George LeMieux

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Madam President, these are two documents from yesterday. I spoke a moment ago of 20 skimmers. That is a Thursday document; this is the Wednesday document. This is the Snapshot Report No. 22, Deepwater Horizon Response, Wednesday, June 16, from the State of Florida's Governor Crist to Dave Halstead, State coordinating officer. This says, as of yesterday, 32 skimmers off the coast of Florida. The report we have from today has 20, so that is a drop of 12. This is the National Incident Command Daily Situation Update, Shore Operations--Florida panhandle, Department of Homeland Security document. It says there are 110 skimmers. We just found out that is for the entire gulf coast. What is being reported to us is that there are 110 skimmers for the entire gulf coast. Thirteen of those skimmers are off of Florida. We are told that those 13 are encapsulated within this number of 32. As of yesterday, 32; as of today, 20. Only 110 skimmers are off the entire gulf coast to fight this problem. We are calling upon this administration to get its act together. We commend them for this fund yesterday. That is good work. We give credit where credit is due. But we have to stop this oil from coming to shore. These skimmers can do the job. If there are 2,000 skimmers in this country, why aren't they headed to the gulf? If there are thousands of them around the world, why aren't they headed to the gulf? This question must be answered as quickly as possible. My colleague from Alabama and I and others will continue to come to the Senate floor and urge this administration to get on top of this problem and get these skimmers where they need to be.

Mr. LeMIEUX. That is correct. We have been talking to the Coast Guard for weeks about trying to muster every skimmer available to the gulf for not just Florida but for Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. I met with the President, Admiral Allen, Governor Crist, Congressman Jeff Miller, and other State officials in Pensacola. We met for an hour. I asked about the skimmers and about the report from the State Department, and I asked: Did we decline foreign assistance? I asked about the skimmers. He said that, of course, Admiral Allen wants to get as many skimmers as possible, and he is working on it. That sounds good, but we need results. It is not just about effort; we need results. These reports are showing that we are not getting the results.

Mr. LeMIEUX. I don't know what is holding it up. The Jones Act is not a barrier. That can be waived. The Jones Act was waived, as I understand it, after Katrina. There is power under the U.S. Code--I believe it is 46 U.S. Code, section 500, but I will check that--that gives the ability of agency heads of the Federal Government to waive the Jones Act. The President and Admiral Allen tell us there are ships that have come from foreign countries. I hope that is true. I assume it is if they told us that. Why is the State Department on the one hand reporting that they are declining offers of assistance from 17 countries, and then we hear some ships are being used? It comes back to the point my colleague, Senator Nelson from Florida, made about having a command and control unit. I am believing that Admiral Allen is running this operation, and I like him and commend him for his service. But we obviously need to have a better top-down control situation here so that we get some results. Every person in America has to be scratching their head as to why these skimmers aren't there. Why aren't there hundreds of them off the coasts of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi? We just celebrated the anniversary of Dunkirk a couple days ago, where the British civilians took their boats out and rescued the British soldiers who were retreating, and saved the day. Why aren't there boats there to save the day for the gulf coast?

Mr. LeMIEUX. That is a great point. There doesn't seem to be a sense of urgency. Job 1 is stopping the oil from leaking, and job 2 is stopping the oil from coming ashore. They are doing some good work. The President tells us that by the end of the month 90 percent will be contained. Let's hope that happens. Let's stop the oil from getting on our beaches, in our estuaries, our coastal waterways. The best way to do that with booming is skimming. As the Senator mentioned, skimming is working and the oil is able to be skimmed. Why are we waiting to ask Governors? As Admiral Allen told the Senator and me a moment ago, they are going to put in a request to Governors to free up skimmers. There are skimmers around the country that have to be on duty because there could be a spill someplace else. They have to request waivers. One, why are we waiting until now? Two, that is like saying your house is burning down, but the fire truck is covering another area in case a fire breaks out. Well, the fire is happening now. The skimmers need to go to the gulf now. Why there isn't that sense of urgency and followup, I cannot explain.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the crisis we are having in the Gulf of Mexico and how it is impacting Florida, with the worst economic and environmental disaster in our Nation's history. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to be with the President of the United States, along with our Governor, Congressman Jeff Miller, and other State and local leaders, and we talked to the President about the oilspill and what needs to be done in order to mitigate the damage that is happening to Florida and the other Gulf States. The most important thing I wanted to stress with the President of the United States is that after capping the well, which is job 1--and we have some confidence and the President reported he hopes by the end of this month at least 90 percent of the oil will be captured from the wellhead--but the next most important priority is keeping that oil from coming on shore. Right now, there is a slick of oil that is 2 miles wide and 40 miles long. It is oil that has come up, apparently, off the bottom of the ocean. There is this ``lava lamp'' effect that is happening now, where the oil, depending upon the heat of the day, is sinking and rising in the ocean. This is part of that plume that British Petroleum said did not exist, and it is a darker and heavier oil than what we have seen before. This is not merely the sheen that is on the top. That oil is right off the shore of Pensacola. We need to make sure that oil does not come ashore, does not come on our beaches, does not get into Pensacola Bay, does not go through the Perdido Pass, does not get into those wetlands and marshes. The best way we can do that is to get more skimmers off the coast of Florida. As of yesterday, there were 32 skimmers off the coast of Florida. That is simply unacceptable. We know from Admiral Allen that there are 2,000 skimmers in the United States. I brought this point up to the President of the United States. Maybe all of them are not available to come to Florida. But if 500 of them were available to come to the Gulf of Mexico, that would be a huge improvement. There should not be 32 skimmers off the coast of Florida; there should be hundreds of skimmers, especially with this looming threat of this oil coming ashore. I have asked for weeks that every skimmer that is available in this country and every skimmer that is available around the world be on its way to Florida. I brought up this issue with the President and Admiral Allen. Why aren't there more skimmers? I was told that Admiral Allen is trying to get as many as possible. We need a sense of urgency to get those skimmers off our shores. I asked specifically about foreign countries offering aid to bring their skimmers to Florida and the other Gulf States and I was told that we have help from foreign countries, but yesterday the State Department says that 21 offers from 17 countries to bring help to Florida and the other Gulf States have been refused. Which is it? Are they helping or are we refusing them? We have to get that communications mishap, that misunderstanding, under control. If the foreign countries want to bring their skimmers here, we should welcome them, and the other equipment they can bring to help us ameliorate this oil as it comes ashore. I am going to stay laser focused on this. We are going to do a skimmer watch. Every day I am here, I am going to come to the floor and report to this Senate, this Congress, and the people of the United States how many skimmers are off the coast of Florida. This is something the Federal Government should do. Thirty-two skimmers sounds as though my buddies and I got some boats out there and did it. It doesn't sound like the Federal Government. The lives of the people of Florida are at stake. Their businesses, their livelihoods are at stake. I was told by the owner of the pier in Pensacola and a lady who worked for him that people are coming to the beach in Pensacola to see the beach one last time, as if they were visiting a friend on his or her deathbed, because they don't think the beach is ever going to look the same. So they are coming with their cameras and they are bringing their children and showing them what a snow-white beach looks like because they don't think they are going to see it again. I have had grown men--men I have known 10, 20 years of my life, professionals--come up to me with tears in their eyes worrying about what this is going to mean for Florida. Ninety percent of Floridians live within 10 miles of the coast. People move to Florida because they love the water. We have more recreational boaters and fishermen