety risks that could result from the increased use of ethanol as a general purpose transportation fuel. The letter noted the administration had called for a national effort to reduce consumers' demand for gasoline by 20 percent in 10 years, in part through increased use of renewable transportation fuels such as ethanol. Sadly, these onerous biofuel mandates, which would significantly increase renewable fuel use, particularly the use of ethanol over the next two decades, became law. Since December, the world has been confronted with irrefutable evidence that our current biofuels mandates are having massive and potentially life-threatening consequences. Once again, we are reminded how restrictive Government mandates and ill-advised bureaucratic meddling produce unintended consequences. Trying to centrally manage and plan a global food distribution network and economy through clumsy, unrealistically high mandates has been a proven failure. An April 28 article on our current biofuel mandates in the National Review, by Phil Kepren and James Valvo, detailed the mindset of bureaucratic planners. Each new generation of central planners believes the previous generation wasn't smart enough. Yet central economic planning is forever doomed to failure since the approach itself limits human freedom, ingenuity, entrepreneurship, and innovation. To put it in other terms, as Ronald Reagan said: ``The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.'' A large auto manufacturer has erected a billboard for their lineup of so-called eco-friendly cars that run on ethanol that is currently being prominently displayed not far from the Capitol. This advertisement--I saw it yesterday--asks a simple question: ``Why drill for fuel when you can grow it?'' That sounds like a politically correct question, to which the auto company's marketing team must have thought was an obvious answer. Let me allow world leaders and mainstream media outlets, the UN, and former believers in mandated Government standards to further answer the billboard's marketing campaign in no uncertain terms; that is, what the question is: Why drill for fuel when you can grow it? The answer is found in India's Finance Minister's statement he made earlier this month. He said: When millions of people are going hungry, it's a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels. Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said: Food prices were raising the specter of famine in certain countries. A conflict is emerging between foodstuffs and fuel . . . with disastrous social conflicts and dubious environmental results. The United Kingdom Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has called for a reevaluation of biofuels. He said: Now that we know that biofuels, intended to promote energy independence and combat climate change, are frequently energy inefficient we need to look closely at the impact on food prices and the environment of different production methods and to ensure we are more selective in our support. The Scotsman Brown also noted hunger is: the number one threat to public health across the world, responsible for a third of child deaths. Tackling hunger is a moral challenge for each of us. The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, has now called for: an investigation into whether the push for biofuels is to blame for rising food prices. According to an article in the United Kingdom Register, the EU may: cancel its target of requiring 10 percent of petro and diesel to be biofuel by 2020. That is what they are doing in the United Kingdom. Now they recognize they made a mistake. The article explained: Recent weeks have seen riots over food prices in Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia and Mauritania. Rice prices have hit record levels this year and several countries have banned exports. India has renewed a ban on all exports of nonbasmati rice. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon warned in April that high food prices could wipe out progress in reducing poverty and hurt global economic growth. The U.N. Secretary-General said: This steeply rising price of food has developed into a real global crisis. He called for world leaders to meet on an urgent basis. You know, it is funny that I have been quoting the United Nations. I am probably the biggest critic of the United Nations in this Chamber. But I have also been very active over the years in Africa and doing the very thing we are trying to do now, to make sure that fewer people starve to death. The head of the U.N. world food agency summed up global food difficulties this way. He said: A silent tsunami which knows no borders is sweeping the world. On April 25, the U.N. food agency chief, Jacques Diouf, warned of possible civil war in some countries because of global food shortages. I wish to pause a moment and note that some of the rhetoric by the United Nations and others may be a bit over the top and prone to hyped alarmism. I have taken to this Chamber many times to debunk so-called environmental crises and media manipulation of environmental issues. I do not want to now be accused of overhyping our current global food situation. But please do not let over-the-top rhetoric obscure the fact that the world is currently facing a serious biofuel mandates problem and needs remedying. Ironically, the anti-energy environmental left has spent decades worrying over various crises that never seem to materialize. You have to give the environmentalists credit, they may finally get their bona fide crisis, but alas, it will be one created by the very policies they advocated. It is kind of interesting because we can recall the environmentalist community advocating the use of ethanol and the mandates and then not recognizing this creates a greater pollution problem as well as a starvation problem. The most interesting is the mainstream news outlets have now turned on biofuels and, in particular, corn ethanol. Publications that normally uncritically parrot the leftwing environmental agenda are now among the biggest denouncers of our current biofuel policies. The New York Times, for example, has stated: Soaring food prices, driven in part by demand for ethanol made from corn, have helped slash the amount of food aid the government buys to its lowest level in a decade, possibly resulting in more hungry people around the world this year. Time magazine was blunt in an April 7, 2008, article titled ``The Clean Energy Scam,'' by reporter Michael Grunwald, who wrote that our current policies on corn ethanol are ``environmentally disastrous.'' ``The biofuels boom, in short, is one that could haunt the planet for generations--and it's only getting started,'' Grunwald wrote. Time magazine also featured Tim Searchinger, a Princeton scholar and former Environmental Defense attorney who said: People don't want to believe renewable fuels could be bad. But when you realize we're tearing down rain forests that store loads of carbon to grow crops that store much less carbon, it becomes obvious. Time magazine also said the rising prices were ``spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon [rain forest] at an increasingly alarming rate.'' Former CBS newsman Dan Rather has also weighed in. Rather wrote on April 27: When more acreage is devoted to corn for ethanol, less is available for food production. In this case I agree with Dan Rather. He said: Here in the United States, food is less often a matter of life and death, but it is putting an additional dangerous strain on families who are already struggling to get by in a faltering economy. Rather added: Already there are reports of charitable food pantries unable to meet the needs of those they serve. The New York Sun put it bluntly about the impact of our policies: ``Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World.'' That was an article on April 21. A 2007 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development concluded that biofuels ``offer a cure [for oil dependency] that is worse than the disease.'' Other organizations have weighed in. The National Academy of Sciences conducted a study finding corn-based ethanol may strain water supplies. The American Lung Association has raised air pollution concerns from the burning of ethanol in gasoline. Cornell ecology professor David Pimental called our current ethanol policy a ``boondoggle.'' Pimental said: It does require 30 [percent] more energy oil equivalents to produce a gallon of ethanol than you actually get out, and it causes a lot of severe