[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2568-2580]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   MAKING AVAILABLE FUNDS FOR THE LOW-INCOME HOME ENERGY ASSISTANCE 
                             PROGRAM, 2006

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the bill.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 2320) to make available funds included in the 
     Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 for the Low-Income Home Energy 
     Assistance Program for fiscal year 2006 and for other 
     purposes.

  Pending:

       Kyl/Ensign amendment No. 2899, to make available funds 
     included in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 for allotments 
     to States for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program 
     for fiscal year 2006.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The cloture motion having been 
presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the 
motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the standing rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on S. 2320, a bill 
     to make available funds included in the Deficit Reduction Act 
     of 2005 for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program for 
     fiscal year 2006, and for other purposes.
         William Frist, Lamar Alexander, Ted Stevens, Pat Roberts, 
           Robert F. Bennett, George Allen, Pete V. Domenici, Rick 
           Santorum, Gordon Smith, John Thune, Richard G. Lugar, 
           Arlen Specter, Mitch McConnell, Lincoln D. Chafee, Lisa 
           Murkowski, Mike DeWine, David Vitter.

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the live quorum be 
waived and that this vote occur on Tuesday, March 7, following the 
period for morning business and a 1-hour period of equally-divided 
debate on LIHEAP.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. FRIST. For schedule purposes, we now have up to three votes 
scheduled for Monday on three U.S. district judges, as well as the 
cloture vote on LIHEAP which will occur Tuesday morning, sometime prior 
to the policy meetings.
  I expect that today will be a relatively short session. If Senators 
do wish to come to the floor to speak, they should do so as soon as 
possible this morning.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be dispensed with.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in 
morning business.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                                 Energy

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I know we will not be in very long today. 
As a matter of fact, I am going to Wyoming in a little bit. There are 
some things I have wanted to talk about for some time, and since we 
have some time this morning, I thought I might take a few minutes to 
talk a bit about energy.
  We, of course, have been on a number of other things, and 
unfortunately taking a long time to do them. But I hope we get back to 
those things that are really vital to us in terms of the economy, in 
terms of jobs, in terms of health care, and terrorism. But one of the 
most important questions, of course, that we face is the question of 
energy.
  Sometimes I think we forget how vital and what such a part of our 
lives

[[Page 2569]]

energy is. All we have to do is look around and turn the lights off or 
turn the heat off for a little while and we recognize how important it 
is. We have talked about it a great deal.
  As a matter of fact, last year one of the most important and vital 
things that we did was to put together a policy on energy. I think it 
was a very good policy. It is a policy that is in effect. The fact is, 
however, it is a policy, as it should be, but then we should be faced 
with and take on the responsibility of implementing that policy. It is 
one thing to have a policy, and it is very important to have one, but 
then you have to put something in place to cause the policy to be in 
action. I think that is where we are now.
  Being part of the committee, I may be a little prejudiced. I think 
the policy was a good one and looked forward to the future and took 
into account things such as conservation and efficient use. That is a 
very important part.
  One of the things we really have to stress is how we can get more 
mileage out of the energy we have. We also looked--again importantly--
at the idea of alternative sources of energy. Over time, we can look at 
wind energy, we can look at ethanol, we can look at Sun energy--all 
kinds of things out there. And we should.
  The fact is, most of those--even though I think they have great 
potential and will be a real part of our lives in the future--are out 
there waiting.
  The other thing we talked about, however, in the policy is to make 
better use of those things that are already available to us. That is 
really what I want to talk about for a couple of minutes this morning; 
that, specifically, is coal. Coal is our largest fossil fuel resource. 
As a matter of fact, we have the largest supply of coal in the world 
that we can depend on in the future. About 27 percent of future coal is 
in the United States. We use a great deal of it right now generating 
electricity by and large, but the fact is, even though we are using 
train loads to run a generator for 1 day, we still have the resources 
to do this for a good long time in the future.
  However, there are some things pending we can be doing in the fairly 
short term that will have a real impact. If we wait for these 
alternatives, we are going to have some real pressing times between the 
time they are ready to go and what we are doing now. I am hopeful and 
involved in the budget right now. I, frankly, wish there was a little 
more attention--I think there should be--in the budget not only to look 
at research over time but to do some things to incentivize the 
development of those things that will have an impact in the next 4, 6, 
or 8 years. That is very important because energy is that nearly on the 
edge.
  One of them, of course, is the various alternative uses of coal. We 
kind of know what to do. In fact, there are some plants now that are 
using coal and converting it and processing gas, which takes out 
CO2, which takes out the climate-warming kinds of things and 
yet produces coal. Of course, as we produce more generation we have to 
look at other ways.
  Coal has been the only kind of fuel that has been used over the last 
20 years. About 50 percent of our generation is done by coal, and more 
recent plants have been gas.
  In our policy, we are better off using coal for generation and let 
gas be used for things which are more flexible.
  For instance, my State of Wyoming is the largest producer of coal. We 
have some of the biggest resources for coal in the future. These are 
open-pit mines, which are very efficient and very effective. We are 
very anxious to try to bring to this country and put into use fairly 
soon some of the procedures that can be used. As I said, you can make 
diesel fuel out of coal, which is very important.
  We have plants in Wyoming that are ready to do that, if we can get 
started. We can make gas out of coal. We can make hydrogen out of coal. 
These things, of course, take incentives and take some money.
  I hope in this budget, in addition to looking out in the future in 
terms of research, we also look at how we implement in the shorter term 
the things we already know how to do--how we use our greater resources, 
use them in a more efficient way, and in a way which is environmentally 
sound so we can put ourselves in the position of being less dependent 
on foreign oil and foreign imports.
  I want to talk some more about it as time goes by, but I guess the 
point I wanted to make and leave and see if we can't talk about is, we 
have a policy. We have a policy that deals with some fairly short-term 
changes. We need to be putting some emphasis on those as we look at our 
budget needs, look at things which can have an impact in the short 
term. We have to look at where these resources are so we can make our 
development around where the resources are and look forward to 
providing energy in this country on an economically sound basis, 
reasonably effectively, and available to everyone. We can do that.
  I hope we pursue our policies and implement them.
  I will continue over time to focus on these things.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The minority leader is recognized.


                             Pension Reform

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, another day is gone. The Senate has been 
unable to appoint conferees on the pension reform bill. I am terribly 
disappointed that is the case.
  Forty-four million American workers are covered by private sector 
pension plans. They need our help. They can only get help if we have a 
conference with the House, a bill comes back here, and it is approved 
by both the House and the Senate. Forty-four million people would have 
peace of mind.
  Senate Democrats are ready to go to conference now so we can produce 
a pension reform bill that will improve worker retirement security. 
Throughout this process, Democrats have worked with Republicans. This 
is truly a bipartisan effort to produce a bill that passed the Senate 
with 97 votes. It wasn't until we got into a position of appointing 
conferees that the majority decided to, for lack of a better 
description, play games.
  I have to, frankly, say--I haven't had this job a long time--it has 
never happened during the time that I have been leader. I don't 
remember it happening during the time I was assistant leader for 6 
years.
  I don't know when the last time was that we had a prolonged dispute 
about how many people are going to be on a conference committee.
  Why are we seeing this now? Perhaps they are trying to stack the deck 
in favor of downtown interests--I should say some downtown interests. 
We should give the opportunity to the Senate to stack the deck in favor 
of the 44 million workers and not a few special interests down on K 
Street.
  Yesterday, the distinguished majority leader said, and I quote:

       We have two committees with equal stakes in this bill, and 
     they should have an equal number of conferees in the 
     committee. The conference committee should fairly represent 
     the two committees of jurisdiction.

  I agree. This is precisely why I proposed a conference of eight 
Republicans and six Democrats instead of seven Republicans and five 
Democrats.
  Under my proposal, four Republicans and three Democrats can be 
appointed from the HELP Committee, and four Republicans and three 
Democrats could be appointed from the Finance Committee. Remember, 
these numbers give the majority a two-vote majority.
  The proposal I suggested establishes equal and fair representation to 
the two committees but for the fact we have 55 Republicans and 45 
Democrats. We have acknowledged they should have a two-vote majority in 
this conference. But it is fair, eight Republicans, six Democrats; 
eight Republicans representing the Committee on Finance and the HELP 
Committee, six Democrats representing the Committee on Finance and the 
HELP Committee. My proposal established equal and fair representation 
of the two committees--exactly what the leader said we need to 
accomplish so we can at least get the conference underway.
  We are ready to go. It is puzzling when the majority leader refuses 
to

