Fred Thompson

Mr. THOMPSON

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. THOMPSON. Madam President, I was in error when I asked that the time of the Senator from Texas not be charged against anyone. I think that should be charged against the time of Senator Lieberman and myself. I ask unanimous consent that be done.

Mr. THOMPSON. Madam President, I am getting ready to suggest the absence of a quorum again, and I ask unanimous consent that the quorum call we are about to go into not be charged against either side.

Mr. THOMPSON. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, we have had a good discussion on this motion to proceed. I thank Senator Byrd for doing what he has done. I will say publicly what I told him privately before the recess: I thought he was doing all of us a favor by slowing us down a little bit. There was an awful lot of talk about we must get this done by September 11 for symbolic reasons, and symbolism is important. But it is not nearly as important as it is to get this right. We will not get it right forever. We will be dealing with it probably for some time to come. But it is important to get it as right as we can. I think it is very important that we take the time necessary to do that. We can disagree as to how long is enough time. But I do think we can all agree that in retrospect, we were kind of headed toward a stampede there for a little while where we wanted to get something passed so we could say we got something passed. That receives short-term benefits maybe to us but it doesn't do much in terms of long-term benefits to the country. I think we are where we need to be now. We have come back. We have had a chance to digest this, discuss it, debate it in a public forum, and now to discuss it here on the floor. Senator Byrd made some very interesting and valid points about things that we need to consider. He, I think rightfully, pointed out that the NSA creation was probably the model that not only the President is going by, but the model that we all can have in terms of importance and in terms of how long it takes to put these things together. It took a good while to put the National Security Agency together. I believe it took 6 months between the time the bill was introduced and the time that it was passed. I point out that it was after a war. I do think probably Congress had a little more leisure during those days than we have. It was 2 years after the war. Of course, we are just beginning our endeavor. We don't have quite the leisure that perhaps the Congress did at that time. We have been considering the overall concept one way or another, formally or informally, for some time. The Gilmore Commission came in December of 2000 with a recommendation for a Homeland Security Department. The Hart-Rudman Commission came out in February, I believe, of last year, with a recommendation. We didn't pay enough attention to it soon enough. But it was out there. It was discussed and considered at that time. Congress, from time to time, has certainly considered many of the component problems that have led to this bill. For example, the problems with the INS are certainly no secret. We have been dealing with that. We have been dealing with other problems the Government has. I suggest the time is ripe, and there is no reason now for us not to address this issue after we have had a full-fledged discussion. I think the analogy to the Transportation Security Administration that was referred to and that was referred to in the newspaper today is a good one. I think it shows the difficulty that we have when we establish an agency that is having to recreate itself on the one hand and do the job on the other simultaneously. That is a very good point. What we are doing here in terms of the Department of Homeland Security is TSA enlarged in many respects. That leads me to perhaps a slightly different conclusion. That leads me to the conclusion that what we need to do to avoid that problem is to give the people who are in charge and have the responsibility for making sure this works the tools they can use to make it work. We had a civil service organization system, and we had a management system, the paradigm for which was established many years ago. We live in a different world now. That is what the President is talking about when he is talking about managerial flexibility and having the tools with which to manage this thing. If you talk to corporate leaders who have undergone transitions that are much less complicated than what we are doing, they talk about how difficult it is and how important it is to have the right kind of culture but also to have the managerial talent, the managerial wherewithal and flexibility to address those thousands of problems and difficulties that you are going to have in trying to pull all these factors together. These corporate managers don't even have Congress to answer to or deal with or worry about. Certainly, when it comes to Government, Congress cannot deal with each of these issues. We have to either trust our leadership to the point of giving them some managerial flexibility or not. I think that is what we are doing here. That is what this is all about. It is not a major grant of new power; it is a granting of power by Congress after thorough deliberation to better manage what Congress is establishing within the discretion of Congress, and having the annual appropriations process, among other hearings and considerations, in which to evaluate what is going on. I think we have to give that kind of authority if we are going to place on these people the kinds of responsibilities that we are placing on them. There has been a concern expressed about personal liberties. Democracy always has to--especially a democracy under attack--balance the national security of the country with the personal liberties that we hold so dear. I think we have done a pretty good job of that. Some of the things that the administration has done have been somewhat controversial. They are not really reflected in this bill. This bill really doesn't deal with any of those things. But I do think it is appropriate to point out that in other times President Lincoln instituted habeas corpus. President Roosevelt had internments, and things of that nature. Other Presidents have taken rather severe action when they deemed it necessary in times of war and in times of national security. We are not even approaching things of that nature. And we are not really even approaching the subject matter in this bill. So I respectfully suggest that there is no danger here of giving the President too much power. The danger, quite frankly, is that we are establishing a new Department that is complex, multifaceted, and is going to be difficult to organize without giving the President some authority that several other Government agencies already have, that the Congress has already given them. We will have an opportunity to discuss this later when appropriate amendments come up. But in the area of national security, and in the area of flexibility with regard to some of these agencies, what the President is basically asking for is the same authority that prior Presidents have had in the national security area, and the same authority for this new Department that other Department heads already have. So I do not think we need to concern ourselves overly about that. But I will say that it is refreshing to stand on this floor, to sit and listen to someone such as Senator Byrd talk about first principles, talk about the basic function of government, talk about the things the forefathers concerned themselves with, and the things we should concern ourselves with as we go forward with this bill. But I suggest that it is time we go forward. I yield the floor.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. It is most agreeable to me. I think that is the way to proceed.

Mr. THOMPSON. Yes.

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, it is indeed true that today we begin consideration of the most significant reorganization of the executive branch in over 50 years. Not since the creation of the Department of Defense and the creation of the national intelligence apparatus in the National Security Act of 1947 has the Senate considered such a massive restructuring of Federal agencies. Just as World War II and the start of the cold war demonstrated the need to reorganize our defense and intelligence establishment, the terrorist attacks of September 11 demonstrate the need to reorganize our homeland security establishment to address the threat of terrorism and other types of asymmetric warfare against our country and against our people. I start by acknowledging and thanking Senator Lieberman, the manager of the bill, for his leadership on this issue. He was an early supporter of legislation to reorganize the executive branch to confront emerging threats against our country. He recognized what needed to be done and has worked hard to get us to the point where we are today. While we have some disagreements in some important areas, in the end we both believe that the creation of a new Department of Homeland Security is needed to make this country safe. Our Nation and the Senate also owe a debt of gratitude to the Members of the Hart-Rudman and Gilmore Commissions. Recommendations from both commissions have contributed greatly to our efforts. Indeed, the proposal before us owes much to the insight and thoughtful recommendations of our former colleagues, Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman. This legislation is one of the centerpieces of our country's overall homeland security strategy. What we do here will have lasting effects on our Nation. It will certainly outlive us. We should not shy away from the fact that while some bureaucracies will be reduced and eliminated, we will be creating a large new bureaucracy with new leadership, a new mission, and a new culture. However, even advocates of smaller Government realize it is a mission that is vital to the security of this Nation, the most important responsibility of this or any other government and one of the basic responsibilities outlined for the National Government by the framers of our Constitution. That is what we are about today. I think it is appropriate perhaps to take a moment to reflect on how we got here. It is obvious to all that in the last several years we have undergone a revolution in the world in terms of the advances of modern technology. The same thing has happened with regard to transportation. We have also seen the emerging of a brand of religious radicalism that has infected certain parts of our world. We have seen the merging of those factors together, now, so that a small band of people, a small group of people, or even individuals on the other side of the world can wreak tremendous damage to our homeland. It is a different world we live in today, and we must have different means of dealing with it. We have seen attacks on us over the last several years that have become more and more indicative of the kind of world we can expect in the future: The Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the original World Trade Center bombing, our embassies have been attacked, the U.S.S. Cole has been attacked. There have been other attempts that have failed because of the intelligence we were able to obtain. Attacks have been thwarted. We have seen over the last few years, through our committee hearings and through reports of the GAO and other governmental entities, a rising pattern of capabilities, in terms not only of terrorism but of rogue nation-states and their increasing ability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, to develop those weapons of mass destruction, and to have the missile capability and other capabilities of delivering those for thousands and thousands of miles. We have seen intelligence reports reminding us from time to time that this is what is going on out there. We have not paid as much attention to that in times past as we should have. When we look back with the vision we have now and see the attacks that have come upon us around the world, attacks on our interests and our people, coupled with the intelligence information we were getting here in our own Congress, we should have been able to see, as some of us have seen, that there was a developing pattern out there that needed to be addressed by the Congress. One of the good things that comes from such a tragedy under which we are now laboring is that it does finally focus our attention and allows us to do some things we should have done some time ago. It is a terrible price to pay in order to get us here, but we are here now and we should take advantage of that opportunity. How do we react to something like September 11? We react by coming together, as the American people have. We react by being strong militarily and having the kind of leadership that we have to carry out the necessary operations overseas. We are doing that. The President said in the very beginning that it was going to be a long, tough road. Indeed, it is proving to be. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort for people to rally right after an attack. But it is going to take something special from the American people to have the stick-to- itiveness, and to have the stamina it is going to take, over a long period of time, for us to do what we are in the midst of doing now militarily. We also react by changing our priorities. We cannot continue, in the Congress of the United States, in terms of budgetary matters, for example, to act as if these are normal times. We cannot have guns and butter at all times. We cannot have our cake and eat it, too. We have to prioritize now to deal with this threat that we have to our Nation. Finally, the other important thing we can do is the one we are dealing with here today, this week, and days hereafter, and that is addressing and improving the institutions we have in our Government to deal with such matters and specifically the new threat we face. We have seen--Senator Lieberman and I--especially in the Governmental Affairs Committee over the last several years, an increasing array of problems that our Government has. There have been problems in management. There have been problems in trying to develop information technology that the private sector already has up and running. We have spent billions and billions of dollars and still have difficulty in getting that right and integrating those systems into our governmental operations. We have financial management difficulties. We literally cannot pass an audit as a Government. We lose things and misplace things such as military equipment and other troubling things such as that. We have human capital problems. Half our workforce is going to be eligible for retirement before long. We do not have what we should have, in terms of ability to recruit, ability to retain, ability to keep the people we need and not keep the people we do not need, and pay the ones we need to pay for these high-tech jobs--jobs that are so highly paid out in the private sector--to do the things we have to do in Government now. All of this presents a real problem to us, as a government, a Government-wide problem that has been growing--and growing all too silently out there--and without us doing too much about it. The GAO reminds us every year that the same agencies year after year appear on the high-risk list. That is the list that is compiled, as you know, on a yearly basis to lay out the agencies that are most susceptible to waste, fraud, abuse, overlap, duplication, and inefficiencies. The same agencies appear year after year. Some of those agencies are the ones being brought into this homeland security bill. We can't afford, as we create this new Department, to incorporate the same kinds of problems that we are seeing government-wide because the stakes are too great. It is not just a matter of wasting a few billion dollars of the taxpayers' money; it is a matter that could literally be life and death. This is what this bill is all about. This is why Senator Lieberman took the initiative. This is why the President decided, once the strategic view was presented to him by the people he had commissioned to look at all of this, that a homeland security approach was needed, and that the 22 agencies out there needed to be pulled together into one cohesive entity that could work to make our country safer. Certainly, there are very important areas. I will not go over all of them. Senator Lieberman has done that. But border security, for example, has never made any sense when we have people crossing borders, when goods cross the borders, and when plant life crosses the borders--all of which can be dangerous to the American people. They can cross them by water, they can cross the borders by air, they can cross the borders by highways. All of those things are just different aspects of the same problem. It all has to do essentially with border security. It has never made any sense to have all of this dispersed throughout Government. What the President does and what the committee bill does is to pull those in. We have different ways of doing it. We will have an opportunity to discuss those in more detail as we proceed, but it gets its arms around the border security problem. A lot of experts will say if you can do much better on the border problem, you can do better in the intelligence area, then you have gone a long way toward solving the problem. In the intelligence area, the President's approach is to have an intelligence entity that will allow us to protect our infrastructure. As you know, our infrastructure is elaborate, far-flung, and complex. Almost all of it is in private hands. It is an extremely difficult problem to address and to get our arms around and to protect. We can never be totally protected at all times in all ways. It is going to require a great deal of attention and expenditure of money by State, local, and Federal Government over years to come. We are going to have to address the vulnerabilities that we have. The President's approach would set up a system to assess those vulnerabilities in order to protect those infrastructures. The committee's approach is a broader approach. We will have an opportunity to discuss that. I have concern about this broader approach because I don't think we can address the difficulties with the intelligence community in this bill and give it to a sub-Cabinet officer to have authority to pull all the dots together and all the things that need to be done in the intelligence community. We have seen, goodness knows, over the last several months and few years the difficulties we have in those areas of collecting intelligence, analyzing intelligence, and disseminating intelligence properly. That, to me, is a very important area that is going to have to be led by the President. It is going to have to be done by the administration. I view that as somewhat separate from the homeland security effort. But we can never mesh our entire intelligence community into this new Department. The analyses that we are going to need for the Homeland Security Department are also needed by these various intelligence communities. These are legitimate differences of view and approach that we will have an opportunity to discuss as we proceed. But we all agree that we, No. 1, must do much better in terms of our intelligence community and capabilities government-wide; secondly, this new entity must have some new intelligence entity to assist it to do what we properly decide that it ought to be doing. We will have an opportunity to discuss that in some more detail. I think as we proceed we can flesh this legislation out and we can make it even better than it is. Senator Lieberman is correct. I think there are many things we have basic agreement on here on a bipartisan basis. There are some serious differences of view on some important areas--differences the majority of the committee took versus what the President wishes to do. I think in these times the President must be given some leeway. It is going to be a long time before we put the final period to the last sentence of this legislation. I think it will be changed, as many other pieces of legislation dealing with the Department of Defense and the Transportation Department and others have changed over the years. I think there will be amendments and changes as we go forward. But it is important that we get off on the right foot. It is important, for example, that we give the new Department the management tools it needs. I have mentioned some of the problems we have traditionally with Government and the fact that we can't afford to bring those problems into the new Department. We can't expect to keep doing things the same old way and get different results. We don't want those inefficiencies, those overlaps, duplications, and waste, lost items, and things such as that, to follow us into the Department of Homeland Security. We can't have that happen. It won't work. What is the answer? The answer is to give the new Department sufficient management flexibility in order to address these issues. We have recognized this need in times past. We have given this flexibility in terms of hiring and firing and managing and compensating. Most of it has to do with compensation. A lot of people will say this is anti- employee or union-busting or what not. It has nothing to do with that. Various agencies and the GAO came to us. The IRS came to us. The FAA came to us. The Transportation Security Administration came to us. They all came to us and said: Look, we either have special circumstances or we have special problems and we need some additional tools to deal with that. We need the right people in the right place to deal with those matters. In every one of those instances which I mentioned, Congress gave it to them. Congress gave them additional flexibilities that are not within the body of title V because we perceived those needs to be exactly as they were described to us. Now we are pulling 22 agencies together--some of them, quite frankly, already dysfunctional--and giving out these new responsibilities. We talk about how important it is to the new Department. My question is, If we are going to give these flexibilities to these other agencies, my goodness, why not this one, of all agencies or all departments? The President's national security authority must be preserved. We have significant disagreement with regard to whether the traditional authority that Presidents have had since President Jimmy Carter in the national security area in terms of the justifiable need to activate collective bargaining agreements with particular entities at particular times, for good reason. Presidents have used this authority judiciously. As far as I know, there has never really been a problem with it. This bill, as written, would take a step backwards from that authority of the President. I don't think it is fair in these times, of all times, to do that. On the issue of the White House staff, should we force on the President a Senate-confirmed person in that position when he says he is creating a new Department and a new Secretary with all of this elaborate mechanism, and he wants his personal person--some people make the analogy with the National Security Council, for example, that it is not Senate confirmed--inside the White House working for him? I assume, as Mr. Ridge is doing today, should we not give the President that? I believe so, after a sound intelligence approach, as I mentioned earlier, with not too many directorates, and not making this more elaborate and complex than we should. Those are issues that we have. I think they are legitimate. I think they are important. They will be the subject of amendments as we proceed. But, again, we do not want to look at a glass that is almost full and say that it is almost empty, because it is not. We agree on many, many important fundamental aspects. I think it is our job to get about the consideration of it, and to improve it, to discuss these important issues and differences that we have, and come to a conclusion that is going to achieve what we are all striving for; that is, a safer United States of America. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. THOMPSON. I would ask that the Senator from Texas be given as much time----

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, let me address what I consider to be the real issue, really the only issue, as far as I am concerned. It is not who the bad guys are and who the good guys are. I have seen excesses on both sides of this issue. It is not a matter of what is best for the trial lawyers or best for the insurance companies or even what is best for the patients. It is a question of whether we have a limited form of government, whether we have a Federal Government with enumerated powers. That is the underlying issue. It is amazing to me that we can have a debate on something such as this without it even being brought up. What we have is an amendment which will take things that have been under the purview of the State governments for 200 years and federalize them. This is getting to be such a common occurrence that nobody pays much attention to it anymore. I pay attention to it. I think it is a bad trend. I think it goes against the system of government that our Founding Fathers set up and has worked in our favor for 200 years.

