Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. You would ask, if it is voluntary, why would they do it? Because there is a financial incentive for oil companies who want to pay for new drilling in 181 or elsewhere in the central or western gulf, not to pay that by swapping out their financial interest in these ancient leases that are still here. They are of minor value compared to the entire value of the leases elsewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, but nevertheless that is there. Why it is important that we keep the Senate bill intact and not expand it with any version of the House is because the House-passed legislation works for the Gulf of Mexico, but the House-passed version lifts the moratorium for the entire country and allows, with State legislative approval, drilling to come up to 3 miles off the coast of a State. Of course, Atlantic seaboard Senators, Pacific Ocean Senators, would be violently opposed to that, and then the Senators who start realizing that it starts getting into their military- restricted areas, their defense-restricted areas, would find that enormously objectionable. That is another reason we need to keep this legislation intact as it goes to the House and then comes back to the Senate. My colleague from Florida, Senator Martinez, has made several statements on the floor--and it is my understanding that he will again--that he is given assurances that the protection of Florida will be there when this legislation comes back from the House. It is the privilege of this Senator from Florida to support this legislation. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. People say that is voluntary for the oil companies.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, we are on a subject that is near and dear to the heart of the Senator from Florida--both Senators from Florida. It is a subject of which, a year ago, in bringing up an energy bill, there was an attempt to drill off the coast of Florida, and this Senator had to start his first filibuster. We were able to resolve that with the help of the distinguished senior Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Domenici, who, true to his word, let the Energy bill go on without bringing up the portions with regard to drilling off of Florida when it went to conference with the House of Representatives. And I have thanked Senator Domenici many times on this floor for being a man of his word. I must say, in the negotiations that have brought this legislation to the floor now, I give great credit to the senior Senator from Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu, in looking out for the interests of her State in receiving revenue--what would come from new drilling that this legislation addresses not only for Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, but especially for Louisiana. It addresses those revenue needs that the State needs since it is losing all of those wetlands. We saw the results of that in the great tragedy of Hurricane Katrina a year ago. So I give great credit to Senator Landrieu. But I also give great credit to Senator Landrieu because she knew the interests of Florida had to be protected in order for her to get an agreement because both Senators from Florida were willing to filibuster any legislation that threatened the interests of Florida. To her great credit--Senator Landrieu's--she worked with the two Senators from Florida. She also worked with the other gulf coast Senators. And what has been crafted is a piece of legislation that addresses just the Gulf of Mexico. Now, you might wonder: Why does Florida not want its waters off the coast of Florida to be drilled? Well, this Senator is going to explain that. Certainly, there are economic interests with a $57 billion a year tourism industry that depends on pristine beaches. Certainly, there is the delicate environment--the 10,000 Islands, the Big Bend area, the bays and estuaries, Apalachicola Bay--all of these environmental areas that are so delicate to the ecology of the oceans where so much marine life is spawned. But there is another big reason that most people do not understand, and it is right here as shown on this chart. Most people do not realize that the entire Gulf of Mexico off of Florida is restricted airspace. Why? Because this is the largest testing and training area in the world for the U.S. military. All of this area has restricted air use and naval use. You wonder: When the U.S. Atlantic fleet training in Vieques--the little island off the eastern end of Puerto Rico--when it was shut down, why did most of that training come to Florida? It is because you can do combined air-sea exercises and land exercises from Eglin Air Force Base, Pensacola NAS--Naval Air Station Pensacola. Squadrons of Navy F-18s come down and spend 2 weeks, 3 weeks at a time, and are stationed there because when they lift off out of Key West NAS, within 2 minutes they are over restricted airspace where they can go about their training. So here is a large part of the reason--as shown right here on the chart--why there is no drilling off the west coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico. The importance of what is called the Eglin Air Force Base Gulf Test and Training Range has been emphasized in the letter that was received by the Senate Armed Services Committee, signed by the Secretary of Defense, Don Rumsfeld. That letter was delivered to the committee last November, in which he says: You cannot have oil and gas rigs out here where we are testing and training sophisticated weapons systems, and where we are training our pilots--Air Force and Navy pilots--and where we now will have the F-35 all-pilot training for the new Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35 for all branches of service, all out here because of that restricted space. So Secretary Rumsfeld made it very clear: You cannot have oil and gas rigs. I remember the Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer, one day said: Why should Florida be protected? Here, this is the reason. This is the historical reason, in addition to the reasons of the environment, as well as the economy of Florida in protecting our tourism industry. So this is what