Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order following the remarks of Senator Lieberman.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10:30 a.m. tomorrow, Thursday, September 11; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed to have expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and that there be a period of morning business for up to 1 hour, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first half and the majority controlling the second half; and that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of S. 3001, the Department of Defense authorizations bill. I further ask that there be a moment of silence at 12:30 p.m. to honor the victims of the September 11 attacks.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I say to the Senator, I listened to your speech.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, the legislation we are dealing with today authorizes more than $500 billion, and even in Washington that is a heck of a lot of money. That expenditure comes at a time when we have massive amounts of unmet needs in our country, when there is a crumbling infrastructure, a need to invest in sustainable energy, a need to address education, and many other needs. On top of all of that, we are looking at a $9.5 trillion national debt and a record-breaking deficit. I hear many of my colleagues come to the floor and speak about waste and fraud in all kinds of agencies and, frankly, that is appropriate. Our job as Members of Congress is to make sure we do our best to see that not one nickel--not one nickel--is spent in waste or in fraud or unwisely. But just as we should do that with the Department of Agriculture or with Human Services, we should also do it with the Defense Department; in fact, even more so with the Defense Department, because their budget is so huge--$500 billion at a time of massive amounts of unmet needs in this country. It appears that not a week goes by when one doesn't open a newspaper or see a television program which deals with another example of horrendous waste, fraud, or abuse which takes place within the Department of Defense. I know my colleagues on the Defense Committee, Senator Levin and Senator Warner, are aware of these things and they are trying, but this is tough stuff. I think we have to raise our profile in addressing this waste, fraud, and abuse. Just some examples: In March of this year, we learned that a 22-year- old Defense contractor peddled as much as $300 million in old ammunition, much of it defective, to the Afghan Army and to their police forces. That is right. AEY, a fly-by-night company, landed the huge contract, despite its record of botched dealings with the State Department and Defense Department. In fact, the State Department had placed this company on a watch list of companies suspected of illegal arms transactions. Further, the Pentagon inspector general revealed that $321 million was paid out to cover salaries of 1,000 anonymous employees in the Iraqi Ministry of Finance. That amounts to $320,000 per employee--not bad in Iraq where people do very well if they make $50 or $60 a week, but we are not even sure that the employees saw any of this money. We also learned not terribly long ago that the Army ousted the contracting officer overseeing Kellogg, Brown & Root's huge Iraq support contract when this distinguished public servant refused to approve paying the company more than $1 billion in questionable charges. In other words, he did his job. He took a hard look at where this money was going. There were red flags popping up all over the place. He said: Wait a minute. We are not going to pay this money. His reward was not a commendation but his firing. And on and on it goes. The Air Force paid a private U.S. contractor $32 million to construct a Ramadi, Iraq airbase. That is OK, except the only problem is the contractor cashed a check and the facility was never built--$32 million for a project never undertaken. Another contractor was paid $142 million to construct Iraqi prisons, fire stations, and police facilities that were either never started or never completed--$142 million. It is absolutely essential for us to provide the Pentagon with the budgetary means they need within that huge budget to root out waste, fraud, and abuse by contractors in war zones overseas. We also must take a close look at how money is misspent here at home--not just in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Air Force--the Air Force, needless to say--has a few airplanes, but apparently cannot ship a package directly from a depot in Corpus Christi, TX, to a National Guard unit in Oklahoma. Because of outdated freight forwarding rules, investigators discovered that one package took a 2,243-mile detour through Houston, TX, to Fort Wayne, IN, and then on to Dallas before it arrived at its destination in Oklahoma. The GAO is investigating the ridiculous shipping regulations that cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Now, are all of these examples simply so-called bad apples or do they more likely represent a broken system with inadequate oversight? In my view, unfortunately, it is the latter. I think we have a broken system. I think we have billions and billions of taxpayers' dollars being wasted and not going where they need to go, which is to defend our country. The Pentagon's leaders have not done enough to ensure that a dollar spent means a dollar gained in national security. Frankly, this is not a new problem. In 1940, Senator Harry Truman investigated waste and fraud by the U.S. military. During World War II he proposed the creation of a Senate special committee to investigate the national defense program. The Truman committee identified way back then in the 1940s more than $15 billion in unnecessary and fraudulent defense spending. That is a huge amount of money. As Senator Truman put it at the time: We intend to see that no man or corporate group of men shall profit inordinately on the blood of the boys in the fox holes. I think what Truman said in the 1940s is absolutely true today. Was Harry Truman unpatriotic for demanding increased congressional oversight on the War Department and defense contractors at a moment of national crisis during World War II? The answer is, of course, no, he was not. He simply demanded that, in his words: Each dollar expended for war purposes would produce a dollar's worth of the necessary war supplies. I think that is certainly a reasonable request supported by every taxpayer in this country. That is why last year I and the Presiding Officer joined with other freshmen colleagues to introduce legislation calling for the creation of a commission on war contracting modeled on the Truman committee. We need such a bipartisan effort more now than ever. Today, government auditors have compiled lists of countless examples of risky and inadequate practices by the Defense Department in overseeing contracts. The problem is not just private contractors. The Department needs to adopt better practices to stop blatant examples of wasteful and overpriced purchases. Some examples: The GAO--the Government Accountability Office--recently assessed 72 major weapons acquisition programs and reported a colossal $295 billion in cost overruns on a $1.6 trillion contract portfolio--$295 billion in cost overruns. That is not a bad apple, that is not an aberration, that speaks to a system that is significantly broken. What is more, on average, these systems are delivered 21 months late. So these contractors end up getting far more than they were originally supposed to get and, to boot, they are almost 2 years late on delivering the product. It gets even worse than that. The Defense Department has shelled out billions of dollars in bonuses to contractors who don't deserve them. According to one study, award and incentive fees totaling $8 billion were granted even when the contractors did not deserve the bonuses under the Pentagon's own rules. What a bonus is supposed to be about is you get a reward when you do your job well, when you come in perhaps under contract, when you come in earlier than you had agreed to. That is what a bonus is. But unfortunately, these guys are getting these bonuses even when they perform poorly, and that is clearly unacceptable. I wish to commend my colleagues, Senator Levin and Senator Warner, for their initiative to establish a director of independent cost assessment. It is time for this Congress to impose effective acquisition controls and require the Pentagon to put its financial house in order. Even the Pentagon's own inspector general has admitted that: The rapid growth of the DOD budget since fiscal year 2000 leaves the department increasingly more vulnerable to the fraud, waste, and abuse that undermines the department's mission. That is the Pentagon's own inspector general. So it is time to engage in a serious debate over this Bush defense budget that elevates gold-plated technologies and huge contractor payouts over cogent and sensible strategy. A little historical perspective is instructive. President Dwight David Eisenhower, a five-star general and the military commander of Europe during World War II, deplored excessive military spending and its diversion of resources away from pressing public needs--Dwight D. Eisenhower. A few days before he left office in 1961, President Eisenhower gave one of the most prophetic speeches ever given in the White House. Here is what Eisenhower--a Republican, I should add--what Eisenhower said: In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.--Dwight David Eisenhower. Fast forward 48 years to the last months of George W. Bush's Presidency. It is remarkable how prescient Eisenhower's concerns were. Today the budget of President Bush calls for a $515 billion Pentagon budget. This is in addition--this is in addition--to the $200 billion a year being spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it also does not include $16 billion spent on nuclear weapons. That is why I proposed an amendment--a very modest amendment, I might say--to address one of the more egregious examples of wasteful spending in the Federal Government. The incredible amount of unneeded spare parts--what we are talking about is unneeded spare parts and other items--in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and other Department of Defense agency warehouses is measured in the billions of dollars. What we are talking about is unneeded spare parts. They don't need it, billions of dollars of unneeded spare parts. Fixing the military inventory systems is the reason behind the amendment I have authored, along with Senator Feingold and Senator Whitehouse. The Government Accountability Office--the GAO--has placed the Department of Defense inventory system on ``high risk'' lists year in and year out. In other words, there is a red flag attached to this line item. The unneeded spare parts inventory and the inefficient inventory management systems are literally costing the taxpayers millions and millions of dollars each year. Worse, these unnecessary spare parts are clogging up the supply system, costing millions for storage, and are not providing the support needed for our service men and women for defending our country. More than half of the Air Force's secondary inventory--an average of $31.4 billion--was not needed to support service requirements. That is right. More than $18 billion of its on- hand spare parts are beyond the needs of the Air Force. Imagine that: $18 billion in unneeded spare parts. We have Air Force warehouses full of parts that are simply not needed. It gets even worse than that. The Air Force has on order $235 million in inventory already identified as ready for disposal. In case you didn't catch that: $235 million in inventory already identified as ready for disposal. So $235 million worth of parts not even delivered to the Air Force's warehouses will be ready for disposal by the time they arrive. Now, that may make sense to somebody--maybe the people who make money producing the stuff. It certainly does not make sense to me or, I expect, anybody else in this country. By the way, this is almost 20 percent of its total on-order inventory. It is a huge amount of inventory. The Air Force has redefined terms and created new categories such as ``Additional Applications Anticipated,'' ``Uneconomical to Terminate,'' ``Management Decision,'' and ``Data Error.'' What they mean by data error is a series of computer entry mistakes amounting to $96.5 million during one recent 3-month period alone. To my way of thinking, this is further evidence of the Air Force's inability to manage its inventory program. If data errors are rampant in the system, fix them. If the inventory problems can't be corrected without costing even more money, then something is wrong with the system. This is not just an Air Force problem; it is Pentagon-wide. The numbers for the Navy and Army are also extremely troubling. The Army's numbers are incomplete because the Army could not provide data from two major agencies, including the communications and electronics commands, because their inventory computer systems were not compatible with other Army computer systems. This is with a budget of $500 billion and we can't get computers to talk to each other. Ironically, the communications and electronics command is one of the commands responsible for Army hardware and software acquisition. This underscores the serious problem of the inability of the Defense Department computer systems to interface with each other. My staff was actually told by an Air Force material command manager that Air Force inventory officers are still actually relying on computer systems that are based on decades-old designs. Year after year, the nonpartisan research arm of Congress has exhorted the Pentagon to, 1, provide incentives to reduce purchases of unneeded on-order inventory; 2, conduct a comprehensive assessment of unneeded inventory items on hand; and, 3, take measures to address fluctuations in demand that produce these huge inventories. Clearly, something must be done to set things right. It is time to get the Pentagon inventory system up to modern practices. What does our amendment do? It does a few things. First, the amendment, offered by Senators Feingold, Whitehouse, and myself, will require the Secretary of Defense to develop a comprehensive plan for improving the inventory system, including each service's plan to improve audit systems for reducing the gap between projected requirements and actual requirements, improvements to information technology systems, personnel and training needs, contract reviews, and other relevant policy changes. Second, this amendment will require a certification to Congress that the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Defense Logistics Agency have reduced their secondary inventory. Third, this amendment strengthens the certification process by fencing off $100 million in inventory purchases until the Secretary of Defense makes the required certifications. This is a small but critical step toward fixing the DOD's inventory system. It is time for this Congress to impose long-needed improvement and require the Pentagon to put its house in order. Frankly, this is just a small step forward. We have a lot more to do. This country faces enormous problems. We need money spent in many areas. We don't need to be wasting tens of billions of dollars. I look forward to working with my fellow Senators to see that this amendment becomes law.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, today there is some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that oil is at $123 a barrel and working people are paying $4 for a gallon of gas, and this coming winter residents of the Northeast could be paying over $5 for a gallon of heating oil. But, there is some good news. Today, the CEOs of ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and ConocoPhillips are celebrating. They're feeling pretty good. And, they have good reason to feel that way. ExxonMobil reported today that it made over $11.68 billion in profits over the 2nd quarter alone, breaking its own record for the largest quarterly profit of any American company in the history of the world. But, ExxonMobil is not alone. Shell's 2nd quarter profit jumped by 33 percent to $11.56 billion; and BP's 2nd quarter profit jumped by 28 percent. As a matter of fact, since George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been in office, the five largest oil companies have made over $640 billion in profits. This includes $212 billion for ExxonMobil; $157 billion for Shell; $125 billion for BP; $80 billion for ChevronTexaco; and $66 billion for ConocoPhillips. Believe it or not, the Big 5 oil companies made more profits during the 2nd quarter, than they did during the entire year of 2002. Now, with the exception of my Republican friends here in Congress, there are very few people in this country who believe the oil companies give one hoot about the well-being of the American people. Our Republican friends are saying that if we just give these huge oil companies more acres offshore to drill for oil, they will certainly do the right thing, as they always have, for the American people. Let's just trust those big oil companies because they are really staying up day after day, night after night, worrying about the well-being of the American people. That is what their full-page ads in the New York Times and all their ads on television are telling us. Well, it is good to see there are at least some people in America who believe that. I don't, but apparently my Republican colleagues do. Let me tell you, big oil companies are so concerned about Americans paying high prices for gas and oil that this is what they are doing with their profits: In 2005, ExxonMobil gave its CEO, Lee Raymond, a $398 million retirement package--one of the richest compensation packages in corporate history. They weren't going out looking for new land to drill on, they weren't building more refineries, and they weren't working on energy efficiency. They gave their CEO a $398 million retirement package. In 2006, Occidental Petroleum, gave its CEO, Ray Irani, over $400 million in total compensation. The situation is so absurd and the greed of the oil companies is so outrageous that these companies are not only giving their executives huge compensation packages during their life here on earth, but they have also created a situation, if you