America's Priorities

Floor Speech

AMERICA'S PRIORITIES

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. I thank the President for recognizing me.

I would like to follow on the remarks made by the Democratic leader of the Senate. The American people we represent expect us on the floor of the Senate to truly represent them and their real concerns--the needs of their families, the needs of their communities, the needs of businesses and farmers. We are elected to speak for them and to come together in common purpose on a bipartisan basis and deal with the real issues Americans face.

I would certainly acknowledge that the pending appropriations bill for Labor, Health and Human Services, which includes education as well, is one of the most important appropriations bills that addresses those needs. In years gone by, there was a Congressman from Kentucky named Bill Natcher who was the chairman of the subcommittee that handles this bill. He always called this bill on the House floor the ``people's appropriations bill.'' I think it was aptly named because it meant so much.

So as we visit this bill this week, it is time well spent, time to reflect on what we can do to help education in America, time to reflect on what we can do in the area of health care for America, medical research for America. It is time to look at some of the most basic programs we count on.

Sadly, this bill is the exception, it is not the rule.

Too many times we come to the floor of the Senate not to serve the needs of the people of this great Nation, but to serve the needs of special interest groups. They dominate this process because it has become such an expensive process. Unless you are independently wealthy and can finance your own campaigns from the millions of dollars you made before you came to the Senate, most Senators, mere mortals, spend their time raising money. From whom? Well, from their voters somewhat but, by and large, from special interest groups. So it is no surprise that the agenda of the Senate reflects those special interest groups.

Just a week ago, the new bankruptcy law went into effect. Professor Warren of Harvard Law School this morning in the New York Times talks about what it is going to mean. This was a 9-year effort by the financial institutions and credit card companies of America to make it more difficult for families to file for bankruptcy. Nine years they put into it, and they finally scored their big victory this year. They got this new bankruptcy bill passed.

What it means is fewer people who walk into bankruptcy court will be able to walk out with a clean slate. Many people walking in, crushed by debt, will find themselves walking out still carrying most of that debt.

Who are these people? Who are these folks who have been accused of abusing the bankruptcy system? Take a look at them: Over half of them are people who were overwhelmed by one thing--medical bills. There was an article in the New York Times this Sunday on the front page--my colleagues might have read it--of a family with health insurance and a sick baby who ended up losing their home, despite the fact they had health insurance, because of the serious medical problems that little baby faced.

This new bankruptcy law pushed on us by financial institutions and credit card companies will make it more difficult for families like that to ever erase the slate and start over. The special interests won again.

Then we had this debate on the floor of the Senate about the Department of Defense authorization bill. Can you think of anything more important, certainly to the families of 150,000 American soldiers serving in Iraq today? Is there anything more important than the Department of Defense authorization bill, a bill which addresses the needs of our soldiers, the needs of the Pentagon, the needs of our veterans? Could there be a higher priority for us to deal with on the floor of the Senate?

Do you know what happened to that bill? The Republican leadership pulled that bill off the floor and said: We don't have time to consider it. And what did they replace it with? They replaced it with a bill pushed by the gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, a bill which says that gun manufacturers cannot be held liable in court for their wrongdoing. That is right, we have created this class in America, a limited class of people who are not responsible for their wrongdoing. It doesn't apply to you, not as an individual. If you are guilty of wrongdoing you can be held accountable. It does not apply to 99.9 percent of the businesses in America. Guilty of wrongdoing? You are held accountable.

But the gun industry, this big special interest group, so powerful that Republican leadership pulled the Department of Defense bill off the floor and has never returned to it.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DURBIN. I will be happy to yield for a question.

Mr. REID. I apologize for interrupting.

In the New York Times today on the front page there is a column that says: ``GOP Testing Ways to Blunt Leak Charges.'' Is the Senator aware that the senior Senator from Texas said she hoped ``that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened''--referring to the Rove-Libby scandal in the White House--``that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality. .....'' Will my friend comment on this statement?

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I did read the article on the plane coming out here. I think everyone knows, without saying this is a critical week, that something could happen this week. There are investigations under way of the Republican leadership, the House and the Senate, and now there is a question as to whether there will be indictments handed down for others in the executive department.

It is clear from the statement by some Senators, including the one quoted, that they are trying to prepare America for the shock that even higher level indictments could be handed down.

I say to the Senator from Nevada, and I think he would agree with me, the vast majority of the men and women serving in the House and Senate today are the most honest, hard-working people America could ever hope for. They come to work every day trying to serve the public good and yet in every institution, whether it is Government, business, families, even churches, there is wrongdoing. People do the wrong thing.

I hope what we hear being said by some Members of the Senate minimizing the possibility of indictments at the highest level of our Government does not reflect the true feeling of this body. I honestly believe there has been a rampant culture of corruption and cronyism that can take over our lives if we are not careful in public life. I hope we are mindful of the public's need to know that we are committed to continuing honest, ethical conduct in public service. Otherwise, we lose the confidence. Nothing else we do means much.

To minimize the possibility of someone being indicted for perjury overlooks the obvious. What is at stake, what is at issue in this investigation involving Valerie Plame, is the fact that this woman was a career employee of the Central Intelligence Agency in a covert status, which meant people did not know what she was doing. That gave her entre and opportunity others did not have. So protecting her identity was an important part of her service to this Nation.

There are many like her who risk their lives every day for America to make it safer to uncover potential acts of terrorism before they occur. So when her husband, a former ambassador, put an article in the newspaper critical of the Bush administration for overstating the reasons we were going to invade Iraq, someone--according to columnist Robert Novak, two people in the White House--came forward to out her identity. They did that for the most vain national political reasons, to punish her and her husband for speaking out against the administration.

