[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 30 (Thursday, March 9, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1928-S1932]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE PROCESS

  Mr. DODD. Madam President, let me, if I may, respond to some of the 
things that have been said. I see my good friend from New York is here 
as well. I expect he may want to share some thoughts. I will not be 
long. First, let me say to my good friends from Maine and Arizona, they 
are truly wonderful friends, and I have worked on countless occasions 
with both of them. I regret we are in this situation as well. I say to 
my friends, this is a matter that is extremely important. We have all 
worked very hard in a bipartisan fashion to bring up both this lobbying 
reform and ethics reform package. So I am still confident, despite the 
differences that occurred yesterday, that we are going to achieve that 
goal.
  I had hoped we would be able to finish it by this week so we would 
not end up having an elongated debate about the subject matter. I do 
not think it needs that much time. I am sorry that is not going to 
occur.
  Let me also quickly say to my friend from Arizona, much of what he 
has said I agree with. I am a product of this place in many ways. I 
have been here a long time. I sat here on the floor as a page back--I 
think Jefferson was President when I sat on the floor here, that is how 
long ago it was--watching Lyndon Johnson sitting as Vice President of 
the United States, and with the all-night civil rights debates, and so 
forth. So I am very much a product of this institution. My father 
served here, and so I have great reverence for the Senate.
  I too regret what has happened in many ways, that we do not spend the 
time to work out matters, as we have done on this bill. I think this 
bill has been a good example of how the Senate ought to function in 
many ways. That is not to say we are all going to agree on every 
amendment offered, but we created a process by which this can be done. 
I am disappointed we come here on Tuesdays and leave on Thursdays. 
There was a time when we used to come on Monday and stay until Friday, 
and there was ample time during the week for consideration of matters.
  Part of the difficulty is, today, when you know you have to come in 
on a Tuesday at about 5 and leave on Thursday at about 5, then in order 
to deal with all the matters in front of you, you start doing things or 
offering things in a fashion you might not otherwise were there more of 
an opportunity to deal with it.
  I counted up last night. I suspect, if I am correct, that there are 
about 60 legislative days left in this session. Assuming we will 
probably adjourn sometime in September for the fall elections, we have 
60 days left to deal with a variety of issues.
  My colleague from Arizona is right. Look, the numbers are there. The 
American public is not happy with how they see their national 
legislative body

[[Page S1929]]

functioning. There are many reasons for that, not the least of which is 
there are issues out there which they confront every single day that 
are staggering to them--their health care problems, employment issues, 
the education quality in our country. We all know what the issues are. 
We do not have to do a survey. They want to know whether we are going 
to pay attention to the matters they grapple with every single day.
  This is also an important issue because it has to do with how we are 
perceived as a body. So I am not going to minimize this at all. I am 
not going to stand here and suggest we are all--at one time or another 
we have done things that I suspect if we had the chance to do them 
again, we would do them differently.
  I will let my colleague from New York address and express what his 
intents were and what his purposes were, but he raised what, as my 
colleague from Arizona said, is a very important issue. All of us know 
that. We have had major hearings. My friend from Maine has had major 
hearings on this question already. The Banking Committee has had 
hearings. The other body has already passed, at least out of the 
Appropriations Committee--my good friend Congressman Jerry Lewis has 
passed--I think 60 to 2 was the vote, something like that yesterday, a 
similar proposal dealing with this question about our port security.
  So none of us minimalize this issue. This is not some extraneous 
matter that has marginal importance to people here. It is timely. It is 
important. It is critical. People are worried about it.

  I would hope, because the hour of 2:15, or whatever the time for this 
cloture vote is to occur, has not arrived, that there might still be an 
opportunity for us to find some way to be able to say--next week, the 
week after, whenever it is here--that we have a chance for an hour or 
two to raise an important issue, have a good debate in the Senate--in 
fact, the leader mentioned 2 hours; I think 3 or 4 or 5 hours--for us 
to discuss an issue of that importance, and with that agreement being 
reached, we then would agree there will be no other extraneous matters 
brought up on this bill, and then we could move forward with it so we 
do not end up tying ourselves in a knot with cloture motions and voting 
against or for and whatever we are going to do here, delaying the 
consideration of this bill.