can believe it, where these oil companies have carved out huge corporate payments to the heirs of senior executives if they die in office. I guess this is what happens when you have more money than you know what to do with. According to the Wall Street Journal, if the CEO of Occidental Petroleum dies in office, his family will get $115 million. The family of the CEO of Nabors Industries, another oil company, would receive $288 million. This would be funny if it were not so pathetic in the sense of the impact this type of spending has on the American people. Not only are huge oil companies using their record-breaking profits on big compensation benefits for their CEOs, but they are also spending large sums of money buying back their own stock. In other words, when they are making these very large profits, they are not going out drilling for more oil, as our Republican friends are suggesting. In fact, While Americans are struggling to pay for the skyrocketing price of gasoline; big oil companies are having an entirely different problem. For the past seven years, big oil companies are struggling to figure out what they are going to do with all of their windfall profits. Let me quote from a headline taken from the front page of the Wall Street Journal way back on July 30 of 2001, ``Pumping Money: Major Oil Companies Struggle to Spend Huge Hoards of Cash.'' According to this 2001 article, ``Royal Dutch/Shell Group said it was pumping out $1.5 million in profit an hour and sitting on more than $11 billion in the bank.'' That was in 2001. Since that time Shell's profits have more than tripled. On April 18, 2005, Fortune Magazine published an article with the Headline ``Poor Little Rich Company,'' referring to ExxonMobil. According to this article, ``ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond, suddenly has a new anxiety: how to spend the windfall wrought by $55 a barrel oil. By the end of April [of 2005], Exxon will have a cash hoard of more than $25 billion. . . . At a time when domestic energy production is declining and drivers are paying a record $2.15 a gallon [remember, this was in 2005], American consumers, not to mention politicians, are likely to start focusing on whether Exxon is spending enough to find oil and gas. While Exxon is returning more money to shareholders via dividends and buying back more of its stock, its spending on drilling and other development activities actually declined in 2004--even though crude prices jumped by a third.'' That was when the price of oil was $55 a barrel and gas was $2.15 a gallon. Today oil is over $123 a barrel and gas is about $4 a gallon. What is happening today? Big oil companies are spending even more on stock buybacks and CEO compensation and less on trying to produce more oil. For example, ConocoPhillips recently announced that it plans to give all of the $12 billion in profits it made last year back to shareholders, paying more than $3 billion in dividends and spending the rest to buy back shares of its own stock. To put this in perspective the money that ConocoPhillips is spending on stock buybacks and dividends is enough to reduce the price of gas by 9 cents a gallon throughout the entire United States. Now, I want my Republican friends to listen closely. They have been saying over and over again that big oil desperately needs all of these windfall profits to drill for more oil. But, guess what? According to the CEO of ConocoPhillips, James Mulva, ``We like the discipline of the share repurchase. If we find that we have more cash flow, it's not really going to be going toward capital spending.'' In other words, ConocoPhillips won't use their windfall profits to drill for more oil, or invest in renewable energy, or explore for new sources of oil discoveries no matter how much their profits rise. Overall, since 2005, the five biggest oil companies have made $345 billion in profits and spent over $250 billion buying back stock and paying dividends to shareholders. Last year, ExxonMobil spent 850 percent more buying back its own stock than it did on capital expenditures in the United States. The $38 billion in windfall profits that ExxonMobil gave back to shareholders last year could have been used to reduce gas prices at the pump throughout the United States by 27 cents a gallon for the entire year. Mr. President, let's not kid ourselves. One of the major reasons as to why Americans are getting ripped-off at the gas pump has to do with the tremendous power and influence that big oil companies have in the Congress. As a matter of fact, since 1998, the oil and gas industry has spent over $616 million on lobbying activities. Who have they hired? Well, on April 8 of this year, The Hill reported that Chevron hired former Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Republican; former Senator John Breaux, a Democrat; their sons Chester Trent Lott, Jr. and John Breaux, Jr.; and Trent Boyles, who was Lott's Chief of Staff to lobby Congress on issues relating to trade, climate change, and energy taxes. ExxonMobil has hired former Senator Don Nickles, a Republican from Oklahoma, who served in this body for 24 years, to lobby Congress on behalf of their issues. These are just a few of the hundreds of lobbyists that big oil and gas companies have hired to influence Congress, many of them former Senators, former Congressmen, and former Congressional staffers. That is one of the reasons why, among many other reasons, this Congress, in recent years, has decided to give some $18 billion in tax breaks to oil companies despite their record-breaking profits. In addition, since 1990 big oil companies have made over $213 million in campaign contributions. And that is a simple fact. Lo and behold, what we are hearing today--just coincidentally, no doubt--is that the most important thing we can do in terms of the energy crisis is to provide more land offshore for the oil companies to drill at a time when they already have some 68 million acres of leased land, which they are not drilling on today. The American people want action, and there are some things we can do--not in 15 or 20 years but that we can do right now. First, we need to impose a windfall profits tax on big oil companies so that they would be prohibited from gouging consumers at the gas pump. Unfortunately, instead of taking away big oil's windfall profits and giving it back to the American people, Republicans want to provide even more tax breaks to big oil. In fact, Sen. McCain has a plan that would give ExxonMobil a $1.5 billion tax break. Now, we have heard Republicans give three reasons as to why they are opposed to a windfall profits tax. First, Republicans claim that the last time Congress enacted a windfall profits tax in 1981 it had the effect of increasing our dependence on foreign oil. Wrong. Mr. President, when Congress repealed the windfall profits tax in 1988, the U.S. was importing 7.4 million barrels of oil a day. Today, the U.S. is importing over 13.4 million barrels of oil a day. We are far more dependent on foreign oil today without a windfall profits tax than we were 20 years ago when we had a windfall profits tax. Secondly, my Republican friends tell us that the windfall profits tax didn't work because Congress repealed it in 1988. That is also wrong. While I would have structured it differently, the fact of the matter is that from 1981 until 1988 when the windfall profits tax was repealed, the price of oil fell from $35 a barrel to less than $15 a barrel. In addition, gas prices at the pump fell from $1.35 a gallon to 90 cents a gallon--a drop of 45 cents a gallon. And the Federal Government collected over $80 billion in revenue. The reason why the windfall profits tax was repealed was due to low oil and gas prices, which makes perfect sense. If oil and gas prices are low, big oil companies are not making windfall profits and there is no need for a windfall profits tax. If gas prices at the pump were only 90 cents a gallon, I would be one of the first Senators to say we don't need a windfall profits tax. But, they are not. They are over $4 a gallon. Finally, Republicans claim that big oil companies need to keep their windfall profits so that they can increase production and build more refineries. That particular argument is laughable. Big oil companies have been making windfall profits for over seven long years--and they are not using these profits to build more refineries and they are not using it to expand production. Instead, they are using this money to buy back their own stock, increase dividends to their shareholders, and enrich their CEOs, as I have explained earlier. Not only do we need to impose a windfall profits tax on these extremely powerful oil corporations, but we also have to address what I perceive is a growing understanding that Wall Street investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and hedge fund managers are driving up the price of oil in the unregulated energy futures market. In other words, they are speculating on energy futures and driving up prices. There are estimates that 25 to 50 percent of the cost of a barrel of oil is attributable to unregulated speculation on oil futures. We have heard from some leading energy economists, and we have heard from people in the oil industry themselves who tell us that 25 to 50 percent of the cost of a barrel of oil today is not due to supply and demand or the cost of production but is due to manipulation of markets and excessive speculation. In essence, Wall Street firms are making billions as they artificially drive up oil prices by buying, holding, and selling huge amounts of oil on dark unregulated markets. Some of my Republican friends claim that the increase in the price of oil has nothing to do with speculation, but it is interesting to me that we have had executives of major oil companies--major oil companies--who have come before Congress and who are saying, ``Why is oil $125, $130, and $140 a barrel?'' Do you know what they say? The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell testified before Congress and said: ``The oil fundamentals are no problem. They are the same as they were when oil was selling for $60 a barrel.'' This is not some radical economist. It is not some left-winger. This is a guy who is the head of Royal Dutch Shell. The CEO of Marathon Oil recently said: ``$100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the market.'' I know my Republican friends have a lot of respect for the oil industry, a great competence in them. They love them and give them huge tax breaks. So maybe they should listen to what some of these guys are saying in terms of oil speculation. For those who believe that excessive speculation is not causing oil prices to climb higher, let me just say this. Over the past 7 years, Enron; BP; and Amaranth were caught redhanded manipulating the price of electricity; propane; and natural gas. Each time, supply and demand was to blame and each time the pundits were proven wrong. Excessive speculation; manipulation and greed were the cause. Enron employees are in jail for manipulating the electricity market in 2001; BP was forced to pay a $300 million fine for manipulating propane prices in 2004; and the Amaranth hedge fund collapsed after manipulating natural gas prices in 2006. The Stop Excessive Speculation Act introduced by Majority Leader Reid begins to seriously address this problem. We need to pass this bill as soon as possible. The bottom line is that it is time for the United States Senate to say no to big oil companies and greedy hedge fund managers and yes to the American people.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I thank Senator Mikulski and Senator Brown. I will be very brief. In the United States today, there is a nursing shortage approaching a crisis. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 1.2 million new and replacement nurses will be needed by 2014. We are not educating enough nurses to meet this need, which is why the U.S. Department of Health foresees a nursing shortage of over 1 million by 2020. Yet, even with such an enormous need for nurses, U.S. nursing schools turned away--turned away--41,000 qualified applicants for baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2005 because they do not have the resources to train more nurses. If community college nursing programs are included in these numbers, 150,000 well-qualified applicants are turned away each year from nursing programs. The College Opportunity and Affordability Act includes an important new program which will enable our colleges to train more nurses to meet the nursing crisis. It provides extra capacity for nursing students in a very simple, efficient, and cost-effective way. The nursing provision in title VIII provides colleges, community colleges, and universities a grant for each additional student their nursing program enrolls over their previous average enrollment. The nursing program gets a $3,000 grant for each additional student, money which will help defray the increased cost required to teach and train that student. With this program in place, nursing programs can expand to admit an additional 10,000 student nurses each year, or more, at modest costs. I thank Chairman Mikulski, and I thank Huck Gutman of my office for his outstanding work over the last year. This is an outstanding program, and we are going to begin to address a serious problem. I yield for Senator Brown.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, today there is some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that oil is at $123 a barrel and working people are paying $4 for a gallon of gas, and this coming winter residents of the Northeast could be paying over $5 for a gallon of heating oil. But, there is some good news. Today, the CEOs of ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and ConocoPhillips are celebrating. They're feeling pretty good. And, they have good reason to feel that way. ExxonMobil reported today that it made over $11.68 billion in profits over the 2nd quarter alone, breaking its own record for the largest quarterly profit of any American company in the history of the world. But, ExxonMobil is not alone. Shell's 2nd quarter profit jumped by 33 percent to $11.56 billion; and BP's 2nd quarter profit jumped by 28 percent. As a matter of fact, since George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been in office, the five largest oil companies have made over $640 billion in profits. This includes $212 billion for ExxonMobil; $157 billion for Shell; $125 billion for BP; $80 billion for ChevronTexaco; and $66 billion for ConocoPhillips. Believe it or not, the Big 5 oil companies made more profits during the 2nd quarter, than they did during the entire year of 2002. Now, with the exception of my Republican friends here in Congress, there are very few people in this country who believe the oil companies give one hoot about the well-being of the American people. Our Republican friends are saying that if we just give these huge oil companies more acres offshore to drill for oil, they will certainly do the right thing, as they always have, for the American people. Let's just trust those big oil companies because they are really staying up day after day, night after night, worrying about the well-being of the American people. That is what their full-page ads in the New York Times and all their ads on television are telling us. Well, it is good to see there are at least some people in America who believe that. I don't, but apparently my Republican colleagues do. Let me tell you, big oil companies are so concerned about Americans paying high prices for gas and oil that this is what they are doing with their profits: In 2005, ExxonMobil gave its CEO, Lee Raymond, a $398 million retirement package--one of the richest compensation packages in corporate history. They weren't going out looking for new land to drill on, they weren't building more refineries, and they weren't working on energy efficiency. They gave their CEO a $398 million retirement package. In 2006, Occidental Petroleum, gave its CEO, Ray Irani, over $400 million in total compensation. The situation is so absurd and the greed of the oil companies is so outrageous that these companies are not only giving their executives huge compensation packages during their life here on earth, but they have also created a situation, if you can believe it, where these oil companies have carved out huge corporate payments to the heirs of senior executives if they die in office. I guess this is what happens when you have more money than you know what to do with. According to the Wall Street Journal, if the CEO of Occidental Petroleum dies in office, his family will get $115 million. The family of the CEO of Nabors Industries, another oil company, would receive $288 million. This would be funny if it were not so pathetic in the sense of the impact this type of spending has on the American people. Not only are huge oil companies using their record-breaking profits on big compensation benefits for their CEOs, but they are also spending large sums of money buying back their own stock. In other words, when they are making these very large profits, they are not going out drilling for more oil, as our Republican friends are suggesting. In fact, While Americans are struggling to pay for the skyrocketing price of gasoline; big oil companies are having an entirely different problem. For the past seven years, big oil companies are struggling to figure out what they are going to do with all of their windfall profits. Let me quote from a headline taken from the front page of the Wall Street Journal way back on July 30 of 2001, ``Pumping Money: Major Oil Companies Struggle to Spend Huge Hoards of Cash.'' According to this 2001 article, ``Royal Dutch/Shell Group said it was pumping out $1.5 million in profit an hour and sitting on more than $11 billion in the bank.'' That was in 2001. Since that time Shell's profits have more than tripled. On April 18, 2005, Fortune Magazine published an article with the Headline ``Poor Little Rich Company,'' referring to ExxonMobil. According to this article, ``ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond, suddenly has a new anxiety: how to spend the windfall wrought by $55 a barrel oil. By the end of April [of 2005], Exxon will have a cash hoard of more than $25 billion. . . . At a time when domestic energy production is declining and drivers are paying a record $2.15 a