we are dealing with, as shown on this chart. All of the yellow on this chart off the State of Florida is going to be protected until the year 2022. That is three planning periods of 5 years each. That is 15 years after the planning period of 2007 kicks in. All of that area--which is 125 miles from Fort Walton, it is 100 miles from Perdido Key, 100 miles off of the Alabama coast right here. Then it comes around, and it then follows this critical line, this black line that is called the military mission line, a military mission line that was established in 1981 by the Department of Defense in that they said they wanted no drilling east of that line. Therefore, that line becomes the critical line, of which you see that most of the area of Florida, then, is protected from drilling. And that is all the way through the year 2022. That area, by the way--from this point off of Clearwater, which is in the Tampa Bay area--is 235 miles due west of the Tampa Bay area beaches. For Naples, it is in excess of 300 miles. No drilling. So you can see the protection for Florida also happens to be the protection for the U.S. military in these ranges. Now, we have had people come to the floor and say they are concerned about this going down to the House. The House-passed bill basically lifts the moratorium for drilling off the Outer Continental Shelf of the entire United States--the Pacific coast, the Atlantic coast, and so forth. I want to speak about the assurances I have been given when this bill will leave here and go to the House of Representatives. But let me tell you why this bill only deals with the Gulf of Mexico. From Florida's standpoint, from the military's standpoint, from the Nation's defense standpoint, we do not want to lift the moratorium and have drilling off the east coast of Florida and the rest of the southeastern United States because, look right here on this chart. Here is another major Air Force and Navy training area off the northeast coast of Florida and off the east coast of Georgia. In addition, right there is a place called Cape Canaveral. The Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is where we launch our rockets to put all of our satellites, our defense satellites, into equatorial orbit. You can't have oil rigs out here where you are dropping the first stages of the expendable booster rockets that are putting our highly sophisticated and highly classified defense payloads into equatorial orbit. Just to the north of Cape Canaveral is a place called the Kennedy Space Center. It happens to have launch pad 39A and launch pad 39B from which we launch the space shuttle and, after the year 2012, it is estimated we will launch the new space vehicle called the Crew Exploration Vehicle. You can't have oil rigs out here where we are dropping the solid rocket boosters from the space shuttle when we launch, those two big candlesticks on either side of the external tank of the space shuttle. After they have expended their fuel 2 minutes into flight, they separate from the space shuttle and parachute back into the Atlantic Ocean. They are then brought back in, refurbished, and reused. You can't have oil rigs out here. So as people talk about wanting drilling off the east coast of Florida, which this legislation in front of us does not address but the House bill does address, you can't do that out here with an interest of the Nation at stake--the military preparedness plus the defense of this country, with the important payloads that we are launching out of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, as well as the Kennedy Space Center. When people say that this legislation we are passing in the Senate does not address protections of the east coast, the east coast isn't a threat. Right now the east coast is under a moratorium until the year 2012. That is not where the threat is. The threat is here in the Gulf of Mexico. That is why we have the legislation before us that we do. That is why this Senator is coming to the floor to announce my support for this legislation, which I have helped craft and on which I have waited until today, until I had assurances that this legislation was not going to be in any significant way changed when it leaves this Chamber and goes down to the House. What are those assurances? I have been authorized to say from the majority leader, Senator Frist--and I am reading from an e-mail to me. This is a quote Senator Frist sent to me today-- The Senate bill is a carefully crafted compromise and I believe it represents what is achievable in the Senate this year. I will not bring a bill back before the Senate that does not provide adequate protections to the State of Florida. I look forward to working with both Florida Senators to achieve this goal. Yesterday, I spoke personally to Senator Frist on the telephone. He told me he would do everything within his ability to keep it to the Senate version when the bill returns to the Senate. That is a pretty good assurance for this Senator to protect the interests of Florida. I went to our leader on this side of the aisle, the Democratic leader, and Senator Reid has written a letter to me: Dear Senator Nelson: It is my expectation that the House of Representatives will accept S. 3711 as passed by the Senate without amending it and without modifying it in a conference committee. If the House does not accept the Senate bill as passed, I will join other Senators and Senator Nelson and produce the votes to sustain a filibuster to prevent the passage of the bill when it would return to the Senate. That is the end of the quote from Senator Reid's letter. Around here, you have to take a man at his word. I accept the word and the assurances of the two great leaders of our two great parties in protecting the interests of Florida. I am prepared to come and support this legislation and to thank the leadership on both sides as they have worked with the two Senators from Florida to try to do what is right for the country. In the legislation that addresses the drilling, there is another important component for Florida; that is, there are a few leases out in this area from years past, decades past, that have never been drilled because they have never gotten the permits because of all that we have been going through, keeping these waters protected in a moratorium. Senator Landrieu has crafted a portion of the bill that revenue will go to four Gulf States from the revenue generated to the Federal Government from new leases. The interest of Florida, since there won't be drilling, is to get rid of the ancient leases that are never going to be drilled. So there is a provision in the legislation that will allow the swapping of these leases by their value for new leases in the area that can be drilled in what is called lease sale 181, and other leases in the central and western Gulf of Mexico, new leases that we want to be drilled where a swap would occur.