is sort of maybe making its way through the congress i was in my home state of iowa this weekend and a lot of people came up to me from various walks of life questioning whether or not to we had lost all our sanity around here in terms of the stimulus bill well as i probe and ask questions it seems everyone thought this idea of just sending a check out to everybody when we're borrowing the money from our kids and grandkids to do it didn't seem to make much sense especially if some of that so called stimulus money is used to buy a flat screen t v made in china so we borrow money from china we're going more debt to them which our kids and grandkids and great grandkids and on and on lap to pay for so that here can buy a consumer goods made in china and send the money to china so who stimuluses this really for is it for our country or is it for china  really rightly question this and now when they heard that maybe we're going to send a check to everybody regardless of income that bill gates intent blessing is always the foil i guess for the wealthiest in our country but  the people of that of that magnitude of income would actually get a check and i gotta believe that people are beyond laughing about this now i gotta believe that the citizens of this country are scratching their heads and wondering just what are we doing here what i heard from my constituents and i was that if you really want to do something in terms of the economy first of all you take care of those that are hurt the most those at the bottom and then you take and you invest money in the economic well being of this country  more i talk to people about this a big game very clear to me that what we should be focusing on in this stimulus package not what the white house has said and not even what the house said i wasn't part of that agreement i was invited to those talks for nothing else was only done by the speaker of the house i guess and the minority leader of the house and the the the the president well you know there's one hundred senators here to represent people and it was seemed to me that we should have some input into what this quote stimulus package is it was clear to me that just taking a bunch of money that we borrowed from china which our kids and grandkids have to pay back and give it in a check to everyone just throw it out there is just throwing money at the album how many times we heard around her don't just throw money at the problem we've got an economic slowdown let's target let's target what it is that we're going to put our money into first you want to ask their legitimate question of if you're going to spend a dollar what gives you the most economic activity what rolls around the most in the economy what has the largest multiplier effect well the economic research service they modi's have all said that the biggest bang for the buck that we can get is in food stamps either a one point seven three or a one point eight for multiplier effect means for every dollar you put in you're getting a dollar eighty four more in economic activity  the highest the worst everything else so here's a way we can actually do something about the economy target money and help those that need help the most that we have had a constant erosion in food stamps which present a thirty year erosion in the asset level the asset level right now for a person to qualify for food stamps this country's two thousand dollars and the words if you're a single parent a couple of kids you're working maybe you're in a temporary layoff now with the economic turndown but let's say that while you were working you saved a little bit of money for that rainy day you know we're always telling people to save money to good for you good for your future so i made a save a little bit of money well if they saved over two thousand dollars they don't get food stamps that's the same level it was at in  if it had kept pace with inflation the asset level today would be about six thousand dollars so we've had that erosion now for thirty years we've had eleven years of an erosion of the standard deduction which is without getting into the nitty gritty of how it works it's just a standard deduction for a family on food stamps take into account certain factors it comes out to be about a deduction of about one hundred thirty four dollars a month that's the level it was at ten years ago eleven years ago as change was frozen it was frozen at that level in one nine hundred ninety six the child care  is now capped and hundred seventy five has been that way for eleven years no increase in child care deduction even though we know that child care cost more money today than it did eleven years ago so we've had great er ons and couple that with the fact that since two thousand the number of people on food stamps in this country has gone from sixteen million to twenty six million so while the economy may have been good for some people over the last five or six years it was good for people at the top but if the economy was so darn good over the last several years why did we go from sixteen million on food stamps to twenty six million on food stamps because for those at the bottom the economy was not very good thus the whitening gap between the rich and the poor in this country so it seems to make sense if we're going to have some kind of quote stimulus package the first rule would be you know do no harm and then target it so that it is effective and i can't think of the i'd not me but ask the economists they all say the most the best bang for the buck you get is when you put it in food staff so here's our opportunity both to help some multiplier effects to help stimulate the economy and do what really is morally right what we should have done a long time ago and that is to make sure that the people the bottom don't keep falling through the safety nets so i  i say mr president i don't know what the finance committee is going to do this is not in their jurisdiction i understand that they can't do any about food stamps that's not in their jurisdiction but when that bill comes up and we get to the floor  i want everyone to be aware that we are going to have a an amendment and i will have an amendment on food stamps and to put a significant amount of money in food stamps about twenty percent increase in food stamps for the next year as gives us twelve months now why twelve months rather than six months or seven months or eight months well first of all we have a farm bill in which both the house and the senate addressed some of these longstanding problems in the food stamp structure i don't know when the farm bill is going to get passed the president's threaten to veto it we'll get it done sometime sooner or later we'll get this farm bill done hopefully in the next month or so but then the changes that have to take place to change the system so that we can begin to increase the asset level and take the cap off of child care deduction increase that and and and then take that to the standard deduction and factory and inflation for that a takes time we don't get it done right away it would be i think the height of cruelty to say to people who need this food and who need food and we're going to increase it for six months and then we're going to take away from now at least if you get a rebate did i i said i'm not really in favor of all these checks by but if you're going to get a check you can save it for a rainy day you can do something like that but with food stamps you can't do that so if you have food stamps and you say we'll increase your food stamps you can buy a little better protein you can eat a little bit better for six months and we're going to cut off keep in mind mr press that right now under our food st try sometime so what we're talking about here is not lavish living we're talking about giving people just the basic but again this is a this is our chance to do something that i think is morally right at the same time really target our help in stimulating the economy the second only to that second only to that would be increasing unemployment benefits people who have been unemployed for a long time need to have it extended to have their unemployment benefits extended that also has a big multiplier effect and close on the heels of that in terms of benefiting the economy is the money that we used to build our infrastructure that's the road in the bridges the school buildings sure and water systems government buildings it would be things like community development block grants that we put out to our cities and communities to do construction projects so it seems to me again that if we're going to put money out there this is what we ought to be doing we have billions of dollars of construction needed to be done in this country on school buildings classrooms bridges need i mentioned minnesota highways our highway system is falling apart that and that great interstate highway system that we built and i worked on when i was in high school well over half a century old and keep in mind when it was built we didn't have the truck traffic then that we have today so we need to put money into the infrastructure those jobs are ready to go by may by the time these checks would get out there talking about you would have people starting to go to work the benefits of putting money into an infrastructure project are multiple multiple multiple fold of benefits first of all the work is done locally i mean that you can't outsource it the india or china obviously if you're going to build a school house you've got to hire people locally to do it so the work is done locally secondly almost all of the materials used in any kind of infrastructure project whether it's cement or or reinforcing rods or whether it's carpeting in america maybe not all of it the vast majority of it is made here in this country so the ripple effect throughout our economy is great when you do an infrastructure project you put people to work most of the materials the stuff you buy are american made and the third thing is once you do this you have something of lasting good to our economy something that helps the free enterprise system function better when our roads and highways are plugged up with traffic and it can't move that hurts business when we don't have adequate clean water and sewer systems for communities businesses can't locate there and operate efficiently when we don't have the best schools in america with the best facilities and the high speed hookup to the to the internet when we don't have schools which are the jewel of a neighborhood the best thing that kids would ever see in their activities during the week would be the school not the mall not the theater not the sports arena but their school what if that was the nicest thing in every neighborhood i tend to think that that would help our teachers to teach better recruit teachers and give kids more incentive to study but it provides a lasting benefit for this country so mark me down mr president one that is i'm just more than a little cautious maybe a little bit more conservative on this idea of sending everybody out a check i think people would be better off in our economy be better off if we did those three things do something on the food side for the people that are hardest hit our economy extend our unemployment benefits and put a slug of money into infrastructure building that's what we had to tell president bush that's what we had to tell the white house that's our program that's the democrats program for this country to put people back to work not just to send everybody a check but let's give everybody a job let's give them jobs out there that will build things for our country the multiplier effect on that is enormous but if you just go send somebody a check those said they could they might just buy i tend to buy something made in china or japan or who knows where else and i'm not that's just not the best thing for our for our long term economy not not for what we want to do in this country so once again it seems like we look for short term solutions the long term problems our long term problems are the infrastructure of this country the fact that we don't have a good job base for people in this country long term problems we're importing more and more and more from overseas i listen to the president last night in the state of the union message talked about exports are up he did mention how much more imports ruppel rex pours he just didn't even mention that we're in hock up to our eyeballs in this country to china and it's getting worse not better so we're going to send everybody a five hundred dollar check and tell me go spend some money on things probably made in china so again i don't think we had a rollover i don't think we had a block anything but i think we have to come up with a package that really does something for our economy and i think the things i just outlined i think will do more for our economy than send everybody a three hundred or a five or maybe a twelve hundred dollar check and lastly mr president i see that there's some talk about sending everybody a check no in come l got the income limits in the house were too high seventy five thousand one hundred fifty thousand dollars for a couple you could get up to twelve hundred bucks i just don't think that's logical and i don't think it's healthy i don't think it's good for our country i don't think it's good for the long term health of our of our economy so mr president i hope that we can work together in a bipartisan atmosphere here to come up with a package that's not just throwing money at the problem but targets and targeted to those areas that really will be effective in getting people back to work helping people the bottom of the ladder and providing for the long term economic underpinnings of  working in a concerted cooperative manages shepherd the intelligence committee bill through the legislative process and a strong bipartisan manner and i call you know the temporary protect america act said to expire on february first less than a week from now must act with firm resolve to ensure that the intelligence committee possesses the tools and legal authority that is required to prevent future terrorist attacks on our soil in the wake of the years of controversies surrounding the terrorist surveillance program we all must be mindful of our duties to uphold the constitutional protections as old as this republic i do not believe that these goals are mutually exclusive the foreign intelligence surveillance act it's known  is a distinct system of laws and regulations for the government's ability to legally conduct national security related surveillance of communications the intelligence committee proposal which was reported out on a strong thirteen to two bipartisan vote does not present the ideal solution to the urgent matter before us underscoring i think the difficulties and complexities that have presented by the question of internal intelligence surveillance however it is a marked improvement over the protect america and and represents a collective agreement of thirteen of the fifteen men members of the intelligence committee both republicans and democrats and i appreciate the disparate views that many of our and colleagues on both sides of this aisle as bad as but in the end the senate must work to achieve its will and to find the common ground that so essential on this issue for our nation's security for congress to be relevant in the south to mentally come to a legislative resolution and conclusion the underlying premise of pfizer recognizes that obtaining of standard search warrant through a typical federal state court is not appropriate when addressing sensitive security operations and highly classified information and creating separate legal mechanisms the such men matters but as it has been nearly thirty years relied upon the rulings of the special foreign intelligence surveillance court and continuous congressional oversight ensuring that fourth amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures are respected and although pfizer is and remains an indispensable to win the war on terror it was written almost thirty years ago long before the name al qaida rang with any significance and has begun to show its age five it was an acted before cell phones before e mail before the internet all of which are used today by hundreds of millions of people across the globe unfortunately those numbers include terrorists who are using these tools for planning training and coordination of their operations put simply find these technologies and provisions do not correspond to the systems they're using communications today as admiral mcconnell the director of the national intelligence said recently a most straightforwardly pfizer's definition of electronic surveillance has simply not kept pace with technology but we all know this is not the only backdrop to the pfizer reauthorization prior to december two thousand and five only the party leaders in both the house and the senate and the cham and ranking members of those houses respective intelligence committee the so called gang of  had any knowledge that warrantless surveillance was occurring on u s soil with neither court approval nor congressional authorization once the program came to light the administration asserted it had the legal survey allowance anyway setting considerable tenuous interpretations of both article two of the constitution and the two thousand and two authorization for the use of military force in iraq this was not the power sharing construct between the three branches of government under which pfizer had operated for nearly three decades rather this was a unilateral exercise of executive branches aready to the exclusion of the other two the use of two thousand and six which would have called for strict legislative oversight and judicial review of the program and number of my colleagues join the effort with a variety of additional proposals to both exert congressional oversight as well as to modernize vies them and the administration bowing to this collective congressional pressure finally permitted full access to the n s a program by members and staff of both intelligence committees congressional leverage lead the attorney general this past january to cement the terrorist surveillance program to the requirements of pfizer including appropriate review was stateside surveillance requests by the foreign intelligence surveillance court at the time this is viewed as a step toward some restoration of the rule of law and constitutional principles and pfizer reform efforts focused on modernizing this statute to technological purposes yet as noted in the intelligence committee's report on the pfizer amendments of two thousand and seven at the end of may two thousand and seven attention was drawn to a ruling of the pfizer court that the director of national intelligence later described as significantly diverting a analysts from their counterterrorism mission to provide information to the court in late july the director of national intelligence inform congress that the decision had led to degraded capabilities in the face of a heightened terrorist threat environment and quote signs a reform efforts quickly shifted to addressing this gap congress responded this past august by passing the bipartisan protect america act a law which cleared the senate sixty to twenty eight and though in an imperfect statute it granted the director of national intelligence