[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 195 (Wednesday, December 19, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15962-S15966]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  FTC

  First, I want to talk about some action that was taken yesterday by 
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin and 
Commissioners Tate and McDowell, forming a majority of three. In a 3-
to-2 split, the Commission decided yesterday their main issue was the 
need to relax the ownership rules so we can have more concentration in 
America's media. It is exactly the wrong thing to have done. They have 
done the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, despite the fact that the 
Congress itself has asked them not to do this.
  The Commerce Committee, of which I am a member, has passed 
legislation asking them not to vote so quickly on this rule. Members of 
the Commerce Committee and other Senators, 27 in total, sent a letter 
to the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission this week and 
said: If you proceed to do this, we will introduce legislation to 
nullify and revoke the rule you are intending to pursue.
  Now, despite that, yesterday the Chairman of the Federal 
Communications Commission, having worked apparently the night before--
at 1 a.m. he was still passing around materials about what his rule 
was--drove through a new FCC rule to allow newspapers to buy television 
stations, to relax the cross ownership ban that has existed for some 
three decades here. We have in this country a dramatic concentration in 
America's media. A substantial portion of what most people in this 
country will see and hear and read today is controlled by a handful of 
corporations; it's a massive concentration. It is not unusual for you 
to drive down the street and think you're listening to your hometown 
radio station, but it isn't. Oh, you think you are listening to your 
hometown radion station, but they are not there. It is very likely 
someone is driving down the road in Salt Lake City, UT, and hears the 
disk jockey say: Well, it is a great morning here in Salt Lake City. 
The sun is coming up, we have got a few clouds in the sky, it is going 
to be a beautiful day. The traffic is kind of light. You think, well, 
this person obviously is in Salt Lake City, I am listening to a Salt 
Lake City station. But, no, that person is actually in a basement 
studio in Baltimore, MD, ripping from the Internet whatever that person 
can find about Salt Lake City and then pretending he is broadcasting 
from Salt Lake City. It is going on all across the country and it is 
called voice tracking. Localism is gone in many companies that have 
radio stations and television stations. And yet the Federal 
Communications Commission that is supposed to wear a striped shirt and 
be a referee--that is what a regulator is about--the Federal 
Communications Commission apparently believes we do not have enough 
concentration in the media.
  In one community in my home state, Minot, ND, one company bought all 
six commercial radio stations. Think of that, bought all six of them. 
There was an incident one night at 2 in the morning that threatened 
peoples' lives,

[[Page S15963]]

killed one person, sent a lot of people to the hospital, when a plume 
of anhydrous ammonia enveloped that town from a train accident. The 
citizens called the radio station, but could not get an answer. Nobody 
answered the phone. Maybe if those six radio stations had been owned by 
six local people, you think you may have found someone there? I would 
think so, but yesterday the Federal Communications Commission said: 
Well, none of that matters. We want more concentration in the media. So 
they passed a rule that allows cross ownership, that has been banned 
for some 30 years, between newspapers and television stations.
  Well, here is the media. Let's take a look at the media. They say: 
Well, we have got all of these new opportunities in the media. All of 
these are different voices. We have got Internet, we have cable 
channels, we have got so many more voices. Yes, more voices, the same 
ventriloquist.
  Let me describe why that is the case. News Corporation. Here is one 
company. Take a look at it. The Internet, books, production, 
programming, film, magazines, newspapers, satellite. One corporation. 
By the way, that corporation has just purchased the Wall Street 
Journal.
  Disney: Parks and resorts, magazines, radio, books, Internet, 
production, television, film. Time Warner. All of this media it owns: 
Programming, magazines, the Internet, film, television, cable.
  Viacom: The Internet, film, production, programming, radio 
television. Well, I could go on. Let me go on to two more charts.
  CBS Corporation, exactly the same thing. Go to the most popular 
Internet sites, who owns them? The same companies. General Electric. 
Television, programming, production, film, magazines, and on and on.
