Ken Salazar

Mr. SALAZAR

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. SALAZAR. Would my friend from Tennessee yield for a question?

Mr. SALAZAR. How much is left on the other side?

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President may I inquire as to how much time is left?

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I thank Senator Reid and state his eloquence today, in terms of pointing out issues and concerns with respect to the Inhofe amendment, is very much appreciated. I want to reiterate to my colleagues on the floor of the Senate today that I am asking for your support for an amendment that will unify America, that will say that English is in fact the language of the land and that we will work to make sure English is the common language of America. I am also here to ask my colleagues to vote against the amendment of Senator Inhofe because I am concerned about the unintended consequences that will flow from the proposal which Senator Inhofe has offered. Let me say there can be no doubt at all that English is, in fact, the unifying language of America. In my own State of Colorado, as I look at some of the statistics on the number of people who are waiting in long lines to learn English, it is an incredibly long line. In the five- county Denver-Metro area, adult ESL programs working with the Department of Education have 5,000 people enrolled in those programs. They have a waiting list that is up to 2 months, because there are so many people in the Denver metropolitan area who want to learn English. This debate is not about the endangerment of English in America today. People in America understand that we conduct our business in English, that we are conducting our business in the Senate today in English. The people of America understand that the keystone to opportunity is learning the English language, and you need not look any further than the number of people who are enrolled in educational classes, trying to learn English to know they understand that very fact. The concern with the amendment of Senator Inhofe is that you are going to have unintended consequences that will flow from the language of the amendment. Many of my colleagues have spoken about those unintended consequences. I want to focus on one particular aspect of that which I find to be very un-American and that is the fact that when you allow for discrimination to occur on the basis of national origin, on the basis of race, on the basis of gender, on the basis of language, that we are taking a step backward in the progress that America has made. None of us wants to revisit what has happened in the history of America as we have moved forward as a nation to become a much more inclusive nation and a nation that celebrates the diversity that makes us a strong nation. None of us wants to revisit the latter half of the last century, when segregation was sanctioned under the law until 1954, and until the Civil Rights Act. None of us want to move back into those dark days of American history. Yet the fact remains today we still have some of that discrimination that exists in our society. We have example after example, personal examples we can cite about people who have been the victims of language discrimination. When we elevate one language, in the manner that Senator Inhofe has attempted to do in his amendment, above every other language, what will happen as an unintended consequence of his amendment is that you will usher in, in my judgment, a new era of language discrimination in America. I do not believe that ushering in a new era of language discrimination in America is something that will be helpful to us as we struggle in this 21st century to make sure that we maintain the strongest America, the strongest Nation possible in our world. I ask people, those of you who are concerned about language discrimination in America, to vote against the amendment of Senator Inhofe on that point. Let me conclude by saying that the amendment we have proposed today talks about the importance of English and the importance of unifying America through the English language. I believe we can work together. I believe that will require the immigrants to whom we are trying to address the immigration reform package to learn English. It is important that they learn English. As I conclude my portion of this discussion, I think back to a mother and a father who in the 1940s were part of that greatest of generations fighting for the freedom of America--a father in World War II as a soldier, and a mother at the age of 20 speaking Spanish but coming to Washington to work in the Pentagon. They were victims of language discrimination. That generation was a victim of language discrimination. They would have had maybe the same opportunities I have had if they had been part of an America that fully understood they would be treated the same as those who speak languages other than English. But I do not want us to go back in the history of our country to a place where we are darkened again by that discrimination which existed in the 1940s or the 1950s. My fear is that the amendment that my good friend from Oklahoma is offering today will open the door once again to that history of discrimination, which I find very pernicious. I yield the floor.

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, in response to the colloquy I am having with my friend from Tennessee, it seems to me this language could be read that Senator Inhofe has proposed to say that because we are a Government Chamber, since we do not have a law that proactively says-- or a rule of the Senate--that you can speak a language other than English here, perhaps when we were speaking about Attorney General Gonzales, we would have been in violation of this exact provision if it stays in the same language. To continue my question to the Senator, my friend from Tennessee, it was not at all our intention in the drafting of the amendment to take away any of the requirements we have for people who come here under this immigration proposal to learn English or to go through the civics courses which are required now for the legislation that has been included in here. So it is my view that the Senator has misread the amendment we have supported.

