[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 10 (Thursday, January 18, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S717-S721]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 ENERGY

  Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I come to the Chamber today to speak 
about efforts that are now underway in the 110th Congress to deal with 
an issue the American people have become tremendously sensitized to 
over the last couple of years--the issue of energy, the availability of 
energy, and the cost of energy. I believe it is important, as we look 
at cost and America's reaction to it, to recognize that while Americans 
are paying a higher price for energy today, there has never yet been a 
question about the availability of energy and the supply itself. I 
think we forget that when we paid, in midsummer, $3 at the gas pump for 
gas and substantially more for diesel, it was always there, it was 
always available, and that never became the issue.
  What I believe is important for us today, in the new Congress, under 
new leadership in the House and the Senate, is to not only focus on the 
availability of energy but also move ourselves toward being a nation 
that becomes independent in its ability to produce its own energy--all 
kinds, in all ways--for the American consumer.
  I find it fascinating that somehow, in the midst of all of this, we 
have forgotten that while the energy is still at the pump, the lights 
still come on when we throw the switch in our house in the morning, and 
America is awash in the use of energy, we have become increasingly 
dependent on foreign sources for a substantial portion of the very 
energy that moves this country. Here is a chart which I think 
demonstrates that. Today, arguably, we have become 60 percent dependent 
upon someone else producing our hydrocarbons--our oil to produce our 
gas and our diesel and, of course, the plastics our country uses as a 
derivative of that.
  In this new Congress, we should focus as aggressively as we did in 
the last Congress in the creation of the National Energy Policy Act of 
2005. We ought to now move a major step forward toward energy 
independence by not only encouraging the increased production of all 
forms of energy but looking to see if Government stands in the way of 
that. Is Government promoting it or are we inhibiting it and forcing 
those who supply our energy to progressively seek offshore sources of 
that supply?