gallon [remember, this was in 2005], American consumers, not to mention politicians, are likely to start focusing on whether Exxon is spending enough to find oil and gas. While Exxon is returning more money to shareholders via dividends and buying back more of its stock, its spending on drilling and other development activities actually declined in 2004--even though crude prices jumped by a third.'' That was when the price of oil was $55 a barrel and gas was $2.15 a gallon. Today oil is over $123 a barrel and gas is about $4 a gallon. What is happening today? Big oil companies are spending even more on stock buybacks and CEO compensation and less on trying to produce more oil. For example, ConocoPhillips recently announced that it plans to give all of the $12 billion in profits it made last year back to shareholders, paying more than $3 billion in dividends and spending the rest to buy back shares of its own stock. To put this in perspective the money that ConocoPhillips is spending on stock buybacks and dividends is enough to reduce the price of gas by 9 cents a gallon throughout the entire United States. Now, I want my Republican friends to listen closely. They have been saying over and over again that big oil desperately needs all of these windfall profits to drill for more oil. But, guess what? According to the CEO of ConocoPhillips, James Mulva, ``We like the discipline of the share repurchase. If we find that we have more cash flow, it's not really going to be going toward capital spending.'' In other words, ConocoPhillips won't use their windfall profits to drill for more oil, or invest in renewable energy, or explore for new sources of oil discoveries no matter how much their profits rise. Overall, since 2005, the five biggest oil companies have made $345 billion in profits and spent over $250 billion buying back stock and paying dividends to shareholders. Last year, ExxonMobil spent 850 percent more buying back its own stock than it did on capital expenditures in the United States. The $38 billion in windfall profits that ExxonMobil gave back to shareholders last year could have been used to reduce gas prices at the pump throughout the United States by 27 cents a gallon for the entire year. Mr. President, let's not kid ourselves. One of the major reasons as to why Americans are getting ripped-off at the gas pump has to do with the tremendous power and influence that big oil companies have in the Congress. As a matter of fact, since 1998, the oil and gas industry has spent over $616 million on lobbying activities. Who have they hired? Well, on April 8 of this year, The Hill reported that Chevron hired former Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Republican; former Senator John Breaux, a Democrat; their sons Chester Trent Lott, Jr. and John Breaux, Jr.; and Trent Boyles, who was Lott's Chief of Staff to lobby Congress on issues relating to trade, climate change, and energy taxes. ExxonMobil has hired former Senator Don Nickles, a Republican from Oklahoma, who served in this body for 24 years, to lobby Congress on behalf of their issues. These are just a few of the hundreds of lobbyists that big oil and gas companies have hired to influence Congress, many of them former Senators, former Congressmen, and former Congressional staffers. That is one of the reasons why, among many other reasons, this Congress, in recent years, has decided to give some $18 billion in tax breaks to oil companies despite their record-breaking profits. In addition, since 1990 big oil companies have made over $213 million in campaign contributions. And that is a simple fact. Lo and behold, what we are hearing today--just coincidentally, no doubt--is that the most important thing we can do in terms of the energy crisis is to provide more land offshore for the oil companies to drill at a time when they already have some 68 million acres of leased land, which they are not drilling on today. The American people want action, and there are some things we can do--not in 15 or 20 years but that we can do right now. First, we need to impose a windfall profits tax on big oil companies so that they would be prohibited from gouging consumers at the gas pump. Unfortunately, instead of taking away big oil's windfall profits and giving it back to the American people, Republicans want to provide even more tax breaks to big oil. In fact, Sen. McCain has a plan that would give ExxonMobil a $1.5 billion tax break. Now, we have heard Republicans give three reasons as to why they are opposed to a windfall profits tax. First, Republicans claim that the last time Congress enacted a windfall profits tax in 1981 it had the effect of increasing our dependence on foreign oil. Wrong. Mr. President, when Congress repealed the windfall profits tax in 1988, the U.S. was importing 7.4 million barrels of oil a day. Today, the U.S. is importing over 13.4 million barrels of oil a day. We are far more dependent on foreign oil today without a windfall profits tax than we were 20 years ago when we had a windfall profits tax. Secondly, my Republican friends tell us that the windfall profits tax didn't work because Congress repealed it in 1988. That is also wrong. While I would have structured it differently, the fact of the matter is that from 1981 until 1988 when the windfall profits tax was repealed, the price of oil fell from $35 a barrel to less than $15 a barrel. In addition, gas prices at the pump fell from $1.35 a gallon to 90 cents a gallon--a drop of 45 cents a gallon. And the Federal Government collected over $80 billion in revenue. The reason why the windfall profits tax was repealed was due to low oil and gas prices, which makes perfect sense. If oil and gas prices are low, big oil companies are not making windfall profits and there is no need for a windfall profits tax. If gas prices at the pump were only 90 cents a gallon, I would be one of the first Senators to say we don't need a windfall profits tax. But, they are not. They are over $4 a gallon. Finally, Republicans claim that big oil companies need to keep their windfall profits so that they can increase production and build more refineries. That particular argument is laughable. Big oil companies have been making windfall profits for over seven long years--and they are not using these profits to build more refineries and they are not using it to expand production. Instead, they are using this money to buy back their own stock, increase dividends to their shareholders, and enrich their CEOs, as I have explained earlier. Not only do we need to impose a windfall profits tax on these extremely powerful oil corporations, but we also have to address what I perceive is a growing understanding that Wall Street investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and hedge fund managers are driving up the price of oil in the unregulated energy futures market. In other words, they are speculating on energy futures and driving up prices. There are estimates that 25 to 50 percent of the cost of a barrel of oil is attributable to unregulated speculation on oil futures. We have heard from some leading energy economists, and we have heard from people in the oil industry themselves who tell us that 25 to 50 percent of the cost of a barrel of oil today is not due to supply and demand or the cost of production but is due to manipulation of markets and excessive speculation. In essence, Wall Street firms are making billions as they artificially drive up oil prices by buying, holding, and selling huge amounts of oil on dark unregulated markets. Some of my Republican friends claim that the increase in the price of oil has nothing to do with speculation, but it is interesting to me that we have had executives of major oil companies--major oil companies--who have come before Congress and who are saying, ``Why is oil $125, $130, and $140 a barrel?'' Do you know what they say? The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell testified before Congress and said: ``The oil fundamentals are no problem. They are the same as they were when oil was selling for $60 a barrel.'' This is not some radical economist. It is not some left-winger. This is a guy who is the head of Royal Dutch Shell. The CEO of Marathon Oil recently said: ``$100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the market.'' I know my Republican friends have a lot of respect for the oil industry, a great competence in them. They love them and give them huge tax breaks. So maybe they should listen to what some of these guys are saying in terms of oil speculation. For those who believe that excessive speculation is not causing oil prices to climb higher, let me just say this. Over the past 7 years, Enron; BP; and Amaranth were caught redhanded manipulating the price of electricity; propane; and natural gas. Each time, supply and demand was to blame and each time the pundits were proven wrong. Excessive speculation; manipulation and greed were the cause. Enron employees are in jail for manipulating the electricity market in 2001; BP was forced to pay a $300 million fine for manipulating propane prices in 2004; and the Amaranth hedge fund collapsed after manipulating natural gas prices in 2006. The Stop Excessive Speculation Act introduced by Majority Leader Reid begins to seriously address this problem. We need to pass this bill as soon as possible. The bottom line is that it is time for the United States Senate to say no to big oil companies and greedy hedge fund managers and yes to the American people.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I suspect if people are watching what is going on here, they do not have any clue or understanding of what is taking place because, in fact, it is fairly incomprehensible. It is pretty hard to understand why bill after bill dealing with issues of enormous consequence for millions of Americans is being filibustered by the Republicans, which means we have to get 60 votes to end the debate, votes which we obviously don't have. From the beginning of the session, there have been 91 filibusters, which is more than anyone has ever seen in the Senate. The reason the Republicans are filibustering today is because they want to pass the so-called Gas Price Reduction Act. That is the title of their bill. But I would argue that the title of this bill is a complete misnomer. The so-called Gas Price Reduction Act will not lower gas prices today, which stand at about $4 a gallon. All over this country, people are deeply upset about having to pay these outrageously high gas prices. They are worried about what oil prices will be in the winter. They understand the impact of these oil prices on food and other aspects of our economy. And the Republican legislation is entitled ``The Gas Price Reduction Act,'' but it is not going to reduce these gas prices which are so high today. That is not my view, that is President Bush's view. That is the view of everybody in the world. That is our Republican friends' view. They are saying, quite appropriately and correctly, that if you drill now, maybe in 10, 15, or 20 years, there will be some impact on prices. Well, maybe there will be and maybe there won't be, but there is no argument that in the midst of a crisis today, what they are proposing will have zero impact on our economy right now. So whatever the merits or lack of merits--and I am not sympathetic to drilling in environmentally sensitive areas in the Outer Continental Shelf--what we should be clear about is that the Republican proposal will do zero to address the crisis of high energy prices today. And again, that is not just my view. President Bush's own Energy Department has said that increased drilling offshore would have ``no significant impact'' on gas prices until the year 2030, and even then its impact would be negligible. That is what President Bush's own Energy Department is saying. So perhaps our Republican friends might want to change the title of their bill from ``The Gas Price Reduction Act'' to the ``No Significant Impact on Gas Prices; Maybe By 2030 Act.'' That would at least be a more accurate description of what they are trying to do. Maybe there will be some impact by the year 2030, but let's not fool the American people. The American people are angry, they are frustrated about what is going on today. And we could argue whether the Republican policy is good or not good, but let's not kid anybody, it is not going to have any impact on gas and oil prices now. For those who think it is okay not to do anything or see any impact until 2030, I guess they could support what the Republicans are doing. But I know what is going on in Vermont; that is, workers can't afford $4 a gallon for gas when they are driving 50 miles to work and 50 miles back, and they surely can't afford the price of oil that is coming down the pike next winter. They do not want action in 20 years, they want action now. And in my view, Madam President, that is what we should be doing. With the exception of my Republican friends here in Congress, there are very few people in this country who believe the oil companies give one hoot about the well-being of the American people. Our Republican friends are saying that if we just give these huge oil companies more acres offshore to drill for oil, they will certainly do the right thing, as they always have, for the American people. Let's just trust those big oil companies because they are really staying up day after day, night after night, worrying about the well-being of the American people. That is what their full-page ads in the New York Times and all their ads are telling us. Well, it is good to see there are at least some people in America who believe that. I don't, but apparently my Republican colleagues do. Let me just mention to you, Madam President, just how much concern the oil companies have for the American consumer. While the American people have been paying $4 and more for a gallon of gas, ExxonMobil has made more profits than any operation in the history of the world over the past 2 consecutive years, making $40 billion last year alone. Oil prices are soaring, and ExxonMobil is making recordbreaking profits. But ExxonMobil, of course, is not alone. Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell and B.P. have also been making out like bandits. In fact, the five largest oil companies in this country have made over $600 billion in profits since George W. Bush has been President. Yes, they are deeply concerned about the high price of gas and oil. Yes, they really are. It is really upsetting to them. Last year, the major oil companies in the United States made over $155 billion in profits--in just 1 year. Let me tell you, Madam President, big oil companies are so concerned about Americans paying high prices for gas and oil that this is what they are doing with their profits. You see, our Republican friends would suggest that what the oil companies are trying to do is explore new areas, do new drilling, produce more oil, and lower prices. Well, I don't think so, frankly. I will tell you what they are doing with their huge profits. In 2005, ExxonMobil gave its CEO, Lee Raymond, a $398 million retirement package--among the richest compensation packages in corporate history. They weren't going out looking for new land to drill on, they weren't building more refineries, and they weren't working on energy efficiency. They gave their CEO a $398 million retirement package. In 2006, another one of those oil companies that is staying up nights worrying about the American people, Occidental Petroleum, gave its CEO, Ray Irani, over $400 million in total compensation--again, beyond comprehension to ordinary people. In fact, there were articles recently in the press suggesting that one of the major problems ExxonMobil had is that they had so much cash in hand, they literally did not know how to invest it or how to get rid of it. That was their major problem. The situation is so absurd and the greed of the oil companies is so outrageous that these companies are not only giving their executives huge compensation packages in their lifetimes, but they have also created a situation, if you can believe it, where these oil companies have carved out huge corporate payments to the heirs of senior executives if they die in office. I guess this is what happens when you have more money than you know what to do with. In other words, if, according to the Wall Street Journal, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum dies in office, his family will get $115 million. The family of the CEO of Nabors Industries, another oil company, would receive $288 million. So it is not only giving out huge compensation packages; if the CEO dies in office, the family gets a huge package. Madam President, this would be funny if it were not so pathetic in the sense of the impact this type of spending has on the American people. Not only are huge oil companies using their recordbreaking profits on big compensation benefits for their CEOs, but they are also spending large sums of money buying back their own stock. In other words, when they are making these very large profits, they are not going out drilling for more oil, as our Republican friends are suggesting. Overall, since 2005--3 years ago--the five largest oil companies have made $345 billion in profit and spent over $250 billion of that $345 billion buying back stock and paying larger dividends to their stockholders. That is what they are doing with their money. They are not going out and saying: Gee, how can we do more drilling? Gee, how can we lower the price of oil? They are buying up stock and increasing the benefits to their shareholders. Last year, ExxonMobil, the largest oil company in our country, spent 850 percent more buying back its own stock than it did on capital expenditures in the United States. And that is a fact. Let's not kid ourselves. The big oil companies--and I know we are not supposed to talk about this too much in the Senate, but anyone who doesn't believe these oil companies have huge political influence over what goes on here in Washington is surely kidding themselves. Since 1998, the oil and gas industry has spent over $616 million on lobbying. In a 10-year period, they have spent over $616 million in lobbying. Now, what does that mean? It means they hire the best law firms in town, they hire former leading Republicans and Democrats--anybody can come in and work with Members of Congress--to get their way. That is one of the reasons why, among