Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the use of calculators be permitted on the floor of the Senate during consideration of the conference report on the 2009 concurrent resolution on the budget.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, on behalf of Senator Conrad, I ask unanimous consent that the following staff of the Budget Committee be granted full floor access privileges during consideration of the conference report to accompany the fiscal year 2009 concurrent resolution on the budget: John Righter, Joel Friedman, Steve Posner, Jim Hearn, Cheri Reidy, and Dave Fisher. I further ask unanimous consent that Brock Ramos, a fellow on the Budget Committee staff, be granted floor privileges during consideration of the conference report to accompany the fiscal year 2009 concurrent resolution on the budget.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank my good friend from Florida. I will close with the following point, which my friend Senator Nelson, the distinguished Senator from Florida, calls to mind, because of his extraordinarily distinguished service to our country. He was willing to put himself at great risk in the extraordinarily challenging pursuit of becoming an astronaut for the United States of America. I mean, talk about the best and brightest. As we know from many tragedies, it is not only an extraordinarily challenging pursuit, it is one where you do put your life very much at risk on behalf of the progress of this country. He, in that very important way, and I, in a much slower way, share an important belief, which is that the Government of the United States of America, our American system of government which has been passed down to us after a revolutionary war, a civil war, two great world wars, the Great Depression, essentially intact and, indeed, improving through the decades and generations, is one of God's great gifts to humankind. It is now in our hands, particularly as we represent our States in this body. It is to be treasured. It is to be viewed with respect. It is, indeed, to be viewed with reverence. The thing that, to me, is worst of all from his politics, from his corruption, from his debasement of public service, is the lack of respect, the lack of reverence for what we have been given, for what we hold in trust for ourselves and future generations. It has never been as low as it is now. But the light still burns, and we will continue to call attention to the miscreancy that we find. Soon, in January, it will be over. I thank my friend from Florida and yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, for much of last year, as many of us will remember, the Senate Judiciary Committee was engaged in a very troubling inquiry. We were trying to determine whether the Bush administration had fired several U.S. attorneys for political reasons; not because they were not good U.S. attorneys but because they were not loyal ``Bushies,'' to use the phrase a Department of Justice official used. That inquiry continues at the Department of Justice, but over its course, we already know the incompetence and misjudgments that it uncovered have cost numerous Department of Justice officials their jobs, and properly so, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who made clear that he put loyalty to the President before the faithful exercise of that important office. Unfortunately, it also cost that proud Department the morale of its officials and, to a sad degree, the trust of the American people, many of whom have been left to wonder whether Federal prosecutions in this country arise from the pursuit of justice or whether under the Bush administration they arise from the pursuit of political advantage. Here we go again, perhaps. This morning, we awoke to the news that the Environmental Protection Agency's regional administrator for the Midwest, Mary Gade, was forced to resign in the midst of a heated debate over dioxin contamination in waters near Michigan. Dioxin is an extremely dangerous chemical. According to a report by the Chicago Tribune, Ms. Gade invoked emergency powers last year to force Dow Chemical, headquartered in Michigan, to clean up several areas saturated with this toxic chemical, a dangerous carcinogen which was a byproduct, among other things, of Agent Orange, with which we are sadly familiar. Ms. Gade later broke off negotiations with Dow Chemical on a more comprehensive cleanup, citing concerns that Dow had been reluctant to take steps to protect health and wildlife. That put the company in a tough position. At that point, the Tribune's report says the company asked EPA officials in Washington to intervene, although Dow said it had nothing to do with Ms. Gade's dismissal. The paper wrote that Ms. Gade said that high-ranking EPA officials ``repeatedly questioned her aggressive action against Dow.'' It quoted Ms. Gade as saying, ``There is no question that this is about Dow.'' We do not yet know all the details of Ms. Gade's firing or everything that may have gone on between her office and Dow Chemical. But from everything we have heard and seen so far, it looks like deja vu all over again from an administration that values compliance with its political agenda more than it values the trust or the best interests of the American people. Last year, we learned this is an administration that would not hesitate to fire capable Federal prosecutors when they would not toe an improper party line. Today it seems the Bush administration might have once again removed a highly qualified and well-regarded official whose only misstep was to disagree with the political bosses. Unfortunately, the story of Mary Gade is not only a distressing signal that the Bush administration may again be making hiring and firing decisions based on political loyalty, it is also a piece of evidence in a growing pile of evidence of a troubling and destructive force at work within our Government, one with serious consequences for our environment, for our natural resources, and for the health of Americans, for us, for our families. We have also known that the Bush administration was no friend to the environment. Over and over again for 7 long years, this administration has put forward under false flags policies that would do great harm to the environment. Remember the Clear Skies Initiative that would increase air pollution? Remember the national energy policy written with Dick Cheney by oil industry lobbyists? The Bush approach to environmental protection has not only been wrong, it has been Orwellian. That pattern continues even to this day. Not long ago, President Bush stood in the White House Rose Garden and announced what his administration characterized as a ``new strategy'' to address climate change. As the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania well knows, Americans all over this country are crying out for a bold and visionary plan to tackle the looming threat of global warming, a problem that threatens to engulf this Nation and the entire world within generations if nothing is done. So we looked to the Rose Garden for leadership from our President. And what did we find? We found a proposal that was neither new nor even a strategy. Instead, the President announced what he called a new national goal: voluntary action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. Let me say that again. Voluntary action to reduce emissions by 2025, 17 years from now, 17 years of increases. There are a couple of problems with this approach. First, the obvious problem is if you are allowing greenhouse gas emissions to continue to rise for 17 years, you are not doing much effectively about them, even though overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that unless we take immediate action to cut global warming pollutants, we might be too late to prevent the most serious impacts of global climate change. Mr. President, you and I are in our fifties. We may be gone when it gets bad. I have met your girls. I have a girl and a boy of my own. I look at the young pages here who are gathered in the well. This will be their world, and the responsibility is on us to take action now while we can to protect the world in which they will live. On that score, President Bush failed again. He literally offered zero initiatives, none, that might reduce emissions now or in the future. He made it clear that, on what is left of his watch, the U.S. Government will never require polluters to make such reductions. As every American who is not working in the Bush administration understands, voluntary action without strength of will or force of law simply is not enough to tackle a problem of this magnitude. Finally, even if the President announced this empty so-called renewed commitment to fighting global warming, his administration indicated it would oppose a specific detailed plan for addressing the climate change problem the Senate will likely take up after our Memorial Day recess, the Warner-Lieberman plan Chairman Boxer has worked so hard to get out of our Environment and Public Works Committee. This trifecta of failure from the White House would be laughable if it were not that the problem itself is so serious. It raises, actually, the distasteful possibility, given this administration's long