  I will leave it to my colleague from New York to explain what his 
intentions are, what he would like to do. But having talked to him, I 
believe he is going to suggest we have something like that. I realize 
that causes some heartburn for others. But nonetheless, my hope is that 
we can get away from this, get back to where we were yesterday morning, 
moving rather smoothly through a process that Senator Collins and my 
colleague from Connecticut, Senator Lieberman, and Senator Lott and I 
were trying to create, with having one amendment going back and forth 
from either side, and getting down to a number where we actually had a 
good possibility of concluding the consideration of this bill by this 
evening.
  That may not happen now because of the delay here. But my appeal 
would be to the Republican leader--I just heard the Democratic leader--
to see if in the next hour or so we can't come to some agreement here 
to get back on this bill. Let's avoid the cloture votes and get through 
this legislation. Let's keep it a clean bill, if we can, despite the 
temptation to bring up other issues. Set aside some time for this 
debate, and discuss it here on the floor, dealing with the port 
security issues. That way I think we have satisfied our roles to deal 
with timely questions, to deal with this important matter, and avoid 
the kind of acrimony that can truly cause this place to crater again.
  Again, I say I will let my friend from New York explain what he did. 
But I understand his motives to at least bring up this very important 
matter, and one that all of us care deeply about. We are hearing about 
it from our constituents.
  Again, to my friend from Arizona, for whom I have the greatest 
respect and admiration--I have loved working with him over the years on 
many matters--I too worry. If more committees conducted themselves as 
the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee does--my 
Committee on Banking, by the way--with oversight, looking at issues--I 
think the Armed Services Committee is doing a pretty good job on a lot 
of these issues. That is the role of the Senate: to be engaged in the 
debate, the discussion, to provide the time here on the floor, with 
that Monday through Friday, so we have a good opportunity here to 
discuss the important issues of the day.
  Again, the leadership has to work this out. A lot of us are at fault 
because we ask the leaders, we say: I can't be around on Friday. I 
can't be here on Monday. Can you wait until 6 o'clock on Tuesday? All 
of a sudden, you are arriving on Tuesday and leaving on Thursday night. 
No other job in America allows you to come for a couple days a week in 
order to do business.
  So I am sorry in a way we are finding ourselves in this truncated 
situation. I regret we are in this situation, but we can get out of it 
as well. My hope would be we would find an opportunity to provide a 
window to discuss port security, which is critical, and clean this bill 
up. Let's deal with the issues before us. My friend from Maine said it 
well earlier: We need to get back on this question. I agree with her on 
that point. That appeal is out there. I will leave it up to the leaders 
to decide how to proceed, but I hope that will be the case.
  Madam President, I see my friend from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I thank my colleagues, particularly my 
good friend from Connecticut, as well as the minority leader, for 
laying out our position. Before I begin, I do want to thank the Senator 
from Maine, the Senator from Connecticut, his colleague, the other 
Senator from Connecticut, as well as the Senator from Mississippi for 
their hard work on this issue. Nobody gainsays the importance of doing 
ethics reform. I certainly have been a member of the Rules Committee 
and involved in it. The bottom line is very simple: Doing ethics reform 
and dealing with the Dubai issue are not mutually exclusive. We can do 
both. We can do both this week. The motion made by the minority leader 
makes that perfectly clear. The two are not mutually exclusive. Nothing 
would make us happier on this side of the aisle than working out an 
agreement where we would be given time to debate this amendment, 
separately or as part of the bill, whichever would be the majority's 
preference, and then move back to the very important, thoughtfully 
worked-out legislation on ethics reform.
  We have to deal with the Dubai ports issue not in April or May but 
now. That is not only what the American people want, it is important to 
every one of us. I come from New York. We went through 9/11. Ever since 
that day, ever since the next day, when I put on this flag which I wear 
every day in memory of those who were lost, I have said: We have to do 
everything we can to make sure it doesn't happen again. That doesn't 
mean it should be No. 16 or No. 17 or even Nos. 3 or 4 on the list. It 
should be No. 1.
  When we heard that Dubai Ports World was going to take over our 
ports, it naturally raised alarms, not because the country was an Arab 
country but because the country had had a long nexus with terrorism. 
The more you look at the deal, the worse it gets. That is the problem.
