[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 175 (Tuesday, November 13, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14257-S14273]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            PRESIDENTAL VETO

  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, earlier today, President Bush vetoed the 
Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill. I 
wish I could say I was surprised but, frankly, few actions by this 
President surprise me anymore. This is a good bill, a bipartisan bill, 
a bill that cleared both Houses with clear, strong majorities. In fact, 
the first one cleared here by 75 votes. It is a bill that reflects the 
critical education, health, job training needs of our country, 
especially for Americans who are at the bottom rungs of the socio-
economic ladder. The bill was endorsed by more than 1,000--actually 
1,075, to be exact--health, education, social service, and labor 
organizations in this country. There are disability groups in this 
letter, disease advocacy groups, school groups, community action 
partnerships, religious groups--millions of people across America are 
represented on this letter. This morning President Bush turned his back 
on all of them.
  He seems to have no problem pouring billions of dollars into Iraq for 
schools, hospitals, job programs, health needs, but when it comes to 
those priorities here in America, the President says no. After spending 
all these billions of dollars on schools, hospitals, job programs, and 
health needs in Iraq, it is time to start investing some of that money 
here in America.
  The President insists we have to stick to exactly the top number in 
his budget. Frankly, if we did that, we would be cutting programs such 
as the Low Income Heating Energy Assistance Program for the elderly at 
a time when we know fuel prices are going to be extremely high this 
winter.
  The President completely zeroed out the social services block grant 
and cut the community services block grant by 50 percent.
  Under the President's budget, we would be cutting the National Cancer 
Institute. At a time when we are starting to make some progress in the 
fight against cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and so many other 
things, he cuts funding for the NIH.
  Again, we need to put more money into special education to help some 
of our beleaguered property tax payers in our States.
  We have a backlog of several hundred thousand cases in Social 
Security. People who have paid in all their lives to Social Security, 
if they have a problem and they have an appeal pending or a case to be 
heard--there are 700,000 backlogged. It is about a year-and-a-half wait 
right now to get Social Security. It is unconscionable. We put money in 
there to reduce the backlog.
  We wanted to fund more community health centers as one of the great 
things we have done in this country to help people who are not getting 
their health care needs attended to, to get them at their community 
health care centers. It has done a great job nationally.
  We put more money into the Head Start Program. And No Child Left 
Behind--we put more money in there to meet our needs in title I 
schools, teacher training.
  These are all provisions that were in our bill. As I noted before, it 
was bipartisan. I worked very closely with Senator Specter, our ranking 
member. There were dozens of provisions and funding increases in the 
bill that were requested specifically by Republicans, those on the 
other side of the aisle who requested that we increase funding in these 
areas. Unfortunately, it seems Mr. Bush is more interested in provoking 
a confrontation than in governing responsibly. He recently dismissed 
the funding in this bill as ``social spending,'' as though somehow it 
pays for ice cream socials or Saturday-night socials or something such 
as that--social spending. I never heard it referred to like that. It is 
out of bounds, it is out of touch, it shows how isolated this President 
has become.
  Every dime of additional funding in this bill goes to bedrock 
essential programs and services that have been shortchanged in the last 
few years. I mentioned them: community health centers, Head Start, NIH, 
special education, student aid, social services block grant and 
community services

[[Page S14258]]

block grant, Pell grants. These are all things that have been 
shortchanged. The President's budget would cut NIH, LIHEAP, special 
education, and eliminate the community services block grant, job 
training, housing and emergency food assistance for our most needy 
citizens. Apparently, Mr. Bush sees this as frivolous social spending. 
I couldn't disagree more.
  We have to keep the President's veto this morning in context. During 
the 6 years Republicans controlled Congress, Mr. Bush did not veto a 
single appropriations bill, including many that went over his budget. 
He never vetoed one of them. Now Democrats are in charge. Yes, we have 
gone over budget in some of the areas I mentioned and not only with the 
support but the encouragement of Republican Members who wanted to add 
more money. I guess because the Democrats run Congress now, the 
President says he will veto them. He did. He vetoed the bill this 
morning, but he never vetoed one in 6 years even though they were above 
his request. It smacks of the most blatant form of partisanship and 
politics. It kind of goes beyond the pale.
  A few weeks ago the President sent up a new supplemental spending 
bill. We will be working on that this week. I don't know if we will 
pass it this week or when we come back in December. It is more than 
$196 billion, mostly for Iraq. The Congressional Budget Office now 
estimates that Mr. Bush's war in Iraq will cost a staggering $1.9 
trillion in the next decade. Yet he vetoed this bill, over $12 billion 
in funding for education, health, biomedical research, and other 
domestic priorities.
  You ask: $1.9 trillion, $12 billion, what does it mean? Look at it 
this way: Do away with all the zeroes. It means Mr. Bush is asking for 
$1,900 for Iraq. Yet he vetoed this bill because we spent $12 more than 
what he wanted. That shows misplaced priorities: $12 billion a month 
for the war in Iraq, yet he vetoed this bill which is $12 billion for a 
whole year.
  What is most disappointing about the President's veto this morning is 
his total unwillingness to compromise. Any time we work out bills, we 
compromise. That is the art of democracy. We compromise. No one around 
here ever gets everything he or she wants, but we make compromises. We 
do it in committee; we do it on the floor of the Senate. We do it 
between the House and the Senate. Then when all is said and done and we 
work in conference, usually the President will work with us to work out 
problems. This is where the White House is. Where do we meet? The 
President never came to our conference--I shouldn't say the President 
didn't, but his people never came to our conference to offer 
compromises, where we might meet halfway.
  When the President sent down his veto message, he mentioned two 
things about our bill: One, it had the lifting of his ban on stem cell 
research; two, it spent more money than he wanted. I thought a 
compromise might be: OK, we will take off the stem cell stuff, and you 
agree to the spending priorities we have. We voluntarily, to try to 
meet the President halfway, said: OK, we will take off the stem cell 
issue, even though Senator Specter and I both believe strongly in it. 
It passed the committee with only three dissenting votes. The Senate 
has spoken at least twice in support of an embryonic stem cell bill to 
take off the handcuffs the President has put on scientists. But even 
that wasn't enough.
  Then we went to conference. We thought: OK, will the President now 
try to meet us somewhat on the spending part? The answer was no. It was 
his way or the highway. We either agree totally with the President or 
he is going to veto it and the White House will put pressure on the 
House because that is where the bill goes for an override, to keep them 
from overriding his veto.
  It is sad the President has taken that position. Under the 
Constitution, Congress does have the power to override a veto. It 
happened last week with the water resources bill. He vetoed it. Both 
the House and Senate voted over two-thirds, as is constitutionally 
required, to override the veto. We could do it on this bill that funds 
education, everything from Head Start, elementary education with title 
I, No Child Left Behind, elementary and secondary education, college 
with Pell grants, student loans, forgiveness of loans if you go into 
certain occupations such as medically underserved areas, legal 
services, or become a prosecuting attorney--the type of occupations 
that don't pay a lot of money but are needed in our country.
  On health, especially all the biomedical research that was in that 
bill for NIH, the money for the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention for making sure we get more flu vaccine this year 
stockpiled, not to mention all of the efforts that CDC is doing in 
stockpiling other vaccines in case of a terrorist incident, something 
that might happen--we hope it doesn't, but we have to be prepared for 
it--that is in this bill he vetoed.
  I mentioned things such as low-income heating energy assistance for 
low-income elderly. This is all in this bill. Now it is up to the House 
whether they will vote to override the veto. It will be interesting to 
see how many House Members would vote to override the President on the 
water resources bill but would not vote to override a bill that deals 
with health, education, community block grants, NIH, the Centers for 
Disease Control. It will be interesting.
  The Water Resources Development Act was an important bill. I was 
strongly supportive of it. It goes basically to meet one of the urgent 
infrastructure needs of the country: waterways, to make sure we upgrade 
our locks and dams and make sure they are adequate to the environmental 
needs and river transportation needs for the next century. It is vital. 
The Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor appropriations bill 
is sort of the counterpart of that in terms of the human 
infrastructure, making sure we have the best educated populace, that we 
meet the health care needs of people, that we invest in cutting edge 
research, that we have good job retraining programs.
  We just had a case where a Maytag plant, after all these years, 
closed in Newton, IA. We need job retraining programs. That is in this 
bill the President vetoed. It is human infrastructure needs.
  It will be interesting to see how many House Members vote to override 
the President when it comes to the physical infrastructure but now will 
not vote to override the President when it comes to the human 
infrastructure. I hope it is very few. I hope we get the same number of 
votes to override the President's veto on this Education, Health and 
Human Services, and Labor appropriations bill as we got on the water 
resources bill.
  It is a sad day that the President would veto this bill. We went out 
of our way to meet him halfway, but he said absolutely not. It is his 
way or nothing else.
  That is not the way we do things. The President is not acting 
responsibly, quite frankly, in this area. I don't know what we can do. 
If the House overrides the veto, I am pretty certain we would have the 
votes here to override the veto. We would have to wait for the House to 
act first. I hope they do, and I hope we get it. I hope we vote to 
override the veto. But until then, we have to see what the House is 
going to do.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


           President's Veto of Labor, Hhs Appropriations Bill

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, they say in life you can really judge a 
person's values by where they put their wealth. Certainly, we all love 
our families, and we think nothing of spending a lot of money on our 
children. We all value our health, and we go to great extent to spend 
whatever is necessary to have a healthy lifestyle and to live on for 
many years.
  The President, today, had a chance to demonstrate his values with his 
veto pen. He had a chance to decide what priorities we should have in 
America

[[Page S14259]]

for our future. We sent him a bill called the Labor, Health and Human 
Services appropriations bill.
  There was a venerable Congressman from Kentucky named Bill Natcher. 
He served for many years and distinguished himself as never having 
missed a rollcall vote in his life. I will not get into that side 
story, but his responsibility in the House Appropriations Committee was 
to chair the subcommittee that generated this spending bill, the Labor, 
Health and Human Services bill, the bill that includes education, 
health care, medical research--programs that really directly reach the 
people of America. He called it the people's bill. He used to wear 
these starched white shirts and dark-blue suits and silver-gray ties. 
He looked like a Senator. He had the gray hair and would stand there 
and say: This is the people's bill. The people should vote for it. And 
they did. Overwhelmingly, House Members--Democrats and Republicans--
would vote for it because this bill really does reach families 
everywhere across America.
  President Bush decided to veto this bill today. He vetoed the bill, 
which is rare. Incidentally, he never vetoed a bill until this year. 
Now, he has, after a long search, found his veto pen and is using it 
frequently. He vetoed this bill this year because it called for 4 
percent more spending than he had asked for--$6 billion.
  Madam President, $6 billion is a lot of money, for sure, but not by 
Federal budget standards. The President, before he vetoed this bill, 
signed the Defense appropriations bill. That bill was 10 percent over 
his request, and yet he signed it. When it came to this bill that 
reaches families and people across America, he said no.
  Of course, this President, who says we cannot afford $6 billion for 
programs for the American people, is asking us for $196 billion for 
programs for the people of Iraq--$196 billion. It is hard to understand 
how we cannot afford health care in America, cancer research in 
America, education in America, worker protection in America, homeless 
shelters for veterans in America, yet $196 billion for Iraq. I said it 
before. This President gets up every morning in the White House, opens 
the window, looks outside and sees Iraq. He doesn't see America, 
because if he would see America, he would understand the American 
people across this Nation value so much the priorities he vetoed today.

