Ron Wyden

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Absolutely.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank, particularly, the distinguished Senator from Montana, who is on the floor, Mr. Baucus, and Senator Grassley, for working very closely with me on this issue because I think this illustrates something the Senate is going to have to tackle aggressively in the days ahead. This, at least, makes a modest step in the right direction. At a time when the oil companies have been making record profits and often charging record prices at the pump, it does not seem, to me, they ought to be receiving record subsidies from the taxpayers. What this amendment does--and this would mean for the first time in, as far as I can tell, 20 years--the Congress would actually be rolling back a subsidy to the oil industry. This would limit one of the new tax breaks that the major oil companies received in last year's Energy bill. The reason I feel so strongly about this, colleagues, is we had the major oil companies before the Energy Committee recently, and I asked the CEOs of the five largest oil companies if they agreed with the President's statement--and I quote here--``With $55 oil, we don't need incentives for oil and gas companies to explore.'' The CEOs of ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, BP, and Shell all agreed that the new tax breaks for exploration in the Energy bill were unnecessary. In fact, ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond said: When you add it all up that energy legislation is zero in terms of how it affects ExxonMobil. So what we have is the bizarre situation where the Congress sends billions of dollars of new subsidies to the oil companies when the oil companies actually show up at congressional hearings and say they do not even need these subsidies that the Congress is sending them. Now, ExxonMobil recently announced it had posted an all-time record profit of $36 billion in 2005. That huge amount is not just the highest profit ever for an oil company, it is the highest profit ever for any company. And ExxonMobil is not the only oil company to post a record- high profit in 2005. ConocoPhillips reported its profits shot up 66 percent to $13.5 billion, while ChevronTexaco's profits jumped to more than $14 billion. The five largest oil companies in the country had combined profits of more than $110 billion. So I would only say to the Senate today, it is one thing to talk about new tax breaks to the oil companies and to look at them, as we are doing today, and to particularly say: Do the oil companies need these tax breaks in order to promote exploration and secure the energy our country needs? What we now have is the situation where the oil companies themselves have come to the Congress and have said, publicly, before the Congress, they do not need these kinds of tax breaks. At a time when they make record profits and consumers have recently paid record-high prices, the Federal Government simply should not record record-high subsidies to these companies. The Senate tax reconciliation bill includes an amendment I had the opportunity to work with Chairman Grassley and Senator Baucus on to eliminate one of the new tax breaks for the oil companies to explore. This is exactly the type of incentive the major oil company CEOs and President Bush have said they do not need. The special-interest tax break I was able to see eliminated from the Finance Committee bill would cost taxpayers about $300 million over 10 years. The taxpayers, in effect, would have to pay higher taxes to provide this big break for major oil companies, when the price of oil is over $60 per barrel. That is $7 per barrel higher than the price at which the President said they do not need incentives. At these high prices, it is my view we ought to take back this unnecessary tax break and save our citizens hard-earned tax dollars. Now, there are some in the industry who may argue the five major oil companies' CEOs do not speak for the entire industry. They may argue the small producers still need more incentives to explore. I want to emphasize this amendment does not affect the small producers. This amendment is about the large oil companies, the people who came to the Senate and said they do not need new subsidies. This amendment is about making sure these major firms don't get a tax break they now have testified they don't need. The fact is, over the past 2 years, oil companies have already increased their drilling operations as the price of oil has skyrocketed from $45 per barrel to over $70 per barrel. The number of rigs in operation and the amount of drilling have also been increased by a third since 2003. Most of this increased drilling occurred before the new tax break went into effect. What it comes down to is Congress should not provide more subsidies to major oil companies that make record profits to do what they are already doing, especially at a time when our consumers are getting hammered at the pump. Unless the Congress accepts this measure that the Finance Committee accepted when I offered it through the support of the chairman and Senator Baucus, the major oil companies would be getting a significant new tax break that other major industries don't get. Instead of having to write off some of their capital costs over a number of years, major companies would get accelerated writeoffs for what is called geological and geophysical exploration costs. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the IRS and the Federal courts have ruled that these costs are capital costs which should properly be depreciated over the entire period the oil well is producing, which can be a decade or longer. The President's budget calls for scaling back this special treatment of oil and gas exploration costs by extending the depreciation period for what are called G&G costs from 2 to 5 years. The Senate bill takes a little different approach by repealing accelerated depreciation of these costs for the biggest oil companies. I wish to emphasize this, particularly since I see my friend from Mississippi who has discussed the energy issue in a very thoughtful way in committee. The Senator from Mississippi and others have stressed how important these incentives are to the independents and small producers. This is something with which I am sympathetic. I have indicated to Chairman Grassley and others that I believe we ought to be taking a comprehensive look at the Tax Code as it relates to the energy field to make sure we can reconfigure these tax breaks so that when they are needed by the small companies and the independents, they can get them, but we don't keep sending them out the door to the big oil companies and then have these big oil companies in effect embarrass the Congress by coming to a hearing and saying: Look, we don't need these breaks. Tax breaks such as the accelerated writeoffs for these costs also clutter up the Tax Code and distort capital markets. It is not the place to discuss it today, but my Fair Flat Tax Act would give us a bipartisan opportunity to remove some of that clutter from the Tax Code. At least we can make a start at reform today by eliminating the special interest tax break for the oil industry which the companies say they don't need. Our consumers already pay more at work, they pay more at home, and they pay more as they drive everywhere in between. Let's give them a break in their personal energy bills. We can give them a break by ensuring that those folks who are getting hammered with high energy bills at home won't have to subsidize profitable oil companies when they pay their taxes. I urge my colleagues to support fiscal responsibility by supporting my motion to urge the conferees to support the Senate position, eliminate this special tax break for the major companies. This does not apply to the small companies. It doesn't apply to the independents. I have worked closely with Chairman Grassley and Senator Baucus to ensure that will be the case. I hope we will be back in this Chamber for a more comprehensive discussion of the Tax Code and energy policy in the days ahead. My own sense is, in the last energy bill, we subsidized an awful lot of people to do the wrong thing. Getting a new energy policy is arguably the most red, white, and blue issue the Congress could possibly take up. I think about our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, these individuals who honor us every day with their courage and valor. I want to make sure their kids and grandkids are not off in the Middle East fighting a war and Congress is still dallying on oil. This is a step in the right direction. I suspect other colleagues want to discuss this issue. I reserve the remainder of my time. In fact, how much additional time do I have on this motion?

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 30 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I want to conclude on another pocketbook issue for the middle class by talking about health care. I am a Senator who believes there ought to be private choices in American health care. There are some who think that all the health care ought to be privatized, some who think that Government ought to do everything. I am one who believes there is a role for both the private sector and for Government in health care. Unfortunately, I voted for the Medicare prescription drug program. As a former director of the Oregon Gray Panthers, I still have the welts on my back to show for it. I never conceived that the administration of this program could be so bungled. We have bedlam out there right now with seniors with advanced degrees trying to sort all this out. Again, it did not have to be this way. If, for example, the administration had at least standardized the policies a little bit so that people could compare the various prescription drug coverages available, we could have avoided this chaos. There is a model for this as well, a model used for the private health insurance supplements that seniors bought to add to their Medicare. Before I came to Congress, I was director of the Gray Panthers. It was not uncommon for a senior to have 10, 15 private health insurance policies. We drained that swamp. Now seniors for the most part have only one Medigap policy. It meets their needs. The insurance industry has indicated it works for them. We ought to be trying to standardize or at least make more understandable the private health policies that seniors are looking at now to meet their prescription drug needs. I have suggested this to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. To his credit, he has indicated that he is interested in pursuing it. The administration of this program didn't have to roll out this way. It could have been simpler and more understandable, if the choices that were made available to seniors had simply been structured in a clearer, more understandable way. There is a second thing that needs to be done on health care. Senator Snowe and I got 51 votes late last year for our legislation to lift the restriction on Medicare's right to bargain to hold down the cost of prescription medicine. The way Medicare is buying this medicine defies anything that goes on in the private sector. It is similar to somebody going to Costco and buying toilet paper one roll at a time. Nobody would shop the way Medicare is purchasing these prescription drugs. By my count, Senator Snowe and I now have 53 votes for our legislation to lift the restriction on Medicare bargaining. I commend a number of colleagues who have been involved. On our side of the aisle, Senators Stabenow and Feinstein have done a lot of heavy lifting. Senator McCain has been a wonderful supporter. We ought to pass that legislation. We ought to make it possible for Medicare to bargain to hold down the cost of medicine. I look forward to talking to our colleagues further, including the distinguished Senator in the chair. There are other steps that ought to be taken to hold down the costs in health care. I hope we will hear about them tonight. One of the best is to make more accurate information available about how doctors and hospitals price their services. It is possible to shop for just about anything in the United States, but you cannot shop very much for health care. It makes no sense at all. Senator Cornyn, the distinguished Senator from Texas, has a great interest in this issue. Other colleagues do as well. But if we are serious about holding down costs--I think the President will talk about cost containment tonight--let's get better, more understandable, more usable information about doctors and hospitals out to the American people. That is step No. 2. Step No. 3 involves end-of-life care--one of the most controversial issues in American health care. As my colleagues know, I was the one who blocked