  The new Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that I serve on, 
under the guidance of Jeff Bingaman, recently held a hearing on who 
supplies the oil for the world. Is it ExxonMobil? No. Is it Conoco? No. 
Is it Phillips? No, even though we think it is because that is where we 
get our fuel when we go to the gas pump. What we found out and what 
many have known is that 80 percent of the world's oil supplies are 
controlled by governments. And they are not our Government. They are 
controlled by government or government-owned companies.
  I recently gave a speech to a group of oil producers. I talked about 
petro nationalism and a growing concern in this country that the world 
that supplies this portion of our oil can use their political muscle 
but, more importantly, the valve on the pipeline of the oil supply, to 
determine the kind of politics and international relations they want to 
have with us, knowing how we have become so dependent upon that supply.
  I hope we continue to focus on supply and availability instead of 
doing what some are saying we are going to do. We are going to punish 
the oil companies because they are making too much money. We are going 
to tax them, and we are going to tax the consumer because somehow that 
will produce more oil? No, no, no. That is politics, folks. That is, 
plain and simply, big-time politics, to show the consumer you are 
macho, that somehow you will knock down the big boys who supply the 
oil.
  Ask the questions, if you are a consumer: Will that keep oil at the 
pump? Will that keep gas available to me? Will that produce more gas to 
bring down the price? Those are the legitimate questions that ought to 
be answered when the leadership of the new Senate says: No, we will 
muscle up to the big boys and knock 'em down because somehow they may 
be price gouging. Yet investigation after investigation after 
investigation suggests that is quite the opposite. That simply is not 
happening.
  Nowhere are they going to tell you in all of this political rhetoric 
that I would hope would take us toward energy independence and a 
greater sense of energy security in our country that the new deep wells 
we are drilling in the gulf that produce or new oil supply could cost 
upward of $1 billion a well in actual expenses before the oil begins to 
flow out of that well and into the ships or into the pipelines that 
take it to the refineries that ultimately put it in the pipeline that 
get it to the consumers' pumps. And the issue goes on and on.
  I hope that in this Congress, while some will want to play politics, 
a good many will focus on the reality not only of what we have done, 
which has been very successful in the last few years--and that is the 
Energy Policy Act of 2005--but go on with the business of setting goals 
and driving incentives that move us to energy independence. It is 
phenomenally important we do that as a country. Long-term investment, 
new technologies, clean sources of energy are going to become 
increasingly important.
  But more important is that we can stand as a Nation and say we are 
independent of the political pressures of the Middle East or the 
political pressures of Venezuela or the political pressures of Central 
Europe and Russia, that now control the world's supply of oil. That is 
what Americans ought to be asking our Congress at this time. Are you 
going to ensure an increased supply? Are you going to ensure a greater 
sense of independence by the reality of where our oil comes from?
  This is not just an issue of oil. We know it is an issue of new 
technology. It is an issue of cleanness. It is an issue of nonemitting 
greenhouse gas sources of energy because today we are all about clean 
energy. And we ought to be. Yet we understand the agenda for climate 
change is going to be a punitive one, one that would obviously distort 
a market's growth toward cleaner supplies. It is called cap and trade 
or command and control instead of saying, yes, that is the old 
technology. Now let's invest in new technologies. Instead of 
penalizing, let's create the incentives that move toward new 
technologies and let us then lay down the old. That is how we cause 
America to become increasingly energy independent. I am talking climate 
change.
  The Speaker of the House yesterday did something very fascinating. 
She couldn't get the climate change she wanted out of her own committee 
so she has created a new select committee on climate change to be 
headed up by Representative Ed Markey. I remember Representative Markey 
over the years: All antinuclear, day after day, year after year. He 
lost that battle. Americans said: You are not going to go there 
anymore. You are going to start producing energy because it is clean. 
Now he has been assigned a select committee on climate change.
  Congressman Dingell, who chairs the appropriate committee, said 
select committees are about as useful as feathers on a fish. 
Congressman Dingell gets it right.
  What is useful, what is important in the argument of climate change, 
is new technology, it is incentives, it is producing energy in today's 
market that is, by any dimension, cleaner than what we produced in the 
past. You do not penalize the producer, you incentivize the producer to 
make sure that they move in the direction of clean energy. When you do 
that, you also say, as we said in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and as 
we sought to say again and again and again to the consumer, we are 
going to provide you with the tools to conserve, to become more 
efficient in your use of energy.
  All of those things, in combination over the next 10 to 15 years, 
clearly ought to allow this country to stand up and say we have 
narrowed this gap; we are more independent as a Nation today in our 
supply of energy than we were in 2007, and we are more independent 
because our Government stood up, got out of the way, incentivized,

[[Page S718]]

created those kinds of tools that the private sector could effectively 
use for an ever-increasing supply of clean energy and that we, as 
consumers, were given the tools to become more efficient in the use of 
those clean supplies of energy.
  I hope that ought to be and will become the mission of this new 
Congress, not to play games with the politics they thought brought them 
to power but to realize that the American consumer still is going to 
ask that the gas pump be full of energy, that the light switch supplies 
electricity in the morning and that, hopefully, it will come in a 
cleaner form and it won't cost any more than it has cost in the past in 
relation to cost of living and inflation.
  Those are the realities of a marketplace that we ought to help, not 
penalize. Is that politically wise to do? In the long run, it is very 
politically wise to do because then America can stand on its own two 
feet. It will not have to bow to the suppliers, such as Russia and the 
Middle East, and to let a dictator in Venezuela jerk us around because 
he has a major supply of oil. We can say: No, we supply our own. We are 
independent. We have been responsible in doing so, and we did it in a 
clean and diverse way.