  Yesterday we celebrated Veterans Day. We acknowledged what the men 
and women who have served this country mean to us, our history, and our 
future. There were a lot of good speeches given by great politicians 
talking about how much we value our veterans. Those speeches had hardly 
been finished when the President returned to the White House to veto 
this bill.
  This bill would have provided funding for employment and health 
programs for veterans. It is hard to believe in America that one out of 
four homeless people is a veteran. You see them on the streets of your 
town, large and small; you see them standing on the highways with 
little cardboard signs. One out of four of them is a veteran. This bill 
tried to provide counseling, shelter, ways to give these veterans a 
place to sleep at night. The President vetoed it and said it was too 
darn much spending.
  This bill would have provided $228 million for veterans employment, 
$9.5 million for traumatic brain injury, and $23.6 million for the 
Homeless Veterans Reintegration Programs.
  Last night on television I saw a program. James Gandolfini, who was 
the star of ``The Sopranos,'' had a special documentary; I believe it 
was called ``Alive Day.'' I think that was the name of it, but you 
couldn't miss it if you saw it because he invited veterans on this 
program to be interviewed, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who had 
been injured. These young men and women came and talked about their 
love of this country, their service to our Nation and what they had 
been through. This beautiful young woman who had been a lieutenant in 
the Army had a rocket-propelled grenade explode right next to her, 
tearing off her right arm and shoulder. She now has a prosthetic arm 
that appears to be real but of course does not even have function to 
it, but it is what she uses. It was a touching moment when she talked 
about what her future would be, this beautiful young woman, this 
disabled veteran.
  There were many amputees--some of them double amputees--talking about 
trying to put their lives back together. Some of the most painful 
episodes involve victims of traumatic brain injury. There was one young 
man with his mother sitting next to him. They showed before pictures, 
when he was a hard-charging soldier, happy go lucky and a lot of fun, 
who then sustained a serious traumatic brain injury and now is in a 
wheelchair. He hopes the day will come when he can once again walk and 
run. It is hard to imagine we could give tribute to those veterans 
yesterday and veto a bill today that would have spent just $9.5 million 
for traumatic brain injury programs, but the President did that this 
morning.
  The President came to Washington and said he wanted to be the 
education President. We remember it well because he came up with a new 
term we hadn't heard before called No Child Left Behind; he persuaded 
leaders on both sides of the aisle to vote for it and produced a new 
education program for America. This bill provided money to make that 
program work. It is not enough to identify the problems in our schools 
and the difficulties facing our children and our students; you need 
help to make certain you have the best teachers in the classroom, the 
proper class size, the right equipment at the school.
  We also understand early childhood education is essential for kids to 
succeed. Show me a family where the mom and dad focus on teaching that 
child to read and read to the child and take the child out and speak to 
them in adult terms and I will show you a child probably destined to be 
pretty good in kindergarten. A lot of kids don't have that good 
fortune; mom and dad are off to work. So the Head Start Program is a 
way to give them a fighting chance. The bill the President vetoed today 
included more than $7 billion for the Head Start Program, increasing it 
by $200 million from last year. The President said we can't afford to 
increase the Head Start Program.
  The bill also included $18 billion for higher education initiatives 
and student financial aid. How many working families do you know with a 
child they want to see go to the best school in America, struggling 
with the idea of how they will pay for it and the debt they will carry 
out of school? We put money in this bill to help those families help 
those students, and the President said we can't afford it.
  The President's budget would have provided title I funds for 117,000 
fewer students and cut the number of new teachers in classrooms by 
8,000. So the President says it is wasteful for us to provide title I 
funds to help children from disadvantaged families--117,000 more--and 
new teachers and classrooms by 8,000. At the same time, he wants $196 
billion for a war in Iraq not paid for.
  In Illinois, almost 3,500 students will be left behind by the 
President's veto, and 200 teachers will not be hired. Will that be 
better for those schools, those families, those children? Of course 
not.
  The appropriations bill the President vetoed also included $11.3 
billion for special ed, kids with special challenges who need special 
help and with that help have a chance to succeed. The President said we 
spend too much money on those kids and he vetoed it.
  Had Congress provided what the President requested, Federal funding 
for disabled children would be lower by an average of $117 per child. I 
have been in schools with special education classes, and I have watched 
the special care those children need and receive, often one-on-one 
help. If that teacher is caring and competent, the child has a chance--
just a chance--to come out of the shadows of darkness and have a 
future. That is what this bill is about--a bill the President says 
America cannot afford.
  In the area of health care--this is one I think touches me and most 
people--we included $29 billion for medical research at 27 institutes 
and centers at the National Institutes of Health. Senator Mikulski 
knows all about this. This is in her neck of the woods in Maryland. The 
National Institutes of Health and what they achieve, we put in this 
bill $29 billion and included $1.4 billion more than the President 
requested for medical research at NIH.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, would the Senator from Illinois yield 
for a question?

[[Page S14260]]

  Mr. DURBIN. I am happy to yield.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Is the Senator aware the President's budget actually 
cut NIH by $310 million? He cut the National Institutes of Health 
projects by $310 million, wiping out research opportunities for those 
young scientists with breakthrough ideas, as well as those which were 
ready for advancements; is the Senator aware of that?
  Mr. DURBIN. I am aware of it. I will tell my colleagues the Senator 
from Maryland probably recalls that over the last 10 years or so, this 
has kind of been an area of real bipartisan cooperation. We may fight 
like cats and dogs over everything else, but we said: Come on, when it 
comes to the National Institutes of Health and medical research, 
Democrats get sick and Republicans get sick, too, and our kids do as 
well, so let's all join hands and promise we are going to increase the 
spending for medical research, not just to find the cures but also, as 
the Senator from Maryland says, to build up the infrastructure of 
talented professionals who will devote their lives to this medical 
research. The President says: No, we can't afford it.
  Madam President, $1.4 billion, we can't afford to spend $1.4 billion 
more on cancer research, heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson's, 
Alzheimer's? We can't afford that? Well, for $12 billion to $15 billion 
a month, we can obviously afford a war in Iraq, but the President can't 
find money for the war against disease and death in this country. That 
is truly unfortunate.
  Since I see my colleague from Maryland, I will surrender the floor 
and give her a chance to speak. I hope this veto today will not go 
unnoticed. Elections have consequences. In the last election, the 
American people said: We are going to give you--the Democrats--a 
majority in the Senate and a majority in the House. Now do something 
with it.
  We have tried. We have succeeded in many areas. But we have run into 
the opposition of this President more often than not. When we tried to 
change the course and policy of the war in Iraq, the President used his 
first veto as President of the United States to veto on foreign policy, 
to veto that decision. When we tried to change his horrendous decision 
to stop medical research involving stem cells, he used his veto pen 
again. When we tried to provide children's health insurance for 
millions of kids across America who are not poor enough to qualify for 
Medicaid but not lucky enough to have health insurance in their family, 
he used his veto pen again. He used it again today.
  Why is it a recurring theme that we see this President stopping 
efforts by this Democratic Congress to address the issues people care 
about: Health care, making sure we have the best; medical research to 
find those cures; making sure our schools are preparing the next 
generation of leaders; making certain that as a country, we move 
forward in providing health insurance protection for kids. It is a sad 
moment.
  I hope the House of Representatives can rally the votes to override 
that veto. I hope a few of our Republican friends who joined us in 
passing this bill, with over 70 votes, if I am not mistaken--I think 
close to 75 votes--I hope they will stand with us again and override 
this President's veto--a mistake, a mistake this President made at the 
expense of America's families.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland is recognized.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
pending amendments on the farm bill be laid aside and that I be allowed 
to speak on two important amendments that I will offer at an 
appropriate time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, today I rise to speak about two very 
important amendments. I will ask for a vote on both of these amendments 
at an appropriate time. The first amendment requires the U.S. 
Government to label any food that comes from a cloned animal or its 
progeny. The second amendment would increase food safety because I will 
ask for three studies on the impact of cloned products in our food 
supply--the impact on trade, the impact on the economy, and the impact 
on health.
  But let me talk about the fundamental problem. See this picture up 
here? This is Dolly. You remember Dolly, the cloned lamb that burst 
onto the scene? Dolly is cloned. She has gone from a novelty to a 
biotech product, to possibly Dolly burger in your food supply. So we 
have gone from: Hello Dolly, who are you, to being on the verge of 
having Dolly burgers in our school lunch program, maybe Dolly 
Braunschweiger in our Meals on Wheels program. Why are we on the verge 
of doing that? It is because the FDA said it is OK. You remember the 
FDA. They said OK to Vioxx. They said OK to a lot of things.
  It seems, in December of 2006, the FDA announced that milk and meat 
products from cloned animals are safe for human consumption. Now, I 
have very serious doubts about that, but I am not a scientist, so I 
want more science and more research. Most Americans agree with me, that 
scientists should be able to monitor cloned animals as they enter the 
food supply. To my dismay, FDA has refused to label cloned food. I 
believe people have a right to know and a right to make their own 
decisions.
  The American people find cloned food disturbing. A Gallup poll 
reports over 60 percent of Americans think it is immoral to clone 
animals. My bill doesn't deal with morality. My bill deals with: When 
you eat it, you know where it came from. Consumers have a right to 
know. They have no way to tell if the food comes from a cloned animal, 
the cloned animal's progeny, such as Dolly, or if it comes from a cow, 
a pig, a chicken. I want the public to be informed.
  I am for consumer choice. If most Americans don't want cloned milk 
and meat, they should not be required to eat it. I cannot stop the 
cloning of animals. Maybe that would not be a good idea. I cannot stop 
the FDA from approving it. I don't believe in meddling at that level. 
But I can insist on labeling. And if it enters your food supply, 
whether you buy it at the supermarket or whether you are in a 
restaurant or whether it is going to be in the child's school lunch 
program or your elder parents' Meals on Wheels program, you ought to 
know about it. My amendment would require labeling by the FDA and the 
Department of Agriculture, to put a label on all food from cloned 
animals that says this product is from a cloned animal or its progeny. 
These labels would be at the wholesale level, retail level, or 
restaurant level, or wherever the U.S. Government acts in calling it 
nutrition. It would allow the American people to make an informed 
decision on what they are eating.
  You would think I am creating Armageddon. The BioTrade Association 
has been all over me with the functional equivalent of cleats, running 
editorial boards, and whispering science as they know it into the ears 
of the ed boards. If they have such confidence that cloned food is OK, 
why would they care if it were labeled? If they had such confidence 
that the American people would be indifferent to labeling, why would 
they oppose it?
  They say it will cost too much. Guess what. They said it about 
nutritional labeling. They said that about other forms of labeling on 
our food. I reject those arguments. I believe you want to know this. I 
really believe you want to know if you are eating cloned food.
  Madam President, you know me. You know I am one of the people in the 
Senate who has stood fairly on the side of science, the technology 
advancements it brings and the need always for more research. I believe 
we need more research into what this means. What is the impact and 
consequence on public health, on individual health, on unborn children, 
which I know is a great concern to many of our colleagues here? We 
don't know. Are we going to wake up and, instead of fetal alcohol 
problems, have the impact of cloned food? I don't know that.
  My second amendment would require three studies: a health impact 
study on cloned foods and do more of it; an economic impact to the 
United States from adding cloned food to our food supply; a foreign 
trade impact on exporting food made in the United States from cloned 
animals.
  My amendment also requires scientific peer review of the FDA's 
decision to improve scientific rigor. It would eliminate and assure 
there were no conflicts of interest. Many studies done with cloned food 
were done with the supporters of cloning, and those who would profit 
from cloning. The FDA received over 13,000 comments

[[Page S14261]]

when it released its initial decision that food from cloned animals is 
safe. Many of these comments said more information is needed. 
Scientists said there is more information needed. The public said more 
information is needed. I believe we need to listen to the National 
Academy of Sciences, which is the premier adviser to the Congress and 
the people on this.
  The National Academy of Sciences agrees that cloning is a brand-new 
science. There may be unknown and unintended consequences. These 
scientists recommend this technology be monitored and urge postmarket 
surveillance. You cannot have postmarket surveillance unless it is 
labeled. If it is mixed in with your food, you won't be able to do 
this.
  The FDA tells us that once they determined cloned food is safe, they 
would allow it to enter the market. The scientists want this labeling. 
I believe we are going down a difficult path. In Europe, they call this 
type of food ``Frankenfood.'' Cloned beef is having a hard time in the 
marketplace. Do we want the EU to ban all American food products 
because the people are worried about ``Frankenfood'' and are worried 
that this ``Frankenfood'' has been mingled with the other food? 
Essentially, they could ban all exports of meat products there. I don't 
want to hear one more thing coming from the EU that says they don't 
want to buy our beef or lamb because they are worried that it is 
``Frankenfood.''
  Again, I am worried about it. How about having an amendment that 
mandates a study on the trade impacts?
  I also believe in science and research. I believe, therefore, we need 
to mandate a study now and follow a scientific program based on sound 
science. Were they accurate? Were they impartial? Were they free of 
conflict of interest? What additional research needs to be done? We 
need to be able to also look at the impact on our economy. Are we 
running a shortage in beef, lamb, and so on, so that we have to go to 
cloned animals? I don't think so. It seems to be readily available in 
the American marketplace. I don't know why we need to do this.
  People say, well, don't you believe in the FDA? I do. The FDA is in 
my State. Over a thousand dedicated men and women work there every day. 
What I also know is that the FDA has been making some pretty big 
mistakes. They have been making mistakes in their food supply. They 
cannot stand sentry over spinach and E. coli in our own country. How 
are they going to monitor Dolly as she makes her way into our food 
supply? They don't even have enough people to keep an eye on E. coli 
spreading in spinach in our own country. What about the food coming in 
from other countries that we don't seem to be able to stand sentry 
over?
  The FDA has not had enough resources in the food supply area. Then 
they say: Don't worry, honey, we will take care of you. We learned that 
line a long time ago and we know how false it was. The FDA, I believe, 
needs more help. They need more research. They need more monitoring, 
and this is why I am for labeling. Labeling would tell us where these 
foods go. It would give us the ability to have postmarket surveillance 
to look at the consequences, some of which might be OK and some of 
which might be quite questionable. So all I am saying is give the 
public a right to know and let's do more studies.
  I don't know about Dolly. She looks so sad here in this photo, 
doesn't she? I don't know if she is happy that she is a clone, and I 
don't know if she is sad that she is a clone. I know whatever happens 
to Dolly, and whatever breakthrough comes from cloning--and maybe there 
are wonderful things that I don't know about. I do know that when I sit 
down on my heart-smart program and bite into a nice juicy roll, I want 
to know whether I am eating beef, lamb, or a Dolly burger. So my 
amendment simply says: Give me the right to know; otherwise, I will 
take further steps to say bah, bah to Dolly burgers.
  Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Presidential Veto

  Mr. BYRD. Madam President, today the President, our President, 
demonstrated once again that he values political posturing more than 
making America a safer, healthier, more economically strong nation.
  This morning, President Bush vetoed a bipartisan, fiscally 
responsible Labor-HHS-Education bill that increases funding for 
programs to improve student performance, makes college more affordable, 
supports lifesaving medical research, and provides relief for families 
coping with rising home heating costs.
  The bill also provides money for veterans employment programs, 
homeless veterans, and research to help those veterans suffering from 
traumatic brain injuries.
  The President, in an effort to convey the appearance of fiscal 
discipline, has threatened to veto 10 of the 12 appropriations bills--
10 out of 12.
  Today the President vetoed the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations 
bill because Congress chose to increase funding by 5 percent. The 
hypocrisy of the President's political posturing became even more clear 
today. This morning, the President signed the Defense appropriations 
bill which provides a $40 billion, or 10-percent, increase for the 
Department of Defense. Also, this morning, the President vetoed the 
Labor-HHS-Education bill because Congress chose to restore 
irresponsible and shortsighted cuts proposed by the President.
  As part of the President's political message, he describes the 5-
percent increase for Labor-HHS-Education programs as ``bloated'' 
spending. I call it responsible investments in research in cancer, 
heart disease, diabetes, in educating our children, in providing access 
to health care to rural America, and to heating the homes of low-income 
elderly Americans.
  The President proposed to cut funding for the National Institutes of 
Health by $279 million for studying cancer, diabetes, and heart 
disease. Under the President's budget, the National Institutes of 
Health would have to eliminate 717 research grants that could lead to 
cures or treatments for cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and other 
diseases.
  Congress restored those cuts and provided an increase of $1.1 
billion. I ask the question: Is increasing spending for the National 
Institutes of Health by 3.8 percent ``bloated'' spending? Is it? Of 
course not.
  The President proposed over $3 billion in cuts for educational 
programs, including special education, Safe and Drug-Free Schools, and 
improving teacher quality. Congress--that is us--restored those cuts. 
Is increasing by 3 percent to educate our children bloated spending? I 
ask the question again. Congress restored those cuts. Is increasing 
funding by 3 percent to educate our children bloated spending? No.

