[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 78 (Friday, June 16, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5990-S6004]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2007
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of S. 2766, which the clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (S. 2766) to authorize appropriations for fiscal
year 2007 for military activities of the Department of
Defense, for military construction, and for defense
activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe
personnel strengths for such fiscal year for the Armed
Forces, and for other purposes.
Pending:
McCain amendment No. 4241, to name the Act after John
Warner, a Senator from Virginia.
Nelson (FL)/Menendez amendment No. 4265, to express the
sense of Congress that the Government of Iraq should not
grant amnesty to persons known to have attacked, killed, or
wounded members of the Armed Forces of the United States.
McConnell amendment No. 4272, to commend the Iraqi
Government for affirming its positions of no amnesty for
terrorists who have attacked U.S. forces.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I say to my distinguished ranking member,
I think at this time it would be appropriate if the Senator wishes to
bring up his amendment.
We are in business, I say to my colleagues wherever they are, for
purposes of amendments. The Senator from Michigan and I will be here
for some period of time in hopes of processing amendments.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from North Dakota. He
covered such a wide range of issues with such depth and integrity that
is really quite extraordinary. We are ready for his amendment. I think
he is prepared to proceed with the amendment. We look forward to
hearing from him on that matter.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Amendment No. 4292
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the pending amendments are
set aside.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Dorgan], for himself,
Mr. Durbin, and Mr. Harkin, proposes an amendment numbered
4292.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of
the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text of
Amendments.'')
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, first of all, I thank the Senator from
Virginia for his kind comments. He did not say he welcomed my amendment
because he probably knows that this amendment is one which we have
dealt with before. But I feel so strongly the need to continue to offer
the amendment, if only by voice vote, which says what is going on I
think is dreadfully wrong and needs to be corrected. I know the Senator
from Virginia and the Senator from Michigan are legislators with
goodwill and good skills. I hope they will join with me as I once again
describe the issues of contracting that exist because we are spending
so much money in such a hurry that there is waste, fraud, and abuse
which simply cannot be addressed in the regular order.
I believe this amendment is once again a proposal whereby there was a
Truman-type committee, the type that existed when Harry Truman served
in the Senate, a Democratic Senate then, with a Democrat in the White
House. Harry Truman, I am sure, caused some real angst at the White
House by saying: I think there needs to be a special bipartisan
committee established to take a look at waste, fraud, and abuse in
military contracting. He traveled all across this country to military
installations to meet with contractors. His committee unearthed a
substantial amount of waste.
I offer it again, as I have offered it on previous occasions. I
understand I have not been successful, but I offer it again only
because I don't think the problem has abated. I think the problem still
exists.
[[Page S5991]]
Just the other day, in a supplemental emergency appropriations bill,
we spent $92 billion. Some of that was for Katrina relief, but the rest
of it, by and large, will find its way into the Pentagon accounts--to
restore accounts.
The Senator from Illinois just came in, and the Senator from Illinois
and I have jointly worked on this issue. Senator Harkin has asked to be
a cosponsor as well. I offer it on behalf of myself and Senators Durbin
and Harkin. This is something that we have talked about at some length
over a period of time.
We have approved emergency supplemental appropriations bills to the
tune of tens and tens and tens of billions of dollars. I believe it is
now over $340 billion. Think of that: almost a third of $1 trillion
approved without being paid for. This adds right on the top of the
Federal debt.
This spending is in support of our military. I voted for it because
we can't send our troops abroad and not provide them the equipment and
things they need.
But when you spend this much money, including $18 billion-plus for
reconstruction in Iraq, and then begin to see who gets hold of this
money, it is hair raising to hear the stories about what is happening.
I am not suggesting that there would never be any waste as a result
of this war. Wartime is a different circumstance. I understand that.
But I think it is safe to say that there has been more waste, more
fraud, and more abuse of the taxpayers' money in the recently short
time, several years, than in the history of this country. I think it is
unparalleled. I think we have a responsibility to deal with it.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. DORGAN. Yes.
Mr. DURBIN. Through the Chair, I am happy to join him in this effort
in which we are trying to have some oversight on tax money being spent
on this war. The Senator and I have worked on this concept together. We
went back to a day when the Senator from Missouri, Harry Truman,
decided to ask the same hard questions of the administration during the
Second World War, trying to find instances where tax dollars were being
wasted and people were profiteering and soldiers were getting equipment
that wasn't up to standard.
I ask the Senator from North Dakota: Isn't it curious that Senator
Harry Truman, a Democrat from Missouri who created this commission and
asked hard questions, when there was a Democratic President named
Franklin Roosevelt, was suggesting that when it comes to profiteering,
Congress doesn't do the administration nor the people of this country
any favors by saying we are going to protect our own party in the White
House? Shouldn't we be dealing with a nonpartisan issue of waste at the
expense of taxpayers and, more importantly, at the expense of soldiers?
Isn't it true that at the hearings which Senator Dorgan has chaired
bringing together whistleblowers who tell us these terrible stories of
waste of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money, that absent these
hearings there has been very little done on Capitol Hill by way of
oversight of the giants who are winning these no-bid contracts,
multibillion-dollar contracts, and wasting too much of taxpayer
dollars?
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, it is the case that whistleblowers from
Kuwait, Iraq, and various parts of the United States have come to me
and said: What is going on is wrong. We have held some hearings through
our policy committee to take a look at it. They have wanted to testify.
Let me give you one example. I talked about Rory before. A man named
Rory, an engaging fellow, who was a supervisor at a food service
operation in Iraq, he said to us that what was going on was wrong. He
worked for Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton.
No. 1, he said we were charging for thousands of meals that we
weren't serving.
No. 2, we were feeding the troops food that had expired date stamps
on them.
He brought it to the attention of his superiors. They said: It
doesn't matter. Feed it to the troops. It doesn't matter.
He said: We had convoys of trucks that were attacked on the road with
food in them. He was told: You go into that truck bed and you find out
what food has shrapnel in it. If you find good pieces of shrapnel, you
give it to your supervisors as souvenirs, but feed the food to the
troops.
The other thing that was very interesting, talking about employees of
Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, he said: We were
told that when Government auditors come around, don't you dare talk to
them. You are forbidden to talk to them. If you do, one of two things
will happen. You will either be fired, or you will be sent to a part of
Iraq where there is active, hostile shooting going on.
This fellow, in fact, was sent to one of the active areas of Falluja.
He had the courage, guts, and temerity, and decided he would talk to
Government auditors.
It is unbelievable to me to hear a whistleblower say that a
contractor which was being paid with Government funds told the
employees: Don't you dare talk to Government auditors. If you do, you
will be fired.
That is so fundamentally wrong.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, if I may ask one more question, in one of
the hearings that I attended, I recall that Senator Dorgan brought in
one of these whistleblowers who talked about the monogrammed towels
they were charging the Government to be put into certain facilities.
The Senator talked about running up the price of gasoline that they
were charging to the Government. I hope the Senator will recount those
particular instances.
But I would like to ask the Senator, when Members of Congress get up
here and say: We love our soldiers and we love our troops and we stand
behind them, how can we then cast a blind eye and overlook the obvious?
When our soldiers aren't getting the right equipment, when our soldiers
aren't getting the goods they deserve, when they are not getting the
supplies they need to be safe and successful, how can that reflect any
love of our troops? If we are truly committed to these soldiers,
wouldn't we be holding oversight hearings, bringing in under oath these
whistleblowers and their bosses? Let us bring them in and put them
before the cameras and ask them if they are wasting taxpayer dollars
and endangering the lives of our troops. Wouldn't that be the true
measure of our commitment to these men and women in uniform?
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, clearly that is what we ought to do on
behalf of soldiers.
I tell the Senator that the most recent allegations have been made by
two people who worked for, once again, Kellogg, Brown & Root, a
subsidiary of Halliburton Corporation, about the water that was
provided to the military installations. Let me describe that.
Taking water from the Euphrates River--and some of it goes into a
system where it is purified and used as potable water to drink. Some of
it is used as nonpotable water. But the way they designed the lines to
serve nonpotable water to the base, which is used for showering,
shaving, and brushing teeth, and so on, the water that was coming out
nonpotable areas was actually more contaminated with E. Coli, bacteria,
than the raw water coming out of the Euphrates River from the sewage
disposal.
Halliburton said it is not true. The Pentagon said it is not true.
It just wasn't one base. We have a memorandum from the person from
KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary in charge of water to all the military
installations in Iraq. That memorandum, which has now been made public,
was from the person who was in charge on behalf of Halliburton, or KBR,
of all the water for all the installations. That memo admits that they
have a serious problem, and they have made big mistakes that could have
caused serious problems, including death.
After we held hearings, a young woman, an Army captain in Iraq, wrote
us a long, unsolicited e-mail. She said: There is something going on on
my base. I saw there was some questions about water to our military
installations in Iraq. I am here. I am treating people for all kinds of
skin problems. And I began to see things that made me suspicious that
there was something wrong with the water.
She said: I had my staff track back to the water line.
She said: What I found out was they were providing nonpotable water
to the
[[Page S5992]]
soldiers on this base that was contaminated.
This is from a doctor who is there today. This isn't conjecture,
speculation, or accusation. This is from a doctor who is actually
treating people. Yet, once again, the company that we are paying as a
contractor to provide water service to these bases, connect and purify
the water and provide the water to soldiers, denied publicly that
anything was wrong. We have two eye witnesses who have testified,
whistleblowers one that worked for the company. We have the internal
document from the company that discussed how they had made these
mistakes, and we have a doctor, a physician, who works for the
Army. This is like the old Western movie: Who are you going to believe,
me or your own lying eyes?
The fact is, we know what is happening there, yet no one seems much
concerned about it. I write to the Defense Secretary about this and say
it is quite clear that unhealthy water is being supplied to troops for
showering, brushing their teeth, and shaving. No one seems to get
really excited over that. It seems to me the Secretary of Defense ought
to say, Wait, what on Earth is going on? Let's put a stop to this.
I will talk in a few minutes about how all of this happens. It
happens because we have sole-source, no-bid contracts and very little
oversight.
Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator will yield for one last question, what
strikes me is there is not a sense of outrage that American tax dollars
are being wasted but, even more important, that American troops are
being shortchanged.
What do we ask of these men and women in uniform? Quite simply, we
say, take an oath to wear this uniform and risk your life for America--
how much more could we ask--and they do it. And then they expect from
us support--support when they are in the field and support when they
come home.
I don't understand why there isn't a sense of outrage in this
Congress on a bipartisan basis, on both sides of the aisle, that we are
not only being ripped off as taxpayers by these no-bid contracts but
that we are shortchanging these men and women who are risking their
lives while we stand in the comfort and safety of this Senate.
I know Halliburton is a big political force in this town. I know in
some quarters you are not supposed to question Halliburton. This is
some sacred institution politically. I don't buy it. I count the
soldiers that are putting their lives on the line to be much more
sacred and much more valuable than any big, huge, no-bid corporation.