than any other State. We have more coastline than any State in the continental United States. Only Alaska surpasses us in coastline. We have more beaches than any State in the United States. Water is part of our way of life, and we need to see a more robust effort. I am appreciative of the President on this escrow fund he has set up, and we have just gotten a report that BP is going to put $20 billion into this escrow account. We have been asking for this since the beginning of May. I am glad the President got it done. While I don't always agree with the President, where credit is due, credit should be given, and he should be given credit for this and getting it done. We need those dollars to pay claims. We need those dollars because Floridians are getting mixed results from BP about paying those claims. So I am appreciative of the President for taking the idea, executing it, and getting it done. Now we need to see the same attention to detail and urgency in trying to keep that oil from coming to shore, and I look forward to that. We have failed from the beginning to understand the scope of this spill. On April 23 we thought there were 200 barrels a day leaking. On April 28 it was moved up to 5,000; May 27, 19,000; June 10, 40,000; today, 60,000 barrels a day. Sixty thousand barrels a day leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. That is 2\1/2\ million gallons per day; to date an estimated 146 million gallons. We are eclipsing the Exxon Valdez each week that goes by. We have to stay vigilant. The President must stay involved. I hope he will come back to Florida. We are going to look for him to lead us through this. No one wants the President to succeed more than I do in this particular matter because it is the livelihood of Floridians. It is our economy and it is our environment that is at stake. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, today I wish to bring special recognition to Dr. Ann Marie Phillips Southerland. Dr. Southerland has elected to retire from Pensacola Junior College after 42 years of distinguished service. She first joined the faculty of the PJC home economics department in 1975 and was promoted as an assistant professor in 1978, an associate professor in 1981, a full professor in 1984 and department head in 1985. Recognizing her devotion to student success and years of excellence in teaching, Dr. Southerland was appointed to the position of district director of vocational education in 1988 and district dean of vocational education in 1990. In this capacity, Dr. Southerland spearheaded efforts and initiatives to improve curriculum, instruction and assessment. She challenged her colleagues to empower students and ensure they would enter the world with the skills to compete and succeed in the increasingly competitive global marketplace. The success of Dr. Southerland's contributions to Pensacola Junior College were measurable, and the college appointed her to assistant vice president for academic affairs and career education in 2005. Yet Dr. Southerland's reach has been felt far beyond the academic corridors of northwest Florida. She has selflessly dedicated her time, experience and energy to causes throughout the State of Florida--serving as a member of the Council of Occupational Deans and working arm in arm with her counterparts in all 28 institutions in the Florida College System. What's more, her extensive body of academic literature has been published in numerous scholarly journals and periodicals. I wish to take this opportunity to commend Dr. Southerland for her service and professionalism. She has been a role model and mentor for many faculty, staff and students at Pensacola Junior College. She has my sincere and heartfelt thanks for her devotion to educating tomorrow's leaders.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I am here again today to talk about my concerns that are emerging from the problems we are seeing in Venezuela. Last May 25--just a couple weeks ago--I wrote a letter to the Secretary of State, Secretary Clinton, that was signed by 11 of my colleagues and myself. Senator Ensign from Nevada and I wrote this letter together, and we were welcome to have 10 other Senators join in the letter to Secretary Clinton to speak about our concern--in fact, what we would call a gathering storm of concern--about the country of Venezuela. The letter seeks to have a review by the Secretary of State and the Department of State as to whether Venezuela should be added to the list of states that we consider state sponsors of terror. The letter goes through a number of issues I have spoken about on the floor before concerning some very questionable behavior by Hugo Chavez and Venezuela. One of the issues it talks about is the support of Venezuela for the narcoterrorists in Colombia, the FARC. Evidence has come forward that Venezuela's weapons have found their way into the hands of these narcoterrorists. Another of the things we talk about in the letter is the concern with a plot that was revealed by a Spanish judge in March of this past year--a plot to assassinate President Uribe in Colombia, where the Spanish judge has accused Venezuela of being behind that plot, along with a Spanish terrorist group called the ETA. The letter also speaks about Hezbollah's activities in Venezuela-- Hezbollah, the Middle Eastern terrorist group, supported by Iran. The letter also speaks of the troubling new information that for at least 3 years Venezuela and Iran have been putting factories together in remote areas of eastern Venezuela, which is the area believed to be rich in uranium. In December of 2008, Turkish customs authorities caught one of these joint companies, literally called VenIran--``Ven'' for Venezuela--a ``tractor factory,'' attempting to smuggle 22 containers of explosive materials labeled as ``tractor parts.'' Since 2007, we have pointed out, there have been direct flights between Caracas, Venezuela, and Tehran, Iran, without proper controls or customs verifications. We have also pointed out in the letter there are increasing paramilitary Iranian forces operating in Venezuela. We know from recent reports from the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran now looks to have the nuclear fuel which will give them the capability to build nuclear weapons. We have had open testimony in front of the Armed Services Committee that within 3 to 5 years Iran may have the intercontinental ballistic capability to deliver those weapons across the ocean and put the United States in jeopardy. But Venezuela is a lot closer. There is no need for an ICBM from Venezuela. In fact, a flight from Venezuela to Florida is about the same length in time as a flight from Florida to Washington, DC. So we brought this letter to the attention of Secretary Clinton in May. We wrote this letter on May 25, 2010. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. LeMIEUX. We hope to receive a response from the Department of State. I know firsthand that Secretary Clinton is focused on Latin America. I have spoken to her on several occasions. I know she knows we need to do a better job promoting democracy in Latin America. She shares that concern. We have had those conversations. For too long, Latin America has been neglected by the United States in our diplomatic relations. For a variety of reasons, some of them with good merit, we have been focusing to the east. But we cannot neglect our friends in Central and South America. We cannot neglect our friends in Colombia, for example, or in Panama. That is why I have come to the floor on several occasions and called for the ratification of the free-trade agreements between our country and those countries that only makes sense. It not only makes sense for jobs and commerce, but it also makes sense in terms of our good relations with our friends in the region. No better friend do we have than in Colombia, right next door to this very concerning state of Venezuela. The reason I come to the floor specifically today is that when we sent this letter on May 25, we expected to receive a response. Yet just last Friday, Assistant Secretary Arturo Valenzuela, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, was asked about this letter because there was an upcoming trip by the Secretary of State to South America. Secretary Valenzuela was asked why Secretary Clinton was not going to Venezuela, and he explained. Then the question of this letter came up, and his response was: Oh, I don't--because I was traveling, I don't know anything about that letter, so I'd have to find out. Now, I know they get a lot of letters over at the Department of State, but this letter is signed by 12 Senators. It has been widely covered in the media. It was relevant enough that someone would ask the question at a press conference. Yet Mr. Valenzuela, through some oversight, was unaware of the letter. I look forward to getting a response from Secretary Clinton and Assistant Secretary Valenzuela to this letter. There is a gathering storm in Venezuela. As much as we have to look across the ocean to our fears about Iran, their development of nuclear weapons and what they are going to do with those nuclear weapons, there is a concern to our south, very close to our shores in Venezuela, and a dangerous combination which is occurring between Iran and Venezuela, Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez. If we do not stay focused on it, mark my words, 3, 5 years from now we are going to be seeing all the same developments in Venezuela we have seen in Iran. We are going to see them starting to develop a nuclear presence for ``peaceful'' purposes. They are