  The President proposed cuts of nearly $1 billion from health 
programs, such as rural health, preventive health, nurse training, and 
mental health grants. Congress, on a bipartisan basis, restored those 
cuts. I ask the question: Is providing an increase of $225 million for 
community health centers bloated spending? Is it? Certainly not.
  The President--our President--proposed to cut low-income home energy 
assistance by $379 million. Congress restored that cut and provided an 
increase of $250 million. With the price of a barrel of oil reaching 
$100, does anyone really think increasing low-income home energy 
assistance is bloated spending? No.
  No Senator will be cold this winter. I will not be cold this winter. 
You on that side of the aisle will not be cold this winter. We on this 
side will not be cold this winter. No Senator will be cold at home this 
winter. The President will not be cold down at the White House. No. Yet 
the President wants Congress to slash such assistance.
  President Bush's Budget Director, Jim Nussle, with whom I met several 
weeks ago, indicated he would be prepared to negotiate in good faith 
with Congress over our differences in spending. To my dismay--to my 
dismay--Director Nussle has not reached out to the leadership of the 
Appropriations Committees in the House and the Senate in a genuine 
effort to find common ground.

[[Page S14262]]

  Now, what is the problem? Why, Mr. President, why, Mr. Nussle, is the 
$40 billion increase for the Department of Defense fiscally responsible 
while a $6 billion increase to educate our children and improve the 
health of our citizens bloated spending?
  Now, let's stop--please, let's stop--this charade of political 
gamesmanship. I say this most respectfully to our President. Let's move 
forward for the good of the American people. They deserve more from 
their elected officials.
  I suggest to this White House that it stop its intransigence and help 
us--the elected Representatives of the people in Congress--to enact 
this vital legislation. Let's sit down together and work out the 
problems in this bill. Providing for our people's needs should not be a 
game of us versus them. It should not be a Republican White House 
versus a Democratic conference. People's lives should not be fodder for 
ego-driven political games.
  Homeless veterans, veterans in need of health care, children in need 
of education, these must not become the target in a foolish game of 
kickball. I urge this White House--I plead with this White House--to 
sit down with the Congress and address the growing unmet needs in this 
country. If we can build schools and hospitals in Iraq, we can 
certainly provide health care and education for our own citizens. 
Nobody wins in a game of chicken, and surely the White House can and 
ought to work with us--us, in Congress--to stop this charade.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask to speak for up to 7 minutes in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson of Nebraska). Without objection, it 
is so ordered.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, November voters in my State of Ohio spoke 
out for change. They spoke out for a very different and new set of 
priorities in Washington, priorities that match their own priorities 
and their own values back home.
  Heeding their calls earlier this year, Congress raised the minimum 
wage, passed potentially lifesaving stem cell legislation, voted to 
expand access for health insurance to literally 4 million low-income 
children, and last week, Congress sent to the President the Labor, 
Health and Human Services bill for his signature, a bipartisan bill 
that was filled with our national priorities. That bill would increase 
funding for Head Start and Pell grants and programs that benefit our 
Nation's veterans.
  Earlier today, once again, the President made it clear that this 
administration and its supporters do not share the priorities of 
America's middle class. He vetoed lifesaving stem cell legislation, he 
vetoed expanding access to children's health insurance, and he, today, 
vetoed the bipartisan bill for Head Start, to give preschool kids a 
chance. He vetoed the legislation that included Pell grants to give 
middle-class working families, working-class kids an opportunity to go 
to college without a huge, onerous burden on them when they leave 
college. And he vetoed legislation that would matter to our Nation's 
veterans.
  Today's veto was a veto of middle-class families and a veto of our 
values as a nation. The Labor, Health and Human Services bill funds the 
priorities that matter most in Ohio and across the Nation--more funding 
to help low-income children get the best possible start in school, more 
funding for students hoping to realize their American dream, more 
funding for programs to help our Nation's veterans with job training, 
with college costs, and to help with the all too serious issue of 
traumatic brain injury.
  The day after Veterans Day, the day set aside to honor our Nation's 
veterans, the President vetoed legislation that would benefit those who 
have sacrificed so much for our great country. That, Mr. President, is 
unacceptable.
  Yesterday, in Cleveland, at the Wade Park Veterans Hospital, I spent 
the afternoon with veterans from northeast Ohio, listening to them and 
their concerns. I learned that they need more, not less, assistance 
from the Federal Government. I heard from a former Ohio National 
Guardsman living in Jefferson, OH, not far from Ashtabula. Before being 
deployed to Iraq, he was an engineer and his wife was the vice 
president of a local company. After being injured in Iraq by an IED, he 
returned home suffering from a traumatic brain injury, a spinal cord 
injury, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Unable to work full time 
because of his injuries, this former National Guardsman, who worked 
full time before he left, now had to rely on disability compensation to 
support his family. His wife Julie had to leave her job to care full 
time for her child and for her husband. His care requires four trips 
weekly to the nearest VA hospital, a trip of about 110 miles each way.
  I heard from a reservist, CPL Anthony Niederiter, of Euclid, OH, who 
was deployed to Iraq in 2005. Corporal Niederiter shared stories about 
the need for a better system that helps our military men and women 
return to civilian life after serving our country. The confusing 
transition process has caused veteran after veteran to miss filing 
deadlines for health benefits and educational opportunities.
  One veteran, one soldier, told me after he left the military, he 
applied for dental benefits 32 or 33 days after he left the military. 
But he found out if you don't apply within 30 days, they are not 
available. Nobody told him that. Others have been denied educational 
benefits because they didn't follow the right rules because nobody told 
them that when they left the military.
  Too many commanding officers, after these troops are used up and of 
no value anymore to the military, just wash their hands of them and 
look to the next class of military recruits they are going to send off 
to war, not informing those who are leaving, those who have served 
their country--frankly, not caring enough to make sure those veterans, 
those soldiers leaving the Armed Forces have been notified and told of 
their rights and the benefits they are able to receive--education, 
health care, and the like.
  I heard from Dr. John Schupp, a Cleveland State University professor, 
who emphasized the importance of doing more, not less, for our 
veterans. Dr. Schupp founded the SERV Program, a two-semester program 
at Cleveland State University designed just for veterans. The program 
helps veterans apply for GI bill benefits, offers veterans-only classes 
that help ease the transition back into the classroom for many veterans 
who have not been in a classroom for 6, 8, 10 years or longer. He works 
with veterans to navigate VA issues and offers a veteran-to-veteran 
mentoring program.
  Mr. President, we need more programs like this. Dr. Schupp's 
involvement, his brainchild, his program--much of this should be done 
by the Department of Defense before our soldiers, our marines, and our 
sailors leave government or military service. Dr. Schupp has taken up 
the slack, frankly, for much that hasn't been done. We need more 
programs like this, not just in Ohio but across our great country.
  We need more Federal investment in our Nation's veterans. We must 
continue to honor our heroes from World War II and Korea and Vietnam, 
while finding ways to care for the new generation of veterans returning 
from Afghanistan and Iraq--and Kosovo, as one of the veterans came from 
yesterday. As more and more veterans return from these overseas 
engagements, especially from Afghanistan and Iraq, we must ensure that 
this growing group has access to the best care and the best benefits 
available. They have earned them.
  Congress cannot simply wait to correct problems that arise. We can, 
we must anticipate those problems and address them now, not later. 
Providing care and support for Ohio's veterans is a moral obligation. 
Instead of vetoes, our veterans deserve, from their Government, the 
support they have earned. Congress can start by overriding the veto of 
the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill.
  I strongly encourage my colleagues to stand up for middle-class 
families, stand up for our communities, stand up for our workers, and 
to stand up, importantly, for our Nation's veterans. I strongly 
encourage my colleagues to override this veto.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

[[Page S14263]]

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cardin). Without objection, it is so 
ordered. The Senator is recognized to speak as in morning business, 
without objection.


                             Global Warming

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as a member of the Senate environmental 
committee, and also on the Energy Committee, it is my view that the 
time is long overdue for Congress to go beyond deal-making and politics 
as usual in addressing the crisis of global warming. The droughts, the 
floods, and the severe weather disturbances our planet is already 
experiencing will only get worse, potentially impacting billions of 
people, if we do not take bold and decisive action in the very near 
future.
  While the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill is a strong step 
forward--and I applaud both Senators and I applaud Senator Barbara 
Boxer for her entire leadership on global warming--it is my view that 
legislation as currently written does not go anywhere near far enough 
in creating the policies the scientific community says we must develop 
in order to avert a planetary catastrophe.
  This legislation is also lacking in paving the way for the 
transformation of our energy system, away from fossil fuels into energy 
efficiency and sustainable energy technologies.
  Here are some of my concerns about the Lieberman-Warner bill. These 
are concerns I will be working on in the next number of weeks, trying 
to improve that legislation. First, virtually all the scientific 
evidence tells us, at the least, we must reduce greenhouse gas 
emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050, if we stand a chance to 
reverse global warming. Unfortunately, the Lieberman-Warner bill, as 
currently written, under the very best projections, provides a 63-
percent reduction. In other words, under the best projections, this 
bill does not go far enough, according to the scientific community, in 
giving us a chance to reverse global warming. Secondly, this 
legislation allows major polluters to continue emitting greenhouse 
gases for free until the year 2036. In fact, old-fashioned, dirty coal-
burning plants could still be built during this period. That is wrong. 
The right to pollute should not be given away for up to 26 years. 
Further, in calculating emission reductions, this bill relies much too 
heavily on ``offsets,'' a process which is difficult to verify and 
which could lead to the underreporting of emission reductions.
  Third, this bill provides a massive amount of corporate welfare to 
industries that have been major emitters of greenhouse gases, while 
requiring minimal performance standards and accountability for these 
same industries. According to a recent report published by Friends of 
the Earth, the auction and allocation processes of the bill could 
generate up to $3.6 trillion over a 40-year period. While a large fund 
does exist in the bill for ``low carbon technology,'' there is no 
guaranteed allocation for such important technologies as wind, solar, 
geothermal, hydrogen or for energy efficiency. But there is a 
guaranteed allotment of $324 billion over a 40-year period for the coal 
industry through an advanced coal sequestration program and $232 
billion for advanced technology vehicles.
  The time is late. If Congress is serious about preventing 
irreversible damage to our planet because of global warming, we need to 
get our act together. We need to move in a bold and focused manner. Not 
only are the people of our country looking to us to do that, but so are 
countries all over the world. The good news is, we can do it.
  As Members will recall, in 1941, President Roosevelt and the Congress 
began the process of rearming America to defeat Naziism and Japanese 
imperialism. Within a few short years, we had transformed our economy 
and started producing the tanks and bombs and planes and guns needed to 
defeat Nazism. We did it because of the leadership of Roosevelt and the 
Congress. In 1961, President Kennedy called upon our Nation to 
undertake the seemingly impossible task of sending a man to the Moon. 
Working with Congress, NASA was greatly expanded. The best scientists 
and engineers in this country and in the world were assembled to focus 
on the task. Billions of dollars were appropriated and, in 1969, as we 
all remember with great pride, Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the Moon. 
We did it. There was a challenge. We stepped up to the plate. We did 
it.
  As a result of global warming, the challenge we face today is no less 
daunting and no less consequential. Quite the contrary. Now we are 
fighting for the future of the planet and the well-being of billions of 
people in every corner of the world. Once again, if we summon the 
political courage, I have absolutely no doubt the United States of 
America can lead the world in resolving this very dangerous crisis. We 
can do it.
  In that context, let me take a moment to suggest some ways we can 
strengthen the Lieberman-Warner bill--and I look forward to working 
with those Senators and the entire committee--to aggressively reverse 
global warming. Most importantly, significant resources in this bill 
must be explicitly allocated for energy efficiency and sustainable 
energy, the areas where we can get the greatest and quickest bang for 
the buck. In terms of energy efficiency, my home city of Burlington, 
VT--and I have the honor of having been mayor of that city from 1981 to 
1989--despite strong economic growth, consumes no more electricity 
today than it did 16 years ago because of a successful citywide effort 
on the part of our municipally owned electric company to make our 
homes, offices, schools, and buildings all over the city more energy 
efficient. That is what we did in Burlington, VT. In California, which 
has a strong and growing economy, electric consumption per person has 
remained steady over the last 20 years because of that State's 
commitment to energy efficiency. In other words, in Burlington, VT, and 
the State of California--and I am sure in other communities around the 
country--despite economic growth, the consumption of electricity does 
not have to go soaring, if we invest in energy efficiency, if we rally 
the people to not waste energy.
  Numerous studies tell us that by retrofitting older buildings and by 
establishing strong energy efficiency standards for new construction, 
we can cut fuel and electric consumption by at least 40 percent. If we 
want to save energy, that is how we do it. Those savings will increase 
with such new technologies as LED light bulbs, which consume 1/10th the 
electricity of an incandescent bulb, while lasting 20 years. These LED 
light bulbs are on the verge of getting on the market. We have to 
facilitate that process and get them all over the country as soon as we 
possibly can.
  In terms of saving energy in transportation, it is beyond my 
comprehension that we are driving automobiles today which get the same 
mileage per gallon--25 miles per gallon--as cars in this country did 20 
years ago. Think of all the technology, all of the changes. Yet we are 
driving cars today which get the same mileage per gallon as was the 
case 20 years ago. That is absurd. If Europe and Japan can average over 
44 miles per gallon, we can do at least as well. Simply raising CAFE 
standards to 40 miles per gallon--less than the Europeans, less than 
the Japanese--will save more oil than we import from Saudi Arabia. How 
about that? That makes a lot of sense.
  Further, we should also be rebuilding and expanding our decaying rail 
and subway systems and making sure energy-efficient buses are available 
in rural America so travelers have an alternative to the automobile. 
Everybody knows the state of the rail system in America today is 
absolutely unacceptable, way behind Europe, way behind Japan. Subways 
in large cities need an enormous amount of work. In rural States such 
as Vermont, there are communities that have virtually no public 
transportation at all. We have to address that crisis, if we are 
serious about global warming.
  In terms of sustainable energy, the other area we can make tremendous 
leaps forward, wind power is now the fastest growing source of new 
energy in the world and in the United States, but we have barely begun 
to tap its potential. In Denmark, for example, 20 percent of the 
electricity is produced by wind. We, as a Congress, should be 
supporting wind energy, not only through the creation of large wind 
farms in the appropriate areas but through the production of small 
inexpensive wind turbines which can be used in homes and