the original Schiavo legislation from coming up on the floor. Let me talk about something all of us can agree on, and that is we ought to expand hospice and comfort care to deal with end-of-life services because this is something which will help us save money, will avoid some of the family tragedies that result in these horrible, polarizing kinds of problems such as we saw in the tragic Schiavo case. There is no reason, given the fact that a growing fraction of the health care dollar gets spent in the last few months of an individual's life, that to be both compassionate and hold down health care costs, Republicans and Democrats cannot join hands on expanding hospice care as an alternative to what our citizens face now with end-of-life choices. The fourth step is an area the Chair has a great interest in, and that is health care technology. We know many communities have multiple technologies, such as MRI machines. There are some very exciting and tremendous new products that are available. Many communities have lots of these technologies, and some have none at all. There is a maldistribution of health care resources. So an area I have a great interest in is, making it possible in communities in Minnesota and Oregon for health care providers to share these technologies, perhaps even giving them a waiver of antitrust restrictions, so that rather than everybody having to keep up with the Joneses and adding to health care expenses in an area that has fueled our costs, let's figure out a way that will not freeze innovation. Nobody wants to do that. The Senator from Minnesota has been a leader in that field. We don't want to freeze innovation, but we want to hold down costs and make sure there is access. I think there are ways in which we can create incentives to share these exciting health care technologies. I have suggested just one this afternoon. That is a way to hold down health care costs. Mr. President, to recap, let's clean up the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Let's figure out how to get better and more accurate information about doctors and hospital costs and services out. Let's expand hospice and compassionate end-of-life care. And let's make sure there are incentives to better use health care technology. Those are four practical steps which can hold down health care costs and improve health care services in our country. I close by way of saying that I came to the Senate floor today because I had those 21 town meetings at home. I heard middle-class people talk about all the issues where the second word was ``bill''-- medical bill, tax bill, mortgage bill, gas bill, home heating bill. They are concerned about economics and their pocketbooks. We don't need all this dead wood in our tax system. We can come up with a 1-page alternative. I proposed one, as have others. We can work in a bipartisan way to hold down health care costs. Tonight, we may not hear about some of what I have discussed this afternoon, but I look forward to working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle and with the Bush administration because on both the tax issue and the health care issue, we can do better. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, while Senators talk about prebuttal and rebuttal speeches before the State of the Union speech, I hear middle- class folks saying ``drop the buts and make our lives easier.'' I know because in January, when I was home, I held 21 community meetings. The big issues then were those where the second word was ``bill''--medical bills, gas bills, heating bills, mortgage bills, college bills, and especially tax bills. It is not hard to see why those are the issues. Middle-class folks in this country are not keeping up. Even their wages do not keep up with inflation. And while they want a better life for their kids--the way their parents wanted for them--they stay up nights worrying that they cannot make it happen. So today I want to spend a few minutes discussing just two issues: taxes and health care. I believe in each of these two issues Congress could work on a bipartisan basis for genuine relief for the middle class. We may not hear about it tonight, but as middle-class folks begin pulling together their 1099s, their W-2s, their schedule this and schedule that, and all of what they have to do to comply with filling out their tax forms, I simply wanted to come to the floor and say it does not have to be this way. I brought, today, just part of what constitutes the regulations and rules for complying with taxes in America. One of the experts in the field told me there have been more than 14,000 amendments to the Tax Code since the last major overhaul in 1986. It comes to almost three for every working day in America. This year, Americans are going to spend $140 billion on tax compliance. Americans are going to spend more money complying with the tax rules than the Federal government is spending on higher education in our country. I have come to the floor today because I want to make it clear I do not think it has to be that way. I have developed an alternative. My one-page 1040 form is just 30 lines long. Take your income from all sources, subtract your deductions, take your credits, send it off to the IRS, and you can even add a note: I'm done. Have a nice day. I filled this out myself, and that in and of itself is a little bit of a revolution because it has been a long time since a member of the Senate Finance Committee or someone in the other body on the Ways and Means Committee could fill out their own tax form. What happens today? More than three million people, for example, have to essentially fill out their taxes twice. They have that alternative minimum tax staring at them. Scores of families are pulling together shoe boxes full of receipts, shouting across the living room, ``Honey, can you find that receipt for the copier that we bought months ago?'' because part of it is for business and part of it was used for the family. I say it does not have to be this way. I have shown that you can have a one-page 1040 form. The President's advisory committee report that came out in the fall had a similar form--I do not happen to agree with all they did, but their one-page form isn't that much longer than mine. For purposes of Government work, we could put the two of them together and really do something meaningful on a bipartisan basis to simplify the Tax Code, to use that $140 billion now spent on compliance on something I know the Presiding Officer has a great interest in--education and infrastructure and other areas that are of great importance to our country. But on top of simplifying the Tax Code, there is more that has to be done to help the middle class. I suspect we are not going to hear about it tonight, but Warren Buffett, the second wealthiest man in America, pays a lot lower tax rate than his receptionist. That is because there is a double standard. We hit people a lot harder when they work for wages than when they make their money off investments. I am not interested in soaking anybody. I believe in markets. I believe in creating wealth. But something is out of whack when middle-class folks have to spend the time to figure out how to wade through all of this and spend literally much of the money they want to spend on their families on just filling out their taxes--it is not right to hammer people who work for a living. Here is the way it works. If a cop working outside the Capitol gets a little bit of a pay raise--maybe $500--that cop pays 25 percent of the pay raise to the Federal Government in income taxes and pays Social Security payroll taxes on top of it. If, however, you make your money on investments--we want everybody to do well in that area also--you pay 15 percent of what you make on your investments in income taxes and you do not pay any Social Security payroll taxes. There is a double standard. We discriminate against people who work for a living. In Ohio, in Oregon, across the country, if you work hard, play by the rules, and work for a wage, you get hit a lot harder than the people who make their money on investments. I have already said I am not interested in soaking anybody. I happen to believe marginal rates are a big deal. And because I do, I have not raised the top rate in my proposal. I have three tax brackets: 15, 25, and 35 percent. So it is progressive. I have said to colleagues on the other side of the aisle, folks in the administration, there is plenty of flexibility in my proposal. If we want to make it 13, 23 and 33, I am up for that, too. We can do that in a bipartisan way. But tonight, I suspect, instead of hearing that we ought to take on the tax bureaucracy embodied in a few of these volumes, in effect we are going to be told to re-up for business as usual. I don't think it has to be that way. I refer colleagues to what happened in 1986, 20 years ago. Then we had a Republican President, revered by millions of Americans, Ronald Reagan, who worked with Democrats, Dan Rostenkowski, Bill Bradley, Dick Gephardt. They found common ground in a proposal that has many of the same features I bring to the Senate today. They were concerned about marginal rates. There were Democrats, such as myself, who think marginal rates are a big deal. They worked together with a Republican President to achieve a significant success. They removed a lot of clutter from the Tax Code. I wish we hadn't gone back over the last 20 years since that historic legislation and added it all back, those more than 14,000 provisions. But it happened. We all know it has a little bit to do with the lobbyists, because the lobbyists all come and ask for this particular break or another. I had one of our colleagues say to me: Ron, I don't agree with every part of your proposal, but you are right, probably every 20 years you ought to automatically cleanse the Tax Code. You automatically ought to give it a bath. So I come tonight to say I am interested in working on a bipartisan basis to do something about all this dead wood. I would rather preserve the trees that go into all these volumes and simplify the life of middle-class folks. We have our folks talking on cell phones all day and pagers and practically tethered to the Internet. I know of young people trying to get ahead. They work 12, 14 hours a day. They come home and they are still checking their e-mail. Do we want to put them through another 30 hours of preparing their taxes? I filled out my one-page 1040 form. I already said the President's Advisory Panel on tax reform had some good ideas. We could come up with an alternative. But we have to want to lead. We have to want to lead as President Reagan did, as Bill Bradley did. We have to say we want to do it on a bipartisan basis. I am hopeful that if we hear tonight about business as usual on taxes, I can join with colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I have already talked to some on the Finance Committee where I am honored to serve. I have discussed it both with Chairman Grassley and Senator Baucus, two who frankly are role models for bipartisanship. I came today to particularly talk about how this could help middle- class folks. I am going to put in the Record examples of how various middle-class people would be affected. I will ask unanimous consent to print in the Record some examples of how my proposal would help the middle class. Under my proposal we will have a lot of middle-class people, people making $70, $80, $90,000 a year--there are a lot of them in Ohio and Oregon--will get a significant amount of relief. Essentially, all those families who make up to $150,000 a year, primarily on wage income, maybe a little bit of investment thrown in, they are going to get real tax relief or they are going to stay about the same. I want to see us do it in a fiscally responsible way. I know this is of great concern to the Senator from Ohio. The Congressional Research Service said that it is possible to get the tax relief to millions of middle-class people that is outlined in my legislation, the Fair Flat Tax Act, and pay down the Federal deficit by $100 billion. That is clearly not all you have to do to stop the hemorrhaging of the Federal budget, but at least it is a downpayment. The Senator from Ohio has done an awful lot of good work in terms of pay-as-you-go budgeting and taking on health care costs and some of the skyrocketing cost of entitlements. My proposal doesn't pretend to deal with all of the red ink we see in the Federal budget, but it does get real tax relief to middle-class people and does it in a fiscally responsible way, with the Congressional Research Service saying that it would pay down the Federal deficit by $100 billion over the next few years. I will be back on the floor over the next few days and weeks trying to make the case for bipartisanship