legislative session we pause to acknowledge your stopper and use it in throne between the cherubim so shower us with gifts from your bounty today lead our lawmakers beside still waters and replenish their spirits with your power as they grapple with the challenges of our time give them a face that will not shrink when facing formidable obstacles lord provide them with the wisdom to hear your voice and the courage to obey your counsel remind them that success comes not by might all power but by your spirit let your hand rest on our nation and need it to a great and this that glorifies you  five water source water resources development act the debate on that conference report will extend until quarter to six tonight majority manager senator boxer and center enough will be here shortly after three to proceed forward one is the chairman of the committee one is the ranking member that was reversed and half was manager backcombing the chairman boxer and the ranking member last year they were together well last year and they work extremely well together this year bill which i think sets a good example for all of us here mr president you don't have to have now ideological parity to get things done around here and this is a good example that the vote on the conference report expected around five forty five p m today this could never ever have been accomplished without these two senators working together once and there's action on the conference report this evening will decide what we're going to do we have not a lot to do this week and and we have finished this bill which means you probably won't finish this bill this week but it's something we have to do everyone should watch closely what's going on and we'll try to work our way through this will be a number of procedural hurdles we have to get through accomplished much more than that by the time he leaves by opening its gates to this man and hateful idiology columbia university is allowing him to take full advantage of a golden opportunity to spread it ahead of state he's legally entitled to visit the united it is quite another to give a man who's referred to the united states as the great and who denies the holocaust a coveted platform from  which let's consider for a minute what iran has said and done during his presidency iran actively supports militias that undermine the rule of law and export weapons that are killing our united states soldiers and marines in iraq iran actively supports militias that undermine the rule of law and exports weapons that are killing our united states soldiers and marines as i indicated iran is actively pursuing a nuclear program that puts it on a path toward possessing nuclear weapons iran is a state sponsor of terror iran supports proxies that are undercutting attempts to bring peace reconciliation and democracy to lebanon has called for israel one of america's closest allies to be wiped off the map iran supports proxies in syria and gaza that are actively trying to goad israel into war and undercut average  to imagine any nation on earth that threatens us and those of its allies much more than iran it's hard to imagine any great american university generations past inviting a world leader to its campus who supported groups that kill to its campus a state sponsor of terror a school that rejected the two thousand and five on the grounds that they don't ask don't tell policy discriminated against gays now welcome to man or is perpetrators administration's approach to the iranian nuclear program active diplomacy and ratcheting up international sanctions are at this point the best path forward that said diplomacy is only as effective as the credibility and potential force backing it up the president as commander in chief is correct to preserve a broad spectrum of policy options in confronting the iranian threat efforts to slow iran's nuclear weapons program why would iran take us seriously if way to go shit with all carrots and no sticks and why would they take us seriously when our hateful screeds against us and our allies are met with an avocation to join polite society lecture circuit mr president i would just close by saying that i strongly support brace page race baiter is a hallmark of democracy a right not afforded about my identity god to his own people there's a of the previous order the leadership time is reserved under the previous order there will now be a period for the transaction of morning business of sixty minutes until the hour of three ten p with senators permitted to speak their own for up to ten minutes each in with the time equally divided between the two leaders of their designees with the majority control in the first half and senator byrd recognized for twenty five minutes of the majority's time and the republicans controlling the final portion soldiers stayed for just a little while longer to bring the dream to reality such a grand vision of course produced yet another new bush administration slogan return own success which fits very nicely on a bumper sticker for the back of the lemon this team of play of the men is trying to peddle like in a good used car salesman the president insisted we take him up on his once in a lifetime good deal just as he has insisted each and every time and he needs a little more time for his war terrorists set up complexes from which to launch attacks on the united states and iran or syria or both will develop nuclear weapons and invade iraq on their way to israel needed for the surge could begin returning home as long as conditions continued to improve and the owner timeline that he had laid out the president suggested that subject to his fine print the number of u s troops in iraq might be reduced might be reduced to one hundred thirty seven thousand by july  before the so called temporary surge began in february two thousand and seven frankly that is not much of a drought down given all the so called troops shift from leading operations to partnering with iraqi forces and eventually it over watching those forces in two thousand and three over four years ago when u s forces overthrew the regime of saddam hussein that was supposed to be a rapid transition to a civil government in iraq and all the years since the invasion civil society has not yet put down strong roots despite our efforts b achieving re conciliation and equitable arrangements for the sharing of oil revenue or holding elections put them  iraqi security forces riddled with sectarian corruption and will not be capable of providing security for some time to come if ever u s troops been partnering with iraq it troops for years now and u s troops have been training equipping and supporting iraqi forces to the  of dollars u s troops have been conducting counterterrorism operations as a pheasant also noted in his speech so what pray tell is new or different about this i did years i can see nothing by which to judge success so that our troops may return own success it is just a nice pain iraq for a very alone time to come president bush expressed at least said that if he has is veda u s troops would be in iraq long past his exit from the white house he both sides that he will leave his staggering phone and policy calamity for someone else to clean up talk about passing the b  as to bread we simply cannot afford another slick white house sales job too many young men and women have died i have been maimed in this horrific war we owe it to them to take a good hard look at the facts general petraeus in his testimony has suggested that because of the the number of iraqi deaths have decreased in indicating progress that may or may not be true i do not know but i do know that general petraeus carefully did not note that the number of u deaths in iraq actually increased during the surge period compared to the same coverage in private in prior years ken rove betray also did not note that the u s military death rate in iraq that is the average number of deaths per month also continues to climb from prior petraeus pointed to the decrease in the hottest month  as a decrease in the number of them from improvised explosive devices or i need tax during the surge area to june through alga says another sign of progress s deaths from i increased during the surge area compared to the same period in prior years that as they say is the vest the story that is the whole truth not carefully cheery picked to test fixed design to vote for the president's pitch for the president is men also did not talk about the price tag of ishani little war sedan no need to discuss that void they have hooked us into writing the check supplemental appropriations bill the largest one ever congress is already appropriated over four hundred fifty varian dollars for the war in iraq and if congress approves if congress approves if congress approves it president's latest request for supplemental funds that figure will grow to over six hundred billion dollars during fiscal year two thousand and eight that is a price tag with no i mean zero and it folks the direct costs do not additional debt higher oil and gasoline prices increased security costs here at home and incalculable damage done to our image and reputation in the world because of this was our combined direct and indirect cost and abrogation to this war will exceed yes exceed one trillion dollars by the most conservative estimates many economists believe that the costs are much higher that six hundred billion dollars or a one trillion dollar price tag also does not begin to cover the lost opportunity because all of the ways in which money now spent on iraq could have been used to make our bridges they are secure our borders improve education or to prepare for and rebuild after natural disasters and weather related veyron ming failures that money could have been used to develop be necessary to achieve their vision their vision their vision of progress and success its vog of the mind yes it's boggles the mind to consider the long term cost of buying this war we all say that we support the troops these brave men and women have been given a near impossible task which they have performed with dedication professionalism courage and honor congress has provided everything that the generals asked for and more  the president has taken that support for our men and women in uniform implies support an even validation of his policy he wants to keep the u s military tied down in iraq indefinitely trying to bargain very little more time little more time time and time again never grasping that his father's president's policy is fatally fa am convinced that the best layers of board our troops is the bring them home home sweet home and the only way to get them home home sweet home may be to somehow restrict and i'm here today to insist of limits to try and try and try and drag gain strain must be attached to this money this senator was support no more no more no more blank checks for iraq mr praed unknown oct eleventh two thousand and two i was one i was one i was only twenty three senators who voted against the authorization that led to this all and final awful war i call on my colleagues for the sake of our soldiers and for the sake of our nation to remember that half truths and misleading claims of what led to this war we can all recall that  to the united nations to sell this law to do you and and to the nation secretary powell painted frightening visions of bands racked truck and rail car weapons laboratories and nuclear weapons none of it was accurate not anything not the nation was led to believe that our troops would be greeted as liberators and that iraq may descend further into chaos if u s troops leave now or it may descend into chaos whenever they leave as long as the united states keep the peace in iraq is no incentive for iraqis to maintain the peace on their own after nearly five years this awful war i've years this terrible war more than thirty eight hundred deaths over twenty seven thousand did and no and no and no end in sight we must change servant who remains as full of not just passion which was evident but brain power at at the at a mature age shall i say as he was when he was a lot younger and it's and it's a privilege really to serve with him and to have just listened to mr president i rise to speak on an amendment number thirty seventeen which senator kyl of arizona and i have introduced this amendment would designate the iranian revolutionary guard corps as a foreign terrorist organization and thereby subject this deadly enough areas group to a series of economic and diplomatic sanctions that i think senator kyl and i think will will be felt in iran and that this group because of its dangerous and destabilizing work in iraq and throughout the middle east really deserves as president this is obviously a day a week in which the leader of iran president of money naji is in the united states of america a great debate rages about what's the appropriate way to greet him what what sanctions what platform should be given to him what sanctions should be discussed  personally i feel it was a terrible mistake for columbia university to invite him to speak because he comes literally with blood on his hands the blood of american soldiers who are being killed today in iraq by iraqi extremists trained by the iranian revolutionary guard corps that could force in iran at bases surrounding tehran but i offer this amendment in this spirit if we're looking for a way to meaningfully respond to the presence of money to judge in the united states i can't think of anything better than passing this resolution which documents exactly the campaign of death and murder of americans and others throughout the middle east that is that it is carrying out regardless of where any individual member of this chamber stands on the war in iraq and what the best way forward on the war in iraq is this matter of iran role deadly role in iraq and throughout the middle east should draw us all together this is a matter on which we're not for or against the war in iraq we're not democrats or republicans we're americans standing based on the evidence against force the iranian revolutionary guard corps republican guard corps excuse me that could force that has blood on its hands and the blood is american blood last week general petraeus two weeks ago now justified before congress and he could not have been clearer about the threat we face from iran in his words and i quote it is increasingly apparent to both coalition and iraqi leaders that iran through the use of the iranian republican guard corps could force seeks to turn the shia militia extremists into a hezbollah like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the iraqi state and coalition forces and of quote general petraeus as testimony is just the latest in a rolling dusty a of evidence about a rainy in terrorism call it what it is act my day job is may be called president he is the terrorist dictator who with a small group around him is seize control of a great nation iran a growing dosia of evidence about a rainy and terrorism in iraq and throughout the region that we in this chamber have received from our american military commanders on the ground in iraq from our top diplomats there and from our own intelligence community this is not opinion this is fact specifically we received detailed information in recent months about how operatives from the iranian revolutionary guard corps has been training have been training arming funding and even directing extremists inside iraq as ambassador crocker testified and i quote while claiming to support iraq and its transition iran has actively undermined it by providing lethal in iraq we know this because coalition forces american forces have captured one of the hezbollah leaders inside iraq and recovered documents the detail the relationship between the iranian regime and the extremist groups that they are sponsoring who are killing americans general petraeus said it when he was here this is not intelligence this is evidence we also know that iran has been using its territory to train and organize these extremists as i said what's the source of that u s military spokesperson in iraq brigadier general kevin bergner explosives and other deadly tools of guerrilla warfare that they then use against our troops in iraq general bergner also reported this summer that the u s military has concluded that the senior leadership in iran is aware of the activities of the iranian guard corps in sponsoring attacks against our soldiers in iraq and that in his words it is quote hard to imagine that the supreme leader of iran ayatollah comedy does not know about them the consequences of this arena in terrorism in iraq have been immense and terrible for our men and women in uniform there and for their families and friends here at home according to the tenet general ray already erno deputy commander of our forces in iraq iranian supplied weapons were responsible for a full one third of american combat it's this july and that builds on a similar record in preceding months let me repeat that up to a third of the deaths of american soldiers in iraq in july were caused by a sophisticated explosive devices used by people trained in iraq those devices supplied by trained in iran those devices supplied by iran this means that the iranians and their agents are killing our troops and why are they doing it because they want us to retreat from iraq iranians understand sometimes it seems better than a lot of americans do that if american power collapses in iraq if we retreat and abandon our allies in the hopes we share with them for a better future in iraq and throughout the middle east our position throughout the region will become much much weaker and iran spears ition will become much much stronger iranian and gresham in iraq fits warily into a larger pattern of regional aggression leading they hope to regional domination tehran is also training funding and equipping radical groups that are responsible for the deaths of lebanese palestinians afghanis and israel as they are attempting to destabilize a series of moderate regimes in the arab world just last week at mill found commander of our central command said that the iranian revolutionary guard corps is supplying anti coalition forces with the same sophisticated explosive devices it is giving to extremists interact in admiral fallon's w there is no doubt that agents from iran are in volved in aiding the insurgency and of quote the fact is it is it is iraq that today is the central front of iran's efforts to become the heads of monic power in the middle east the iranian regime knows that iraq has become the central front in our war with islamicist terrorism it is where they believe they can begin the process of pushing us out of the region and seizing control that is why i don't believe a person can be serious about responding to the threat of iran while calling for our precipitous withdrawal from iraq a i quote the political power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly by that he means us soon we will see a huge power vacuum in the region already trying to implement it to the best of his ability and quote from the american ambassador in baghdad mr president's vital to the national security interest of the united states that the iranian government not be allowed to prevail in its war against us and the iraqi people's hopes for a better future the memmott the senator kyl and i and others are offering is we believe an important component of our response to this threat first  will send a clear message both to the regime in tehran a fanatical regime in tehran not i believe presented of of the feelings and hopes of of the iranian people and it will send a clear message to our allies  the region that the united states will not stand idly by and allow iranian backed terrorists to kill hundreds of american soldiers we will not stand idly by and allow iran through its proxies and then directly to dominate iraq as a memo to acknowledge is what our military commanders and top diplomats are telling us which is that regardless of what we might desire here in washington the government in tehran has made a decision and they are carrying it out and it is to wage a proxy war against the united states in iraq and against our allies in the arab world and israel throughout the region we must respond our amendment states that it should be part of the policy of the united states to stop the violent activities and influence inside iraq of the government of the islamic republic of iran as well as its foreign facilitators like lebanese hezbollah and the indigenous direct the extremist are mehmet recognizes that campaign of terror must be among the crucial considerations for any plan for the transition and drawdown of our forces in iraq as general petraeus warned us in his testimony the threat of iran may in the long run prove an even greater danger to the stability of iraq their hopes for political reconciliation and self government than al qaida we cannot ignore or ran for that reason ma'am and senator kyl and i are offering calls on the state department to designate the iranian revolutionary guard corps as a foreign terrorist organization and place the i r g c on the list of specially specially designated global terrorists this is no small organization i've seen estimates say that it's as large as one hundred fifty thousand or one hundred eighty thousand they have ground troops they have air capability they even have naval assets they have businesses which are doing business with other businesses throughout the region in the world this is the organization that the evidence presented to us by the american military and intelligence communities tell us is responsible for the murder of american soldiers in iraq they are launching terrorist attacks through their agents against our troops therefore they should be treated as terrorists they must begin to suffer the economic and diplomatic punishments th come with being designated as a foreign terrorist organization course everyone in this chamber would prefer that we find a way to convince the iranian regime to stop these attacks against our soldiers and iraqi soldiers and civilians through negotiation but reality requires that we recognize that we have tried to use the tools of diplomacy with iran with fact my denny judd's government and it has produced representatives in decades and what have these talks produce these talks at which our ambassador has presented the iranians with hard evidence that we know that the the iranian guard corps is training iraqi extremists who are coming back into iraq and killing american soldiers what is that evidence produced nothing nothing at all in fact there's some evidence that the iranian activity is growing in ambassador crocker's own words as he testified before congress and i quote he said i laid out the concerns we had over any activity that was damaging to iraq's security but found no