[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 7 (Tuesday, January 13, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S324-S333]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DESIGNATING CERTAIN LAND AS COMPONENTS OF THE NATIONAL WILDERNESS
PRESERVATION SYSTEM--Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico is recognized.
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in
morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
israel and gaza
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I am here today to speak about the
growing violence in Gaza. I support the United Nations Security Council
resolution calling for an immediate and durable cease-fire. In my view,
both the Israeli airstrikes and the Palestinian rocket attacks must
stop immediately, and Israeli ground forces should withdraw from Gaza.
I regret that President Bush chose to have the United States be the
only Security Council member not to support this U.N. resolution.
I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the U.N. resolution be
printed in the Record.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
[[Page S325]]
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. BINGAMAN. Last week, the Senate responded to the hostilities by
passing S. Res. 10, a resolution that I do not support. While I agree
with some parts of the resolution, I believe it left out important
provisions. The resolution called for Hamas to end the rocket and
mortar attacks but it did not call on Israel to stop its airstrikes and
ground assault. Nor did the resolution call on Israel to withdraw from
Gaza. Moreover, I believe the resolution downplayed the humanitarian
situation in Gaza. Thousands of people in Gaza do not have access to
food, clean water, or medical care. The U.K. Foreign Minister, David
Miliband, speaking about humanitarian conditions in Gaza said, ``the
word `crisis', which is sometimes overused, is wholly appropriate'' to
describe how bad things are. He made that statement to describe how bad
he saw that things are at this time.
I support Israel's right to defend itself. Israel has no stronger
ally than the United States, and we have no better friend in the region
than Israel. But friends can make mistakes.
The rocket attacks that Israel has suffered are unacceptable. But I
believe Israel's use of force has been excessive and I do not believe
it will help Israel achieve its long-term goals. Instead of weakening
Hamas, the incursion is boosting support for Hamas both among
Palestinians and the Arabic world and it is undermining support for
moderates in the region. Instead of making Israel's enemies fear its
military power, I believe this conflict shows its enemies that they can
taunt Israel into reacting so strongly that it undermines its
international support. Instead of rebutting the accusations that Israel
has ignored the long-deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the growing
death toll and worsening living conditions will fuel similar
accusations long into the future.
This violence is but another chapter of violence in the long history
of the Middle East. What is needed is an international effort to broker
an immediate truce and to build that into a lasting peace.
A lasting peace requires a two-state solution. It is hard to see how
such an agreement can be achieved without the deep involvement and
leadership of the United States. I have been disappointed that the Bush
administration has failed to lead the peace process for the past 8
years. President Obama should not repeat that mistake after he takes
office next week. He should appoint a special envoy to the region soon
after his Secretary of State is confirmed by the Senate. President
Obama should commit his administration to a steady and persistent
effort to engage both Israelis and Palestinians in finding a political
solution to the conflict that has long plagued this region.
Exhibit 1
Resolution 1860 (2009)
Adopted by the Security Council at its 6063rd meeting, on 8 January
2009
The Security Council,
Recalling all of its relevant resolutions, including
resolutions 242 (1967), 338 (1973), 1397 (2002), 1515 (2003)
and 1850 (2008),
Stressing that the Gaza Strip constitutes an integral part
of the territory occupied in 1967 and will be a part of the
Palestinian state,
Emphasizing the importance of the safety and well-being of
all civilians,
Expressing grave concern at the escalation of violence and
the deterioration of the situation, in particular the
resulting heavy civilian casualties since the refusal to
extend the period of calm; and emphasizing that the
Palestinian and Israeli civilian populations must be
protected,
Expressing grave concern also at the deepening humanitarian
crisis in Gaza,
Emphasizing the need to ensure sustained and regular flow
of goods and people through the Gaza crossings,
Recognizing the vital role played by UNRWA in providing
humanitarian and economic assistance within Gaza,
Recalling that a lasting solution to the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict can only be achieved by peaceful means,
Reaffirming the right of all States in the region to live
in peace within secure and internationally recognized
borders,
1. Stresses the urgency of and calls for an immediate,
durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full
withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza;
2. Calls for the unimpeded provision and distribution
throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of
food, fuel and medical treatment;
3. Welcomes the initiatives aimed at creating and opening
humanitarian corridors and other mechanisms for the sustained
delivery of humanitarian aid;
4. Calls on Member States to support international efforts
to alleviate the humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza,
including through urgently needed additional contributions to
UNRWA and through the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee;
5. Condemns all violence and hostilities directed against
civilians and all acts of terrorism;
6. Calls upon Member States to intensify efforts to provide
arrangements and guarantees in Gaza in order to sustain a
durable ceasefire and calm, including to prevent illicit
trafficking in arms and ammunition and to ensure the
sustained reopening of the crossing points on the basis of
the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access between the
Palestinian Authority and Israel; and in this regard,
welcomes the Egyptian initiative, and other regional and
international efforts that are under way;
7. Encourages tangible steps towards intra-Palestinian
reconciliation including in support of mediation efforts of
Egypt and the League of Arab States as expressed in the 26
November 2008 resolution, and consistent with Security
Council resolution 1850 (2008) and other relevant
resolutions;
8. Calls for renewed and urgent efforts by the parties and
the international community to achieve a comprehensive peace
based on the vision of a region where two democratic States,
Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace with secure
and recognized borders, as envisaged in Security Council
resolution 1850 (2008), and recalls also the importance of
the Arab Peace Initiative;
9. Welcomes the Quartet's consideration, in consultation
with the parties, of an international meeting in Moscow in
2009;
10. Decides to remain seized of the matter.
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, 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.
Mr. MARTINEZ. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. McCaskill.) Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Tribute to Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter
Mr. MARTINEZ. Madam President, today it gives me great pleasure to
pay tribute to an outstanding leader and tremendous public servant,
Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter.
When Donald Winter was sworn in as Secretary of the Navy on January
3, 2006, he was charged with training, equipping, and organizing our
sailors and marines in a time of war. He assumed these responsibilities
at a time when the U.S. Navy was in the midst of an ambitious
modernization program across the board. A new class of destroyers,
aircraft carriers, submarines, cruisers, and others was in the
production pipeline. It would take an extraordinarily talented,
knowledgeable, and energetic leader to navigate the Department of the
Navy through these transitions. We were fortunate to find such a person
in Donald Winter. He was that kind of a leader. He immediately outlined
his priorities and then set to work on implementing them: Prosecute the
global war on terror; build the future fleet; take care of our wounded
and their families. Those were his priorities, and each day he drove
the Department to focus on these areas.
With 25,000 marines and 36,000 sailors in Iraq, Afghanistan, and
elsewhere in the Central Command's area of responsibility, the Navy and
Marine Corps have been playing a critical role in fighting this war.
From providing maritime security in the Northern Arabian Gulf, to
turning around a seemingly hopeless situation in al-Anbar Province, to
providing individual augmentees on the ground in Iraq, our sailors and
marines have been on the front lines and have been performing superbly.