Mr. THOMPSON. Yes.

Mr. THOMPSON. The answer to that question is yes. I am amazed to hear that we have a problem in a particular State and that the solution is for the citizens of the small town in that State maybe to drive past the courthouse and drive through the capital, past the statehouse, and get on an airplane and fly to Washington, DC, to talk about a Federal solution against their own State. Tennessee just had a discussion about a State income tax and a State sales tax. One of the points made against a higher State sales tax was that the State of Kentucky and the State of Mississippi and the State of Arkansas, all these other surrounding States, had a lower sales tax and people would go to those States to buy their goods, just as apparently people are going from one State to another to take advantage of a better medical malpractice case. The answer to that is, that is the way it is supposed to work. That is our system of government. That is the reason we have States, to have competition among States. If we extend the commerce clause to this, after having been told by the Supreme Court in the Lopez case that the commerce clause does not extend to guns in the local school, after having been told in the Morrison case by the Supreme Court that the commerce clause does not extend to a sex-based crime at a local level-- if we extend the commerce clause to the delivery of a baby in Lawrenceburg, TN, there is nothing to which we cannot extend the commerce clause. I regret to say, it is some of us who talk about limited government and enumerated powers who are doing this. I do not think it is sound policy. It does not matter whether or not there are excesses on one side or another. States are supposed to address these matters. I would not come here and say the State of Tennessee is inadequate in this regard unless I was willing to go back to the State of Tennessee and fight for a change in the laws. Senator Kennedy and I, are we supposed to write the laws for the State of Tennessee with regard to something that has been under their purview for 200 years? I don't think so. We can disagree on what those laws should be, but we cannot disagree, surely, on the principle that underlies this debate. The proposed amendment goes so far as to require that each State require 50 percent of all punitive damage awards be used for licensing, investigating, disciplining, and certifying health care professionals and the reduction of malpractice costs for the health care professional volunteers. This requirement would get us into the management of the licensing and regulation of health care professionals in every State in this country. This is just one step away from national standards and national regulation, not just in the health care area but potentially in any other area. Regardless of whether you think medical malpractice premiums are too high or lawyers are terrible people, or whatever, if we walk away at this time from this principle, when we want to assert this principle, we are not going to have any principles to stand on because we will have ignored them so often for the particular causes we want at the moment that they will be totally eroded. I submit to the Chamber that is too high a price to pay. I yield back whatever time remains.

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, just a very brief response. I think the logical extension of this amendment would mean if we could pass any large Federal program--as we have--such as Medicare, Social Security, and I guess our defense appropriations bills, and so forth, then we could take any activity, even noncommercial activity in the smallest hamlet of the smallest town in America, anything they would do that might arguably impact on the cost of those programs would be fair game under the spending clause. If that is the case, that is not a direction in which we need to go. I would contrast what we are doing here with regard to delivery of a baby, let's say, in Lawrenceburg, TN, and the rules the State of Tennessee imposed upon that we would abrogate--I contrast that with a product liability debate we had. I voted for that bill. That is an inherently interstate commerce, commercial activity. I have concluded that there was a legitimate reason to have some national standards with regard to that. I think our Founding Fathers would have approved of that. I think it is a far cry from where we are with regard to this. I yield the floor.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I am very pleased to be here today as the Senate takes up for consideration the nomination of Judge Julia Smith Gibbons to be a U.S. Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit. I am grateful to my colleagues for their unanimous vote on Friday in support of cloture on this nomination to allow it to come to a vote today. I support this nomination, and I am confident my colleagues will do so as well when they learn of Judge Gibbons's background and qualifications. Judge Gibbons will be a welcome addition to the Sixth Circuit. Before I address Judge Gibbons's qualifications, I want to let my colleagues know of the problems confronting the Sixth Circuit. Today, 29 of the 179 U.S. Circuit Court judgeships remain unfilled. Eight of those 29 vacancies are in the Sixth Circuit. Let me put that into perspective: 28 percent of all of the vacant circuit judgeships in the country occur in just one of the 13 Circuits. These 8 vacancies constitute one-half of the 16 judgeships allocated to the Sixth Circuit, which is twice the number of vacancies in any other circuit. Meanwhile, the court's caseload continues to rise. Not surprisingly, the Sixth Circuit is also the slowest appellate court in the Federal system. According to the Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit, the average time from filing to decision is 2 years, some 6 months slower than the next slowest circuit. We must also recognize that the vacancy rate does not only affect the Sixth Circuit and litigants before that court. In order to fill its annual need for over 160 three-judge panels to hear cases, the Sixth Circuit must bring in visiting judges from other circuits or from district courts. Last fiscal year, visiting judge handled almost 20 percent of the Sixth Circuit's workload, and the Court relied on visiting judges twice as often as any other circuit. While some of these visiting judges are senior judges, many are active circuit and district judges. These judges maintain a full docket themselves, in addition to pitching in to assist the Sixth Circuit. As district judges spend more time handling appellate cases, they must put off acting on their own dockets. The ripple effect caused by the vacancy rate on the Sixth Circuit is therefore much broader than we might suppose. According to a recent witness before the Judiciary Committee, the demands being made on district judges within the Sixth Circuit to fill seats on three-judge panels are so burdensome, that many district judges are now refusing what had been considered a prestigious assignment. The vacancy rate on the Sixth Circuit is placing a significant burden on the entire Federal judiciary, which would be overburdened even if every vacancy were filled. Some of the adverse impacts of the vacancy rate on the Sixth Circuit are not so readily discernible or can be quantified. For instance, visiting judges from outside the circuit or from the district courts may not be as familiar with Sixth Circuit law as the judges of the Sixth Circuit themselves. The court's reliance on such a large contingent of visiting judges increases the risk of intra-circuit conflict among different panels of the court, making en banc review by the full Sixth Circuit more frequent. And en banc review places greater burdens on the court by requiring that all active judges, rather than just a portion of them, give the case their attention. I am not seeking to lay blame. I am just pointing out that we must overcome the differences that have led us to the quagmire in which we find ourselves. And I believe it is fair for me to do so. During President Clinton's administration, I did all I could to get the President's nominees to the district courts in Tennessee confirmed quickly. I also shepherded through the Senate the nomination of the last judge confirmed to the Sixth Circuit, Ronald Gilman. I hope that the fact that the Senate is moving to take up the nomination of Judge Gibbons bodes well for our willingness to take up other nominations to the Sixth Circuit. Let me turn now to the specific nomination before us. Despite her relative youth for such a position, Judge Julia Smith Gibbons been a judge for over 20 years. I am confident that the Senate will not consider any more highly qualified nominee this year. Judge Gibbons was born and raised in Pulaski, TN, which is a small town in south-central Tennessee less than 20 miles from Lawrenceburg, where I grew up. She attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, from which she received her B.A. magna cum laude in 1972 and where she was elected to membership in Phi Beta Kappa, the national honor society. Judge Gibbons then left Tennessee to attend law school in our neighbor to the east at the University of Virginia Law School, where she was a member of the editorial board of the law review and was elected to the Order of the Coif, the national legal honor society. Upon graduating from law school, she returned to Tennessee to clerk for Judge William Miller of the Sixth Circuit, the court to which Judge Gibbons has been nominated. In 1976, Judge Gibbons became an associate with a Memphis law firm. After 3 years practicing law, Judge Gibbons joined the administration of Governor Lamar Alexander as the Governor's legal advisor in 1979. In 1981, Governor Alexander appointed Judge Gibbons to the Tennessee Circuit Court for the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, which covers Memphis and Shelby County, and she was elected to a full term in 1982. In 1983, Judge Gibbons was appointed United States District Judge for the Western District of Tennessee by President Reagan, the first woman to hold such a position in Tennessee. At the time, she was the youngest Federal judge in the Nation. From 1994 to 2000, she served as Chief Judge of the court. She is very highly regarded by the bar as an exceptional trial judge. While she was being considered for this appointment and since her nomination, I have heard from many lawyers who have practiced before her extolling her virtues as a trial judge. Her reputation is national and has been recognized by the Chief Justice, who has appointed her to the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, the Judicial Resources Committee of the Judicial Conference, and the Judicial Officer Resources Working Group. Despite her heavy judicial workload, Judge Gibbons has remained active in her church and community, serving as an elder of the Idlewild Presbyterian Church and as a former president of the Memphis Rotary Club. In sum, I am confident that Judge Gibbons will be an outstanding member of the Sixth Circuit, as she has been an outstanding trial judge. Before I yield, let me thank Chairman Leahy and his staff, and Senator Hatch and his staff for their cooperation and assistance in moving this nomination forward. I hope our action today on Judge Gibbons bodes well for getting the remaining Sixth Circuit vacancies filled expeditiously. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting to support the nomination of Judge Julia Smith Gibbons.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the important issue of adding a prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program. As a part of the debate on this drug pricing bill, we are considering amendments to provide Medicare beneficiaries with coverage for their prescription drug costs. This would be the largest expansion of any Federal entitlement program since Congress enacted Medicare in 1965. And as I listen to the debate, I am concerned that this body is ignoring some very serious issues, namely the cost of what we are doing and whether we can afford to take this action given the current budget situation. I think each of us here today would agree that the Medicare program is outdated. If we were creating this program from scratch right now, there is no question that we would include coverage for prescription drugs. Medicines have become integral to the treatment of disease, in many cases replacing costly surgical procedures. However, in our desire to address one serious flaw in Medicare, I am concerned that we are missing the broader questions of the impact of our actions on future generations of taxpayers and on the sustainability of the Medicare program. We cannot legislate in a vacuum. I want to begin my remarks by reminding my colleagues of the demographic time bomb we are facing in this country. The first wave of the 76 million baby boomers will begin retiring in 2008. Between now and 2035, the number of Americans over the age of 65 will double. We will go from having 3.4 workers to support Medicare and Social Security beneficiaries today to 2.3 workers by 2026. Not only is the over-65 population growing rapidly, but they are living longer. Increased life expectancy is a good thing, but it also has serious implications for the Federal budget and entitlement spending. According to the Medicare Trustees' most recent report to Congress, the Medicare Part A Trust Fund is scheduled to be in a cash deficit beginning in 2016 and will go bankrupt in 2030. Spending on Medicare Part B, which covers outpatient services, is growing at a faster rate than our economy. Over the next 10 years, the Medicare trustees estimate that Part B spending will increase on average by 6.1 percent each year, compared to a growth rate in the economy of 5.1 percent per year. The Congressional Budget Office projects that Federal expenditures on Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid combined will grow from the current 7.8 percent of GDP to 14.7 percent of GDP in 2030. I think it's important to remember that the Federal Government has generally taken no more than 20 percent out of the economy in taxes to fund the government. Entitlement spending is moving dangerously close to that limit. David Walker of the General Accounting Office testified before the Senate Budget Committee earlier this year, and he warned us that by 2030, absent any changes to Social Security and Medicare, there will be virtually no money left for discretionary spending such as national defense, education or law enforcement. This estimate does not take into consideration any new spending Congress may authorize, such as adding a Medicare prescription drug benefit or increasing Medicare payments to health care providers. As inadequate as the current Medicare program may be, it is not sustainable even in its current form. In addition, I feel compelled to offer additional context to this debate. We all know that our world and budget situation have changed dramatically over the past 10 months. The latest projections from the Office of Management and Budget are that our deficit this year could reach $165 billion. In addition, the requirements of protecting our Nation and combating terrorism have placed urgent new claims on Federal resources. In fiscal year 2002, we will spend at least $29.2 billion on homeland security. The supplemental appropriations bill would spend an additional $5.8 billion, bringing the total to nearly $38 billion. The President's budget request for fiscal year 2003 proposes spending of $37.7 billion for homeland security. This amount is double what we were spending on homeland security items prior to the September 11 attacks. The Brookings Institute recently recommended funding of $45 billion for fiscal year 2003 on homeland security. We are also in the process of considering the President's proposal to create a new Department of Homeland Security. The cost of creating this new department could be another billion dollars. The truth is that we just don't have a good notion of how much homeland security spending will cost in the coming years, but we know that the costs will be tremendous, and we know that we must spend whatever it takes. On top of these security-related claims on our Federal resources, we need to remember that a majority of Congress just voted to increase spending on farmers by $90 billion above the current level over the next 10 years. I opposed that legislation, because I believe much of that money would be better spent on other priorities, including a prescription drug benefit. And let us not forget that we voted in May to create a new, $20 billion federal health care entitlement for workers displaced by trade. These things add up. We're spending money we no longer have. I do believe that Congress should address the needs of the one-third of seniors who have no prescription drug coverage now. But when I look at the cost of adding a prescription drug benefit, it is clear to me that there is just no inexpensive way to provide seniors with a meaningful drug benefit. CBO projects that seniors' spending on prescription drugs over the next 10 years will be $1.8 trillion. That is 21 percent higher than CBO's 10-year estimate from last year. Although two-thirds of that increase is due to the changing budget window, dropping the low-cost year, 2002, and adding the higher cost year, 2012, this projection still concerns me. The various Medicare prescription drug proposals we are debating have 10-year cost estimates ranging from a low of $150 billion for the Hagel/Ensign, bill to $370 billion for the tripartisan bill, to as much as $600 billion for the Graham/Kennedy bill. Can we really rely on the accuracy of these numbers? Last year's budget resolution set aside $300 billion over 10 years for Medicare modernization and a prescription drug benefit. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle strongly supported that $300 billion number as sufficient to pay for a Medicare drug benefit. If we were to trend that $300 billion forward one year, we would be looking at a $350 billion drug package. This year, the budget resolution that was reported by the Senate Budget Committee, but never passed by the full Senate, contains $500 billion over 10 years for a Medicare prescription drug benefit and for increased Medicare provider payments and for providing health coverage to the uninsured. How is it that we are even considering a $600 billion bill that would only provide prescription drug coverage? I am firmly in the camp of those who believe that we should not add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare without also making much-needed changes to strengthen the program. The Medicare and Social Security Trustees advise us that we can make relatively small changes now to put the Medicare and Social Security programs on sound financial footing for the future. But, the longer we wait, the harder it will be. This debate over a Medicare prescription drug benefit provides us with an excellent opportunity to begin taking steps that will make Medicare sustainable over the long term. I want to commend the members of the tri-partisan group for their efforts to put us on the path toward a strengthened Medicare program. They have worked hard for more than a year to craft their bill to provide a reasonable and permanent drug benefit, unlike the proposal of my colleague from Florida. And, they have drafted the only proposal that makes any meaningful improvements to the Medicare program. I believe that the tri-partisan proposal would provide greater security for today's seniors and for tomorrow's seniors. The new fee-for-service plan, Medicare Part E, would make the transition to Medicare more seamless for those Americans who are beginning to age into the Medicare program by providing them with a benefit that more closely resembles the private health plan they are used to. The tri-partisan bill would also provide seniors with protection from unusually high health care costs for the first time. I am deeply disappointed that the Finance Committee has not been given the opportunity to mark up either the tri-partisan bill or any other Medicare prescription drug bill. It is a shame that the Majority Leader has decided once again to by-pass the committee process, which might have yielded a product that could garner the 60 votes needed to pass a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Even more important is that we would not be in the current parliamentary situation of needing 60 votes to waive a budget point of order on these bills if the Senate had passed a budget this year. In the likely event that neither of two comprehensive prescription drug proposals garners 60 votes, then I would hope we could at least pass the Hagel/Ensign proposal. The Hagel/Ensign amendment would provide the neediest seniors with assistance with their prescription drug costs. It would allow all seniors to benefit from group discounts. And, it would provide all seniors with protection from unusually high drug costs. These benefits could be implemented immediately, and the proposal would buy us time to find bipartisan consensus on an affordable, comprehensive Medicare prescription drug benefit. I hope we can carry forward the spirit of the tri-partisan group and work together to address the needs of our seniors who lack prescription drug coverage, bring Medicare into the 21st century and set it on sound financial footing, and do so while recognizing the new budget world in which we live. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Madam President, there has been a lot of discussion concerning the Commercial Activities Panel. As has already been stated, this is a panel that was set up with the distinguished citizens to consider this complex problem. One of their recommendations, No. 9, is to ensure that competitions involve a process that considers both quality and cost factors. My understanding is that the amendment of the Senator from Massachusetts addresses only the cost factors in determining the best value to the Government. On that, in and of itself, we clearly have a deviation, to say the least, from the Commercial Activities Panel. That is not as significant a point as the one following, and that is the Armed Services Committee simply has not reviewed the panel's recommendations, and we on the Governmental Affairs Committee have not had the opportunity to review and consider the panel's recommendations. This is certainly an area of some complexity and controversy that should go through the committee process. We have a bill before the Senate now on the Governmental Affairs Committee similar to the Kennedy amendment but it applies to all agencies in the Federal Government. We have had one hearing on that bill to date. We are in the middle of that process. This amendment will clearly increase the costs to the Government and distract the Department of Defense from its war fighting mission. The Senator asked, why are we against competition? The answer is, we are not. We have plenty of competition. What we have is competition in the private sector competing for the jobs. The Senator would interject the Federal unions into the middle of that competition where there has been no such injection in times past. The Department of Defense points out it will cost more money and it will delay contracts at a time when we neither need higher costs nor delays in the issuing of contracts. The DOD and the OMB Director opposes this amendment, as well as small and minority-owned businesses and major labor unions. This is no time to be shifting massive jobs from the private sector to the public sector labor unions. Private labor unions have been losing membership over the past several years while membership in the public labor unions have been rising. Many labor unions oppose this amendment as well as taxpayer groups. I urge my colleagues to vote against the Kennedy amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Madam President, today I pay tribute to a U.S. Air Force officer, Colonel David R. Chaffee. Colonel Chaffee currently serves as the Program Director of the Combat Air Forces Command and Control Systems Program office at the Electronic Systems Center on Hanscom Air Force Base. He will soon retire from the Air Force after 25 years of service. Today, it is my privilege to recognize some of Colonel Chaffee's accomplishments, and to commend his service to the Air Force and our Nation. Colonel Chaffee was born in Rockwood, TN, and began his Air Force career as a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Early in his career, he was an Aeronautical Developmental Engineer at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, OH, and later returned there as the Program Manager for the F100-PW-220 engine. After multiple, high-level acquisition positions at Headquarters in Washington, DC, he spent 2 years at the Ogden Air Logistics Center at Hill Air Force Base, UT as a Program Director before arriving in May 2000 at Hanscom Air Force Base for his current assignment. Throughout his career, Colonel Chaffee won numerous awards for performance in the Acquisitions career field, including the General O'Malley Memorial Leadership Award in 1987 and the Clements Award in 1985. Additionally, he was a Distinguished Graduate from Squadron Officers School and Air Command and Staff College. He holds two master's degrees, one in Aeronautical Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology and one in National Resource Strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. At Hanscom Air Force Base, Colonel Chaffee's leadership contributed to the Combat Air Forces Command and Control Systems Program Office being regarded as a center of excellence for command and control and air battle management. This office provides integrated mission critical command and control tools that help create air tasking orders, plan combat sortie missions, and analyze weather information for planned targets. Colonel Chaffee's support for improved processes and innovation led to significant increases in program office performance. Colonel David Chaffee has made a difference during his service to the Air Force and our Nation. He displayed a commitment to the men and women in his charge and was well known for mentoring junior officers. In addition, throughout his demanding career, Colonel Chaffee has been a family man, as he and his wife, Ann, raised three daughters, Lauren, Katelyn, and Jillian. I urge my colleagues to join me in commending Colonel Chaffee and thanking him for his years of service.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I strongly support the amendment of Senator Gregg. I think the debate on trade promotion authority is a classic example of something that used to be nonpartisan, as I understand it, and that is trade--as was the consensus I thought we developed that I believed was a good thing for our country. It is also an example of how often nowadays it seems we are asked to do some bad things in order to do something that is any good. We are urged to keep our eyes on the ball, which is trade promotion authority, they say. I hope we all agree that free trade is good, that trade promotion authority is good. I think standing by itself it would pass overwhelmingly. But I am beginning to wonder what the ball is. If, in fact, we are taking the first steps toward the Federal Government sending somebody a check for their insurance coverage, if we are taking the first step toward the Federal Government providing a wage differential for this group, that group, and then the next group-- to me that is the ball. As important as trade promotion authority is, I am not sure I am willing to do that evil in order to do the other good. If the idea is to load down something that is so clearly beneficial to this economy and this country such as trade promotion authority, the Andean trade agreement, with so many things that are so onerous that it is going to defeat the underlying bill--if that is the purpose, I think those who seek to carry that out are very close to accomplishing their goal. It would be a pity, it would be a bad thing for this country, but I am afraid that is what we are looking at. Trade promotion authority and the Andean trade agreement are being held as hostages for a series of new entitlement programs, which really have nothing to do with trade but have everything to do with a social agenda which, as the Senator from New Hampshire pointed out, has failed in other parts of the world. While they are scrambling to try to be more like us, we are scrambling to try to be more like them, it seems. If there is anything we ought to agree to in this body, it is the importance of trade promotion authority and the Andean trade agreement, at a time when our friends to the south of us, the Colombian Government, are about to be taken over by narcotraffickers, if they have their way, and have the first narcogovernment in our hemisphere instead of the democracy that is there now. Is anything more important than stopping that? I don't know. We have a relationship with the Government of Ecuador where we have a forward operation location to assist us in drug eradication. Fighting drugs, terrorism, there is nothing more important than that. And everyone knows we need to have a trading relationship with these folks who are trying to do the right thing, trying to impose the rule of law and other beneficial things that we stand for in their countries, and yet that is being held hostage to these new entitlement programs. The amendment of the Senator from New Hampshire, of course, has to do with one of the more onerous ones, which is an open invitation to outright fraud and abuse. Every year we come up with new assessments of how many billions of dollars we pay out to people who are dead or who are defrauding the Government or whatnot. This is an open invitation to do that. It is a program that would make the European leftists blush, and yet we are trying to move in that direction. But it is only one part of the onerous provisions that have loaded up this trade promotion authority bill. So in order to do something good for our country, good for consumers, good for folks in Tennessee, who go to the store and want to buy goods a little bit cheaper--in order for us to do that, we are being asked to sign off on a bill that would triple the cost of trade adjustment assistance. We all agree that we need some trade adjustment assistance, but now we are being asked, in a time of deficit, in a time of war, to triple this program for this 2 percent of workers. For this constituent group, in this election year, we are being asked to do that, to give this group of people--this small group of people-- an additional 6 months of unemployment compensation. The average guy who gets laid off gets 6 months. So now this 2 percent would get up to 2 years. So this group goes from 6 months to 2 years, and it expands the number of reasons they do not have to undergo any additional training. Trade assistance was originally designed as a training program to help people get a new job. This bill has over a half dozen exceptions where people do not even have to take training, including a provision that says you do not have to take training if there is another comparable job. If there is another comparable job, why do you need trade assistance anyway? This bill would expand coverage to secondary workers, double or triple the number of people eligible. It creates a new program to pay farmers when commodity prices are below 80 percent of the previous 5- year average and imports contribute in part to the decline in price. We just passed $190 billion in entitlement spending for farmers in the farm bill. This, in large part, duplicates that. There is a new program, a new bureaucracy in the office of the Department of Commerce. This program duplicates existing programs that provide assistance for communities. And it is a new bureaucracy in the process. All of this is at a cost of who knows what. Estimates have been all over the lot, but they are all based on assumptions that people would participate in this new program at the same level as they participated in the old program. This is a much more generous program. It stands to reason a much higher percentage of people are going to participate in it. So you are probably looking at $1 billion, or between $1 billion and $2 billion a year for a 10-year period, something like that, for something that could never pass on its own, something that no one would have the temerity to put in a piece of legislation. It is only because you are trying to hold free trade hostage, the Andean trade agreement hostage to this new group of entitlement programs. If this new wage guarantee provision, for example, really works out the way we are talking about--that it is open and rife with waste, fraud, and abuse--what are the chances of this new entitlement program being canceled? Zero. It never happens. It never will happen. What are the chances of it being expanded? Pretty good. It is up to $5,000 now for the