Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I want to bring to the attention of the Senate a little known fact, as the clock continues to tick for us to take up drilling legislation off the Outer Continental Shelf, in particular, the proposal that has been cast by the so-called Gang of 10 as a compromise, which is looking at a comprehensive approach, which I applaud, that includes revenues. But it also includes tax incentives for alternative fuels and so forth. The part the two Senators from Florida extremely object to is the fact of intruding in the military mission, the only testing and training area that is the largest for our U.S. Department of Defense, and all other agencies, including for classified and black programs that go on for testing and evaluation in this training range. But what is particularly egregious is that in opening up all of that area that is now closed pursuant to the statute we passed 2 years ago, the 2006 statute--that we closed all of that area to drilling because of the military--in the opening of that area, and in the so-called giving of revenue to the adjacent State--in this case Florida--well, lo and behold, all the revenue allocated to the State does not go to the State of Florida, even though it is the waters of the Gulf of Mexico off of the State of Florida. What happens in the complicated formula that is there is that 10 percent of all the revenues from the leasing of Federal lands for oil and gas production goes to each State on the gulf. That would include Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. In other words, the revenue does not go to the State of Florida, even though it is off the coast of Florida. Forty percent of that State revenue due to the State would go to the other States instead of Florida. That is simply not fair. When I explain that to Senators, they are surprised, and in some cases aghast, because common sense would tell you it is not fair. That is another reason this Senator has put his foot down that we are not going to let Florida, nor the Department of Defense, be the sacrificial lamb for some kind of proposal so people can say we are drilling out there. I want to drill. I want to drill offshore. But I want to drill where it makes sense. The formula that has been concocted certainly does not make sense. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I move to reconsider the vote and to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. McCaskill.) Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a resolution calling for a stop to the illegal flow of arms into Sudan and an expansion of the United Nations embargo on arms sales to Sudan. I am happy we have a number of cosponsors of this legislation--as a matter of fact, Senators Inhofe, Brownback, Casey, Clinton, Dole, Durbin, Feingold, Hatch, Isakson, Kerry, Lieberman, Martinez, Menendez, Snowe, and Boxer. You can see with Senators spanning the breadth and depth of the Senate, they are recognizing this is one of the most important issues facing planet Earth at this time in trying to stop the genocide in Darfur. Last July 14, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague requested a warrant for the arrest of Sudan's President Bashir on the charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. In part, it was because of his arming the jingaweit militias in Darfur. Our colleagues certainly are urging the prosecution of Bashir for these crimes. But it is now time for the international community and the Congress to take further action in order to prevent the continued export of arms to the regime, the Sudan regime in Khartoum. This resolution is a call to action to stop the steady stream of arms going from countries such as China and Russia into Darfur. The loopholes in the current UN arms regime are recognized as the main cause for the continued violence and the killings there. Two UN arms embargoes are currently in place prohibiting the Government of Sudan from moving arms into Darfur except with the advance approval of the UN monitoring body. The embargoes also require foreign nations to take measures to ensure they do not militarily assist anyone in the conflict in Darfur. Yet those embargoes are impossible to enforce since the Government of Sudan can still receive as many weapons as it wants, as long as the government in Khartoum promises that the arms are not going to be used in Darfur, which, of course, it makes those promises and then completely ignores them. As Sudan's main weapons suppliers, China and Russia, they turn a blind eye to the fact that the weapons they sold are being used to kill the innocent civilians in Darfur, and the weapons continue to flow into the country. Now, remember, earlier in the year, China had shipped a huge weapons cache to the regime in Zimbabwe. But fortunately the ship was turned away by the dockworkers in South Africa. In the case of Sudan, however, the Chinese arms reached their final destination. According to the United Nations, China supplies approximately 90 percent of Sudan's imports of small arms today. Expanding the present embargo would help us prohibit China and Russia from selling to Sudan regardless of where those arms were used in the country. In the October 2007 report, the U.N. panel of experts cited numerous