I say to the Senator from North Dakota, we have done this before, the
two of us have joined together, and said let's put together a
bipartisan commission that will ask the hard questions, a commission
that will bring people in and put them under oath, find out if they are
cheating us, find out if they are profiteering during a war, find out
if they are shortchanging our soldiers, and let the chips fall where
they may. If we find there is a violation of law, even if it reaches
all the way to the boardroom, so be it.
How many times have we come to the Senate, I ask the Senator from
North Dakota, refresh my memory, how many times have we brought this
option to the Senate and said to our colleagues, please, for the sake
of the troops, let's have real oversight, let's ask these questions.
How many times have we done this during the course of this 3-year
war, I ask the Senator from North Dakota who has been the leader in
this effort, and I have been glad to join him, how often have we tried?
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we have had three recorded votes on this,
and we have brought this to the Senate maybe six times now, altogether.
I know it is repetitious. I know it probably is not pleasant to hear
all of these things again, yet I don't think there is any choice.
If I might, just for the benefit of my colleague from Illinois,
Senator Durbin and I began talking about this some long while ago when
we began to see the evidence of waste. We have worked at it since then.
When Senator Durbin was asking a question, I described the water
issue. I want to read a quote from a memorandum that was written May
13, 2005, an internal Halliburton memorandum, written by Will Granger,
the man who was paid with taxpayer funds to do this contract for
Halliburton for all of the water issues in Iraq. These are the water
issues for the U.S. bases in Iraq that directly affect United States
soldiers.
Will Granger, the Halliburton employee:
No disinfection to the non-potable water was occurring [at
Camp Ar Ramadi] for water designated for showering purposes.
This caused an unknown population to be exposed to
potentially harmful water for an undetermined amount of time.
This event should be considered a ``NEAR MISS'' as the
consequences of these actions could have been VERY SEVERE
resulting in mass sickness or death.
The deficiencies of the camp where the event occurred is
not exclusive to that camp; meaning that country-wide, all
camps suffer to some extent from some or all of the
deficiencies noted.
That is what was covered up. This was not made public until I was
able to dig it out. But when a whistleblower said this is happening--
and I am not referring to Will Granger, but to a whistleblower who said
this is happening in his testimony to our committee--Halliburton said
that it is not happening, you are not telling the truth, the Pentagon
says there is no evidence of it.
And here is the internal Halliburton report that says it is
happening, No. 1; and, No. 2, this camp was a ``near miss'' and:
. . . the consequence could have been VERY SEVERE resulting
in mass sickness or death.
A lot of people are making a lot of money, spent by this Congress, in
support of our soldiers who are at war, and we have some contractors
who are not playing straight with the soldiers or the American people.
I ask consent to show two items on the floor of the Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. A man whose name was Henry Bunting came to a hearing I
held. I believe Senator Durbin was at that hearing. Henry Bunting
worked for Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton in
Kuwait. In Kuwait, he was the purchaser of supplies for the U.S. Army.
They wanted some hand towels, needed some towels, so a purchase
requisition goes to Henry. Henry is going to buy some towels. Except
when he put in the order for the towels, his company said, no, no, no,
you cannot buy those regular towels that way. Towels have to have our
logo embroidered on them.
So this is what he had to buy, at more than double the cost of the
regular towels, so that the company logo could be put on the towels,
and the taxpayers could be charged twice as much.
I am sure the soldiers didn't care one way or another whether there
was that embroidered logo on the towel. But Henry, the purchaser, was
told: You buy these. And don't ask any questions.
Henry says, You know, the American taxpayer got charged double and he
didn't like it and he want to speak publicly. And not just this, it was
a thousand other examples of costs being run up, from $45 for a case of
Coca-cola, to $7,500 a month to lease an SUV. Henry said, It is not
just the towels, but he brought the towels along to show us what is
going on is really wrong. The American people are taking a bath here
and it undermines the soldiers, as well.
Thank God there are some whistleblowers who are willing to come
forward.
What we need now, of course, is the opportunity to legislate and see
if we can't stop this.
I will not go much longer, although I don't see anyone preparing to
offer another amendment yet. I do want to make a couple of points I
made the other day on the broader amendment that was turned down by the
Senate. That amendment dealt with contracting as well, but it was a
much broader amendment than this.
I made the point then, and this actually had to do with Bunnatine
Greenhouse. I know there are some who do not want to hear about this
anymore. But I don't think we have any choice. This was the top
civilian contracting official at the Corps of Engineers. She was the
one responsible for overseeing the contracts.
Through the Corps of Engineers, Halliburton and KBR got no-bid, sole-
[[Page S5993]]
source contracts, giant contracts. Over one half of the contracts in
the war theater are Halliburton.
By the way, this has nothing to do with the Vice President. Whenever
you mention that term, they say, You are attacking the Vice President.
No, he has been gone a long time. It doesn't have anything to do with
him. It has to do with a company that got over 50 percent of the
contracts in Iraq.
Bunnatine Greenhouse, the top contracting officer at Corps of
Engineers who lost her job, now, as a result of telling the truth,
says:
I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to
contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and
improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of
my professional career.
For that, she got demoted. Pretty harsh treatment for people who are
whistleblowers in this town. She has been replaced, by the way, by
someone without experience. When I have asked the general who runs the
Corps of Engineers, he said the person that is replacing Bunnatine
Greenhouse is now being trained. Not much consolation or confidence, in
my judgment, in that for the American people.
One final story. If the issue of water does not motivate someone, let
me talk again about Custer Battles. I have plenty of people come to me
about Mr. Custer and Mr. Battles. This is an example of what is going
on with so much money available.
Mr. Custer and Mr. Battles show up in Iraq without any money, without
much experience in contracting, and decide, I will get some of this; I
want to get some of this contracting that is available. It was not very
long and they got some contracts very quickly. In fact, they ultimately
got over $100 million in contracts.
The first contract was to provide security. They set up a little firm
to provide security at the Baghdad airport. Now, among other things,
whistleblowers from their own company came forward and said, Here are
the things they were doing. They are cheating you blind. They took the
forklift troop trucks out of the Baghdad airport, took them somewhere
else, put them in the warehouse, painted them blue and sent them back
and sold them to the Coalition Provisional Authority. They do not
belong to them. They repainted them and sold them back to us. They set
up subsidiaries in Lebanon and other places to buy and sell to and from
themselves, and inflate the price, and, therefore, injure the taxpayer.
Here is what the fellow who runs the security system at the Baghdad
airport said. The Baghdad airports director of security in a memo--a
guy, also, that was trying to provide some warning--a memo to the
Coalition Provisional Authority, and that is us in Iraq; it was set up
by Donald Rumsfeld and that was the United States--here is what he
said:
Custer Battles have shown themselves to be unresponsive,
uncooperative, incompetent, deceitful, manipulative and war
profiteers. Other than that they are swell fellows.
This from the director of security at the Baghdad airport. These guys
ended up getting over $100 million in contracts. I will show you a
little bit of their money. This is a picture of $2 million in cash,
$100 bills wrapped in Saran Wrap. I happen to know this guy; you do not
see his head, just his body standing in front of the $2 million. He
showed up here. He wanted to talk about this. Here is what he wanted to
say.
What he wanted to say was, When I was there, standing in Baghdad,
working on these accounts, the word went out to all of the contractors:
We pay in cash; bring a bag. He said it was like the Wild West. Bring a
sack because we pay in cash.
This $2 million actually went to Custer Battles. They took a picture
of it. He said they used to throw these around as footballs, Saran
Wrapped $100 bills. They threw them around as footballs in the office.
And down below they had billions and billions of dollars, apparently.
Lest there be any question about the misuse of money, let me show $2
million Saran Wrapped just before it went to Custer Battles. How did
this happen? Because this guy right here, this fellow right here, told
me that our message to everyone was ``bring a bag because we pay in
cash.''
Does anyone doubt there is going to be dramatic waste, fraud, and
abuse in those circumstances? Does anyone doubt that at all, and after
all of these stories? Doubling the price of hand towels; 25 tons,
50,000 pounds of nails laying on the sands of Iraq because they were
ordered in the wrong side, dumped in the sand.
I could go on forever from what I learned from whistleblowers. I will
not do that, only to say this: The next step for this Congress, I
think, is to establish a Truman-type committee. We have done it before
and we can do it again. Never has it been more needed than now. There
is, I think, plenty of evidence that the most significant waste, fraud,
and abuse that has ever been visited on the taxpayers of this country
is occurring now and has occurred in the last 3 years.
The remedy for that? It is not to blame anyone here. The remedy for
that is for us to fix it, for us to do something. What should we do?
Let's put together the type of thing that worked previously. Harry
Truman had the guts to do it.
Harry Truman was a Democrat. There was a Democrat in the White House.
I am sure they all were gnashing their teeth at what Harry Truman was
trying to do, but on a bipartisan basis Harry Truman put together, with
the consent of the Senate, the Truman Committee that sunk their teeth
into this issue and really did investigate and came up with a massive
amount of waste, fraud, and abuse.
That is a minnow compared to the whale that exists at the moment in
waste, fraud, and abuse. It is required of us, in my judgment, required
of us to pass this legislation.
Having said all of that, let me compliment the chairman and the
ranking member, but let me not do it because it is obligatory but
because I really do think they do a great job. I hope they decide to
strongly support this amendment. Then I will come back and compliment
them some more.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, first let me compliment the Senator from
North Dakota. He has been absolutely steadfast on this issue. He has
made a major contribution on this issue.
If the Senator will stay for a moment, I want to ask him a question
about the Truman Committee which he has made reference to. Perhaps I
will make a brief statement and then ask him if he concurs with this
history.
When then Senator Truman was appointed to head up the special
committee to look into the abuses of contracting during World War II,
he did an incredible job for a lot of reasons. One, he took on the
abuse, the waste, the fraud that existed. He unearthed it. He brought
it out in the daylight. He made a major contribution to our troops and
to the taxpayers. It was such an important contribution that his
temporary ad hoc special committee then became a Permanent Subcommittee
on Investigations.
So that the origin of our Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
which now exists over at the Homeland Security Committee was the
special Truman Committee. That is how big an impact that Truman
Committee had. And I am wondering whether or not that little bit of
history shows us in addition to all of the reasons that were given by
the Senator from North Dakota how vitally important these special
committees can be, what a contribution they can make to the war effort
and to saving taxpayers' dollars.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Senator is absolutely correct, first,
about the history and, second, about the importance of this. Harry
Truman used to have a sign on his desk saying, ``the buck stops here.''
Well, the buck stops here in the Congress on this issue. We are the
ones who have to go find this waste, fraud, and abuse and put a stop to
it. If we don't do it, it won't happen.
Harry Truman was a straight talker, a straight thinker. He used to
say he would only accept one-armed economists because he didn't want
people around him saying ``on the one hand'' and ``on the other hand.''
He decided to sink his teeth into the issue of waste, fraud, and abuse,
and he made a big difference at a time when there was substantial
waste, fraud, and abuse.
