Ron Wyden

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, tomorrow in the other body, the House of Representatives, they will begin debating one of the most important communications issues facing our country--the future of the Internet. Since the other body will begin that discussion shortly and we have had debate beginning in the Senate Commerce Committee, chaired by Senator Stevens who worked so cooperatively with Senator Inouye, I wish to take a few minutes and talk about why I think this issue is so important and what the stakes are for our country. We all understand what has been so exciting about the Internet. The Internet has been a tremendously democratizing force, ensuring that in every nook and cranny of America, opportunities are there for Americans to learn, to tap the free enterprise system and to secure health care to name a few. This is an extraordinary array of opportunities. Today on the Internet, after you have paid your access charge to use the Net, you go where you want, when you want, how you want, free of discrimination because you have paid that one original access charge. Unfortunately, there are huge communications lobbies, consisting particularly of some of the major phone companies and some of the major cable companies, that want to change the way the Internet works. They would like to make consumers and businesses in our country pay tomorrow for what is free today. Today, when small businesses or consumers pay their Internet access charge, they can go wherever they want, whenever they want, however they want, without racking up extra charges and without facing discrimination. Unfortunately, these big communications lobbies would like to change that. For example, we see reports in distinguished business publications, such as the Wall Street Journal. They talk there about communications plans that are ``pay to play.'' If you were going to go to a variety of Web sites, under the approach they are proposing in the Wall Street Journal, the Web sites or the consumer would have to pay every time they went to one of these Web sites, in order to get good quality service. I don't think that is right. I think that is discrimination. I think it is discriminating against consumers, I think it is discriminating against small businesses. I think it will do extraordinary damage to the inherent beauty of the Internet, which has been all about a fair shake for every American, for every consumer. In an effort to spin this discrimination by the big cable companies and big phone companies against the consumers, the big lobbies are engaged in a huge advertising blitz. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, these big lobbies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertisements to convince the American people that discrimination and these extra charges they would face on the Internet are actually good for consumers and businesses. If it is so good for the consumer, why are these lobbies spending millions of dollars on these advertisements to tell the American people about it? If discrimination was so good, wouldn't consumers have been interested in paying higher prices a long time ago? It is hard to open the pages of a newspaper or turn on the television without seeing an advertisement urging people to stop Congress from ``regulating the Internet.'' One trade association has even placed ads in the airports around Washington, DC, hoping Senators and Representatives traveling back to their States will see them. I can't imagine the executives of these large corporations would commit such large sums to advertising if they didn't think these kinds of advertisements would pay off handsomely in profits. Groups, such as Hands Off the Internet, a front group for some of the big communications lobbies, have offered some eye-popping ads. Look at this recent ad, for example, in which they display a copy of my legislation, the Internet Nondiscrimination Act. The only thing accurate about this ad is the top page of my bill. It has my name on it. It clearly says the ``Internet Nondiscrimination Act,'' but just about everything else is dead wrong. What they have done is falsely add what looks like hundreds, if not thousands, of pages to my bill. This is how they demonstrate what my legislation is all about. Here is the reality, Mr. President. Here is what they say I propose. However, this is just not accurate. Here is what my legislation looks like, what the big communications lobbies ought to describe as the real world; a piece of legislation that is 15 pages long. The bill I have introduced, this 15-page bill, doesn't look like anything along the lines of what the big communications lobbies are spending such vast sums on saying it looks like. There is an even more disturbing misrepresentation in this ad. It says, stamped up at the top, ``regulation.'' My legislation isn't about regulation. All I want is to leave the Internet alone. I don't want it to be subject to discriminatory changes, changes that would hit the American consumer in the pocket. I think any fairminded American who looks at my record will see that I have never sought to regulate the Internet. On the contrary, when I came to the Senate, I was a leader in the effort to keep the Internet free of discriminatory taxes. I fought to keep the Internet free of regulation. Now I am trying to keep control of the Internet in the hands of the American people and not force Americans in this country to pay tomorrow for what is free today. If you looked at these advertisements, Mr. President, you would think that neutrality is some newfangled idea that threatens the Internet. Net neutrality is what we have today, and the Internet has thrived precisely because it is neutral. It has thrived because consumers, and not some huge phone company or some huge cable company, get to choose what they want to see and how quickly they get to see it. I want to make it clear that those of us who are fighting to keep the Net neutral, which means that when you go to your browser, you go where you want, when you want, how you want, after you pay that initial access charge, are not interested in regulating anything. The people who want to make the changes, the big telecom and cable lobbies, are the ones who want to meddle with the Internet. They want to put their hands on the Internet so they can heap all these extra charges on the American people. Right now there is a small business, a craft maker, in Tigard, OR, who has a Web site where she sells her products all over the world. If these big lobbies have their way, she will have to pay a new hefty fee so customers can continue to have the same access to her Web site. That is not right. The consumer, after they pay that initial access charge, ought to be able to go where they want, when they want, how they want to get there. To make them pay tomorrow for what they get for free today is wrong. Colleagues are waiting to speak. I had anticipated spending a bit more time on this, but I think this ad says it all. We ought to keep the Internet free of discrimination. We ought to protect consumers against multiple and discriminatory access charges. The next time somebody sees one of these ads, ads that seem to have millions of dollars of lobby money backing them up, they ought to know that this which purports to represent my legislation is false. What is in this ad suggests scores and scores of pages. The reality is my bill to keep the Internet free of discrimination and protect the consumer is 15 pages long. This argument at the top of the ad that there will be a host of Net- neutrality regulations is similarly false. It is not about regulating anything on the Internet. I want to keep the Internet the way it is--an open, vibrant system, accessible to all. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, up and down the coast of Oregon, fishermen, their families and communities are suffering from the actions of the Secretary of Commerce in curtailing the Klamath salmon fishery without offering the assistance they need to cope with this disaster. Months ago the Pacific Fishery Management Council recommended to the Secretary of Commerce that this salmon fishery be drastically curtailed. The Secretary responded to the Council's recommendation by slashing the quotas and limiting the number of days and areas that could be fished. But despite numerous pleas for help from the affected communities, the Secretary has done nothing for months and months to help out the fishers whose livelihood depends on the Klamath salmon stocks. The Secretary's continued inaction is not acceptable, and so I am objecting to any unanimous consent request for the Senate to proceed to or adopt S. 2012, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2005 until the Senate can consider legislative steps that will help fishermen in Oregon and California survive this disastrous fishing season. I make this objection consistent with my policy of always announcing ``holds'' I may place on legislation or nominations. The State of Oregon is seeking a Presidential emergency declaration for those affected by this Federal action, and I intend to work closely with the State and my colleagues here in the Senate to make sure Oregon's fishing communities are not forgotten and that they receive the aid they will require to make it through this year.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to attempt, once again, to raise awareness of the plight of countless rural communities due to the impending expiration of the Secure Rural Schools and County Self- Determination Act. I regret that the lack of concern at the White House and the inertia in Congress forces me to put a hold on David Bernhardt, the administration's nominee for Interior Solicitor. It is time for everyone to focus their attention on the needs of the more than 700 rural counties in over 40 States that are depending on the reauthorization of this county payments legislation. Thus far, the administration's solution to funding county payments is unacceptable. The county payments law, which provides a stable revenue source for education, roads, and other county services in rural areas, is due to expire at the end of this year. In early 2005, I coauthored a bipartisan bill, S. 267, to reauthorize county payments for another 7 years. The bill has 26 Senate cosponsors. In February, the administration proposed reauthorizing the law for only 5 years while cutting funding by 60 percent and funding that reduced portion with a controversial Federal land sale scheme. In response, Senator Baucus proposed a sensible, alternative funding source for county payments, a proposal which I was pleased to cosponsor. Our legislation fully funds county payments by ensuring that a portion of Federal taxes are withheld from payments by the Federal Government to government contractors. The Federal Government currently does not withhold taxes when it pays government contractors. Recently, however, over my objections, Congress approved a major tax bill that uses the Baucus proposal to instead provide tax cuts for this country's most fortunate few. This lack of regard for the historic obligations of the Federal Government to rural counties severs a vitally important funding lifeline to communities throughout the country. I will hold this nominee--and many nominees coming after him, if need be--until the administration finds an acceptable way to fund county payments.