the tools necessary to protect our homeland at a time when the there was a well documented gaps in our intelligence gathering congress wisely employed a six month sunset to ensure that the acknowledged shortcomings of this temporary law could be explored at length improperly corrected the bill before the senate today is a product of that four months of deliberation given all that i have just outlined clearly the time has now come to take person in concrete action the intelligence committee has been guided by its vast expertise in overseeing american intelligence operations and this proposal sorts out the confusion of the past several years and replaces legal gray areas with clear bright line rule central to this revision is the role of the pfizer court a critical step in this process as the courts must play a prominent role whenever a fourth amendment concerns are at stake the bill rightly maintains the rule that no court order is required when targeting communications abroad and clarif this remains the case even if for example a foreign to foreign email transit of a server located on u s soil however the bill would going forward allow for so called ambrose surveillance only under the following conditions first that it may be conducted for one year secondly the director of the national intelligence the attorney general must certify that such operations would target only those individuals reasonably believed to be outside of the within the united states where the target is a united states citizen a permanent resident anywhere in the world the bill now requires that a warrant first be obtained from the files a core the pfizer court and only the pfizer court will have the authority to determine that there is a probable cause to believe that the u s person in question is an agent of a foreign power only then me a warrant be issued and only then may targeted surveillance this is a strong and substantial improvement of the provisions of the protect america act and is no worthy that this bill if passed would recognize for the first time ever the right of a u s citizen a permanent resident to be free from surveillance by the u s government even with such person is abroad as our colleagues and wyden noted the wash imposed on december tenth this is a change that was contemplated back in one nine hundred seventy eight but which never receive the attention necessary from congress to become law finally the bill authorizes the inspectors general of the department of justice and elements of the intelligence community to conduct independent reviews of agency compliance with court approved  procedures adding another independent check to ensure that the agency's chats with implementing the program are in fact complying with a court order and minimizing any of the information that was inadvertently collected this is not to say that the judiciary committee's substitute was not the period and some regards for example it contains the stronger language asserting that the files the court and the federal criminal court the exclusive means by which the u s government may conduct surveillance counteracting allegations by the administration that the two thousand and two authorization of the use of military force against iraq provided an alternate statutory authority to be clear the intelligence committee does state that such a restriction applies to electronic surveillance in fact i feel very strongly about this provision that's why i joined others of my colleagues on the intelligence committee for additional comment regarding this provision specifically that atheism is the exclusive means by which the u s government may conduct surveillance yet the judiciary committee bill took this one step further expanding exclusivity to cover any communications or communications information a broader term meant to reach even those communications not covered under the more narrowly defined category of electronic surveillance yet on balance the intelligence committee legislation reflects the committee's expertise in this field and presents a bipartisan approach for restoring order to the state of the law surrounding government surveillance as the intelligence committee report noted the committee held seven hearings in two thousand and seven on these issues received numerous classified briefings propounded and received answers to numerous questions and conducted extensive interviews with several attorneys in the executive branch who were involved in the review of the president's program in addition the committee receive formal testimony from the companies alleged to have participated the program and reviewed correspondence that was provided to private sector entities concerning the president's program the committee secured the inspector general's report in orders and opinions issued by the pfizer court following the shift of activities to the judicial supervision of the files accord and invited statements from experts on national security law and civil liberties the committee also examined the extensive testimony given before other committees in the last several years and visited the n carefully scrutinizing the programs implementation the underlying committee bill vests significant authority and rightfully so in the files a court to authorize targeting of us per ns and to sign off on minim procedures of any non targeting surveillance it further modernizes pfizer so that its terms apply rationally to today's technology and streamlined procedures to ensure that the men and women in our intelligence community can maximize their focus on detecting threats to our homeland and it does all of this while employing the intelligence committee's technical expertise to avoid any of the unintended consequences i would like to focus mr president the remainder of my remarks and what has become the flashpoint of controversy whether to grant retroactive immunity to the numerous telecommunications companies who have been sued for allegedly providing private customer information to the government in violation of the law i believe that this narrow limited grant of immunity is a proper course of action for the reasons i will cite for is critical to note and to understand that a grant of immunity to telecom providers for assisting the government is not a novel concept but rather a long standing component of the existing law specifically the federal criminal code already states that no cause of action shall lie in any court against any provider for providing information facilities or assistance to the federal government in conducting an electronic surveillance if the company is presented with either a court order or certification signed by the attorney general stating that no warrant a court order is required by law that all statutory requirements have been met and that specific assistance is required and  why then must the bill before us contain an immunity provision for telecommunications firms the answer is that they are unable to invoke it because the very existence of whether a company or any company did or did not participate in any alleged surveillance has been designated as a state secret by the united states government this places the telecommunications companies in a catch twenty two scenario if hypothetically a company did assist the government it cannot reveal that the fact under the state secrets doctrine and thus cannot claim the benefit of immunity converse only if a company did not provide any alleged assistance it still cannot demonstrate that fact to conclusively dismiss the lawsuit again because of the mandates of the state secrets doctrine and the forty plus active lawsuits defendant telecommunications companies are in a no win situation to those who may ask why i conquered should concern itself with addressing these pending lawsuits i would answer that the credibility in the effectiveness of america's intelligence community depends on it particularly in the wake of the devastating attacks of september eleventh two thousand and one any american company that when reportedly presented with proper certification assisted the government in a matter of national security was doing whole likelihood in the best interests of our nation and punishing such cooperation through subsequent lawsuits could have drastic future consequences this position has been serviced by former attorney general john ashcroft and former deputy attorney general james cole in both of whom had well documented misgivings about the administration's original approach to or surveillance this view is often held by the distinguished chairman of the intelligence committee who on october thirty first of this year wrote in the washington post that the telecommunication losses are unfair and unwise as the operational details of the program remain highly classified the companies are prevented from defending themselves court and if we require them to face a mountain of lawsuits we risk losing their support in the future the immunity provision in this bill is narrow and limited or it is only retroactive it clearly delineate what types of surveillance require a search warrant for the files the court and what types do not the very fact that the files a court will be involved contrast factory with the gray area under which the term terrorist surveillance entitled to statutory immunity as the intelligence committee report underscored the action that the committee proposes should be understood by the executive branch and provided as a one time  and national experience in the midst of which representation were made that assistance of the government was authorized and lawful in doing so the underlying legislation acts prospectively to guard against any future infringements of constitutional liberties that might occur by contrast striking title to accomplish nothing constructive in the future to the contrary as i just indicated and may be counterproductive by discouraging future cooperation by private entities second the bill only grants immunity for civil lawsuits it would not provide amnesty to anyone that telecommunications companies government officials are any other party who engaged in any potential criminal wrongdoing should any criminal allegations arise against telecommunications offices government officials or others such as investigations not not be prevented by this provision nothing in this bill is intended to affect any of the pending suit against the government or individual government officials third this provision does not  any determination of whether or not the program in question was legal it only grants the telecommunication carries immunity if the attorney general certifies that those carriers cooperated with intelligence activities designed to detect or prevent a terrorist attack and that such a request was made in writing and with the assertion that the program was authorized by the president and determined to be lawful finally this bill provides affaires course of action for addressing corporations that when presented with an urgent official request at a critical period for our nation's security acted in a patriotic manner and provide assistance in defending this nation these companies were assured that their cooperation was not only legal but necessary and essential because a very unique technical capabilities also know that the present in italy authorized the n s a program in the early days and weeks after september eleventh attacks attacks it should shock and nation and forced us to quickly react and adjust to the new reality of the twenty first century where terrorism was occurring in our own backyard if a telecommunication company was approached by government officials asking for assistance in warding off another terrorist attack and those government officials produce a document stating that the president had authorized that specific activity and that that effectively was regarded as legal can we really say that the company acted unreasonably and complying with this request so mr president the interest of protecting our nation and there's new environment of the twenty first century and bringing stability and certainty to the men and women who are in our intelligence community as they carry out their very vital and critical missions and defending and preserving their freedoms at home i would urge passage of pfizer reform that is bipartisan there respects an act of balance among all branches of government that will establish a key role for the courts going forward  evaluating surveillance measures in the united states and against u s persons abroad and that we will allow the intelligence community to devote its full efforts to fighting and winning the war on terror mr president  fifteen minutes is that as if in morning business to be followed by need to be recognized for up to thirty five minutes as it is morning business is your objection going said that the senator the junior senator from pennsylvania senator casey be recognized for up to fifteen minutes after which i would be recognized for up to thirty five minutes and then the senator from virginia would be recognized for up to ten minutes  morning business is your objection hearing on the center from pennsylvania is recognized for fifteen minutes mr president thank you very much mr president i rise today to speak about the war in iraq although much of the news i want to thank the senator from oklahoma for working through that unanimous consent agreement mr president let me let me restart i ride that is think about the war in iraq there's a lot of talk in this chamber and across this  n across the country about our economy and that's justifiable but i think we have to remember that in the midst of a difficult economy here in americans a lot to talk about in the work on to respond to that we still have a war in iraq to worry about to debate and to take action on and i don't think we can lose sight of a war that grinds on without end in iraq this war does burden our troops obviously with repeated and prolonged deployment and in fact i think drains our national resources the war hampers our efforts in places like afghanistan in pakistan the real front lines in the global struggle against islamic terrorism and extremism so i do we must ask ourselves at least a couple of questions when it comes to the war in iraq there are many but there are least a few i can think of what are we in the united states congress doing about this war  today and this week and this month in the months ahead even as we struggle to deal with the difficult economy the second question might be when will the iraqi government the iraqi government start serious discussions on national reconciliation third how will we know when we have achieved our objectives in iraq how will we know that and finally i think probably the most compelling question is when will our troops come home when will our troops come home last night the president spoke about a number of topics and one was economy one of the first words the president said with regard to the economy he talked about a time of uncertainty mr president president bush i mean i would say to him that i disagree with regard to the economy this isn't about something that's uncertain it is very certain the lives of americans the perilous and traumatic economy that they're living through is not uncertain or vague or foggy it is very certain the cost of everything in the life of a family going through the roof and we have to make sure that we respond to that but i would i would argue that that word uncertainty does apply when it comes to the war in iraq as in terms of our policy i would argue to the president that what's uncertain if there is uncertainty out there in our land it's about the war in iraq and certainly frankly about what is our plan in iraq what is this administration and this congress doing to deal with this war in iraq that's where the uncertainty is i think the reality of the economy is very certain for american families and while the headline have all but vanished from the front pages and television screens about iraq in the administration continues to divert attention elsewhere we have a fundamental obligation as elected representatives of the american people to continue to focus on the war until we change the policy and bring our troops home and we just mark the first year anniversary of the president's decision to escalate troop for it to initiate i should say a troop escalation in iraq and we're coming up on the fifth anniversary of the fifth anniversary of the invasion of iraq last night in the state of the union address the present describe the surge in very positive terms make no mistake about it we all know this our soldiers have executed their mission with bravery and heroism and violence in many parts of iraq is in fact down yet despite all that despite all that effort despite all that work yet iraq today is still not secure a nation and it will not be secure until its leaders can leave the green zone without fear of assassination it will not be secure until they can leave the green zone without fear of suicide bombings it will not be secure until its own national army and police forces can stand up and protect all all of iraq's people without regard to ethnicity or creed and assessing whether or not the surge has worked we should pay attention to the president's words from a year ago president bush declared on in january two thousand and seven when he first announced the surge quote iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas unquote they're the president's words so let's judge this issue by his words judged by those standards you don't see it about the president we can only conclude the surge has not worked if that's what the objective was i would add to that when i was in iraq in august and i asked to talk to the ambassador crocker about the terminology used by this administration with regard to the war and i said that sometimes the terminology is way off and misleading and he said what i do the way i judge what's happening here is whether or not we can achieve sustainable stability that's what he said sustainable stability based upon what ambassador crocker said and based upon what the president said if you measure what's happening now against those standards the surge has not worked based upon those assertions by the ambassador and by the president the troop escalation did not prompt the iraqi government to make the hard choices or to meet the benchmarks laid out by the administration as general petraeus told me in that same meeting this past summer in baghdad the war in iraq can only be one politically not militarily and he said that on the public record as well but a national reconciliation oil sharing and other key issues were iraqis must forge agreement in order to allow s forces to eventually withdraw we don't see nearly enough progress in fact the evidence of substantial progress is very bleak now we heard recently about things have been happening in iraq the iraqi parliament passed a db out of the cation measure this is past month it is unclear how far the legislation will go toward addressing sunni concerns since serious disagreement exists on the laws implementation some contents contend that former baptists will still be barred barred from important ministries like justice interior and defense as is often occurred to as as often occurred in the past once again the iraqi political leadership has chosen to avoid the hard choices and instead kick the can and down