But I would venture to say there has never been a case in our history
where
[[Page S5994]]
we have pushed hundreds of billions of dollars out the door in a very
large hurry and put them in the hands of no-bid, sole-source contracts
with big companies and said, ``Have a good time.'' It is unbelievable
what is going on, and it is our responsibility to stop it--not
tomorrow; it is our responsibility to stop it now.
This is the bill in which we should do it. This amendment fits
exactly in this piece of legislation. My hope is that when the dust
settles, we will have decided to accept this amendment.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. LEVIN. I again thank the Senator from North Dakota for the
amendment and I hope that we can get some bipartisan support for it.
There have been reports on abuses. Reports are no substitute for
hearings. When you have hearings following a special committee
investigation, you have people who are put under oath, who are in the
public spotlight so that we can bring a focus on these whistleblower
complaints, and that is what has been missing. We have not had a place
where the whistleblowers and the people who defend against their
charges are brought together, both put under oath in a public forum so
that we can then try to end what seems to be so clearly the abuses
which have existed.
One of these contracts is a $10 billion contract-plus, basically. It
is for indefinite delivery of goods, and it is for an indefinite amount
quantitatively. So you have this contract which exists with
Hallliburton or the company that they own which allows them to have the
total, complete, unilateral sole-source ability to be given a work
order--sometimes the money is agreed upon in advance, sometimes the
amount of the contract is not agreed to until afterwards--indefinite
delivery for indefinite quantities of indefinite goods.
Now, that kind of a contract just automatically lends itself to
abuses, which should not happen here. This is something I spoke about
yesterday. There should have been at least two and perhaps three
contractors who were put in the exclusive contract to provide goods and
services in support of the troops.
This is an open-ended contract of undefined scope which then later on
billions of dollars of work orders are then put in place. It just lends
itself to excess and to abuse. This is something again which I have
spoken on a number of times. You need to have competition--not just for
who is going to get an open-ended contract but in the implementation of
work orders you need some competition. The only way you are going to
get it in this circumstance when we are at war is if you have two or
three contractors that are awarded these so-called IDIQ contracts so
that when it comes to supplying the goods underneath it, they can
compete against each other. It is the only hope that you have for a
fair price for an amount of goods that is not known at the beginning
but which has to be then supplied during the contract.
What these hearings which Senator Dorgan has spearheaded have shown
is this kind of a contract and the potential for abuse that it leads
to. It has raised all kinds of questions as to whether Halliburton
overcharged the Coalition Provisional Authority for several million
dollars for oil that was purchased in Kuwait and delivered to Iraq.
It raised the question of whether Halliburton overcharged the
Department of Defense for thousands of meals that were not actually
served.
It raised the question of whether Halliburton had the estimating
subcontracting and financial management systems needed to run two
multi-billion-dollar contracts in Iraq.
It raised the question of why did Halliburton receive a follow-on
contract for the reconstruction of the Iraqi oil industry at a time
when the DCAA, the Defense Contract Audit Agency, had warned that the
company's systems were not up to this challenge.
It raised the question, these hearings that were spearhead by Senator
Dorgan, as to whether Halliburton knowingly supplied our troops with
spoiled food or unsafe drinking water.
It raised the question as to whether Halliburton intentionally
withheld information from the Government to avoid raising questions
about the quality of its performance.
There have been only two hearings in our subcommittee. I compliment
our chairman. Our committee and our subcommittee every year have to
deal with a bill, and this bill is in the Chamber. It takes a huge
amount of our time as a practical matter. The two subcommittees that
have hearings on this issue which Senator Dorgan raises simply have not
been able to put in the kind of time that a special Truman Committee
can to focus on this kind of issue. And that is why I very much support
the appointment by the Senate of a Truman Committee on Iraq
contracting.
When you have this many tens of billions of dollars which are being
spent and when you have allegations by whistleblowers, people who are
in the know, that we have been unable to get into or have not gotten
into for one reason or another, they have not been investigated or
overseen by the other committee that might do this, this really needs a
focus if we are going to have some credibility in the expenditure of
these huge amounts of money in the Iraq war. And this should be done on
a bipartisan basis. It would be with a Truman Committee. It needs to be
done in a way which is free of any kind of political taint or political
slant. But it needs to be done. We have to restore credibility and
confidence in this contracting system, and the only way we are going to
do that I can see is to have a bipartisan Truman-like committee that
spends the time, has the staff focus on it, making recommendations
which I think will be similar to the ones that were defeated yesterday
but they should not be prejudged. In any event, it could make
recommendations to this body, and I would hope we would all welcome
those kinds of recommendations.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, if I could engage my distinguished ranking
member in a colloquy, historically this amendment is almost identical
in form to what came before the Senate on 14 September last fall, 2005.
It was defeated by a vote of 53 to 44. And that was on the Commerce-
State-Justice appropriations bill. Then, with the tenacity of our good
friend from North Dakota, he brought the same amendment up again on
October 19, 2005. Again, it was defeated by a vote of 54 to 44 on the
Transportation appropriations bill.
So the Senate on two occasions has examined this before other
committees and defeated it.
Now, let's go back a little bit in history, and this is a part of
Senate history that you have greater familiarity with than do I. Your
distinguished predecessor, Senator Nunn, when I worked with him--he was
chairman, I was the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee--
there would be times when he would say, ``John, I simply have to take
off a week; I have this special committee.'' He was then on the
committee on which you served, I think, throughout your tenure in the
Senate; now called Homeland Security, it used to be called Government
Operations. And the Senate as a body some time ago decided to take the
roots of the Truman Commission, which, indeed, was a successful
operation, and repose it, place it into the Government Operations
Committee, now the Homeland Security Committee.
Mr. LEVIN. I have been on that committee as long as I have been here.
Mr. WARNER. Another 28 years.
Mr. LEVIN. That subcommittee has a major agenda and a whole host of
areas that the chairman has identified, frequently with my support, and
it has a very full plate. This committee, our committee, has something
that that committee does not have, and that is we have the knowledge,
we have the information because we are the committee that specializes
in the work of Halliburton in the field. We are the people who have the
experience in terms of what the troops need and how it is provided to
the troops. And so our committee also has the ability to handle these
hearings. Neither committee has seen fit, either because it has too
full a plate already--and I think our committee from firsthand
knowledge is in that situation--has a very full plate, and therefore
has not been able or for whatever reason has decided not to look at
what are clearly excesses which need to be reviewed.
So it is a matter of finding, identifying Senators who have an
interest in this matter who would focus on this
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matter because of the attention that it deserves.
Now, it could be an outside commission. If the chairman would prefer
that there be an outside commission to do this, perhaps Senator Dorgan
would be willing to do it. But this requires a major undertaking with
an investigative--you have to identify and set out special staff that
will do the investigations on this, and then prepare for hearings. If
our committee were able to do this, I would be all for it.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I say to my good friend, yes, there are
instances of fraud and abuse, and work has been done by the Armed
Services Committee Readiness Subcommittee. I believe Senator Akaka is
on that committee from your side of the aisle. It is a lot of work. It
is not as if somebody is sitting on their hands.
Fraud, waste and abuse within the Federal contracting system, while
not pervasive, is a significant problem that we as a Congress must, and
are, addressing.
The potential for fraud, waste and abuse is not limited to just Iraq
and Afghanistan. Through the use of normal committee legislative tools
and processes we have uncovered fraudulent and wasteful cases and are
conducting systemic oversight.
The Armed Services Committee has conducted numerous hearings and
briefings on acquisition oversight and reform (including oversight of
contracting in Iraq) and has initiated investigations by the GAO and
the Inspector General on DOD acquisition practices and programs.
Other committees, such as Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
and Foreign Relations, with jurisdiction over government contracting,
have similar oversight records.
The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction
was established to look at Iraqi contracting. The special IG routinely
briefs this Committee and others on its findings.
Just yesterday we approved an amendment to expand the special IG's
oversight to include a broader range of funds being used to contract
for Iraq reconstruction activities.
And, as I noted earlier this week, the special IG submits quarterly
and semi-annual reports to Congress. The inspector general operates a
hotline for reports of possible waste, fraud and abuse and has
uncovered criminal activity that has been referred for prosecution.
The special inspector general's efforts have yielded important
oversight results and have prompted three specific lessons learned
initiatives.
The lessons learned initiatives are: (1) human capital management;
(2) contract management; and (3) program management.
The contract management report should be out later this summer.
The committee has also addressed contract and acquisition reform
through a series of legislative provisions and initiatives.
I will highlight three recent examples:
No. 1, Section 817 of last year's defense authorization act addressed
the need for a joint contingency contracting plan;
No. 2, Section 841 of that same legislation required GAO to review
efforts of the Department to identify and assess areas of vulnerability
for contracting waste, fraud and abuse. This report should be completed
soon;
No. 3, the committee included a provision in this year's bill to
build on previous oversight efforts in the contracting area. Section
864 of our bill would require the Department to develop contingency
program management plans. This section is part of a series of
provisions designed to improve acquisition and contracting outcomes
across the department through better overall program management.
I believe our activities, which I have very briefly outlined here,
represent the best approach to conducting oversight. We bring in the
experts and have them address systemic and specific problems.
We want to avoid an approach that would lead to wasting much of our
oversight efforts on anecdotes of individual fraudulent acts which
mayor may not show that we have a systemic problem.
We need to prosecute those singular cases and protect against fraud,
waste and abuse in a way that can still deliver goods and services to
the warfighter as quickly as possible.
So I say to my colleague, I appreciate his concerns and I look
forward to working with him to address problems with Federal
acquisition.
However, I do not support the establishment of a new special
Committee which would duplicate the work of this Committee and would
only look at selected Federal expenditures and contracts.
I come back to this creation of the entity that the Senator from
North Dakota wants and I again draw attention to the fact that Homeland
Security has been given by the Senate the overall responsibility and an
investigating committee with special funding, special staff to do
investigations. Senator Nunn utilized it frequently when he was
chairman of our committee. But there isn't a committee in this body
that is not faced from time to time with the subject of fraud, waste,
and abuse. And the Senate decided, rather than have each of the
committees have their own special investigating team, to put together
this subcommittee in the Government Operations Committee to do this
work.
So I come back to my friend and just ask, why should we create
something additional to what is already present, structured by the
Senate to address the fraud, waste, and abuse problems in all the
committees that we serve on and it was placed in the Homeland Defense
Committee?
Mr. LEVIN. There have been requests--I believe from the chairman of
the Homeland Security Committee--to get into this. And if the chairman
would be willing to sign a letter with me making another request to
that chairman to try to find time in either her committee work or in
Senator Coleman's committee, I would again be very happy to join in
that request.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I would certainly entertain that.
Mr. LEVIN. If we are unable do that on our committee, which we have
not been able to do anything that needs to be done here--and I
understand the time pressures on the committee because of this annual
bill we have; I know what is on the plate over at the Governmental
Affairs Committee and on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations--
Mr. WARNER. You serve on that committee.
Mr. LEVIN. That is exactly right. I have been there throughout my
tenure. I am personally familiar with the work they have undertaken.
But if Senator Warner would be willing to sign a request to Senator
Collins, I would be delighted to join in that.