[[Page S14264]]

farms all across rural America. These small turbines can produce up to 
half the electricity an average home consumes and are now--right now, 
forget the future--reasonably priced. Without Federal tax credits, 
which are available, without rebates such as what is being done in 
California today, a 1.8-kilowatt turbine is now being sold for some 
$12,000, including installation, with a payback of 5 to 6 years. That 
is a pretty good deal. If you are not worried about global warming, if 
you are not worried about carbon emissions, it is a good deal because 
you are going to save money on your electric bill.

  The possibilities for solar energy are virtually unlimited. In 
Germany, a quarter of a million homes are now producing electricity 
through rooftop photovoltaic units, and the price per kilowatt is 
rapidly declining. In California, that State is providing strong 
incentives so 1 million homes will have photovoltaic rooftop units in 
the next 10 years. But the potential for solar energy goes far beyond 
rooftop photovoltaic units. Right now in the State of Nevada, a solar 
plant is generating 56 megawatts of electricity. What we are now 
beginning to see developed in the Southwestern part of the country are 
solar plants which are capable of producing enormous amounts of 
electricity. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of 
the U.S. Department of Energy:

       Solar energy represents a huge domestic energy resource for 
     the United States, particularly in the Southwest where the 
     deserts have some of the best solar resource levels in the 
     world. For example, an area approximately 12% the size of 
     Nevada (15% of federal lands in Nevada) has the potential to 
     supply all of the electric needs of the United States.

  Whether that area can in fact supply all the electric needs of the 
United States, I don't know. But I have recently, in the last couple 
weeks, talked to people who are involved in these solar plants. They 
say in the reasonably near future, they can supply 20 percent of the 
electricity our country needs. There it is, sitting there, ready to 
happen. Our job is to facilitate that process and make it happen sooner 
rather than later.
  Perhaps most significantly, Pacific Gas & Electric, which to my 
understanding is the largest electric utility in the country based in 
California, has recently signed a contract with Solel, an Israeli 
company, to build a 535-megawatt plant in the Mohave Desert. This 
plant, which should be operating in 4 years--my understanding is they 
are going to break ground in 2, and it should be operating in 4 years--
will have an output equivalent to a small nuclear powerplant and will 
produce electricity for some 400,000 homes. This is not a small-time 
operation. The people I talked to involved in this industry say this is 
the beginning. Think of what we can do if we provided them with the 
support they need.
  Most importantly, people say: Well, that is a good idea, but 
unfortunately this electricity is going to be sky high, very expensive.
  That is not the case. The price of the electricity generated by this 
plant to be online in 4 years is competitive with other fuels today and 
will likely be much cheaper than other fuels in the future.
  News reports indicate that the 25-year purchase agreement signed by 
Pacific Gas and Electric with Solel calls for electricity to be 
initially generated at about 10 cents per kilowatt, with very minimal 
increases over the next 25 years--minimal increases because this is a 
process that does not have all that many moving parts. There it is. It 
needs maintenance. It needs work. But, unlike gas, unlike oil, you are 
not looking at a volatile market. There is the Sun. It will shine. So 
we are talking about a price over a 25-year period which probably will 
end up being less than 15 cents a kilowatt in the year 2035, which I 
suspect will be not only very competitive, it will be more than 
competitive.
  The potential for solar plants in the Southwest is extremely strong. 
While there certainly is no magical silver bullet in the production of 
new, nonpolluting energy sources, experts tell us we can build dozens 
of plants in the Southwest, and that this one nongreenhouse gas-
emitting source could provide a huge amount of the electricity our 
country needs.
  Geothermal energy is another source of sustainable energy that has 
huge potential. Mr. President, as you know, geothermal energy is the 
heat from deep inside the Earth. It is free, it is renewable, and it 
can be used for electricity generation and direct heating. While 
geothermal is available at some depth everywhere, it is most accessible 
in Western States where hydrothermal resources are at shallow depths.
  Currently, the United States has approximately 2,900 megawatts of 
installed capacity, which is just 5 percent--5 percent--of the 
renewable electricity generation in the United States. The installed 
geothermal capacity is already expected to double in the near term with 
projects that are under development, but this is just the tip of the 
iceberg.
  A recent report for the U.S. Department of Energy by the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, suggests that geothermal 
could provide 100,000 megawatts of new carbon-free electricity at less 
than 10 cents per kilowatt hour, comparable to costs for clean coal. 
Drilling technology from the petroleum industry is the key to unlocking 
this huge potential. Enhanced geothermal systems tap energy from hot 
impermeable rocks that are between 2 and 6 miles below the Earth's 
crust.
  So geothermal is another opportunity for us as a nation to be 
producing large amounts of energy in a way that does not emit carbon 
dioxide and does not create greenhouse gases.
  An investment of $1 billion--less than the price of one coal-fired 
powerplant--could make this resource commercially viable within 15 
years. The potential payoff is huge. It is estimated that electricity 
from geothermal sources can provide 10 percent of the U.S. base-load 
energy needs in 2050.
  In terms of the future--in terms of the future of our planet--the bad 
news is that scientists are now telling us they have underestimated the 
speed and destructive aspects of global warming.
  As you remember, Mr. President, the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change, which recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with 
former Vice President Al Gore--many of those scientists are now saying 
their projections were too conservative, that the planet is warming 
faster than they had anticipated, and the damage will be greater if we 
do not move boldly to reverse it. That is the bad news.
  There is good news, however. The good news is that, at the end of the 
day, we know how to reverse global warming. We know what to do. What is 
lacking now is not the scientific knowledge, though more and more 
knowledge will come, and it is not the technology, though more and more 
technology will be developed, and sustainable energy will become less 
and less expensive. But after all is said and done, we know what we 
have to do. We know how to make our homes and our transportation 
systems more energy efficient. We are now making great progress in 
driving down the cost of nonpolluting, sustainable energy technologies. 
That is what we are doing.
  What is lacking now is the political will--the political will to 
think outside of the box, the political will to envision a new energy 
system in America which is not based on fossil fuels, the political 
will to stand up to powerful special interests that are more concerned 
about their profits than about the well-being of our planet.
  So I think not only the children--the young people of our country and 
the people all over America--but people throughout the world want this 
Congress to catch up to where they are. They are far ahead of where we 
are. I think if we have the courage to do the right thing here, we can 
reverse global warming. In the process, we can create millions of good-
paying jobs, we can help restore our position in the international 
community as a country that is leading and not following on this issue 
of huge consequence.
  Mr. President, I yield back the floor and suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll of the Senate.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. BOXER. 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 California is recognized.
  Mrs. BOXER. Thank you very much, Mr. President.

[[Page S14265]]

  Mr. President, I thank Senator Harkin because I know he is going to 
be speaking shortly, and I wanted to follow Senator Sanders.
  As the Chair of the Environment Committee, I was very interested in 
his presentation. I thank him for caring so deeply about global 
warming. The thing we have to do around here is get a good bill down to 
the floor. Because everything Senator Sanders talks about--geothermal, 
solar--everything he talks about--green jobs--depends on our ability to 
get a good bill to the floor of the Senate.
  What also is interesting is that Senator Sanders called the 
Lieberman-Warner bill a very strong bill. I agree with him. It is a 
very strong bill. And that is before we even make some perfecting 
amendments out of subcommittee.
  I think it is interesting, it is the evening time now. Senator Harkin 
is on the floor, and Senator Cardin is the Presiding Officer. Senator 
Harkin is a cosponsor of the Lieberman-Warner bill. Senator Harkin is 
truly a great conservationist, as we are going to hear from him. He 
gave a presentation to us at our caucus lunch that showed how deeply 
committed he is to this country's environment.
  The fact that he is on the Lieberman-Warner bill gave a great lift 
and a great boost to that piece of legislation. Mr. Cardin, the Senator 
from Maryland, sitting in the chair, our Presiding Officer, has played 
a tremendous role already in moving forward the legislation if we are 
going to address global warming.
  There is not any question that the ravages of global warming are 
around the corner. Is it going to be 20 years? Is it going to be 10 
years? Do we already see it? Some say yes--in Darfur, in some of the 
weather patterns, in some of the fires, in some of the floods, in some 
of the droughts--because the scientists tell us that unfettered global 
warming will lead to extremes in weather. So it is coming down the 
track right at us.
  We have some options in this Senate as to what we are going to do 
about it. We can hold out for the ``perfect'' bill. I can say, as 
someone who wrote a bill with Senator Jeffords, and then Senator 
Sanders: Oh, I know which bill is perfect for me; it is the bill I 
wrote. I know my friends in the Senate each could take their turn at 
writing a bill, and that bill would be ``perfect'' for that Senator. 
But this is a legislative body, and if you have 100 ``perfects,'' and 
we cannot agree to come together on a very good bill, we get nothing 
done.
  I would suggest that for those who, very well-intentioned, decide to 
turn their back on a very good bill because it is not their idea of 
``perfect,'' I think that is an irresponsible position to find yourself 
in. I feel very strongly about that.
  There is much about the Lieberman-Warner bill I am going to work to 
strengthen in the full committee. If the bill gets to the floor, I am 
going to work hard to strengthen it. But I know, as long as it is a 
very strong bill, we need to move it forward.
  So we could hold out for the ``perfect.'' That is very dangerous 
because that leads to no bill. And no bill--doing nothing about global 
warming in the face of all the science--would be very irresponsible.
  The next thing we could do is have a bill that is very weak. I think 
a very weak bill is dangerous because people will think, ``Oh, they 
have taken care of global warming,'' when, in fact, we have not. You 
may be stuck with a weak bill, and you cannot strengthen it, so that is 
a problem too.
  So it seems to me we could hold out for the ``perfect,'' and that 
means no bill, we could have a dangerously weak bill, which is a very 
bad option, or we could have a very good bill. We know that. We have 
people who are saying: Wait a minute, this bill, Lieberman-Warner, is 
too weak. We heard some of that on the floor tonight. It is too weak. I 
want an 80-percent cut in 2050, and it is 65 percent. So is the 
solution to do nothing? I say no. Then we have many people on the other 
side who say this bill is too strong. It is kind of like the three 
bears--what is just right?