the road once again ensuring further bloodshed and national fragmentation in the interim we all know how long this war has endured it's endured longer than the war that we know as world war two longer than that war over thirty nine hundred dead hundred seventy eight pennsylvanians the number of wounded in pennsylvania is about twelve hundred or more across the country twenty eight thousand our military forces of done everything that we've asked of them they've matched the bravery in the success in every way possible of those great american workers who preceded them in past conflicts but our troops  best fighting men and women in the world cannot force a foreign government east to be stable they cannot force iraqi national police to put aside their deep seated sectarianism and corruption and they cannot force iraqi political leaders to want progress as much as our troops do and as much as iraqi people deserve we have much to do much to do to make progress but here's what's happening lately this is very a very important point to conclude with this the president is showing every sign that he intends in the waning days of his administration to lock the united states and in particular to lock our fighting men and women into a long term strategic commitment in iraq without consultation with the elected representatives in american people here in congress his signal to the iraqi government that the united states can maintain significant u s troop levels in iraq for at least ten years ten years if not longer he seeks to negotiate long term a long term strategic agreement with the iraqi government that would commit the united states to provide security assurances to the iraqi government against external aggression and unprecedented commitment that could and broil the united states in a future regional conflict or even a full scale iraqi civil war the president's senior aides have proposed that such an agreement would need to be ratified by the iraqi parliament the iraqi parliament but can bypass the us congress that is unacceptable to me and i think to anyone in this body and to the american people and it's why five other members of this body join me in december in sending a letter to the president that the congress must be a full and co equal partner and extending such a long term commitment and i ask unanimous consent that my letter of december the twelfth to the president will be made part of the record without objection we now learned the president in signing the department of defense authorization bill into law yesterday as once again taking the opportunity to issue another infamous signing statement imposing his own interpretation of the law over the clear intent of the u s congress let's not forget that this important legislation has been needlessly delayed for weeks because the president wanted to defer the concerns of the iraqi government over compensation for u s victims of saddam hussein's act acts of terrorism i repeat that a critical pay raise for our troops was delayed because a foreign government raised concerns with this white house and signing the department offense authorization bill into law the president declared his right to ignore ignore several important provisions including the establishment of an important special commission to review wartime contracting this provision what was an initiative the senate democratic pressure in class led by senator the president also declared his right to ignore ignore a provision prohibit prohibiting funding for u s military bases or installations in iraq that facilitate quote permanent stationing unquote of u s troops in iraq  me say that again in plain language this provision sought to prevent the united states from establishing a permanent bases in iraq and the president has indicated he may ignore ignore this provision every time senior administr asked about permanent military bases in iraq they contend it is not their intention to construct such facilities yet this signing statement issued by the president yesterday is the clearest signal yet that the administration wants to hold this option in reserve mr president this is exactly the wrong signal to send both to the iraqi government and its neighbors in the region and to others as well permanent us military bases is a blank check to an iraqi government that has shown no evidence it is ready to step up and take full responsibility for what happens in iraq permanent us military bases feeds a propaganda of our enemies who argue that the united states invasion in two thousand and three was carried out to secure access to iraq's oil and establish strategic beachhead for the u s military in the region permanent us military bases means that u s troops will be interact for years to come ensuring that the great strain on the american military will continue indefinitely and finally in our conclude with this mr president we have a lot on our plate this year to deal with we have a economy to deal with and so many other difficult issues but the war in iraq continues to be the central foreign policy challenge and challenge faced by the president by the congress and by the nation when this president departs office after eight years he should not should not commit our soldiers and our nation to ten more years ten more years if not longer in hundreds of billion dollars hundreds of billions of dollars more spent on the war in iraq mr president i yield the floor president i don't very often do this but i am going to make a presentation today and i'd like to give it a title in the title is the third reason in the subtitle very likely could be the third reason that we are winning in and that we should be in iraq i have to say that i've had occasion to be there many times and there's no doubt in my mind and i don't think that in many people's minds that we are actually winning in iraq but before i address this i'd like to like to point out something that very few people are aware of and that is the mess it was in in that was inherited by george system the in so during the ninety's this during the clinton administration we started decimating the the system and i have the documentation here because a lot of people don't understand this if you would take what happened in the first year or the last year of the previous administration or the first year that the clintons had to control the budget if we had taken a flat amount to determine how much we were going to be spending on defending america draw that straight line and only add into that only add into it the inflation in other words that's what would be if we didn't do anything else well the budget that came from the white house is this red line is down here if you take the difference between the red line and what would have been a flat budget it's four hundred twelve billion dollars in other words four hundred twelve billion dollars came out of our defense system however the good news was that congress looked at that and said that's too big of a cut for  in so they intervene in a raise the president present next president clinton's budget to this brown line in the middle so it's what was inherited by this president was a amount three hundred  thirteen billion dollars less than it would have been if it's just been a static amount now that would have been bad enough and i've always contended that we have to make that the number one priority in america to defend america but to make it worse on nine eleven we went to war and then we were pushed into a situation of going into liberating iraq in all the sudden people started standing on the floor of the senate and they said things like well how in the world could we could this president be getting into deficit be spending so much in all of this this is the reason we started off three hundred thirteen billion dollars less during the timeframe of the next administration well that is the that's that's the seriousness of it now i say that because i recall so well the confirmation of later became secretary rumsfeld during his confirmation hearings they they they were making statements at that time about what they're going to do with the problems that are there in that we are underfunded in the military modernization program has gone sideways for strength is not what it should be and so what are you going to do what are going to do about that and so i made that this is all live on t v during the confirmation hearing i was on the senate armed services committee and i said mr rumsfeld if we have a problem that i see is very very serious and that is you're going to get all of your generals around you we're going to get all these smart people and we're going to say what are we going to be confronted with ten years from today and the generals as smart as they are they're going to be wrong i can remember and i said this at that meeting this was what seven years ago i said when the last year i was in the house of representatives i was attending a house armed services committee and in the armed services committee they said an expert witness said ten years from now we will no longer need ground troops in america and of course we saw what happened in kosovo  bosnia and we knew that that was wrong so i said you know since we can't tell we're going to be ten years now and there's a lead time in preparing for war or a continued see what what what's the answer to this thing we don't know we're going to have to have th strike vehicles are going to have to have the best live vehicles the best artillery pieces and his answer was this he said well you know i have made a study of that you're asking the right person because the average year in the one hundred years of the twentieth century we spent on defense five point seven percent of our g d p he said at the end of the ninety's it went down to two point seven percent and i said down to two point seven percent where should have been he said we don't know for sure but somewhere in excess of four percent probably four and a percent which is still less than it was for the previous several one hundred years well that is kind of interesting to me because when you look at the like right now how many people in america realize that there are some things that we have are not as good as some of our potential adversaries and i would say that one of my heroes prior to the time that he was chief of the air force was general john jumper general jumper was he stood up and said publicly  hundred ninety eight i believe it is he said now the russians are making a strike vehicle this better than our best and they've talked about the su twenty seven's and the su thirty s our best at that time where the at the fifteen's and the f sixteen and that was a shock treatment people realize and so we started working again on the f twenty two and they have thirty five the joint strike fighter the same thing i could say about other vehicles right now the best artillery piece we have in our arsenal is called  world war two technology it is a paladin it's something that you have to get out after every shot and swab the breech like you did back in world war two and so now we have we're stepping ahead this is all happened during this administration where we now have the new f c s future combat system that's going to revolutionize for the first time in probably thirty years how we fight battles i only say that because this is something that we have to contend with in the future in it also puts a pretty good picture as to where we were when this thing happened on nine eleven i would like to suggest there are three reasons that we went into for the liberation of iraq and the first one is one that is called in my mind now because i had an experience you would enjoy it if i say this to the my good friend who is occupying the chair from arkansas that i had occasion to weekends ago to be in a place that is referred to now k s winter white house it was a car pound the kennedy compound in west palm beach florida ironically it was sold to a very strong wealthy partisan republican and we were having an intimate down there and i looked  audience when i was giving a talk and there was a lot of my heroes such as alexander haig previously was secretary of defense under under ronald reagan and we told the story that of saddam hussein that  majority whip in the house of representatives was there also and anyway we had occasion to go one of the persons on that trip was then the ambassador from kuwait to the united states a man of nobility and he had his daughter she's around eight years old with with him and she they wanted to go to see what their home looked like on the persian gulf and so we went there only to find out that saddam hussein had been using that home as a headquarters and we went up to what i think is a little girl's bedroom it was one of the bedrooms in found that had been used as a torture chamber there body parts that were strewn around the room stuck to the walls horrible things that have been going on there we found a little boy that just had his ear cut off because he was caught with a little tiny american flag with inside we talked about the horrible atrocities that were going on and personally witnessed some stories of individuals people who were sentenced to a torturous death by saddam hussein many of them would beg that they be dropped their body be eased into a vat of acid head first so that they would be able to die quicker than feet first we saw the fact that weddings any weddings that were taking place in the streets at that time of saddam hussein they would raid the weddings they would kill the people rape the girls and bury him alive we looked into integrates to see mass graves hundreds of people who had been buried alive or tortured to death but i guess what i'd say is the first reason that we went to iraq was i think we would go anywhere our country would go anywhere to the aid of a country that had this kind of a  atrocities taking place so that was the first reason is in this sort of hussein regime of torture and it was successful and we did the second reason was because iraq was a major terrorist training area there are four areas where they trained you know about some error in ramadi because people now realize that they're pretty familiar with that but you may have forgotten or maybe never even known about some of the other areas got for example is an international terrorist training camp in northeastern iraq near the iranian border it was run by ansari islam and a known terrorist organization based on information from the united states army special forces revealed terrorist training footage in the targets were clearly americans foreign arabs were being trained as hijackers of airplanes that's interesting they had a fuselage of an old boeing seven  seven on the ground in solomon poc where they're training terrorists to hijack airplanes now we have no way of knowing whether or not those who are the perpetrators of the crime took place on  the the the nine eleven but very likely that could have been the case now the bottom line though is that the second reason for the liberation of iraq was to do away with all the training camps that for specific detail training camps i'm talking about and we did that and so i'd like before getting into the reason number three to kind of compare what is going on from a perspective that of you guys probably have not heard that is i've had occasion to be in what we call centcom and africa that's where of the major problems are some nineteen times and now go back and kind of compare the last three qaida continued to challenge coalition forces throughout iraq things were going all that well but the coalition forces did launch two hundred raids against al qaeda cleared out some of the strongholds but to add occasion to talk to the defense minister just visiting with him we talked about the current situation in iraq and he can be done we can our people would be able to be trained over a period of time with proper training to take care of this and we talked about some of these things that our press talks about back in the united states he said that the big conflict between sunni's in the shias is mostly a western concept and he used as evidence of that individuals in his own family he happened to be married i could get this backwards either he was a sun married shia or vice versa and so we had a good discussion but we could see very clearly that we things might be getting a little better but they were better than as much as well as we hoped now let's fast forward to may of zero seven i returned to iraq and visited ramadi fallujah baghdad and some of the other areas and this is after the surge surge took place in january so this was in may this is three months later so they very much ramadi went from being controlled by the al qaeda in hailed as their capital we might remember this about fifteen months ago they had a news conference over there where they said qaida was going to be come  mati was going to be come the capital of terrorism in the world the world capital well by may of zero seven it was under the control total control it was totally secure not by united states troops but by the iraqi security forces the neighborhood security watch programs were working and they it's kind of like the programs that we have in this country have a neighborhood watch program and they go out and they look and see what they can do to to make their or make it things  more comfortable more peaceful and they were you heard the stories and how they go out and they would take a or an spray can and they draw circles around and detonated i e d these this was going on it was it seemed to be going very well that's the first time that i realize i'm kind of a slow learner and i realized that the real leaders in iraq were not the political leaders but were the religious leaders or the clerics in the months prior to the surge the average and we had intelligence people there the average was the messages that were in the in the mosque on the weekly bases were eighty to eighty five percent were and i american since april there hasn't been any and i merican messages that joint security stations seem to be going very very well there they were that's where instead of going back to our troops going back from baghdad to the green zone of baghdad after they're out on a raid or out doing their work on a mission they would instead go to some of area that we might recall was where we are marines when world war two style door to door and unbar change from the center of violence to a success story in baghdad sectarian murders decreased by thirty percent joint security stations stood up for me deep relations between the coalition forces and the iraqis and it was referred to by general petraeus as brotherhood of a close fight and there's some other good news too in the media became just about halfway honest and this is kind of interesting because i can remember in earlier trips the first thing a troop would ask me when i would go in and say why is it the american people don't understand what we're doing why don't they like is why doesn't the media like as i can remember one  lieutenant colonel tim ryan he said as i have here he said he was quoted as saying the inaccurate picture they paint has distorted the worldview of the daily realities in iraq the result is a further erosion of international support for the united states efforts there and a strengthening of the insurgents resolve in recruiting efforts while weakening our own