Joseph Lieberman

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, the United States has been the most innovative, technologically capable economy in the world. Yet our science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, STEM, education system is failing to ensure that children in our great Nation are entering the workforce with the skills and knowledge required for success in the global economy of the 21st century. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is catching up. I rise today on behalf of myself and Senator Coleman to introduce the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education for the 21st Century Act. This legislation seeks to promote and coordinate existing science and technology education efforts and to improve the communication among various stakeholders so that tomorrow's workforce will be prepared to continue the American tradition of innovation and enterprise. There are three pieces to this legislation, which is based largely on the recommendations found in the National Science Board's action plan on STEM education. First, this legislation charters a new, independent, and non-Federal National Council for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education, which will coordinate and facilitate STEM education initiatives across the Nation and inform policymakers and the public on the state of STEM education across the United States. This council will be housed in the National Academy of Sciences and will have a Board of Directors comprised of representatives from the various State and local governments, organizations, businesses, and industries that have a stake in the success of STEM education. This includes current and former governors, chief State school officers, representatives from local school boards, classroom teachers, school administrators, representatives from institutions of higher education, private foundations, and representatives of businesses and industries. Much of the innovation and success in improving STEM education throughout the country is being done locally, in the State's counties, and school systems, often partnering with businesses and industry in need of a STEM-educated workforce. The Council will bring together these various stakeholders to facilitate and coordinate the flow of information on STEM education systems to various stakeholders; to independently evaluate the success of Federal and non-Federal STEM initiatives; to fairly determine and promote best STEM classroom practices; to encourage the acquisition and retention of highly effective STEM teachers; and to inform policymakers and the general public on the state of STEM education across the United States. More specifically, the Council will also be responsible for issuing an annual report on the state of STEM education in America to the States, Congress, the Federal Government, and the general public; disseminating results from research on teaching and learning in STEM fields to State educational agencies; helping the States establish their own Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education boards or councils; proposing models for the effective professional development of teachers in STEM fields; and launching and updating a publicly available website that hosts a database consisting of information on scholarships, fellowships, grants, internships, and summer programs for both students and teachers. Second, this bill authorizes a full standing Committee on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education within the National Science and Technology Council, NSTC, which is part of the Executive Office of the President. This committee would be responsible for coordinating STEM education across all the Federal agencies involved in such efforts, including the National Laboratories, the Department of Commerce, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, and NASA. Currently, the NSTC Committee on Science has a Subcommittee on Education and Workforce Development with jurisdiction over issues relating to STEM education. However, this subcommittee has been largely inactive: it rarely meets and has not been effective in coordinating the efforts of these different agencies. Senator Coleman and I believe that the state of STEM education in the Nation today warrants a full committee at the NSTC that will meet regularly to assess the effectiveness of such Federal efforts. Finally in this legislation we direct the Secretary of Education to undergo a comprehensive review of all programs within the Department of Education relating to education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, and to evaluate them for their effectiveness. We want to make sure that the current panoply of such programs are effective, target the students they are intended to target, are not unnecessarily redundant, complement State and local educational agencies, and are promoted effectively so that students, teachers, and parents know about these efforts. We also direct the Department to submit to Congress a plan for addressing the challenges they identify in this review. I believe this legislation will help science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education in this country, and will help students, parents, teachers, and other educators as we strive to prepare tomorrow's workforce for the global economy of the 21st century. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, the United States has been the most innovative, technologically capable economy in the world. Yet our science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, STEM, education system is failing to ensure that children in our great Nation are entering the workforce with the skills and knowledge required for success in the global economy of the 21st century. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is catching up. I rise today on behalf of myself and Senator Coleman to introduce the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education for the 21st Century Act. This legislation seeks to promote and coordinate existing science and technology education efforts and to improve the communication among various stakeholders so that tomorrow's workforce will be prepared to continue the American tradition of innovation and enterprise. There are three pieces to this legislation, which is based largely on the recommendations found in the National Science Board's action plan on STEM education. First, this legislation charters a new, independent, and non-Federal National Council for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education, which will coordinate and facilitate STEM education initiatives across the Nation and inform policymakers and the public on the state of STEM education across the United States. This council will be housed in the National Academy of Sciences and will have a Board of Directors comprised of representatives from the various State and local governments, organizations, businesses, and industries that have a stake in the success of STEM education. This includes current and former governors, chief State school officers, representatives from local school boards, classroom teachers, school administrators, representatives from institutions of higher education, private foundations, and representatives of businesses and industries. Much of the innovation and success in improving STEM education throughout the country is being done locally, in the State's counties, and school systems, often partnering with businesses and industry in need of a STEM-educated workforce. The Council will bring together these various stakeholders to facilitate and coordinate the flow of information on STEM education systems to various stakeholders; to independently evaluate the success of Federal and non-Federal STEM initiatives; to fairly determine and promote best STEM classroom practices; to encourage the acquisition and retention of highly effective STEM teachers; and to inform policymakers and the general public on the state of STEM education across the United States. More specifically, the Council will also be responsible for issuing an annual report on the state of STEM education in America to the States, Congress, the Federal Government, and the general public; disseminating results from research on teaching and learning in STEM fields to State educational agencies; helping the States establish their own Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education boards or councils; proposing models for the effective professional development of teachers in STEM fields; and launching and updating a publicly available website that hosts a database consisting of information on scholarships, fellowships, grants, internships, and summer programs for both students and teachers. Second, this bill authorizes a full standing Committee on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education within the National Science and Technology Council, NSTC, which is part of the Executive Office of the President. This committee would be responsible for coordinating STEM education across all the Federal agencies involved in such efforts, including the National Laboratories, the Department of Commerce, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, and NASA. Currently, the NSTC Committee on Science has a Subcommittee on Education and Workforce Development with jurisdiction over issues relating to STEM education. However, this subcommittee has been largely inactive: it rarely meets and has not been effective in coordinating the efforts of these different agencies. Senator Coleman and I believe that the state of STEM education in the Nation today warrants a full committee at the NSTC that will meet regularly to assess the effectiveness of such Federal efforts. Finally in this legislation we direct the Secretary of Education to undergo a comprehensive review of all programs within the Department of Education relating to education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, and to evaluate them for their effectiveness. We want to make sure that the current panoply of such programs are effective, target the students they are intended to target, are not unnecessarily redundant, complement State and local educational agencies, and are promoted effectively so that students, teachers, and parents know about these efforts. We also direct the Department to submit to Congress a plan for addressing the challenges they identify in this review. I believe this legislation will help science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education in this country, and will help students, parents, teachers, and other educators as we strive to prepare tomorrow's workforce for the global economy of the 21st century. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, before my friend from South Carolina leaves the floor, as usual, but not always, I agree with him. I hope we can get to a point where we can deal with both of those issues, offshore drilling and the development of more nuclear powerplants. I wanted to clarify for the Record, when you said we should be as bold as the French, you were speaking only of their use of nuclear power?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank my friend from South Carolina. Madam President, I rise to speak in favor of the Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act. I want to commend and thank Senate Majority Leader Reid for considering and adopting a series of ideas on this subject, including particularly the Commodity Speculation Reform Act, which I was privileged to introduce along with Senator Collins of Maine and Senator Cantwell of Washington State. The commodity markets perform a crucial function in our economy as a place where producers and consumers of specific commodities can enter into what are called futures contracts that help hedge the risks of price fluctuations in their industries to give them this certainty that they can buy or sell the product that they are dealing with at some time in the future. And that gives them some stability for their businesses. Those markets have existed for a long time, and they perform a critically important function. The real physical commodity market traders--the airlines, the refineries, the manufacturing firms, and the other users and producers of energy--are the people who actually intend to produce or take delivery of those commodities such as oil as part of doing their business. That is why they go out to the futures markets. Historically, participation in those markets, quite naturally, has been dominated by those commodity traders. That is why they were created, why the markets were created. Financial speculators, including pension funds, university endowments, and other large institutional investors, however, have in recent years poured billions and billions of dollars into commodity markets betting on rising prices. Let's make it clear, these are bets. There is nothing illegal about what they are doing. But as I learned long ago, just because something is not illegal does not mean it is not wrong or it does not hurt people. And the underlying premise of this legislation is that excessive speculation in these commodity markets, futures markets for oil, particularly, is unnaturally raising the price of oil, which is to say immediately, the outrageous price of gasoline that people are paying all across our country today. The difference between the physical traders, as we call them, the people who actually want the product physically or have it to sell, such as the producers of energy or airlines or refineries or manufacturers and the speculators, the speculators never intend to buy or sell the product. They are moving paper around, and they are moving enormous amounts of paper around. The numbers speak for themselves. In the past 5 years, the amount these so-called institutional investors have put into commodity index funds has gone from $13 billion to $317 billion. That is with a ``b,'' billion. And, of course, the price of commodities in these funds rose nearly 200 percent over the same period. That is what is shown in this chart: 1970 is here, 2008 there. You can see the black line shows the prices, and it shows the stock price commodity index over here, the amount of money put in. It goes up and down, but it is basically staying here. Then, yes, look at that. The amount invested goes up and the prices go up dramatically. One way to understand this is I think one of the witnesses before our committee said there had been an amazing increase in the demand for those futures contracts. So, in part, the price has gone up for that reason. But I will come back to that. Moreover, the amount of money that pension funds have moved into the commodities thus far may be the tip of the iceberg. Estimates suggest that less than 1 percent of the $2 trillion--trillion this time with a ``t''--of private pension fund assets is currently allocated to commodities. Imagine if that percentage increases to 5 or 10 percent, what an impact that will have. Through some mystery and magic that I never fully appreciated and certainly do not support, futures contract prices, even though they are for oil that will be delivered in the future, somehow get read right out at the gas pump pretty much the next day. Add that private pension money to increasing commodity investments from State and local governments, pension plans, hedge funds, insurance companies, and other institutional investors, and the result is clear: rising oil, gas, and food prices. The stark reality is the speculators today threaten to overwhelm our commodity markets and substantially increase food and energy prices for years to come. In a series of hearings that Senator Collins and I conducted in our Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, we heard testimony from one expert that this kind of excessive speculation in the commodity markets may be adding as much as $40 to $60 to the cost of a barrel of oil. Of course, that then gets pushed through the system and we pay at the pump or this winter in our home heating oil purchases. There are some people who say that 40 to 60 number is much too high. But I would say most everybody we talked to said that speculation in the commodities market is certainly adding something to the retail price of fuel. I would say even a single dollar increase due to excessive speculation is a dollar too much because of the terrible effect it has on individual consumers who are struggling to spread their budget and use it for the necessities of life, but also because of the overall effect it is having now on the American economy. Let me give you this example: One of the worst protected industries by the increase in fuel prices is the airline industry. Fuel prices are an important part of them doing business. And what we read periodically when they file their quarterly reports are the stunning losses that they are suffering; laying off people as a result, cutting flights as a result from their schedule. So here is a number. According to the Air Transport Association, every $1 increase in the price of a barrel of crude oil adds $470 million a year in jet fuel costs, almost half a billion dollars more cost to the American airline industry. Of course, those costs are passed on to consumers in the form of higher ticket prices and other surcharges that are now keeping a lot of passengers on the ground and the airline industry reeling. If speculators want to invest in energy, they can buy stock directly in energy companies and that would bring needed investment into a means of production; that would increase supply and eventually contribute to lower gasoline prices. Unfortunately, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, known as the CFTC, has ignored the urgent task of providing a frontline defense against this rampant speculation in the commodity markets. As we listened to the witnesses from this commission before our committee, it seemed they had not even been prepared to recognize and acknowledge that there is such a thing as excessive speculation and that it is contributing to rising commodity prices. Instead, the commission has delegated much of its regulatory authority to the for-profit commodity exchanges themselves. This is a very unusual circumstance. These are very professionally run exchanges, but what has happened is that the regulator we created--and I will talk about that in a minute--in the 1930s has given the authority to the regulated exchanges to say how many speculation positions--in other words, how many futures contracts--any one investor in the market can hold at any one time. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission was created in the 1930s because some of the physical traders, particularly in food-related products--grains, et cetera--felt that speculators were unfairly and unnecessarily driving up the price of food. So the Congress created the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and gave them the power to regulate and prevent manipulation and, we would say, excessive speculation. They seemed to say they only have the right to police manipulation, which is doing something out and out unethical, as opposed to putting billions of dollars into the market, moving paper around, and raising the price of commodities for consumers. In contradiction with Congress's original legislative intent, therefore, the commission seems to view its responsibility as confined to that single purpose--preventing market manipulation. On the contrary, the record will show that Congress fully intended the commission to regulate not only market manipulation but what we are seeing today that is hurting consumers all across the country badly, and that is excessive speculation. I want to talk about what this bill before us does. First, I do want to say, in fairness and clarity, I am not saying--I don't think anybody supporting this bill is saying--that the only reason why gasoline, for instance, has gone over $4 a gallon is speculation on the commodity markets. There are other causes. One is clearly rising world demand. The other is a sense that there is a limited supply of oil under the ground. The third is a problem that we in both Houses of Congress and the President have created over a period of time, and I suppose others in our economy have contributed to it. That is the weakness of the American dollar. What is clear is that one of the reasons why this enormous amount of money is pouring into the commodity markets and speculative index funds over the last 5 years is that the dollar has gotten weaker. People who used to leave their money in the dollar as a secure place to be, as a kind of hedge against inflation, feel it is not working now. That is why they are going into these commodity index funds as a better, kind of a gold standard of the day. Until we do something about our national fiscal health and strengthen the dollar again, there still will be that incentive for people to put money into the index funds. So it is not only speculation in the commodity markets but, I am convinced this is one of the contributing causes, perhaps the one cause that we in the Federal Government, by wisely regulating, can actually do something through that will, in fact, put downward pressure on retail gasoline and oil prices. Here is what the leadership bill does. It incorporates a bipartisan proposal that was developed with Senator Collins and Senator Cantwell to create a seamless system of speculative position limits that apply to commodity positions held both off and on the regulated exchanges. To be brief, there is a whole world now that has been created over the years outside of the exchanges, New York, Chicago, where these futures are traded, so-called over-the-counter, unregulated, foreign exchanges. This bill has the aim of covering all those. Because if you are going to regulate speculation, you should regulate it wherever it is occurring. We in Congress have the power to adopt a law such as that. Speculative position limits, the primary policy tool of the CFTC for preventing excessive speculation, authorized back in 1935, were used successfully for decades. Now it should be extended to where the action is occurring. Speculative position limits would put a cap on the size of any one investor's holdings in futures contracts of speculation with respect to a specific commodity, wherever those contracts were purchased. Current caps only apply to positions on the regulated exchanges, and we think that no longer does the job. In addition, I am working with other Members on a substitute amendment that, similar to this bill, because it covers over-the- counter markets, I want to go on to cover investments on the foreign exchanges, incorporate foreign holdings. The outstanding value of over- the-counter commodity derivatives is estimated by the Bank of International Settlements to be $9 trillion. So no bill that wants to deal with the commodity trading business can do so without addressing over-the-counter trading. We want to go on to the foreign holdings as well so that the system will be complete. It won't have any holes in it. One of the witnesses before the committee said the current system of regulating sales and futures contracts, speculative contracts, is like Swiss cheese, a lot of holes in it. Senator Collins and I want to make it like good, strong New England cheddar cheese, no holes. The bill includes another concept from the Lieberman-Collins-Cantwell bill that establishes a specific criteria that the CFTC must use when it sets the speculative position limits. It adopts and expands a rule from our bill by requiring the CFTC to consider the overall effect of speculative activity and to set the position limits at amounts no greater than necessary to ensure liquidity in the markets. We are not saying all speculation is bad. Some speculation makes the markets liquid. It makes them function. It makes them work for those farmers and fuel producers and home heating oil dealers and airlines that want to deal in the actual physical product. We think that provision is necessary. Congress fully intended the regulators use the speculative position limits to counteract excessive speculation when it passed the original Commodity Exchange Act of 1935. I talked about this briefly, but you can see it here. Congress stated its purpose was ``to provide a measure of control over those forms of speculative activity which too often demoralize the markets to the injury of producers and consumers. . . .'' ``[T]he bill''--not this bill but the bill in 1935--``has another objective, the restoration of the primary function of the exchanges which is to furnish a market for the commodities themselves.'' That is from a House report of March 18, 1935. A lot of years have passed since then, but that states the problem we are dealing with now. It is worse now because of the hundreds of billions of dollars of speculative activity that is going on now. Other provisions in this bill are drawn from legislation introduced by several of my colleagues, including a proposal from Senator Levin to authorize the CFTC to liquidate over-the-counter positions, if necessary, in response to major market disturbance. It also includes provisions pushed by Senator Bingaman of New Mexico that would enhance the tools available at present to the Federal Government to prevent market manipulation. What I am saying is that rather than constituting a radical disruptive attempt to distort commodity markets, our legislation basically returns the regulation of commodity markets to where it was intended to be in 1935. It adjusts to the changing reality by embracing all the places where these speculation futures contracts are being sold and regulates them as the Congress of 1935 intended. I know some critics of the bill have said it would encourage investors to foreign exchanges. I don't believe so. The bill will actually discourage flight from the major American exchanges, because it puts all trading platforms under the same regulatory umbrella. It is an even playing field now because everybody is going to be covered. Speculators are subject to the same position limits as those who are investing from here, regardless of whether they invest in New York, London, Dubai, or over the counter. There is another area of the bill I am working with my colleagues to address. I want to touch on it briefly. The bill I have introduced with Senators Collins and Cantwell would extend the reforms to both energy and agricultural commodity markets. The bill before the Senate now only deals with the energy markets. I must say that in many respects the case for reforming agricultural markets is even greater than the case for energy markets, though the American consumer is feeling the increase in food prices less painfully than the increase in gas prices. But trust me, anybody who has been to the supermarket lately knows they are feeling the pinch from increasing food prices as well. Here is the reason. The agricultural commodity markets are historically very small. As investor money flows into index funds--this is a kind of package of investments in commodities that the big institutional investors put money in--that include agricultural components, there is a significant risk that the speculative activity will actually overwhelm the agricultural commodity markets to the great detriment of farmers and American consumers as well. We put our proposed legislation on the Homeland Security Committee's Web site. We got wonderful responses from people, one very poignant one from actually an agricultural food broker in the Midwest--I believe Iowa-- complaining about the unbelievable impact on farmers of this excessive speculation coming into the food commodity markets. As he said, even though the farmers I deal with are making more money because food prices are going up, they know this is going in a bad direction because prices are going up for no good reason. They are going up for speculation. There are those who will object to the bill because they think that government should never interfere in free markets. The father of capitalism, Adam Smith, noted in ``The Wealth of Nations,'' the great classic text on capitalism, that even in a free market, there needs to be some limits. He wrote: Those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals which may endanger the security of the whole society are and ought to be restrained by the laws of all governments. I forgot who said it, but somebody else said, probably a little less elegantly, that the world has never seen anything like a free market system to create wealth. It is a magnificent means of creating wealth. But inherently the free market system has no conscience, and there are simply occasions when, to maximize gain, people will be downright greedy without regard to the consequences on society as a whole. We honor wealth creation in America. People are not against wealthy people in America. Everybody wants to be wealthy in America. But when there are no, essentially, policemen on the economic beat, then people who have a lot of money begin to take advantage of people who are on the other end. That is why we have a whole system of regulation. I daresay it is part of the reason failure to regulate adequately, which has been noted by people in both parties--Secretary Paulson and others have talked about it--failure to regulate financial markets, to adequately create accountability in the extension of home mortgages--a banker gives a mortgage to somebody who is not able to pay it over the long term, but the banker has no accountability because the banker puts it in a package, sells