  It is a phenomenal challenge for us but a challenge that is important 
to meet.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson of Nebraska). The Senator from 
Georgia.
  (The remarks of Mr. Isakson and Mr. Alexander pertaining to the 
introduction of S. 330 are located in today's Record under ``Statements 
on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.''
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Obama). The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise to talk about energy, and I start 
by reminding people, as well as my fellow Senators, that in August 
2005, the President signed an energy bill that was very comprehensive--
probably tilted toward renewable fuels, such as ethanol, and toward 
conservation, such as fuel cell cars, but also a small part of it was 
some incentives for domestic fuel, petroleum production, for refining 
and for distribution and for things of that nature.
  It was a very comprehensive bill because we were concerned about the 
price of gasoline. We were concerned about what working men and women 
of America were having to pay. We were concerned about national 
security. There were a lot of reasons for passing that bill.
  But then you get into an election year, 2006, and the impression you 
get from the election rhetoric is that we never had an energy policy, 
never passed a bill, or what we did pass was only for the big oil 
companies, and that there was no concern whatsoever about national 
security, there was no concern on the part of the Senate, when we 
passed that Energy Policy Act in 2005, about what many working men and 
women were paying for gasoline and things of that nature.
  And all of this rhetoric against it--or what was said about it, if 
anybody wanted to admit we had an energy policy passed by Congress--was 
that it was all for big oil. I wish to remind people that bill was 
overwhelmingly bipartisan. But yet during the last campaign, one 
political party talked all about giveaways to big oil, never talked 
about ethanol, never talked about conservation, that it was an energy 
bill that was just for big oil and for big corporations, making the 
other political party out to be nothing but for big corporations, as 
opposed to what our incentive was: to drive down the price of gasoline 
and to have an adequate supply of gasoline and not be dependent so much 
upon foreign sources of oil, which was our motivation.
  So I am here, now that the House of Representatives is working on a 
bill that deals with energy policy, and particularly to repeal what was 
referred to in the last election as ``sweetheart tax deals for big 
oil'' that were included in that Energy Policy Act of 2005, to say this 
bill that we passed was very well balanced for ethanol, alternative 
energy, conservation, with a small part of it for domestic oil 
production, and how intellectually dishonest it is to refer to this 
bill as a giveaway to big oil.
  I will use some statistics to back up what I am referring to. At the 
time we considered the Energy Policy Act of 2005, I was chairman of the 
Senate Finance Committee because my party was in the majority. So I 
played a central role in developing the tax title, along with my 
colleague, Senator Baucus. So, in fact, it was a very bipartisan bill. 
In fact, Senator Baucus and I produced, on a bipartisan basis, this 
comprehensive tax package that included provisions to increase domestic 
energy production, increase energy efficiency, and increase the 
development of alternative and renewable energies.
  On the whole, I think the effort was a success. All you have to do to 
know it was a success is to look at the explosion in the building of 
ethanol plants throughout the country--most of them in the Midwest but 
throughout the country--as people are going to alternative energies, 
renewable fuels now because ethanol is made from crops that are growing 
from year to year. So I think the effort was very much a success, and 
that is one small part of it being a success.
  The Senate tax title was supported unanimously--I wish to emphasize 
unanimously--because there, at that time, were 11 Republicans and 9 
Democrats on the committee. It came out of our committee unanimously. 
This bill, which during the last election was talked about as a 
giveaway to big oil, came out of our committee unanimously and 
eventually passed the Senate 85 to 15. And the conference agreement, 
ironing out the differences between the House and the Senate, passed by 
a margin of 74 to 26.
  So throughout the whole process it was bipartisan, that this was the 
answer to the energy problems facing the Nation--not that it was the 
end-all and be-all, but it was a very comprehensive effort and a 
successful effort to solve the energy problems of our Nation.
  The entire tax package that was in this bill, the Energy Policy Act 
of 2005, had a budget score of $11.1 billion over 10 years.
  According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, $2.6 
billion or 18 percent of the package was for oil and gas production, 
refining, and distribution. Distribution isn't always by the big oil 
companies. So 18 percent--that is why I said our bill, passed in 2005, 
signed by the President, was overwhelmingly tilted toward renewable 
fuels and toward conservation, not toward domestic petroleum 
production. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the tax title 
of the Energy Policy Act actually raised taxes on oil and gas companies 
by at least $224 million.
  Understand, this was described in the last election as a giveaway to 
big oil. Yet nonpartisan staff said that oil and gas companies ended up 
paying $224 million in new taxes. In the last election, the tax title 
was characterized as tax giveaways to big oil, anywhere from $9 billion 
to $14 billion. How do you get $14 billion, if you want to say it was 
100 percent for big oil instead of 18 percent? How can you say a bill 
that was scored at $11.1 billion could end up being a giveaway of $14 
billion? It doesn't add up. And figures don't lie.
  At a time of record high gas prices last year, the other side accused 
the Republican majority of failure of leadership. They said it was time 
to rewrite the Energy bill and stop the billion dollar tax giveaways 
for big oil, the same kind of misleading insinuations I have been 
referring to on another issue they had in the last campaign, about the 
fact that we ought to negotiate with drug companies to get prescription 
drug prices down, when we are already doing that, as I pointed out in 
some speeches last week. For the 24 most-used drugs by seniors, the 
plans that are negotiating with the drug companies have negotiated 
prices down an average of 35 percent.
  Getting back to energy, during the same campaign cycle, Members on 
the other side sold the taxpayers a bill of goods. They committed to 
repealing all the tax giveaways to big oil that the Republican Congress 
included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which ended up with $224 
million more coming in from oil and gas. With the results of the 
November election, I presume they believe they were given a mandate 
from the voters to take away all of those ``tax giveaways''--the words 
they used--in that bill. We heard the arguments over and over, both 
here on the Senate floor and across the country on the campaign trail. 
But now that the debt has come due, it is time for the new Democratic 
majority to deliver on