wage differential. What are the chances of that coming in and getting more and more generous? Look at where trade adjustment assistance has gone from when it was first passed to what is being proposed today. No one ever dreamed, when trade adjustment assistance was first passed, that somebody would be proposing that we would do things in terms of 70 percent of their COBRA or wage differential, or all these other things that are being proposed. The same thing will happen with this new list of entitlements. So I strongly urge adoption of the Gregg amendment. It would make a bad bill a little better. There are many of us who are tussling and grappling with something--and that I think all of America should be grappling with--and that is the balancing off of something so important as giving the President authority to get into the 21st century a little bit, and become a leader in this country, as we are supposed to be, in free trade, put our money where our mouth is, giving him trade promotion authority that our Presidents have had up until President Clinton, and get on with it. If we cannot compete in this world economy with all the advantages we have, I will be very surprised. We should not be afraid of it. As important as all that is, however, I am afraid there is an effort here to saddle it with things that are bad for this country, that are the camel's nose under the tent, things that would never pass on their own. I say we have to keep our eye on the ball. We are going to hold free trade hostage. We are going to hold our friends in our hemisphere--whom we ought to be trying to do everything to help--hostage in order to get a new array of social programs and guarantees and things that are old and tired and have failed in other parts of this world and should never be started in this one. I yield the floor.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I rise today to express my concern about the farm bill. I have been a strong supporter of Tennessee farmers since I first came to the Senate, and I supported the 1996 Freedom to Farm bill, but I cannot support the conference report that is pending before the Senate. At a time when our country is fighting a war against terrorism, at a time when we are facing a deficit of up to $130 billion this year, I believe it is irresponsible to spend an additional $82.8 billion on farm subsidies on top of the $163 billion that we are already slated to spend. To do so would be a disservice to the citizens and taxpayers of this country. In addition, this farm bill will likely cause us to violate our WTO commitments at precisely the time when we are trying to convince other countries to open their markets to our agricultural products. Most importantly, I believe that the farm policies in this bill will hurt the very people that they are intended to help the small family farmers, by perpetuating the cycle of overproduction, depressed prices, and government subsidies that has made our farmers increasingly dependent on government assistance. Since 1978, Federal outlays to farmers have exceeded $300 billion, equal to nearly 10 percent of the Federal debt. In 2000, direct government payments to farmers reached a record high $22 billion. The bill proposes to spend $82.8 billion over the existing baseline of agriculture spending over the next 10 years. This amount is almost $10 billion above the already generous amount provided for farm spending in the FY 2002 budget resolution. The total cost of this bill over the six-year life of the bill is $248.6 billion. The expansion of the farm bill represents a 76 percent increase in agriculture spending. This remarkable explosion in spending would be a cause for concern at any time, but it is especially alarming under current circumstances. Our nation is fighting a war against terrorism and our government is facing potentially large deficits. In fiscal year 2002, we will spend at least $29.2 billion on homeland security. The President has proposed an additional $5.2 billion in his recent fiscal year 2002 supplemental spending request, which would bring total spending to nearly $38 billion. The President's budget request for fiscal year 2003 proposes spending of $37.7 billion for homeland security. This amount is double what we were spending on homeland security items prior to the September 11 attacks. The Brookings Institution recently recommended funding of $45 billion for fiscal year 2003 for homeland security. The truth is that we don't have a good notion of how much homeland security spending will cost in the coming years, but we know that the costs will be tremendous. As I mentioned earlier, we recently received new projections from CBO that our deficit this year could reach $130 billion. We have to recognize that the world has changed. My concerns about this legislation, however, are not limited to its cost. I believe that this legislation returns to the failed farm policies that were in place prior to the 1996 Freedom to Farm legislation, and that the effect of these policies will be to make farmers increasingly dependent on government subsidies. These policies defy logic and they defy the most basic laws of economics. The government sets a floor price for certain agricultural commodities that is higher than the market price in order to support growers of those commodities. The result is that farmers know that they are guaranteed to receive a certain price regardless of market conditions, so they ignore market signals and overproduce. The overproduction further depresses commodity prices, leading to the need for ever increasing government subsidies. We don't need to rely on economic theory to know that this is true. The data show that our farmers have been caught in an ongoing cycle of overproduction, depressed prices, and increasing government subsidies for decades. According to a study by the Heritage Foundation, farmers have responded to existing price floors by planting as many as 5 million additional acres of crops that are already overproduced. The farm bill before the Senate today will increase the target prices for these commodities and increase the amount of subsidies that farmers can receive, which I fear will only exacerbate the overproduction problem. Of the new spending in this bill, $56.7 billion is to increase commodity payments. That's nearly 70 percent of the new funds for agriculture. These kinds of policies do our farmers a disservice by creating a situation in which market prices cannot recover, forcing farmers to become increasingly reliant on government subsidies. Under current farm programs, federal government subsidies already comprise 50 percent of total farm income. This farm bill makes it impossible for farmers to move away from these subsidies. Proponents of this legislation argue that we must provide these subsidies to support small family farmers who would otherwise be forced out of business. However, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 60 percent of America's farmers are ineligible for any direct government assistance. Of the 40 percent of farmers who are eligible for government subsidies, 10 percent receive two-thirds of the benefits. That means that 4 percent of our nation's farmers receive two-thirds of all federal subsidies. In Tennessee, the top 1 percent of farm subsidy recipients receive 43 percent of the payments. That means that about 1100 of Tennessee's approximately 110,000 farmers receive nearly half of the payments. The top 10 percent of farmers in Tennessee receive 84 percent of the payments. The bottom 80 percent of farmers receive only 7 percent of the total benefits, averaging less than $700 per farmer. That is not right and it is unworthy of this Congress. According to the Heritage Foundation, the House version of the farm bill, which was less expensive than the conference report, would have cost $190 billion in taxes over the next 10 years and $271 billion in inflated food prices. The Taxpayers for Common Sense performed a cost- benefit analysis of the Senate bill on a state-by-state basis using each state's share of total U.S. personal income taxes. According to that analysis, over the next 5 years, under the Senate bill, Tennessee farmers would have received average annual farm subsidy payments of $159 million, but Tennessee taxpayers would have paid $273 million to obtain it for a loss to the state of $115 million. With this farm bill, we had an opportunity to provide a safety net for our family farmers while moving towards a more market-oriented approach. Senator Lugar has spent countless hours on the floor of this Senate, not only explaining all of these problems with the current system, but proposing effective alternatives that could move us towards a more market-oriented approach while still maintaining a safety net for our farmers. He proposed ideas such as providing federal subsidies for farmers to purchase whole farm insurance or providing matching funds for farm savings accounts. Instead, the bill before us represents a grab bag of regional special interests. For the northeast, there is a newer, more expensive dairy program. Studies indicate that this plan will increase the cost of milk by 10 to 15 percent. For the southern coastal states, the farm bill continues the sugar program, which has raised the price of sugar in the United States to nearly eight times the world price. The Midwestern states, as always, receive the overwhelming majority of the direct commodity payments. I understand we have some contested elections going on. I am also concerned that this farm bill will set back efforts to open foreign markets to our agricultural products. Everyone knew the U.S. market for agricultural products is essentially saturated. The real growth opportunity is in exports, and the U.S. has consistently made decreasing other nation's price supports and export subsidies a high priority in our discussions at the World Trade Organization. However, there is a high probability that this farm bill will cause us to violate our WTO commitments. In 1995, we committed to reduce our most trade-distorting domestic farm support to $19.1 billion per year. We have fulfilled that commitment, in part because the direct government payments provided under the 1996 Freedom to Farm bill were not related to price or production and were therefore not considered most trade- distorting and were not subject to the $19 billion cap. The conference report before the Senate today will decrease these non trade-distorting subsidies and replace them with trade-distorting coutercyclical subsidies. A report by the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute concluded that there is a 30 percent chance that the U.S. will exceed its WTO commitments in the 2002 marketing year. Now the conference report does give the Secretary of Agriculture the authority to make a determination that the U.S. is likely to violate its WTO commitments and to lower farm supports, but that creates a situation where the law provides an entitlement for farmers, which they would be counting on, and then the administration would have to come along and take that money away. Everybody in this room knows that is not going to happen. It is unclear whether the U.S. will face immediate challenge on the farm bill at the WTO. The European Union has issued conflicting statements. However, it is clear that the passage of the farm bill has angered our trading partners and weakened our ability to negotiate for decreases in agricultural support at the WTO. E.U. Trade Commissioner Franz Fischler said the bill: . . . marks a blow to credibility of U.S. policy in the WTO, where the U.S. has presented a trade-oriented agenda wholly inconsistent with the new bill. This farm bill undermines our credibility when we push for open agricultural markets and reduction of the support levels provided by other countries. In conclusion, this farm bill spends an enormous amount of taxpayers' money at a time when we cannot afford it to the disproportionate benefits of a few large farms producing a limited number of program crops. I believe most farmers do not want forever to rely on Government subsidies for their living and in increasing numbers and percentages. They want to earn a living by producing their crops and earning a decent market price for them. This legislation will make that more difficult. In fact, it goes in exactly the opposite direction. It is a callous document that can only be supported in the name of political expediency. I choose not to do so. I will not support it. I yield the floor.