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I object. It has not been cleared.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I will vote in favor of the Child Custody Protection Act. I support the Florida law which was enacted after voters approved an amendment to the Florida Constitution. The law requires that Florida parents must be notified prior to their minor child obtaining an abortion, and it provides that a judge can grant an exception. This act will help ensure that minors in Florida consult with their parents before obtaining an abortion in another State, while also preserving the ability of minors to seek a judicial waiver when that notice is not in the best interest of the minor. The ultimate goal must be to prevent teen pregnancy so that none of our children find themselves in these difficult situations, and thus I also supported the amendment to provide Federal grants for programs that educate minors on the use of contraceptives and abstinence.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, in the years before the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Johnson, discrimination and brutal force were used to deny African Americans the right to vote as guaranteed by the 15th amendment. There are stories of local election officials requiring Black residents to pass arbitrary tests, like correctly guessing the number of bubbles that a bar of soap would produce, before being allowed to register to vote. And, of course, there were the more insidious forms of intimidation, which is a very sad chapter in the history of this country, with African Americans being lynched and murdered for attempting to vote or registering others to vote. In the 41 years since the enactment of the Voting Rights Act, America has inched closer to its promise of an inclusive society, where everyone, regardless of race, regardless of religion, regardless of economic class or regardless of gender, has an equal opportunity to succeed. We are not there yet. Sadly, I can point to modern day attempts to deny the right to vote to citizens in my own State. During the 2004 election, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement created a list of 48,000 convicted felons. This list was then sent to the 67 supervisors of election in Florida, who were given the instructions to strike those 48,000 convicted felons from the rolls. The public was denied meaningful access to the lists to verify its accuracy because of a law passed by the legislature in the previous few years. CNN challenged the constitutionality of the law under the Florida Constitution. This Senator participated in that challenge by filing what is called an amicus curiae brief, or a friend of the court brief. A courageous Florida circuit judge declared the law unconstitutional. When the Miami Herald got their hands on the list of 48,000 names of convicted felons, guess what they found. First of all, they found the list was overwhelmingly minority; second, they found that the list was overwhelmingly minority African American; and third, they found about 3,000 legitimate registered voters on that list who were not convicted felons. If not for that lawsuit 3,000 legitimate registered voters with names that were similar to the names of convicted felons would have gone to the polls on Election Day in November of 2004 and been told they were not a registered voter and they could not vote. It is 41 years since the Voting Rights Act. This just happened 2 years ago. We're getting closer to the ideal, we're just not there yet. Reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act is going to move us further down the road and, most importantly, it will ensure that we never turn back. Today, as I cast a vote in favor of reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act, I hope and pray that 25 years from now, at the end of the authorization of this act, our country will have progressed so that we do not have to continue this particular debate. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, the Congress will soon pass important legislation that will better protect children around the country from those who seek them harm. The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, H.R. 4472, named after the son of John and Reve Walsh who was killed in Florida almost 25 years ago, is the toughest and most comprehensive sex offender bill in recent years. This legislation includes a number of changes to safeguard children, including tougher sentences for crimes committed against children, a publicly accessible national database of sex offenders, and a Federal requirement for convicted sex offenders to register their locations with law enforcement officials. The bill also includes a provision, which I authored, to track released sex offenders. Sadly, events of the recent past highlight the need for us to know the location of convicted sexual offenders if they are released back into our communities. In my State of Florida, two young girls, Jessica Lunsford and Sarah Lunde, were both murdered by convicted sex offenders within weeks of each other in 2005. Jessica Lunsford of Homosassa, FL, was a 9-year-old girl who was abducted from her home, raped, and then buried alive by a convicted sex offender who lived 150 feet from her home. Law enforcement had lost track of him and they did not know that he worked at the school that Jessica attended, despite his being a registered sex offender. A few weeks later, 13-year-old Sarah Lunde of Ruskin, FL, was murdered by her mother's ex-boyfriend. He