[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 16983-16988]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, when major and hard-fought legislation 
nears enactment, the rhetoric on this floor can get a little 
overheated. Supporters of the measure sometimes overstate the 
importance of the legislation or exaggerate its benefits. Opponents 
make doomsday predictions of what will happen if the bill becomes law. 
Only the passage of time can answer those arguments, but by the time 
that answers are available, the Senate has often has moved on to other 
battles.
  Today, I want to take a few minutes on the floor to call the 
attention of my colleagues and the American people to some promising 
indications that the doomsday predictions of opponents of the McCain-
Feingold bill have not come to pass. As we told the Senate at the time, 
McCain-Feingold will not solve every problem in our campaign finance 
system, and it hasn't. Lately, there has been significant controversy 
over so-called ``527 organizations,'' which the FEC has permitted to 
operate in violation, I believe, of the Federal Election Campaign Act 
of 1974.
  Nonetheless, McCain-Feingold is working as it was intended to work. 
It closed the political party soft money loophole, and it has restored 
some sanity to a system that had truly spun out of control over the 
last several elections. While it is still too early to reach a final 
conclusion, it appears that the cynics and the doubters were wrong. And 
that is good news for the American people.
  When the Senate considered the McCain-Feingold bill in March 2001, we 
had just finished a hotly contested Presidential election in 2000. 
Nearly $500 million of soft money was raised in that election by the 
two political parties, almost double what was raised in the 1996 
election. Nearly two-thirds of that total was given by just 800 donors, 
who contributed over $120,000 each to the parties. The biggest donors 
contributed far more than that. The most generous soft money donor, 
AFSCME, gave almost $6 million, all to the Democratic party. SEIU gave 
a total of $4.3 million, mostly to the Democrats. AT&T gave a total of 
$3.7 million to the parties, the Carpenters and Joiners Union $2.9 
million, Freddie Mac and Philip Morris, $2.4 million. Then we had the 
``double givers''--companies that gave money to both parties. In 2000, 
there were 146 donors that gave over $100,000 in soft money to both of 
the political parties.
  The appearance of corruption created by this avalanche of soft money 
was overwhelming. The public knew it; and we all knew it in our hearts. 
And the Supreme Court knew it when it upheld the McCain-Feingold bill 
against constitutional challenge in the case of McConnell v. FEC. The 
Court stated the following:

       As the record demonstrates, it is the manner in which 
     parties have sold access to federal candidates and 
     officeholders that has given rise to the appearance of undue 
     influence. Implicit (and, as the record shows, sometimes 
     explicit) in the sale of access is the suggestion that money 
     buys influence. It is no surprise then that purchasers of 
     such access unabashedly admit that they are seeking to 
     purchase just such influence. It was not unwarranted for 
     Congress to conclude that the selling of access gives rise to 
     the appearance of corruption.

  In this election cycle, I am happy to report, political party soft 
money is no more. Not reduced, not held in check, not capped--it is 
just gone. I consider this one of the most significant developments in 
American politics in the last 50 years. In 2002, a colleague told me on 
this floor that he had just finished making an hour of calls asking for 
large soft money contributions. He said he felt like taking a shower. 
Now, many of my colleagues, including some who did not support our 
bill, tell me how happy they are to not have to make those calls any 
more. That's a huge change in how we spend our time, and how we relate 
to people who have a big stake in what we do on this floor.
  But what about the political parties? When we were debating McCain-
Feingold, we had a real difference of opinion on how the bill would 
affect the parties. On one side were Senators who argued passionately 
that the bill would kill the political parties.
  One Senator said the following during our debate:

       This legislation seeks, quite literally, to eliminate any 
     prominence for the role of political parties in American 
     elections.
       This legislation favors special interests over parties and 
     favors some special interests over other special interests. 
     Equally remarkable is the patchwork manner in which this 
     legislation achieves its virtual elimination of political 
     parties from the electoral process.