going to be playing from the same playbook Ahmadinejad has played from in Iran. We have to take aggressive measures against Iran. I have called, as many Senators have, for this administration to get to work in a more expeditious way to impose those sanctions--meaningful, hard sanctions on Iran to stop their nuclear program. We are reading in the newspaper today about Iran--all the circuitous efforts it takes to reflag ships, rename ships so they can get weapons back into Iran and avoid our sanctions. We have to crack down on that. That is the diplomatic and foreign affairs problem of today. But the diplomatic and foreign affairs problem of tomorrow is Venezuela, and steps should be taken right now to work ahead of that problem so that 3 to 5 years from now we are not having all the same troubles with Venezuela that we are now having with Iran. Yet they are far closer to the United States than Iran is. So we sent this letter, and we look forward to the response. There are a lot of ramifications of declaring a country a state sponsor of terror. I am not asking that be done today. But I am asking it be seriously evaluated. That is why Senator Ensign and myself, along with 10 other of our colleagues, sent this letter, and we would like to hear a response. We would like it to be taken seriously. We would like this administration to focus on Venezuela before it is a problem that gets ahead of us, before it is a problem we do not have enough time to address in a proactive and thoughtful manner. Little problems become big problems. This problem is already beyond being little. Let's get on top of it. Let's evaluate it. We hope we get a response to this letter as soon as possible, from the Secretary of State and the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be yielded 5 minutes from Senator Sessions' time.

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I come today to the floor of the Senate to discuss the environmental and economic disaster that is happening right now with the oilspill from the British Petroleum and Transocean rig in the Gulf of Mexico. This past weekend I had the opportunity to be in Pensacola, FL, and to walk on the beautiful beaches. The good news is, and the news that is not being reported as much as it is should be by the press, our beaches are open, they are beautiful, people are out there enjoying the Sun and the surf, and it is still safe to go to the beach. It is still safe to go fishing in the Gulf of Mexico off the shores of Florida and do all of the other things people enjoy doing in our beautiful State. Unfortunately, we are starting to see oil wash up onshore. It is washing up not in the form so much as a tar ball but sort of a goopy substance. We are spotting that on the beach. I have walked on the beaches, and it is distressing to see that. When you pick it up and touch it, it has sort of a pudding-like consistency. It obviously has the touch and feel of oil. The concern we have, as this disaster approaches day 50, is, how much can this ecosystem bear? How much oil can be spewed into the water before it has a tremendously damaging impact upon the beaches in Florida? We have already seen what it has done to the marshland of Louisiana. Florida has more than 1,200 miles of coastline around the State. Potentially, this oil could impact up to 1,000 miles if the oil gets itself into the Loop Current and makes its way around the southern tip of Florida up the east coast. That is everyone's worst nightmare. The good news is the people of Florida who are working in city government, local government, and State government are doing an excellent job to prepare. I had the opportunity to meet with Mayor Mike Wiggins of Pensacola, with commission chairman Grover Robinson of the Escambia County Commission, as well as Larry Newsome, county administrator, who are doing a great job of preparing. There are teams of people on the beaches picking up the oil and debris where needed. They have folks on standby, ready to go to work if needed in western Florida. We need to do more. There needs to be a coherent plan on how we are going to prevent the oil from coming ashore and to mitigate its impact if and when it does. Tourism is tremendously important to Florida. In Florida, our environment and economy are inextricably linked. We cannot have any more damage than the State can sustain in the marsh or beach areas. We do not want oil washing up on the shore all along the coast of Florida. I have called upon this administration to be more aggressive. I want to see the President in Florida. I want to see him more than just a couple hours there. I want to see him working through the solutions like Governor Jindal is doing in Louisiana, like Governor Crist is doing in Florida, like former Governor Jeb Bush did when we had 9 or 10 hurricanes in 2004 and 2005--on the ground, managing through the crisis, pushing people for solutions. It is not enough to have the good work of the Coast Guard. And they are doing good work. It is not enough to call on the Department of Interior or the Department of Homeland Security. We need the President on the ground pushing for those solutions. He is a very bright man. He is the President of the United States. If he is there, working through these problems the way the Governors do, we will get better solutions. We need more skimmers off the coast of Florida. I am sure my other Gulf State friends would like to see skimmers as well. They prevent the oil from coming ashore. Are we thinking outside the box? Are we looking for every other possible alternative? Are there skimmers that can be brought in, large supertanker skimmers such as were used in the Persian Gulf when they had oilspills? Who is leading the effort to push for new solutions and new ideas? Who is vetting all of the possible opportunities presented to clean up the oil? We want to see this leadership from the top, from the Commander in Chief. The worst-case scenario is that none of the efforts going on right now are going to stop the oil from spilling. We have this cap collector BP has put on. It is having some success. That is good news. Let's hope it has all the success in the world. But if we have to wait until the end of the summer for the relief wells to go into effect--and what if they don't work as well as intended, what if there are setbacks along the way, what if it is the fall--how many tens of thousands of barrels of oil are going to spill into the Gulf of Mexico? What is the plan? What is being prepared? We need to see the President show more leadership. The people of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida need that. While BP is at fault, this is not a BP problem; this is an American problem. We need to see the President more thoroughly involved. The claims process has already started. British Petroleum has paid out about $48 million. There is now a claims process center in Pensacola. Senator Vitter and I have put together a piece of legislation to expedite claims. That should get passed by this body. There is a lot we can do here in Washington to help relieve the pain of our fellow Floridians and others in the gulf. Ultimately, job 1 is to stop the oil from spilling. Job 2 is to mitigate and prevent the oil from coming ashore. We want to see the President of the United States leading the effort. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Madam President, I am honored to welcome Captain William F. Cuddy, as the guest Chaplain for the U.S. Senate for today. Since July of 2006, Captain Cuddy has served as Chaplain of the U.S. Coast Guard. Coast Guard Chaplains have a long history of assisting service men and their families in their spiritual journey. Since 1929, when Chaplain Roy L. Lewis was ordered to the submarine base at Groton, CT, with primary duties to the base and additional duties to the Coast Guard Academy, religious ministry has been a critical component of supporting the men and women who shoulder the burdens of safeguarding our homeland. Captain Cuddy proudly continues that tradition by providing religious counsel to our young men and women who are often tested by military life. What's more, Captain Cuddy's ministerial outreach is an asset to the families of our Coast Guard men and women during spouses' deployments away from home. A native of Boston, MA, Captain Cuddy graduated from Cathedral High School in June 1967 and enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He served aboard the USS Essex homeported in Newport, RI, until 1970, when he left active duty for the Navy Reserve and entered Fitchburg State College. He graduated in 1974 with bachelor of science in education. Captain Cuddy then entered St. John's Seminary in 1974. During his seminary studies, Captain Cuddy remained active as an aviation structural support technician with a number of Reserve squadrons and was commissioned an ensign in March 1977 in the Chaplain Corps' Theological Student Candidate Program. After graduating from St. John's Seminary in 1979, he was ordained by Cardinal Humberto Mederios for service in the Archdiocese of Boston and received an appointment in the Reserve Chaplain Corps in 1980 as a lieutenant junior grade. Captain Cuddy once again reported for active duty in July 1990. While assigned to Mayport, FL, from 1998 to 2001, he provided chaplain support to the Coast Guard units in northern Florida. In this role, he provided spiritual support to the men and women safeguarding our country. On behalf of the State of Florida and my colleagues here in the Senate, I thank Captain Cuddy for his service to our country and for his prayer today. We welcome him to the U.S. Senate.