[[Page 2570]]

take ``yes'' for an answer. The proposals put forward by the majority 
leader only add to this confusion. It appears that seven Republicans 
are okay, eight Republicans are not okay, nine Republicans are okay but 
only if they have, not a two-vote majority, but now a three-vote 
margin.
  So what conclusions could be drawn? At least two could be drawn. 
First, the majority leader and his supporters downtown do not really 
care about the equal and fair representation; they only care about 
stacked representation. Second, and most unfortunately, they apparently 
care more about stacking the deck than they do about completing action 
on this vital piece of legislation.
  Remember, whatever suggestion I have made, I don't change the 
majority of the Republicans. They have a two-vote majority. The 
majority leader has an opportunity to prove these words wrong. What am 
I saying? That they care more about stacking the deck than they do 
about completing this important legislation.
  If the distinguished majority leader believes what he said yesterday, 
we can go to conference today with equal and fair representation from 
the HELP Committee and the Committee on Finance. If he does not accept 
this offer, it indicates he believes the lobbyists on K Street are more 
important than the workers on Main Street.
  Yesterday, I listened to statements by Senators Baucus and Conrad, 
the Democratic ranking members on the Committee on Finance and 
Committee on the Budget. What they said speaks volumes on what is wrong 
with this administration. I have trouble comprehending how the majority 
ignores these huge deficits. They are there. They are piling up. Why? 
We vote to approve these deficits.
  In the pay-as-you-go system, if someone wants to spend some money, 
you have to have an offset. Those rules have been abandoned by this 
administration and this Republican-dominated Congress. I don't 
understand this. I always had in my mind that the Republicans were 
fiscally concerned about the status of our economy. Obviously, that is 
not true.
  President Bush is the most fiscally irresponsible President in the 
history of our country. No other President comes even close. When this 
administration came to office, the Federal debt was about $5 trillion. 
We were running large annual budget surpluses. We were paying down the 
debt.
  Alan Greenspan, the recently departed Federal Reserve Chairman, 
expressed concern during the final year of President Clinton's 
administration that the public debt was being paid down so rapidly that 
it may cause a concern to the financial markets.
  Over the last 5 years, rather than reducing the debt, our Nation has 
suffered record deficits and gone on an unprecedented and dangerous 
borrowing spree. Total debt now stands at over $8 trillion, and we are 
being asked to increase it by another $800 billion, which will last, 
some say, for no more than about a year.
  Compounding matters, the President's most recent budget makes matters 
substantially worse, leading to a $12 trillion debt by the year 2011. 
That is just as the first wave of baby boomers begins to retire.
  Not only is the debt exploding at the worst possible time, 
increasingly we are borrowing from foreigners--Dubai, China, Japan. 
Since this administration took office 5 years ago, our country has more 
than doubled its foreign debt, increasing such borrowing by over $1 
trillion. That is more foreign debt than we accumulated in the first 
224 years of this Republic.
  During the last 3 years of the Clinton administration, we paid off 
$200 billion in foreign debt. We paid it off. Given the explosion of 
debt in recent years, it is long past time for Washington to change 
course and adopt a new fiscal policy. All we are asking is that people 
be concerned about the future of our economy. Our Nation is at stake.
  I had the good fortune of being able to serve for a number of years 
in this Senate with Pat Moynihan, Daniel Pat Moynihan, who will go down 
in the history of this country as one of its most outstanding Senators. 
He served in Democratic Presidential administrations, Republican 
Presidential administrations. He was a man who had a great intellect. 
He served during World War II. He was a great patriot and a great 
intellect.
  Before he died, he said that he believed all this debt which was 
being accumulated, all the tax cuts, were not to help the wealthy; they 
would starve Government because the programs that some people in this 
administration hate, such as Social Security, which the President 
wanted to privatize in the 1970s, Medicare and Medicaid and other such 
programs, could not be attacked on a frontal basis. They could not do 
it directly. So by starving the Government, that is what has happened. 
And the Government is being starved. The American people are being 
starved with this huge debt.
  At a minimum, this is a matter which deserves considerable debate in 
the Senate and an opportunity for all Senators of both political 
parties to participate. Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that 
some on the other side are doing everything they can to squelch this.
  My friend, the senior Senator of the Committee on Finance, Mr. 
Grassley, is reported to have said--not reported; he said it--that he 
would like the debt limit to be extended but ``with the least debate.'' 
According to one news story, he said, ``I would like to see a bill on 
Thursday night just prior to recess.'' Those are code words for saying: 
Let's jam this thing out of here. It appears that is what the 
leadership intends to do.
  I got a letter in December from Secretary Snow saying that the 
country's debt limit is going to be exceeded, and to do something about 
it. During the holiday season, I got to this letter. It wasn't suddenly 
given to us. It appears to me we should be spending some time on this 
issue. But we are not; we just shove it under the rug. It is only 
another $800 billion of taxpayers' money, most of which will be 
borrowed from foreign governments, with no debate, no amendments, no 
public scrutiny, with no accountability for the massive debt we are 
imposing on future generations of Americans. That is not how this 
Republic, that is not how this Senate is supposed to work. It is not 
how our great democracy is supposed to function. We should be inviting 
public input, not trying to hide what we are doing because people are 
embarrassed of public reaction. We shouldn't be jamming things through 
Congress for political expediency.
  The chairman of the Committee on Finance has said to extend the debt 
limit ``with the least debate,'' and, ``I would like to see a bill on 
any Thursday night just prior to a recess.''
  If the majority believes that increasing our debt by about $800 
billion is the right thing to do, they should be upfront about it. They 
should explain why they think more debt is good. They should explain 
why they think it is fair to force our children, our grandchildren, and 
great grandchildren to pay higher taxes, why it is right to increase 
our Nation's dependence on foreign creditors. Let them try to defend 
that. Maybe they can convince the public they are right, but I don't 
think so because most Americans know that increasing the debt is wrong. 
The baby boomers are about to retire. Under the circumstances, as 
almost any credible economist would tell you, we should be reducing 
debt, not increasing it.
  I am appreciative of Ranking Member Baucus and Ranking Member Conrad. 
We have sent a letter to the majority leader urging him to allow a 
thorough and open debate on any legislation to increase our debt. The 
letter says that before we approve hundreds of billions of dollars in 
additional borrowing, we should adopt reforms to reduce the need for 
more debt in the future. In particular, we should reinstate the pay-as-
you-go rules that proved so effective in promoting fiscal discipline in 
the 1990s. That meant if you want a new program, pay for it, take it 
from someplace else. When you finish, there has been no new debt to 
this country. And to show the cynicism of what is going on around here, 
we have been debating for more than a year the Republican's deficit 
reduction bill--that is

[[Page 2571]]

what they call it--which increases the debt.
  We should not allow our Government to go deeper and deeper into debt 
without full and complete debate. We believe we should be more fiscally 
responsible. All this will do is create more fiscal irresponsibility. 
It will create higher taxes on our children and a weaker economy for 
future generations.
  The American public will see whether this vote takes place in the 
dark of night or in broad daylight. They will see that Democrats are 
not going to vote to increase this debt. This debt has been generated 
by President Bush and his Republican Members of Congress, and $8.2 
trillion is not enough. My good friends on the other side--all 55--will 
have to belly up to the bar and vote to increase the debt of this 
country by $800 billion, or whatever figure is chosen, because 
Democrats are not going to do this. The votes are going to have to come 
from the Republican Party. We are not going to support this 
irresponsible Government we have in America today.
  How can you run a business like we are being run here? When the 
credit cards run out, you cannot borrow more money from the bank. 
Instead, you go out and find the money--you rob the American people. 
How could you run your home this way?
  If I can no longer manage on my salary, I can no longer pay for the 
style of living we have, I talk to my wife and children and say: We 
will have to cut back on things.
  Not here.


                   Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act

  More than 9 months ago, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 810, 
the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. It was one of the rare 
victories in the House for bipartisanship. I felt good about that. It 
was my hope we would embrace the same spirit of bipartisanship in the 
Senate and pass this legislation, as well. It offers so much hope to 
untold millions of Americans and their families, people who suffer from 
these dread diseases.
  After the House passed the stem cell bill, I spoke with my friend, 
the majority leader, about the need to take up this crucial legislation 
as soon as possible. At that time, Dr. Frist assured me he would 
consider the bill in the Senate by July. That was last July.
  By the end of July, the majority leader still had not found time to 
schedule debate on the stem cell bill, so I moved to take up and pass 
the House bill on the Senate floor. It was objected to by the majority, 
but Senator Frist and I admire him for this, Mr. President--delivered a 
speech the next day in which he expressed support for Federal funding 
for expanded embryonic stem cell research. That was not easy for him to 
do. I admire him for doing it, and I appreciate it. In the speech, Dr. 
Frist said that the potential of stem cell research to save lives and 
ease human suffering ``deserves our increased energy and focus.''
  Now, Senator Frist is a surgeon, a transplant surgeon, one of the 
pioneers. When he started doing this transplant surgery, most people 
thought it was an experiment that was doomed to failure. I have spoken 
to Senator Frist. He personally would travel on little airplanes with a 
heart that had been taken out of one human being. He would take that 
heart and transplant it in another human being.
  Now, since he did that, they have certainly come up with easier and 
better methods of transporting human hearts. But that is what he did. 
And he, coming from a different perspective than I, believes that stem 
cell research will save lives, it will help us, it will ease human 
suffering. I am not a scientist, but I believe that, also.
  But after he gave this remarkable speech--and I know he received 
criticism from certain political folks--we returned from the August 
recess, and he still did not find time to debate this important 
legislation. He found time to do a lot of other things, like drilling 
in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. He found time for the Majority's budget, 
a budget that leaders of the faith-based community and major religious 
institutions said was immoral. He found time to give sweeping liability 
protections to the drug industry. But he could not find time to keep 
hope alive for millions of Americans counting on the promise of stem 
cell research.
  In December of last year, the majority leader asked consent to take 
up and pass the House-passed cord blood bill. Now, we all supported the 
cord blood bill, but we did not want to do that because we wanted to 
consider the cord blood bill and the stem cell bill together. That is 
what the House did. But in an effort of bipartisanship and in an effort 
of hope and faith in the process here, we said go ahead and do that.
  When we passed the cord blood bill, Senator Frist expressed his 
commitment to the stem cell bill, but he did not bring it to the floor. 
He asked the proponents of stem cell research to support his request to 
take up and pass the cord blood bill in exchange for a commitment to 
consider the stem cell bill early in the 2006 session.
  At that time, Dr. Frist explained:

       It is going to take some time that I will give on the floor 
     of the Senate early in the year and have committed to do so 
     because of its importance. It is important to address that in 
     order for that research to be amplified. Much of that 
     research needs to be amplified for cures that may occur 5 or 
     10 years down the road.

