[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 122 (Wednesday, September 19, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9488-S9489]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        THE AGENDA OF THE SENATE

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me talk, just for a moment, about the 
agenda in the Senate. Part of that agenda is, of course, what we are 
doing in this Senate Chamber today; that is, as President Bush is 
indicating to the American people, we are getting back to work. It is 
what we want to have happen in this country.
  What happened last week was an unspeakable horror visited upon us by 
terrorists. It took so many thousands of lives of innocent Americans. 
We grieve for them. But the President said: We must go back to work. 
And so we must, in the Senate as well.
  Our work largely remains the appropriations bills that we must 
complete. We are required to complete them by October 1. It is almost 
certain we will not be able to do that with all the appropriations 
bills, but we need to work hard to make that happen.
  Today we bring one appropriations bill to the floor of the Senate; 
and that is the Treasury, Post Office, general government bill. It is a 
very important piece of legislation because, as I indicated, it 
contains money for counterterrorism, it contains money for about one-
half of the Federal law enforcement system, including the Customs 
Service, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Secret Service, and 
so many other vital functions.
  I think if we could pass this legislation today, or no later than 
Friday morning--but perhaps this afternoon--it would send a wonderful 
signal to the American people that when the President said, let's all 
get back to work, the Senate took that seriously, and we have gotten 
back to work, and we have moved a piece of legislation today that 
represents one very important subcommittee on the Senate Appropriations 
Committee.
  I know my colleague, the chairman of the full committee, Senator 
Byrd, and the ranking member, Senator Stevens, have worked very hard. I 
am so proud to serve with them on the Appropriations Committee. They 
work very hard to try to get these appropriations bills moving and get 
them through the Senate. If we can get this piece of legislation done 
today, I think it will be a great signal to send to the American 
people.
  Part of the agenda, and the immediate part for us, is to pass 
appropriations bills. But there are, it seems to me, three significant 
issues that the Senate and the Congress and the American people must 
grapple with in a very serious way, with perhaps more determination 
than we have had for a long while as a nation.
  One is the issue of terrorism. We now know that terror visits this 
land in a fashion that we have never before thought possible. The 
result is that we must not only recover from the acts of terrorism that 
occurred last week, we must work very hard to prevent those kinds of 
acts of terrorism from being committed in the future.

  We know there are cells of terrorists that operate in this country. 
We know there are training camps for terrorists in other countries. We 
know there are people who very much would like to strike right at the 
heart of this country. So we must wage a war against terrorism, as 
President Bush has indicated. We must do so thoughtfully, not 
recklessly. We must do so in a vigilant way, every day, in every way, 
to try to be sure, as an American people, that we retain our freedoms 
but, at the same time, we try to reduce the risk of terrorist acts.
  It is going to cost some money to do so. If we are, for example, 
going to put sky marshals on commercial airplanes flying in the 
country, that takes manpower, it takes money, it takes resources, yet 
we do not have much of a choice. If we are going to beef up security at 
airports so that people who are flying on commercial airplanes in this 
country have a feeling of safety and that we have substantially 
tightened security, that is going to require some money, but we do not 
have much choice.
  If we are going to give the opportunity to our intelligence 
community, and the FBI, the CIA, and the law enforcement community--if 
we are going to give them the tools they need to try to take down these 
terrorist cells, and to try to track down the terrorists who committed 
these acts, and to track down terrorists who might commit future acts 
and prevent those acts from occurring, it is going to require some 
money and some resources.
  I think all of us in Congress have to be willing to do that. I know 
there are some recommendations that will be controversial with respect 
to this war that we wage on terrorism.
  The Attorney General made a recommendation the other day that I know 
will be controversial, and yet I do not think we have much choice in 
this matter. He talked about the circumstance that now exists when you 
get a wiretap order from the Federal court that allows you to wiretap 
only with respect to one telephone instrument the conversations of a 
suspected terrorist.
  It seems to me, as the Attorney General has suggested, that if you 
have someone who is a suspected terrorist, and you have been able to 
make that case to a Federal court and are able to get a Federal court 
order, it ought not just apply to one telephone, it ought to apply to 
the phone calls made by that suspected terrorist from whatever 
telephone that suspected terrorist uses.
  That is an example of the kind of policy changes we are going to have 
to consider, some of which will be controversial, but we do not have 
much choice if we are going to protect this country.
  I do not want America to have to give up a lot of civil liberties in 
order to meet these protections that we now need, but we also need to 
understand that we need, as Americans, to be vigilant--all of us. It is 
not just about law enforcement, it is about all of us being vigilant 
and understanding that if we see something that is unusual, if we see 
something that we think should offer us concern, that it be reported.
  So this war on terrorism is a very serious--a deadly serious--war 
that will be waged by all of us to try to prevent future terrorist acts 
in this country.

