John Kerry

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Madam President, today we take an important first step toward reforming our campaign finance system. After an election in which $3 billion was spent in an effort to elect or defeat candidates, we are finally taking action to attempt to make our campaign finance laws meaningful. However, there are predictable consequences from this legislation that will not be positive and will require further attention to the issue of campaign finance reform. The money spent on the 2000 election should come as a surprise to no one. Soft money, an important target of this bill, has increased at a remarkable pace. Year after year, there has been a steady and dramatic increase in the amount of money raised and spent on elections. For example, in 1992, Democrats raised $30 million in soft money. In 1996, the Democrats more than tripled that amount and raised $107 million in soft money. In the 2000 Democrats raised $243 million in soft money. The Republican party has consistently proven itself to have even more fund-raising prowess than the Democrats, but the trends are exactly the same, with substantial increases year after year. In 1992, the Republican party raised $45 million in soft money. In 1996, they raised $120 million in soft money. And in 2000, the Republican party raised $244 million in soft money. The American people have become almost numb to these kinds of staggering figures, and they have come to expect fund-raising records to be broken with each election cycle. And, what is far worse for our Democracy is that the public also believes that this money buys access and influence that average citizens don't have. In addition to the overwhelming amounts of soft money that were raised and spent in 2000, hundreds of millions of dollars were also spent on so-called issue ads. Now, I'm not talking about television ads that truly discuss the issues of the day. I'm talking about ads that air just before an election that show candidates, surrounded by their families, American flags waving in the background, that tell of the candidates' service to the Nation, or heroic actions during a war. Anyone who sees an ad like this believes it is a campaign ad. But, because of a quirk in the law, even these most blatant of campaign ads are called issue ads. As such, the contributions that pay for them are unlimited and relatively undisclosed. Yet, in many cases, these ads shape the debate in a race, and they most certainly are intended to shape the outcome. Those ubiquitous television ads are purchased by all kinds of organized special interests to persuade the American people to vote for or against a candidate. These ads, usually negative, often inaccurate, are driving the political process today. Do they violate the spirit of the campaign finance laws in this country? They certainly do. But, don't take my word for it. Listen to the executive director of the National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action, who said, ``It is foolish to believe there is a difference between issue advocacy and advocacy of a political candidate. What separates issue advocacy and political advocacy is a line in the sand drawn on a windy day.'' The bill that we are sending to the President takes a step toward reform. It is important to know that it is also firmly rooted in prior laws. Federal law has prohibited corporations from contributing to Federal candidates since 1907. Labor unions likewise have been barred from contributing to candidates since 1943. In addition, the post- Watergate campaign finance law caps individual contributions at $25,000 per calendar year, and permits individuals to give no more than $20,000 to a national party, $5,000 to a political action committee, and $2,000 to a candidate. These limits were put in place after the country learned a hard lessen about the corrupting influence of money in politics. Nowhere in these laws are there any provisions for soft money. That aberration came into play in 1978 when the Federal Election Commission gave the Kansas Republican State Committee permission to use corporate and union funds to pay for a voter drive benefitting Federal as well as State candidates. The costs of the drive were to be split between hard money raised under Federal law and soft money raised under Kansas law. The FEC's decision in the Kansas case gives parties the option to spend soft money any time a Federal election coincides with a State or local race. A creation not of Congress, but of a weak, politically motivated Federal agency, soft money is a loophole to our system that is long overdue for eradication. Despite what the foes of this bill claim, banning soft money contributions does not violate the Constitution. The Supreme Court in Buckley versus Valeo held that limits on individual campaign contributions do not violate the first amendment. If a limit of $1000 on contributions by individuals was upheld as constitutional, then a ban on contributions of $10,000, $100,000 or $1 million is also going to be upheld. Buckley, too, said that the risk of corruption or the appearance of corruption warranted limits on individual campaign contributions. Soft money contributions to political parties can be limited for the same reason. Like soft money, issue advocacy has a history that defies the intent of campaign finance laws. In what remains the seminal case on campaign finance, Buckley, the Supreme Court held that campaign finance limitations applied only to ``communications that in express terms advocate the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate for Federal office.'' A footnote to the opinion says that the limits apply when communications include terms ``such as `vote for,' `elect,' `support,' `cast