  That is a statement from Dr. Bill Frist. Three months have gone by. 
We are now into March 2006 and still no time has been scheduled to 
consider the House-passed stem cell bill. We all know this is a short 
legislative year. We have less than 3 weeks remaining in the work of 
this period and a short work period in April. Before you know it, it 
will be May and an entire year will have passed since the House 
finished this bill.
  Mr. President, recently I was in Las Vegas with the Las Vegas 
Metropolitan Police Department SWAT team for a demonstration of their 
new mobile command center, which is really state of the art. When the 
demonstration was over, I saw a man in a wheelchair. I walked over and 
introduced myself and asked why he was in a wheelchair. He said: I was 
a motorcycle officer, and somebody ran a red light and hit me. He has 
been paralyzed from the waist down for 5 years. He said to me: You 
know--he grabbed his leg--I am getting a little bit of feeling. I hope 
that is the case. But he said: Stem cell is my only hope.
  Now, he does not know anything about stem cells other than what 
people have told him. He is not a scientist. He is a police officer. He 
works in an office now. But he has hope. He has hope. As Dr. Frist 
said:

       Much of that research needs to be amplified for cures that 
     may occur 5 or 10 years down the road.

  He has been 5 years in a wheelchair. He is willing to wait a lot 
longer.
  One year may not seem like a lot of time to some of us, but it is an 
eternity, I am sure, to some people out there who are so sick with some 
of those diseases where stem cell research could help. Diseases and 
conditions like spinal cord injuries, Alzheimer's, diabetes, 
Parkinson's.
  Last Sunday, ``60 Minutes,'' the public affairs program on CBS, ran a 
segment on embryonic stem cell research. They featured a woman named 
Suzanne Short who is paralyzed from the neck down who was hit by a 
drunk driver almost 25 years ago. Here is something she said about her 
hope for stem cell research:

       Whether I walk or not, I really don't care. And, yeah, if I 
     do that's great. But . . . if you could just wake up one 
     morning and not have to wait for someone to come in my room 
     and get me out of bed, I could at least transfer myself into 
     my own wheelchair, be amazing. I'd be completely independent.

  That is what she said. She has waited more than 24 years for help. 
Now we need action in the Senate. She should not have to wait longer.
  Mr. President, less than a month ago, my friend died, Jeanie Sherman, 
Jeanie McCall. She was paralyzed from the waist down. She wrote the 
most, to me, heartrending letter about her experiences in a wheelchair 
for all those many years.
  Every day we delay consideration of this legislation is a day we deny 
hope to the hundreds of millions of Americans who suffer from these 
devastating illnesses and conditions that have no cure--diseases such 
as cancer, as I have

[[Page 2572]]

indicated, Alzheimer's, diabetes, Parkinson's, spinal cord injuries, 
and heart disease, even Lou Gehrig's disease.
  There are a number of very important issues that this body ought to 
consider this session, but few are as important to the American people 
as stem cell legislation that could provide medical breakthroughs that 
would benefit hundreds of millions of people.
  So, Mr. President, I know that we are crammed for time here, but I 
would hope we can find time early this year to debate stem cell 
research. We have to keep hope alive.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask the Democratic leader to stay on the 
floor just so we can discuss some of these issues. And I apologize for 
not being here. I was in my office, and so I don't know exactly what 
issues he talked about. But I am fascinated by the comments on stem 
cells and would love to talk further about stem cells in terms of both 
the power and the potential for stem cells to cure, something I have 
spent a lot of time with and know something about.
  But if the implication was made that for some reason the issues 
surrounding life, surrounding cures, surrounding healing are any less 
important to this side than the other side of the aisle, I think it is 
disingenuous to say. I say to the Democratic leader, on stem cells--he 
knows I am a great advocate for the potential and promise for embryonic 
stem cells, the practical application; where I have run a transplant 
center, where tens of thousands of people have benefited from the 
procedures of adult stem cells, mainly bone marrow transplants--I hope 
he does not question my commitment to healing, to addressing that this 
year.
  He knows it was the other side of the aisle that refused the 
unanimous consent request last year in July where we would take up four 
different stem cell bills. And, again, I was not on the floor, but I 
would ask the Democratic leader what point he was trying to make in 
terms of stem cells?
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, first of all, I think you would have 
appreciated what I said about you. I do not think there is anything 
disingenuous about what I said. I talked about your pioneering 
transplant surgery. I talked about your courageous statement on the 
Senate floor about the need to do something about the stem cell 
research and how difficult it was from a political perspective for you 
to do what you did.
  So my point that I made here is that we need to find time to work on 
stem cell research. I did not say we should do it tomorrow. I said we 
should figure out a time to do it this year. There is nothing 
disingenuous about what I said. And there was nothing that I said 
during my statement on stem cell research that was disrespectful to 
you. I recognize the burden you have trying to juggle things to get 
time here. But this is an issue that we have to figure out a way to 
move forward on.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, so we can make it clearly understood--and I 
apologize for not being on the floor--the Democratic leader understands 
and has agreed to the fact that we are going to address stem cells as 
early as we possibly can this year, that that is a commitment that was 
made after the unanimous consent request was not accepted from the 
other side to address it last July, that that commitment is there in 
working together to address this important issue.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, as I said in my statement, the distinguished 
majority leader said that we would bring this up early in this session. 
I am not critical of its not having already been brought up, even 
though I would rather have done that than--I hate to bring up the ``A'' 
word--asbestos. There are other things we could be doing. As I said, I 
am willing to work with the majority leader. We still have time until 
we get out of here to set aside some time to do stem cell. We are ready 
to move forward on stem cell research. As I said when we agreed to pass 
the cord blood bill, we wanted to keep the cord blood bill and the stem 
cell bill together. That is what the House did. We agreed to pass the 
cord blood bill with the understanding that the majority leader would 
schedule time early this year to consider the House-passed stem cell 
bill.
  Mr. FRIST. Bipartisan, working together.
  Mr. REID. We wanted to move the two bills together. A number of my 
people didn't want to separate them, but we took you at your word and 
the cord blood bill is now the law. That is what I said in my earlier 
statement. We cannot pass stem cell research unless there is a 
bipartisan effort to move it. That is why I didn't demand in my 
statement that we take this up instead of debt limit or instead of 
lobbying reform. I am saying that we have a lot to do, but stem cell 
ought to be a priority.
  Mr. FRIST. But things such as asbestos, you can't deny that there are 
patients with mesothelioma and clinical diseases today who are being 
hurt by the system and that that is not an important issue from a 
humanitarian standpoint, from a healing standpoint, for people who are 
suffering from disease right now, dying from lung cancer today who are 
not getting adequate compensation or appropriate compensation in a 
timely way. You don't mean to imply that we should not be addressing 
this asbestos crisis that is out there that also has a huge healing 
humanitarian component to it?
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, if I could respond to the distinguished 
majority leader, there is no question that the majority of this Senate 
feels that asbestos is a difficult, very complex problem and should be 
addressed. But the bill that came before the Senate was a bad bill. 
That is why now and before this, but now especially, a group of 
Senators is working on a bipartisan basis to come up with legislation 
to address that issue. Sure, it is important. That was a bad bill, and 
the Senate treated it so.
  Mr. FRIST. Then, on pensions, my staff said that you mentioned 
pensions, perhaps trying to stack the issues for downtown interests, 
the majority decided to play games. What are you even implying? We 
finished this bill on November 15 on this floor. We completed it. The 
House finished it a month later. We have been waiting to go to 
conference now for I guess 3 months. My distinguished colleague knows 
it is the majority that ultimately sets the ratios. The ratio has been 
crystal clear for weeks now, and now the argument seems to be shifting 
that there are outside interests dictating all this, when I have been 
crystal clear for weeks now on what those ratios will be. What is the 
implication, that there is somebody outside dictating what we are 
doing?
  Mr. REID. First, let me say, moving on beyond stem cells, I guess, 
but so the record is clear, yes, we did object to the unanimous consent 
agreement because it was for six or seven bills. What we proposed----
  Mr. FRIST. That is on stem cells.
  Mr. REID. Yes. What we proposed is that we work on the stem cell bill 
and the cord blood bill. That is what the House did, and there was no 
reason we couldn't do the same.
  Mr. FRIST. I take that. But let's move on to pensions. This is 
getting old, and it is almost childish in terms of us not getting to 
conference. People are going to be hurt again.
  Mr. REID. I have given several statements this week on pension 
reform. I believe that we should move forward. I have given all the 
statistical numbers. People who are watching this would tend to agree 
that seven Republicans is OK with the majority. Eight is not. Nine is, 
if there is a three-vote margin. I am saying that we should have a 
conference. The Senate, whether it is fair or unfair, has worked for 
224 years. These conferences ordinarily are fairly easy. It is fairly 
easy to go to conference. What we are saying is, let's have another 
Republican and another Democrat or two more Republicans and two more 
Democrats. There will still be a two-vote margin that the Republicans 
have. Why can't we go to conference? That is what every one of my 
statements has said.
  I have said that and I gave reasons. What are the reasons for this? I 
gave an example yesterday about some of my trial experience. Are you 
trying