readiness on the iranian side at all to and gauge seriously on these issues the impression i came away with after a couple rounds is that the iranians were interested simply in the appearance of discussions of being seen to be at the table with the u s as an arbiter of iraq's president future rather than actually doing serious business right now ambassador crocker says i haven't seen any sign of earnest seriousness on the iranian side end of quote far from convincing the iranian regime to stop its proxy attacks on american soldiers the evidence is that these attacks have escalated increased over the last month according to the most recent national intelligence estimate quote iran has been intensifying aspects of its lethal support as soon as time has expired wonderfully might as to cheer for three additional moments the objection well i was i'd ask unanimous consent thank you mr president the war in iran that iran is fighting against american troops and our allies in iraq is an undeclared war but it is nonetheless a real war in rich real americans and iraqis are being murdered by iranian agents we cannot close our eyes to that outrageous reality this amendment exposes that behavior and demands justice as we speak the president of iran is in the united states there's no better time than this for us to stand together united as americans regardless of our position on iraq or a party affiliation and send a crystal clear message  fanatical terrorists and tyrants who now run the great country of iran and oppress its people that their campaign of terror against our troops in iraq must end and that we will stand united as americans against it with any judge should not be given any american platform to speak from until he acts this stop his government's killing of americans they have been shouting for almost three decades death to america he leads those chants of tens of thousands in iran today but they've done more than show back did to bring that to americans in the marine barracks in beirut khobar tower in saudi arabia and in iraq given this evil giving this evil and fanatical man a platform at a great american university is an insult to the hundreds of americans whose blood he and his extremist allies in iran have on their hands he deserves no audience no respect no opportunity to explain away his hateful words and murderous actions he and the ruling clique in iran deserve the punishment and more this amendment senator carl and i are introducing would impose on them as the terrorists they are i urge my colleagues to support the amendment i thank the chairman i yield the floor mr president thank you mr president first let me compliment my colleague from connecticut who was largely responsible for the idea of this amendment and much of the text of it to his leadership over the years in trying to ensure that we take appropriate action against iran confronts america both with regard to its nuclear program development as well as more currently its activities against our forces in iraq has been truly inspirational and i appreciate that leadership as president from connecticut has well laid out the case for this sense of the senate resolution that the united states government should designate specifically the islamic revolutionary guard as a foreign terrorist organization and included on the list of specially designated global terrorists in addition the sense of the senate resolution urges our diplomatic and economic tools to pressure the iranian regime not only to abandon its nuclear program but also to stop the use of its surrogates against our forces in iraq there are only two questions raised about this resolution i am hoping and expecting that it will receive very strong bipartisan support tomorrow is something we're able to vote on it tomorrow the only two questions were first of all can this be read in any way as an authorization of military action against iran and i will assure my colleagues that is absolutely not our intention in fact quite the opposite this is intended to obviate the necessity for such military conduct nobody wants to have to engage in military action against iran directly but what we would like to do is get them to stop killing our troops and one way to do that is to put the economic pressure on the organization that's doing the killing and that's what this resolution would ask the administration to do and secondly there's the question of whether the islamic the islamic revolutionary guard is the appropriate entity to list on the specially designated list of global terrorists and the answer to that is clearly yes as all point out in a moment we have been controversial evidence that this is the group as senator lieberman that is causing the trouble some have said well we should engages in the economic activity which supplies the financial resources to the goods force so it would not be adequate obviously just to designate the could force which is an arm of the revolutionary guard as the terrorist entity  what evidence do we actually have that this is the entity of the iranian government doing all the dirty work there are many many public statements and i'll quote from some of them senator lieberman quoted some of them there's also other information as you might imagine and my colleague should be encouraged to consult with our intelligence agencies if they have any additional questions about the specific involvement of the islamic revolutionary guard but it is clear that this is the entity  in which we which we should be focusing senator lieberman quoted one of general petraeus statements in his testimony before the committee on foreign affairs and the canadian armed services on september tenth apparent that iran through the use of the along with his below instructors train approximately twenty to sixty iraqis at a time sending them back to iraq organized into these special groups they are being taught how to use explosively formed penetrators mortars rockets as well as intelligence sniper and kidnapping operations in addition to training that could force also supplies these special groups with weapons and funding of seven hundred fifty thousand to three million u s dollars a month now senator lieberman also referred to general odierno when i was in iraq military hardware and describe to us what it was and essentially it was all of the things examples of many of the things that they had found supplied by iran weaponry that was killing american troops on one he said here look at here now he said you probably can't read farsi but this says made in iran well i accept his statement of what the farsi says made in iran and he also showed us the earth penetrators before we went to iraq we were in kuwait at the base in which a lot of our equipment is come back out of iraq for repair or disposition and i say disposition because because some of it has been so devastated by the explosion of these weapons smuggled in from iran that there's nothing much left of them and what was so impressive or depressive to me was to see the biggest heaviest tank in the world the abrams tank blown apart by these things like it was a stick of dynamite in a tin can they force shape in the middle that he said is a shaped charge that explodes up into the tank or the humvee or whatever the military vehicle is and then explodes and devastate it in any event and they have no doubt whatsoever that this that this equipment that is killing american troops is coming from iran the department of defense report to congress entitled measuring stability and security in iraq that was just released on september eighteenth of this year says and i'm quoting most of the explosives and ammunition used by these groups are provided by the iranian islamic revolutionary guard quds force for the period of june through the end of august the explosively formed penetrator the women i just referred to events are projected to rise by thirty nine percent over the period of march through may end of quote there's very interesting story in time magazine a recent issue quoting a former cia explosive expert who still works in iraq as saying that these explosively formed projectiles officially connected with the government they have access to the equipment and material and technology to to make them it's a it's a complicating annealing process that's involved in the making of the weapon i describe incidentally the same individual is convinced that the ira ji is helping iraqi shia militias site and their mortars on the green zone helping them make sure that they actually land in the green zone he said and i'm quoting the way they're dropping them in grid's tells me all i need to know that incidentally was also discussed in an august two thousand and five time report about an iranian operative who headed a network of insurgents created again by the islamic revolutionary guard cor and that they began introducing the z f p's into the country at the beginning of that year one whom a stockpile shibani in early two thousand and seven u s military sources claim that captured if peace displayed all the harm hallmarks of the rainy and manufactured weaponry this is all i r g c this is the entity that would be cleared they'd be declared a terrorist group under resolution  a that's spelled t a k e y a h of the council on foreign relations recently said this and i'm speaking of the r g c they are heavily involved in everything from pharmaceuticals to telecommunications and pipelines even the new khamenei airport and a great deal of smuggling and i'm going on to quote him many of the front companies engaged in for curing nuclear technology are owned and run by the revolutionary guards they're developing along the lines of the chinese military which is involved in many business enterprises it's a huge business conglomeration and of quote this makes the point that senator lieberman made before that this revolutionary guard corps is deeply involved in economic activity they rely on on financing for a lot of their activity and it is this vulnerability that causes us to believe that if they are  state sponsor terrorist group we can through the use of the sanctions that are available to us inhibit and impede and ultimately stop their activity the revolutionary guard corps plays a key role in the military industries of  iran according to anthony cordesman who is a distinguished expert in this area he's currently with the center for strategic international studies i've been involved in it tempted acquisition of nuclear weapons and surface to surface missiles among other things interestingly also the unanimously passed u n security council resolution sanctioning iran have listed several ayer g c entities as being involved in iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activities and finally the u n s c r resolutions list high ranking i r g c personnel for their involvement in these programs including the deputy commander of the r g c the chief of the i or g c joint staff the commander ground forces the commander of the i r g c navy the commander of the bus resistance force the commander of the could force and the deputy interior minister for security affairs who is also an i r g c officer i note that these resolutions these quotations to simply make the point that there is absolutely no doubt that it is the i r g c that's involved in these activities against our american forces responsible for their deaths in iraq and it  it by being so listed we can employ our financial and immigration sanctions which could include then potentially blocking assets and even the prosecution of supporters who would provide funding to them it could also involve refusal of visas and deportations of members and would allow us to block the assets of the u s in the united states of any foreign company doing business with them in effect cutting them out of american markets and a lesser sanctions like just focusing on the of course would would not in any way solve the problem that's just as i said that's the hitman for the mafia here you've got to get to the mafia and we can't settle for symbolism here this is serious as i said finally and this will be my last point  resolution should not be read as an authorization for the use of force and i think we might even be changing a couple of words in it to make that crystal clear that was not our intention and to the extent anybody might try to use that as an excuse for not supporting you w you won't have that excuse we we took out a couple of the phrases that were pointed out as potentially offering that degree of support this is not such an authorization for use of military action this is designed to prevent that so if your concern is that we might ultimately be forced or at least some people might believe we would be forced to take action against iran and you want to avoid that result this kind of economic sanction which is within our power as americans we don't have to rely upon anybody else in the world to do it we have the ability to do this we know it could hurt them we know what goes directly to the entity that's causing harm to our forces and therefore we believe that it's an appropriate action for the administration to take and this would put the united states senate on record as urging the administration to take this action as soon as possible so that we could end the perfidies action of the i r g c i compliment my colleague from connecticut again for his leadership in the sponsorship of this resolution and hope that tomorrow will have a chance to vote on it at all of our colleagues will be supportive of it now i wish to compliment them for for their leadership on this important issue mr president i ask unanimous consent that the debate time for the energy and water resources conference report be preserved deserve action without objection or with the present a lot is being said about whether can burns included enough latino's in his new television series all world war two this is just one more desk in this chamber were reversed and became many from one instead of one for many ken burns epic series on the war began last night on public television it promises to stick in our collective memory is only a few television event and for example the roots here burns own civil war series and super bowls in fact our country is so splintered these days in so in trawled with our diversity that not very much becomes collective memory as did for example mcguffey's reader in the one nine hundred century or the three networks newscasts in the mid twentieth century this diminish and of our common core a believes and experiences is america's fundamental challenge because forging unity from our magnificent diversity is america's greatest achievement and has created our capacity for other achievement at the library of congress a few weeks ago reflecting on his six years of work on this television series ken burns said that americans were more united during world war two and its aftermath then in any other time it was no coincidence that during this era the so called greatest generation also accomplished the most welcoming new citizens babies to bomb bullies is that upon race building overwhelming military power and the best universities and producing nearly one third of the world's wealth for just five percent of the world's people according the late arthur sless injuries book the dis uniting of america can burns said that america today could use quote a little less pluribus and a little more soon unquote following world war two liberals likes lessons or albert shanker hubert humphrey were vigorous apostles of america's common purpose their fourth of july speeches were as if use of as anybody but today the left disdains and the right seems to have forgotten the importance of knows which means we are abandoning our greatest achievement we see this in our work in the senate there is no constituency for consensus only for division and many of those who work hardest for consensus are retiring or near the end of their careers here a good example is the debate on iraq a war that our like world war two divides us instead of  the president is conducting the war the way he wants to conduct the war not recognizing that persuading at least half the people he is right is the only way he can sustain a long term united states president i the democratic majority on the other hand is working hard for a perceived political advantage not recognizing that most voters would prefer that we work together when americans are fighting and die both sides deserve an incomplete on their report card a unified country would speak with one voice on where we go from here in iraq because our troops deserve to hear because the enemy needs to hear because one political party does not go to war our country does this and finally because the united states senate looks downright ridiculous lecturing baghdad about being in a political stalemate when we can't get out of the political stalemate ourselves we still have an opportunity to speak with one voice on a rack seventy eight of us in the house of representatives and the united states sen thirty five democrats and forty three republicans have co sponsored legislation making the bipartisan iraq study group recommendations the policy of our government it is a consensus most members i believe burns after they had seen some of his world war two series that they had watched his civil war series with their parents and had decided then to attend west point could only hope that burns new series could have as much impact and remind us of that time world war two and its aftermath when americans pull together and remind us that today we could use a little less plural and a little more as a president i ask unanimous consent to include in the record the names of the seventy eight co sponsors of the iraq study group recommendations as one five four five in the senate and h r two five seven four in the house in the senate there are nine democrats didn't california tell me what the order is at this point morning business is close on the previous order the senate will proceed to the consideration of the conference report to accompany h r fourteen ninety five which the court will report conference report to accompany chart one hundred ninety five the of conference on the disagreeing votes of the two houses on the member of the senate to the bill h r fourteen ninety five provide for the conservation development of water and related resources and for other purposes having met have agreed that the house received from its disagreement with a member of the conference report on h r four thousand nine hundred five the water resources avail an act of two thousand and seven and i think i could pick up on something center out sandra just said about how divided we are in this country over this iraq war that is very very clear and no one understands it more than our senator who is sitting in the chair and presiding today how we are divided this is a different story and so we take a little break out of our discussions about iraq and we'll continue to work for bipartisanship and bring in this war no amount of requirements but today at this time we take a little bit of a break from that and we turn towards something very important which is really building and rebuilding the water infrastructure of our nation and today is a day seven years in the making and i want to start off by thanking united united on a bill that will authorize the projects the policies of the civil works program of the army corps of engineers and i am still committees removes fota day on final passage of that bill and we will send it to the president and mr pearl mr president i hope that president bush will reconsider his veto threat of this bill i think colleagues will speak to how urgent this bill really is ma having a water resources bill for seven long years that is too long to wait and of colleagues are concerned about the size of this bill well truly if we had gone back the way we did it every two years it would be just about the size bill is and if senator inhofe will say when he gets here and as you know he and i i don't agree on many environmental matters but on public works matters we do agree this is really the first step in a long process  the authorizing step and then comes the appropriations and so every one of these projects that has gone through local governments all over this country remembered for every one of these projects there's a local match so these are projects that came from the bottom up that came from our people who are saying to us we need help with flood control we need help with economic development we need help with stretching we need help with wet was restoration we need help on a number of areas involving the movement of water and this country learned that when we watched after hurricanes rita and katrina if we didn't know it then  certainly know it now so i say that this president this bill is in line in terms of a price tag with what we would have had had we done this every two years is huge support for the spell the votes in the house and senate are enormous very very one sided and so i hope mr president if you're listening are people in your office or with a man who is know this is respectful request to join with us we don't have to fight over every single thing when it comes to the economy the quality of life of our people we should be united the house vote on this conference report with three hundred eighty one to forty mr president and we're hoping we will vote you know in that same fashion here in the united states  taking a ten minutes at this time in our reserves some more time later in the face of can i read you know ten minutes of my time to senator landrieu and i just want to say before she begins that she has been a mover this bill she has were her heart out to get this bill to the floor and as a result of her working of course along with her colleagues and ravenna was on the committee we came our committee came to louisiana mr president and we held a very unique hearing and we had many tallents i see center cards on the floor he was there we had a very good turnout and senator landrieu was eloquent there she's been eloquent on the floor particular committee who have worked so hard ranking them our member senator inhofe from oklahoma has also worked hard but i have to say to the chairwoman who took the chairmanship of this committee and said seven years is enough time to wait it's too long for the people of louisiana or california or florida or maryland good colleague from maryland senator cardin who serves on this committee and has been so forceful she said i'm coming to louisiana i want to see it for myself particularly after hurricanes katrina and rita devastated our coast and as the chairwoman knows we lost two hundred sixty seven square miles of land in south louisiana because of the storm in the devastation of the tides and the surges and the flooding that's more than whole district of columbia more than two