and destructive history of disregard for environmental concerns, that the President's new strategy is not just a complete failure, a complete nothing, it is actually a stalking horse, intended to prevent real progress on climate change, a way to leave this problem, similar to so many others, for the next President to have to solve. Regrettably, the President's announcement is also a stunning failure of leadership in a world community that is quickly growing unaccustomed to American leadership--not a good habit for the world to adopt. We have known for a long time that politics of special interests is at the bottom of this and the Bush White House has repeatedly interfered with the decisionmaking process of the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies, in thrall to the checkbooks of the oil companies, the gas companies, the chemical companies, the timber companies, the coal companies, the auto companies. If you have a corporate checkbook, they are for you. A couple of weeks ago, we saw new evidence of how deeply this corrosive political influence has seeped within EPA, the primary Federal agency charged with protecting our environment and our people's public health. A report issued April 23 by the Union of Concerned Scientists, entitled ``Interference at the EPA,'' is a truly scathing indictment of the decisionmaking process at EPA from those who know it best, the scientists inside the Agency. The report consisted largely of a survey of EPA scientists. It found that 60 percent of those surveyed had personally experienced at least one instance of political interference during the past 5 years--60 percent of the scientists. The report documents, among many other things, that many EPA scientists have been directed to inappropriately exclude or alter information from EPA science documents, or have had their work edited in a manner that resulted in changes to their scientific findings. The survey also revealed EPA scientists have often objected to or resigned or removed themselves from EPA projects because of pressure--pressure to change their scientific findings. The conclusion could not be much clearer: EPA is an agency in crisis. Once upon a time, anyone working at EPA could be proud of their agency's reputation. It was the international gold standard in the area of environmental protection. Indeed, for most of its 40-year history, all Americans could place their trust in EPA's independent, science- based leadership to safeguard our natural resources and our public health. If you go back to the founding of the Agency, in a 1970 press release by its first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, he stated this role unequivocally: EPA is an independent agency. It has no obligation to promote agriculture or commerce, only the critical obligation to protect and enhance the environment. Administrator Ruckelshaus was a Republican appointed by President Nixon. Yet both he and the President who appointed him intended EPA to be immune from political pressure; to be guided by the twin lodestars of law and science in discharging that critical obligation to protect and enhance the environment. In recent years, and especially during the tenure of Administrator Johnson, we have seen the EPA's leadership, in cahoots with its White House allies, despoil these basic principles of independence and scientific integrity. Here are only a few examples from the long bill of particulars that indicts the leadership of this once-vaunted agency. The George Bush Environmental Protection Agency falsified data and fabricated results of studies regarding the safety of the air around the site of the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11. The George Bush Environmental Protection Agency selectively edited Government reports, including the EPA's 2003 report on the environment, to support uncertainty in climate change science, placing the imprimatur of the Government of the United States on fringe views, soundly rejected by the vast majority--essentially the entire world scientific community. The George Bush Environmental Protection Agency has routinely tampered with regulatory and scientific processes to achieve results sought by, guess what, industry--at the expense of our public health and the environment. For example, in 2004, EPA allowed North Dakota to alter the way it measured air quality. That is the way they brought the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in compliance with national air quality standards, not by cleaning up the air but by allowing them to change the way they measured air quality. The George Bush Environmental Protection Agency has hidden, suppressed and delayed the release of scientific findings in order to affect the impacts of EPA decisions. If they have two things going on, if you can slow one down and get the other out first, if it is helpful to industry, there they are--as in the case of a 2002 report on the effects of mercury on children's health that EPA delayed for 9 months and released only after it had been leaked to the media. The George Bush Environmental Protection Agency has disregarded legally mandated scientific and administrative procedures, as in the case of the Agency's failure to abide by the Supreme Court's recent decision on regulating greenhouse gas emissions. The George Bush Environmental Protection Agency has stacked the EPA's leadership and its advisory committees with industry allies, removing respected scientists who argued for stronger public protections. A prime example of this is the removal, at the request of the industry lobbying group the American Chemistry Council, of toxicologist Deborah Rice from an EPA toxics advisory committee. Dr. Rice had argued for more stringent EPA standards for regulating certain chemicals used in commercially available plastic products. Not only was Dr. Rice removed from the panel, but her remarks on the panel were retroactively stricken from the record. EPA essentially took the fact that Dr. Rice had ever been on the panel and struck it from the panel's records. They, I guess, administratively ``disappeared'' her. It is not the kind of thing that happens in the country I know. The George Bush Environmental Protection Agency has ignored the recommendations of career staff and scientists when they collide with White House political imperatives, as in the case of the Agency's decision on the so-called California waiver--first time ever not to grant the waiver. The George Bush EPA has reduced enforcement of environmental regulations by opening fewer criminal investigations and filing fewer lawsuits against corporate polluters. The George Bush EPA has not only failed to protect but sought reprisals against agency employees who pointed out problems, reported legal violations, and attempted to correct factual misrepresentations made by their superiors. Amazingly, the EPA's Office of General Counsel has invoked the doctrine of sovereign immunity against whistleblowers suing the agency because of actions taken by the agency in reprisal for their whistleblower activity. And, as a lawyer, as somebody who spent a good deal of his life as a government lawyer, it pains me to see how the George Bush EPA has had its lawyering literally mocked, mocked by the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal, which, in one case, condemned the EPA's defense of its regulation as possible ``only in a Humpty-Dumpty world,'' and in another case accused the agency of ``deploying the logic of the Queen of Hearts'' from ``Alice in Wonderland'' in the agency's interpretation of the law. It makes one's skin crawl to see the ways in which EPA's leadership under the Bush administration has put the interest of big business and their lobbyists before the health and welfare of our environment and the American people. This has dire consequences. First, in a world that presents complex challenges to our public health, to our environment, and to our national security, the elevation of corporate interests over independent, science-based decisionmaking threatens America's very ability to respond effectively and to provide the kind of leadership on complex problems that the world expects and that Americans deserve. Second, the administration's conduct has demoralized EPA's professional workforce--the scientists, the lawyers, the regulatory experts to whom EPA owes its reputation as a champion of environmental protection. And time and time again during this administration they have seen their expert counsel set aside in favor of a partisan political agenda. Third, President Bush and this administration have compromised the faith of the American people in the integrity of their Government. We can disagree. This is a Chamber that is built for disagreement. We can disagree on policy considerations; we can argue about what the right or the wrong decision is to make. But it is a tragedy when we doubt the integrity of the process of America's agencies of Government. The President's eagerness to do the bidding of the special interests and the Administrator's willingness to kowtow to the White House, to the detriment of sound public policy, only confirms what too many consider fear that the United States of America is no longer governed by and for the people. When policy is made for special interests and not for public good, America is left weaker. No matter our partisan or ideological standings, no one in this great Chamber, I hope, would want to do such a thing to this great country. The Bush administration has done lasting harm both to our environment and to the confidence of the American people. Next Wednesday, May 7, at 9:30 a.m., I will join Senator Barbara Boxer, the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, for an oversight hearing to look into the actions by this Bush administration and the EPA Administrator which seem to be so badly at odds with the recommendations of the agency's scientists and the best interests of the American people. Chairman Boxer--we can be so proud of her--has been dogged, relentless in her pursuit of the truth behind the screen of machinations of the EPA's leadership and the Bush White House. And her leadership will continue to be critical as we try to get to the bottom of this issue. We plan to ask the tough questions, and we will expect honest answers because the American people deserve an Environmental Protection Agency that lives up to that name.