Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss exotic pythons and the devastating impact they are having on wildlife in my home state. To combat this deadly nonnative nuisance, I am also filing a bill that will ban the interstate commerce and importation of these snakes. Pythons were first discovered in the Everglades in the mid-1990s, and now have a rapidly-growing breeding population within the boundary of Everglades National Park. They impact almost seventy endangered species living in the Everglades and threaten to upset the natural balance that we are spending billions of dollars to restore. When I toured the Everglades with Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer, we witnessed firsthand the damage pythons are causing, and the efforts researchers are making to eradicate them from the wild. These snakes were brought to Florida to be sold as pets, and were introduced into the wild by owners who could no longer handle them. They eat animals ranging from songbirds to white ibises, as well as endangered and threatened species such as the Key Largo woodrat. Pythons can grow to be 23 feet long and weigh up to 200 pounds, and there is currently no effective way of eradicating them in the wild. They can consume animals many times their size, and recently, researchers also found cougar parts in the stomachs of captured pythons. This development could signal a new threat to the endangered Florida panther, which we have been working so hard to save. Python populations have also been discovered in Big Cypress National Preserve to the north, Miami's water management areas to the northeast, Key Largo to the southeast, and many state parks, municipalities, and public and private lands in the region. Because climate range projections from the U.S. Geological Survey show that pythons may soon expand their range to include much of the southern third of the United States, getting their populations under control is even more pressing. In the last year, the State of Florida has taken some actions to address the problems created by owners who release their pythons into the wild, and I applaud these efforts. The State now requires owners of animals they call ``Reptiles of Concern''--a category that includes two species besides pythons--not only to obtain permits for their animals, but also to implant a tracking microchip in larger pythons. I believe federal action is also needed. That is why today I am introducing a bill that would amend the Lacey Act to ban the importation and interstate commerce of the python. This step is needed to reduce the number of pythons released into the wild by pet owners who don't understand the responsibility caring for a python entails. In 2007, preeminent environmentalist and former assistant secretary of the Interior Nathaniel Reed wrote, ``The dramatic increase in the number of snakes in the Park and Big Cypress call into question why it has taken so long for the Service to utilize its powers under the Lacey Act to prevent importation of the snake into an ecosystem where escapees and rejects have built a sustainable population.'' If we do not take action now, we will let python populations in Florida continue to grow and further ravage the already-fragile Everglades, as well as risk letting them spread throughout the Southern portion of the United States. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I wish to talk about not just the stimulus bill but how we need to address this overall economic crisis, which the more we hear about, the worse it gets. If we don't watch out, we are going to be in a downward economic spiral. Look back to where we got into the mess. Wall Street allowed banks to make too many bad home loans. They were home loans the homeowners could not afford, and many times they were rushed into signing these kinds of agreements when their income level would not support that kind of mortgage. Then Wall Street bundled thousands of those mortgages-- sometimes you heard them referred to as subprime--and sold them as a security. Those were bought and sold throughout the financial process, from financial institution to financial institution. They were sold at a profit. There was little or no regulation. Of course, the bankers walked away with billions of dollars in bonuses and the taxpayers now have to clean up the mess. Well, what began as trouble in the housing market quickly spread to the financial system and, from there, to the economy as a whole. The revenue stream for these mortgages was cut off because people weren't paying their monthly payments on the mortgages, and therefore the revenue from these bundled securities of bad mortgages weren't paying off, and that started rippling through the entire financial system for whoever held those bundled mortgages. What started as an American problem now has become a global problem. Foreign governments, many of their investors, had invested in these bundled securitized mortgages. Foreign governments have seen their exports decline, and they are finding themselves shut out when they seek loans from the world's banks. The banks aren't lending because they do not have the security of knowledge that those borrowers are going to pay off. Lo and behold, since this thing has spread globally, even to foreign governments, some of the governments may even default on their own debts, which would be a devastating blow for any nation. That is a story that has yet to be told. We may have foreign governments defaulting on their debts and going into insolvency. Such defaults could clearly pose a national security threat for us, as already fragile governments fall and are replaced by forces that are hostile to American interests. At the same time, our current economic crisis will soon become a financing problem for our own Government. We are running up a large tab. We are spending nearly $900 billion in this bill to stimulate the economy. Maybe we are going to have to spend that much again to relieve the banks of the toxic assets--these bad assets that are so underwater--in order to get these toxic assets off the books of the banks. Well, when you look down the road, it is hard to fathom that we are going to put this financial burden on our children, but economists-- conservative and liberal--across the spectrum agree that the burden could be far worse if we don't take bold and immediate action, as evidenced in what is on the floor of the Senate now. We need to act, we need to act boldly, and we need to act now. This economic recovery bill that we will consider this week begins to move us in the right direction. Now, there ought to be some tweaks and some iterations on it, and we are going to consider that in the amendatory process, but let's consider the thrust of it. It funds shovel-ready infrastructure--those projects that are ready to go--which are going to strengthen our Nation while creating jobs in the construction sector. We heard the chairman of the Finance Committee say that over 90 percent of all the spending that occurs as a result of the tax cuts and the tax incentives--he said over 90 percent of all the tax portion of the bill is going to take effect in the first 19 months. Now that is the kind of stimulus we need. This bill provides health and education assistance to State governments. It protects the most vulnerable, while putting money back into the economy. The legislation before us creates incentives for the private sector to put money into innovative ideas in health care technology, in energy efficiency, and in a smarter electricity grid. I think this bill moves us in the right direction. But we have to watch out that we do not get sidetracked. We need to make sure we are investing in sectors where the economy is idle, where Americans stand ready to work on the projects we fund. As we debate the bill's tax provisions, we need to make sure they provide incentives for employers to create new well-paying jobs. I saw something that is disturbing to me. I saw that a group of our Senators is trying to do some cuts in this, and in a publication this morning they singled out NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee has helped those of us who work in this kind of specialty here before the Senate. What this group of Senators does not realize is that is directly related to job stimulus because of the horrible situation we have ourselves in where we are going to shut down our American vehicle to get to space, the space shuttle, and it is going to be another 5 years, under the present plan, to get the new rocket ready to get to our own space station that we have built and paid for. As a result, the Kennedy Space Center, the Johnson Space Center in Texas, and the Marshall Space Center in Alabama are looking at massive layoffs. My space center in Florida is looking at 5,000 jobs being laid off. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee, who has an insight into this, has provided that money for stimulus for those jobs. So let's keep that goal in mind--jobs. That is what we want to do with this stimulus bill. The legislation alone is not going to move us beyond the total problem we are facing, the potential downward spiral. Experts, liberal and conservative, now agree that the Nation's banks are going to need ongoing support at a cost that might exceed what we have committed already. If the banks are going to continue receiving Government support, they must grant taxpayers a meaningful ownership stake. They must boost lending to individuals and to small business, and they must accept real limits on executive compensation. Of course, there is another story chronicled in this morning's newspapers about how all of these banks have gotten all of these billions of dollars, and that not only has not increased lending, their lending to borrowers has actually decreased. That is unacceptable. If we provide the banks with more support--and I suspect we are going to have to--in this next tranche of $350 billion, then we still are going to have to address the mortgage foreclosure crisis, which is the root cause of the current circumstance. We need a credible plan for Government-backed mortgage refinancing, whether it is through Freddie or Fannie, the FDIC, or whether we create a new loan facility that is created specifically for that purpose. I talked to the Secretary of the Treasury three times about this, and I am encouraged that the administration appears to support such a plan. I am telling you, every one of us knows that our constituents, particularly those near retirement age and retired, are dramatically concerned about the loss of their retirement savings which has accompanied the markets' collapse. Since the 1980s, what happened? We have seen a shift away from a defined benefit pension, toward a market-based individual retirement account. Many Americans now rely on such accounts as a vital source of retirement income--the IRAs, the 401(k)s--and for those who have reached retirement--and every one of us has a lot of retirees in our State--or for those who hope to retire in the near future, the markets' collapse has delayed or laid waste to their plans, all the while Wall Street executives walk off with billions of dollars in bonuses. These are folks who have worked. They played by the rules. They have saved all of their lives. They deserve our attention more than the bankers who got us into this mess. I want to quote from an Indiana newspaper, the Evansville Courier. To our colleagues from Indiana, I wish to compliment the editorial from your newspaper on February 2: The middle class retirees who saved in their IRA and 401(k) plans, and who intended to use their Social Security entitlement to supplement their investment income, and thereby to live out their days in modest comfort, now face the complete loss of that dream. It was not a dream of luxury, just a hard-won freedom from daily work and maybe a trip to somewhere warm in the winter. That is what they saved for. And once this economy recovers--and it will, hopefully sooner than many predict--we are still going to have a lot of work that will remain. We need to look at the current causes of our crisis, and we need to better regulate our financial markets. As the economy recovers, we will need to keep a close eye on the Nation's monetary policy. Interest rates now are at historic lows, and our monetary policy is looser than it has been in decades. As we step on the fiscal gas, in addition to the monetary loosening, we need to make sure we do not overshoot the mark and trigger a new period of inflation. So our problems are many and our options are few. Things may get worse before they get better. If we put aside the differences and reason together, they will get better. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, since we have a moment, I will tell you about S. Con. Res. 4. Two years ago, an American went to Kish Island, which is part of Iran. The Iranian island is in the Persian Gulf and a visa is not required to get there. We have the records that Bob Levinson, a retired FBI agent, checked out of his hotel, which subsequently has been confirmed by the taxi driver who drove him to the airport and deposited him. At that point, Bob Levinson disappeared and has left a wife and seven children. They happen to reside in the State of Florida. But it doesn't make any difference where the State is. We have a number of Senators who have joined with me on this resolution to keep up the pressure. I want you to know that under the reasonable man test, all of the evidence we have suggests that Bob Levinson is in Iran and is being held against his will. First, there was an Iranian press story about 6 weeks after Levinson's disappearance that indicated he would be released, that he was in custody. This report comes from PRESS TV, which is an Iranian Government press operation. In addition, there was a fellow he met with on Kish Island named Belfield, who is a fugitive from American justice. Belfield now resides in Iran and has stated publicly that he met with Bob Levinson. The meeting was suddenly interrupted by people who arrested Belfield. This fellow, Belfield, has said that Levinson is being held in Iran. We have also had the statement by the President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, who says he doesn't know anything about Levinson's location in Iran, but that the Government of Iran would do everything to cooperate. Thus far, in innumerable contacts from this Senator and Mrs. Levinson including during her visit a year ago to Tehran and to Kish Island, the Government of Iran has not been forthcoming or willing to cooperate. The reasonable man test says he is held in Iran. I can tell you that this Senator believes he is being held and he is being held in a secret prison. We do know that, from time to time, in several diplomatic sessions, whenever this has been brought up to an Iranian official, first, he says, ``We don't know anything about Levinson,'' and then they immediately change the subject to talk about the Iranians who were picked up by the U.S. Government in Erbil, Iraq. Whether they are suggesting an exchange, we simply don't know. But I can tell you that the Government of the United States, now under the new administration, specifically with the Secretary of State, who has been briefed on details in the Bob Levinson case, is pressing forward. In conclusion, if there is a new chapter in the relationship between the United States and Iran, what better way for that new chapter to open than for Iran to make a humanitarian gesture by returning this father, this husband, to his family, his wife and seven children.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss exotic pythons and the devastating impact they are having on wildlife in my home state. To combat this deadly nonnative nuisance, I am also filing a bill that will ban the interstate commerce and importation of these snakes. Pythons were first discovered in the Everglades in the mid-1990s, and now have a rapidly-growing breeding population within the boundary of Everglades National Park. They impact almost seventy endangered species living in the Everglades and threaten to upset the natural balance that we are spending billions of dollars to restore. When I toured the Everglades with Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer, we witnessed firsthand the damage pythons are causing, and the efforts researchers are making to eradicate them from the wild. These snakes were brought to Florida to be sold as pets, and were introduced into the wild by owners who could no longer handle them. They eat animals ranging from songbirds to white ibises, as well as endangered and threatened species such as the Key Largo woodrat. Pythons can grow to be 23 feet long and weigh up to 200 pounds, and there is currently no effective way of eradicating them in the wild. They can consume animals many times their size, and recently, researchers also found cougar parts in the stomachs of captured pythons. This development could signal a new threat to the endangered Florida panther, which we have been working so hard to save. Python populations have also been discovered in Big Cypress National Preserve to the north, Miami's water management areas to the northeast, Key Largo to the southeast, and many state parks, municipalities, and public and private lands in the region. Because climate range projections from the U.S. Geological Survey show that pythons may soon expand their range to include much of the southern third of the United States, getting their populations under control is even more pressing. In the last year, the State of Florida has taken some actions to address the problems created by owners who release their pythons into the wild, and I applaud these efforts. The State now requires owners of animals they call ``Reptiles of Concern''--a category that includes two species besides pythons--not only to obtain permits for their animals, but also to implant a tracking microchip in larger pythons. I believe federal action is also needed. That is why today I am introducing a bill that would amend the Lacey Act to ban the importation and interstate commerce of the python. This step is needed to reduce the number of pythons released into the wild by pet owners who don't understand the responsibility caring for a python entails. In 2007, preeminent environmentalist and former assistant secretary of the Interior Nathaniel Reed wrote, ``The dramatic increase in the number of snakes in the Park and Big Cypress call into question why it has taken so long for the Service to utilize its powers under the Lacey Act to prevent importation of the snake into an ecosystem where escapees and rejects have built a sustainable population.'' If we do not take action now, we will let python populations in Florida continue to grow and further ravage the already-fragile Everglades, as well as risk letting them spread throughout the Southern portion of the United States. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I wish to express my optimism that with a new administration and a new Congress, we will finally be able to achieve what was left unfinished last year: the expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program. Though we are in difficult economic times, we can never afford to squander our Nation's most precious resource--our children. From 1994 to 2000 I served as the State of Florida's elected treasurer and insurance commissioner. During my tenure, I oversaw the implementation of the SCHIP program, or the Healthy Kids Program, as it is known in Florida. There is no doubt in my mind that this program works. Nationwide, in 1997 23.3 percent of low-income children were uninsured. By 2006, this number had dropped to 15.4 percent. However, much remains to be done. The rate of uninsured children in Florida is nearly 19 percent--the second worst in the country. Around 8.6 million children in America are uninsured; nearly 900,000 of these children are in Florida. One of the reasons I support this bill so strongly is that it expands coverage and offers incentives for States like Florida to find and enroll uncovered children. During difficult economic times such as these, there are more children in need of the CHIP program, not fewer. While I am very satisfied with the progress this legislation would make in covering children, I do have concerns about its financing. I want to emphasize that increasing the tobacco tax is an appropriate funding mechanism for this legislation. It will have significant positive impacts on health, save untold millions in health care costs, and reduce the prevalence of smoking among the children whom this bill is designed to protect. However, I am concerned that the tax is applied unequally across different tobacco products. Under the current legislation, there is a much higher tax increase for large cigars than for other tobacco products. This is no small problem for Florida--90 percent of large cigars in the U.S. are either manufactured or imported through Florida, accounting for approximately 3,000 jobs. While I remain opposed to placing an unfair tax burden on any one product, I still feel we have a strong bill on the whole, one that will improve health care dramatically for America's children.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, it is such a delight to see the Presiding Officer in the chair, the distinguished new Senator from the great State of North Carolina whom, every time I look at her wonderful smile, I think: That smile was born and bred in Florida. We are so happy to have the Presiding Officer here as a part of the Senate representing the great State of North Carolina. Madam President, I, of course, am going to vote for S. 275, the Children's Health Insurance Program. This reauthorization is a long time coming. We went through the trauma of having it vetoed by the President last year. We attempted to override that veto and got a close vote but didn't get enough. So here we are. We will have the votes this time. My particular additional interest in this is because in my life before the Senate, I had the privilege of being the elected State treasurer in Florida, which is also--was then--under Florida law at the time, the State insurance commissioner. In that capacity, I chaired what is known as the Florida Healthy Kids Program. It was a very innovative way in which we would reach out through the school system to make health insurance more affordable for children under the theory that if a child is sick, a child is clearly not going to learn. We know by all of the sociological studies that if a child does not get the proper medical observation and treatment during those formative years, it can manifest itself in so many more complicated ways later on in life which, just from a societal point of view, becomes a much greater expense on society; whereas, if children can get the proper health care, it is not only a good, humanitarian commonsense, Judeo-Christian kind of practice, but in an overall cost to society it is much more efficient and economical. We saw in this innovative program in the 1990s in Florida, the Healthy Kids Program, where we could make insurance available to children through the school system according to their parents' ability to pay. We piggybacked it on top of the School Lunch Program because already there, you had a determination of a family's financial means and capability. What we saw was that it spread like wildfire throughout the Florida school system in each of the counties, and it became not only very popular, it became very effective. Here we have a program where we are applying that concept for the whole country. It started back a couple of decades ago. We are reauthorizing it, and we are enhancing it. It makes good common sense. It clearly makes good health sense. It makes good economic sense. And in America, where we want to give the best of every opportunity for our children, it fulfills that dream and that desire as well. For these reasons, it is hard for me to believe anyone would vote against the reauthorization of this program. I commend our leadership, that they have brought up this bill basically as the first bill for us to pass. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, we all know because of what we have seen in our various States that our people are hurting; they are losing their homes; they are losing their jobs; they are falling behind in their mortgages; They are losing their businesses; and they are losing their life savings. Now, we clearly have the mandate that, if it is humanly possible, we need to turn this economy around. So the people of this country are expecting to see us take some real action--real action--on trying to turn this economy around. We, in this position, representing our States, are very privileged to have the public's trust and the responsibility that comes with that trust. Part of that responsibility means when there is a problem, we have to shine light on the problem and find out what it is. Take, for example, what we have seen recently on the Wall Street greed, when you have a former Merrill Lynch executive spending almost a million and a half dollars on his office renovations while his company was forcing layoffs as well as having huge losses and while the company that was acquired--his company--was asking for billions of dollars, and receiving it, from the public moneys. Well, there is obviously a problem. A number of us have filed legislation that is going to try to get at this issue. Even with this being put in the law, a new law saying none of this bailout money can be used for office renovations and political contributions or to go off on all these extravagant conferences or for corporate aircraft or for entertainment and holiday parties or for executive bonuses--all of these things that have come forth when the light of day is shone on them, having so enraged our people and our constituents--well, even if we get this into the law--and I hope we will be able to pass this legislation a number of us have filed--it is still going to take the administration riding herd on this issue every day, and that means primarily the Secretary of the Treasury. We are going to be voting on the confirmation of the Secretary of the Treasury at 6 o'clock today. It is this Senator's intention to vote for Timothy Geithner. But what is it going to take to get Wall Street's attention and to restore the American family's quality of life? It is going to take real accountability. That means the next Secretary of the Treasury is going to have to ride herd and, when he appoints an accountability board, to make sure that board is meeting--like the last Secretary of the Treasury did not. They did not meet once to see how that first tranche of $350 billion of the bailout money was being spent--not once. So I come from the sunshine State. We believe in letting the sun shine in. This means not getting ahead of ourselves when Wall Street comes crying that one of their unregulated financial schemes threatens to destroy our way of life, and then turns around and throws some party on some Caribbean island. It means putting in place regulations with the right carrots and sticks so we are not gambling with our country's future. So as we are about to confirm the next Secretary of the Treasury, there is not a more important mandate than for him to crack the whip and make sure this Federal money, this public money, this taxpayer money, is being spent as it was intended, and holding people accountable, and reporting the results. If we do not get the accountability and the transparency, if we do not get what we expect from the banks that willingly accept this money, then we should demand the public's money back. I have spoken personally to the nominee, and he has said--and I want to quote him--``I completely get it.'' So I am assuming he is going to be confirmed today. I will vote for him. I expect swift action to back up these words. The American people expect swift action by all of us to bring Wall Street and this economy back in line. We do not have any time to waste. There is simply too much at stake. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, it is great to see you as our Presiding Officer. I might call to the attention of the Senate again that the Presiding Officer, the junior Senator from North Carolina, has roots that go very deep in the State of Florida. Her family is one of the prominent families of our State. The Senator happens to have been raised in Lakeland, FL, in Imperial Polk County. It is a delight to have her come join the Senate family. I wish to address the matter before us, which is the Lilly Ledbetter bill. We have a chance, with passage of this legislation, which is going to occur perhaps tonight, to have it as a major first step in the legislative process that will ultimately go to the new President for his signature into law to right a wrong, to bring justice where justice has not been because of an insidious kind of discrimination, discriminating in the employment workplace, by paying women less than men for the same task that is performed. You would think that back in the 1920s, with America finally coming to realize that American women had the right to vote, the course would have been set back then in removing that discrimination. But here it is in the new century, in the dawn of a new age, and we still have to confront this inequity. We will do that. It is too bad we had to do that now as a result of a 5-to-4 decision in the Supreme Court that, for technical reasons, said Mrs. Ledbetter could not be made whole financially because she did not know of the discrimination that had happened to her some 15 years before. Whatever that technicality was, it was unfortunate that the Supreme Court, in that 5-to-4 decision, struck down her ability to get compensation, to get recompense for the injustice that had been bestowed upon her. But since we are a government of three separate branches, where there has been a mistake made, we have the opportunity to correct it. So we are going to do that today here in the Senate. I am certainly going to be a part of it because I will be voting for this legislation. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, there is an example of another one of our Senators in this body who is now assuming a very high and important position in the Government. The President and the Vice President have sprung forth from this Chamber. How honored we are, it having just been announced that Senator Salazar has resigned since he has been confirmed as Secretary of the Interior. The issue before us is Senator Clinton. The Senator from Texas has laid out his concerns and has said he finds the arrangement unusual. I appreciate his remarks. He has noted the good works of the Clinton Foundation. This Senator would think this arrangement is unusually good--for reasons. What has the Clinton Foundation done? It is not as if the spouse of a high-level new Secretary of State is in a foundation or a corporation of some nefarious kind of activity. Indeed, this is the kind of activity, as noted by the Senator from Texas, that is extraordinarily good. For example, the Clinton Foundation has helped millions of people around the world. Mr. President, 1.4 million people living with HIV/ AIDS now have access to lifesaving drugs. Because of this foundation's efforts and the former President's efforts to lower the cost of those antiretroviral drugs, 71 countries have access to these lifesaving medicines, which represents more than 92 percent of the people living on this planet with HIV. I will give another example: 425,000 Rwandans are served by four health facilities that have been strengthened by the Clinton Foundation. Because of these efforts, they have increased countries' human resource capacity to deliver care and treatment to their people, and it has helped prevent the transmission of disease from mothers to their children. Take for example the Clinton Climate Initiative. It is working with 40 of the world's largest cities, both in the United States and around the globe, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat global warming--something in which the next speaker, the Senator from Arizona, has been so intimately involved. These Clinton programs are fostering sustainable development in Africa and Latin America. As Americans, we can clearly applaud the efforts of the former President and his exceptional humanitarian work he has accomplished over the years that he has been a private citizen and that he has worked on through the Clinton Foundation. We were reminded yesterday, with the inaugural celebration and the inaugural activities, of the importance of getting the national security team in place and getting it in place fast. The President laid out the imminent crises he is having to face. We need a Secretary of State in place. Senator Clinton's integrity and her record of service are clear. We should not delay any longer, and we ought to confirm her quickly to be our next Secretary of State. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, the U.S. Navy just released today, at 1:30 p.m., a record of decision which follows a 2\1/2\ year analysis and final environmental impact statement of 13 alternatives for homeporting additional ships at the naval station in Mayport, FL, which is at the mouth of the St. Johns River near Jacksonville. The Navy's decision will establish a homeport for a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier which disperses the fleet instead of it all being in one place in Norfolk, VA, a fleet of five nuclear aircraft carriers, the most recent of which was just commissioned last weekend--the one that was named after the 41st President of the United States--and those five assigned to the Atlantic fleet. It will disperse that fleet by having a homeport for a nuclear aircraft carrier, which will reduce the risk to the Atlantic fleet of carriers from a natural or a manmade disaster. I wish to give a direct quote from the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Installations from his press release today: Neither the [Navy], nor the nation, nor its citizens can wait for a catastrophic event to occur before recognizing . . . its responsibility to develop a hedge against such an event. A catastrophic event. The decision is a continuation of what the Secretary of the Navy has said is the principle of strategic dispersal. According to the Secretary of the Navy, ``Strategic dispersal of our fleet is both a protective measure and a passive deterrence measure, and it is one important factor in [the Navy's] homeporting decisions and [its] maintenance of transient piers.'' Going back to 2005, the Chief of Naval Operations, ADM Vernon Clark, asserted that ``over-centralization of the [carrier] port structure is not a good strategic move . . . the Navy should have two carrier- capable homeports on each coast. The fact is, there is only one carrier-capable port on the east coast. There are three nuclear carrier-capable ports on the west coast. This wasn't the case before. Before, when we had nuclear carriers and conventional carriers in the Atlantic fleet back in the mid-eighties, there were four carriers in Norfolk, in this photograph from 1985, and there were two aircraft carriers stationed in Florida at Mayport Naval Station. That was the case all the way up to 1987. There were still two-carrier ports all the way up to last year when the John F. Kennedy, a conventionally powered aircraft carrier, was decommissioned and mothballed. And now with five carriers, there is only one port. The Navy has been wrestling with this problem, and they have come to the conclusion in the final administrative process of the record of decision announced this afternoon that in the interest of national security, they need these two-carrier ports, which we have always had up until last year. If the naval station in Norfolk were to become disabled, the Atlantic fleet carriers would be either stuck in port and prevented from getting to their area of operations or they would be prevented from reaching a port of maintenance. And mind you, the naval station in Norfolk, VA, is 8 miles up the river in a single-land channel that could easily be stopped up. Back in 2007, in our Defense authorization bill, we reaffirmed Admiral Clark's judgment that he had made 2 years previously in 2005. We reaffirmed that judgment that the Navy's fleet should disperse its Atlantic coast carriers in two homeports, just as it has always been. The considered judgment and decisions of our military leaders make sense because there are numerous risks that face our Nation's capital ships. Those risks are compounded when