and a half times the size of the one hundred square miles that represents the district of columbia this is a huge expanse of land that was lost and this senator said enough we've been waiting too long and so this bill it is then seven long years and today with this conference committee vote that's going to take place and in about two hours that weight will come to an end and the last step that congress can take to send this bill off will have been taken a conference report hopefully will be approved by a vast majority of senators on both sides of the aisle it would not have happened senator boxer without your leadership so i am indeed so grateful on behalf of the people that i represent in the ways and this is just a small map but i think it shows mr president and to my colleagues the vastness of the land that we're trying to protect and preserve this great wetlands which is the green area shown here this is the mississippi river that comes down of course through the mouth of the mississippi river this  is the sabine river that divides louisiana from texas and the pearl river which divides mississippi or serves as a boundary between mississippi and louisiana but for east texas all of louisiana and for west mississippi this is an extremely important bill for our coastal regions it is going to provide historic and first time funding for a comprehensive wetlands restoration a combination of levees wetlands restoration freshwater diversion projects that are going to not only protect the three and a half million people that live south of the hand when people say to me senator why do you live there i don't know exactly how to answer that question other than to say we've been there for three hundred years i don't know exactly why the first person and that was before the native americans and that was after the native american set of the land i'm just speaking about from when the endo put up a stake along the mississippi river and and i would say there are any number of reasons one is which it was absolutely imperative to settle on the mouth of the river for westward expansion for the nation and you couldn't have a nation without the mississippi river the louisiana purchase that represents nineteen states now are made up by the louisiana purchase i mean we can remember our history i can't go into all the reasons but they most certainly are there over three hundred years the three million people that live here i can't relocate them it would be cost prohibitive all we can do is protect them we can put in smart planning and smart zoning that's what we're doing and have been come up with a plan that the repairs is put up money themselves the state and the federal government and that's what we're doing i know i only have a few minutes left and i'll speak later but let me say that this is another way to look at the levee system that is crucial to protect the people that live in south louisiana unlike many states mr president we don't have beaches i've been to the beautiful beaches in california and i want them preserved and i've been to some of the most beautiful beaches in virginia and to in north carolina and throughout the country work but we're the only state that doesn't have beaches we only have two we have holly beaches seven miles long it was virtually destroyed  the storm and grand isle is seven miles long this coastline is thousands of miles long with only two little beaches but we do have wetlands and we don't have people living on these wetlands  sometimes there's a little camp here a a little community there but they're stuck on the high ridges and they've been living they are on ridges that can be protected and with the right kind of levees and right kind of comprehensive system like we have in the netherlands and we have in other places in the world this can be done it just takes commitment it takes dedication and it needs a steady stream of funding i just want to and can i ask how many minutes i have left  but this is the track of all hurricanes from one hundred fifty five to two thousand and five that is what the southeastern part of this country has to brace itself for every year year after year after year now according to all reports these storms are getting stronger and stronger and more numerous we've been very blessed senator boxer that we haven't had a critical storm this summer but the season is still open until november this yellow track is the track of katrina this yellow track is the track of rita which actually hit two years ago today hurricane rita two years ago today i was just down in cameron parish this weekend right here the corner of louisiana and east texas hurting still very badly as well as our areas here from from this storm is not recovered yet but my point is is that this bill not only has projects for inland waterways and navigation but it provides vital projects for all of south east the united states and for this  eastern seaboard to protect people and the great industries and manufacturing that are represented through all sorts of navigable waterways and port successor that service this whole nation i would say that without this bill this whole area becomes significantly more vulnerable and open to storms erosion and surges and i think this is a very dramatic chart that shows what we are up against i am going to come back later on the floor and show some other charts but but i want to say just in conclusion this is a historic bill for louisiana extremely important for the nation for the first time we have authorized more ganza to the gulf which protects houma louisiana a city that not a lot of people hear about but it's a very important city it's smaller than baton rouge smaller than new orleans smaller than laugh yet but it is crucial to the energy infrastructure of this nation we have many small towns in south louisiana that you won't hear a lot about but we store or oil and gas there we run pipelines through these towns people are down there working their hearts out to give us the energy security we need the least we could do is protect their schools their communities their way of life and their culture so i thank the senator for allowing me to speak i think my colleague senator vitter who's a member of this committee and he'll be speaking in just a moment he's been extremely helpful and energetic and forceful in his advocacy for many of these projects and we've worked together and i'm very pleased that he has put up so much time and effort in this but i thank the senator for allowing me to speak i see my colleague from florida who also has made a historic breakthrough on some projects particularly the everglades and i thank the chair of the aisle in strong strong support of this water resources development act conference report and perhaps it's appropriate that we will pass this historic legislation through the senate today september twenty fourth the two year anniversary of hurricane rita which devastated large parts of southeast texas and southwest louisiana of course less than a month ago august twenty ninth was a two year anniversary of hurricane rita also very appropriate they are finally moving on this crucial legislation so near to that anniversary in fact mr president i would go so far as to say that as we still battle to recover from those two devastating storms as we still climb out of that enormous setback in the louisiana as we still face important work to do related to that recovery and congress this conference report this war to build is the single most important thing we can pass to help the gulf coast  recovery particularly medium and long term that's how vital it is to improve hurricane flood protection and that's essential it is our very lifeblood survival recovery from the devastating impact of hurricanes katrina and rita and of course mr president like virtually everyone i'm very frustrated about how long it took us to get to this moment seven years when really a word of bill is expected to be passed every two years but at least at least i will also say we have done something with that delay in improving them bill to take account of the needs and the lessons learned coming out of those devastating storms i first came to the senate and after the election of two thousand and four january two thousand  the first committee i was assigned to was the environment and public works committee through which this word a bill of course passes that committee works on the bill even when i first came to the senate three years ago this bill was about two years overdue so it's been a long long time coming but we worked on it we have improved it it's gone through the committee process it's gone through the conference process i also served on the conference committee and we finally have a very good robust product that again has at least taken advantage of that time lapse to learn the lessons of hurricanes katrina and rita and to really include key provisions that louisiana and the gulf coast need for their recovery and indeed survival what crucial provisions are included in this bill well a one hundred year level of hurricane protection president bush in his famous jackson square speech in mid september two thousand and five made a clear and and historic commitment to that very high level of hurricane protection this bill embodies that commitment and passes it into law it takes several steps forward toward that one hundred level year year level of protection recently the court determined that level of protection is doesn't exist in the greater new orleans area where between two and sixteen feet vertically deficient in terms of our levees throughout the greater new orleans area this bill fully authorizes address and back shortfall second key component of the bill moving on into the future a greater level of hurricane protection even beyond the one hundred year level what we in south louisiana call a category five protection in prior legislation some of the supplemental appropriations bills that we passed on an emergency basis after the hurricanes we told the corps to get to work studying and designing that higher level of protection this bill further refines that mandates and directs the in no uncertain terms to offer a specific project recommendations for that fundamental a higher sounder level of protection a third crucial component is coastal restoration as my colleague from louisiana has spoken louisiana has lost enormous amounts of land just having it vanish into the gulf due to coastal land loss we've lost more land than exists in the entire state of delaware right now as we speak we lose a football field of land every thirty eight minutes and that's twenty four hours a day seven days a week fifty two weeks a year it goes on and on and on this bill begins to address in a very serious way that national emergency this bill authorizes an ambitious coastal restoration plan again the bill is long overdue but we have made use of that delay when i first came to the senate the word of bill then under consideration only devoted about four hundred million dollars to this national crisis of coastal land loss it only authorized one specific project we knew we have to do more we saw we have to do more because of the experiences of hurricanes katrina and rita and so now we authorized around four billion dollars of this crucial work with seventeen specific coastal restoration projects fully authorized core reform another crucial provision embodied in the bill although i think we do corps reform right particularly with regard to louisiana projects one of the most bitter lessons of hurricane katrina in particular was that the corps had made serious engineering and other mistakes in the past which led to the lev breaches and devastating flooding throughout the new orleans area we had to reform the process to make sure that never happened again we had to bring in outside engineering and other expertise to integrate with expertise within the corps to make sure those sorts of mistakes were never made again and so i drafted with the help of others core reform provisions that are in this bill some of them specific to louisiana projects we integrate for the first time ever we fully integrate hurricane coastal flood protection and navigation programs within louisiana and we mandate a specific integration team that will help that become reality so that one type of project isn't done in isolation we have stablished the louisiana water resources council to improve the efficiency and performance of projects that is a very important part of core reform and we expedite the process so that hopefully no longer will it take an average of thirteen years thirteen years for an average corps project to even get to the stage where the first shovel hits the ground and this bill contains so many other crucial provisions closing mr go fully major improvements to the bonnet carre diversion alternative major hurricane protection improvements to lower jefferson parish and lose power crucial work in the southwest part of the state where hurricane rita caused devastating damage including deeper access to the port of idea coupled with greater flood and hurricane protection in vermilion parish and improved graduation and navigation on the calculus you rever and on and on and on this bill is a lifeline for our continued survival in louisiana as we move forward mr president i want to thank all of the folks who worked so hard to produce this bill certainly including the leadership of my e p w committee the chair chairman boxer the ranking member member center in the hoff the the chair and ranking member of the subcommittee of jurisdiction centers  and all of their a very devoted staff and as we move on i urge all to join together to pass the bill and then to either avoid a presidential veto hopefully or if necessary work immediately in a bipartisan fashion to override that veto and ensure that this crucial legislature racial so the very survival of louisiana becomes a thanks to mr president and i want to thank the chair of the committee for yielding me time mr president and i rise today in support of the conference report for the water resources development at this legislation authorizing some port and study them projects to protect and maintain water resources throughout our work country mr president  especially pleased that the conference report includes twenty six point nine million dollars for scam alice maine more than one hundred years ago the army corps built  devastating erosion at campell was the extent of the erosion is truly shocking some thirty six houses have been washed to the sea in the last one hundred years the ninety ninety eight shoreline is four hundred feet from where the shoreline stood in nineteen zero way the houses that are now in danger were once six or more houses back from the sea mr president in april of this year a devastating patriots day storm hit me with heavy winds and a great deal of rain and inland and coastal flooding mr president let me just show my colleagues some of the evidence of the devastation that was caused by this a storm as you can see this is the road that follows along the waterfront it was utterly devastated and another picture that i'll show my colleagues this is what happened to some of the and thrown down by the storm yet another example of a house that has been absolutely ruined as a result of this storm now mr when the jetty was first constructed a hundred years ago we didn't have the knowledge that we do now and no one predicted the terrible impact credible force of the ocean during the storm earlier this year literally washed out the foundations of the homes the streets that once ran along the ocean from was largely destroyed leaving nothing between the remaining  the open ocean and many homeowners in the areas we're still dealing with flooded basements for weeks following the storm this was a vivid reminder of the terrible what impact that a powerful storm can have on those who live in this vulnerable community the sea has advanced such that another large storm could wash out the peninsula altogether and term campell us into an island that obviously would be devastating to the people who live there now mr president and we know now what must be done to prevent such a calamity study center taken at the direction of the army corps of engineers indicates that a offshore breakwater and a spur coming off the jetty are likely to be needed to protect campell us from further erosion and the jedi has served an important navigational purpose well over the one hundred plus years of its existence but now it's time for the federal government to make good on its obligation to help those people who have been harmed by the structure that the federal government built in the first place with the passage of the water and energy development resources sector we will finally have bought the rights the funds necessary to act upon the best available science and to foley and finally protect the rats and ends of camp ballots i erik's my colleagues to support the conference report and again i thank the committee for the response of to the concerns of the people of names thank you mr president mr that have been miniscule aided by mankind and distorted like has happened with the florida everglades and when i talk about commitment i want to talk about senator box because this lady in just a few months after waiting for seven years with all of their leadership flailing about and not making it happen this lady chair of the environment committee has made it happen and it's going to be passed we're going to do it today and we all hope that the president will not veto it but in the separation of powers under our constitution we have a way of an acting wall over a president's veto and that is better than a two thirds vote in both houses of congress to enacted into law despite the veto of the president we hope we don't have to do that but if we do we will and then we can set things right and we can get about the restoration now i want to tell the senate about this incredible area known as the everglades this is a compendium in satellite imagery over a four year period this is the southern tip of florida this is lake okeechobee palm beach fort lauderdale miami homestead the beginning of the florida keys this is a road that was constructed in the nineteenth twenty's to get from miami to naples called the tamiami trail this is a road that was constructed to get from fort lauderdale to naples interstate seventy five called alligator alley this of course was constructed much more recently some time about twenty five years ago and was constructed with a box culvert so that there would be proper water flows but you can imagine mr president that back in and i nine hundred twenty s they didn't think about that and in effect when they built the tamiami trail it in effect created a diet that as the water flowed sal out of lake okeechobee in the historical mother nature patterns and would flow in this he flow to the south in the florida berry and into the gulf of mexico it was suddenly stopped by this dye which was the road bit so part of this bill called modified why orders is to correct that having additional flows come underneath and then eventually to construct a long bridge or bridges here which will enhance the flow of the water now why enhance the flow of the water well that's what mother nature intended the water actually starts way north just south of orlando flows in this direction southerly and southwesterly until the hurricanes of the one nine hundred twenty s when over two thousand people were killed drowned and the whole idea was to come in and start diving in draining for flood control but in so doing they messed up what mother nature intended and so about the year two thousand when the comprehensive everglades restoration project was passed it was to take and now accommodate for several different things first of all that the water had been diverted so that had to be changed but the fact that now six million people were living here that wasn't the case in early florida and that a vast agricultural industry had developed  south end of the lake and to give the water needs to the everglades and the everglades national park to the six million people and to the agricultural interest that put together is the comprehensive everglades restoration plan and ever since that was enacted we have not had an authorization bill to authorize the projects  plan so i again give kudos to senator boxer for bringing this up and making it happen fast and so what we have then is a major project in this bill called the indian river lagoon this is the indian river up here i happen to grow up as a child on this river mr president at times that and say lucy rivers flowing into the indian river lagoon is like a dead river because of the excessive nutrients lowering the lake  flowing to tide water the same to the west down the caloosahatchee river down to fort myers excessive nutrients it creates a dead river i couldn't believe it a couple years ago i went out on that river right there the st lucie river i did first of all there was a bright green algae bloom well you know what that means that means that that algae is sucking up the oxygen from the river and therefore all the living things that depend on that river are not going to be there i didn't see the mullet jumping i didn't see the porpoises rolling i didn't see mr  spray diving into the water to get his dinner i didn't see mr eagle sitting over in the dead pine tree waiting for mr ah spray that catches then or for him it was a dead river now that is one of the reasons one of these major projects called the indian river lagoon and that is authorized then we've got to go appropriate the money and get it done all right there's another area in here called the it is a highly endangered area because of the encroachment of development and the necessary water flows it also is addressed as well as what i talked about this diet which is the road bed called the tamiami trail and so mr president what we have is a comprehensive plan and what marjorie stoneman douglas when she wrote of her great love this florida everglades turned it the river of grass and i'll conclude with this mr president senator boxer and her husband were kind enough to go down to the everglades with me a few weeks ago and it was this incredible sight and it was we  grass in an airboat and as the sun began to set and as the shadows lengthened and as we came out of the river of grass into the big cypress preserve with the stands of cypress trees with that little light of a lable right at dusk it looked like we were in this beautiful meadow of grass with the trees stance and suddenly reality struck when we saw a mother don't know and her to fall on us instead of bounding over the hills of the grass they were jumping over the grass out of water and back into the water in this incredible incredible place of location of color and flora the everglades does not