to overhaul the tax system. I don't think it is possible to continue to add a piece here and a piece there and make any sense out of all this. We will only be adding more and more volumes. For example, virtually every Senator I have talked to wants to deal with the alternative minimum tax. We know there are a lot of people being swept up in the alternative minimum tax who certainly don't consider themselves fat cats. They weren't the kind of people anybody was talking about when the AMT came into being. But we are getting to the point now where it is almost impossible to put a patch on the AMT without having that change ripple all the way through the system. What we ought to say, on a bipartisan basis, is we can make the code simpler, flatter, and fairer. I have described today how it can be made simpler. I have a one-page 1040 form. The President's advisory commission has one that is a bit longer, but they are close enough for purposes of Government work. I have three brackets in my tax proposal: 15, 25, and 35. It is fine with me to adjust the numbers a little bit, particularly the idea of going down a couple of points for each of the brackets. The biggest challenge in terms of working out a bipartisan proposal is on the issue of fairness, because that is obviously in the eye of the beholder. What is fair to one person may not be fair to somebody else. I want to close on one point with respect to taxes. Ronald Reagan signed a bill in 1986 that treated investment income the way wage income was treated. Ronald Reagan in 1986, working with Bill Bradley, Dick Gephardt, a host of Democrats, signed a bill that treated investment income as it treated wage income. He did it because he thought the overall set of tax brackets made sense. I happen to think mine do as well. Colleagues may have other approaches. What we know for a fact is what was done in 1986 worked. The stock market was not hampered. For colleagues on the other side of the aisle, a Republican got elected President in 1988 so no Republican was hurt by tax reform, where there was bipartisan leadership. I come to the floor with my first comments, that while, unfortunately, we are not going to hear about comprehensive tax reform tonight, this Senator wants to make it clear that this is a cause I am not giving up on. I am going to push this at every possible opportunity. I am going to work with colleagues on the other side of the aisle. We know that you can't get anything important done unless it is bipartisan. I am going to do it because I don't think you can defend business as usual with this tax system. The simplification that I have come to argue for makes sense. Frankly, that ought to be a no-brainer for everyone. We can make the code flatter. Let's role up our sleeves and try to come up with a system that is fairer for everybody, the way it was done back in 1986. If we can get it done--and I have the good fortune of being able to stay on the Senate Finance Committee, if the people of Oregon honor me with a chance to continue to serve there--this time I am going to fight those lobbyists who will try to go back and clutter it up. Frankly, that is what happened in 1986. Nobody really said ``no'' after that historic reform. How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. WYDEN

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

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, consistent with my practice of announcing publicly my intent to object to unanimous consent requests, I am asking to have printed in the Record a letter to Senator Reid dated January 18, 2006. It explains that I will use every legislative and procedural tool at my disposal as a U.S. Senator to block any attempt to affect in any way Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, which the Supreme Court upheld yesterday. The letter follows. U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, January 18, 2006. Hon. Harry Reid, Minority Leader, The Capitol, Washington, DC. Dear Leader Reid: I am writing to inform you of my intent to object to any unanimous consent request to consider any measure or matter that might affect end of life care generally and Oregon's Death With Dignity Act in particular. As you know, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday upheld Oregon's unique Death with Dignity Act, and I intend to use every legislative and procedural tool at my disposal as a United States Senator to block any attempt to overturn, invalidate or otherwise affect Oregon's law in any way. Consistent with my practice of publicly announcing my intent to place a ``hold'' on a measure or matter, I will ask that this letter be printed in the Congressional Record. If your staff has any questions, please feel free to contact my Legislative and Policy Director, Carole Grunberg, or my Senior Health Policy Advisor, Stephanie Kennan at 224-5244. Sincerely, Ron Wyden, U.S. Senator.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I cannot support the devastating cuts to health care that are in the budget reconciliation conference report. I have fought to slow health care spending, but that is not what is in this conference report. This conference report slashes and bums the health care countryside like the barbarians descending on Rome. This conference report is not about reform or creating a decent health system for the poor and for seniors--it is about dismantling the system as we know it. For starters, the Senate-passed bill increased drug rebates so that Medicaid beneficiaries would get better prices on their drugs. The Senate bill increased the minimum rebates that drug manufacturers are required to pay the Medicaid Program for drugs. The Senate package also contained a provision that would have expanded the rebate to include managed care drug plans. None of these improvements, which would have produced savings of $10.5 billion over 10 years and have helped ensure Medicaid participants get better prescription drug prices, is included in the conference report. The conference report reopens the Medicare Modernization Act, MMA,-- not to make improvements in the drug benefit but to push those with a little more income to pay higher Part B premiums sooner. It seems to me that given the confusion, the unhappiness, the need for more and better counseling for seniors on their choices, and the need to assure cost containment in the Part D drug benefit, you should have gone farther than what is in the product before us and made real improvements. One improvement that won a majority of 51 votes on the Senate floor was an amendment I offered with Senator Snowe to allow Medicare to use its purchasing power to benefit seniors. Giving Medicare that power would have produced a real benefit for seniors, but that is not included here. `` The home health cuts in this conference report will hurt a service that is vital to seniors. The conference report freezes home health payments for a year. Home health care has been demonstrated to be cost effective alternative to institutional care in both the Medicare and Medicaid Programs. In Oregon, what is proposed here will compound the negative impact of other cuts. Since 1997, when Congress first enacted cuts in home health, Oregon has lost 30 home health agencies. Oregon's home health agencies' profit margins are already at a negative 21.75 percent, and 33 of 60 home health agencies are in rural areas. I fear what will happen to Oregon's seniors when home health agencies' payments are frozen, but their costs keep going up. The conference report increases copayments and premiums for the poor. I happen to believe that everyone should pay something on the spot for care unless they destitute, but the increases required here will force people who can get care today to for go care tomorrow. Oregon has learned from experience in this area. When Oregon instituted strict copayment and premium payment policies 55,000 people dropped off Medicaid, and most of those were people with chronic health problems, like high blood pressure and diabetes. The reconciliation bill says States can increase substantially the copayments that many Medicaid beneficiaries are required to pay to access health services and medications. Sure, there will be savings, but they will be achieved because people just won't get care or just won't seek care. That is not, in my view, good public health policy, and completely undermines the purpose of Medicaid. The conference report makes it harder for people to qualify for Medicaid long-term care. The conference report embraces the House provisions that restrict eligibility for Medicaid long-term care services and squeeze more savings out of those who need Medicaid. These provisions are far more onerous than the Senate passed bill, casting a wide net that will force every applicant to prove they had not transferred assets years before a disabling accident, stroke, heart attack, broken hip, or diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease simply in order to catch a few who intentionally transfer assets. These provisions even go after to middle-class Americans who make modest gifts to relatives like their grandchildren or who contribute to charity. How can anyone expect the average American who experiences a decline in their health years after having made a contribution to charity or given their grandchild some money toward a college fund to keep records on all of this? People won't be able to document many of the things they will be required to so that families or nursing homes will end up eating the money during the period in which their loved ones are not qualified. Lastly, the conference report negates a court decision concerning disproportionate share payments. One of the lawsuits brought on this issue was brought by a number of Oregon hospitals. The result of orturning the decision in this case is that many hospitals will be harmed because those people who are part section 1115 waivers as an ``expansion population'' would no longer be counted for the purposes of calculating Medicare disproportionate share payments. This harms safety net hospitals. There are many other reasons to reject this conference report, but the truly harmful health care provisions stand out starkly among a sea of damaging provisions. These, alone, are reason enough to reject this budget document.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I introduce, with my friend and colleague from Oregon, Senator Smith, a small bill that should pack a big score for ecological education in the City of Eugene. This bill authorizes the transfer of 12 acres from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to the City of Eugene on which the City of Eugene plans to construct the West Eugene Environmental Education Center (WEEEC). The WEEEC is a planned campus that will eventually hold laboratories, greenhouses, a reference library, and public gathering places including an exhibit hall, auditorium, and three classrooms. Transfer of this acreage by this bill is the first step towards making the promise of this educational center a reality. The WEEEC and this bill are supported by the West Eugene Wetland Partnership (Partnership). The Partnership is made up of the BLM, Eugene School Districts, Northwest Youth Corp, and the Willamette Resources and Educational Network (WREN) which was formed to assist in planning, funding, building, and operating portions of this education center. This bill is also supported by the Oregon and California Counties (O&C counties) who originally had issue with the land transfer because they opposed loss of the 12 acres from the BLM land base. They are now in support of this bill because the City of Eugene has stepped up to the plate and is transferring land they currently own to the BLM to keep the public land roles consistent. The WEEEC will be the culmination of over a decade of work on the part of local folks to preserve the West Eugene Wetlands. I urge its swift passage. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I introduce, with my friend and colleague from Oregon, Senator Smith, a small bill that should pack a big score for ecological education in the City of Eugene. This bill authorizes the transfer of 12 acres from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to the City of Eugene on which the City of Eugene plans to construct the West Eugene Environmental Education Center (WEEEC). The WEEEC is a planned campus that will eventually hold laboratories, greenhouses, a reference library, and public gathering places including an exhibit hall, auditorium, and three classrooms. Transfer of this acreage by this bill is the first step towards making the promise of this educational center a reality. The WEEEC and this bill are supported by the West Eugene Wetland Partnership (Partnership). The Partnership is made up of the BLM, Eugene School Districts, Northwest Youth Corp, and the Willamette Resources and Educational Network (WREN) which was formed to assist in planning, funding, building, and operating portions of this education center. This bill is also supported by the Oregon and California Counties (O&C counties) who originally had issue with the land transfer because they opposed loss of the 12 acres from the BLM land base. They are now in support of this bill because the City of Eugene has stepped up to the plate and is transferring land they currently own to the BLM to keep the public land roles consistent. The WEEEC will be the culmination of over a decade of work on the part of local folks to preserve the West Eugene Wetlands. I urge its swift passage. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the legislative rider attached to the Defense appropriations conference report that would open the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to drilling gives the same two companies the Alaska Gasline Port Authority charges with colluding to withhold Alaskan gas supplies a tremendous sweetheart economic deal. In addition to being an abuse of the legislative process, attaching this rider to the Defense appropriations bill, in my view, is bad environmental policy, bad budget policy, and most particularly bad energy policy. As a result of this rider, the Defense spending bill, which contains money critical for our troops, is getting held hostage for special interest legislation for the oil industry. The rider that was grafted onto the Defense bill provides unprecedented waivers for Federal environmental and other laws, including the National Wildlife Refuge Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Federal Mineral Leasing Act. The Arctic drilling legislation also overrides current law to reduce the State of Alaska's share of the revenue produced by Arctic oil drilling. Under current law, 90 percent of those receipts would be paid to the State of Alaska and the remaining 10 percent to the U.S. Treasury. The rider that was plucked from the budget reconciliation spending bill and grafted onto the Defense appropriations conference report changes the allocation in current law to permit the Federal Government to retain 50 percent of the receipts. The State of Alaska has threatened to sue to get the full 90 percent of the revenues. If that lawsuit succeeds, then 40 percent of the revenues that the Defense spending bill assumes will be available for hurricane recovery, LIHEAP, and other purposes will not be there at all. If the State loses, then its rights will have successfully been overridden. One way or another, either the State of Alaska or the Federal taxpayer is going to end up getting shortchanged. Most importantly, if the charges we have heard in the last 24 hours of withholding gas supply are true, there would be nothing to stop the same oil companies the Alaska Gasline Port Authority is charging with gas market manipulation from manipulating Alaskan oil markets. Nothing in the rider on the Defense bill would in any way prevent the companies from engaging in the same conduct they have been charged with by an Alaska-chartered agency with respect to oil drilling in the Arctic. The actions of the Alaska Gasline Port Authority this week against ExxonMobil and BP, in my view, raise a host of fundamental questions. First, whose rights is the Arctic drilling rider supposed to uphold? The State of Alaska? Or the major oil companies? How will drilling in the Arctic truly affect our Nation's energy security? What are the real budget revenues that Arctic drilling will produce? The Congressional Budget Office's revenue estimates for Arctic oil drilling assume that the oil companies will move quickly to develop oilfields in the Arctic Refuge. These assumptions do not factor in the prospect of oil companies choking off the flow of oil, as the Alaska Gasline Port Authority alleged is being done by ExxonMobil and BP now with Alaskan gas supplies. The other question that begs to be asked about the Alaska Gasline lawsuit is where in the world was the Federal Government, particularly the consumer protection regulators, who are supposed to be policing the kind of collusion that is alleged in the lawsuit of the Alaska Gasline Port Authority this week? What has the Federal Trade Commission, the so-called consumer watchdog agency, done to stop what former Alaska Governor Hickel has called ``extreme corporate greed that has abused Alaska and punished the American consumer.'' The response is, unfortunately, the same as what we have seen from the Federal Trade Commission over the last few years when it comes to oil company mega mergers, price gouging at the gas pump and other anticompetitive practices. The consumer watchdog seems to be taking a long winter nap when it comes to energy. This is yet another example of the Federal Trade Commission's perpetual hibernation when it comes to protecting the consumer who is getting clobbered by escalating energy costs. If an agency of the State of Alaska, with no more than a handful of lawyers, is able to take action against collusion by the world's largest oil companies, why isn't the Federal Government's premier consumer protection agency, with scores of lawyers, able to protect consumers? Last week I spoke at length on this issue. In fact, the distinguished Presiding Officer of the Senate was in the chair at that time. He is very much aware I intend to continue to raise my concerns about why the Federal Trade Commission keeps ducking this critical consumer protection issue. This latest news about the Alaska Gasline Port Authority bringing an antitrust action against major oil company collusion in energy markets, in my view, is especially troubling. It calls out for further investigation by both the Congress and the Federal Trade Commission. In my view, it is the Congress's job to investigate whether the claims made by the advocates of Arctic oil drilling hold up, given what the Alaska Gasline Port Authority is alleging this week about two of the oil companies that hold Arctic drilling rights. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire is correct in a technical sense. But I am going to discuss something that will have, in my view, great ramifications for the Federal budget generally, and I am going to outline that briefly this afternoon. We have heard a lot during the past few days about the rights of Alaskans as an argument to justify drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But yesterday, the Alaska Gasline Port Authority, an Alaska state-chartered agency, charged two of the companies that have drilling rights in the Arctic Refuge with conspiring to manipulate the State of Alaska's energy market. The Alaska Gasline lawsuit charges that ExxonMobil and BP withheld supplies of natural gas to gain market power over supply. This is a very significant development with, in my view, great implications for Arctic oil drilling. If these allegations are correct--that ExxonMobil and BP withheld Alaskan gas supplies from the market--what would stop these companies from withholding oil from Arctic drilling from the market? If Alaskan oil supplies are withheld from the market, that does nothing to reduce our Nation's dependence on foreign oil. It also produces no revenue to the Federal Treasury that supporters of Arctic oil drilling claim fund hurricane relief and other programs. These serious charges about oil company manipulation of Alaska's energy supplies are not made by some leftwing group but by an agency chartered by the State of Alaska. An article in today's Wall Street Journal quotes Walter Hickel, a former Republican Governor of Alaska, as saying the lawsuit against these major oil companies ``reveals a story of extreme corporate greed that has abused Alaska and punished the American consumer.'' I ask unanimous consent that a copy of this article be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from North Dakota. I have come to the floor this afternoon to bring to the Senate's attention a new development with respect to the Arctic Refuge--a development that has taken place in the last 24 hours that I think has great implications for the budget work the Senate is doing here this week. It also speaks volumes about the lack of consumer protection we are seeing in our country generally. We have heard a lot in the past few days----

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, in the final hours of this session of the Senate, the Senate is going to approve two nominees to the Federal Trade Commission. I take a few minutes tonight to describe why I want to be on record tonight against the nomination of both these individuals. When it comes to energy, the Federal Trade Commission essentially is out of the consumer protection business. Well over a year ago, I released a report documenting the Federal Trade Commission's campaign of inaction when it comes to protecting our consumers at the gas pumps. My report documented how the Federal Trade Commission has refused to challenge oil industry mergers the Government Accountability Office says would raise gas prices at the pump by 7 cents a gallon alone on the west coast. My report also documented how the Federal Trade Commission failed to act when refineries had been shut down or to stop anticompetitive practices such as redlining and zone pricing. Since then nothing has changed. Despite what we saw recently--record high prices for consumers, and record profits by major oil companies--what we have seen is a record level of inaction by the Federal Trade Commission on behalf of energy consumers. In the last few months, when we saw the price of gasoline soar to an all-time record high, the Federal Trade Commission was invisible. As far as I can tell, the Federal Trade Commission failed to take any action at all in the wake of the hurricanes in the gulf that sent the price of gas skyrocketing to over $3 a gallon across the country. If you do a Google search on FTC and gasoline prices, nothing at all comes up to indicate that the Federal Trade Commission has taken any action on behalf of energy consumers. What you do find are statements by the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission arguing against giving the agency additional authority to protect consumers against price gouging at the pump. For example, the Federal Trade Commission Chair recently made the statement opposing an effort here in the Senate to have a price gouging law because ``they are not simple to enforce and they could do more harm to consumers.'' The fact, however, is a number of States do have price gouging laws. Two State attorneys general testified at a joint hearing recently here in the Senate that these laws are, in fact, beneficial. In her testimony before a joint Senate hearing last month, the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Debra Majoras, described what I believe to be an astoundingly serious theory of consumer protection when she essentially said there is no need for a Federal price gouging law no matter how high the price of gasoline goes. The argument was by Ms. Majoras that gasoline price gouging is a local issue even if the price gouger is a major multinational oil company. FTC officials also testified before the Congress that the agency has no authority to stop price gouging by individual companies. Despite this clear gap in the agency's authority, the agency has refused to say what additional authority it needs to go after price gouging, and others have pressed them to do for years. There are unquestionable efforts in the private marketplace to exploit consumers, and it didn't start with Hurricane Katrina. As the Wall Street Journal documented recently, gas prices for much of this recent period have increased twice as fast as crude oil prices. Clearly, a number of oil companies are not simply passing on higher crude oil costs but are also adding substantial increases to the cost of gas above and beyond the higher cost of crude oil. Since the early 1970s and for much of this year, there has never been the kind of disparity between increases in the price of gas and increases in the price of crude oil. This was not seen even in the days of the long gas lines following the OPEC embargo. Over the past 30 years, gasoline prices never rose more than 5 percent higher in a year than the cost of crude increase. But in the past year, gas price increases outpaced crude by 36 percent. After Hurricane Katrina, the price difference soared even higher to 68 percent. Further evidence of price gouging could be found in what happened on the west coast immediately following Hurricane Katrina, when prices surged 15 cents per gallon overnight. For years, oil industry officials, the Federal Trade Commission, and others have maintained that the west coast was an