you put all your eggs in one basket, on one place on the east coast. Remember, on the west coast, the Pacific coast, we have not two but three nuclear homeports and, indeed, you can put in an additional two ports in the Pacific Theater. We simply must not delay in implementing this decision. The Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, has come to the same strategic conclusion when he reminds us--and this is from his letter of a few weeks ago: Having a single [nuclear carrier] homeport has not been considered acceptable on the west coast and should not be considered acceptable on the east coast. It is clear that the strategic necessity is to have two homeports for our five capital ships, our five nuclear aircraft carriers. The lessons of December 7, 1941, are a reminder of the danger to our national security if we do not disperse our capital ships. Remember what happened on that day: eight battleships were in port in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. It was just lucky that the three aircraft carriers were out. Two of them were sailing out to the west to islands, such as Wake, to deliver marine aircraft, and the third one was 5 hours out of Honolulu doing training exercises. Because there were eight battleships all bunched together, the four-star Navy admiral was fired. He was stripped of two of his four stars, and he was forced to retire. That is a lesson in Navy history that still stands. Clearly, that has been part of the lesson that has led the CNO, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of Defense to come to this decision which they announced several weeks ago and which has been officially reiterated today in the record of decision by the U.S. Navy. Some people are going to say: They won't bunch up the ships. Why did they bunch up five aircraft carriers in Norfolk in 1997? Count them-- one, two, three, four, five in 1997. The U.S. Navy did not learn the lesson of Pearl Harbor then. And you say: That was 11 years ago. What about 2001? One, two, three, four, five. Oh, by the way, you see this is the main bridge, this is the special channel, and the commercial channel comes right by all these ships: one, two, three, four, five, all docked together. That was 2001. You say that was 7 years ago. We have information that in 2003 the same thing happened again. I just don't have a photograph of it, but I will. Where are the lessons of Pearl Harbor and the firing and stripping of two stars of four-star Admiral Kimmel because of the attack on Pearl Harbor? Where are those lessons being learned by the U.S. Navy? I submit to the Senate that is a main part of the reason the U.S. Navy has today announced the official record of decision that it will disperse the Atlantic fleet of nuclear carriers by having one of those in the port of Mayport, which was the second port until last year. This was studied for 2\1/2\ years. There were 13 alternatives to the risk that exists. The Secretary of the Navy made the decision, with the advice of the Chief of Naval Operations, and accepted by the Secretary of Defense. It is my hope that parochial politics does not get in the way. There is going to have to be an appropriation of some $500 million in military construction that will make Mayport station nuclear capable. Of course, that is a lot of money, but for the national security of protecting the fleet of our main ships, that is a cost we are going to have to bear. It is this Senator's hope that we will get the Senate and the House of Representatives to understand the good common sense of this strategic defense policy when it comes around to the Defense authorization bill and the Defense appropriations bill.

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

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 13, 2009, at 9:30 a.m., to hold hearing a nomination hearing.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet, during the session of the Senate on January 13th, to conduct a hearing on the nomination of Mr. Arne Duncan, of Illinois, to be Secretary of Education. The hearing will commence at 10 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate to conduct a hearing on Tuesday, January 13, 2009, at 10 a.m., in room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. At this hearing, the Committee will consider the nomination of Steven Chu, to be Secretary of Energy.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on January 13, 2009 at 10 a.m. to conduct a committee hearing on the nomination of Mr. Shaun Donovan to be Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, restoration of America's Everglades is one of my top priorities in the Senate. Everglades National Park stands to be enhanced by enactment of the public lands bill package, S. 22. Section 7107 contains a measure--similar to a bill introduced by Senator Mel Martinez and me, to facilitate an important land exchange which will allow the National Park Service to acquire the last significant private inholding in the East Everglades and clear the way to finally implement the congressionally approved Modified Waters Delivery project or ``Mod Waters.'' Mod Waters will help restore natural water flows into Everglades Park. This project provides a critical foundation for many future restoration projects and although it was authorized in 1989, has been delayed for a variety of reasons including the need to acquire private lands that will be returned to a natural state by increased water flows. The Park Service has worked painstakingly since 1989 to acquire over 100,000 acres in the East Everglades at a cost of more than $104 million to clear the way for Mod Waters. Over 8000 individual parcels of land have been purchased and added to Everglades National Park. The land trade provided for in the pending measure will enable the park to acquire Florida Power and Light's--FPL--7-mile long, 330-foot wide inholding that now bisects the expanded park. This corridor of private lands runs north-south through the heart of the East Everglades and Shark River Slough, which provides the primary water flows into the park--the area where more natural water flows will be restored by Mod Waters. Under the exchange, FPL would surrender this 320-acre inholding to the park and receive approximately 260 acres on the eastern periphery of the park immediately adjacent to the existing L 31 canal and levee as well as a vegetative management easement to help control nonnative exotic plants among others. Public acquisition of the FPL inholding would eliminate the last significant private inholding delaying Mod Waters. In return, FPL would receive lands that would be outside the park, providing it with the opportunity to develop such lands into a viable utility corridor, if approved. This is a win-win for the people of south Florida who depend upon both a healthy environment and the availability of power. As I stated earlier, Mod Waters is the foundation for the broader Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, CERP, approved by Congress in the Water Resources Development Act of 2000. The congressionally mandated September 2008 National Academy of Sciences report on Everglades restoration called progress on Mod Waters ``dismal.'' The report emphasized that Mod Waters is critical to restoration, especially for Everglades Park, and urged the Federal Government to take action to move the project along. This exchange does precisely that. No funds will be needed for this inholding acquisition. Since so much work has already been done to identify the precise lands and interests in land to be exchanged and these lands have been subject to professional appraisals, we expect the park to be able to promptly complete the necessary administrative requirements to complete the exchange. Time is of the essence in order to facilitate Mod Waters and ensure that the exchange is executed so taxpayers are spared the multi- million dollar costs of purchasing the FPL corridor. Prior to executing the land trade, the Park Service will prepare the appropriate National Environmental Policy Act document to fully understand the environmental impacts, if any. It is my hope that this exchange will provide a wide array of environmental benefits to the park. The exchange ensures that there will be no electric transmission lines constructed on the existing private right-of-way. The bill also provides the Service with the authority to relocate the Everglades Park boundary to ensure that the lands conveyed to FPL are outside of the park. It is intended that the utility corridor, if developed, not be within Everglades Park. Because many of the agreements have been worked out in advance between FPL and the park, I expect that the Park Service will move expeditiously to complete the land exchange authorized by this legislation. In a similar vein, the Park Service must also make a determination that the lands and interests along the L 31 canal and levee on the edge of the park are ``suitable'' for exchange and conveyance to FPL. This ``suitability'' is already widely acknowledged and recognized by both the agency and the Congress as these peripheral lands are not in the heart of the park and not critical for Mod Waters and water flow restoration. Accordingly, I expect the Park Service to act in a timely manner to render the suitability finding. I received a letter from Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary, Mike Sole, expressing his support for the land transfer. The exchange is also supported by the Department of the Interior and the Army Corps of Engineers. I expect the Park Service and FPL to move promptly to complete the exchange. Again, the need for action on Mod Waters means that time is of the essence. I wish to thank Chairman Bingaman and Ranking Member Murkowski for their efforts to incorporate this important measure in the S. 22 package. We must move expeditiously to compete Mod Waters and completion of this land exchange will help us achieve these objectives while ensuring that the taxpayers are spared the cost of purchasing a very expensive park inholding from FPL. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, over the past half year, as the price of a barrel of oil has rocketed into the sky--all the way to $147 a barrel and in 1 day the price escalating $25--there have been a number of Senators on this floor and in committee meetings and in private discussions saying: Why won't people wake up and realize it is not the economic marketplace of supply and demand that is determining the price of oil? Who wants us to believe that? The oil companies, of course. In fact, the price of oil has escalated not because there is a tightness on the world marketplace of demand for oil. Indeed, at the very time of a 6-month period from the last quarter of last year until the first quarter of 2008--that 6-month period when the demand for oil was going down and the supply was going up, which would indicate the price should be going down if supply is greater than demand--exactly the reverse was true. The price kept rocketing to the Moon. It defied the laws of supply and demand. Yet we had everybody running out saying, ``Oh, it is the tight world marketplace,'' and it was difficult to get people to listen to a group of Senators who said it was because the commodities futures exchanges had been deregulated and, therefore, unregulated oil futures contracts speculation was running wild. Then, once it got up to $147 a barrel, what happened? The liquidity crisis hit, the economic crisis of confidence hit--not only in America but across the world. A lot of this was precipitated by the faulty mortgages, the subprime mortgages we are now not paying off in the revenue stream because people weren't paying their mortgages. Those mortgages had been bundled into securities and then bought and sold, and a lot of financial institutions, hedge funds, mutual funds and, indeed, big investments for pension funds started dumping those because they needed cash, and they started dumping their positions on oil futures commodities that they had purchased in this speculative frenzy that ran the price up to $147 a barrel. What happened? The exact reverse. The price of oil starts coming down. So what should we do about this? Well, we ought to do what a number of us have been saying: We ought to go back and reregulate what we have jurisdiction over, which is the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Now, why was it deregulated? It was deregulated in the dead of night before Christmas in the year 2000, and it was deregulated at the behest of the Enron Corporation. And once they deregulated that commodities futures trading market on energy, it allowed them to go out and speculate on energy contracts. What was the first result? In the early part of this decade we saw it happen in California. We saw the electricity contracts start a runup in speculative bidding, to which it went up--the cost of electricity--by as high as 300 percent in California. Once that started to unravel, then we know what happened: Enron started to unravel with all the shenanigans that had gone on there. But here we are 7 and 8 years later, after the law was changed, and we haven't been able to get it changed back because people come out here and say: Oh, it is supply and demand in the world market for oil, and they come up with a simple slogan, as if that was going to handle the price of oil when it was hitting $147 and translated into about $4- gallon-gasoline. Their simple little slogan was ``drill baby, drill,'' as if that were going to solve the problem of the price of gasoline and the price of oil. But now we hear--and people are starting to pay attention--we ought to reregulate this futures commodities trading. Now, what do we mean by regulate? I am talking about simple little things, such as you would have to use the oil that you are bidding on, such as an airline does. It locks in a future price for fuel by bidding on these future oil contracts. An airline, in fact, does use oil. By taking away the regulation, they have removed that ability. Or to give another example of regulation: A Commodities Futures Trading Commission could say you have to put a certain amount of money down if you are going to buy a future oil contract. Instead of getting it with nothing down, you have to put some skin in the game. But if you completely deregulate it, what you leave it to is the speculator to go in and bid that price up and up and up. Now, this is what we have been saying on the floor of this Senate for the last 6 or 8 months, a number of us--Senator Dorgan, Senator Cantwell, this Senator, and several other Senators--but it has been hard to get an audience that would listen. Well, no less a respected institution than CBS News ``60 Minutes'' last Sunday night broke it open and put it about as clearly as I have ever heard in posing this question: Did speculation fuel oil price swings? And what they concluded was that 6 months ago, when oil hit its alltime high of $147, and gas was up around $4 a gallon, it created a frenzy that fed into irrational and false claims that the problem was just supply and demand and that the solution was to drill for more oil. Well, it looks a lot different now. That frenzy that got mixed up in Presidential politics as well, with those simplified mantras of ``drill baby, drill,'' fueled by a slick public relations campaign, that was funded by deep-pocket oil companies. Yet those same oil companies testified in the spring of 2008 that if supply and demand were the sole driver of oil prices, that oil should cost no more than $55 a barrel. We had executives of two of the big major oil companies say the normal laws of supply and demand would say that oil ought to be in the range of $55 to $65 a barrel, and they testified, this Senator thinks, correctly. So ask yourself: Could supply and demand justify the wild swings in prices? And in that one instance where oil jumped $25 in 1 day for a barrel of oil, ask yourself: Could the new oil demands by China and India, that have needs for new oil products, could that have suddenly caused that price to jump so much in a single day? And the answer, clearly, is: No. It was speculation that caused that bubble to grow. Wall Street investors shifted billions of dollars out of the stock market and into the commodities futures market and ultimately into oil, and that is what was the biggest driver of running up the price of oil and gasoline. What is even more powerful in demonstrating the influence of speculators on oil prices is examining what happened to those prices after we in the Senate, and down at the other end of the Capitol in the House, started threatening regulation again. Well, guess what happened. The prices went down. When Wall Street experienced a financial meltdown with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near collapse of AIG, prices fell even more as the Wall Street speculators got out of the oil futures markets to the tune of $70 billion. The speculative bubble in commodities, which was not only energy but agricultural commodities, all of a sudden bubble popped. Demand for oil in the United States is down by 5 percent, but the price of oil is down 75 percent. So we shouldn't be fooled by the drop in prices. Some financial analysts, fortunately, are not fooled by the drop in prices. They are advising investors that low oil prices are a temporary phenomenon and that oil prices will average above $75 a barrel over the next 5 years. Well, a number of us, months ago, filed a bill to stop the trading of oil and other energy commodities on the unregulated exchanges, and what the bill does is it turns the clock back to a change in law that was pushed by the Enron Corporation, known as the Enron loophole, which opened the way for a flood of speculative money in these commodity markets. I am introducing that bill again today, and I seek our colleagues' support. We must be vigilant to ensure that Wall Street investors do not take advantage of the lax regulation to reap profits by driving up the price of oil and making driving a lot more expensive for the rest of us. Let us remember that we saw what happened with another form of unregulated financial instruments. That was those insurance policies that had a fancy name, called credit default swaps. They were unregulated. Look what happened: The collapse