environmental problems. This is very significant. It takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. No one ever talked about that last December. Friends of the Earth has urged the UK to abandon its current biofuel targets, which I believe they are now doing. Food campaigner Vicky Hird from Friends of the Earth said: [UK Prime Minister] Gordon Brown is right to be concerned about the impact of biofuels on food prices and the environment. Evidence is growing that they cause more harm than good. Food production must be revolutionized to prevent a global catastrophe. Jane Goodall, the internationally famous primate conservationist, warned about biofuels and the impact on the rain forests in Asia, Africa, and South America: We're cutting down forests now to grow sugar cane and palm oil for biofuels. She said this in September of last year. The group, Clean Air Task Force, recently reported that nearly 12 million hectares of peat land in Indonesia has been converted to accommodate a palm oil plantation. The land was reportedly drained, cleared, and burned for conversion to a plantation. Even Miles O'Brien of CNN, a man of whom I have been harshly critical, and yet a man I consider to be a good friend in spite of our honest differences of opinion, and I are together on this issue. He reported on CNN on February 21: If every last ear of corn in America were used for ethanol, it would reduce our oil consumption by only 7 percent. He is right. O'Brien also reported: Corn ethanol is not as clean, efficient, or practical as politicians claim. I agree with this. I am glad to find something on which my good pilot friend and I can agree. Lester Brown, who has been dubbed ``the guru of the environmental movement,'' has added his voice in opposition to our current biofuels policies. Brown cowrote, on April 22: It is in this spirit that today, Earth Day, we call upon Congress to revisit recently enacted Federal mandates requiring the diversion of foodstuffs for production of biofuels. Brown wrote that our current biofuel mandate was ``causing environmental harm and contributing to a growing global food crisis.'' Brown continued: Turning one-fourth of our corn into fuel is affecting global food prices. U.S. food prices are rising in twice the rate of inflation, hitting the pocketbook of lower income Americans and people living on fixed incomes. America must stop contributing to food price inflation through mandates that force us to use food to feed our cars instead of to feed people. Brown concluded: It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel mandates have failed. Congress took a big chance on biofuels that, unfortunately, has not worked out. Now, in the spirit of progress, let us learn the appropriate lessons from this setback, and let us act quickly to mitigate the damage and set upon a new course that holds greater promise for meeting the challenges ahead. I agree. Not very often do we agree, but I do agree with that because there is something we can do about this. When you have Lester Brown, Miles O'Brien, Dan Rather, Time magazine, the New York Times, the United Nations, and Jim Inhofe all in agreement on changing an environmental policy, you can rest assured the policy is horribly misguided. All of these publications and individuals now realize the pure folly of the Federal Government's biofuel mandate. You might ask, how did we get here? I would say, when the Republicans were the majority party, I was the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. I worked successfully with my colleagues to create a comprehensive yet measured approach. The result of this work, the Reliable Fuels Act, was ultimately incorporated into the 2005 Energy bill. This original renewable fuels standard--that is, the RFS-- took a commonsense approach in that it prescribed just 4 billion gallons of renewable fuels in 2006, growing to a feasible 5.5 billion gallons in 2012. This low rampup allowed time and flexibility for the many foreseen and unforeseen challenges likely to surface with the implementation of such a program. Under my leadership, the committee held at least 13 hearings on the RFS program, examining issues from the future of transportation fuels to the most recent and, unfortunately, last oversight hearing in September 2006 which highlighted the implementation of the RFS program. However, despite the enormous amount of attention and the eventual legislative enactment of that now greatly expanded RFS program, the EPW Committee has failed to hold even one hearing on RFS this Congress. This morning I challenged the chairman of that committee. I am still ranking member, but I challenged Chairman Boxer to hold such a hearing. Despite the EPW Committee's failure to conduct any oversight, by 2007 it had become increasingly clear that to double the RFS mandate into a shorter timeframe would prove reckless and premature. Yet many in Congress refuse to acknowledge the many warning signs. The 2007 Energy bill mandated 36 million gallons of biofuels by 2022. Of this, 15 billion gallons are now required from corn-based ethanol by just 2015. Washington was abuzz last year with talk of energy independence, cutting our reliance on foreign sources of energy, increasing supplies of fuels, investing in biofuels, lowering the price of energy, especially prices at the pump--all fine goals. Yet this Congress's actions didn't meet its rhetoric. I believe a secure energy supply has to be grounded in three principles: stability, diversity, and affordability. Our policies have to promote domestic energy production, including oil, gas, nuclear, corn, as well as renewable fuels. I have said this over and over. We need all of the above to meet the energy crisis in America. What the Democrats and the green movement failed to understand is environmental regulations are not free. They have a very real price. We should be producing more fuel at home. It is good for our security, good for jobs, good for consumers. Working with Congressman Frank Lucas, I sponsored and secured Senate passage of the first national transitional assistance program to help farmers grow dedicated energy crops for cellulosic biofuels. This measure is vital to the development of cellulosic biofuels in the United States because it would encourage U.S. agricultural producers within a 50-mile radius of a cellulosic biorefinery to produce nonfood energy crops for clean burning fuel. In addition, I am proud of the research taking place in my State of Oklahoma. It is being done by the Noble Foundation and its partners. By focusing on cellulosic ethanol, we can stimulate a biofuels industry that doesn't compete with other domestic agriculture. Since you can grow it all over the country--and that is not to be said about corn-- you avoid the transportation problems of Midwest-focused ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol can increase both energy and economic security. Washington has a long way to go to get energy policy right. The future of energy is going to require a wide variety of fuels and approaches. We all need to work together to achieve our common goals. The only way they can defeat us is to divide and conquer. We have seen examples of that recently. But we all need to work together. I call on all of my colleagues today to set aside our differences and work together for an abundant, secure, and environmentally sound energy policy. It is worth repeating that when you have Lester Brown, Miles O'Brien, Dan Rather, Time magazine, New York Times, the United Nations, and Jim Inhofe all in agreement on changing an environmental policy, you can rest assured that the policy is horribly misguided. All of these publications and individuals now realize the pure folly of the Federal Government's current biofuel mandates. Once again, I call on Congress to revisit the enactment of this mandate. Secondly, what we have to do--and I still am the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee which has jurisdiction over the EPA--is to call upon EPA to put a stop to the mandate now. It can be done while they are trying to determine what effect this has on our food supplies. The only way to do it is to stop the mandate while the review is taking place. People are starving to death because of this transfer from food to fuel. As the ranking member of the EPW Committee, which has jurisdiction, I am going to ask for an immediate waiver to stop this mandate. I yield the floor to my good friend from Kansas who agrees with everything I just said.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I think we have talked enough on this bill. Everyone knows what it is. We have to get our road construction programs going. We cannot do it without an ``aye'' vote on this motion. I urge you to vote aye. Cloture Motion