Mr. SALAZAR. I say to my friend from Tennessee, not too long ago in the Senate, we entered into a debate concerning the nomination of Attorney General Gonzales to be Attorney General of the United States. There were Members of this Senate who came to the Senate and spoke eloquently in Spanish about why he should be confirmed, including Senator Martinez. Would the Inhofe amendment make it illegal for that kind of activity to occur in the Senate?

Mr. SALAZAR

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, my friend from Massachusetts is correct. We stand firmly for the proposition that we need to absolutely secure our borders. Indeed, if we fail to address the reality of 11 million people living in the shadows of the United States today, we will have failed to achieve the national security objective. If one thinks about what happened in the days after 9/11, our Government ought to know who is living in our society. We cannot know that when we have 11 million people living in the shadows. Those people need to be brought out of the shadows, they need to be brought out into the sunlight, they need to be registered, they need to pay a fine, they need to learn English, and they need to do the rest of the things we talk about in this legislation. The very fundamental principle of an immigration law to provide us with national security in America will be altered if we are not able to move forward with the implementation of those provisions of the law. The proposal which my good friend from Georgia has proposed, the Isakson amendment, would essentially gut the sense of our comprehensive immigration reform bill because we would not be able to deal with that reality and we would not be able to deal with the guest worker program that the President of the United States is proposing.