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am next in line, but I understand the majority leader and the distinguished Senator from Nevada wish to have a brief colloquy. I will defer to them and pick up when they are finished.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before he leaves the Chamber, I simply wish to say to the distinguished chairman of our committee that I thank him for his kind and gracious introductory remarks to me. As he knows, sometimes we agree, as we did in the effort to make public the CIA inspector general's report on 9/11. I appreciated working with the distinguished chairman on that matter. Sometimes we disagree, as we do tonight with respect to the nomination of General Hayden, but Chairman Roberts has always been courteous and fair in our committee and essentially to every member. I thank him for that as he leaves the Chamber tonight. Clearly, Chairman Roberts and Senator Hatch, two distinguished members of our Intelligence Committee, want no part of it, but there are those who want to turn the Hayden nomination into a referendum on who is toughest on terrorism, Republicans or Democrats. These people do America a disservice. I know of no Senator who sympathizes with a terrorist. I know of no Senator who wishes to coddle al-Qaida. I know of no Senator who is anything other than a patriot. Unfortunately, this nomination is being used to divide the Senate and the American people on the issue of terrorism. Just this past Monday, the Washington Post newspaper reported that the White House: Seems eager for a battle over the nomination of Air Force GEN Michael V. Hayden as CIA Director. The article goes on to say: The White House hopes voters will see the warrantless surveillance program Hayden started as head of the National Security Agency as tough on terrorism rather than a violation of civil liberties. I believe the American people deserve better than the White House agenda of false choices. I believe one can fight the terrorists ferociously and protect the liberties of law-abiding Americans. I believe the Senate should not be bullied into thinking that security and liberty are mutually exclusive, and I believe that millions of Americans share that view. From the days of Ben Franklin, security and liberty in America have been mutually reinforcing, and it is our job to maintain this sacred balance. This is harder to do now because across America there is less trust and there is more fear. The lack of trust has been fed by the Bush administration telling the public that they have struck the right balance between security and liberty, but then we have had one media report after another that contradicts that claim. When the media reports come out, the administration says it can't say anything because responding would help the terrorists, but then the administration responds in multiple forums to get out the small shards of information that they believe is helpful to their point of view. The increased fear among our people is nourished by the fact that there are no independent checks on the Government's conduct, as there have been for more than 200 years in America. Law-abiding Americans have no reason to be confident that anyone is independently verifying reports about the administration's reported surveillance of their personal phone calls, e-mails, and Internet use. All of this mistrust and fear has translated into a lack of credibility. The administration has given us, by words and deeds, a national security routine: Do one thing, say another. An absolute prerequisite to running intelligence programs successfully is credibility. Despite the scores of talented, dedicated, patriotic people working at Langley today, the failings of the Agency's recent leadership have left the Agency's credibility diminished. The Agency is now looking at the prospect of its fourth Director since 9/11. The last Director brought partisanship and lost talented professional staff as a result. The Agency's No. 3 man, who resigned this month, is being investigated by the FBI for links to the bribing of a former Congressman. It is long past time to get it right at the CIA. This will be the second time I have voted on a Hayden nomination. The first time around, when he was nominated to serve as Deputy National Intelligence Director, I voted for the General. In my view, General Hayden's technical knowledge is not in question. He has always been personable in any discussions the two of us have had, and he has always been extremely easy to talk to. But since I last voted for him, information has come to light that has raised serious questions about whether the General is the right person to lead the CIA. There are serious questions about whether the General will continue to be an administration cheerleader; serious questions regarding his credibility; serious questions about his understanding of and respect for constitutional checks and balances, and the important accountability in Government that they create. Here are the facts: Last December, the New York Times reported that since 9/11, the National Security Agency, which General Hayden was in charge of at the time, initiated a warrantless wiretapping program. General Hayden, reported once more in the media to be the architect of the program, became the main public spokesperson in its defense. At a White House press conference in December of 2005 and at subsequent events, including a speech at the National Press Club this past January, the General vigorously defended the administration's warrantless wiretapping program. Even before the war in Iraq, I was concerned about politicizing intelligence. Since then, I think they are only additional grounds for concern. At his confirmation hearing, General Hayden said he wants to get the CIA out of the news. To me, this was a curious statement, given all the time he has spent on the bully pulpit defending the President's warrantless wiretapping program. Inevitably, any political appointee will have an allegiance to the White House that appointed him or her. But when it comes to positions in the intelligence community, I believe that this allegiance, regardless of whether a Republican or a Democrat is in the White House, should go only so far. It is not good for our great country to have a CIA Director who jumps into every political debate that comes up here in Washington, D.C. It is not good for our great country to have a CIA Director who willingly serves as an administration cheerleader. It is not good for our great country to have a CIA Director who gets trotted out again and again and again to publicly argue for the President's controversial decisions. Politicizing the position renders the CIA Director less effective and less credible. Inevitably, Americans will begin to see the Director as an administration defender rather than a conveyor of the unvarnished truth. And in our next CIA Director, we need more truth and we need less varnish. My second concern rises out of the first. Not only has General Hayden raised questions through his words and actions about politicizing intelligence, but, unfortunately, even when he says something, you cannot trust, based on his words, that what he says is credible. At the National Press Club speech he gave in January defending the NSA warrantless wiretapping program, the General repeatedly stated that the program was limited to international to domestic, or domestic to international calls. For instance, he said: There is always a balancing between security and liberty. We understand that this is a more--I'll use the word ``aggressive''--program than would be traditionally available under FISA. It is also less intrusive. It deals only with international calls. Later, General Hayden said: That is why I mentioned earlier that the program is less intrusive. It deals only with international calls. He explained: The intrusion into privacy--the intrusion into privacy is significantly less. It is only international calls. He added: We are talking about here communications we have every reason to believe are al-Qaida communications, one end of which is in the United States. At the conclusion of the Press Club address, he was asked by a reporter: Can you assure us that all of these intercepts had an international component, and that at no time were any of the intercepts purely domestic? The General said: The authorization given to NSA by the President requires that one end of the communications has to be outside the United States. I can assure you by the physics of the intercept, by how we actually conduct our activities, that one end of these communications are always outside the United States of America. With those final words, the speech and the press conference concluded. But then, just weeks ago, Americans read in the USA Today newspaper that the NSA, according to the paper, was also gathering basic information concerning hundreds of millions of innocent Americans' domestic phone calls. I cannot confirm or deny what was in that article, but I can tell you when I opened the paper that morning and read the article, it raised serious concerns for me about whether the General had been misleading. Unfortunately, this is not a single incident in an otherwise perfect record. There is a pattern of saying one thing and doing another when it comes to the General. For instance, General Hayden said he received legal authority to tap Americans' phone calls without a warrant in 