  So we have now a Federal Communications Commission that says: You 
know what we need? We need more concentration, less localism, less 
minority ownership, apparently. It is unbelievably arrogant what they 
did yesterday. Let me describe why I think what they did yesterday was 
arrogant.
  They had a rule they were going to put out some while ago dealing 
with migratory birds and communication towers. They said: This is an 
important rule. We will give 90 days for the American people to comment 
on this rule. Ninety days. On a rule dealing with relaxing ownership 
limits, they gave 28 days. Twenty-eight days.
  Chairman Powell, the chairman before Chairman Martin, ran an FCC that 
included now-Chairman Martin. Four years ago he said he was going to 
put out a new ownership rule for the media. Here is what he proposed: 
In one of America's largest cities a company could own the following: 
eight radio stations, three television stations, the cable company, and 
the newspaper, and it will be fine.

  Well, it was not fine with me. Senator Trent Lott and I got the 
Senate to pass a resolution of disapproval of the rule. In the 
meantime, the Federal court stayed the rule so it could not take 
effect. Here we are now back with the same issue, Chairman Martin 
leading the way. He says, well, this is a smaller step. Sure, it is a 
smaller step. You have abrogated the right of the American people to 
even understand what you are doing. He says: Well, we had a 120-day 
comment period. No, you did not, you had 28 days. You went out and held 
some meetings, but there was no rule for people to comment on at that 
point.
  I want to make this point. What the FCC has done is arrogant. The 
chairman and the ranking member on the Commerce Committee asked them 
not to do it, 27 Senators sent them a letter saying it is 
inappropriate, saying you should not be short-circuiting the right of 
the American people to comment on this rule.
  This Federal Communications Commission, operating with its strings to 
the White House, has decided what we need in this country is more 
concentration of the media. It is unbelievable to me. The last thing in 
the world we need in this country is more concentration in the media. 
What we do need with respect to radio stations and television stations 
and, yes, newspapers are some basic connections in the communities in 
which they serve.
  This notion of voice tracking and all of the other things that are 
going on, one person at a studio board is running four or five 
stations, sending out homogenized music, pretending he is in four 
cities at the same time, that is not what was intended when we decided 
to give for-profit companies the right to use the airwaves that belong 
to the American people free of charge.
  They have a responsibility, a public interest responsibility, and a 
responsibility to serve local interests. This Federal Communications 
Commission ought to hang its head for what it did yesterday. It is not 
over. We will bring to the floor of the Senate a resolution of 
disapproval. I am convinced, and I predict, that the resolution of 
disapproval will prevail on the floor of the Senate.
  I would prefer to say nice things about a Federal agency, if only we 
could find a Federal agency that takes some responsibility for doing 
what it is intended to do. You can look around. You can look at the 
Surface Transportation Board, an agency that is supposed to be a 
referee with respect to the railroads. It is dead from the neck up; has 
been for years. There is no opportunity, no real opportunity, for 
anybody to have any opportunity to contest rail rates, for example.
  I can go on and on with respect to regulators. It is too bad, because 
the American people deserve better, in my judgment. The American people 
expect better from this administration.
  I want to speak on another couple of subjects this afternoon. First, 
I want to talk about the subprime loan issue, which affects almost 
everyone in this country because of the way it is affecting our 
economy. The subprime crisis has at its roots a substantial amount of 
greed and a lust for profits, that in my judgment injured basic common 
sense.
  I want to read an advertisement that almost everyone has seen or 
heard when in the morning you get up, brush your teeth, maybe are 
listening to the television set as you get ready for work, and you hear 
this advertisement. We have all heard them. I wondered when I heard 
them: Well, how on Earth can this work?
  Here is one, Millennia Corporation: 12 Months, No Mortgage Payment. 
That is right. We will give you the money to make your first 12 
payments if you call in the next 7 days. We pay it for you.