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, as we come back to the floor of the Senate today to take up this issue of national security and the national urgency on workable immigration law, I want to first say that I applaud my colleagues both on the Democratic and the Republican sides who have been working so hard to move forward with a comprehensive immigration reform package. I also want to say thank you to the President of the United States of America for his statement last night to the Nation, in which he appealed to the best interests of America to come together and develop a comprehensive immigration reform package. I believe it is worthwhile to quote again from what the President said last night. Tonight I want to speak directly to Members of the House and the Senate. An immigration reform bill needs to be comprehensive because all elements of this problem must be addressed together, or none of them will be solved at all. The House has passed an immigration bill. The Senate should act by the end of this month so that we can work out the differences between the two bills and Congress can pass a comprehensive bill for me to sign into law. Again, he said we need to work on this problem together, on all of its elements, or none of the elements will be solved. Mr. President, amendment No. 3994 is an amendment that takes a very different approach from the Senator from Georgia, my good friend, Senator Isakson. As chairman Specter noted on the floor yesterday, the proponents of the Isakson amendment take the view that we ought to have all our border-strengthening and security measures in place before we address any aspect of this problem. I don't think that that is an effective approach. In the past, for the last 20 years, when we have tried to approach immigration issues by only looking at one issue at a time, we have failed. We have continually thrown money at a problem to increase border security through funding. Yet our borders continue to be porous and broken, and the lawlessness that comes with that is something we see across America. I don't believe we should let this crisis fester. I don't believe we should continue to tolerate those being in the shadows of society, the 11 million undocumented workers in this country today. I don't believe we in the Senate should stand in the way of a comprehensive immigration reform that has extensive bipartisan support in this body. It is very clear to all of us today that the current situation is inadequate and there is a lot of work that needs to be done. I want to move ahead on all fronts and take the comprehensive approach that has been discussed on this floor, and a comprehensive approach which the President himself has endorsed. National security is at the heart of a workable immigration law, and we should not allow an immigration law to go into effect if it will not address the national security interests of the United States. That is at the heart of my amendment. My amendment is a very simple amendment. As the clerk read that amendment, it was very clear and straightforward, and it simply requires the President of the United States to make a determination that the national security of the United States will be strengthened by the following programs: Title IV, which includes the new guest worker program, and title VI, which includes the provisions relating to the 11 million undocumented workers who are living in the shadows of America today; and it also includes the bipartisan changes to immigration that have been forged in this body by leaders such as Senator Craig and Senator Feinstein on agriculture jobs and the DREAM Act, which is another bipartisan measure. Under our amendment, those provisions of the bill cannot be implemented unless and until the President of the United States finds that it is in the national interest and for national security that those provisions of the legislation be implemented. Senator Isakson's amendment, on the other hand, is designed to weaken this comprehensive approach. The approach of my friend from Georgia would focus only on border enforcement. When we look at the history of the last 20 years, approaches that have focused on border enforcement only have been approaches that have not succeeded in dealing with the issue of immigration. I agree with President Bush that we need to address this issue in a comprehensive manner, and I urge my colleagues to support amendment No. 3994. At the end of the day, it seems to me that those of us in this body who recognize the importance of this issue need to understand that the stool has to have three legs for us to develop comprehensive immigration reform. First, we need to secure our borders. In the legislation we have proposed, there are multiple provisions that deal with the strengthening of our borders, including the doubling of the number of Border Patrol officers, bringing in new technology that would allow us to make sure we know who is coming and going across our borders, and a number of other provisions that are intended to ensure that our borders become secure. The second leg of that stool is making sure that we are enforcing our immigration laws within our country. We have not done an adequate job of enforcing our immigration laws in this country. The President acknowledged that reality as well. Our legislation will make sure that we are enforcing our immigration laws within the interior of our country. The third leg on that stool is to make sure we are addressing the human and economic reality of the 11 million people who currently live in an undocumented status in America today. Sometimes when we get into these debates on the Senate floor, it is a discussion about policy, but it is also important for us never to forget why we are here, and never to forget that there are, in fact, millions of human beings who are very much affected by the current system of lawlessness on our borders. Sadly, last year, over 300 people died trying to cross the border. In my own community, over the last several Sundays, I heard a Catholic priest talk about how it is that people were dying of thirst and hunger in the deserts of Arizona and places such as Texas. I heard my colleague, my friend from Arizona, Senator John McCain, speak eloquently and passionately about this issue. Since 1998, more than 2,000 men, women, and children have lost their lives crossing the border between Mexico and the United States. That is not what we are about in America. Anywhere else in America if we had 2,000 people dying, the people of America would be standing up and saying we must do something to correct this problem and to correct it in a way that is going to work. That is why a comprehensive solution is needed in this situation. That is why my amendment No. 3994 was proposed. It will help us move down the road to developing that comprehensive immigration reform package. I thank the Chair, and I yield the remainder of my time to the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. SALAZAR. My understanding was that under the unanimous consent agreement that had been entered into by the floor managers, the next hour would be divided equally between the Senator from Georgia in relation to his amendment, as well as the amendment that I would be offering following the Senator from Georgia.

Mr. SALAZAR. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President.

Mr. SALAZAR. I thank the Chair.

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, my friend from Massachusetts is, in fact, correct. We need to deal with the entire set of immigration issues today, including the illegal hiring of people in this country. The provisions we have set forward in this bill will allow us to, in fact, bring those people who are here illegally and who are undocumented out of the shadows so we can address the national security interests. My amendment requires the President of the United States to basically say that before the guest worker program is implemented, the President has to determine that it is in the interest of national security for us to implement those provisions; that before we move forward with the program that addresses the reality of 11 million undocumented workers, the President of the United States shall acknowledge and make a statement that, in fact, it is in the national security interests of the United States of America. That is why this amendment is a much better, preferred approach than the amendment which is being offered by my friend from Georgia.

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I agree with my friend from Massachusetts. In fact, that would happen. We would have 11 million workers who probably would continue to work as they have been working now, for some of them decades in this country, and that the system of illegality in terms of employers hiring undocumented workers is simply a system that is going to continue into the future unabated. That is why it is so essential that we move forward with this issue in a comprehensive approach. Last night the President was absolutely correct in his statement that we cannot deal with this issue of immigration reform in a piecemeal manner. We have to deal with it in a comprehensive manner that addresses the issue of 11 million undocumented workers who are in this country today.