instances in which the Government of Sudan had egregiously violated the obligations under international law. Likewise, Amnesty International has reported that Chinese and Russian weapons are used extensively in Darfur. This year, the BBC aired a long expose on the arms flow into Sudan, and that BBC expose proved that Chinese weapons have been transferred to Darfur since the arms embargo was imposed by the United Nations resolution. So how much more proof do we need? I tried to go to the Sudan last year, but the Government of Sudan denied me a visa. So I had to go in through the back door by going into Chad and going to the border there. As I traveled along that border of Chad and the Sudan, I saw there the squalid refugee camps where 400,000 of those people who had fled Darfur had taken refuge from the killings and the violence. By the way, the killings and the violence did not stop once they were in the refugee camps in Chad. Since 2003, the conflict in Darfur has killed at least an unbelievable 300,000 people, and it has displaced more than 2.5 million. They know the horrors of war, hunger, and, unfortunately the women know the horrors of rape. And the attacks on the refugee camps continue. As a matter of fact, the men in the refugee camps make the women go out to collect the firewood. Anytime they go outside of the perimeter of the refugee camp, they are subject to being attacked and raped. Governments, religious leaders, human rights activists, and nongovernmental organizations have issued calls to end the genocide. The people of Darfur, nevertheless, remain vulnerable to daily attacks by these militias, armed with Chinese and Russian firearms, and they continue to suffer. We have been putting the spotlight on Darfur for several years now and nothing gets done. The Government of Sudan makes promises, the United Nations tries to do things, and nothing gets done. Resolutions and envoys have thus far failed to stop countries from funneling the arms into Darfur. At the upcoming session of the United Nations General Assembly, we now have another opportunity to name and shame the perpetrators and to halt the immoral export of weapons to the killing fields. That is what this resolution is about. It pledges to continue United States support for a political solution in Darfur, and it calls for the immediate and unfettered deployment of a United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force, without regard to the country of origin of those forces. It calls for the immediate end of arms sales to the Government of Sudan from all U.N. member states. That will continue until the conflict in Darfur has been resolved. This resolution calls for the use of the voice and vote of the United States in the Security Council in order to expand that embargo to cover all of the arms going into the Sudan except for an appropriate exception for the nonlethal assistance to the Government of southern Sudan. At this upcoming 63rd U.N. General Assembly, when it opens next week, the U.S. must support this expanded embargo that will try to bring some sense into the madness that is over there. If the U.N. Security Council were to strengthen the embargo regime, it would send a strong signal to the Sudanese Government that their support in the international community is shifting. It is going to be this Senator's great privilege, as one of two Senators representing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to represent the Senate at the United Nations General Assembly. I plan to bring up this issue over and over again to the U.N. delegates I meet. I hope the Senate will see fit to support this effort by passing this resolution.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, as soon as the copy of my amendment arrives, I will send it to the desk to file, not to offer at this point. Although it is applicable to the Defense bill, I will save it, at the request of the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, for next week's consideration of the Energy bill. It is an amendment to protect the interests of the Department of Defense; to protect the largest testing and training range in the world for our Defense Department. Let me show you where it is. It is in the Gulf of Mexico, off of Florida. It is all of this area outlined in yellow that is east of this longitudinal line. That area in yellow, including this area up here, 125 miles off Pensacola, is what was etched into law in 2006, 2 years ago, as a protected area from drilling for oil and gas. And why is that? Because everything east of that longitude-latitude line, all the way close to the coast of Florida, is the largest testing and training area for the United States military in the world. Now, you may wonder why in the last round of base closures and realignment--and remember, the acronym is BRAC, Base Realignment and Closure Commission, that is what BRAC stands for--in the realignment all of the pilot training for the new F-22 stealth fighter came to Tyndall Air Force Base at Panama City. You may wonder why. Well, that F-22 does a dogfight at 1\1/2\ mach. You can imagine what the training radius, the turning radius, is for an F-22 as it is in a dogfight. It is at 1\1/2\ times the speed of sound. So it has all of that area out there in which to