through there in complete uninformed in unbalanced reporting many members of the media covering the war the war in iraq are aiding and abetting the enemy well that's what i heard from many of them but this is one that we can actually quote well that's something that's changing i think we saw just a few months after i returned from that trip two of the journalists one was michael how numbered only in the hundreds as from where they were before more iraqi units are well integrated in terms of it ethnicity you know keep in mind these were statements that were made and were in the new york times which is not really been a bastion and they said this is a quote now she was responding to questions well i was surprised you know after we went to eastern baghdad i was taken to the allowing market which is near half the street which several of us have been to which was the scene of a very bloody gun battle back in january and you know this market seemed to be thriving and there are a lot of people out and about a lot of family owned businesses and vegetable stands and so you see signs of life that seem to be normal the situation is improving that was not me that wasn't senator  ever since the success has been there you know they're not saying it's not successful but they're not covering it this is the coverage in september of zero seven and it dropped down about half in october and then it dropped on again in november so i guess what we're saying is that if they can't print something bad because it's nothing bad is happening there they don't print anything at all i returned to iraq on the thirtieth of last in the surge continue to success i traveled to the contingency operations in were much better less than half of the iraqi leaders who were in baghdad when the surge began were still in the city the seventy five percent reduction in religious and ethnic cleansing in the capital double of the seizure of the insurgents weapons caches and the the rise of the number of al qaeda kills in captures so you know it knocked out some six media cells make it harder for al qaeda to spread their propaganda and our incidence attacks were down from forty a day two to  ten a day economic growth you heard what katie couric said about the markets i was in those same markets crowded markets they were selling fresh food and it's just like normal times the large hospital project in the sunni triangle is back on track iraqi army performing very very well and iraqi citizens formed a grassroots movement called the concerned citizens lee and the baghdad returns to normalcy little kitty pools and loans that are cared for and the parks and markets and the surge provided security security allowed the local populations and governments to stand up basic economics taken root iraqis spending money on iraq projects now that's a good news here's the bad news general petraeus after all of  general betray us and i supported senator lieberman's condemnation of move on or exit temped character assassination as well as senator corns resolution senator cornered resolutions merely stood  d general petraeus and there are twenty eight senators in this chamber who supported move move on org and acted i'm sure you will be remembered and no american is above scrutiny this is clearly a calculated move on the part of this organization to undermine the noble efforts of this patriot to execute the duties that we in the congress unanimously sent him to accomplish i simply have to wonder whose side some of these people are on this goes to show how far we will go to root for american failure in iraq these organizations are clearly placing their political agenda ahead of the interests of the best interests of the united states and particularly the men and women who are in uniform so let's just for a minute  aside and look at a range beyond the obvious consequences that would be fall in iraq without u s support lack of secure and stable iraq means instability in the middle east namely an unimpeded rogue iran a crippled iraq will create a power vacuum new member of the dinner judge said on april and august twenty eighth of zero seven he said looking at this vacuum that he anticipated was going to take place he said quote soon we will see a huge power vacuum in the region of course we are prepared to fill the gap with the help of neighbors and regional friends like saudi arabia and with the help of iraqi nation maybe it's good that that was said because people in our realize they know what kind of person he is and they know that he was prepared and wanted to fill a gap a gap a vacuum that is not there now arab nations in the region have expressed their concern with iran and are eager to contain the growing uranium power the world knows what iran is capable of the world has seen their aggression brigadier general jimmy kay she's a united states air force retired commander former commander rector inside the cheyenne mountain complex that is nine hundred eighty seven to eighty nine he was only person who could initiate a nuclear attack after e advising the sitting president of a missile launch by our enemies and our need to respond no political or civilian type of united states had more knowledge about day to day military actions around the world he said and this is a quote this is a brigadier general jimmy page he said i watched iran interaction missiles at each other every day and all day long for months they killed hundreds of thousands of the their own people they were fighting for control of the middle east iran's nuclear work continues including the enrichment of uranium which could easily be used as part of a nuclear weapons program i think we all understand that in the last two years iran has continued developing the list technology launching missiles over two thousand kilometers coalition forces have intercepted iranian arms shipments in iraq including materials that are used to make explosive the formed  which are being used against our american troops coalition forces have also detained iranian agents in iraq and on january seventh iranian gunboats we remember that how they were intimidating some of our u s warships at the time or iran has now turned their attention to the only other threat to their dominance that is the freedom loving nations and people throughout the globe in the world cannot afford to have iran in control of the middle east so iraq remains as the  critical link iraq is a at a decisive turning point in their journey towards democracy the surge has created opportunities that the iraqi people have not taken for granted the wakening is spreading from  ambar province to diyala province and i saw it coming years ago years ago i can remember going as many of my colleagues had from place to place in iraq long before the surge seeing that our troops when they would receive goods from home like cookies and candies package it repackage in small packages and throw them out of these kids way out in the countryside and the kids would wave american flags that was out there and we know that the success was taking place there once turbulent viol provinces returned to record control iraqi control not our control the government of iraq and acted the justice accountability law on january twelfth showing real progress toward four former bassett's reconciliation i s a spent force in iraq it's retreated to the horn of africa and speaking of africa i've had occasion to be in djibouti in the horn of africa have to say this is some degree of pride this picture you're is not adopted this little girl that little girl my granddaughter in so some good things are happening over there but i have to say that looking at the squeeze is taking place in the middle east a lot of the terrorist activity is going down through the horn of africa and into africa and the occupier the chair is fully aware that we both sitting on the senate armed services committee are very proud of the fact that we're setting up in helping the african set up african serious syria has see supporting foreign fighters in iraq the saudis are cracking down its borders slimy terror is in the country iran is isolated and the world must remain focused and steady so that iraq is an example to the world of how to reject here and confront those who practice it and you know it is not going to go unnoticed political leaders see this the world sees now that little kids are not being tortured to death in iraq girls and are now going to school instead of being raped and murdered more no more mass graves no more vats of acid in the butchers said ahmed hussein is dead yeah we're doing a difficult thing but we're doing the right thing and i just as americans always try to do the right thing we are doing the right thing there but think about it for a minute isn't iraq really trying to do we were trying to do two hundred thirty years ago we were seeking a parliament that time two hundred thirty years ago and that's what iraq is doing today we were seeking a constitution that's a direct trying to do they were seeking democracy or seeking freedom same thing iraq is ceding that seeking the same things that we were seeking some some two hundred years ago forces were going to knowing they're going to be shot it but it willing to do it to go vote remember the purple fingers that was what was taking place well i would have to say this that the we went through the same thing in this country and i always have always said that one of the best speeches ever made was ronald reagan's or into the rendezvous with destiny when he talked about the the cuban who is trying to escape castro cuba and this ship were washed up on the shore of florida a lady was there and said and he was talking about the atrocities of castro's cuba and she said you know i guess we in this country don't know how lucky we are and he said how lucky you are we're the ones who are lucky because we had a place to escape to and so i would just have to say that the first reason to do it was to end the murderous regime of saddam hussein the second reason was to shut down the four terrorist training camps in the third is the fact that we are doing they're doing exactly what we did just a number of  years just two hundred thirty years ago and when i stop and i think about the message and the inspiration that we had from our forefathers and you stop and think about the message that was given to it would be given to us today and it was given to us at that time when a tall read it stood on the house of birds and it made a speech for them at that time for us today and certainly for iraq today he said they tell us here that we are weak this is exactly what they're saying to have been saying to the iraqis they tell us here that we are we are weak and able to cope with so formidable an adversary but when sholay the stronger let be the next week or next year will be when we are totally disarmed should we gather strength through inaction in areas are we sure we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying s what others would do that as for me said patrick henry give me liberty or give me death i guess i'm saying that you're president that the iraqi freedom fighters are not unlike what we were two hundred years ago and wouldn't be great if we were to provide the inspiration for then that our forefathers provided for us so that's what's happening right now we are winning we're doing the right thing and  without objection so ordered this present i'd like to raise two issues briefly to the members of our body today the first if we look back at the state of the union speech last night the president toward the end of his speech talked about those who've been serving since nine eleven the same individuals that my colleague from oklahoma has been talking about for the last thirty five minutes and the president said at one point we must keep faith with all who have risked life and limb so that we might live in freedom and peace over the past seven years we have increased funding for veterans more than ninety five percent as we increase funding we must also reform our veterans system to meet the needs of a new war and a new generation unfortunately what the president did not speak about in his remarks last night was probably the most important benefit that we can be offering to people who have served our country since nine eleven and that is a g i bill that would give them the same sort of educational benefits those who served during world war two we hear so many people on this floor in the administration in their speeches talking about how this is the next greatest generation and people lionizing the service that they have given since nine eleven and i am one of those who incentive one hundred eighty does not allow them to move forward toward truly a first class future here's a couple of examples for you when people came back from world war  two veterans eight million of them were able to take advantage of the g i bill to pay their tuition bought their books gave them a monthly stipend to the school of their choice for instance senator lautenberg who was a co sponsor our average veteran coming out of iraq and afghanistan is able to receive about six thousand dollars a year under the g i bill that's now in place that's twelve point eight percent of what it would take for our veterans today to be able to go to colombia senator warner my colleague from virginia was able to take advantage of it was able to go to washington and undergraduate he was able to go to university of virginia law school  i would emphasize mr president that i am standing here as a beneficiary of uncle sam after i was wounded in vietnam and left the marine corps i was able to go to georgetown law school with my tuitions paid for my books bought and a monthly stipend today's montgomery g i bill would pay about eleven point six percent of that so i think it's time for all of us in the political process who like to use the words of praise rightfully earned by the people on the battlefield talk the talk and then walk the walk let's get them a g i bill that truly allows them a first class future we have a majority an overwhelming majority of my senate colleagues on the democratic side as co sponsors on this legislation i am truly hopeful that people on the other side of the aisle will understand that this is not a political measure it is a measure of respect and it is an earned benefit we are giving this year eighteen point two billion dollars worth of educational grants to people in this country purely based on their economic status certainly we can afford to pay for a meaningful g i bill for these young men and women who've been serving since nine eleven the senator senior senator from alaska mentioned during the christmas break we are spending approximately fifteen billion dollars a month in iraq and afghanistan we could finance and we can fund this g i bill for one week of what it would cost for us to run the war wars in iraq and afghanistan and unlike a lot of comparisons that are made on the floor this is a direct comparison because i was a cost of war and i my colleagues get behind it let's get this done early in the session before we go into the political season and get these young men and women to the benefits that they not only deserve but they earned the second issue i would like to mention today regards national defense authorization act which the president signed into law yesterday  was a commission on wartime contracting which senator mccaskill and i jointly introduced early in the year last year and were able to get embodied in the national defense authorization act this is a very important piece of legislation it will put into place independent bipartisan commission that has a two year sunset date on it jointly jointly selected by democrats and republicans in the senate and in the house and from the administration of a commission filled with experts not of senators sitting around or political people sitting around to examine the wartime contracting that has taken place since our invasion of iraq particularly also looking at afghanistan and trying to bring accountability to broad range of fraud waste and abuse that we all know has occurred during that period now to my surprise when the president signed this legislation yesterday he issued a signing statement along with it saying this with respect to this wartime contracting commission that this wartime contracting commission purports to impose requirements that couldn't hit the president's ability to carry out his institutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed to protect national security to supervise the executive branch and to execute his authority as commander in chief he goes on to say that the executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president and other words the president of the united states who has been in charge of the conduct of this war and whose administration has been in charge of executing these contracts supervising them making sure that they meet the requirements of fairness in the law is now saying that he believes a legislative body can enact a law that he can choose to ignore basically because he said since it says it would interfere with his responsibility as commander in chief to supervise a war i am totally  totally at a loss here i am totally amazed to see this kind of language as it respects this legislation the commission was put into place with broad bipartisan support and by cam support both the house and the senate the idea being to study the systemic problems the same sorts of things that this president i would think would want to rule out it's historic precedent goes into the truman committee that took place during world war two then senator harry truman wanted to look at wartime fraud waste and abuse so that we could get a proper handle on federal spending that was going into mobilization into the projects that were being put on line in world war two and we certainly didn't see president franklin roosevelt trying to say that the truman committee's work was going to interfere with his ability to conduct world war two to the contrary the president during that war saw that this was the type thing that he needed in order to bring the right sort of supervision and the right sort of accountability that might eliminate waste fraud and abuse so we don't quite know what the administration intends with this sort of language but i want all of my colleagues to be aware of it and to be aware that it potentially is an impingement on the rights of the legislative body  in effect saying that the president has the authority to ignore a law that has now passed a law that has now signed so we are going to go forward  with this commission we're going to work with the administration we hope to set it up we're going to move as rapidly as we can because the clock is ticking on in terms of statute of limitations on some of the charges that might be filed and i would hope that the people of this country understand that we want to do this for the good of the american people that we have a responsibility to make sure that the nation's purse strings have  been properly taken care of and that we are acting as the stewards of america's taxpayers and again if someone in the administration would like to explain to us what their constitutional issue is with a piece of legislation that the president has just signed we would be happy to hear that in the meantime we're moving forward this commission it is vitally important to