  I think what is just right is a very strong bill that moves us 
forward, that asserts the real dangers of global warming, and we know 
what that is: sea level rise. Those of us who went to Greenland saw 
what could happen if that sheet melts. We could see huge increases in 
sea level for all of us who represent coastal States, and the whole 
country and the world will suffer. The intelligence community, the 
Department of Defense--they are saying to us: With a few feet rise in 
sea level, we are going to have refugee problems, we are going to have 
every problem in the world. So the fact is, we can't turn our backs.
  We had a hearing on the public health implications of unfettered 
global warming. The star witness was the head of the CDC, Julie 
Gerberding, Dr. Gerberding. She is the top doc of the country. She had 
very strong views that we have to look at the public health impacts. 
For example, what is going to happen to our elderly when heat levels 
rise and they can't seek refuge? What is going to happen to our 
children when they are swimming in lakes and streams and rivers and 
those bodies of water are so warm that dangerous amoebas live in those 
waters? What is going to happen to them? What is going to happen to the 
people of the world when they can't get the food they need?
  So what happened was the White House redacted page after page of 
their own head of the CDC--they redacted page after page of their own 
head of the CDC. Her testimony was redacted. When we wrote and asked 
for it, the answer came back from the White House Counsel: Oh, no, we 
couldn't possibly send you this. This is a breach of executive 
privilege and the rest.
  Can you believe, Mr. President, that the people of this country who 
pay the taxes for the CDC employees cannot hear what the top doc has to 
say about the ravages--the potential ravages--of global warming? This 
is what we are facing. Yet we see signs that the people who think our 
bill doesn't go far enough are going to team up with the people who 
want to kill this legislation. What a tragedy that would be. And who 
loses? The people of the United States of America. These new 
technologies that are going to save us, the ones Senator Sanders talked 
about--he talked with great passion about solar and wind and all the 
rest--you are not going to get it, folks, unless you have a bill that 
puts a price on carbon. If you hold out for your version of the 
perfect, trust me, it isn't going to happen, and you give false hope to 
people--false hope to people.
  So I would just say to my colleagues who may be listening that we 
have a golden opportunity in the Environment Committee. We have held 
more than 20 hearings on global warming. We have this bipartisan bill. 
We have gotten it through the subcommittee. We are working to make it 
better, get it through the full committee and onto the floor of the 
Senate, where we will see where people stand. We will have amendments 
that range from one extreme to the other, and we will see where people 
stand on global warming.
  I would say to you, Mr. President, coming from a State that has done 
so much about this already, we are late to the game. We are late to the 
dance. We are late to the party. But we are not too late, unless 
everybody stands up and says: If I don't get it my way, then I will 
show you the highway. We have a lot of that going on already. We have a 
President who really won't talk to us about anything. He won't talk to 
us about Iraq; he won't meet us halfway there. He won't talk to us 
about CHIP; he won't meet us halfway there. He won't talk to us about 
education funding; he won't meet us halfway there. Won't, won't, won't, 
won't, won't. He vetoed the Water Resources Development Act. We 
overrode it. He still has never said he was wrong. There is too much of 
that. We in the Senate have to show that we are adult enough to admit 
that the perfect cannot be the enemy of the good, particularly when 
there is so much at stake.
  So I am excited about the work of the Environment Committee, and I am 
so pleased we had a bipartisan breakthrough. I am so grateful to all 
the groups out there who are helping us, who are giving us the courage 
to move forward, because, believe me, special interests are going to be 
pounding us, pounding us, pounding us.
  To wrap this up, there are always people who say no to the science. 
There are always people who say: Oh, no, HIV doesn't cause AIDS, I 
don't believe it.

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There are always people who say cigarette smoking doesn't cause lung 
cancer. I am sure there were people who said to Jonas Salk: Your 
vaccine idea is just not going to work. We have to go with the 
consensus view, and we have it on our side. We know we have to act.
  So it is going to be an exciting time in the Environment Committee. 
It is going to be an exciting time here on the floor when this 
legislation comes to the floor. I don't know exactly when that will 
happen, but it will happen, and when it does we will have a chance to 
fulfill our responsibility not just to our generation but to our kids' 
generation and our grandkids and future generations. I see young people 
sitting here on the floor of the Senate helping us out every day. Their 
generation has so much at stake.
  I met with some young people from the UC system, UC Santa Cruz. They 
are going to 100 percent renewable energy to run UC Santa Cruz, and all 
of the different campuses, UC campuses, are going to try to do that. So 
whether we vote here or we don't vote here, the people are way ahead of 
us. How sad it is if we were to walk away from this challenge because 
it wasn't just right on page 102 or page 6. It is never going to be 
perfect, I say to my colleagues, but we have an obligation to come 
together. We did it with the Clean Water Act years ago, the Safe 
Drinking Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. We have really 
moved forward, and we became a leader in the world. We are behind the 
world today, and the world is looking to us.
  So I am excited about this challenge, and I thank Senator Sanders for 
his passion, for coming down and making the case for solar energy, 
making the case for wind energy. But I will say to him and everyone 
else within the sound of my voice that it isn't going to happen unless 
this Congress sets up a cap-and-trade system with mandatory cuts in 
carbon. It just isn't going to happen the way it should.
  Thank you very much, Mr. President, and I thank, Senator Harkin for 
this time.
  I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. MENENDEZ). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, it is hard to believe, but we are on the 
farm bill. As any casual observer might notice, we are not doing 
anything. We sit here with an empty Chamber. The farm bill has now been 
on the floor for over a week. The farm bill was laid down a week ago 
yesterday, as a matter of fact, and nothing has happened. Why hasn't 
anything happened? Because we can't get anything from the other side.
  We want to move ahead. We wanted to ask unanimous consent to go ahead 
with an amendment with a time limit, vote on it, and move to another 
amendment, but the other side refuses. The Republican leadership 
refuses to move ahead on the farm bill. I suggested earlier today that 
we may at least want to have some amendments up. We cannot get consent 
on the other side. So here we sit. At this rate, we may not have a farm 
bill.
  We worked very hard on it this year. First, on the other side in the 
House, they got a farm bill passed early. We met and worked hard on it 
all summer long and worked with the Finance Committee to get extra 
funds to meet our obligations. I am checking on this right now, but I 
believe we had a record movement of a farm bill through our committee 
this year--a day and a half, a short day and a half.
  Now, this is my seventh farm bill. I have never seen anything move 
that fast. It was the result of weeks and weeks and months and months 
of working with the other side, with everybody working together, 
hammering out agreements, before we brought it to the committee. That 
is a good way of doing things around here. You establish relationships, 
figure out what people need to make sure they take care of their 
constituents. We came out of committee with not one vote against the 
farm bill. That never happened before, either, to the best of my 
memory. We always have a split vote coming out of committee on the farm 
bill. So it took a day and a half to get it out.
  I commend my ranking member, Senator Chambliss, who worked very hard 
on his side to pull things together. I don't even know how many 
amendments we had in that day and a half--four, five, or six--not very 
many. We disposed of them; we either adopted them or not. When we voted 
the bill out, we didn't have one dissenting vote.
  So you would think a bill such as that coming to the floor could be 
handled rapidly. But then we got here and we wanted to move it, so our 
majority leader, exercising his right as majority leader, said we will 
do this bill and we will do relevant amendments. If it is relevant to 
the farm bill, we will take all comers. Bring them all. That sounds 
good to me--open debate, open amendments. Bring on the amendments to 
the farm bill. But the other side said, no, they may have some 
extraneous amendments dealing with children's health care, estate 
taxes--I don't know what else. We may have had some on this side too. 
But we were agreeing that we would not take any non-relevant 
amendments, whether they were from Democrats or Republicans. I thought 
that was a pretty good way to proceed, to just focus on the farm bill. 
The Republican side said no.
  We have been locked here for over a week. I say to my friends in farm 
country--farmers, ranchers, agribusiness, the suppliers, wholesalers, 
retailers, shippers, those who sell seed, the elevator operators, 
fertilizer dealers, and those in the livestock industry, who want to 
know what the farm bill is like so they can plan ahead on whether they 
are going to milk more cows or fewer cows: Will the milk go to class A 
or class B? Will we feed more cattle or will we shift to feeding hogs? 
What is the lay of the land going to be? They need certainty. The 
livestock market is volatile as it is, but they need some certainty as 
to what we are going to do here. That is why we worked very hard to get 
the bill done, hopefully, by December, which is not unusual--except for 
the last farm bill when I was chairman at that time, the House was in 
Republican hands and the Senate was Democratic, and we got it through 
ahead of schedule. But for that one exception, every farm bill comes in 
late. That is just the nature of things around here, I guess. We 
usually get them done by December. The present farm bill is expired. We 
are now on a continuing resolution.
  I say to my friends in farm and ranch country, you ought to be 
calling up the minority leadership and saying we ought to get this farm 
bill through. We have to get it through. But if we don't move soon, we 
will have an extension of the present farm bill. We will just extend 
it. All the work we have done this year will be for naught. We will 
have to pick it up again some other time. That may be what will happen 
because of the fact that we cannot get an agreement to move ahead. We 
are stuck here at 6:20 in the evening, and we have been on the bill 1 
week with not one amendment. All we ask is for the other side to bring 
forth amendments, and we will get ours and start moving.
  I know we are trying to work things out. After a while, my patience 
runs out. Next week, we have Thanksgiving. People want to go home for 
Thanksgiving. If we don't finish the farm bill this week, it is going 
to be hard to have a farm bill done before we go home for Christmas. I 
know what it is like after Thanksgiving when we come back. We have 3 
weeks, and we have all our appropriations bills. I am chairman of one 
of the appropriations subcommittees. We have all that to do. We have 
the Iraq war funding to consider, and we have some tax bills. Everybody 
is going to want to get out of here and get home for Christmas.
  I say to all those watching, if we don't get a farm bill done this 
week, it will be hard to get one done this year. Maybe we will have to 
go into next year sometime to get it done. I hope that doesn't happen, 
but here we sit with no action, and there are going to be other things 
to be brought up this week, such as conference reports.
  So here we sit. I hope we can reach some agreement and move ahead 
rapidly. If we don't, it looks as if we may be in for a long continuing 
resolution on the farm bill--either into next year or beyond. I don't 
know when we can

[[Page S14267]]

finally get it done. But it is too important to just leave it go. We 
would like to get it done. Is there everything in the farm bill I would 
have wished for? No. Senator Chambliss and every member of the 
committee could say the same thing. That is the art of compromise. This 
bill is a good compromise among all regions of the country. I hope we 
can move ahead.
  I want to talk a little about one area of the farm bill about which I 
feel very passionate. Even though we have done some good things, we 
haven't done as much as we need to do, considering the enormity of what 
confronts us in terms of the loss of our soil, the pollution of our 
water and waterways, and the degradation of whole areas of this country 
because of intensive cropping or lack of good practices. We are facing 
a dire circumstance in this country where we are going to lose the 
productivity of our soil. Almost like global warming, it may reach a 
point where the scales have tipped so far that to get the productivity 
back, to clean up our waterways might be almost impossible or will cost 
so much money that we won't be able to do it.
  All of the farmers I have fought for so hard over these last 32 years 
are what I call the front line of conservationists. Farmers and 
ranchers want to protect the soil. They want to leave it better for 
future generations. When you are caught between a rock and a hard place 
in terms of all of the input costs, what it costs to produce a crop, 
the demands on those crops, and some negative incentives in the system 
right now in terms of Government support to farming and ranching--you 
put all those together, and there is a counterpressure, if you will, 
from the Government and from society at large against the farmer being 
a good conservationist.
  We are placing tremendous demands on our food and fiber producers in 
this country--tremendous demands--and, with the ethanol boom and 
others, even more demand for the productivity of our soil. So what is 
happening right now, in many cases, is we are pushing it to the limits 
and beyond the limits to what soil can carry and what our water can 
carry, and now we have to think about being really good 
conservationists, not on the scale of the individual farmer but on a 
national scale.
  I wish to take some time to talk about conservation and what is 
happening in our country at large in terms of conservation and what is 
happening to our soil and water in America and why we have to do 
something about it and why little steps, little things aren't going to 
do it. We need some big steps, big interventions, just as we do on 
global warming. The previous two speakers talked about that. If we just 
tinker around the edges, it won't mean anything. It is the same with 
conservation. We need a national commitment to a conservation ethic to 
restore, renew, and preserve our waterways, our soil, our wildlife 
habitats, and, yes, the source of our water. All that needs to be 
preserved.
  I have some pictures I wanted to point to here, some charts to give 
an idea of what I am talking about. I will bet you, Mr. President, a 
lot of Americans have seen this first picture somewhere. Every school 
kid has seen it in a history book. It is reprinted time and time again 
in one of our periodical magazines, talking about the great Dust Bowl 
of the 1930s.
  What was the Dust Bowl? It took place in the panhandles of Oklahoma, 
Texas, some in New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, up into Nebraska, and 
stretching up into South Dakota. This is one of the famous pictures 
taken in Cimarron, OK, in 1936 in the Dust Bowl. You can see there is 
no grass, nothing. You can see that the top of the posts are covered 
with dust. And there is a farmer and his kids running to take shelter 
from yet another one of the dust storms. That was in Cimarron County.

  The year before that, in 1935, under President Franklin Roosevelt, 
the Soil Conservation Act passed and the Soil Conservation Service 
began providing help and service to farmers on conservation.
  The next picture shows what happened that year. This is another 
famous picture, of a dust cloud in Kansas. On April 14, 1935, a dust 
storm started in eastern Montana, western North Dakota, rumbled through 
South Dakota into Nebraska, across Kansas into Oklahoma and into Texas. 
This dust storm was called Black Sunday. It was the biggest dust storm 
ever. In fact, it was preceded the previous year by a dust storm that 
swept from west to east that dumped dust on New York City. New York 
City got so dark it had to turn on its lights. Ships at sea could not 
dock in New York City because of the dust.
  There is a wonderful book that I recommend that was released last 
year. This book by Timothy Egan is called ``The Worst Hard Time: The 
Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.'' I 
recommend this book.
  First of all, it is a great read. He tells a wonderful story about 
the Dust Bowl, but he tells the history of the whole area and what 
happened in that area in the 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, up to the 
1930s. Here is what he said:

       By some estimates, more than 80 million acres in the 
     southern plains were stripped of topsoil.

  Mr. President, 80 million acres.

       In less than 20 years, a rich cover that had taken several 
     thousand years to develop was disappearing day by day.