  The same Senator claimed:

       But under this bill, I promise you, if McCain-Feingold 
     becomes law, there won't be one penny less spent on 
     politics--not a penny less. In fact, a good deal more will be 
     spent on politics. It just won't be spent by the parties. 
     Even with the increase in hard money, which I think is a good 
     idea and I voted for, there is no way that will ever make up 
     for the soft dollars lost.

  There isn't any way, he said, that they will ever make up for the 
soft dollars lost.
  Twenty months after the McCain-Feingold bill went into effect as the 
law of the land, our two great political parties are alive and well. 
Apparently they do have something to offer to the American people other 
than fundraisers for lobbyists. A new study by Anthony Corrado and Tom 
Mann of the Brookings Institution reports that through the first 18 
months of the 2004 election cycle, the national party committees raised 
$615 million in hard money alone, which was more than the $540 million 
that they had raised in hard and soft money combined at a comparable 
point in the 2000 election cycle. Let me say that again. As of June 30, 
the parties had raised more in hard money in this election cycle than 
they had raised in hard and soft money combined at a similar point in 
the 2000 cycle.
  Remember the Senator who said there was ``no way'' that the parties 
could make up for the soft money they would lose under the McCain-
Feingold bill. Well it turns out that Senator was wrong.
  The parties are not just surviving, they are thriving. And they are 
doing this not just by taking advantage of the increased contribution 
limits instituted by McCain-Feingold. Corrado and Mann state the 
following:

       While these increases in the contribution limits have 
     provided the parties with millions of additional dollars, the 
     growth in party funding in 2004 is largely the result of a 
     remarkable surge in the number of party donors. Both parties 
     have added hundreds of thousands of new small donors to their 
     rolls.

  The numbers are truly astonishing. The Republican National Committee

[[Page 16984]]

has added a million new donors. The NRCC added 400,000 new contributors 
in 2003. The DNC has recruited more than 800,000 new small donors 
through direct mail alone. And these numbers don't include any new 
online contributions in 2004. And, of course, they don't include the 
hundreds of millions of dollars in hard money raised by the two major 
party presidential candidates.
  The parties are stronger than they were before not just because they 
have raised more money than in 2000. Small contributors are a much 
better indicator of strength than big contributors. Small contributors 
volunteer, they are involved, they vote, and they inspire others to 
contribute and vote. I believe McCain-Feingold saved the political 
parties from the oblivion to which they were sending themselves with 
their reliance on the easy fix of soft money.
  The argument over the effect of the bill on the political parties was 
just one of the disagreements we had when the bill was considered back 
in 2001. Another dispute concerned what would happen to all that soft 
money that had previously been contributed to the parties. Opponents of 
the bill expressed absolute certainty that the money contributed to the 
parties would simply migrate to less accountable outside groups. One 
Senator said the following during our debate:

       Why do we want to ban soft money to political parties, that 
     funding which is now accountable and reportable? This ban 
     would weaken the parties and put more money and control in 
     the hands of wealthy individuals and independent groups who 
     are accountable to no one.
       Another Senator quoted a prominent Republican lawyer who 
     said: ``The world under McCain-Feingold is a world where the 
     loudest voices in the process are third-party groups.''

  Those of us who supported the bill certainly recognized that some 
donors would look for alternative ways to influence the political 
process. But we also thought that much of the money that was being 
given to the political parties was being given under duress. We argued 
that if Members of Congress and other public officials weren't asking 
for the money, much of it wouldn't be given at all. We had heard from 
countless corporate executives that the soft money system, which many 
had called legalized bribery, was really more like legalized extortion. 
I will never forget the words of Ed Kangas the former CEO of Deloitte 
Touche Tohmatsu. He said:

       Businesses should not have to pay a toll to have their case 
     heard in Washington. There are many times when CEOs feel like 
     the pressure to contribute soft money is nothing less than a 
     shakedown.