it to somebody up the chain, and the next thing you know somebody is buying a bond based on those mortgages who lives in Norway, as somebody gave me a real-life example. That is beginning to happen in a different way in speculation in commodity markets, which is why I think we have to extend the original law to cover the reality of our day, to protect the American consumer and, in fact, to protect the American economy. So I know there is what has become a characteristic classic Senate moment where there is a potential gridlock over this bill because of disagreements on what amendments will be allowed. I surely hope we can overcome that because the American people need the relief this bill will offer. I hope we can figure out a way to come to a lot of the other ideas that colleagues want to put on as amendments because the American people need the relief those amendments will offer as well. I know people comment on and joke about the fact that in recent polling, the people who have a favorable impression of Congress has dropped below 10 percent to 9 percent. My friend, the Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain, says when you get down to 9 percent favorability for Congress, you are down to family and staff. I want to thank my family and my staff, all of you who are here. But it is not a laughing matter, and the public is not happy with us for good reason. We are not getting anything done to solve their problems that they worry about, that they face every day: the cost of energy, the cost of health care, the security of their jobs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, the price of energy. This bill is one way to bring some help. So I hope we will figure out a way to get beyond the gridlock and get this done.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now recess until 5 p.m. today for the briefing from National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley; further, that the time in recess count postcloture, and following the recess, the time from 5 to 5:50 p.m. be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation, the Commodity Speculation Reform Act of 2008, with my colleague Senator Collins, the ranking minority member of our Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The legislation is designed to wring out of the commodity markets the excessive speculation--and I stress the word ``excessive''--that we believe has helped lead to the sudden and soaring spikes in the prices Americans pay for food and energy. We are going to do this by returning the commodity markets to what they were meant to be--a place where producers and consumers of specific commodities can enter into futures contracts that help hedge the risks of price fluctuations common to their industries. These commodity market traders--farmers, airlines, refineries-- actually intend to produce or take delivery of specific commodities as part of doing business. On the other hand, financial speculators, including pension funds, university endowments, and other large institutional investors, have poured billions and billions of dollars into these markets over the past 5 years betting on rising prices--and let's make it clear, that these are bets--without ever intending to actually own a barrel of oil or a bushel of corn. They are looking for nothing more than paper profits. In a series of hearings held by our Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, we heard testimony that this kind of excessive speculation in the commodity markets may have added as much as $40 to $60 to the cost of a barrel of oil. Some say these figures are too high. But I would say that even a single dollar increase due to excessive speculation is a dollar too much because of the inflationary effect it can have not only on the U.S. economy, but around the world. Consider this: according to the Air Transport Association, every $1 increase in the price of a barrel of crude oil adds $470 million a year in jet fuel costs--almost half a billion dollars--to the U.S. airline industry. These costs are passed on to consumers in the forms of higher ticket prices and other surcharges that are now keeping potential passengers on the ground and has the industry reeling. These increases directly hit consumers in the global economy through higher gas and food prices. Moreover, the negative effects of commodity price inflation ripple through the economy as the high cost of energy and raw materials weakens our manufacturing base, and the high cost associated with transporting goods impedes international trade. The profits made by the speculators do not produce one new barrel of oil, put one new acre of farmland into production, put one new mine into operation, or add one new gallon of refinery capacity. If speculators really want to invest in commodities, they can buy stock in an energy company or an agricultural firm. They can purchase the royalty rights to land. Any of these options would benefit from market trends related to commodity prices and would also bring needed investment into means of production that would increase supplies and eventually contribute to lower commodity prices. Unfortunately, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has ignored the urgent task of providing our front line defense against rampant and unmanaged speculation. To this day, the Commission has yet to recognize that speculation affects commodity prices. Instead, the Commission has delegated much of its regulatory authority to the for-profit exchanges. Moreover, in contradiction with Congress's original legislative intent, the Commission views its mission as confined to a single purpose--preventing market manipulation. On the contrary, Congress fully intended the Commission to regulate market manipulation AND excessive speculation. Our bill effectively closes the door to excessive speculation, but in a rational and reasonable way by, in effect, perfecting current law. First, it requires the CFTC to consider the overall effect of speculation when it sets the position limits that restrict the amount that any one investor can invest in a commodity. This is a critical and necessary change--if the Commission does not acknowledge and embrace its obligation to prevent excessive speculation, all of our efforts will be in vain. Second, it extends the existing rules that apply to the regulated exchanges to currently unregulated over-the-counter and foreign markets. Over the last 10 years, over-the-counter trading in commodities has exploded. The over-the-counter investment vehicles are simply economic substitutes for futures contracts. There is no rational reason that they should not be subject to the same laws and regulations that apply to futures contracts. This change also eliminates the ``swaps loophole'' that allows pension funds and other large investors to invest in index funds that circumvent the position limits. From 2003 to 2008, investment in commodity index funds has swelled from $13 billion to $260 billion and has, in effect, chased up prices and taken control of the commodity markets away from the industries and producers that must use them as a means of doing business. Other important provisions would direct that the speculative position limits must be set by the CFTC, not the futures exchanges, and repeal the CFTC's authority to substitute meaningless reporting requirements for actual speculative position limits. In the course of our Committee hearings and in later deliberations we looked at a number of legislative options, including banning certain large investors, such as pension funds, from the commodity markets altogether. But we feel the approach we've come up with in this bill is a reasonable, commonsense approach that will help bring order back to the commodity markets while preserving the liquidity it needs to function properly. Some have suggested that Congressional action will simply push investors to foreign markets. Our bill actually discourages flight from the major exchanges because it puts all trading platforms under the same regulatory umbrella. Speculators are subject to the same position limits regardless of whether they invest in New York, London, Dubai, or over-the-counter. Is excessive speculation the sole cause of rising prices? Of course not. Global economic growth, particularly in emerging nations like China and India, has put tremendous upward pressure on the prices of energy, food and raw materials. But there is little doubt--even among most skeptics of our legislation--that excessive speculation has had an effect on rising prices. Our bill will end that and help create a more orderly market for the industries and producers who must deal in commodities as a matter of business. The father of modern capitalism, Adam Smith, overall wanted to limit the role of government in free markets. In fact, in ``The Wealth of Nations'' Smith said speculators served many useful functions in a free market and many of his observations are still true today. But Smith knew there had to be limits, writing: ``those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which may endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments.'' With this bill we seek that kind of restraint so that the few don't gain exorbitant profits at the expense of the average American reeling under spiraling prices for food and fuel. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill and a summary be printed in the Record.