  Here is one from a company called Zoom Credit: Credit approval is 
just seconds away. Get on the fast track with Zoom Credit. At the speed 
of light, Zoom Credit will pre-approve you for a car loan, a home loan, 
refinance, or a credit card. Even if your credit is in the tank, Zoom 
Credit is like money in the bank. Zoom Credit specializes in credit 
repair, debt consolidation too. Bankruptcy, slow credit, no credit. Who 
cares?
  That is the advertisement from Zoom Credit.
  Countrywide Financial, the largest mortgage lender in the country, 
had this to say: Homeowners, do you want to refinance and get cash? 
Countrywide has a great reason to do it now. A no cost refinance. It 
has no points, no application fees, no credit reporting and no third-
party fees. No title, no escrow, no appraisal fees. Absolutely no 
closing costs. So you wind up with a lot more cash.
  Now the advertisements that say: Have you been bankrupt? Have you 
been missing payments? Do you have bad credit? Come to us. Do those 
advertisements say something to us about fundamentally bad business? It 
does to me.
  Let me tell you what Countrywide Financial was doing. It is not just 
Countrywide; I am using it as an example. They began to offer hybrid 
mortgage loans. They offered loans where you paid interest only. You 
get a loan on your home, a new mortgage, and you pay no principal. You 
just pay interest only, and layer your principal in later at the end of 
the mortgage.
  Well, that was not enough. They decided: Well, we will do a payment 
option adjustable rate mortgage. That allows the borrower to pay only a 
portion of the interest and none of the principal, and the portion they 
did not pay gets added to the back of the mortgage.
  So you advertise, and you say: You know what, you have got bad 
credit, you have been bankrupt, you are a slow pay, your credit rating 
is in the tank, tell you what, we will give you a subprime loan. Do you 
know what? We will give you a loan at 2 percent. It will have to bounce 
up when it resets in a while, so you will have to pay a little

[[Page S15964]]

more later, but we got this housing bubble going on, you know, bubbles 
never burst. So buy this and flip it. If you cannot make the payment 2 
years from now when the interest rate resets, you can flip the house 
and make $30,000, $50,000, $100,000, do not worry, be happy.
  In fact, some of this comes from cold calls to the home from brokers 
in some cases making $10,000 $20,000, $30,000 in fees, saying: What you 
need is a new loan. It is a new loan that is going to have a 2-percent 
interest rate. And, by the way, when we tell you what your monthly 
payment is going to be, we are not going to tell you that you have 
escrow payments on taxes and insurance. That will not be part of what 
we tell you. So we will get you into this new mortgage loan, and we are 
going to have a prepayment penalty. You are locked into a circumstance 
where the rate is going to reset, and when it resets, you cannot pay it 
off early because you will have a big penalty. This from the largest 
mortgage lender in the country.
  I don't know how one looks at this and understands the consequences 
of it for mortgage lenders that went hog-wild. They then gave people 
subprime loans. It is called subprime because it doesn't quite measure 
up and has very unusual terms. What they do next with the subprime 
loans is they sell them quickly, and then they are securitized by 
perhaps a third party who sells them again, so they are sold in two or 
three cases. It is like putting sausage together, the old story about 
how sausage used to be made with sawdust. It is a filler used to make 
sausage. You get a container--in most cases the intestine--you fill it 
up with a little meat and sawdust, and then you slice it. That is what 
they did with these mortgages. They took some subprime, they took some 
others, they diced them, spliced them, securitized them, sold them two 
or three times.
  Now we have a circumstance where a financial institution in France 
has a massive problem because they are holding securities they didn't 
know existed with subprime loans that were sliced and diced. What is 
the incentive for the investor to buy these? The investor is greedy. 
The broker is greedy. The mortgage lender is greedy. The investor who 
wants to buy these sliced-and-diced pieces of mortgage sausages is 
going to get a higher return because you have to reset the interest 
rate. That is going to jack rates way up, which means you get a higher 
return as an investor. Guess what. The center pole of the tent 
collapses, and everybody is standing around wondering what on Earth 
happened.