is also a convicted sex offender. In response to these tragic events, Florida enacted a law that provides tougher sentences for child sex offenders and aids law enforcement in effectively monitoring those sex offenders. The law requires sex offenders, released back into our communities, to wear a device to allow authorities to track them via a global positioning system. My provision in the Adam Walsh Act provides Jessica Lunsford and Sarah Lunde grants to aid States and local government in purchasing electronic monitoring systems, such as global positioning systems, that will provide law enforcement with real time information on the whereabouts of sex offenders released from prison to within 10 feet of their location. Law enforcement will be able to restrict the movements of sex offenders by programming these systems to alert authorities if a sex offender goes to a park, amusement park, elementary school or other areas determined to be off limits. The ankle bracelets used to monitor their movements are tamperproof and will alert law enforcement in the event that an offender has removed it so law enforcement can immediately act to apprehend the offender. The grants will provide a total of $15 million to State and local government to help implement laws in order to get tougher on sex offenders released back into their communities with electronic monitoring technology. The bill will provide for $5 million in grants for fiscal years 2007 through 2009. The bill then directs the Attorney General to provide a report to Congress assessing the effectiveness of the program and making recommendations as to future funding levels. In the United States, there are an estimated 380,000 registered sex offenders, although thousands have disappeared, according to authorities. We have over 30,000 of these sex offenders in the State of Florida. Laws, such as the one in Florida, and the Adam Walsh Act, which will be passed by Congress, are necessary to protect our children. I believe it is important that the Federal Government be appropriately supportive of State and local governments that are addressing this problem. To be effective, tough laws on sexual predators of children must be properly funded, and I believe these tough laws being passed by Federal and State legislatures are worth properly funding when they will protect our children. Children are our most important treasure and protecting them is one of our most sacred responsibilities. I hope this bill will serve as a living memorial to all the children and serve as some comfort to their families. I hope the Jessica Lunsford and Sarah Lunde grants provided in this bill will allow law enforcement to help prevent other families from suffering similar tragedies.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, under Senate rules, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to show a prompt on the Senate floor, a bottle of water.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Senator Feingold, as you know, the legislation establishing the Everglades Restoration Comprehensive Plan creates a permanent, independent peer review panel with extensive responsibilities for reviewing the Everglades restoration plan in detail. The Corps of Engineers has contracted with the National Academy of Sciences to establish that panel, and it has been working productively for years, issuing a number of major reports. Would this legislation create duplication with that panel?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I appreciate and agree with your understanding of this amendment. I fully support the view that expensive controversial Corps of Engineers projects should be subject to independent peer review. In case there is any possible need for clarification of this issue, would the Senator from Wisconsin be willing to work with me during the conference on this bill?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, this is the bottle. This is a glass of clean water that is put on our desk to drink. This is the bottle of water that I scooped up out of the Saint Lucie River which is one of the estuaries that will be dealt with in this Water Resources Development Act that we are now considering. You can see the dramatic difference between the two. This one is laden with algae and with all kinds of particulates. This is the kind of clean water that we would like our rivers and estuaries to be. Thank goodness we have this bill and we are going to pass it. It is going to address these kinds of problems. Specifically in this bill is the Everglades restoration and two important projects, the Indian River Lagoon, from which this water came. It is the Saint Lucie River estuary that leads into the Indian River. You can see why that estuary is messed up. When I went out there and scooped up this bottle of water, it was a dead river. That river, the Saint Lucie, flows into the Indian River, which is not a river, it is a lagoon. It is a bay. This Senator grew up on the banks of the Indian River. Where I grew up, there are the pelicans diving for fish because there are plenty of fish. There is Mr. Osprey up there swooping down and getting his dinner. You look up in that dead pine tree and there is old Mr. Eagle. He is up there waiting for Mr. Osprey to go down and scoop up and get his dinner. Then Mr. Eagle is going to take off after Mr. Osprey, and Mr. Osprey is going to drop that fish and Mr. Eagle is going to swoop it up. That is going to be his dinner. Yet there is nothing out there in a river that has water like this--no pelicans, no bird life. You cannot even see it. You can see the density of this water. You cannot even see below the surface of the water. Thank goodness we have up this WRDA bill. This bill also is going to authorize the Fakahatchee Strand and the waters that dump into the St. Lucie, like this to the east of Lake Okeechobee, dumped into the Caloosahatchee River to the west, and a similar kind of water goes out to tidewater in the Gulf of Mexico to the Caloosahatchee River. This is what we are going to correct with this WRDA bill. And, also, we are going to--in the managers' package they have accepted an amendment that the two Senators from Florida have offered, which is to get an