These sailors and marines have always been foremost in Secretary
Winter's mind, and they are the ones he has worked tirelessly to
support in every way possible on Capitol Hill, within the Pentagon, and
throughout the Department of the Navy.
While supporting our brave warriors in harm's way, Secretary Winter
also focused on building the future fleet by instituting the most far-
reaching acquisition reforms in decades.
I had the pleasure of traveling with Secretary Winter to Guantanamo
Bay in Cuba in May 2007. It was my second time returning to this island
since my arrival here in 1962. What I saw was the tremendous leadership
ability he possesses and his firm commitment to the men and women of
the U.S. Navy.
[[Page S326]]
I would also commend Secretary Winter for his tireless efforts to
ensure that our Nation is doing everything in our power to take care of
our wounded. Secretary Winter has been an outspoken and relentless
advocate for our wounded warriors, insisting on the highest possible
standards for every sailor and every marine.
So on behalf of the men and women serving under him in my home State
of Florida, I salute Secretary Winter for his superior performance in
leading the Navy and Marine Corps over the past 3 years. We wish him
Godspeed in his future endeavors, and we thank him for his service to
our Nation.
situation in israel
Mr. President, the first and most sacred duty of any government is
providing for the safety and security of its citizens.
Hamas's repeated rocket attacks on the Israeli people created a
situation that required an Israeli response.
I was pleased to join my colleagues in cosponsoring S. Res. 10, which
recognizes Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza.
While diplomacy is always a preferable alternative, at some point any
legitimate government must take the necessary actions to safeguard its
people from acts of terrorism against an unarmed civilian population.
With more than 6,000 rocket attacks launched into Israel from Gaza,
the Israeli government acted reasonably in an effort to end the attacks
against civilian targets.
These attacks are Hamas' latest attempts to advance their cruel and
murderous agenda.
Hamas first began as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, a
terrorist group responsible for the assassination of Egypt's President
Anwar Sadat.
As you might recall, Sadat was the first Arab President willing to
make peace with Israel.
Hamas has since claimed the lives of countless others throughout the
region.
In 2002, a Hamas suicide bomber killed five Americans and four
Israelis who were eating lunch in the cafeteria at Hebrew University in
Jerusalem. The bomb was smuggled in a backpack loaded with shrapnel,
which maximized damage to the cafeteria and inflicted severe injuries
on more than 80 students.
Since coming to power politically in 2006, the terrorist organization
has hijacked the Palestinian people's agenda.
They have cynically used their own people as civilian shields and
brought harm to those who do not share their radical views. During the
June 2007 coup in Gaza, Hamas operatives killed a cook of Palestinian
National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas by throwing him from the
roof of a 15-story building with his hands and feet tied. In the
current conflict, they have fired rockets at their own people. On
December 26, two Palestinian girls aged 5 and 13 were killed when a
rocket fell short of reaching an Israeli target.
Hamas openly admits it uses women and children as human shields. One
Hamas leader described this appalling practice by saying, ``For the
Palestinian people, death has become an industry. . . . This is why
they have formed human shields of the women, the children, [and] the
elderly.''
Instead of investing in their own people's well-being, in roads,
schools, and hospitals, they have instead invested in the cache of
weapons they are using to cause death and destruction in Israel.
As a result, Palestinians are suffering. They have limited access to
basic needs such as food and medicine. Their free speech has been
suppressed through violence. And their right to freely practice
religion has been replaced by a strong-armed enforcement of a radical
brand of Islam.
The largest beneficiary of Hamas's weapons purchases has been Iran,
which has aided Hamas by training terrorists and offering advice in
making deadly explosives and long-range rockets. Throughout the
conflict, Hamas has turned into a Hezbollah-like Iranian proxy by
threatening Israel from the south. Iran's willingness to embolden
terrorist organizations like Hamas poses a serious threat not only to
Israel, but also the United States.
While Iran's influence has been plainly apparent across the Middle
East, they have surreptitiously worked to advance their anti-American
agenda in our own hemisphere. In recent years, Iran has aggressively
increased its Latin American presence by working with the leaders who
have found a commonality in the Iranian President's radical ways.
Iran and the regimes of nations like Venezuela and Cuba may not share
a common border, but they share an anti-American agenda that poses a
tremendous risk to our Nation's security.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first visited Venezuela in 2006
and has since returned to visit the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua, and
Bolivia. He has also hosted Latin American leaders in Tehran.
As a result of these meetings, Iran has entered into several economic
and political agreements, including plans to finance new progovernment
television and radio stations in Bolivia and countries throughout the
region. These agreements help to fan the flames of anti-Americanism,
which persists throughout the region.
The government of Argentina recently revealed they received $1
million from the Cuban regime to pay for anti-American protests during
President Bush's visit there in 2005. Cuban families could have used
that money for food, but instead it was wasted on furthering the
regime's anti-American agenda.
What has been lost on these Latin American leaders is the larger
conflict at hand.
Iran is heavily invested in a conflict that has claimed the lives of
countless innocent civilians, and they will stop at no cost, continuing
to aid in the destruction of American allies.
For our Nation, the next few weeks will be historic, but critical.
I am anxious to hear about President-elect Obama's plan to address
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I am hopeful his administration
will continue to reaffirm the U.S.'s historic commitment to the people
of Israel.
I am also hopeful the administration will continue efforts to
persuade Syria to stop yielding to Iran's devious demands. Syria must
understand that Iran's interests do not serve the interests of the
people of the Middle East.
Egypt has taken significant measures in trying to stop Hamas's
smuggling of weapons and militants from Egypt into Gaza, but they must
do more.
One proposal I support deploys an international force of military
engineers to monitor and destroy the tunnels along the Egyptian border
near Gaza.
I would also encourage the new administration to continue working
vigorously with the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations on
the U.N.-sanctioned ``Annapolis Process'' to achieve a final status
agreement between Arabs and Israelis that includes a viable, democratic
Palestinian state living in peace with Israel and its neighbors.
And finally, I hope to see further progress in our efforts to train
the Palestinian Presidential Guard led by U.S. General Keith Dayton.
Although the recent outbreak of violence in Israel is troubling, I am
hopeful a new cease-fire agreement can be reached very soon.
A true cease-fire with Hamas should include a guarantee for no more
rockets and safeguards against rearming.
Both sides will soon realize that further loss of innocent life is
too great a cost, and peace and security is the only viable way
forward.
I look forward to working with my colleagues on the Armed Services
Committee and the new administration to find a way forward in Israel
and ensure a plan for peace in the future.
Madam President, 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.
Mr. BROWNBACK. 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. BROWNBACK. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as
in morning business for up to 15 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Guantanamo Bay Detainees
Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, I rise to speak today about a topic
that is in the news, is important, and has to do with an area of
Leavenworth, KS, very near the Presiding Officer's State, and in my
home State, about the issue of the Guantanamo Bay detainees.