just affect florida it doesn't just affect the western hemisphere major environmental sites that are ecologically threaten the climate of planet earth our home i am so grateful that we have this bill in that we're going to pass it with huge numbers today as president the floor legislation and hats off to senator jim jeffords jeffords and his staff are katherine ransome deserve a special thanks because for years they've been working on this legislation and i just want to personally thank for his efforts as well and i know if he were here with us today he'd be very happy to get this legislation passed we westerners have been playing recently with several years of drought ranchers and farmers across my state montana kids and working families a doctor's visits a better sense that they need when they're sick and get them the checkups they need to stay well in ten years the children's health insurance program has reduced the number of low income children living with health insurance by one third or ten years reduce that by one third and eighty two percent of americans want congress to cover more low income uninsured kids with this week congress is heeding the call this week  to do right by america's kids the president said look beyond politics presents a look to the faces of america's uninsured children we should see the time is ripe for him to do right as well i thank my colleagues  consent that whatever time senator emails back to back to me with the understanding he would be able to speak again if he so chooses his objection without objection to and i thank my colleagues very gracious for that how much time do i have years i've worked with senator mccain and many of our colleagues on essential reforms of the corps of engineers and have long anticipated the day that the congress annex meaningful reforms unfortunately today is not that day and this is not reform bill that the country needs after a decade of government and independent reports calling for reform in the corps and pointing out stunning flaws in core projects and project studies and after the tragic failures of new orleans levees during hurricane katrina the american people deserve meaningful reforms to ensure that the projects the corps builds are safe appropriate environmentally responsible and fiscally sound the urgency and necessity could not be clearer unfortunately the conference report includes weak reforms the senate twice voted in support of strong reform language when it passed word of bills earlier this year and last congress of the conference report we're about to vote on has been stripped of many important safeguards that would ensure accountability and prevent the corps from manipulating the process we've compromised enough over the years we could no longer afford a system that favors wasteful projects over the needs of the american people bill brought back from conferences particularly disappointing because a few months ago on may fifteenth senators reid boxer and i entered into a colloquy in which we agreed that the senate environment public works committee would ensure that the strong senate reforms would be the minimum reforms coming out of conference and enacted into law that agreement apparently has counted for little i'm particularly troubled by the changes made to the bill's independent review provision during negotiations between the house and the senate the senate version of the bill included a strong independent review provision which i successfully offered as an amendment to last year's bill and which was again included in this year's worth of subjecting the corps of engineer projects studies to review by an independent panel of experts will help ensure future corps projects do not waste taxpayer money or endanger public safety and environmental impacts are avoided or minimised unfortunately mr president the independent review provision included in the conference report was significantly weaken in several respects first it does not ensure independence of the review process of the conference report the supposedly independent review is not independent review processes run by the court rather than the outside agency is required by the senate bill the court chief of engineers is given significant authority to decide the timing of review of the projects to be reviewed and whether to implement a review panel's recommendation apparently even has the ability to control control the flow of information received by the review panel the court was not given the authority to determine the scope of the review but in these other respects it was given far too much authority all of which will compromise the independence of the review that is performed second it terminates the independent review provisions seven years after an act that it is reasonable for congress to continually evaluate how the program is working don't but to presume that there is not a long need for a long term review and set a sunset date is a responsible independent review should be permanently integrated into the corps tant planning process the burden should be on the corps to demonstrate why it does not need a congressionally mandate review process rather than one congress to wage another battle to extend the requirement in seven years third it allows the court to exempt project senate provisions establish mandatory review when clear triggers are met however the conference report gives the corps fairly broad discretion to decide what projects get reviewed it expands the house's loophole along the border exempt projects that exceed the mandatory forty five million dollars cost rigor of corporate exempt continuing authority program projects certain rehabilitation projects and most egregiously projects that it determines are not controversial or only require an environmental assessment rather than a full blown environmental impact statement is this very decision whether doing it is often in need of review projects economic justification engineering analysis and formulation of project alternatives are critical elements that should be looked at for all major projects not just those with significant environmental impact conference report also prevents review of most studies of the conference board exam projects from review does not give the core equal authority to include the bill includes restrictive language that prevents the core from reviewing studies that were initiated more than two years ago or that were initiated in the last two years but already have an array of alternatives unquote identified which occurs early in the process the senate language would have allowed to initiate a review for any project that it does not have that does not have a draft feasibility report the conference report also eliminates the requirement that a review is mandatory if request by a federal agency the senate bill would have made a project review mandatory requested by a federal agency with the authority to review corps projects instead the conference report gives the corps the authority to reject the request requires the federal agency to appeal the decision to the council on environmental quality the corps should be required to conduct a review made by the head of another agency of this charge the reviewing corps projects or at a minimum to justify to the council environmental quality why it was to deny such a request present the final problem i want to highlight is that the conference report does not make sure that the core is accountable conference report eliminate a key provision in the senate bill that ensured accountability specifically the provision w required a different project ends up in court the same way it is given to the panel in the corps opinion if the court cannot provide a good explanation for why did nor the panel's recommendations by dropping this accountability requirement the conference report allows the board to ignore the panel recommendations as the core is currently doing with its own internal review process mr president i would love to be able to join my colleagues in claiming this is that this is an historic moment and i am pleased that some of the other reforms i have fought for included in this bill we have come a long way in the last seven years as evidenced by the overwhelming bipartisan majority of my colleagues who supported the senate's reforms last year and again earlier this year but we haven't come far enough and that is truly regrettable why should the taxpayers of this country after continuing wonder if their dollars are being spent on projects that lacked merit hurt the environment or just aren't entirely reliable isn't congress finally willing to put an end to the long time practice of doling out projects to members regardless of those projects merits how many more flawed projects are wasted dollars will take before we say enough i am pleased that the concert for it contains some modest we can do much better than that in fact we did much better that when we passed the senate bill not long ago congress needs to get this right i think the stakes are too high unfortunately for the reasons i've explained the conference report fails to do enough to contain severely compromised language that doesn't fix the status quo under which congress uses the corps to fund pet projects that are not justified or adequately reviewed and also expressed my concerns with the cost of the bill which is balloon to twenty three billion dollars twenty three billion dollars from the approximately fourteen to fifteen billion cost of the house and senate versions nearly one billion dollars of the additional costs for one thousand projects were added during conference in the senate or the house as previously reviewed these projects my colleagues have previously stood in the senate floor and said the cost of the bill does not matter because word is merely an authorizing bill and not an appropriations bill we will sort out our priorities later they say i think the american taxpayers would join me in saying this is absolutely irresponsible and shirks our responsibilities as elected officials there is already a fifty eight billion dollars backlog of construction projects previously authorized and with only two billion dollars annually appropriated for project construction this means that the nation's most pressing needs facing nitpicking competition for funding and likely delays furthermore this bill authorizes a second significant number of projects and studies that are beyond the corps primary mission areas the core cannot be everything to everyone and congress does need to discipline itself and set priorities i will continue to work with my colleagues to institute a system for prioritizing core projects and other critical reforms we may have an opportunity to pass those reforms sooner than some had hoped the administration has indicated the president will veto this bill this flawed bloated bill rather than overriding a veto though i hope that congress will use that veto as an opportunity to rethink the fl mindset that resulted in this bill and previous word of bills we don't do or can statuettes favors by spending their tax dollars on projects that are not justified or fully reviewed we need reforms to make sure that those tax dollars are spent on the most priorities not just on members pork president i urge my colleagues to oppose the word of conference report and i reserve the balance of my time much pressure senator from missouri as president been a bill a word of bill you're in this administration so i'll call it word of two thousand and one allies state has nearly one thousand miles of missouri and mississippi river front edge in addition to our lakes  communities rely on the corps projects for affordable water transportation flood protection energy production environmental protection and recreational opportunities nobody knows better than the farmers of missouri in the mid west how important river transportation is to serve the world market this bill to my constituents means jobs trade competitiveness reliable and affordable energy drinking water and protection from floods which can ruin property and kill people this is not a minor importance to those out in the world in the midwest who work for a living i'm also delighted we're completing our long journey to permit modernization of the mississippi river locks these locks were built during the great depression for paddlewheel boats seventy five years ago they were designed to last fifty years well they're twenty five years past their design life time this is a long much needed overdue investment in infrastructure jobs to be paid trade competitiveness and environmental protection sixty percent of all grain exports move through the bottleneck of obsolete locks some us for the cost pollution and fuel efficiencies of river transportation throughout this long and arduous process to complete a two year bill in seven years we've been blessed with strong bipartisan support for moderniz and others from the midwest a played key roles in this becoming law and i express my gratitude outside of congress modernization of the old bottleneck locks as one the and untiring support of agriculture the waterways community industry labor and community leaders i'm concerned the administration may veto this bill because they say it's too big but if it were a normal two year big bill they would be big but this is a seven year bill thousand a five year period the awesome authorization levels total the almost the same as this in your bill almost twenty one billion dollars now if there is a veto i look forward overriding it on a bipartisan basis as soon as action can be scheduled mr president this is an authorization bill without appropriations it spends nothing as senator knows this bill simply adds projects to the list of items eligible for appropriations subject to the binding budget limitations faced under the appropriations process put another way this is a license to hunt you still have to hit the bird and you can't go over the limit so all it is is a license to ask for appropriations the backlog of unfunded items that is often referred to by opponents of this bill isn't funded because the many of the projects are not sufficiently high priority within tight budgets some may be very good but they do not make the cut given the limited budget there's it makes sense to say that bills passed many years ago have to be funded before we can look take a fresh look at priorities facing  waterway infrastructure and other waterways needs i don't think so priorities change and right now these items in this bill are the priorities that have been fairly vetted by the cor by all those who have input and by the by the environment public works committee in our body in the transportation infrastructure on the other side and i urge my colleagues to support it to oppose new authorizations is simply a way to pretend to save money without saving money by unwisely assuming that all currently authorized projects are of a higher priority than the newly authorized projects contained in this bill and many ways this will cost money and i'll talk about that in a minute but if there were to be a veto the unfortunate message for water states and agricultural states in the mid midwest is that water resources are not a high priority of this administration despite the expectation of many supporters in two thousand when supporters of waterways in missouri came out in record numbers carry th state or the current president now the previous administration was not supportive and this my administration is no better our concern started with the proposed construction budgets then they fired mike parker a strong proponent of water resources then they underfunded flood control and navigation on the waterways on the missouri river and now it would be capped off by vetoing word i truly hope that doesn't happen they would get a grade for consistency except that they say they support aggressive trade policies but they say nothing about the transportation capacity vital to move the goods they want this to trade is so they sa pollution fuel efficiencies economic and environmental benefits that are obvious to all now i was really interested to read in the november two thousand and five article in the washington times the president noted during a press conference with panamanian president tauriel torry holt it is in our nation's interest that this canal be modernized i was his quote i know the administration does not oppose modernizing the social security age locks on the mississippi river built during the depression era experimental paddlewheel boat but they also have not yet endorsed it yet there was this rousing endorsement for upgrading the waterways in panama my colleagues my constituents back home believe that our midwestern ex borders deserve as much consideration as chinese export is who transit the panama canal i remain hopeful that the administration will agree no two of us will write the bill the same way i'm pleased that so much work was done for so long by so many to find a compromise that could serve the diverse needs of a nation that needs water resources to function among a very long list this supported by the national corn growers association the carpenters operating engineers laborers american farm bureau federation american soybean association and scores of members of the waterway council from coast to coast communities communities to community large and small mr president vice our staffs have been working tirelessly on this not for days or for weeks but years it's been a long process gotten to know like family  there's almost some regret in knowing that our family will be broken up when this bill is signed into law but maybe we can get back on schedule and have a another two years word a bill in two years but the staff has been tremendous they set up they took on tough issues set up difficult criteria helped to sort through the competing objectives and they never quit while there were many who worked very hard on this over the years  guess so be it because the success of our economy and its people owes a great debt to investments that were made before by those before us i urge my colleagues to make the investments now that will be providing the benefits for future generations and vote in favor of an opportunity and value for our future now we were reminded tragically free few years ago in minnesota of the need to be vigilant about updating our infrastructure when you see what happened and many in minnesota saw bridge collapse there was a tragic loss of life ever some disruption of commerce but mr president if one of these locks midway between on the river between missouri and illinois the bottom of the chain if one of these locks fails completely and bailing wire and chewing gum can only hold back the river so long and they leak not like sieves but by continuous sheets to water if one of those locks were to blow out and fail the impact on our economy and our economy  impact we almost felt when katrina shut off the mouth of the mississippi river in louisiana fortunately they got that on done in a couple of days but even papers that don't normally think about water commerce and agriculture were saying what a danger this was a failure of one of these locks one of these half size outdated over age locks could tremendously cripple our economy put our rural economies into a significant downturn i urge our leadership in this body the move quickly for a speedy override vote show is sure to be told materialize but again my thanks congratulations and deep appreciation for the environment public works committee leadership and the diligent staff who has brought us to this point this to president it's time we've passed the two thousand and one word a bill it may be six years late but it's even more needed now than it was in two thousand and one thank the chair and i yield the floor the senator from california is present i have one unanimous consent request for a committee to meet during today's session of the senate it has the approval of majority minority leaders i ask you has sent this request your greed to end this request be framed in the record objection sorter mr president again i in a way i i'm glad i didn't have a chance to speak before because there's been so much interest in the spell that i've waited until we had a little quieter time on the on the senate floor although several are coming over i would just make a very basic point which is part of our work is making sure that in coordination with local governments and state governments and communities and the american people we do what we need to do so we can build our economy so that our economy has behind it the infrastructure that it needs and we all saw what happens when an infrastructure fails we saw that and in minnesota when the bridge collapsed mr president and i am proud that the committee environment public works held a very strong hearing at the behest of senator clover char and we are moving forward on a way to ensure that we can fund those kinds of improvements we saw what happens when water infrastructure fails when we looked at what happened in hurricane katrina and we saw that the levees we thought were built to protect against category five storm simply didn't stand up now there is no way that we can talk our way out of the problem that we face here in america mr president and the problem we face is we've got an aging infrastructure whether it's our roads or our bridges our highways or our water infrastructure these need attention and that's why today is such an and day and why i am so proud to stand here because even though not every member will support this bill i would say almost every member  will senator feingold was eloquent and he was very disappointed that we didn't do everything that he and senator mccain after suncor reform and i understand we're very close friends and colleagues but the fact is i see the little differently we went a very long way and i know he and i have our differences and what i'd like to do rather than take the time to have engaged in an argument is to place into the record the program highlights of core reform initiatives that are in this bill i'd ask unanimous consent that those be slaves in the record at this time but objects shorter mr president what everyone will be able to read in the record is the independent review that we now have in place in the bill that is truly independent done by the national academy of sciences safety is surance review mitigation planning principles and guidelines water based i'm sorry watershed based planning levee safety and other program improvements including expediting the process for the authorizing the unconstructive backlog of projects so rather than get into a big argument it's such to me such a positive day today i see the senator from virginia coming to say a few words this is a very important day we are struggling here in the senate to to work together  you know leave the war in iraq