many other reasons, this Congress, in recent years, has decided to give some $18 billion in tax breaks to oil companies despite their recordbreaking profits. Over $616 million in the last 10 years on lobbying, and since 1990 they have made over $213 million in campaign contributions. And that is a simple fact. Lo and behold, what we are hearing today--just coincidentally, no doubt--is that the most important thing we can do in terms of the energy crisis is to provide more land offshore for the oil companies to drill at a time when they already have some 68 million acres of leased land, which they are not drilling on today. The American people want action, and there are some things we can do--not in 15 or 20 years but that we can do right now. Not only do we need to impose, in my view, a windfall profits tax on these extremely powerful oil corporations, but we have to address what I perceive is a growing understanding that Wall Street investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and hedge fund managers are driving up the price of oil in the unregulated energy futures market. In other words, they are speculating on energy futures and driving up prices. There are estimates that 25 to 50 percent of the cost of a barrel of oil is attributable to unregulated speculation on oil futures. I know the Presiding Officer's committee has had hearings on this issue and other committees have had hearings on this issue. We have heard from some leading energy economists, and we have heard from people in the oil industry themselves who tell us that 25 to 50 percent of the cost of a barrel of oil today is not due to supply and demand or the cost of production but is due to manipulation of markets and excessive speculation. In essence, Wall Street firms are making billions as they artificially drive up oil prices by buying, holding, and selling huge amounts of oil on dark unregulated markets. Some of my Republican friends claim that the increase in the price of oil has nothing to do with speculation, but it is interesting to me that we have had executives of major oil companies--major oil companies--who have come before Congress and who are saying, ``Why is oil $125, $130, and $140 a barrel?'' Do you know what they say? The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell testified before Congress and said: The oil fundamentals are no problem. They are the same as they were when oil was selling for $60 a barrel. This is not some radical economist. It is not some leftwinger. This is a guy who is the head of Royal Dutch Shell. The CEO of Marathon Oil recently said: $100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the market. I know my Republican friends have a lot of respect for the oil industry, a great competence in them. They love them and give them huge tax breaks. So maybe they should listen to what some of these guys are saying in terms of oil speculation. Some people have suggested or implied that those of us--including people in the oil industry--who believe speculation is driving up prices are into some kind of conspiracy theory, that we just want to demonize Wall Street or big investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Well, I would like to briefly read an excerpt from a research paper done by Goldman Sachs US Economic Research dated June 2, 2008. This is what they say, and I find this interesting: Lawmakers and regulators have begun to respond to these concerns-- Concerns about high oil prices-- but we still think it is unlikely that there will be any significant legislative changes enacted this year. In fact, it is entirely possible that Congress will adjourn for the year without enacting any further legislation focused on commodity speculation. And then this is the interesting thing they say: However, the debate itself could break the rise in energy prices for a brief period until there is greater certainty regarding the legislative and regulatory outcome. In other words, what Goldman Sachs is saying is that even the debate on speculation in the oil industry could have an impact on slowing down oil prices, and it may well be that is the case. We have seen that in the last 2 weeks or so. Let's talk a little bit about recent history and speculation and market manipulation in terms of the energy market. In 2000 and 2001, our friends at Enron successfully manipulated the electricity market, and the results, of course, were that in California and on the west coast electric rates went up by 300 percent. It is interesting to remember--and I remember this--what Enron was saying at that time. They were saying don't blame us, it is a supply and demand issue. I gather those Enron officials, who may be in jail today, are perhaps still saying that, but we know a little bit differently. We also know that BP artificially increased prices on the propane gas market. They were fined for that over $300 million. We also know Amaranth, a hedge fund, manipulated prices on the natural gas market. In fact, in 2006, Amaranth cornered the natural gas market by controlling 75 percent of all the natural gas futures contracts in a single month. In other words, the idea of manipulation and speculation and control of a market is not a new idea. We have seen three instances in the last 8 years, with Enron, BP, and Amaranth doing just that. Given that reality, why would we think it is so shocking that is taking place right now in terms of oil? Let me conclude by saying it is imperative that we move now in terms of addressing the energy crisis. People all over this country are hurting. They want us to act, and we must act. To my mind, one of the things we have to do is to move this country aggressively forward in terms of energy efficiency and in terms of sustainable energy. Our Republican friends talk about wanting to grow more energy, increase energy supplies. Let me inform them the Sun does that, the wind does that, geothermal does that, biomass does that. It is incomprehensible to me that time after time legislation has come before this body--including today--which will simply extend the tax credits that have been given for sustainable energy, and we cannot even do that. There are huge economic gains, not to mention moving forward in terms of global warming and reducing greenhouse gas emissions if we do that. Yet we cannot even get the votes to do that. We can move forward in terms of a windfall profits tax. We can move forward in speculation. We can move forward in terms of energy efficiency. We can move forward in terms of encouraging the growth of sustainable energy. Those are the things that we can do now. I believe those are the things the American people want us to do. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, It is with great pleasure that I inform you, my colleagues, and the Nation that Vermont's Champlain Housing Trust was selected as one of two recipients of the 2008 World Habitat Award, an honor presented annually by the United Nations. Each year on World Habitat Day, the United Nations Agency for Human Settlements, which promotes socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all, presents these awards. Established in 1985, the World Habitat Awards are bestowed on projects that provide practical and innovative solutions to current housing needs and problems. One award is for a project in the global north and the other for a project in the global south. I have a particularly deep and lengthy interest in the Champlain Housing Trust. It was established as the Nation's first municipally funded community land trust in 1984, when I was mayor of Burlington, VT. It has grown substantially, and today it is not only the first but the largest, community land trust in the country. It has provided a model for securing perpetually affordable housing that has been adopted by many other cities and municipalities across the Nation. The program came into being because, in the 1980s, Burlington faced a number of housing challenges--and we were looking for innovative solutions. Among other issues that we faced was the reality that low and moderate income households, in the face of rapidly rising and fluctuating house prices, were threatened with displacement. We also believed that decent and affordable housing was a right of all people and not just a commodity for financial gain by a select few. As mayor of Burlington, I was very fortunate to have an outstanding staff as well as strong community input in helping to formulate this concept. Among many others who played an active role in developing what was initially called the Burlington Community Land Trust were Terry Bouricius, John Davis, Peter Clavelle, Michael Monte, Brenda Torpy, and Amy Wright. When I entered the House of Representatives, my interest in land trusts did not abate. Encouraged by the growing land trust community across the Nation, I successfully introduced legislation that encouraged the use of the land trust model the Burlington community land trust had helped establish so that this model could be expanded to communities across the country. Meanwhile, ably directed by Brenda Torpy and a legion of committed staff and volunteers over the past two and a half decades, the Champlain Housing Trust has continued to grow and expand its geographic reach, and has been met with unparalleled success. Thousands of low and moderate income families have been able to experience homeownership, while the trust has made great strides both toward revitalizing Burlington's historical Old North End neighborhood and expanding to three different counties in northwestern Vermont. The Champlain Housing Trust is a model of democracy at the grassroots, involving homeowners, as well as government officials and members of the larger community, in its governance. It has been a successful experiment that has revealed to the nation and, as this U.N. award demonstrates, to the world as well, how through the land trust concept, home ownership can be combined with making housing perpetually affordable. The 2008 World Habitat Award is in recognition of all who have worked on establishing and expanding land trusts, all who have bought land trust homes, and all who have helped disseminate the land trust concept. And, in particular, it is a celebration of the wonderful work done by the Champlain Housing Trust.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, the State of Vermont has lost one of its greatest teachers, Graham Newell. I wish to honor this remarkable man, an important figure in our State's history in government as well as throughout its system of education. A seventh generation Vermonter who grew up in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, Newell returned to Vermont to teach after earning his degree in classics from the University of Chicago. For eight decades he was the quintessential educator, beginning and ending at his beloved St. Johnsbury Academy and teaching history and social sciences to college students for many years as well, serving as a professor and chair of the Social Sciences Department at Lyndon State College. Graham Newell was a man who so highly regarded the field of education that he entered politics to be its champion in the State legislature. First elected to the Vermont House in 1953, and later elected to the Vermont Senate, he served as the chairman of both the House and Senate Education Committees. Throughout his tenure in the legislature in Montpelier, Graham Newell worked tirelessly to ensure educational opportunities for students with disabilities. Indeed, Vermont's special education bill preceded comparable legislation on the Federal level by 20 years. He was also instrumental in the formation of the Vermont State College system and he authored a fair dismissal bill for educators. Although Graham Newell was a Vermont delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1956 and 1964, he was one of the great practitioners of a long Vermont tradition of nonpartisan politics. He became involved in government reform, serving on the Little Hoover Commission that reorganized Vermont's State agencies, and he was appointed by President Kennedy to the National Advisory Commission on Inter-Governmental Relations. A founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, he championed a strict separation of church and State by opposing public busing for parochial schools. As the resident Vermont historian at Lyndon State, he was responsible for naming all of its buildings after notable Vermonters. And, in a wonderful instance of turnabout is fair play, St. Johnsbury Academy recently honored him by renaming its foreign languages building Newell Hall. Above all he valued equality and equal opportunity, principles that no doubt derived from his Vermont upbringing, his long study and admiration for Roman history and from his work in education. Graham Newell taught Latin at St. Johnsbury Academy well into his nineties, long after he retired from his professorship at Lyndon State College. The indelible mark he made on the communities of St. Johnsbury and Lyndonville will not soon be forgotten. These communities need only look to the countless students whose lives he touched to see the effect he had on them. Mr. Newell earned countless awards as an outstanding educator, historian and model citizen, including being named the Vermont Chamber of Commerce's Man of the Year in 2005. It is exemplary citizens such as Graham Newell who have earned Vermont its reputation for civic leadership and principled politics, for sound reasoning in government, and for rising above partisan labels. Today, we honor his memory by recognizing his great commitments: to responsible citizenship, to superior education for all, to teaching, and to public service, and to shaping a future that will be worthy of our past.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, the Senator from Alabama said that what the LIHEAP legislation is about is subsidizing fossil fuels. No, that is not accurate. What the LIHEAP legislation is about is keeping people alive in Alabama, in Arizona, in Texas, in Vermont, in Maine, and all over this country. The Senator from Alabama should know that people are dying this summer, when the heat gets to 110 degrees and when electric rates are soaring and they do not have the money to pay those electric bills. The Senator from Alabama and others should know the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, have made it very clear that more people die from extreme heat exposure and exposure to the cold than all other natural disasters combined. Let's be clear what we are voting on this morning. When the Senator from Alabama and others say: Well, we are spending money trying to keep the elderly and the sick and children alive when the weather gets 20 below zero, we are. I will vote for those proposals, rather than hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthiest 1 percent. I will vote to make sure people in Vermont do not freeze in the winter, while we give tax breaks to ExxonMobil that enjoys recordbreaking profits. That is what we are talking about, priorities. Do we keep the old and the sick and kids alive when the weather gets cold or when the weather gets very hot or do we spend money on people who make huge campaign contributions? That is part of what this debate is about.

Mr. SANDERS. I have the floor. I will not yield. Some other people are saying what we should be talking about is energy policy. Well, of course, we should. The energy policy of this country is way out of whack. We are spending $700 billion a year importing foreign oil. We need to move to sustainable energy. We have not moved to energy efficiency. There is an honest debate about where and how much drilling should take place. But that is not what this debate is about. Since 1981, we have had LIHEAP. It has been supported in a bipartisan manner from everybody from President Bush on down. It is a program that has worked. What everybody in this Chamber understands is the price of home heating oil is soaring, the price of electricity is soaring, and the people will become sick and die and be forced to leave their homes if we do not significantly expand LIHEAP funding in order to make sure they can pay their bills. Let me reiterate to my friend from Alabama or anybody else: This is not a cold-weather State bill. Am I worried about what is going to happen in Vermont this winter? You can bet on it.

Mr. SANDERS. I believe I have the floor.

Mr. SANDERS. In Philadelphia, PA, in June, 17 people died from heat exhaustion. In Arizona, over the years, hundreds of people have died because they lack the ability to stay cool in the summer. This legislation is supported by the AARP because they understand, the largest senior group in America, what will happen to older Americans if it is not passed. This legislation is supported by the National Governors Association because they know the financial problems facing States and the need for the Federal Government to act. This legislation is supported by the Southern Governors Association because they know what hot weather does to peoples' health, especially the old and the sick when they cannot stay cool. What we are dealing with is literally a life-and-death situation. People in the hot-weather States will die when temperatures get to be 115 degrees, and they cannot afford the electricity to stay cool with air-conditioning. People will die in the Northern tier when the weather gets 20 below zero, and they cannot afford the high cost of home heating oil or gas. The American people are sick and tired of all the partisanship which is going on. Every Member of the Senate can write a press release telling their constituents why they voted no. But you know what, I do not think the people are going to believe you. If we have enough money for tax breaks for ExxonMobil, we have enough money in this country to make sure people do not freeze to death and that people do not die of heat exhaustion. I hope we can come together while we disagree about other aspects of energy policy. I hope we can finally come together and go back home, whether it is to the South or the North, and tell the American people, we understand what high energy prices are doing to them. We are going to stay with you. We are not going to let the most fragile people in our country, the most vulnerable people in our country, suffer unnecessarily when we know how to help them. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS. How much time remains on our side?