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. I thank the Chair. Madam President, I thank Senator Lieberman and Senator Gordon Smith for this amendment. It is entirely appropriate for the legislative branch of Government to express itself on something that is so important to so many Americans. The President has stated this country is not going to abandon Israel. I know he means what he says. I do not think there is much doubt in terms of the Congress of the United States, but we need to make sure there is none. Quite frankly, I am surprised at some of the misreadings that our friends in Europe and other places have sometimes of our body and our intentions. It appears to me that Israel is in a struggle for its very existence. I do not think that is an overstatement. We read about skirmishes, and we hear of the historical difficulties we have had in that region. We tend to, in my mind, sometimes downplay the significance of what is going on there, but it is more significant probably than most people realize. No. 1, it is quite apparent that the Israelis believe they are in a struggle for their existence. It is clear to them, as it is to me, that the driving force among the Palestinians--not all Palestinians--is intent to drive the Israelis out of their country. If we look at Arafat's map, we will see that it does not have Israel on it. When those people talk about a Palestinian homeland, they are talking about Tel Aviv, they are not talking about the West Bank. When the Israelis see that and they are subjected to organized, orchestrated, systematic terrorist activity where their children are being murdered, they take that very seriously. They are doing right now what is necessary to protect themselves. I am afraid their enemies in this region are not interested in just a Palestinian state, which I think the entire international community now is saying has to be a part of any long-term resolution of this problem. They certainly are not interested in a peace process, not at this stage of the game anyway. Mr. Arafat was offered what in most people's minds was the best deal that had ever been placed on the table during the prior Israeli administration. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has put a proposition on the table that the Palestinians have shown no indication they want to accept. Is there any doubt that if the violence stopped, the Israelis would be willing to sit down at the table? Of course not. Is there any doubt, on the other hand, that if the Israelis pull out of Jenin and the other places in the West Bank, the Palestinians will be willing to sit down at the table? The answer to that is no. Why is this the case? I am afraid it is the case because they still think they are winning the battle, they are winning the struggle. How can that be when they undergo tremendous losses? I think it is because the Palestinians believe they are winning the battle in the international community. It has been absolutely amazing to me to watch this occur. It is Orwellian to see person after person--young people--being strapped up with dynamite--with the encouragement of their families who are being paid off in many cases by Saddam Hussein and others--to kill innocent men, women, and children in public places in Israel, and to see the massacre and carnage of people who are not military people, who are not government leaders, but just kids out having a good time, and then to have this situation twist and turn a few times and come out as outrage against the Israelis in the world community. Somehow this brutal activity against civilians is equated with military operations the Israelis conduct against Palestinian militant leaders. I do not understand how that can come about. I am sure it boggles the minds of the Israelis, and I am sure it encourages the Palestinian leadership that wishes to drive Israel into the sea. That is the reason they still believe they have a chance, because our European friends are more critical of Israel as they defend themselves from these massacres than they are of the Palestinians. They believe that because our moderate Arab friends feel the same way about it. They believe that because the United Nations itself is more intent on investigating a war zone where people get killed, where the Israelis, instead of dropping bombs the way the United States often does, went house to house to save innocent lives and get the guilty and get the people who are responsible for so much of this destruction, losing people--they conduct this house-to-house kind of activity and bulldoze some buildings. This is the activity that the leadership of the United Nations wants to investigate. Of course, as it turns out, there was not anything to investigate. All of the charges against the Israelis proved false before they even got there. At the same time, the blood is hardly dry in downtown Tel Aviv from innocent children who were murdered by the leadership of the PLO and other radicals among that group. As the Senator said, 5-year-old children are being shot and killed in their bed, but it is a war zone that the United Nations wants to investigate. So that is why I think the PLO and Mr. Arafat and his kind believe they may be winning. They are willing to sacrifice any number of their people in order to have the political victory. I think the toughest thing in the world for political leaders to do is to acknowledge sometimes that there is nothing that can be done in short order. It does not matter in the end what the Europeans, the United Nations, the Americans, or the moderate Arabs think. Until these two parties are willing to sit down and work out a peace arrangement, we are not going to have peace. There is nothing in the world that any of us can do to force them to do that. In my opinion, nothing is going to force them to do that until they are both either exhausted or they both believe it is in their best interest to sit down. As I said, I am afraid Mr. Arafat and the PLO do not see that in their best interest right now. I suggest to our friends around the world to reassess what they are doing. I think they are contributing to the problem. They are keeping hope alive among these people who would drive Israel out of existence and into the sea. That is not going to happen. They are endangering the entire region because Israel is not going to let that happen. We all know Israel has the capability to keep that from happening. No one wants a conflagration in that part of the world, but that will happen before Israel allows itself to once again be exterminated. By encouraging the kind of activity that has driven Israel to that point, we are prolonging the conflict and making the world a more dangerous place. I say to our moderate Arab friends, including our friends the Saudis, with whom we do have an important relationship-- they are important to us. We are important to them. It is not one- sided. We have worked with each other for a long time. Hopefully, we can work with each other again. But it is no testimonial to friendship to not be honest. Part of what our friends there need to remember is, it is their country who furnished most of the terrorists on September 11 who did so much damage to us. It was their diplomat ambassador to Great Britain who was quoted as praising these suicide bombers and terrorists. It is their country and some of their own people who are raising money or allowing money to be raised in that country that finds its way to terrorists all over the world. It is their people, in many instances, who are raising money for the families who send these children in to blow themselves up and kill innocent Israelis. And it is their leaders, many times in their controlled press, who call the United States, along with the Israelis, terrorists. These are the folks we should be worried about, oil or no oil. The United States will not continue to be the United States that we all know and love and grew up in if we let these people dictate our policies contrary to our own interests and to the interests of our only democratic ally in that part of the world. I know that is not going to happen, and our friends, the Saudis, need to understand that is not going to happen. The United Nations, over the years, has had every kind of conceivable condemning resolution against the Israelis, while atrocity after atrocity has occurred against the Israelis. The United Nations, instead of investigating and looking into these places in the world where people are getting butchered by the tens of thousands, are more interested in the supposed human rights violations that the Israelis are conducting than anything else. These are supposed to be the objective analyzers of the situation in Jenin and other places. I urge that perhaps they take a look at their own behavior and their own attitudes. Our European friends, I hope, would reassess their attitudes and their public statements of their leaders at a time when anti-Semitism is breaking out once again in key European countries. As we watch the elections, as we watch the synagogues being burned, we are getting condemning lectures from them because we are supporting the only democracy in the Middle East. What in the world are they thinking? What kind of reaction do they think that is going to engender on our part? I think it is very important that we send a strong, clear message, as I think the President has done, and that we in this body send a clear message we will not bow to such wrong-headed public opinion, no matter how universal it is at the present time. We should be the leaders and we should point out the error of their ways. They should change their opinions because we are not about to turn our backs on an ally who has been our ally for so many years; that is a democracy, is not aggressively pursuing anyone except in self-defense, and who is now being subjected to a new kind of warfare that is, I believe, designed to wipe them off the face of the Earth in the end. Otherwise, we would have had at least a peace process that meant something instead of one that is in name only and is violated as soon as the ink is dry on the paper. So I again commend my friends from Connecticut and Oregon for giving us an opportunity to vote on this and to add our voices to those who are so wishful for a resolution in this troubled part of the world, who understand that it is in the interest of the United States to have a resolution in this part of the world. It is the right thing to do. It is the humane thing to do, to engage in that kind of process. It serves our interest with regard to our war and fight on terrorism in other countries in that region, but at the same time, realizing that it cannot happen, we cannot force it to happen until the parties are there, and one of the parties is not going to be there as long as the entire world is encouraging them to conduct continued terrorist activities that, up until this point, would have been universally condemned but for some reason is not being now. I yield the floor.