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation, the Commodity Speculation Reform Act of 2008, with my colleague Senator Collins, the ranking minority member of our Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The legislation is designed to wring out of the commodity markets the excessive speculation--and I stress the word ``excessive''--that we believe has helped lead to the sudden and soaring spikes in the prices Americans pay for food and energy. We are going to do this by returning the commodity markets to what they were meant to be--a place where producers and consumers of specific commodities can enter into futures contracts that help hedge the risks of price fluctuations common to their industries. These commodity market traders--farmers, airlines, refineries-- actually intend to produce or take delivery of specific commodities as part of doing business. On the other hand, financial speculators, including pension funds, university endowments, and other large institutional investors, have poured billions and billions of dollars into these markets over the past 5 years betting on rising prices--and let's make it clear, that these are bets--without ever intending to actually own a barrel of oil or a bushel of corn. They are looking for nothing more than paper profits. In a series of hearings held by our Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, we heard testimony that this kind of excessive speculation in the commodity markets may have added as much as $40 to $60 to the cost of a barrel of oil. Some say these figures are too high. But I would say that even a single dollar increase due to excessive speculation is a dollar too much because of the inflationary effect it can have not only on the U.S. economy, but around the world. Consider this: according to the Air Transport Association, every $1 increase in the price of a barrel of crude oil adds $470 million a year in jet fuel costs--almost half a billion dollars--to the U.S. airline industry. These costs are passed on to consumers in the forms of higher ticket prices and other surcharges that are now keeping potential passengers on the ground and has the industry reeling. These increases directly hit consumers in the global economy through higher gas and food prices. Moreover, the negative effects of commodity price inflation ripple through the economy as the high cost of energy and raw materials weakens our manufacturing base, and the high cost associated with transporting goods impedes international trade. The profits made by the speculators do not produce one new barrel of oil, put one new acre of farmland into production, put one new mine into operation, or add one new gallon of refinery capacity. If speculators really want to invest in commodities, they can buy stock in an energy company or an agricultural firm. They can purchase the royalty rights to land. Any of these options would benefit from market trends related to commodity prices and would also bring needed investment into means of production that would increase supplies and eventually contribute to lower commodity prices. Unfortunately, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has ignored the urgent task of providing our front line defense against rampant and unmanaged speculation. To this day, the Commission has yet to recognize that speculation affects commodity prices. Instead, the Commission has delegated much of its regulatory authority to the for-profit exchanges. Moreover, in contradiction with Congress's original legislative intent, the Commission views its mission as confined to a single purpose--preventing market manipulation. On the contrary, Congress fully intended the Commission to regulate market manipulation AND excessive speculation. Our bill effectively closes the door to excessive speculation, but in a rational and reasonable way by, in effect, perfecting current law. First, it requires the CFTC to consider the overall effect of speculation when it sets the position limits that restrict the amount that any one investor can invest in a commodity. This is a critical and necessary change--if the Commission does not acknowledge and embrace its obligation to prevent excessive speculation, all of our efforts will be in vain. Second, it extends the existing rules that apply to the regulated exchanges to currently unregulated over-the-counter and foreign markets. Over the last 10 years, over-the-counter trading in commodities has exploded. The over-the-counter investment vehicles are simply economic substitutes for futures contracts. There is no rational reason that they should not be subject to the same laws and regulations that apply to futures contracts. This change also eliminates the ``swaps loophole'' that allows pension funds and other large investors to invest in index funds that circumvent the position limits. From 2003 to 2008, investment in commodity index funds has swelled from $13 billion to $260 billion and has, in effect, chased up prices and taken control of the commodity markets away from the industries and producers that must use them as a means of doing business. Other important provisions would direct that the speculative position limits must be set by the CFTC, not the futures exchanges, and repeal the CFTC's authority to substitute meaningless reporting requirements for actual speculative position limits. In the course of our Committee hearings and in later deliberations we looked at a number of legislative options, including banning certain large investors, such as pension funds, from the commodity markets altogether. But we feel the approach we've come up with in this bill is a reasonable, commonsense approach that will help bring order back to the commodity markets while preserving the liquidity it needs to function properly. Some have suggested that Congressional action will simply push investors to foreign markets. Our bill actually discourages flight from the major exchanges because it puts all trading platforms under the same regulatory umbrella. Speculators are subject to the same position limits regardless of whether they invest in New York, London, Dubai, or over-the-counter. Is excessive speculation the sole cause of rising prices? Of course not. Global economic growth, particularly in emerging nations like China and India, has put tremendous upward pressure on the prices of energy, food and raw materials. But there is little doubt--even among most skeptics of our legislation--that excessive speculation has had an effect on rising prices. Our bill will end that and help create a more orderly market for the industries and producers who must deal in commodities as a matter of business. The father of modern capitalism, Adam Smith, overall wanted to limit the role of government in free markets. In fact, in ``The Wealth of Nations'' Smith said speculators served many useful functions in a free market and many of his observations are still true today. But Smith knew there had to be limits, writing: ``those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which may endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments.'' With this bill we seek that kind of restraint so that the few don't gain exorbitant profits at the expense of the average American reeling under spiraling prices for food and fuel. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill and a summary be printed in the Record.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, New Haven has lost a friend, a neighbor, and a teacher, with the passing of Robert Leeney, the longtime editor of the New Haven Register. In his career at the Register, Bob informed, educated, and entertained us in many roles, including as an editorial writer, reporter, book editor, Broadway columnist, and theatre critic. Bob's weekly column in the paper, the ``Editor's Note''--which he remarkably wrote from April 6, 1974 to April 7, 2007, without missing even a single week--was a must-read column that brightened up our Saturday mornings. Evident in his writing was his love of New Haven, often reminding us what we may have missed, and through him it is true to say that our love of New Haven increased. In his columns, Bob rarely strayed from local nonpolitical topics, but when he did it was often to remind us about the greatness of our country, the value of service, or to urge politicians to look beyond partisan politics. And Bob always did this with a grace and delivery that ensured his words made their impact. His writing often brought to life, and made us yearn for, an earlier age. In his last July 4th column, published on June 30, 2007, for instance, Bob wrote about the celebrations in the 1920s. It was a time, he wrote, when: ``In every family, the youngsters were chipping in long-saved nickels and dimes to build a fireworks fund for the front porch displays that illuminated streets and lawns, beaches and boat docks in salute to American independence and the personal freedom it signified for all the world.'' Just as Bob's professional life was marked by his scholarship and talented writing and reporting, his personal life, too, was marked by his dedication to New Haven and to his being the consummate gentleman. His service to our community did not end with his journalism, and in his spare time he served our community in many roles. Indeed, his life was twinned with that of New Haven, especially in its artistic and religious life. To give just a few examples of his extensive public service, Bob served as vice president of the New Haven Arts Council and on the city committee that worked to reopen the Shubert. Once the theatre was reopened, he served on its board. His interests and service was not limited to the arts. Bob served as a director of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce and was a member of the State Education Commission's Connecticut Education Council. He also sat on the committee tasked with establishing a Holocaust memorial, as well as on other committees. Bob was a religious man, and in recognition for his service to the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II appointed him a Knight of St. Gregory. Bob also received numerous other awards, including Connecticut Anti-Defamation League's First Amendment Freedoms Award--of which he was the first ever recipient. It can be said about Bob that he left our society better off for the wisdom and humanity he taught us both in his writings, in his personal life of honor, and in his public service. Bob's wife Anne passed away in 1990, and I remember him writing that after she died he went to bed and ``touched the pillow where the moonlight and the memory fused and whispered, `Much ado about nothing, old girl'--and went to sleep.'' Hadassah and I extend our condolences to his family, the Register, and the entire community. We will miss you, Bob.