  Eighty million acres of grassland turned over, grassland that he says 
in the book was laid down almost 20,000 years ago. As he said, this was 
land the buffalo couldn't hurt, the tornadoes, the fires, and the 
floods struck, but the grasslands stayed, and they came back year after 
year.
  But then there was the land rush. That area was opened up to 
homesteaders. They came in with plows and new equipment. They plowed it 
all up, turned it over.
  As one person said in Timothy Egan's book, he looked around and said: 
There is something wrong here; the wrong side is up. The dirt is up and 
the grass is down and the wind started blowing. And then came Black 
Sunday, April 14, 1935, the worst dust storm in recorded history. I 
don't mean in this century; I mean in recorded history, the worst dust 
storm ever.
  Again, when people look at that picture and they read about Black 
Sunday, they say: That is all over with; we took care of that 
situation. But look at this next photograph: a dust storm, the same as 
you saw before, and this time with color photography. That is a dust 
storm in the same area in Kansas, taken last year. The same huge dust 
storms rumbling through the plains because we have, once again, 
stripped the soil bare, turned the wrong side up, and we lack good 
conservation practices.
  Here is another picture. This one could have been in the thirties 
just as the first picture I showed, but this was taken in South Dakota 
last year. Here is a fence. We can barely see it. The top of the fence 
is almost covered, and it stretches as far as the eye can see. That is 
just dust and a few tumbleweeds. That is South Dakota last year.
  I hope we can recall the lessons of the thirties and what putting 
marginal cropland in production will really cost us.
  This farm bill will prohibit allowing newly broken native sod into 
the Crop Insurance Program. That is vitally important because you 
cannot be covered under the disaster provisions of this farm bill 
unless you buy crop insurance. So if you turn over native sod, you 
cannot get crop insurance on the newly broken land, and you will not 
get disaster payments, and you will not be eligible then for all the 
other programs. So there is a strong provision in this bill to at least 
save some of the native sod because history can and will and does 
repeat itself, as we have just shown.
  That is the dust. Here is the water. This is a cornfield in my part 
of the country. We can see that it has rained, and there is water 
running off. It is running probably into a ditch, that ditch drains 
probably into a small stream, that small stream runs into a bigger 
river, and that river goes into either the Missouri River or the 
Mississippi River.
  What happens is when this soil and water runs off, it is taking with 
it phosphorous, and it is taking with it nitrogen, washing down into 
the river. What happens to it? When it goes down river, it winds up 
down south of New Orleans. In this next photograph, the red area is 
called the hypoxic area, the dead zone in the mouth of the Mississippi. 
This picture was taken by satellite this year. That area in red is now

[[Page S14268]]

the size of New Jersey. These nutrient levels are so high, that it 
triggers an explosive growth of algae; when the algae dies, the 
decomposition process consumes all the oxygen, so all marine life 
dies--no crabs, no shrimp, no nothing.
  So, again, the water we saw running off these fields goes into the 
Mississippi, and this is what happens to it.
  What can be done about it? There are things that can be done about 
it. This picture show us one. I showed you a picture a little bit ago 
of the water running off the field. That wouldn't happen here. This is 
the Boone River watershed, Hamilton County, IA. We see buffer strips 
along the streams. So if there is a heavy rain, any runoff will be 
trapped by the trees and the grasslands and whatever else is in 
between.
  Those nutrients are good for trees. It makes them grow. The trees 
keep the nutrients from going in the water. Practices such as this are 
promoted by several conservation programs--the Conservation Stewardship 
Program, the EQIP program, the Environmental Quality Incentives 
Program, and the Conservation Reserve Program, especially the 
continuous signup.

  What is so important to note is that these are incentives paid to 
farmers to do these strips. One might say: Why wouldn't farmers just do 
that on their own? Why? Because of economics. The Senator was present 
today when I mentioned earlier about my backyard. I happen to be one of 
a few people who actually lives in the house in which he was born. Not 
many people can say that. I actually live in the house in which I was 
born.
  A lot of people say: Harkin, I live in the house I grew up in.
  I said: That is not what I said. I live in the house in which I was 
born. I wasn't born in a hospital. I was born in a house, as were all 
my five siblings. We lived in a small town in rural Iowa. People were 
born at home.
  In my home, we have a nice backyard with fruit trees. My wife planted 
a nice garden out there. Ever since I was a kid, I always thought I 
knew where the end of our garden was to the east, and there has always 
been a field there, about a 140-acre field with corn and beans.
  Because of the high price of corn and the high price of beans, the 
owner of that property sent a notice to all of us who live around it 
saying: I just had my property resurveyed, and my property is about 6 
feet more into your property than what you think.
  He has his rights. No one ever bothered to think about it in the 
past. We had our garden there, and we had our trees. As a consequence, 
I am going to have to have some of our bushes and trees taken out and 
move the line back. I guess I mind a little bit, but the guy is within 
his rights.
  One might think: What does 6 feet mean? Up until now, 6 feet never 
meant a hoot to any farmer who farmed that land, and it has gone 
through three or four different hands. No one ever cared about it. 
Because the demands are now so high on the owner of that property, and 
I am sure the farmer who farms that land says: You know, that extra 6 
feet, I can grow a few more rows of corn in there and get some more 
money. So before next year we have to move everything back, and they 
get another 6 feet.
  I tell that story to demonstrate the pressures that farmers are under 
to plow and plant right up to the fence row or anyplace they can get.
  I don't know the farmer who owns that land in this photograph, but I 
can tell you his economic pressures are to plant right up to the 
stream, to get rid of all that buffer and plant right up to the stream. 
Why doesn't he? Because he is in a conservation program that is giving 
him incentives, payments to provide a continuous strip through there. 
He might have made a little more money if he had planted right up to 
it, but he has probably a CRP agreement for 10 years, maybe has a CSP 
contract.
  I know a lot of farmers in Iowa who have done buffers like this. You 
know what, Mr. President. They feel better about it. They feel better 
about it because they know they are helping keep the water clean. They 
are farming the way nature really meant for them to farm. But because 
of economic pressures, they need help.
  That is what this farm bill does, it provides some help and support. 
They get a benefit, but I can tell you, he probably would make more 
money if he plowed right up to the stream. But he is willing to give up 
a little bit as long as he gets some help from the Government to put 
this buffer in. They feel better about it.
  What do we get out of it? Cleaner water, fish, not hypoxia down in 
the Gulf of Mexico. It cleans up our waterways. It preserves our soil 
for future generations. That is what is in this farm bill, to help them 
continue to do that.
  I talked about the Midwest. How about the East? Here is a farm in 
Pennsylvania that uses many of our conservation practices. We see strip 
cropping and contour farming. They have some corn, maybe some alfalfa 
in there for livestock. It is good conservation practice. It looks as 
if he has a good rotation practices on this land.
  There is one other item in this photograph. We see the city out here. 
It is encroaching on his farmland. There is a program called the 
Farmland Protection Program which buys easements on land, permanent 
easements on land. So that land cannot be converted to development; it 
has to stay as farmland. Again, here is a farmer. He could be getting 
CSP, the Conservation Stewardship Program. He may have gotten some EQIP 
money, and he may be getting farmland protection program money. I don't 
know. But those are all programs involved in preserving the land. We 
can see the strip cropping on the hillside and the contour plowing. 
That is what he has done to hold back the water. Again, part of our 
farm bill is to provide money for the Farmland Protection Program.

  Here is something a little bit closer to where we are here in the 
Capitol. Any of us who have been around this area for any time knows 
the Chesapeake Bay is polluted. Now, not all of that Chesapeake Bay 
pollution is because of farmland. There is a lot of industrial waste 
coming from factories and from other places up and down--plants, people 
dumping stuff out and going into the Chesapeake Bay. That has to be 
stopped. But a big part of the Chesapeake Bay problem is the nutrients 
coming off a lot of our land, such as livestock waste. It comes from 
the whole Chesapeake Bay watershed, which extends all the way to New 
York State. So New York State, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, 
Maryland, a little bit of West Virginia, all that water dumps into the 
Chesapeake Bay, eventually.
  Here is a farm in New Castle County, DE. Again, this is a prime 
example of conservation of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Prior to this 
picture being taken--you can see some wetlands and farm fields in the 
background--where that wetland is, crops used to grow. So from those 
fields, nutrients ran off right into the bay. Through conservation 
programs and through the Wetlands Reserve Program, this farmer has gone 
back and, with the help of conservation, has put this back into a 
wetlands, secluded off from the Chesapeake Bay, so any runoff filters 
through the wetlands. It filters through the wetlands before it gets to 
the Chesapeake Bay.
  If anybody wants to see how a wetlands works, you don't have to go 
more than about 15 miles from where this Capitol is, southwest of here. 
There is something called the Huntley Meadows Wetlands Reserve. I 
recommend it highly for anyone. Go down there and take a stroll through 
the wetlands. They have done a great job. They have preserved the 
wetlands, and it is right in the middle of a city. All of a sudden you 
go from housing developments and busy thoroughfares up Route 1 and down 
south, and all of a sudden you are in a wetlands area. A lot of the 
runoff from apartment houses and businesses and parking lots and 
everything else drains into this wetlands. By the time it gets through 
and dumps into the Potomac River, it is clean. The wetlands cleans it 
up. It is 15 miles from here where you can see it happen, Huntley 
Meadows.
  This bill provides $160 million for the Chesapeake Bay to do this 
kind of work to back up into the farmlands, restore wetlands, and help 
farmers build the structures and do the things to clean up the 
Chesapeake Bay. We can do it. This farmer did it in Delaware.
  Now, this photo is from Georgia. Well, you can't see much except this 
shows pine trees back here. All pine

[[Page S14269]]

trees back here, but in the past they were overgrown and so thick that 
wildlife could not use it for habitat. So they thinned it out to 
provided for some wildlife cover in that area. One of Senator 
Chambliss's priorities was to add a feature to the Conservation Reserve 
Program that will result in better management of soft wood pine stands 
currently enrolled in the CRP. The Senate bill invests $84 million in 
this effort. Again, showing the breadth and the depth of what we are 
doing on conservation in forested areas in the South, making sure we 
have good conservation at work there also.
  And lest we forget about the West, this is Arizona. This is well-
managed grazing land. The Conservation Stewardship Program provides 
incentives to increase current conservation, use better management 
practices, such as rotational grazing that better utilizes the resource 
base and increases wildlife habitat. The Senate bill continues to 
devote 60 percent of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program to 
livestock needs.
  Again, it is hard to see here, but what we are trying to show with 
this is that with fences, with rotational grazing, you don't feed down 
all the grass and don't create areas where the wind blows all the dust, 
or if they have a heavy rain it runs the soil off. This is good 
conservation practice and rotational grazing. You graze for a while, 
then you move them on. But in order to do that, you obviously need some 
fences, and fences cost money. So we provide that kind of help. If a 
rancher wants to get involved in good conservation practices with 
rotational grazing, we help with that. We help with that. So even in 
the Arizona southwest, we can make a difference.
  Well, now you might wonder about this picture. Well, we are all 
familiar with the problems affecting honeybees and other pollinating 
species. In this farm bill, we have made strategic changes to help with 
this issue. In the Conservation Reserve Program, the Conservation 
Stewardship Program, and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, 
we emphasize the creation and improvement of both the native and 
managed pollinator habitat. We require the Secretary of Agriculture to 
update conservation standards to include consideration for pollinators. 
Now, our Senate bill provides clear direction to focus conservation 
programs on creating, improving, and maintaining pollinator habitats 
and to revise and update conservation practices to include pollinators.
  Again, together these practices will help to establish better 
pollination. We know we have had a problem with honeybees dying. We 
don't know exactly what is causing it. They are doing a lot of research 
on it now. But we do know one thing. In order for our prairies once 
again to blossom and do all the kinds of conservation work we need, we 
need that little animal called a honeybee for pollination purposes. So 
this bill invests in that also.
  Coming full circle, when I started off my talk, I showed pictures of 
the great Dust Bowl in Kansas and places such as that--eastern 
Colorado. That is where this picture was taken. If you could take a 
picture of here in 1935, you would see the Dust Bowl. What has happened 
in this area, obviously a housing development has grown up, but in the 
foreground you will see grassland. That is a grassland reserve. They 
can't build houses there. You see a part of it, but this is a huge 
grassland reserve--protected by an easement that ensures that it stays 
in agricultural production. Grass will grow there, and livestock will 
graze, and the grass will hold the soil down, and keep the dust from 
blowing.

