Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I will yield the floor in 1 second, but first I need to say we are not in a good position today. This Congress has not performed well. We have passed only one appropriations bill. We have had only 10 votes in the last 31 days. That is not a good performance. I have been prepared to move forward on this legislation and I hope others will. I am disappointed that we have continual objections to that end. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I want to thank Senator Lincoln for her articulate and effective explanation of the difficulties in the Dorgan-Grassley amendment. I absolutely am confident that it will undermine the traditional agricultural safety net for farmers in the Southeast. There are a lot of reasons for that. I cannot say for sure what it is like in other areas of the country. Apparently, the amendment would not have the same effect in every area, at least in the same percentage of farmers. But since the 2002 bill, input costs to produce agricultural products have increased, particularly in the Southeast and particularly for cotton, one of our most significant cash crops. The cost of nitrogen, potassium, phosphate, and diesel fuel have risen dramatically. I do not mean a little bit; some of them have doubled during this time. However, support payments have remained level. As a result, the safety net already has, in effect, been cut in half. The committee-passed bill essentially continues the 2002 structure of having a safety net that is half of what it was a few years ago. Producer groups in the Southeast understand the Federal budget reality is not something they want to deny. And the lack of availability of new funding impacts our ability to provide increases in the safety net as we would normally expect to occur. But they are united in their concern and opposition to any effort to further reduce the safety net. The Grassley-Dorgan amendment would not impact producers in the Midwest, it appears. Crops such as corn and wheat are not expensive commodities to produce. As a result, payments do not have to be as high to support farmers in those areas when prices fall. Crops grown in the Southeast, such as cotton and peanuts, are high- value commodities that cost a great deal to produce. For example, cotton currently costs approximately $450 to $500 to plant and harvest per acre. That is a lot of money. In Alabama, the average Statewide yield is approximately 700 pounds per acre from year to year. However, with current market conditions, producers are barely able to break even with the safety net currently in place. Any further attempt to limit payments will practically destroy agricultural production of high-value commodities in the Southeast. I suggest our colleagues take note of what the farm bill did. Before, when you actually compute the support payment levels, they were $360,000. Now, with the changes in amendments and loophole closings that have occurred, it has dropped to $100,000. Multiple payments are no longer effective, and a decreased limit has the potential to be very harmful. Let me share this thought with my colleagues. My family on my mother's and father's sides are farmers. They have been in rural Alabama for 150 years. I know something about farming, but there is more to farming than just the farmer. My father, who had a country store when I was in junior high school, purchased a farm equipment dealership. There are a lot of other people who support agriculture than just the farmers. To be effective, make a living, and farm in agriculture in Alabama and throughout the Nation, you have to be engaged in a large-scale operation with expensive equipment. You have to invest a tremendous amount of money in bringing in a crop. If crop prices fall, you can be devastated. As Senator Lincoln said, who is going to fill the gap? It is not going to be somebody here. It is going to be somebody else around the world who is receiving far more subsidies than our people. There is the farm equipment dealer. There is the fertilizer dealer. There are the seed people. There are the people who labor at harvesting and the people who process the cotton, the soybeans, the peanuts and convert them to marketable products. That whole infrastructure, the bankers who loan the money, the businessman in town, the hardware store that supplies their needs, is dependent on the farmer. In Alabama, as in most areas of the country, farmers are larger. They have far more at risk. If they go under, not only do they go under, but entire industries go under. We have cut this to effectively reduce the abuses in the system. I thank the committee for doing so, and I oppose the Dorgan-Grassley amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I will attempt to complete my remarks in less than the 10 minutes I have. Modification to Amendment No. 3596 Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to amend my amendment. We got a score today that indicated it would cost $1 million over 10 years. This would be an offset for that. So I send this modification to the amendment to the desk and ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to amend the amendment.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I call up amendment No. 3596.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, first I would like to share in the gist of the remarks of Senator Wyden, that OPEC is a cartel. They meet to decide how much production they will allow. The reason they do that is to control the price of oil in the world marketplace. By controlling the amount they produce, they control the price. It is a cartel price, it is not a free market price. They call themselves a cartel. In effect, they meet to decide how much they are going to tax the American consumer. That is because the value of the oil on the global marketplace is disconnected to the cost of its production throughout the world. I think we should do what we can with ethanol and other alternative fuels to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, both for our economy, as well as for our national security. I thank Senator Harkin for his leadership as chairman of the Agriculture Committee. He has been courteous to me and other Senators in any number of ways. I thank Senator Chambliss for his leadership and his expertise, particularly concerning matters in our region of the country. My amendment has to do with crop insurance. I truly believe it is an amendment that will be a good-government amendment that will allow us to test an idea that came from farmers themselves and could, indeed, create a situation in which crop insurance works better in America than it currently does. Crop insurance alone has not worked as well as we expected. Many farmers don't sign up, one farmer told me today. That alone should tell you something. He said farmers are pretty clever. They know a good deal when they see it. If they are not signing up, usually there is a reason. But crop insurance is a critical component of farming in America today. We need more farmers signed up. We need more farmers insured. How we get there is the question. The farm insurance program that the Government funds and helps support has not ended the periodic disaster payment bills that Congress has considered. Since the year 2000, $1.3 billion per year has been appropriated by this Congress as disaster relief, indicating that the crop insurance is not yet covering the losses that farmers are sustaining. In addition, we are supporting crop insurance premiums to the tune of $3.25 billion a year. That is a