Mr. WARNER. What I would suggest we do is have a consultation with
Senators Collins and Lieberman and then follow up with a letter, if we
deem appropriate.
Mr. LEVIN. That would be fine.
Mr. WARNER. That committee has done a prodigious amount of work. I
certainly commend the chairman and ranking member of the Homeland
Security Committee. They are workers.
Mr. LEVIN. I am on that committee, as you pointed out. I know the
workload they have. Just yesterday, they completed a markup on one bill
which took 2 days. I don't know of any people who work harder in the
Senate than do Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman.
Mr. WARNER. So we have a procedure on that. For the moment, I suggest
we set aside the pending amendment and turn to the matter of trying to
clear some amendments on this side. Is that appropriate at this time?
Mr. LEVIN. That would be fine.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the pending amendment is
set aside.
Amendments Nos. 4254 and 4295, 4296, and 4297, En Bloc
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I send a series of amendments to the desk
which have been cleared by myself and the distinguished ranking member.
I ask unanimous consent that the Senate consider the amendments en
bloc, the amendments be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid
upon the table, and that any statements relating to any of these
individual amendments be printed in the Record.
Mr. LEVIN. Reserving the right to object, and I will not, I just
wonder if the Senator would identify the Senator who has sponsored the
amendment so that they will hear their amendments have now been
cleared.
Mr. WARNER. Fine. The Senators I have indicated here on my sheet are
[[Page S5996]]
Senators Sessions, Obama, Allard, Salazar, and I judge that scribbling
is Senator Warner of Virginia.
Mr. LEVIN. I thank the chairman.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendments were agreed to, as follows:
amendment no. 4254
(Purpose: To require the use of competitive procedures for Federal
contracts worth over $500,000 related to hurricane recovery, subject to
existing limited national security, public interest, and other
exceptions)
At the end of subtitle I of title X, add the following:
SEC. 1084. IMPROVED ACCOUNTABILITY FOR COMPETITIVE
CONTRACTING IN HURRICANE RECOVERY.
The exceptions to full and open competition otherwise
available under (2), (3), (4), and (5) of section 303(c) of
the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949
(41 U.S.C. 253(c)) and paragraphs (2), (3), (4), and (5) of
section 2304(c) of title 10, United States Code, shall not
apply to Federal contracts worth over $500,000 for the
procurement of property or services in connection with relief
and recovery efforts related to Hurricane Katrina and the
other hurricanes of the 2005 season.
amendment no. 4295
(Purpose: To require a report on reporting requirements applicable to
the Department of Defense)
At the end of subtitle G of title X, add the following:
SEC. 1066. REPORT ON REPORTING REQUIREMENTS APPLICABLE TO THE
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE.
(a) Report Required.--
(1) In general.--Not later than March 1, 2007, the
Secretary of Defense shall submit to the congressional
defense committees a report on each report described in
paragraph (2) that is required by law to be submitted to the
congressional defense committees by the Department of Defense
or any department, agency, element, or component under the
Department of Defense.
(2) Covered reports.--Paragraph (1) applies with respect to
any report required under a provision of law enacted on or
after the date of the enactment of the National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 (Public Law 108-136)
that requires recurring reports to the committees referred to
in that paragraph.
(b) Elements.--The report required by subsection (a) shall
set forth the following:
(1) Each report described by that subsection, including a
statement of the provision of law under which such report is
required to be submitted to Congress.
(2) For each such report, an assessment by the Secretary of
the utility of such report from the perspective of the
Department of Defense and a recommendation on the
advisability of repealing the requirement for the submittal
of such report.
amendment no. 4296
(Purpose: To prohibit the acquisition by the Secretary of the Army of
real property to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site until the
Secretary submits a report analyzing such expansion and provides to the
congressional defense committees the extent to which the expansion
could be carried out through transactions with willing sellers of the
privately held land)
On page 546, after line 22, add the following:
SEC. 2828. REPORTS ON ARMY TRAINING RANGES.
(a) Limitation.--The Secretary of the Army may not carry
out any acquisition of real property to expand the Pinon
Canyon Maneuver Site at Fort Carson, Colorado until 30 days
after the Secretary submits the report required under
subsection (b).
(b) Report on Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site.--
(1) In general.--Not later than November 30, 2006, the
Secretary of the Army shall submit to the congressional
defense committees a report containing an analysis of any
potential expansion of the military training range at the
Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site at Fort Carson, Colorado.
(2) Content.--The report required under paragraph (1) shall
include the following information:
(A) A description of the Army's current and projected
military requirements for training at the Pinon Canyon
Maneuver Site.
(B) An analysis of the reasons for any changes in those
requirements, including the extent to which they are a result
of the increase of military personnel due to the 2005 round
of defense base closure and realignment, the conversion of
Army brigades to a modular format, or the Integrated Global
Presence and Basing Strategy.
(C) A proposed plan for addressing those requirements,
including a description of any proposed expansion of the
existing training range by acquiring privately held land
surrounding the site and an analysis of alternative
approaches that do not require expansion of the training
range.
(D) If an expansion of the training range is recommended
pursuant to subparagraph (C), the following information:
(i) An assessment of the economic impact on local
communities of such acquisition.
(ii) An assessment of the environmental impact of expanding
the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site.
(iii) An estimate of the costs associated with the
potential expansion, including land acquisition, range
improvements, installation of utilities, environmental
restoration, and other environmental activities in connection
with the acquisition.
(iv) An assessment of options for compensating local
communities for the loss of property tax revenue as a result
of the expansion of Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site.
(v) An assessment of whether the acquisition of additional
land at the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site can be carried out by
the Secretary solely through transactions, including land
exchanges and the lease or purchase of easements, with
willing sellers of the privately held land.
(c) Report on Expansion of Army Training Ranges.--
(1) In general.--Not later than February 1, 2007, the
Secretary of the Army shall submit to the congressional
defense committees a report containing an assessment of the
training ranges operated by the Army to support major Army
units.
(2) Content.--The report required under paragraph (1) shall
include the following information:
(A) The size, description, and mission essential training
tasks supported by each such Army training range during
fiscal year 2003.
(B) A description of the projected changes in training
range requirements, including the size, characteristics, and
attributes for mission essential training of each range and
the extent to which any changes in requirements are a result
of the 2005 round of defense base closure and realignment,
the conversion of Army brigades to a modular format, or the
Integrated Global Presence and Basing Strategy.
(C) The projected deficit or surplus of training land at
each such range, and a description of the Army's plan to
address that projected deficit or surplus of land as well as
the upgrade of range attributes at each existing training
range.
(D) A description of the Army's prioritization process and
investment strategy to address the potential expansion or
upgrade of training ranges.
(E) An analysis of alternatives to the expansion of Army
ranges to include an assessment of the joint use of ranges
operated by other services.
amendment no. 4297
(Purpose: To make technical corrections to provisions related to the
National Museums of the Armed Forces)
On page 65, line 16, insert ``facility designated by the
Secretary as the'' before ``National''.
On page 65, line 24, insert ``facility designated by the
Secretary as the'' before ``National''.
On page 66, line 17, insert ``facility designated by the
Secretary as the'' before ``National''.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, the Senator from Michigan and I have been
here, together with the leadership of both sides, making it clear we
are ready to conduct business on such amendments as may be brought
before the Senate on this bill. I believe at this time we have now
completed such business as was ready. I anticipate the leadership will
advise us with regard to the schedule on Monday, and most certainly we
will be back up at some point in time during that day to continue. I
hope I will be joined by my distinguished colleague from Michigan
urging Senators to come to the floor.
On our side of the aisle, I only know of perhaps two amendments that
might be offered--one, as you are quite familiar with, by the Senator
from Georgia with regard to certain aircraft programs. That is clear on
its face. The other one I will work through. Frankly, I would have to
say to my colleagues throughout the Senate, most particularly to my
ranking member, I begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel,
certainly as regards the amendments that could be forthcoming from this
side of the aisle.
Mr. LEVIN. I was hoping the Senator was referring to Iraq, but since
he is referring to our bill, I also see that we ought to be able to
finish this next week. We will have a good debate on Iraq, I guess
probably next Tuesday. Next Monday, I believe we have an amendment
lined up.
Mr. WARNER. I know the Senator from Georgia wishes to offer his.
Mr. LEVIN. On your side of the aisle. After Senator Dorgan offered
his today, it would then go to your side of the aisle to offer the next
amendment, if we want to keep that informal order which has been
established.
Mr. WARNER. Correct.
Mr. LEVIN. Then we could perhaps pick up the debate on the Dorgan
amendment on Monday after the debate on the judge.
Mr. WARNER. I think the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts
intends to revisit his strong approach to some of the situations in
Iraq, particularly regarding troop structure.
Mr. LEVIN. I wouldn't want to speak for the Senator from
Massachusetts. I
[[Page S5997]]
do believe, though, he is working on an amendment. There will be at
least two amendments on this side relative to Iraq.
Mr. WARNER. In addition to the one from the Senator from
Massachusetts?
Mr. LEVIN. There is one Senator Jack Reed and I are working on, and I
think there is one Senator Kerry is working on. I can't speak for
others. There may be a number of amendments on this side.
Mr. WARNER. I see the distinguished minority whip here. Maybe he
could advise us what his ascertainment might be with regard to the
balance of amendments on that side.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I have an amendment related to the
rendition of prisoners which I would like to say a word about before we
adjourn today. There may be an indication that there are still a few
more amendments to be forthcoming. I will bring my amendment to your
attention today, and I hope all Members will do the same so that you
can plot the schedule for the upcoming week.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, we believe there are a number of amendments
which will need debate. It would be useful for all Senators on either
Monday or Tuesday morning, if they could, to let us know what
amendments they are planning on offering so we could get an estimate--I
know you would agree as the floor manager--as to how many amendments
are out there.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, Senator Frist and I have discussed that. I
believe he is in conversation with the leadership on your side. I
heartily endorse that approach. Perhaps we could formalize it in some
way.
Mr. LEVIN. I think we might be better off not formalizing it.
Mr. WARNER. Only in the sense that the two leaders and you and I come
to the floor. I am not suggesting cloture or anything of that nature. I
would hope this bill could be passed on by the Senate without the
benefit of any cloture motion.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I would like to ask through the Chair, if
this would be an appropriate moment, I would like to speak to the
amendment which I will offer and a few other remarks not to exceed 5 or
10 minutes.
Mr. WARNER. Whatever the distinguished Senator from Illinois wishes,
please proceed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to recognizing the Senator
from Illinois for 10 minutes?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, after wars are completed, history stands
in judgment of the leaders, not just whether there was a victory or
defeat in the war but whether the war was conducted properly. Almost
without fail, history has been a brutal, sometimes difficult judge of
the conduct of war. Caught up in concern about protection and security,
nations do things which don't stand the test of time and reflection.
The man I think was our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, in the
course of the Civil War suspended the writ of habeas corpus. By
suspending that writ, he held prisoners without charges and without due
process for long periods of time. It was controversial. Later on, it
was judged that perhaps President Lincoln had gone too far.