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, for that magnificent exchange of correspondence between the Hebrew congregation of Newport, RI, and President Washington. May I say that Senator Whitehouse, in his own bearing and substance, lives out the promise of religious freedom that our first President gave to all Americans. Perhaps I should say I say that as one of the descendants of the Stock of Abraham who is privileged to be a Member of the Senate today. I thank Senator Whitehouse. I thank Senator Coburn. I am going to take the liberty, if I may, to speak for a few minutes while we are waiting for either Senator Murkowski, Senators Webb or Martinez, who are going to read documents before I conclude. But I particularly want to give a statement of appreciation to our colleague, Senator Cornyn of Texas, whose idea this was. He came to me and said: Why do we not try to establish a new Senate tradition, where every year, either on July 8, which, as Senator Coburn indicated, was the first public reading of the Declaration, or the day closest to July 4 when the Senate is in session, we read the Declaration, this magnificent statement of America's founding principles, purpose, destiny, and other patriotic documents of the moment to remind us what we are about as a Nation, and in some sense, to refresh our sense of national purpose and to build on the celebrations that are part of July 4. We all love the fireworks, we all love the time to be with our family, we love the parades and, of course, we are struck now, as we are at war, in the expressions of gratitude toward those who have put on the uniform of the United States of America to defend our freedom and our security. But this all goes back to the beginning, to the extraordinary founding of this country by an extraordinary group of human beings. The truth is we do not celebrate enough that America, unique among Nations, was not defined from the beginning by its borders, by its geography, if you will, but by its ideology, by its values, as the founding generation of Americans expressed magnificently in the first official documents. Those words of the Declaration about the self-evident truth that all of us are created equal and endowed not by Jefferson, the great American who wrote the Declaration, not by the philosophers of the enlightenment but by our Creator, with these unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that paragraph, and then it says, in order to secure those rights, the Government is formed; in other words, to secure the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I always like to say America is a faith-based initiative founded on those endowments from our Creator. Building this magnificent architecture of freedom stated in the poetry of the founding generation of Americans has probably had more effect, has definitely had more effect on more people and more political activity in the 200-plus years since 1776 than any other single document. Of course, other documents stating other ``isms'' have come along, Nazism, Communism, Islamism, but the Declaration of Independence, Americanism, has prevailed. The other thing that struck me as I read the Declaration was the anger and the passion we sometimes forget our founding generation had toward Great Britain and the King for all the tyrannical usurpations of their freedom that were the cause of the Declaration. Finally, the document is a magnificently aspirational document. It states noble goals. But let us all be honest, at this moment on this floor, particularly at the moment in 1776, where the Declaration of Independence was signed and issued, America was nowhere near realizing the glorious values stated, of equality, of life and the pursuit of life and happiness. People of color had no rights. They were not even counted equal with White people. Women had effectively no rights. I was forced, by the validity of the document, to read a terribly bigoted and offensive reference to Native Americans. But that is the story of America. The Declaration gave us our purpose. It gave us our destiny. It put us on a journey. Succeeding generations of Americans have come closer to realizing the aspirations stated in that document. Of course, the work goes on in our time as it has for every previous generation of Americans. I appreciate very much that Senator Webb has come to the Chamber. I am pleased to yield to him for a reading of Thomas Jefferson's last letter.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from Virginia for a characteristically purposive and eloquent reading of a great document. I thank him for carrying the torch of Jefferson, along with that other great Virginian, Senator John Warner, in our time in the Senate. While we await, hopefully soon, Senators Murkowski and Martinez, I thought I would go on and perhaps read the final document that I was going to read at the end. Before I do so, I thank Senator Cornyn of Texas whose idea this was, hoping this might form the basis of not only the Senate celebrating the documents but, of course, more than that, the values, the principles, the destiny, the American destiny captured in them and in the glorious words of our founding generation, but that we might, in doing so, perhaps carry out or begin a national civics lesson in all that we have to be grateful for as Americans, as each succeeding generation of Americans has not only taken on the responsibility to try to move the country closer to the aspirations that are expressed in these founding documents but, of course, each succeeding generation has benefited from the promise of equality stated in these documents. I thank Senator Cornyn. I wish to now thank the people working for him. Senators have good ideas occasionally, but it is the staff who makes sure we implement them. I wish to particularly thank Nicole Gustafson, of his staff, and Michelle Chin and also Clarine Nardi Riddle, who is my chief of staff, who has worked on this on behalf of my office. I have always been struck by the extent to which the founding generation of Americans was powerfully religious. In fact, they came to this country, most of them, to escape religious persecution. So it is no surprise that the original documents, as you can hear, of our country, as we read this morning, are full of references to God, the Almighty, nature's God, a whole series of descriptions. That is why, I said earlier and I say with pride and gratitude, America is a faith- based institution. That is why it always seems to me that anyone who tries to separate America and religion is doing something unnatural. The remarkable balance the Founders established was of a nation premised on faith in God, whose purpose was, as a government, to secure the rights each of us have as an endowment from our Creator and yet to do that in a way that, as the Declaration, as the Constitution, as the magnificent letter from our first President, George Washington, to the Hebrew congregation of Newport, RI, makes clear, respects everybody's right to believe in whatever they wish to believe in. It struck me once, reading the Declaration, when we say that the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is an endowment of our Creator, that one of the rights our Founders recognized is the right not just to believe in the Creator as one who chooses but, in fact, not to believe in our Creator and to equally enjoy the protections and rights that come to all Americans. It is perhaps because the Declaration of Independence is a faith-based document that it has had such universal application and effect across the world, inspiring generation after generation of people throughout the world, in every continent of the world, to essentially pick up the torch, to accept the destiny, to revolt against tyranny and despotism, to fight in the same revolutionary spirit that comes through the Declaration of Independence that we read a few moments ago for the freedom of their own people. Of course, if you say, as our Founders did and as we believe, that the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that are the premise of the Declaration of Independence were the endowment of our Creator, surely our Creator, who created heaven and the Earth and all who live on it, did not intend for those rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be the exclusive possession of Americans. This is the most universal declaration of human rights. It still guides our foreign policy because it is what we are all about--freedom and the extension of freedom. I do wish to say it has inspired enormous numbers of people throughout the world to fight, as our founding generation fought, for freedom. The document I wish to read now, chosen by staff but a fascinating one, I must say--I had never seen it before--speaks to the profound faith of the founding generation, their knowledge of the Bible. In fact, I suppose it was at the Constitutional Congress, there was a debate about the symbol of the United States of America. And before the symbol that we have now was chosen, a few of the Founders suggested-- argued, in fact--that it be a portrayal of the children of Israel crossing the sea divided by God's will because they felt they were, as some of them said, establishing here a new Jerusalem. The letter I wish to read was written by John Quincy Adams, one of the great members of the founding generation, eloquent, a