Mr. INHOFE. We are ready.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I agree with the comments made by the chairman. It is my understanding we are down to maybe three amendments. I have talked to Senator Coburn, who has an amendment, as well as Senator Bond. It is my hope that Senator DeMint will be able to present his amendment. Then it is my understanding we will hold votes until early this afternoon and maybe try to get some of the others out of the way. Being a conservative, I want to make sure everybody understands: A technical corrections bill is always necessary when we have a major reauthorization of transportation. There are some things in here that are borderline. One case, in my State of Oklahoma, in Durant, I mistakenly said 200 yesterday, but it is $300,000 on a road program that the Department of Transportation came back and said: We thought we were ready for this, but we are not. But we are, on down the road in Idabel. It is common sense that that is where it should be done. It is the same amount of money. I agree with the principle behind the amendment of the Senator from South Carolina, but in this case we have to have the technical corrections bill in order to go forward with a lot of the projects that have been authorized since 2005. I am hopeful we will be able to proceed along those lines. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I will just be a moment. I see the Senator from Florida wants the floor. But let me, first of all, say that this is right. In my State of Oklahoma, we had some things for which it took 7 years for this bill to come into reality. The reauthorization is something we should do every other year, but we did not do it. When you pass a bill of this magnitude--and, look, I have to say there is no one person in this body of 100 Senators who is more conservative than I am. That is what all the ratings say. ACLU has me as No. 1. So it is not a matter of conservative versus liberal. This is a matter of doing what we are supposed to do. We are supposed to defend America. We are supposed to work on the infrastructure. We have been doing it since the National Highway System came into effect back in the Eisenhower administration. But I had two changes that were in my bill. I had a light signalization that was meant to take place in Tulsa, OK. This is a modernization, using new technology. However, in the original bill, it said ``Oklahoma.'' It did not say ``Tulsa, OK,'' when clearly that was our intent. So the Department of Transportation of Oklahoma said: Put in ``Tulsa'' so we know where that belongs. The other one, which I have already mentioned, was the $300,000 for a project. Actually, it was a feasibility study in Durant, OK, in southern Oklahoma. Then they found out later that you are better off doing it down the road from there in Idabel. Consequently, if we are forced not to be able to make that technical correction, we would be forced to spend $300,000 on something we are not ready to do. So the important thing to get across to people is that this technical corrections bill does not increase the total amount of authorizations that are taking place right now from the 2005 bill. It is the same amount. I do not want people to think it is not, because it is, and that is an irrefutable fact. I kind of agree with the chairman of the committee when she talks about that this will kill the bill. It would if it went back and they could not move it, the House would not accept this. This is one of the most difficult things to deal with when we are doing the authorization bill because every time we finally get an agreement here, we have to go over there and get the same thing--Democrats and Republicans here and Democrats and Republicans there. I just don't want to put ourselves in a position where we send anything over there that could kill this bill because this is necessary to finally finish the implementation of the 2005 Transportation authorization bill. So with that, I will yield the floor, and I will have more to say later.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, we talked about this before. First of all, I am coming from a very conservative perspective. Looking at this and also looking at the infrastructure needs we have, we want to make sure the technical corrections bill is not killed because that will stop all the activity going on that is so desperately needed in South Carolina as well as the rest of the country. There is no increase in the technical corrections bill in the amount of authorization. That is very important for people to know. We talk about projects and assume they are projects that were not considered before. The top line is an amount of authorization that is the same. It has not increased at all. So I contend, with all due respect to one of my closest friends and fellow conservatives, that the conservative position is to stay with the technical corrections bill.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I have 1 minute to respond.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, today I wish to honor Jennifer Joy Wilson. For the past decade, Ms. Wilson has served first as the head of the National Stone Association, and then after the merger of two similar groups, as the president and CEO of the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association, NSSGA. Based in Alexandria, VA, NSSGA is the world's largest mining association by product volume. Its member companies represent more than 90 percent of the crushed stone and 70 percent of the sand and gravel produced annually in the United States and approximately 118,000 working men and women in the aggregates industry. During 2006, a total of about 2.95 billion metric tons of crushed stone, sand and gravel, valued at $21 billion, were produced and sold in the United States. This year Ms. Wilson has been given the distinguished honor of being selected as AggMan of the Year by Aggregates Manager magazine, one of the construction aggregates industry's leading trade publications. During her tenure, the NSSGA led an effort to improve employee safety in the aggregate industry by developing new safety procedures, called Part 46, for the U.S. Mine Safety & Health Administration, MSHA. The joint industry-labor effort produced a proposal ``that would apply better to our industry and provide managers and workers with effective means to prevent accidents and fatalities.'' By all accounts, Part 46 has shown remarkable success in reducing employee injuries. On February 11, 2003, an alliance between NSSGA and MSHA was announced. Signed at the NSSGA's Centennial Convention in Orlando, FL, the agreement calls for the two bodies to work closely together on the promotion of safe working conditions, the development of effective miner training programs, and the expansion of the mine safety and health outreach and communication. ``For the first time ever, MSHA and an industry association have jointly agreed to adopt safety and health performance goals with objective measures,'' then MSHA Administrator Dave Lauriski said during that meeting. ``This alone is unprecedented . . . NSSGA is again showing its leadership.'' On the environmental front, Ms. Wilson led the industry in investing in a study ``righting an assumption we just didn't believe was right.'' Through the efforts of the association and its members, it was determined that the aggregates industry is not a major emitter of PM- 10--a particular type of air pollutant. The final regulations reflected the investment by the industry in recognizing that aggregate operations are not a major source of coarse particulate matter. Considering almost half of all crushed stone, sand and gravel produced in the United States is used for building the Nation's transportation infrastructure, Ms. Wilson has led her members in establishing a strong grassroots presence connecting the industry's workforce with their elected officials while increasing their activity on Capitol Hill. Leveraging the association's resources, Ms. Wilson has also worked closely with industry coalitions to advocate for sound and sensible transportation policies. Ms. Wilson has also worked to raise awareness of the public, legislators, and of regulators at all levels to the immeasurably important role aggregates play in maintaining America's high quality of life. She calls this effort ``romancing the stone'' which includes her leadership in establishing The Rocks gallery at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and creating a permanent endowment to support the gallery, all totaling more than $3.1 million. Many people have been able to take credit for industry accomplishments, but selection as AggMan of the Year denotes something not everyone can lay claim to--respect of one's peers. For this reason I stand here today to take a moment and congratulate a woman who has done so much for America and the good people in the aggregates industry all the while earning their respect.