your ballot for,' `Smith for Congress,' `vote against,' `defeat,' `reject.' '' The phrases in the footnote have become known as the ``magic words'' without which a communication, no matter what its purpose or impact, is often classified as issue advocacy, thus falling outside the reach of the campaign finance laws. Until the 1992 election cycle, most for-profit, not-for-profit, and labor organizations did not attempt to get into electoral politics via issue advocacy. That year, one advocacy group pushed the envelope and aired what was, for all intents and purposes, a negative campaign ad attacking Bill Clinton. Because the ad never used Buckley's ``magic words,'' the Court of Appeals decided that the ad was a discussion of issues related rather than an exhortation to vote against Clinton in the upcoming Presidential election. That ad and others like it opened the flood gates to more so-called issue advocacy in 1996, when countless special interests started overwhelming the airwaves with millions of dollars in ads that looked like campaign ads, but, because they avoided those magic words, were deemed issue-ads. Opponents of this proposal will also argue that any effort to control or limit sham issue ads would violate the First Amendment. They argue that as long as you don't use the so-called ``magic words'' in Buckley, such as ``vote for'' or ``vote against,'' you can say just about anything you want in an advertisement. But that is simply not what the Supreme Court said in Buckley. It said that one way to identify campaign speech that can be regulated is by looking at whether it uses words of express advocacy. But the Court never said that Congress was precluded from adopting another test so long as it was clear, precise and narrow. A final argument opponents of reform like to make is that we spend less on campaigns than we do on potato chips or laundry detergent. But I would ask the proponents of this argument whether what we are seeking in our democracy is electioneering that has no more depth or substance than a snack food commercial. Despite the ever-increasing sums spent on campaigns, we have not seen an improvement in campaign discourse, issue discussion or voter education. More money does not mean more ideas, more substance or more depth. Instead, it means more of what voters complain about most. More 30-second spots, more negativity and an increasingly longer campaign period. Less money might actually improve the quality of discourse, requiring candidates to more cautiously spend their resources. It might encourage more debates, as was the case in my own race against Bill Weld in 1996, and it would certainly focus the candidates' voter education efforts during the period shortly before the election, when most voters are tuned in, instead of starting the campaign 18 months before election day. Shays/Meehan takes an important step that begins to tackle the problems of soft money and issue advocacy. I support this legislation that has been championed by two very able colleagues, but I would note one serious shortcoming of the bill. It won't curb the rampant spending that drives the quest for money. Unfortunately, we all recognize that creating spending limits is not a simple proposition. In the 1976 Buckley case, the Supreme Court struck spending limits as an unconstitutional restriction of political speech. An important caveat to its decision is that spending limits could be imposed in exchange for a public benefit. I wish we had at our disposal a number of bargaining chips, public benefits that we could trade in exchange for spending limits. However, unless the Supreme Court reverses itself, something I am certainly not expecting in the near future, we must accept that if we want to limit the amounts spent on campaigns, we must provide candidates with some sort of public grant. I realize that a lot of my colleagues aren't ready to embrace public funding as a way to finance our campaigns. But it is, in my opinion, the best constitutional means to the important end of limiting campaign spending and the contributions that go with it. Ultimately, I would support a system that provides full public funding for political candidates. I will continue to support clean money as the ultimate way to truly and completely purge our system of the negative influence of corporate money. I would also support a partial public funding system as a way to wean candidates from their reliance on hard money and get them used to campaigning under generous spending limits. I offered an amendment to McCain/Fiengold that would have provided sweeping reform in the form of a partial public funding system, but I recognize that we are a long way away from enacting such a program. Nevertheless I will continue to support and work for that type of reform as a way to end the cycle of unlimited money being raised and spent on our elections. This bill is a way to break free from the status quo. However, as with any reform measure, there are always going to be possibilities for abuse. The fact that some people will try to skirt the law is not a reason for us to fail to take this incremental movement towards repairing the system. But, it does mean we must ensure that this the first, rather than the last, step for fundamental reform. I have supported campaign finance reform for 18 years and I believe that even legislation that takes only a small step forward is necessary to begin to restore the dwindling faith the average American has in our political system. We can't go on leaving our citizens with the impression that the only kind of influence left in American politics is the kind you wield with a checkbook. I believe this bill reduces the power of the checkbook and I will therefore support it.