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3994 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. SALAZAR. I ask unanimous consent Senator Martinez be added as a cosponsor to amendment No. 3994, which is my amendment.

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, let me reiterate that the approach which was outlined by the President, which the bipartisan coalition of Senators has been working on, is a comprehensive approach. History has shown that when we take only one aspect of immigration reform, we fail. We failed in 1986. We failed at different efforts over the last 20 years. This time, we have to get it right. The President of the United States is right when he ultimately stated last night that we need comprehensive immigration reform. The proposed amendment by my colleague from the State of Georgia, and my good friend, essentially would take what are the 54 provisions of title I in this piece of legislation we are currently considering, going from section 101 all the way to section 154. It essentially would say that we are only going to be about a border enforcement bill without dealing with the other aspects of the legislation which is proposed. He would leave on the side what we do to bring the 11 million people who are here out of the shadows and get them registered in a system where we can monitor them, make sure if they are criminals they are deported, make sure if they are law-abiding citizens we put them in a kind of guest worker program that will work, and his provision essentially would gut this bill. The proposal of my good friend from Georgia is no different in most respects from what came out of the House of Representatives. It is a border-enforcement-only bill. It has been said time and time again that if we are going to address the issue of immigration reform, we need to do it in a comprehensive manner. We need to move with border enforcement, and our legislation does that. The President's statement last night that in the meantime we will go ahead and have the National Guard assist us in making sure we are securing our borders needs to be followed. Second, we need to make sure we are enforcing our immigration laws within the interior of our country. Our legislation proposes to do that. Third, we need to deal with the reality of the bill and the elephant in the room--the 11 million people who are living here in the United States today. We need to bring them out of the shadows. My friend from Georgia would propose to leave them in the shadows for an indefinite period of time, whether it be 5 years, 20 years, or 30 years, whatever it might be. That will not work. We need to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform today. I urge my colleagues to oppose the Isakson amendment and to support the amendment which I have offered. I yield my time back to the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. SALAZAR