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the committee. This is something we have spent a long time on. I think it is very important for all of us on both sides of the aisle to understand that what we are considering here is not the transportation reauthorization bill of 2005. That was done. That is history. That is behind us. A technical corrections bill is common with every bill, every major piece of legislation that comes along. Sometimes in the case--I will go ahead and say in my case of Oklahoma, we had a major project that was about a $200,000 project in Durant, OK in which, according to our transportation commissioner and the Transportation Department of Oklahoma, that same amount of money could be better spent doing the same project but at another location. Well, that takes a technical change. There is no difference. I say to all of my good friends, there is no one who is more conservative than I am by all ratings in my last 22 years in both the House and the Senate. There are no new projects. There is no new spending. The amount of money that was authorized is the same amount of money that is authorized at the present time in the technical corrections bill. So it is not somehow getting some kind of an earmark or something else in it. I have often said that of all of the systems we use in Washington to accomplish things, probably the transportation system is the best. I don't know of anyone who complains about paying into the highway trust fund when they get gasoline. They want to be sure it is going to go to building highways, repairing bridges. But what we do in the State of Oklahoma is we have eight transportation districts, eight transportation commissioners, all geographically located. They make recommendations. What I do with a transportation bill is I leave it up to them to make the determination as to where that goes. The States are making those decisions. The highway trust fund--there are some States where the money doesn't go straight into transportation. They have been robbing balances of the highway trust fund for as long as I know. We have corrected that problem in the State of Oklahoma. Instead of having it go to other causes, it goes to correcting the crisis we are in right now. I wish to say that for those of us who are conservatives, this is something that works well. If there is any function of government that needs to be addressed and has to be addressed at the Federal level, it is our roads and highways. We have States such as Montana, big States that have very few people. You still have to get across them. You have the congested eastern States that have the opposite situation. That is why way back in the Eisenhower administration they decided to go in together and create this system we still have today. It is one that has worked fairly well. I don't want people out there to think this is something that has a bunch of projects and a bunch of earmarks in it. It doesn't. This is something we spent 2 or 3 years intensively working on prior to its passage in 2005. Now we want to make these corrections to make sure the rest of the projects get done. Here is the dilemma we have right now. We have a lot of projects--not nearly enough but a lot of projects--that we authorized in 2005. If we don't have technical corrections, we are up against the wall now where we can't get anything more done, and we have given our word to people all throughout the country that we are going to improve bridges, we are going to try to save lives, and it has virtually stopped because we have certain corrections that need to be made. What we dealt with on that very large, what was it, $286 billion over the period of 2005 through 2009, which is a lot of money, that doesn't do anything more--it doesn't even maintain what we already have. We don't even have a lot of new stuff in there. There is not a person in America who doesn't know we have a crisis. Some of these Members of this committee or this body, if you don't think it is a crisis, call your wife at home, or your husband, and they will tell you it is a crisis. It is worse every year. It is not something that we can make a decision today and all come to our good senses and get it done and it will be done tomorrow. It is a long lead time. It is a complicated process. But it is one of the things that has worked well. I know there are a lot of people who want to satisfy some constituency that says you are spending too much money. You tell that constituency to go out and drive in the traffic for a while and see what kind of serious problems we have. I have often said--and I have followed this myself--we all in this body have different priorities. That is what makes it a representative body. I have often said we need to, No. 1, take care of our Nation's security, have a military that can defend our country; No. 2, take care of the infrastructure we have and move forward with that; and No. 3, which is kind of a pet thing with me, and I think everyone who has previously been a mayor of a major city--unfunded mandates is another area that I feel this governing body should be paying attention to. But we have a bill. We have a bill that is working now. We are improving highways. We are adding lanes. But we have come to a stop. I think anyone who tries to keep this from becoming a reality doesn't want to address a serious problem we are faced with. No one else is going to do it for us. The States can't do it. It has to be done by the Federal Government. We passed a bill. We are going to be coming up against another bill next year when this runs out in 2009. We are going to be reauthorizing for the next 5 years or 7 years or maybe even longer. But this has to be done and we need to get it done now. We do have several amendments. I understand the concern of the Senator from South Carolina who has made his statements, and he has done so very eloquently. Frankly, I agree with almost everything he says. The only thing I disagree with is that this bill isn't creating new projects, isn't spending new money. We need, in his State as well as my State and in all 50 States, to get on with this. I hope people realize these are not new projects; it is not an increase in spending. It doesn't spend at all; it is an authorization bill. Another amendment that is going to be pending is that of my good friend Senator Bond from Missouri. He has a special concern, and I encourage him to come down to the floor to bring it up, debate it, and let's vote on it and get that done. Then my junior Senator has a concern over something that is a process that happened--it didn't even happen here, but it happened in the other body. Now, I agree with him, it is something that was egregious and needs to be investigated. I think it should be. I think there are a lot of different ways of doing it. I want to join hands with him and get this done. So we, to my knowledge, only have those three things that are out there that are holding this up. I would invite those three authors to come down. I think while we are not going to be having votes tonight, we can start debating these tonight, and tomorrow morning we could actually vote on some of these. But I agree with the chairman of the committee, Senator Boxer, and the majority and the minority leaders in this body that we need to get it done. We are not going to get it done until we get the amendments down here, debate them, and decide what is the will of this body. That is what we are supposed to be doing for a living around here. That is what happens. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I neglected to mention that when we went through this long and arduous legislation initially, there are probably not two Members of the Senate who are more opposed to each other philosophically than the two of us, Senator Boxer and myself. But we recognize that the process we used is one that is fair. We developed criteria. There are projects in here that met the criteria. Some of them I would oppose personally, but nonetheless, you have to come up with a bill if you are going to have roads to travel and infrastructure to serve this great Nation. I compliment Senator Boxer in working with me on some of the problems I had initially with this bill.