[[Page S719]]

their promises to the American people. So what have they come up with 
to repeal? How much money are they going to take back from big oil to 
alleviate consumer pain at the pump? Just one provision--that is right, 
one provision.
  After all the demagoguery against our party and the Energy bill that 
passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, supposedly because of 
ties to big oil, are they accusing the Democrats who voted for it of 
ties to big oil as well? And they are going to repeal what? One single 
tax provision enacted in the Energy Policy Act signed by the President 
in August of 2005. Of course, that is only half the story. It turns out 
this outrageous ``tax giveaway'' to big oil is scored by the 
Congressional Budget Office to save the U.S. Treasury $104 million over 
10 years, not the $14 billion that was the outside figure used during 
the campaign, not $1.4 billion but $104 million.
  I am a family farmer from New Hartford, IA. I know $104 million is 
still a lot of money. But it turns out to be less than 1 percent of the 
entire package of the energy tax incentives included in that Energy 
Policy Act that came out of my committee on a unanimous vote, all 
Republicans and all Democrats, and passed the Senate in an 
overwhelmingly bipartisan manner. So in a desperate attempt to increase 
the size of the tax penalty on domestic oil and gas producers, they 
have also included the repeal of the oil and gas industry's eligibility 
for the manufacturing income tax deduction. That is not just for oil 
and gas; that is for all manufacturing in America. This was another 
bill, in 2004, that passed overwhelmingly with a bipartisan majority. 
The American JOBS Creation Act of 2004 was a new law supported by 69 
Senators--that is bipartisan--that contained far-reaching measures to 
revive the manufacturing base in America because of outsourcing.
  We did that by cutting taxes so that the cost of capital is 
competitive with the cost of capital overseas, so we don't lose jobs 
overseas. We also created incentives for people to invest in the United 
States instead of investing overseas. It devoted tax benefits to 
American manufacturers in the form of a 3-percentage-point rate cut 
subject to the payment of wages to their employees. If they didn't hire 
more people, they didn't get the benefit. Remember, it was called the 
Americans JOBS Creation Act. This manufacturing tax cut goes to large 
and small corporations, family-held S corporations, partnerships, sole 
proprietors, family farmers, and cooperatives. If you manufacture here, 
you get the tax cut here. If you manufacture overseas, you don't get 
the tax cut. It was only for manufacturing in the United States, and it 
was only for U.S. manufacturers that paid employees' wages. It was not 
for manufacturing offshore and it was not for folks who only 
manufacture and hire overseas.
  In defining U.S. domestic manufacturing, Congress included in the 
definition all things that are extracted or grown, including what the 
family farmers grow. That means that all domestic minerals and the 
people who produce domestic minerals receive benefits. And that would 
include extraction of domestic--meaning here in America--oil and gas 
and the production of products made out of our own oil and gas.
  It seems very strange to me that if you want to become less dependent 
upon foreign oil, the first thing you would do, in your first 100 days 
being in the majority for the first time in 12 years, is to increase 
the taxes by 3 percentage points on domestic production of oil and gas, 
which was part of the American JOBS Creation Act of 2004, which passed 
in a bipartisan majority in the Senate.
  In addition, the House proposal also increases the taxes on all 
refinery products. That means your home heating oil and your farmer's 
diesel used to run the machines that harvest the crops. In addition, 
fertilizer is a primary product of natural gas, so midwestern family 
farmers are going to be hurt and not helped by any of this proposal. 
That is what is coming out of the other body to this body to consider. 
Maybe because it is represented by so many people from the big cities 
of America, they don't realize food grows on farms. It doesn't grow in 
a supermarket. Maybe they don't realize what they are doing to the 
American farmer. But we don't need the cost of our anhydrous ammonia, 
which last summer was $550 a ton compared to about $250 a ton 2 years 
ago--so we have fertilizer to grow our crops--to be driven up still 
more.