2001. A year later, in 2002, the General testified before Congress's joint 9/11 inquiry that he had no authority to listen to Americans' phone calls in the United States without first obtaining enough evidence for a warrant. As conceded by the General himself, at the time he made these statements to Congress, the NSA was in fact doing the very thing he led us to believe it could not: engaging in warrantless wiretapping on persons here in our country. When I asked the General to explain these contradictions at his confirmation hearing, I didn't get much of a response. At best, I got a nonanswer that reflected the General's skill in verbal gymnastics, but not the type of candor that America needs in its next CIA Director. There is another example that I want to talk briefly about, Mr. President. When General Hayden came before the Senate Intelligence Committee last year in conjunction with his nomination to serve as a deputy to Ambassador Negroponte, I asked him about the NSA Trailblazer Program. This had been one of the General's signature NSA management initiatives, one that had been again reported as one designed to modernize the Agency's information technology infrastructure. In response to my questions--I want to be specific about this because there has been a lot of discussion about it--among a variety of other comments the General made about the Trailblazer Program, at page 44 of the transcript of that 2005 hearing that was held to approve General Hayden to be the deputy to Mr. Negroponte, the General said with respect to the Trailblazer Program: A personal view, now--looking back--we overachieved. Now, I cannot go into detail here on the Senate floor because of the classified nature of the information involved, but suffice it to say today the press is reporting that the program is belly-up and the press is reporting that it is a billion dollars worth of junk software. I take my constitutional responsibility to give advice and consent to the President's nominations very seriously. Last Monday, after the hearing, I did something that I do not customarily do. I reached out to the general once more in an effort to try to find grounds for supporting his nomination. In my office I asked that he keep the Senate Intelligence Committee fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities other than covert actions. In writing, the general responded: Regarding communications with Congress on critical issues, if confirmed as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency I intend to have an open and complete dialog with the full membership of the committee, as indicated by 501(C) 502 and 503 of the National Security Act as amended. So far, so good. But then the general added: As you understand, there will continue to be very sensitive intelligence activities and operations such as covert actions that, consistent with legislative history and longstanding practice, is briefed only to leadership of the committee. On those rare occasions, communications with those Members will be exhaustive. So once again the bottom line, General Hayden's response is ambiguous. If confirmed he intends to sometimes inform Congress and at other times only inform certain Members, without explaining how this will be decided or what his role in the decision will be. Read his response from Monday and you still can't determine when he will brief members of the Senate Intelligence Committee on the activities of the CIA, and when they will be learning about them by reading the morning newspaper. As I stated, the CIA is looking at the prospect of its fourth Director in this dangerous post-9/11 world. Serious reform is needed to get the Central Intelligence Agency headed in the right direction. To make this happen, America needs a CIA Director who says what he means and means what he says. Unfortunately, time and time again, General Hayden has demonstrated a propensity for neither. His words and acts on one occasion cannot be reconciled with words and acts on another. He is a man with a reputation for taking complicated questions and giving simple answers. Unfortunately and repeatedly, when I have asked him simple questions, he has given me complicated answers, or nothing at all. Americans want to believe that their Government is doing everything it can to fight terrorism ferociously and to protect the legal rights and civil liberties of law-abiding Americans. But right now millions of Americans are having trouble locating the checks and balances on Executive power. They don't know what the truth is and they are very concerned about what is next. I believe it is time for the Senate to break that cycle. I remain concerned that what has happened at the National Security Agency under General Hayden will be replicated at the Central Intelligence Agency. For that reason, I oppose the nomination. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I have been waiting some time to talk about General Hayden. I note the presence of the distinguished chairman of our committee, a committee on which I am proud to serve. Given the fact we are starting a discussion of General Hayden to head the Central Intelligence Agency, I ask unanimous consent that Chairman Roberts be allowed to speak at this time and that I be able to follow the chairman after he has completed his remarks.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank him for his courtesy.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I would be ready in just a couple of minutes to start. If my colleague would like to go on for a couple of additional minutes, and then I will speak, and then he could return.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I was going to talk for about 15 minutes or so. I would be happy to wait for my friend from Alabama, if he would like to finish. How much longer do you intend to speak?

Mr. WYDEN. Would my colleague yield just briefly for a question?

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, a couple of weeks ago, I stood in this spot for almost 5 hours because I wanted to prosecute an important cause, the cause of cutting needless subsidies to oil companies when the price of oil is over $70 a barrel. Today the price of oil is still about $70 a barrel, but there is a prospect of some good news. Late last night, the House of Representatives did something that seemed unimaginable in the Senate a couple of weeks ago. They actually had a vote on whether profitable oil companies should get taxpayer-funded royalty giveaways at a time when our citizens are paying record prices at the gas pump. When I spoke on the floor several weeks ago, all I was trying to do was get an up-or-down vote on exactly what the House of Representatives voted for last night. In fact, I spoke in this spot for more than 4 hours before any Senator of either political party raised any concern about the proposal I was advancing. But despite that extended effort, I was unable to get an up-or-down vote on my proposal to stop ladling out tens of billions of dollars of unnecessary subsidies to the oil industry. Last night, the House of Representatives not only voted, but they voted overwhelmingly, on a bipartisan basis, to put a stop to this extraordinary waste of taxpayer money. I remind the Senate and those who may be following this debate that the Government Accountability Office has said that a minimum of $20 billion will be spent on this program. There is litigation involving this program underway. If the litigation is successful, and we are not able to roll back this subsidy, this program could cost taxpayers $80 billion. Fortunately, the House voted last night to prohibit funding for new offshore oil and natural gas production leases if companies do not pay royalties based on fair market prices. The House vote aims to get oil and gas companies to renegotiate Federal contracts signed in 1998 and 1999 that included royalty relief for companies at a time when crude oil prices were considerably lower than they are now. If the companies wish to continue to get new leases in the future, they would have to renegotiate the old leases and pay royalties based on current market conditions. This is very much along the lines of what I sought, after an extended discussion, to have the Senate vote on just a few weeks ago. Some have argued that this approach would be essentially like blackmailing the companies by denying new leases unless they renegotiated the old ones. These opponents have argued that, instead, Congress ought to keep in place these giveaway contracts at a cost of billions of dollars to our citizens. I also point out, as we did several weeks ago on this floor, that this was a bipartisan ripoff. Mistakes were made during the Clinton administration in 1998 and 1999. Secretary Norton sweetened the pot early on, during the President's term, administratively. Then in the summer of 2005, in the conference between the House and the Senate, these subsidies were made still sweeter. So the sugar just kept coming at a time when the program was already way too sweet for the taste of taxpayers. No one has a constitutional right to get new leases to drill on Federal lands at giveaway prices. Congress can set new terms and conditions for new leases at any time. In fact, the Congress did just that less than a year ago in passing the Energy bill. The House of Representatives did the same thing in their vote last night. I still believe the Senate ought to have an opportunity to debate and to vote on the oil royalty issue as well, and I will tell the Senate today I am going to do everything in my power to get this issue back on the floor of the Senate as soon as possible. This is a ripoff of our taxpayers. It is an outrage, at a time when middle class folks show up at a gas station in Georgia and Oregon and elsewhere around the country, pay huge prices, and then on top of it their taxpayer dollars are being used to subsidize the companies with these giveaway contracts. This is too important an issue for the Senate to duck. Too much taxpayer money is at stake for the Senate to duck. I do not see how the Senate can explain away not voting on this after the discussion we have had thus far and after the House of Representatives has now voted, in a bipartisan way, to do what was the subject of extended debate on the Senate floor. The oil companies are supposed to pay royalties to the Federal Government when they extract oil from Federal lands. But in