examination of this report that came out about a 70- year-old dike that rings Lake Okeechobee; 40,000 people live in the vicinity of the perimeter of Lake Okeechobee, and the report predicts there is a one-in-six chance of dike failure with each year that passes. So we are getting an emergency examination and report in this bill of the sanctity and security of that dike, with all of those lives that are at stake. Overall, all of this is so important for us. This is the greater part of a 20-year project of the restoration of the Everglades, the river of grass, which for over a half century we have messed up by diking and draining and sending this water of Mother Nature out to tidewater, instead of preserving it for what it was intended by Mother Nature--to keep flowing south through the Everglades and ultimately out into the Florida Bay. I am so grateful that the leadership on both sides of the aisle has brought this bill to the floor. It is with great joy that I will be voting for this legislation. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, yesterday, July 17, 2006, marked the successful conclusion of the STS-121 space shuttle Discovery mission with its safe landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This 13-day mission was the 115th shuttle mission and the 18th to visit the International Space Station. STS-121 satisfied its ``return to flight'' objectives by flight testing improvements to the shuttle and testing on-orbit shuttle repair procedures. This flight provided more than 28,000 pounds of equipment and supplies to the space station and enabled its number of occupants to grow to three. STS-121 included three important spacewalks and laid the groundwork for the continued assembly, and ultimately doubling in size, of the space station. I applaud the bravery, expertise, and accomplishments of the STS-121 crew--Commander Steven Lindsey, Pilot Mark Kelly, and Mission Specialists Michael Fossum, Lisa Nowak, Thomas Reiter, Piers Sellers, and Stephanie Wilson. This successful mission is a testament to the thousands of people who work on the space shuttle and space station programs. Mr. President, we must continue with our plans to fly the space shuttle in order to complete the construction of the International Space Station. Equally important, we must work together to preserve the workforce that will soon become the backbone of the new crew exploration vehicle and the next human space project.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, we just heard a great deal of discussion and disagreement. My bottom line on this whole issue of stem cell research is that a vast majority of the medical and scientific community feels that this is a process which would lead to medical breakthroughs in the fight against disease. To this Senator, that is worth exploring. There is hardly a Senator here whose life has not been touched by disease, in one way or another, through their family. In this particular Senator's life, my family has been touched by disease, and we don't know the cause of it. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's disease. It took down the great baseball player, Lou Gehrig. For years, the researchers have looked and looked and researched and researched and have not found a cure. The ALS community, along with many other communities, is concerned about the treatment and cure of diseases on which stem cell research might offer a clue. Researchers believe that stem cells may have the potential to treat over 100 million Americans who suffer from a variety of conditions, many of which you heard already discussed on the floor of the Senate today. There is a T-shirt that I jogged in this morning. It was given to me by the Miami Project. One of the most graphic symbols on this T-shirt is the international symbol of a wheelchair-bound person, and that international symbol suddenly starts to become upright and walks. The Miami Project was put together after the tragedy of a spinal cord injury to the son of Nick Buoniconti, the all-pro linebacker of the great Miami Dolphins team, the undefeated team of 1972. When his son was at a Citadel football game, he suffered that injury. Now the son and the father are both behind Miami Project, trying to find a cure for spinal cord injuries. And all the medical researchers feel that stem cell research is very promising for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and I already mentioned ALS and diabetes. If that occurred, think what that would mean as we grapple with the Federal budget that is going out of control because of the accelerating cost of Medicare. If we were able to treat and cure some of these diseases, think about how much cost savings that would create. And clearly, in this Senator's mind, a secondary consideration is the fact of eliminating, almost miraculously, the plague of these diseases by the stem cells that have the ability to reproduce themselves and potentially develop into different kinds of cells in the human body. Of course, you have already heard in the debate today about the extensive research and being able to treat certain diseases. When confronted with this a few weeks before September 11, 2001, the President announced that the administration would only allow Federal funding for this research to be used on existing colonies of embryonic stem cells. Of course, you have heard the chorus in the scientific community, since then, expressing concern about the quality, the longevity, and the availability of these lines--and they believe that the research advancement requires new embryonic stem cell lines. The key is to increase the availability of the quality embryonic stem cell lines. The current rules have limited the supply and have resulted in fewer investigators focusing their efforts on stem cell research. Therefore, progress has been limited because of Federal funding in this research being limited. We have the ability to fix that. We can do that in this bill before the Senate. This Senator intends to support this bill. This bill lifts the President's current restriction that allows researchers to receive the Federal funding for the study of embryonic stem cells. These stem cells can only be derived from embryos originally