  In 1999, on this floor, I said the following in a debate with another 
Senator who actually supported the soft money ban, but asserted that 
soft money would simply flow to outside groups:

       I have this chart. It is a list of all the soft money 
     double givers. These are corporations that have given over 
     $150,000 to both sides. Under the Senator's logic, these very 
     same corporations--Philip Morris, Joseph Seagram, RJR 
     Nabisco, BankAmerica Corporation--each of these would 
     continue making the same amount of contributions; they would 
     take the chance of violating the law by doing this in 
     coordination with or at the suggestion of the parties, and 
     they would calmly turn over the same kind of cash to others, 
     be it left-wing or right-wing independent groups?
       I have to say . . . I am skeptical that if they cannot hand 
     the check directly to the political party leaders, they will 
     take those chances.

  On this dispute, with 3\1/2\ months to go before the election, the 
jury is still out. But once again, the early indications are that the 
doomsday predictions of opponents of the bill will not come to pass.
  Not long ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that it surveyed the 
20 top corporate donors in the 2002 election cycle and more than half, 
including Microsoft, Citigroup, and Pfizer, are resisting giving large 
contributions to the outside groups, the 527s, that are trying to raise 
unlimited contributions since the parties can no longer accept them. As 
the article noted:

       The reticence illustrates an uneasiness on the part of some 
     of the corporations to get sucked back into the world of 
     unlimited political contributions that they thought campaign 
     reform had left behind.

  According to a Washington Post article in June:

       [E]lection law lawyers said corporations are showing 
     significant reluctance to get back into making ``soft money'' 
     donations after passage of the McCain-Feingold law.

  According to the Center for Public Integrity, which maintains the 
most complete database of information on 527s using the reports 
required by the disclosure bill we passed in 2000, 527s that focus on 
federal elections along with labor-funded 527s have raised 
approximately $150 million as of June 30. This is far less than the 
$254 million that had been raised in soft money by the parties at a 
similar point in the 2000 election cycle and less than half of the $308 
million raised in the first 18 months of the 2002 cycle. It is, of 
course, possible that 527 fundraising will pick up significantly in the 
wake of the FEC's determination in May that it will likely not regulate 
these groups as political committees in this election cycle. But the 
underlying problem with raising money for these organizations remain. 
That is very simple. It is central to this whole issue. They cannot 
offer the kind of access and influence that made the parties such 
effective soft money seekers prior to the enactment of McCain-Feingold.
  There is no doubt that ideologically motivated wealthy individuals 
will continue to seek ways to influence elections. Most of the money 
being donated to the 527s is coming from such people. I continue to 
believe that many of these groups, since their stated goal is to 
influence federal elections, should be required to register as federal 
PACs, which can accept contributions of only $5,000 per year from 
individuals. But even if they continue to operate outside the law, they 
are not going to replace the political parties. Without significant 
corporate support, they simply cannot raise the kind of money that the 
parties raised in 2000, much less the amounts that would have been 
raised under the old system in this election cycle.
  So to those who forecast or believed the doomsday scenarios back in 
2001 and 2002 when we considered the bill, or who continue to believe 
them today, I suggest you look at the numbers. McCain-Feingold is 
working, and the Senate should be proud that it passed. As we approach 
the 2004 elections, and the airwaves become saturated with political 
advertising, note the difference. Party ads are paid for with the 
contributions of millions of hardworking Americans proud to participate 
in the political process and looking to parties and to their government 
to represent them, not the special interests that used to write the big 
checks.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDENT OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent I be recognized to speak in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                         9/11 Commission Report

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this may be the last day of Senate 
activity before we take a recess for August. In that recess, both major 
political parties will have their conventions in Boston and New York. 
Members will be back home in their States, some campaigning, some 
spending time with their families--a period of time we all look forward 
to each year. However, we leave this Senate with a great deal of 
unfinished business.
  This morning, Governor Tom Kean, a former Governor of New Jersey, and 
Congressman Lee Hamilton of Indiana gave a briefing to Members of the 
Senate on the 9/11 Commission Report. Let me say at the outset that 
those two individuals, Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton, as well 
as every member of this Commission, performed a great service for the 
United States of America. They have produced a report which, frankly, 
is a bargain. They were given an appropriation of some $15 million, 
they had 80 staff people, and over