  In the 100 days of the new majority, this is what they are doing to 
the American consumer, the American farmer. All of this in the new 
House majority so they can rewrite and adopt a campaign promise to cut 
tax benefits to big oil. It is an example of a problem they made up 
that now they have to deliver on. In the process, they are going to 
hurt the family farmers, hurt the consumers, and cut out one of the 
things this body adopted in the JOBS Creation Act of 2004, to create 
manufacturing jobs in America, incentives to invest in America so that 
we don't have outsourcing.
  If they wanted to get back at Exxon--that is big oil, if there ever 
was big oil--they missed the mark. The people who produce here in the 
United States are the same people you go to church with and your kids 
see in school. If you want to become more dependent upon foreign oil, 
then you should be happy with this proposal coming out of the first 100 
days of the new majority in the new House of Representatives. If you 
want to create incentives for the production of U.S. lower 48 domestic 
oil and gas, then this quite obviously is the wrong policy, all for a 
campaign gimmick, all for campaign pandering. That is not right, to 
teach the family farmers and the consumers of America, who are already 
paying enough for their prices and are suffering from high energy 
costs, to do more by taking away this 3-percent point tax incentive we 
gave for investment in America to create jobs in America. If it is made 
in America, you get the benefit of it. If it is made overseas, you 
don't get the benefit.
  Granted, there were also three provisions relating to royalty relief 
that were included in their bill. Two were included in the bipartisan 
Energy Policy Act, and one seeks to remedy an error caused by the 
Clinton administration bureaucrats in the Interior Department of 10 
years ago. I will leave those discussions to the people who are best 
prepared to answer those, my colleagues on the Energy and Natural 
Resources Committee, who have jurisdiction and expertise in this area.
  I also point out to my colleagues and constituents that I am not 
beholden to big oil or the energy industry. In the years I have been in 
the Senate, I have battled big oil, because they hate renewable fuels 
that we call ethanol. They don't want you burning anything in your gas 
tank that doesn't come out of their oil wells. They don't want you 
burning in your gas tank those things that come off the farmers' fields 
in the way of corn from which we make ethanol, also for all of the 
sorts of things that they don't like, what we call energy conservation 
and forcing electric utilities to use renewable portfolio standards 
within the industry. I have supported biodiesel. I have supported 
ethanol. I have supported renewable portfolio standards--all things 
that big corporations in America don't like. But we have been 
successful in doing it.
  I have relentlessly chased the bad players in the petroleum industry 
at all levels, both legal and illegal. As chairman of the Senate 
Finance Committee, we closed over $10 billion in tax provisions that 
the President signed into law, shutting down fuel fraud and folks 
stealing fuel excise taxes from the Highway Trust Fund. These are real 
provisions, collecting $10 billion of taxes that were evaded that will 
no longer be evaded.
  So what are the facts concerning the track record of the previous 
Congress and the President of the United States on energy policy and 
promoting renewable and alternative energy, and what is wrong with the 
rhetoric of the last campaign that led people to believe it was 
something different than we ended up passing? We extended and expanded 
the production tax credit for electricity produced from renewable 
sources such as wind, biomass, geothermal, and landfill gas. We enacted 
tax credits for the purchase of hybrid fuel cells and advanced lean 
burn diesel vehicles. We enacted incentives for the production and use 
of ethanol and biodiesel and the infrastructure to dispense that fuel.
  The distinguished Presiding Officer contributed the idea behind doing 
that, so we would set up more biodiesel pumps at stations through the 
30-percent tax credit that the Senator from