of AIG that had to come in to the tune of upward of a $100 billion rescue from the Federal Government. I don't believe it is simple coincidence that the same legislation that let those credit default swaps escape regulation also allowed energy traders to conduct their business in the shadows. We need to bring that industry out of the darkness and into the full light of day. Mr. President, I wish to quote a couple lines from this Sunday's interview on CBS News ``60 Minutes.'' A representative of the Petroleum Marketers Association is interviewed, a Mr. Gilligan, and he says: Approximately 60 to 70 percent of the oil contracts in the futures markets are now held by speculative entities, not by the companies that need oil, not by the airlines, not by the oil companies, but by investors that are looking to make money from their speculative positions. Now, that is a representative of the oil companies that said that. Furthermore, the investigative reporter, Steve Kroft, quotes a fellow named Michael Masters, and he states: In a five-year period, Masters said the amount of money institutional investors, hedge funds and the big Wall Street banks had placed in the commodities markets went from $13 billion to $300 billion. Last year, 27 barrels of crude were being traded every day on the New York Mercantile Exchange for every 1 barrel of oil that was actually being consumed in the United States. That is Mr. Kroft's analysis on ``60 Minutes,'' and he was referring to a former Wall Street trader named Michael Masters. I wish to end by further quoting Mr. Kroft from 60 Minutes: A recent report out of MIT analyzing world oil production and consumption also concluded that the basic fundamentals of supply and demand could not have been responsible for last year's runup in oil prices. Another quote from an interviewee: ``From quarter four of '07 until the second quarter of '08''--that is a 6-month period--``the Energy Information Administration said that supply went up, worldwide supply went up, and worldwide demand went down . . . This was the period of the spike'' in oil prices ``so you had the largest price increase in history during a time when actual demand was going down and actual supply was going up during that same period. The only thing that makes sense that lifted the price was investor demand''--in other words, the speculators making an artificial demand. I think it is clear. That is why I am introducing this legislation. I look forward with great optimism to the passage of this kind of legislation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill and a ``60 Minutes'' transcript be printed in the Record.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, over the past half year, as the price of a barrel of oil has rocketed into the sky--all the way to $147 a barrel and in 1 day the price escalating $25--there have been a number of Senators on this floor and in committee meetings and in private discussions saying: Why won't people wake up and realize it is not the economic marketplace of supply and demand that is determining the price of oil? Who wants us to believe that? The oil companies, of course. In fact, the price of oil has escalated not because there is a tightness on the world marketplace of demand for oil. Indeed, at the very time of a 6-month period from the last quarter of last year until the first quarter of 2008--that 6-month period when the demand for oil was going down and the supply was going up, which would indicate the price should be going down if supply is greater than demand--exactly the reverse was true. The price kept rocketing to the Moon. It defied the laws of supply and demand. Yet we had everybody running out saying, ``Oh, it is the tight world marketplace,'' and it was difficult to get people to listen to a group of Senators who said it was because the commodities futures exchanges had been deregulated and, therefore, unregulated oil futures contracts speculation was running wild. Then, once it got up to $147 a barrel, what happened? The liquidity crisis hit, the economic crisis of confidence hit--not only in America but across the world. A lot of this was precipitated by the faulty mortgages, the subprime mortgages we are now not paying off in the revenue stream because people weren't paying their mortgages. Those mortgages had been bundled into securities and then bought and sold, and a lot of financial institutions, hedge funds, mutual funds and, indeed, big investments for pension funds started dumping those because they needed cash, and they started dumping their positions on oil futures commodities that they had purchased in this speculative frenzy that ran the price up to $147 a barrel. What happened? The exact reverse. The price of oil starts coming down. So what should we do about this? Well, we ought to do what a number of us have been saying: We ought to go back and reregulate what we have jurisdiction over, which is the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Now, why was it deregulated? It was deregulated in the dead of night before Christmas in the year 2000, and it was deregulated at the behest of the Enron Corporation. And once they deregulated that commodities futures trading market on energy, it allowed them to go out and speculate on energy contracts. What was the first result? In the early part of this decade we saw it happen in California. We saw the electricity contracts start a runup in speculative bidding, to which it went up--the cost of electricity--by as high as 300 percent in California. Once that started to unravel, then we know what happened: Enron started to unravel with all the shenanigans that had gone on there. But here we are 7 and 8 years later, after the law was changed, and we haven't been able to get it changed back because people come out here and say: Oh, it is supply and demand in the world market for oil, and they come up with a simple slogan, as if that was going to handle the price of oil when it was hitting $147 and translated into about $4- gallon-gasoline. Their simple little slogan was ``drill baby, drill,'' as if that were going to solve the problem of the price of gasoline and the price of oil. But now we hear--and people are starting to pay attention--we ought to reregulate this futures commodities trading. Now, what do we mean by regulate? I am talking about simple little things, such as you would have to use the oil that you are bidding on, such as an airline does. It locks in a future price for fuel by bidding on these future oil contracts. An airline, in fact, does use oil. By taking away the regulation, they have removed that ability. Or to give another example of regulation: A Commodities Futures Trading Commission could say you have to put a certain amount of money down if you are going to buy a future oil contract. Instead of getting it with nothing down, you have to put some skin in the game. But if you completely deregulate it, what you leave it to is the speculator to go in and bid that price up and up and up. Now, this is what we have been saying on the floor of this Senate for the last 6 or 8 months, a number of us--Senator Dorgan, Senator Cantwell, this Senator, and several other Senators--but it has been hard to get an audience that would listen. Well, no less a respected institution than CBS News ``60 Minutes'' last Sunday night broke it open and put it about as clearly as I have ever heard in posing this question: Did speculation fuel oil price swings? And what they concluded was that 6 months ago, when oil hit its alltime high of $147, and gas was up around $4 a gallon, it created a frenzy that fed into irrational and false claims that the problem was just supply and demand and that the solution was to drill for more oil. Well, it looks a lot different now. That frenzy that got mixed up in Presidential politics as well, with those simplified mantras of ``drill baby, drill,'' fueled by a slick public relations campaign, that was funded by deep-pocket oil companies. Yet those same oil companies testified in the spring of 2008 that if supply and demand were the sole driver of oil prices, that oil should cost no more than $55 a barrel. We had executives of two of the big major oil companies say the normal laws of supply and demand would say that oil ought to be in the range of $55 to $65 a barrel, and they testified, this Senator thinks, correctly. So ask yourself: Could supply and demand justify the wild swings in prices? And in that one instance where oil jumped $25 in 1 day for a barrel of oil, ask yourself: Could the new oil demands by China and India, that have needs for new oil products, could that have suddenly caused that price to jump so much in a single day? And the answer, clearly, is: No. It was speculation that caused that bubble to grow. Wall Street investors shifted billions of dollars out of the stock market and into the commodities futures market and ultimately into oil, and that is what was the biggest driver of running up the price of oil and gasoline. What is even more powerful in demonstrating the influence of speculators on oil prices is examining what happened to those prices after we in the Senate, and down at the other