  First, we find out that the review done by the CFIUS committee was 
cursory, quick. They didn't even call the port authorities, such as New 
York, New Jersey, and ask about it. The letter that my friend from 
South Carolina first procured, Senator Graham, given to Senator Reid 
and myself, lays out very clearly how an operator of a port can have a 
great deal to do with security. Then not only did we find out that the 
review was cursory and casual, it seemed that the wheels were greased 
to let this deal go through. Everything was quick. Everything was 
secret. Everything was quiet.
  A group of us--myself, my colleague from North Dakota, both 
colleagues from New Jersey, my colleague from New York, both colleagues 
from Connecticut, many others from the metropolitan areas--said: We 
have to do something. We have to move because we can't wait. The 
bipartisan legislation that we introduced said: Put the deal on hold. 
Do the 45-day review.

[[Page S1930]]

Make sure the report goes to Congress. We get to see it; a 
nonclassified version goes to the American people. And then we get the 
right, if we choose, to disapprove.
  The 45-day review was going forward, but none of the other conditions 
have been met. Right now the law would be such that the 45-day review 
would go forward. We wouldn't know how thorough it would be because it 
would be secret. The Congress and the American people would never know 
the results of the review, and the President would get to say ``yes'' 
or ``no.'' The President has already said ``yes.'' If the President had 
said: I am going to take a new look at this after the 45-day review, it 
might give us some hope. But he didn't. It is Alice in Wonderlandlike--
verdict first, trial second.
  Then, this weekend, a few more things occurred. The head of Dubai 
Ports World was on national television in America on a CNN show. And 
when asked by Wolf Blitzer, chief correspondent in Dubai, how many 
containers do you inspect here in Dubai, he answered: I don't know.
  When asked what kind of security guarantees do you have about the 
employees who might work on the perimeter or with the cargo manifests, 
he didn't even care. He simply said: We have to make our British 
shareholders happy. That has been the whole trouble with this process. 
That has been the trouble with the CFIUS process. It seems that 
economics and diplomacy trump security.
  In fact, I have been around the CFIUS process for a while, being a 
member of the House Banking Committee and now the Senate Banking 
Committee. I have been on the Banking Committees for every one of my 26 
years in Congress. Basically, it was passed before I got here, but the 
CFIUS process was basically done to give national security cover and 
allow economic deals to go forward. Because in the 1980s and the 1990s, 
the greatest concern we had was not security but economics. After 9/11, 
all that changed, but the CFIUS process did not.
  Many of us have come to the same conclusion that Jerry Lewis in the 
House came to, and I guess 62 of the 64 Appropriations Committee 
members, bipartisan, in the House Appropriations Committee, that this 
deal should be stopped.
  We don't have the luxury of waiting. That appropriations bill may not 
get over here until April, the supplemental. It may not be voted on 
until May. The deal will be consummated and done. And then they will 
say: You can't undo it. There will be constitutional and legal 
problems.

  We have to act now. There are a variety of ways to act. I have chosen 
one. There is no monopoly on that. Maybe there is another. And 
certainly there are a variety of procedures. We can vote, as Senator 
Reid offered, as a separate standing bill today, tomorrow, early next 
week. We can do it as part of this bill. We can make an arrangement and 
make it somewhere else. But the voice of the Senate must be heard. 
Lobbying reform is important, yes, but so is security. Lobbying reform 
has some time urgency, given everything we have seen, yes, but not more 
time urgency than this deal which might engender our security.
  Let me be clear: We can do both. This Chamber can walk and chew gum 
at the same time. We can spend some time debating this, go back to 
lobbying reform and accomplish both our goals. But let me make one 
thing clear: We will use whatever parliamentary means we can to make 
sure there is a vote on this issue. In recent months and years, the 
Senate has changed. It is much harder to offer amendments. The tree is 
filled up. There are agreements that amendments cannot be germane. 
Cloture is filed. Our job, my job, as I represent 19 million New 
Yorkers, is to see that they are secure, above all. Therefore, I 
believe that we must vote on this amendment soon, quickly, and move on 
to other business.
  I tell my colleagues, certainly this Senator from New York and, I 
think, many of my colleagues, will do everything we can to make sure 
that there is a vote on Dubai Ports World, a meaningful vote that ends 
the deal before it is too late.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I have listened to the thoughtful 
comments this morning. I understand there is some controversy, some 
passion and anxiety about all of this. It is not partisan. There is 
nothing partisan about an amendment dealing with the Dubai Ports World 
issue. This is a significant issue. As my colleagues have said, the 
bill that is on the floor is also a significant issue. Both need to be 
dealt with. Both should be considered by this great deliberative body. 