Mr. LeMIEUX

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

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about an issue that is of great concern to my State of Florida, as well as to all the Gulf States--in fact, to the entire United States of America-- and that is this ongoing spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. It has been a month since the time this spill started, and the oil continues to flow out of the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico at a rate that has not yet been determined but appears to be thousands of gallons a day. We see those pictures on television now of the flow, and despite the efforts to siphon off some of that oil, more and more enters the Gulf of Mexico. It does so despite attempts by British Petroleum and others in the unified command to stop this flow of oil. We are now on the fourth or fifth possible solution to cap the well. In fact, they are going to try to cap the well tonight. I believe, as we get on to each of these solutions, they are less and less likely to succeed. So as ADM Thad Allen, who is the incident commander, the admiral in charge of the Coast Guard, told us at his briefing just 2 days ago, we are unlikely to see this oil stop spilling into the gulf until the relief wells are drilled, and fully drilled, which could be as late as August. It could be later. What does that mean? That means this oilspill, which is now stretching over miles and miles in the gulf, is only going to get bigger. What we see on the surface may not be the extent of the spill. The plume of oil underneath may be far worse. In the wake of this tragedy, I sent a letter to British Petroleum's CEO, Tony Hayward, and I requested that BP set aside $1 billion so that the five Gulf States would have that money available today to help stop the oil from reaching our shores and to mitigate the damage once it did. The response I received in a letter yesterday, although it wasn't this emphatic, was no. They have given some money to the Gulf States. My home State of Florida has received about $50 million, which is appreciated, but it is not going to be near enough if and when this oil comes ashore in Florida. Where will the oil come ashore? Will it be in the panhandle or western Florida? Will it be in Tampa Bay? Naples? Will it get into the Loop Current and go into the Florida Keys, the Florida Bay, Ten Thousand Islands, and run up the eastern side of the United States, up past Miami, Fort Lauderdale, or Palm Beach? We just don't know. But if and when this oil does come ashore in Florida, it will be a disaster. Right now, it is not there, as far as we know. Right now, those beaches are still pristine. Right now, we continue to welcome people to Florida to come and visit, to come and fish and do all the things they would normally do on vacation. Florida is open for business. But we cannot sit around and wait for the oil to come. I am very concerned not only about the failure of British Petroleum to stop this oil from leaking, but I am concerned at the efforts that have been taken by this administration. I don't mean to say this in a partisan way because it could have been another administration that was on watch when this happened, and certainly the problems we have go back beyond the time of this administration. But I think it is fair to say, having looked at this now for a month's time, that where we are today is not acceptable. It is not acceptable that oil is washing up on the shore, on the beaches of Louisiana and into their marshes. That is not acceptable. That is a failure--a failure of the administration, a failure of our government, a failure of British Petroleum. And I don't want to be there when the oil washes up on the shore in Mississippi, Alabama, in Florida, or Texas, for that matter. The question I have is, What is the plan? What is the plan of our government, since British Petroleum can't solve this problem on its own? What is the plan to stop the oil from coming ashore? What are we doing now besides relying upon British Petroleum to drill these relief wells? There have been proposals that have come to the floor offered by my colleague from New Jersey and my colleague from Florida and others on the Democratic side to set up $10 billion--to raise the cap on compensation claims from the current law, which only allows for $75 million. Senators Vitter, myself, Murkowski, and others have a similar but different bill that would have an expedited compensation process which would not go to a $10 billion cap but, instead, look to the profits of the company, which in this case would move the cap up to about $20 billion. A lot of times partisanship rules the day in the Senate. This should not be one of them. Our differences are not so great that we should not be able to bridge them and come to a resolution. Senator Menendez has offered his amendment and asked unanimous consent that it be brought up. It has been objected to, and I understand the reasons why. Senator Vitter has offered up his and my proposal. It has been objected to by Democrats. We should be able to get past this and figure out a solution. We believe our proposal is better. We believe it is better because if you set it at $10 billion, you are only going to allow two or three oil companies in the world to exist. You will potentially put all the rest out of business. Under our proposal, more than $10 billion will be recovered from BP for this incident and still let other companies participate. Plus, by having the claims process go forward now, we could get relief to people who need it. I think it is a better proposal. But that is a question worthy of debate, and we should be able to come to consensus on that and not have a partisan play on it. I want to talk a minute about the Minerals Management Service. These are the folks within the Department of the Interior who are charged with overseeing drilling. By anybody's account, what they have done is a failure. We see the administration is now breaking them up into two separate units under the Department of the Interior. That may be fine going forward, but let's look back. A report recently released by the inspector general of the Department of the Interior suggests a culture of corruption littered with several shocking conflicts of interest and professional malfeasance at the Minerals Management Service. Among the findings, the report suggests the employees regularly accepted gifts from those they were charged to oversee; that there was a revolving door of employment in which regulators took jobs in the oil industry over which they had previously held regulatory authority; and it even suggests the oil industry officials were allowed to fill out safety oversight forms in pencil only to have the MMS employees trace over them in pen. This is not acceptable, to say the least. There is an apparent and obvious lack of oversight. It would seem that the response to the spill itself certainly should have been more effective. I want to point this Chamber to an April 29, 2010, story by the Mobile Press-Register where it says that Federal officials, including former NOAA oil response coordinators, had a 1994 plan to respond to oilspills in the Gulf of Mexico, such as the one we are experiencing today. The former NOAA oilspill response coordinator, Ron Gouget, has said a plan was in place to immediately begin--in situ, which is a fancy word for in place or on location--oil burning. Yet it took more than 1 week for officials to conduct a test burn. Why is that important? If there were a plan that was in place to burn the oil as soon as it came out of the wellhead, we might have been able to stop this vast plume and expansion of oil over the Gulf of Mexico. We might have been able to stop the oil from washing ashore in Louisiana and potentially washing ashore in Texas, Mississippi, and Florida. Why do you have to burn early? You have to burn early, as was explained to me by the Coast Guard when, about 2 weeks ago, I flew over the wellhead and saw the oil and the tar floating on the top of the Gulf of Mexico, you have to burn early because if the oil mixes with the water it loses its ability to be flammable. So the plan, if this report from the Mobile Register is right, was correct that you have to burn immediately in order to have the largest effect. The plan called for multiple fire booms. This is the booming, the material that you see that, hopefully, keeps the oil from spilling onto our shores. There is also something called fire booming or fire booms, which is what you put around the area you are burning in order to contain the fire. The plan called for multiple fire booms to be available and deployed to deal with a spill of