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I rise in support of legislation that has been filed today to reauthorize the development fund for the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor. The bill is sponsored by Senator Chafee, and I am proud to be an original cosponsor. The John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor was established by Congress in 1986 to recognize and preserve the natural, cultural and historical resources of the region. I would like to read a description of the Blackstone River written by the National Park Service. I think it captures its special nature. The Blackstone River Valley illustrates a major revolution in America's past: the Age of Industry. The way people lived during this turning point in history can still be seen in the valley's villages, farms, cities and riverways--in a working landscape between Worchester, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. In 1790, American craftsmen built the first machines that successfully used waterpower to spin cotton. America's first factory, Slater Mill was built on the banks of the Blackstone River. Here, industrial America was born. This revolutionary way of using waterpower spread quickly throughout the valley and New England. It changed nearly everything. Two hundred years later, the story of the American Industrial Revolution can still be seen and told in the Blackstone River Valley. Thousands of structures and whole landscapes show the radical changes in the way people lived and worked. The way people lived before the advent of industry also can be seen on the land, and the choices for the future are visible as well. For good and bad, each generation makes its choices and changes the character of life in the valley. Today, the rural to city landscapes tell the story of this revolution in American history. Native Americans, European colonizers, farmers, craftsmen, industrialists, and continuing waves of immigrants all left the imprint of their work and culture on the land. The farms, hilltop market centers, mill villages, cities, dams, canals, roads, and railroads are physical products of tremendous social and economic power. With the assistance of the National Park Service, the Commission has forged collaborative partnerships with a new spirit of ownership among government leaders, private investors and residents for the river resources and communities. The Blackstone has been called ``America's hardest working river'' because of its industrial legacy. That same description could apply to the people who have decided themselves to making the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor a success today. The natural value and historical importance of the Blackstone and the dedication of the people involved is why I am eager to support Senator Chafee's legislation.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I rise in support of legislation that has been filed today to reauthorize the development fund for the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor. The bill is sponsored by Senator Chafee, and I am proud to be an original cosponsor. The John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor was established by Congress in 1986 to recognize and preserve the natural, cultural and historical resources of the region. I would like to read a description of the Blackstone River written by the National Park Service. I think it captures its special nature. The Blackstone River Valley illustrates a major revolution in America's past: the Age of Industry. The way people lived during this turning point in history can still be seen in the valley's villages, farms, cities and riverways--in a working landscape between Worchester, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. In 1790, American craftsmen built the first machines that successfully used waterpower to spin cotton. America's first factory, Slater Mill was built on the banks of the Blackstone River. Here, industrial America was born. This revolutionary way of using waterpower spread quickly throughout the valley and New England. It changed nearly everything. Two hundred years later, the story of the American Industrial Revolution can still be seen and told in the Blackstone River Valley. Thousands of structures and whole landscapes show the radical changes in the way people lived and worked. The way people lived before the advent of industry also can be seen on the land, and the choices for the future are visible as well. For good and bad, each generation makes its choices and changes the character of life in the valley. Today, the rural to city landscapes tell the story of this revolution in American history. Native Americans, European colonizers, farmers, craftsmen, industrialists, and continuing waves of immigrants all left the imprint of their work and culture on the land. The farms, hilltop market centers, mill villages, cities, dams, canals, roads, and railroads are physical products of tremendous social and economic power. With the assistance of the National Park Service, the Commission has forged collaborative partnerships with a new spirit of ownership among government leaders, private investors and residents for the river resources and communities. The Blackstone has been called ``America's hardest working river'' because of its industrial legacy. That same description could apply to the people who have decided themselves to making the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor a success today. The natural value and historical importance of the Blackstone and the dedication of the people involved is why I am eager to support Senator Chafee's legislation.