  What happened was an unbelievable system filled with greed by 
everyone who should have known better, starting with television 
advertising that said, ``Get a loan from us even if you are in 
bankruptcy because we are interested in helping you out, even if you 
have bad credit,'' starting with that and ending on the other side with 
sophisticated investment banks and rating organizations believing they 
can buy these pieces of mortgage sausage that, at its fundamental, 
never added up, and they believe they can show big profits on their 
books. The result is now we see CEOs of some very large corporations 
who are not only losing jobs, but the corporations are taking writeoffs 
of $8 billion, $10 billion. This is going to be a casebook study of bad 
business in all business schools at some point.
  The question is, How does it happen that all of this occurs outside 
of the view of regulators or outside of the concern of regulators? 
Where was the Federal Reserve Board when all of this happened? Where 
was Alan Greenspan? He was walking around scratching his head, worried 
that we were going to pay down the debt too rapidly in the first part 
of this decade. He was the enabler for George Bush for deciding that 
even though we don't have a fiscal policy that has yet produced 10 
years of surplus--we had a surplus when President Bush took over, but 
the prediction was for the next 10 years--even though we didn't yet 
have that, he had an enabler in Alan Greenspan walking around 
scratching his head, trying to figure out how he could sell the Bush 
policy by saying: I am really worried we are going to pay down the debt 
too quickly and it will have an adverse impact on the economy. He, more 
than anybody, gave a green light to a bad fiscal policy. Even as that 
was occurring, he apparently was looking the other way in a determined 
manner as all of this was happening under his nose. It is the Federal 
Reserve Board, yes, but it is also other regulators as well who should 
have been involved. If ever there is a lesson that you need effective 
regulatory capability in a government, it ought to be now.
  I was watching a wonderful series about the Presidency. It is 
documentaries about most of America's more recent Presidents during the 
last century. One of them was about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 
something he did during the 1930s that was unbelievably controversial. 
During the 1930s, he decided banks should be regulated. He did that for 
a good reason. He decided there should be regulation of banks. He was 
excoriated by American business and by banks. What on Earth are you 
talking about? Why should banks be regulated?
  The question is, What happened to effective regulation that began to 
be created over some decades to protect the public interest, when we 
now see in the year 2007 this kind of behavior, a subprime mortgage 
crisis that at its roots is devoid of common business sense? Yet it 
happened, and the smartest guys in the room--to describe the title of a 
movie dealing with Enron--apparently were the ones who constructed it. 
Now we all pay the price.
  Warren Buffett, one of the wonderful business leaders in this 
country, says: Every bubble will burst. Part of the housing bubble was 
created by subprime loans and by all of these folks deciding: We are 
going to get all these mortgage instruments out there, even if they are 
not sound fundamentally. That helped exacerbate the bubble. The plain 
fact is, the bubble was destined to burst. Then what happened? What 
happened is what we see now--substantial financial chaos, some 
companies running, trying to figure out what happened, and we have a 
lot of victims.
  George Will suggests that nobody is a victim who got a home loan. I 
beg to differ. The fact is, those who were getting cold calls from 
fast-talking mortgage brokers trying to put them in a mortgage they 
didn't quite understand and could not afford, those folks have been 
victimized. I don't pretend to know all the solutions, but I know the 
start of a solution is to decide, No. 1, you can't be peddling this 
kind of thing. We have seen it before in other decades. It almost 
always leads to collapse and chaos. Second, you can't effectively 
function in a financial system such as ours unless you have some 
regulatory capability.
  I had recently written a piece about a new financing system that has 
emerged in our country and around the world--but especially it is 
developing here--that represents the dark side of money. It is the 
equivalent of the dark matter in the universe, the dark money that 
exists that is outside of the sight of anybody. When you take a look at 
what is happening with respect to hedge funds and derivatives, a whole 
series of things happening in our financial system that are outside of 
the regulatory capability or even the sight of regulators.