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I will yield.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the matter before the Senate now that is currently being blocked by the minority is a bill that would permit work to proceed on hundreds of highway and transportation infrastructure projects, creating tens of thousands of construction jobs, and pouring $1 billion into our economy. This is timely legislation to repair our roads and bridges now, while our economy needs the work. Yet this bill is stalled in this body because Republicans in the Senate will not allow it to move forward. Unfortunately, we have seen this movie too many times. The minority has engaged in no less than 65 filibusters in this Congress--an astounding number that lays bare the minority's lack of interest in solving the real problems America faces. What a record--65 filibusters, the most ever. That is what the minority has to contribute to the problems America is facing. A number of our Republican colleagues have come to the floor of the Senate to speak today, but we have heard very little in the way of substantive or reasonable objections to the highway bill. Instead, what we have heard is a lot of talk about taxes. Of course taxes are on the minds of many Americans today. It is, after all, April 15, filing day, the deadline for Federal and State tax returns to be filed. Today, we should remember that the work of Government does not just cost money, it costs our money. For that reason, we should ask how this Government is spending our hard-earned money and whether the priorities reflected in the Federal Government's spending are truly the right priorities for our people and for our time. These are difficult days. Today, families throughout my State of Rhode Island and all across this country are reading their bank statements, opening their bills, reading their local newspapers, and finding that the looming downturn in the economy leaves them struggling to make ends meet. Everywhere we look, prices are rising, from the groceries that feed our families to the gasoline that fuels our cars. Every day, more Americans face the disaster of foreclosure. Every day, more Americans face the nightmare of catastrophic health care bills. In these days of insecurity, the people of this country are looking for answers, for solutions, for a new direction. Democrats in the Senate are working overtime to provide that new direction. We passed an economic stimulus package, legislation to address the housing crisis, and a budget plan to put our Government back on the path to surplus and cut taxes for middle-class families. We know we need a change of course and, most particularly, a change of leadership in the White House to get our country back on track. But Senate Republicans today are making it clear that they do not agree. Instead of putting working families first, instead of getting our infrastructure repaired, they want to protect the massive Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, a fiscally irresponsible policy that has left our country trillions of dollars in debt. Instead of a budget that focuses Federal Government spending on our children and our veterans, Republicans want to stick us with the status quo, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into an endless war in Iraq without spending a dime here at home to fix the problems that face American families. Senate Democrats support tax cuts for middle-class families, including targeted help for families with children or seeking to adopt a child. Indeed, the budget resolution this year would provide those tax cuts in a fiscally responsible way, without digging our country deeper into debt. But President Bush and his Republican allies in the Senate want to extend the extravagant portions of the 2001 to 2003 Bush tax breaks that are weighted heavily toward the wealthiest Americans. Mr. President, 71 percent of the value of the tax cuts in 2009 will go to the wealthiest fifth of Americans, and 28 percent of the value of the tax cuts goes to the top 1 percent, a group whose incomes average around $1.5 million a year--clearly people who are hurting and need a lot of help from our Government right now. Almost nothing at all goes to the lowest earning fifth, families who earn $15,000 a year or less. This is the George Bush idea of fair tax policy. The President's insistence on forcing through these cuts without making up for the lost revenue, to defer that pain to later generations--to our children, to our grandchildren--was not only cowardly leadership, it left our budget in precarious straits. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 cost a staggering $1.9 trillion, and they account for 25 percent of the $7.7 trillion Bush Debt. The $7.7 trillion Bush Debt is the difference between the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projections as President Clinton left office compared to the budgetary nightmare George Bush created--$7.7 trillion. I am from Rhode Island. One trillion dollars is an unthinkable amount of money in a small State such as Rhode Island. I do not know what $7.7 trillion is. So I have tried to scale it for myself. I have here in my hand a simple penny. A simple penny. If this simple penny were $1 billion--now, even in Rhode Island $1 billion is big money--if this simple penny were $1 billion, $7.7 trillion is a stack of these simple billion-dollar pennies that is 39 feet high, takes us right to the top of this room with a simple penny being a full billion dollars. It is an astonishing burden for this country to have to bear. It is the responsibility of George Bush and the Republicans, and we have to get serious about it. But are the Senate Republicans willing to get serious about it? No. If they have their way, the wealthiest Americans will continue to profit to the tune of trillions of borrowed dollars while those most in need receive virtually nothing. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the poorest Americans--the lowest 20 percent of income earners would receive less than 0.5 percent of the value of extending Bush tax cuts between 2009 and 2018. The top 20 percent, on the other hand, would receive a staggering 74 percent of the value, a total of nearly $4 trillion over that 10-year period. And, of course, this is Bush tax policy, so the higher the income, the greater the benefit. Close to $1.2 trillion in Bush tax cuts would accrue to the top 1 percent of American households. Households with annual incomes of more than $1 million a year, those alone receive $834 billion, $834 billion in extended Bush tax cuts. The reckless fixation on tax cuts for our wealthiest folks that the Bush administration has pursued is driving us to a bad place, to a divided America with two economies, a gilded economy for the wealthy, and a worried struggle for everyone else. That is not good for America. In fact, that is not America. But this does not seem to bother our Republican friends. They have hitched their wagons to the big winners in the gilded economy: the oil companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the billionaires. The two economies, well, that is fine with them so long as their friends are winning. But that is not good for America. In fact, that is not America, not the one we know. The tool they have used over and over and over is the filibuster. With a $7.7 trillion Bush Debt foundering us, with families across the country in their home States, everyone struggling, you would think they would want their role to be more productive than being the biggest filibusters in American history. You would think they would want a more productive record and legacy than that. But, no, they want to dig a $7.7 trillion hole and then filibuster the folks who are trying to get America out of it. It is so clear that Senate Republicans would prefer to engage in overheated and overhyped tax rhetoric than they would roll up their sleeves, sit down, and get to work on legislation solving the real problems working Americans are facing across our country each day. I will tell you, it is clear and it is disappointing. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I thank all of my colleagues who have worked so hard this week on the housing stimulus bill. I particularly want to commend my friend from Rhode Island--Senator Jack Reed--for his tireless work on simplifying mortgage disclosures so that mortgage applicants will have in plain English--not fine print or jargon--the most important terms of the loan including the maximum monthly payment possible. This provision was included in the bipartisan substitute amendment and I congratulate Senator Reed. For months, as America has sunk deeper and deeper into economic distress, hard-working people all over this country have wondered what they are going to do to make ends meet--and why their Government wasn't doing more to help. For families already strained by rising health care and gasoline costs, and with many struggling to care for an elderly parent or put a child through college, the latest economic downturn is fast becoming the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. In my State of Rhode Island, where affordable housing was already in scarce supply, thousands of families face foreclosure, eviction, and an uncertain future. For the 12-month period ending in December 2007, the foreclosure rate in Rhode Island increased by a staggering 238 percent. More than 12 percent of subprime loans in my State were in foreclosure in December 2007. The foreclosure rate among subprime loans in Rhode Island is 15 times higher than the prime loan foreclosure rate. This is a crisis that strikes at the most vulnerable. As I talked to Rhode Islanders during the recent recess, I heard over and over again about the difficulty of making ends meet in this fragile economy. And as they watch things get worse, they wonder why our Government would do so much to keep the investment bank Bear Stearns from going under, but so little for them and their neighbors. There are some in this city, and in this building, who believe that if we simply let the markets correct themselves, all will be well. I have great faith in market forces, and I've seen firsthand the power of American industry and American ingenuity to work great good in our country and our world. But we in Government should know by now that market forces need disciplined constraint, and that the American people deserve better than to see their homes swept away by a financial typhoon while Congress stands idly by. They need our help. Earlier this week, after hard work and good-faith negotiations, Senators Dodd and Shelby reached a compromise on legislation to soften the blow of the residential real estate collapse. In addition to Senator Reed's disclosure provision, the bill now before us includes $4 billion in funding for community development block grants to assist States and municipalities in purchasing and rehabilitating homes that have been foreclosed upon, and $100 million for pre-foreclosure counseling. It also includes Federal Housing Administration reform that will increase the availability of FHA-backed mortgages, offering an alternative to the subprime market for more middle- and lower-income families for whom buying a new home might otherwise be out of reach. This agreement is a strong start, but it failed to include a provision authored by Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois that would permit bankruptcy judges to modify the terms of a primary residence mortgage. I was proud to cosponsor Senator Durbin's amendment, which included this provision, and was disappointed that the amendment lost a procedural vote yesterday. I plan to support my colleague from Illinois as he continues his efforts to enact this important change to the bankruptcy code. As my colleagues know, unlike most contracts, including mortgages on vacation homes and family farms, bankruptcy judges cannot currently modify the terms of the very contract most dear to families facing bankruptcy, their principal residence: the place they call home, where they raise their children, know their neighbors, and live their lives. Simply put, this provision would fix this glaring anomaly in section 1322(b)(2) of the bankruptcy code so that primary residence mortgages are treated like most other secured debts. Like any secured creditor, the mortgage holder would be entitled to adequate protection of his or her property interest during the chapter 13 case. The modification of the mortgage would be limited by market prices and rates and to a repayment term of no longer than 30 years. Given the cost of foreclosures--which may average as high as $50,000 per incident--it would seem that this amendment to the bankruptcy code would benefit all parties to a mortgage. Passing this measure could help more than 600,000 families facing bankruptcy stay in their homes. As we continue to consider this housing stimulus package, we have an opportunity to help millions of families weather this crisis and get their lives back on track. I will continue to fight for meaningful relief for middle-class families threatened with the loss of their homes.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today to commemorate the extraordinary life of Dith Pran, who risked his life to expose the terrors of the Khmer Rouge regime in his native Cambodia, and who later became the subject of the Oscar award-winning film, ``The Killing Fields.'' Mr. Dith died March 30, 2008, in New Jersey, surrounded by relatives and friends. He was a defender of human rights, a journalist, a teacher, and a hero. As many fled Cambodia during the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, Mr. Dith sent his wife and children to safety abroad but stayed behind with investigative journalist Sydney H. Schanberg to help ensure that news of the events there reached the outside world. He believed his country and people could only be saved from the Khmer Rouge if individuals in other countries understood the tragedy gathering in his homeland. Amidst the crisis spreading throughout Southeast Asia in the years following the Vietnam war--a crisis my father, Charles Whitehouse, also saw firsthand through his work as U.S. Ambassador to Laos and Thailand in the 1970s--Dith Pran was a witness to, and a fierce critic of, the greatest atrocities men have inflicted upon their fellow men. Against all odds, Mr. Dith survived the Cambodian genocide in which 2 million Cambodians, one-third of the population, were killed. Most of his extended family were also killed. He suffered through 4 years of hard labor, living on just one teaspoon of rice a day and whatever animals and insects he could find. Mr. Dith finally escaped from a commune and travelled 40 miles to the Thai border through what he coined ``the killing fields,'' past the bodies of those killed by the Khmer Rouge, before reaching safety. After reaching the United States, Mr. Dith became a photojournalist for the New York Times. He founded the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project to educate individuals around the world of the horrors he survived in order to prevent future genocides. He was appointed a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1985. For his efforts to educate the world, Mr. Dith was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 1998. He also received the Award of Excellence from the International Center in New York. Dith Pran said: ``Part of my life is saving life. I don't consider myself a politician or a hero. I'm a messenger. If Cambodia is to survive, she needs many voices.'' Dith Pran has been a powerful and compelling voice for his countrymen and the land he loved. His willingness to share his story brought light to dark places and hope to millions.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 2:15 p.m., Tuesday, April 1, the Senate proceed to the motion to reconsider the vote by which cloture was not invoked on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3221; that the motion to reconsider be agreed to; further, that the time until 2:30 p.m. be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders with the majority leader controlling the final 7\1/2\ minutes; that at 2:30 p.m, without further intervening action or debate, the Senate proceed to vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3221.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, and that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table without interviewing action.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I send a resolution to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask unanimous consent that it stand in recess under the previous order.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order of December 19, 2007, with respect to S. 1974, be vitiated and that S. 1974 remain at the desk.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Foreign Relations Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 478, and the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution and preamble be agreed to en bloc, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in recess until 10 a.m. tomorrow, April 1; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate proceed to a period of morning business until 12:30 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees; further, I ask that at 12:30 p.m., the Senate recess until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus luncheons.