accountability in the government and by i'm very proud to have been a sponsor of it and we are marching senator from michigan i would ask consent that i be allowed to proceed for five minutes it morning business i believe that is under our control the senator has that right mr president first  commend senator webb for the leadership on the issue that he talked about and i'm going to speak very briefly on that same issue the signing statement of the president yesterday but before i do that i want to commend him and the other sponsors  this legislation it is critically needed long overdue and but for the leadership of senator webb and a few other senators we would not have had that provision in the bill which was finally signed yesterday and yesterday the president did sign into law the national defense authorization act and it is essentially the same bill that the president veto last month in his signing statement the president a den a fight a few provisions of the and stated that they quote purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the president's ability to carry out his constitutional obligations close quote the president's statement went on to say that quote the executive branch show construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president close quote the specific provisions that the president cited relate to a commission to study and submit reports to congress on wartime contracting in iraq and afghanistan he cited a provision that enhances the protections from reprisal for contractor employees who disclose evidence of waste fraud or abuse on department of defense contracts he objected or these raised a question about a requirement for offices within the intelligence community to respond a written request from the chairman or ranking member of the armed services committees for intelligence assessments reports estimates or legal opinions within forty five days unless the president asserts a privilege pursuant to the constitution of the united states and he also raised  reference to at least a limitation on the use of funds appropriated pursuant to the act to establish a military base or installation for the permanent stationing of u s armed forces in iraq or to exercise united states control of the oil resources of iraq now i understand the president's statement did not say that these specific provisions or any other provisions of the act or unlawful nor that the executive branch would not implement these provisions i also understand that similar statements have been included in signing statements on a number of laws by this president and that those statements that not result in the refusal to enforce the law as written nevertheless i believe it is important to come to the floor as chairman of the armed services committee to express the view that congress has a right to expect that the administration will faithfully implement all of the  defense authorization act of two thousand and eight not just the ones that the president happens to agree with as i noted at the outset the president voted he vetoed an earlier version of this act which contained the same specific provisions that he singled out in his signing statement yesterday the president did not choose to exercise his veto over those provisions and as a result they have not changed in any way whatsoever in the version of the bill that the president chose to sign with his signature these provisions become the law of the land congress in the american people have a right to expect that the administration will now faithfully carry them out this president i the senate isn't general speeches while democratic and republican leaders work out an agreement on the five a bill some background and an update on the legislation bill would limit the ability of the government to eavesdrop on americans without a warrant and also protect telecommunications companies from lawsuits claiming they illegally help spying without court orders the locks myers on friday and the house is planning to vote today on a fifteen day extension of the law to give more time to work out an agreement the senate and the white house  also agreed to that fifteen day extension congressional quarterly reporting that the senate bill which as the by the backing of the white house has been stalled by procedural maneuvering reading from c q now some democrats are labor opposed to a provision granting retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies are being sued for their alleged role in the national security agency's warrantless wiretapping program that republicans have been blocking up or down votes on amendments to strike that provision and make other changes they said would upset the delicate bipartisan compromise which was approved by the intelligence committee of michigan that was happening on that by the legislation to proceed going back now to the senate that's where the objections ordered the president i ask unanimous consent that morning business be extended for film the guardian really i do believe that it was willard miller who inspired the preparation of that movie and i want to tell the senate about his actions shortly after midnight on the tenth of february two thousand and seven united states coast guard records rescue coordination center in juneau alaska received an emergency beacon from a fishing vessel on the scene i mean they realize that the crew of the fishing vessel had abandoned their ships and climbed into a life raft which was being tossed at that time in the treacherous bering sea petty ready to him self to be hoisted down into the forty degree temperatures below as soon as the petty officer entered the water he swam through this life raft and found four survivors they were  hyperthermia and in shock and unprotected from the elephants they did not elements they did not have any surviving surviving equipment survival equipment on one by one petty officer milam told the survivors of a life raft and take them and swim with them over to a rescue basket that had been lost lowered to the darkness from the helicopter that was hovering above them after loading the first two survivors into the rescue basket petty officer miller began to feel the frigid water flowing into his own suit and he told me that he had had unfortunately hung up on the edge of a life raft and and partially zips and he was that water was spilling into his his survival suit but he had to fight the debilitating effects of cold and and struggle against exhaustion in order to continue to swim the third live third survivor from the left from that this life raft to the rescue basket while the third ride survivor was being lifted towards the spotlights of the rescue fifteen minutes more petty officer miller courageously asked to be lowered back into the sea now over the top of this survivor to try and save that last remaining survivor on entering the water  next time he was pushed into the helicopter but he told me personally that the next time he awoke he was in the clinic at dutch harbor alaska wrapped in blankets and survived and surrounded by heat lamps as a matter of fact he told me he was in bed for a period of hours and they told him his boat was leaving so he just got himself up and went back to the dock and got on board the boat this man is one of the most courageous men i've ever met in my life and when we consider the coast craft a very delicate and a very sensitive but probably the most important piece of legislation certainly that the intelligence committee has dealt with over the last several months and maybe even the last several years  certainly one of the most important piece of legislation to come to the floor of this body it's a bill that gives a two to our intelligence community to allow our brave men and women who stand at the forefront today of the war on terrorism in every part of the world as they seek to gather information from those who are plotting planning and scheming to kill and harm america as to which the intelligence community seeks to get in this particular instance deals with their ability to gather information from what we refer to as terrorists or bad as who are communicating overseas to other individuals who are also overseas there's no question but what if somebody is inside the united states in order for us to be able to gather information from conversations that that individual has over the air or over a hard line it's necessary that a court order first be obtained a spec that very clear what we are seeking to do is to give our intelligence community the ability to collect information from those people who are planning against terrorist are against targets of the united states or against individuals who may reside in the united states may reside at the united states but are americans and it's those individuals that we seek to stop and prohibit from them having the capability to kill and harm americans and this legislation is a crucial piece in the puzzle that the intelligence community needs to be able to gather information from these individuals this particular piece of legislation has been debated in the instant intelligence committee for ten months and was voted out of the intelligence committee on of a baptist on basis of thirteen to two i actually voted against several of the amendments that we had on this bill in the intelligence committee but at the end of the day even though some of the amendments absolute against were passed  feldt it was such an important piece of legislation and put such power and authority and necessary power and authority in the hands of the intelligence community that that i voted for it and man vice chairman chairman bond who is on the floor with me now for his leadership and i would simply ask the vice chairman mr chairman we've been here debating this bill now last week as well as this week where are we what what's the holdup what's the problem was at the united states sen e give our intelligence community the ability they need to protect americans mr president senator from missouri mr president by may respond to my colleague from georgia who is a very valuable member of the intelligence we call the protect america act in august everybody agreed that it should be sixty votes because this is a very important very controversial bill that has to be  adopted by sixty votes a hand we have asked that amendments to this bill be considered under a sixty vote rule very common in this  senate to demand sixty votes to be sure that it's a partisan bill so far we have not been able oh we have provided several alternatives to our friends on the other side to get a clear way of going forward and i would so that's why that's why we are stuck waiting to find a reasonable manner of proceeding and i would ask my  colleague if if in fact he feels that we had adequate contact with interaction and advice from the intelligence community and whether it is him sort have the advice and assistance of those who are experts in know the operations of electronic surveillance to have a role and are drafting of the legislation and would respond to the vice chairman senator from missouri without question under your leadership in the leadership of senator rockefeller the chairman we have had not only the top leadership the d n i head of the cia folks from the are folks from the n s a in to testify before the intelligence committee but there's also been the opportunity on the part of every member of the senate intelligence committee to go to the locations where the information is being gathered and to see firsthand the methods and not necessarily the sources in every case but to see the methods of how we gather the information so all of this is very highly classified all of it was dealt with in a very sensitive and classified manner but the fact is from a practical standpoint we have had testimony from top to bottom the individuals who physically gather the information all the way to the top leadership and it's been questions have been asked strongly on both sides of the hour within the committee of the individuals who have presented testimony and everybody has a had the opportunity to have a free and open dialogue and debate with those individuals and again based upon what they had to say this legislation was crafted this medicine ration was was again debated in total within the committee and without question the opportunity was there to inquire of all of those in the intelligence community of why we need this legislation why it's so critically important where we would be is so important to have the intelligence community operatives and lawyers involved in drafting the major we had several good ideas in offered in the comm that turned out not to be workable i would i would ask my colleagues why he thinks it's important to have the direct involvement by the intelligence community experts as to how to craft not only the legislation but amendments to respond to the distinguished senator from missouri that without question it's necessary to get testimony from everybody who touched the issue in any way from a legal standpoint from a practical standpoint to make sure that there were no unintended consequences that came out of the final product that came out of the intelligence committee and as the senator will recall we had some very heated debate on a couple of amendments within the committee very good debate on both sides of the issue sometimes there were democrats arguing with democrats republicans arguing with republicans but that's the nature of the intelligence committee and operates in a bipartisan fashion to make sure that we do look at every aspect legal practical as well as technical to make sure that we get it right and this sentence i think we did get it right which you say i might ask my friend from georgia  that this bill not only enables the community to move forward but it provides additional protections for americans for their privacy and constitutional rights  i'd ask him if he thinks those amendments had been incorporated in the legislation before us and what he thinks the final product of the intelligence committee is as a result of this present thank the center first question and i would simply say that again there's just no doubt but what after all the discussion after all the testimony that was presented after all the debate that took place within the confines of the sen committee what we found was that for twenty five years the members of the intelligence community have been operating programs in a fashion such that the intelligence that they gather amendments act are foreign individuals who are located in a foreign country and they are the ones who we know to be terrorists or bad gas and they are the ones that we contemplate may be planning our scheming to kill and harm americans or carry out terrorist attacks against american interests and the purpose of all of the testimony from everyone who touched the issue you was to ask isn't this the first time any of the five the bills even the predecessor files a bill or the protect america act has included privacy protections for americans reverse targeting so that if there is an inadvertent recording or inadvertent listening in on a conversation involves an american the minimum minim procedure comes into play to ensure that unless that individual is involved in in some plotting and scheming a terrorist act outside the united states that the procedures that are provided for in this bill will ensure that the information gleaned will be destroyed will be done away with and that there will be no record whatsoever any conversations between that individual this is the first time in the history of our intelligence community that a pfizer court order for u s persons is required regardless of where that individual is located so that if our intelligence community thinks that a u s citizen who goes a brawl in and is seeking to engage in a conversation for the purpose of carrying at a terrorist act before there can be any listening in on conversations there must first be a court order obtained irrespective of whether that person is in the united states or outset first time in the history of our intelligence community operating that that has been the case so the added protect action the fourth amendment that normally is not needed for a person located outside the united states is provided for in this particular piece of legislation as president i my colleague has mentioned reverse targeting i after i would ask him  in the bill reverse targeting takes place when it targets a foreigner overseas solely to get u s persons communications directly between that foreign person and a u s person  the targeting of the foreign person is allowed without a court order the targeting of a u s person is not allowed unless a court order is first obtained so if someone the intelligence community really wants to listen in on the u s senate decides to do so by targeting the foreign individual that is prohibited in this legislation and again that's the first time that we've seen that protection put in the statute so i as a lawyer still recovering from practicing law sometimes i think it is the first time that ak and remember in all of my years since my days of constitutional law and lost to where the fourth amendment rights have been granted to end a visual who are citizens of united states reside outside the united states when these particular procedures take place in this prison i ask my colleague we just talked about the he just talked about the new protections u s person  i thought it was pretty good but if we were simply to extend the protect america act would that not lemonade or at least delay any act and anybody who is concerned about extending and and protecting the rights of individuals ought to be a lot more concerned about getting this bill enacted into law then they should be about extending the protect americans act so this this is one of those situations where only unexplainable to me for someone to say that well i don't think we ought to pass this law because it doesn't go far enough when it goes further than current law that they have we have already voted for we have in place today and now there's an attempt being made to expand for an additional period of time but better than i might ask my colleague i think say it's taken so long to get us to this point when they attacked america act expires on february first well as you said in a number of times from the floor of the senate over the last several we stand ready to pass this we're ready to pass that night if i have friends on the other side or simply get together with us and let's vote it up or down and when it comes to the issue you have sixty votes  i would say mr president the vice chairman that gosh i have only been in this body for five years but i think one single major piece of legislation that i have seen on the floor of the senate during those five years that didn't require sixty votes for all major amendments was the manager of the farm bill recently that's a long ways away from this just to get a piece of legislation every major amendment we had required sixty votes that's the most recent big piece of legislation that we've had on the floor so every time we have a major sixty vote requirement is reasonable it is going to be called for so for us to not have it in amendment that would make it impossible for the intelligence collection required by the intelligence community to go forward and if if such were adopted what would it