isolated gasoline market from the rest of the country. West coast supplies were not affected by the hurricanes. The west coast gets almost none of its gas from the gulf. If the west coast was an isolated market, as the oil industry has claimed for years, then Katrina was not a justification for jacking up gas prices on the west coast immediately after the hurricanes. The Federal Trade Commission is the principal consumer protection agency in the Government. It is the Federal agency that can and should take action when gasoline markets go haywire as they did after the hurricanes. But instead of action, what we have repeatedly seen were excuses. In the past, the Federal Trade Commission often claimed that it was studying the problem or monitoring the gasoline markets as an excuse for inaction on gas pricing. Recently, the Federal Trade Commission's campaign of inaction has even extended to the studies that the agency does. The Federal Trade Commission chair testified last week that a study of gas price gouging that Congress required the FTC to complete by this month would not be ready until next spring. In effect, the campaign of inaction is now approaching the point of paralysis where the agency won't even deliver promptly on commitments that it has made to study the issue. The agency has continued its program with inaction on behalf of gasoline consumers despite the findings by the Government Accountability Office that the agency's policies are raising prices at the pump. In May of 2004 the Government Accountability Office released a major study showing how oil industry mergers and the Federal Trade Commission allowed to go through in the 1990s substantially increased concentration in the oil industry and increased gas prices for consumers by as much as 7 cents per gallon on the west coast. Specifically, the Government Accountability Office found that during the 1990s the Federal Trade Commission allowed a wave of oil industry mergers to proceed, that these mergers had substantially increased concentration in the oil industry, and that almost all of the largest of the oil industry mega mergers examined by the auditors each had increased gasoline prices. Essentially, the Government Accountability Office found that the Federal Trade Commission's policies on mergers had permitted serial price gouging. Two years ago, when current Federal Trade Commission Chair Deborah Majoras last came before the Senate for confirmation, I asked a response to the report done by the independent government auditor. Despite her promise to do so, I have yet to receive any response from the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. The Government Accountability Office is not alone in documenting how Government regulators have been missing in action when it comes to protecting our consumers at the gas pump. Since 2001, oil industry mergers totalling more than $19 billion have gone unchallenged by the Federal Trade Commission, according to a recent article in Bloomberg News. The article also reported that these unchecked mergers may have contributed to the highest gasoline prices in the past 20 years. According to the Federal Trade Commission's own records, the agency imposed no conditions on 28 of 33 oil mergers since 2001. You can see the results of the Federal Trade Commission's inaction at gas stations in Oregon and across the country. Nationwide, the Government Accountability Office found between 1994 and 2002, gasoline market concentration increased in all but four States. As a result of the Government's merger policies, 46 States now have gasoline markets with moderate or high concentration, compared to only about half that just 10 years ago. The Federal Trade Commission, oil industry officials, and consumer groups all agree in these concentrated markets oil companies do not need to collude in order to raise prices. The Federal Trade Commission's former general counsel, William Kovacic, has said: It may be possible in selected markets for individual firms to unilaterally increase prices. In other words, the Federal Trade Commission's general counsel basically admitted that oil companies in these markets can price gouge with impunity. Mr. Kovacic is one of the two nominees for the Federal Trade Commission who is now before the Senate. Despite all of this evidence that gasoline markets around the country have become more concentrated and that in these concentrated markets individual firms can raise prices and extract monopoly profits, the Federal Trade Commission has failed to take effective action to check oil industry mergers. In the vast majority of cases, the Federal Trade Commission took no action at all. The Federal Trade Commission's inaction on oil mergers is once again a front burner issue with the recent announcement that ConocoPhillips, an oil company formed from a series of mergers the Federal Trade Commission allowed, is acquiring Burlington Resources to create one of the largest U.S. natural gas producers. Many in the oil and gas industry expect this merger announcement will lead to a similar wave of consolidation in the natural gas industry. This, in turn, will lead to greater consolidation of the industry and fewer choices for consumers. In addition to the inaction on merger issues, the Federal Trade Commission has also failed to act against proven areas of anticompetitive activity. Major oil companies are charging, in some instances, dealers' discriminatory ``zone prices'' that make it impossible for dealers to compete fairly with company-owned stations or even other dealers in the same geographic area. With zone pricing, one oil company sells the same gas to its own brand stations at different prices. The cost to the oil company of making the gas is the same. In many cases, the cost of delivering that gas to the service station is the same, but the price the station pays is not the same. And the station that pays the higher price is not able to compete, and eventually that station goes out of business and there is further concentration in that particular community's market. Another example of anticompetitive practices that now occur in gas markets is a practice known as redlining. This involves oil companies making certain areas off limits to independent gas distributors, known as jobbers, who bring competition to a particular area. The Federal Trade Commission's own investigation of west coast gas markets found that the practice of redlining was rampant on the west coast, but the Federal Trade Commission concluded that it could only take action to stop this anticompetitive practice if the redlining was the result of out and out collusion, a standard that is almost impossible to prove. In my home State, one courageous gasoline dealer took on the major oil companies and won a multimillion-dollar court judgment in a case that involved redlining. This dealer gave the evidence that was used to win his case in court to the Federal Trade Commission. The Federal Trade Commission, the premier consumer protection agency of the Federal Government, failed to do anything to help this dealer or to reign in the anticompetitive practices at issue. In areas other than energy, the Federal Trade Commission, in my view, has made a significant contribution to protecting consumers. In other areas, the Federal Trade Commission has not hesitated to move aggressively on behalf of the consuming public. To give one example, the Federal Trade Commission created a Do Not Call Program to prevent consumers from being hassled at home. With its Do Not Call Program, the agency pushed to protect consumers to the limits of its authority and even went beyond what the courts say it had authority to do. For some reason, in the case of energy, the Federal Trade Commission had a regulatory blind spot. That has been true, I am sad to report, in both Democrat and Republican administrations. It is a bipartisan blind spot that keeps the agency from looking out for the millions of Americans who consume gasoline and gas products every single day. The Federal Trade Commission will not even speak out now on behalf of consumers getting gouged at the gas pump. The agency will not use its bully pulpit to even say that record high gas prices are an issue of concern that they will be looking at closely. The FTC approach on gas prices is one, in my view, that must change. I do not intend to support the business-as-usual approach on energy that has been seen too long at the Federal Trade Commission. I have met with both the nominees to the Federal Trade Commission, Mr. William Kovacic and Mr. Thomas Rosch. I also asked them to provide me their views in writing in an effort to find out whether they would push the Commission to take a different approach from its long history of inaction in this area. Unfortunately, neither of these individuals provided me with any compelling evidence that they are committed to and will, in fact, work aggressively to change the culture of inaction at the Federal Trade Commission with respect to consumer protection in the energy field. Despite this prior statement about how oil companies with market power could gouge with impunity, Mr. Kovacic, the former Trade Commission general counsel, failed to identify any new authority the Federal Trade Commission needed to close the regulatory gap. On the question of whether the Federal Trade Commission needed added authority to address mergers in the petroleum industry that the GAO found had increased gasoline prices, Mr. Kovacic wrote: I do not have any specific preliminary in mind at the moment. Mr. Kovacic was more constructive on the question of whether there were other ways the FTC's statutory authority might be enhanced. He suggested Federal antitrust laws could be enhanced by encouraging whistleblowers to reveal illegal conduct by adding qui tam mechanisms that allow the whistleblowers to receive a percentage of the funds the government recovers from wrongdoers. I certainly agree a qui tam mechanism could provide a useful supplement to Government oversight in many areas. It is not a substitute for the Federal Trade Commission doing its job. And Mr. Kovacic did not identify any way the Federal Trade Commission's own approach to the oil industry would change. Given the Federal Trade Commission's record, given what they have done in the last few years, essentially being AWOL when it comes to energy, Mr. Kovacic's proposal essentially amounts to contracting out the Federal Trade Commission's enforcement authority in this area. Now, I personally believe that the Federal Trade Commission itself needs to be an aggressive watchdog, looking out for consumers at the gas pump, not passively waiting for an industry whistleblower to come forward with smoking-gun evidence before taking action. That is why I find, at this point, no evidence that Mr. Kovacic would bring a different kind of outlook to the Federal Trade Commission's work in the energy field. Now, the other nominee, Mr. Rosch, had a more interesting proposal. He suggests restoring the Federal Trade Commission's authority to challenge unilateral conduct affecting competition, authority that the Federal Trade Commission had prior to 1994. That would be a good first step toward closing the existing gap in the Agency's regulatory authority. Had Mr. Rosch ended his letter to me at that point, I would have been willing to support his nomination. However, he went on to undercut his case when it came to anticompetitive practices in a key area: zone pricing. In effect, before taking any action to deal with this particularly egregious and anticompetitive practice, Mr. Rosch argued for waiting for the outcome of a pending court case and for recommendations of the Antitrust Modernization Commission. So he was, in effect, saying, as the Federal Trade Commission says again and again and again in the energy field, that he wants more time to study, which means more delay and more inaction as it relates to protecting consumers from anticompetitive practices. It is my view that we have had enough delay and enough study when it comes to the anticompetitive practices of the oil industry. I do not intend to support business as usual at the Agency, and I am not going to support business-as-usual nominees to be FTC Commissioners. I intend to continue to raise my concerns as long as the Federal Trade Commission continues to duck aggressive consumer protection efforts in an area that, for reasons that I cannot fully explain to the Senate, they are simply unwilling to take up. This Agency, which is willing to step in in a variety of areas, such as ``do not call,'' stretches their authority to the limits and then even beyond, for some reason continues to sit on their hands when it relates to energy. I want things to change at the Agency. I want to see a more aggressive approach on behalf of energy consumers. I am not convinced that anything will change if Mr. Kovacic or Mr. Rosch is appointed to the Federal Trade Commission. Both of these individuals are going to get approved by the Senate in the last few hours of this session. It is my hope, in wrapping up--I see the Senator from Pennsylvania on the floor, who has patiently waited--it is my hope that these two individuals, Mr. Rosch and Mr. Kovacic, will prove that I am incorrect in the judgments I make tonight. I hope they will be aggressive. I hope they will look for opportunities to stand up for the consumer. I hope they will change this course of inaction that has been laid out by Ms. Majoras. If those two individuals, Mr. Kovacic and Mr. Rosch, take those kinds of steps, if they take the kinds of steps I have advocated tonight--to stand up for the energy consumer in this country--they will have my full support. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, as the session winds down this year, I wanted to take a few minutes and bring to the attention of the Senate a new development that I think will be of great interest to millions of parents and families across the country. As the distinguished President of the Senate knows from our service in the other body, parents are greatly concerned that their children are bombarded every day with obscene, indecent, profane, and violent entertainment on television. Parents come up to us as legislators and say: What are you going to do to stop this trash? What are you going to do to keep indecent programming away from our children's eyes and ears? Of course, we all wish for an ideal world where parents would take the most direct action, which is simply to turn the television set off. That is something that can be done without any Government role. But with parents working--and very often both parents working two jobs each to try to make ends meet--that is not always possible. So as I began to look at how to solve the indecency problem, I asked what could the Government do in this area to better protect our kids from indecent programming on television? I also asked how to do it in a way without a big government bureaucracy program, a one-size-fits-all approach or where the Federal Government would regulate the actual content of the programs on our television sets. As I began the search to try to figure out a responsible approach to the problem of indecent programming for children, one of the things I found is one of the cable companies and the big television programmers have set up a special tier of programming for those people who are interested in sports and those people who are interested in movies. I looked at it and found that not only had cable companies done this, it seemed to be working as well. They found a way to do it that the subscribers like and which was profitable. I said to myself, if that kind of approach works for sports fans and movie fans, why can we not do it for families as well? Why can we not have a special tier of programming that is appropriate for children and works for families, the way we have special programming for sports and movies? So earlier in this session, I introduced the Kid Friendly TV Programming Act, which would require all video service providers to implement a tier of television programming that is appropriate for children. In my bill, a kids' tier is defined as a group of 15 or more television stations blocked off in a separate channel area with both programming and commercials on it that are purely kid friendly. Parents would be able to subscribe to this block of stations separate from their regular programming, knowing the programming on their television will not carry material that is obscene, indecent, profane, sexual, or gratuitously violent. In introducing this legislation, it seemed to hit the criteria that were most important to me: more wholesome choices for parents and families but not a one-size-fits-all Government mandate. The Government would put the focus where it ought to be, which is to give parents a block or tier of channels separate from regular programming where there would not be material inappropriate for our children. After I introduced the legislation, Chairman Stevens and the ranking minority member Senator Inouye of the Commerce Committee, also made an important effort in holding a roundtable discussion on the problem of indecency, which provided some very valuable exposure for the issue. I want to express my appreciation to both of them for their leadership on this matter. I also want to express my appreciation to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin Martin, who has discussed this issue with me on a number of occasions. He gave a great boost to this effort several weeks ago at the forum that was held on indecent programming, where he came out and said that a kids' tier of programming would be a responsible, practical way to make sure our Nation's children had more wholesome choices on television. This week, spurred on by the legislation, the work of Chairman Martin, and the good bipartisan work done by Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye, the cable industry took a small step in the right direction when six cable companies, including Time Warner and Comcast, announced they plan to offer a kids' tier of programming in 2006. Having listened for months to arguments that kids' tier is not going to be profitable and it is not going to be practical, we saw the industry finally come to an understanding that it was time to get serious about this problem. Yesterday, Time Warner released the details of their kids' tier offer. I was pleased to see that their proposal included G-rated stations that run child friendly content 24 hours a day. However, it is unclear what will be included in the package that parents must purchase in order to purchase the kids' tier. Parents still may have to subscribe to a tier that includes stations that carry foul language, excessive violence, and inappropriate sexual content in order to subscribe to the kids' tier. That is not what my legislation called for at all. It said we had to have alternatives to the kind of inappropriate programming that is out there now. But in order to subscribe to Time Warner's kids' tier, families might also have to subscribe to service which could include inappropriate programming for children. I am pleased I can say on the Senate floor that at least some people in the industry have recognized the need for a kids' tier of cable programming across our country. For a long time, whenever I brought this up, they basically said western civilization would end if we have this kind of programming that meets the needs of parents and families. At least we have seen baby steps to address this issue. What is needed is not different than what parents have at the candy- free checkout lane at the supermarket. Just like parents should not have to take their kids past all the candy to check out at the grocery store, parents should not be forced to surf through obscene programs in order to get to the programs for kids that are appropriate. In the days ahead I want to make sure that children across the country have an opportunity to have access to this kind of good quality programming, that the kids' tier is implemented properly, and that it does not depend on which community one is in. While a family in Corvallis or Portland in my home State would have a kids' tier available to them because they are served by Comcast, a family in Pendleton or Hood River would not because they receive their cable through a different company. Until all video service providers are offering a kids' tier the job will be incomplete. My legislation requires that all video service providers institute a kids' tier. I want to make sure families get this option. It is my intent to watch the developments we have seen in the last couple of weeks with respect to Time Warner and Comcast very closely. I am very appreciative of what Chairman Martin has done in this area because he has given great visibility to the question of improving children's programming. I see Senator Pryor is in the Chamber as well. He has done excellent work on the Commerce Committee on this issue of indecent programming for children. If we do not see this kind of tier of kid friendly programming done right across this country, I am going to come back to the Senate and push for my original legislation. The private sector has taken baby steps in the right direction, but there is still a great deal left to do. With millions of kids being exposed to indecent, profane, and violent programming, it is important to do this job right, and the Senate ought to stay at it on a bipartisan basis until it is done.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I would like to let the Senator from Georgia propound a unanimous consent request first.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, while I personally am vehemently opposed to the statements that have been made by the President of Iran, I have been asked by the Members on this side of the aisle to object, and I do so object.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise to say a word or two about our good friend Senator Corzine, who will be leaving the Senate to assume the governorship of New Jersey. What I would like to do--because I have heard a lot about Senator Corzine and his background in Illinois today--is to talk about when I saw him in action for the first time. It was when the Senate was working on the post 9/11 airline relief legislation. A lot of us were very troubled about how that ought to be done. We were sympathetic to the needs of the airlines after 9/11 but concerned about the very large sums of money that were going to be directed to one sector of our economy when many of our important economic sectors were hurt after 9/ 11; in that period when our country suffered tragically in New York but where there were economic ramifications across the country. That legislation would not have passed if Senator Corzine, along with help from our former colleague, Senator Fitzgerald, had not stepped in and figured out how to deal with the financing in a responsible way that protected taxpayers while providing some help to the airlines. Senator Corzine took out a sharp pencil, using the expertise he had acquired in his years at Goldman Sachs and throughout his training in finance, and figured out how to make sure there was not a bailout in effect for just one sector that would have taxpayers holding the bag and was sensitive to the needs of all concerned. I was struck, as I watched him deal with that airline legislation, how in this individual a combination of compassion, fairness, and intelligence worked in a very quiet and dignified way to bring together different parties, different Senators who had widely diverse views, and tackled an issue of great importance. I think that is exactly what he is going to do when he assumes the Governorship of New Jersey. He is going to bring exactly that combination of fairness, compassion, and brains, always done in a kind of low-key, understated way. I believe the people of New Jersey will benefit as they have in his service here in the U.S. Senate. We hope Governor Corzine will come to Oregon because he has expressed an interest in looking at some of our innovative approaches, particularly in the area of health care and the environment. We wish him well and know he is going to have a very distinguished career as the new Governor of New Jersey. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. As my friend knows, I think virtually everything the Senator from Pennsylvania does is meritorious. I am troubled, though, about where we are with the national security letters. Yes, they existed for years, but they were greatly expanded with the PATRIOT Act. We know that. I am also concerned as we consider this kind of legal language that there will be a chilling effect on the exercise of the right to counsel, and I get that again without being able to go into the details because of my examination of the issue. I am not going to debate the Senator's good-faith efforts; they have always been to try to strike a balance. But I am concerned that something that even the Government--the executive branch admits this is a tool that should be used carefully, at a time, as I said, when you open the morning newspaper and every day you see another effort to not strike this balance. I think we ought to stay at this national security letter issue and deal with concerns raised here with respect to secrecy and exercise of right to counsel. My good friend from Pennsylvania and I have worked together on so many issues, and I want him to know of my desire to do it and my respect for his ability to get into some of these technical questions in a fashion that is almost unparalleled.