In the midst of the First World War, with our concern over espionage,
Congress enacted the Sedition Act which unfortunately tarred and
condemned innocent Americans, and later on we came to realize that. In
World War II, the most notorious conduct by our own Government was
against our fellow citizens of Japanese ancestry who were interred in
camps, innocent people. I know some of them. I have grown up with some
of them. I know they carry scars from that incarceration. Throughout
our history, as we reflect, we find there are things we should not have
done in the course of a war.
I have said on this floor several times that I believe eventually
history will be a very strenuous judge of our conduct in this war on
terror when it comes to the use of torture. For decades, the United
States had established a clear standard that we would never engage in
torture--cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Then after 9/11, in
the shock and fear that followed, this administration ended up trying
to rewrite the standards for interrogation and torture. It wasn't a
proud chapter in our history. We now know the administration abandoned
that effort after some time. We know as well that some of the people
who were involved in it have been reluctant to even discuss what they
were doing. But there was a good ending when last year Senator John
McCain offered an amendment in the Senate to state unequivocally that
the United States would not engage in the torture of prisoners, not
engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners.
The reasons are obvious. Prisoners who are being tortured will say
anything. It doesn't have to be true. Secondly, the standard we set in
the treatment of our prisoners could one day be used against Americans
who are taken as prisoners. So not only does it give you invalid
information, it sets a standard that we never want our soldiers to be
subjected to.
By a vote of 90 to 9, the Senate enacted John McCain's standard for
torture, saying that we were not abandoning our longstanding commitment
to it. I was happy to cosponsor that effort. There was a debate where
Vice President Cheney came forward and said we need to make an
exception for agents of intelligence agencies in our Government. Thank
goodness, the Vice President's recommendation was rejected. The
President signed it, and I hope he is living by it. Sadly, most of that
is being done behind closed doors, and we won't know for a long time,
if ever, whether it is being followed. I trust the word of the
President when he says we are not engaging in torture. Now comes the
next chapter.
If the President's words are an indication, Guantanamo Bay is likely
to be closed. That is a good thing. Guantanamo Bay and the prisoners
who are being held there have to be moved to a different situation. If
they are in fact a danger to the United States or to any soldiers or
any person we value, they should be charged and held or held as enemy
combatants. But if they are being held for intelligence purposes, we
should be honest. After 3 years, for goodness' sake, what value could
they possibly bring to our intelligence?
Several hundred men are being held. Last week, there was the
startling discovery that three had committed suicide. It is an
indication to me that Guantanamo Bay should be closed, as the President
has suggested. I hope it is sooner rather than later.
Then what will happen to the prisoners? The amendment I will offer
says that if we are going to be involved in the rendition of these
prisoners, the transfer of these prisoners to some other place, some
other country, we need to make sure that country abides by the same
standards of humane conduct to which the United States ascribes. We
cannot be content in sending these prisoners to some other place where
they will be subjected to torture if, in fact, we have expressed a
value in the United States that we are opposed to torture. That is what
the amendment will say, that we make that effort to ascertain and to
review regularly those detention facilities to make sure they live by
that same standard.
There has been a debate this week in Washington over the war in Iraq.
It was also a week when the Department of Defense reported that we have
lost 2,500 soldiers. White House spokesperson Tony Snow was asked to
comment on this loss of 2,500. I am sure the statement he made doesn't
reflect what he really feels in his heart when he said:
It's a number.
I am sure he feels as we all do that it is more than a number. It is
more than an aggregate. It is 2,500 precious lives that have been lost
by men and women in uniform willing to stand and serve and risk their
lives for America.
I have attended some of the funerals. They are heartbreaking. Most of
the soldiers are very young. I recall going down to southern Illinois
where the funeral service was right outside the farmhouse where this
young man grew up, down in Perry County. His mom and dad brought out
for us to see, around the tent where the service was taking place,
little souvenirs from his life--his fishing rods, his hunting rifle. We
were just a few feet away from the tree house he and his dad built. I
will never forget that scene as long as I live. It was a reminder that
before he was in uniform, he was a son, he was a boy. Their
heartbreaking experience will be with them for a long time. There are
2,499 other stories just like
[[Page S5998]]
that of grief which will be shared by families for years to come.
We are debating now what should we do in Iraq. The idea that we pull
out our troops quickly, precipitously, is unacceptable. It would leave
a situation which I am afraid would descend further into chaos and
maybe create more instability and more problems to come.
But here is what worries me. When the President of the United States
goes to Iraq and says to our enemies in Iraq that we are here to stay,
that may be a strong message to our enemies of our resolve, but it is
the wrong message to our allies and friends. The Iraqis have to
understand we are not going to stay indefinitely. Think of what we have
done in this country, not only giving 2,500 of our best and bravest
lives, not only having 20,000 of our soldiers come home, half of them
with serious permanent injuries, 2,000 of them with head injuries, not
only spending $300 billion in behalf of this effort in Iraq, not only
sacrificing at home where we can't afford to fund medical research,
Amtrak, education, health care, and the programs which Americans value,
not only all these things, but we have been successful; we have deposed
their dictator, Saddam Hussein; we dug him out of a hole in the ground
and put him on trial.
We have given the Iraqis more than ample opportunity to control their
fate and future. We offered them free elections. We have given them a
chance to form a government. We have given this country so much in the
3 years we have been there. Now we must say to them: The day has come
when you must stand and defend your own country. If you value Iraq as a
nation, be prepared to stand and fight and maybe even die on behalf of
that nation. But if we say to the Iraqis that we are staying there
indefinitely, it is the best deal on Earth because it is the best
military on Earth that will be there for them serving as a babysitter
and a referee in an ongoing civil war for an indeterminate amount of
time.
How many more lives will America give to this conflict before the
Iraqis stand and defend their own nation? And when the President and
many in the Chamber here don't want to speak to any kind of withdrawal
date, they are suggesting to the Iraqis we are there to stay. That is
the wrong message. We need to tell them that we have fought and offered
our best for their future and that they need to accept that
responsibility from this point forward.
This week, I stood in silence at my desk on the floor of the Senate
with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in reverence to the 2,500
lives that have been lost, saying a prayer for their memory and their
families, thinking as well of the veterans who have come home, some
broken in body and in spirit, who have done so much for this country.
We owe it to them, we owe it to their families to reach a point where
we can come home with our mission truly accomplished.
It is more than just a number. Mr. President, 2,500 of our soldiers
have given their lives. When this came up initially, I voted against
authorization for war. I believed at the time that the administration
had misled us as to what was happening there, this threat of weapons of
mass destruction and nuclear weapons and connections with
9/11. It turned out they were all false. None of it was true, and we
went to war anyway. We were told as soon as we arrived that the Iraqi
Army would turn on Saddam Hussein and join us in the fight, and that
didn't happen. We were told the Iraqi people would greet us with open
arms, and I know many are appreciative for what we have done, but it is
still so unsafe in that country. The average soldier just going down
the street in a military vehicle is risking his life every single day,
more than 3 years after our invasion.
Having voted against that authorization for war, though, I have voted
for every penny this President asked for. I lived through Vietnam. I
remember what happened. An unpopular war was taken out on our soldiers,
and that is not fair. Our soldiers did what we asked of them in the
Vietnam war, as they are doing today. Politicians and elected officials
can debate and differ on policy, but the bottom line is our soldiers
are serving us and we should stand by them. I voted for every penny
because of one basic standard: If it were my son or daughter in
uniform, I would want them to have everything they needed to come home
safely. That is the way I feel, and that is why I voted this week for
the supplemental appropriation. But that won't stop me today and in the
coming days from challenging this administration and challenging this
Congress to make it clear that the Iraqis have to stand and fight and
defend, and the American troops are coming home. It is only when that
happens that we can truly say that our mission is accomplished.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to share a few thoughts
about the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the Armed Services
Committee, which I chair, which deals with space, missile defense,
satellites, and many of the other high-tech systems on which our
Defense Department relies. But I just want to respond to my colleague,
Senator Durbin. I don't think he actually meant to say that our
soldiers are coming home broken in body and spirit, but he came close.
That is not what I am hearing. Go out to Walter Reed. They may have
broken bodies and broken bones, but they are not broken in spirit.
The night before last, I attended a wonderful ceremony of the 231st
birthday of the U.S. Army. I was talking with soldiers there. We were
talking about the war and the politics of the Capitol. They are aware
of what is going on. I told them that I thought the Congress would not
vote for any immediate withdrawal, and indeed we voted yesterday 93 to
6 against any kind of withdrawal requirement for this year. That vote,
represents a strong bipartisan consensus of the Senate. One of those
soldiers said: I will tell you what we want, Senator; ``We want to
win.'' We want to win this war. That is what the American people want,
that is what the soldiers who have gone there and sacrificed want, and
that is what they believe in. The soldiers who have been there believe
in what they have done. They have been courageous in performing their
mission.
It is difficult for me and for them to understand this idea that we
can support the soldiers but not support the mission we sent them on,
sent them by a three-fourths vote of this Senate. A majority of
Democrats and Republicans voted for this war, and we are going to stay
the course, we are going to help our military succeed, and we are going
to help them win.
The point I pick up more and more as I talk with these soldiers, what
I am hearing from them, is they are afraid we are going to mess it up.
They believe they are winning. They believe they are doing their job.
They believe they will be successful. And they are really worried that
this Congress will be the one that will lose its nerve and not stand
with them after they put their lives on the line for this country.
I believe this is a big deal, and that success in Iraq is important
for our Nation. I visited that region recently. I talked to the leaders
of Turkey, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. What would it mean for us
if we had a disastrous event in Iraq where the terrorists take over
that country? What would it mean to their neighbors? What would it mean
to the region? All nations of good will know we must succeed.
Iraq is stepping up. There are now 260,000 Iraqi soldiers and
security personnel in uniform and reaching higher and higher levels of
performance. They are doing a much better job every day. They will soon
be at 350,000 by the end of this year. They are being better equipped
and better trained, and I believe we are doing a much smarter job of
imbedding our soldiers with the Iraqi units so we can call in air
support, we can provide mentoring, we can provide advice, we can call
on other kinds of support, if they need it, to be effective.
A majority of the raids and actions that are taking place in Iraq are
taking place by the Iraqis. Iraqi soldiers are taking more casualties
than American soldiers. We are not babysitting them. This image of
millions casting their ballots for a freely elected government of Iraq
is not a bad image for us to remember. We need to remember that, and it
is important for us, let me note first and foremost, that this Nation
not allow the terrorists to win in Iraq.
[[Page S5999]]
We are going to be successful. But I realize the American people are
concerned. They don't like to see violence and continued death. They
don't like to see our soldiers at risk. I certainly understand that;
neither do I.
I have been an admirer of General Abizaid, CENTCOM commander, and his
team of generals because General Abizaid has always resisted the
temptation to see how many troops we can put in Iraq. He said that is
not the way to win this war. We need the right number of troops, and we
need to begin to draw them down as soon as it is appropriate to draw
them down and lift up the Iraqi Army. That is what we need to do.