[[Page S720]]

Illinois thought of. I thank him for that idea. I was very happy to 
work with him on that. That is the distinguished Presiding Officer. We 
enacted the first ever renewable fuel standard for ethanol and 
biodiesel that has led to fantastic growth in the industry.
  With regard to energy efficiency, we enacted incentives for 
efficiency improvement for new and existing homes and commercial 
buildings and for energy-efficient home appliances.
  According to the clock in the other body, we are still somewhere 
within the first 100 days of the new Democratic majority, and again we 
see another example of legislative action not living up to campaign 
rhetoric. A word of caution to voters across America: Beware of the 
goods that you might be sold during an election. That applies to both 
Republicans and Democrats as far as I am concerned. In the case of 
repealing the ``big oil tax giveaways''--those are words used in the 
last election--from the Energy Policy Act, it turns out in fact to be a 
pig in a poke.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada is recognized.
  Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, we are debating an important piece of 
legislation. The American people are rightly frustrated with the 
process Congress uses to consider. That is to say, it is not done in 
the light of day and with full transparency. They believe lobbyists 
have too much influence on this institution. Last year, we tried to 
pass a lobbying reform bill to help clean up some of the ways that we 
do legislation around here. We were not able to come to an agreement 
between the House and Senate, so there is another effort underway this 
year.
  I think this legislation is very important. Republicans support 
reform. We have been offering relative amendments to make Congress more 
accountable to the American people. More transparent. These amendments 
will address the problems that have existed for some time. The 
majority, however, is trying to end the debate on this bill. They are 
not willing to let the Senate consider some very important amendments 
that will improve how Congress handles the people's business. I will 
mention a couple of my own amendments to this legislation in just a 
moment. I would say that the majority would be right to cut off debate, 
if Republicans were strictly trying to obstruct passage of this bill. 
Then their parliamentary move would, I agree, be appropriate. But the 
minority is not being obstructionist. We have legitimate amendments 
that deserve to be debated and voted on. Senators deserve to be heard. 
It is not right for the majority to try to railroad this piece of 
legislation through this body without giving Members their right to 
have amendments debated. Particularly when those amendments are not 
being used as a delaying tactic. I simply do not believe that is the 
way this institution should be run. That is why, last night, 45 
Senators voted against what is called cloture. That would have brought 
debate to a close and would have brought any attempt to improve this 
legislation to a close.
  Let me give you two examples of legitimate amendments that have been 
offered and why they are important to be debated and voted on.
  The first amendment I want to talk about addresses provisions where 
this bill falls short, particularly with respect to transparency and to 
allow the American people to observe how this Congress operates. 
Section 102 of this bill is an example of where the bill falls short. I 
commend the authors of the legislation for including this section. The 
intent is to stop the conferees from putting unrelated pieces of 
legislation in a conference report. Too often in the past conferees 
have inserted provisions in the conference that were completely 
unrelated to the bill. This simply is not the way the Congress should 
be legislating. The Senate should not bypass the regular legislative 
process. When we do, it means we are passing legislation, in some 
cases, without even holding a hearing. This process also denies 
Senators the opportunity to debate and offer amendments to improve 
unrelated provisions. But the most offensive part of this is that it is 
done outside of the public's view.
  In a democracy such as ours, Congress should do its business in the 
full light of day. The entire Senate should consider, debate, and amend 
legislation in full view of the American public. I often hear from 
constituents who have concerns about legislation we are debating on the 
Senate floor. That feedback has always been important to me. I have 
always appreciated Nevadans who have taken the time to participate in 
the legislative process. So when we insert unrelated matters into a 
conference report, we deny the American people the chance to observe 
what we are doing, to participate in that process, and to be heard. 
That is why I fully support the intent of section 102 of the bill 
because the intent is to fix that which is broken.
  In my review of this section, and after consulting with the Senate 
Parliamentarian's Office, I don't believe that the current language in 
this bill will work. This section will not change what we are saying 
needs to be changed. What do I mean? First and foremost, section 102 
states that a Senator may object to a conference report that contains 
provisions that were not considered by the House or the Senate. That 
sounds good. As written, this sentence reads how rule XXVIII actually 
operates; that is to say that the point of order is raised against the 
entire conference report and not the offending provision or 
objectionable item in a conference report.