Mr. WYDEN. National security letters----

Mr. WYDEN. I have enormous respect for Chairman Specter and Senator Leahy, and will say what is so troubling about this particular period: Virtually every single day, almost every day, we see another report about the administration trying to skew the bounds between fighting terrorism ferociously and protecting the civil liberties of the people of our country. The front page of the paper today: Secret Pentagon databases are kept. Essentially, the administration, when somebody digs it up, finds out that all of this is being done--again in secret. As I have said many times, the two concepts--security and civil liberties--are not mutually exclusive, and when crafting legislation, they be approached in tandem. In fact, it is my view that the promotion of American security and the protection of Americans' rights and freedoms should be mutually reinforcing principles. If one goal is abandoned for the other, or one goal carries less importance than the other, then a new solution must be found. A new solution is certainly needed in this case. The PATRIOT Act conference report reflects the wholesale rejection of this two-pronged approach and relegates civil liberties to second class status. The conference report strips out those Senate provisions that helped ensure good Congressional oversight. It limits the ability of law- abiding Americans to defend themselves from possible PATRIOT Act abuses. These changes do not make the PATRIOT Act a more effective tool for fighting terrorism; ultimately, they leave Americans more vulnerable to violations of privacy and the PATRIOT Act more susceptible to abuse. I am not going to go through the whole bill, but would like to highlight one issue in particular that Oregonians have raised with me-- National Security Letters. National Security Letters authorize the FBI, without judicial approval, to obtain Americans' sensitive information. Senator Specter has enormous technical legal skills, and I am very concerned about the national security letters, as well. I sit on the Intelligence Committee. Of course we cannot get into any aspect of what goes on in those debates, but it seems to me any way you parse the legal language with respect to the conference report and the national security letters, it is not balanced. It is, once again, skewed against the rights of the individual. The Washington Post recently reported that the FBI is using National Security Letters to go on fishing expeditions, and the FBI issued at least 30,000 NSLs in the last year alone. In these fishing expeditions, the FBI reportedly casts a wide net, gathering personal information on innocent Americans. The Post article describes the experience of George Christian of Connecticut. Mr. Christian manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries and reportedly received an NSL seeking ``all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person'' who used a specific computer at a certain library branch. The FBI reportedly instructed Mr. Christian that he could never talk to anyone about the request. In spite of this apparent gag order, he decided to challenge the NSL. The court files are sealed, but the Post reported that the judge described the basis for the NSL as laughably vague. With the FBI issuing at least 30,000 NSLs a year, how many other Americans like Mr. Christian are out there? How many Americans have had personal information turned over to the federal government--who they've called, where they've traveled, what they've bought--because someone didn't have the time or the money to fight an unreasonable NSL? Who is going to have access to all the information the FBI has reportedly gathered that may now be in vast government databases? If any one NSL can be used to gather information on thousands or even tens of thousands of Americans, one can only guess how many Americans have already been affected by these fishing expeditions. As pointed out in the Post article, the FBI acknowledged from the beginning that the NSL was an incredible power that had to be used judiciously. As one FBI employee stated in a 2001 memo sent to all 56 field offices: NSLs are powerful investigative tools, in that they can compel the production of substantial amounts of relevant information . . . However, they must be used judiciously. Thirty thousand NSLs a year doesn't sound judicious to me. And 30,000 NSLs a year shouldn't sound judicious to the citizens of Oregon. The reporting on NSLs cries out for proper congressional oversight to ensure that abuse of NSL powers does not occur. For starters, Americans must be armed with the necessary tools to challenge unreasonable National Security Letters. But the conference report further inhibits the ability of Americans to challenge NSLs. More specifically, the conference report requires an NSL recipient who consults with an attorney to give the name of the attorney to the FBI. Talk about a chilling effect on the right to counsel! I am not aware of a provision like this existing in any other area of law. For instance, the conference report imposes criminal penalties on an NSL recipient who speaks out in violation of an NSL gag order. So even if the NSL recipient believes that the letter is unconstitutional and that his rights have been violated, he could go to jail for 5 years. It is provisions in the conference report like these, which expand the federal government's powers and make it more difficult for ordinary Americans and Congress to challenge abuses of that power, that give me serious pause. And there are not just one or two of them. Look in the sections concerning requests for business and library records, roving wiretaps, sneak and peak searches, and of course NSLs: there is a recurring pattern here and it is very disturbing. There are those who claim that there have been no abuses of the PATRIOT Act. With all due respect, that is, at best, disingenuous. At least two courts have held that the FBI used its NSL power in an unconstitutional manner. And remember, we are talking about powers that include gag rules--so how many others are out there challenging PATRIOT Act activities in silence? There are those who will say, ``I haven't done anything wrong and I have no problem with the government doing what needs to be done to fight terror--if they end up with my personal information, but don't use it against me, so be it.'' I wonder how that innocent person would feel if the FBI were watching over his shoulder as he surfed the Internet, standing by his side and noting whom he calls and when, or standing next to him at the cash register as he pays for a anniversary gift for his wife. Because I'll bet he wouldn't be ok with this. And while technology has made surveillance less obvious, this is exactly what some of the more controversial PATRIOT Act powers allow the government to do with only the vaguest of reasons and little or no oversight. The obligation to demonstrate that the government is not abusing an individual's rights should not be on the shoulders of that individual. That burden should be squarely on the government's shoulders. The 9-11 Commission endorsed this notion, recommending that ``the burden of proof for retaining a particular governmental power should be on the executive . . . .'' With respect to the overall bill, in our part of the world we are terribly concerned about what is going on with methamphetamine. Senator Smith and I have worked very closely on a bipartisan basis with our colleagues to get a good anti-meth program. The administration comes along at the 11th hour and politicizes this meth issue at a time when we could pass it with a 100-0 vote. As a cosponsor of the Combat Meth Act, I intend to continue to fight for the passage of the meth bill but not as a part of this badly flawed legislation. And while my decision was made more difficult by the fact that legislation addressing the meth crisis was included in the conference report, I will be opposing the conference report and opposing cloture. I want it understood I am anxious to work with my colleagues on a bipartisan basis, but given this particular climate and the need to constantly keep the teeter-totter balance--fighting terrorism aggressively, protecting the civil liberties of our country--it seems to me we have to be very judicious with respect to how tools such as the national security letter are being used. Any way you cut it, my colleagues, I don't see that taking place. So more time is needed to make the necessary corrections to the conference report to ensure that the PATRIOT Act Reauthorization promotes Americans' security and protects their rights and freedoms. The Senate should not be coerced into accepting a piece of legislation that allows the Federal Government to reach, unchecked, further into the personal life of every American, with fewer means of appeal and less oversight. I therefore urge my colleagues to support the proposal submitted by Senator Leahy and Senator Sununu extending the expiring provisions of the PATRIOT Act for 3 months. I ask unanimous consent that my statement be printed in the Record. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, December 1, was World AIDS Day, and I wanted to take this time to both acknowledge the good work that is done around world to prevent and treat this disease and to acknowledge the need is still great around the world and in our own country to fund prevention, treatment, and support. AIDS kills 3 million people each year, and 13,500 people are newly infected each day. AIDS has already left 15 million orphans in its wake. The theme of World AIDS Day 2005 was ``Keeping the Promise.'' To date, the United States has led the world in contributions to the Global Fund, providing one-third of all contributions. However, the statistics tell us that while we have come far, we still have far to go in preventing this tragic disease, including here at home. We have experienced many medical miracles in the form of drugs that help people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS live healthier longer. Yet, we seem to be able to fund less and less of the services that help individuals stay healthy and maintain the structure of their lives. I was recently visited by constituents who were either HIV positive or had full-blown AIDS. They told many moving stories about how their lives had been made better by programs that help them get health services, pay for their drugs, rent and provide other support services. Many of these programs are through the Ryan White Act. The unmet need grows daily. For example, in Portland, the Russell Street Dental Clinic provides about $60,000 worth of services to HIV patients each month compared with about $15,000 a month 3 years ago. In 2003, a study was released that documented the service gaps in Oregon. The list of services for which there is not enough funding to meet the need is long and includes dental care, help with legal affairs, counseling, housing and help in paying rent or utilities, and transportation. Despite an increased number of people living with HIV/AIDS, Ryan White funding has decreased. Many of the programs my constituents tell me help them are through Title I of the Ryan White Act. This title provides the vital core services of Medical care, mental health and substance abuse treatment, dental care, and case management. The Oregon AIDS Drug Assistance Program has had to change eligibility and take other steps to limit enrollment because of budget constraints. This program helps individuals with their drug costs. I view it as a wise investment because it helps people stay healthier, working, and productive. What I have heard from my constituents is sheer frustration that the programs they know work are yet again on the chopping block. I share their frustration. An investment in health care, whether abroad or in our own country, an investment in a community and in making that community healthier. I hope Congress keeps this in mind as we face difficult decisions about funding in the future. I ask unanimous consent that my remarks be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, when it comes to energy, the Federal Trade Commission, FTC, is basically out of the consumer protection business. Well over a year ago, I released a report documenting the Federal Trade Commission's campaign of inaction when it comes to protecting consumers at the gas pump. My report documented how the FTC has refused to challenge oil industry mergers that the Government Accountability Office says have raised gas prices at the pump by 7 cents a gallon on the West Coast. My report also documented how the FTC failed to act when refineries have been shut down or to stop anti-competitive practices like redlining and zone pricing. Since then, nothing has changed. Despite the recent record-high prices for consumers and record profits by big oil companies, we are seeing a record level of inaction by the Federal Trade Commission, FTC, on behalf of energy consumers. In the last few months, when the price of gasoline soared to an all- time record-high level, the FTC has been invisible. As far as I can tell, the FTC failed to take any action at all in the wake of hurricanes in the gulf that sent the price of gasoline skyrocketing to over $3 a gallon nationwide. If you do a Google search on the ``FTC and gasoline prices,'' nothing comes up that shows the FTC is taking any action on behalf of energy consumers. What you will find are statements by the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission arguing against