  I gave a speech talking about where the price of oil is. One of the 
senior analysts of Oppenheimer says there is no reason that it ought to 
be 5 cents above $55 for a barrel of oil. There is no justification for 
the price of oil being a nickle above $55 a barrel. It is above $55 a 
barrel because the futures market for oil has become an orgy for 
speculation. We have hedge funds deep in the futures market for oil. We 
have investment banks in the futures market for oil. There are reports 
that some investment banks are actually buying storage facilities so 
they can actually take the supply off the existing inventory, put it in 
storage, and wait until the price goes up. There is so much going on in 
this country's financial system that desperately needs the capability 
for regulators to understand what is happening and take effective 
action to respond to it.
  Mr. WEBB. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. WEBB. If I may, this Senator came to the floor on other business, 
but I followed the Senator's comments with some fascination and 
gratitude, quite frankly. I admire the Senator for coming down here 
week after week and addressing issues that in many cases are conceptual 
issues that don't usually get the time for consideration in

[[Page S15965]]

this body. One of the events that came to my mind when the Senator was 
talking about Franklin Roosevelt's administration and his willingness 
to regulate banks--and we have seen such a push of late against any 
sort of Government regulation--was when Andrew Jackson vetoed the 
charter for the second national bank, which was an act that Historian 
Vernon Louis Parrington termed ``the most courageous political act in 
American history.'' Andrew Jackson did it for exactly the same reasons 
as the Senator from North Dakota is stating. What Andrew Jackson said 
at that time was that if the charter of the second national bank came 
into place, it would have created and perpetuated an unbridled 
aristocracy in the United States. It would have allowed the 
continuation of aristocracy in a nation that was supposed to be a 
democracy.
  I particularly associate myself with the remarks of the Senator when 
it comes to the verticalization of our communications industry. You can 
look back in history. Whenever authoritarianism takes hold of a nation, 
they do it through three entities. They take out the ability of people 
to worship. They attempt to decimate the family, and they go after the 
ability of people to speak freely. In some cases, this verticalization, 
it can be argued, is simply economic. But certainly in a lot of areas, 
when you have this verticalization of ownership from film to TV to 
local TV stations to newspapers, it can affect people's access to 
information. It can affect people's ability to make reasoned judgments.
  I wanted to interrupt the Senator for a few minutes to state my 
appreciation for his coming to the floor week after week and making 
these points. I will be very strongly desirous of working with him on 
both of those issues.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator 
from Virginia. He said something about a year ago that I have long 
remembered because it is something I have been concerned about. He was 
talking about the economy and about concentration in the economy. It 
relates to what I was describing about big companies and the media. 
Senator Webb talked about the fact that we have reached a point now 
where the average CEO in America makes 400 times what the average 
worker makes.
  I was doing some writing the other night about this issue. I talked 
about hedge funds a few moments ago and their role in the subprime 
mortgage scandal. I was talking about what hedge fund managers are 
earning. From a recent Alpha Magazine report on compensation--the hedge 
fund manager who earned the most last year made $1.7 billion. James 
Simons did that. And $1.7 billion means he makes in 1 hour what the 
average worker makes in a year, but he makes it every hour. The point I 
am making about this is the skewed nature of this economic system of 
ours and what is happening in it.
  My colleague will know that in recent days we have had a debate with 
President Bush about who the big spenders are and so on. The biggest 
spender by far has been President Bush. He has sent us budgets that 
represented the highest amount of spending and the biggest deficits we 
have had for a long time. When we tried to pay for some things, we 
said: Let's do certain things and pay for them. The President said: Not 
on your life. We will not allow you to pay for these things.
  Here are the things we wanted to do to pay for some of those things, 
some things that were worthy--for example, extending incentives for 
renewable energy and so on. We said: Those people, including hedge fund 
managers, who are making a lot of money and are paying a 15-percent 
income tax rate, which is a lower rate than the receptionist in the 
office down the street is paid, they should be paying an income rate 
like all Americans. The President said: Not on your life.