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. I would like to thank my colleagues for their statements and indicate my support for the agreement that we have reached with regard to Title X. A lot of hard work has gone into this agreement. It is my belief that there are still many uncertainties with regard to climate change. However, I also believe that the potential risks of climate change warrant study, research and technological development. This substitute to Title X goes a long way towards achieving those goals. This amendment also recognizes that there are many contributors to climate change beyond CO2 and I appreciate that black soot is included. My biggest concern with the substitute is the creation of a White House Office on Climate Change. As ranking member of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, I have great concerns about duplication and overlayering in government. I hope we can work this out in conference and I look forward to the White House weighing in on this important issue.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues from Wisconsin and Arizona. Their leadership in this matter has been noted many times. It cannot be stressed too much. It is another indication that people who are intent on doing something they believe is good for the country can, if they are willing to spend a few years on it, take something that has apparently little support and wind up having substantial support. We are about to see that happen, and Senator McCain and Senator Feingold are to be congratulated for leading the fight, taking the slings and arrows, and doing something that I think is going to wind up benefiting our political system, this institution, and, most importantly, what we are supposed to be about more than anything else, benefiting the Nation. It has been pointed out that there are problems with this legislation. It is pretty extensive. No doubt the opponents of this legislation are correct in that. I know of no legislation of this type that is not complex and without problems. It has been pointed out there will probably be some unintended consequences. No doubt that is correct. It has been pointed out that people will start from day 1, after this is over, looking for loopholes, looking for the soft spots. ``You cannot do anything about money,'' they say. And there is no doubt people will be looking for loopholes. They even say that certain portions are unconstitutional. They are probably correct about that. Fortunately, we have a clause that will not cause the rest of the bill to fall. I believe the major portions of the bill and the more important parts of the bill are constitutional, according to decisions the Supreme Court has already made. I am willing to concede those points. Those points are not unusual or indigenous to this bill. They are things we see all the time. Once we get through the meat grinder, the legislative process, we rarely come with a perfect piece of legislation. This has an awful lot of good in it, and it is going to do some good. The argument that we will have to change it in another 20 years does not concern me that much. We had legislation that worked in this area for about 20 years, and it did a pretty good job. Then we had to change it, and that is what we are doing now. There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing to be afraid of with regard to that. We have to keep in mind the history--where we have been--to know where we are going. It is true that loopholes developed in the law. That is what we are about today. It has been said of the last law that was passed in 1974, major legislation, that it was a failure. I disagree. That law was a public financing system for Presidential elections, and it was pretty much an even playing field. The candidates spent about the same amount of money. There was not any scandal, Democratic or Republican, during that period of time. Sometimes the incumbent won, sometimes the challenger won. To me, that is the United States of America. That situation prevailed for approximately 20 years. In the 1990s all that changed. We had an administration that was willing to take chances with the law and legal interpretations that no one, until that point, was willing to take. We had a regulatory environment in which decisions were made that were inconsistent, contradictory, complex, and hard to understand. If we put all that together, we wind up with the result we have today. But we should not denigrate the fact that we can legislate in this area to some good effect. I have spent a lot of time in this Chamber talking about reasons we should not regulate in many areas. I believe the government closest to the people is the best. I believe in our principles of federalism. I believe State and local governments should step up and assume the responsibilities they traditionally have had in this country for 200 years. I believe all of that. But surely the most conservative of us must recognize that there are certain areas which are within the Federal province. Certainly national defense comes to mind. Recently we have been working on our national parks and what is happening to them. Those are responsibilities the Federal Government has taken on. We have taken on the responsibility of our infrastructure and items of that nature. I believe the election of Federal officials falls into that category. If we as a body cannot take a look at our system, why it is working and not working, and legislate in that area, I do not know in what area we can properly regulate. I have no problem stepping up to the plate, as we did in 1974, and saying we are going to place some limitations on contributions and we are going to have a system of Presidential campaigns where we are not going to have millions and millions of dollars of soft money pouring in from unions and corporations throughout this Nation. It worked for a good period of time, and we are about to do something that is going to work for another good period of time. It is important that we keep in mind the nature of the problem we are trying to address. We are not federalizing something that does not pertain to the Federal Government. We are not creating some new regulatory scheme. We probably cannot get all the regulations under the current system in this Chamber. They are complex. They are confusing. They are extensive. We already have that system. Explain to me the rules that pertain to what the State parties can do vis-a-vis the national parties. They can trade money back and forth, percentages for this, percentages for that. It would take the brain power of a nuclear scientist to figure it out. That is the current situation. So we should not be bashful about stepping up, recognizing the problem, and believing we can do something about it. It is our responsibility to do something about it. What is that problem? The problem simply is this: We have gone from a situation in this country where we financed our Federal campaigns with small contributions and a lot of people to a system where we are more and more dependent on huge entities giving tremendous amounts of money and a future that points toward fewer people being involved in the process. We have gone from a situation where the maximum contribution solicited was $1,000 to a situation where those raising the money would consider themselves foolish if they spent too much time on raising those hard dollars when they can pick up the phone to these big outfits and raise it many times that. You are not a player anymore unless you have $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, or $100,000. The same entities pick up our expenses for the convention. There is a tremendous amount of money now coming into play that was not there a short time ago. We have a system now that benefits the politicians and benefits the parties, and we try to make folks think it is our birthright. It has not always been that way. It is a recent creation, and it is not a good creation. Why is it not good? It is not good to have legislators or Presidents be too dependent on people for whom they are supposed to be making laws that affect their lives. When the very people who have legislation before you are coming to you with greater and greater amounts of money for your political campaign, that creates a potential conflict of interest that we simply do not need. It does not look good. The American people think, the average Joe on the street thinks, that with that much money being paid to that few people, they are expecting something for it.

Mr. THOMPSON. I appreciate that, Mr. President. I will wind up by saying we have a chance to address this constant scandal waiting to happen. We are making headway to do something that will reduce the cynicism in this country that will help this body, that will help us individually, and will trade increased hard money limits for the reduction of soft money, a tradeoff that will help challengers reach a threshold credibility when they want to challenge us in these races. So I commend my colleagues for this legislation. There is much more good in this than ill, and I think it will help this institution and ultimately this country.

Mr. THOMPSON. Madam President, I understand that questions have been raised about the provisions of the bill that prevent State candidates from spending non-Federal money on ads that mention Federal candidates. Can the sponsors clarify how these provisions might affect a State candidate spending money on an ad that touts that candidate having received the endorsement of a Federal candidate or officeholder?