order to stimulate production of oil in our country, the Federal Government, over the last decade, has been discounting these royalty fees. These discounts now amount to billions of dollars. The royalty relief that is given to the oil companies is now the granddaddy of all the oil subsidies. There has been a lot of debate on the floor of this body over the last few weeks about tax breaks for the oil companies. The President, in my view, to his credit, has indicated that he understands that these tax breaks are no longer needed. I was very pleased to see that. I was pleased to hear the President's comment because when the chief executives from the major oil companies came to the Energy Committee last November, I literally went down the row and asked them if they continued to need all of these tax breaks. The oil executives said they don't need the tax breaks. But the Congress decided to keep ladling them out. So on top of the oil companies' record profits, on top of record prices, on top of record tax breaks, what we have seen is record amounts of royalty relief granted to the oil companies as well. With prices in the stratosphere, I do not see how anyone can justify this multibillion-dollar subsidy. The point of my amendment several weeks ago was to get rid of these special oil company discounts, the special breaks that amount to billions of dollars, unless the price of oil comes down or unless the Bush administration determines that royalty relief is necessary to avoid supply disruption. There is, in my view, a growing bipartisan chorus saying that royalty relief is not needed. For example, as another showing of bipartisanship in this cause, a distinguished Member of the other body who chairs the Resources Committee, Congressman Richard Pombo, said in a newspaper interview that there is no need for this particular incentive. He said there is not any need for what the Congress has been ladling out and has said it is not necessary at a time of these prices. In addition, Mr. Michael Coney, a lawyer for the Shell Oil Company, not exactly a place where you would look for somebody to gratuitously bash the industry--he basically said the same thing. He said in this kind of climate you can't make a case for a multibillion-dollar subsidy. The architect of the program, the author of the program, a very respected, very esteemed former colleague of many of us here, Senator Bennett Johnston of Louisiana, has said what has taken place with respect to the royalty relief program is not at all what he had in mind when he wrote the law. Last night, the House of Representatives took a landmark step towards reforming this program to reflect current market conditions. I pay a special congratulations to two long-term friends from the other body, Congressman Ed Markey and Congressman Maurice Hinchey. They both spent an enormous amount of time on this issue. They focused on building bipartisan support for their effort. And what Congressman Markey and what Congressman Hinchey were able to do last night was a real breakthrough in terms of protecting the interests of taxpayers. I congratulate those two for building a bipartisan coalition on behalf of this cause. What I proposed in the Senate was a similar approach to getting the royalty program back on track. I said we ought to roll back these royalty relief subsidies. Let's make sure we are sensitive to the prospect of conditions that can't be anticipated now. If the President says there is going to be a supply disruption or problems are taking place, then we would have a chance to look at it again. Previously, there had been a particular provision in the royalty relief program that said when the oil prices shot up, when they went above a certain level--then it was considered above $34 a barrel--the companies would have to, once again, start paying these royalties. But the problem the Senate and now the House has been looking at stems from the fact that some in the Clinton administration weren't watching the store. They weren't watchdogging this program. They weren't watchdogging the interests of taxpayers as they should have. So they did not put in this clause, the clause that protects taxpayers by setting the price level when you cut off the subsidies, and they didn't include the clause that protects the taxpayers in a number of the leases. As a result, what has happened is taxpayer money has been wasted and there has been a litigation derby, with scores and scores of lawsuits, with companies still asserting the right to get more cash out of the taxpayer till. The Government Accountability Office has estimated that at minimum the Federal Government is going to be out $20 billion. This is the biggest subsidy of them all in the energy area. I recall when I was on the Senate floor earlier our colleague from Florida, Senator Nelson, raised an important concern with respect to a oil subsidy program that he was troubled by. It costs the taxpayers $1 billion. Senator Nelson of Florida was spot on, in terms of trying to protect taxpayers and deal with another area where taxpayers' interests have not been well served. But Senator Nelson was talking about something that was relatively small potatoes compared to the money that is involved with royalties. Suffice it to say, with the subsidies going out the door now and the prospect that the litigation is successful, there is a very real threat that the cost of the subsidy will go still higher, and there are some independent experts in this field who have said that the cost of this program could come in at $80 billion. Under the Energy bill signed into law last summer, the oil companies were given new subsidies in the form of reduced royalty fees for the oil and gas they extract from Federal land, including offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. This particular new subsidy in the summer of 2005 was signed into law when the companies were already reporting extraordinary profits. We were already seeing the consumer getting pounded at the gas pump, and it would have been an ideal time, in that summer of 2005, for the Congress to do what members of both political parties have been talking about, and that is roll back these unnecessary expenses, these unnecessary costs to taxpayers. It should have been done in that conference in the summer of 2005. It was wrong that Senators and Members of the other body agreed, in the summer of 2005, to expand a program which has lost any sensible philosophical foundation, a program that began in a time when oil was around $16 a barrel, and now is one that has been reconfigured into one that gives out subsidies when the price of oil is $70 a barrel. Back when that energy conference got together in the summer of 2005, those Members of the Senate and the other body should have said: This is the time to draw the line. This royalty relief program does not pass the smell test. It makes absolutely no sense to be dispensing billions and billions of dollars of royalty relief to the oil companies on top of everything else they already receive. What I hope now, with the promising action that was taken in the House of Representatives late last night, is I hope it is possible for some common sense, some practical action on behalf of taxpayers, to win bipartisan support in the Senate. That is what caused me to come to this floor several weeks ago and stay in this spot for almost 5 hours. I am about done now because I think we have made the point, and I don't think we need to spend 5 hours on it today. But I will tell you that a program like this, which was useful back when prices were low, makes no sense, no sense at all anymore. You can argue for government subsidies at a time when, for example, oil prices are low, and when we are talking about the need to stimulate production, when the American economy needs a shot in the arm. But you certainly don't need billions of dollars of royalty relief for companies at a time when you have record profits, record costs, and record tax breaks. I am very hopeful that when the Senate comes back next week, we will begin a bipartisan effort to put in place legislation very much along the lines of what passed the House of Representatives late last night. There will be an opportunity to support the kind of commonsense reform I have been talking about, which passed the House last night, when the Interior appropriations bill comes to the floor. I also appreciate particularly the efforts of Senator Kyl of Arizona who has worked with me on this cause. He was a very active colleague during the debate, and since then has worked with me to try to find a way to advance this cause in the Senate. We now have a new opportunity to protect the interests of taxpayers and to modernize our energy policy. Talk about not keeping up with the times. How can you argue in favor of a program that began when oil was $16 a barrel? That is what we are dealing with. We are subsidizing the price of this commodity at a time when it hovers around $70 a barrel using a program that began decades ago when the price of oil was $16 a barrel. It makes no sense. I am going to be back on this floor at the first possible opportunity to see if it is possible, on a bipartisan basis, to accomplish what I and Senator Kyl were not able to do on a bipartisan basis a couple of weeks ago. I hope in the Senate there will be a new interest in saving our taxpayers' money and promoting fiscal responsibility by reining in further royalty relief for oil companies. We ought to stipulate that if the price goes down, or America faces some kind of supply disruption, we could revisit it. But until then, we ought to roll back this oil company royalty relief and save our citizens' hard-earned taxpayer dollars for more worthy causes.