created for fertility treatments and that are willingly donated by patients and, I might say, that are slated to be discarded. We will get a substantial majority of votes in the Senate. Although we hear the threats of a veto, it would be my hope the President will reexamine this issue. We are only talking about one kind of stem cell research. This is the stem cells that come through a rather complicated progress, from a fertilized egg that was going to be discarded. There is another promising way of doing this called somatic cell nuclear transfer where it is not even a fertilized egg. You take an egg, scoop out the nucleus, take a stem cell from the donor--it can be from a skin cell--put that nucleus in, and activate the process of growing cells. That process of stem cell research has enormous promise. This Senator has heard from thousands of Floridians who suffer on a daily basis from some of these terrible diseases. The Senate has the ability to bring hope to these people. It is time to act. The Senate should pass this bill and pass it with a fairly sizable majority, giving scientists the tools they need to search for cures. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that helps the U.S. Forest Service protect sensitive and precious forest by selling developed land in Leon County, FL, in order to purchase at-risk land in the heart of our national forests. Specifically, this bill allows for the sale of tract W-1979, which is 114 acres in Tallahassee, the proceeds of which are specifically designated to purchase private inholdings in the Apalachicola National Forest. The Forest Service believes that W-1979 has lost its national forest character and is unmanageable. The land will be sold to Leon County, where it will help the continued advancement of Blueprint 2000, a series of community initiatives to improve Tallahassee and Leon County. By selling this land on the outskirts of the Apalachicola National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service can acquire precious land deep in the forest that could be lost to development. This legislation also gives the U.S. Forest Service in Florida the same flexibility to manage lands and capital that it has in many other states. Previously, whenever National Forest land was sold, the funds could only be used to purchase more land, while many important infrastructure projects went undone. With passage of this bill, proceeds only from the sale of ``non-green'' lands can go towards capital improvements, such as administrative facilities that help the Forest Service manage the Ocala, Apalachicola and Osceola National Forests. These non-green lands have already been developed with urban improvements, and no longer align with the goals of the U.S. Forest Service. Congressmen Crenshaw and Boyd have introduced similar legislation in the House of Representatives. I hope that we can quickly pass these bills and help Leon County and the Forest Service.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that helps the U.S. Forest Service protect sensitive and precious forest by selling developed land in Leon County, FL, in order to purchase at-risk land in the heart of our national forests. Specifically, this bill allows for the sale of tract W-1979, which is 114 acres in Tallahassee, the proceeds of which are specifically designated to purchase private inholdings in the Apalachicola National Forest. The Forest Service believes that W-1979 has lost its national forest character and is unmanageable. The land will be sold to Leon County, where it will help the continued advancement of Blueprint 2000, a series of community initiatives to improve Tallahassee and Leon County. By selling this land on the outskirts of the Apalachicola National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service can acquire precious land deep in the forest that could be lost to development. This legislation also gives the U.S. Forest Service in Florida the same flexibility to manage lands and capital that it has in many other states. Previously, whenever National Forest land was sold, the funds could only be used to purchase more land, while many important infrastructure projects went undone. With passage of this bill, proceeds only from the sale of ``non-green'' lands can go towards capital improvements, such as administrative facilities that help the Forest Service manage the Ocala, Apalachicola and Osceola National Forests. These non-green lands have already been developed with urban improvements, and no longer align with the goals of the U.S. Forest Service. Congressmen Crenshaw and Boyd have introduced similar legislation in the House of Representatives. I hope that we can quickly pass these bills and help Leon County and the Forest Service.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, today I condemn Hamas's and Hezbollah's unprovoked acts of war against Israel and to express strong support for Israel's right to defend itself. On July 12, Hezbollah attacked an Israeli military unit patrolling the Israeli border south of Lebanon, and two Israeli soldiers were taken hostage. Hezbollah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has admitted that this was a calculated act, which Hezbollah had planned for 5 months. Analysts agree that this act is a sign of support for the Hamas kidnapping of another Israeli soldier on June 25. It is also a sign that two of the regions most recalcitrant terrorist organizations have no interest in the peace and security of the people they supposedly now represent in elected governments in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories. Both of these attacks were clear acts of war--attacks on Israeli soldiers guarding undisputed Israeli territory. The Hezbollah attack was also a blatant breach of Security Council resolutions 1559, 1655, and 1680, which certified Israel's full withdrawal from Lebanese territory, called for the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon, and called for an end to attacks across the Israel-Lebanon border. Despite these resolutions, Hezbollah remains an armed militia group with unrestrained activity in Lebanon and has not been pressured by the Lebanese Government to disarm. In fact, Hezbollah is a