But this is not about partisanship at all.
  I understand partisanship. I regret that there is too much of it in 
this town. I left the House many years ago, decided I was going to 
leave the House. I did run for the Senate, but I was done with the 
House of Representatives. What did it for me was when they established, 
through then-Congressman Gingrich--I guess it is all right to say his 
name--something called GOPAC. And they word-tested through polls and 
then sent out a missive to everyone in his political camp that said: 
Here is the way we deal with this. When you are describing your 
opponent in a political election, use the words ``sick,'' ``traitor,'' 
``pathetic,'' ``antifamily,'' ``antiflag.'' That was sent all over this 
country by an organization that said: This is the way you should engage 
in politics. Here are the words you should use to describe your 
opponents. And we poll tested them. They work. Describe your opponents 
as sick, pathetic, traitor, antiflag. That was sent around the country. 
That is what polluted the House of Representatives. I had been there 
long enough when I saw that sort of thing.
  I love the Senate. I respect the Senate. I like being here. It is a 
great privilege to serve in the Senate. I regret there is probably too 
much partisanship here as well. I don't think we have had the kind of 
partisanship that infected the House beginning in the late 1980s, but I 
realize that this body and the House and the President, for that 
matter, are not in good standing with the American people these days. 
That circumstance exists because the American people take a look at us 
and they say: Here is what we face in our daily lives, and you are not 
addressing it. You are doing nothing about it. Why aren't you sinking 
your teeth into the significant issues of the day? The issue that faces 
me when I pull up to the gas pump, why aren't you sinking your teeth 
into that issue?
  Someone stood up in North Dakota recently from a human service 
nonprofit organization and said: I just had an 81-year-old woman come 
in looking for a job. She just lost her last job. Do you know what her 
last job was at age 81? Cleaning office buildings starting at 1 a.m. 
Then they cut back that employment, so now she needs another job 
because her Social Security is $170 a month. So at age 81 she is 
looking for a second job to clean buildings. Why aren't you doing 
something about that? Why isn't the Congress addressing that?
  An hour ago, this Government announced that last month's trade 
deficit was $68.5 billion in 1 month, the highest in the history of the 
human race. What does that mean? It is not just 68.5 billion dollars, 
it is jobs, massive numbers of jobs moving overseas, and it is the 
selling of this country piece by piece; at a rate of $2 billion a day 
we are selling America. Why don't we sink our teeth into that? Stem 
cell research, reimportation of prescription drugs, why don't you sink 
your teeth into that, they wonder.
  At least part of the reason in the Senate that we can't sink our 
teeth into these issues is because we are prevented from offering 
amendments to do so. My colleague has offered an amendment on a 
controversial issue, I understand. The issue of whether a United Arab 
Emirates company called Dubai Ports World should be managing America's 
seaports. Should they manage some of America's largest seaports? Is 
this issue controversial? I suppose it is. Is it urgent that the 
Congress address this? Of course, it is urgent. The House 
Appropriations Committee, controlled by the President's own political 
party, yesterday by a vote of 62 to 2 slapped an amendment on an 
emergency supplemental appropriations bill designed to provide money 
for the Department of Defense and for Hurricane Katrina recovery. They 
slapped an amendment on there to stop this ports deal. Good for them. 
So there has been offered in

[[Page S1931]]

the Senate an amendment to stop the ports deal. All of a sudden the 
Senate is stopped, dead cold in its tracks. Why is it that a proposal 
such as this becomes a set of brake pads for the Senate? Who decides it 
should shut things down because someone offers an amendment to stop 
this takeover of the management of U.S. ports by a company from the 
United Arab Emirates? Why wouldn't we vote on it? How about yesterday 
when it was offered, after people got over being upset that we had to 
deal with it, how about voting on it and then moving ahead?
  The underlying bill by Senator Collins and Senator Dodd is a bill we 
should do.
  I am enormously pleased with their leadership. That has not been easy 
to bring that bill to the floor. Senator Lieberman, Senator Lott, the 
two I have mentioned should be commended. Look, this is leadership. 