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I share a loss which many in New England, and Massachusetts particularly, feel today. Thomas Winship, editor of the Boston Globe from 1965 to 1984, and a champion of the role that the American newspaper plays in our lives and the lives of our country, died early this morning after a long and brave battle with cancer, leaving behind his wife Beth, a sister, Joanna Crawford; two sons, Lawrence and Ben; two daughters, Margaret and Joanna, and eight grandchildren. Our condolences from all in the State of Massachusetts and all who knew him. Our prayers go out to them today as they grieve the passing of this very special man. Their loss is also our country's loss. I can say without embellishment that Tom Winship was one of America's great newspapermen. He was an extraordinary editor, a giant among a generation of editors that includes people such as Ben Bradlee and Joe Lelyveld, and a host of others, all of whom were a band of brothers at that time, who sought to change the face of America, our politics, our culture, and our lives, in a positive way, using their power of the print to be able to reach the American people with what they thought were best interpretations and aspirations of our country. Tom was a man who lived the word ``citizen'' to its fullest. He loved his family, his country, his community, and the newspaper business, all with a burning passion. In his years at the Boston Globe, he left an indelible mark on the newspaper lore of our Nation. It is not an exaggeration to say that through his efforts and the efforts of others, they made a real and a significant contribution, certainly to the history of Massachusetts, of New England, and, in the conglomerate of all of them, of the country. I first met Tom Winship when I was a young veteran, recently returned from Vietnam. I went to see him to talk about the war, a visit which led to a friendship that lasted some 31 years. When we veterans came to Washington in the early 1970s to speak our minds about the war in which we had fought, as veterans who believed we had no other choice but to tell another side of the story, something we thought was not sufficiently reported, Tom Winship showed a special and personal interest. He understood the meaning of that effort. He insisted that his paper cover that story, our story, and I think, even fairly stated, America's story. He insisted that be covered when others were not so sure that was wise or that it mattered. Tom's courage was measured not just in printing ``The Pentagon Papers,'' for which he was bitterly attacked by some, but in covering all the words of the time--harsh words sometimes, honest words always, and words that might much more easily, were it not for him, have been ignored. Tom's brand of special leadership did not begin or end with Vietnam. Perhaps it began even with the civil rights movement when he faced not just the segregation of the South but a segregation that he also recognized existed at home in the North. It was also his early activism, his willingness to protect the environment in the days when Rachel Carson and her book ``Silent Spring'' touched a new consciousness about clean air, clean water, and the birth of the environmental movement that never could have reached full momentum without Tom's stewardship of a newspaper determined to make it an issue. It was the unflinching effort to press for reforms--in Massachusetts, in the State legislature, in the State constitution--and his creation of the Globe's Spotlight Team that awoke citizens to what was happening in too many instances in government, that made it possible for a new generation of reformers, Governors, to have a voice and find the platform that ultimately helped usher in the modern era of politics in our State. On all these issues and so many more, it was Tom Winship who never shied away from steering the Boston Globe by his own moral compass. He believed that a newspaper served an important national purpose: To report the news, yes, but also, he believed equally importantly, to help his fellow citizens understand how events in their neighborhoods and beyond their borders impacted their lives. He believed in the role of the newspaper to help frame choices for each of us, to help us find a direction as a people, to open our eyes to the outcomes and possibilities which, as it always is in a democracy, are left up to the people to decide. Tom thought it was entirely appropriate to make public a sense of moral outrage about the actions of people in public life whose choices or whose unwillingness to make choices, their inaction, came into conflict with the public interest. Tom Winship did not easily accept the changes he perceived in America's print media which seemed more and more interested in personality and conflict and less and less interested in ideas and ideals. Tom's sense of what was news and what was merely new never shifted. It was seared into him by his passion for a debate on big choices and his deep and unshakable belief that the newspapers were there to help us wrestle with those decisions. For his enduring faith in the responsibility of journalists to our country, and for his remarkable energy spent to preserve that special role of the American newspaper in our democracy, for his courage in fighting to put real news, however contentious, on the front pages of America's consciousness, Tom earned the enormous and unfailing respect of his peers. He also earned the admiration of a generation of activists and outsiders who might well have otherwise been written out of our Nation's dialog. For all that he did in his life and throughout his career, Tom leaves an enormous legacy, one that will endure, even as newsprint fades and newspapers yellow with age. It will not be just a memory but a standard, a standard that teaches us lessons about telling the truth and focusing on what is really important. When you lose a man such as Tom Winship, your first instinct is to say you will not see another one like him. But knowing what we do about Tom Winship, knowing all he stood for and all he accomplished, we also know he would not want that. He simply would not believe it. He would want us to think that the world we live in, in the future will be a world with more people pursuing the same goals, with more people who believe they can change things and follow his example. He would have believed nothing less than that. Although the standard he set is exceedingly high, it will mean so much more to our country to see another generation that walks the path Tom Winship so courageously blazed for all of us. I yield the floor.