  We described in a picture what is happening. We said: We want to shut 
down tax scams that allow Wachovia to buy a sewer system in Germany, 
not because they have expertise in German sewers; they want to buy the 
assets of a German sewer system so they can write off hundreds of 
millions of dollars in taxes they would otherwise owe this country. The 
President said: No, you can't be doing that. That is a tax increase.
  From David Evans, a really great reporter, I got a picture of this 
building, the Ugland House, some while ago. This is a 5-story white 
house in the Cayman Islands, home to 12,748 corporations. Are they 
there? No, it is a legal fiction. Lawyers have put them there legally 
so they can avoid paying U.S. taxes. The President doesn't want to shut 
those things down. He said: No, if you shut this sort of thing down, we 
call it a tax increase, even as the President is protecting these 
unbelievable opportunities for the wealthiest to avoid paying taxes, at 
a time when the debt is increasing dramatically.
  Here is what the President has done since the year 2002. He sent us 
emergency requests, none of it paid for, and said: I want it all added 
to the Federal debt. In 2002, he said: I want $50 billion. In 2003: I 
want $76 billion. I don't want to pay for any of it. Add it right to 
the debt. I am sending soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan. When they come 
back, they can pay for the debt. In 2004: I want $87 billion. In 2005: 
I want $82 billion. In 2006: I want $92 billion. It is all emergency 
money outside the budget, all added to the Federal debt. In 2007: I 
want $103 billion. And in 2008: I want $196 billion.

  He has asked for over two-thirds of a trillion dollars and wanted to 
charge it all to future generations, and he has gotten by with it. Then 
he sits in the Oval Office and says: Well, I am the fiscal 
conservative. I do not think so. I grew up in a small town. I 
understood what a Republican was. They are an important part of this 
political system. The one thing you could count on from real 
Republicans is they believed you ought to balance budgets. It is what 
it was in my hometown. It is what it used to be in this Chamber.
  Now, that new brand is: Let's spend money, and let's add it to the 
Federal debt. This is not some Democrat that is doing this; this is 
President George W. Bush asking for over two-thirds of a trillion 
dollars and asking that none of it be paid for. We will send soldiers 
to war, but we will not have the courage to ask the American people to 
help pay the bill.
  In recent days and weeks, we have been treated to quite a sideshow of 
this administration describing their view of fiscal responsibility. 
They have said the Senate wants to spend $22 billion more than the 
President in this year on things such as health, education, taking care 
of sick kids, improving America's classrooms, energy--a whole series of 
things--weather assistance, home heating fuel in the winter. For all of 
these things, the President says no. He says: You want to spend more 
than I do here at home, so you are big spenders. You are $22 billion 
over my number. And, oh, by the way, I am $196 billion over your 
number. He says: I want that, and I don't want any of it paid for.
  I think it is long past the time to start taking care of a few things 
at home, and I think there is a right and a wrong way to do it. It is 
time we pay for that which we spend, and there are plenty of ways to do 
it. If we have the richest people in the country paying 15 percent tax 
rates, I think they ought to pay what others pay.
  As I said, the second richest man in the world, Warren Buffett, is a 
remarkable businessman and an interesting guy and somebody I have had 
the opportunity to know over the years. He said he did a little test in 
his office in Omaha, NE. I think he said there were 30 or 40 people who 
worked in that central office. He checked--with the cooperation of his 
employees--to find out what their effective tax rate was. Guess what. 
The lowest effective tax rate in his office was Warren Buffett's. And 
he said, to his credit: That is just wrong. Why should I pay a lower 
tax rate than the receptionist in my office? This is from the world's 
second richest man.
  Very few in that stratosphere in income will take that position. Most 
of them are spending a lot of money to try to preserve what they have: 
a 15-percent tax rate. In many cases, the top hedge fund managers in 
this country are paying the 15-percent tax rate on massive earnings, 
and they have this President in the White House trying to do everything 
he can--and so far successfully--preventing those of us in the Congress 
who want to say to the wealthiest Americans: Pay the tax rate that the 
rest of us pay, that everybody else pays.