lot of money. What can we do? I suggest we should listen to the farmers. In 1999, the Alabama Farmers Federation held a conference and formed a committee to see what could be done to improve crop insurance. That committee was led by Ricky Wiggins, a cotton and peanut farmer in south Alabama, and concluded that farm savings accounts could do that. That is what they recommended. My amendment would create and allow the Department of Agriculture, in fact, to create farm savings accounts for farmers. The Federal Government subsidy that has been going to insurance premiums would go into this account, and the farmers' part of the premium would go into this account. It would be their controlled insurance fund. I talked to Secretary Johanns about this when he was our Secretary, and he liked the idea. He thought it was premature to try to mandate this around the country. We discussed a pilot program and he thought that was a good idea and that is what I am proposing in this amendment. The concept would be for the Department of Agriculture to create and implement regulations for a pilot program. It would be limited to just 1 percent of farmers throughout the country. That is only approximately 20,000 farmers nationwide. It would create a whole farm risk-management account for all the farming activities, not just on a commodity-by- commodity basis. The combination of two and three failures of a small nature can put a farm in critical condition, and often they are not able to collect on their crop insurance because no one particular crop has been badly damaged. Farm savings accounts would overcome this by providing more flexibility. The Federal Government would contribute, the farmer would contribute, and when a disaster occurs, a farmer would be allowed to withdraw the money from his emergency fund. If his income fell below 80 percent of his 3-year farm income average, unless there was change in his activities, he would be able to draw money out of that account. But the farmer also must have catastrophic insurance through an insurance company because it is still possible that there would be a catastrophe and he would have a total loss and would need the kind of coverage this farm savings account does not provide. The pilot program would be totally voluntary. No farmer would be required to participate. I believe the results of this pilot program could be substantial. It would certainly save overhead. It would create a situation where the farmer could decide how to utilize his resources. Today, if a farmer believes his crop is a total loss, he calls in an adjuster. The adjuster has to look at the crop and has to certify that this crop is likely to be a failure at the time it is harvested and would not be worth carrying forward. This will allow farmers in many circumstances to plow under that crop and replant another crop. Until he gets the certification that his insurance is going to pay, he is delayed from doing the replanting. This can be crucial because as the weeks go by the season gets shorter and the farmer has less and less ability to replant. Those are things I hear about a lot. They come to me and complain. I called insurance companies on behalf of farmers. It is a difficult situation for both sides. The insurance companies have legitimate reasons to be cautious and responsible with their money. Farmers have a legitimate reason to seek prompt payment so they can move forward. Farm savings accounts could reduce the amount of disaster relief that our Nation is paying out each year. I believe it is an amendment that my colleagues should sincerely consider. In conclusion, let me say this about it. We will talk about it more tomorrow. This is a farmers plan. They came forward with it. The Alabama Farmers Federation is an affiliate with the American Farm Bureau. They strongly support it. The Farm Bureau itself has not taken a position on it. They are not opposing this legislation. It would apply only to 1 percent of farmers. It would be voluntary. No farmer would have to sign up for it. The decisionmaking for how to utilize the money when a disaster occurs would be given to the farmer and not an insurance adjuster. And we can see how it works. Maybe it will not work, and maybe we will realize this is not the way to go. But, then again, it might work. In fact, I think it will work. In fact, I think our farmers were very smart when they asked for this. I believe quite a number of farmers may find this is far more effective for them than the present system we are utilizing. One can conjure up objections that might occur. Certainly, for some farmers this would not be something they would want to opt for, but I believe the Department of Agriculture can work through this and create some guidelines and regulations that would work. So I say, let's try. Let's give this idea a chance. Let's see if we can create a better way of handling insurance for a number of farmers. After a few we will have learned something. I urge my colleagues to consider this legislation as we go forward with this farm bill. We will probably have a vote on it tomorrow. I truly urge them, let's try this. If you have any objections, I would be pleased to try to address them, and we will speak in more detail about the amendment tomorrow. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I believe I will have an hour debate on this, 30 minutes on each side. I ask I be recognized for 10 minutes tonight and be notified when that 10 minutes has run.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I add that I appreciate Senator Bingaman for his fair and good leadership. Particularly, I thank Senator Domenici, who understood the problems some of us have had in our region with the high cost of electricity that would occur if this bill were to pass as it came back from the House. I do think the legislation has a lot of good things in it. Hopefully, we can work forward in a way that we can pass it because we have a need to be more energy independent, and we need to create more energy in a cleaner way. I thank Senator Bingaman and Senator Domenici. I am optimistic we will reach that agreement.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I am pleased today to offer a bipartisan bill to fix a serious loophole in the law that has prevented some of our wounded warriors from Iraq and Afghanistan from receiving their full enlistment bonuses when they are discharged as the result of wounds they receive in combat. The Wounded Warrior Bonus Equity Act reflects the hard work of several Members of Congress, who put partisanship aside to address this serious matter. The men and women of our magnificent armed forces serve with incredible courage and bravery. In return, the U.S. makes a commitment to them, and the Government must fulfill its end of the bargain.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I am pleased today to offer a bipartisan bill to fix a serious loophole in the law that has prevented some of our wounded warriors from Iraq and Afghanistan from receiving their full enlistment bonuses when they are discharged as the result of wounds they receive in combat. The Wounded Warrior Bonus Equity Act reflects the hard work of several Members of Congress, who put partisanship aside to address this serious matter. The men and women of our magnificent armed forces serve with incredible courage and bravery. In return, the U.S. makes a commitment to them, and the Government must fulfill its end of the bargain.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent that 2 minutes be allocated to the Senator from Texas.