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, I wish to say to the distinguished Senator from Mississippi that I am certainly not interested in class warfare. But what I am interested in is giving all Americans a fair chance to accumulate wealth. This legislation doesn't do that, and that is why I am opposed to it. My sense is that everybody in our country wants to do well. Everybody aspires to be well off. Everybody wants to be able to get ahead. Yet that is not possible in many respects because of our Tax Code. The American people just finished the annual ordeal of doing their taxes. This spring, Warren Buffet, the second wealthiest person in the United States, paid a lower tax rate than his receptionist. But under this bill, that receptionist isn't going to get much of anything. Senator Lott made a point with respect to the next tax bill. We are going to have another bill, Senator Lott said. But the bottom line is the oil companies get their boost in this bill today. What Senator Lott and others have said is maybe sometime down the road we will start talking about middle-class folks. I think we have to give everybody in this country the chance to accumulate wealth. We have to do more than hand out gusher giveaways to a fortunate few. That is why I have introduced the Fair Flat Tax Act that gives everybody in our country the opportunity to accumulate wealth. So we are clear on this oil issue, I want the Senate to understand some of the history of it. On November 9, 2005, the CEOs of the major oil companies came to a joint Senate hearing of the Energy and Commerce Committees. I asked them then--it had never been asked in a public forum--whether they agreed with the President's statement that ``with $55 oil we don't need incentives for oil and gas companies to explore.'' The CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Conoco, Phillips, and BP-Shell for the first time agreed that the tax breaks which had been provided in the Energy bill weren't necessary. Having heard that statement, I said I want to begin, on a bipartisan basis, to start working with colleagues in the Finance Committee to scale back these tax breaks that, to his credit, the President of the United States said aren't even necessary. I began to work with the distinguished Senator from Montana, Senator Baucus, and the Chair of our committee, Senator Grassley, to try to start rolling back those tax breaks. It was a very modest step that was taken. Our committee repealed one of the tax breaks that dealt with what are called geological and geophysical drilling expenses. But we got it passed, and for the first time in 20 years, the Senate Finance Committee--I think Senator Lott was even there that day--a tax break that the oil companies had gotten was taken away. Repealing that tax break would have saved about $1 billion. It certainly is not everything that is needed to deal with these exploding deficits but a solid step in the right direction. You then have a conference between the Senate and the House. At a time of record profits, at a time of record prices, this bipartisan amendment to make a modest reduction in the kind of tax breaks that the President said are not needed when oil is over $55 a barrel pretty much disappeared. It was cut by more than 50 percent. I say to my good friend from Mississippi that I can't accept a double standard where the oil companies get their tax breaks today--they get them right now--and yet, the Senate will come back and maybe sometime down the road start talking about relief for the middle class. I want to work with the Senator from Mississippi. He and I have worked together on many occasions. That was why I felt that the bipartisan agreement I got in the original Senate bill was so important. But what I can't accept is a double standard, where you have the gusher giveaways today on the oil side and then we hear--as we heard on the floor of the Senate--we will come back with another bill at a another time and maybe at that point we can talk about tax relief for middle-class folks. Another comment was made that I want to highlight about former President Ronald Reagan who, of course, is revered and respected by all. The last thing President Reagan did, to his credit, in the tax area is he worked with colleagues on both sides of the aisle, with former Senator from New Jersey, Bill Bradley; the former chair of the Ways and Mean Committee in the House, Dan Rostenkowski, on overhauling the Tax Code. One of the steps that they agreed on is we were not going to hit the cops who walk the beat with a higher tax rate than somebody who is out investing, say, in Google stock. We had a bipartisan agreement back in 1986 that we weren't going to discriminate against wages. We weren't in this country going to say that the people who work hard and play by the rules and make their money from wages are going to get hammered. What the Senator from Mississippi said I found very interesting with respect to Ronald Reagan because what Ronald Reagan embraced in 1986 is exactly what I am calling for in my Fair Flat Tax Act. That is an approach that says we are in it together. We are all going to be able to accumulate wealth. Everybody is going to have a chance to get ahead. Everybody who aspires for a better life for themselves and their families would have an opportunity to do it under the Fair Flat Tax Act. They sure don't under this bill with those oil gusher giveaways right now. We have been told that sometime in the future, we will come back to talk about middle-class folks, and we will have a discussion about their needs and what they hope for their families sometime. This is one other area where, again, I have a little bit of a difference of opinion with my friend from Mississippi. He has talked about the fact that corporate profits are up, revenue is coming in. Of course, we are glad to see all of that. But the reality today is this is the first time in decades when corporate profits are up and productivity is up--both trends we like to see--that middle-class people are seeing their wages stagnant. The middle-class folks are not enjoying the fruits of these benefits of additional revenue. Again, I want our corporations to do well. I want to see the incredible improvements in productivity. What I think every Member of the Senate ought to be talking about is that not all Americans are in a position to enjoy these developments. That is why any time when I go home and have a community meeting, almost all of the issues raised by my constituents have the second word ``bill.'' They ask about their gas bill or medical bill or mortgage bill or tax bill. That is why I want to work with Senator Lott on a bipartisan basis so that when we have an expansion of corporate profits, when we see an increase in productivity, the middle-class person can get ahead as well. We are not seeing that today. In fact, the Federal Reserve said the other day that, for all practical purposes, over the last 5 years, the net worth of middle- class folks has hardly moved. What I want to do is what Ronald Reagan and Bill Bradley and others did back in 1986--make changes in the Tax Code so that everybody has the opportunity to accumulate wealth. I wrote a bill, the Fair Flat Tax Act, which does that. In fact, I am saying this to Senator Lott because I would love having a chance to work with him. I took the same brackets that Ronald Reagan did. I chose the exact same tax brackets that Ronald Reagan did for my Fair Flat Tax Act. It is an indication that if we can have a bipartisan effort, as we saw two decades ago before the 14,000 changes in the Tax Code since 1986, we could see once again Democrats and Republicans coming together to continue the trend toward expanded corporate profits and corporate productivity, but we would not be leaving the middle-class person behind. That is what is so unfortunate about what has happened. My proposal allows us to save about $100 billion over the next 5 years. By contrast, the tax legislation before the Senate increases the deficit with more tax cuts that aren't paid for. In terms of tax compliance, you can go to my web site, wyden.senate.com to see my simplified 1040. People at Money Magazine were able to complete this form in just 15 minutes. But this year, Americans spent more complying with the Tax Code than the government has spent on higher education. Is that what we want? Is that our vision of tax reform? I don't think so. I think we want to build on the kind of bipartisan effort we had in 1986. We had a revered Republican President, Ronald Reagan, who has been cited on the floor today, coming together with Democrats in both the Senate and the House. We were able to do something that allowed us to grow the economy and also let middle-class folks get ahead. Is it right that the cops who guard this wonderful institution pay a higher tax rate on their wages than Warren Buffett does as the second wealthiest person in our country? I don't want to soak anyone. I want everyone to be able to get ahead. I want everyone to be able to accumulate wealth. What we have been told under this tax bill is that the oil companies get theirs today, but we will have some other day, some other time, some other opportunity to talk about the interests of the middle class. That is not fair to the people of this country. We have said we are all in it together. We should not have a double standard with the powerful getting theirs today and working families having to wait for another time. That is not right. While we are, for example, putting a little patch on the alternative minimum tax in this legislation, and I am glad to see that--the crushing costs of this tax are not being addressed. My fair flat tax legislation abolishes the alternative minimum tax altogether. That is what we ought to do before we see this thing ramp up and up and up, engulfing millions of middle-class folks who end up having to pay their taxes twice. I will wrap up with one last point. In this legislation, as we look at the tax cuts being offered in the bill to a fortunate few, we are seeing in the legislation that those who have crafted the bill are taking the very money Senator Baucus and I have sought in order to keep rural schools open, something Senator Lott and a number of colleagues on the other side have been with us on a bipartisan basis. Senator Baucus and I asked, are we going to sell off hundreds of thousands of acres of our public lands in order to pay for the rural schools? We did not think that made any sense. So we said we are going to go to the drawing board. We are going to come up with an alternative. We did that. We said we were going to keep money from going to tax dodgers, make sure they paid what was owed, and to make sure the federal government honors our commitments to rural schools, rural schools in Oregon, in Mississippi, and all across the country. It is possible, as Ronald Reagan and Democrats did in 1986, to make the Tax Code simpler, flatter, and fairer, and allow us to grow our economy and do right by the middle class. The legislation I have introduced, the Fair Flat Tax Act, is a starting point for the debate. We ought to understand, certainly on the Committee on Finance where I have the honor to serve with Senator Lott, that there is a lot of give and take in a tax debate. What I do know is the bill that the Senate will be voting on before too long does not give all Americans the opportunity to accumulate wealth. That is why I must oppose it. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Baucus, I ask unanimous consent that the following interns and fellows be granted floor privileges during consideration of S. 1955: Leona Cutler, David Schwartz, Diedra Henry-Spires, Britt Sandler, Tiffany Smith, Tom Louthan, and Christal Edwards.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before she leaves the floor, I want to express my thanks to the distinguished Senator from Maine for working so closely with me on health care issues. I expect that before long Senator Snowe and I will be offering our bipartisan amendment to lift the restriction on Medicare that bars Medicare from bargaining to hold down health care costs. Senator Snowe and I have worked on this for over 3 years. We recently got 54 votes in the Senate to win passage of this bipartisan effort. I thank her for all the good work she is doing in the health care field and look forward to when she offers our bipartisan amendment before too long and to prosecuting this cause on behalf of senior citizens and taxpayers alike. Mr. President and colleagues, no other health policy in America is more objectionable to the people of this country than preventing Medicare from bargaining to hold down health care costs. This restriction that bars Medicare from bargaining to hold down health costs simply defies common sense. The restriction that bars Medicare from bargaining to hold down health costs is contrary to what goes on in the private sector of this country every single day. It certainly is contrary to the needs of this program and the taxpayers of this country when we see the Federal budget deficit exploding every time we turn around. It seems to me that to have Medicare actually barred from bargaining to hold down prescription costs simply defies the sensible approaches that we have always taken in holding down health costs. That approach is to use your bargaining power and the capacity to argue on behalf of large numbers of people. That is using marketplace forces to really make a difference. The way Medicare is buying prescription drugs under this program is like somebody going to Costco and buying toilet paper one roll at a time. Nobody would ever go shopping that way. Certainly when steel companies, auto companies, any major manufacturing concerns first sit down with a vendor, they ask: What kind of deal will you give me on the basis of the large volume of this product that I am going to be purchasing? Not Medicare. Medicare won't do what everyone else does all across this country every single day. It is especially important that Medicare use this bargaining power, given what the American Association of Retired Persons has found recently in a report they released to us on the cost of prescription drugs. The AARP released a report in February of 2006 that found brand name medications most commonly used by older people rose almost twice the rate of inflation in other areas of health care. So here is a chance to actually save money for senior citizens and taxpayers. We can especially expect to see savings when you have single-source drugs for which there is absolutely no competition. There are concrete cases where the Federal Government says we are not going to allow price controls, we are not going to allow the establishment of a one-size-fits-all formulary, but we are going to say that the Government is going to be able to bargain, and that approach will make a real difference. I know some colleagues think any effort by the Government to allow bargaining to hold down the cost of medicine will lead to price controls. The amendment which Senator Snowe and I expect to file before long is very clear. It does not permit price setting or the creation of a formulary. All it says is the Federal Government, and in effect the seniors of this country, would be able to go into the market and use their clout just like any other big purchaser could to hold down the cost of medicine using marketplace forces. As colleagues consider this particular approach I hope--I know the distinguished President of the Senate has a great interest in pharmaceuticals and prescription drugs--that colleagues will look at what Senator Snowe and I advocate. In that amendment, on page 3, lines 2 through 8 make it clear that we are opposed to price controls. We have continually tried to address this. We are not in favor of price controls. We are not in favor of establishing a one-size-fits-all formulary or instituting a uniform price structure of any kind. All we are saying is that the Federal Government ought to have a chance to do some hard-nosed bargaining the way everybody else does to hold down the cost of prescription drugs. Secretary Tommy Thompson, former Secretary of Health and Human Services, said that the one power he wanted as he left office and was denied by the Congress was the opportunity to negotiate when necessary to hold down the cost of prescription drugs. This amendment would ensure that the prescription drug benefit is sustainable without interfering with marketplace forces and would simply say that the Federal Government could leverage the marketplace just as any other big buyer of a product does. To date, millions of seniors have enrolled in this program and, of course, they are realizing some savings on their prescription drugs. We are glad to see that, but it has come about primarily through the infusion of taxpayer money. What I and Senator Snowe would like to do is bring about some savings--not just by pouring more and more taxpayer money into this program but by using marketplace forces to protect the interests of seniors and our taxpayers. Prohibiting Medicare from negotiating for drug prices was an overreach. I know of no other industry in the United States that has power like this. We don't see any other industry that does business with the Federal Government in which discussions and negotiations with the Federal Government is specifically barred. Everybody else has to sit down across the table from the Government representing the interests of our taxpayers and get into the nuts and bolts of negotiating the best deal for a particular group of Americans. We need to end this special treatment, this favoritism, this unwarranted preference that only the prescription drug industry has and give our Government the bargaining power that is needed so that seniors and taxpayers can be protected through marketplace forces. Some who are opposed to what Senator Snowe and I want to do have said that we are already seeing some negotiations. Of course, that is true. Having voted for this program and wanting to see it work--I have welts on my back to show for that--I am pleased that we are seeing some discussion among health plans and others. But I think we will see a whole lot more opportunity to contain costs and contain them through marketplace forces if we untie the hands of the Secretary, as the previous Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, sought to do. I believe we ought to take every possible step to save every possible nickel to protect seniors and taxpayers, and lifting this absurd restriction on Medicare bargaining power will do just that. I cannot for the life of me conceive of a rational reason Medicare should not have the same power to negotiate just the way other smart shoppers do across this country. Every smart shopper in the private sector--every single one--wants the kind of opportunity that I and Senator Snowe are advocating. I don't know of any private entity, whether it is a timber company in my home State or a big auto company or anybody else who doesn't sit down across the bargaining table and ask, what are we going to do to work something out that reflects the fact that I am going to be buying a lot of something? Why shouldn't Medicare, if it believes it is warranted, have that authority in effect as a standby? Senator Snowe and I have been crystal clear in saying that there is a difference between negotiating and bargaining and price controls and uniform formularies. We would say to our colleagues: Look at our proposal just as we did in the one that received 54 votes recently. We spell it out. We lay it out on page 3 of our amendment, lines 2 through 8. We stipulate no price controls, no uniform formulary, no particular kind of one-size-fits-all price structure in any way. I would like to, along with Senator Snowe, offer a market-based, comprehensive cost containment to help hold down the cost of prescription drugs in our country. I am glad we are discussing Medicare this week. I think it is high time. I tell colleagues that no other health policy in America is more objectionable than the one that prevents Medicare from bargaining to hold down health care costs. It is time to inject some common sense into the Medicare drug benefit. Giving Medicare bargaining power to millions of senior citizens through Medicare is economics 101. If it is important to the seniors of this country, it is important to taxpayers. We expect to bring a bipartisan proposal to the floor of the Senate this week. We all know we could sure use some bipartisanship around here at this critical time. I hope colleagues will, as they did a few weeks ago, show strong bipartisan support for our proposal. If we are serious about reining in health costs, and the American people say it is at the top of their agenda, you have to lift this restriction that bars Medicare from bargaining. We expect to be filing the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden amendment before long. We hope, as we did on the last occasion when we voted on this, we will have a strong majority in the Senate in support of a commonsense, practical way to protect senior citizens who are buying prescription drugs and are taxpayers at the same time. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I wish to be clear that what the Senator from New Mexico asked for was a request to speak for 5 minutes and then we would return to consideration of my amendment specifically in its current form, and I would be recognized to speak on my amendment.