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, access to affordable, quality health care is on the minds of virtually every American. As I travel across my State of Colorado and this nation, people urge me and my colleagues in Congress to solve our health care crisis. I rise today to again add my voice to the millions calling for meaningful, comprehensive health care reform--reform that allows Americans to get the health care that they need; reform that will stop the crippling effect that the rising costs of health care has on our citizens, businesses and economy. Last year, Senator McCain and I introduced the National Commission on Health Care Act, S. 2007. Its purpose is simple and bold--to fix our broken health care system. The need to reform our health care system could not be more compelling. An astounding 46 million Americans lack health insurance. They come from every community, every walk of life, and every race and ethnic group. But the most telling part about them is that they come from working families who struggle to put food on their tables and pay their bills. They live in constant fear of getting sick. When they get sick, they often go without medical care and get sicker. For those fortunate enough to have health insurance, the picture is also grim. Health insurance premiums for family coverage have risen by over 59 percent since 2000, with the average annual premiums for employer-sponsored family coverage costing nearly $11,000. Rising premiums place working families at risk of joining the ranks of the uninsured. Rising health care coverage has also threatened the ability of American businesses to maintain insurance coverage for their employees and compete on a global level. Congress must act now to reform our system. We need much more than a week of gimmicks or piecemeal bills. We need comprehensive reform. S. 2007 reflects that need. The act creates a bipartisan commission of 10 elder states men and women. I want to stress that this is a bipartisan commission. Our health care crisis is not a Democratic or Republican problem. It is a national problem that we must solve together. The members will conduct a thorough investigation into our health care system, building on the work of others to comprehensively look at availability, affordability, quality and costs relating to our health care system. It will look at the uninsured, the small business insurance market, the increases in premiums and health care costs, and the problems that businesses face in maintaining insurance coverage. The commission will study our government programs and the private health insurance industry. And, most importantly, the commission will develop comprehensive proposals and recommendations to actually solve problems associated with our Nation's health care system. It is not enough to chip away at the problem by enacting policies related to one aspect of our health care system. We need a comprehensive study and comprehensive solutions. The National Commission on Health Care will not duplicate the very important work that has already been done by other commissions and think tanks. What it will do is study the proposals from a comprehensive perspective, engage business, labor, health care, consumer, insurance and other groups to develop workable policies that if enacted will solve the crisis we face today. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass the Commission Act to reform our broken health care system. Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes to talk about the Medicare prescription drug program. I want to talk about the need to extend the deadline for seniors and people with disabilities and I want to talk about the rural, independent pharmacies that have suffered because of implementation problems with the drug program. I was not a member of this esteemed body when the Medicare Modernization Act creating this program was enacted. I therefore have no political stake in defending or criticizing the drug program. I have every interest, however, in making sure that the program is properly implemented and that our seniors and people with disabilities have adequate time and accurate resources with which to make decisions about what plans best meet their health care needs. I strongly support Senator Bill Nelson's legislation extending the deadline for seniors and people with disabilities to enroll in the program. I want to thank Senator Bill Nelson for his commitment to ensure that seniors and people with disabilities have adequate time and accurate information to make wise decisions about their prescription drug insurance. In less than 1 week, seniors will face the deadline for enrollment in the prescription drug program. For many seniors and their family members, selecting an appropriate prescription plan is a difficult and challenging endeavor. I know firsthand how time-consuming and difficult it is to navigate through the various plans to select the plan that meets the needs of an individual senior. Several weeks ago, I helped my 82-year-old mother select a prescription drug program. In Colorado, there are over 42 plans to choose from--each covering different drugs or formularies as they are known, each with different monthly