Some want to have the President set forth a detailed plan so they can
criticize it, basically. How will some sort of formalized plan help our
soldiers be effective in the battle? It just tells your enemy what you
are going to be doing. More importantly, a detailed plan is not going
to be permanent. It will have to change because the enemy changes. As
soon as you shut off one avenue of enemy success, they take another one
and you have to respond to that. That is the history of warfare. That
is the way wars have always been fought: you constantly adjust and
constantly alter your efforts to be successful toward your ultimate
goal of victory. That is what our military is doing.
Trying to demand a date from our military to withdraw or trying to
demand from them a plan of what they are going to do 5 months from now
fails to understand and recognize the nature of this conflict, and this
conflict more than most conflicts because we face an asymmetrical
enemy, a nontraditional enemy, who knows it cannot stand and fight our
military successfully, so it devises devious and sneaky ways to pit one
religion against another, to attack American soldiers, to attack the
local police, all designed to crumble the Government of Iraq. But it
hasn't happened. Iraqis are still signing up and becoming policemen.
Iraqis are still signing up and the army is growing. The Government of
Iraq has elected, for the first time, their permanent leadership.
Prime Minister Maliki is in office. His whole Cabinet now has been
established. The two key Cabinet positions on which they spent extra
time, Defense and Interior, have now been established, confirmed and
voted by the 275 member Parliament. So they have their government now,
fully elected, a permanent government, just like any other nation in
the world. There is no interim government now.
I believe they are going to be successful, and I tell you, it is
going to be important for the United States that they are. We have
invested a lot; our soldiers have invested a lot. They are proud of
what they are doing. They are not broken in spirit. They want to be
successful and win.
I have some numbers I will share with my colleagues and those around
the country who might be listening. In this conflict, the Army has had
the largest number of people serving in Iraq, yet their enlistment rate
through May of this year was 104.3 percent. They have exceeded their
enlistment goals for this year. They have exceeded their reenlistment
goals. The Army for a few months did miss their goals, and some critics
said it was a broken Army and predicted disaster. The Army said: No, we
are not broken, and we are going to meet our goals. For 13 consecutive
months, the Army has met its goals. The highest retention reenlistment
rates come from the units that have just come back from Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Staff Sergeant Barr, who was at Walter Reed, was injured by an
explosive device. He was punctured by as many as 100 different pieces
of shrapnel. He was told he would have difficulty walking and would
probably never run again. He said he was going to run again, and he was
going back to Iraq with the unit that he came with. And he worked at it
and he worked at it and he ran. He eventually went back to Iraq and
served again. That is the kind of spirit that we have. That is the kind
of spirit that you see in our Army.
I was told by an officer who knew that story that every single
soldier in his squad reenlisted. This is the spirit that this Congress
needs to strive to be worthy of. This is the kind of professional
commitment and courage that inspires us, or should inspire us. We
should not be whining around here and trying to find some error that
was made somewhere where body armor did not get to a soldier. Body
armor is out there protecting soldiers. It is not a problem. To say
that there has never been a shortage somewhere or somehow a supply
failed to get where it was supposed to, I can't say; but it is not a
systemic problem. But to go around and suggest to the citizens of our
country that this Congress and the military is not committed to
providing body armor to our soldiers is bogus and false and undermines
what they are doing. It must be most confusing to our soldiers there.
But I think the vote yesterday should give them confidence that most
of this talk is simply politics. Most of it is just complaining and
second-guessing, like is done on the floor of the Senate every day. We
hear it every day on many issues and debate and criticism is passed of
the strength of American Government.
But I would urge my colleagues to think differently about soldiers in
conflict, soldiers in harm's way. We need to be careful what we are
saying here. It may sound good, it may hurt President Bush, to make
this allegation or that allegation, but is it perhaps creating in the
eyes of our enemies a belief that we are divided, that we won't stay
the course, and that if they just kill enough people, civilians,
Americans, Iraqis, that somehow, it will all just fail. Is that the
possibility that we are creating? That is why I urge my colleagues to
be very careful and watch what you say in terms of attacks on the
efforts that our military have so courageously undertaken in Iraq.
Things happen in war. Bad things happen. But no military has done a
better job of striving for perfection than ours has.
I would also like to respond to charges that this Nation is going to
be embarrassed historically because we have tortured people that were
captured in this war on terrorism. We talked about Lincoln. Lincoln
eliminated the writ of habeas corpus. Roosevelt, as Senator Durbin
said, locked people up, Japanese Americans, in a way that was not
justified. He basically takes a view, as so many seem to be saying on
the left and on the Democratic side, that we have a policy of torture
in the United States. That is not so. The President has repeatedly,
time and time again, said: We have no policy of torture; we do not
torture.
There is a statute in the United States Code passed shortly before I
came here that defines and prohibits torture. It does not say you can
never put any stress on someone, but it says you can't subject them to
torture, and it defines it precisely.
They say, well, what about Abu Ghraib. Let me remind everybody, we
learned about Abu Ghraib when the Army general reported what happened
in Abu Ghraib. Let me remind people that what happened to those
prisoners in Abu Ghraib, so wrong that it was, had nothing to do with
interrogation, had nothing to do with any plan of torture. These were
not even prisoners who had any intelligence. It was the late graveyard
shift and a group of soldiers lost their discipline--lost their
discipline under the stress of war--and performed in a way that got
them prosecuted and sent to jail by the U.S. military. That was not the
policy of the United States of America. We have heard this most complex
chain of thoughts and reasoning, this complex chain of reasoning which
is almost laughable, and is worthy of the most incredible conspiracy
theorists, that somehow President Bush is responsible for what happened
in Abu Ghraib.
It is not so. The military responded firmly and aggressively to this
terrible wrong. And do you remember the story--I know the Presiding
Officer does--of the fine African-American colonel under the stress of
attacks on his men in Iraq, he fired a gun near the head of an enemy
that had been captured in order to attempt to frighten him and to get
intelligence from him. Apparently, he got some intelligence of value
that he believed helped protect the lives of his soldiers. But do you
know what. He was booted out of the military because we don't tolerate
that kind of thing. His actions went beyond what our standards allow,
and he was cashiered from the Army. A fine person with a fine career
who made a big mistake, and he paid for it because we don't accept that
kind of thing.
[[Page S6000]]
It is demeaning, it is dishonest, it is wrong to suggest that we have
a policy to torture prisoners. With regard to Guantanamo, I know the
President said he would like to see it closed. Well, I want to know
what he is going to do with those prisoners. I have been there twice.
Those soldiers do their jobs under difficult conditions every single
day. They are highly professional. They do not allow themselves to be
baited into overreacting when these prisoners display the worst kinds
of anti-Americanism.
Until just recently, not a single captive had died at Guantanamo. Now
we have three suicides. So I suppose that is our fault now, that we had
three people commit suicide who were being held down there. These are
not bad conditions at all. They are good conditions. They are treated
fine. They are given the Koran, given places to worship, given places
to exercise, and given all kinds of things that most prisons around the
world don't give to the prisoners of their own countries, much less to
the people who want to destroy their country.
But what I would say is this: They committed suicide. Those suicides
were a political statement. They were their efforts to attack and
undermine the United States. Their fervent desire was that Members of
this Senate and the House of Representatives would use their deaths to
speak on the floor to try to undermine our war against terrorism to
make us less successful in the war on terrorism. That is exactly what
their goal was. And, I would say this: does anyone in this Chamber
doubt that if they had access to a bomb, they would have put that bomb
on their body and killed anybody they could have? They would have
killed themselves to promote their terrorist agenda. If they had been
given the opportunity, wouldn't they have put a bomb on and killed
others at the same time?
I say those suicides are an absolute indication that we have in
Guantanamo some of the most dangerous terrorists in the world.
Now, I heard an official of our great ally, the United Kingdom, say
we ought to close Guantanamo. I wanted to write him and say: Do you
want to take these prisoners to the U.K.? Do you want to hold them? And
then if you get tired of holding them, are you just going to let them
go in London on your subways and on your buses? Then the critics worry
that if we turn them back to their home countries and we have a
rendition of the prisoners back to their home countries, that we have
to guarantee that they are going to be treated wonderfully. So we can't
keep them in Guantanamo, we can't--who else wants them? We can't even
send them back to their home countries to be held in prison,
apparently.
So this reminds me of nuclear waste. Everybody has nuclear waste, but
nobody wants to do anything with it, and they use the argument that you
can't dispose of nuclear waste to try to block nuclear power. So this
is just another attempt to make it more difficult, in my view, for us
to be successful in handling these prisoners. They are not being
tortured at Guantanamo. It is not the policy of the United States to
torture anyone, and they are not being tortured. The few people who
violated our high standards have been disciplined and punished.
So let me say this in conclusion, Mr. President. The good news is
that we have free debate here, and we get to duke it out and we get to
have our say. We just voted yesterday 93 to 6 to declare we have no
intention of any precipitous withdrawal from Iraq; that we are going to
stand there with our soldiers, and we are going to stand with our
allies in Iraq and help them establish a free, decent, democratic
government, a government that will be to our national interests to an
incredible degree. It will be more valuable than most people can
comprehend to us and to the world to have a decent, peaceful Iraq and
to defeat the terrorists there who want to take it over and make it
their place.
The other good news is that we have had a very successful attack on
the CEO of terrorism, Zarqawi, and he has been killed. He clearly was
the No. 1 executive officer of terrorism in the world, and that was a
big victory.
We also now completed the confirmation of the Defense Minister and
the Interior Minister for Iraq, so the entire Cabinet is in place, and
an entire government is in place. The Iraqi Army continues to get
better, and it continues to grow, and we are beginning to see the
possibility that our troops can be withdrawn. If we have to send more
troops there, I will listen to the commanders. If they can bring the
troops down, that will make me happy. We are going to listen to our
commanders and do what it takes and continue this process in a way that
leads to--what? Victory. That is what the soldiers we have sent there
want, that is what the American people want, and that is what we in
this Congress have to do; to figure out how to help our military people
go forward and achieve victory. That will be my effort, and I think for
the most part that is the bipartisan consensus of this Senate.
Mr. President, again, I finish with a tribute to the professionalism
of those in service, to the risk they have incurred; how they have
attempted to conduct the violence of war in a way that mitigates
civilian casualties and that reflects the highest ideals of the United
States of America. I could not be more proud of their service. The
conduct of this war on terrorism will be received as the most humane
and careful war in history.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, let me begin by saying I very much share the view of
the Senator from Alabama about our troops. Day in and day out, they
bring the utmost professionalism and the utmost courage and valor to
the cause of standing up for American values. I very much share his
views with respect to the tribute we ought to be paying to those who
serve us, who wear the uniform of the United States and who do it with
such extraordinary patriotism and service to our country.
(Mr. SESSIONS assumed the Chair.)
What I am here to talk about, though, is the political decisions that
are made and how they affect those courageous troops and how they
affect the security of the country.
In March of this year, at a press conference, a reporter asked
President Bush:
Will there come a day, and I'm not asking you when, not
asking for a timetable--will there come a day when there will
be no more American forces in Iraq?
The President responded:
That, of course, is an objective and that will be decided
by future Presidents and future governments of Iraq.