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 7 minutes and that the remaining 15 minutes be reserved for Senator Dodd.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I agree with the previous speaker, the distinguished Senator from Ohio, about the need for a national energy policy. He and I may disagree as to what that policy should look like, but at a time when we are spending $700 billion a year importing oil from abroad, at a time when we are contributing toward global warming, at a time when the oil companies are enjoying recordbreaking profits, at a time when some people will tell us, experts will tell us, that speculation is driving up the cost of a barrel of oil by 25 to 50 percent, I think we need a new energy policy. But I sincerely hope my good friend from Ohio will not penalize the millions of low-income people who are not here on that debate. For them, it is a life-and-death issue, in some cases, about whether we double LIHEAP funding in order to provide the benefits they desperately need. There are many reasons that any of us can give for not voting for a piece of legislation, but I hope in terms of the very important LIHEAP vote, we do not have folks coming up, well, I believe in LIHEAP; I am not voting for A or B; this is why--if we do not double the amount of money for LIHEAP at a time when home heating oil costs will be double what they were a couple of years ago. Natural gas prices, as the Senator from Ohio said, are rising very rapidly. People throughout the country, in the southern part, are unable to afford electricity and are trying to get by without air- conditioning at a great threat to their health. I hope those people will not be held hostage to the debate we are having. Yes, of course, we need a national energy policy. Yes, of course, this current policy is a disaster. But, please, let's not create a situation where people die and people suffer. Who gets LIHEAP? My friend from Ohio knows who gets LIHEAP. Those are the elderly people who get LIHEAP. Those are lower income families with children. Those are people with disabilities. Please, let's not hold those people hostage tomorrow while we continue the debate. So, I say to my good friend from Ohio, count me in as someone who will continue to fight for a national energy policy. I happen to disagree with the Senator on some of the particulars, but we need a national energy policy. Of course, we need to lower the cost of energy. But, right now, when we are seeing in the northern tier of the country, in the Northeast, a doubling of the price of home heating oil, people will go cold, people will freeze if we do not provide them with the help they need. I hope I can count on my friend's support tomorrow for that legislation. I am very happy to say, in terms of LIHEAP, we are getting very significant bipartisan support for this legislation. This bill which, as I mentioned, would double the amount of money we are spending on LIHEAP--it is S. 3186, the Warm in Winter and Cool in Summer Act. It now has 52 cosponsors, 35 Democrats, 13 Republicans, and 2 Independents. I want to thank all of them. I want to thank Majority Leader Reid, Senators Obama, Durbin, Murray, Landrieu, Leahy, Cantwell, Jack Reed, Kerry, Kennedy, Schumer, Levin, Cardin, Brown, Klobuchar, Menendez, Casey,--and I want to thank you, the Presiding Officer, for your strong support for this legislation--Bingaman, Lautenberg, Stabenow, Bill Nelson, Baucus, Salazar, Wyden, Whitehouse, Rockefeller, Dodd, Tester, Mikulski, Biden, Kohl, Dorgan, McCaskill, and Boxer. I also want to thank 13 Republican cosponsors of this legislation. It is no secret that we are in the midst of a lot of partisanship, a lot of bad feelings. But I am very glad that 13 Republicans have come on board this legislation. They are Senators Grassley, Snowe, Stevens, Coleman, Smith, Sununu, Collins, Murkowski, Gregg, Lugar, Bond, Dole, and Specter. I appreciate their support, as well as Senator Lieberman, the other Independent, in addition to myself. I thank Senator Reid, the majority leader, for trying to push this legislation. Not only do we have a significant amount of support in the Senate, we are getting support from dozens and dozens and dozens of organizations from all over this country who understand the importance of LIHEAP and the need to substantially increase funding. Now, one of the organizations that has been very active and actively involved in this issue is the AARP, which is the largest senior group in this country. I would like to, if I may, read briefly from a statement that the AARP made in support of the legislation that is coming up tomorrow. And that is: AARP fully supports the Warm in Winter and Cool in Summer Act. This legislation will provide needed relief for many older persons who may not receive assistance despite their eligibility due to a lack of funding. Older Americans who are more susceptible to hypothermia and heat stroke know the importance of heating and cooling their homes. They often skip on other necessities to pay their utility bills. However, today's escalating energy prices and the Nation's unpredictable and extreme temperatures are adding to the growing economic hardship faced by seniors. LIHEAP is underfunded and unable to meet the energy assistance needs of the program's eligible households. Studies show that while LIHEAP serves more households than ever before, only 16 percent of eligible households received assistance in 2006. Let me repeat that. Only 16 percent, in 2006. The need is now substantially greater because of the rising cost of fuel and because of the recession we are in currently. AARP finishes by saying: An estimated gap of almost $28 billion now exists between what LIHEAP pays and total energy costs facing the eligible LIHEAP population. So we are very appreciative that AARP is supporting this legislation. Let me mention a letter that I received yesterday from the National Governors Association. The National Governors Association, representing all 50 Governors in this country, is also supporting this legislation. Let me read briefly from this letter. I ask unanimous consent to have this letter printed in the Record.

Mr. SANDERS. The letter states: Dear Senator Reid and Senator McConnell: On behalf of the Nation's governors, we write to express our support for increased funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program for fiscal year 2008. Bipartisan efforts, such as the ``Warm in Winter and Cool in Summer Act'' (S. 3186), which would add $2.53 billion in LIHEAP funding for FY 2008 and split this funding equitably between the LIHEAP base formula grant and the contingency fund, are a step in the right direction. This approach will help ensure that States receive an equitable share of the energy assistance. I thank the National Governors Association. The letter was signed by Governor Granholm and Governor Rell of Connecticut. We appreciate their support. I come from a State where the weather gets 20 below zero. In a moment, I will be talking about what some of my constituents experienced last winter and the fears they have for the coming winter and why it is absolutely imperative that we substantially increase LIHEAP funding. What I want to do right now is read about what is going on in America today, in July and in June of 2008, in terms of the impact that high temperatures are having on some of our most vulnerable citizens, primarily the elderly. We gathered some headlines and brief articles about events and tragedies that are occurring right now. From the Mississippi Daily Journal: An autopsy report confirmed a Monroe County, Mississippi, man died as a result of heat stroke Sunday. Later on in the article it states: When the temperatures hit the high 90s, North Mississippi Medical Center emergency department starts seeing more heat- related illnesses, particularly heat exhaustion [hospital officials said.] Then there is an article, which I am sure you are familiar with, which comes from the Philadelphia Inquirer. This was June 14, 2008. This was rather astounding because Philadelphia is not in the middle of the South. This is the way the article reads. It says: The National Weather Service warned last week that the four-day hot spell that began June 7 could be deadly--and the projection proved all too true. As of yesterday---- This is the article on June 14-- As of yesterday, the deaths of 17 people in Philadelphia has been linked to the heat during those four days. Most lack air conditioning in their homes. In several cases fans and open windows proved insufficient. That is from the Philadelphia Inquirer. I know that is one of the reasons you are such a strong supporter and why Senator Specter is also a strong supporter. That was in Philadelphia. In Modesto, CA, ``Heat Claims Life of Elderly Modesto, California Woman.'' In Woodland, CA, ``4 Deaths Blamed on NorCal Heat Wave.'' Last week's Northern California heat wave is being blamed for killing at least four people. June 12, 2008, The Capital, the newspaper in Annapolis. It reads: An elderly man was found dead inside his stifling Orchard Beach, Maryland home early this week, marking the first heat- related fatality in Anne Arundel County, Maryland in three years. The article goes on: Maryland recorded 21 heat-related deaths in 2007, 43 in 2006 and 47 in 2005, according to the Maryland Emergency Management Agency. The county Health Department said Anne Arundel had three heat-related fatalities in 2005. ``Every summer, we see an increase in call volume related to heat-related emergencies,'' Chief Tobia said. And tragically, this death highlights the absolute importance of staying cool, staying hydrated and checking in on your neighbors.'' Arizona Republic, Phoenix, AZ, June 9, 2008. Headline: ``69 Valley Facilities Give Water, Aid to Homeless.'' Blue Swadener, a spokesman for St. Joseph the Worker, said there were 50 heat-related deaths in Maricopa County, AZ between May and September 2007. On and on it goes. This is only a sampling of headlines dealing with heat-related deaths. Let me talk a little bit about what is going on in some of the northern States, especially in Vermont. A couple of months ago, I asked Vermonters to write to me telling me about their experience with high energy costs and a very tough economy. These are some of the letters I received from Vermont. A moment ago we talked about what is going on in warm weather States, when the weather becomes very hot. This is from Vermont. The first letter comes from a mother who lives in rural Vermont: We have two small children (a baby and a toddler) and felt fortunate to own our own house and land but due to the increasing fuel prices we have at times had to choose between baby food [and] diapers and heating fuel. We've run out of heating fuel three times so far and the baby has ended up in the hospital with pneumonia two of the times. We try to keep the kids warm with an electric space heater on those nights, but that just doesn't do the trick . . . Please help. That is what we are talking about. That is why we need to increase LIHEAP so that children do not get cold and end up in the hospital or that elderly people in the southern part of this country die or end up in the hospital because of heat exhaustion. Another letter I received from a small city in Vermont: I am a single mother with a 9 year old boy. We lived this past winter without any heat at all. . . . To stay warm at night my son and I would pull off all the pillows from the couch and pile them on the kitchen floor. I'd hang a blanket from the kitchen doorway and we'd sleep right there on the floor. By February we ran out of wood and I burned my mother's dining room furniture. I have no oil for hot water. We boil our water on the stove and pour it in the tub. I know there are a lot of reasons to vote against anything. Please do not hold these people hostage to the ongoing energy debate we face in this country. Yes, of course, we need an energy policy. Yes, of course, what we are doing today is absurd. But there are people who will die. There are people who will end up in the hospital. There are people who get sick. There will be people who have to take money out of their medicine budget, out of their food budget to pay for heat in the winter or air-conditioning in the summer. Let us not punish those people. I know all the excuses, all of the reasons that people can give for voting no. Hold them. Don't use them tomorrow. Let the people back home know you are going to stand up for some of the most vulnerable people in this country while we work on a national energy policy. At a time when home energy bills are soaring, what this legislation does is basically double the amount of LIHEAP funding. It fulfills what the authorization level was. That is what it does, not more than that. What it understands, as I mentioned earlier, is that while millions of people today are receiving LIHEAP funds, millions more who are eligible for the program simply are not getting into it because there is not enough funding available. What happens is, as home heating prices soar, either fewer people will be able to receive benefits or else the benefits people receive will be simply inadequate because States have to cut back. That is why the National Governors Association is supporting this legislation. I made this point the other day, but it is worth repeating: When there is a flood, when there is a fire, and then there is a natural disaster, CNN and the other TV cameras are there. They cover it. All of us are concerned about the enormous problems facing the Midwest in terms of the flooding there. We are concerned about the terrible forest fires taking place in California. As a nation, we have to address those problems. But I ask my colleagues to understand that just because CNN is not in a house which has no heat when the weather gets 20 below zero, don't think that is not as important an issue. Do not think that suffering is not as real. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control, over 1,000 Americans from across the country died from hypothermia in their own homes, not out on the street, from 1999 to 2002, which are the latest figures we have available. They froze to death in the United States. That is why LIHEAP as a program was created, and that is why we have to expand the mission of LIHEAP to address the reality of today, that while our economy is declining, energy costs are soaring. More and more people are in need of LIHEAP. As I mentioned earlier, this is not only a cold weather issue. Over the past decade more than 400 people died of heat exposure in Arizona, including 31 in July of 2005 alone. Let me wrap up my remarks by thanking all of the Members of the Senate--I think there are 52 or 53 cosponsors, including 13 Republicans--for their support. I thank the AARP and the dozens and dozens of other organizations for their support. I thank the National Governors Association for their support. Every person in the Senate is a politician. We know how the system works. We know we can give any excuse under God's sky for voting no on an issue. We can vote no any time we want to. We can write a press release explaining why we are voting no. I hope tomorrow Members of the Senate will not exercise that option. I hope tomorrow Senators will not force millions of the most vulnerable people--LIHEAP is primarily for the elderly; it is for people with disabilities, for families with kids--please, do not punish those people, do not force those people to go cold or get sick or die because of heat exhaustion because of the debate we are having here right now. There is widespread support that this legislation should be passed, that funding should be substantially increased. That is what we are doing. I hope tomorrow we can have a very significant and good vote on this important piece of legislation so the American people can see that in the midst of all of this partisanship, Members of the Senate have come together to say that no one in our country will freeze to death this winter or die of heat exhaustion. This is an important issue. The vote is tomorrow. I look forward to widespread support from both sides of the aisle. I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 National Governors Association, Washington, DC, July 25, 2008. Hon. Harry M. Reid, Majority Leader, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC. Hon. Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC. Dear Senator Reid and Senator McConnell: On behalf of the nation's governors, we write to express our support for increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) for fiscal year (FY) 2008. Bipartisan efforts, such as the ``Warm in Winter and Cool in Summer Act'' (S. 3186), which would add $2.53 billion in LIHEAP funding for FY 2008 and split this funding equitably between the LIHEAP base formula grant and the contingency fund, are a step in the right direction. This approach will help ensure that states receive an equitable share of the energy assistance provided, which is what Congress envisioned when it authorized the multi-tiered formula. This kind of equity is an important goal. Additional funding will support critically needed heating and cooling assistance to millions of our most vulnerable citizens, including the elderly, individuals with disabilities and families that often have to choose between paying their heating or cooling bills and buying food, medicine and other essential needs. With greater financial support, states will be better able to maintain and potentially increase benefit levels, as well as potentially increase outreach to eligible families in need of rising energy cost assistance. Governors applaud bipartisan efforts to increase funding for heating and cooling assistance and fully support adding $2.53 billion in LIHEAP funding for FY 2008 to help our nation respond to existing home energy needs. Sincerely, Governor Jennifer Granholm, Chair, Health and Human Services Committee. Governor M. Jodi Rell, Vice Chair, Health and Human Services Committee.