has torn us apart it is very hard but i'm vis matter of building an infrastructure and making sure that it works we are as one and i will tell you that this conference report has the support of my ranking members then and have the entire environment public works committee it's important to note that the conference report was signed by every  chambers let me say that expect the conference report was signed by every conferee republican democratic independent as they may be in both chambers the conference report has already received an overwhelming vote in the house three hundred eighty one in favor of forty opposed imagine what a wonderful message that is that we can work together mr president i also want to state for the record that this conference report fully complies with the rules of the senate as amended by i asked one the honest leadership and open gov i'm an act of two thousand and seven under the requirements of new rule forty four i certify that each congressionally directed spending item in the conference report and the name of each senator who submitted a request to the committee for that item has been identified through a chart that has been available on the committee web sites at least forty eight hours prior to the vote on this conference report so we have been faithful as we must been to the new forty four on our ethics where you can see  senator requested and a certification that in fact there is no conflict of interest no for cuny area interest on the part of the senator or any member of the immediate family so this is truly a bipartisan bill and i'm going to make a unanimous consent request if it if it's all right now that at the conclusion of my ten minutes that is senator senator cardin be recognized for up to ten minutes and that then senator warner be recognized as a lefty i believe i was on the floor here from before the senator from maryland well senator from maryland has been on the floor all day all over find well i'm not going to run this very much time with my ten minutes three minutes remaining all right so again we have complied with the new ethics rules and i want to say also in terms of the core reform matters that th ere is an environmental organization american rivers and they have written a very important letter that they are going to actually asked being clued in in the record they certainly believe that we should have gone further with core reform and that's clear but they do say the reform in this bill begins to put the corps on track towards becoming a more reliable and credible agency this is important and they do say the gains in the word of bill would not have been possible without tireless work from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle they names them names of centers and even though as i say they would have wanted a hundred percent of what senator feingold asked for they again say congress has taken a first step toward more responsible river management and i just feel pleased with this i i know that some times we see a glass you know half falling sometimes we see it half empty you know i think half full i'm proud that we made the amazing strides toward core form center fein shall we say very disappointed and i respect that i just don't see the way he sees it so when i come back to just some more of my time but i will keep at this point i will talk about how important bill is to the health and safety of our families our communities and our economy so at this time i would yield and i will go to the unanimous consent a the first time i've listened with great interest to our distinguished chairwoman and may i commend you on your leadership bob and that of our distinguished ranking colleague it's been six years i've been working to get here and i've been pleased to be a member of this committee a couple of decades almost now but it's a great achievement and i strongly support what you have been able to do and thank you for your inclusion of an amendment that i felt very important to send to weapon i my colleague from virginia and i announced on the thirtieth of july the basic text of that amendment and so i pleased today to add a few closing words the conference likely my last word as a united states senator includes a high priority of craney island eastward expansion project cardiology represents a significant opportunity for the commonwealth to be home to the development of state of the our cargo operations project will accommodate a major new terminal for the  authority a move create over fifty four thousand new jobs annually and wages of a bite one point seven billion now this port serves just not the commonwealth of virginia but it it's its  deep into america and many states to serve as home to the world's largest naval base that's the tidewater region and one of the business commercial ports on the east coast hampton roads is of just  critical port necessary for national defense and so this project will also directly and indirectly serve our national defense project will help position the hampton roads region to strengthen his position as a major east coast port or virginia serves as a gateway that's an interesting term it's a gateway in other words things flow in things flow out not just for the commonwealth of virginia but for almost every state in the union ships down through this port on some cajuns more than fifty five percent of the cargo that we move is i'm from outside of the commonwealth of virginia borders that is to say mr president this project it's just not important to the genyen but for other states and companies who rely on their goods moving through the port in a reliable cost effective safe manner but that reason i'm pleased that the cost share for this project will be equally divided repeat equally divided between the commonwealth of virginia and to its port authority and the federal government clearly a project with strong national benefits and is only fitting that in this case the federal government help shoulder part of the cost because of the national security interest and the fact that we serve so many other states so again i thank my distinguished chairman and ranking member of our committee and  good colleagues speak first of all because my friends on the other side are are looking for time i reveal them three minutes of my time to senator inhofe right off the bat three minutes if maryland thank you mr president resident i rise in support of the conference report on the water resources development act of two thousand and seven i want to start by thanking a starter boxer for her incredible leadership sunder in hall for bringing forward a process that allows us to reach this moment where after seven years we're going to be able to pass the water resources development act senator boxer and senator and a whole have developed a process where we could come forward with programs that are extremely important to our country in a fiscally responsible manner and can come together in a really nonpartisan  forward on this legislation let me start all by saying that in our country today we spend point three percent of our gross domestic product on infrastructure and buildings that's deplorable we saw the consequences of that failure to invest in our infrastructure and our roads and our bridges in our in our buildings and what happened  minnesota the collapse of a bridge in the environment of public works committee we we had a hearing on what we need to do as far as wastewater treatment facility plants and how there are literally hundreds of projects that go on fund that  damaging our health and damaging our environment well today we are prepared to move forward with what i think is an extremely important bill and once again i congratulate village chip on the environment of public works committee senator boxer for making this possible this bill is very important to our country it's very important to our future and i'm proud to be a member of the committee i'm proud to be a supporter of this legislation let me comment just for a few minutes as to what it means for the region of the country that i represent in this general area where we all are today we've heard a lot about how this is going to help the people of louisiana which i strongly support i think we all have a responsibility to deal with the problems from katrina we heard how it's going to help in regards to the everglades well this bill is the most important act in regards to the chesapeake bay which is a national treasure and helps give us a model as to how we can reclaim a body of water that is impacted by so many jurisdictions and states we not only provide for the restoration funds that are important for the chesapeake bay but we also provide for the very first time that the army corps will supplement the environmental protection agency's effort to repair and improve wastewater treatment facility plans that benefit the chesapeake bay specifically blue plains will benefit from this legislation well the users of in northern virginia maryland district of columbia all of us will benefit from the waste water treatment facility improvements a blue plains the new e p a permit for blue plains requires that the nitrogen load from the plant be reduced by more than four million pounds annually this will be the largest single nutrient reduction project in the bay watershed in a decade and all the experts say that should be our highest priority in regards to the chesapeake bay i'm also pleased that there's twenty million dollars in regards to waste or restoration included in this in this legislation which is very important for the chesapeake bay and very important for our environment so we're improving the chesapeake bay by this legislation but we're also dealing with the economic realities of our waterways the port of baltimore port of baltimore contributes to billion dollars to our state's economy employing eighteen thousand marylanders directly and tens of thousands more indirectly listen to my colleague from virginia talk about the port in virginia and as the port a bridge in the port of maryland is vital to our national security our national interests well this legislation extends the authorization for the fifty foot  baltimore harbor and channels very important to our economy very important to our region the legislation does more it continues the commitment of the army corps and and our communities to the popular our popular all in was once an inhabited island no longer the case but what we've done with popular island is that we've made it a plus plus we have a location for the dredge materials from the from the dredging in the chesapeake bay in our harbors but we've also created environmental advantage popular island has risen phoenix like from the waters of the chesapeake bay we've created five hundred seventy acres of plant habitat an additional five hundred seventy acres of wetland habitat are being created through the leadership in this congress that's good news for our environment and good news for our economy is a national model of how we should do the dredging and environmental improvements there's more in it for our region smith al remote inhabited island in the chesapeake bay a maryland virginia border it has lost three thousand three hundred acres of wetlands and it's in threatened to be totally lost to erosion this bill authorizes the construction of two miles of break water to protect over twenty one hankers of wetlands and underwater grass beds very important to our environment very important to the people who happen to live on and i'm pleased that we've included that in this legislation well this this bill helps from the eastern shore of maryland to chesapeake bay to the mountains of western maryland three watering of the sea in the canals cumberland will not only help as far as the historical restoration of that part of our state but also be important for flood control so this legislation is comprehensive helps all the regions of our country but helps our nation as a whole i'm proud to be a supporter of this legislation i'm proud to serve them a committee to help create it and i just urge my colleagues not only as a sport as legislation but i urge the president to please understand how important this bill is to our country it's a modest investment starts to reverse the pursuit is a process for too long where we've ignored our infrastructure in this country it's the right plan for america's future i urge my colleagues thank you mr president i rise to express my concerns and disappointment about the number of provisions that have been added to this bill the water resource development act the bill we refer to as word of that were not part of the bill that we passed in the senate are not part of the bill that was passed in the house these provisions are earmarks because they direct spending directly at the request of a member to a specific and to the in their home state or district unfortunately these earmarks were not passed by either body and in an open or transparent way instead they were added behind closed doors in the dark of night as we sometimes say here and as a result these earmarks cannot easily be debated amended or removed from the bill mr president i'm very disappointed that these provisions were added in secret that's not how we should do things here and it's a direct violation of a stated goal of the ethics bill that was recently passed in signed by the president just ten days ago my colleagues on the other side of the came down to the floor one by one and praised the new ethics bill because they said it would stop earmarks from being added in the dark of night i question the effectiveness of these provisions at that time because they had been watered down behind closed doors yet my colleagues on the other side said it was the most sweeping at the form in decades and said there would be no more secret earmarks added to our bills in conference mr president according to taxpayers for common sense this word our conference report contains numerous earmarks that were not part of either the house or the senate bill and unfortunately any time you talk about earmarks it seems very personal because it usually has a member's name to it so i'll start with south carolina because one of the earmarks added in conference was for south carolina and obviously i'd like to do everything i can to help my own state  but this was not the time or the way to do it there's a number of items or ten million or eleven million but unfortunately there's one item in here for one point eight billion dollars that earmark alone is more than ten percent of the total cost of the original bill and this was added in conference it was not debated or voted on now it's coming back and it's amendable all of these projects that were added have added to the cost of this bill and actually the cost has exploded according to the congressional budget office the projects contained in this bill totaled some fourteen billion when it left the senate but then it was taken to conference behind closed doors amounts were a new projects were added reforms were dropped and the bill  twenty three point two billion that's right mr president the price of this bill has increased sixty six percent since it left the floor of the senate i know my colleagues a senator from california and oklahoma have worked very hard on this bill and i believe there are some good things in it i was very pleased to work with the senator from california on some reforms that will help us day authorize projects that have not been funded in five years or more and are currently enacted as my colleagues know the long list of backlog projects make it very difficult for the corps of engineers to focus on real priorities i'm looking forward to working with the senator from california to get a good list of the enacted projects from the administration so the committee can authorize them from the next word a bill the senators told me she will be authorize these projects but if for some reason we're not able to get that done this bill provides an automatic mechanism to deal with the rise by the end of the fiscal year following the fiscal year in which the projects appear on the inactive list this reform is more important than ever because the bill that we're passing now or bringing back up now increases the backlog of projects from fifty eight billion to approximately eighty billion so while this bill takes one step forward unfortunately it takes two steps back the price tag of this bill is too high and it violates an important principle that we need to honor it includes new provisions that were not in the bills that we passed and that's got stop that's why i offered an amendment along with senator ensign and mccain to the ethics bill earlier this year that would clarify that earmarks added in conference were subject to rule twenty eight of the standing rules  senate which prohibits what we call out of scope matter from being added to our bills in conference in which can only be weighed by sixty seven votes for the amendment we offered would have created a sixty vote for an avoider against earmarks added in conference at this point of order was sustaining the provisions would be taken out of the bill even though the liberal los angeles times editorial board this weekend made their support for such a rule be known in a weekend editorial entitled the value of congressional pork the l a times said such a rich rule was a worthy proposal that would make it harder for lawmakers to insert last minute goodies during reconciliation of senate and house bills this is just playing good government unfortunately the clarification to rule twenty eight was eliminated from the final bill even though it was unanimously accepted here on the floor in january even worse the majority leader is now saying the sixty vote for an avoider against what we call airdrop earmarks should only a y to appropriation bills this is very disappointing there's absolutely no reason why we should restrict authorization earmarks they can be just as wasteful just as misguided and i'm afraid just corrupting as appropriation earmarks authorization earmarks can be traded for bribes just as easily as appropriation earmarks after checking with the senate parliamentarian i understand there's some confusion over the definition of earmarks for this particular rule the rule says it applies to provisions that provide a level of funding to a specific project of what could be clearer mr president all of the projects that i read earlier fit that definition regardless of whether they are appropriation or authorisations and if people want to parse these terms and say authorizations are not actual funding then i'm afraid we're not being completely honest mr president we all know how the corps of engineer works we pass this word a bill that tells the corps what projects to do and then their annual appropriation bills provide money to complete these projects but without a the projects will not go forward authorizations are important and we should be just as open and just as transparent about them as we are for appropriations mr president i intended to raise a point of order today against these new provisions under rule forty four which was part of the ethics bill and i understand the unanimous consent agreement that we are operating under for hits me from doing so in a minute i'm going to ask for consent to be allowed to make this point of order against the provision and if if i am allowed to do that in the chair rules that the floor of orders acceptable under the rule then a course i would urge my colleagues to sustain this point of order so that we can take these provisions out but before i do this i was present i'd like to ask how much time i have or my meaning about twenty minutes the senator has a lover and a half minutes for me i'd like to reserve the balance of my time but yield five minutes to my colleague senator mccask senator from missouri is recognized shape the senator fielding the sometime you know this is a unique bill in many ways in congress it's unique because there's a different set of rules when it comes to water projects bill and the water resources development in this country to the army corps of engineers i believe as a former auditor that we should be allowing the army corps of engineers to direct funding based on a cost benefit analysis a cost benefit analysis would allow the prioriti of projects based on the best value for our dollar the law here requires unlike any other place in our government it was explained to me when i got here that the law requires that congress direct th deal with that this is the only place this year that my name is listed on a specific funding request for missouri and i'm not comfortable with that i understand it's a reality that this law requires that if congress is not directing this funding there is no funding i believe very much we should reform the way we fund the army corps of engineers projects i believe it should be driven it should be driven by a cost benefit analysis it's hard to understand why in this area unlike any other areas not only are we in a position to decide level of funding we're going to decide every single project now since this is so unique it is even more important that we have complete transparency even though i was uncomfortable with requesting specific funding i understood the unique nature of this particular bill but i was comforted by the fact that i believed all of the projects were going to have a public airing that they were going to be included in either the house bill or the senate bill and there was not going to be any projects that were put into the authorization bill through the conference process unfortunately that happened and that will bring me to the point of having to vote no on this bill because i believe very strongly in the principle that whatever we include must be included in either the deliberations of the house or the senate this isn't about the projects and the merit of the projects i'm sure they're all very meritorious in fact painfully for me one of them is in missouri this isn't about the project this is about the process this isn't about democrats and this isn't about republicans this is about a bad habit this is about getting into the habit of directing authorization  spending in a conference report instead of under the bright lights of a senate floor the house floor or committee work we need to stop putting projects in conference first reports there were a bill now some people are going to say well doesn't matter we have this backlog of all these projects well if it didn't matter why do we need to do it and if it does matter it ought to be important enough to be in one bill or the other i believe that we need to reform not only the way we fund the army corps of engineers to give more deference to their discretion based on cost benefit analysis and i believe we need to stop the bad habit of ever putting projects in a conference report without the