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 484 and that the Senate now proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. As a reminder, at approximately 2:30 p.m. tomorrow, the Senate will vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3221, the housing legislation.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I salute the leadership and the energy of the Senator from Michigan in this area. The Senator is clearly passionate about the economic issues we see across the country but those that particularly affect her State. There is not a person in this body who is not aware of how deeply she cares and how hard she fights for the people of Michigan. I am pleased to join her on the floor. Last month we received the President's budget request for fiscal year 2009. I am a member, like Senator Stabenow, of the Budget Committee. This is the last budget we will receive from President Bush, and I think it is an opportune time to look at how this administration's policies have affected our economic circumstances and how average Americans will suffer as a result. The Bush policies have generated what deserves to be known as and what I will call today, ``the Bush Debt,'' a legacy of indebtedness that will burden our children and grandchildren for generations to come and cost us the opportunity to help millions of Americans all over this country lead lives of promise, prosperity, and happiness. As I have traveled across my State, Rhode Islanders have told me over and over their stories about struggling to make ends meet--from seniors stretching fixed incomes to pay for prescription drugs and housing to working families trying to heat their homes and send their children to college. Yet President Bush in his budget for fiscal year 2009 has proposed deep cuts to Medicare, deep cuts to home heating assistance for low-income families, and deep cuts to Federal student aid, weakening access to citizens' basic needs. The administration cites the need for fiscal discipline. The President says discipline is necessary to address our Nation's growing budget deficits. What the President does not say--and probably never will say--is that his own ill- advised, misguided policies created those record deficits. It did not have to end this way. But it did, and the President must bear the responsibility. Seven years ago this January, George Bush stood on the western steps of this hallowed building and took his oath of office as President of the United States. In his first address to the Nation, George Bush pledged to call for responsibility and try to live it as well. After a divisive election, many Americans found comfort and hope in those words. On the budgetary front there was good reason for optimism on that cold January morning. After decades of deficit spending, bipartisan cooperation between President Clinton and a Republican Congress had set the Nation on its healthiest fiscal path in generations. After 28 straight years of multibillion dollar budget deficits, our Nation saw surpluses beginning in 1998. In President Clinton's last full year in office, we saw the largest budget surplus in our Nation's history--$236 billion. The good budgetary news wasn't behind us. The month George Bush moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan accounting arm of Congress, projected we would see surpluses straight through the decade. These budget surpluses, the product of responsible governing--some might even say fiscally conservative governing--were projected to be enough to completely wipe out our national debt by 2009. Let me say that again: to completely wipe out our national debt by 2009. In other words, the hard work had been done. If President Bush had stayed the course of fiscal responsibility, he could have been the first President of the United States since Andrew Jackson in 1836 to govern a debt-free United States, an America with the power and the freedom to support its people as they sought new opportunities and new frontiers. Imagine that. This President's fiscal year 2009 budget, instead of including debt service payments, could have requested significant funds for Pell grants, for LIHEAP, the badly needed overhaul of our health care system, bridge construction, investment in small and environmentally friendly business, and countless other valuable programs for ordinary Americans. When President Bush took office, leading economists were debating the consequences of this great Nation debt free, standing tall in the world with no claim on it by foreign powers. But this President made a different choice. Instead of keeping our Nation on the path to economic security and prosperity, to new investments in our health care system, students, seniors, and veterans, the President who called for responsibility squandered away the surpluses he inherited, mortgaged our children and grandchildren's futures, and compromised the quality of working Americans' lives. How can we measure the magnitude of the harm done to our economy and our people by this administration's decision to deviate from the responsible policies of President Clinton? The first chart shows the budget plans of President Clinton as he left office and the budget formulated by President Bush. As you can see, the Clinton line, represented in blue, based on his levels of taxation and spending, has budget surpluses for every single year of this decade. In contrast, the Bush budget line, represented in red, has deep record-setting deficits in every year after 2001. This next chart illustrates the value of the differences between the budget landscape planned by President Clinton and the one created by President Bush. As we can see, the difference between the two is a staggering $7.7 trillion. This number represents the fiscal harm President Bush has inflicted on our Nation. This number is ``the Bush Debt.'' It consists of a decade of foregone surpluses and new borrowing, much of it from foreign nations such as China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. We have even become a debtor nation to Mexico. Mr. President, $7.7 trillion is more than double the amount of public debt when President Bush took office. Like most concepts of enormous size, this amount takes some thought to comprehend: $7.7 trillion is $25,000 owed by every adult or child in the United States, squandered surpluses and new debt created by this President. How did we move from the path of surpluses away from the promise of wiping out our national debt to trillions of dollars in new national liabilities? One would hope this administration could at least justify the Bush Debt by pointing to borrowing policies that improved average Americans' lives. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, this dramatic change of course stems largely from two of this President's many poor decisions over the past 7 years: first, tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy at the expense of the less fortunate and, second, the President's endless, misguided, unpaid war in Iraq. In the same inaugural address in which he called for responsibility, President Bush vowed to reduce taxes, even though the American economy was booming in the 1990s, under tax levels set by President Clinton which were low by both historical and international standards. The irony, of course, is that President Bush's tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were the height of irresponsibility. Because these massive tax cuts were predominantly directed at high-income families rather than low-income families, many Americans most in need of assistance were shortchanged. These extravagant tax cuts are weighted heavily toward the wealthiest Americans. In fact, 71 percent of the value of the tax cuts in 2009 will go to the wealthiest fifth of Americans, with a staggering 28 percent of the value of the tax cuts going to the top 1 percent and almost nothing at all going to the lowest earning fifth, families who earn $15,000 a year or less. This is George Bush's idea of fair tax cuts. And President Bush's insistence on forcing through these cuts without making up for the lost revenue, to defer that pain to later administrations and later years, was not only cowardly leadership, but it left our budget in precarious straits. The Bush tax cuts cost a staggering $1.9 trillion and account for 25 percent of the $7.7 trillion Bush Debt measured from the start of the Bush presidency through 2010, when the tax cuts are set to expire. Every American knows the importance of balancing his or her own household budget. Every American knows the struggle of keeping spending in line with income, making sure there is enough money to pay for clothing, food, home heating, college tuition, and maybe a little for vacation or going out to the movies. Most Americans do a good job of balancing budgets but not President Bush. Rather than living by his inaugural pledge of responsibility, President Bush preferred to score political points by delivering massive tax cuts to his wealthiest supporters. He chose not to remain on a responsible fiscal path and instead put this country under the crushing burden of a multitrillion- dollar