Mr. INHOFE. Let me use some of the time for the issue at hand. First of all, I wish to talk about the technical corrections bill that is going to be voted on in about 15 minutes--not the bill but the motion to proceed to the bill. The Transportation bill that we are involved in, that Senator Boxer and I were involved in back in 2005, that we passed August 10 of 2005, authorized $286 billion in transportation and infrastructure spending for fiscal years 2005 through 2009. Now, let me say that as a conservative standing here, that is a huge number. I think that may have been the largest nondefense spending bill at the time up to that time. But it is interesting that if we spend all of that, it is not going to even maintain what we have today. That is why we put into the bill a committee to look into new ways of funding infrastructure, new ways of funding transportation. We have been doing it the same way since President Eisenhower, and it is time we tried something different. I think there is a resistance to continuing to increase taxes as the only way of funding our infrastructure. Included in the bill are recommended technical changes from the Department of Transportation that address functional problems in implementing the bill, technical changes to safety products which will continue to be delayed from breaking ground due to simple drafting errors and descriptions. Furthermore, universities and other transportation research entities will not receive their fully intended funding, and the States will be unable to use millions of dollars in transportation funds that were authorized 3 years ago. Something that is interesting, the bill does not increase the overall size of SAFETEA. I have heard a lot of people say: Well, this is a big spending bill. First of all, it is not a spending bill, it is an authorizing bill. But the technical corrections are also an authorization. Now, it is my understanding, and I believe it is true, that the total amount of authorization that was in the bill itself is not changed by the technical corrections bill. A lot of people are implying it is. I do not believe it is. We have had staff and ourselves looking at it. It may change some of the priorities in the authorization, but the overall figure, the top line, is going to be the same. Several of my colleagues have approached me recently with additional project fixes. In some cases, I have had to say no to their requests because they either submitted them too late to be considered in our negotiations with the House--the request went beyond the scope of a technical fix--or because the proposed fix was to a House project which the House objected to. Let's keep in mind, we have two Houses working on this. We have the Senate and the House of Representatives. This is a difficult type of legislation to get passed. But one thing you can't do is start making changes and anticipate that the House is going to go along with those changes, because I can tell my colleagues, they will not do it. Our House colleagues have passed this bill several times, but each time it comes over to the Senate it has been held up. The bill before us, along with the manager's substitute amendment, is the commutation of negotiations between the House and the Senate. Any changes to the bill at this point will require the concurrence of the House or the bill will not proceed. Therefore, I ask my colleagues to understand that if they are planning on filing an amendment before the chairman and I can agree to it, we need to determine if our counterparts in the House would find it to be agreeable. I suggest they probably will not. I heard about an hour ago, when I arrived in Washington, that it might be that the administration could have some objections. I am having a hard time understanding how that could be. First, they supported the bill. They signed the bill when it first passed in August of 2005. Technical corrections is a common thing. It does not have a net increase in authorizations. I can't see why it would be. I understand there would be one provision having to do with rapid transit that would not be in our committee. It was not in the committee chaired by Senator Boxer and formerly chaired by me. It is in the Banking Committee. So we want to look at that. If that is the objection, I certainly believe we can talk to the administration and keep them from opposing it. We have some amendments that have been discussed. I have not been here long enough to find out this week if people are going to come forward with their amendments. My junior Senator, Mr. Coburn, makes a very good point on a project down in Florida called Coconut Road, that there have been some problems. Apparently, all those have been corrected. The only thing I wish to talk to my junior Senator about is if he wants to examine this, investigate this, that is a good idea. It is already being done. However, we have enough committees and commissions around this place, thousands of them. I am not sure we need another one. That is something we might want to debate. I know Senator Bond has an amendment that he has discussed. I look forward to visiting with him. Any of these amendments, yes, we want to talk about them. But keep in mind, we do have this commitment that we have a technical corrections bill that has to pass or we cannot implement those provisions that otherwise are going to allow us to correct some of the problems we have. Again, here I am, a conservative, saying this is not adequate, what we have done today. We have another one that should be coming up next year. Hopefully, it will. Sometimes it doesn't happen like it should. But in the meantime, I want that committee that is supposed to be examining the way we have historically funded roads and highways and infrastructure to come up with some ideas. There are experiments in different States right now. But we will have to recognize the fact that this country has got to have infrastructure for it to survive. In conclusion, I assure my colleagues that I appreciate their responsiveness to our numerous requests to advise the committee of their requests, thereby assisting us to help them. If we were unable to satisfactorily address their concerns in this bill, there will be additional opportunities do so when we reauthorize SAFETEA, and that reauthorization should be under way next year. With that, I hope those who object to this will at least let us proceed to this bill. Then we can look at it and see if there are any of the amendments that we feel would not violate the agreement between the Senate and House and would have the effect of killing the whole bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for a moment?

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, let me say I do agree with what Senator Boxer says, although it is a little bit more than that. Not only does it not spend more, it doesn't authorize more. I think that is very important for people to understand. There is some confusion from some things I have read in different publications that make it appear that we have increased the authorization. Some things have been moved around, but the bottom line is it has remained unchanged. The other thing that is important to repeat is that as big as this bill was, the 2005 bill we are scheduled to get into again next year, in 2009, it still doesn't take care of the problem. We have a problem in this country with the $286 billion figure; it doesn't even maintain what we have today. That is critical. I am hoping the committee that was established for the purpose of exploring new ways of funding transportation will come up with something a little more creative than they have so far because we are not going to be able to do it just by redoing and expanding what Eisenhower started many years ago. So we need to have this bill in order to go ahead and finish the projects that we have authorized and that are paid for at this time, and we won't do it unless we can pass this bill. So I hope anyone--I would agree with Senator Boxer--anyone with amendments, let's bring them down and talk about them, and I am available to talk, and I am doing that as we speak. I have spoken with a couple of Members who have talked about an amendment. So if you have any amendments, bring them down so Senator Boxer and I can visit with you about the amendments. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, having returned a few days ago from my 14th trip in the area, I think it is particularly meaningful to remember the life and sacrifice of a remarkable young man, Army Staff Sergeant Christopher Hake. Chris died on the 23rd of March, 2008, of injuries he sustained when an IED detonated near his Bradley fighting vehicle in Baghdad, Iraq. Chris grew up in Enid, OK, with two sisters, Shannon and Keri, and two brothers, Zachary and Skylar. I was in Enid yesterday. I looked around and I could see the area, the type of place where Chris grew up. He spent his time, as most Oklahoma boys did, attending school, playing ball, driving his car, spending time with family and friends, and going to church. His strong faith in Jesus matured during his time at Oklahoma Bible Academy. While there, he became very involved in his youth group and traveled to Mexico on a mission trip. Unsure of what he wanted to do after graduating from Oklahoma Bible Academy, Chris enlisted in the Army in 2000. Chris excelled during basic training in Fort Benning and was selected to serve as a member of the ``Old Guard''--one of the oldest and most respected infantry regiments in the U.S. Army. As a member of the Old Guard, Chris was responsible for guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery and escorting deceased Army servicemembers to their final rest in the ``Garden of Stone,'' as Arlington is sometimes called. While serving in the Old Guard unit, the Pentagon was attacked on September 11. Chris was immediately called upon to clear the Pentagon after the attack. This solidified Chris's commitment to the fight for freedom in the world and to protect the people of America. He saw that opportunity in Iraq. In 2004, Chris transferred to the 4th Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, GA. While home during the summer of 2004, he met Kelli Short and it was love at first sight. They married on 21 December 2004, and Chris deployed on his first Iraq tour in January. Chris was disillusioned after his first tour, feeling many of the decisions being made back in DC were negatively impacting their ability to accomplish the mission. I know this is true because I talked to the troops when I was over there on the 14 trips I have made. As we speak, in the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Petraeus is telling us the truth about what is happening over there. Chris returned to Fort Stewart after his year in Iraq, and on October 14, 2006, Kelli gave birth to Gage Christopher Michael Hake. Chris was both a loving husband and a proud father. His focus and love was his family--spending time with them, playing games with them, sitting for hours just to be with them, working on their house together. Chris returned to Iraq on his second tour in October of 2007. He fought back his emotions as he said goodbye to his 1-year-old son, but he knew what he had to do and why. He loved serving his country. Once in Iraq again, Chris saw a difference in the mission and what was happening with the Iraqi people. During his second tour, Chris said he knew he should be there and talked of the love of the Iraqi people for him and the troops. Pete Hake, Chris's father, remembered him saying: ``You couldn't pay me to come home early.'' That is the kind of dedication Chris and so many others have. On Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008, Chris Hake tragically died of injuries he sustained when an IED detonated near his vehicle in Baghdad. Three other soldiers of his battalion and under his command were killed alongside Chris. Chris's father recounted that Chris had said, ``They would die for each other,'' and they did. They gave the ultimate sacrifice in serving their country. In a recent e-mail to his mom and dad, he said he wanted to dedicate his second tour in Iraq to becoming a closer follower of Jesus. Chris wrote: If anything were to happen to me, Gage would always be able to know that his father died so he could live in peace. I know Jesus did the same for me, so it is comforting. I don't have a nervous bone in my body this time. I am more at peace than I have been my whole life. On March 31, Chris returned to Oklahoma and was greeted by an honor guard from Fort Sill, members of the Patriot Guard Riders motorcycle group, Airmen from Vance Air Force Base, and a mass of fellow Oklahomans to honor this American hero. It was obvious he held the respect of so many, and he was a beloved son, father, and husband. I read through some of the comments written in Chris's online guest book, and I would like to share a few of these with you: Thank you for your sacrifice--my children will know what men like you have done for them. I am the mom of a soldier serving in Iraq and just wanted to tell you how proud I am of your son, husband, and daddy. Know that 1st Squad will always maintain and exceed the standards you have set. We miss you. I read through all of the entries and cried. I hope it is comforting to know that there are so many of us praying for you. John 15:13--Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. The ``Spartans'' will keep you close to our hearts forever in time. Thank you for being my son. Thank you for Gage, a little copy of you. Thank you for fighting and making a stand. Goodbye, my son, my baby boy, my U.S. soldier, my pride and joy. Today, we remember Staff Sergeant Chris Hake, a young man who loved his family and loved his country. Chris was doing the Lord's work, and the Lord is richly blessing him now. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first, I associate myself much with the remarks of Senator McConnell. Serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee and having been in that theater more than any other Member from the very beginning, it is so obvious to see what the cost of defeat would be. When you look at Iran and Ahmadinejad saying that if the Americans cut and run, ``there will be a void and we will fill that void,'' it would be a disaster for freedom and that would bring the fight from over there over to our soil. We cannot let that happen.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Illinois for his cooperation. As I said, if we have any other Members of our side who wish to come down and talk about this, there was that length of time set aside. So I reserve that time for anybody else who wants to speak. If anybody is listening and they wish to use some of this 30 minutes, they are welcome to do it. I returned 2 days ago from Iraq. It is my 18th trip in the area, in the theater. Sometimes it was Afghanistan and other areas, but it was in that zone there. I wished to take this opportunity to kind of show where we are today, how we got here, and where we are going to go. Some good things are happening over there. A lot of people don't believe it, and some people don't want to believe it. The first thing I wish to do is try to give an indication as to where we started and how this whole thing started. We keep hearing quotes from people--and misquotes--such as General Cody. He is very certain the Army--even though it is stressed--the soldiers themselves are in a position to continue as they have been. But there is a problem. I think the world needs to know how we got into this problem in the first place. It began in the 1990s during the Clinton administration. I have a chart. When I make this statement, people tend not to believe it is true. At that time, we downgraded the military, during those 8 years in the 1990s, by approximately $412 billion. If you look at where we were during the beginning of the Clinton administration, that would be this black line on the chart. If you merely put into this chart the inflation rate and kept the funding of the military at a constant level, it would be this black line. However, the red line down here was the Clinton budget. The budget came in--if you added up all 8 years--at $412 billion below what the static budget would have been with inflation added. I say that, and it sounds a little bit like something people are hearing for the first time. Yet it should not be the first time. I know there wasn't one month that went by in the 1990s that I didn't come down to the Senate floor and say this euphoric attitude that the Cold War is over and we don't need a military anymore is something that is going to come back to haunt