[[Page 16985]]

a very short period of time by congressional standards did a more 
thorough analysis of the events leading up to September 11 than any 
analysis that has been done by a congressional committee. They did it 
in a bipartisan fashion, an analytical fashion, and they did it not 
looking for someone to blame or someone to assign responsibility but, 
rather, to learn so they would learn as a Commission and we would learn 
as a nation how to make America safer.
  As Governor Kean this morning went through this Commission report, he 
outlined all of the occurrences, starting with the initial bombing of 
the World Trade Center many years ago, that led up to September 11. As 
he read the list, it went longer and longer and longer, all of the 
clear evidence we had accumulated of activities by al-Qaida and other 
terrorists threatening the United States of America. When you heard 
this list, you reached the same conclusion he did; that is, why didn't 
we see it coming?
  There was so much evidence leading in that direction. Governor Kean 
and Congressman Hamilton said many of our leaders, many of our 
agencies, many Members of Congress, and many American people were still 
thinking about the threat and danger of our world in terms of a cold 
war. Now we were facing a new danger, a danger which was not obvious to 
us, and very few people were prescient enough to see it coming.
  He talked about how these al-Qaida terrorists on 9/11, with a budget 
of less than half a million dollars, managed to see weaknesses in our 
system of security, that they could bring a 4-inch bladed knife on a 
plane but not a 6-inch bladed knife. All they needed was a 4-inch 
knife. They used box cutters. They came on planes and threatened the 
crews and commandeered the aircraft. They knew the doorways to the 
pilots' cabin were not reinforced or locked. They put all this together 
into this hideous plan of theirs to crash airplanes into the World 
Trade Center and the Pentagon.
  Well, the facts were there for us to see, and most of us missed it. 
But this Commission said: We need to look beyond that. We need to look 
to the next question: What should we be doing to make certain America 
is safer? What should we have learned from 9/11? And they identified 
several areas.
  Congressman Hamilton said: We need more imagination. At one point he 
said--I suppose halfway in jest--we should have been reading more Tom 
Clancy novels and thinking about possibilities rather than just 
analyzing the way things had always been. We needed to make sure we 
developed imagination, developed a program that could respond to these 
new threats, capabilities. And we needed to make certain we had done 
everything we could to organize and manage our Government assets so 
they could be used most effectively.
  Our friends in the military understand that. It is the reason why the 
United States of America has the best military in the world. About 10 
years ago, Senator Goldwater and Congressman Nichols proposed some 
dramatic reforms in the military and its management to try to stop this 
competition among the branches in the military and bring them together, 
and it has worked. This cooperative effort has made our military even 
that much better today.
  Well, this Commission report suggests we need to do the same thing 
when it comes to the 15 different intelligence agencies across our 
Government that are responsible for collecting and analyzing 
information, to warn us of dangers ahead. Fifteen different agencies, 
with many extremely talented people, some with the most sophisticated 
technology in the world, but often dealing with obstacles and hurdles 
between agencies that should not exist.
  They gave us examples: that one agency would know of the 19 
terrorists on 9/11 and that many of them were dangerous people, but it 
was not communicated to the Federal Aviation Administration to keep 
them off airplanes; that we would establish standards which said: If 
you were identified by our Government as a dangerous person, we are 