debt, the Bush Debt. These tax cuts, while a large slice of the Bush Debt pie, are unfortunately not the whole story. There is also a large spending component to the Bush Debt, driven principally by the war in Iraq. By the end of this year, the price tag for the war in Iraq will have exceeded $600 billion. Even if we are successful in pressuring this President or the next President to begin redeploying our troops, American taxpayers will still have spent at least $740 billion on this misguided war by 2010. Even if the next President gets us quickly out of Iraq, as I hope she or he will, we will be paying costs related to this war for years to come. We must care for our veterans and for the families of fallen soldiers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cost of medical care, disability payments, and compensation for the families of fallen soldiers will cost between $10 billion and $13 billion in the next 10 years alone. We have a moral obligation to take care of the brave men and women who sacrificed their youth, health, limbs, and sometimes their lives to serve their Nation. These are costs, however, that we need never have had to bear. While they pale in comparison to the personal cost incurred by service members and their families, these monetary costs are nonetheless significant, and they will affect America's security for decades to come. Like all debt, the Bush Debt requires interest payments. Every day Americans make interest payments on mortgages, car loans, student loans, or credit cards. According to President Bush's proposed budget for fiscal year 2009, next year alone, America will owe $260 billion in interest on the Bush Debt. Two hundred sixty billion in interest payments equates to $857 to our creditors in Japan, China, and Saudi Arabia for every man, woman, and child in the United States, next year and the year after that and long into the future. To make matters worse, if you can believe this--hold on to your hat-- the Bush administration is borrowing the money to make the interest payments, further adding to the debt. Imagine if we could take the $7.7 trillion Bush Debt off budget and set up a separate revenue system to make the interest payments--to feed the beast. Then every taxpayer would see we are doing something about this unprecedented debt. We should consider forming a commission, a Bush Debt repayment authority, to study the possibility of bringing the Bush Debt off the budget to show the American people how much this President has cost them, to pay the Bush Debt down responsibly over time, the way Government often steps in to pay down a disaster debt responsibly over time, and to show our children and grandchildren that we were not all cowards pushing our costs onto them. This enormous interest payment isn't an abstract idea dreamed up by economists. This $260 billion is precious cash flow that could otherwise be spent improving our health care system, building new schools, repairing our roads and bridges, or helping our businesses compete against foreign competition. Individual Americans may not be writing $857 checks to Japan or China or Saudi Arabia, but each one of us pays a steep price for the Bush debt--a price that is already evident in the President's budget for this year. The budget request that included $260 billion for interest payments also included tough talk about belt tightening. The President proposes to hold discretionary spending growth to 1 percent--effectively a cut since the consumer price index grew 4.1 percent last year. His budget plan slashed funds for low-income heating assistance; the COPS Program, which keeps police officers on the beat to protect local communities; Federal student aid programs, which help young people afford a college education; and community development grants, which provide badly needed assistance for low-income families and small businesses. The President's budget also calls for tremendous cuts in Medicare and Medicaid over the next 5 years--cuts that would surely affect medical care for American families. President Bush is asking for more money to continue his misguided war in Iraq, more money to service the debt he created, and more money to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, but less money to help the millions of people all across this country who need health insurance or food for their families or better schools for their children or a home they can afford. Those are not the correct priorities for America, President Bush. What if President Bush had never cut rich Americans' taxes or taken us to war in Iraq? What if the fiscally responsible policies of the Clinton administration had continued to the present day? What if our public debt had been paid entirely by the end of next year, leaving us free to invest in our people and our future? What if there were no $7.7 trillion Bush debt and no $260 billion in interest payments next year? What could this country--the land of opportunity and possibility--be doing with an extra $260 billion a year? Well, for just $5 billion--or 2 percent of the interest cost of the Bush debt in 2009--we could provide health insurance to 3.8 million more children through the Children's Health Insurance Program--the very initiative President Bush vetoed last year. Actually, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, we could provide health insurance to every uninsured American--adults and children--for $173 billion. So well within the amount of money we will need to spend next year to service the Bush debt, we could completely cover every American with quality health care. There are many other worthy programs we could fund with the remainder of the $260 billion interest payment. Our Head Start Program, which helps prepare preschool-age children from low-income families to succeed in kindergarten and beyond, currently has barely enough resources to cover half of the 2 million children who are eligible. The remaining 1 million children could be covered for an additional $7 billion. Pell grants, named after my distinguished Senator from Rhode Island, Claiborne Pell, help college students afford the steep costs of their education. We made progress last year in increasing funding for the Pell Grant Program, but Pell grants only fund a small fraction of tuition for many students. It used to fund about half of the tuition. It has slipped to less than a third today. We could double every single Pell grant next year, raising the maximum grant to over $8,400, for $18 billion. With the remaining $62 billion in our ``world without Bush,'' we could bring up to code 95 percent of the structurally deficient and functionally obsolete bridges in the country, with all the work and jobs that would entail. My home State of Rhode Island has the unhappy distinction of having the highest percentage of structurally deficient bridges in the country. But following the tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis last year, there is a renewed awareness of the urgency of updating our national transportation infrastructure. That $62 billion covers 95 percent of our Nation's deficient bridges and funds those repairs in fiscal year 2009. What about the other 5 percent? Well, we will have another $280 billion in Bush debt interest payments coming up in 2010. We could spend it--if we could--to fix those bridges. Another year of tragic lost opportunities. We will make annual interest payments of this magnitude until a future President takes on the daunting challenge of paying down the principle of the national debt left for us by President Bush. Well, that is quite a list: cover every uninsured American with health insurance, fully fund the Head Start Program, double each and every Pell grant, and repair our deficient bridges. Sadly, we do none of that. We use that money to pay the interest on the Bush debt. We will be making payments for the Bush debt for decades into the future. An often ignored yet critical aspect of the Bush debt is the effect interest payments have on our national security--the very interest the administration purports to be advancing through its misguided war in Iraq. This chart illustrates the point. To service the Bush debt, we have borrowed more money from foreigners, more money from other nations, such as China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia, under George Bush than under all 42 of his predecessors combined. The result of this foreign borrowing is that a large portion of the interest payments we make gets sent overseas, supplementing the income of foreigners and allowing foreign nations to invest in their economies and infrastructures. If not for the Bush debt, that money could be invested here at home, helping to grow American businesses and generate income and strength for our own future generations. Instead, the Bush debt has helped, and will continue to help, boost the Chinese economy at the cost of our own. The Bush debt will send trillions of dollars to foreign nations over the coming years, giving them even more dollars to buy up our American businesses. When the Presidency of George W. Bush comes to its long-anticipated end on January 20, 2009, it will leave in its destructive wake trillions of dollars in debt owed to other nations, many of which do not have America's best interests at heart. This administration will leave behind an America whose standing in the world and whose regard among its fellow nations has been weakened and degraded by a war that seems to have no end--a fiscally weakened nation, a borrower, with a falling economy, struggling under the Bush debt. Worst of all, this President will leave behind millions of Americans who, had this administration merely stayed the course of fiscal responsibility chartered by President Clinton, would be far better off than they are today. They would be, starting in 2009, in a debt-free United States that could afford to assist working families with the costs of a college education, to overhaul our health care system, to repair our crumbling infrastructure, to invest in small and green businesses, and to improve the lives of average Americans in countless other ways. We cannot ignore the Bush debt. While George Bush starts packing for his retirement on his Texas ranch, those of us who care about the future of our Nation--the future of our children--must work toward undoing the damage this President has done. Mr. President, I submit that we need to see the Bush debt as a serious national problem, a fiscal, economic, and national security threat, and engage in a solemn and serious way, as the trustees of our national welfare, to confront the Bush debt. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I rise to oppose amendments offered to the Consumer Product Safety Commission bill by Senators Cornyn and Vitter. Before speaking about these amendments, I first commend Senator Pryor for his important work on this bill. I know he has been working on this a long time and we are, as former State attorneys general, particularly pleased to see language in this bill granting State attorneys general the authority to obtain injunctive relief against entities that violate consumer protection laws. I know Senator Pryor and other former attorneys general in this body understand that this authority is an efficient and effective way to enforce consumer protection laws. Unfortunately, the amendments offered by Senators Cornyn and Vitter would needlessly undercut these important protections. The Cornyn amendment adds the following language to the bill. It says: An Attorney General of a State may not enter into a contingency fee arrangement for legal or expert witness services related to a civil action under this section. I oppose inclusion of this language in the bill. As an attorney general, I was involved in Rhode Island in a very significant piece of litigation which is now successful. We have won the jury case. It was filed on behalf of tens of thousands of Rhode Island children who either had been poisoned by lead in paint or were going to be poisoned by lead in paint if nothing was done. Without the ability to bring in a significant law firm to support my office's efforts, we would have been simply blown out of the litigation by the blizzard of dilatory tactics, by the paper blizzard that defense attorneys can specialize in. I can recall being forced to chase down a witness list of 100 witnesses to take depositions, not one of whom was called as an actual witness. I believe it was an effort to create a wild goose chase, to stretch our resources, to try to make these kinds of cases painful to attorneys general who might dare bring them. The ability of a State to authorize its attorney general or recognize the inherent authority of the attorney general to enter into these contingency fee agreements is an important part of that State's own law. Simply put, Congress has no business telling elected State attorneys general what kind of contracts they can or cannot enter into which would be perfectly legal under State law. I am especially surprised to see what appears to be significant Republican support for this amendment since it contradicts a very basic principle--federalism. Congress ought to let the States, whenever possible, govern themselves. As a former State attorney general who has had this experience of taking on powerful corporations with essentially unlimited resources, I believe strongly that State attorneys general should not have their hands tied by Congress so that they cannot aggressively pursue and punish corporate wrongdoing on a level playing field. That is all they ask for. I will oppose the Vitter amendment for similar reasons. This amendment requires State taxpayers to pay the legal fees and costs if a manufacturer prevails in a consumer protection suit brought by a State attorney general. This appears to be an effort to weaken this important bipartisan legislation. First, it would obviously discourage State AGs from bringing consumer protection cases in the first place. If it looks as though something went wrong with the case, you would have to find a way to fund your opponent's legal fees. Second, it places an unreasonable burden on State taxpayers. Why, for instance, should the taxpayers of Rhode Island have to cover the legal fees for an out-of- State, possibly even an out-of-the-United States foreign company that has been charged with violating our consumer protection laws? As a former State attorney general, I well understand that these amendments will have a significant effect, diminishing the ability of State attorneys general to enforce consumer protection laws. If these are good consumer protection laws, we want to see them enforced. We don't want to discourage those officials charged with their enforcement. I urge my colleagues to vote against the amendments of my friends Senators Cornyn and Vitter. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I want to follow the lead of the distinguished Senator from North Dakota and my friend, the Senator from Illinois, and continue on this question with the determination the Government has made that waterboarding is legal. It is a question that matters so much to wary and watchful nations, disheartened and distrustful in the wake of 7 years of failed leadership and broken promises. It is also a question that matters immensely to the billions of men, women, and children around the globe who look to this country, the United States of America, as a beacon of light that shows the way nations ought to act and the way the world ought to be. It is a question that matters to the American people who are sick of asking: Is it wrong? and being told: Well, it depends. The people of America still do not know how this came about--in particular, how the Department of Justice came to approve this sordid technique. I believe we are in a position where the concerns we have about torture overlap with some of the concerns we have had in this Chamber about the independence and integrity of the Department of Justice. Here is what we know. We know that Attorney General Michael Mukasey has said that ``the CIA sought advice from the Department of Justice, and the Department informed the CIA that [waterboarding's] use would be lawful under the circumstances and within the limits and safeguards of the program.'' We know in 2002, John Yoo of the Office of Legal Counsel drafted a memo, later approved by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, which reads, in part: There is a significant range of acts that, though they might constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, failed to rise to the level of torture. As Evan Wallach of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law has written: None of the Memo's analysis explains why waterboarding does not cause physical or psychological pain sufficient to meet the criminalization standards it enunciates. We have asked for further clarification, but in a hearing before the Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Mukasey refused to comment on the legality of waterboarding because the technique was not currently in use and because of what he described as ``the absence of concrete facts and circumstances.'' Even though the Department of Justice is now conducting an investigation into whether tape recordings of alleged waterboarding sessions were improperly destroyed, they would not look into whether the conduct on the tape was in and of itself improper. The argument is that no one who relies in good faith on the Department's past advice should be subject to criminal investigations for actions taken in reliance on that advice, which raises the question within the question: How did that advice come to be given in the first place? How did the best and brightest of the Department of Justice overlook the facts of the history of waterboarding prosecutions in which the United States was directly involved, and why was such guidance approved when contravening precedents appear clearly to be in evidence? Mr. President, I commend to my colleagues the article written by Evan Wallach, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, entitled ``Drop by Drop: Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts.'' The full cite is 45 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 468 (2007). Mr. President, the U.S. Government long considered waterboarding a form of torture, prosecutable as a war crime and punishable accordingly. This history includes war crimes prosecutions against Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American