They have brought a bill to the floor that is important. We need to do 
it. But there is nothing that suggests that just because an amendment 
was offered dealing with Dubai Ports World, it ought to shut down the 
Senate. It didn't shut down the House yesterday when Congressman Lewis 
offered it to an emergency supplemental appropriations bill. They just 
voted. Why have we not voted? Senator Frist, I guess, has decided we 
won't vote on it. So we will stop the Senate cold in its tracks. We 
will pull down on the side of the road and hang out for while.
  Does that make any sense to anybody? This doesn't make sense to me. 
Seventy, seventy-five percent of the American people--polls tell us--
think that it is stark raving nuts to have a company owned by the 
United Arab Emirates manage our major ports. I know we have some people 
who are the elitists in Washington and who think they know better than 
all of the American people. They think they have greater wisdom and the 
American people just don't get it. These elitists think that the 
American people are isolationist xenophobes and cannot see over the 
horizon. So we have people in Washington who think this deal with Dubai 
Ports World is fine. It is not fine with me. It is not fine with 70, 75 
percent of the American people.
  If we get a vote on it in the Senate, it will not be fine with an 
overwhelming majority of the Senate. The question is, Will we be able 
to do in the Senate what the House did? That is, have an opportunity to 
vote on this proposition: Should a company owned by the United Arab 
Emirates be managing America's ports?
  Well, it is interesting to read some of the things that have been 
written in recent days about this. United Arab Emirates, to the extent 
they have cooperated with us since 9/11, good for them. We hope they 
will continue. But there are questions about the extent to which they 
were involved in 9/11--yes, two of the hijackers were from there; yes, 
a substantial amount of evidence exists that the financing for the 9/11 
plots went through financial institutions in the UAE. Dr. Khan from 
Pakistan was moving nuclear materials that were being pirated and 
shipped around the world to North Korea and Iran and other countries, 
and that was accommodated by the UAE ports.
  Interestingly enough, the 9/11 Commission report--I have cited the 
page in a previous discussion--talks about when we knew where Osama bin 
Laden was in 1999. We knew where he was, because our intelligence 
pinpointed his location. They readied the cruise missiles to shoot at 
this location. Overnight, they decided they had to withhold and would 
not do it. Why? Because George Tenet later said we might have wiped out 
half of the royal family of the UAE, who were visiting Osama bin Laden 
at the time.
  The 9/11 Commission report puts it a bit differently. It says UAE 
royal family members were there. But it is written and spoken by the 
head of the CIA. The reason the attack wasn't launched when we knew 
where Osama bin Laden was that he was being visited by the royal family 
of the UAE.
  My point is this: That country has had some ties to terrorism. It was 
one of three countries to recognize the Taliban government, which 
accommodated Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. It has ties to terrorism. 
When the American people learned about CFIUS and all these goofy 
acronyms and the work these folks have done in secret that says it is 
OK for a company such as this, owned by UAE, to manage our ports, the 
people of this country ask: Why is it that a country such as the United 
States cannot manage its own seaports? If we are so concerned about 
national security--and we are--and if we are threatened by terrorists 
consistently--and we are--and if seaports and airports are two of the 
important elements of national security--and they are--and if you go to 
the airport and try to board a plane, they will have you take off your 
shoes and belt, and as you go through the metal detector you will see a 
6-year-old kid spread-eagle and being wanded because we are concerned 
about security, and if that is the case, why then would we turn to 
seaport security and decide this? With 5.7 million to 5.9 million 
containers coming in every year to our seaports, we have decided it is 
OK for a Middle Eastern country--the UAE--with its history, to manage 
our seaports through a company owned by that government. Does that make 
sense?
  My former colleague, Fritz Hollings, who used to sit at this desk, 
used to talk about seaport security a lot. We don't have any seaports 
in North Dakota. But we went back and checked the Record: I came to the 
floor 13 times from 2001 until the end of 2005 to talk about seaport 
security--13 times. Almost every time I was here, Senator Fritz 
Hollings was also here talking about seaport security. We offered and 
offered and offered amendments to heighten and increase inspections and 
seaport security. Now we inspect only 4 to 5 percent of the containers 
that come in; 96 percent are not inspected. Does that make any sense?