end of the Capitol in the House, started threatening regulation again. Well, guess what happened. The prices went down. When Wall Street experienced a financial meltdown with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near collapse of AIG, prices fell even more as the Wall Street speculators got out of the oil futures markets to the tune of $70 billion. The speculative bubble in commodities, which was not only energy but agricultural commodities, all of a sudden bubble popped. Demand for oil in the United States is down by 5 percent, but the price of oil is down 75 percent. So we shouldn't be fooled by the drop in prices. Some financial analysts, fortunately, are not fooled by the drop in prices. They are advising investors that low oil prices are a temporary phenomenon and that oil prices will average above $75 a barrel over the next 5 years. Well, a number of us, months ago, filed a bill to stop the trading of oil and other energy commodities on the unregulated exchanges, and what the bill does is it turns the clock back to a change in law that was pushed by the Enron Corporation, known as the Enron loophole, which opened the way for a flood of speculative money in these commodity markets. I am introducing that bill again today, and I seek our colleagues' support. We must be vigilant to ensure that Wall Street investors do not take advantage of the lax regulation to reap profits by driving up the price of oil and making driving a lot more expensive for the rest of us. Let us remember that we saw what happened with another form of unregulated financial instruments. That was those insurance policies that had a fancy name, called credit default swaps. They were unregulated. Look what happened: The collapse of AIG that had to come in to the tune of upward of a $100 billion rescue from the Federal Government. I don't believe it is simple coincidence that the same legislation that let those credit default swaps escape regulation also allowed energy traders to conduct their business in the shadows. We need to bring that industry out of the darkness and into the full light of day. Mr. President, I wish to quote a couple lines from this Sunday's interview on CBS News ``60 Minutes.'' A representative of the Petroleum Marketers Association is interviewed, a Mr. Gilligan, and he says: Approximately 60 to 70 percent of the oil contracts in the futures markets are now held by speculative entities, not by the companies that need oil, not by the airlines, not by the oil companies, but by investors that are looking to make money from their speculative positions. Now, that is a representative of the oil companies that said that. Furthermore, the investigative reporter, Steve Kroft, quotes a fellow named Michael Masters, and he states: In a five-year period, Masters said the amount of money institutional investors, hedge funds and the big Wall Street banks had placed in the commodities markets went from $13 billion to $300 billion. Last year, 27 barrels of crude were being traded every day on the New York Mercantile Exchange for every 1 barrel of oil that was actually being consumed in the United States. That is Mr. Kroft's analysis on ``60 Minutes,'' and he was referring to a former Wall Street trader named Michael Masters. I wish to end by further quoting Mr. Kroft from 60 Minutes: A recent report out of MIT analyzing world oil production and consumption also concluded that the basic fundamentals of supply and demand could not have been responsible for last year's runup in oil prices. Another quote from an interviewee: ``From quarter four of '07 until the second quarter of '08''--that is a 6-month period--``the Energy Information Administration said that supply went up, worldwide supply went up, and worldwide demand went down . . . This was the period of the spike'' in oil prices ``so you had the largest price increase in history during a time when actual demand was going down and actual supply was going up during that same period. The only thing that makes sense that lifted the price was investor demand''--in other words, the speculators making an artificial demand. I think it is clear. That is why I am introducing this legislation. I look forward with great optimism to the passage of this kind of legislation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill and a ``60 Minutes'' transcript be printed in the Record.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

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

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess under the previous order.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, the task happily falls to some of us Senators each year in which we can chronicle the success of the national champion in college football. Of course, there were tens of millions of Americans watching TV last Thursday night as the No. 1 and No. 2 teams ranked in the country in college football played for the BCS National Championship. Of course, in that game, with two high- powered offenses, the University of Florida Gators prevailed. I will be offering a resolution for the Senate to pass to present to the University of Florida and to its coach and to the team. They will be coming here for the traditional visit to the White House to visit with the President later on this year. I am joined--although the Senate rules prohibit Albert the Alligator from appearing on the floor of the Senate, and as my colleague, the Senator from Alabama, over there is giving the Gator chomp, the University of Alabama rolling tide having been the victims of the Gator chomp in the SEC championship game--I make note that Albert the Alligator, the University of Florida's mascot, is safely ensconced back in the cloakroom since the alligator is not allowed onto the floor of the Senate. But all of us are celebrating this tremendous victory. I also wish to mention that since the BCS National Championship rotates among the major bowls, this year it was the turn for the Orange Bowl to have not only the Orange Bowl on January 1 but then the national championship game. The entire Orange Bowl Committee, of which the two Senators from Florida are privileged to be ex-officio members, had conducted such a magnificent event, had done it with great aplomb and excellence, great hospitality to the two teams involved, to the university administrations, and it was all around a very positive experience. For the national champion Gators, I wish to quote a couple of articles. From the columnist Greg Cote and the Miami Herald: The Gators flat-out won this game and this title, and all the more impressively because it was less by quarterback Tim Tebow's magic (though he was voted game MVP) than by his defense defusing the other team's epic offense. Then I quote from the columnist of the Gainesville Sun, Robbie Andreu: The Florida Gators apparently were right after all. Oklahoma obviously had not seen a defense like Florida's this season. And Tim Tebow? There's no way he is the fourth-best quarterback in the Big 12. With the defense coming up with critical stops when it had to, and with Tebow, Percy Harvin and the offense generating points when the game was on the line, the Gators were clutch in the second half and beat the Sooners 24-14 Thursday night at Dolphin Stadium to give Florida its third national championship, and second in three years. Coach Meyer is quoted: This is one of the best teams in the history of college football. So we celebrate that. Now, since we are dealing with these weighty problems and here we are taking up a stimulus bill--we are taking up this TARP legislation this week--it is good to have a little levity. Indeed, before this game, I went to the Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Coburn, and I said: Would you like to have a little friendly wager? What we decided was that the losing team's Senator would sing a song in front of the winning Senator's constituents, and we agreed in advance that the songs would be that I would sing ``Oklahoma'' if the Sooners won, and Senator Coburn would sing ``Rocket Man'' by Elton John--a favorite of this Senator--if the Gators won. So next Wednesday, 2 days from now, circa noontime, we are going to have a gathering of Florida constituents for Senator Coburn and me. I suggested to Senator Coburn that I would even graciously sing a few bars of ``Oklahoma.'' Also, if he couldn't follow the words--and we are going to play ``Rocket Man'' for him--if he couldn't follow the words, clearly we could sing a few bars of the Florida alma matur, the Florida fight song, ``We Are The Boys From Old Florida.'' It is good to have this levity. It is good to have a wholesome sport that is uniquely American that we can get enthused about. It is good that we have athletics that add so much to a university setting, that bring out more of a university personality in addition to the studies, the academics, and the research we are so privileged to have in our American universities. So, indeed, this Senator is here to say: All hail, Florida, which comes from the alma matur. All hail, Florida. This time, again, the Gators are the national champions. Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.