aviators in World War II, the use of water torture by U.S. soldiers in the Philippines, and even an incident of waterboarding by a local sheriff prosecuted by the Department of Justice itself. Let me start with that. I am reading from the Wallach law review article in which it reports: In 1983, the Department of Justice affirmed that the use of water torture techniques was indeed criminal conduct under U.S. law. A sheriff in a Texas county waterboarded prisoners in order to extract confessions. Count one of the indictment asserted that the defendants conspired to--and this is a quote from the Department's own indictment--``subject prisoners to a suffocating `water torture' ordeal in order to coerce confessions. This generally included the placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate he was suffocating and/or drowning.'' The sheriff and his deputies were all convicted by a jury under count one. It didn't end there. The case then went up on appeal, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rendered a decision. I have in my hands United States of America v. Lee, 744 F.2d 1124, decided in 1984, in which they gave appellate review of these convictions. Finally, at sentencing, U.S. District Judge James DeAnda's comments, according to the article, were ``He told the former Sheriff that he had allowed law enforcement to fall into `the hands of a bunch of thugs. The operation down there would embarrass the dictator of a country.' '' That is the opinion of a U.S. district court judge at a sentencing on waterboarding. How is it that when the Department of Justice, the Office of Legal Counsel were asked for their opinion, they were able to write this opinion? I have it in my hand. This is the unclassified version. It has been substantially redacted. Even so, it is 50 pages long--50 pages long. They did 50 pages of legal research and could not find a U.S. Court of Appeals case in which the Department of Justice itself had brought the charges? Here is the case, United States v. Lee. It describes the facts: Lee was indicted along with two other deputies, Floyd Baker and James Glover, and the County Sheriff James Parker, based on a number of incidents in which prisoners were subjected to a ``water torture'' in order to prompt confessions to various crimes. Throughout the rest of the opinion, these are referred to as ``torture'' and ``torture incidents.'' All one has to have is Lexus or Westlaw and plug in the words ``water torture'' and find this case. How is it possible that the Office of Legal Counsel could not have found this? How is it possible that they could have also missed what the Columbia Law School was able to find--a telegram from Secretary of State Cordell Hull to the Japanese Government objecting to the mistreatment of American prisoners, which included specifically waterboarding and describing the ``brutal and bestial methods of extorting alleged confessions''? That is our Secretary of State in an official communication to the Japanese Government describing, among other tortures, water tortures as brutal and bestial methods to extort alleged confessions. How could they not have found that? How could they not have found the charges the Senator from North Dakota referred to in which Japanese soldiers were brought up on charges in front of military tribunals--military tribunals staffed with American judges, military tribunals staffed with American prosecutors--for waterboarding American prisoners? Here are some examples. One of the Japanese officers was named Hata and the article describes the charges and specifications against Officer Hata, which included this: . . . Hata did, willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture Morris O. Killough, an American Prisoner of War, by beating and kicking him, by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils. Similarly, Hata did willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture Thomas B. Armitage, William O. Cash and Monroe Dave Woodall, American Prisoners of War, by beating and kicking them, by forcing water into their mouths and noses. . . . The charge and specifications against Officer Asano were: Asano did, willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture Morris O. Killough, an American Prisoner of War, by beating and kicking him, by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils. . . . Asano did, willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture Thomas B. Armitage, William O Cash and Munroe Dave Woodall, American Prisoners of War, by beating and kicking them, by forcing water into their mouths and noses. . . . The charge and specifications against Officer Kita were again, ``willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture John Henry Burton, an American Prisoner of War, by beating him and by forcing water into his nose.'' Over and over the testimony describes exactly what we know as waterboarding. The charges and specifications by this tribunal staffed by American officers describe that they did willfully and unlawfully commit cruel, inhuman, and brutal acts and atrocities and other offenses, including strapping them to a stretcher and pouring water down their nostrils, by holding the prisoner's head back and forcing him to swallow a bucketful of sea water over and over and over. How could they have missed it? How could they have missed it? How could they miss the decision on point by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit? What else do we know about the Office of Legal Counsel? We know that the conditions there were pretty ripe for abuse. We know they were doing this in secret, protected from public scrutiny, protected from peer review, protected from critical analysis under the veil of secrecy, deep secrecy in which they were operating, coming up with the theories as they pleased, thinking they would never see the light of day. So they did not have to do their homework. Somebody might have done a little research and found the Fifth Circuit decision on point, but, no, they did not need to. It is part of a pattern because, as the Presiding Officer will recall, when I was offered the chance to read the secret Office of Legal Counsel opinions related to the warrantless wiretapping program, I went and took some notes, and when I got back here, I eventually was able to get them declassified. They described other interesting theories that grew in that hothouse of legal ideology, protected from the glare of public scrutiny, ideas such as the President is not obliged to follow Executive orders. He is not obliged to give anybody notice that he is violating Executive orders. He can live in a parallel universe in constant violation of his own Executive orders and nothing is wrong with that, other than, of course, the fact that it completely degrades and destroys the entire structure of Executive orders as a law function of the United States of America. Another argument is that under article II, the President's power as Commander in Chief, he has the authority to determine what his powers are. Think about that for a moment. They assert article II gives them the authority to decide what the scope of his article II powers are. I seem to remember a decision called Marbury v. Madison saying it is ``emphatically the province of the judicial department to decide what the law is.'' The last one, my personal favorite, is that the Department of Justice is bound by the legal determinations of the President. It is a good thing that was not the case when President Nixon was the President and made the legal determination if the President does it, it doesn't violate the law. So what on Earth has been going on at the Office of Legal Counsel, an office that used to be distinguished for its probity, for its analysis, for its scholarship, an office on which the Department of Justice relies? Just as Americans rely on the Department of Justice to provide guidance in our Government, to provide a moral compass within the Department of Justice, the Office of Legal Counsel is supposed to be the place where they try to get it right. How could they try to get it right when they cannot even find a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision on water torture when you are looking up whether it is illegal? If I were a partner in a law firm and a junior associate came to me with a memo such as this that had missed the case on point, do you think he would have much of a career? I don't think so. It is a fatal failure of legal analysis. And yet, where there is supposed to be the very best at the legal counsel of the Department of Justice, they missed all of it. If there has been a systematic breakdown in this institution of Government long known for probity and scholarship, if it has been captured and behind a veil of secrecy rendered a political ideological tool, that is a matter of very legitimate public concern. I am pleased to say Senator Durbin and myself have written to the inspector general of the Department of Justice and to the Office of Professional Responsibility of the Department of Justice to look into exactly that matter. I thank the Presiding Officer for his patience with me. I thank the distinguished Senator from Florida for his patience. I yield the floor.