[[Page 2573]]

to--juries usually come up with the right result, not always for the 
right reasons, but they usually come up with the right results. So do 
conference committees. So I am saying, let's go to conference. I am 
willing on my side to make choices as to who should go. But I say that 
we have the HELP Committee and we have the Finance Committee. Both have 
jurisdiction on this matter. I don't think it is asking too much to 
have three Senators representing the Finance Committee, three Senators 
representing the HELP Committee. That is what I am asking, rather than 
five.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, just so people understand, the 7-to-5 
ratio, which I have been clear on for weeks now, does allow for equal 
participation between those two committees, so the fairness is that 7-
to-5 ratio.
  This protections to the drug industry, no time for stem cells--first 
of all, the timing issue is because of this postponement. The fact that 
the PATRIOT Act finally passed yesterday, when it should have passed 
weeks ago, is a manifestation. This wasn't a problem with your whole 
caucus. It was a handful of people who felt strongly about it, and that 
is within their rights. But some way or another, we need to keep moving 
on all of these issues, whether it is stem cells, whether it is 
pensions, whether it is lobbying reform, whether it is coming in to 
address the debt limit. We are going have to move along and stop 
postponing, obstructing, and then saying we are running out of time. We 
can't address these important issues.
  Asbestos is important. My distinguished colleague may diminish how 
important it is, but it is an important issue from a range. We are 
going to systematically go through and address them, but we need 
cooperation, working together. Let me ask the Senator, I wasn't here--
again, I apologize--but protections to the drug industry, something was 
said about that. What does that mean?
  Mr. REID. Well, I could have gone into more detail, but I talked 
quite a long time anyway. What I was complaining about is the 
inordinate amount of time that we spent dealing with certain issues--
and I did mention specifically the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And 
the pharmaceuticals, I thought they got a sweetheart deal with the 
provision that was inserted in the DoD Conference report in the middle 
of the night without any debate. I think I have a right to complain 
about how that bill was handled. I thought the Appropriations 
Committee, had they not been burdened with the ANWR thing, we could 
have been out of here weeks earlier than what we were, but that held 
things up for a long time. I have a right to complain about that.
  Mr. FRIST. I understand. I plead to the other side of the aisle, if 
we could work together, the list--I am sure your list went on much 
longer on important issues. But unless we get some sort of working 
together without slowing things down and dragging out even asbestos, 
where we can't debate, we can only have debate, we can't amend; we have 
to work together to move forward.
  On the drug industry, again, I am not sure exactly what it is, but 
right now avian flu, if you look at a map, over the last 6 months, 
where 10 million birds have died, 20 million, then 100 million, and 
then 200 million, it is moving our way. It has a 50-percent mortality 
rate today. If you get infected today--and probably a third of us would 
get infected because we have no natural immunologic response to that, 
unlike the regular flu--if it does continue to have a 50-percent 
mortality, we are in real trouble. We have no vaccines. The reason we 
have no vaccines today, in large part, is because the liability system 
has gotten out of whack. We had 26 manufacturing companies back in the 
1960s. We have three today. They can't produce a vaccine. It would take 
them 13 months today. So the liability protections are only in the 
event there is an emergency, an emergency, a life-threatening 
emergency, in event there is a bioterrorist attack or in the event 
there is a pandemic. Today there are no protections given whatsoever. 
And also built in with those protections is a compensation program.
  I came to the floor because, as this list goes on, if these are not 
at least elucidated, the American people are left with a one-sided 
view, and that is wrong. Again, I didn't come to the floor to go 
through the entire list, but notes started coming into my office about 
the list itself.
  I will close with a plea to the other side of the aisle. It is an 
election year. It is a year where partisanship is going to come to the 
floor and where things are going to be obstructed or slowed down. But 
there has to be some things we can work together on. It might be stem 
cells. It may be health issues. It should be asbestos. Hopefully, it 
will be lobbying reform next week. Maybe that will be the first time 
this year we can show working together. Then we have border security. 
The Democratic leader and I were talking about that before. That is 
going to be a tough issue for us, border security and enforcement, with 
a lot of amendments on the floor. We have to work together, Democrat 
and Republican, right side of the aisle, left side of the aisle, to do 
the Nation's business, to govern with meaningful solutions; otherwise, 
we are going to be here all year doing nothing.
  Again, the Democratic leader and I don't just talk on the floor, and 
we need to keep our conversations going, as we do our best to govern 
with meaningful solutions to the problems we face today.
  Mr. REID. I would say that the left side or right side of the aisle 
is according to where you are standing in this building. This side of 
the aisle takes no back seat to what we have tried to do with avian 
flu. We have pushed this very hard. We pushed it because we were told 
that it is not a question of if, it is a question of when.
  We understand the seriousness of this. That is why we worked so hard 
to get the administration to also recognize this.
  The majority leader, I know he is a prominent physician, and that is 
what I stated in my statement here. In the DoD bill, people are 
concerned about a provision that was placed in the bill without the 
opportunity to debate it that offers sweeping liability protections for 
the drug industry without compensation for victims who are harmed by 
reckless wrongdoing.
  This is not the time to debate this in its entirety. I mentioned this 
with a number of other things. But I would not be doing my job if I did 
not come and talk about how I feel, how we feel, representing what the 
minority feels about the needs to go to conference on the pension bill. 
That is an obligation I have. I think I am right. But the fact that I 
disagree with the majority doesn't mean that there is anything wrong 
with me. I think we are right.
  I had an obligation to come and talk about the debt limit. That is 
important that we talk about that. I believe I had a right and an 
obligation to come and talk about the situation dealing with stem 
cells. I think anyone that would read my statement about stem cells, 
that wasn't a statement where I was saying let's draw a ring here and 
have somebody go in one corner and somebody come out the other and 
start slugging. I think this is one of the most important things that 
we need to do this year. I was pleading for time to have it done.
  As far as cooperation, that runs both ways. We are in the minority. 
We understand that. But times change around here. Someday we will be in 
the majority, and we will be back in the minority. That is one of great 
things about our country. That is one of the great things about the 
Senate.
  The Senate is here to protect individual Senators who represent 
States. Sometimes these rules are cumbersome. I see on the floor the 
distinguished junior Senator from Mississippi who was the majority 
leader and minority leader in years past. He has written a book about 
how difficult it is. But it is the Senate. It has worked well for our 
country. I hope when the books are written about my tenure here that it 
will be one where people will say: He tried to get along with people, 
tried to get some things done. I have no problem with the majority 
leader coming to the floor and saying: What did you say? Because he

[[Page 2574]]

can look at the record and see what I said. I don't mind staff running 
notes to him saying things, parts of what I said. But there was nothing 
in any of my statements that should be cause for alarm, other than 
alarm that I believe there are certain things we need to do: 
Specifically, debate on the debt limit; two, get a conference appointed 
for the pensions; and get a time set so we can debate stem cells.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, first of all, I have enjoyed being referred 
to as the junior Senator from Mississippi, which I am. It makes me feel 
so young. I am flattered by that description.
  I tiptoe into these waters with some hesitancy and with a great deal 
of respect for our two leaders because I know working out these issues 
is not easy. You have personalities. You have individual Senators who 
have interests or concerns. I have the greatest respect for both of 
these men. I know how tough the job is. But my friends, if we don't get 
into conference on the pensions, it is going to be a plague on both our 
houses. I have talked to Senator Reid about this. I understand his 
problems, and I know what Senator Frist, as the majority leader, is 
dealing with. But I also know that this issue is time-sensitive.
  If we don't get into the conference pretty soon, we are not going to 
get an agreement before April 15. There is at least one airline that 
has bet the whole company, frankly--their survival and bankruptcy--on 
us getting pension reform done. Do you think people are only worried 
about health care? They are worried about retirement and they are 
worried about their pensions. Are they going to be there? Are they 
adequately funded? Who will pay for it? The taxpayer?
  That is what is going to happen. Company after company will dump 
their pension plans on the PBGC, the Government entity that insures 
these plans. They are going to be stuck with the bill. I hate to get 
into this, but having been there before, I cannot help myself because I 
care about the substance here.
  I am pleading with our leaders to find a way to deal with it. The 
Senator from Nevada knows that the majority leader has to lead on these 
issues. He has to find a way to get us into conference, but it takes 
cooperation. The majority leader says 7 to 5. I think it is a little 
high. The last time we had a pension reform conference, we had 8 total, 
not 12 Senators. But the Senator from Nevada says: No, no, no, it has 
to be 8 to 6. That troubles me because the majority leader came up with 
a reasonable number, but the minority leader said it has to be 8 to 6 
or we are not going to conference. We are at loggerheads, and we should 
not be.
  I have a novel idea. Let's go up to 9 to 7 or go down to 6 to 4.
  Mr. REID. I will take it, 9 to 7. You will have a deal.
  Mr. LOTT. I will be glad to work on that, but I don't think the 
numbers make that much difference. This is a bipartisan issue. I cannot 
do this for the leader or the leaders. But go down to 6 to 4 or go up--
and, by the way, it won't make a lot of difference. We are sweating 
about this. Sixteen Senators are going to be in a conference. For 
heaven's sake, that is a cattle call. I think that is too many.
  I plead with our leaders to come up with an agreement. I have never 
seen this happen before--never. Not one time when I was majority leader 
did the minority leader and I not come to an agreement on a number to 
go to conference with.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. LOTT. I am glad to.
  Mr. REID. That is what I said earlier. During my tenure as leader and 
assistant leader, I never remember this happening. That is what I said 
before you came here.
  Mr. LOTT. Senator Daschle didn't say: No, you have to give me a 
specific number or I won't go. At least you are showing movement. We 
need to do this and we need to do it today. I am going to continue to 
talk about this. I will remind people that we have a deadline, which is 
April 15. And I remind everybody that the Senate passed this November 
16 by a vote of 97 to 2. The House passed it last year.
  We have been fumbling around with this for 2 whole months. This 
involves retirement insecurity for millions of Americans. Chairman 
Grassley has done good work, along with Chairman Enzi and ranking 
member Kennedy; he wants these conferees appointed. All of the Senators 
involved are flummoxed that we cannot find a way to come to agreement 
on this subject. The House passed it 294 to 132 on December 15. And 
here we are and we cannot get into conference. Is it complicated? Yes. 
Can it be worked out? Absolutely. Whom are we fooling? There will be 
three or four people who are going to write this thing. The rest of us 
will be there as spearholders. Why don't we get on with it.
  I am concerned about this. I think we ought to be able to get it 
worked out. The majority leader is the majority leader. He does make 
the final call on the numbers. You know, when we go to conference, does 
it need to be cooperative and collaborative? Yes. I cannot believe, 
with all of the Senators on this side pushing and hoping for a 
conference, and the Senators on the minority side who are pushing for a 
conference, that we cannot get this done. It is all because one or two 
Senators think they have to be able to go to conference, or else. I 
wanted to be a conferee on the tax bill, and I should have been. But 
the leader decided the number was 2 to 1, so those are the conferees. 
That is the way it works. I understand that. I cannot be a conferee on 
every bill.
  I say to those who are demanding they be a conferee, we have to 
support our leaders. I want to make it clear that I am worried about 
the legislation. I want to be helpful.
  I realize it is presumptuous of me to talk about this. I am not here 
about who is the majority or minority when it comes to substance. This 
is about people's lives. What are we doing? That is part of a pattern 
where all of a sudden everything is objected to. We look bad. I want to 
make it clear that I am not talking about our majority leader. He is 
trying to move things. It is similar to trying to move a ``dad-blame'' 
mountain, and only the good Lord can give you the power to do that.
  I plead with our leaders to find a way to make this happen and do it 
today. Today. I think what we might have to do, if we cannot get an 
agreement--I urge our leader to begin the process to--however long it 
takes, however many votes it takes--to make this happen. It can be 
done. But it takes, again, an excruciating amount of time, similar to 
what we went through on the PATRIOT Act. What a supercilious, 
ridiculous process we went through, with all those extra votes to get 
to a vote of 89 to 11 on a consensus bill.
  Yes, it is a Senator's right to run the string out if they want, but 
is that good? Was anything achieved? Is the Senate better off and are 
the American people better off? Absolutely not. I tell you, any of our 
colleagues on the other side that think you win by blocking things and 
stopping things from happening, I can tell you it doesn't work. I have 
tried it both ways. The American people want us here to get results. 
When you get results, there is plenty of credit to go around on both 
sides. You know, if we don't act on the pension bill, within 6 weeks 
there are going to be disasters. The blame is going to be in this 
Chamber.
  I yield the floor, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip is recognized.