Mr. WYDEN. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President.

Mr. WYDEN. Without losing my right to the floor immediately after the question; of course, I yield.

Mr. WYDEN. If I can respond, just to ensure that we are absolutely correct on this point, what I would like to do--and, hopefully, we can work it out in a matter of minutes----

Mr. WYDEN. That is probably one of the most encouraging things I have heard in hours.

Mr. WYDEN. That is over 25 years. And the cost, if the litigation that is underway is successful, the evidence indicates that could add up to $80 billion. The entire supplemental is $100 billion, so depending on how this litigation turns out before too long, the amount of money involved could be close to the cost of the entire supplemental.

Mr. WYDEN. Again, I tell my friend from Colorado that this is not my preferred choice of doing business in the Senate. I was ready to vote last night. I am ready to vote now. I am ready to vote as part of a package of amendments. My understanding is I cannot yield the floor at this time without losing my place. I reluctantly have to decline.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank the distinguished Senator. I know the Senator, having chaired the Appropriations Committee, is anxious to try to work this out. My door is open to try to do that. If the Senator can do what apparently we couldn't get worked out with Senators McCain, Salazar, Nelson, and others, no one will be happier than I. I want to note exactly what the amendment does. It blocks the Federal Government from sweetening the already sweetheart royalty deals that are being dispensed under this legislation. This is needed because even as the prices have shot up, the previous Secretary of Interior was giving more royalty relief to the companies. It has been reported in the press that the Secretary of Interior made the incentives more generous by raising the threshold prices. Her action allowed drillers to escape royalties in 2005, when prices spiked to record levels. She also offered to sweeten the contracts that were not generous enough, in her opinion. Think about that one. She went back and offered to sweeten the contracts that she felt were not generous enough, contracts the drillers signed before the new regulations were approved. What this amendment does is it prohibits the kind of sweetening of the deals for those who are drilling when prices are high. When prices are high and we have no threat of disruption, then I am saying the Government has to step in and watchdog this program and do a better job for the taxpayers. These are royalty deals which are already laden with sugar. They do not need any further sweetening. What is needed in the Senate is for the Senate to say now we are going to do what has not been done; we are going to step in and protect the taxpayers and the American people. Under this amendment I am trying to get up in front of the Senate, the next Secretary of Interior would not be able to do what was done last year and give away more royalty relief when oil prices are above $55 per barrel. That is what we are all about today. I hope we will have discussion of other aspects of the oil business. I know that colleagues have amendments of a variety of types they wish to offer. But these are the sweetest deals in town. They are laden with sugar. They do not need any further sweetening. And at some point you have to ask, Is the Senate ever going to draw the line and have some real accountability in this program? I have now been speaking about this for probably close to 3 hours. No Member of the Senate has spoken in favor of running the Royalty Relief Program the way it is. I want to repeat that. After 3 hours of debate and a chance for anybody here in the Senate to come and say, Look, I think it is important, I think we ought to keep the program the way it is, nobody in the Senate has come before this distinguished body and made the case for this program on the floor of the Senate. I think that says it all. Nothing could better illuminate the history of this out-of-control program than the fact that nobody has opposed it here or has opposed my amendment on the floor of the Senate. The way decisions are made with respect to this program is like what happened with the conference committee in 2005 on the Energy bill. After midnight, when nobody would have a chance to see what was going on, an argument was made that this doesn't cost any money. A couple of Senators were present. They said, You have to be kidding. There has been one Government report and audit after another of this program. Nobody can say with a straight face that this program costs nothing. Yet that was the argument made after midnight in the energy conference. So this legislation kept getting sweeter and sweeter and sweeter. Billions of dollars are at stake. We already have record prices. We already have record profits. The question becomes, Are we going to have record royalty payments? I think it is important now for the Senate to draw the line. I want to make sure the Senate is aware of how my amendment would work. Right now the oil companies are supposed to pay royalties to the Federal Government when they extract oil from Federal lands. To stimulate production when the price of oil was cheap, the Federal Government reduced the amount of royalty payments the companies had to make. Now that the price of oil has shot up to over $70 a barrel, the discounted royalty payments amount to a needless subsidy of billions and billions of dollars. So the practical effect of all of this is the Senate works on a supplemental spending program. It is called an emergency because the Government doesn't have the money. That is why we are in this situation today. We have an emergency. The Government doesn't have the money, but yet the Senate is still willing to look the other way when billions and billions of dollars go out the door at a time when the President of the United States has said you don't need subsidies when the price of oil is over $50 a barrel. Experts in and out of the Government share my view that this subsidy defies common sense. I have described the views of the chairman of the natural resources committee, Congressman Pombo, who talked about what the folks at Shell Oil have said. Former Senator Johnston wrote this particular program. There isn't anybody defending this program in its current form. That is the amazing part of this debate. Nobody has stood up and said, I want the Royalty Relief Program to operate just the way it is. I thought for sure we would have some discussion about this topic. I thought somebody would actually stand up and oppose what I am talking about. Somebody might say, Look, just because you say it is the granddaddy of all subsidies doesn't mean it doesn't do any good. But nobody has done that. In the course of speaking at some length about this particular program, nobody here in the Senate has said they want to come to the floor and defend it. I think that tells a whole lot about the situation we are in. By the way, I think it says a lot about whether the Senate is willing to hold these companies accountable and is going to watchdog the program which costs billions and billions of dollars. We have all had our phones flooded with folks concerned about the price of oil. I heard a discussion from the distinguished Senator from Arizona who said that earmarks were the top question he had heard about from citizens. Like the Senator from South Carolina, I have an enormous amount of respect for the Senator from Arizona. But I think while earmarks are certainly important--and I don't want to get into some kind of competition about what is the most important--I can tell you everything I am seeing right now is that gasoline prices is the issue the American people want to address. I want a new energy policy. I am anxious to work with colleagues to do so. As I have spoken here on the floor of the Senate, I would say arguably the best idea we have seen in energy as it relates to production comes from our friend from Wyoming, Senator Thomas, who has pointed out that we are probably not getting a big chunk of the oil production out of existing wells. It is an amazing thing; experts in the field say we may be losing as much as a third of what is out there in existing wells. If you go and get that oil, first, you begin to add to the production that all Senators want to encourage but also you do something that is sensible for the environment because you don't run the risk of additional environmental problems. As we have looked at on the Commerce Committee under the distinguished chair, Senator Stevens, there is a lot of new technology in the oil business. So it is possible to capture some of the gases that are emitted and better protect the environment. There are good ideas for getting a fresh energy policy and certainly increasing production. As I have said publicly and privately, I think Senator Thomas is one of the best. But there are also some programs that make no sense. This one doesn't. This one is the biggest of them all. If the Senate is serious about reining in these practices that drain our Treasury, which is a factor in our having to come to the floor and ask for emergency spending programs, then I think we have to tackle this kind of program. Government subsidies--sure, you can make a case for them when the price is low, when you have to stimulate production, and when our economy needs a shot in the arm. But billions of dollars of royalty relief for the companies with these kinds of prices? I don't get it. I don't think it is even a close call. Perhaps that is why we have not seen anybody come to the floor and argue on behalf of doing business this way. My amendment would ensure that you have royalty relief when it is needed. When you need royalty relief, under this particular amendment-- when there is a supply disruption or when prices fall--you would be able to have that relief. But it ought to be targeted. It ought