full affirmation and public  confirm what she has said that i take no issue with the authority of the senate to designate spending particularly on a authorization bills while this practice has certainly been abused particularly in our appropriation bills over the years my point today is not to suggest that our committee and the floor of the senate do not have the right to authorize money for  particular projects but i believe as senator mccaskill has said and make clear that in the debate here on the senate floor it seemed that we unanimously agreed that these projects should be bought brought to the floor of the senate if if someone wanted to question them we could have those amendments and we could all simply vote on the whole package but it seemed clear that we all agreed that new earmarks should not be added in conference and then for that conference bill to come back without any chance of amending it that's not the type of business that we talked about in the whole ethics debate so my issue is not with our ability to earmark or  even the practice of authorization bills designating spending but just that they are added in conference when we all agreed that if it was not added in either the senate or the house bill that it could not be added in conference for that reason i would like to ask unanimous consent that i be allowed to raise a point of order under rule forty four mr president i would reserve reserving the right to object let me say that for seven years we've waited for flood control and we saw katrina for seven years we've waited for environmental restoration for seven years we waited for navigation improvements for seven years we've waited and the bottom line is every single project in this bill has a letter attached to it saying who asked for it whether it was  and i would just like to suggest that one of the reasons that the war lens was not prepared for katrina and that we have so many problems with our infrastructure is the way that we politically meddle with the priorities of states particularly with the corps of engineers that would have has a backlog of billions of projects over many of years and we've refused to clear out those backlogs so that the corps can focus on those things that need to be done like the levees in new orleans instead year after year we add one earmark after another where the corps has no focus at all and what they're doing and we're trying to direct from washington what our water projects should be in the fact that we have plus this bill up from fourteen billion to over twenty three billion sixty six percent increases left the senate floor that we have to have some shame we have to have some honor in this body that if we're going to do this let's do it in a way that we all said we would and that's to bring these to the floor that we could debate and vote on them instead of adding them and trying to slip them by in a conference bill mr president i'm very disappointed in this body particularly after all of the grand debate about ethics reform the disclosure of earmarks the fact that none would be added in secret over the last few weeks we've pretty much backtracked on everything that we've talked about to the point where even liberal public publications across the country are talking about the pork that we're producing here in the senate instead of doing the nation's business delegating authority to the states we are in effect weakening our ability to have a national infrastructure that say in works for all americans and i'm very disappointed that not only this is been done but that a member of the senate is not even allowed to raise a point of order against the fact that it has been if he does not take that twenty minutes center and a half and i will share that time but at this point will withhold on that i'm i'm sorry that my colleagues entertainment has left the floor which is oftentimes happens but i really have to say that  when he when i said we really can't wait we need to do this country now related fixes his answer was well the reason we had a problem with katrina in the first place is the co did didn't do a good job that's what he said and i think that everyone will agree certainly the corps did not live up to any of our expectations but what he doesn't mention center demand is that in this bill that's before us mr president because of the hard work saturn to find gold and others we have put in this bill now an independent review process where there will be no no projects going forward unless and until there is an independent report that the national academy of sciences will in fact oversee so we have gotten light years from where we were before and that's why we have so much strong support for our bill the au society supports our bill the clean water fund the conservancy of southwest florida the everglades foundation the clean water council the american shore and beach preservation society the national water resources association and on and on and on the fact of the matter is mr president if we had a lab at the mint request to go forward we'd be back to square one back to square one and we cannot afford it it has been seven mong years and again the health of our community is at stake the safety of our families at stake i can just talk about sacramento finally we have the language in here to move forward the authorization to move forward with the crapper flood control for the community of sacramento mr president three hundred thousand people live there it is the home of our state is the capital of our state and we finally reached agreement and these aren't agreements that come from the top down these agreements come from local government up and i think it's important as colleagues come to the floor to in a way that mean this process to understand if they mean the process they're really demeaning their own communities you know in oklahoma or in california or in georgia and i do see center isaacson here and i spank him so much he and their pockets work in valuable center and happened to me in doing all this the fact is these projects and these ideas and these means spring up from local government and america fact homeowners associations who find themselves faced with dangerous circumstances because a river is rising and there haven't been improvements that are made that are an ass and i share commitment assuring us our infrastructure including our water resources and  i think when we look at all the things that come before us when we're so torn in half here democrat versus republican here we have an opportunity to move forward in a bipartisan fashion  center in half a day in his way because he has been hammering of this this is one step of a very important process and we've actually added these independent reviews center so that we really have checks and balances all the way through the so i will retain senator from georgia thank distinguished ranking member and i thank chairman boxer and subcommittee chairman baucus for the outstanding work they've done in the world of bill i come to the floor to urge my colleagues to support the conference report and to point out the critical need of infrastructure we have in this country historically every two years we passed the word of bill but now we've gone seven years without that what's happened in the last seven years well we've had significant droughts we've had katrina we've had great tragedies and it's about time we came back to the floor of the senate we passed a comprehensive bill now i know there's been some criticism of the amount of the bill last saw where there was a c b score c b o's or about twenty three billion dollars man my colleagues this is an authorization number one number two it's seven years in the making not two and number three we have had significant tragedies and have significant threats in our own states that need to be addressed and need to be prioritized i'll just take mt state as an example i a state with a major metropolitan area the city of atlanta that city has five million people whose source of drinking water is lake lanier and the chattahoochee river we don't have aquifers in the north to draw from only the surface water that we retain to the leadership of a visionary governor a few years ago we passed the not north metro water planning district a family take the consolidated area of all of north georgia and put it into a singular planning district for water purposes for management of storm water to see to it if we couldn't do what we could to maximize the return we get on the significant investment we make in the most precious thing we have and then as our water this legislation has money for conveyance systems in that they have come together where regional water authorities or local ward authorities have joined together with a regional plan to cooperate and build a solid water infrastructure secondly the big water management project is in here a project that i started with nine years ago the city eros will develop to manage dome water manage its runoff control our water better in a major urban area now been cited by as one of the most outstanding projects of its type in the united states of america and equally in here a very visionary agreement between two governors the governor of georgia and the governor of south carolina who came together and signed a tribe by state  water compact for the construction proposed construction of a port to be operated jointly by the state of georgia and the state of south carolina in jasper county south carolina on the savannah river the port of charleston in the borders of an art to the major ports on these goes the united states with this planned agreement and the funding that pays for the study put up by those states and the study that's authorized in this legislation these two states will tell us that a historic precedent to reach out together and for partnerships so to make the maximum use of the port capability in facilities of both our states on the atlantic coast a lot of work has gone under this legislation the ranking member inhofe has worked on it tirelessly chairman boxer but i want to mention the name of a few giancarlo all who spent countless hours to make this legislation come to pass mr president thank the ranking member for the time i commit my vote to the passage of this conference committee and ask my colleagues to join me and show a significant vote for the water resources is not easy we have a lot of hearings we have a lot of expertise we have people looking studying to see what is deserving to be authorized and i can tell you this senator from georgia is i don't know of one member of that committee  worked any harder maybe even as hard as this senator from georgia so i do think him for coming down today and making the statements that me mentioned a couple of things i know that my good friend from south carolina senator demit would not intentionally misrepresent  anything but when he says that once it's authorized it's just like spending edges isn't true and i know he hasn't thought that through or he wouldn't be making that statement we have a backlog it's already been talked about several times here a backlog of some thirty two billion dollars of core projects that have been authorized that haven't been done that speaks for itself it's there out there you know how can you say that  by the way it's worthwhile saying simply people might say why are you authorizing more they haven't done those maybe some of those are no longer necessary time goes by things change i would give a couple examples though in my state of oklahoma we have a as a flood control tunnel up there that is has been authorized at one point two billion dollars that is back in one nine hundred ninety that was last year the year before and so far no money has as has come in there now mr president i was disappointed in the way that time is handled here let me just make a few comments and then perhaps see if anyone else comes down who really needs to be heard but let me for right now first read the myself you know we have a lot of people here talking about and i know there are a lot of people watching right now we're going to find out who the conservatives really are let me tell you there are a lot of born again conservatives that i've heard on the floor so far who are not conservative who are making it look that way by opposing it authorization bill and i say this redeem myself in that every organization i have human events i have i have the last three years of the american conservative union i'm not number two mr president i'm not number three i'm number one if you know that number one most conservative member of the united states senate and yet i'm here to tell you something that is very unpopular because no one's going to understand it after i get through explaining it to you and that is and i plan to come back i'm going to go ahead and get right into it i'm going i tell you what authorization really is mr president and i hope that our members some of them are listening fear that they're not i think minds are already made up the bill is going to pass by the way to have passed by an overwhelming majority of the votes there's no question about that so in a way we're wasting a lot of time right now but i think it's important at least somebody says something that has to be said and that is what is authorization all about him the background of authorization is gone all the way back to two eighteen sixteen and eighteen sixteen is going are permanent committees were were put together we didn't have committees prior to that and so the responsibilities of authorizing appropriating were put in these eleven committees in accordance with their jurisdiction now and by eight hundred sixty seven fifty one years later the senate created is committee the idea there mr president was to separate authorizing the language with appropriate appropriations they were going to actually spend the money but somebody else is going to do the the authorization in eight hundred ninety nine we went down to the so that the i'll terrorizing committees we're we're we're at that time we had seen that they had kind of moved together and so the appropriations committee was actually the senate changed the rules and they stab not only that the senators were going to be appropriating and not authorizing on appropriations now that's when the current rules sixteen came into effect it had been there but have been there for a different purpose rule sixteen says that if the appropriators appropriate something that is not authorized that is going to take a cooper i'm going to be a sixty point vote point of order now that's huge that was very clear in one thousand nine hundred two they said we want to make it impossible virtually impossible for the appropriators without going through any authorisation to just unilaterally say well we ought to have all these projects we don't care of their worthwhile or not and that's what happened and  then slowly since that time it has been going back to two appropriators are getting more and more power and they've been diminishing the power of the authorize you know let me give an example put up the military chart committee now let me tell you why authorizing in the process of authorizing is is important i'm going to take i could use almost any example that i wanted to but i'll use missile defense i think right now there are very few people around since nine eleven who don't know that there are monsters out there that within a missile into the united states we now have a missile defense system that we're still developing there's three different phases mr president you have to boost phase midcourse they say in the terminal phase in the boost phase quite frankly we're naked we don't have anything that we're not down in this or in it's boost phase but we're working on tuesday estens one system is called the kinetic energy booster in the other is an airborne laser system the airborne laser system ultimately is going to be a great thing for it it's not there yet mid course we've all heard about the aegis system aegis this and i believe there are sixteen pages ships right now they have a capability of knocking down a missile during its mid course phase and then we also have a ground base now we know that this is that we need this redundancy because there are places in the world where we don't know where these are going to be fired i think we all know that the president has been trying to get a location in the in eastern europe and up around the old soviet union it has been very difficult to do that so what we ultimately have to have is a way of knocking these missiles down from any place in a mid course well we have two systems so one might look at that and say or it's been appropriate or say i know we're  some money we don't need to mid course systems one will be enough but that's not right because the expertise that is in these committees the authorizing committee says we're going to have to have that coverage lastly the terminal phase we all know about the fad system we know about the pac three the patriot capability three advanced system and those are both say they're redundant but they're not now here's the point i'm trying to make the reason that we know in the senate armed services committee  that this is that it's important that we have to have these is because we are staffed with a whole lot of really smart people there are specialists in this area area of national defense i coulda used the f twenty two versus the f thirty five any other systems that we have there but the point here is the armed services committee is and a authorizing committee that is staffed with experts so is the environment public works committee they go through and they have people that are experts in certain areas and we go through and authorize things for the future if you take away the senate armed services committee and you're no longer able to do that is no longer able to  o to authorize then you're going to have appropriators sitting down they're just sitting around waiting for something to come up that they want and going ahead maybe with maybe some contractor they know has a system and they'll go ahead and use that system but they wouldn't have the expertise now i'm not bashing appropriators appropriators that's a very important part of the of the process but they have to have a a a some kind of a discipline in their spending there is no discipline let me mention something else that would be very unpopular and i said this on the floor back during the transportation reauthorization bill which at that time the republicans were the majority so i chaired the committee that senator boxer now chairs at that time a lot of people were trying someplace where they couldn't get there except by by barge traffic and they could never develop that area one of the few things that works well in government in my estimation is the way we do the transportation reauthorization because what we do everyone pays at the pump and they come down in and the money comes into the highway trust fund that we establish criteria and senator boxer will remember that we had some thirty criteria that we use in the transportation one of those criteria were what do the people at home want in the case of that bridge to nowhere the the one hundred projects that the state of alaska had down that they wanted to do with their tax dollars was that particular bridge it was number five from the tut and so we in our infinite wisdom in washington saying we're smarter than those dumb people out in the states we said well even though this is what you want to have you can't have it because we have this infinite wisdom in washington i use these examples only because the authorization system does work thank you several people have already said in the case of this we're supposed to be doing this water resource development reauthorization every two years if we had done  two years we would be faced with what we're faced with today we would be looking at twenty one billion dollars averages out about three billion dollars of my math serves me correctly and so we tried to had one in two thousand and two we were able to do it we tried it in two thousand and four we were able to do it we tried it in two thousand and six that didn't work either in fact we did our job we just ran out of time as i recall now it's two thousand and seven now if we don't do it this time it's going to be another year and it's go mean that the that the appropriators are going to go ahead and do these things without going through the right authorizing process i have to say and i say this in all sincerity to my good conservative friends this is not money that we're spending it's authorizing projects as to what meet certain criteria i would say if you look at some of the problems that we're having right now the hurricane katrina that was not foreseen that was a wake up call it can happen infrastructure needs the collapse of the bridge in minneapolis that was a bridge that was was on an interstate in oklahoma and i forty we have another bridge that was built with the same technology at the same time and right now chunks of concrete are dropping off that bridge and falling down below we have in my state of oklahoma the worst bridge situation is in i'm not proud of this but it's true we have the most deteriorating most moratoria and bridges than any other state has now these are things that we need to be doing yeah i am ranked as the number one most conservative but i've always been a big spender in two areas one defending america we need to defend america no one else is going to do that for us and number two infrastructure and that's what we're talking about today we went through this long involved thing on the transportation reauthorization now we're getting to and yet you know mr president i'm embarrassed to tell you is as sizable is that transportation reauthorization bill was it if we were able to spend all the money that was authorized that would do it wouldn't even maintain the current system that we have today now with that i'm going to reserve but let me mention one other thing where we're my conservative friends back in the year two thousand when we passed this huge open ended bill called the everglades restoration act it went there and it didn't have any corps of engineers report did not have a cheese report it was open ending ended in the vote was ninety nine to one and guess who the one was it was me now were my conservative friends at that time that was a huge thing now we look in retrospect and we find out i was right and the other ninety nine were wrong they might argue with me but i think it was the  nonetheless in the current though that we have there are now some reports down the everglades so we're doing at the right way with this bill and so i would only say that in reserve the balance of my time in case somebody else comes down and wants to but i would just have to say this in case i run out of time i do