[[Page S15966]]

  The point I wanted to make, very simply, is this: The President has 
made a big cause in recent weeks about being a fiscal conservative. 
There is nothing fiscally conservative about an administration that 
took a very large budget surplus and turned it into very large budget 
deficits. There is nothing conservative about protecting tax breaks for 
the wealthiest Americans. There is nothing conservative about proposing 
two-thirds of a trillion dollars of spending and wanting to add it to 
the Federal debt. That is not conservatism. That is reckless fiscal 
policy and one that ought to change.
  One final point: The President, today, is signing an energy bill. We 
wrote an energy bill, and it is a good bill. It comes up short in two 
areas. We should have increased renewable energy provision in it that 
requires that all electricity produced in this country should be 
produced with 15 percent from renewable resources. That ought to be in 
the bill. It is not in the bill that passed.
  Second, we ought to have had the extenders, extending the production 
tax credit and other incentives for the renewables and other sources of 
energy in order to make sure we are going to continue to push on 
renewable energy incentives.
  But having said that--we did not get that because of the President 
and his supporters--having said that, here is what we did get: We got 
an energy bill that, for the first time in 32 years, requires Detroit 
and the auto companies to make automobiles that have better gas 
mileage, 10 miles to the gallon in 10 years, beginning in the year 
2011. That is a significant change. I am proud to have been a part of 
causing that change. I was the principal author of a legislative 
initiative supported by SAFE, Securing America's Future Energy. That 
called for the increase in reformed CAFE standards. It called for a 
substantial increase in renewable fuels, which we have done by a 36-
billion-gallon renewable fuels standard to be achieved by 2022.
  We have a title that is very good dealing with conservation and 
efficiency of virtually everything we use in this country today. We get 
up in the morning, we turn on a switch, and then we turn on a key. We 
see light, and we start the car. We don't think much about energy, but 
it is central to our lives.
  We are so unbelievably dependent on foreign sources of energy. Sixty 
percent of the oil we use comes from outside our country, much of it 
from troubled parts of our world. We have to change that.

  I am proud of the bill we have passed in this Congress. It is a 
significant accomplishment. We need to come back next year, and do the 
renewable energy piece, saying every kilowatt of electricity produced 
in the country should have 15 percent renewable. We can take energy 
right from the wind, and we can extend America's energy supply with 
renewable energy.
  I think while there are a lot of reasons we did not make as much 
headway as we would have liked in this Congress--we are, after all, 
only 51-49 in the Senate and about the same percentage in the U.S. 
House and a President who has a veto pen. Despite all of that, for the 
first time in nine years we increased the minimum wage. Those folks 
working at the bottom of the economic ladder--the ones who work two 
jobs, sometimes three jobs. I believe in 60 percent of the cases, it is 
a woman trying to make ends meet, often trying to raise a family--for 
the first time in 9 years, we increased the minimum wage to say to 
them: You matter as well. You are at the bottom of the ladder, but 
there are ways we can help you. And an increase to the minimum wage is 
a significant accomplishment.
  We passed a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, and that was 
significant. We increased Pell grants and student loans. We did some 
important things in Congress. We passed an energy bill at the end.
  Would we have wished we could have done more? Sure. But the fact is, 
with this President in the White House, we were not able to get all the 
things we wanted to get done. But we will. The future is about change. 
The agenda that we care so much about is about change, about pivoting 
and beginning to take care of things in this country that have long 
been neglected.
  Having said all of that, I feel optimistic. I like what we have done. 
I know this is a time that is very frustrating for the American people 
for a lot of reasons: the war in Iraq, the subprime loan scandal, the 
massive scandal of waste, fraud, and abuse in contracting for the war 
in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina, the most significant waste, fraud, and 
abuse in the history of this country.
  I know why people are upset. They are upset about jobs going 
overseas, trade policies that, in my judgment, are bankrupt in terms of 
standing up for this country's interests. But the fact is, all of those 
things are things we can change. Step by step, we can make these 
changes. That is why I feel optimistic.
  Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence 
of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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