                   TRIBUTE TO SERGEANT ERIC LEE TOTH

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask the Senate to pause for a moment 
today in loving memory and honor of Sergeant Eric Lee Toth.
  Sergeant Toth of Edmonton, KY, served with the 623rd Field Artillery 
in the Kentucky Army National Guard. The 623rd frequently escorts 
supply convoys throughout Iraq, a dangerous duty that often put them 
in, as one Kentucky National Guard general has termed it, ``the eye of 
the storm.''
  On March 30, 2005, Sergeant Toth and two other Kentucky Guard 
soldiers were traveling in a Humvee on a supply route in Iraq, 
escorting a convoy of supply trucks from the southern end of the 
country to the north. One of the soldiers traveling with Sergeant Toth 
was his brother-in-law.

[[Page 2575]]

  Suddenly, at a point about 30 miles north of Baghdad, an explosive 
device hidden in a car went off. The other two soldiers in the Humvee 
were injured; Sergeant Toth was killed. He had served his Nation as a 
citizen-soldier for almost two years. He was 21 years old.
  For his valorous service, Sergeant Toth was awarded the Bronze Star 
Medal, the Purple Heart and the Combat Action Badge. He had previously 
received both the Army Good Conduct Medal and the Armed Forces Reserve 
Medal. And he was awarded the Kentucky Distinguished Service Medal, the 
second-highest honor that the Commonwealth of Kentucky can bestow.
  Like so many young Americans, Eric was inspired to enlist in the 
Kentucky National Guard after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 
2001. He felt an unswerving duty to defend his country after seeing the 
destruction on that horrible day, to help ensure that something similar 
didn't happen again. ``Ever since 9-11 . . . that's what he thought he 
should do,'' says his wife, Andrea.
  Captain John H. Holmes Jr., Sergeant Toth's battery commander, 
recalled that Eric had set his sights on becoming a member of the 
respected Alpha Battery when he joined the 623rd Field Artillery of the 
Kentucky National Guard. He wanted to serve in the same unit as his 
brother-in-law, Sergeant Ricky Brooks. He looked to Ricky as a role 
model, and the two grew closer during their service in Iraq.
  Eric knew that Alpha Battery would likely deploy to Iraq, but this 
courageous young man did not shy away from his share of 
responsibility--rather, he embraced it. Captain Holmes says that Eric 
``inspired every one of us to be better than we ever thought we could 
be, and touched our lives indelibly.''
  Sergeant Toth got the assignment he sought, and was deployed to Iraq 
with the 623rd in January 2005. Missions to escort supply convoys 
lasted as much as 18 hours to go a mere 500 miles, and the soldiers 
often had to bridge language and cultural barriers to communicate with 
the convoy truck drivers.
  Eric was the gunner for his unit. Captain Holmes tells us that a 
gunner's responsibility is to be the ``eyes and ears for his officers 
and his fellow soldiers,'' and that Eric succeeded at that quite well. 
His brother-in-law, Sergeant Brooks, calls Eric one of the best gunners 
he ever knew, and recalled a previous mission when Eric had been 
alerted to the possible presence of the enemy. When Sergeant Brooks saw 
Eric check his gun and equipment twice, he knew Sergeant Toth was ready 
and could be counted on in battle.
  Born in Glasgow, located in south-central Kentucky not far from 
Mammoth Cave, Eric Toth grew up as quite the young athlete. He was the 
captain of his football team at Metcalfe County High School. As a young 
man, Eric helped nurture others in the sport he loved by coaching 
little-league football in Edmonton, which is the county seat of 
Metcalfe County.
  As a child, Eric minded his studies as well. Bennie Stephens, who is 
still with the Metcalfe County public school system, taught both Eric 
and Ricky Brooks when each was in the fifth grade, and remembers them 
as good students who worked hard.
  Eric also enjoyed a good game of volleyball, and took pleasure in 
hunting and fishing. He played basketball with Sergeant Brooks. He was 
an avid movie fan, and even while in Iraq, Eric purchased 28 movies to 
fill the downtime in between missions.
  Sergeant Toth was laid to rest last year in Sulphur Springs Cemetery, 
in Edmonton. Mr. President, I was honored to be one of the many who 
went to pay my respects that day to a courageous American hero. A lot 
of people love and miss Eric Toth, and they will remember his bravery, 
his generosity of spirit, and his sacrifice.
  Eric was blessed to have a large family and many friends. His wife, 
Andrea, is with us in the gallery today, and we thank her for sharing 
her memories of her husband with us. Eric will be forever treasured by 
his father, Danny Toth, and his mother, Brenda Paronto, who says that 
Eric ``loved his country and loved what he was doing.''
  He is remembered as well by his half-sister, Debbie, his stepsister, 
Tasha, his stepbrothers Derrick and Travis, and many more members of a 
large extended family.
  Perhaps Eric's commander, Captain Holmes, summed it up best when he 
said Eric ``was always about trying and doing.'' I hope those who knew 
and loved Eric can take some measure of solace in the knowledge that 
Eric lived with bravery, giving his life for the freedom of people he 
would never meet, but who will forever benefit from his sacrifice.
  This country owes a debt to Eric and the countless men and women who, 
like him, offer up their bravery to the rest of us. I ask my colleagues 
to keep the family of Sergeant Eric Toth in their thoughts and prayers, 
as they will be in mine.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. 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 ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in 
morning business for as much time as I consume.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator is recognized.