Mr. SANDERS

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

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, all of us recognize there are very strong differences of opinion in Congress about how to resolve the major energy crisis facing working families throughout our country. I have my views on this issue, and other Members have different points of view, and that is the way it is. I am happy to report, however, that there is an increasing unanimity of understanding around one very important fact regarding this energy crisis; that is, if we do not dramatically increase funding for the highly successful Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, usually known as LIHEAP, senior citizens on fixed incomes, the disabled, and working families with children are in serious danger of either freezing to death this coming winter or perhaps dying of heat stroke this summer because they are unable to pay their home energy bills. We cannot allow that to happen. I am happy to announce, in a tripartisan effort, that more and more Senators understand that reality and are prepared to work together to protect our citizens. S. 3186, the Warm in Winter and Cool in Summer Act, the LIHEAP legislation that I recently introduced, now has 53 cosponsors--53 cosponsors--38 Democrats, 13 Republicans, and 2 Independents. I thank all of those cosponsors for their support. I am absolutely confident that as soon as this bill gets on the Senate floor, not only do we have the 50 votes, I am quite confident we are going to have 60 votes and perhaps more. I also thank majority leader Harry Reid for filing a cloture motion last night on the motion to proceed to this very important legislation. Senator Reid understands, as I think most of us do, that it is absolutely essential for the health and well-being of millions of our citizens that this bill be passed, and passed as soon as possible. My hope is that after passage in the Senate, we can get it over to the House before the August break and see it pass in that body as well. That may be overly optimistic, but that is what I would like to see. Let me say a few words about why this bill needs to be passed. At a time when home energy bills are soaring, this legislation would nearly double the funding for LIHEAP in fiscal year 2008, taking it from a little more than $2.5 billion to $5.1 billion--a total increase of $2.53 billion. This is, in fact, what Congress has authorized for LIHEAP. Let me say a few words about why we need to significantly increase funding for LIHEAP. In 2007, 5.8 million Americans--primarily senior citizens, working families with kids, and people with disabilities--utilized this program. These are the most vulnerable people in our country. Unfortunately, these 5.8 million Americans are only 16 percent--16 percent--of the people who are eligible for the program. The vast majority of the people who are eligible cannot get into the program because we lack the funds to help them. Madam President, 94 percent of the participants in the LIHEAP program were elderly, disabled, or had a child in the family under 18. From fiscal year 2003 to fiscal year 2008, the cost of the average heating oil bill has increased by over 93 percent--almost doubled. The estimated increase in an average natural gas bill during that same period has gone up by about 50 percent. Unfortunately, LIHEAP funding has lagged far behind these outrageously high increases in energy costs. In fact, we are spending 23 percent less on LIHEAP today than we did 2 years ago, and after adjusting for inflation, we spent more on LIHEAP 20 years ago than we are spending right now. Let's be very clear. What we are talking about now is a life-and- death situation. Many people do not understand this, but more people have died in our country from the extreme heat and extreme cold since 1998 than all natural disasters in this country combined, including floods, fires, hurricanes, and tornadoes. According to the Centers for Disease Control, over 1,000 Americans from across the country died from hypothermia in their own homes just between 1999 and 2002. Those are the latest figures we have available. In other words, they froze to death because they could not afford to adequately heat their homes. How many of these deaths were preventable? All of them were, according to the CDC. We will probably not know for several years how many Americans died last winter because they could not afford to heat their homes, but clearly one death is too many. I understand this country is struggling with an emergency situation in terms of flooding in the Midwest and wildfires in California, but there is another emergency which must be dealt with now while we also deal with those emergencies. At a time when the costs of home heating fuels and electricity are soaring and when the economy is in decline, millions of Americans are finding it harder and harder to stay warm in the winter or stay cool in the summer. In my State of Vermont and throughout New England and the Northeast, people are extremely worried that they will not have enough money to afford the price of heating oil next winter. A newspaper in my State, the Stowe Reporter, recently editorialized that the lack of affordable heating oil could turn into New England's version of Hurricane Katrina next winter. We cannot allow that to happen. I want all of my colleagues to understand that the home energy crisis that is being faced throughout the northern part of our country is something that is very imminent and is something that people are very concerned about. But this program, LIHEAP, is not just a program for cold-weather States; it is also a program for hot-weather States so that the elderly, the sick, and the frail in hot-weather States can afford to pay soaring electric bills to provide the air-conditioning they need. In other words, this program is not just a life-and-death program for the northern tier of our country; it is vitally important for the South and Southwest and for people who are struggling to pay for the skyrocketing price of electricity which has tripled in some parts of the country. What we are concerned about there is that if you are 90 years of age and you are sick and you cannot afford skyrocketing electric bills and your electricity gets turned off, you are in serious trouble. According to the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association, a recordbreaking 15.6 million American families, or nearly 15 percent of all households, are at least 30 days overdue in paying their utility bills. This is a crisis situation and a situation in which LIHEAP can be of significant help. To demonstrate how important LIHEAP is right now for Southern States dealing with a major heat wave, let me give you a few examples of what I am referring to. This is hard to believe, but it is true. Over the past decade, the last 10 years, more than 400 people have died of heat exposure in the State of Arizona, including 31 in July of 2005 alone. All of these deaths could have been prevented if the people affected had air-conditioning. Without increased support from the Federal Government, Arizona will be out of LIHEAP funding before the end of this month. Let me quote from a letter I received on July 15--last week--from Phil Gordon, the mayor of Phoenix, AZ. This is what he writes: I am writing to express my support for the Warm in Winter and Cool in Summer Act. Currently Arizona can only provide assistance to 6 percent-- Six percent-- of eligible LIHEAP households. . . . To make matters worse, Phoenix continues to experience extreme heat. In the past month alone, we have had 15 days with temperatures at or above 110 degrees. This extreme heat is especially hard on the very young, the elderly and disabled who are on fixed incomes and can no longer afford to cool their homes. . . . Arizona Public Service-- That is the electric company there-- reported that there was a 36% increase in the number of households having difficulty in paying utility bills and an increase of 11,000 families being disconnected compared to a year ago. Imagine not having electricity, and day after day the temperature is 110 degrees. And imagine if you are 90 years of age. Imagine if you are sick. Rising energy and housing costs are placing enormous strains on low-income households across Arizona. So writes Mayor Phil Gordon of Phoenix, AZ. Madam President, it is not just Arizona. Due to a lack of LIHEAP funding, the State of Texas only provides air-conditioning assistance to about 4 percent of those who qualify. Let me quote from a letter I received on July 15 from Shawnee Bayer from the Community Action Committee in Victoria, TX. She writes: The temperatures in our area have been 100 to 110 degrees for 16 consecutive days. I fear it is going to be very tragic at the current pace we are going with so little LIHEAP funding available. . . . There are so many who need our assistance, like the elderly lady in her 80's who recently almost died due to kidney failure; now she doesn't want to use her air conditioner because she is afraid she won't be able to pay the bill. . . . That should not be taking place here in the United States of America. This is in Victoria, TX. I received an e-mail from DeAndra Baker from the Community Action Agency in Giddings, TX, who writes: We have a gentleman who is 78 years old and on a fixed income of $770.00 a month. . . . Due to the extremely high temperatures he is unable to afford to keep his home cool. His doctor provided a statement that he must have his air conditioner turned on at a minimum of 80 degrees to avoid congestive heart failure and he is not even able to afford that much. Sadly, he will not continue to run his A/C or fans and will be at serious risk unless LIHEAP funding is increased soon. That is what is going on in the State of Texas. Without additional support from the Federal Government, the State of Georgia will not be able to offer any LIHEAP assistance whatsoever to its residents this summer. Currently, Georgia has a waiting list of 28,000 people hoping to receive some relief from the hot weather this summer. Let me quote from a letter I received from the executive director of the Community Action Agency in Gainesville, GA, Janice Riley. She writes: One family that came in after we ran out of LIHEAP funds was the Jones family. . . . Mr. Jones, came to our office requesting assistance with his electric bill. He has a wife and five children. . . . They got behind with all their bills when he was injured on the job six months ago. . . . Their daughter is paralyzed from the neck down from a fall she had at six months of age. I wish we could help them. Another participant that did not receive LIHEAP funds and is now facing disconnection or homelessness is Ms. O'Brien, a 33 year old, single parent with 5 children between the ages of 7-16, and a newborn grandchild which she has taken in. . . . Her power was turned off last week because she was unable to pay it. . . . Her need for assistance is based on the high costs of living, not from her lack of work ethic and heroic efforts to maintain her household. In addition, unless this legislation is signed into law soon, the State of Kentucky will not be able to keep any of its residents cool this summer through the LIHEAP program. According to the executive director of the Community Action Agency in Kentucky, Kip Bowmar: February of 2008 marked the first time in the program's history that all 120 Counties in Kentucky ran out of LIHEAP funds forcing us to close our doors as fuel prices were soaring and people needed help. In Florida, Hilda Frazier, the State director of the LIHEAP program, has estimated they will serve 26,000 fewer households this year because of the reduction of available LIHEAP funding and the rising cost of energy. Moving on to California, Joan Graham, the deputy director of the Community Action Agency in Sacramento, CA, recently wrote that: Every day we are turning away at least 50 families who qualify for LIHEAP because we lack resources. Energy bills have increased 30 percent over last year, yet our funding has not increased. In 2006, there were 29 heat-related deaths in Sacramento County. One senior who passed away due to extreme heat was afraid to turn on his air-conditioner because he knew he would be unable to pay the electric bill. We know there are more like him out there at present. Why is LIHEAP so important in the South in the summertime? From 1999 to 2003, over 3,400 deaths in this country were due to excessive heat. All of these deaths were preventable, and air-conditioning is the best way to prevent those deaths, according to CDC. I relate the problems associated with high heat and lack of LIHEAP funding not because that is necessarily an issue in my State. In our State of Vermont, in the northern tier of this country, the fear obviously is that when winter comes and weather becomes 20 below zero, we are going to have many families who are going to go cold. Some may freeze, some may be forced to vacate their homes and move in with other relatives and friends. That is what our fear is. Again, this is not just a fear of northern States, this is a concern that impacts every State in this country, whether you are in the North or whether you are in the South. It is imperative that we move on this issue and it is imperative that we move as quickly as possible. So once again, I am delighted that in the midst of all of the differences of opinion we are hearing on energy policy in general, there has been a coming together around the issue of LIHEAP. We now have 52 cosponsors, including 13 Republicans. When this bill comes to the floor--and it will come to the floor soon; we are going to pass it--I am quite confident we are going to get at least 60 votes, if we need that, and maybe a lot more than that. My hope is that we move it on to the House to get it passed there as soon as possible and we get this desperately needed funding out into the States. This is an issue we are making some progress on and I look forward to the support of all of my colleagues. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 4 minutes.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me begin by suggesting that a number of my Republican friends who come to the floor speak under the mantra: Drill, drill, drill; it is going to solve all our problems. Well, you know what. The American people, the people in Vermont are disgusted, angry, and frustrated that they are paying $4.10 for a gallon of gas. The people in my State--the Northern part of this country--are worried sick about how they are going to be able to heat their homes next winter when the price of home heating fuel may well be double what it was just a few years ago. Well, you know what. Drill, drill, drill is not going to solve the problem because President Bush's own Energy Department has told us very clearly that increased drilling offshore-- what many of my Republican friends want--would have ``no significant impact'' on gas prices until the year 2030. Even then, its impact would be negligible. So if you are outraged about paying $4.10 for a gallon of gas, it is of no help at all for our Republican friends to say: Well, gee, maybe in 20-some-odd years we may be able to lower the cost of gas by a few cents a gallon. We must do a lot better than that. We have some folks who think we should drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Well, President Bush's own Energy Department told us in 2005: Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would only reduce gasoline prices by a penny per gallon and only in 20 years when drilling is at or near peak production. So if we are serious about addressing the energy crisis this country has, and we don't want to wait another 20 or 25 years to lower gas prices by a few cents a gallon, we have to start looking at some other options. The first option we have to look at is taking a hard look at the excessive speculation which is now taking place in the energy market. We have heard experts, energy economists, come before one committee or another to tell us, in fact, that the price of a barrel of oil today may be 25 to 50 percent higher than it should be under normal processes--supply and demand and the cost of production--because of excessive speculation. So we have to move aggressively on the speculation issue. Second, because I know ExxonMobil feels that the public doesn't trust them, it is nice to see so many of my Republican friends who have such confidence in the oil industry, and who believe that if we allow the oil companies to drill offshore in areas where there has been a drilling moratorium, to ignore the fact that there are over 60 million acres of land they already have leases on, and people believe if a oil company is given more land to drill, then prices will go down. I am glad to see some people have confidence in the oil companies. I personally do not. While oil prices have been soaring, it is important to point out that, year after year, oil companies have been making record-breaking profits. Year after year, they have been paying their CEOs huge and excessive compensation packages. Year after year, instead of investing in new machinery to, in fact, drill for more oil, they have been using their profits to buy back stock and raise the price of the stock. Last year alone, ExxonMobil used $38 billion of their windfall profits to buy back their own stock in increased dividends to their shareholders. Mr. President, $38 billion is enough money to reduce gas prices at the pump by 27 cents a gallon for an entire year. But it is interesting to know that some of our Republican friends have so much confidence that if we gave our friends in the oil companies even more territory to drill on, in environmentally sensitive areas, they will absolutely do the right thing, that the oil companies are staying up nights--ExxonMobil and the others--worrying about the American consumer. If you believe that, I have a couple of bridges to sell you. I think we have to take a hard look at the continued greed of the oil companies. It would be a nice thing if we had a President of the United States who wasn't, in fact, an oilman. It would be a good thing if we had a Vice President who wasn't part of the oil industry. It would be nice if we had a President of the United States who would bring the oil industry into the Oval Office and say, gentlemen--and they are gentlemen--stop ripping off the American people. You have to start lowering your prices. Thirdly, when we deal with the myriad of problems we have in terms of energy, we have to be mindful not only of the greed of the oil companies, not only of Wall Street speculation, but we have to understand that right now--right now--this summer and this winter there are millions of Americans who need and will need immediate help to deal with the coming winter, as to whether they are going to be heating their homes, whether they are going to be going cold, and in fact we have to worry about people now in the southern States who are seeing temperatures of 110, 115 degrees, who cannot afford the rapidly increasing price of electricity, and are seeing their electricity turned off. If you are old and you are sick and frail, do you know what. That 115 degree temperature is not particularly healthy for you. What we need to do--and I hope we can get the bill on the floor immediately--is substantially increase funding for LIHEAP. We have legislation that would double LIHEAP funding. I am proud to say this bill has tripartisan support. We already have 49 cosponsors, including 12 Republicans. I have little doubt that if we can get that bill on the floor, if the Republicans do not continue to object to Senator Reid's effort to bring it up, we can get not only 60 votes but maybe a lot more. There is companion