[[Page S327]]
My simple point on this issue is, there is a very strong push--and I
understand that push, and it is one that has been going on for some
period of time--to close Guantanamo Bay. I would simply make the point
we should not attempt to force-fit detainees where they do not belong
and where it does not fit. I do not believe the new administration can
look my constituents in the eye and say to them they are going to be
safe with detainees at Fort Leavenworth as they are with military
prisoners at Fort Leavenworth, and particularly not with what we are
talking about from Guantanamo Bay.
I have invited President-elect Obama and his team to come to
Leavenworth to look at this facility, to see if this is something that
could fit and work. I do not believe it does at all. But I have invited
them there to come and to look and to make their own assessment.
I further call on the incoming administration to conduct a thorough
study--a thorough study--of all possible locations where detainees
could be transferred. The study must seriously assess the legal and
security requirements for detainees, as well as the impact on the areas
surrounding a proposed detainee location.
In the end, I believe the detainees will probably need to go to one
of three types of places: overseas, either in the custody of foreign
nations or at U.S. military facilities abroad set up for these types of
detainees we have at Guantanamo Bay or on military land or at
facilities previously closed or scheduled to be closed under the BRAC
process, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, or into a new
facility specifically designed for these detainees.
The administration is projecting they are going to sign an order
right off when coming into office that is going to close Guantanamo
Bay. I am asking them, in looking at my State, in looking at the
Disciplinary Barracks at Leavenworth, that they consider the nature of
the facility, the nature of the detainee, and make a careful assessment
as to whether this fits in this situation.
Let me describe for you a little bit the situation of the
Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, KS. Fort Leavenworth is a
small facility. It is roughly 8 miles by 8 miles. It is a primary
mission facility for education in the military. It is the Command and
General Staff College for the military, for the Army. They do an
outstanding job of that. They do an outstanding job not only for the
U.S. military--particularly for the Army--they have all branches of the
services that come there to be trained, but they also have, at any one
time, students from 90 different countries at this facility.
I recently spoke at a graduation exercise there with a number of
students who were coming out of a program, and the President of Uganda
was there because his son was graduating from this program. One of the
key problems with relocating the detainees from Guantanamo Bay to Fort
Leavenworth is that a number of Islamic countries will not send
students now to Fort Leavenworth if detainees are being held there who
they don't believe should be detained in the first place. Then you
start to break these military-to-military ties that have been so
important for us to be able to work in concert with--places such as
Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or the good work we have been able to do in some
cases back and forth in Pakistan, although not nearly enough. We need
to do a lot more--and better. But if you break that tie, where you are
training these military officers side by side and then building
relationships that work back and forth and then you start moving
toward: Well, the Saudis aren't going to send anybody to the Command
and General Staff College in the United States because detainees who
they believe in their countries shouldn't be held are being held in the
same facility that is an 8-square-mile facility. Then the Kuwaitis
don't do it and the Pakistanis don't do it and you start breaking these
types of ties.
The major purpose of Fort Leavenworth is education, not discipline.
Then there is the problem with the nature of the Disciplinary Barracks
itself. It is primarily a medium disciplinary facility at Fort
Leavenworth, not maximum. We do not have the space to be able to
contain all the detainees from Guantanamo Bay. We don't even have
enough space to contain what would be referred to as the worst of the
worst from the Guantanamo Bay facility at the Disciplinary Barracks at
Fort Leavenworth. Plus, it is against the law to mix a U.S. military
population, where we have had people from the U.S. military who have
committed a crime and they are being held at the Disciplinary
Barracks--you cannot mix that population under law with a population of
foreign detainees. That is against the law. It is against conventions
we have entered into. So there is that legal hurdle that is there as
well.
Now let me further describe the facility. It has a major railroad
that runs through it. It has a train coming through on a regular basis
10 to 15 times a day. The security concern that raises of moving
detainees from Guantanamo Bay--very high visibility--to the middle of
the country but a place where people could try to spring them, are they
going to use the railroad track? Are they going to try to bomb or put
bombs in the railroad coming through? It is a real problem. We don't
have an exterior fence. We have the Missouri River, but that is fairly
navigable to be able to move across for a terrorist population or
somebody who is trying to get into the perimeter of the facility to
make it through. So we are not set up that way. It is within a major
urban area of Kansas City. Kansas City straddles both the Kansas and
the Missouri side. Leavenworth is on the edge of that, on the northern
edge of that Kansas City complex. So you are moving the detainees from
Guantanamo Bay in a confined facility away from major urban areas and
right into a major urban area in the United States. That doesn't make
much sense. It is going to be very difficult to do. It is going to be
impossible to do. And then to look my constituents in the eye and look
the constituents of the Presiding Officer in the eye and say: You are
going to be as safe as if you have military detainees.
We are used to handling the prison population at Leavenworth. We have
a multiple set of facilities. We have a Federal penitentiary, we have a
State penitentiary, we have a private penitentiary, and we have a
military penitentiary. The community is very well adapted to be able to
handle prison populations. It does it very well. But the community does
not want this population because they say we are not set up to be able
to handle this population. I think this is a community that does not
say not in my back yard because they have been willing to take
prisoners for some period of time. They are just saying they are not
set up for this prison population in our back yard. We can't handle
this.
For all these reasons, I would urge the administration--the incoming
Obama administration--to take a very hard, serious scholarly view of
what it is you can do with the Guantanamo Bay detainees. I would ask
them to take a very serious look at the logistical problems of
Leavenworth.
I know a number of the people who are involved at Fort Leavenworth
are deeply concerned about the fact that they have a number of
schoolchildren who are educated on the Fort Leavenworth military base,
because at the Command and General Staff College, we get people
assigned there for a year, 2 years, sometimes longer periods of time
and families move there. We have schools we operate on the military
base. We are deeply concerned about somebody coming in, wanting to make
a statement and going into one of those schools and taking the children
hostage.
I have seen situations where a number of people are put in harm's way
for no good reason whatsoever, and seeing that this facility is not set
up to be able to do this is one of them.
I have visited with people locally. I have a call scheduled with
Secretary Gates. We have been putting this forward in legislative form
in prior legislative sessions, and I will be in this legislative
session as well to make this point. If it had been easy to close
Guantanamo Bay previously, I am certain the current administration
would have done it. It is a difficult task. But that doesn't mean that
because it is a difficult task, then you do it fast. It means because
it is a difficult task, you take your time and you do it right or you
are going to create a lot more
[[Page S328]]
problems down the road. This is one where I think the loss in this
situation is far greater--far greater--than any gain we would get in
closing the Guantanamo Bay facility, particularly in our relationship
to Islamic countries.
I would plead with the new administration to look at this in a very
serious and in a very clear and in a very analytical way, to make a
wise decision that will stand for the future and not just create a huge
set of problems for the future.
With that, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Pryor). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
THE ECONOMY
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have been interested for some long while
about new technology and the Internet and all those related issues.