to be targeted as it was in the middle 1990s. That was a period when the price of energy was way down. Parts of our country that could produce oil were hurting. There was a judgment made before my good friend from South Carolina and I were in the Congress, there was a judgment made in the middle of the 1990s to say, all right, let us give these companies a break. If they go out and take some risk, if they will go out and drill and take those chances as you do as part of the free enterprise system because the Government wanted to encourage production at an important time, there was bipartisan consensus that it be done. The author of the program, Senator Johnston, our former colleague from Louisiana, put together an impressive coalition to get it passed. As I have quoted Senator Johnston here on this floor recently, what we have isn't anything close to what was intended. He was kind of baffled about the whole thing. He said the whole thing is confusing. It is time for the Senate to say that on the biggest subsidy program, the one that costs the most, which is going to be greater, as far as I can tell, than all of the subsidies combined, and if the litigation involving this program costs approximately what the whole supplemental costs, this is the program we have to deal with. I don't think it passes the smell test to keep dispensing billions and billions of dollars of royalty relief at this time from the taxpayers' wallet. This is a program that was useful a decade ago. But nobody could say that we need these kinds of incentives at this time. Back when they were talking about this program in the middle 1990s, the price of oil was in the vicinity of $34 or $35 a barrel. That was the threshold they were talking about at that time. Now the price of oil is twice the threshold that was used back in those days, in the 1990s. This is a program that it seems to me the Senate has to step in and start watchdogging. One of the reasons I have come to the floor of the Senate today is because the Department of the Interior won't even answer questions from Senators. After there were news reports earlier this year, a number of Senators asked very practical questions. They wanted to know about additional audits; they wanted to make sure there was an effort to enforce the law; they pointed out discrepancies in reports on this program; that the Securities and Exchange Commission was given one set of facts and statistics and the Department of Interior was given another set of facts and statistics. Think about that. We now have companies not even using the same information the Government has so the Government can watchdog the program. Then they go over to the person who heads the Minerals Management Office, which runs this particular program, and what that person says is, Gosh, we don't know. We don't have the auditors. We can't keep track of this. We are not people with expertise. I guess I could see that point if it were involving a small program; in other words, you would be talking about something with a modest sum of money, and they said they did not have enough auditors. Senators could work on a bipartisan basis and beef up the program. But it was not an emergency because you were talking about a much smaller amount of money. We know the phrase a billion here, a billion there starts to add up to real money. Everett Dirksen talked about millions; now we are talking about billions. The point is, this is not a small program. This is one of the biggest programs, $20 billion minimum. The General Accounting Office says $20 billion minimum is involved. If the litigation surrounding this program is successful, it could approach the amount that would pay for the entire emergency supplemental program. That is pretty amazing. One program subsidizing the companies with royalty relief--and no Senator has come to the Senate over the last few hours to defend the operation of the program in its current form--one program can pick up the tab for most of the emergency supplemental. Yet we cannot get a vote up or down as part of any kind of practice that resembles what the Senator from South Carolina and this Senator have customarily seen in the Senate. We have a discussion over a batch of amendments. Usually a big batch of amendments takes a reasonable period of time. I have done this. The Senator from South Carolina has done it scores and scores of times. Then the amendment you offer is put into a package of other amendments, and there is a vote at a time when Senators of both political parties have been notified and all Members are aware of what is coming up in the Senate. We cannot do that. Somehow, we cannot do that. I see the distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Cochran, has returned. I have propounded a variety of different questions to see if we could at some point do what is the customary practice in the Senate, which is at some point have a vote, at some point that is convenient for all who want to offer their amendments. As far as I can tell, we are not having any discussions about how to do that. I have not heard any discussions about others who want to amend this in some way. We have, essentially, a one-sided discussion. This side would very much like to see if we can move forward and get about the business of the Senate. I have outlined the key questions about a program which is a classic example of what happens when you do not have the Government watchdogging the taxpayers' wallet. The money does not fly out of the sky and land in Washington and all of a sudden get used for one program or another. This is taxpayers' hard-earned money. We have a situation in South Carolina, Oregon, and elsewhere where people are getting clobbered at the pump. They are all up in arms about the cost of gasoline. We have these record prices at the pump. We have record profits people constantly read about, and the CEOs get pensions. Some of the pensions the CEOs are getting come to sums that are greater than whole communities, as far as I can tell, in terms of their pension relief. So citizens hear about this sort of thing and want to know what the Congress is doing to straighten out the priorities. What this is about, folks, is straightening out the priorities. I don't think the priorities ought to be to have a minimum of $20 billion used for a royalty relief program when the price of oil is over $70 a barrel. The priorities ought to be for the kinds of things the distinguished Senator from Mississippi and his counterpart on the Democratic side have been working to get done. We do have emergencies. We have emergencies we have to address. I want to see it done. I will tell the Senate when we are subsidizing an amount that could possibly come to the full cost of this supplemental, this cries out for the Senate to step in. I am going to do everything I can do and will continue to try to engage colleagues on both sides of the aisle so we can do what is necessary to protect the public; that is, essentially reining in a program that has been driven by a small number of lobbyists. A small number of lobbyists for a small number of companies has figured out how to make off with the bank. That is essentially what has happened. We have a program that very few know much about. When it hit the newspapers a few months ago, Senators and others were up in arms. It is fair to say very few knew a great deal about how the program operated. Those headlines--``General Accounting Office Says Minimum of $20 Billion Will Be Lost''--should have served as a wake-up call. After we saw those news reports, Senators began writing letters, some of them bipartisan, saying to the Department of Interior: Give us the facts about the program. They said: We have read all these reports indicating what a waste of money, what a colossal waste of money this is. Give us the facts. The Department of Interior has stonewalled Senators who are trying to get the facts about how the program works. The Senators pointed out the discrepancies in the information furnished. Senators pointed out there did not seem to be people watching this program and watchdogging it, but still no response from the Department of Interior. So we get to the point, it seems to me, that somebody ought to come to the Senate and describe how an industry that is finding profit everywhere it looks ought to be given more relief from the Federal taxpayer. That is what it comes down to. This industry is doing exceptionally well. Everyone understands the importance of energy production. We understand the importance of seeing it produced in the United States. But the good ideas for getting production going in this country are not ones that drain the Treasury of billions and billions of dollars. The good ideas are the kinds of ideas offered by the distinguished Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Thomas, who talks about getting more production out of existing wells. That is the kind of thing we ought to be doing to get a new energy policy, a red, white, and blue energy policy that is patriotic. Frankly, our energy policy does a great disservice to those who honor us by wearing the uniform overseas. I know the Senator from South Carolina has been a great advocate for those people. When I meet with folks in the military, I say: You have honored us with your extraordinary service by wearing the uniform and putting your health and the well-being of your family on the line. I want to get a new energy policy so it is less likely that your kid and your grandkid will be off in the Middle East fighting another war where people are saying it is about oil. We owe it to those courageous people who honor our Nation by wearing the uniform to get them a fresh energy policy from ideas such as those offered by Senator Thomas. This program is not one of them. I see one of my cosponsors of this legislation in the Chamber. I am ecstatic he has arrived in the Chamber, and I yield to him under the unanimous consent agreement.

Mr. WYDEN. Again, under our unanimous consent.