going to search your baggage, but we are not going to stop you from 
getting on a plane. All of these things suggest we need to be smarter 
and better and tougher in the future.
  The proposals they came up with are going to be controversial. They 
will be discussed at length by Members of Congress and a lot of others. 
But they are on the right track.
  First: to give to one person new authority over these intelligence 
agencies. Senator Feinstein of California, my colleague, has one 
approach. The Commission has another approach. But the idea is to vest 
in that person more authority to get the job done.
  Second: to force together all these different agencies, 15 different 
agencies, into a counterterrorism network that works and cooperates. 
That is something that is long overdue.
  And then, third: to look at Congress, because we have a role in this, 
too. Congress did not do as good a job as it could have done. We have a 
Senate Intelligence Committee, of which I am proud to be a part, and 
the House Intelligence Committee. But we need more oversight. We need 
to be able to develop the skills, with staff and our own commitment, to 
ask hard questions of these intelligence agencies, to ask what they are 
doing, whether they are being imaginative enough, whether they are 
cooperating with other agencies.
  We need to ask hard questions about the appropriations for these 
agencies. I happen to serve on the Intelligence Committee and on the 
Appropriations Committee. So I sat through both hearings recently. I 
will tell you what happened in our Appropriations Committee hearing. It 
was a meeting of the Defense Subcommittee, in the closed room upstairs.
  Then-Director of the CIA George Tenet presented a lengthy analysis of 
the intelligence threats to the United States, about 150 pages, and 
went through it. On about page 110, he started talking about the 
appropriations. That is what we were there for. We were there to 
discuss the money needed for our intelligence operations. But the first 
110 out of 150 pages were all about the threats around the world and 
how serious they might be.
  When it came time for members of the Appropriations subcommittee to 
ask questions, they dwelled on the front part of Mr. Tenet's 
presentation, the first 110 pages. They dwelled on questions related to 
threats to the United States.
  I am way down the line on that committee. By the time it came, an 
hour and a half later, to my questions, I said to Director Tenet: May I 
ask you a question about your appropriations? It was the first question 
asked about that at that hearing. We spent less than 10 minutes asking 
about the money that was to be spent and why.
  My question to Director Tenet at the time was: What is the most 
significant part of your budget? How has it changed from last year? And 
why do we need it?
  Well, that is an obvious question in any Appropriations hearing. But 
we never got to it until extremely late in the hearing. We can do 
better.
  One of the suggestions from Congressman Hamilton is to look for a 
joint Intelligence Committee between the House and the Senate. There is 
only one viable analogy, when we did the same thing with atomic energy 
40 years ago. No one in Congress today served at that time. It would be 
interesting to see how it worked.
  Another is to give to the Senate Intelligence Committee and House 
Intelligence Committee authorizing-appropriating authority. For most 
people following this debate, this sounds so arcane it does not sound 
important, but it is: to give to one committee the authority to look at 
the programs and how they are working and then look at the budget and 
see how it matches up. That is important.
  We need to expand the Senate Intelligence Committee staff. We do not 
have enough people. How can we possibly keep track of 15 different 
agencies, thousands of employees, the reaches of these agencies into 
countries all around the world, in the heavens above and the Earth 
below, and do