  So, again, in this Grassland Reserve Program, there are about a 
million acres enrolled right now, but we haven't been doing it very 
long. Remember, I mentioned in the Dust Bowl that 80 million acres--80 
million acres--were turned up. We have a million in protected 
grassland. We have a long way to go. We have a long way to go. But we 
put in $240 million for the Grassland Reserve Program in this bill to 
continue the program.
  Now, again, I want to digress a little bit on this grassland. You 
see, one of the other things we are doing in our farm bill is we are 
providing money for ethanol--cellulosic ethanol. Ethanol not made from 
row crops, such as corn, but cellulose made from grass, such as this. 
With the research we are doing, we know we can make ethanol from these 
grasses. We are getting the right enzymes to make it economical. The 
scientists and engineers tell me that in 5 years or so we will have an 
economical means of making cellulosic ethanol. We are already investing 
in that in several ethanol plants around the country.
  Imagine, if you will, this huge area of grasslands in the Plains 
States, where I showed the picture of the Dust Bowl.
  This is the picture I showed earlier of a dust storm in Kansas last 
year. Now imagine, if you will, that rather than cropping this land, as 
we do every year, we have grassland. Now, as Timothy Egan pointed out 
in his book, nature has a way of selecting the best ecosystem over a 
long period of time. Nature does that, whether it is the rain forest up 
in the Northwest, the bay area here for shellfish and others, and 
backwaters, where all the fish life starts, or in the grasslands in the 
Plains areas. So over thousands and thousands and thousands of years, 
nature laid down this thin topsoil, and on top of it grew grasses--
buffalo grass, blue stem, others--and through selectivity, over periods 
of time, were the hardiest to grow there. They sent their roots down 
20, 30 feet into the ground, and they could withstand years of drought, 
the worst blizzards, and grass fires that used to sweep across the 
Plains.
  Anyone who has ever read the Laura Ingalls Wilder book ``Little House 
on the Prairie'' knows how she talks about the threat of these huge 
fires sweeping through and all of that kept coming back, the grasslands 
that were there. Millions of buffalo ranged up and down there and had 
enough food to sustain them forever, and in 20 years we turned over 80 
million acres of it that then dried up and blew away.
  But think about this. We are going to have cellulose ethanol made 
from grass. Ten years from now, fifteen years from now, twenty years 
from now, we could see much of this land back into grassland. Not for 
buffalo to graze on but being grown as cellulosic feedstock being cut 
for ethanol and making fuel for our country. You don't have to plow it 
up. You leave it there, you cut it, it stays there and grows the next 
year. We can have the best conservation, we can have our grasslands, 
and we can produce the fuel we need for this country and do it in a way 
that is in concert with nature.
  So that is why it is so important we get this grassland back and 
provide the incentives to protect as much of this grass as possible, 
and that is why we put $240 million into this bill.
  The last couple of things I want to show is the Conservation Security 
Program, now renamed the Conservation Stewardship Program, which has 
enrolled about 15 million acres since 2002. This was a new program put 
into the farm bill in 2002. You see, most conservation programs are 
programs designed to give incentives to someone to take land out of 
production, put it into grassland, put it in trees, wetlands and buffer 
strips. And that is an important part of conservation.
  But there is a lot of working lands. We need farmers to be better 
conservationists on working lands, lands that are being cropped. That 
means, for example, putting on the right amount of fertilizer and other 
management practices that can make a big difference for the 
environment.
  Through the Conservation Security Program, I saw areas where farmers 
enrolled, and transitioned to precision agriculture, with equipment 
guided by the Global Positioning System. They had soil tests done of 
their farm, and rather than applying the same amount of fertilizer all 
over, they put the right amount of fertilizer wherever they applied 
it--more one place, less in another place. They were able to monitor 
and get the right amount of fertilizer so it wouldn't run off. They 
were able to buy equipment so they could do minimum tillage, where they 
didn't have to turn the soil over with the plow. They could combine, 
cut the cornstalks and leave it right there on the ground.
  I visited a farm in southern Iowa this summer that was in the 
Conservation Security Program. With help the farmer received from the 
program, he had purchased some equipment to do what I am talking about. 
Then he took me over his land. He had corn last year. This year, he is 
planting beans. So he

[[Page S14270]]

is on a rotation, which is good for the soil. But he left all his 
cornstalks chopped and laid on the ground. At the time of my visit, 
there was rain in his area. It rained almost 5 inches--5 inches in 
about 12 hours. Now that is a heavy rain. We drove all over his land in 
a four-wheel drive vehicle. He hardly had any soil runoff because that 
rain would hit those cornstalks on the ground, slide off--he almost had 
literally no soil runoff.

  Right across the road was a farmer who was not in the program and was 
planting corn up and down the hillsides and there were ditches where 
the water had taken that soil and run off the farm into other ditches, 
into streams, and the soil was gone.
  The program in the 2002 farm bill was a conservation program to help 
farmers be better conservationists on land on which they were actually 
producing crops or livestock. They didn't have to take land out of 
production. They just had to do things better: minimum tillage, crop 
rotations, buffer strips, applying with the right amount of 
fertilizer--that type of thing. For producers who have been able to 
enroll, it has worked wonderfully.
  But there has been one problem. The administration decided to allow 
enrollment on the basis of a watershed rotation. Over eight years, the 
program would supposedly cover all the watersheds in the country, but 
it has fallen far short of that goal. That is the bad news.
  The good news is in this farm bill we get off the watershed rotation, 
and make CSP a national program--producers in every watershed and 
region of the states would be eligible to enroll, every year. Producers 
are ranked based upon the level of conservation they are already doing, 
and how much new conservation they are willing to do as part of the 
contract. We are strengthening this program.
  It is hard to see on this chart, but the conservation security 
program is in every State in the Nation. It is all over, from 
Washington, Oregon, California, all across the east coast. A lot of 
people have said it is mostly for the Midwest. That is not true. On the 
east coast, on the far west up in Idaho. We even have some in Alaska, 
even some in Hawaii--again, to protect our soil and other resources.
  The point I want to make here is in the last 5 years since we put 
this program in, we have enrolled 15 million acres. I know that sounds 
like a lot, but under the new program we have in this bill, with the 
funding we have, we will enroll 13.2 million acres each year in this 
program--13.2 million acres every year. We had 15 million acres in 5 
years. We will do almost as much every year for the next 5 years. This 
means by the end of this farm bill we will have about 80 million acres 
enrolled in this program.
  What will that mean? It will mean cleaner water, better wildlife 
habitats, less soil runoff; a better environment, a healthier 
environment for farmers, their families, and for all of us. That is why 
this program is so important.
  It is sad to say, the House didn't put anything into this program and 
actually cut the program from baseline. It is an important program, one 
that can do a lot of good for our country. But it needs to be funded 
properly to give producers a fair shot at enrolling for it to do the 
good it has the potential of doing.
  Last, here is the kind of thing we are looking at here. We talked 
about the soil and the land but it all comes down to people and the 
kind of people we have farming, and their families. That is what it 
comes down to. How do we nurture beginning farmers? How do we get young 
people involved in this?
  Here is a young dairy farmer, Matt Fendry. He is 25 years old. He 
farms near Lanesboro in southeast Minnesota. He is a beginning farmer. 
He sells his milk through Organic Valley out of Lafarge, WI.
  Matt, like many beginning farmers and ranchers, will benefit from the 
provisions we have in the conservation title. Here is how we do it.
  For beginning farmers like Matt Fendry, and socially disadvantaged 
producers, we have included a special increase in cost-share rates up 
to 90 percent. So if the young man here wants to do good conservation 
work on his land--maybe rotational grazing the grassland for his 
cattle--it probably will cost him a little bit to get some things 
established. He can get back 90 percent. He only has to put up 10 
percent of this money. The Government will come in for 90 percent for a 
beginning farmer.
  Ten percent of our conservation programs will be reserved for 
beginning farmers. And for the first time we will allow the Secretary 
of Agriculture to advance up to 30 percent of the value of an EQIP 
contract to beginning and socially disadvantaged producers so they can 
purchase the materials they need for conservation work.
  Most of the EQIP money that will go to Matt for what he will do for 
good conservation would come after he does it, maybe a year after. That 
means he would have to borrow the money, and pay interest. Now we give 
the Secretary authority to get what he needs, 30 percent up front, so 
if he needs to put in fencing, buy seed, whatever he needs to get this 
operation going using good conservation, he can get up front.
  I think that is probably the bottom line here on my whole talk this 
evening, and that is what can we do for conservation. But what can we 
do to get young people involved in a way so they start from the very 
beginning, not just being a producer but being an environmentally 
conscious producer and one who, from the very beginning, protects our 
soil, our water, and our wildlife habitat? That is the goal of this.
  You can see I am very passionate about this. I am passionate because 
if you read history, you know what we are doing. We saw it in the 
photos at the beginning of my presentation--we are repeating the 
mistakes of the past. We are abusing the land and pushing it beyond its 
productive capacity. As I said--the farmers want to protect their soil 
and their land. But the economics of agriculture drives producers to 
produce as much as they can when prices are high. The farm bill has to 
counter those pressures.
  It is not good for this country. It is not good for our society. It 
is not good for rural America. So we need to make some changes in this 
farm bill and redirect it and guide it toward more conservation.

  Back in 1998, I was wondering why it was that Europe was spending so 
much of government money on their farmers, yet they were complying with 
the World Trade Organization restrictions on farm subsidies. We are 
spending less money on our farmers and somehow we are not complying. I 
wanted to see what were they doing in Europe different than we were 
doing. So I traveled around and visited a lot of their farms.
  No matter where I went, I saw a pristine countryside. I saw a 
countryside with small towns that were vibrant. I saw soil that was 
protected, waterways that were decently clean--some areas better than 
others. Finally I began to figure it out, what countries like France, 
Belgium, Germany, Spain, England, and Denmark were doing. They were 
making ``green payments'' to farmers, payments to farmers for 
conservation. Under the WTO, that is in the ``green box,'' which means 
it doesn't count against WTO limits. So some of the Europeans figure 
out here is the way we support our farmers, our small towns, our 
communities, clean up our water, provide for a beautiful countryside, 
and, guess what, we don't take a hit in the WTO because of that.
  That made me think. I come back, traveling around through this 
country, I see the wind blowing, I see the dust storms, the soil 
erosion, the hypoxia maps in the Gulf of Mexico, what is happening to 
the Chesapeake Bay, and I think: Wait a minute, why aren't we doing 
that?
  We have a program now, a direct payment program--$5 billion a year, 
$25 billion over the life of this farm bill, that started in 1996, of 
direct payments to farmers. To qualify for direct payments, all you had 
to do is have base acreage and a certain crop back in 1981 to 1985. You 
don't have to plant anything to get this money.
  Moreover, the bigger you are, and the bigger the base you had, the 
more money you get. The result is that these payments lead to a cycle. 
More direct payments means a greater opportunity to expand. More 
expansion means more direct payments. It is like a black hole, there is 
nothing to stop it.
  I am concerned that this cycle is hurting family farmers. It 
encourages producers to get bigger and bigger. Yet here we go, $5 
billion a year, $25 billion

[[Page S14271]]

over the life of this. It seems to me it would make much more sense and 
would be more supported, I think, by the general populace, if we took 
that money and put it out in green payments to farmers to build the 
buffer strips, the contours, the wetlands, the grasslands--yes, paying 
farmers to help them use the right amount of fertilizer and do 
rotations and things such as that, that help preserve the soil.
  Conservation programs are perfectly acceptable under WTO. We get a 
lot out of it. I am hopeful in the coming weeks, maybe as we go to 
conference on this farm bill, we can do more for conservation.
  I want to say we did a good job on conservation in this bill. I am 
not denying that. We put good money in conservation. I thank my ranking 
member, Saxby Chambliss, and all the others on the committee. It was a 
hard fight but we got the money in there. But it is not quite enough 
when you look at all the other things in the farm bill. We moved the 
ball forward, but I think with the demands on our farmers now, what we 
see happening around this country, we need an even greater commitment. 
We need to do a lot more in conservation than we have ever done before 
or pretty soon the scales will tip so far that the kind of money it is 
going to take it to do it will be prohibitive.
  That is why I take the time of the Senate tonight to talk about 
conservation. We need a better conservation ethic in this country. As 
we consider the farm bill, we need to be talking about soil and water 
conservation, helping farmers be better stewards of the soil and water. 
I am hopeful as we move into more debate we can make a few changes that 
will add some money to conservation before we go to conference. We have 
done a lot in the farm bill, but we have a lot more we can do.
  So I ask any Senator out there who has an amendment, if you have not 
filed it, you better file it because pretty soon we may cut it off.
  I am not encouraging amendments, you understand. I am just saying, if 
you have one, you better get it in in a hurry, and we will take a look 
at it.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


             Unanimous Consent Request--Executive Calendar

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Reid, I ask unanimous 
consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider 
Calendar No. 206, the nomination of James Kunder to be Deputy 
Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development; that 
the nomination be confirmed; the motion to reconsider be laid on the 
table; the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; 
and the Senate then return to legislative session.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Reserving the right to object, I understand that 
Senator Coburn, who was on the Senate floor a little earlier, has an 
objection to this request. On his behalf I would object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I would like to say to all of our 
colleagues, we have worked diligently to try to come together with a 
list of amendments on the farm bill to try to make sure that we proceed 
in some sort of regular order over the next several days.
  Unfortunately, we have been here all day without being able to 
consider amendments. It is the unfortunate part of the way we do 
business in this body, trying to be deliberate, trying to make sure we 
are fair, not operating under a rule like our colleagues in the House 
do.
  It is the way the Senate is designed to work. I think now it appears 
our leaders are going to be able to sit down with a list of amendments 
that have come forward from the majority side of the aisle, a list of 
amendments that have come forward from the minority side of the aisle, 
and we are going to be able to agree that these are all of the 
amendments that can be considered.
  There is no agreement that all of them are germane, but there is 
hopefully going to be an agreement shortly that will allow us to 
proceed in the regular order for the consideration of amendments. It is 
a frustrating process that we go through from time to time.
  When we were in the majority and our colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle were in the minority, again, there was many a day that we sat 
wanting to move forward and not being able to because of the way the 
process in the Senate works.
  I would simply say to our colleagues that I fully expect that we are 
going to have an agreement, which means we should be able to move 
forward with the farm bill tomorrow, from an amendment consideration 
standpoint. Senator Harkin and I pretty well agreed on the order of a 
couple of amendments that we will begin with that are critical 
amendments for consideration.
  I am very hopeful that within the next couple of days not only will 
we make significant progress on the farm bill, but I am very hopeful, 
as I know Senator Harkin, Senator Conrad, and all of us are who have 
been working very hard together in a bipartisan way to get this bill 
before our colleagues, to have it considered before we get away from 
here for Thanksgiving so we can complete it early on in December and, 
hopefully, get it to the desk of the President in time that farmers and 
ranchers across this country will know what the farm policy is going to 
be for the next 5 years versus having to enter into the end-of-the-year 
process with a big question mark out there.
  I simply say, again, we hope that is going to happen. I hope before 
we leave here in the next several minutes, whatever it may be, that we 
do have some agreement on the direction in which we are moving with 
respect to amendments to be offered to the farm bill.
  I yield the floor, and 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. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown.) Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, we are still, as I understand, on the 2007 
farm bill. I wanted to speak to one particular title of that bill, if I 
might, today.
  As I have noted before, I support the Food Security and Energy 
Security Act of 2007, which is currently before the Senate. My hope is 
that in the not too distant future, we will be able to reach an 
agreement with regard to amendments so that we can move this process 
forward.
  My fear is, if we do not reach any resolution this week and this gets 
pushed back until after the Thanksgiving break, that we run a very 
serious risk that we are not going to be able to get a bill through the 
Senate, conferenced with the House, before the end of the year.
  In my judgment it is incredibly important to farmers and ranchers 
across this country that we come to some conclusions with this farm 
bill to give them some certainty, as they approach the 2008 planting 
season, about what the rules are going to be, what the programs are 
going to be, how it has perhaps changed from what we currently have in 
place.
  But, in any event, it is, from a timing standpoint, of great 
importance that we act as soon as we can on the 2007 farm bill. So my 
hope would be, again, that we reach some resolution between the 
leadership on both sides as it pertains to amendments, and, of course, 
I have an amendment dealing with renewable fuel standards that I hope 
will be able to be included in that list of amendments that we get to 
debate and ultimately vote on.