have i have a report here or a letter from the head of the the this is a secretary of the army for civil works secretary wo proof margin so if the president vetoes it he knows it's going to get be overwritten and i have to question why he would be doing something like that again we are reauthorizing we're not appropriating one nickel with this bill i retain the balance of my time very appropriate and strong arguments for this bill there are some reasons to vote against the bill i guess but i wouldn't say that one of them is because you're a conservative because the senator from oklahoma is absolutely correct this is a conservative approach to infrastructure this is the right approach this is about investments whether you're representing the state of california which tends to be sometimes more liberal on issues or representing a state like oklahoma which tends to be more conservative this is the right vote now you could vote against this bill because you don't think it has enough core reforms i think senator feingold's position although i disagree with it is a legitimate position he does believe the corps should have more forms and actually i kind of agree with a lot of what he says but we just couldn't get a majority of senators to go along with his proposal we had to drop it or sacrifice the whole bill i just didn't think it was worth sacrificing the whole bill we have some reforms and i am committed and others are committed to continuing to work to reform the court to streamline the court to force them to stop wasting so much money and time and i'm committed to do that in the future but right now we've got wetlands to save and levees to build an hour to say the senator from oklahoma is exactly correct this is a chart that shows the civil works as a percentage of the gross domestic product since one thousand nine hundred twenty nine mr president there is a crisis in america we are down be low half a percentage point relative to the gross domestic product we have not spent we're spending less today than we did in one thousand and twenty nine i know nobody believes this but this is not the chart that came from mary landrieu is office this is the chart that comes from the corps of engineers itself you can see that in the run up to the in the wars world war one and world war two how this bolted up because we had to make some of these investments but look at the precipitous slide mr president now us say this because  senator is corrupt the national chamber of commerce not a bastion of liberalism is supporting this bill the manufacturers of america not a bastion of liberalism sent out a letter supporting this bill why because business can't operate without poor and navigation and flood control agriculture cannot operate if every year their fields get flooded i don't know how to explain this any more this is not a pork barrel runaway spending this is critical investments and it's been seven years since this bill has passed senator boxer didn't run up a big tab she's worked our heart out with senator inhofe to get a bill passed in seven months that should have passed seven years ago and for the argument from the good senator from south carolina i know somebody has to come to the floor and read talking points from some organization about this bill but i want to say something about south carolina and louisiana and florida and texas these are the hurricanes that have hit since  i don't know how many more katrina's i don't know how many more readers i don't know how many more hugo's we need but these are the tracks of the storms we have three hundred million people that live in the united states i'm just going t awhile gas that fifty percent of them live in the northeast and the south because i know the west is very lightly populated the interior so i would imagine that the gravity of the population is where we're looking here how many more storms have to hit before we pass a water bill how many more homes have to be flooded we lost two hundred seventy five thousand in louisiana mississippi last year two years ago today rita landed in to south louisiana and east texas not focus so much on my state because of course i represent louisiana but i picked up the houston chronicle this morning front page big headline people in south texas still waiting for help from the federal government for homes destroyed two years ago now this bill isn't going to solve every problem it's not going to build every levee but i tell you we better get about raisin this chart up a little bit here or i don't know what our manufacturers and our businesses are going to do because you can buy everything you want on the internet but every now and then you have to ship it you can purchase it with a you know a mouse click but that product has to get on a ship it's got to get on a truck it's got to get on a barge it's got to go somewhere and if we don't start building levees and protecting our people from these storms and lord help us for another terrorist attack i just don't know what we're going to do so there is some urgency about this and i would only say in my final minutes i hope that the president will not veto this bill i hope he will reconsider his position and look at the vote overwhelming vote in the house i think we're going to have an overwhelming vote in the senate and say you know i thought about vetoing this bill but i decided not to because the arguments have been good and i asked the thirty more seconds without objection so i hope the president will reconsider this number the lowest investment since one thousand twenty nine i hope you'll look at the hurricane maps and then i hope you'll look at the land loss and louisiana now i'd like to just end with this we have lost more than twice the amount of land in the dust the last storm red dots represent significant land loss if an enemy came and took this land away from us we would declare world war three but it's not an enemy it's ourselves so let's pass the word of bill i thank the chairman of the ranking member for their his time and i get in just ten minutes to my time without objection all right mr president we're madam president let me say to my good friend from louisiana i do agree with you i hope the president doesn't do this and if he doesn't mean he does or does it doesn't make any difference outcomes going to be the same that we're going to have this bill but let me give him the assurance that the place to start using your veto is when you start spending money in places where we shouldn't spend money and not on this on authorization in fact i want to make sure everybody understands even though i've made a number of statements here that just because i support the author of this authorization bill doesn't mean i'm going to support everything on it there will be some things when it comes appropriation time that i'll be down to the floor leading the opposition in asking the president to veto some of these things but you have to have discipline in some ways it has to be some kind of a guide and some kind of criteria that you'd only just use for a minute talk grow quickly about my state of oklahoma now these are things that are in here for my state but things that should be in here these are things that government should be doing lake arcadia is a good example that the people of the city of and then oklahoma which i think is the fastest growing city in oklahoma because of a set of circumstances they were being built it had been built for years now for water  even using all that's correct in here and in the event that this bill should not pass those people of the city of edmond oklahoma are going to have to come up with money to pay for something they never got lake the same situation is down the red river chloride control project in this bill clarifies the operation and maintenance of the clinic or a control project at the red river in would be this is critically important to our farmers in southern and nothing has been done and we spent millions and millions of dollars in till four and a half years ago and i became chairman of this committee and with the help from the democrats senator boxer included were able to actually get in there and do simply what we have some of the  e the projects that are necessary to ultimately take care of that devastating thing in northern oklahoma now we have i spent several years three terms as being mayor of a major city in oklahoma called tulsa oklahoma tulsa oklahoma we one of the biggest problems we have and i dare say that if you were to talk to any mayor in america they'll say well the biggest problem in my city is not prostitution is not crime is streets it's an unfunded mandate so we had the federal government coming along saying what to do about mandating certain things to be done and some of my poor communities in oklahoma are just not able to do it and i would just give you a couple examples in all of these these towns and cities in oklahoma i have been there i've seen different things that the federal government has come in and told them to do and not funded and there are projects in aid oklahoma in norman wilbert and weatherford bethany woodward langley durand midwest city that's a project midwest city that it's a water infrastructure type of project ardmore guymon oklahoma out in the panhandle i was out there just during the last  and they were having a real serious problem with with wastewater treatment out there this would resolve that problem altus oklahoma chickasha oklahoma good well houma bartlesville mustang alva and when you stop and you think about all these things these are things that it should not be their responsibility they don't have the capability of doing it and they're all things that came from the federal government here i am number one most conservatives saying government does have a function the base your function i've always said is defending america and is is is in infrastructure let me mention a couple of things if i could madam president i have a letter here from the department the army the assistant secretary of civil works that's the the corps of engineers they talk about it said the corps already backlog of ongoing projects future appropriations some thirty eight billion dollars well i use that my argument as to why this is necessary there's a reason for the backlog at the time they were authorized but then circumstances change some of these projects don't need to be done will never be done and by the way when you talk about the amount of money that is going to be authorized you don't know first of all how much of that twenty one or twenty three billion dollars maybe half of that will ultimately be spent we don't know some of it may be spent next year some ten years from now it's just authorizing saying at this time in this snapshot in time with these are things that need to be done in america these are legitimate these meet the criteria so that argument is no good he said adding excessive new authorization is due this backlog is an affordable and not necessary this sentence implies that it is inadvisable to authorize new projects until all current authorized projects are completed and death could be further from the truth certainly providing adequate hurricane protection in new orleans is a higher priority than some of the already authorized projects but we didn't know at the time that these were authorized and that's why this this is important they said in this letter that the bill will include numerous authorisations that are outside of and and inappropriate for the mission of the corps of engineers who the author and so forth well the conference report does not include authorization surface transportation projects for the corps of engineers that isn't something that we do so you look at the arguments that they have then it gets right down back to the argument that the attack here as i said going all the way back to eight hundred sixteen is on the authorization process the only discipline we have been spending in this body is to have an authorization prospe process and again i would repeat there are going to be some of these there are authorized that i will i would feel in my heart should not be appropriated and i will fight against appropriation that is where the battle should be should be fought and i think it's going be i don't want to question any no one's sincerity and in their opposition to this but i think there are a lot of people who are going to say well go home and have a press release saying i voted against this spending some twenty three billion dollars nothing could be further from the truth you oppose the authorization system in your prose you oppose discipline in spending i retain the balance within and a president center from california isn't could you tell us how much time remains between center and i found myself the senator from oklahoma six minutes and the senator from california as thirteen minute man president let me say as we wind down that i think that this committee which i'm so proud to be the chairman and i'm so pleased to work with senate and house on these infrastructure issues i think we've done our work i think we've done our job now of course you're going to always find something that somebody doesn't like in the bill but the fact is as center and hard has explained with i think the most instructive set of charts and i thank him so much for going back to the history of the difference between appropriations and authorization that this is a step that's an important step and a necessary step in the process but by no means the last and he talked about the appropriations process i talked about the process now that senator feingold and mccain got added to dispell although they're still not happy with everything we've done it creates an independent review so we'll have independent you will have appropriations and therefore this is a very necessary first step after these projects have come up really from our constituents from our homeowners from our city councils from our boards of supervisors from the mayors and governors etc so i think we've put together a bill that meets our community's me and i think we've done it in the very best way we can we have complied with the new ethics rules and by the way i want to ask unanimous consent that a letter dated today from majority leader reid and move committee chair feinstein replying to standard demand on the issue of whether the senate rule forty four point of order applies to authorization bills to be placed in the record without objection so we have complied and spoke with the ethics committee we work with the parliamentarian in every step of the way to make sure that we in total concert with that new law because we're respectful of it we have letters from every senator that we have a transparent process here everyone who asks for a project put your name on the line to make sure there's no  interested you have in this or your family so this is an important day for our country you know we've all said this in different ways but we are authorizing projects our communities need to help protect millions of people in our nation from catastrophic flooding it also will help restore the great wetlands estuaries and rivers of our nation places where wildlife thrives and our families enjoy today and we want to make sure they enjoy the hunting the fishing the boating the camping the outdoor industries by the way those outdoor industries are very important part of our economy because the recreation economy and without these projects they simply won't be able to thrive word it makes other important contributions it authorizes projects were communities that they need to increase their capacity at the airports  to make shipping easier safer more efficient it literally keeps america's economy moving you cannot have a great country if you don't keep up with the infrastructure needs we saw what happens when a bridge collapses and we're dealing with that in the committee as well look what happens if we don't keep up with our water projects we're not to be able to move our ships i mean i know there are for example in california so many ports but in many cases a lot of silt builds up and they can't move those ships through so we need to do that these harbors are gateways to the world and our manufactured goods are just computer chips agricultural goods grains wines and spirits pass through and harbors to be sold around the world five point five billion dollars of goods pass through our ports each day and more than two point five billion tons of trade move through our ports each year and colleagues that volume is expected to double over the next fifteen years that's why we say to this president we please sign a bill why do we have to fight over every single thing the fact is you can't have a great economy  economy in the world if we can't keep our goods moving and we need to create thousands of new jobs right here in america the port economy is responsible for approximately five million jobs and i say to you ma president job that your middle name and this bill will keep jobs being created keep goods moving keep the jobs going were essential to good movement and i mentioned outdoor recreation do you know because maybe some people don't know this the corps of engineers is the largest provider of outdoor recreation operating more than two thousand five hundred recreation areas and four hundred sixty three projects and leasing an additional eight hundred sites the state or local park and recreation authorities or private interests at these projects around the country the core hosts three hundred sixty million visitors a year at its lakes its beaches another area one in ten americans twenty five million people visit a corps project at least once a year six hundred thousand jobs are related to all of this movement so colleagues we can all agree that public health and safety economic growth environmental protection are important goals and this bill helps to achieve them and so finally i want to say a word of them to leader harry reid who has just come onto the floor to to make a statement on his own i know that center in half and i spoke to senator reid many many many many times and i know that it's difficult for him because every so the public understand everyone who gets the bill at of his or her committee goes right to the majority leader of the bank for time and he made a commitment to me he said he told me and i will and i remember when the jewish holidays are completed we will turn to work and that's what he did he is a man of his word and this is very important for the country so finally let me thank the staff first the democratic association of manufacturers the american farm bureau and and the three biggest construction labor organizations labors international international union operating engineers the united brotherhood of carpenters and joiners you get all those plus a host of local people plus a host of water people i think that we're answering a need here so again i want to thank each and every member of the staff my dear friend center and half for just being such a good fighter for this and all the members of the senate i know we're going to have a great vote as my understanding i'm going to  s i have i have a presentation and make madam president two groups two conservative groups talking about the history of authorisation since eight hundred sixteen which i gave the abbreviated edition a few minutes ago but it's so frustrating to me to see people saying that they want to do it for summary isn't going to happen this going to pass by a huge margin if their present vetoes i think the president knows it's going to be overridden but if for some reason this didn't pass legal right back where we were in two thousand to two thousand for two thousand and six and we would be having that the appropriators out there without any kind of discipline without any kind of of process to go through making those determinations and i think would be the wrong thing to do lastly i didn't mention this and that is oklahoma texas and arkansas so we had quite a number of floods if they hadn't been for what the corps of engineers had already done that was previously authorized and  then later on was appropriated it would have cost as they now say five point four billion dollars more in damages that it did so i just hope that that the good conservatives will look at this and realize we've got to have authorization in the process committee people complain about the kind of not working together in a bipartisan basis and perhaps that's true and a lot of occasions but are there many occasions where we need to look at the glass being half floor as  half empty and here is an example of the glass being half full this is a fine piece of legislation that has been pushed by two senators with ideological bands that are totally different senator boxer has one political philosophy semyonov has another but that's how things should work around here and i was just being a little bit personal about this i think people recognize that senator ensign and i work very well together we're not political soulmates but we're friends and we work together and that's what has been accomplished here we don't have political soulmates but they work together giving and taking and legislation is the art of compromise consensus building and that's what this is senator boxer didn't get all she wanted sooner and often get all she want he wanted but they got something good for this country and i want the record spread with the fact that this is an extremely important piece of legislation that literally could not have been accomplished not only with but they didn't committee they got a pass from the floor but quite frankly persistence they've had in any time i try to turn away from it they hit me in the right direction i'm glad we're here at this mr bond mrs boxer mr martinez mr menendez mr stevens mr white house mr sanders mr sanders  nebraska mr nelson of nebraska i mr lieberman mr lieberman mr hatch mr hatch  without objection mr president mr president a senator from louisiana mr president may i just as we concluded this historic vote thank colleagues on both sides of the aisle and just briefly put a few names into the record i know we're moving to another piece of legislation to thank senator boxer again and senator inhofe senator reid for living up to his commitment but for the record i'd like to put in that there were several people on our system our staff that worked so johnson mark tyner and lauren gerardo that's how long has been going on that i've literally had twelve people in and out of the projects department working on this bill thank you mr president i can again thank our colleagues and  president senator from california mr president i'd like to ask unanimous consent to speak with senator feingold on morning business for fifteen minutes i understand that the other side is going to object to a unanimous consent agreement i'm going to ask for you'd