fighter for freedom. He delivered an address to the New York Historical Society, celebrating the 50th anniversary of George Washington's inauguration. In that address, he urges the people to embrace the fundamental principles that motivated the founding generation, of which he was a part, and to make them a part of daily living. He premised it all on his own belief in the Bible. So let me read it to you now: When the children of Israel, after forty years of wanderings in the wilderness, were about to enter the promised land, their leader Moses, who was not permitted to cross the Jordan with them, just before his removal from among them, commanded that when the Lord their God should have brought them into the land, they should put the curse upon Mount Ebal, and the blessing upon Mount Gerizim. The injunction was faithfully fulfilled by his successor Joshua. Immediately after they had taken possession of the land, Joshua built an altar to the Lord, of whole stones, upon Mount Ebal. And there he wrote, upon the stones, a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written in the presence of the children of Israel: and all Israel and their elders and officers, and their judges, stood on the two sides of the ark of the covenant, borne by the priests and Levites, six tribes over against Mount Gerizim, and six over against Mount Ebal. And he read all the words of the law, the blessings and cursings, according to all that was written in the book of the law. Now John Quincy Adams brings it home from the Bible to America when he says: Fellow-citizens, the ark of your covenant is the Declaration of Independence. Your Mount Ebal, is the confederacy of separate state sovereignties, and your Mount Gerizim is the Constitution of the United States. He continues: In that scene of tremendous and awful solemnity, narrated in the Holy Scriptures, there is not a curse pronounced against the people, upon Mount Ebal, not a blessing promised them upon Mount Gerizim, which your posterity may not suffer or enjoy, from your and their adherence to, or departure from, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, practically interwoven in the Constitution of the United States. So Adams brings it right from the Bible to America, to the Declaration and the Constitution. Then he says, in conclusion: Lay up these principles, then in your hearts, and in your souls-- And then quoting from the Bible, or picking the metaphor up, he says-- bind them for signs upon your hands, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes--teach them to your children-- He is speaking now of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution-- speaking of them when sitting in your houses, when walking by the way, when lying down and when rising up--write them upon the doorplates of your houses, and upon your gates--cling to them as to the issues of life--adhere to them as to the cords of your eternal salvation. So may your children's children at the next return of this day of jubilee-- Remember, it was 50 years after Washington's inaugural-- after a full century of experience under your national Constitution-- Today, we are now into our third century of experience-- celebrate it again in the full enjoyment of all the blessings recognized by you in the commemoration of this day, and of all the blessings promised to the children of Israel upon Mount Gerizim, as the reward of obedience to the law of God. A remarkable statement of the enduring bases of our great national documents that guide us to this very day. I am very grateful to see our friend and colleague from Alaska, Senator Murkowski, in the Chamber, and I will yield now to her for the Abraham Lincoln Independence Hall speech regarding slavery.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Murkowski for that moving reading of the statement by President Lincoln and for all she does in our time to carry on those principles. It struck me--I said earlier the Declaration was an aspirational document and positing the self-evident truth that all of us are created equal, having this endowment from our Creator to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--the great promise of equality of opportunity--that it was not realized at the time, July 4, 1776, when it was written. One of the groups I mentioned--women--had essentially no equal rights at that time. The story of America is the story of trying to, over time, reach the aspirations of the founding generation. It was only into the last century, as you well know, I say to my friend from Alaska, that women got the right to vote, and only more recently that women began to be elected to the Senate in some numbers. So the work goes on. Obviously, you were elected because of your qualities as a person, not because of your gender. But I note both the progress that has been made and the progress that yet has to be made to realize the fullest range of the goals of the Founders. Senator Martinez, the final Member to speak, is on his way. I will fill in a little bit. I say to the Senator, your reading of Lincoln inspires me to recall that I recently read a book--I forget the name of the book, but I remember the author, William Lee Miller. I remember it well because he was a teacher of mine at Yale, who has now been teaching for many years at the University of Virginia. He wrote a book recently on Lincoln, and in it he analyzes Lincoln's first inaugural address. I thought he made a powerful point that reminded me of the extent to which Lincoln in that first inaugural address talked about the oath of office he was taking and how it transformed him. In other words, he said when he raised his hand--the right hand--and put the other hand on the Bible and said he was now pledging to protect, preserve, and defend the Constitution, it transformed him as a person. Yes, he was still Abraham Lincoln, American citizen, but he was now the President, with a solemn and sacred obligation to protect, preserve, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That was a powerful insight, and one I think all of us--as thrilled as I remember I was, and I am sure every Member of the Senate was when we walked to the well of the Senate the first time, and every time since, on the day we were sworn in as Senators, to feel transformed by the oath we take, which puts the interests of the Constitution and our Nation first above personal interests, above party interests. In this particularly partisan chapter of American political history, it is worth remembering that the oath we took, as Lincoln's first inaugural instructs us, was not to protect and defend and preserve ourselves or our parties but to protect, preserve, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and, of course, the United States itself most of all. I am grateful to see my friend from Florida in the Chamber and now yield to Senator Martinez for the reading of Patrick Henry's speech.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Martinez for that wonderful reading and for all that his person speaks to. He said he was an immigrant to this country, born in Cuba. The truth is, we are all immigrants, the founding generation. We are all immigrants. The original Americans were Native Americans. I think some of us whose families have been here a while may forget all of that. The country in its founding documents posited these magnificent ideas based on faith, the endowment of our Creator, but then this openness and equality. The Senator from Florida, in his lifetime, his fresh memory, reminds us all how we have to be grateful for each succeeding generation as an obligation to accept the responsibility and, if you will, the destiny that is included in these documents--the Declaration and the Constitution--but we are also beneficiaries of those. Certainly, I have been in my life, and the Senator from Florida has been in his life. It is great to have somebody such as the Senator from Florida, by virtue of his own ability and hard work being a Senator, to be here and to read Patrick Henry's inspiring words. That is really what America is about.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I am honored that Senator Warner has come to the floor. He is a great Virginian in the tradition of Jefferson, and I wish to call on him because I believe he would like to add just a few words here at the end of this hour of celebration of our independence.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, if I may, I am going to finish up in a moment with just a minute because I have had plenty of time to speak, so we will be there before 11:15.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. No.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. ``For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: ``For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: ``For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: ``For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:''

Mr. LIEBERMAN. ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it; and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.''

Mr. LIEBERMAN. ``He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. ``He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. ``He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.''

Mr. LIEBERMAN. ``He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. ``He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. ``He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. ``He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their acts of pretended legislation:''

Mr. LIEBERMAN. ``He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. ``He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the Lives of our people. ``He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. ``He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. ``He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.''