premiums; each with different copayments, each with different drug prices, and each with different participating pharmacies. I speak from experience--the process is daunting. My offices have been helping many Coloradans with questions on Medicare prescription drug program. Often, individuals have called my office in exasperation, trying to find a friendly voice to help them through this process. My staff has assisted these individuals. However, many seniors continue to put off signing up for the program because they are confused and nervous. In Colorado, there are still over 100,000 individuals who are eligible to enroll in the plans who have not. Coloradans consistently tell me that they need more time to make sure they review reliable accurate information to select the right plan. They should have that time. The complexity of the plans and the importance of the choice that seniors and the disabled must make dictate that we allow them more time to make these important decisions regarding their health. Beyond the complexity of the program, seniors and people with disabilities need more time because of the government's own inability to provide reliable information and available help to navigate the choices they are being asked to make. Just this month the Government Accountability Office released a report that highlighted the government's own shortcomings with respect to the implementation of the drug benefit. The report highlighted that the Medicare help-lines were not providing accurate information for beneficiaries with questions about enrollment. Posing as seniors and senior advocates, the GAO made calls to the Medicare help-line with questions about how the program works. Astonishingly, the GAO often could not get through to an operator! When the GAO staff did finally get through to an operator, the information specialists often could not answer their questions about the drug benefit, could not help them with questions about specific plans, and could not provide the detailed information that seniors need to enroll. If the government that administers this program could not provide timely, adequate information to beneficiaries, how can we hold them to an artificial deadline? Our seniors and people with disabilities deserve better. They certainly do not deserve to be penalized. Individuals who miss the approaching deadline will not have an opportunity to enroll until November. In turn, they will face increased premiums and co-pays. And these costs increase the longer the individual waits. Seniors should not be punished for the government's inability to provide them with information with which to make a choice regarding their health. We need to help our seniors in this process, by giving them the time and resources needed to make the best decision for them. I also want to speak in support of Senator Lautenberg's Pharmacists Medicare Relief Act of 2006 to modify the Medicare drug benefit to allow pharmacies to get timely payment from prescription drug plans. As we all know, pharmacies operating in rural towns and communities, like my hometown in Colorado, are important components of the community's already fragile health care delivery system. Because rural residents tend to be older and have more chronic conditions, pharmacy services to rural residents are particularly important. The Medicare drug program has threatened the very survival of some rural pharmacies because of the manner in which the plans pay the pharmacies. These pharmacies must pay their wholesalers on a weekly or biweekly basis. Unfortunately, the prescription drug plans reimburse the pharmacies every 6 weeks. The discrepancy in payment has seriously affected the business of many pharmacies, and particularly pharmacies in rural communities. Fortunately, there is a simple fix: require the plans to reimburse the pharmacies every 14 days. That is exactly what Senator Lautenberg's legislation will do. This legislation would require the plans to pay pharmacists within 14 days if the claims are submitted electronically, and 30 days if the claims are submitted by paper. The legislation also prohibits plans from cobranding Medicare beneficiaries eligibility cards--which means that it bans brands or names of pharmacies from being printed on the prescription drug cards, so that large pharmacies cannot use this advertising advantage at the expense of small operations. These simple fixes will enable pharmacies in rural areas to continue to serve beneficiaries. Our rural pharmacies and the seniors and disabled people they serve deserve our best efforts to correct problems with the drug benefit plan to enhance health care delivery. I urge my colleagues to support this small but very important fix. One thing that we can all agree on is that our health care system is in crisis, and that crisis is harming health care providers and patients who need health care services. It is clear that we need real reform. The time for enacting piecemeal legislation that chips away at the massive health care problems is over. Our healthcare crisis will persist long after this healthcare week in the Senate is over. I pledge to put partisanship aside and work with all of my colleagues toward real health care solutions.