giving the agency additional authority to protect consumers against price gouging at the gas pump. For example, the FTC Chairman recently made statements opposing Federal price gouging laws, because ``they are not simple to enforce'' and that they could do more harm to consumers. But 28 States already have price gouging laws on their books and two state attorney General testified at last week's joint hearing by the Senate Energy and Commerce Committees that these laws are more beneficial than harmful to consumers. In her testimony before the joint Senate hearing last week, FTC Chairman Majoras described what I consider to be an astounding theory of consumer protection when she essentially said there is no need for Federal price gouging laws no matter how high the price goes. She argued that gasoline price gouging was a ``local issue'' even if the price gouger was a multinational oil company. FTC officials also recently testified before Congress that the agency has no authority to stop price gouging by individual oil companies. Despite this clear gap in the agency's authority, the FTC has refused to say what additional authority it needs to go after price gouging, as I have pressed them to do for years. Mr. President and colleagues, there is gasoline price gouging going on today and it didn't start with Hurricane Katrina. As The Wall Street Journal documented in September, gasoline prices have increased twice as fast as crude oil price during the past year. Clearly, the oil companies are not simply passing on higher crude oil costs but are also adding on substantial increases to the cost of gasoline above and beyond the higher crude costs. Since the early 1970s, there has never been the kind of disparity between increases in the price of gasoline and the increase in the price of crude oil that we are seeing today. We didn't see this great of a price difference even in the days of the longest gas lines following the OPEC embargo. Over the past 30 years, gasoline prices never rose more than 5 percent higher in a year than the cost of crude increased. But in the past year, gas price increases outpaced crude by 36 percent. And since Hurricane Katrina, the price difference has soared even higher to 68 percent. Further evidence of price gouging can be found in what happened on the west coast immediately following Hurricane Katrina when prices surged 15 cents per gallon overnight. For years, oil industry officials, the Federal Trade Commission and other government agencies have maintained that the west coast is an isolated gasoline market from the rest of the country. West coast supplies were not affected by the hurricane. The west coast gets almost none of its gasoline from the gulf. If the west coast is an isolated market as the oil industry has claimed for years, then Katrina is no justification for jacking up gas prices on the west coast immediately after the hurricane hit. The FTC is the principal consumer protection agency in the Federal Government. It is the Federal agency that can and should take action when gasoline markets are going haywire as they have both before and since Hurricane Katrina. But instead of action, we have excuses. In the past, the FTC often claimed that it was studying the problem or monitoring gasoline markets as an excuse for its inaction on gas pricing. Recently, the FTC's campaign of inaction has even extended to its studies. The FTC Chairman testified last week that a study of gas price gouging that Congress required the FTC to complete by this month would not be ready until next spring. Mr. President, the FTC's campaign of inaction is approaching the point of paralysis! The FTC has continued its program of inaction on behalf of gasoline consumers despite findings by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO, that the FTC's policies are raising prices at the gas pump. In May 2004, GAO released a major study showing how oil industry mergers the FTC allowed to go through during the 1990's substantially increased concentration in the oil industry and increased gasoline prices for consumers by as much as seven cents per gallon on the West Coast. Specifically, GAO found that during the 1990's the FTC allowed a wave of oil industry mergers to proceed, that these mergers had substantially increased concentration in the oil industry and that almost all of the largest of the oil industry mega-mergers examined by GAO each had increased gasoline prices by one to two cents per gallon. Essentially, the GAO found that the FTC's oil merger policies during the 1990's had permitted serial price gouging. Two years ago, when the current FTC Chairman, Deborah Majoras, came before the Senate for confirmation, I asked her to respond to the GAO's report. Despite her promise to do so, I have yet to receive any response from Chairman Majoras. The GAO is not alone in documenting how FTC regulators have been missing in action when it comes to protecting consumers at the gas pump. Since 2001, oil industry mergers totaling $19.5 billion have been unchallenged by the FTC, according to an article in Bloomberg News. The article also reported that these unchecked mergers may have contributed to the highest gasoline prices in the past 20 years. According to the FTC's own records, the agency imposed no conditions on 28 of 33 oil mergers since 2001. You can see the results of the FTC's inaction at gas stations in Oregon and all across America. Nationwide, the GAO found that between 1994 and 2002, gasoline market concentration increased in all but four states. As a result of FTC merger policies, 46 States' gasoline markets are now moderately or highly concentrated, compared to 27 States in 1994. The FTC, oil industry officials and consumer groups all agree that in these concentrated markets, oil companies don't need to collude in order to raise prices. The FTC's former General Counsel William Kovacic has said that ``It may be possible in selected markets for individual firms to unilaterally increase prices.'' In other words, the FTC General Counsel basically admitted that oil companies in these markets can price gouge with impunity. Mr. Kovacis is one of the two nominees for FTC Commissioner who is now before the Senate. Despite all this evidence that gasoline markets around the country have become more concentrated and, in these concentrated markets, individual firms can raise prices and extract monopoly profits, the FTC has failed to take effective action to check oil industry mergers. In the vast majority of cases, the FTC took no action at all. In addition to its inaction in merger cases, the FTC has also failed to act against proven areas of anti-competitive activity. Major oil companies are charging dealers discriminatory ``Azone prices'' that make it impossible for dealers to compete fairly with company-owned stations or even other dealers in the same geographic area. With zone pricing, one oil company sells the same gasoline to its own brand service stations at different prices. The cost to the oil company of making the gasoline is the same. In many cases, the cost of delivering that gasoline to the service stations is the same, but the price the service stations pay is not the same. And the station that pays the higher price is not able to compete. Another example of anticompetitive practices now occurring in gasoline markets is a practice known as ``redlining.'' This involves oil companies making certain areas off-limits to independent gasoline distributors known as jobbers who could bring competition to the area. The Federal Trade Commission's own investigation of west coast gasoline markets found that the practice of redlining was rampant in west coast markets and that it hurt consumers. But the FTC concluded it could only take action to stop this anti-competitive practice if the redlining was the result of out-and-out collusion, a standard that is almost impossible to prove in court. In my home State of Oregon, one courageous gasoline dealer took on the big oil companies and won a multi-million dollar court judgment in a case that involved redlining. This dealer gave the evidence he used to win his case in court to the Federal Trade Commission. But the Federal Trade Commission the preeminent consumer protection agency in the Federal Government failed to do anything to help this dealer or reign in the anti-competitive practices at issue in his case. In areas other than energy, the Federal Trade Commission has been a great consumer protection agency. It has not hesitated to move aggressively to act on behalf of consumers. To give one example, the FTC created a ``Do Not Call'' program to prevent consumers from being hassled at home by telemarketers. With its ``Do Not Call'' program, the agency pushed to protect consumers to the limits of its authority and even went beyond what the courts said it had authority to do. But in the case of energy, the FTC has a regulatory blind spot. And this has been true in both Democratic and Republican administrations. It's been a bipartisan blind spot that keeps the agency from looking out for gasoline consumers. The FTC won't even speak out on behalf of consumers getting gouged at the gas pump. The agency won't use its bully pulpit to even say that record-high gasoline prices are an issue of concern, that they will be looking at closely. The FTC's approach on gas prices has got to change. I'm not going to support the business as usual approach on energy we've seen for too long at the FTC. So, I have asked the Senate leadership for additional time to study the views of the two nominees to the Federal Trade Commission, Mr. William Kovacic and Mr. Thomas Rousch. I just received detailed letters and other documents from each of them. I have asked the leadership for time for consultation on these two nominations, as it is not my intent at this time to lodge a formal objection to a unanimous consent request to consider them. I will use the time between now and when the Senate returns in December to examine their records more carefully and reach a decision as to whether these individuals are committed to and will in fact work aggressively toward changing the culture of inaction at the FTC regarding consumer protection in the energy field.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, with the CEOs of the major oil companies admitting that they do not need tax breaks, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are signaling that it is a new day as far as energy taxes. For the first time in 20 years, the Senate is on the brink of cutting back on a portion of the billions of dollars in tax breaks the major oil companies receive annually. The long march toward reforming the energy provisions in our Tax Code began a couple of days ago, when the Senate Finance Committee accepted my amendment that would limit a brand-new tax break in the 2005 Energy bill that would allow the oil companies to get faster write-offs for their exploration costs. That amendment was, in my view, a beginning at rolling back unnecessary tax breaks. Today, a bipartisan group, under the leadership of Senator Feinstein and Senator Sununu, are building on that. It is preposterous for the Senate to keep voting out tax breaks for the major oil companies when these executives go on national television and say they aren't needed. At a time when the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program doesn't have enough funds, at a time when Americans are hurting all across the country, I don't know how it is possible for a Member of the Senate to stand up and say: We are going to continue to dispense tax favors that the oil industry says are not needed. What I did in the Finance Committee, what Senator Feinstein is building on today, is to say we are going to do a better job in the future of targeting scarce resources. In this case we are going to limit the tax breaks to the small and independent producers. Even with that, the fact is that over the past 2 years, oil companies have already increased their drilling operations, as the price of oil has skyrocketed from $45 per barrel to over $70. The number of rigs in operation and the amount of drilling have both increased by a third since 2003. Special treatment of oil and gas costs in the Tax Code is exactly the kind of special interest tax break we ought to be working, on a bipartisan basis, to eliminate. By eliminating this and other special- interest tax breaks, it will be possible to simplify the Code, help to lower tax rates, and, most specifically, let the energy markets work, let capital flow to its highest and best use. This is a pretty big day in the Senate. Literally for 20 years, the Senate has been pouring it on in terms of one tax break after another for the major oil companies. If you look at the statutes, the statutes are not confining these tax breaks to the small independent producer. My legislation in the Senate Finance Committee did just that. I heard the pleas of a number of colleagues on the Finance Committee who said: Be careful about the small independent producers. I did that. We passed it in the Finance Committee. Senator Feinstein and Senator Sununu have picked up on that theme. This is not going to take anything away from the small independent producers, but it is a big first step at reforming the Tax Code and keeping taxpayers' hard-earned money, when major oil executives say they don't need those dollars for tax breaks. I hope the Senate will support the Feinstein-Sununu amendment, and take the next step in this effort to reform the Tax Code. I yield the floor.