. . . decided by future Presidents. . . .
. . . decided by future Presidents. . . .
. . . decided by future Presidents. . . .
I found that statement troubling for two major reasons. First,
staying in Iraq for years and years, in my view, will threaten
Americans' preparedness to deal with a host of other threats that ought
to concern all of us. Certainly at the top of that list would be Iran
and North Korea, but suffice it to say, it is a dangerous world.
I serve on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. I know the
distinguished Senator from Alabama has a great interest in military
affairs. No Senator who looks at the facts and the world in a realistic
way would conclude otherwise. It is a dangerous world. There are real
threats to our country. It is my view that to stay and stay and stay in
Iraq will threaten the preparedness of our country at a dangerous time.
Second, it seems to me that making this kind of open-ended commitment
to stay in Iraq, an open-ended commitment that in effect says we will
be there at least until 2009, doesn't send the right message to the
Iraqis about getting serious about their most serious challenges. For
example, when I was recently in Iraq with my colleague, Senator Snowe,
I was especially troubled by the Iraqis' response to my concerns about
corruption in the Iraqi oil sector. We all know that 90 percent of the
revenue generated in Iraq comes from oil, and there has been one
independent analysis after another documenting widespread corruption in
Iraq's oil sector. I brought that to the attention of the officials
Senator Snowe and I met with on our trip. Essentially, the response was
one of denial: Well, Senator, it really isn't that bad; well, Senator,
we are getting serious about it; well, Senator, we are thinking about
trying X, Y, and Z.
But I say to the Senate today that we continue to read these
independent
[[Page S6001]]
analyses which have documented widespread corruption and malfeasance in
the Iraqi oil sector. Yet it is not being dealt with. My view is that
to say the future of American forces in Iraq will be decided by future
Presidents is yet another signal to the Iraqis that they have plenty of
time to deal with serious problems like corruption in the oil sector,
which should have been dealt with some time ago.
Again, I share the view of the Senator from Alabama concerning the
professionalism of our troops. Our country and the world is better as a
result of the death of Mr. Zarqawi. The kind of carnage and the brutal
campaign that Mr. Zarqawi conducted is well understood. We are all very
hopeful, because we all root for success in Iraq, that this will deal a
blow to the insurgency. Our soldiers and all concerned ought to be
proud of what they accomplished in taking down Zarqawi. I am proud of
them. I know the Senator from Alabama is as well.
But let us think about the implications of overstretching our Armed
Forces. That is why I say I am troubled about what is going to happen
to American preparedness for a dangerous world if we stay and stay and
stay--until at least 2009. Oregon Guard members, for example, of whom
we are exceptionally proud, are on their third rotation in the theater.
Some Active-Duty Forces are on their fourth rotation. Others are
getting ready for their fifth rotation into harm's way. I am sure that
is also the case in Alabama. I am sure it is also the case in every
part of the United States. I will tell the Senate today that I think
the stress our courageous Armed Forces are dealing with now is at the
point where, if we can't get the Iraqis to speed up securing their own
defense, this is going to undermine America's preparedness to deal with
a dangerous world.
Our Armed Forces are maintaining an exceptional level of
professionalism under exceptional stress, but at a certain point it is
just not possible to continue in that way and be ready for the kinds of
crises and the kinds of national security challenges that exist today.
So the preparedness of our U.S. military to deal with a host of
national security challenges hinges on what happens in Iraq. The more
responsibility the Iraqis take for their future, the less the United
States must shoulder, and the sooner we can start bringing our troops
home.
When our President says that a future American President will decide
when to bring U.S. troops home, it seems to me that sends a message to
the Iraqis that they have a lot more time. For the sake of
preparedness, for the sake of Iraq securing its own future, we have to
speed this timetable up. American troops cannot and should not be in
Iraq forever.
Shortly, I will introduce a very simple resolution. It is a sense of
the Senate on the President's intention to keep U.S. forces in Iraq
until at least 2009. The resolution is very simple. I will just read it
this afternoon:
That it is the sense of the Senate that--
(1) the members of the Armed Forces deserve the enormous
respect and support of the Senate and the American people for
the sacrifices that they are making on behalf of our country;
and
(2) the President's intention, as stated on March 21, 2006,
that ``future Presidents'' will determine whether to keep
members of the Armed Forces in Iraq undermines the
preparedness of the United States military to respond to
other crises and should not be supported.
I will close. Again I pick up on the Chair's statement about the
commitment of our troops and their courage and their valor. This is
not, today, a debate about whether it was right to go to war. We had
that debate. I was on the side that voted against, and other Senators
were for it. We are long past that point. What we are dealing with now
is how to win the peace. That is something which all Senators should be
looking to try to work together on and find some bipartisan common
ground.
I commend the Senator from Alabama for his statement about our
troops. But I do believe we have to find a way to get beyond some of
these artificial choices--like cutting and running or staying the
course. Hopefully we can do that. I believe one area for bipartisan
cooperation should be to try to speed up Iraq taking over its own
future.
I was very troubled by the statement that it was the President's
intention that the future of our Armed Forces in Iraq would be dealt
with by future Presidents. We have to deal with it now. We have to find
a way to win the peace and do it on a bipartisan basis. I intend to
work with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to advance this goal,
which is not about whether you are for the war or against the war, it
is today about winning the peace, and that is why I will be offering my
resolution.
I yield the floor.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, as chairman of the Budget Committee, I
regularly comment on appropriations bills that are brought to the
Senate for consideration and present the fiscal comparisons and
budgetary data. I believe it is useful to expand that practice, when
required, for authorization bills that we consider.
S. 2766, the national Defense authorization bill for fiscal year
2007, is, of course, one of the most important bills the Congress
brings up on an annual basis. As Senators know, the Budget Committee
does not enforce the levels of the authorizations of appropriations
contained in the bill, even though they constitute the vast majority of
programs and projects addressed. Ultimately, those authorizations of
appropriations only spend money once the Appropriations Committee acts
on its Defense bill.
But there is another category of spending in the Defense
authorization bill which the Budget Committee does enforce because
passage of this bill and its signature by the President would create
automatic spending. By that, I mean the direct spending or mandatory
spending provisions in the bill.
According to a Congressional Budget Office estimate of June 9, 2006,
S. 2766 as reported increases budget authority for mandatory spending
by $458 million in fiscal year 2007 and $1.508 billion over the next 5
years. Corresponding outlays are $307 million in fiscal year 2007 and
$1.416 billion over the next 5 years.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a table of direct
spending for S. 2766 excerpted from CBO's official cost estimate be
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
TABLE 4.--ESTIMATED IMPACT OF S. 2766 ON DIRECT SPENDING AND REVENUES
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By fiscal year, in millions of dollars--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHANGES IN DIRECT SPENDING
Military Housing in Korea:
Estimated Budget Authority............ 160 160 160 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Estimated Outlays..................... 10 58 109 126 92 48 22 10 5 0
Pilot Projects for Military Housing:
Estimated Budget Authority............ 0 0 30 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Estimated Outlays..................... 0 0 4 14 9 2 1 0 0 0
Maximum Term of Leases for Overseas
Facilities:
Estimated Budget Authority............ 1 2 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
Estimated Outlays..................... * 1 3 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
SBP Benefits:
Estimated Budget Authority............ 53 57 61 63 66 68 70 72 74 76
Estimated Outlays..................... 53 57 61 63 66 68 70 72 74 76
Paid-Up SBP:
Estimated Budget Authority............ 202 213 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Estimated Outlays..................... 202 213 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
TRICARE Pharmacy Program:
Estimated Budget Authority............ 42 61 62 54 46 39 31 22 12 2
Estimated Outlays..................... 42 61 62 54 46 39 31 22 12 2
[[Page S6002]]
Total Changes:
Estimated Budget Authority........ 458 493 318 122 117 112 106 99 91 83
Estimated Outlays................. 307 390 239 262 218 162 129 109 96 83
CHANGES IN REVENUES
Thrift Savings Plan: Estimated Revenues... * * * * * * * * * *
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES.--Numbers in the text may differ from figures shown here because of rounding. SBP = Survivor Benefit Plan.
* = between -$500,000 and $500,000.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, in evaluating our needs in the Department
of Defense authorization bill, key factors will be our relationship
with Iran and North Korea as we face two major problems of two nations:
one having nuclear weapons and the other appearing to be intent on
developing nuclear weapons. I applaud the President's recent move to
agree to bilateral negotiations with Iran subject to certain
conditions, and I think he was precisely correct in saying that
notwithstanding the difficulties with Iran and their apparent
intransigence, that all diplomatic efforts ought to be explored before
any consideration is given to the use of military force. I think that
is a way to approach the international issues. While we deal with some
of these tough adversaries, all options should theoretically remain on
the table. But to the extent that these problems can be solved through
diplomacy, that is obviously the preferable course.
In dealing with countries such as Iran and North Korea, it is
difficult when the United States has branded them as the ``axis of
evil.'' But President Reagan invited Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to a
dialogue within weeks after labeling the U.S.S.R. as the ``evil
empire.'' So it is possible to have some tough dialogue and some tough
rhetoric and, at the same time, work toward negotiations, no matter how
difficult the adversary or potential adversary may be.
Early in my activities and public service, when I was an assistant
district attorney in Philadelphia, I had an occasion to interview
inmates at the State prison, Rockview, who were under the death
sentence. Joining the district attorney's office, I was low man on the
totem pole, and the low man got the job of traveling to the State
prison and talking to people under the death penalty, people who wanted
to have their death sentences commuted. It was quite an experience.
Very, very tough people who had committed heinous crimes, outrageous
lives, bad backgrounds, about as tough a gang as you could find off the
streets of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and other parts of the State who
had committed murders so atrocious that they had gotten the death
penalty. That taught me a lesson, leading me to the conclusion that if
you could talk to people like that, you could talk to anybody. You
don't have to agree with people, but there is no reason not to talk. I
am aware that it is a significant transfer to apply that kind of an
experience to international diplomacy, but I think it has some weight.
There are those who oppose talking to Iran or North Korea on a
bilateral basis because we don't want to recognize them, we don't want
to give them any status. I think a comprehensive answer was made to
that by Richard Armitage, who was Deputy Secretary of State right under
Colin Powell during President Bush's first term. This is what Mr.
Armitage had to say:
It appears that the administration thinks that dialogue
equates with weakness, that we have called these regimes evil
and, therefore, we won't talk to them. Some people say that
talking would legitimize the regimes. But we are not trying
to change the regimes, and they are already legitimatized in
the eyes of the international community. So we ought to have
enough confidence in our ability as diplomats to go eye-to-
eye with people, even though we disagree in the strongest
possible way, and come away without losing anything.
Our relationship with Iran has obviously been extremely difficult
since the Shah was deposed in 1979. And Iran is a proud country with a
proud history. There is, at least, some part of the motivation to
become a nuclear power, nuclear military force to be with the big boys
as a matter of international status. I think if we were willing to meet
with Iran in a straightforward, diplomatic way as negotiating equals--
the United States is never going to be equal with Iran because of the
great difference in our power in the international field--but I do
believe that our foreign policy would be enhanced if we treated foreign
leaders, foreign countries with more dignity and respect. I think it
would be a significant step forward if Iran were treated as a
diplomatic and negotiating equal, that it might take some of the
pressure off their determination to be a nuclear military power or, at
a minimum, I think it is worth a try.