like me to do it upfront is that a correct i always a blog's the senator from nevada so i will do the if i have unanimous consen that will be the order is there any objection reserving the right to object so you're going to ask for unanimous consent on the bill of rights your best president and then you'll you'll follow fifteen minutes of speaking after that if that's not right mr president if i may just finish it's my understanding that you have another commitment and therefore i'm happy to accommodate you in this regard  that also ok thank you very much ali and subject seems all right i will do them both first and then you can both object and then senator feingold and i will have some time to speak if s agree  thousand and seven that the amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to the bill as amended the read three times passed in the motion to read reconsider sitter laid upon the table that any statements relating there to appear at the appropriate place in the record as if read without intervening action or debate is their objection i object to objection is heard thank you very much if i might  proceed with the second unanimous consent then mr president i ask unanimous consent the set proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar number ninety six s two two three a bill to require senate candidates to file designation statements and reports in electronic forms that the committee reported to men be considered and agreed to the bill as amended the read three times passed and the motion to reconsider the late upon the table with no intervening action this president is there objection reserving the right to object that of about a i have no objection to the underlying bill but there is a any issue that i entered remember that i would like to add to the bill if the senator from california would agree we have a problem going on in the united states senate where there are outside groups who are filing ethics complaints and they're doing it for purely political reasons so mr president i think that we could fix that at least having transparency to where if someone files an ethics complaint against a u s senator from the outside that they would have to disclose their donors so if this is being done purely for political reasons then we would find that out because we would see who are their donors are we need to protect the institution we need to protect individual senators from purely pull tical motives motivated politically motivated ethics complaints that come against us that sometimes we'll have to run up legal bills and all kinds of other things and if it's done purely for part reasons we need to know that and transparency is the best way to do that so if the senator from california would modify her unanimous consent request to reflect and to add this portion that at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the republican leader the senate proceed to consideration of calendar number one hundred six s two twenty three under the following limitations that the committee reported amendment be agreed to and that the only other minute in order be an amendment related to transparency and disclosure with one hour of debate equally divided in the usual form on the bill and the amendment to run concurrently and that following the use or yielding back of the time the senate proceed to a vote in relation to the ensign amendment and that the bill as amendment amended then be read a third time in the senate proceed to a vote on passage of the bill with no intervening action or debate with the senators modifier m another objection if if i may be reserving the right to object i would like to just make a comment or two if i might this proposal would require all organizations that filed ethics complaints to publicly disclose any individual or entity that donated five thousand dollars or more to that organization if the good senator from nevada would be willing i would be very willing to have this proposal considered in the rules committee in a prompt way i would not like to hold up passing this commonsense simple filing the l and i don't want to debate the merits at this time this bill that senator ensign is proposing is not germane to the basic bill before us and it would quite likely be a poison pill that would kill any chance of us getting the electronically file bill enact into law at this time so i would reiterate the offer to hear it in a prompt manner in the rules committee but i must object to it at this time and i so do object an objection is he and i object to the original unanimous consent i understand and i jackson is heard on that is why i think the senator then mr president on the original bill which has just been objected to twice in april first on the seventeenth and then on the twenty six i rose to ask unanimous consent that the senate take up and pass as two to three it was reported out by the rules committee on march twenty eighth in the first case senator alexander objected on behalf of a republican senator and in the second senator bunning rose to object on behalf of the republican side but to this date no republican senator has come forward to acknowledge placing a hold on this bill and say why the bill should not become law i wrote them a minority leader on may twenty seventh asking for his help in learning who was opposed to the bill and why but no members have yet come forward to identify themselves this is a simple direct bill with respect to transparency it's an idea who has a long come everybody else does it and so it's very hard for me to understand who could oppose this and what their reason for opposing it could be and our hearing on march fourteenth and at our markup on march eighth it was clear that there was no public opposition to this pozole i believe it's time for the senate to act the bill isn't titled senate campaign disclosure parity act it is sponsored by senator feingold who sits behind me in this chamber senator cochran and thirty other senators it would require that senate compact campaign finance reports be filed electronically rather than in paper format currently house candidates presidential candidates political action committees and party committees are all required to file electronically but senators senate candidates authorize campaign committees of senators and the democratic republican senate campaign committee and the democratic republican senate campaign committee are exempt so we operate separately from everybody else now is this practical the answer is no it's cumbersome paper copies of disclosure reports are filed with the senate office records they scan them they make an electronic copy and they send the copy to the f e c on a dedicated communications line the f e c then prints the report sends it to a vendor in fredericksburg virginia where the information is keyed in by hand and then transferred back to the f e c database at a cost of approximately two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the taxpayers now of course during this convoluted period there is no transparency therefore the reports are not available for public scrutiny it's long past time to bring the senate into the modern era and directed nies to transparency is a pie heart of the political process i urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in ensuring timely access and disclosure of campaign finance activities to the public the sponsor of this bill senator feingold has joined me today to urge passage of this bill now thanks to the enactment of s one there is a new reason why we are doing this today and section five twelve s one now requires members placing a hold on a bill to come forward and identify themselves now the best of my knowledge no member has yet use this section to break through the anonymity of a senate hold and i believe it's appropriate that this provision be asserted now for the first time in connection with a bill that is all about transparency i think it might be useful for me to read it since it is now the law section five twelve  in general the majority and minority leaders of the senate or their designees shall recognize a notice of intent of a senator who is a member of their caucus to object to proceed ingham to a mat measure or matter only if the senator one following the objection to a unanimous consent to proceed ing to and or passage of a measure or matter on their behalf submits a notice of intent in writing to the appropriate leader or their designate and then to not later than six sessions days after submission under paragraph one submits for inclusion in the congressional record and in the applicable calendar section described in subsection b the follow i sen whoever it is intend to object to proceed ings to name the and that it's been a rolling hold up to now but now after six days we must know who it is and i would believe that if their efforts to obfuscate this section of the law candidly that we should amend the law to prevent that from happening this is a simple bill everybody is for nobody wants to say who is against it and i think that should become apparent and i believe senator feingold and i hope senator cochran the co sponsor of this bill and i have dozens of co sponsors also would agree so i'd like to acknowledge us senator feingold  i may and yield the balance of my time to him and also thank him for his leadership on this issue the president senator from wisconsin a mr president i want to course think senator from california and of course is the chair of the key committee on this bill for her persistence in trying to get this bill through the senate we came to the floor twice the spring to try to get consent to pass the senate campaign disclosure parity act  on behalf of an unidentified republican senator no senator had come to us to let us know what his or her objection to the bill is the source of the objection apparently didn't want to be identified when the president signed the honestly her ship and open government act last last week is the center feinstein pointed out as one fortunately secret holds became a thing of the past and i'm very proud to have been involved deeply with trying to pass that legislation and so that when a objection was lodged today the objecting senator would have had to come forward in six session days and as far as i know this was going to be the first test of the new rule on secret holds and i was looking forward to learning who the real objector was as the rule requires if an objection was made on behalf of an unidentified senator but now it appears that the senator from nevada has actually identified himself as the objector of the bill so we know what is what is going on here i believe that the new provision under the new law is the reason that this individual identified himself i don't think that would have happened it had not been for the positive deterrent effect that this new legislation has and i think senator feinstein and i can cite this is the first time this was a successfully forced in the case of a secret hold this underlying bill about disclosure that i authored along with others is completely noncontroversial this simply put senate campaigns under the same obligation to file their reports electronically to the house and presidential campaigns have been forced to do for years there is simply no reason that the information in senate campaign finance report should remain less accessible to the public than any other campaign finance report we are now up to forty one bipartisan co sponsors as a senator from california pointed out not a single concern about the bill was heard in the rules committee the bill passed that committee by voice vote and no one has come to us with any concerns about it at all so the time has come to get it done mr president senator from nevada has made an alternative proposal to bring up the bill to make an a but to make him an amendment in order to member that he wants to offer a lever has nothing to do with this bill and david is a very controversial proposal to require groups that file ethics complaints to disclose their donors i'm sure that charitable and advocacy organizations will find this amendment a quite controversial it should be were to the appropriate committee and given very searching study before it is offered on the a senator from california said it would certainly be a poison pill for the underlying bill which thus far has had no public opposition whatsoever so i am pleased that the senator from california objected and we are happy to make that objection very public so i want to thank the chair the chairman of the committee senator from california i will say again i looks like we've made a little bit of progress here no longer is there a secret hold on the bill instead the senator from nevada has made it plain that he is the one holding up the bill on offering an unrelated abetment that is unfortunate but at least we know what we're dealing with i hope in the days ahead we'll be able to prevail on him to change his approach there are some bills were it is simply not appropriate to seek to add extraneous and controversial in them as the amendment has proposed is surely a poison pill for this bill and we really need to get this bill in place soon so that these requirements of disclosure will apply during the two thousand and eight election season so once again i truly think the senator from california and i look for getting this bill passed in the near future you development it helps them thrive children without health insurance or children taken to emergency rooms instead of doctors offices their children whose care is delayed and delayed until simple sickness becomes serious illness their children who need our to attention our compassion our help the president has said he opposes this legislation because philosophically show he thinks children should be covered by private insurance not by the children's health insurance program it doesn't matter whether these whether these children in reality should be covered by private insurance what matters that these is that these children are not covered by private insurance they are not simply they are not covered at all and by lodging a veto threat against this bill the president is saying that if private insurers haven't made room for low income children then we should make room for them either that's not just faulty logic it's faulty ethics the same time the president argues that the children's health insurance program is too expensive we're suggesting bipartisan lee in both houses a program that started ten years ago democratic president bill clinton republican house republican senate a bipartisan initiative from ten years ago were suggesting an increase of seven billion dollars a year over the next five years thirty five billion dollars contrast that with the war in iraq seven dollars a year to cover four million uninsured children in this country seventy five thousand in my state of ohio for seven billion dollars a year contrast that with two and a half billion dollars a week in the war in iraq seven billion dollars a year two and a half billion dollars a week yet the president says that's too much to take care of four million children uninsured children don't have the luxury of time they can't will themselves to remain healthy until individual insurance becomes more affordable were employed or employer sponsored curve coverage stops eroding or the president becomes more pragmatic it's up to this body this week to take action in ohio the dems go family can tell you why they value the children's health insurance program emily dempo three years old has down's syndrome because of her condition she's automatically denied private health coverage because down syndrome is considered a preexist in condition emily was covered by the children's health insurance program until march thirty first of this year under the children's health insurance program employee was able to receive the therapy she needed to reach all of her developmental milestones in an age appropriate way but in march the only was cut off from this program because her father made one hundred thirteen dollars too much per month for the family to qualify her family self employed her mother stays at home to care for her without health insurance the bills for emily's care total thirty seven hundred dollars per month which of course is impossible for the dems coast to pay the  family income falls within the range of two hundred fifty in three hundred percent of poverty emily is now then without health insurance for six months governor strickland and the republican legislature bipartisan lee raise the threshold for children's health insurance in ohio if the feds go along if the president signs our bill to three hundred percent of poverty not for families living in the lap of luxury but families like the dim co's who have seen their daughter off from her health insurance because of preexisting condition in falling out of eligibility because her father made a hundred dollars too much per month so far emily's not regressing but there's that possibility with down syndrome her parents can't afford the insurance for themselves either but more than anything they just want to see three year old emily covered they worry about what will happen to her without the therapy she needs and she doesn't qualify for any other programs despite her disability i wish that president bush would talk to the dem co family would keep them in mind as he considers whether or not to sign the children's health insurance program i hope you want to like make life better not harder for this hard working family in help thrive the children's health insurance program will expire september or thirtieth unless the president signs this bill the house and senate have found a compromise that works for both parties the version we passed in the senate passed with sixty eight votes more than enough to veto and override this the compromise version is very much like the senate version even though some of us would like to see us do a bit more that would cover the compromise will cover four million american children as i said seventy five thousand of them living in my state of ohio these children didn't choose to be uninsured they're not uninsured because their families walked away from private insurance understands the president most of the children the children's health insurance program sons and daughters of working parents parents who are working hard playing by the rules simply not making enough money to buy private insurance and their employers are not providing that insurance the fact is private insurance too often steers clear of too many working families in akron in toledo in zanesville in marion in lyme in marietta these families are uninsured because they have no choice their children have no choice but we have a choice we can choose to help them let's do it thank you mr president president senator from new york thank you mr president and i rise to speak about h r twenty six forty it's called the nics improvement act and i c s and the leahy schumer amendment mr president i have worked long and hard on this bill it's been a long time in coming and now it's time to get it passed to put it simply the young man who was behind the great tragedy at virginia tech had a long history of mental illness but still fell through the cracks of arse checking systems and bought guns and ammunition it's against the law for someone with serious mental illness to buy a gun when the system fails we're all less safe this bill will get desperately needed resources to the states to help improve our federal background check process the bill will make it harder for someone to get lost in the system mr president we cannot wait any longer before passing this commonsense piece of legislation we cannot sit back and watch another virginia tech shooting happen without doing everything we can to stop them i've worked hard on this bill for more than a decade and the background check system to which it is added in two thousand and two representative carolyn mccarthy and i introduced the legislation similar to what we're taking up today it was in response to another senseless shooting this one at our lady of peace church in our state in lynbrook on long island that was where someone with a long history of mental illness bought a gun walked into our lady of peace church killed father lawrence penzias and a longtime parishioner eileen taza and so back then we introduced a bill to get money to the states to help them get important records on mental illness convictions things like that into the next system but because of the climate of mistrust on all sides of the gun issue that bill was never passed into law i believe it passed the house once i believe it passed the senate once but the two never hooked up now here we are again it saddens me that it's taken this long it's been years after our lady of peace it's been five months after virginia tech to move the debate forward and really try to get something done about safety on our streets and college campuses and now we're so close to house has passed similar legislation that went through with this court of both the n r a and the brady campaign that doesn't happen too often and as you know mr president when the n r a and i agree on an issue there is a good chance some good can come of it we already have a comprehensive background check system but the dispersants the system relies on up to date computer searches to produce fast results it is only as good as the automated information the states provide that's why the focus of the bill is to get more records into the system so under the bill states that opt into the system who do well will be rewarded with grants and financial incentives states who don't will be punished and we have modified that so that smaller states who have more difficulty keeping the records because they have smaller budgets will not be penalized senator leahy correctly insisted that that be done to protect his state of vermont but it affects smaller states as well and the amendments that senator leahy has suggested and been added to this bill i believe improve it without getting any of our delicately balanced coalition out of kilter in any way so i want to thank senator leahy for doing that perhaps the most important thing i could say about this bill is that it's all about public safety it's all about enforcing the laws on the books this is not and this is important not a gun control bill no lawful gun owners are going to have their guns taken away nobody who should be allowed to get a gun will have his or her rights restricted the bill targets only the those records that are supposed to be in the system already records that demonstrate whether someone is seriously mentally ill a felon or sell on what the genya check showed us is that when the background check system fails the consequences can be terribly tragic carolyn mccarthy and congresswoman mccarthy and i saw that in