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Arizona for his comments. I know he has been the recipient of those kinds of comments previously. He and I seem to find ourselves together on that occasionally. I came to the Senate hoping I would always find that this institution debated facts and truth. Obviously, I am not naive. I know there are some politics; we all understand that. I am not trying to suggest that is not part of it. But the level of Harry and Louise-ing of this issue that we saw in the last days is a commentary on money in American politics and how the agenda of the country gets distorted and the ways in which special interests and big money can mold an issue into a certain perspective completely devoid of some of the reality. We saw a National Academy of Sciences study used again and again in the most obviously distorted way. People would read from the study which referenced a 1993 analysis. Despite the fact that analysis has been redone since then, despite the fact there is a 2002 current year analysis, everybody kept going back. Let us go back to 1993 because that is much more effective, even though it is not true. Across America, people were told they might have to farm with a compact car. I know the Chair does not believe that. People are not going to be farming with compact cars. Tractors are not even under CAFE standards. As to the level of reasonableness of the standard that could have been found with respect to light trucks or pickups, it is beyond imagination we would not be willing to come to grips with what I think is a greater truth. Those most concerned with safety in America, those entities that consistently earn a reputation coming to the Senate with studies and analyses upon which all of our colleagues depend--the Center for Auto Safety, Public Citizen, people who have a reputation of representing the consumer--were against what the Senate did. Not one safety organization in America supported what was adopted. I have learned to take my losses, and we are all going to live to fight another day. This issue is going to come back, I am absolutely convinced about that. We are going to face it. I saw that the price of gas went up about 5 or 6 cents at the pump in the Washington area in the last couple of days. I remember when I was going to law school what it was like to study my torts and contracts sitting for an hour and a half in a line waiting to get gasoline, and I wished I had a car that did not require me to go into that line as frequently as it did so I could get to school and back on one tank of gas more frequently. In Europe, people are driving cars that get 60 and 70 miles per gallon, and the question is pregnant here in America: Why aren't we? There is a new poll that came out yesterday. It shows 88 percent of Americans want cars that are more efficient. I believe even those who drive pickups and light trucks all across America would like a truck that is more efficient. They pay their gas bill. They have to pay for the same costs as everybody else. It would be a lot more efficient if they could have some of that new technology. In my judgment, we missed--it is my judgment, and I could be wrong, as everybody knows--an opportunity to help make America more competitive, to help save money for our consumers, and to beat back what has been a proven reluctance by an industry for years. This is not a matter of conjecture. I know the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Georgia, knows Stuart Eizenstat. I know the Presiding Officer knows President Jimmy Carter very well. President Jimmy Carter sat in front of the Big Three, and they came to him and said: Mr. President, we cannot do this. You are going to put us out of business. Stuart Eizenstat testified to our committee that he sat in that meeting and listened to the president of General Motors tell him it was impossible to meet the standards, but President Carter himself, somebody who understood technology, an engineer by training, made a courageous decision that we had to move forward. That courageous decision to move forward saved millions of barrels of oil--billions by now. It saved, many would say, the American industry because it made them competitive with the German and Japanese car that was increasingly gaining market share because Americans wanted cars that were more efficient. I believe in the capacity of every UAW worker and every car manufacturer in America to build a car that is competitive with any car in the world. I believe in the capacity of American ingenuity and technology. I believe in our entrepreneurial spirit. Today, we turned our backs on something President Kennedy did in the 1960s when he said we could go to the moon in 10 years. He did not know for certain we could get there, but he set a goal, and America met the goal. We could have, today, set a goal for America. We could have said we are going to reduce the threat that our kids may have to go to another country