  Even as we focus on that issue--terrorism, counterterrorism, rooting 
out the terrorists, finding out who did what was done last week with 
such madness in our country, and punishing them, and trying to prevent 
future acts--even as we do that, we have a couple of other things that 
are of paramount importance; and that is, we need to provide some 
additional vibrancy and restore life to this country's economy.
  Even before the deadly acts last week, our economy was softening, and 
that softening of the American economy was causing significant 
problems. What happened last week has caused significant shock to the 
American economy. As a result of that shock, many of us worry a great 
deal that the confidence in this country's economy will suffer, the 
American people will lose confidence, and that we will see a further 
spiraling of economic difficulties.
  So it is very important for all of us--the President and the 
Congress, Republicans and Democrats--to work to see if we can begin to 
pump some life into this economy. That means that almost certainly we 
will have to consider some kind of economic stimulus program, some kind 
of fiscal policy that matches what the Federal Reserve will do in 
monetary policy that provides some life and some buoyancy to an economy 
that has been in trouble.
  The most important thing we can do is offer hope to the American 
people that in the long term the American economy is one to invest in; 
this is an economy of hope, optimism, and economic growth in the long 
term. We go through periods of upturns and downturns. There are 
inevitable contractions and expansions in the American economy. That 
will never change.
  But we were going through a contraction at about the same time we 
were hit with these disasters last week, and that spells real trouble. 
All of us need to catch this economy very quickly and try to provide 
some new life and vibrancy to it. I think the President

[[Page S9489]]

will find willing hands in Congress, wanting to help him lift the kinds 
of policies necessary to boost this economy.
  Some are talking, I know, about, for example, tax cuts, a capital 
gains tax cut. Frankly, I do not think we ought to be talking about a 
tax cut that will persuade people to sell stock at the moment. If you 
substantially create more demand for selling stock at a time that the 
stock market is moving downward, you are creating exactly the wrong 
influences. So a capital gains reduction is not, in my judgment, the 
right medicine; at least it is the wrong medicine for this illness.
  I think, for example, investment tax credits might be something that 
could provide some stimulus. There are a whole series of things you 
could put in a menu that you could conceive would provide stimulus to 
this economy. But I think we have to have that discussion. And we have 
to work with President Bush and the Congress to put something together 
that says to the American people: We understand this economy has some 
difficulty. We are going to move quickly and decisively to respond to 
it, to give you hope that this country's economy will have a bright 
future and this country's economy will continue to grow.
  In addition to all of that, what happened in this country ought to 
remind all of us that there is, in fact, an urgency to write an energy 
policy for America.
  Without energy, this country doesn't work. Without energy, we don't 
have an economy. Without energy, America's lights are off. America's 
machines are shut down. The American economic engine doesn't run. We 
are a country that consumes an enormous amount of energy with a set of 
energy policies that are very vulnerable to terrorists. We are far too 
dependent on foreign sources of energy, and we have a system of energy 
for our country that is far too vulnerable to potential terrorist 
attacks.
  We need a new domestic energy policy, one that says, yes, we are 
going to produce more, more oil and more natural gas, not necessarily 
from the most fragile lands in the world. We don't need to do that. 
Yes, we are going to produce more. We are going to produce more coal, 
and we will do that using clean coal technology. We don't have to 
sacrifice our environment even as we use more coal.
  Importantly, we are also going to begin to conserve. Conservation is 
a very important ingredient in an energy policy that works. We also 
need to begin to focus more of our resources and more of our 
determination to find renewable and limitless sources of energy. It 
makes good sense for us to take the energy from the wind. The new 
technology wind turbines are remarkable. Why not use that energy from 
the wind that is limitless and renewable?
  It makes good sense to take a drop of alcohol from a kernel of corn. 
You extend America's energy supply with that alcohol, and you still 
have the protein feedstock left from the corn.
  It makes good sense to do things in a different way. Yes, we need to 
produce more, more oil, more natural gas, and more coal. Yes, we need 
to do that while we pay attention to this country's environment. We can 
and must do that. But also we need conservation. We need more 
efficiency of appliances, and we need renewable and limitless sources 
of energy developed in a very significant way.
  I say that because when we talk about these three elements of public 
policy that require an urgency on the part of Congress, dealing with 
counterterrorism, trying to provide lift to an economy that is in 
trouble, and writing an energy bill that makes us less vulnerable to 
terrorist attacks and the shutoff of the supply of oil from the Middle 
East, all of these represent an urgency that Congress must tackle.
  We must do this in a way that makes sense. This can't be business as 
usual. It can't be, ``The President believes this and we believe that. 
Let's have a fight for 5 or 6 months.'' It must be taking from the 
President and from Members of Congress the best of what all have to 
offer and from that developing a public policy that will strengthen our 
country, strengthen our country in the area of fighting terrorism, in 
trying to give our economy the lift it needs at this point and in 
making us less dependent on a source of energy that is vulnerable.
  All of these represent an agenda that is critical to our country.
  Could I talk about other things? Yes, there are plenty of other 
things yet to do. We know we need the kinds of things we were debating 
before the terrorist act last week. We were debating campaign finance 
reform, a Patients' Bill of Rights, the cost of prescription drugs. All 
of those things are important. None of them have lost their importance 
in the scheme of trying to do the people's business in the Congress. 
But there is an urgency to several of the elements of public policy 
that we must pay attention to first: terrorism, the economy, and 
energy.
  I, for one, pledge to this President and my fellow Members of the 
Senate that we must come together in a way that we have never before 
done--at least in recent years--to grab these policy issues and try to 
find the best that everyone in the Chamber has to offer and work with 
the President to make the changes necessary to strengthen America.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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