us. Well, it has come back to haunt us. This is the problem we have. It is very much like during the Carter administration in the 1970s, when President Ronald Reagan inherited a hollow force when he took office. It was. When you are decreasing the funding of the military over 8 years, you are dropping behind in your modernization program, and it means your force strength will be dropped, and it was a downgrading of about 40 percent. One of the things that concerned me at that time was there is this feeling among the American people that we have the best of everything; that when our kids go into combat, they are armed and equipped with the very best equipment that is out there. Unfortunately, that is not true. It should be true. I think the American people would demand--if they knew we were having these problems--that we would give our kids the very best of everything. I have always been very appreciative of GEN John Jumper, who, in 1998, might been the Vice Chief of the Air Force. He stood up and said Russia was making a strike vehicle--he was referring to the SU-25 and SU-30 vehicles--and selling them all over the world to countries such as China, or potential adversaries, which are better than our best strike vehicles, the F-15 and the F-16. In some areas, they were better. He talked about the stealth capabilities of what the Russians were making as opposed to what we had. At that time, there was one sale of around 240 of these vehicles to the Chinese. So they had equipment that was better than ours. Another example is the NLOS cannon. This is the best thing we have. The Paladin is World War II technology. With the Paladin, after every shot of this cannon, you have to swab the breach. You saw pictures of this in prior wars. But this isn't acceptable because there are five countries making a better one than we are making, including South Africa. So what we have been attempting to do, after this period of time was over, was to start upgrading, modernizing, and increasing the force strength and capability of our American military. Nonetheless, it is very significant that people realize that when this administration took over, and 9/11 came about, this was the condition of our military. It should not have been that way. The terrorist movement was active through the 1990s and during the Clinton administration. In February of 1993, there was a car bomb planted in the underground parking garage below the World Trade Center. We knew that, and that was prior to 9/11. In June of 1996, Khobar Towers, we remember, were bombed by Hezbollah, with intelligence pointing to support by al-Qaida. The embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in 1998, were blown up, and that was done by the terrorists. We all remember what happened in Yemen, when a small craft went into the USS Cole and killed a number of Americans. That was another terrorist attack. So this terrorism was going on all during the time we were downsizing our military. The next thing we find out is we are in a position where we have a down-sized military, and 9/11 comes along and 3,000 Americans are killed by terrorists, and we found out other terrorist attacks were planned at that time. That is when this all started. I have to say--because right now I am missing a hearing, which I will go to when my remarks are finished--in talking about this stressed situation of our Army, people need to understand how we got into this situation. After my 18th trip over there, and every time in talking to the young people over there, yes, they are stressed and their families are stressed and, yes, they have had more deployments, and they should be 12 months instead of 15 months but they understand this has to be done. We cannot compromise our victory. So we went in after 9/11 for three reasons. First, we went in to liberate Iraq from a tyrannical leader. I remember so well in 1991, after the first Iraq war, I had an occasion to be on the first freedom flight. It was 1991. There were nine of us, Democrats and Republicans. We were the first ones, in fact, to go to Kuwait City, but the Iraqis did not even know at that time the war was over. They were burning oilfields. The day would turn into night because of the smoke. That was the environment we were in at that time. We had a person of nobility in Kuwait who had a palace by the Persian Gulf who was with us. He had a 7-year-old daughter. They went with us. Alexander Haig, Tony Cuello was one of the party who went over. At that time, he was, I believe, the Democratic whip of the House of Representatives. So it was a mixture of people. This man of nobility and his daughter wanted to see what their house looked like, if it was torn up during the first gulf war. When we got there, we found out that Saddam Hussein had used it for a headquarters. I took the little girl up to her bedroom--she wanted to see her little animals--only to find they had used her bedroom for a torture chamber, and there were body parts just scattered around in different areas. When we saw this, we realized what an animal this man we were dealing with was. After 1991, we went back several different times, only to find that Saddam Hussein went after everybody who he suspected had been opposed to him during that first war, and he took care of them in different ways. He tortured thousands of people to death. You have to have gone over there, as I did, and looked into the graves and seen people who had been buried alive. His sons would raid weddings that were taking place. They would rape the bride, and then they would bury her alive. People who were going to be tortured to death by Saddam Hussein were begging to be dropped into the vats of acid head first so they would die quicker, or into the grinders, or the limbs that were cut off. We really cannot draw a distinction between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein in terms of the fact they are terrorists and they have no regard for human life. We just recently found an al-Qaida torture manual. The very things Saddam Hussein was doing in torturing people, they are doing now. Take a look at this chart. They are using flames on the throat; cutting the feet open so if they live, they will never be able to walk again; hanging by the arms while they had electrodes going in; drills used on their hands; and, of course, chopping off their limbs. This is a manual teaching them how to do it. We watched this and saw this was happening. I would think any reasonable person would say that alone would have been enough to go in to stop that reign of tyranny that was taking place at that time. But there are other reasons too. The second reason is there were training camps located in Iraq in places such as Sargot, Ramadi, Samarra, and one of them was in Salmon Pac. Salmon Pac is a community in Iraq where they have a fuselage of a 707 on the ground, and they were teaching people how to hijack airplanes. We will never know whether the perpetrators of 9/11 were trained in Salmon Pac. We don't know that. We never will know. Nonetheless, those are four training camps in Iraq. They are all closed now. They are not training anymore. That alone is certainly itself enough reason to have gone in there. The third reason is to help the Iraqi people create a free and democratic country. People say: Why do we care about the Iraqis? We have problems at home. Why are we spending all this money? Why do we care about what kind of democracy they have? And they thought it was impossible to start one, anyway. One reason is, if they do not do it, it is going to be a problem area for terrorists in the Middle East until they are fighting on our soil. The troops who are over there know this. I just got back. I talked with many troops. In fact, now we have the Oklahoma 45th over there, and we visited with most of them. They understand why they are there. What would happen? There were a lot of surrender resolutions, a lot of cut-and-run resolutions that got a lot of attention in this body. I can remember when moveon.org had the big ad campaign portraying David Petraeus, one of our great American heroes, as ``General Betray Us.'' It was unconscionable. There were resolutions to disavow what he said. There were 25 Members of this Senate body who opposed those resolutions. When the terrorists see this, they are hoping and praying that we, the Americans, are going to leave Iraq. On August 28, 2007, Ahmadinejad made a statement. He was referring to these resolutions that are going to draw our people out of Iraq. He said: Soon we will see