I recall reading a couple of years ago a statement by the former
president of IBM in which he described the unbelievable leapfrog in
technology and capability--most of it breathtaking. Most of us
understand that because we use the Internet we can go anywhere in the
world at our fingertips on the keyboard, but he described something
breathtaking to me. He described the issue of storage density and the
new capability of storage density. He said that we are on the cusp now
of being able to reduce in storage density all of the works that exist
in the Library of Congress--I think it is somewhere around 14 or 16
million volumes of work--which is the largest repository of human
knowledge that exists anywhere on Earth; to be able to store that on a
very small wafer the size of a penny.
Think of that: a wafer the size of a penny representing the storage
device that contains the largest repository of human knowledge in
history. Pretty remarkable.
Assume that you are able to walk around with a storage device the
size of a penny in your jacket pocket which you can put into a computer
and peruse all that human knowledge that has been gained since the
start of human history. On that storage device would be a lot of
information, but what wouldn't be on that storage device--of all the
human knowledge accumulated since the beginning of time--would be how
we get out of this financial mess that the country is now in. There is
no formula, there is no rule, there is no experience that would give us
a roadmap of how we get from here to where we need to be to get out of
this financial wreck.
We are indeed in a financial crisis. And the one thing that unites
the smartest economists in the country or the deepest thinkers or the
latest self-proclaimed greatest sage and all the rest of us, the thing
that connects us all, is none of us has ever been here before. We are
all walking in the woods for which there is no map and all we have is a
guess as to how we are to try to put this economy back together.
Now, some people say: Well, what does all that mean, this financial
crisis? How do we understand that there is this wreckage occurring in
the economy? Well, you can look at it a number of ways. You can look at
the people who have been saving for a long period of time, investing
their 401(k) in a mutual fund or in the stock market. After 30 years of
work, they had a nest egg for retirement, but they have lost 40 or 50
percent of it, just like that. Half a lifetime of savings gone, like
that. That is one piece of evidence. It is pretty dramatic for every
family in this country.
But there is other evidence as well. And that evidence especially, it
seems to me, describes the crisis in our families in this country. If
you look at last month's unemployment report, it says, in a kind of a
sanitary way, that 524,000 people lost their jobs. Well, what if you
just say 523,999 and then focus on the one, just one person who had to
come home, in most cases, and tell a spouse: You know what, I have lost
my job today. No, I am not a bad employee. I have worked hard for that
company for 10 or 15 years, but they laid employees off today. To that
one family, that is 100 percent unemployment, and that is a disaster
for that family. Think of it. Last month, over half a million Americans
had that discussion some night around the supper table: What are we
going to do?
And it is not just the half million people who lost their jobs last
month or 2.6 million people who have lost their jobs since this
recession started, and which has grown deeper; it is the hundreds of
thousands and millions more who have not only had to say I have lost my
job but who have had to say I have lost my house as well. It is pretty
unbelievable.
This is an extraordinary country, with great strength, and an
economic engine that has been the wonder of the world. No one in the
world has done what we have done to expand the middle class and give
everyone a feeling of opportunity. No one has done that. I have
described before the unbelievable accomplishments of our country. We
have survived the Civil War, survived a Great Depression, and we have
been through two World Wars. We represent the beacon of freedom around
the world. We have always been a country that represents hope.
I have been in so many parts of this world and asked people: What do
you desire for your life? I remember being on a helicopter that ran out
of gas between Nicaragua and Honduras in a mountainous area. We landed
under power but we landed because we had no fuel, and campesinos from
around the region came to see who had landed in this helicopter. We
were stranded for about 4 hours until we were found. We had an
interpreter, and so during a discussion, through an interpreter, I
asked a young woman, who walked up with others--she had about three or
four children with her, probably in her early 20s--what do you aspire
to do for you and your family? Oh, I want to come to the United States,
she said. Why? Because the United States is where there is opportunity
and freedom, she said. So in a discussion up in the mountains between
Honduras and Nicaragua someone who had never seen an American
understood America as a place for her and her family, a place of
opportunity and freedom.
It is unbelievable what this place has represented to the rest of the
world. We split the atom, we have spliced genes. As I have said before,
we have cloned animals. We invent things--the silicone chip, plastic,
and the radar. We cured smallpox and polio. We built the telephone, the
television, the Internet, and the computer. We built airplanes and
learned to fly them; built rockets to fly to the Moon. It is
unbelievable what we have done. Our country is just that resourceful.
But we have found ourselves in recent months in a very deep hole. We
find ourselves right now perched on the edge of a cliff, and the
question is: What do we do to try to restore economic health to this
country so that next month the news is not another half million
Americans have lost their jobs; so that perhaps next month, or some
month in the future the news will be that more Americans are working,
more Americans have found jobs, more Americans are owning homes. How do
we do all that?
The fact is, there is not anything in recorded human history that
replicates this and there is not anyone who knows what is the menu to
use to restore economic health. This country is in some very severe
difficulty.
I wish to talk about what all this means and what I think we have to
do. President-elect Obama came to the Senate today and spent time with
the Democratic caucus. He spent the lunch hour with us and spoke for
nearly an hour. It was an extraordinary exchange of views. He is a very
gifted person who I think has great promise and, I think, hope that we
can restore economic health to this country. He is going to need a lot
of help. He is going to need a lot of us, Republican and Democrat. He
is going to need the American people to join in an effort to restore
economic health to this country.
In the Thomas Wolfe book ``You Can't Go Home Again,'' he describes
the kind of unique character of the American people. He describes it as
a quenchless hope, boundless optimism, indestructible belief. I think
these qualities exist in this country and it has gotten us through many
difficult periods and will again and will this
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time. But this will take some effort. This will not be easy.
I have described before what has caused much of this. It is not
rocket science to describe it. We have seen what I think is an
unbelievable carnival of greed, creating and trading exotic financial
instruments that had dramatic risks, attaching that risk to some of
America's biggest financial institutions and some of America's biggest
banks. To go right to the origin of it--I have said it before and I
will say it again and again, as long as I have an opportunity to speak
about this because you have to close the gate. You cannot restore
confidence in this country until you close the gate. Here is the house
of cards that was built. We know what happens to house of cards in a
high wind and all that, it has come down.
I described the other day, and I am going to once again, what is
called a subprime mortgage scandal. They were advertising mortgages. We
have all seen it. We have seen these advertisements. Here is the
Countrywide ad. It was the biggest mortgage bank in the country. It now
doesn't exist. It was subsumed into another company. By the way, the
CEO of Countrywide, I am told--at least reading the newspaper--got away
with a couple hundred million dollars for himself so he is not exactly
shedding tears about all this. But here is what they were advertising
for the American people: Do you have less than perfect credit? Do you
have late mortgage payments? Have you been denied by other lenders?
Call us. We would like to give you a loan.