That is a crime, to out the identity of a CIA agent. Who created this crime? It was a crime created by President Bush's father, former head of the CIA, who was so enraged that someone had written a book disclosing the identity of a CIA agent which he believed resulted in their death that he called on Congress to pass a law to say if anybody disclosed that identity, they should be held responsible for it. That is what is at the heart of this.

This is not a political game. It involves the lives and good fortunes of many men and women who serve this country selflessly. So to minimize this Valerie Plame investigation and to say it is over some technicality--for goodness sakes, the security of America and the security of the men and women in our intelligence agency, that is not a technicality. That is part of the defense of this country. I certainly hope what we have seen in the paper this morning, reflected in yesterday's talk shows, is not part of some strategy to try to minimize what is an extremely serious investigation.

I also say this before I yield the floor--I see the Senator from Pennsylvania is here as chairman of the committee. The three points made by the Senator from Nevada are critical points. Five weeks from now, how can we go home and say Thanksgiving has come, we are ready for the holidays, we are headed off, and not do something about energy in America? How can we face the people we represent who cannot afford to pay their heating bills, people who cannot afford the cost of gas in my part of the world, in the Midwest, or the cost of heating oil in the Northeast? Can we say we have done the best we can do? I do not think so.

When it comes to energy, the bill we passed was a sop to the special interests. It was $9 billion in subsidies to oil companies which are experiencing the highest profits they have seen in decades. Some parts of the bill were good, and I voted for it because it included ethanol and biodiesel and a few other things, but by and large this bill did not force us into an energy policy. What we need to do is very obvious.

First, we need to protect consumers in America from these price spikes. They are defenseless when the cost of gasoline reaches the point they cannot afford to go to work or run their small businesses or bring the harvest in from the farm.

Secondly, we need to punish profiteers. The four major oil companies in America in the first 6 months of this year had over $40 billion in profits.

When you stuck that nozzle in the tank of your car and watched those numbers racing by on the pump, you were sending it directly to the boardrooms of these oil companies, $40 billion in profits that they took right out of that experience.

One of the Senators from the other side last week asked, what is wrong with profits? Well, I guess nothing is wrong with profits unless you have to pay for them out of your hard-earned money every single day, and unless you cannot heat your home in the dead of winter because the cost of heating oil has gone up to make sure those profits keep coming to the boardrooms.

Some of us believe it is time to say, end of the road to these major oil companies that are profiteering, and to punish the profiteers with a windfall profits tax which tells them there is no incentive in raising the price for more profiteering. Some say that is harsh, it goes too far. I do not think so. Imposing that tax and bringing the money back to consumers directly in rebates or to help pay for LIHEAP so low-income families can heat their homes, in my mind, is simple justice.

Finally, we need an energy policy that looks ahead to making America less energy dependent. There was one critical issue on the floor when it came to the Energy bill. It was an amendment offered by Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, cosponsored by many of us, and here is what it said: Much like President Kennedy's goal of reaching the Moon, we will set as a national goal reducing our dependence on foreign oil in America by 40 percent over the next 20 years. Is there a person
following this debate who does not think that is a good idea, a positive thing, that we would take the impact of the OPEC cartel and oil sheiks out of the American economy, minimize their impact?

We called that amendment up for a vote. One would think it would have been a unanimous vote, but it turned out to be a partisan vote. Not a single Republican Senator would support it. To reduce the dependence on foreign oil? That makes no sense.

We need to push for creativity when it comes to energy. We need to find renewable, sustainable sources of energy. What is the administration's answer to the energy crisis? Drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. An argument can be made there is not enough oil there to sustain us for any period of time. Over 20 years, the oil coming out of there is worth 6 months of America's energy supply. Over 20 years, it would produce 6 months' worth.

What happened last week in the Energy Committee? Up came a vote which said, incidentally, if there is going to be drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the oil better come down to America to help reduce our prices. That amendment was defeated. It was defeated on a largely partisan rollcall. There were many who said, no, the oil companies cannot be told what to do with the oil they take out of a wildlife refuge that has been protected for 50 years.

One wonders about the reach and impact of special interest groups. President Eisenhower's Arctic Wildlife Refuge, which we have valued and protected for 50 years, is going to be invaded and desecrated to drill for oil for America's energy, but this Congress would not say that oil would come back for heat and to fuel the cars of Americans. Where will it go? Probably to China.

Think about that for a second. One of our largest competitors in the world, energy hungry themselves, may end up with the very oil we are taking out of this wildlife refuge we have debated for years.

The point made about Hurricane Katrina is a good one. How can we leave without creating an independent, nonpartisan commission to figure out what went wrong? For 24/7, we saw those ghastly images of our fellow Americans struggling so that their children could survive this flood. We watched corpses bobbing in the flooded waters, seeing people desperate for shelter, water, and food. Much like 9/11, we think we ought to look into that to make sure we never repeat those mistakes again. There is resistance from the White House and from the majority.

Basically, the avian influenza is another call to arms. If this avian influenza, which has been described as inevitable by Dr. Gerberding of the Centers for Disease Control, strikes America, the people of this country have a right to turn to every single elected official and ask, what did you do, knowing this was coming? What did you do to stockpile the antiviral agents that might save the lives of the children in my family? What did you do to start the vaccine production that might save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans? What did you do back in October of the year 2005 when you had that chance?

So the question is whether we will go home having addressed any of those issues: energy, Katrina or avian influenza. This bill before us is critically important, but after this bill is finished I hope we will move to those three items. I think they are of great national significance.

I yield the floor.

Source