                      Managing America's Seaports

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, there is a lot of discussion this week in 
the Congress, in committees on which I serve and in other committees, 
dealing with the issue of the company that is owned by the United Arab 
Emirates, a Dubai company owned by a government called the UAE, 
managing six of America's major seaports. I wish to make a couple 
comments about that.
  First, I introduced legislation this week that would simply 
disapprove the transaction. I don't think I need 45 days, and I don't 
need 45 minutes to make a judgment that it doesn't make any sense for 
our country to have a company owned by the United Arab Emirates 
managing six of America's major seaports. It doesn't make sense to me, 
and I will explain why.
  In a time when our country is severely threatened by terrorism--and 
we read about it all the time that terrorists threaten this country--we 
understand that terrorists would love to commit another major act of 
terrorism inside the United States. Go to an airport this afternoon and 
try to board an airplane. You will find they want you to take your belt 
off. They want you to take your shoes off. They want you to take your 
wristwatch off. And then as you get through the metal detector, you see 
they have some 6-year-old spread-eagled against the wall, wanding that 
6-year-old, or perhaps a Catholic priest, because they set off the 
metal detector.
  We understand what is happening at airports. There is massive 
security. We have all these folks who are trying to get to their 
airplane, and yet we have them lined up in all kinds of ways because of 
security issues.
  What about our seaports? We know our seaports are also a target for 
terrorists. We have over 5.7 million containers coming in on ships into 
our seaports.
  The administration says it is concerned about a rogue nation or a 
terrorist group getting access to an intercontinental ballistic missile 
and putting a nuclear bomb on the tip of the missile and firing it at 
this country at 14,000 or 18,000 miles an hour. So we are spending, I 
don't know, somewhere around $10 billion this year to build an 
antiballistic missile system. Some of us think that is not a very wise 
expenditure because it is one of the least likely threats. Instead of 
worrying about the threat of an intercontinental ballistic missile 
coming at us from a rogue nation or a terrorist, a very unlikely 
threat, we should worry about a ship pulling up to a dock at 6 or 8 
miles an hour with a container loaded on board that ship that contains 
a weapon of mass destruction, pulling up to a

[[Page 2576]]

dock or a pier at one of America's major cities. Then we are not 
talking about 3,000 people dead; we are talking about tens of thousands 
or hundreds of thousands of people killed. Yet think of this: We only 
inspect about 4 or perhaps as much as 5 percent of all of those 
containers coming into our country.
  We know that just after 9/11, when there was a lot of discussion 
about this, there was a fellow who tried to ship himself to Canada, 
someone who they thought was a terrorist, who loaded himself into a 
container and actually had a cot to sleep on and a water supply; he had 
a radio connected to a GPS monitor, a whole series of things. He was 
shipping himself in a container to the country of Canada. They happened 
to find that person. The assumption was that he was going to find his 
way into Canada in a container and come into this country across our 
border. We know the dangers that exist with these ships and the 
containers. Yet there is very little, frankly, very little seaport 
security.
  I went to a seaport once. We don't have seaports in my State, but I 
toured a seaport and asked about security and asked about things, and I 
mentioned previously on the floor that I saw a container that had been 
taken off a ship and was being opened.
  I said: What is in the container? Why is that being opened?
  They said: That is a refrigerated container; that is just one we 
decided to open.
  I asked: What is in it?
  Frozen broccoli from Poland.
  I said: How do you know what is in the middle of that container? I 
see what you have pulled off the end of it and you cut open some bags 
and found some frozen broccoli. But how do you know what is in the 
middle of that container? Well, we really don't, is the answer, and 
they inspect somewhere around 4 to 5 percent of those containers.
  So with all of the potential threat at our seaports, we are now 
learning that a company owned by the United Arab Emirates has been 
cleared by the administration to provide management and, yes, security, 
because security is a part of management, at six major seaports in our 
country.
  My colleagues, a number of them, have described the United Arab 
Emirates. It is not my intention to offend this country. The 
administration says they have been helpful to us with respect to the 
war on terrorism. I don't know the specifics about that, but if they 
have been helpful, we appreciate that. We do know, however, that two of 
the hijackers who crashed into our World Trade Center and the Pentagon 
on 9/11 were United Arab Emirates citizens. We know from the 9/11 
Commission Report that the United Arab Emirates was a crossroads that 
helped finance the terrorist operations. We know that the United Arab 
Emirates ports were crossroads through which Dr. Khan of Pakistan moved 
substantial amounts of nuclear knowledge and material to North Korea 
and Iran and other parts of the world, and that will pose very much 
danger to us and to our children. So we know some things about the 
United Arab Emirates.
  My colleague, Senator Hollings, whom I have described a few times on 
the floor and who used to sit at the desk right behind me, my colleague 
just wrote an op-ed piece, and he described the United Arab Emirates. 
He said that in some countries, women are allowed to vote. In the 
United Arab Emirates, neither men nor women are allowed to vote. There 
are a lot of questions about the United Arab Emirates.
  Let me mention something from the 9/11 Commission Report as well, 
about the United Arab Emirates. On page 137, it describes in 1999 the 
fact that we had found Osama bin Laden, presumably, knew where Osama 
bin Laden was, and he was near a hunting camp in the Afghan desert 
being used by visitors of a Gulf State from the United Arab Emirates. 
On page 138, it describes how in 1999, once our intelligence had 
decided they knew where Osama bin Laden was, they were going to launch 
a military strike against him. Page 138 describes that on February 10, 
1999, the military was doing the targeting to hit the main camp with 
cruise missiles. No strike, however, was launched. Osama bin Laden then 
disappeared.
  The reason the strike was called off is that intelligence officials 
were worried that a strike against bin Laden would kill an Emirate 
prince, somebody from the United Arab Emirates. Part of the Royal 
Family was visiting with Osama bin Laden at the time, and our 
intelligence officials were worried that if they launched a strike 
against Osama bin Laden, they would kill someone from the Royal Family 
of the United Arab Emirates. This is on page 138 of the 9/11 Commission 
Report.
  My point is very simple. The United Arab Emirates may very well have 
been helpful to us in the fight against terrorism in the last couple of 
years, and if they are being helpful to us, good for them. This is not 
about offending the United Arab Emirates by saying that we don't want a 
company owned by that country to manage American seaports. I don't wish 
to offend the UAE, but neither should we be offending common sense. A 
whole reservoir of common sense would tell us that this country, given 
the fact that we are the No. 1 target for terrorists, ought to be 
managing our own ports, our own major seaports, and ought to be 
providing our own security and ensuring our own security.
  If I might also make a couple of points. The Committee on Foreign 
Investment of the United States, which is made up of somewhere around a 
dozen agencies within the administration, studied this proposed port 
deal and said it was okay for the United Arab Emirates-owned company to 
manage our major seaports. Well, on February 27 we learned that the 
Coast Guard expressed reservations about the deal in a secret report 
that was made public this week, and here is what the report said. This 
is the Coast Guard. It says:

       There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential 
     for the UAE company's assets to support terrorist operations 
     that preclude an overall threat assessment of the potential 
     of the merger.

  In fact, the Coast Guard referred to a large number of potential 
vulnerabilities, and then it listed them, and one of the intelligence 
gaps that the Coast Guard referred to was the fact that no one had 
checked the backgrounds of the people in charge of the UAE-owned 
company.
  So when the secret Coast Guard report was made public this week--I 
believe by Senator Collins, who was holding a hearing at the time--the 
administration had the Coast Guard make another statement, and here is 
what the Coast Guard said on February 28:

       Upon subsequent and further review, the Coast Guard and the 
     entire CFIUS panel believe that this transaction, when taking 
     into account strong security assurances by DP World does not 
     compromise U.S. security.

  The Coast Guard obviously works for the President, and they made this 
statement dutifully in line with the administration's interests. But it 
is interesting. The Coast Guard's statement does not say that anybody 
checked the backgrounds of the officials of the UAE company. That was 
what the Coast Guard cited as one of the major vulnerabilities.
  The highest ranking official in the Department of Homeland Security 
who reviewed this port deal is Assistant Secretary Stewart Baker. 
Assistant Secretary Stewart Baker told The New York Times on February 
17 that the CFIUS review did not include any background checks on 
senior managers of the company. In fact, the review didn't involve 
gathering any information from outside sources like the New York and 
New Jersey Port Authority, because the committee kept the proposed 
transaction secret. In fact, Baker said the committee's investigation 
lasted just a couple of months, beginning in November, ending in mid-
January, so there wouldn't have been time to do very thorough 
background checks anyway.
  So here is what we have. We have the Coast Guard saying in a secret 
memorandum that there are real vulnerabilities here with respect to 
potential terrorism, and in that memorandum, they say one of the 
vulnerabilities is that no one had checked the backgrounds of

[[Page 2577]]

the people in charge of the UAE company. So then the Coast Guard, when 
this becomes public, says: No, no, it is okay. We have pretty much been 
satisfied. And then the Department of Homeland Security official, the 
top official who did this, says: Well, no, we didn't check those 
backgrounds.
  Question: How could the Coast Guard be satisfied when the conditions 
weren't met, when they had just said previously that there was a 
potential threat here? They said, ``There are many intelligence gaps 
concerning the potential for the UAE company's assets to support 
terrorist operations,'' and one of the bases for that is they hadn't 
checked the backgrounds of the people in charge. And then the Coast 
Guard says: But that is OK, now we are in sync with the administration 
on this. Then Homeland Security comes out and says: Well, we never did 
check the backgrounds of the people in charge.
  This really gives you confidence that the transaction was properly 
vetted, doesn't it?
  Let me just mention that in 2002, May of 2002, the U.S. Military 
Special Operations Command obtained a document produced by al-Qaida in 
which al-Qaida claimed to have infiltrated the United Arab Emirates. 
Referring to the UAE, the 2002 al-Qaida document, which was written in 
Arabic, says: We have infiltrated your security, censorship, and 
monetary agencies along with other agencies that should not be 
mentioned.
  I have no idea whether there is any credibility here or not, but I do 
know that two of the 9/11 hijackers were from the UAE and the financing 
for the attacks flowed through UAE financial institutions. And it seems 
preposterous to me that the administration would just dismiss issues 
which were raised in a secret memorandum by the Coast Guard, even after 
there is an admission that the conditions that resulted in that concern 
about terrorism were never met.
  The point is simple. This relates in many ways to the larger question 
of outsourcing, offshoring, contracting out the global economy. This 
global economy has galloped along. The rules, of course, have not kept 
pace. We now discover that in this so-called global economy, there are 
things which cause great concern. Among those would be deciding that 
America's seaports, largest seaports should be managed by a state-owned 
company, a company owned by the United Arab Emirates. Does that make 
sense? Is the reaction of the American people so out of sync with 
common sense? I don't think so. I think the American people are in 
perfect sync with common sense, and the folks in the administration who 
did CFIUS and the folks in the administration who are now defending 
this are the ones who are out of sync with any common sense.
  The President says: I have made up my mind. If the Congress passes 
legislation and sends it to my desk, I am going to veto it because I 
want the UAE company to be able to manage these ports. I say if you 
want to veto it, then go right ahead, but I think this Congress should 
pass legislation that says very simply that we don't want a state-owned 
company from the United Arab Emirates managing America's seaports. 
There are, in fact, security issues, national security issues that 
trump all of the other issues, and we don't believe that is 
appropriate. I have introduced legislation to do that, and we will see 
whether in the coming days and weeks we will be able to pass that 
legislation. I, frankly, think we will.
  A colleague over in the House, Congressman Duncan, said something 
today that I believe is useful to repeat. He said:

       People call this attitude protectionism. If that is what 
     they call it, then count me guilty of wanting to protect this 
     country's interests.