Mr. SESSIONS. We really need to do this. We voted after a full debate this summer to give General Petraeus a chance, asked him to come back and report in September. We voted 80 to 14 to fund the surge, and General Petraeus came back with positive reports in September. But it was early. We were not sure what was going to be the true trend. Since September, the situation in Iraq has improved to a degree I did not expect possible. The casualties are down two-thirds from earlier in the summer. It appears al-Qaida is completely on the run. Great progress has been made. It is unthinkable at this point, after all we have been through, the difficult times we had this summer, when progress is being made clearly, indisputably, that we would now jerk the rug out from under our soldiers. We have to do this. We need Senator Reid to quit saying we are losing and quit saying this is not working, while our soldiers are making progress. How demoralizing is that? I urge my colleagues to vote to support our troops at this critical point as we are making progress.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we know what the deal is. The Senator from Iowa knows what the problem is. The Democratic leadership is refusing to allow amendments on the farm bill, and the farm bill is not going to pass until they do. And they are going to allow amendments at some time, and we are going to pass a farm bill. That is what the truth is, and everybody knows it here. But I want to talk about something that is really troubling to me. We had a hearing yesterday in the Armed Services Committee. The Secretary of the Army, Pete Geren, and GEN George Casey, the Chief of Staff of the Army, told us that they are reaching a crisis in maintaining support for our troops in Iraq, that they need desperately for this Congress to fulfill its responsibility to support the troops we have sent into the field in harm's way to execute the policy of this Nation. They are there because we sent them there. They are doing fabulous work, and they need support. Just remember, this summer we had a long debate about what to do. President Bush said we need to change our policy. The American people said we need to change our policy. We sent General Petraeus there. I see the Senator from Texas. I don't know if she wants additional time.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the remaining Republican time be divided equally between Senators Graham, Thune, and Sessions, and that I be allowed to speak at this point.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, today I want to commend a distinguished resident of the State of Alabama, Dr. Andrew Mays. Dr. Mays lives in Birmingham, AL. He is a well-respected member of the medical community in our State, serving as a faculty member in the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine's Department of Ophthalmology, as well as operating a private clinical practice. He serves our State public education and health systems at the Callahan Eye Foundation Hospital, where he concentrates his research and practice in combating the devastating effects of the eye disease glaucoma. Dr. Mays also sits on the Board of Directors for the Alabama Academy of Ophthalmology. However, I speak to you today not to praise Dr. Mays for his accomplishments in medicine, but to congratulate him on being awarded the first prize in the 2007 Van Cliburn International Competition for Outstanding Amateurs. Dr. Mays beat 74 other contestants on June 3, 2007, to earn this mark of distinction. This competition lasts a week, and allows competitors over the age of 35 who do not earn their livelihood through playing or providing instruction on the piano to vie for a chance to win this distinguished title. Michael Huebner of the Birmingham News once stated that Dr. Mays possessed ``a heart and mind of extraordinary capacity.'' Drew Mays possesses wonderful talent. He polished and sharpened this talent at the School of Music at the University of Alabama, earning both a Bachelor of Music in 1982, summa cum laude honors included, and a Master of Music degree in 1987 from this fine institution. In addition, he earned the opportunities to study at the Conservatory of Music in Hanover, Germany, and the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, where he began his Master studies. Not only has Dr. Mays made a name for himself through medicine and music, he is a man dedicated to family values. He and his wife, Dr. Therese Mays, have four young children. Dr. Mays had his family by his side as he won the Van Cliburn competition this year. I had the pleasure of meeting him and his wife when they came to visit my office during a trip to play at George Washington University through a Smithsonian Associates program. During the recital he gave at the Jack Morton Auditorium on the GWU campus, you could see the bond these two shared as musicians and partners, as his wife nodded along to the twists, turns, and rhythms of his performance. I commend Dr. Andrew Mays for all of his accomplishments and successes, and I am proud to be able to represent such a wonderful man. I share with this body today my pleasure in congratulating Dr. Mays for winning this prestigious competition, as he is certainly a worthy recipient.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we are facing a number of challenges in the Senate and in the Congress, but none is more important than our willingness and our responsibility to properly support the men and women in our Armed Forces who are serving us today in Iraq and Afghanistan; serving us because we voted to send them there, doing the policy of the United States that has the support of the President, the Chief Executive, the Commander in Chief, and that has been supported by the Congress. Yes, we have had a lot of debate, a lot of dissension, and a lot of complaints, but when the chips have been down, time and time again we have authorized and funded the activities that are going on now in the name of the United States of America in Iraq and in Afghanistan. We had an election last fall. We have heard people talk about that. But the American people did not say: We want to pull out of Iraq regardless of the consequences. They said they were not happy, and none of us were happy with the way things were going. It seemed to be drifting in a bad way, and there seemed to be no positive results coming. So we had, after this election, last spring, April and May, a big debate about it. And President Bush said: We need to change policy. I am going to send a new general over there, General Petraeus, and we are going to change tactics, and I am going to ask you to approve additional troops. I am asking for a surge in troops. So we talked about it. We debated it right here in the Senate. This great Nation's legislative branch responded to the President's call and had a debate on it. We had no obligation to fund that. None whatsoever. But earlier in the summer, we voted 80 to 14 to fund the surge in Iraq and to send General Petraeus and to give him a chance to utilize a new tactic and a new strategy for confronting the terrorist forces we were facing there, in particular al-Qaida, which was a strong entity at that time. I have got to tell you, I was worried things had not gone as well as we had expected. We had had a bad year, and casualties were up and attacks were up and it was a tough time. But as part of that debate, we asked General Petraeus to come back in September and give us a report. My Democratic colleagues and others, all of us were concerned. We wanted a report to see how things were going because we were not going to have a blank check and unended obligation to Iraq if things were not going to work. That is a fundamental synopsis of the situation. I believe that is a fair analysis. So General Petraeus came back and gave us his report. General Jimmy Jones had been sent and a group of other independent evaluators with experience in military matters. That commission was sent over there at the direction of Congress. When we passed the supplemental to fund General Petraeus and the surge, we required another report, not just General Petraeus, but the Jones Commission to come back and make a report. We asked the General Accounting Office to do an evaluation also, the independent GAO. So they all came back in September. We had hearings and debate and suggestions and we continued to go forward. We voted, in essence, to continue