  While the intent of section 102 is to allow a Senator to object to a 
single provision that is added into the bill, the bill is not written 
to allow that. My amendment makes it clear that the point of order is 
to be raised against an individual item that is in the conference 
report and not the conference report itself. In other words, this 
small, simple change is absolutely critical to the process because if 
you want to strip something out of the bill, without my amendment you 
cannot strip a single provision out of the bill. You raise a point of 
order and it brings the entire conference report down. Why is that 
important? Well, let me tell you why it is important.
  For instance, we had a port security bill last year. There was an 
unrelated item put into the port security bill. There may have been 
objections to that item, but if one had raised the point of order, it 
would have brought the whole port security bill down. Nobody wanted to 
do that. It was an important piece of legislation. Without my 
amendment, that is the way we would continue to operate.
  But that is not what section 102 in this bill states. Its intent is 
to be able to surgically go in and cut out a piece that is added in the 
dead of night, behind closed doors, in a conference report--the types 
of things that, frankly, most Americans find objectionable. So this is 
one of the reasons that we should not be passing this legislation until 
the Senate has carefully considered each provision of this bill. We 
should allow for amendments to go forward, to be debated. We should 
make sure that we get things in this bill right before it leaves the 
Senate, so that when it is joined with the House's bill, we have done 
the best possible job to ensure that we cleaned up the way we do our 
business.
  I have another amendment that I want to talk about. This illustrates 
the other important point of why it is important to allow Senators to 
have their time with amendments.
  The minority--the Republicans in the Senate--want legitimate 
amendments to improve this legislation. I believe we should have the 
right to offer those amendments.
  The second amendment I want to talk about is to ensure that our men 
and women in the military, those serving in harm's way, remain our top 
budget priority. I want to speak about protecting defense spending from 
being raided and used for nondefense purposes.
  Over the past several years, there have been several congressional 
scandals that have undermined public confidence in government. It is my 
sincere hope that this legislation before us will be the first of many 
steps to restore that confidence. The message to both parties last 
November was that Congress has to change the way we operate. The 
American people will no longer accept some of the practices of the 
past, nor should they. It is up to this body to change our practices, 
to reform how Congress does the people's business. We should ensure 
that our dealings are transparent, that we are accountable, and that we 
are honest with the American people.