Mr. SALAZAR

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, over the March recess, I joined the leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John Warner of Virginia and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, on a trip to Iraq to hear the on-the-ground perspective of our military leaders, our troops in the field, and Iraqi officials. I returned to the United States as always overwhelmed by my pride and admiration for our service men and women, who continue to work with commitment and professionalism even in the most difficult circumstances. I cast my vote in support of this supplemental package before us because I am completely committed to providing our men and women in uniform with the support they need to continue their excellent work. Toward that end, I am very pleased that an amendment I authored calling for regular reports on the Pentagon's efforts to train our troops in methods of detecting and defeating improvised explosive devices has been added to this bill. I also cast this vote today because when it comes to funding our service men and women, right now this supplemental is the only game in town. And because the administration refuses, year after year, to incorporate the costs of ongoing operations in Iraq into the regular budget, we have no choice but to fund these efforts through these emergency supplementals--essentially putting hundreds of billions on our national tab. The Senate voted overwhelmingly in support of Senator Byrd's amendment urging the administration to stop these irresponsible budget games. I hope the President heeds that message. In addition to reaffirming my admiration for our military, my recent trip to Iraq also gave me a deeper understanding of the importance of success in Iraq and the truly daunting nature of the challenges ahead. In addition to the extremely serious fiscal issues confronting us, we have the even more serious policy issue to consider--how should U.S. policy proceed in Iraq? A failed Iraqi state would threaten our national interests, destabilizing an already volatile region and creating a lasting haven for terrorists. Our national security imperatives mandate our commitment to Iraq's success. Success in Iraq is dependent on several factors: controlling violence, creating a stable government of national unity, delivering basic services and the promise of economic development to the Iraqi people, and establishing strong and supportive relations between Iraq and its neighbors in the region. If any of these pillars are missing, Iraq's future becomes uncertain and unstable. America can help, but ultimately the Iraqis must achieve these goals on their own. The Iraqi people and Iraqi security forces have made significant strides, but much more remains before Iraq can govern and protect Iraqis. And Iraq's neighbors, who know the region best and will suffer most from a failed state in their midst, must step up to the plate to help end the political deadlock in Iraq. We all recognize that U.S. forces cannot and should not remain in Iraq indefinitely. The U.S. military presence in Iraq should depend upon Iraqi leaders promptly making the compromises necessary to achieve the broad-based, sustainable, political settlement necessary to form a government of national unity and defeat the insurgency. We need partners within Iraq and outside its borders who are committed to stability and sharing power in order to achieve the mission of a truly democratic Iraq, and to share in that success with Iraq's people. We also need to ensure that the magnitude of the challenge before us in Iraq does not distract all our attention from the vitally important, ongoing mission in Afghanistan. This bill also provides much needed support for that mission. We have made tremendous progress, working with the Afghan people, in helping to turn Afghanistan from a state sponsor of terrorism to a stable, responsible member of the international community. But our work is by no means complete, and the American troops and Afghani leaders I met with in Kabul just weeks ago underscored how important it is that we continue our strong support for the stabilizing mission. This bill also provides support for the communities devastated by last year's hurricane season. I am afraid that, thus far, the story of the Government's response to Katrina has been a story of failure not only in the preparations for the storm and in the midst of the crisis but also in the recovery effort. Too many promises have not been kept, and too many American families continue to live in an atmosphere of uncertainty. The provisions in this bill will help, but our commitment does not end here. Congress needs to make sure that the gulf region has the necessary resources to recover from last year's hurricanes and respond to future storms, but it must also make sure that the administration has fixed the incompetence at FEMA and DHS which disturbed so many Americans. I look forward to continuing to work on these important issues in the upcoming months. Over the past 6 years, Colorado has suffered from ongoing natural disasters including drought. Unfortunately, many areas in Colorado continue to suffer from ongoing extreme weather conditions including drought, hail, and frost. In particular, Colorado wheat producers are estimating that this will be the fifth below- average wheat crop in 6 years. In addition, many Colorado farmers and ranchers are suffering from economic losses due to continually rising gas prices. And what is true in Colorado is true in many other States across the country. That is why I am an original cosponsor of Senator Conrad's emergency agriculture disaster assistance package, and I am so pleased that it was included as part of this supplemental bill. Toward that end, I especially thank Senators Conrad and Cochran, who worked very hard on these important provisions. I am so pleased that the Senate has voted to provide immediate assistance to producers across the country who have been devastated by a variety of natural disasters. While, overall, we are lucky in Colorado that this has been a better year for many of our farmers and ranchers who have suffered from continuing natural disasters over the past several years, many producers in southern and eastern Colorado have been hit by drought conditions once again. It has been downhill for the 2005 Colorado winter wheat crop since last May. In fact, estimates show that it will be the fifth below- average winter wheat crop in 6 years--with potential losses to producers of over $60 million. In addition, increasing gas prices have hit our rural communities hard, making it virtually impossible for many producers to cover the unexpected additional costs. During harvest, agricultural producers are some of the largest fuel consumers in the United States and producers are facing enormous fuel costs. Farm fuel has increased by 79 percent from $1.40 per gallon in September of 2004 to around $2.60 per gallon in September 2005. Colorado wheat producers have told me that it would take a 40-bushel average yield per acre and an average price of $4.00 per bushel to cover all of these additional costs and break even. Unfortunately, the average yield in 2005 was 24 bushels per acre, and the average price is projected at $3.34 per bushel. Finally, Mr. President, I wish to express again how pleased I am that the Senate adopted my amendment to provide an additional $30 million to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires and mitigate the effects of widespread insect infestations throughout the entire National Forest System. In the West, the seasonal wildfire potential outlook map shows above-normal fire danger across the Western United States and several Southern States, too, have increased fire dangers. One of the most alarming factors in the wildfire outlook this year is insect infestation. For example, my State of Colorado has over 1.5 million acres that have been infested by bark beetles. After these infestations come through a forest, they leave behind entire stands of trees-- sometimes thousands of acres--that are more susceptible to fire due to the dried-out conditions and increased fuel loads in those forests. Just today, I learned from the U.S. Forest Service that Colorado has 280,000 acres of approved hazardous fuel reduction projects that are awaiting treatment, with Forest Service funding only sufficient to conduct about a quarter of those projects under the best circumstances. This situation represents a true emergency, and I am relieved that we were able to address it in this bill.

Mr. SALAZAR

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. SALAZAR. That is indeed correct. I am willing to withdraw my request for a vote at this point in time if, indeed, we can resolve this by a voice vote.

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: What is the pending business?

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, through the Chair, I think it would be appropriate for my friend from North Carolina to have a conversation about how to move forward with his amendment. At this point I ask unanimous consent that the pending business be set aside so I may offer an amendment.

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3736.