to allow General Petraeus to pursue the plans he was carrying out. Some progress had been made. It was notable, but it was not sufficient for us to say with certainty that a major change positively had occurred. We could not be certain of that. But it looked as if some progress was being made with more troops and new tactics. So we said then: Let's go forward. And we did. Now we have seen some very dramatic positive developments in Iraq. The Iraqi people, by all accounts, I think few can dispute this, have believed the American troops are reliable allies. We have changed our tactics in how we deal with the local Iraqi officials and tribal leaders and mayors and chiefs of police. We are doing a much better job--General Petraeus is--of partnering with them. They have turned against al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden's troops, that terrorist group they thought was going to take over Iraq. And Al Anbar, the worst area in Iraq for al-Qaida, has made a transformation. Al-Qaida is on the run throughout Iraq. Violence is down substantially. Can I guarantee you it will continue to go down? I cannot. I can tell you that deaths of American soldiers are down by two-thirds this last month; and attacks on Iraqi civilians, which always cost more lives than attacks on our American soldiers, are down by a similar margin. Attacks on Iraqi soldiers are also down. Al-Qaida has virtually been removed. Sadr's group has quieted down and seems to be working with the Government. The Government has not performed like we would like it to. The Parliament, they have not performed like I would like to see them perform. I think they deserve criticism for that. But it is not an easy thing for them to do, just to walk in and reach agreements that affect the future of Iraq and the oil revenue and military power within Iraq for generations to come. It is understandable they would be somewhat reluctant. But they need to do better. But, fundamentally, as of this date, things are so much better than they were in April and May, and so much better even than they were in September. That is quite remarkable. No one, I think, can deny that. We are a great nation. We have a great Congress. And we went through a national post-election discussion about what to do. Were we just going to pull out regardless of the consequences? Were we going to give General Petraeus a chance to employ new tactics? We voted to give him a chance. It is beginning to work better than I think any of us would have predicted so far. It is rather dramatic. So I would say to my colleagues, at this point in time, for goodness' sake, let's not now start cutting back on the ability of our soldiers to have the resources they need to continue what they are doing. Let's not try to pass legislation that directs General Petraeus how to conduct operations in Iraq. What do a group of politicians in a dysfunctional Congress have to offer to one of the most brilliant generals this Nation has ever produced, General Petraeus? In a few short months he has achieved dramatic progress there. We are committed there. Our soldiers are committed. They are serving us now. I had an e-mail the other day sent to me from a relative of a soldier in Iraq. He was saying things are better. The only concern he had was what the Congress would do, whether we would pull the rug out from under them, if we are going to deny them the resources they need to continue the progress. After all this effort, to walk away from what we have done is, to me, unthinkable. We are at a point now where instead of giving a supplemental that will allow the military to plan the year's activities, plan to go forward with, as you know, General Petraeus's commitment to reduce troops by next summer, we are talking about a $50 billion supplemental with all kinds of strings attached to it. The President is not going to accept it. He cannot accept it. He is not going to accept it. So for us to continue to pursue a supplemental with excessive strings attached that is too small, leaves the military uncertain of the support of the American people and the Congress is a bad thing for us to do. It really is. It is not good. Well, they say, let's keep the military out there. Let's let them know we are watching them. We are going to keep control of them instead of giving them the funding they need for a year or more. Let's do it a few months at a time. Then we can bring them in here, and we can beat them up. We can appeal to our antiwar people out in the country and let them know we are fighting for them, and we will do all these things. And it won't hurt anything. But it does hurt. If you were walking the streets in Baghdad right now attempting to execute the policy of the United States, placing your life at risk, does it not make any difference to you whether Congress is behind you? I think it does make a difference. While questioning General Casey yesterday, the chief of staff of the Army, former commander in Iraq, I said, I am concerned that what we are doing is going to undermine the confidence American soldiers have in the support they have at home. It will embolden the enemy and make our allies less certain of our commitment. I said, I know you don't want to be drawn into a political debate, but that seems to be the situation. He summed it up this way. He said: Senator, as I said in my opening statement, it sends the wrong message. Doesn't it send the wrong message that we can't, after a full debate this summer, now continue for a few months to support our troops? They are in the field now. Why stand we here idle? Why are we not doing our part to show them the support they need? We will watch this situation in Iraq. If it gets worse and things are not moving effectively, then we ought to, as a Congress, continue to consider whether to remove our troops, to cut off funding. But that is not what we are going to do. We are not going to cut off funding for our troops while they are making the kind of progress they are making. It is not going to happen. So if we are going to actually follow through eventually and give this money to them, why don't we do it in a way that helps them to be even more successful instead of doing it in a way that makes it more difficult for them and places our soldiers and troops at greater risk? This is what the Deputy Secretary of Defense wrote a few days ago, November 8, about the budget situation we are now in. Yes, we did pass a Defense appropriations bill. But we funded the military effort in Iraq and Afghanistan by separate supplemental appropriations. It allows us to have more control over what is actually being spent on the war effort to do it separately. He wrote this letter. This is Secretary Gordon England: I am deeply concerned that the . . . Defense Appropriations Conference report under consideration does not provide necessary funding for military operations and will result in having to shut down significant portions of the Defense Department by early next year. He goes on to say: Without this critical funding, the Department will have no choice but to deplete key appropriations accounts by early next year. In particular, the Army's Operation and Maintenance account will be completely exhausted in mid-to- late January, and the limited general transfer authority available can only provide three additional weeks of relief. This situation will result in a profoundly negative impact on the defense civilian workforce, depot maintenance, base operations, and training activities. Specifically, the Department would have to begin notifications as early as next month to properly carry out the resultant closure of military facilities, furloughing of civilian workers, and deferral of contract activity. If you were Secretary of Defense, what would you do if you have soldiers in the field authorized by the Congress, authorized by the Commander in Chief, and you run out of money? You have to lay off your civilian personnel, and you have to get the money to the soldiers whose lives are at risk. Secretary England goes on to say: In addition, the lack of any funding for the Iraqi Security Forces and the Afghanistan National Security Forces directly undermines the United States' ability to continue training and equipping Iraqi and Afghani security forces, thereby lengthening the time until they can assume full security responsibilities. These are not idle threats. The money is running out. We ought not to be