what would happen to the legislation must present facts and respond to the center you're exactly right here we are if we did not have a sixty vote requirement on amendments or or dealing with any issue in this bill then it is possible that we could have the passage of an amendment but less than a majority of the members of the senate and on this critical this sensitive this most important piece of legislation for us to have the passage of an amendment without a sixty vote requirement really makes no sense at all and i think all of bond we as the my friend from georgia the distinguished senator pointed out in order to pass a very important legislation such as this it has been the practice in this body to require sixty votes and as my colleague from georgia just said the farm bill passed had sixty votes on the amendments when we asked the protect america act we had to get sixty votes this bill to be enacted into law will undoubtedly have to have sixty votes and these signed by the president now  i would say to my distinguished neighbor from illinois if there are changes made with less than sixty vote margin if they destroy the ability of the intelligence community to operate the collection system as we have prescribed and that bill will never be signed into law we would have to start all over again and we would  leaving our intelligence community without the tools to protect us we are not saying that we're changing the rules of procedure we're following the practice that has been adopted in this senate if the senator deal for the question i'd be happy to i'm new here i've only been here ten years eleven and so i'm trying to learn a little bit about how this works and i recall somehow the republic survived the nation did well we kept our armies in the field and build our highways and pastor bills and did it for a long period of time without requiring sixty votes on every amendment and then there came this age of the filibuster where the republican minority last year had sixty two filibusters breaking a record in the senate to stop a filibuster you need sixty votes and so now i assume what senator from missouri is suggesting is we are in a new age in the senate it's going to take sixty votes for everything and if that's the proposal i'd suggest a rule change let's get on with it let's find out if there's enough votes in the senate to make this the permanent rule of the senate takes sixty votes to pass an amendment if it's going to be the age of filibusters again this year the public i don't like it much for the minorities empowers them i know i was once in the minority not that long ago and so i if that's your goal if you want to make the sixty vote requirement it's a different senate and it will be i think unfortunately and the frustration many people have when they take a look at washington and say well why didn't you pass something want to do something about health care want to do something with these issues and tell him we don't have sixty votes mr president if that was a question and the other side was in the minority we found that it was very difficult to pass things without sixty votes and thus we we have seen that practice before but this is not this is not an ordinary piece of legislation this when had we dealt with it in a timely fashion could have been handled on on a different basis but the director of national  refer to as the d n i was submitted to the intelligence committee in april a measure that he thought was necessary to modernize pfizer and that bill was not brought up and i testified in person before the committee an open hearing in may spite my request that bill was not the no legislation was developed in the committee the d n i came before the senate were able to pass the bill but we had to pass it on a sixty vote with sixty votes and when there are very important pieces of legislation with strong strong feelings on both sides  my colleague from georgia pointed out as he handled the very important and very difficult farm bill those measures had to have fifty votes now the fact of the matter is that we could have a bunch of simple majority votes and there are many that i think we can take on a simple majority but if there are amends which if i'd opt would prevent the bill from being passed and signed into law to the president i'm saying as a practical matter it makes sense to have fifty to have a sixty vote margin and we we are waiting for a response from the offers that we have made to the other side because frankly february february one is coming i would hope we would agree on and i understand that the house is sending us a fifteen day extension and i would say to my friend from illinois that i hope we can adopt the fifteen day extension and a collaborative agreement between two sides on how we're going to proceed to finish this bill and i think i see the i see the distinguished assistant minority the majority  without objection and this present i'd like to announce the membership there will be no roll call votes during today's session no more call for  always a pleasure to work with and i hope maybe tomorrow we will be able to go forward i was going to offer some thoughts on the intent of pfizer but i would defer to my colleague if he has further points he mr president i i think my colleague from georgia and i thought maybe if anybody's still listening we would talk just a little bit about the intent of the foreign intelligence surveillance act origins of pfizer she correctly noted that it was created at least in part in response to the disclosed abuses of domestic national security surveillance however i would say is the legislative history makes clear pfizer was never intended to regulate the acquisition of contents of international or foreign communications where the contents are acquired by intentionally targeting a particular known u s person who is in the united states the legislative history states and i quote this bill does not afford protections to u s persons who are abroad nor does it regulate the acquisition of the contents of international communications  persons who are in the united states where the contents are acquired unintentionally the committee does not believe this bill is the appropriate vehicle for addressing this area their standards and procedures for overseas surveillance  may have to be different from those provided in this bill for electronic surveillance within the united states for or targeted against u s persons who are in the united states and quote  actions then fison as originally drafted was a domestic foreign intelligence surveillance act congress was concerned about targeting persons inside the united states with interceptions conducted inside the united states the  amendments that we are considering that day are very different animal and could be better characterized as an international foreign intelligence surveillance act the bill is concerned mainly with targeting persons outside the united states where an interception might occur inside the united states what i mean by that the legislation will regulate how the president may conduct electronic surveillance of foreign terrorists operating in foreign countries when their communications just happen to pass through the united states on wire communications networks their strange interference with the intelligence communities and indeed the president's authority to conduct foreign intelligence activities appears to arise from overabundant concerned about the rights of persons in the united states whose communications are incidentally collected when they talk to terrorists overseas it is odd that we are creating a new law in this area that departs from the original construct of pfizer because in the international surveillance realm there have been no significant abuses of the intelligence community's ability to collect overseas foreign intelligence unfortunately two factors have compelled us to make these changes to first defies first we need to ensure that the critical intelligence gaps identified by the d n i last year do not appear the protect america act effectively close those gaps last summer but there is bipartisan agreement that we can improve on its provisions especially in the area of carrier law ability protection and that's what our committee did second the legislation also required is also required because we must address the practical reality then electronic communication service providers are now insisting on formal process to compel cooperation in the foreign arena arena in order to obtain prospective liability protection similar to that enjoyed for domestic intelligence and criminal wiretaps that's why the carrier liability protection and prospected liability protection provisions of this bill are show important another area where we are departing from the original is that targeting of u s persons abroad fison is passed in one thousand nine hundred seventy eight left the targeting of american citizens abroad to the president's executive order applicable to the intelligence committee and community and the procedures approved by the attorney general in this legislation for the first time in history we build into the files the new laws that govern the targeting of u s persons overseas who are agents officers or employees of foreign powers when a significant purpose of the accusation is to obtain foreign intelligence information these new procedures are some truth sometimes referred to as a two point five procedures because they are based in part a point on section two point five of the executive order twelve triple three which is long gover director onix surveillance of u s persons overseas by requiring the approval of the attorney general based upon a finding  probable cause that the target is a foreign parent power agent of a foreign power these two point five changes were part of the overall bipartisan compromise and now require prior court review by the foreign intelligence surveillance  valence conducted by the us government targeted u s persons overseas americans will still be on their own with respect to being surveilled by foreign governments overseas but at least they can remain confident that if they aren't working for a foreign power as a spy or a terrorist their own government won't be listening into their conversation now the last area that mentioned it merits discussion on the issue of pfizer's original intent is the foreign intelligence surveillance court we refer to that is the fifth f i s the according to section one hundred three of pfizer the fisc was a set of stablished as a special court with nationwide jurisdiction to quote here applications for and grant orders approving electronic surveillance anywhere within the united states unquote that's it as evidenced by the application in order requirements in fison each application is for a specific target unquote for a significant part because of obtaining foreign intelligence information the court was originally structured so it seven judges would provide geographic geographical diversity the post nine eleven expansion of the face from seven to eleven judges and hands that diversity judges are nominated by the chief judge in their circuit to promote ideological balance on the thing as it was clearly recognized that only one or two judges who would would be in washington d on a rotating basis at any given time this was encouraged to this was intended to discourage judge shopping and make it unlikely that an application for the extension of an order would be heard by the same judge who granted the original order the fairest was never envisioned as a court that would or should handle protract protracted litigation it possesses neither the staff nor the facilities to provide oversight legislation more moreover it is very likely that such prolonged litigation would interfere with the main business of the fast which is to ensure the timely review and approval of in the end of a jewel operational phase application for court orders now we need to remember the physical set up to review domestic electronic surveillance and later physical searches an area that has numerous parallels to the similar reviews conducted by district court judges when they are asked to authorize criminal wiretaps as i mentioned previously even the fisc has acknowledged its lack of expertise in foreign targeting which is they say better left to the ledges to the executive branch the court's recent opinion in the case of enter a motion for release of court records state quote even if a typical phys ed judge had more expertise in national security matters that a typical district court judge that expertise would still not equal that of the executive branch which is constitutionally entrusted with protecting the national security and quoting now i think we should be very hesitant to disregard the court's own assessment of its confidence see in the overseas foreign intelligence realm especially given the original intent of fighting i would urge all my colleagues to be mindful of the court's own words as we consider some of the proposed amendments particularly those that would allow the allegedly assisted with the government with terrorist surveillance program as examples of amendments thirty nine nineteen and thirty eight fifty eight president conclusion i offer these observations mainly to ensure the record reflect that the legislation depart from pfizer's original intent and a deliberate and carefully tailored manner rather some practical considerations including a desire for a strong bipartisan bill that have driven the need for this legislation we should be extremely careful about adding new changing existing provisions in the bill that could negatively impact the operational effectiveness of our intelligence community or provide unwarranted protection to overseas terrorist incidents and spies mr president i hope and i will not make the unanimous consent request now but i would advise on delaying this important legislation i'm not making that request now i ask i want to alert my colleagues on the other side of the aisle i hope that will not be necessary but we full week working weeks before we go on recess we must get this bill sent to the house conference and passed before we leave for president's day recess they are to do so could leave our intelligence community without the tools they need and as america without the protection of meat i thank the chair and i thank my colleagues on the floor president senator from colorado mr president i think when we look back at the work of this chamber at the end of two thousand and seven we saw this  address a fundamental need of america and that's the issue of food security last night we heard the president the united states address the nation in the state of the union in which one of the things he talked about was the importance of moving forward with an economic stimulus package that economic stimulus package which has been negotiated at least at the with the house of representatives on a bipartisan basis is another example of when people are willing to work together you can actually get some things done and that's what we should be doing here in this chamber today we should be working through amendments with respect to improving the foreign intelligence service act in order for us to be able to get that legislation finally a prude but we are up against frankly here is an unwillingness on the part of the republican minority to allow us to move forward to get to a final passage of this bill in a way that would consider relevant and germane amendments that would make it better in a way that would address the absolute need to protect the cherished civil liberties of americans those are the kinds of amendments that we ought to be dealing with but instead we are faced with a with a filibuster as president i would hope that we could act on this legislation and then move on to the urgent need that the people of america have brought us here to work on their  behalf you heard the president last night talking about the economic issues that face america in my view when i look at my state of colorado i believe the economy is skating on very thin ice and you see it in a lot of different ways you see it in rising gas prices you see it in the extraordinary health care costs that people have to pay and you see it with respect to the housing crisis that we're facing in my state and across america and i think about my state maybe it's a small state in comparison to the great state of new jersey and new york and other states but i will say this are five million people five million people in my state who i believe are very concerned about what's happening with housing in colorado and that's because one of out of every three hundred seventy six homes one of what out of every three hundred seventy six homes today in the state of colorado is in foreclosure and if one out of three hundred seventy six homes is in foreclosure today i would venture that probably ninety percent of the homes in colorado have seen a very significant decline in their value over the last two years so ye the people of america are very nervous about what's happening with economy and it is our responsibility therefore to move forward with an economic stimulus package that will address that economic uncertainty and i'm hopeful that leadership of senator baucus and senator grassley and my colleagues on the finance committee that we will be able to get to a markup of legislation that can reach the floor of this senate tomorrow evening perhaps the next day there will be that jumpstart to the economy that we need and i think there is broad agreement on what that legislation will do it will put money into the pockets of consumers of america so we can help stimulate the economy it will create incentives for small business which are so much of the economic engine of america to god and invest in equipment and growth so that we can create jobs for the people of this country will move forward with a package that will also include extending unemployment insurance the legislation that we're dealing with here with respect to pfizer so that we can work on those short term economic issues and having worked through those economic issues which i hope we are able to do in a bipartisan fashion then we'll have the opportunity hopefully to work on other legislation that really addresses the longer term economic security needs of america and that long term economic set of issues that i believe we have to address we have to first of all get the farm bill which garnered almost eighty i think had eighty two votes here in the united states senate so we can get that legislation across the finish line so that we can guarantee the food security of america for generations to come it is the best farm bill in my view that has come out of this senate chamber and out of congress for a long long time and i think both by republic and democratic colleague would agree with that characterization of the farm bill and we need to move beyond the farm bill to also address other long term economic issues that faces we must address the issue the clean energy future for america yes we can celebrate the fact that we came together in a bipartisan way to pass the energy bill which the president sign december that we did a lot to move forward with sufficient c and transportation and how we use electricity and other energy in our homes and in our buildings a very significant step forward in embracing the new future