[[Page 16986]]

this with literally a handful of staff people?
  On the Senate Intelligence Committee, which I have served on for 4 
years, I have one staff person whom I share with another Senator. That 
is not good enough. Part-time staff will not do the job.
  Again, let me say, the 9/11 Commission report is a great service to 
America. The men and women who spent the time to make it a reality 
deserve our thanks and praise. President Bush was right yesterday. This 
is not a matter of blaming President Clinton or blaming President Bush. 
We are called on, as Members of Congress, in a bipartisan fashion, to 
think of ways to change the law to make America safer. I think that is 
what people across America expect of us.
  Let me tell you what we can do today in a bipartisan fashion. We are 
hours away from leaving. We will be off, as I said, for the August 
recess. We will leave behind this Senate Calendar of pending 
legislation. On the back page of this calendar, the first item: the 
Homeland Security appropriations bill. It has been on this calendar 
since June 17--over a month now. We will leave town. We will leave 
Washington for 6 weeks, without passing the Homeland Security 
appropriations bill.
  We should have done that a long time ago. We should be moving toward 
a conference to make sure that when October 1 comes, the new fiscal 
year, we are ready to move, we are ready to send the resources that are 
necessary not only to the Department of Homeland Security but to State 
and local first responders. That is a critical issue.
  Let me give you an example. The President's budget request for 
Homeland Security has a total appropriation of $32.6 billion. This is a 
7.7-percent increase over last year. In the House of Representatives, 
they appropriated $33.1 billion, slightly more than the Senate. But the 
problem is within the appropriations request itself.
  President Bush's budget request for the Department of Homeland 
Security represents a dramatic cut of $1 billion in money for State and 
local first responders. I have said it repeatedly, God forbid another 
act of terrorism hits the United States. People in the streets of 
America are not likely to look for the number of the White House or of 
the Senate. They will dial 911. They will be looking for first 
responders in their community.
  When we cut money, as the President's budget does, for State and 
local first responders, we are shortchanging our line of defense, our 
hometown line of defense against terrorism.
  When you make these cuts to these State and local units of 
government, let me give you an example of some of what we in Illinois 
and other places may find at risk.
  We need the money that has been cut in the President's budget for 
homeland security. We need it to specially train and equip local and 
State teams, firefighters, policemen, medical responders. We need it 
for interoperable communications.
  I was surprised to learn a few years ago that in my State of 
Illinois, with 12.5 million people, there is no single network for the 
police and firefighters and ambulance services and hospital trauma 
centers to communicate. They each have different radio systems, 
different frequencies. What is wrong with this picture? We need them 
all together. If something should happen in my State or in a 
neighboring State, in South Carolina, wherever it happened to be, the 
first responders in that State should have a common communications 
system. When President Bush's budget cuts money for State and local 
responders, it reduces the likelihood that we can develop those 
systems. We need standardized training, methods to share intelligence, 
and we need mutual aid plans.
  Most people, when they think of dangers and threats in the State of 
Illinois, automatically think of the great city of Chicago that may be 
a target. I hope it never happens. We had an exercise 2 years ago to 
try to simulate what might happen if we had such a tragedy. We quickly 
learned that if something did happen, we would need a dramatic increase 
of first responders, that the existing police and firefighters in 
Chicago and most major cities were inadequate to the task. We would 
almost have to double their numbers. That means reaching out to 
surrounding communities in mutual aid, so if it is a situation in 
downtown Chicago or in a suburban area, surrounding units would come to 
their assistance. That is done today over and over again across 
America. When the tornado hit Utica, IL, a few months ago, they had 
fire departments and first responders from all over the region coming 
together. But in order to make this mutual aid happen, we need money 
for the State and local responders to develop it. That line in the 
budget was cut by President Bush. It needs to be restored by Congress. 
We need to do that before we go home.
  Within this same Senate calendar, you will also find other provisions 
of homeland security, such as a provision to increase the safety and 
security of nuclear powerplants. We have six nuclear powerplants in 
Illinois. These are important for us. They provide more than half of 
our electricity. They need better protection. We need better 
coordination of the fire and police and medical units around them.
  We also have in our State--and it is probably the reason why we have 
been as prosperous as we have throughout our history--so much 
transportation, intermodal facilities. I visited at the old Joliet 
arsenal out in the area where Shell is. All of these trainyards and 
interstate highways--each one of them is vulnerable and needs to have 
special protection. We are a significant source of our Nation's food 
supply. We have many great universities.
  Our State is not unique. Virtually every State can tell the same 
story of areas where we need to focus our attention and resources. We 
have these four bills on the calendar that would address some aspects.
  One of the bills provides for greater security and defense of nuclear 
power facilities. That is one that is obvious. We will leave the Senate 
today without enacting that legislation and moving it to conference 
committee.
  We also have a provision for the chemical industry. Obviously, here 
is a part of the private sector that is really vulnerable. Legislation 
has been developed to make it safer, and it sits on the calendar while 
we spend our time spinning our wheels on the Senate floor.
  The same thing for our ports with the thousands of containers that 
come in on a daily basis, and our rail facilities. Each one of these 
areas has a special piece of legislation on this calendar that we have 
failed to address as we leave to go on our August recess. I hope there 
won't come a moment in the next 6 weeks when we look back and say: We 
really should have done our work. We should have spent less time on the 
Senate floor embroiled in these political debates that spin our wheels 
and go nowhere and more time doing things people care about.