this magnitude. But Federal officials instead had no booms on hand and had to go out and locate fire booms in the private sector, purchase it, and then transport it to the gulf region. Mr. Gouget, who is the former oil response coordinator, believes that 95 percent of the oil could have been captured through the timely executed burning. I know there were weather conditions, but if that problem had been jumped on right away perhaps we would not see oil in the marshes of Louisiana. Perhaps we would not see oil on the beaches of Louisiana. Perhaps we would not see what may eventually come, which is oil on the beaches of other States in the gulf, including Florida. Being from Florida, I have had the opportunity to be around some very good leaders in times of emergencies--Governor Jeb Bush, Governor Charlie Crist, people I worked with when we had hurricanes and tornadoes and other natural disasters. We know something about this in Florida. The lesson of these disasters is this: You have to respond to them immediately with overwhelming resources. You may over-respond, as hindsight will show you, because the disaster may not turn out to be much of a disaster. But that is a cost worth incurring. What you should not do is fail to respond quickly and let the disaster get out of control. Small problems become big problems. That certainly seems to be the case here. We are going to learn more over time about what happened with MMS and the Department of the Interior and what happened with British Petroleum and Transocean. But right now it seems pretty apparent this Federal Government and British Petroleum were not properly prepared because there is an outcome we have to evaluate. If the oil is washing ashore, we have failed. The government has failed and BP has failed. Frankly, I am concerned that we are not reacting to this disaster in a way that we should. We are not giving it the proper response it deserves. I have heard this disaster called a slow-moving Katrina, and I think that is right. But just because it moves slowly doesn't mean the Federal Government should. Everything must be done now. I know there are good people working on this. I have tremendous respect for Admiral Allen of the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard does exceptional work. But this is a results-oriented issue. If the oil is washing ashore, then the Federal Government and BP have failed. Before the oil washes ashore in Texas or Mississippi or Alabama or Florida, everything should be done that can be done to stop it. I don't have the feeling that is what is being done. I will continue to come to the Senate floor to talk about this issue as time goes on. I am urging the President of the United States to give this the focus and attention it deserves. There is no more important problem facing us in the short term than this oilspill. My home State of Florida right now is suffering through the worst recession we have had in anybody's memory. Unemployment is 12 percent. We are either No. 1 or No. 2 in terms of the most mortgage foreclosures in the country. Our business has come to a grinding halt. While there are signs of optimism, while we see things getting better in some sectors, and we have to remain hopeful--and Florida, we know, will succeed--this is a very difficult time. If this oil comes ashore--and, thank God, it has not so far--but if and when it does, it is not only going to have a disastrous impact on our environment and potentially impact 1,000 miles of coastline in Florida, but it is going to impact our economy. Florida welcomes more than 80 million tourists a year. They come to Florida for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons they come is for our beautiful beaches, some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, especially in the Florida Panhandle. If that oil comes ashore, it is going to be devastating to our economy. That is not good for Florida. It is not good for America. This crisis demands a sense of urgency that it has not received, in my humble opinion, up until now. I call upon this administration to put forth every effort and to tell us what the plan is to stop this oil from coming ashore in States such as Florida. I yield the floor.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I wish to thank my friend and colleague from New Hampshire for allowing me to take some time on the floor this morning. If I may, I wish to speak about an issue that is of great impact to Florida; that is, this oilspill. This is not the first time I have come to the floor to speak about the potential impact this gulf oilspill may have upon the coast of Florida. I have called upon British Petroleum to set up a $1 billion fund, a replenishing or evergreen fund, if you will, so we can get to work to get ready to prepare, if this oil is to come ashore, to mitigate its effect, to prevent, as much as possible, the oil from coming ashore. So far, there has been $25 million given to Florida and other Gulf States, another $25 million is coming for advertising purposes. The good news is, we believe the oil is not ashore yet. But there is some disturbing new information. This morning, I had the opportunity to speak to RADM William Baumgartner of the Coast Guard. Reports yesterday afternoon tell us some tar balls have washed ashore in Key West, FL. That is far ahead of any projections of oil from this spill being put onto the Loop Current in the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico and coming in contact with the southernmost point of Florida. It was not expected that that would happen for several days. But it could be that the oil is far more spread out than we anticipated. It is not unusual for there to be oil to come upon the shore of Florida or any other Gulf States. In fact, it naturally occurs. We know from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection that there were at least 600 reports in the past 2 years of tar balls and things such as that because, as we have come to find out, this is a naturally occurring phenomenon as well, that oil will seep from the ocean floor and potentially come upon our shores in the form of tar balls and other small things. But the concern is, these 20 tar balls that came upon the shore yesterday in Key West are from the gulf oilspill. If that is the case, the oilspill is far larger and has spread far more quickly than we could have anticipated. Right now those samples of those tar balls are being sent for research and evaluation to determine whether they are, in fact, from the oilspill that happened now almost 1 month ago. Whether those tar balls are from the disaster or whether they are naturally occurring, we know this oil slick is spreading. We know it is going to get into the Loop Current, the Loop Current which will then bring that oil down close to the Keys, potentially all the way up the Atlantic side of Florida. We cannot wait to find out what is going to happen. We cannot wait to pay claims after damages have already been incurred by the people of Florida. Florida is reliant upon the beauty of its State for its economy. We have actually more than 80 million tourists who come to Florida each year, more than a $65 billion tourism industry. Recreational saltwater fishing has a $5 billion impact on Florida and is responsible for more than 50,000 jobs. Recreational boating has an $18 billion impact. We have more registered boaters in Florida than any other State in the Union. Some 90 percent of Florida's population lives within 10 miles of its coast. We are the State, besides Alaska, with the largest coastline and more beaches than any other State. There have been a lot of problems here. One, why did this spill happen; the failure of regulation by the Department of the Interior, the lack of a quick response by this administration, and a lack of a quick response by British Petroleum, mistakes being made at the scene; why did the blowout preventers fail, all the other things we have read about and heard about. We are having hearings in Congress on what caused this tragic incident to happen in the first place. We are going to get to the bottom of all those things. Right now we need dollars in the hands of our States in the gulf, to get together our volunteers, our businesses, our local governments, county, city, and State, to try to prevent this oil from coming ashore. We need a flotilla of Florida boaters out there trying to scoop up these tar balls before they come ashore. We need a volunteer effort not unlike what we had in World War II in Europe, where the British came to Dunkirk and rescued the military and brought them ashore when they were fleeing. We need to get the Florida volunteers, senior citizens and others, on