  This administration has not been willing to support the substantial 
enhancement that is necessary for real security at our seaports. One 
day, God forbid, there may be a terrorist attack that comes from 
America's seaports. We are spending somewhere close to $10 billion a 
year now on the issue of antiballistic missile protection, thinking 
that a rogue nation or a terrorist will acquire an intercontinental 
ballistic missile, put a nuclear weapon on the tip of it and shoot it 
at us at 15,000 miles an hour. That is the least likely threat America 
faces. A much more likely threat is a ship pulling up to a port at 2 to 
4 miles an hour, up to the dock in a major American city, full of 
containers, one of which might have a nuclear weapon in it. Then we are 
not talking about 3,000 casualties; we are talking about 100,000 or 
even 300,000 casualties.

  So is seaport security important? It is critical. We need to deal 
with it. We need to send a message to this administration and to all 
those involved in what is called CFIUS the Committee on Foreign 
Investment in the United States--that we don't improve security at our 
seaports by deciding we should have the UAE wholly owned company manage 
our seaports. Mr. Chertoff said it will actually improve security to 
have the UAE company managing America's seaports. That is so 
unbelievable that it is almost laughable. But you should not laugh when 
you are talking about national security issues.
  This proposal is going to improve security at our seaports? Hardly. 
The reason the American people are concerned about it, the reason the 
Congress is concerned is that we understand this will diminish 
security. This will erode security at our seaports. Security is already 
too weak, and it must be dramatically strengthened.
  Now, we are here in the Senate chambers with virtually nothing 
happening. The same thing happened yesterday afternoon. The bill is on 
the floor of the Senate and the Senate rules are such that you can 
offer amendments to that bill and they don't have to be germane prior 
to any cloture motion; they don't have to be relevant to the bill.
  I will give you some examples of the problems of the Senate, the way 
the Senate works these days. I was promised--and others were as well--
that we would have a vote on the issue of reimportation of prescription 
drugs. Reimportation would drive down the price of prescription drugs 
in the United States because we pay the highest prices in the world, 
and the same drug, made by the same company, put in the same bottle, 
made in the same manufacturing plant, is sent to Canada and is sold for 
one-tenth of the price. I recently sat on a hay bale talking with an 
old codger who is about 85-years-old.

[[Page S1932]]

He said: My wife has been fighting breast cancer for 3 years, and we 
have driven to Canada for 3 straight years, every 3 months, to get her 
medicine, and we have saved 80 percent on her medicine bill; the same 
pill I could have gotten on the North Dakota side of the border, but it 
is priced much higher in the United States.
  So for several years now, we have had proposals that are bipartisan 
to allow for reimportation, but we have been prevented from having an 
opportunity to vote on it on the floor of the Senate, despite the fact 
that the majority leader at midnight one night made a commitment to do 
it. He thinks he didn't. It is written in the Congressional Record and 
somebody can look at it and see whether or not the commitment was made. 
But we didn't get a vote on it. So it is frustrating.
  The Senate is a place where you ought to get a vote. The complaint 
now, I guess, is that the amendment was offered. It wasn't offered in 
violation of the rules. The rules allow it to be offered. Perhaps if 
somebody says let's not vote on it this afternoon but tomorrow, or 
let's vote on it next Tuesday, my guess is they can make an arrangement 
to have that happen. But this is a voluntary rest for the Senate. 
Deciding not to move forward with the bill is a decision by the 
majority leader. He has decided that he doesn't want to vote on an 
amendment offered under the rules and which deals with a very relevant 
issue that was voted on yesterday in a House Committee by the majority 
party on a piece of legislation that had nothing to do with the 
amendment. It was OK in the House to do that.
  But the majority party in the Senate, even though it was offered 
under the rules of the Senate, said: No, no, if you are going to force 
us to talk about and vote on this issue of whether a UAE company should 
be managing America's ports, we are going to stop the process, stop 
progress of the Senate, and we are going to sit around and look at each 
other. That doesn't make any sense. Let's run the Senate the way it 
ought to be run. If you have amendments, let's debate the amendments 
and vote on the amendments. This isn't rocket science. If somebody 
offers an amendment, you have a debate. If you think the people are 
talking too long, get an agreement on restricting the debate, or get a 
time agreement and, at the end of the debate, you vote and count them. 
You don't weigh them; you just count them. It is very simple.