                        Further Important Issues

  I have devoted this period of time in my speech on the 9/11 
Commission report and homeland security, but I will say that we are 
remiss if we leave Washington without thinking of other issues that 
have a direct impact on the families and businesses across America. 
Some are extremely obvious. Pick a State. Pick a city. Go to any 
business, large or small, and ask them their No. 1 headache today. It 
is likely that most will respond: The cost of health insurance. It is a 
cost which is crippling businesses, denying coverage to many people, it 
continues to go up and out of sight, and reduces protection for the 
people who are supposed to be helped.
  What have we done in Washington in the Senate on the issue of the 
affordability of quality health care and health insurance? Absolutely 
nothing. We don't even talk about it. We act as if it is not a problem. 
It is the No. 1 complaint of businesses and unions and families in 
Illinois. How can this representative body, charged with changing the 
laws and making life better in America, have a session that is void of 
any meaningful debate on the cost and availability of quality health 
care? We will have done that. We will adjourn without having seriously 
considered it.

[[Page 16987]]

  The second issue is the state of the economy, whether we are prepared 
to help those industries which have struggled during the last 
recession, particularly manufacturing, whether our trade laws are 
adequately enforced, whether we are training and equipping the 
workforce of the future.
  The third issue is obvious to most: What are we going to do about 
energy? Are we going to continue to be dependent for decades to come on 
the Middle East, drawing us into the intrigue of Saudi Arabia and those 
surrounding countries and all the other sources or are we going to move 
toward energy independence? We had a debate on an energy bill that went 
nowhere. Sadly, that bill didn't get very serious about the real 
issues. Can you imagine a debate on energy policy in America that does 
not even address the question of the fuel efficiency of America's cars 
and trucks? That was our debate. We decided, because the special 
interest groups, the manufacturers, and some of their workers didn't 
want to get into energy efficiency, that we would consider an energy 
bill that did not address the No. 1 area of consumption of energy in 
America--the fuel efficiencies of cars and trucks.
  We can do better. America can have a good, strong, growing economy 
that is environmentally responsible and energy efficient. We have done 
it before, and we can do it again. What is lacking is leadership, on 
the floor of the Senate, in the House, and in the White House. That is 
critically important.
  Of course, the one issue I started with is the issue that I will end 
with--America's security defense. As we speak on the Senate floor 
today, just a few minutes away by car are Walter Reed Hospital and the 
Bethesda Naval Medical Center. In the wards and rooms of those two 
great medical institutions are men and women who served our country 
valiantly in Iraq, many of whom suffered extremely serious injuries. I 
have been out with colleagues to visit with them from time to time and 
can't help but be impressed. They are the best and brightest in 
America. They are young men and women who stood up, took the oath, put 
on the uniform, and risked their lives for America. My heart goes out 
to them every day and many just like them who are serving in Iraq and 
Afghanistan and all around the world.
  We have to be mindful of the fact that our situation in Iraq is a 
long-term commitment. No matter what you might have thought when we 
decided to invade Iraq--and I was one of 23 Senators who voted against 
the use-of-force resolution at that time--we all come together now 
believing that we need to provide every resource our men and women in 
uniform need to finish their mission and come home safely. That is 
something that should never be far from our minds, as well as the 
question of what we are going to do to make America safer here at home.
  We talk about a war on terrorism, but former Senator Bob Kerrey of 
Nebraska at the 9/11 Commission meeting made an observation we should 
not forget. He said to Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet, who appeared 
before the Commission, that it really isn't a war on terrorism. 
Terrorism is a tactic. The question is, Who is the enemy using the 
terrorism tactic? That is the real question. What should we be doing 
now to discover the plots and dangers across the world that might come 
to threaten the United States but also to reach out to the next 
generation in countries around the world to let them know we are a 
compassionate, caring people with values they can share and that their 
lives will be better for that.
  It goes beyond military strength and intelligence. It goes into 
diplomacy and leadership around the world so that this country, as we 
may hear from time to time, is not only strong at home but respected 
around the world.
  We can do our part. We need to reach out in different areas where we 
have not as much in the past. Yesterday, I spoke on the floor about the 
situation in the Sudan. It is a situation where literally a thousand 
people a day are losing their lives to what is a horrible genocide 
occurring in that country. We need to do more.
  The United States has spent over $100 million so far in food aid. We 
need to be a political force, too, to push that Sudanese Government to 
do what is right and to work with the United Nations so that we say to 
the world: The United States is not interested in treasure or 
territory; we are a caring people, a humanitarian people who care about 
some of the poorest places on Earth, such as the Sudan.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Dole). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WYDEN. 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. WYDEN. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WYDEN. I also thank my friend from Tennessee, Senator Alexander. 
I know he wants to speak as well. I will not be long.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  (The remarks of Mr. Wyden pertaining to the introduction of S. 2723 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee is recognized.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. Alexander pertaining to the introduction of S. 
2721 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced 
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')