of biofuels of the renewable fuel standard and we took some steps to start dealing with the issue of global warming by putting carbon sequestration provisions in that bill but there's more to be done on energy there's a lot more to be done on energy because what was missing in that bill and what is still missing today is a jet engine that will power us into the twenty first century clean energy economy was not there and that's because the legislation that we passed out of the finance committee was alone votes short of getting to the sixty votes to be able to stop the filibuster that was underway so we need to return back to the energy legislation so that we can build that long term economic security for america we also have to deal with the housing crisis we will deal perhaps with it in some minor ways i think as we deal with the stimulus package but there are other pieces of legislation which a number of committees have been working on to try to deal with the housing crisis so we need to deal with both the short term and the long term economic challenges that we face here in america and yet we are wrapped around the axle in terms of moving forward on this fight as a bill because the republican minority has taken the view that  we can simply style stall stall until the time runs out i think we ought to be worth being in good faith to consider the amendments that many of my colleagues have brought to this war which are being preprinted from being considered so vice chairman bond put together in this legislation as well as the work of chairman leahy and senator specter on the judiciary committee and i probably have another ten minutes or so to go on the general legislation in support of the bill in the w forward with it but because we are at this impasse because we are wrapped around the axle it seems to me that a time out here is what would make sense for us to be able then to turn our attention to be able to pivot over to these economic issues that we have to address which the president asked us to address last night and so in that regard mr president i would ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the media consideration of calendar number five sixty four s twenty five fifty six the bil read a third time and pass and the motion to rick reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate objection i reserving the right to object i thank my colleague for his courtesy and for easy tention his interest in this subject but as i have previously stated we have to get this bill done to replace the protect america act i believe the house has as passed to raise considering passing president i thank my friend from missouri and i look forward to the leadership that was shown by the intelligence committee in terms of both senators rockefeller and by bringing both republicans and democrats together to fashion the legislation that is before us and addition to that i think we have an opportunity to work with the center lay in the members of the judiciary committee to figure out the best way of moving forward to achieve the ultimate goal which is really to make sure that we are protecting america so i look very much forward to working with my good friend from missouri and getting that come as a president and i don't think any member in this chamber would argue the fact that we need to update and ex seventy eight just think mr president of the attacks of the last years that temper eleven illustrated in the most tragic bloody and horrible way the grave threat that extremists groups can pose to the united states of america the attacks in new york washington and pennsylvania brought the specter of terrorism to our front door in many ways the innocence of america was broken on that day but september eleventh is not the only terrorist attack that we or our allies have endured in recent years in two thousand to a bombing in bali killed two hundred two people and wounded two hundred and nine in two thousand and four this is after nine eleven two thousand and four the bombs on the trains in madrid killed one hundred ninety one people and wounded over two thousand people and in two thousand and five we saw the attacks on london's underground commuter train which killed fifty two and injured seven hundred we could go on with the list of violent incidents that have been caused because of terrorism around the world the state department reports that the number of incidents of terrorism worldwide worldwide has grown dramatically in recent years between two thousand and five and two thousand and six the number of incidents rose from eleven thousand one hundred fifty three to fourteen thousand three hundred and thirty eight three fourths three fourths of those incidents that's three fourths of fourteen thousand three hundred thirty eight incidents resulted in death injury or kidnapping all told terrorism has claimed the lives of more than seventy four thousand people around the world in only the year two thousand and six at seventy four thousand people most of them innocent members of our human race who have been killed by the scourge of terrorism around the world americans understand that our intelligence and surveillance capabilities are absolutely essential to preventing these types of attacks our government needs to have the power and the tools to listen in on those who are plotting an attack on the united states and our interests they need to be able to monitor the e mails of a terrorist suspect they need to be able to track people and they need to be able to track those violent networks they need to be able to respond quickly and decisively on information that is collected to make sure that we protect the innocent from harm mister didn't americans wan government that can and will fulfill its primary responsibility the responsibility of keeping its citizens safe from attack but we also want to make sure that we have a government that will not abuse the power and trust that in it we want to government that honors the rule of law and upholds the cherished values of our constitution we want to government to protect the privacy of law abiding citizens and we want to government that is worth of respect not here without a doubt the events of september eleventh demanded an expansion of our intelligence gathering capabilities we needed to take emergency action to ensure the security of americans over the short term rather than work within the authorities provided by congress the and then attorney general john ashcroft built its own program the terrorist surveillance program out of the view of congress out of the view of congress in the darkness of the public out of oversight of the courts they built that on their own based on some assumed authority it ministration hid the fact that it was implementing its program in a manner that overstepped the authorities that congress had provided under law it had the fact that it could target americans for surveillance without a warrant there was no mention to the american people that their communications could be spied upon without a warrant or without any other kind of protection from the courts and hid the fact that it was grabbing more power for the of branch than our founding fathers would have ever ever thought wise in their quest to protect the civil liberties and freedoms of america we need to move in my view beyond the thinking that characterized the formation of this unlawful terrorist surveillance program within the executive perform ranch and we have indeed made some progress together in moving forward ind new direction we have consolidated the information that our intelligence agencies collect we have implemented the recommendations of the nine eleven commission in this congress we have created the department of homeland security and we are now ready to bring five up to date with our technology and the threats that we face over the last few days the administration has presented the american people with a false dichotomy a claim that we have to choose between protecting our national security on the one hand and protecting our civil liberties that is a false dichotomy as a former attorney general i can tell you that we can do both we can have a surveillance program that gives our law enforcement the tools that it needs to protect protect america and at the same time we can make sure that we're protecting the civil liberties of the citizens of our country the bill before us places some simple but highly effective safeguards on the government's surveillance program and for that we should be thankful of this legislation the safeguards will in no way impede our efforts to defeat the terrorists networks and prevent attacks on americans if an intelligence agency gets actionable information it can establish survey the surveillance immediately no waiting for a warrant no red tape no delay the agency will simply have to seek a retroactive warrant once the surveillance has begun its president i ask unanimous consent to continue as if they were morning business for an additional five minutes is their objection without objection so ordered mr president i thank you i thank the chair the bill before us mr president places some simple but highly effective safeguards on the government's surveillance program these safeguards will in no way impede our efforts to defeat the terrorists networks and provide and prevent attacks on americans i want to highlight a few provisions of the bill that the intelligence committee reported and which is a bill that really is at the center of our debate this week these provisions require the fight's according congress to play a greater role in overseeing the nation's surveillance program i say a greater role and an appropriate role in overseeing the nation's surveillance program first  reauthorization will require the fight to court to review the administration's procedures for determining that the target of surveillance is reasonably believed to be outside the united states second the five the court must review the procedures for minimizing the and information about americans incidentally collected during the surveillance of foreign targets third the court must approve or disapprove the targeting of americans overseas under this new authority on an individual basis based on its review of whether there is probable cause to believe that the person is an agent of a foreign power for the bill includes a six year sunset to allow congress to evaluate how the new authorities are carried out and to and sure that abuses do not occur before authorities are extended further the threats and technologies are changing so fast that congress will need to update the legislation during that time finally the bill requires the intelligence community to conduct an annual review and requires detailed semiannual reports to be submitted to the house and senate intelligence and judiciary committees concerning collections authorized in the bill including instances of noncompliance mr president these provisions represent a dramatic improvement to our nation's international surveillance program and i are and pleased that there is a foundation of the bill but we can do more to strengthen the bill and do better to imports the rule of law i support senator cardin amendment and i co sponsored that amendment to have a four year sunset for the bill rather than six years if we learned of problems with the program if the technologies continue to change or if the threat changes we should have the opportunity to change the law over the coming coming days we'll also debate how to handle the question of immunity for companies that participated in the war in the warrantless surveillance program from two thousand one until two thousand and seven in my view mr president if a company was knowingly acting in violation of existing law the courts should review their actions to determine if there was wrongdoing if however the attorney general or intelligence agency approached a company and the company clearly tried to follow the law and act in good faith it should not be held liable that is why i'm co sponsoring senator feinstein's amendment which establishes an independent process for reviewing whether a company should receive immunity under this amendment the five the court would follow a three step process for determining whether or not a lawsuit has america senator feinstein has proposed a smart and fair solution to this very difficult problem mr president the fight the reauthorization has become unnecessarily politicized in my view we are fully able to strengthen our nation's international surveillance capabilities protecting the privacy of americans and i hope that the members of this chamber can put the rhetoric and threats aside and move forward to assure that america is in fact protected both in terms of threats against them from violence from terrorists at the same time that we protect their civil liberties i hope we can pass the fight's a bill soon and i hope the president will do what is right inequity in the social security disability insurance system this inequity rises from federal law that places an arbitrary five month waiting period on when an individual who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness is eligible for disability compensation provided through social security benefits currently mr president under title to the social security act federal law requires a five month waiting period from when the patient is diagnosed until the disability benefits began much the monthly cash benefits about nine hundred eighty dollars on average will be provided to the disabled individuals to help offset medical or any other expenses and will to help diminish the financial hardships that are faced by those words a resident who is the senator from alaska for a request monthly cash benefits that are available to to the individual can help not only asset the medical or the other expenses but they can really help to diminish the spin anshul hardships that are faced by the this this legislation came about as a result of a telephone call received in my anchorage office to the head of my constituent services and she she received a call from a constituent and in town alaska by the name of robert james and he indicated that he had just been diagnosed in november with stage four lung cancer and he was given at that time three to six months live and he called my office asking for help he wanted to know how as as someone who had just been diagnosed with a with  terminal illness how he might be eligible for disability compensation provided through social security benefits and so my constituent services director after listening to his story went through everything to to try to figure out a way to help this individual only to learn that the process of the law as it sets out now provides for a waiting period a five month waiting period now although mr james has insurance coverage through his employer he isn't able to work because of his disability he's going to incur thousands of dollars probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills because of this arbitrary five month waiting period if he had only been given the opportunity to demonstrate his case for financial hardship to the social security commissioner he and his family may have qualified for this cash benefit after this president what my legislation would do would give the social security commission or the ability to waive the five month waiting period on a case by case basis for a terminally ill individual who would have to demonstrate the financial hardship in mr james case as i indicated he he is employed  work for the airline a cargo department of a major airline there and in alaska but he would have to demonstrate that there is financial hardship as a consequence of this terminal diagnosis makes you wonder why why this five month period the capriciousness really of a five month waiting period is evident by looking at the legislative history and one hundred seventy two house ways and means committee report that sought to reduce the waiting period from at that time six months to five months at the time the senate finance committee was pushing for a shorter period they were pushing for a four month period to back a nine hundred seventy two you had a six month period some wanted it to go to four months eventually agreed upon a five month waiting period but it really begs the question should it be four months should it be five months should it only be one month my legislation would give the social security commission or the discretion to waive the waiting period if the terminally ill individual can demonstrate the financial hardship this will alleviate the financial burden or help to upset the financial burden of a terminal illness on the disabled individual and their family and will also provide for a financial asset for paying medical bills after he or she is deceased is president i would ask that in honor of my constituent mr james that my colleagues support this bill because there are people who become disabled we know that they are unable to work they need that monthly support to help offset their costs of this terminal illness for this reason it's imperative that the social security commissioner have that ability on a case by case basis to make a determination for disability benefits mr james chemotherapy costs we understand or are about well between ten and fifteen thousand dollars per month play session and this doesn't include the other medical bills that he is facing i would ask my colleagues join me in supporting this legislation so that robert chambers and americans like mr james have the ability to qualify for disability benefits to offset these costly dances without legislation and i appreciate what what she's done as president last night we heard a vision the president ited states was sitting in the woods was standing in the chamber of the house of representatives speaking to all of us and he talked about how best to proceed during times of clear economic crisis job loss health care energy costs story threats to our domestic safety nets a war in iraq with no end i  ask when news people news media people ask me what i thought about the speech one of the things i said was i wish the president could have sat in on some of the meetings that i had and as i traveled ohio in the last year in my state we can go by had about eighty town roundtable meetings of fifteen twenty twenty five what a community where for an hour and a half i would ask them questions about their communities about their problems in every corner of the state i heard from veterans and first responders from farmers from people running small businesses from teachers from students from community leaders from mothers and fathers and i i wish that the president had been able to hear some of this because people clearly want to hear their government's finally committed to change into fighting for the middle class they want to hear that the economic policies of the last seven years policies that have failed them are of thing of the past and we have a new direction they want to hear about a plan to finally bring back good paying jobs lower health care and energy costs secure our safety nets in the war in iraq for ohioans the future is about change let's say you're driving down the road mr president you noticed at the signs mile markers exit signs billboards huge houses are telling you you're going in the wrong direction wages stagnating signs saying u s jobs