to defend our gluttony on oil by becoming more efficient. We could have, today, had an opportunity to set a standard that would have pushed the technology curve so America could be the country that sells the cars of the future, all over the world, that are more efficient, more effective, and safer. I misspoke earlier when I said something about the Senator from Michigan. I want to clarify it. I told him about it, and it was purely misspeaking. I said his bill would wipe out the safety standards. I did not mean the safety standards of CAFE that are in existence today. I meant it would wipe out the underlying safety standards in our bill. That, it did. We had a safety standard that would have provided a rollover standard for SUVs. Every year we lose 10,000 Americans who are killed in rollover accidents in SUVs. SUVs are built with a very fragile roof. I think the roof weighs about 75 pounds, something in that vicinity. When the heavy SUV rolls over, people are crushed and killed. That could be prevented. The safety people who supported our bill suggested we should have had that standard in this legislation. That has now been wiped out. The reason this is so important is that there is a history. People know NHTSA has not been a fighting agency for change or for standards. That is why when Ronald Reagan came in and Congress was going to do standards, everybody said: Oh, NHTSA ought to do it. Do not let Congress do it. When Bush 41 was President, they said: Oh, Congress should not do this. NHTSA ought to do this. Then all of a sudden when President Clinton was in office, and Congress was in the hands of the Republicans, the whole argument flipped: Oh, we should not have NHTSA do this. We ought to have Congress do this. Lo and behold, in 1995, the Congress prohibited the EPA from even evaluating what the impact might be of raising the CAFE standards. There is a history, a history of delay, a history of resistance, a history of can't-do, a history of we do not want to do, a history of this is going to kill us. But when Congress had the courage to stand up and raise the aspirations of Americans, guess what. The industry met the standard and exceeded it. And guess what. We raised the numbers of workers in Detroit up to about 1 million in the year 1999, the highest level it had been for a number of years. When I hear my colleagues say, ``What about jobs,'' I do not think it is Toyota and Honda that moved to Mexico. The last measurement I had, it was the Big Three that had moved some plants to Mexico. Honda and Toyota are building plants in the United States of America, and they are increasingly building engines and automobiles in our country and grabbing market share. Maybe the competition of the marketplace will spur some of these entities on but history has shown--look at Enron. There is an example. If ever we have learned in recent days what President Teddy Roosevelt taught us when he had the courage, coming from his party, to stand up against trusts in America, we learned of the unfettered, completely unrestrained, absolutely unregulated appetite of most businesses. We have found countless examples of abuses where sometimes someone is needed to act as a referee, to act as a standard bearer. I believe that someone should have been the Congress. It has not been, and it obviously will not be. So my hope is that as we go down the road, people will think hard about the gains that were lost today. This is not the long-term solution for our country. I understand that. The long-term solution for our country is to be independent of oil, but 70 percent of the oil we consume in America is consumed in transportation. If we are going to reduce foreign dependence, we have only two choices: We either produce it in America or we reduce our dependency abroad. Since oil is the principal dependency, we cannot solve the problem when we only have 3 percent of the world's oil reserves but we use 25 percent of those reserves every year. The math is simple. Every child in school can do the math. If the United States is using 25 percent of the oil, and we only own 3 percent of the oil reserves, either find the oil somewhere else or find an alternative to oil. We cannot drill out of this predicament; we have to invent our way out. One of the ways to have invented our way out of it would have been to have adopted a standard that pushed the technology curve so our industry would suddenly become the world's leader, as we were in alternatives and renewables and photovoltaics in the late 1970s, when we made a similar effort to adopt those technologies. I am proud we were fighting for this. I will stand up anywhere in this country and defend the rectitude of what we attempted to do and decry the lies that suggest everybody in America has to get into some little purple people eater, when Ford Motor Company itself is promoting an SUV with all the power you want, and all the room you want, and it uses half the gasoline. There it is, the car of the future, from Ford Motor Company. There is not a pickup truck, there is not an SUV, there is not a vehicle in America that cannot be driven this size. Look at our buses; look at our fleets. In America today we are driving huge numbers of people in buses that are driven on compressed natural gas. We have alternative vehicles. Fleets are being purchased that way. The Government has the opportunity to set the standard, requiring that no automobile is going to be bought for fleet use of the Government unless we are using hybrids and alternatives. We could begin to create the demand for the marketplace. There are all kinds of ways to try this, but it takes leadership. Today I regret to say I don't think the Senate offered that. I hope it will in the future. I yield the floor.