Does that sound like sound business practices? It doesn't to me. What
does it mean? The broker was able to get $10,000, $20,000 in bonuses
for the loan. The mortgage company took their cut. Then they
securitized it. They sold the security and rolled it into others--like
they used to in the old days pack sawdust in sausage and roll it all
together--they rolled these loans into a securities instrument, sold it
up to hedge funds, sold it to investment banks. And they put prepayment
penalties into it so borrowers were locked in, 3 years from the teaser
rate, to interest rates that the borrower couldn't possibility repay
and everybody was fat and happy and everybody was making a fortune--
millions of dollars. Everybody was making a fortune.
The problem is it was a lot of air. It was not just Countrywide. Zoom
Credit Company--here is what they said in their advertisements:
Credit approval is just seconds away. Get on the fast track
at Zoom Credit. At the speed of light, Zoom Credit will
preapprove you for a car loan.
Even if your credit's in the tank, Zoom Credit's like money
in the bank. Zoom Credit specializes in credit repair and
debt consolidation.
And then they finished with this:
Bankruptcy, slow credit, no credit--who cares?
Does that look like a good business practice to you? It looks like a
Ponzi scheme to me.
This morning the judge in New York said Mr. Madoff, who had a $50
billion alleged Ponzi scheme, was not going to be incarcerated. He
apparently bilked people out of $50 billion, but he is spending today
in a $7 million penthouse apartment in New York City because the judge
says: No, no, he should not be incarcerated. That was a Ponzi scheme,
apparently. People thought they had money invested with him. They, in
fact, did not. It turns out there was not the money they thought was in
their accounts.
But it is not just Mr. Madoff who had a Ponzi scheme. Do you think
this is not a Ponzi scheme, a company such as this says: If you are
bankrupt, you cannot pay your bills, you have slow credit, you have no
credit, come to us; do you think that is not a Ponzi scheme? Because
what do you think they did with that when they roped this customer into
coming to them for a mortgage? They said: Tell you what, we have a
sweet little deal for you. We will give you a mortgage called no-doc,
that means you don't even have to demonstrate your income to us that
will demonstrate you can repay it--no-doc loans. By the way, we will
give you a mortgage, no documentation of your income, and we will give
you a mortgage in which you don't have to pay any principal at all,
just interest. Or, if that is not good enough, you don't have to pay
all the interest for the first year. If that is not good enough, we
give you a mortgage where we make the first 12 months' payments for
you. But wait, we will give you a teaser rate. You can pay 2 percent
interest rate. You can cut your home mortgage in half.
We don't tell you about the fine lines that say we are going to reset
the interest rate to a much higher level in 3 years and you are not
going to be able to repay it. And, by the way, we are going to put a
prepayment penalty in so you can't get out of this because--do you know
what we are going to do with this mortgage? We are going to package it
up with others, called securitizing it, and we are going to sell it so
we don't have any responsibility for it anymore and a hedge fund is
going to buy it. Do you know why a hedge fund is going to buy it? We
have a prepayment penalty in there with high interest rates and it will
reset in 3 years and we are going to make a lot of money. They were all
fat and happy when they built this huge bubble and the bubble burst and
it helped cause a collapse in this economy.
I say all of that just to say it is not over. Go to the Internet
right now, and see if you can find what I found--no-documentation
loans. We still have shysters out there advertising this kind of
nonsense: We will give you a loan. You don't even have to document it.
What happened as a result of this? Some of the biggest financial
names in our country, it turns out, were investing deeply in what we
now understand is toxic assets. We all understand the word ``toxic.''
It always used to be associated with a waste dump, toxic waste dump.
Maybe toxic is an appropriate term. When the Treasury Secretary says
toxic assets, it seems to me the bowels of some of the biggest
financial institutions represent toxic waste dumps because that is
where these bad assets exist.
So the Treasury Secretary came to us when it looked like everything
was going to collapse and said I need $700 billion from the American
taxpayers and I need it in 3 days and I have a three-page bill I want
you to pass. Why? What I am going to do, I am going to buy these assets
from the biggest financial companies in the country and relieve them
from this toxicity deep in the bowels of the banks. I did not vote for
it, but sufficient numbers of my colleagues voted for it to authorize
$700 billion.
Now $350 billion has either been spent or committed. The scandal is
we cannot find out how the taxpayers' money has been used. To whom? For
what purpose? Under what conditions?
We know in total there is about $8.5 trillion that has so far been
committed by the Federal Government. That means the taxpayer is on the
hook for about $8.5 trillion--the Federal Reserve programs, $5.5
trillion; FDIC, $1.5 trillion; Treasury Department, $1.1. Do you know
what? The Bloomberg News Corporation had to sue the Federal Government
to get information about this. Isn't that unbelievable? They should not
have had to sue anybody.
Let me show you the statements that were made by the Treasury
Secretary and others. Here is what the Treasury Secretary said on the
23rd of October:
We need oversight, we need protection. We need
transparency. I want it, we all want it.
That is just words. It didn't mean a thing. There is no transparency.
You cannot find out what is going on. The Treasury Secretary took $125
billion and shoved it at nine banks and said: I am going to invest in
capital. I changed my mind, I am not going to buy any assets. So the
TARP program, which got its named for troubled assets--there are no
troubled assets purchased by the Secretary. He said: I changed my mind,
now I want to give capital to banks.
That is not necessarily a bad idea, except he took $125 billion and
plugged it into nine banks, some of which didn't want it, and there
were no strings attached. He said: I am doing this because I want you
to expand lending. There was no requirement they expand lending, no
requirement they not use it for bonuses or dividends.
If you ask the Treasury Secretary: Did they expand lending with the
$125 billion of taxpayers' money you sunk into capital, his answer is:
I don't know. Ask the banks. They tell you money is fungible, we are
not going to tell you that answer. We know don't know. But ask people
wanting to get money from the banks. They will tell
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you there is no additional lending or expansion of credit. It was just
a commitment on behalf of the American taxpayers of $125 billion in
search of a solution that didn't exist because he didn't put strings on
it or attach some conditions to it, so that is where we are.
Ben Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve Board, said on the 24th of
October, ``Transparency is a big issue.'' I guess so. It is certainly a
much bigger issue, given what he has done. He has moved massive
quantities of money through the Fed--by the way the Fed opened its
window to direct lending to investment banks for the first time in the
history of this country. They used to only do direct lending to FDIC-
insured banks. They opened the window to direct lending to investment
banks. The question is, Who got the money? Under what conditions? How
much? The answer is, We don't know. We are not telling you.
That is unbelievable to me. There is nothing in the Constitution
about this. The Constitution is a short little document that talks
about powers, the powers of the executive branch, the powers of the
legislative branch, and judicial branch. You go read the Constitution
and try to figure out whether you think the opportunity exists for
somebody, even in a crisis, to commit $8.5 trillion, $8.6 trillion on
behalf of the American taxpayer and then tell us you will not to get
information about this? Go to court. That is unbelievably arrogant, in
my judgment.
Having said all that--which is, in some ways, therapeutic for me to
go through what has caused so much of this and to talk about the folly
of the pursuit of a solution. That we cannot possibly succeed unless
you have conditions and attachments to those moneys that are being
used--all of this, it seems to me, is wrapped in a circumstance where
we now find ourselves with a new President. He will be sworn in on the
west front of this building next Tuesday. He inherits the most
significant set of economic problems I think of any President since
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I don't think there is much question about
that.