train. Why also, under the realignment, the BRAC process, did all of the newly developed F-35s, called the Joint Strike Fighter, for the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marines--and it is still being developed--why did they determine that all of the pilot training for the new F-35s was going to be at Eglin Air Force Base, which is located right here, right where that military mission line hits the shore? That longitude line-- Eglin Air Force Base--why right there? It has all of that training area which is protected airspace. Why is this area off bounds here? Well, certainly when we passed the law 2 years ago, the interests of a $65 million a year tourist industry, dependent on pristine beaches, was considered. And by the way, Florida has more beaches than any other State. As a matter of fact, Florida has more coastline than any other State save Alaska, and Alaska doesn't have a lot of beaches. But we in Florida have barrier islands on most of Florida, and those barrier islands have extraordinary white sand beaches. So certainly that was an interest to protect there. But there is another reason. Guess what is right there. Pensacola Naval Air Station. That is where most of the Navy pilots and Marine pilots, naval aviators, that is where most of them learn to fly. So they have all this training area and they can go out on a carrier and train as Navy pilots. Now, speaking of the U.S. Navy, you will remember about 4 or 5 years ago there was a big brouhaha over the U.S. Atlantic Fleet training down off the island which is a part of Puerto Rico--off the shore of Puerto Rico and the island of Vieques. For decades, the U.S. Navy had trained its pilots there. But the people of Puerto Rico took great umbrage at this, and they wanted it changed and they wanted it removed. They were afraid it was a health hazard, and so the United States acceded to that request. As a result, Vieques was shut down for the Atlantic fleet. Well, where is the Atlantic fleet going to train? They have to train. Well, guess what. They came here--the largest testing and training area for the United States in the world. And in all of this protected space there are designated areas for the Navy, specifically off of Pensacola, up here, and then big areas of this part of the gulf for the Navy. The Air Force has mainly the rest of it, including some Air Force training over here. Now, here is what happens with the Navy. We have the Key West Naval Air Station right here. It is actually not on Key West. There are headquarters there on Key West, but the actual airfield is on the island to the north of Key West called Boca Chica. So what happens is they bring these Navy squadrons that are assigned to an Atlantic Fleet naval aircraft carrier, they fly them into Boca Chica, they spend 2 or 3 weeks there--these are the F-18s and will be the F-35s in the future--and then for that period of time they come out here and they have all of this area that is restricted space in order to train. The good news about that is that when they lift off from the runway here at Boca Chica, within 2 minutes they are over restricted space. So they do not have to fly a long way burning up a lot of fuel to get there. In 2 minutes they are ready to start their aerial training and their dogfights. Now, there is something else that is going on here. Because up here, at Fort Walton Beach, this huge Air Force facility called Eglin Air Force Base, is the test and evaluation center for all of the U.S. military--all of the Department of Defense. And what they do is they take all of these weapons systems--not just airplanes but air-to- surface missiles, air-to-air missiles, surface-to-air missiles, surface-to-surface missiles--and they shoot them and they train and they test. This is the Air Force test and evaluation center, but for all of the Department of Defense, and we have some weapons systems that we are shooting for hundreds of miles. From here to here is approximately 300 miles. So we have some weapons systems that are shooting hundreds of miles, and as a result, we need all of that. Now, when we passed this law protecting this area from any drilling 2 years ago, I had a statement in writing from the Secretary of Defense of what the policy is of the Department of Defense, which is that they do not want drilling out here in this test, training, and evaluation range. That is the operative policy as confirmed to me by the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Gordon England, in a phone call with him 2 days ago. That is the operative policy. The Department of Defense, presently the Secretary of the Navy, is considering whether they need all of this, but Secretary England told me that there is no way they are going to have a decision made before we finish our session by the end of this month, and, therefore, we should plan on the operative policy to be that the U.S. Department of Defense does not want any drilling of oil and gas out here because it would mess up their testing, their evaluation, and their training. So the amendment I am going to offer would apply to this Gulf of Mexico area, east of this military mission line, which is this longitude line, everything east of there to the coast. And I want to read it specifically. It is defined as the ``Joint