Mr. KERRY. On behalf of Senator McCain and myself, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be temporarily set aside.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to speak for a few moments about where we now find ourselves. I was talking with the distinguished Senator from Michigan, who won a significant vote by the Senate a little while ago with respect to, instead of having the Senate set a standard, sending the CAFE standard to NHTSA and asking NHTSA to do so within a specified period of time. I understand the dynamics, but may I say there is an incredible schizophrenia in what the Senate has done in these two votes, because on the one hand the minority leader and many of our colleagues came to the floor to argue that the Senate doesn't have the ability--we don't have the science, the information, and we don't have enough capacity to make a determination about how the overall fleet ought to be determined. Then, of course, with the amendment of the occupant of the chair, the Senate decided all of that goes out the window; we do that by exempting pickup trucks. I sympathize with the occupant of the chair that pickup trucks ought to be treated differently. I am not arguing about that. Clearly, they are a mainstay to a huge amount of economic activity and people who contribute very significantly to the fabric of this country. But it is completely contrarian to say we are going to have NHTSA try to evaluate this and, on the next vote, we have exempted 20 percent of the available fleet, so that now, whatever fuel savings we have left to gain have to come out of the rest of the fleet--either passenger cars, SUVs, or others--if it is decided that any savings are going to come at all. Now, just today, some polls were released that showed that 88.9 percent of Americans believe we are better off trying to raise the fuel efficiency of our automobiles, and they would like to see CAFE standards be at a level where America is saving oil, where we are not importing oil from abroad to a greater degree. Senator McCain has worked diligently with a group of Senators on both sides of the aisle--Senator Snowe, Senator Collins, Senator Gordon Smith, and Senator Chafee, and Senators on our side, such as Senators Hollings and Feinstein--to come up with an agreement on a different approach on CAFE. It is an approach that embraces the concept of credit trading, so that you soften, reduce significantly, the pressure on an automobile company to meet the higher standard of, say, the 36 miles or 35 miles--or whatever it might be--by allowing that company to purchase credits from a greenhouse-gas-producing entity of some kind in the United States. What you get from this is a two-fer: You get the reduction in greenhouse gases, and you also get the incentive for companies to move forward, meeting a higher standard of fuel efficiency. I hope NHTSA-- now that the Senate has voted, it is my hope; and I am sure Senator McCain joins me--that this will be a concept maybe they will embrace as they consider how we might come back to more effectively implement the standard. What has happened here in the Senate is the result, to a large degree, of an extraordinary process of distortion over the course of the last days, where huge sums of money have been spent by an industry that has a lot of money, and rather than putting the money into fuel efficiency, they put it into advertising to maintain the status quo. It is ironic.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, if I could interrupt, I need to go into the cloakroom for a moment. I will yield the floor and let my colleague continue to speak.