dangling the Defense Department out there, leaving them hanging with uncertainty, having them spend hours and hours figuring out how they are going to juggle personnel, developing plans to lay off nonessential civilian personnel, although I suppose in some sense are all essential, but laying off civilian personnel and canceling contracts. It will result in substantial expense to the Government for penalties and that kind of thing. We ought not to be doing that. This is what Secretary of the Army Geren said yesterday at the Armed Services Committee hearing: Let me just conclude with a brief comment on the supplemental. Very quickly we run through the resources that are available to us. Dr. Gates has told us to start planning for what we're going to do when we--if we reach the point where we do run out of our O&M funding and start making plans for what we as an army would do with that eventuality. He pleaded with us: Last year, we had bridge funding that helped us through this period. This year, we don't have that funding. So we just ask that--we know there are many issues you all are working on and working through regarding that supplemental. But it's very important for us to be able to provide the orderly and reliable support to our soldiers, for us to get that funding. Isn't that a reasonable request for him to make? I know moveon.org doesn't want us to fund the military. But we voted 80-14 to do this as a Senate, and the House also supported it. Why are we putting the military in a position to go through incredible gymnastics to try to manage this effort, because we are leaving them hanging about whether we are going to give them the money to support our troops? Senator John Thune of South Dakota, a member of the Armed Services Committee, asked this of General Casey. General Casey is the chief of staff of the Army. He asked: And I want to ask General Casey, if I might, a question because earlier this year the Army--it was at an Army posture hearing, I believe, that your predecessor, General Schoomaker, raised concerns about the effect of not delivering adequate and predictable funding, particularly in the form of supplemental funding for the war effort. We're 46 days into the first quarter of fiscal year 2008. We don't have an authorization bill. We don't have a bridge funding bill for the [Department of Defense]. And we don't have an [fiscal year 2008] global war on terror supplemental. Senator Thune goes on: We recently sent a defense appropriations bill to the president which he has signed into law, but that has little effect on the war effort. So my question is what will be the effect of no timely bridge funding or supplemental funding. Will you have to cancel service contracts, lay people off, slow down work at depots, those sorts of thing? If you could, address that subject. This is what General Casey said, a career military man: Secretary [of Defense] Gates has instructed us to begin planning for that possibility. The signing of the appropriations bill did two things. One, it gave us money for our base budget, but it also stopped the continuing resolution funding that was going to support the war. So now we're faced with having to fund the war without a bridge out of the base budget. Our Army O&M account is about $27 billion. When you look at our Army base budget . . . you're talking about $6.5 billion, $6.6 billion a month. If the Army is asked to fund this without any type of bridge or without any additional resources, we're going to run through that $27 billion . . . around mid February. And we cannot wait until then to start making some of the decisions that will have to be made. Our employment contracts, many of them, require 60 days' or 45 days' notice before you can furlough somebody. We have many of the services that are provided by civilians, by contractors, and it would have a hugely detrimental effect on the home base. We will beggar the home front to make sure our soldiers that are in theater have everything they need, and it will put a terrible burden on our soldiers, on families, on the institutional Army, our ability to train. Timely funding is absolutely essential. An organization of our size cannot live effectively with unpredictable funding. And we need that supplemental passed soon, or we're going to have to start planning for the possibility that we're not going to have it. Can anybody dispute that General Casey is exaggerating about that? Can anybody dispute that uncertainty in funding has a terrible impact on the Pentagon? Senator Thune asked another question: General Schoomaker also testified that the Army was forced to cash flow itself through the first quarter of . . . 2006. Could you explain what that means? And will the Army have to do that again? General Casey: We're in that position now. The O&M account is our account that offers us the greatest flexibility. Most of the other accounts are constrained by specific--we call the term color of money. But we would find ourselves having to spend the O&M money not only to support the Army but to support also the war effort. So we are in that position today and using up the funds at a rate of $6.5 billion a month against a $27 billion total. So I hope in the weeks to come our leaders in the Senate will begin to work together in a way that can allow us to approve this funding-- that I think with certainty we will ultimately approve--sooner rather than later and not go through this painful exercise. I have to say, I really think it would be a lot better for our country, I think it would be a lot better for our military, I think it would be a lot better for our allies, and I think it would put us in a much better position against our enemies if the leader of the Senate, the majority leader, would quit saying this is a doomed, failed effort. It is not helpful. We have voted to support this effort, and we do not need to be saying publicly it is not going to work when, in fact, we are achieving more success today than any of us would have thought possible just a few weeks ago. I thank the Chair and yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, this summer, we had grim numbers coming out of Iraq and we had an election and we went through a soul-searching analysis of what to do. By an 80-to-14 vote, this Senate voted to send General Petraeus to Iraq and give him a chance to succeed. We had his full report in September. We had other reports from General Jones and GAO, and we concluded to continue this. In recent weeks, progress has exceeded what we could have expected possible. This is not the right time to tie the hands of our military leaders. It is not the right thing to do--to leave any doubt that we are going to support the troops we have sent into harm's way. I urge colleagues to not leave our troops in uncertainty and stand firm with a policy that seems to be working. Let's continue to monitor it. If it fails, we need to know that. But, right now, things are going well, and it would be wrong to undermine that in any way.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. There is another matter of some importance. A number of Senators have demanded that Judge Mukasey make express statements of law regarding the separation of powers, and they have asked him these questions as a condition of his confirmation. Several Senators alluded to private conversations in which they say Judge Mukasey stated that a President cannot act outside the parameters set by the legislative branch, I guess on most any matter. Particularly, I guess it dealt with FISA. I believe this contradicts the fundamental separation of powers set forth in the Constitution by our Founding Fathers. The oath the President takes is to faithfully execute the Office of the President and to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is written in the Constitution. While the original FISA statute was being debated in 1978, then Carter administration Attorney General Judge Griffin Bell testified: The current bill recognizes no inherent power of the President to conduct electronic surveillance, and I want to interpolate here to say that this does not take away the power of the President under the Constitution. I associate myself with the remarks of Griffin Bell and recognize that nothing we can do in this Congress can impede on the powers vested in the Executive by the Constitution. Congress cannot curtail the constitutional powers of the Executive by statutory law.