Mr. LIEBERMAN. ``Nor have We been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.----''

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I wish to thank Senator Warner for those very eloquent words. I can't think of a better way to end this celebration of the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson of Virginia than with the words of the great Senator from Virginia today, John Warner. I appreciate all of the Members of the Senate having participated in this celebration of our founding documents and of the principles that have given America its purpose and destiny over these many decades. Of course, we hope this will serve in its way as a teaching instrument, a civics lesson for those around the country who may be listening. For our own part here in the Senate, let's pledge today to uphold these principles and their values and the eloquence with which they were expressed, with the same dedication and persistence in courage as the great first generation of Americans who wrote them. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I wish to publicly commend and congratulate LTC Edward M. Fortunato, U.S. Army, upon his retirement after 20 years of military service. I have come to know and respect Lieutenant Colonel Fortunato over the past 3 years, during which time he served as the congressional liaison for all Army aviation programs. In this capacity, Lieutenant Colonel Fortunato was instrumental in improving the understanding of Senators and staff concerning a myriad of Army aviation issues, in particular the reinvestment of Comanche helicopter funding to restructure Army aviation for the 21st century, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Army transformation. He was instrumental in the successful authorization and appropriation of the light utility helicopter, armed-reconnaissance helicopter, joint cargo aircraft, Chinook multiyear, Apache, Black Hawk multiyear and numerous unmanned aerial vehicle and aviation R&D projects. Lieutenant Colonel Fortunato escorted numerous congressional delegations to over 20 countries, including 3 to Iraq and Afghanistan. I myself was privileged to have him as an escort at my specific request for my own visits abroad and in larger delegations. He worked tirelessly to ensure my visits were coordinated with all the relevant agencies, military leaders, heads of state and government officials so I could focus on the issues that were critical to my service as the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Air Land Subcommittee. I am extremely grateful for the support, friendship and perspective Ed provided me and my staff. Lieutenant Colonel Fortunato's congressional assignment was the capstone to an outstanding career of service to our Nation. He served as an aviation officer in numerous command and staff positions. His operational assignments began in the famous 101st Airborne Division, AASLT, during Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm with further assignments as part of JTF-Bravo in Honduras, 2nd Infantry Division in Korea and the 25th Infantry Division, L, in Hawaii. Lieutenant Colonel Fortunato then served in a number of program and acquisition positions to include program manager for the Army Special Operations Aviation Regiment MH-60 Black Hawk fleet and various high level assignments within the Army Secretariat. Lieutenant Colonel Fortunato holds an MBA from George Washington University and a bachelor's of science in business and marketing from George Mason University. His military awards include the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal, Parachutist Badge, Pathfinder Badge, Air Assault Badge, the Army Aviation Association's Order of St. Michael, and he is a Senior Army Aviator with over 1,100 hours. Son of a soldier, Lieutenant Colonel Fortunato is married to the former Monique Childress of Roanoke, VA. They have two children, Isabella, 13, and Edward, 11. I congratulate them on their husband and father's retirement from the Army. The demands of military life are such that military families also sacrifice and serve the Nation along with their soldier, and I thank Monique, Isabella and Ed for their service. The Army, the Senate, and the Nation are fortunate to have had the service of such a great officer as LTC Ed Fortunato. I wish him Godspeed.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to express my profound gratitude and heartfelt best wishes to Frederick M. Downey, a true friend and dedicated public servant who will be leaving my Senate office after serving 12 years as senior counselor and legislative assistant. Given all that we have been through together, Fred's departure is truly a bittersweet occasion. While I am excited for Fred as he pursues an exciting opportunity with the Aerospace Industry Association, I can't help but think what a great loss his leaving will be for me, my staff, and the people of Connecticut. Fred came to my office having already amassed a long and distinguished record in public service and national security. A distinguished military graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, Fred served in the U.S. Army for 24 years, rising to the rank of colonel. In the Army, Fred held a variety of infantry, troop, and staff positions in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and in Vietnam. Between 1988 and 1991, Fred worked in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans in the Department of the Army, where he was responsible for advising senior Army leaders on national security policy and military strategy. He played a leading role in examining the post-Cold War strategic environment, formulating options used by Army leaders when developing a national security strategy and force structure to meet the needs of the new international system. Fred also played an integral role in developing the Army's strategy for Operation Desert Storm. Fred then served as assistant to the director of net assessments, before retiring from the Army in 1993 and joining TASC, Inc. At TASC, Fred provided analytical services to the U.S. Government and our allies. Even with all Fred had already done for our country, his instinct for public service proved strong; and in 1996 he agreed to leave TASC and accept a position as my legislative assistant for defense and foreign affairs. Naturally, I was delighted to have someone with his background and expertise join my team. Fred's tenure in the Senate has been one of remarkable distinction. For over a decade, while America's role in the world has undergone profound and sometimes tumultuous changes, I have consistently been able to rely on Fred to give me the highest level of counsel on critical military and foreign affairs issues. In addition to his almost encyclopedic knowledge of military matters, Fred quickly demonstrated that he possessed keen legislative and political instincts. As my designated representative to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Fred has been indispensable in my efforts to transform America's military so that is it better suited toward the national security needs of a post- Cold War world. With Fred's invaluable assistance, I was able to develop and pass legislation establishing the Quadrennial Defense Review and the National Defense Panel, which requires the Pentagon to regularly assess what it will require to keep America safe in the future, as well as legislation establishing the U.S. Joint Forces Command. Also, as part of the annual Defense authorization bill, Fred and I crafted a series of provisions to reform the policy, procurement, and research and development process at the Department of Defense. Fred was just as focused and passionate in helping advance foreign policy legislation that was both tough on America's enemies and representative of our Nation's core values. With his strong guidance, I was able to enact a number of initiatives that promoted human rights and religious freedom abroad, increased American assistance to fight the spread of global HIV/AIDS, encouraged increased international cooperation and the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and authorized efforts to prevent genocide. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when America was awakened to the grave threat posed by radical Islamist terrorism, Fred was steadfast in his efforts to advance legislation giving the Federal Government the tools it needs to protect Americans from further attacks. Working with my talented staff on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Fred played a vital role in producing legislation that implemented the recommendations of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Fred also teamed up with the committee on the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which enacted the most sweeping reform of our Nation's intelligence community in over half a century, and on legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security. Fred recognized early on that for the United States to ultimately succeed in the war on terror, it is not enough to just seek out and capture terrorists, but that we must also work to provide the people of the Middle East and the rest of the Islamic world an alternative to radical Islamism by promoting democracy and economic development. With this in mind, Fred toiled relentlessly to advance initiatives designed to expand America's diplomatic outreach to the Muslim world and to promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in the Middle East. He also guided to passage the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act, which committed the United States to aiding Afghanistan as it seeks to rebuild for the long term. In 2005, when the Pentagon recommended that the Naval Submarine Base in Groton, CT, be closed, Fred worked tirelessly as a leader in an effort to keep it open. Once again, his advice was pivotal toward developing a successful strategy that demonstrated to the Base Closure and Realignment Commission that the unique synergy of submarine construction and operating talent in southeast Connecticut is critical to our national security. Connecticut truly owes a debt of gratitude to Fred for his perseverance and commitment to the well-being of our State. Of course, I couldn't possibly discuss Fred's service in the Senate without mentioning all the times he and I have traveled the world together on official business. Whether it was our annual trip to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Brussels, or the numerous fact-finding trips taken to Iraq and Afghanistan, Fred was there to provide his thoughtful perspective. Often these trips would keep Fred away from home during the holidays, an enormous sacrifice that I cannot begin to say how much I appreciate. Wherever we traveled, my visits to other parts of the world were always greatly enhanced knowing that Fred was at my side. Fred is respected throughout the Senate for his outstanding work and breadth of knowledge. He has built a reputation with Senators and staff from both sides of the aisle for always being willing to take into account everyone's views and work together to reach a consensus. He is a true professional in the very best sense of the word. I am deeply grateful to Fred's wife, Claudia, for her understanding of the marathon hours and taxing travel schedule that was so often demanded of Fred. Having been lucky enough to have gotten to know her and their two daughters, Dawn Harvey and Kelly Emery, I can only surmise that they served as an endless source of strength for him as he grappled with the tough issues facing the world today. My entire Senate staff has been extremely fortunate to work with Fred, who was always willing to share his broad knowledge and counsel with his coworkers. When things would sometimes get hectic, Fred was a beacon of calm and stability; ready to impart the wisdom he had accumulated from his vast experience to help us all weather the storm. Many new legislative aides and fellows would find that Fred was someone they could approach whenever they needed assistance, and we have all been touched by his graciousness and sense of humor. He will always remain a treasured part of our office family, and the office will never be the same without him. I am honored to have had Fred as a trusted advisor for all these years, and I am even prouder to call him my friend. While he will be missed immensely, my staff and I wish him happiness and health, knowing that he will be equally successful in his next endeavor. On behalf of myself, my staff, and the country, I sincerely thank Fred Downey for his many years of public service.