legislation in the House. We can move this quickly, while we continue the debate on energy policy, and we should come together. We have the votes to significantly expand LIHEAP funding and make sure that old people who are trying to exist in 115 degree temperatures in the Southwest do not get sick from heat exhaustion because they don't have electricity, which is a problem that LIHEAP could address. Of course, as part of this overall debate, it is very clear to many of us that we must, finally, in a significant way, a dramatic way, in a way that Vice President Gore was talking about a few days ago, break our dependency on fossil fuel, on foreign oil, and move this country to sustainable energy and energy efficiency. That is an outline of where we want to go. I think some of my Republican friends are talking about very insignificant lowering of prices in 20 years or 25 years. I think we have to pass the speculation bill that is on the floor right now. It is interesting to me that we have had executives of major oil companies who have come here to Congress--and people are saying, ``Why is oil $125, $130, $140 a barrel?'' Do you know what they say? The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell testified before Congress: The oil fundamentals are no problem. They are the same as they were when oil was selling for $60 a barrel. That was the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell. My friends say it is supply and demand. That is not what a number of executives from the oil industry, who presumably know something about the issue, are saying. The CEO of Marathon Oil recently said: $100 [this is back when it was $100 oil] isn't justified by the physical demand in the market. The senior vice president of ExxonMobil, Stephen Simon, told the House Energy and Commerce Committee: The price of oil should be at $50 to $55 per barrel. So you have folks from the oil industry, who, I suspect, know something about oil fundamentals, who are telling us that the price of oil today is way, way, way higher than it should be. One of the reasons they point to is the role of speculation. By ``speculation,'' we mean that as a result of an action by Senator Gramm back in 2000, with the so-called Enron loophole, energy trading has been deregulated. We have seen the results in a number of areas. Some people say: You guys are talking about speculation; you are into conspiracy theories. You are pointing out the bad guys there, and you are trying to create demons. Let's look at recent history. Is the idea of speculation in energy markets a new idea? Well, in 2000 and 2001, our friends at Enron successfully manipulated the electricity markets, and the results, of course, were that in the western part of our country, electric rates went off the wall. I remind you that during that discussion you may remember that what Enron was saying was: Don't blame us; this is supply and demand. Well, some of those people who were telling us that, I suspect, are in jail now, because as everybody knows, Enron manipulated prices big time until they were finally uncovered. Enron collapsed, and some of their executives, I believe, are now in jail. That was manipulation of the electricity markets in 2000 and 2001. That is not all that has happened in the last decade. In 2004, energy price manipulators moved to the propane market. Many people use propane to heat their homes. That year, the CFTC, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, found that BP artificially increased propane prices by purchasing enormous quantities of propane and withholding the fuel to drive prices higher. In other words, they manipulated the propane market and prices went up. By the end of February of 2004, BP controlled almost 90 percent of all propane delivered on a pipeline that stretches from Texas to Pennsylvania and New York. BP's cornering of the propane market caused prices to increase by 40 percent during the month of February 2004, which eventually caused them, because of their illegal manipulation of the propane market, to pay a $303 million fine. So, again, when we are talking about speculation, and people say you are into conspiracy theories, etc, etc, etc--we have, in 2000 and 2001, Enron manipulating the electric market; and, in 2004, we have BP manipulating the propane market. But it goes on. In 2006, energy price manipulators moved to the natural gas market. When Federal regulators discovered that the Amaranth hedge fund was responsible for artificially driving up natural gas prices--natural gas. So we had electricity, propane, and now we are on natural gas. Amaranth cornered the natural gas market by controlling as much as 75 percent of all of the natural gas futures contracts in a single month. The skyrocketing cost of natural gas, because of Amaranth's control of the market, cost American consumers an estimated $9 billion. Shortly after Amaranth was suspected of manipulating natural gas prices, the hedge fund collapsed. Today, there are many who believe that what happened in electricity, what happened in propane, and what happened in natural gas is now happening in oil. I think we should not be shocked by that, given the recent history I have mentioned. I think we have to move very aggressively in dealing with speculation. Let me take this opportunity to say a few words about the LIHEAP legislation. The bill we introduced would increase LIHEAP funding by going from $2.5 billion to over $5 billion. Basically, it is a doubling of funding. That, in fact, is the amount that has already been authorized. We should be very clear. In terms of the need to increase LIHEAP funding, we are literally dealing with a life-and-death situation. People will die. People will die of exposure to cold. People will die of heat exhaustion if we do not move, and if we do not move quickly. It is important to understand, because CNN cameras do not go there-- they do not go to an old person's house in Tucson, AZ, who is struggling with 110 and 115 degree temperatures without electricity. They don't go to a low or moderate income home in Vermont and Maine when people are trying to stay warm, when the temperature gets 20 below zero. The truth is that more people have died from the extreme heat and hypothermia since 1998 than all natural disasters in this country combined, including floods, fires, hurricanes and tornadoes. I know we all see and appreciate the pain people in the Midwest are experiencing today with the floods. We appreciate and want to respond to the crisis in California with the fires. But the fact is that more people die from exposure to cold and to heat than from these natural disasters, as terrible as they are. To give you an example--this is hard to believe, and many people don't know this--over the past decade, more than 400 people have died of heat exposure in Arizona. That is one State. That is 400 people in the last decade, including 31 people in July of 2005. All of these deaths could have been prevented if these people had had air conditioning. What I worry about is that electricity prices are going up because fuel prices are going up. Our economy is tanking, and we are seeing a record number of disconnects. So I ask people to be concerned about what happens when it gets 20 below zero in Vermont and in Maine. I also ask people to be concerned about what happens when people get disconnected from their electricity in Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and other States. Let me simply conclude that, clearly, we are in the midst of a major energy crisis. There are a number of aspects to that crisis and they have to be addressed. I hope that, as a Congress, while we debate those issues, we come together, as I think we are, in saying that no one in this country this year should die of heat exposure, no one in this country should die through being frozen to death when the temperature gets very low in the northern part of our country. I thank, again, the 49 cosponsors of this legislation. It is tripartisan. Both Independents are on it. We have 12 Republicans on it. The rest are Democrats. I thank them all. I thank Senator Reid for trying his best to try to get that bill to the floor as soon as possible. The AARP and dozens of other national organizations know how important it is that we pass an increase in LIHEAP funding and do it as soon as possible. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I understand that there are a lot of differences in this body on the issue of speculation, which presumably is going to come up next week, on the issue of the role of the large oil companies and the enormous profits they are making, and there are differences of opinion about how fast and how aggressively we should go to sustainable energy and energy efficiency. But in one area, it appears to me there is less and less of a difference of opinion, and that is that more and more Members of the Senate understand that we are facing--right now, this summer, and in this coming winter--an energy crisis in terms of people going cold and perhaps freezing or dying from heat exhaustion this summer. I am very proud to say that we have had tripartisan support for a very substantial increase in the LIHEAP legislation bill I have offered; that is, S. 3186, the Warm in Winter and Cool in Summer Act. That bill now has 47 cosponsors--34 Democrats, 11 Republicans, and 2 independents. At a time when more and more Americans are concerned about the partisanship here in Congress, I am happy to say that this bill has very strong tripartisan support. I wish to thank the 34 Democrats who are cosponsors, including Senator Obama, Majority Leader Reid, and Senators Durbin, Murray, Landrieu, Leahy, Clinton, Cantwell, Jack Reed, Kerry, Kennedy, Schumer, Levin, Cardin, Brown, Klobuchar, Menendez, Casey, Bingaman, Lautenberg, Stabenow, Bill Nelson, Baucus, Salazar, Wyden, Whitehouse, Rockefeller, Dodd, Tester, Mikulski, Biden, Kohl, Dorgan, and McCaskill. I thank all those Democrats for their support, and the 11 Republican cosponsors we have, including Senators Snowe, Stevens, Coleman, Smith, Sununu, Collins, Murkowski, Gregg, Lugar, Bond, and Dole. I also thank the Independent, Senator Lieberman, for joining me as a cosponsor. Both Independents are on that bill. Let me also thank Majority Leader Reid for completing the rule XIV process and putting this bill directly on the calendar. Senator Reid understands, as I think most of us do, that this bill has very strong support. For the health and well-being of many millions of people, whether in the Northeast or in the South, it is absolutely imperative that we pass this legislation as soon as possible. In that regard, I want to express disappointment that just this morning, my Republican friend, Senator Cornyn, objected to a UC for passage of this bill and then objected to putting this bill on the floor and even giving us the opportunity to vote on it today. I hope my Republican friends and the Republican leadership reconsider this action because the truth is, there is a lot of support on the Republican side for increasing LIHEAP. I think it is imperative that we work together and we work as quickly as possible and we take a very strong load of anxiety off the shoulders of people from all over this country by passing this bill and getting a similar bill passed in the House. This tripartisan bill would nearly double the funding for LIHEAP in fiscal year 2008, taking it from $2.57 billion to $5.1 billion. That is a total increase of over $2.5 billion. This, in fact, is the amount at which LIHEAP is authorized. We should make no mistake about it, the issue we are dealing with is a life-and-death issue. It is life and death today, and it will be life and death next winter. I would like to report a statistic that is not widely known. When CNN gets its cameras out, they go to the tornadoes and the floods and the forest fires, and that is appropriate. Those are terrible tragedies we are all concerned about. The truth is that more people in this country have died from the extreme heat and hypothermia since 1998 than all natural disasters combined. That is an interesting point, and you probably didn't know that. I didn't know that. But that is the case. And that includes floods, fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes. The ``problem'' is what happens when maybe an old person in Florida can't afford electricity and has her air-conditioning turned off. She will die. Or a person with an illness in the State of Vermont, when the weather gets 20 below zero and he doesn't have the money to heat his home, he will die as well. And people die one at a time, not in great CNN-type disasters, but the reality is that more people die from extreme heat and extreme cold than they do from other types of emergencies. In Vermont and throughout New England, people are extremely worried that they will not have enough money to afford the price of heating oil next winter. A newspaper in my State of Vermont, the Stowe Reporter, recently editorialized that the lack of affordable heating oil could turn into New England's version of Hurricane Katrina next winter. We cannot allow that to happen. The problem is not just in the Northeast. The point I have to reiterate over and over, this is not just a cold weather problem for my State of Vermont and New England. This is a hot weather problem as well. It is not just a cold weather issue, it is a hot weather issue as well. Over the past decade, more than 400 people died of heat exposure in Arizona. Let me repeat that. Over the past decade, more than 400 people died of heat exposure in Arizona, including 31 in July of 2005 alone, 31 people in 2005 in Arizona. All of these deaths could have been prevented if these people had air-conditioning. Without increased support from the Federal Government, Arizona will be out of LIHEAP funding before the end of this month. But if this bill passes, Arizona will see an infusion of $24 million in LIHEAP funding, triple what they currently receive. Let me quote a letter I received from the mayor of Phoenix, AZ. His name is Phil Gordon. I thank Mayor Gordon for sending me this letter. He is strongly supportive of this legislation. This is what the mayor of Phoenix, AZ, Phil Gordon, writes: I am writing to express my support for the Warm in Winter and Cool in Summer Act. Currently Arizona can only provide assistance to 6 percent of eligible LIHEAP households. . . . To make matters worse, Phoenix continues to experience extreme heat. In the past month alone, we have had 15 days with temperatures at or above 110 degrees. This extreme heat is especially hard on the very young, the elderly and disabled who are on fixed incomes and can no longer afford to cool their homes. . . . Arizona Public Service reported that there was a 36 percent increase in the number of households having difficulty in paying utility bills and an increase of 11,000 families being disconnected compared to a year ago. Rising energy and housing costs are placing enormous strains on low-income households across Arizona. What Mayor Gordon of Phoenix is talking about is taking place all over this country. We are in the middle of a recession. People are losing their work. Wages are going down. The price of fuel in general is going up. That includes electricity. If you are dependent on electricity for air-conditioning, and your electricity gets shut off and you are old and you are sick, you have a serious problem. That is what this legislation is going to address. In my State of Vermont and throughout New England and the Northeast, people are extremely worried that they will not have enough money to afford the price of heating oil next winter. A newspaper in my State of Vermont, the Stowe Reporter, recently editorialized that the lack of affordable heating oil could turn into New England's version of Hurricane Katrina next winter. We cannot allow that to happen. According to the Centers for Disease Control, over 1,000 Americans from across the country died from hypothermia in their own homes from 1999 to 2002, the latest figures we have available. In other words, they froze to death because they could not afford to heat their homes. How many of these deaths were preventable? All of them, according to the CDC. We will probably not know for several years how many Americans died last winter because they could not afford to heat their homes--but one death is too many. And, I want all of my colleagues to understand. This home energy crisis that we are in extends far beyond New England and the Northeast. Today, people in the South and Southwest are struggling to pay for the skyrocketing price of electricity, which has tripled in some parts of the country. The result is that essential utility services are being cut-off because they cannot afford to pay their bills. What that means is that elderly, frail and sick people trying to stay alive in 110 degree temperatures face a major health crisis if their electricity is shut off. In other words, whether you are living in the north or the south or the east or the west, our country is facing a national emergency and it is about time that the President of the United States and the Congress treated it as such. And, while energy prices are soaring, LIHEAP funding is 23 percent less than it was just 2 years ago, completely eviscerating the purchasing power of this extremely important program. In fact, after adjusting for inflation, the Federal Government spent more money on LIHEAP 20 years ago than it is spending today. To demonstrate how important LIHEAP is right now for southern States dealing with a major heat wave, I want to give you just a few examples of what I am referring to. Over the past decade, more than 400 people died of heat exposure in Arizona, including 31 in July of 2005 alone. All of these deaths could have been prevented if these people had air conditioning. Without increased support from the Federal Government, Arizona will be out of LIHEAP funding before the end of this month. But, if this bill passes, Arizona will receive an infusion of over $24 million in LIHEAP funding--triple what they currently receive--to keep their residents cool this summer. Due to a lack of LIHEAP funding, the State of Texas only provides air conditioning assistance to about 4 percent of those who qualify. Recently, I received a letter from Shawnee Bayer from the Community Action Committee in Victoria, TX. In her letter, Ms. Bayer writes: The temperatures in our area have been 100 to 110 degrees for 16 consecutive days. I fear it is going to be very tragic at the current pace we are going with so little LIHEAP funding available. . . . There are so many who need our assistance, like the elderly lady in her 80s who recently almost died due to kidney failure; now she doesn't want to use her air conditioner because she is afraid she won't be able to pay the bill. . . . She just called me last Thursday and has pneumonia; she could hardly talk. . . . Last year she was placed in the hospital in the ICU due to a heat stroke as a result of using only a fan, not the air conditioner. I see children every day who have not eaten because the parents, grandparents and in some cases great grandparents are just trying to keep the electricity on . . . . the electric bills in our area have tripled. That is in Victoria, TX. In addition, I also received an e-mail from DeAndra Baker from the Community Action Agency in Giddings, TX, who said: We have a gentleman who is 78 years old and on a fixed income of $770.00 a month. . . . Due to the extremely high temperatures he is unable to afford to keep his home cool. His doctor provided a statement that he must have his air conditioner turned on at a minimum of 80 degrees to avoid congestive heart failure and he is not even able to afford that much. Sadly, he will not continue to run