Mr. SESSIONS. One additional minute.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I believed we were moving toward a very harmonious vote on Judge Mukasey's confirmation. I have been disappointed that has not occurred. Opponents have latched on to complaints about torture and a specific classified procedure that Judge Mukasey has never seen or studied in detail. Since he refused to express a legal opinion on that one specific technique, they have asserted that he supports torture, and many have decided to vote against him. I think that is unfair to the judge. I will recall that Judge Mukasey was called to the attention of the President through Senator Schumer who has spoken highly of him and who voted for him in the committee, as did Senator Feinstein, two Democratic colleagues. Senator Schumer apparently has known him and his reputation in New York for some time. The President attempted to reach out and to pick a nominee who appeared to be above politics, apart from politics, a person who had a history of competence and integrity. Being a Federal judge is about as removed from the normal give and take of politics and compromise and wheeling and dealing as you can get. And he served in that position for many years but also had experience as an assistant U.S. attorney involved in leading a public corruption section in New York which was pretty sizable and important and dealt with a lot of important cases. He was on the Law Review at Yale and has all of the kind of academics credentials and practical experience you would look for and is the kind of U.S. Attorney General I, and I think people of both parties can feel comfortable with. I really do believe that. I was hopeful we would see a nominee such as Larry Thompson, a longtime friend of mine. He served as former Deputy Attorney General of the United States, a former U.S. attorney; Ted Olson, who served as Solicitor General; or former Attorney General Bill Barr. These are a few individuals who would be considered normal Republican appointees for this position and whose views are well known to be in accord with those of the President on most issues. But, instead, the President reached out and appointed someone who appeared to have strong bipartisan support. I am sorry we have had some of these complaints because I think they distort the record and what the judge actually said in his testimony and are inaccurate in a number of different ways. The issue of torture has been discussed in great detail. But in many ways it has not been handled with accuracy, and the issues have not been squarely addressed. They have been sort of sloughed over, and he has been accused of things, and others, including the President and former Attorney Generals and the military and other people have been accused of things in an inaccurate fashion. I think I would like to make a few comments about how I see the legal situation that we find ourselves in and how things have developed. Prior to the Supreme Court's ruling in 2006 in Hamdan, a legitimate position, clearly, for the United States was that our personnel, when they were dealing with unlawful combatants, were bound by the torture statute, title 18, U.S. Code, Section 2340. That is the controlling statutory authority. It defined torture. It was passed overwhelmingly by Congress in 1994. It was passed by a vote of 92 to 8. Every current member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who was here in the Senate in 1994 voted for it. Senator Biden, Senator Feingold, Senator Feinstein, Senator Grassley, Senator Hatch, Senator Kennedy, Senator Kohl, Senator Leahy, and Senator Specter all voted for this act. I asked Mr. Jack Goldsmith, former head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice under President Bush who resigned because he was not happy with some of the things that were being done, about the legal landscape regarding torture prior to the Hamdan decision--and he wrote a book about it. I asked Mr. Goldsmith about the landscape prior to Hamdan--which found that the Common Article III of the Geneva Convention applied to enemy unlawful combatants detained at Guantanamo Bay. But that decision did not occur until the summer of 2006, so prior to that, pretty clearly, the authority that controlled the U.S. military in dealing with unlawful combatants, which we, I think, had every right to conclude were not covered by the Geneva Conventions, was the torture statute Congress passed in 1994. That is the statute that our military was compelled to comply with. And so the statute on torture is pretty clear. The people who drafted it wanted to make sure that whether in the United States or out of the United States that persons in our custody ought not to be tortured. That certainly is an honorable and appropriate goal, and they did that. They passed this statute in which they defined torture: As used in this chapter (1) ``torture'' means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control; (2) ``severe mental pain or suffering'' means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from-- (A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering. And it goes on. Playing music or segregating a prisoner or giving one prisoner less food or less quality food than you give another one, placing them in stressful conditions clearly does not qualify under this torture statute as inflicting severe physical or mental pain. Our military had lawyers. As Mr. Goldsmith, who was a critic, really, of this administration's behavior, said in his testimony and in his book, they were awash with lawyers. They had lawyers all over the place. Everything was read by lawyers. He said the CIA had 100 lawyers. I don't know how many in the Department of Defense and others he made reference to were there trying to figure out how to conduct interrogations at a time when our country had been attacked, 3,000 people had been killed, and we were trying to figure out if there were other cells in our country and other groups prepared to kill more Americans. I remember when Senator John Ashcroft was nominated for Attorney General, and they were jumping on him about all of this and what should be done and what they had heard that somebody might have done. An exasperated then-Senator, Attorney General nominee Ashcroft responded to one question in frustration by saying: Well, the problem I have with you, Senator, is, it is not my definition of torture that counts, it is the one you enacted into law. So that is what we enacted into law. If people are not happy with it--I think it is a legitimate statute, but if they are not happy with it, so be it. That is the one we passed into law. Our lawyers were telling our intelligence people and others who were apprehending terrorists who were committed to destroying America that they had to comply with this statute.