  Apparently the majority leader wants to run this body like the House 
Rules Committee. They would have kind of a Rules Committee on the floor 
of the Senate that says you can offer this amendment, but you cannot 
offer that one. They have been doing that for a long while now. This 
body is run by people who want to emulate the House Rules Committee and 
prevent people from offering amendments that are perfectly allowable 
under the rules of the Senate. We are told, if you offer an amendment 
under the rules, we are going to shut the place down. We are going to 
stop and complain. So now that the majority party has decided that it 
doesn't want to move, it complains that we are not moving. A very 
strange complaint. They can fix this in 5 minutes.
  I said the other day it doesn't take me 45 days to figure out the UAE 
ports issue. We have a 45-day review period--paradoxically requested by 
the company rather than our country. Our country should insist on that 
because it is our security. But the company asked our country to do a 
45-day review. My point is I don't need 45 days, or even 45 minutes, to 
figure this out. Nor do most Americans. This deal erodes America's 
security. It should not take us 5 minutes to get this place back on 
track.
  The underlying bill is important. It is brought to us by four pretty 
distinguished legislators. Let's proceed with that bill. How do you do 
that? Let's vote on this amendment in the next half hour or so and then 
move ahead. If you say there is a scheduling issue, then let's not vote 
on this amendment today and give us time on Tuesday. That would be all 
right.
  I want to make one other point. I don't know how this is going to 
turn out, but I am on the Appropriations Committee, and on the 
emergency supplemental bill, when we mark that up, I intend to offer 
the identical amendment that a Congressman offered in the House 
Appropriations Committee so that we can have a vote on it and go to 
conference with the House on the emergency supplement with identical 
amendments. I think the Senate should pass an identical amendment in 
the emergency supplemental, no matter how this comes out, as a 
backstop. I intend to offer that in the future when we mark up the 
emergency supplemental bill.
  Madam President, I wish to take an additional minute to talk about 
the news this morning about the $68.5 billion trade deficit, and then I 
will yield to my colleague from Connecticut, or whoever wishes to 
speak. The news is once again devastating: our trade deficit last month 
was $68.5 billion, which is the highest in our history. This relates to 
a trade policy that is fundamentally bankrupt and a Congress and a 
President that are not only asleep at the switch but have their heads 
buried deeper in the sand every month. And the trade deficit widened 
substantially with China again. I will not go through all the stories 
about unfair trade. But if this Congress and the President continue to 
ignore this issue, at some point, this country's currency will suffer a 
fate that I don't want to see. It will have enormous economic 
consequences.
  This is a strategy that is unsustainable. It is hurting Americans and 
is shifting Americans' jobs overseas and selling part of America. By 
the way, this is related to the Dubai Ports World deal because all of 
this offshoring and outsourcing and globalization and the decision that 
anybody could do anything, anywhere, and there really are no rules. And 
the minute somebody says maybe there ought to be rules, they are 
xenophobes and isolationists. And I will talk about that at another 
time.
  If this $68.5 billion is not a wake-up call, if this doesn't wake up 
the Congress and the President--and it likely won't--then I suggest 
this coma is probably irreversible, and I worry about the future of 
this country.
  This country needs to stand up for its own economic interests. 
Whether it is trade with Japan or trade with China, trade with Europe, 
trade with Canada, trade with Mexico--we have very large deficits with 
all of them--and if we don't find a way to address this issue, this 
country's economy will not remain a vibrant world-class economy in the 
long term.
  Again, we are in this deep sleep, or probably a coma, wanting to 
either deny or ignore the central facts of a trade policy that is 
awful. It is trading away American workers, trading away the middle 
class. We are hollowing out the center of this country. We are saying 
to this country's workers: If you can't compete with Chinese wages, if 
you can't compete with Indonesia, Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka wages, shame 
on you; your job is gone.
  I have gone on at length talking about Huffy bikes, Radio Flyer, 
little red wagons--a whole host of products and companies that have 
moved offshore.
  By the way, the thank-you for moving offshore from this Congress is 
to give them a big tax break. We voted to end this tax break four 
times, four amendments I have offered. All four have lost. I will 
continue to offer those amendments because I still believe that the 
last thing we ought to do is offer tax breaks to those who shut their 
American plants and move their jobs overseas. It is pretty unbelievable 
we do that, but it is part of the willingness to both ignore the 
circumstances of our trade deficit and the willingness to believe that 
a completely bankrupt strategy remains workable.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Vitter). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Vitter). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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