  I always liked this so-called four-letter word, ``protection,'' the 
notion of being a protectionist on international trade. What is wrong 
with standing up for protecting this country's interests? Yes, economic 
interests, national security interests. What is wrong with that? Does 
anybody really think it makes sense to be outsourcing and offshoring 
all of this?
  I believe we have the most sophisticated economy in the world. We 
have a wonderful education system. We have a lot happening in this 
country. And if we had no immigration restrictions at all and just had 
an open country, I tell you what, a fair part of the world would be 
headed in our direction. So it is a great place. And we don't have the 
resources in this great place of ours to manage our own seaports at a 
time when we see daily and weekly threats of terrorism against our 
country? We don't have the resources and we don't have the ingenuity 
and we don't have the capability to manage our seaports? What on Earth 
are they thinking about when they suggest that? Of course we do. It is 
just a matter of national will to decide that we want to stand up for 
the economic interests of this country and protect the national 
security interests of this country. That is what our responsibilities 
are.
  I wish that I could, in this case, be supportive of the 
administration and the folks who reviewed this from CFIUS. But the fact 
is, in carpenter's terms you would call it a half a bubble off plumb, 
maybe a full bubble off plumb. This makes no sense at all. You are 
going to turn over our major seaports to a United Arab Emirates-owned 
company about which there are substantial questions about national 
security. I said before, it is nuts. There is no other way of 
describing it. So count me as somebody who is going to try, in every 
way possible, to scuttle this approach.
  The interesting little dance that is going on here, because everybody 
wants to look as though they have been able to win, is: Now we have 
asked, the company has actually asked our country to extend the 45-day 
investigation. You talk about Byzantine. The United Arab Emirates-owned 
company is asking the United States of America to extend its 
investigation because they cut it off prematurely? It is bizarre. That 
is the only way you can describe it. I don't need 45 days; I don't need 
45 minutes to figure out this doesn't make sense. That is why I 
introduced the legislation I introduced.


                           Contracting Fraud

  Turning to another subject, and I will be brief, yesterday I 
introduced legislation with 28 of my colleagues. I will ask unanimous 
consent that Senator Cantwell be added to the piece of legislation.
  The bill we introduced yesterday is about accountability in 
contracting. It is called the Honest Government and Accountability in 
Contracting Act of 2006.
  I have held seven hearings, chairing the Democratic Policy Committee, 
on the issue of contracting. It has been all over the newspapers in the 
last 4 or 5 years, the massive fraud, waste, and abuse in contracting. 
I will not go through all of it, but let me put a couple of things up.
  This is Bunnatine Greenhouse, the highest ranking civilian official 
in the Corps of Engineers. She is in charge of all contracts in the 
Corps of Engineers, and virtually everything being done by contract in 
Iraq is going through the Corps of Engineers. She, incidentally, has 
since been demoted. The reason she has been demoted is this career 
official, who had great ratings and performance evaluations throughout 
her career, told the truth.

       I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to the 
     contracts awarded to KBR [that is Halliburton, a subsidiary 
     of it] represents the most blatant and improper contract 
     abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional 
     career.

  Bunnatine Greenhouse, the highest ranking procurement official in the 
Corps of Engineers is paying for it with her job, but thank God we have 
people with the courage to do this.
  When you mention Halliburton, everyone thinks you are talking about 
the Vice President because he used to run Halliburton. This is not 
about the Vice President. This is about a company that got huge no-bid, 
sole-source contracts to do work in Iraq, and it is unbelievable--the 
whistleblowers from Halliburton described the waste. I will give an 
example. We had a witness who used to work for KBR--Halliburton. He 
used to buy things for them.
  He held up two towels. He said, I was supposed to purchase hand 
towels for

[[Page 2578]]

the soldiers. Here is the towel I would have purchased. It would have 
cost $1.80 a towel, something like that. And here is the towel I did 
purchase. It cost triple that. Why? Because the company said to me I 
want you to purchase the more expensive towel so it has the company 
name embroidered on the towel that goes to the soldiers. Waste? Of 
course it is.
  Mr. President, $85,000 trucks, brand new, were left on the side of 
the road to be trashed because they had a flat tire; $85,000 trucks 
were trashed and left to rot because they had a plugged fuel pump. Do 
you think that is not happening? Listen to the whistleblowers or the 
people who drove the trucks.
  A guy named Rory, on behalf of Halliburton, runs a cafeteria and food 
service. We know there is one allegation of one billing for 42,000 
soldiers being fed a day when in fact they were feeding only 14,000. 
Rory said they missed it by about 5,000 in the place he was feeding 
them, charging for 5,000 more than actually were eating. He said, By 
the way, we were feeding the soldiers food that had expired date stamps 
on it, and when we told our supervisors they said, No, no, feed it to 
them; an expired date stamp doesn't matter. Feed them to the soldiers. 
He also said the convoys bringing the food in would come under attack 
and our supervisors said you go through and pull out the bullets and 
shrapnel in the food, pull it out, and then we will feed the food to 
the soldiers. And by the way, if they are good bullets, save them for 
the supervisors for souvenirs.
  Are these unusual circumstances? The answer is no. I could go on and 
talk about fuel delivery and water contracts, but that is enough, just 
to say there is massive waste and fraud and abuse going on with respect 
to contracting in Iraq.
  By the way, this fellow in this picture testified, this fellow 
wearing this white striped shirt. These are hundred-dollar bills 
wrapped in Saran wrap. This is the way they paid contractors in Iraq. 
He said we told contractors in Iraq, when you come, bring a bag because 
we pay in cash. He said, we used to throw these around like footballs 
in the office, hundred-dollar bills, wrapped. They had a bill vault 
downstairs. So the contractors are told, bring a bag because we pay in 
cash. He said it was like the Wild West. Someone else said we do a 
contract, the American taxpayers are going to pay to get a building air 
conditioned in Iraq, that goes to a subcontractor, it goes to a local 
contractor, another little contractor, and pretty soon we pay for it. 
We get a ceiling fan where we should have gotten an air conditioner. It 
is like the Wild West. Bring a bag and we give you cash.
  Finally, a man named Mr. Custer and a man named Mr. Battles. ``Sixty 
Minutes'' did a recent program on them. They showed up with virtually 
no money. Eventually, within a very short period of time--nearly 2 
years--they got $100 million in contracts from the Federal Government. 
It is pretty unbelievable.
  I have a chart that describes what one of the airport managers said 
about them.
  This is the chart:

       Custer Battles have shown themselves to be unresponsive, 
     uncooperative, incompetent, deceitful, manipulative and war 
     profiteers. Other than that, they are swell fellows.