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

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague. Let me share what this vote is now about. This vote is about whether or not we will keep any standard at all with respect to fuel efficiency. If the Bond-Levin amendment passes, there will be not only no standard whatsoever in place, there will be a process that will allow for delay into the far future. And there is a provision in the Bond-Levin amendment which undoes the current safety standards. There is no safety standard at all. In NHTSA, they ask to look at it, but it undoes the current safety standard. Mr. President, this is a question of whether or not we are going to do what 88 percent of the people in America want us to do and only 9 percent are opposed to, and that is to save a significant amount of oil that we import from the Persian Gulf, from countries that have the ability to dictate to the United States the price in our future-- whether we will save that and simultaneously contribute to global warming problems, as well as health in America. There are two stories here. There is the lie and there is the truth. To my right, that purple machine in the photograph is the lie. No American will be forced to drive any different automobile. My wife drives an SUV. She supports this effort because she knows she can still drive an SUV that is efficient. Cars such as Suburbans are not even included in this measure. We have seen advertisements suggesting that people will have to farm with a subcompact car. How insulting is that to the intelligence of Americans, who know they want more efficient cars? This doesn't even cover tractors. It doesn't even cover the basic trucks, the large trucks in the country. This is the most extraordinary expenditure of money in phony advertisements to scare the American people that I have ever seen here--perhaps since the tobacco debate. Here is the truth. This is Ford Motor Company's own advertisement. They advertise an SUV--a vehicle that gives you all the room and power you want but uses half the gasoline. That is the Ford Motor Company advertisement that stands as a stark contrast to these extraordinary, ridiculous scare tactics. My colleagues have been told that if we raise the CAFE standards, that will harm safety. Let me read from the Chairman of the National Academy of Sciences, from March 10 of this year. Paul Portney says: This proposal of ours is roughly consistent with what the academy identified as being technologically possible, economically affordable, and consistent with the desire of consumers for safety. What safety organization in America supports the Bond-Levin proposal? Not one. Not the major safety organization, the Public Citizen Center for Auto Safety; they support what we are trying to accomplish. The reason they support it is that there are no safety provisions whatsoever in the Bond-Levin proposal. In our proposal, there is, however, an ability to live up to the safety standards. You have heard the National Academy of Sciences report distorted again and again. The update of that report, on which NHTSA has signed off, says you can build a car in America that is just as competent as any SUV today and provides safety. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. KERRY. They try to suggest that this is a jobs problem. The fact is that our workers in Detroit have the ability to build all the cars America can buy that are just as large as the cars we have today but are more efficient. What they need is an auto industry that asks them to do it, that gives them the cars that are so designed. It is extraordinary that my colleagues have so little confidence in the ability of the American worker and American ingenuity to provide cars that are going to be competitive well into the future with the Japanese and Germans. I think we should celebrate the capacity of the American worker, and that is what we are asking people to do. Every year, there has been an opportunity to delay, to obfuscate. The opponents have chosen to do it. The only people who support Bond-Levin are those who support the specific automobile interests, the Big Three, people who work there-- not the safety people, not consumers, not the environmental interests of the country. Generally speaking, this is a pattern of delay and obfuscation. We will have an opportunity after this vote to vote on the Kerry-McCain alternative that reduces the level even further. I ask my colleagues to remember that there is no CAFE requirement at all in Bond-Levin. We will have no standard whatsoever. We will have years of lawsuits and years of delay. It is one more step in Detroit's effort to prevent us from having an opportunity to have cars that are competitive and meet the needs of the future. I retain the remainder of the time.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. I realize that. I am asking if I could ask him just a quick inquiry.

Mr. KERRY. Because we ran out of time. The leader made a decision that there was not time for the committee to act. There, clearly, would have been a majority in the committee, but we did not have time because of the schedule of the Senate. And the majority leader made a decision to try to meld it with the energy bill in order to keep his commitment to you, I believe, to bring the energy bill here at the appropriate time after the recess.

Mr. KERRY. No. Mr. President, no there is none.

Mr. KERRY. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. KERRY. And he has circumvented.

Mr. KERRY. I am going to answer. I am asking recognition to be able to do that, Mr. President.

Mr. KERRY. That is not what I asked.

Mr. KERRY. Never circumvented?

Mr. KERRY. Is that accurate?

Mr. KERRY. Actually, the National Academy of Sciences--I have the report right here--says specifically that without the cost, without loss of jobs, and without loss of safety, you can have a car that increases fuel efficiency up to 37 miles per gallon. That is what the National Academy of Sciences says. They don't tell you you have to do that, but they say you can do it. It is technologically feasible today. So you can, in fact, do that.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I would be delighted to answer the question. And, at the same time, may I say to the Senator, look, my question to him was whether or not a majority leader on the other side has circumvented. I did not ask him whether they met or not.

Mr. KERRY. Specifically, I quote from the study. The study says that predicting energy prices depends on events that shape energy markets that are ``random and cannot be anticipated.''

Mr. KERRY. So in effect we have a proposal on the floor that the study of the Senator does not address at all, or we will have a proposal. The second question: Is the Senator aware the model he referred to is not a fuel economy model, it is an economic model of the U.S. energy system which has a series of statements about pricing and efficiencies that it does not take into account?