The question is, Where does this go from here? You know the law of
holes: When you are in a hole, stop digging. The question is, How do
you stop digging? How do you find a way to put this back on track to
some sort of growth? Where is the bottom? How do you stop this from
falling off a cliff? There are all these folks, the so-called smartest
people in the room, who share with me and with my colleague from
Arkansas, who is the Presiding Officer--share the fact that none of us
understand the answer. Nobody understands exactly what to do.
But I wish to say this: I think at the root of this is always, and
will always be, with this economy of ours, the issue of confidence. Do
people have confidence about the future? If they are living in a place,
in a country and at a time when they can be confident about the
future--confident for themselves and their kids, confident that they
will have a job, retain their jobs, have job security, have a decent
payroll, have benefits in the future--then they are confident and do
things that manifest that confidence: buy clothes, take a trip, buy a
car, buy a house; they do the things that expand this economy. But when
they do not have confidence--and the American people at this point do
not--they do exactly the opposite, which contracts this economy. They
defer all those purchases and decide, you know what, we don't have
confidence that we are going to keep this job, have this income,
provide for our kids. We need to cut back, and that contracts the
economy.
So the question is this: It is not, as I have said often, about how
do you tune the engine on the ship of state. How do you go down to the
engine room and take a look at every dial, gauge, lever, knob, and just
adjust it just right?
In fiscal policy or in monetary policy, how do you adjust it? Tax
credits? M1B? Fiscal stimulus? It is not that at all, in my judgment,
because there is not a perfect menu to provide confidence to the
American people. And it does not matter how you adjust those issues if
you do not find a way to instill confidence, the economy is going to
contract. So I have introduced legislation with a number of pieces that
I think are essential to try to provide that kind of confidence. Let me
describe them.
First and foremost, I do not think you can do this and give the
American people confidence unless you look back and look forward. That
means accountability, and accountability means looking back and looking
ahead, it seems to me. I described the absurdity of Mr. Madoff running
a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, living in his $7 million apartment in New
York City, and the judge saying: That is okay. It seems to me there is
an equal absurdity here of having the equivalent type of Ponzi schemes
in which you loaded some of the biggest American financial institutions
with dramatic amounts of risk and debt and say: Well, now that is past,
no one is accountable. It seems to me someone is accountable for that.
Are they still around? Were they getting $20 and $30 million a year?
Some of them were. There was a recent investigative piece by the
Washington Post describing the person in charge of risk management and
describing a trader at the same firm, both making somewhere in the
neighborhood of $20 million a year. Who is accountable for that, for
the collapse as a result of the loading up of dramatic risk in an
investment bank and then having the American taxpayers bail it out?
Here are some of the so-called biggest institutions that were deemed
``too big to fail.'' Until this point, they have not only been ``too
big to fail,'' they have been ``too small to regulate'' apparently
because we have a lot of folks in this town who do not want to regulate
anything. They want to be willfully blind, including those we pay to
regulate these entities. They are the ones who helped us decide long
ago, as a country: We are not going to look at derivatives, we will not
regulate derivatives, and we are not going to regulate hedge funds. We
are willing to countenance a lot of dark money out there because we do
not need to see it. You know, the high priest of that thought was, of
course, Alan Greenspan, whose notion of how you handle all of this is
self-regulation. Self-regulation will work just fine, he said. Well, it
turns out that was a miscalculation to the tune of some trillions of
dollars. It did not work fine.
Here is what we need to do--accountability going back. I have just
described Alan Greenspan. He came and testified. He said: ``I made a
mistake in presuming the self-interests of organizations, specifically
banks and others, were best capable of protecting their own
shareholders and their own equity in the firms.''
You know the old saying that there is no education in the second kick
of a mule. We know this. We knew this. We have been through this in the
Great Depression. We were through the Gay Nineties and the Roaring
Twenties. None of us lived then, but we learned the lessons and put in
place the protections to make sure it never happened again.
About 10 years ago, the Congress took apart most of those
protections. I voted against it. I thought it was a terrible decision.
But here we are paying the price for that.
Those protections, it seems to me, at this point need to be
reconnected. So what should we do? Well, first of all, I think, in
addition to a rescue plan of some type, or a stimulus plan, as it is
being called, it seems to me you need some type of taxpayer protection.
Nobody is looking out for the taxpayer here, and the taxpayer is having
to make the commitment through the Treasury Secretary, through the
Federal Reserve, and through the Congress. Let's have a taxpayer
protection plan or a Taxpayer Protection Act.
One, I think we ought to extend the oversight, accountability, audit,
and all the reporting provisions that were imposed originally by the
Treasury Department under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act to
cover any financial entity that provides emergency economic assistance
to private firms. There ought to be complete transparency, no secrecy,
nobody saying: We will not tell you, we will not show you, we will not
disclose to you.
Second, all private firms receiving emergency financial assistance
should be subject to the same set of rules and restrictions relating to
executive compensation, golden parachutes, dividend payments, to name a
few.
You know, we had the auto industry executives come down here, and
they were widely pilloried for flying Gulfstream IVs wing tip to wing
tip from
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Detroit to Washington, DC. It turns out that there were over 20
commercial flights that day from here to Detroit and back. One could
have sat them in first class and provided them Dr. Pepper in a paper
cup, or whatever it is they do in first class, between Detroit and
Washington, DC, and they would have been fine. But they flew down wing
tip to wing tip in Gulfstreams and, you know, making $2 million, $2.5
million a month, whatever it was. There was a lot of criticism about
it--justifiable, in my judgment. I want the auto industry to succeed,
but that was not a very smart thing that day.
But the question is, Why it is just the auto industry? Where are all
of those folks who ran some of those big investment banks into the
ditch? Where are the folks who caused that wreckage? How about the
people who ran these big mortgage companies that were selling these
unbelievable mortgages to people with bad credit and getting big
bonuses as a result? When are they going to be brought here under
subpoena and asked the same questions and subject to the same
requirements?
I think we ought to create a taxpayer protection prosecution task
force. I believe there is a lot of illegal activity that has not been
uncovered. And I do not think it ought to be laid at the feet of some
attorney general someplace in some State. There ought to be a Federal
prosecution tasks force empaneled, and that task force must make it a
top priority to investigate and prosecute financial fraud cases and
seek to recover any ill-gotten gains. The task force shall make
recommendations to the Congress, within 60 days, about extending the
statute of limitation in complicated financial crimes, if necessary.
There ought to be a reform commission on the financial system that
determines the causes of this financial nightmare. And the commission
would report its findings, conclusions and make recommendations for
preventing a similar debacle in the future. I do not think it is just a
matter of jump-starting the economic engine; I think you have to rewire
the system here. You have to rewire the financial system. This does not
work.