  From the Baghdad Airport, Director of Airport Security. The 
allegation is, they took the forklifts from the airport, that belonged 
to the airport, took them to a hangar, repainted them blue, and then 
sold them back to the Iraq Provisional Authority.
  My point is there is substantial abuse going on in contracting.
  We have introduced legislation that has a number of components. No. 
1, a piece of legislation that includes as its first section something 
Senator Leahy had offered in the last Congress: punishing war 
profiteers with substantial penalties. Those who would profiteer in a 
wartime situation are despicable and they ought to bear substantial 
penalty.
  The bill cracks down on substantial cheaters. It restores a Clinton 
administration rule, a rule that was made during the Clinton 
administration on suspension and debarment. If you are a contractor and 
you have exhibited a pattern of overcharging the Federal Government or 
failing to comply with the law, basically you have been somebody who 
has cheated the Government and have a pattern of that, you are out. You 
are going to be debarred. You are not going to be able to bid again. 
When the present Bush administration took office they immediately 
rescinded that rule. We would restore that rule by law, requiring full 
disclosure of contract abuses.
  Section 103 provides for greater transparency in contracting. It 
would require agencies to provide the chairmen and ranking members of 
the committees in Congress all contractor reports that found contractor 
misconduct, and put them on a Web site as well.
  The bill would force real competition, no more no-bid, sole-source 
contracts. It would also ban corporate cronyism in contracting. No more 
circumstances where someone works in a certain area and then goes to 
the private sector and gets contracts in the same area for which that 
person worked in the government. It ends cronyism in key government 
positions.
  This is pretty radical. We are daring to suggest that people who are 
being hired for key jobs ought to be qualified for them. FEMA, the 
Federal Emergency Management Agency, used to be, I think, one of the 
stars of the Federal Government. My understanding is 7 of the 11 top 
positions in FEMA were filled by people who had no experience, just 
cronies. You want a job for Al or Ken or Vern or Mary? Stick them over 
there. So 7 of 11 positions were filled by cronies with no experience.
  Then take a look at what happened, see what happened when Katrina hit 
the shores, the largest national disaster in our country's history, and 
you see a FEMA that is completely incompetent.
  The stories are unbelievable. We had a hearing about that. We had a 
guy who drove an 18-wheel truck. He was supposed to haul ice in this 
18-wheel truck for the Katrina victims, at FEMA's direction. He got a 
whole truckload of ice and away he went to provide ice to the victims 
of Katrina. The problem is, he didn't quite get there. FEMA had him 
drive around the country. He was sent to an airbase here and another 
place there, and he finally, after sitting at a military base for a 
long while--with hundreds of other trucks, by the way--he finally had 
to drive back to New York and offload his ice in New York. This is 
unbelievable.
  By the way, I have asked the Department, FEMA agency, how did this 
happen? How did you spend taxpayers' money to have ice run around this 
country that should have gone to the victims of Hurricane Katrina and 
instead we end up paying tens of thousands of dollars and the ice never 
gets there?
  I got a letter from FEMA this week which says: That wasn't our 
responsibility. That was the Corps of Engineers. FEMA has since 
corrected that with an e-mail that is disjointed, were they admit that 
the responsibility was theirs. Their recent reputation for incompetence 
is pretty well deserved. That is something I am going to the bottom of.
  My point is, we need to decide, if we are going to put people in key 
positions to do key jobs, it ought not be cronies, it ought to be 
people who have some basic experience that would suggest they can do 
those jobs.
  Finally, we will strengthen whistleblower protections. People who 
have the courage to blow the whistle on waste, fraud, and abuse ought 
not be penalized, they ought to be applauded.
  That is the legislation I introduced yesterday with 29 cosponsors. 
Senator Cantwell will be the 29th sponsor. I ask unanimous consent 
Senator Cantwell be added as a cosponsor of this legislation, which is 
2361.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. This is not Republican or Democratic, conservative or 
liberal. It is about being smart and doing the right thing. We have had 
a lot of circumstances in recent weeks and months where our country has 
dropped the ball. I mentioned the response to

[[Page 2579]]

Katrina. I mentioned contracting in Iraq and a range of things. I 
believe we must do better than that.
  Some of it stems from these big sole-source, no-bid contracts. That 
is too sweet a deal. What you need is competition. We do not want to 
have this Government favoring one company versus another with sole-
source, no-bid contracts. That is an invitation for waste, in my 
judgment.
  I know we have a pretty substantial schedule. I know Senator Frist 
has indicated his agenda, what he wants to bring to the floor of the 
Senate in the coming weeks and months. But let me say I hope we will 
have time to deal with this issue of honest government and 
accountability in contracting. That is a piece of legislation that is 
urgently needed to be passed.
  I also hope, in the near future, whether it is 45 days or whatever 
the days, they are going to continue to review the question of whether 
the United Arab Emirates should be managing America's ports. Whenever 
that is done, my hope is we will have up-or-down votes here in the 
Congress about whether we think this makes any sense at all.
  I agree with Congressman Hunter. Put me down on the side of wanting 
to protect this country's interests. I guarantee this: We will not be 
protecting this country's interests to continue down this road of 
offshoring and outsourcing and deciding this great country of ours does 
not have the capability to manage its own seaports. What are we 
thinking about? Of course, we have the capability. The question is, do 
we have the national will and enough common sense, is there a reservoir 
of common sense to finally have us doing the right thing?
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sununu). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                            CHILD PREDATORS

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak to my 
colleagues about an issue that not a lot of people in this body think 
about every day--a very large policy issue we talked about over the 
course of the morning--an issue that shocks me personally but is 
shocking America, and it is the topic of child sexual predators.
  Sometime during the late hours of February 23, 2005, Jessica Marie 
Lunsford disappeared from her grandparents' Citrus County, FL, home.
  She was found dead 3 weeks later in a shallow, 4-foot-deep grave 
under the back porch of John Couey's mobile home--just where he told 
authorities she would be.
  The little girl's body was sitting upright, her wrists bound with 
stereo wire, and plastic garbage bags wrapped her tiny, 9-year-old 
frame. In her arms was the stuffed purple dolphin that had gone missing 
with her during the night.
  Authorities believe after kidnapping and sexually assaulting little 
Jessica, John Couey, a known sex offender, buried her alive.
  This case--the Jessica Lunsford case--riveted and shocked the Nation. 
How could someone perpetuate such horrors and against an innocent 
child? How could the system have allowed a convicted sex offender to 
move freely and unmonitored, with no warning to the neighbors of the 
monster in their midst?
  Every year, nearly 798,000 children are reported missing--over 58,000 
of them are the victims of nonfamily abductions.
  One in five girls and one in ten boys are sexually exploited before 
they reach adulthood. Less than 35 percent of those childhood sexual 
assaults are reported to authorities.
  To make matters worse, the Internet is pushing the boundaries of 
sexual exploitation, providing child predators with a new, anonymous 
hunting ground. The Department of Justice reports that one in five 
children as young as 10 years old receives solicitations online. For 
parents and for communities, it is time for all of us to wake up.
  A recent Dateline NBC series called ``To Catch A Predator,'' vividly 
demonstrated that many of these cyberstalkers are more eager to trap 
their young online victims into a real-world nightmare than at any time 
in the past.
  Over the course of a 3-day sting operation in Riverside, CA, Dateline 
was able to nab 50 Internet child sex predators. The men were caught on 
hidden camera arriving at a home where they believed a young teen, aged 
12 or 13, was waiting to meet them. The police were on hand to 
apprehend the would-be molesters.
  There is no stereotyped child predator. The men came from all walks 
of life, including a high school teacher, a rabbi, and a law 
enforcement official. Some had long criminal records that involved 
previous sexual assault convictions.
  The results were shocking, even to the experienced Dateline 
producers. Just like the Lunsford case, the audacity of these men 
should be a wake-up call to all of us that we must do more to protect 
our children from child sexual predators.
  How many times have they gotten away with it in the past? How many 
more are out there cruising cyberspace as I speak right now? How can we 
protect children from falling into their clutches? There are ways, and 
this body, the Senate, will address those ways.
  On Wednesday, I discussed these questions with John Walsh of FOX's 
``America's Most Wanted,'' now a nationally renowned child advocate.
  It was after the tragic kidnapping of his 6-year-old son Adam in 1981 
that Mr. Walsh devoted his life to protecting America's children.
  His organization--the National Center for Missing and Exploited 
Children--single-handedly raised the issue of child abduction to 
national prominence. And for that he should be congratulated. It has 
led to the recovery of countless children and defended the safety and 
well-being of countless families across America.
  In that meeting on Wednesday, he told me in his 24 years of advocacy, 
he has not seen an issue more important and more pressing than creating 
a national sex offenders registry.
  He pointed out that when a neighbor down the street has a mean dog, 
parents know and they warn their children to stay away--to stay away 
from that yard, to stay away from that house. So, too, parents should 
have the right to know that the neighbor down the street has a history 
of sexual violence so they can protect their children from harm.
  Here in the Senate, we will act to fight child predators. I am 
committed to passing child predator legislation this year as part of a 
broader crime-fighting package. I look forward to working with Chairman 
Specter and the Judiciary Committee to develop this package and 
accomplish this goal.
  We should consider provisions from the Children's Safety Act that I 
cosponsored with Senator Hatch and which Chairman Specter helped report 
out of the Judiciary Committee last year.
  A number of ideas were included: Creating a national sex offenders 
database searchable by zip code; requiring States to notify one another 
of the whereabouts of registered offenders; developing a stricter 
tracking system to monitor repeat violent offenders; requiring DNA 
fingerprinting of child sexual predators and developing a DNA database 
to help solve these crimes; imposing enhanced criminal penalties for 
violent crimes against children under 12; and provisions that can 
reduce gang violence, strengthen court security, and prevent child 
pornography.
  We should consider the ideas under development by the distinguished 
Judiciary Committee chairman in the House, Chairman Sensenbrenner.
  When serial rapist Joseph Duncan was caught at a Denny's last summer 
in Coeur d'Alene with one of his child victims, the only words he 
uttered to police were, ``I had fun. Get me a lawyer.'' His sick and 
twisted sense of

[[Page 2580]]

``fun'' was allegedly kidnapping and sexually assaulting Shasta Groene, 
age 8, and her brother Dylan, age 9, eventually murdering the little 
boy but not before tying up and beating to death their older brother, 
their mother, and their mother's boyfriend.
  Joseph Duncan was a repeat offender with a 30-year history of sexual 
assault. He committed his first crime at age 12, preying on a 5-year-
old boy. By the time he was 16, Duncan estimates that he had raped 13 
young boys, 6 of whom he tied up, others he raped at gunpoint. By 17, 
medical authorities deemed him a sexual psychopath.
  After raping and torturing a 14-year-old boy, Duncan was sent to 
prison where he served 14 years before being released--only to attack 
more innocent child victims. Shasta and Dylan's father said:

       There's been so many times I've seen the news announce sex 
     offenders being released into the community. People need to 
     contact their Congressmen, their Senators, and even the 
     President. There's a lot more that can be done.

  I would like to tell Mr. Groene that we are listening. We hear your 
plea and the pleas of so many other Americans who want to see these 
monsters dealt with.
  We are going to act. We will act. We must protect America's children, 
families, and neighborhoods from these sick predators. Our children are 
depending on us to keep them safe from the evils that lurk in the 
shadows.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________