part of the Lebanese Government now with 23 seats in the Lebanese parliament and two ministers in the Government. According to the Department of State, Hezbollah receives $30-40 million a month in cash, aid, and arms support from Iran. Additionally, Syria is still a strong partner with Iran in supporting, sheltering, and funding Hezbollah to the detriment of the people of Lebanon Mr. President, I believe it is critical that the Senate recognize Israel's right to defend itself, and call on the Government of Lebanon to immediately and unconditionally release the abducted Israeli soldiers. The same holds true for the soldier held by Hamas in Gaza. At the same time, we must insist that Iran and Syria immediately cease interfering in the internal affairs of Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories by ending all support for Hezbollah and Hamas. I will shortly be introducing legislation to increase pressure on the Government of Lebanon to do the right thing and disarm Hezbollah. The Lebanese people surely deserve better than to have their fate determined by this terrorist organization. But for now, Israel deserves our unwavering support as it aims to protect its people from these unprovoked attacks.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I thank the Senator. Upon further examination, with the Senator's staff, I think they will find that in most cases we are talking about citizens from Louisiana, as well as citizens from Florida and any other State, who are ordering these prescription drugs at hugely discounted prices from Canada. So that is the major source. That clearly is the interest of this Senator, as we are looking out for our citizens. Now, what, in fact, is happening--and this Senator sees it in great abundance because it is no secret the State of Florida has a considerably larger percentage of senior citizens than most States. We like to call it the land called paradise. It is where a lot of people come to retire. Naturally, in their retirement years, they are looking at trying to make ends meet and their budget work. They thought they were going to get a considerable break on their prescription drugs under the Medicare prescription drug plan. And now a lot of senior citizens are suddenly finding out the drugs are costing them more than they thought they were. And those who are hitting the so-called doughnut hole--that part, once they and the Government have expended $2,250 on drugs in any one calendar year--there is no reimbursement from Medicare all the way up to $5,100. So our senior citizens are additionally having this concern that they cannot afford the drugs. Therefore, if they want to turn to another source, where they can get prescription drugs considerably discounted, then why should the Government policy not be to allow them to do that? That is the essence of the intent of this amendment. The Senator from Louisiana has heard from his constituents, as has this Senator. Over the last several months, our offices in Florida have received numerous calls from people who say the cheaper prescription drugs they bought from Canada have simply vanished in shipment. For example, Mrs. Jacqueline Flick--she is from Coral Gables--relies on Lipitor to help lower her risk of heart disease. She is living on a moderate income. She cannot afford to pay the full price that she would pay at a Walgreens or a CVS. She can get it from Canada and has been. She and her husband have been getting Lipitor for years by ordering it over the Internet from Canada, and she gets it at less than half the price. Naturally, she was outraged last month when she got a letter from Customs and Border Protection notifying her that they had confiscated her Lipitor. By the way, that letter stated reasons that had nothing to do with her particular case. I will give you another example. Alex Zeligson is from my home county of Brevard. He is from Palm Bay. He is a patient with emphysema. He requires oxygen. He requires 13 different medications every day, including medication for his heart. A bunch of his prescription drugs from Canada were seized in February. Naturally, with this going on--and that is just two of many examples. And it has not just happened in the last few months. This has been going on in the State of Florida for the last year and a half. Naturally, these folks are upset. Over the years, the Government has permitted personal supplies of prescription drugs to be imported from Canada. But without adequately informing the Congress, Customs and Border Protection, last November, implemented a new and stricter policy on personal prescription drug importation. Last November, this new policy, without informing the Congress, was quietly implemented, until hundreds of complaints from constituents across the country, press reports, and actions by various congressional offices uncovered this shift in policy. I can tell you that 900 prescription drugs were intercepted in the city of Miami alone. The reason behind this shift remains unknown, but according to documents filed in a court case in Minnesota, there has been illegal and collusive activity to block the imports of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. Our office has discovered that this new policy resulted in tens of thousands of prescription drug shipments being detained by Customs officials. Customs has admitted to 25,000 prescription drug shipments intercepted; 900 of those were in Miami alone. Silently implementing a stricter policy without adequately informing the public puts the health of those who have relied on the prompt delivery of prescription drugs at risk. In response to these stepped-up seizures, this Senator from Florida requested the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General to investigate the change in policy. The Inspector General rejected my request. I have asked the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to investigate. Meanwhile, Americans who rely on low-cost prescription drugs from Canada in order to avoid having to make a choice between prescriptions and food are kept waiting. That is why I have joined the Senator from Louisiana in this amendment. I hope he can perfect the amendment so that it meets the objections the Senator from New Hampshire raised. The intent is simply to prohibit Customs from utilizing funds to stop the importation of FDA-approved prescription drugs by American citizens. A similar provision has already passed the House in the Homeland Security appropriations bill. This amendment, as perfected, is going to ensure that Americans, especially the frail elderly or those with debilitating conditions, are going to be able to at least have a chance of affording the medications they need. It is also going to send a clear message to Customs to explain their dramatic change in policy last November. I hope we will get consensus on this, stop fighting this bureaucratic game, and get some relief for our citizens. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Of course.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, here is an example. If we want to solve this problem, the different agencies of the Government can come together and solve this problem. We already have it on the record, in correspondence and telephone conversation between this Senator from Florida and the FDA, that they have no objection to an up-to-90-day supply coming from Canada, ordered by American citizens, either by the Internet, by mail, or by personally going to Canada. And what about the safety the Senator from New Hampshire has raised? Safety: It is coming from the same drug manufacturers we presently have in America; the very same drug, very same packaging, very same pharmaceutical laboratories. The big difference is our citizens--and particularly this applies to our senior citizens--can get these prescription drugs at a much lower price. Now, I would encourage the Senator from Louisiana, in order to avoid the attacks on the amendment, as have been raised by the Senator from New Hampshire, to pare down the amendment so that those attacks cannot apply. The safety issue of prescription drugs coming from Canada cannot be assailed because those drugs come from the very same manufacturers, in the very same places, as those prescription drugs that are, in fact, provided to our American citizens.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. If I may, this is a matter which can easily be worked out. The questions the Senator from New Hampshire are raising are very legitimate questions. It is a matter that can easily be worked out if the administration is given some direction. For example, approximately a year and a half, 2 years ago, the Acting Director of the Food and Drug Administration, Mr. Crawford, made it clear to this Senator that the FDA was not going to object to private prescriptions for Americans coming from Canada for a limited supply-- such as 90 days for personal use--which is the biggest part of the objection the Senator from Louisiana and this Senator from Florida have, that senior citizens are being prohibited from getting the great discounts they can get either by ordering them from the Internet, by mail, or personally going over to Canada. If there were an intention to work out this problem, it could be done between all of these agencies that the Senator from New Hampshire is raising.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator yield so this Senator can get in on this conversation?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. If the Senator will yield.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, we have an interesting situation where the Department of Defense is requesting that seven Black Hawk helicopters that the U.S. Army owns but are detailed to the Drug Enforcement Administration in the Bahamas be taken out of the Bahamas. No doubt there is a need elsewhere in the world, perhaps in Operation Iraqi Freedom. But this Senator wants to make the case, as I did 2 weeks ago when we had the Defense authorization bill on the floor, that the United States Government needs to find some additional helicopters to replace those that are there for the purpose of interdiction of all kinds of contraband. Indeed, we have experienced enormous success from having those seven helicopters in the last 5 years: 800 drug smugglers have been apprehended as a result of those helicopters being there; 25 tons of cocaine have been taken away from the drug smugglers; 82 tons of marijuana, as a result of the effectiveness of these helicopters. Of course, I am just speaking about the interdiction of contraband drugs, not even to speak of the interdiction of all of the human smuggling that is attempted into the United States through that route. It might be instructive for us to know that when a similar situation was done elsewhere in the Caribbean, in Central America in the late 1990s, and seven helicopters were taken from Central America with a similar kind of mission, the incidence of drug smuggling rose precipitously. Of course, that is what will happen if these helicopters are not replaced. Since the 1980s, these helicopters have made an enormous difference. For example, it is hard to believe the statistic I am going to tell you, but 80 percent of all the cocaine that was smuggled into this country came through that region of the Atlantic, the Bahamas and the Turks and the Caicos, back in the 1980s. That percentage of the total cocaine smuggled into the country has been reduced to 10 percent. So the proof is in the pudding. The success is there. Two weeks ago when we had the Defense authorization bill on the floor, I added an amendment that said that the U.S. Government should come up with a replacement for those helicopters. If they are needed elsewhere, fine; that is, the war on terror. We also have a war on terror and a war to defend the homeland as well. That is right here. That is the southern sector off the shores of the Southern United States. It is my hope that the Defense Department will take very seriously the Defense authorization bill that makes that statement to the U.S. Government. Surely in the inventory of the entire U.S. Government, there are seven helicopters that can replace the ones being taken out and sent to Iraq. The success of our interdiction and the protection of our homeland is at stake. 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. Are we in the parliamentary procedure of morning business?