Gulf Range Complex'' or the ``Gulf of Mexico Range.'' It would also include any military or National Security Agency operations training or testing area that is used by a military or national security agency of the United States. It says: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of the Interior shall not issue any permit for oil and gas leasing or extraction in an area described--as I have just indicated--unless and until the President certifies, based on written opinions provided by each of the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of the Air Force, and the head of each appropriate national security agency of the United States, that in balancing the national security interests of the United States the advantages of oil or gas extraction in the area outweigh the military and national security missions being conducted in the area. In other words, it is a fail-safe approach to say that it is going to force us in the future--whenever we are considering changing laws like this that protect this area for the military, that it shall have the force of law that the Secretary of Interior has to get a written certification from the President that the oil and gas extraction outweighs the military and national security missions being conducted in the area. We are in a time in which our enemies want to do us harm. We are in a time in which we have to be prepared. In order to have that preparation, we not only need the personnel and the intelligence, but we need the equipment. We have to test that equipment under all kinds of conditions to make sure it works when we have to have it work. That is what this testing and evaluation and training range is for. This Senator is not going to let the U.S. defense preparedness be a sacrificial lamb for the interests of the oil and gas companies in order to satisfy their hollow-ring rhetoric that says ``drill, baby, drill.'' You have heard me before on this floor say that the mantra ought not be ``drill, baby, drill.'' As Tom Friedman says, the mantra ought to be ``invent, baby, invent.'' That is how we are going to break the stranglehold of oil that is around our neck. But until we get to that point--and I hope we are rapidly moving to that point of alternative fuels--this Senator is going to stand up and not let the defense preparedness of this country be sacrificed as a lamb on the altar of the oil and gas companies. This Senator also wants to clearly say this to the Gang of 10 that proposes to drill up to 50 miles off the Florida coast. That would bring it up to a point about like this on this map. You can see how that would cut out the heart and the lungs of the military mission test and evaluation. The Gang of 10 that wants to vote on their proposal next week says: By the way, we are going to do that drilling all the way up to 50 miles off of the west coast of Florida, but we are not going to do that off of anybody else's coast. We will let there be drilling at the OK of the States of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, and we are not going to touch anybody else, but we are sure going to touch the west coast of Florida and this military mission line. This Senator wants to clearly say he is not going to let Florida be the sacrificial lamb. I just hope my colleagues understand that this Senator is not going to let that happen. We concocted, crafted, and compromised to pass this law 2 years ago to satisfy the Senator from Louisiana, the Senators from Mississippi, and the Senators from Alabama who wanted additional drilling while at the same time this Senator and my colleague, Senator Martinez, brought to the table that we wanted to protect the military and we wanted to protect Florida. We crafted this compromise. Now, 2 years later, they want to blow it out of the water and they want to blow the U.S. military out of the water. We have a few tools at our disposal called parliamentary rules of the Senate. We are simply not going to let this happen. This Senator is about as bipartisan as anybody on this floor. This Senator is about as reasonable as anybody on this floor. This Senator does believe what the Good Book says, which is ``Come, let us reason together.'' That is how we ought to forge compromise and make law, recognizing that you have to build consensus. That is what we ought to do, and we ought to do it in a bipartisan fashion. But the Gang of 10 wants to run over the interests of this Senator and the interests of the military. Every now and then, we have the opportunity to stand up and say no. I want everybody to be clear where this Senator is. Let me tell you, the Speaker of the House of Representatives came out yesterday with a proposal that this Senator would certainly consider, and I think favorably. What the Speaker of the House has said is honor the 2006 law, and on the rest of the Outer Continental Shelf, all over the United States beyond 100 miles, drill; between 50 and 100 miles, if the State concurs, drill. Those being Federal lands, those revenues would inure to the benefit of the U.S. Treasury, not to the States. This Senator will certainly consider that, but not when they say the interests of Florida and the interests of the Defense Department are the ones that are going to have to completely give, since we worked this and etched it into law for the first time 2 years ago. I want everybody to understand what the position of this Senator is. What I would like to do is to send this amendment to the desk to file. I will not offer it because, as I said, the chairman of our Armed Services Committee has enough on his plate--I am one of his subcommittee chairmen--in order to get this Defense authorization bill passed. But this issue will certainly be ripe next week when we take up the energy provisions. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I want to say a word of appreciation to the Senator from Oregon for his leadership on this, and his courage. He had the courage of his convictions 2 years ago to stand up and to not relinquish the floor in the midst of all kinds of pressure to get on with the legislation in order to get his point across. From time to time, each of us, when we feel passionately and very strongly about an issue that we do not think is right, has a right here to do that. I thank him for that. I thank him for his courage. I second what he has said about the skullduggery that is going on. Is it not interesting that there is no consequence as a result of what the inspector general has found, all of this skullduggery--it is his words, not ours--all kinds of sexual liaisons going on, all kinds of drugs, all kinds of gifts, some of this supplied by the oil companies over which this administrative executive department agency is a watchdog, and it is going to be in an inspector general's report. The Department of Justice, the Attorney General's Office, has said they are not going to prosecute the two main people in the office who carried on all of this scandalous activity; they have resigned. So where is the accountability? When I served in the military a long time ago, I was taught clearly that the commanding officer was accountable for what happened to that commanding officer's troops or ship. Where is the accountability? What about the head of the Minerals Management Service? The head of the Minerals Management Service is there. Where is the accountability? Why should not the head of the Minerals Management Service, on something that went on for one-third of the employees of this office for some period of time, say: I am responsible, I am accountable, and face the music, and face the consequences? But, no, it is always dodge, weave, deflect. It is always somebody else's fault. How much of a pattern have we seen of that over the last 8 years? The American people are getting tired of it. And they are getting tired of it especially when those same kinds of interests, in this case the oil companies influencing an executive branch department to get what they want by using illegal gifts, the offer of sexual favors and drug use. This is the same group that wants to come in, as I was pointing out on that map, and drill all the way up through and cut out the heart and the lungs of the U.S. military testing and training area. No, there is too much that is not in sync here. I thank the Senator for his very prescient and courageous and consistent stance he has had. I yield the floor.

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 resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 656, submitted earlier today by Senators Reid and McConnell.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, as previously announced, there will be no rollcall votes tomorrow or Monday. However, the managers of the bill will be on the floor to debate any further amendments to the Defense authorization bill.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Calendar No. 942, S.J. Res. 42, be indefinitely postponed.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, Friday, September 12; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate resume consideration of S. 3001, the Defense authorization bill. I further ask that the previous prohibition on motions to proceed be in effect during Friday's session of the Senate.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, all of this is happening while we are considering what to do about energy. I hope we will remember that what we ought to do, what we need to do, is drill where it makes sense. But if you want to lower gas prices, we need higher miles per gallon on our cars. We need to increase our tax incentives to our consumers so they can buy more efficient automobiles and tax incentives to the industry so they can retool, as well as we need to increase our oil refining capacity. That is the way we solve the problem of being dependent on oil in this energy crisis we are facing. Madam President, I see my colleague from New Jersey, who has been a kindred spirit on this question of drilling offshore, off of our two respective States. I do not know if the Senator heard what I just talked about, about the inspector general's report, about what has been going on, the hanky-panky that has been going on over at the Minerals Management Service at the Department of the Interior. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Well, Mr. President, I wish to respond, but all I can do is read the amendment of the Senator from Louisiana. On page 4, starting at line 6: The amount authorized to be appropriated by this division . . . is hereby reduced by $271 million, with the amount the reduction-- And it goes on to say-- to be allocated . . . in the manner specified by the Secretary of Defense. What do the words ``this division'' in his own amendment mean? It means everything in the Pentagon, the Department of Defense spending, minus military construction. So when he says the amendment would not allow the Secretary of Defense, at his discretion, to cut all these things I have listed, that is incorrect. That is what the amendment says, as it is drafted. I would add this gets down into the weeds, but since a lot of this is very arcane, there are some additional concerns regarding the Vitter amendment that I will mention for the record. The amendment proposes an additional $87 million for targets, for flight tests. But those funds would, instead, go to the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Program. That is in the wrong place because the targets program is managed in a totally separate office. So any additional funds for targets should go to the test and targets funding line, not to the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Program. I said this is in the weeds, but we have to get in the weeds to talk about how this amendment is flawed. Another example is the proposed $54 million to convert two Aegis cruisers to the missile defense configuration. Well, the Navy doesn't plan on doing two such cruiser conversions, and this amendment might be a problem for the Navy. It is better to simply refer to ``ships'' rather than cruisers. In any event, we should get more information before we authorize something where we don't know what we are doing. Additionally, the amendment would propose $30 million for technology risk reduction to one component of the Standard Missile-3, called the Throttling Divert and Attitude Control System, pronounced TDACS. Well, rather than put all those funds into this one piece of the Standard Missile-3, it would seem like it would be better--and this is according to the Missile Defense Agency--it would be better to provide funds for the overall Standard Missile-3 Development Program. That would be doing a lot more good than the proposal in this amendment. So I think even down in the weeds there are a lot more objections to this amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 4979.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, next week we are going to be on the Energy bill, and we are going to be acting on one of the most important challenges facing our Nation. In fact, the single greatest threat to our national and economic security may well be our dependence on oil, not just foreign oil but oil. No one among us would argue that we need to drill in places where it makes sense. But we all know that more drilling will not do anything to bring down the price of gasoline. A report from the White House has said that, and we have stated that on the floor of the Senate. Nor will more drilling take us down the path to making America energy independent in 10 years. But let's acknowledge that we need to drill for oil in places where it makes sense. This Senator has come to the floor and said over and over that 68 million acres of Federal lands, both on land and submerged lands, leased by the oil companies, is a good place to start. We need to drill for oil in places where it makes sense. If there are expanded places offshore that do not have a counterbalancing reason not to drill there, then let's use that standard. Let's drill in places where it makes sense but understanding all along that is not going to affect the price of gasoline now. The White House report said it would not affect the price of gasoline until the year 2030. But people are hurting now. They want something done about gas prices now. Recognize also there is a fundamental truth that the United States has only 3 percent of the world's oil reserves, but the United States consumes 25 percent of the world's oil production. Common sense tells us, if we only have 3 percent but consume 25 percent, drilling is not going to get us out of the problem. We have people such as Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens who are on the TV saying exactly the same thing. If we cannot drill our way out of the problem, what should we do? It is clear that we could bring the price of gas down a lot more and right away if we would cut some of the waste, if we would conserve. What is one way to conserve? Higher-miles-per-gallon cars because 50 percent of the oil we use goes into cars and trucks. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize this is where we ought to focus. So let's focus on raising the mileage standards for our personal vehicles. It took us 30 years to just a few months ago raise the mileage standards to a paltry 35 miles per gallon, but that is phased in over the next decade and a half. In the meantime, Europe is driving around on an average of 43 miles a gallon. By the way, it is American manufacturers in Detroit that are selling their products, American automobiles, that add to that 43-mile- per-gallon average in Europe. And in Japan, they are driving around in vehicles that get 50 miles per gallon. In other words, we are wasting a lot of oil right here in America that we could be saving, and we could do it with serious conservation measures. One of those ways is to increase our miles per gallon in our vehicles in the fleet average, which we could start doing tomorrow. There is another way, and the other way is to start giving tax incentives to Americans to go out and buy fuel-efficient cars. We ought to require at least 40 miles per gallon on our vehicles, and we should provide to the American consumer tax incentives to encourage them to buy those higher-miles-per-gallon, fuel-efficient cars. In the long run, we have to rapidly build cars that run on batteries and hydrogen, not petroleum, and we need to develop alternative fuels, such as ethanol, from products that we do not eat. While we are at it, we are going to have to pay attention to how we power our homes and industry. We are going to need to develop solar, wind, thermal energy, and safer nuclear power, and we are going to need to increase our oil- refining capacity. Our Government must enact this national energy program to transition us from petroleum to alternative and synthetic fuels. President Kennedy said we were going to release ourselves from the bonds of gravity and go to the Moon and back within 9 years, and we did it. We need to act on this energy crisis with the same urgency. If we put our minds together, then we can realize a number of these items that I have mentioned--drill in places where it makes sense; raise the miles per gallon on our automobiles; give our people tax incentives so that they will be encouraged to buy fuel-efficient cars; develop solar, wind, thermal, safer nuclear power; and increase our oil-refining capacity. These are the ways we are going to solve our energy crisis. This is what I hope as the Senate goes into session next week working on the Energy bill. These are the commonsense ways that we can, with divergent views, come together and build consensus. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I would say to my good friend from Arizona, first of all, recognize how much we have spent on national missile defense. We have spent over $150 billion on national missile defense. In this 1 year, the request is $9.3 billion, of which the committee felt like there were other priorities for $400 million of that. That is a reduction of only 4.2 percent in a program that has spent $150 billion--$150 billion--to date. Now, that is a de minimis cut when you have so many other priorities in the budget of the Pentagon. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I want to respond to the Senator from Arizona, who is my friend. But I want the Senator to understand that the committee did not cut THAAD nor the Aegis. To the contrary, the committee raised, for the very reasons the Senator from Arizona said--that we need more THAAD for our area commanders--we raised that $115 million, as well as the Aegis ballistic missile defense. We raised that $100 million from what was requested. So let's make sure we know what we are talking about. Mr. President, what this all boils down to is the National Missile Defense Program is requested by the administration for $9.3 billion of authorization in this bill. In essence, this whole argument is that the committee has pared back that $9.3 billion request by $400 million. That is what all this argument is about. It is an attempt to increase back that funding of a de minimis cut in a $9.3 billion program. Given all the other requirements we have in the U.S. Government and given all of the other requirements we have in the Department of Defense, should we have a modest decrease from the President's request of $9.3 billion in 1 year? I suggest that there are so many other demands. Think about body armor. Think about getting the V-shaped hulls of MRAPs that are so resistant to the improvised explosive devices they run over on the road and that are saving marines' and soldiers' lives. Ask any commander in Iraq or Afghanistan what are their high priorities. Ask the commanders if THAAD, which is an intercept that can be launched from a mobile launcher, is an important program to them to intercept an incoming intermediate-range missile and you will get a quick answer from those military-area commanders that is what they want. That is the philosophy we have tried to adapt in this bill and at the same time allow national missile defense research to continue but recognizing there are other priorities besides national missile defense. So we just took a de minimis cut out of a $9.3 billion request by the President. That is what all of this flap is about here: Is national missile defense going to have a minor cut so that we can do some of these other priorities for protecting our troops and satisfying their commanders' requests? That is what all this is about. The Vitter amendment proposes to cut $271 million from the rest of the Defense Department and add it to the Missile Defense Agency. This is not funding that the Defense Department has requested. These are programs that are fully funded in our Armed Services Committee bill. But this amendment would give the Secretary of Defense an extraordinary and unwarranted power; that is, the power to cut any items in the defense budget that the Congress is putting in here in order to pay for this increase in an already flush national missile defense budget we have provided. As the chairman