the beaches getting ready to help mitigate this damage that I think, unfortunately, is going to come ashore. We need the funds to do that today. We do not need them a month from now. We do not need them 6 months from now. We do not need them a year from now to pay claims. We need to do everything possible to keep that oil from coming ashore. If we do that, we can keep our economy, our tourism economy strong. Right now, people need to know they should still be coming to Florida to fish, still be coming to Florida for a beach vacation because the oil has not washed upon the shore in west Florida, on the panhandle, and we only have these 20 tar balls in the Keys. Let's hope that is the end of it. I did not want to miss this opportunity to come to the floor to make the point again that we need to make sure the money comes now. Senator Vitter and I and others have filed legislation to make sure oil companies are responsible well beyond the $75 million cap for damages to communities that are impacted by these oilspills. It is focused on profits, more than it is focused on a $10 billion cap, which is a proposal that my friends and colleagues have proposed. Why does it make more sense? Well, based on profits, we know BP may be liable for up to as much as $20 billion for this incident. That is more money to help pay for this. Second, if you just put it on $10 billion, we are only going to have two or three oil companies in this country because no other oil company will be able to get into the business because they will not be able to afford the potential $10 billion cap. If you do not have enough money to pay for it, $10 billion is pretty illusory anyway. What we need to be focused on is making sure those responsible can pay and pay enough to make sure we solve the problem. A lot needs to be done. A lot of questions need to be asked. A lot of answers need to be forthcoming. But right now we need the dollars to protect our shorelines and our beaches. I see my colleague and friend from New Hampshire is ready to speak again.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, this Chamber just supported and voted for the Franken amendment. My measure goes further. My measure says we are going to write these rating agencies out of the law. We should not reward bad behavior. There are other ways to determine creditworthiness. There will be a 2-year period to figure that out. There is a better way to solve this problem. These rating agencies were responsible for this debacle. I yield the remainder of my time to my colleague, Senator Cantwell.

Mr. LeMIEUX. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to temporarily set aside the pending amendment so I may call up amendment No. 3774, as modified.

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

Mr. LeMIEUX. Madam President, I come to the floor today to talk about this important issue my friend from Minnesota has brought forth, and I congratulate him on the work he has done. We know one of the main reasons we had our financial debacle in 2008 was that credit agencies failed to do their job. They put AAA stamps of approval on products that deserved no such stamp. The investing world relied upon the fact that rating agencies were supposed to do their job, and they failed to do their job. So just as when you read Consumer Reports, and you believe they are giving objective information and a good accounting of how a product is or is not safe, the investing world thought Fitch and Moody's and S&P and these others had done their job and had done the due diligence. So I congratulate, again, my friend from Minnesota. He has focused on one of the main reasons we had our financial debacle. Unfortunately, much of what is in this 1,409-page bill does not go after what caused the debacle in 2008. We do not deal with Fannie and Freddie. We did not pass significant underwriting standards yesterday in the Corker amendment. We have a chance to address the issue of the rating agencies, because, but for their failure to do their job, we may not have had this debacle that destroyed, as some estimate, $600 trillion worth of wealth. Where I differ with my friend from Minnesota is that I don't think he has gone far enough. I appreciate his efforts to go after conflicts of interest. I believe there are conflicts of interest. We cannot have the people whose products they rate pay them. He is right about that, but I would go further. My amendment writes these organizations out of law. Why should we reward them and allow them to continue to have what, in effect, is a government-sponsored monopoly? Federal law says creditworthiness will be determined by these rating agencies. Why should we reward them by allowing them to continue in any fashion to have the sanction and permission and basically a monopoly granted by Federal law? That doesn't make any sense to me. So the amendment I am proposing, again, is not, as my friend from Minnesota said, inconsistent with his amendment, and I believe there will be Members who will vote for his amendment and my amendment. I am glad we are both focused on addressing this issue. What my amendment will do is take away this sanctioned monopoly that holds out these rating agencies as the entities that determine what is creditworthy. Certainly, rating agencies will still exist, but there will be more rating agencies involved, plus banks themselves will have to do the due diligence to convince the FDIC or whoever the regulator is that the bonds they hold on their books are creditworthy. In a way, we are saying that the astrology we relied upon in the past didn't work. Let's have some new and better astrology. The rating agencies don't work. Did they not work because they had a conflict of interest? Perhaps. Did they not work because they are incompetent independent of that conflict of interest? Perhaps. I hope what my amendment does will achieve both goals. They will not be paid by these same investment banks if they are no longer written into law, I believe. Plus, if they are no longer written into law, there will have to be something in the marketplace that people can rely upon when they have to make their case to your Federal regulator that these instruments are creditworthy. Someone is going to have to do their homework. My friend from Minnesota is exactly right that the damage done in the marketplace was done in large part because of our reliance upon these rating agencies. The Wall Street Journal on April 21 said: When the government ordains-- And that is an important word-- Moody's and Standard & Poor's as official arbiters of risk, the damage can be catastrophic because so many people rely upon them. So let's stop ordaining them. Why are we going to reward bad behavior? My friend from Minnesota, who has gotten his language from professors and others, the language we have worked on--it is not a conservative idea; it is not a Democratic idea. In fact, it is exactly the same as the language Barney Frank put forward on the House side. So we have a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican working to the same end. So let's not just go halfway. Let's go all the way. Let's make sure these rating agencies don't get rewarded for bad behavior. This will take some time to implement. It needs time for the market to adjust. There is a 2-year period in this amendment for this to take effect. That is important so that banks can beef up their staff to make sure they can do the due diligence, do the homework, to prove creditworthiness. It is good for the market to settle, which it will need to do, from relying upon just these three big rating agencies. I believe the solution has to go the full measure. While I congratulate my friend from Minnesota for tackling this issue and while I also don't think our two measures are inconsistent, I believe the amendment I am proposing, which is almost exactly--similar to the language of Barney Frank on the House side--is the right answer to really get us off this ordination of these rating agencies. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I wish to congratulate my colleague from Tennessee on his amendment, and I rise in support of it. In Florida, we know this was the very problem that started this whole crisis. We called them NINJO loans--no income, no job. Underwriting standards went out the window because of the hunger of Wall Street to suck up these mortgages, to bundle them into these large securitized packages and then sell them off. So as Wall Street demanded more and more, underwriting went out the window. And what does the bank or the mortgage broker care if they can just ship off their mortgage and sell it off to Wall Street? What do they care if the person they are giving the mortgage to can't pay it back? What do they care if that person can't afford the home to start with? So we got ourselves into this perfect storm of a situation, and one of the key elements that allowed this to happen was the fact that there weren't underwriting standards. When I bought my first home back in 1995, I didn't have 20 percent to put down; I had 15 percent. So I had to get mortgage insurance to cover the other 5 percent of my downpayment. Until such time as my family--my wife and I at the time, before we had any of our kids--could make a payoff to get the 20 percent of equity value to the loan, we had to pay for the mortgage insurance. Once we did, we no longer had to pay for that. Well, in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, that went out the window. No longer were these underwriting standards in place. We now know, looking back on the debacle that happened in 2008, that one of the key reasons it happened, one of the key things that made it fertile for this problem to grow was the fact that there weren't underwriting standards. What Senator Corker does in his bill is he puts these mortgage underwriting standards back into law the way they were when everything operated the right way--a 5-percent downpayment, credit enhancement to get you to an 80-percent loan to value, fully documented income, including credit history and employment history, and a method for determining the borrower's ability to repay. All those things make common sense. But that common sense didn't prevail in the mid-2000s. Last year, in an initiative the Wall Street Journal put forward, it talked about the 20 most important things that could be done to avert the financial collapse that happened, and the No. 1 most important thing was to strengthen underwriting standards. But this bill we are considering which is supposed to get at the problems that caused this meltdown in 2008--it is 1,409 pages long--doesn't address perhaps the No. 1 biggest reason we had a financial failure in 2008. Senator Corker, along with Senators Isakson, Shelby, Gregg, and to a smaller extent myself, have worked on this, and I commend my colleague from Tennessee. There is absolutely no reason not to pass this. If any of our colleagues are serious about really reforming our financial system and preventing this problem from happening again, then they must support this very fine amendment. I thank the Chair.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I could not have said better what my friend and colleague from Wyoming just talked about in terms of this consumer protection bill. Every Member of this body is in favor of consumer protection. The goal is to get it right, not to do too much and not to do too little. I think it is important for us to remember what we are trying to address. We are trying to address the financial market meltdown that happened in 2008 and the ramifications that have been so devastating to this economy. They were very devastating in my home State of Florida. But what we should do is address the problem. What we should do is try to make sure the problem does not happen again and not use this crisis as an opportunity to create a huge, new, all-powerful bureau of government that is going to regulate orthodontists and folks who had nothing to do with this financial crisis. Let's think back about what happened. To me there are three or four parts of this story where you can find culpability, places where we should be regulating, some of which is not done in this bill. One is we know mortgages were given to people who should not have had mortgages-- people who had no income and no jobs. They called them ninja loans--no income, no jobs. There were a lot of them in my State of Florida. Why were they written? Many of them were written because they were written by mortgage brokers and banks that did not have to retain any of those mortgages on their books. There were no underwriting standards. They could just ship them off. They had no skin in the game and no responsibility. Then, on Wall Street, this huge market was created to suck in all these mortgages, to create these new investment vehicles that put all these mortgages together--mortgages that did not have the underwriting standards so you could make sure they were sound. In the need to create more and more investment instruments, they created what are called synthetic investment entities. Those are not even ones that held these actual mortgages. They were just merely a shadow that tracked them. So we compounded the problem into hundreds of trillions of dollars, betting on mortgages that should never, in many ways, have been written in the first place. Then, what was the third part of the problem? These mortgages got bundled into these mortgage-backed securities, sold on Wall Street, and the world looked to the rating agencies to stamp their approval on them. The Morningstars and the Moody's and the Fitches and the S&P's stamped their rating and said they are AAA, without understanding them, without evaluating them. That is another one of the culprits that caused this financial crash that we had that has devastated our economy. But for those rating agencies putting the AAA grade on these mortgage-backed security investments, I don't believe we would have had the crash that occurred. People would not have placed their confidence in them. Why did that happen? Why did these rating agencies stamp them? Why did so many people rely upon them? What we come to find out is these rating agencies are written into law. They are written into the Federal law as the way to determine the creditworthiness of investments. The FDIC abdicates its authority and allows rating agencies to be the ones that say something is a good investment or not. That is in the law. How do these rating agencies get paid? They get paid by the very banks that put products in front of them for them to rate. So here is a real easy way to understand this. We all buy Consumer Reports Magazine. Consumer Reports Magazine evaluates everything from toasters to Toyotas, but they don't take any money from the people they rate. They don't have advertisers. But for these rating agencies, they are paid by the people they rate, by the products these banks bring in front of them. Our law says they are the ones that are going to determine whether something is creditworthy. I wish to make sure we have, as Senator Shelby has put forward, a good consumer protection law in this country. But I also wish to make sure we are addressing the problems that caused this failure in the first place, and one of the ways to do that is to make sure we have underwriting on these mortgages so people have some skin in the game: You are putting a downpayment on your house, you are showing you are creditworthy. That is the way it always was. It is only recently that went away. We need to go back to that. That is why I join my colleagues, Senator Corker, Senator Isakson, Senator Gregg, on their amendment to put the underwriting back in the mortgage business. But another thing we need to do, we need to take the credit rating agencies and write them out of the law. They should no longer get their preferential treatment. No longer should the FDIC abdicate its responsibility to determine creditworthiness. The market should take care of this. If people know they can't just rely upon three or four or five rating agencies and they are going to have to do their evaluation themselves, we may prevent this problem from happening in the future and the next way this problem may manifest itself. I have filed an amendment, amendment No. 3774, which will do this. It will take these credit rating agencies out of law. In that way, I believe we can stop one of the reasons why we had this financial collapse. It is not just me who believes in this. On the other side of this building, in the House of Representatives, this same language was put forward in the package that was passed. So this should not be a Republican issue, it should not be a Democratic issue because the Democrats in the House supported something very similar to what I am proposing. This just makes common sense. Let's go after one of the problems that caused this financial mess. I would like to point to the August 21 edition of the Wall Street Journal. In their editorial they say: When the government ordains Moody's and Standard and Poor's as official arbiters of risk, the damage can be catastrophic because so many people rely on them. Well, let's no longer abdicate the government's responsibility. Let's no longer enshrine these rating agencies in Federal law. Let's get rid of one of the reasons we had this financial meltdown to start with. Let's not create a whole now huge consumer agency that does way too much, gets involved in too many things that had nothing to do with this financial meltdown. Let's go after the problem, solve that problem. I believe we can do so by passing the amendment I have introduced today. I yield the floor.