I made my first trip to the Mideast back in 1964, and in the
intervening 42 years I have made almost 30 trips to the region. I tried
to go to Iran shortly after the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988, and my
efforts to go there have never been successful. It is possible to
travel to Iran as a tourist, but it is not--they are not receptive to
having an official visit.
In the absence of being able to go to Iran, I have contacted and had
discussions with two of the Iranian Ambassadors to the United Nations.
I made my first contact back in May of the year 2000, a little more
than 6 years ago, and I discussed with the Iranian Ambassador to the
United Nations the possibility of an exchange of parliamentarians; that
a group of Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives might
meet with a group of parliamentarians from the Iranian Parliament. I
invited the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations to a dinner in my
hideaway, my office here in Washington, attended by a number of
Members. I then met with his successor in August of 2003 and had moved
toward concrete plans to have a group of Iranian parliamentarians meet
with Members of Congress in Switzerland in January of 2004, but
unfortunately, those plans fell through because there was a concurrent,
harsh exchange of rhetoric, and the Iranians were not willing to meet
at that time.
There was a significant development when the Iranian President, on
May 8 of this year, sent President Bush an 18-page letter, and the
President appropriately responded, showing interest in having
negotiations with Iran. We had been pursuing efforts to have diplomatic
pressure applied by Iran in concert with our European allies, trying to
involve China and trying to involve Russia, and then Secretary of State
Rice signified a shift of U.S. policy by indicating our willingness to
negotiate directly with Iran by putting conditions on that offer to
negotiate. To repeat, I believe that we ought to be willing to
negotiate without conditions. We have similarly sought to deal with
North Korea in collaboration with other nations, including Japan and
South Korea, China, and Russia, and here again, it would be my hope
that we would seek and be willing to have those talks without
preconditions.
I was part of a CODEL led by Senator Biden in August of 2001, at the
time when Senator Biden was chairman of the Foreign Relations
Committee, and we traveled to the Far East and had plans to meet with
the North Korean President, and that did not materialize because at
that same time, the North Korean President made an unexpected trip to
China. In looking toward the future, it is my hope to be able to go to
North Korea. I think there is a climate there of receptivity to meeting
with Members of Congress, and that is a course which I intend to
pursue.
I have found that in the meetings I have had on foreign travels that,
at least in my opinion, they have been a bit productive. In the 25
years of my service in the Senate, I have been on the Appropriations
Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, and for 8 years I served on the
Intelligence Committee, chairing that committee during the
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104th Congress in 1995 and 1996, and those committee assignments and my
interests generally in foreign policy have taken me to some 93
countries.
One of the countries I have visited on many occasions is Syria. I
have visited Syria on 15 trips. On nine occasions I have had an
opportunity to meet with President Hafez al-Assad. I was the only
Member of Congress to accompany the Secretary of State to his funeral
in the year 2000, and I have since had an opportunity to visit on three
occasions with President Bashar al-Assad.
In the course of those meetings I got to know President Hafez al-
Assad. The first meeting was in 1988, and it lasted for approximately
4\1/2\ hours. I had long heard about President Assad's willingness to
engage in extended discussions. We covered a wide variety of subjects.
We talked about Syrian relations with Israel. We talked about the
Palestinian problems. We talked about the Iran-Iraq war. We talked
about U.S.-Soviet relations. On a number of occasions I suggested that
I had taken too much of his time. On each occasion he would say: No, I
am interested in talking more.
In the course of meeting President Hafez al-Assad on some nine
occasions, it developed into a cordial relationship, even, you might
call it, a joking relationship. I would urge President Assad to meet
with Israeli Prime Ministers and say that our meeting, always attended
by the local photographers, would appear on the front page of the
Syrian newspaper, the Damascus newspaper, but if President Assad would
meet with the Israeli Prime Minister, it would be world news.
I told him when Prime Minister Rabin and Foreign Minister Perez and
Palestinian Authority Chairman Arafat got the Nobel Peace Prize, if he
would work for peace with Israel, that he would get the Nobel Peace
Prize in Stockholm.
He replied: Well, I might be welcome in Stockholm under the
arrangement you suggest, but I might not be able to get back to
Damascus.
In 1988 I suggested to President Assad that he permit the Jewish
women in Syria to leave the country because there were very few Jewish
men for them to marry. That was a subject which Congressman Stephen
Solarz had undertaken, and I was carrying forward some of what
Congressman Solarz had sought to do. President Hafez al-Assad said to
me that anyone who came to claim a Syrian Jewish bride would be
permitted to take the bride with him out of the country. I relayed that
message to the large Syrian community in Brooklyn, NY. Nothing much
ever came of it. But in 1992, President Assad permitted all the Jews to
immigrate out of Syria. My exhortations might have had some effect--who
knows as to what that might have been.
I consistently would urge President Assad to negotiate with Israel,
and he would say that he would not do so but entertained the
possibility of negotiations with Israel if sponsored by the big 5:
sponsored by the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and
the China. Israel was unwilling to engage in those negotiations because
only the United States would be neutral or perhaps friendly toward
Israel. Finally, President Assad did agree to go to Madrid, in 1991, to
negotiate with Israel.
I had extensive discussions with a very distinguished Syrian
diplomat, Walid al-Moualem. When Benjamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister
of Israel, in 1996, upon taking office Prime Minister Netanyahu made a
forceful declaration that Israel and he would hold Syria responsible
for the actions of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. That led to a
realignment of the Syrian military, and for a time it looked as if that
was a tense situation. I was in Israel at that time and was asked by
Prime Minister Netanyahu to carry a message to President Assad that
Israel wanted peace. I conveyed that message to President Assad, and
later, when I met with Walid al-Moualem, the Syrian Ambassador to the
United Nations--met with him here in Washington--he told me that the
conversations I had and the message I carried from Prime Minister
Netanyahu to President Assad had been, as he put it, ``helpful in
deescalating the dangerous tensions.''
Ambassador Moualem later told me I had gained the trust and
confidence and personal relationship with President Assad because, as
he put it, ``they viewed me as being objective'' even though, as he put
it, ``nobody could question my support for Israel.''
I am not making any major contentions, or making any claims as to
what effect these visits would have had. But every little bit helps. In
getting to know Assad and getting to know his son, it does provide an
opportunity for a statement as to our values in the United States, what
we would like to see happen. I think it is helpful and certainly can do
no harm.
In January of 1989, I made my first trip to Iraq and returned a year
later with Senator Shelby.
I will conclude briefly and will supplement my remarks today with
more specification at a later time on exact dates, based on trip
reports which I make after coming back from each of my travels.
I had referenced the conversation which Senator Shelby and I had with
Saddam Hussein in January of 1990. I do not know if it would have ever
have been possible to have dissuaded Saddam Hussein from his practices
of aggression, but on that occasion Senator Shelby and I had a
professional conversation with him, and it is my view conversations of
that sort have the potential to be helpful.
I have had occasion to visit with Palestinian Authority Chairman
Yasser Arafat on some eight occasions. I have conveyed messages from
Prime Minister Netanyahu to Chairman Arafat about the terrorism issue.
Whether it had any effect or not I do not know. I have had occasion to
visit Cuba on three occasions, meeting with President Fidel Castro on a
wide range of conversations, urging him to have respect for human
rights. I questioned him about the deployment of Soviet missiles in
1962, asking about possible involvement in the assassination of
President Kennedy, which he denied in talking to him about
assassination efforts. I believe there is a fruitful basis to have
cooperation with Cuba on drug interdiction, and it is something I have
pursued and intend to pursue in the future.
I have had occasion to visit China on four visits. I have had
discussions with the Chinese leader about their failure to respect
human rights, about the detention of a librarian from Dickerson
College, who later was freed after a condemnatory resolution was filed
in the Senate, and I have taken the lead in urging Temple University to
establish a school in Beijing to inform Chinese leaders about the due
process of law.
I had an opportunity to meet with President Chavez in Venezuela last
August. There was a controversy on drug enforcement. The Venezuelans
would not meet with our ambassador, and I asked for a meeting of
President Chavez with our ambassador. I met with the Venezuelan
Minister of the Interior. I don't have time to summarize it now, but
President Chavez was willing to discuss a protocol for drug
cooperation.
I believe the talks with people, even our tough adversaries, our
toughest adversaries, can be fruitful. As we structure our legislation
for the Department of Defense and look later to the Department of
Defense appropriations subcommittee, a subcommittee on which I serve,
it is my hope that the United States would be vigorous in the pursuit
of negotiations with Iran to diffuse the risk there, to try to find a
way of recognizing them in respect and dignity, persuading them not to
become a nuclear power, and to have bilateral talks with North Korea on
the same unconditional basis--again treating them with respect and
seeking to find a way to have an international protocol which would
contain and control the significant threat posed by North Korea.
As I say, Mr. President, I have generalized. Most of what I have said
has come from floor statements which I have made in the past 25 years.
And I will document this further at a later time when there is more
time for the presentation.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I want to thank the Democratic Leader,
Senator Reid, for his leadership and the hard work he has done to
include an amendment to National Defense Authorization Act which
increases protections for the dedicated women and men throughout our
judiciary. The recent
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shooting of a State judge in Nevada provides another terrible reminder
of the vulnerable position of our State and Federal judges.
Unfortunately, this is not the only recent reminder. Last May, the
Judiciary Committee heard the courageous testimony of Judge Joan Lefkow
of Chicago, the federal judge whose mother and husband were murdered in
their home. We must protect judges where they work and where they and
their families live.
The amendment now incorporated into the bill which I cosponsored with
Senator Reid, Chairman Specter, and Senator Durbin, would enact
provisions from the Court Security Improvement Act of 2005, CSIA, S.
1968, which Chairman Specter and I introduced last November. Our bill
and this amendment authorize additional resources to improve security
for State and local court systems. We also respond to requests by the
Federal judiciary for a greater voice in working with the U.S. Marshals
Service to determine their security needs. This amendment provides
criminal penalties for the misuse of restricted personal information to
seriously harm or threaten to seriously harm Federal judges, their
families or other individuals performing official duties. It provides
criminal penalties for threatening Federal judges and Federal law
enforcement officials by the malicious filing of false liens, and
provides increased protections for witnesses. It also includes an
extension of life insurance benefits to bankruptcy, magistrate and
territorial judges, and provides health insurance for surviving spouses
and families of Federal judges, both of which are provisions that I
suggested be included.
Finally, this amendment contains provisions which have passed the
Senate several times extending and expanding to family members the
authority of the Judicial Conference to redact certain information from
a Federal judge's mandatory financial disclosure. This redaction
authority is intended to be used in circumstances in which the release
of the information could endanger the filer or the filer's family. I
hope that the House of Representatives finally takes up and passes this
extension and expansion of redaction authority.
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