Mr. SESSIONS. The purported conversations that Senators indicate they have had apparently took place in private settings and not in a confirmation hearing held by the Judiciary Committee where these statements could be made a part of the record or cross-examined or where the words could be recorded with any accuracy. These types of promises, though touted as justification for a vote, perhaps, are not legislative history and have not been made a part of the record of this nomination. They cannot be a part of a legislative history of any kind. Furthermore, I would suggest that if Judge Mukasey did, in fact, say that in a categorical manner, which I really doubt, he would be in error. Any President has certain constitutional powers that cannot be taken away by statute. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. One additional minute.

Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I just have a comment to add to those of Senator Bond about the danger to farmers of making mistakes on energy policy. Energy prices are rising significantly. I saw some numbers recently that indicated for an average family, where one person commuted 29 miles to work every day, $3-a-gallon gasoline could mean $60 to $80 a month more than they would pay for gasoline alone. That is after-tax money out of their pockets. That is a real cost. We absolutely need to strengthen the energy portion of this bill. We need to do more to have a domestic supply of energy. But we also need to be sure we are not driving up the cost of energy so it falls hard on people such as farmers who utilize a lot of energy and a lot of gasoline and diesel fuel. It could be a real problem for them. I agree with Senator Bond that we need to be careful about this because we should not have as our goal driving up the cost of energy. A lot of the policies I am hearing about are going to have little impact on the environment but a lot of impact on our wallets. My thoughts about the Ag bill are that I hope we will be able to pass a bill we can be proud of. I hope to be able to support it. That is what I am looking to do. I will offer an amendment or file it a little later--I know we are not voting on them now--to deal with assisting farmers who suffer losses from disasters in their region. It can be painful for them. I would like to share some thoughts on this. Our current crop insurance, as valuable as it is, has not proven to provide a fully adequate financial safety net for our farmers. The current system can be too expensive and not flexible enough. Farmers come to me all the time and say: I would like to plow under this crop and replant now, but the insurance people think if I let it go to full maturity, I might make enough money off of it that I wouldn't have to claim any insurance. So you have to wait on the insurance people before making a decision. They come out there. They have to make judgments. This is a burden. It can eliminate quick decisionmaking and can be costly. According to the Congressional Research Service, the Government- subsidized Crop Insurance Program has expanded significantly over the last 25 years, and that is what we wanted to happen. We wanted more farmers to take out crop insurance. But yet CRS has found that despite this expansion, the ``anticipated goal of crop insurance replacing disaster payments has not been achieved.'' Indeed, CRS reports that since 2000, ``the federal subsidy to the Crop Insurance Program has averaged about $3.25 billion per year, up from an annual average of $1.1 billion in the 1990s and about $500 million in the 1980s. During this same time, from 1999 to 2006, CRS reports that the average per year ad hoc periodic disaster payment to fund persons who need payments in addition to the crop insurance has totaled $1.3 billion a year. Since 2002, CRS reports that the cost to the Federal Government of Crop Insurance Programs combined with ad hoc supplemental disaster payments has averaged $4.5 billion per year. According to the Risk Management Agency, a group that supervises crop insurance, the average subsidy rate for this year--that is the average subsidy rate, the amount of money the taxpayers provide to subsidize a farmer's crop insurance--amounted to 58 percent of a producer's total crop insurance premium. The average amount of the Government subsidy is $3,359. I am convinced for some farmers--I don't know how many--more flexibility could result in more benefits for those farmers. That is, of course, what we are about, trying to make sure we get the maximum possible disaster risk protection we can for our farmers. Farmers do have a real need for a viable risk management strategy. Certainly, farmers need some form of protection when disasters strike. But these numbers do demonstrate the traditional crop insurance coverage on a commodity-by-commodity basis alone often does not provide the kind of adequate risk protection every farmer needs. In 1999, a committee formed by the Alabama Farmers Federation, our largest farm group affiliated with the Farm Bureau and tasked with developing ways to improve traditional crop insurance, proposed a solution to many of the problems farmers experienced with crop insurance. This is not an idea I came up with; it was an idea the farmers themselves came up with. Ricky Wiggins from South Alabama has farmed all his life and was one of the people who really captured this idea and has pushed it. So this committee recommended that the farmers be given a choice between traditional crop insurance and opening a new account in which they could deposit some of their own money and then receive a modest contribution from the Government. Money that would normally have gone to subsidize insurance would go into this farm security account. My amendment would simply direct that the Secretary of Agriculture implement a pilot program creating these accounts. My pilot program would be limited to 1 percent of eligible farmers or approximately 20,000. These farm savings accounts would allow the farmers to create a whole-farm risk management plan based on the income of the entire farm. Because you have a lot of complications now. If one crop succeeds, and another one fails, or two of them are weak and two of them are the kind of crops for which there is no insurance available at all, then things do not work out fairly for the farmer. Farm savings accounts would serve as a possible alternative or supplement in these instances to traditional crop insurance. Under this proposal, participating producers would deposit money, previously utilized to buy crop insurance--money they would normally be paying to a crop insurance company--into a farm savings account, a tax- deferred, interest-bearing account. The Department of Agriculture would then contribute to the account rather than subsidizing a portion of the producer's crop insurance premium, which is, on average, 58 percent. The producer would put the government contribution into the same account, subsidizing the account in that fashion. Then there would be no further liability on the Department of Agriculture after this point. The farmer, the producer would be self-insured and would not be calling on the Government for additional disaster