a huge power vacuum in the region. Of course, we are prepared to fill that gap. . . . We are talking about Ahmadinejad. That is why the Iraqis are getting so cooperative with us. They don't want that vacuum filled. I was talking the other day with BG Jimmy Cash. He is retired. He is the former command director inside the Cheyenne Mountain complex in the late 1980s. He said: I watched Iran and Iraq shoot missiles every day, all day long for months. They killed hundreds of thousands of their own people. They were fighting for control of the Middle East. Which reminds me, when all these people are talking about weapons of mass destruction, we knew they had weapons of mass destruction then. We knew they were killing hundreds of thousands of their own people in the north, the Kurds, and they were using weapons of mass destruction to send chemical warheads up there that have the effect of burning people to death from the inside out, the most painful thing--women, babies, everybody, thousands and thousands of them. Anyway, if he were to fill that vacuum, we do not know how long it will take for America to be a target on our soil. If we look at what is working, one of the things I noticed on the many trips I have taken over there--about a year ago, a little more than 13 months ago, the surge began. That was General Petraeus. What did he say? GEN David Petraeus said we have to go in there with a surge capability in certain areas. He was concerned about some of the areas around the triangle. As we went in there and positioned ourselves, we found that he was right in his analysis as to where we needed to have more troops stationed--in Fallujah and Ramadi. Remember, just about 2 years ago, they declared that Ramadi would become the terrorist capital of the world. Now Ramadi is under total security, not by the United States but by the Iraqi security forces. So we have watched what has happened since that time. One of the reasons the surge has worked so successfully is that we have had the religious leaders realizing that if we leave, Iran will come in and fill the vacuum, and they cannot have that happen. So the religious leaders, the imams, the clerics started giving positive messages about the United States of America. A year ago, we had our defense intelligence attending the weekly meetings of the mosques. I think they meet every Friday. At that time, 85 percent of the messages that were given in the mosques by the clerics and the imams were anti-American messages. As of April of last year, almost a year ago, there had been virtually none. They are all now positive messages. What does that mean? It means that the Iraqi citizens have now--just like, Mr. President, anyplace in your State of Arkansas or elsewhere in our communities, we have Neighborhood Watch programs. Now they have them. They have their own citizens going in with bait cans, drawing circles around the undetonated IEDs so our troops will not be killed. We watched in Anbar all the incidents. They have been down from 40 a day to 10 a day. We have seen economic growth, the markets open and crowded. The large project in the Sunni Triangle is now back on track. They are going to have the capability to help their people now. The Iraqi Army is starting to perform really well. This surprises a lot of people because they don't think the Iraqi security forces have the capability of being the type of soldiers they are today. We saw this the other day. In fact, I was over there the other day in Bucca in Basra when they went in and took care of the problems so we didn't have to do it. This is what we are seeing. If you have any question that it is true, all you have to do is look at some of the people who never really wanted to be friends of the Bush administration who were opposed to the liberation of Iraq. One such person was Katie Couric. This shocked everybody when she was interviewed. That was in September 2007 by Bob Schieffer. This was live on TV. She had made a trip, after she had been criticizing the war, criticizing the Bush administration, criticizing the whole liberation effort. She went over and came back and said: Well, I was surprised, you know, after I went to Eastern Baghdad. I was taken to the Allawi market-- I have been there also-- which was near Haifa Street which was the scene of that very bloody gun battle back in January, and you know this market seemed to be thriving and there were a lot of people out and about. A lot of family-owned businesses and vegetables stalls and so you do see signs of life that seem to be normal . . . the situation is improving. That is not me talking, that is Katie Couric, whom we least expected that from. We see these things happening. I always make a point when I visit with people in the markets, if I see someone carrying a little baby, I will go in there intentionally without any kind of armament, with an interpreter. The interpreter will tell us just what they are saying. And people with young kids love the Americans. I have to say this too. We are going to see, and have seen already, a lot of accusations that we in the United States, in our Department of Defense, CIA, and the rest of agencies, are guilty of all kinds of torture. It is true that back in Abu Ghraib, when it first happened, there were some people there who did the wrong thing. I think there were 11 of them altogether. They were doing some things that were perhaps not the kinds of things we would endorse. That was taken care of by the U.S. Army. They took care of it. But that came out, and people started talking about what the Americans were doing. Yet look what is in their manual, the types of inhumane torture. I went to Bucca. Bucca is where we have the most detainees in Iraq. I was wanting to find out for sure by going around and interviewing detainees. I interviewed, I would say, about 40 or 50 of them. I picked them out myself. I took an interpreter. Each one said: We never were tortured when we were captured. We have been detained. We will be going back to where we came from. They have become real supporters of the United States. They were treated right. They were treated humanely. They are teaching them to read. They are teaching them to study their Koran. They are teaching them carpentry and other trades because one of the biggest problems they have--it is easy to recruit people when there is total unemployment. The unemployment rate is so high. They have to feed their families some way. Now we have trained them, and they are able to go back and get jobs and take care of their families without having to do it through the military. I just say to you, Mr. President, since this whole situation began-- and I happened to be in Fallujah during each of the two elections that took place, and I watched the Iraqi security forces go down to vote when they knew they were risking their lives. They voted the day before so they could offer security. I watched those people risking their lives--remember the purple finger--knowing their lives were at risk when they voted. This is the democracy they have been looking for. Democracy has been working. I came back this last time thinking the surge has been progressing so well; if we just keep it up, really good things are happening over there. Considering we started with a downgrading of some $412 million in our military, then 9/11 came and we were forced into a war as a result of that, we have done so well. Mr. President, I was a part of the draft many years ago, and I was a believer for quite a number of years, until the first gulf war, that we should have mandatory service because I know what a great thing it did for my life. But when you go over today and you see an all-volunteer force and see what they are capable of doing and what they have done, you come back so proud that they started out down here with very little to work with, and they have been able to sustain it. Are they overworked right now? Are they deployed too often and too long--15 months? Yes, they are. It looks as though we are going to be able to drop that down to 12 months. But the troops themselves say: Whatever it takes, we are going to do this. They know the alternative. The alternative is the war will be waged on American soil. We don't want that to happen. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. Yes. It is my understanding we had up to 30 minutes. It is not my intention to take that much time, but there might be someone else on our side who will want some of the time, in which case I will yield to them. So it could take that long.