Securitizing instruments for which there was never any decent
underwriting because you did not have to underwrite if you were going
to send the risk upstairs--that does not work. And you cannot have dark
money out there beyond the gaze of regulators.
You do have to regulate. It seems to me you have to completely reform
the financial system, and I do think the people who caused this wreck
are going to be the ones who are going to help us reform the system.
So those are four areas that I think we have to do on behalf of the
American taxpayer.
You know, my sense is that everyone in this country wants this new
Government to succeed. President-elect Barack Obama campaigned across
this country on the subject of change. We all understand the need for
that change. The fact is, there is plenty of blame to go around. Lots
of folks, Republicans, Democrats, one administration, another--there is
a lot of blame. But it seems to me there are special obligations laid
at the feet of those who in the last 8 years have decided to be
willfully blind and decided that self-regulation was more important
than having people do their jobs who were supposed to be regulating.
And the result was the creation of a house of cards or a Ponzi scheme
sort of thing that has caused dramatic damage to this country.
Now, it is a mess, but I think this country can get out of it. I
think it would be hard for anybody in this Chamber to decide to get up
and go to work if they did not have an abiding hope about the future of
this country. And I do. But that hope is joined, it seems to me, by
requirements to find out what happened, take action based on what
happened, and make sure it never happens again. That is not rocket
science; that is what we are obligated to do.
This is, as I said, a great country with a wonderful history of
overcoming the odds. We have people who came to this country from
different parts of the planet searching for opportunity. Most of us
come from immigrants who came from one part of the planet or another,
one part of this globe, and came to this country because they believed
this is the place where opportunity existed.
There was a man named Stanley Newberg who died, and there was a tiny
little piece written in the New York Times about him some years ago. It
was a piece that intrigued me, so I looked into it to find out what was
this about, Stanley Newberg. It said, in this one-paragraph piece,
something that I discovered more about. A man came to this country with
his parents to flee the persecution by the Nazis of the Jews, and they
came here and landed in this country, with nothing, in New York City.
His dad had a job peddling fish on the Lower East Side of New York, and
Stanley Newberg trailed along, this little tyke with his dad every day
peddling fish. Then he went to school, and his parents struggled
because they had nothing, and he did well in school. They struggled to
get him some loans and try to help him get to college. He went to
college, graduated from college, and went to work for an aluminum
company. He did very well with the company and rose up to management in
the company and then purchased the company.
Later, he died. When they opened his will, Stanley Newberg, in his
will, left $5.7 million to the United States of America. In his will,
he said: For the privilege of living in that great country. Is that not
remarkable? Here is a man who came here with nothing, was enormously
successful, then at the end of his life left his inheritance to the
United States of America. I am not suggesting everyone do that. I am
suggesting it inspires me when people--in this case, coming here as a
boy with nothing--understand the magic of what this country of ours
offers in terms of opportunity and freedom. And I think, with all of
the hand-wringing that exists in our country about these very serious
troubles we face, I am absolutely convinced, if we work together, with
a new President, a new Government, if we call the American people to be
part of something bigger than themselves, to say this is a moment to
try to put this country back on track and build better opportunity and
greater opportunity for all Americans, I have great hope then for this
country.
Mr. MARTINEZ. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of S. 22,
the public lands omnibus bill. This legislation contains several
important provisions for the State of Florida that will protect its
natural treasures and expand understanding of our rich history. These
bills are bipartisan, and I am proud to have worked with my colleague
Senator Bill Nelson in support of the Everglades provisions and the
commission for the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine's founding.
Congressman John Mica has introduced a companion version of this bill
in the House of Representatives and I wanted to recognize his efforts
as well. In addition, I thank the hard work of Senator Jeff Bingaman,
the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and ranking
member, Senator Murkowski, and their staff, for including these bills
in S. 22 and bringing it to expected floor passage.
The public lands package contains an authorization for the St.
Augustine 450th Commemoration Commission, which is critical in
assisting the National Park Service, the State of Florida, as well as
all local stakeholders in organizing the historic celebration of the
city's founding. St. Augustine's old and complex history mirrors much
of the American experience. It was the birthplace of Christianity in
the New World and it was truly the first blending-pot of cultures that
included peoples of Spanish, English, French, Native American, and
African descent. Many do not know that St. Augustine is the location of
the first parish mass in the United States and it was the location of
the first free black settlement in North America. Nearly a century
before the founding of Jamestown, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon
landed off the coast of St. Augustine looking for the fabled Fountain
of Youth but instead founded a colony known as La Florida. He
discovered very favorable currents that would later be known as the
Gulf Stream, which would serve as trade routes for European explorers
to discover other parts of the New World.
Because of St. Augustine's location along strategic trade routes,
Spain constructed the Castillo de San Marcos in 1672 to protect the
capital of La Florida from French and British interests. The Castillo
de San Marcos is
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built on the ruins of the original fort that was burned to the ground
by British sailor and explorer Sir Francis Drake. The fort still stands
today and has had six different flags fly above its ramparts. It is the
oldest surviving European fortification in the United States.
The St. Augustine Commemoration Commission is necessary to help
organize the tremendous amount of historical and cultural events that
will take place in the first coast area. The commission will encompass
a broad array of members from Federal, State, local, and academic
backgrounds to ensure that it has a diverse make-up of professionals to
assist the city of St. Augustine in celebrating its founding. The
intent of the St. Augustine commission bill is to assist the NPS and
local stakeholders in building upon the experiences of the Jamestown
celebration in 2007. In addition, the commission would provide the
necessary framework to navigate the significant logistical challenges
facing the city of St. Augustine, the State of Florida, and the
National Park Service.
Restoration of the Everglades, especially Everglades National Park,
will be enhanced by enactment of the public lands bills package, S. 22.
One such provision included is section 7107, which would expand the
boundaries of Everglades National Park by nearly 600 acres and help
protect a critical part of Florida's ecological heritage. I am proud to
have cosponsored this legislation with my colleague Bill Nelson, and it
is supported by a broad group. of stakeholders including the Monroe
County government in the Florida Keys, the Nature Conservancy, and the
National Park Service. The passage of this bill would protect coastal
wetlands and habitat for a myriad of endangered species including the
American crocodile, the West Indian manatee, the wood stork, the
roseate spoonbill, and other migrating birds.
The citizens of Florida have long treasured the Everglades, and the
addition of this property within the park's boundaries will help
preserve the unique beauty that makes the keys such a special place.
The addition of the Tarpon Basin property will not place new management
or administrative burdens on our park's staff, but instead would
enhance and preserve a part of Old Florida for years to come.
Another provision included in S. 22, which Senator Nelson and I
support would facilitate an important land exchange to allow the
National Park Service to acquire the last significant private inholding
in the Everglades and clear the way to finally implement the federally
approved Modified Waters Delivery Project or ``Mod Waters.'' Mod Waters
will help restore natural water flows into Everglades National Park,
and although authorized nearly 20 years ago in 1989, it has experienced
substantial delays.