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Madam President, I come to the floor of the Senate to talk about not only the environmental but economic disaster that has happened in the Gulf of Mexico. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to fly over the scene of the spill from the Deepwater Horizon rig along with my colleagues Senator Sessions, Senator Shelby, and Congressman Jeff Miller who represents Florida's First Congressional District. What we saw was pretty startling. As we flew out over the ocean, we saw the beginning of a spill. At first, it looked like a sheen, something one might see with gasoline laying on a concrete floor at a gas station. But as we got closer to where the Deepwater Horizon oil platform was located before, where it fell into the water, we began to see these great bands of orange, rust-colored oil that streaked across the Gulf of Mexico. We began to see small clumps of what looked like tar. As we got closer to the scene of the incident, those small clumps turned into what I would describe as large pads of tar that floated to the surface. We saw the new rigs that are being set up to start the drilling to do escape drilling to allow for the pressure to be taken off the spill where it is located now. We saw some of the cleanup vessels. There were about 10 vessels out there. We understand there are close to 100 involved in the total containment of this spill. What is concerning to me--and I know is concerning to many Members of Congress--is what could happen, what might happen next. There are a lot of folks working very hard in the Coast Guard and the government. We met with Captain Pullen at the Mobile training facility for the Coast Guard, who briefed us on what is going on so far. If we do not get this wellhead to stop leaking oil into the ocean, estimated at 5,000 barrels a day--we don't know how much is leaking. It could be less than that; it could be a lot more. If we do not stop the wellhead from leaking, we are going to have a lot bigger problem. This area has grown every day since April 21 when we had this disaster. It is measured by the size of States. First, it was Rhode Island, then it was Delaware. It is growing bigger and bigger. When the storms subside, as they are doing now, that sheen is going to spread out even further. It certainly is going to likely impact my State of Florida and our beaches and our commercial fishermen and our recreational fishermen. There is cause for great concern. The reason I come to the floor today is to make this point. There are those who are casting blame on British Petroleum. There are those who are casting blame on the government. There will be time for that. Whether the government has done a proper job of getting on this problem from day one, as we are hearing; whether British Petroleum properly worked along with the folks who ran this rig, the Transocean folks; whether they made mistakes--certainly, mistakes were made--there will be time for us to evaluate that. What we must do now is spend all of our energy and efforts stopping the leak from this well because if we don't, we may see an oilspill that is the entire expansion of the Gulf of Mexico. We may see oil that not only hurts the gulf coast of Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas, but we potentially could see this oil go around the southern part of Florida, into the Everglades, into Florida Bay, into the Thousand Islands area--not to mention the coast on the western side of Florida, come up on the Atlantic side and get in the Gulf of Mexico and come all the way up the coast. I am here to urge that all my colleagues support the administration and BP and everyone else who is working on this to stop the leak we have now. To me, it is the most important thing. There were obviously issues of negligence that caused this disaster to happen in the first place. The questions of whether the Federal Government did everything it should have done in the beginning days when this happened will have to be answered, and folks are going to have to come before our committees to answer those questions. But right now, we have to stop this leak and we have to have an increased sense of urgency of stopping that leak and containing the oil. We are putting this dispersant in now at the site of the wellhead. That is apparently having some good effect. BP has also been able--as we learned yesterday from Captain Pullen at the Mobile station--to close one of the hydraulic fail-safe valves. We know it wasn't fail- safe, but at least some of that has been closed, which is stopping, we hope, in some way the amount of oil going into the Gulf of Mexico. There is a crisis now, but the crisis to come could be far worse if we do not stop the leak from the wellhead. Dangerous Ties Between Venezuela and Iran Mr. President, over the last 6 months, we have seen two more attempts that we know of against the United States from terrorist attacks--most recently at Times Square. Thanks to the vigilance of some New Yorkers and the fine work of the New York Police Department, a bombing was stopped. We also remember that on Christmas day, when Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a plane over the skies of America, thankfully, that bomb did not explode. These are very dangerous times. I continue to come to the floor to say that we not only need to pay attention to the east, where this danger is stemming from, but we also have to pay attention to the south. We have to continue to pay attention to Venezuela and the dangerous ties between Venezuela and Iran. I have come to the floor to speak about the fact that Hezbollah and Hamas are now in Iran. We know a Spanish judge has accused Venezuelan authorities of conspiring with the ETA, a radical group in Spain, to assassinate the President of Colombia. We know Venezuela is collaborating with the FARC, the narcoterrorist group, which is bringing in drugs and destabilizing all of Central America all the way up into Mexico. We know of this dangerous situation. We know there are flights now between Venezuela and Iran through Syria that don't go through the normal customs procedures, where folks get off the plane in Venezuela and who knows where they go. We also know now that Iran has sent shock troops to Venezuela. We have also heard of a foiled attempt from a company called VenIran--presumably Venezuela-Iran--to ship alleged tractor parts to Venezuela that turned out to be explosive materials. I come to the floor today to update this continuing story and to begin to bring, hopefully, the focus of this Congress and this administration on the gathering storm that is Venezuela and its contacts with Iran. It is not only that there are now shock troops from Iran in Venezuela, but we see the Chinese Government giving $20 billion to Venezuela for derivative--future--potential to purchase oil, apparently. So lots of questions need to be asked, and we need answers from this administration about a focus on Venezuela. Hugo Chavez is a dangerous man, and the continued attempts by the Venezuelan regime to work with Cuba to spread disharmony throughout the region, to try to bring other Latin American countries along with his strong-man tactics, are cause for concern. I will conclude with this, Mr. President. Two weekends ago, I had the opportunity to go to the Joint Interagency Task Force in Key West, FL, where tremendous work is done by the Coast Guard, the Navy, the FBI, DEA, and all sorts of other agencies to interdict drug trafficking from South America, Central America, into the United States. We know Venezuela is allowing flights to go over its country from Colombia to bring those drugs into Central America. We know how violence comes from those drugs, and we are seeing the destabilization of Mexico because of it. We also know there are semisubmersible craft--minisubmarines, if you will--that ride just below the water that are being used by drug traffickers out of Colombia, with the support of Venezuela, to bring large amounts of cocaine into the United States. Those same craft could be used to deliver a weapon of terror. This administration and the world have to focus not just on Iran but on the dangerous ties between Iran and Venezuela. Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor. I see my friend and colleague from Tennessee is here to speak.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LeMIEUX. I ask to speak as in morning business.