                         9/11 Commission Report

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, this morning at about 10 a.m. we were 
given an opportunity to meet with Governor Kean and Lee Hamilton, the 
cochair of the 9/11 Commission. That is the subject of the news today. 
I know both men well. I know Governor Kean better. We served as 
Governors at the same time. I have known a lot of Governors. He was 
Governor of New Jersey at the time he served. My judgment was he was 
the best Governor in the country. Those leadership characteristics 
certainly showed themselves with this report.
  Mr. Hamilton said he had been working actively with the directors of 
the CIA in every administration since Lyndon Johnson. In a few words, 
he gave us a very impressive presentation. I believe this is an 
impressive report. It is an impressive committee. It has had impressive 
leadership, and it certainly will command my attention as one Senator. 
I intend to read it all the way through, and I intend to take seriously 
the recommendations. I hope all Americans will take time to read it.
  Terrorism, as they remind us, whether or not we like it, is the 
greatest challenge today to our national security. It will be for our 
lifetimes and perhaps much longer than that.
  This is a hard matter for us to come to grips with in the United 
States of America, because it seems too remote from us. It seems as if 
it is on television. That is hard to say after 9/11 when 3,000 people 
were killed in an hour.
  But as Mr. Hamilton gave his report to us, he emphasized four areas 
of failure--not President Bush's failure, not President Clinton's 
failure, but our failure. In fact, he said both Presidents were active 
and busy and interested and working hard on the threat. But in these 
four areas, we as a country failed.
  First was the failure of imagination. We didn't imagine what could 
have happened that day. Second was a failure of policy. A third was a 
failure of capability. And fourth was a failure of management.
  It made me think, if I may give a personal reflection. I have thought 
about it many times because I have heard various people suggest, ``Why 
didn't President Bush think of this?'' or ``Why didn't President 
Clinton think of this?'' As the Chair knows, I was busy in the mid 
1990s trying to occupy the same seat President Bush occupies today. I 
was a candidate for President of the United States in 1994, 1995, and 
1996. I thought back many times. It never once occurred to me a group 
of

[[Page 16988]]

people might fly airplanes into the World Trade Center and into the 
Pentagon and try to fly them into the Capitol.
  It never occurred to me. And it also never occurred to me that if I 
should by some chance be successful in that race, that within a year 
and a half of taking office I would suddenly be interrupted in a 
meeting in Florida with some schoolchildren, and in a short period of 
time I would have to decide whether to shoot down a plane load of U.S. 
citizens on a commercial airline headed toward Washington, DC. It never 
occurred to me.
  I thought for a long time: Maybe that is just me. Maybe I am naive 
and have not had enough experience, but I have asked other public 
officials with a lot more experience. I did not ask the Presiding 
Officer, whose husband was a candidate for our country's highest 
office, if that occurred whether they might have to shoot down such an 
airplane. Maybe with her background in transportation, she would have 
thought of that, but I didn't. And I think most policymakers did not. 
Obviously, many people in intelligence didn't.
  What Mr. Hamilton was saying, and Governor Kean, is we are going to 
have to imagine all of the things that could be done, some of us at 
least, and think about them and take those things very seriously in the 
future.
  As fortunate as we are to live in this big country with remote, safe 
places, far away from a lot of the fighting we see on television, an 
unfortunate part of living in today's world is there are real threats 
and we are going to have to imagine those things that even candidates 
for the highest office in our land a few years ago would not have ever 
imagined.
  I salute the Commission for its work. I thank them for it. I like the 
fact that it is unanimous, without a single dissent, without a 
dissenting opinion. I thank them for their job.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Alexander). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

                          ____________________