The land trade provided for in the pending, measure enables the Park
Service to acquire Florida Power and Light's, FPL, 7-mile long, utility
corridor that now bisects the expanded Everglades National Park. This
corridor runs north-south through the heart of the East Everglades and
Shark River Slough, which provides the primary water flows into the
park. Under the exchange, FPL would give this 320 acre inholding to the
park and would receive roughly 260 acres on the eastern boundary of the
park adjacent to the existing L 31 canal and levee. FPL would also
receive a vegetative management easement to help control nonnative
exotic plants. Public acquisition of the FPL inholding would eliminate
the last significant private inholding delaying Mod Waters.
No funds will be needed for this inholding acquisition and appraisals
indicate that the park receives more value than FPL. Since so much
preliminary work has been put into identifying the precise lands and
interests involved in the exchange, the Park Service should be able to
promptly complete the appraisal approval process. Expeditious review is
critical to facilitate Mod Waters and ensure that the exchange is
executed so taxpayers are spared the multimillion-dollar costs of
purchasing the FPL corridor.
Substantial work has already been completed and all evaluations
indicate that relocating the utility corridor away from the Everglades
National Park will provide a wide array of environmental benefits to
the park. The exchange and relocation ensures that there will be no
electric transmission lines constructed on the existing private right-
of-way. In addition, moving the utility corridor to the periphery of
the park to developed property will lessen impacts on resources,
endangered and threatened species, and other park-related values. The
bill also provides the NPS with the authority to relocate the
Everglades Park boundary to ensure that the lands conveyed to FPL are
outside of the park. The intent is that the relocated utility corridor
not be within Everglades Park.
Since an environmental assessment needs to focus only on those
factors arising from the land exchange itself, it is expected that the
Park Service will move quickly to complete the assessment. Any effects
that may arise from future proposed development of the relocated
corridor would be subject to full environmental review at that time by
appropriate Federal and State agencies. Because of these protections
and oversight, there should be no undue regulatory delay in the
completion of this important land exchange, which could further delay
Mod Waters. Accordingly, the NPS should act in a timely manner to
render a suitability finding for lands adjacent to the park used for
transmission to meet the power needs of south Florida.
I again thank Chairman Bingaman and Senator Murkowski for including
these bills in S. 22. I also want to thank our outgoing ranking member,
Pete Domenici, for his hard work in helping move these bills through
the Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year. We have a chance
at the beginning of a new Congress to show the American people that
Washington is not all about politics and gridlock. I urge my colleagues
to vote for S. 22 to help facilitate the completion of Mod Waters and
enhance the protection of Florida's fragile ecosystem.
Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, restoration of America's
Everglades is one of my top priorities in the Senate. Everglades
National Park stands to be enhanced by enactment of the public lands
bill package, S. 22.
Section 7107 contains a measure--similar to a bill introduced by
Senator Mel Martinez and me, to facilitate an important land exchange
which will allow the National Park Service to acquire the last
significant private inholding in the East Everglades and clear the way
to finally implement the congressionally approved Modified Waters
Delivery project or ``Mod Waters.'' Mod Waters will help restore
natural water flows into Everglades Park. This project provides a
critical foundation for many future restoration projects and although
it was authorized in 1989, has been delayed for a variety of reasons
including the need to acquire private lands that will be returned to a
natural state by increased water flows.
The Park Service has worked painstakingly since 1989 to acquire over
100,000 acres in the East Everglades at a cost of more than $104
million to clear the way for Mod Waters. Over 8000 individual parcels
of land have been purchased and added to Everglades National Park. The
land trade provided for in the pending measure will enable the park to
acquire Florida Power and Light's--FPL--7-mile long, 330-foot wide
inholding that now bisects the expanded park. This corridor of private
lands runs north-south through the heart of the East Everglades and
Shark River Slough, which provides the primary water flows into the
park--the area where more natural water flows will be restored by Mod
Waters. Under the exchange, FPL would surrender this 320-acre inholding
to the park and receive approximately 260 acres on the eastern
periphery of the park immediately adjacent to the existing L 31 canal
and levee as well as a vegetative management easement to help control
nonnative exotic plants among others. Public acquisition of the FPL
inholding would eliminate the last significant private inholding
delaying Mod Waters. In return, FPL would receive lands that would be
outside the park, providing it with the opportunity to develop such
lands into a viable utility corridor, if approved. This is a win-win
for the people of south Florida who depend upon both a healthy
environment and the availability of power.
As I stated earlier, Mod Waters is the foundation for the broader
Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, CERP, approved by Congress
in the
[[Page S333]]
Water Resources Development Act of 2000. The congressionally mandated
September 2008 National Academy of Sciences report on Everglades
restoration called progress on Mod Waters ``dismal.'' The report
emphasized that Mod Waters is critical to restoration, especially for
Everglades Park, and urged the Federal Government to take action to
move the project along. This exchange does precisely that.
No funds will be needed for this inholding acquisition. Since so much
work has already been done to identify the precise lands and interests
in land to be exchanged and these lands have been subject to
professional appraisals, we expect the park to be able to promptly
complete the necessary administrative requirements to complete the
exchange. Time is of the essence in order to facilitate Mod Waters and
ensure that the exchange is executed so taxpayers are spared the multi-
million dollar costs of purchasing the FPL corridor.
Prior to executing the land trade, the Park Service will prepare the
appropriate National Environmental Policy Act document to fully
understand the environmental impacts, if any. It is my hope that this
exchange will provide a wide array of environmental benefits to the
park. The exchange ensures that there will be no electric transmission
lines constructed on the existing private right-of-way. The bill also
provides the Service with the authority to relocate the Everglades Park
boundary to ensure that the lands conveyed to FPL are outside of the
park. It is intended that the utility corridor, if developed, not be
within Everglades Park. Because many of the agreements have been worked
out in advance between FPL and the park, I expect that the Park Service
will move expeditiously to complete the land exchange authorized by
this legislation.
In a similar vein, the Park Service must also make a determination
that the lands and interests along the L 31 canal and levee on the edge
of the park are ``suitable'' for exchange and conveyance to FPL. This
``suitability'' is already widely acknowledged and recognized by both
the agency and the Congress as these peripheral lands are not in the
heart of the park and not critical for Mod Waters and water flow
restoration. Accordingly, I expect the Park Service to act in a timely
manner to render the suitability finding.
I received a letter from Florida Department of Environmental
Protection Secretary, Mike Sole, expressing his support for the land
transfer. The exchange is also supported by the Department of the
Interior and the Army Corps of Engineers.
I expect the Park Service and FPL to move promptly to complete the
exchange. Again, the need for action on Mod Waters means that time is
of the essence.
I wish to thank Chairman Bingaman and Ranking Member Murkowski for
their efforts to incorporate this important measure in the S. 22
package. We must move expeditiously to compete Mod Waters and
completion of this land exchange will help us achieve these objectives
while ensuring that the taxpayers are spared the cost of purchasing a
very expensive park inholding from FPL.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the
quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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