his A/C or fans and will be at serious risk unless LIHEAP funding is increased soon. That is what is going on in the State of Texas. If this bill is signed into law, Texas will receive over $47 million to help keep their residents cool this summer. But it is not just Texas. Without additional support from the Federal Government, the State of Georgia will not be able to offer any LIHEAP assistance whatsoever to its residents this summer. Currently, Georgia has a waiting list of 28,000 people hoping to receive some relief from the hot weather this summer. To demonstrate the desperate need for more LIHEAP funding, let me tell you about an e-mail my office received from the executive director of the Community Action Agency in Gainesville, GA, Janice Riley. According to Ms. Riley, their agency has been out of LIHEAP funding since last December. She was particularly distressed about two families in Georgia who she could not help because of a lack of LIHEAP funding. This is what she had to say: One family that came in after we ran out of LIHEAP funds was the Jones family. . . . Mr. Jones, came to our office requesting assistance with his electric bill. He has a wife and five children. . . . They got behind with all their bills when he was injured on the job six months ago. . . . Their daughter is paralyzed from the neck down from a fall she had at six months of age. I wish we could help them. Another participant that did not receive LIHEAP funds and is now facing disconnection or homelessness is Ms. O'Brien, a 33 year old, single parent with 5 children between the ages of 7-16, and a newborn grandchild which she has taken in. . . . Her power was turned off last week because she was unable to pay it. . . . Her need for assistance is based on the high costs of living, not from her lack of work ethic and heroic efforts to maintain her household. That is what is going on in the State of Georgia. If this bill is signed into law, the State of Georgia would receive over $70 million to make sure their residents stay cool this summer. In addition, unless S. 3186 is signed into law soon, the State of Kentucky will not be able to keep any of their residents cool this summer through the LIHEAP program. According to the executive director of the Community Action Agency in Kentucky, Kip Bowmar: February of 2008 marked the first time in the program's history that all 120 Counties in Kentucky ran out of LIHEAP funds, forcing us to close our doors as fuel prices were soaring and people needed help. If S. 3186 is signed into law, the State of Kentucky will receive nearly $35 million to keep their residents cool this summer and warm in the winter. In Florida, Hilda Frazier, the State director of the LIHEAP program, has estimated that they will serve 26,000 fewer households this year because of the reduction of available LIHEAP funding and the rising cost of energy. According to Ms. Frazier, thousands of families in Florida are being turned away from LIHEAP offices each and every month because they do not have any money. Of the 2 million LIHEAP eligible households in Florida, they will be able to assist fewer than 4 percent of them. The State of Arkansas is also rapidly running out of LIHEAP funding. The LlHEAP coordinator in Benton, AR, recently had to deny assistance to over 430 families there because they had no money. If this bill is signed into law, Arkansas would receive nearly $26 million to help keep their residents cool this summer. Moving on to California, Joan Graham, The deputy director of the Community Action Agency in Sacramento, CA, recently wrote that: Every day, we are turning away at least 50 families who qualify for LIHEAP because we lack resources. Energy bills have increased 30% over last year, yet our funding has not increased. In 2006, there were 29 heat-related deaths in Sacramento County. One senior who passed away due to extreme heat was afraid to turn on his air conditioner because he knew he would be unable to pay the electric bill. We know there are more like him out there at present. If this bill is signed into law, California will receive over $100 million to keep their residents cool this summer and warm next winter. Why is LIHEAP so important in the south in the summertime? According to the Centers for Disease Control, the annual mortality rate from extreme heat in the U.S. has exceeded the death tolls of floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes combined since 1998. Meanwhile, fewer resources have been allocated to heat-related problems than to other extreme weather events. In other words, while more people in this country are dying from heat exposure than any other natural disaster in this country combined; the Federal Government spends less money preventing these deaths from occurring than any other natural disaster we face. From 1999-2003, over 3,400 deaths in this country were due to excessive heat. All of these deaths were preventable and air conditioning is the best way to prevent these deaths, according to the CDC. How many more heat-related deaths will occur in this country if we do not increase LIHEAP? We cannot wait to find out. My heart goes out to the people of Iowa and other areas in the Midwest that have been devastated by the recent flooding. I supported the additional Federal resources that were included in the supplemental to help them through this difficult time. But, let us not forget about senior citizens who will die of heat exposure if we don't help them out this summer. And, let's not wait until it's too late to provide the assistance needed to keep Americans warm in the north this winter. In addition to these facts, tens of thousands of Americans have had their utility and natural gas services shut off this year and millions more are in danger of having these services shut off because they are at least 1 month late in paying their bills. Increasing LIHEAP funding will allow these Americans to turn their electricity and other essential utility services back on right now so that they can cool their homes this summer and heat their homes next winter. According to the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association, a record-breaking 15.6 million American families or nearly 15 percent of all households, are at least 30 days overdue in paying their utility bills. USA Today recently reported that ``Electricity and natural gas shutoffs are up at least 15 percent in several states compared with last year. Totals for some utilities have more than doubled.'' The article then goes on to give the following examples: In Pennsylvania, PPL Electric Utilities disconnected 7,054 customers through April this year, up 168 percent over the same 2007 period. Duke Energy in North Carolina is averaging about 11,000 shutoffs a month, 14 percent above last year. Disconnects are up 27 percent for Peoples Gas in Chicago, 14 percent for Southern California Edison and 56 percent for Detroit Edison. In Michigan, where home foreclosures are soaring and the unemployment rate is the USA's highest, more than one in five Detroit Edison customers were behind in their electric bills in May. ``Some help is available,'' USA Today goes on to report. ``The Low- Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) is providing $2.5 billion in fiscal 2008, but funds are depleted.'' Due to insufficient funding, the average LIHEAP grant only pays for 18 percent of the total cost of heating a home with heating oil; 21 percent of residential propane costs; 41 percent of natural gas costs; and 43 percent of electricity costs. What this means is that low income families with children; senior citizens on fixed incomes and persons with disabilities will have to make up the remaining costs out of their own pockets. And, only 16 percent of eligible LIHEAP recipients currently receive assistance with their home energy bills. What that means is that 84 percent of eligible low-income families with children, senior citizens on fixed incomes and persons with disabilities do not receive any LIHEAP assistance whatsoever due to a lack of funding. Unless we significantly increase LIHEAP funding, two things will happen: fewer and fewer Americans will receive the assistance to keep their homes warm in the winter and cool in the summer; or the grants they receive will become smaller and smaller even as the price of energy soars. We cannot allow that to happen. No family in our Nation should be forced to choose between paying their home energy bills and putting food on the table. No senior citizen should have to decide between buying life-saving prescriptions and paying utility bills. For individuals and households that may have to face these difficult choices, LlHEAP makes a real difference in their ability to cope with adverse circumstances. For all of these reasons, I urge my colleagues to support the Warm in Winter and Cool in Summer Act. There are differences, obviously, in the Senate, differences within the House, on a number of very important energy issues. I understand that. I appreciated the differences. I have my point of view. Other people have different points of view. There is far less difference of opinion--I think widespread support-- among Republicans, Democrats, and Independents that we need to move. We need to move quickly to significantly expand LIHEAP funding. By expanding it, by doubling it, we are doing nothing more than keeping pace with inflation because the price of home heating fuel in my State has doubled so all we are doing is keeping even. I hope we will come together as a body--progressives conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, Independents--and pass this legislation quickly. There is a companion piece in the House. I hope we can get that done and bring the two pieces together. We are going to be able to provide some relief to millions of Americans. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, in response to the outrageously high cost of fuel all across this country, and the fact that people both in the southern part of America and the northern part of America are very worried about how they are going to stay warm next winter and stay cool this summer, I introduced S. 3186, the Warm In Winter And Cool In Summer Act, which will provide immediate relief to millions of senior citizens, families with children, and the disabled who are struggling to pay their home energy bills. Specifically, this bill would nearly double the funding for the highly successful Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, that is the LIHEAP program, in fiscal year 2008, taking LIHEAP from $2.57 billion to $5.1 billion, a total increase of $2.53 billion. I mention that is, in fact, what this program is authorized for. I thank Majority Leader Reid for completing the rule XIV process. My hope is that this legislation, this bill, will be on the Senate floor either this week or next week because it is imperative that we move it as quickly as possible. There are many Members of the Senate, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, who have been active on the LIHEAP issue for a number of years. I want, at this time, to announce that we have now 40 Senators who are cosponsors of this tripartisan legislation. That includes 10 Republicans. It includes 30 Democrats and 1 Independent in addition to myself, making 2 Independents. The cosponsors of this legislation are Senators Obama, Snowe, Majority Leader Reid, Smith, Durbin, Coleman, Murray, Sununu, Landrieu, Collins, Leahy, Murkowski, Clinton, Gregg, Cantwell, Lugar, Kerry, Dole, Kennedy, Bond, Schumer, Levin, Cardin, Brown, Klobuchar, Menendez, Casey, Bingaman, Lautenberg, Stabenow, Bill Nelson, Baucus, Lieberman, Salazar, Rockefeller, Wyden, Jack Reed, Dodd, Whitehouse, and Tester. In other words, we have very strong tripartisan support, from the northern part of our country, from the southern part of our country-- all over. People look at the degree of partisanship that takes place in Congress. I am happy to say this bill is bringing all kinds of people from all kinds of ideologies together to say we have a crisis now; that in the United States of America people should not freeze to death in the winter; in the United States of America people should not be dying of heat exhaustion in the summer. In addition to engendering widespread tripartisan support in the Senate, another bill, exactly the same, is being circulated in the House with very good cosponsorship. Furthermore, I am happy to say we have over 200 groups, national and local groups from all over the country, that are supporting this legislation. They include, among many others: AARP, the city of Phoenix, AZ, Catholic Charities, Salvation Army, the American Red Cross, the American Association of People with Disabilities, et cetera, et cetera--tremendous grassroots support from all over the country. Let me quote from the AARP which, as you know, is the largest senior group in this country. This is what they say: AARP fully supports the Warm in Winter and Cool in Summer Act. This legislation will provide needed relief for many older persons who may not receive assistance--despite their eligibility--due to a lack of funding. Older Americans who are more susceptible to hypothermia and heat stroke know the importance of heating and cooling their homes. They often skimp on other necessities to pay their utility bills. However, today's escalating energy prices and the Nation's unpredictable and extreme temperatures are adding to the growing economic hardships faced by seniors. LIHEAP is underfunded and unable to meet the energy assistance needs of the program's eligible households. That is from the AARP. I reiterate, Mr. President--what I know you know--there are some Americans and maybe even Members of Congress who do not know that when we talk about LIHEAP, we are not just talking about the problems that occur in my State where the weather gets 20 below zero or in your State. We are talking about problems that take place in Arizona and Texas, where temperatures get to be 110, 115 degrees. With a declining economy and escalating utility bills, many people--seniors, disabled, lower income people--cannot afford their electric bill. Their electricity is being disconnected. You are finding elderly people, people with illnesses, in a very horrendous position. This is not just a northern State issue. It is not a New England issue. This is, in fact, a national issue and that is why we have cosponsorship for this bill from all over the country. I have talked in the past and will talk again, obviously, about what LIHEAP means for northern States such as my own, but let me say a few words about what it means for southern States. Let me quote from the city of Phoenix, AZ. This is from Phoenix, and the person there is saying: I am writing to express my support for the Warm in Winter and Cool in Summer Act. Currently Arizona can only provide assistance to 6 percent of eligible LIHEAP households. To make matters worse, Phoenix continues to experience extreme heat. In the past month alone we have had 15 days with temperatures at or above 110 degrees. This extreme heat is especially hard on the very young, the elderly and disabled who are on fixed incomes and can no longer afford to cool their homes. Arizona Public Service reported that there was a 36 percent increase in the number of households having difficulty in paying utility bills and an increase of 11,000 families being disconnected compared to a year ago. Rising energy and housing costs are placing enormous strains on households across Arizona. Now, imagine being ill or elderly, having your electricity disconnected with temperatures day after day after day being 110 degrees. That is a serious health problem. But the issue obviously is not only in the South. In my State there is a newspaper called the Stowe Reporter. This is what they say, very briefly, in an editorial: It could be New England's own Katrina disaster. Hundreds of homes rendered uninhabitable, families' finances stretched to the limit, some driven away altogether to take shelter with friends or family. But unlike Katrina, this calamity is clearly visible on the horizon and we have months to prepare. With home heating oil prices nearly twice what they were one year ago, and no price relief in sight, thousands of Vermonters will be struggling this winter to keep their homes warm. The financial effect of an additional $500 to more than $1,000 on the winter's oil bill will force many to choose between heat and other necessities, such as food. So what we are looking at in the northern tier of this country is our own Katrina, if you like: people being forced out of their homes, people becoming ill, people leaving the northern part of this country because they cannot pay these outrageously high energy costs. This is, in fact, a life-and-death issue. Unlike hurricanes or tornadoes, you are not going to see CNN there. But as my friend from Maine, who is just walking in, understands, in her State and in my State, we are seeing people struggle in a life-and-death fashion. This is very important for people to know, because it does not get a lot of publicity, but according to the Centers for Disease Control, over 1,000 Americans from across the country died from hypothermia in their own homes from 1999 to 2002, and those are the latest figures we have available. In other words, they froze to death because they could not afford to heat their homes. How many of these deaths were preventable? Well, according to the CDC, all of them were preventable. If people were living in homes that were adequately heated, those folks would not have died. It is important to understand that it is not only heating oil prices that are skyrocketing but electricity prices are also soaring. Recently, USA Today ran a headline on its front page that said: ``Price Jolt: Electricity Bills Going Up.'' According to this article, utilities across the United States are raising power prices up to 29 percent, mostly to pay for soaring fuel costs. In other words, the situation that exists in the southern part of the country is that the electricity is disconnected because you cannot afford the huge increases in your electric bill, and if the temperatures are 110 degrees in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, you are in serious trouble. Before I yield to my friend from Maine, I did want to mention some information in our southern and southwestern States. Due to a lack of LIHEAP funding, the State of Texas only provides air conditioning assistance to about 4 percent of those who qualify. Recently I received a letter from Shawnee Bayer, from the Community Action Committee in Victoria, TX. In her letter, Shawnee Bayer told me that LIHEAP funding for their elderly and disabled clients ran out on May 1 of this year. As a result, they have had to turn away over 500 elderly and disabled families seeking assistance with their air conditioning bills. According to Ms. Bayer: The temperatures in our area have been 100 to 110 degrees for 16 consecutive days. I fear it is going to be very tragic at the current pace we are going with so little funding available. There are so many who need our assistance, like the elderly lady in her 80s who recently almost died due to kidney failure; now she doesn't want to use her air conditioner because she is afraid she won't be able to pay the bill and that we won't have funding to assist her when she needs us. She just called me last Thursday and has pneumonia; she could hardly talk. Last year she was placed in the hospital in ICU due to a heat stroke as a result of using only a fan, not the air conditioner. I see children every day who have not eaten because the parents, grandparents and in some cases great grandparents are just trying to keep the electricity on. The electric bills in our area have tripled.