[[Page S721]]

  The tradition of America is that we rise to the occasion. Americans 
have a history of meeting the challenges that we face together. Each 
generation has met obstacles and overcome them. For Congress's part, we 
must be honest and straightforward with the American people about the 
nature of the challenges facing our Nation.
  Unfortunately, in some respects, Congress has not lived up to its end 
of the bargain. We have been using sleight of hand and budget gimmicks 
to mask our out-of-control spending habits. Over the past 5 years, 
Congress has been underfunding defense in the regular appropriations 
process in order to shift some of those funds into what are called 
other discretionary programs that are nondefense items.
  The game being played, with a wink and a nod, is that if we underfund 
defense in the regular appropriations process, we will then make 
defense whole with what are called emergency supplemental bills. In 
some instances, Congress has shifted as much as $11.5 billion from 
defense to nondefense spending in just 1 single year. We know that 
emergency spending has increased substantially in each of the last 5 
years.
  I have a chart to illustrate this. In the years 1990 to 1993, under 
the first President Bush, we had a total of $115 billion in emergency 
supplementals. During the Clinton administration, the total was just 
about the same, $115 billion. Since President Bush has been in office, 
there have been a total of $585 billion in emergency supplementals. 
Now, we have had 9/11, Katrina, and we have had the war against Islamic 
extremists around the world, including the wars in Afghanistan and 
Iraq, that account for most of that spending but not for all of it.
  This increased reliance on supplementals coincides exactly with the 
same time period in which defense has been underfunded. The effects of 
this gimmick are not felt just in 1 year either. Because of the way we 
do budgeting, called baseline budgeting, money that is shifted from 
defense in 1 year is really a permanent shift in funding. And, as a 
result, a $1 billion shift represents not only a shift of $1 billion 
this year, but that is put in the baseline next year and adds up 
cumulatively in perpetuity.
  Let me point out exactly how this works and illustrate it. In 2002, 
$1.9 billion in new spending was shifted from the Department of 
Defense. That new spending is built into the baseline in the next year. 
The green part of the graph is from the previous year. The red part on 
top of that is the amount that defense was underfunded and shifted into 
other programs that year. Take that and shift it into the next year, 
and on and on, where we have a total of 4 years later built into the 
baseline the $29 billion that we have shifted from defense into other 
programs. That is one of the reasons spending is out of control in 
Washington, DC. What was labeled as defense spending is not spent on 
defense and is then being made up in supplemental appropriations bills. 
Which is a clever way to disguise increased spending in other places. 
People in Washington have talked about spending around here. They say 
we have held the line on spending, except for defense-related items. 
That is not true. We have actually been playing a smoke and mirrors 
game, and this chart illustrates that.
  I believe what we are doing is not honest with the American people, 
and we have the annual budget deficits as a result of that. I mentioned 
before that it is important for us to be able to offer amendments. I 
would not be able to offer an amendment if cloture is invoked on this 
bill, and we should not cut off debate. This would be considered a 
nongermane amendment. It would not survive cloture, even though the 
point of this bill is to require legislative transparency. We are 
trying to make Congress' actions transparent and to clean up the budget 
process, however, the majority is trying to cut off debate on these 
critical reforms.

  I am going to have one last chart to demonstrate the effect of this 
budget gimmick. The total effect of underfunding defense and playing 
this game has cost the American people. This last chart, when one 
totals the cost of this gimmick up, is $84 billion. We have shifted $84 
billion by using these budget gimmicks. $84 billion that was shifted 
from defense to nondefense programs. Then we backfill the defense 
accounts with supplemental appropriations.
  We need to have honest budgeting around this place. We need to be 
honest with the American people. If we are going to appropriate money 
for defense, let's do it for defense. If it has to be for some other 
program, let's be honest with the American people and stop playing 
these budget gimmick games.
  If we are going to have transparency in Government, we should have 
transparency in Government. Accountability in government. That is what 
this bill is supposed to be about. It is what we are telling the 
American people that we intend to do. This amendment, along with the 
one I discussed earlier, are very important to ensure that we end the 
games and that we end the gimmicks. This amendment ensures that we tell 
the truth to the American people.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Maine.

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