  But I do want to speak this evening with regard to one particular 
aspect of this farm bill, and it is an important one. It is one that 
perhaps has not been emphasized as much in this debate, although the 
Senator from Iowa, I heard earlier this evening, speaking to the 
conservation title of the farm bill. But my colleagues and I have spent 
the better part of the last 2 years listening to our constituents and 
translating those concerns and suggestions into the farm

[[Page S14272]]

bill that we have before the Senate today. We have also listened to 
multiple criticisms, mostly coming from those who are not directly 
involved in agriculture, telling us what is wrong with this farm bill.

  But today I would like to talk about the conservation title because I 
believe it is just as critical to production agriculture in many 
respects as the commodity title.
  The conservation title of the farm bill comprises only about 9 
percent of its total cost. Yet it potentially affects more than 350 
million acres of land in the United States.
  When I say 9 percent, if you look at total spending in the 2007 farm 
bill, about 14 percent of the money in the bill is in the commodity 
title. Those are the programs that support production agriculture. 
About 9 percent is in this conservation title to which I address my 
remarks. The balance--about 67 percent or about two-thirds--of the 
funding in the farm bill actually goes toward nutrition, those aspects 
of the farm bill that really are very much unrelated to production 
agriculture. That is where the predominant share of the money is spent. 
A lot of times when those who criticize farm bills attack the funding 
that goes toward production agriculture, it is important to realize 
that most of the money in this bill isn't going to production 
agriculture. It is not going to the commodity title. It is going, two-
thirds of it, to the nutrition title. That is in contrast to the last 
farm bill, the farm bill we operate under today, where about 28 percent 
of the funding in the bill goes to the commodity title, production 
agriculture, and about 54 percent of the funding, under the 2002 farm 
bill which is currently in effect and which we are hopefully 
reauthorizing with the 2007 version, goes toward nutrition. Under the 
new farm bill, the one before us today, about 67 percent of the money 
would go toward the nutrition title of the bill. I don't think it is 
fair in many respects when those who would like to criticize this 
attack it for the money going to the commodity title. That is certainly 
not the case.
  The 9 percent that goes into conservation is important. There 
probably isn't anything that we do in terms of conservation or 
environmental stewardship that actually does more to achieve the 
objectives we all want than this conservation title in the farm bill 
achieves.
  This picture, taken in 2007, is an example of the role played by the 
farm bill conservation title. What you see in the picture is CRP on the 
farm. You see also an example of crop production, working literally 
hand in hand. If you look in the bottom part of the picture, you see 
Conservation Reserve Program, the land that has been put into native 
grasses that is in abundance. You see in the center of the photograph a 
wetland area, some water in the background. Across the way, you see the 
cornfields that have been planted. The balance that has been struck on 
this property is seen between conservation, between native grasses, a 
wetland area that has been managed, and it all being complemented with 
a corn crop as well. That sort of describes what all of us would like 
to see when it comes to the way we manage our lands and the way farmers 
go about incorporating conservation practices into their crop 
production as well.
  The CRP on this farm, the 1.5 million acres enrolled in CRP in South 
Dakota added 10 million pheasants and $153 million to South Dakota's 
economy. This year's record corn crop in South Dakota at 556 million 
bushels is worth an additional $1.8 billion to South Dakota farmers--
again, those two working hand in hand in South Dakota achieving record 
corn crops at the same time that we have a record pheasant crop because 
of the good conservation practices that have been employed by many of 
the farmers in our State and which have been in response to, their 
practices, many of the incentives that were put in place in previous 
farm bills.
  The second picture we have this evening is a picture taken not too 
long ago in South Dakota, a few months back, in the year 2007, and it 
tells another story. A lot of people would look at this picture and 
say: That must be the Great Depression, because when you look at it, 
that certainly is what it would appear to be. But it is not a scene 
from the 1930s; it is a scene from last March in 2007. It is an example 
and a result of what happened when native sod was cropped, because crop 
insurance provided an unintended incentive to convert marginal 
pastureland or native sod into cropland. This picture sends a stronger 
message than any words could about the inherent need to take care of 
our land. The topsoil you see in the fence line and ditch along this 
South Dakota field took literally millions of years to create and one 
dust storm to remove. The damage you see here cannot be undone.
  There is a sod saver provision in the farm bill we are considering. 
It won't prohibit anyone from converting native sod into cropland, but 
what it does do, what the sod saver provision in this bill does is 
eliminate the incentives found in current Federal farm policy that 
encourage unwise farming practices which result in the consequences 
shown here.
  Again, it is not a scene from the 1930s, which at first glance one 
might expect, but it is a scene literally from last March, calendar 
year 2007, in South Dakota. It is an example of what can happen when 
bad practices are undertaken.
  The next picture is an example of some of the native sod that is 
being converted to cropland in South Dakota. For the past 100 years, 
billions of acres of prairie have been converted to productive 
farmland. Most native sod that can be productively farmed in South 
Dakota and other prairie States has already been converted to cropland. 
We faced a shortage of money to write this farm bill. I don't believe 
it is a wise use of Federal funds to pay for crop insurance and 
disaster programs on this type of land. If the farmer who owns this 
land wants to farm it under this farm bill, he or she is free to do so. 
But let's not subsidize it. That is an example of land that should not 
be brought under the plow, and this farm bill prevents crop insurance 
or disaster program payments from going to a farmer who would convert 
native prairie ground such as this into cropland.
  This is an example of a dust storm that was not limited to the 1930s. 
This picture was taken in 2005 in South Dakota. Once again, we see the 
consequences of unwise land stewardship practices disturbingly evident 
in this picture.
  During the 1930s, South Dakota received billions of tons of Kansas 
and Oklahoma topsoil, much of it still in place in fence lines and 
fields. The programs we drafted in the conservation title of this farm 
bill, if funded adequately, will ensure that Kansas and Oklahoma 
farmers no longer see their topsoil blow to South Dakota and that South 
Dakota farmers will keep their topsoil in their fields and not in the 
ditches and fence lines as we saw in the previous picture.
  I have stated many times before and I will emphasize once more that 
production agriculture and conservation should not compete; rather, 
they should complement each other.
  This is another picture of a South Dakota cornfield in CRP. CRP is 
native grasses in the foreground and then, of course, a cornfield 
planted toward the background of the picture. Every agricultural area 
in the country is blessed with productive land and also land that needs 
help to keep from polluting the water we drink and the air we breathe.

  I ask those who are so critical of this farm bill to take a close 
look at the conservation title and what it offers. In spite of the 
budget cuts made in drafting this farm bill, which made it more 
difficult than writing any other farm bill that has ever been written, 
I am pleased that my colleagues and I have been able to write a farm 
bill with a sound conservation title.
  I will point out once more examples of the benefits of the 
conservation title in this farm bill: First, protecting and enhancing 
our soil and our land; secondly, providing an economic alternative to 
placing costly fertilizer, seed, and chemicals on unproductive 
cropland; third, enhancing recreation and boosting local economies, 
which, as I noted earlier, created in our State of South Dakota an 
abundance of pheasants, 10 million pheasants this year, which is the 
highest number of pheasants we have seen at any time since the 1960s--
they say about 1962 was the last time we had this kind of pheasant 
numbers in South Dakota--and $153 million to the economy of my State as 
a result of the recreation value that

[[Page S14273]]

comes from good, sound conservation practices.
  I believe it is very important to take a breather from the 
controversy surrounding this farm bill and to take a few minutes to 
focus on the farm bill's proven capabilities to enhance rural America 
and to improve our Nation's water and soil. The conservation title will 
do just that. This is one of many reasons this farm bill deserves the 
support of our colleagues.
  I leave my colleagues with the following information regarding the 
conservation title in the 2002 farm bill. Nationwide, without a 
conservation title, we would have 13.5 million fewer pheasants, 450 
million tons of topsoil disappearing every single year, 2.2 million 
fewer ducks, an additional 170,000 miles of unprotected streams, and 40 
million fewer acres of wildlife habitat. That is the value of a 
conservation title in the farm bill which accomplishes multiple 
objectives--protecting and enhancing our soil and land, providing an 
economic alternative to placing costly fertilizer, seed, and chemicals 
on unproductive cropland, and enhancing recreation and boosting local 
economies. Nine percent of the funding in this farm bill goes toward 
that end. That, when put in a total perspective of what this farm bill 
spends, is not that much relative to the benefit we accomplish and to 
the bad things we avoid happening by having a good conservation title.
  As this farm bill is debated, we will have amendments at some point 
when we get an agreement. The amendments will focus on a lot of other 
areas of the farm bill. Some will focus on the commodity title and 
trying to move money around within the farm bill.
  I am interested in the energy title. I have an amendment to the 
energy title, and we worked very hard in crafting the energy title in 
this farm bill to provide the necessary economic incentives for further 
investment in cellulosic ethanol production. The renewable fuels 
standard amendment I hope to be able to offer along with Senators 
Domenici and Nelson of Nebraska and others on a bipartisan basis will 
make that energy title stronger. It will improve it.
  It will give us some headroom to work within the area of renewable 
energy. The renewable fuels standard put in place back in 2005 called 
for 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel by the year 2012. We are 
going to hit 7.5 billion gallons by the end of this year if we don't 
act to increase the renewable fuels standard. We have a terrible crunch 
that is coming ahead of us. I hope we can get this amendment adopted 
that raises the renewable fuels standard, moves it to 8.5 billion 
gallons in the year 2008. It will give us the necessary headroom to 
keep this wonderful example of renewable energy in this country and a 
remarkable story going forward.
  If we don't do something to address the renewable fuels standard, my 
fear is we will run into a wall. That would not be good. It would not 
be good for those who have already invested in ethanol facilities. It 
would not be good, clearly, for the economy in rural areas and all the 
jobs that have been created as a result of renewable energy. As 
importantly, if not more importantly, it will do nothing to lessen our 
dependence upon foreign sources of energy, which at the end of the day 
is so important in terms of our policy objectives.
  This farm bill, by encouraging more energy production, if we can get 
the renewable fuels standard added to it, will take us a long way 
toward lessening our dependence on foreign energy. I would hope before 
this debate is concluded we will be able to have the amendments adopted 
and voted on, if not adopted, but certainly a chance to debate these 
things which we think will make the farm bill stronger. Some of those 
amendments may deal with the conservation title, but I think this 
particular title is one that often gets overlooked in the discussion 
that is held about the farm bill because of the focus on production 
agriculture and because of the focus on the nutrition title of the bill 
which really comprises about two-thirds of the total funding of the 
bill.
  But 9 percent of the money that is spent in this farm bill, the 
conservation value we get from that and the difference it is making in 
areas all across this country in protecting our critical soil and water 
resources, in adding to our economy, providing recreational 
opportunities such as pheasant hunting in South Dakota--this is a very 
important title of this bill, one that there was great deliberation and 
consideration given toward coming up with.
  I hope at the end of the day we will get the farm bill passed before 
the end of the year and get this conservation title, along with the 
other policy changes that are included in the farm bill, implemented 
into law so our farmers and our ranchers and those who will benefit 
from the great recreational opportunities that will result from this 
conservation title will know what the rules are going to be as we 
approach this next year.
  So, again, I have heard many of my colleagues come down and speak on 
the floor today about different aspects of this bill. My biggest hope 
and greatest fear at this point is--my biggest hope is we get this 
thing moving this week. My greatest fear is if we do not, we are not 
going to get a farm bill this year. So I hope before we leave this week 
we will come to a resolution about amendments and the way forward and 
the process we are going to use to get a farm bill adopted.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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