of the Strategic Subcommittee, I can tell you that we have some of the Nation's most sophisticated weapons systems, many of which we cannot even speak about here because of their classification. This is not a good allocation of priorities. I don't think we would want to give the Secretary of Defense the authority to ignore the will of Congress. For example, would we want the Secretary of Defense to be able to go in and, in order to fund this amendment, cut body armor or would we want him to be able to go in and cut what the commanders in Afghanistan now are begging for--more of these V-hulled vehicles, which replace the humvees, that are saving our boys' and girls' lives called the MRAPs? Of course, we don't want that. Would we want the Secretary of Defense to have the authority to go in and cut $271 million from the $430 million in the bill for sustaining the Joint Strike Fighter, its alternate engine which the Department supports? Of course, we wouldn't want to give the Secretary power to do that. Would we want to give the Secretary the power to go in and totally wipe out the additional $118 million we provided in this bill for operating a full B-52? The Department opposed that. Would we want to give the Secretary the ability to override the will of Congress to do that? How about the F-22, the most sophisticated fighter aircraft? Would we want to give the Secretary of Defense the power to go in and cut half of the $500 million we have provided in this bill for advance procurement of the F-22? I don't think we would want to do that, but that is what we would do, is give the Secretary the power to do that if this amendment is adopted. Would we want to give the Secretary the power of reducing the Army budget request of $512 million for the Patriot missile? Talk about countries and allies and force protection for our own troops of incoming warheads--the Patriot missile is a quick-reaction missile that intercepts those incoming missiles on our troops in a theater. Would we want to cut the increase we provided in this bill? This amendment would give the Secretary the power to do that. Would we want to eliminate the proposed addition of $170 million for advance procurement of another amphibious ship called the LPD-17? I don't think that is what we want to do, but that is what this amendment is going to do, all under the ideology that we haven't provided enough for national missile defense. But we have provided almost $9 billion in this bill for it. We have to set priorities and we have to allocate for programs that we want to make sure are there for the protection of our troops and our allies, and that is what we tried to do. Didn't we have a unanimous vote coming out of the committee for all of these priorities? We did. So why do we want to suddenly change the unanimous, bipartisan support of the Senate Armed Services Committee to adjust all of these priorities? Why would we want to change that? Because there are some people who say ideologically we want to pour more and more money into national missile defense. Isn't $9 billion enough for 1 year? This Senator respectfully requests that the Senate listen to reason and common sense in the allocation of priorities. The committee recommends already--as I stated to Senator Kyl, we have added $215 million for THAAD, which is the terminal high-altitude aerial defense which commanders are requesting, and we have also added that total amount of money, including the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Program, which is launched from a ship and is very effective for incoming warheads. We certainly agree there are potential threats from North Korea and places such as Iran, but those threats are generally in the neighborhood of where they are. That is why Aegis from a ship is so effective, and that is why THAAD from a mobile platform is so effective. We have plussed up those programs. They shouldn't be cut. But the Secretary of Defense, under this amendment, would have that authority. The Vitter amendment would not make any choices about where the additional money to provide for this plus-up to an already rich and robust national missile defense budget would come from. This amendment would not make any choices about where that additional money would come from. So what it says is that this $271 million in additional funding for missile defense, programs that we have either fully funded at the level requested by the Pentagon or increased in our committee bill by $215 million--that program is so important that the Secretary of Defense could cut any other funding program in the Pentagon to pay for it. I don't think that is a responsible way to go. This Senator, as the chairman of the Strategic Subcommittee, will oppose the amendment. It is my hope that Members on both sides of the aisle, members of the Armed Services Committee, will support the committee product. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, his cuts would allow the Secretary of Defense to make cuts across the board to the budget in order to fund his add-back, and that could be the Joint Strike Fighter, the B-52, the F-22, the Patriot Missile, and the LPD amphibious ship. This is not good policy. Our committee came out, on $9.3 billion, and cut only 4 percent on national missile defense.