being shipped overseas housing crisis deepening health care costs soaring increase dependence on foreign oil product safety and sure no into the war in iraq the longest stay on the road the worst things get so do you hit the gas pedal head further down that road you drive down the road the wrong road long enough to become the right one of course not you don't proudly log more miles in the wrong road you change direction there's one thing you can say about the administration and its supporters in congress it's that they're consistent they consistently answer to the wealthiest americans and the largest corporations in pay lip service to the rest of the population i think last night the president said one hundred sixteen million people if we extend the tax cuts hundred sixteen million people who get tax tax cuts averaging eight hundred dollars a person does the president really say that really say what the tax cuts mean it's a very small number of people getting huge tax cuts in tens and tens and tens of millions of americans getting almost nothing does it say it that way does he tell the american people that's what it is no of course not he says the average american will the americans will average eight hundred dollars for the tax cut simply is very misleading we've seen that on tax policy over and over and over in this administration as i sent to senator rubio for a question ideal to the center of north dakota  president i was going to inquire of the senator from ohio if he found as i did last night it very unusual to have an entire state of the union address talking about the economic difficulty in our country and the need for a stimulus plan and so on without ever mentioning the real root causes that all of what's put us in this position for example a seven hundred going to an eight hundred billion dollars a year trade deficit fiscal policy budget deficit that's going to require us to borrow six hundred billion dollars in this fiscal year just that combination is one point three trillion dollars in red ink ten percent of our g d p and one year you know the fact is everyone in the world including american citizens look at that and understand that so far off the track there isn't any way that works and i'm wondering you know if i support a stimulus package i think it's fine to do for psychological purposes but i'm wondering if the senator from ohio wonders as i do that why the president does not even seem to recognize the underlying causes of the economic difficulty in our country appreciate the comments from the senator from north dakota who understands probably better than anybody in this body what its trade deficit means what this trade policy means and what's what's amazing is the president didn't doesn't look at the eight hundred billion dollars trade deficit when i came to the congress in one thousand nine hundred two it was thirty eight billion now it's over eight hundred billion in fact the president's father once said a billion dollars in trade deficit translates into a loss of thirteen thousand jobs now it's eight hundred billion dollars in a president didn't address that but what he did say is let's do more of this he said we need a trade agreement with colombia we need a trade agreement with we need a trade agreement with south korea and it's just makes me incredulous that the president can't look at what's happened and say wait a second let's take it let's do a time out let's let's do no further trade agreements let's go back as a senator from north dakota senator dorgan has suggested let's have benchmarks and look at what the north american free trade agreement did to our country look at what the central american free trade agreements done to our country look at what trade with china has done to the middle class the president totally missed that in at the same time the president said let's do more tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent at the expense of the middle class and drive up these budget deficit so we have trade deficits of eight hundred billion dollars plus we have  budget deficits of about a billion dollars a day and that's that's fundamentally the biggest problem with our economy as you suggest friends and i agree with that analysis and i might say that sat in that chamber last evening in the joint session is always a wonderful privilege to go to a joint session of the congress and hear the president give the state of the union address and i was thinking that you know everyone sitting there in their dark suits and pretty well dressed up for a big location not one person in that chamber not one person that chamber is going to threaten to have their job lost because it was shipped overseas someplace in search of cheap labor nobody in this chamber alone nobody nice date set has ever lost their job because somebody decided to outsource it to shenzhen china for thirty cents an hour labor you know it's just a lot of folks out in the country i don't working people have to come home at the end of work and say honey i was given notice today i lost my job not because i'm a bad worker it's because i found somebody half way around the world that would do that job for twenty cents an hour they told me i can't compete with that well our family can't live on that so you know it seems to me i just just talking but the trade piece of this the president completely ignores that it seems to me there ought to be a s meeting at this point if you've got one point three trillion dollars of red ink in one year that's what we have right now they say well the budget deficits only it's going to be what three hundred billion dollars to seventy five it's not you take a look at budget policy and find out how much we're going to increase the debt in this year indebtedness is going to increase by six hundred billion dollars on the budget side and seven to eight hundred billion dollars on the trade side that's one point three trillion dollars off the track in one single year ten percent of our economic output i mean the fact is that's unsustainable and it's going to run this country's economy into a ditch already started and if we're going to fix it you've got to diagnose it this president hasn't come close to even acknowledging the difficulty of those two issues fiscal policy and trade policy let alone the issue of the scandal the sub prime loan which is regulators falling asleep or unbelievable hedge fund speculation outside of the view of regulators because they don't want it regulated with the senator from ohio agreed that these are the underlying causes of concern about this country's economy absolutely i remember back in the early ninety's we were concerned about what was called the twin deficits the trade deficit the budget deficit we had a budget deficit then  of about three hundred billion dollars a year we had a trade deficit as a presiding officer knows to join me in voting against the north american free trade agreement a decade ago we had a trade deficit of of then not much under one hundred hundred billion dollars and we consider that a serious problem today president bush as you say doesn't recognize that this trade deficit means anything and to the contrary he says well seems to be working let's do more of it and when i get i go back to what his father president in the late eighty's early ninety's said that a billion dollars in trade deficit translates into thirteen thousand lost jobs and you can see how it does because a billion and trade deficit means we're buying a billion dollars we're importing a billion dollars more than we're selling and that means that we're manufacturing last because we're not making it ourselves and if manuf we manufacturing let manufacture less it means that thousands of ohioans are north dakotans or new jerseyans or are finding that there are not working at twelve and fifteen and twenty dollars an hour it means that the those plants lay off workers that communities get less tax dollars and police and fire and teachers are laid off undercutting the economic vitality the community and undercutting the public safety of the community undercutting the ability of our schools to educate our children it's clearly a downward spiral that that is only accelerated when we pass a trade agreement with colombia and a trade agreement with for ruined panama and another trade agreement with south korea mr president the senate deal for the fact is it is not something i enjoy doing to talk about the difficulties here i'd like to talk about the opportunities for this country but we will not get to the opportunities for this country until we decide that we're going to start taking care of some things here at home that this president in this past fiscal year that is the one we're in right now he sent us a request for one hundred ninety six billion dollars of emergency money and said i want to put on top of the debt don't pay for add to the debt that's sixteen billion dollars a month four billion dollars a week for iraq and afghanistan and to replenish the military accounts for that purpose now we're told that he's going to spend another seventy billion on top of that seventy billion well that takes us to very close to three quarters of a trillion dollars that will have been spent none of it paid for all of it requested by this president as an emergency so it didn't have to be paid for i mean you know you look at that and you say to yourself we have so much that needs doing in this country including not just on the budget side getting our act together but on the trade side standing up for our country's interest demanding fair trade  on the investment side to invest in infrastructure all of these things but last night it was almost as if the president was oblivious to the fundamental causes of the economic difficulty this is a great economic engine we have in this country but the fact is that it needs some work and it doesn't need somebody just a polished with a rag and i'm a nice tune it needs real work to get this engine moving again whether you know the american people or the we are innovative we are great workers it's an inspired country in which we live that's why we have progressed the way we have over two hundred years but the american people need something to work with we need to invest in working people we need to have faith in working people instead what we have done in recent and so many examples of all those jobs that are now in china that used to be in ohio one of my favorites is always to talk about about fig newton cookies even fake newton cookies the national biscuit company nabisco it means national biscuit company well national biscuit company took fig newton cookies from new jersey to mexico why they could find somebody to shovel fake paste apparently for much lower cost than it cost to pay somebody shovel fig paste in new jersey so you want to buy some mexican food buy fig newton cookies made in mexico still called the national biscuit company except so national anymore because it isn't so national anymore it's now that their cookie is made in mexico well that's one example of a hundred a thousand a million we could give and have it's the question of whether this country is go stand up for its workers and whether we're going to have the courage not just to stand up for workers in fair trade agreements but whether we're also going to put on track fiscal policy trade policy regulatory authority in a way that gives people confidence about the future of this economy and jobs an opportunity when i when i hear senator dorgan talk about this i think about what twenty years from now fifteen years from now we're going to look back on this time and we're going to think well what were they thinking when they changed the laws to allow so many cheap imports from china made by workers in unsafe conditions sending products back toxic toys to our children's bedrooms and contaminated food into our kitchens and pantries and we're going to look back twenty years from now and think why did we dismantle our industrial base jeopardizing our national security jeopardizing the security of our of our family farms in north dakota and ohio and in our business all businesses and manufacturers and in new jersey and all over this country we're going to look back and think why would these corporations why did we let corporations lobby this congress so that they did change the rules so that it made sense for these companies in terms of their bottom line in terms of their profits to go to china instead of manufacturing and galley in ohio or toledo or chillicothe yours in your youngstown and instead of magic imagine instead if we as a nation decided we were going to have a marshall plan  or a go to the moon kind of plan on alternative energy that we changed our trade law on our tax law and we began through bio mass through production of wind pipe when turbans and and solar panels imagine if we really set out to remake our energy policy in remake our country's industrial base by changing trade laws by changing tax law we clearly in this country we still do the best are india in the world and on all kinds of scientific research and medical research but so often we do the r and d here which is good for our economy and good for our country creating jobs but then most of the production is shipped off off shore so that what good is that for our country when we develop the research we do the research and development here and then send it offshore the center for north dakota mention the ohio art company i think that really sort of tells the story company in northwest ohio right in the corner of the indiana where ohio intersects with indiana and michigan bryan ohio called the ohio art company they make something that most of us knew as children called etch a sketch and about seven or eight years ago when i was in brian just a couple of months ago talking to an executive from ohio our company seven or eight years ago a major or us retailer went to them and said we want to sell your product in our stores for less money for under ten dollars and the only option that a high art company had was to stop its most of its production in ohio and move its production overseas and every job  that was moved to china meant less money for the bryan police department less money for the car the county for the for the williams county for the way in scone a government less money for public schools less money paid into medicare less money paid into social security and it made us poor as a nation at the same time those products moved to china don't don't left living standards up in china because the wages are so low the chinese wink and nod at best at any kind of environmental rules or worker safety rules so we have done little to lift up the whole idea of of trade and senator dorgan i've talked often we want more trade we just want to under a different set of rules instead of lifting workers up so that mexican workers if nafta had been done right would be buying american products and we would be buying mexican products back and forth the way that we should trade in their living standards would go up they'd have good environmental and worker safety standards their wages would rise what happened with the fifty states in the united states is companies moved around the united states to the south eventuality their wages went up and we began and we began to to enrich all sections of the country that way we're not doing that with china we're not doing that with our trade policy that's  was so disappointing as senator dorgan said that last night the president just said we want a new trade agreements colombia we want one with south korea we want one with with panama instead of going in the right direction changing our trade policy moving in a very different direction  president the senator from ohio and i are working on a piece of legislation we intend to introduce that would establish benchmarks for trade agreements you know we decided to a trade agreement with mexico we had a want to have billion dollar trade surplus with the country of mexico  trade agreement well guess what we turned that surplus into a huge deficit a giant deficit sixty to seventy billion dollars a year so we turned a surplus into a deficit ship a lot of the u s jobs to mexico and so what we need is it seems to me trade agreements with benchmarks and accountability is this trade agreement meeting the objectives we develop for our country i mean after all we are stewards of our country we want our country to do well yes we want to lift others we want it to be a more prosperous world but first and foremost we want this country to do well now wouldn't be the height of irony wouldn't be an unbelievable perversion if we pass a stimulus package so called quote stimulus package unquote and we borrow the money from china to put money in the hands of an american family that can take it to wal mart and buy radio flyer little red wagon that's made in china so we borrow the money from china give it to an american consumer who goes to wal mart to buy a chinese wagon i say radio flyer for a specific reason because radio flyer is one of those great american brands almost every child in this country has hooked a ride on a radio flyer either theirs or their neighbors in other little red wagon you know how radio flyer got its  name and emigrants he came to chicago illinois and he decided to start trying to make some way gets made a few of them and everybody liked his wagons and he was a guy that came to our country and was and so so pleased with being able to come to our country and what he like to things he loved airplanes and somehow he really liked marconi and the radio and so he decided he was going to put radio flyer on the side of the little red wagon and it began one hundred ten years they built radio flyer little red wagons in america the dream of this immigrant innovator radio flyer well they don't make em here anymore they're all made in china to close their doors went in search of cheap labor you know it it is it is interesting that when we talk about this some will listen and they'll say well you know something you the guy from ohio fella from north dakota they don't get it they're bunch of xenophobic isolationist stooges that just can't see over the horizon they don't understand the global economy it's a global economy get over it it is a global economy but the rules have not kept pace with galloping globalization and the result is pushing down standards in the united states moving jobs from the united states overseas a hemorrhaging trade deficit that is dangerous for this country's interests two billion dollars a day every day that we import more than we export the largest export from the united states for america by bali was wastepaper to asia think of it my point is simple and i appreciate the work that senator of my and others have done with me on these issues we have to put this country on track you know i'm for trade and plenty of it i believe in plenty of trade but i demand and insist that we stand up for this country's interest and demand fair trade and we've got to bring this trade deficit down that's putting dramatic amounts of money in the hands of the chinese and japanese and others so don't be surprised when you open the paper in the morning and find out what they purchase next one of our major investment banking companies or you name it we've got to fix this and the only point i know the senator from ohio came here with a a statement and i enter