relief. Under farm savings accounts, a minimum contribution by the producer of at least 2 percent of their 3-year average gross income would be required annually, up to a maximum amount of 150 percent. Interest and income to the account would not be taxed as earned income, but withdrawals would be treated as regular income. Account funds would be invested in low-risk guaranteed securities such as CDs or Government securities. Withdrawals from farm savings accounts would be allowed if gross income in any given year falls below 80 percent of the farmer's 3-year average gross income. The amount of the withdrawal would be restricted to the difference between 80 percent of the 3-year average and the actual gross income of that year. For example, if a producer, who typically earns $100,000 a year, makes $70,000, then they would be allowed to withdraw $10,000 from their farm savings account, their emergency insurance account, to bring their annual income up to $80,000. However, if the producer made $90,000 that year, a withdrawal would not be allowed at all. Catastrophic coverage would still be required to participate in this pilot program, because if you have a total loss, then an individual savings account would not be enough to cover it. The producer would be eligible to purchase any additional crop insurance, but it would be completely unsubsidized. In addition, farm savings accounts could be used as collateral in obtaining loans connected with the farming operation. These accounts would be closed if the producer ceased farming for nonfarm employment, retirement or bankruptcy. The remaining balance would be taxed as regular income. The USDA has reported that farm savings accounts may overcome some of the disadvantages of current crop insurance programs. These accounts would encourage farmers to manage risks unique to their operation by saving money in high-income years and using it during years in which income is low. While coverage would depend on the reserves in individual accounts, these accounts would be applied to a variety of farming situations. In addition, the USDA has found these accounts could encourage greater participation in the agriculture safety net by farmers than is currently experienced. Some producers are not even offered the opportunity to purchase insurance for their crops--because of the nature of their crops and the nature of crop insurance, they cannot get insurance--making them more dependent on the ad hoc disaster payments we wrestle with on the floor of the Senate. For example, CRS reports that specialty crop and livestock producers are not afforded the same level of protection for their commodities as the major commodities. Recently, my amendment has been mischaracterized as undermining the level of risk protection provided for farmers. Yet simply taking Government funding previously used as a subsidy for insurance premiums and, instead, using it as an incentive to encourage savings for disasters is not undermining the level of risk protection for the farmers. This is an important distinction. Giving farmers a choice between traditional crop insurance and a new program based on producers saving their own money in a tax-deferred, interest-bearing account actually increases, I submit, the level of risk protection for farmers, particularly since we would require catastrophic coverage to participate in the Farm Savings Account pilot program. Allowing for more approaches to risk management actually gives farmers the opportunity to choose the plan they consider to be better suited for their particular operation. By providing a choice between different risk management strategies, our Government can offer more protection to a greater number of farmers at less of a cost by decreasing the need for these ad hoc disaster payments we so often do. Purchasing crop insurance coverage commodity by commodity, as we do now, may make sense if you grow one or two crops on your farm, but traditional crop insurance may not be the best option if you grow four, five or six commodities in your area of the country. Instead of countless premium payments that are paid by producers each year but not necessarily used, the participating producer can save that hard-earned money himself and receive a modest Government contribution to assist in providing his own risk protection. Farm savings accounts can also provide producers much needed flexibility in managing their operation by overcoming some of the constraints of traditional crop insurance. Under the current system, producers who want to make decisions on how to manage their farm operation when a disaster strikes are often forced to jump through numerous bureaucratic hoops before they are allowed to execute their own decision on their own farm about how they want to manage the crops that are being damaged by a disaster--a drought or flood or freeze. For example, under the current system, producers who want to cut their corn for silage to feed their cattle in a drought year--because they realize the corn crop is not going to be sufficient to actually harvest in the fall--must first get permission from the crop insurance companies and the Federal Government. So you have to have people come out and inspect the farm and argue over whether you should be able to cut the corn prematurely or let it stay in the field in the hope that there will be more rain and maybe a worthwhile crop at the end. Why not give that decisionmaking authority to the farmer? It would save a lot of overhead, I submit. And there is, as we know, some sizable amount of fraud in the crop insurance program. Farm Savings Accounts would greatly eliminate the risk of fraudulent behavior by those participating in the pilot program. Farm Savings Accounts will allow the producers to make their own choices on how to manage their farm operations. If their income drops, they will be able to draw into that account to bring it up to 80 percent of their 3-year average income. I think it has great potential. Simply put, this plan would offer an alternative to some producers who might choose it, and it could encourage broader participation in risk management plans than we have today because a lot of farmers do not participate in any insurance or risk management plans. In combination with traditional crop insurance, farm savings accounts, I believe, will save the taxpayers money by reducing the need for continual bailouts in the form of ad hoc payments and will give farmers more flexibility. If things go well, the farmer may, indeed, create a savings account that can help take care of them in their retirement years. I ask my colleagues to consider this pilot project amendment. It in no way represents a major shift in what we are doing now. It represents a pilot project for 1 percent of farmers. The regulations would be set forth by the Department of Agriculture. At the conclusion of the program several years from now, perhaps we will see it was not a very good program. But perhaps we will find it has great potential--and the farmers who are using it like it--and perhaps more farmers might like to participate. We should consider that in the years to come. I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.