quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from south carolina. 150 are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: yes, we are. a senator: i ask unanimous consent to terminate the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. graham: i see the senator from. how would you like to do this? a senator: i would like to speak for 10 minutes following senator graham. i will be speaks as if in morning business as i assume that senator graham will be. mr. graham: that's correct. the presiding officer: is there any objection? without objection. the senator from south carolina. mr. graham: i come to the floor to acknowledge an an agreement that i reached with the majority leader and the administration regarding the issue of detainee

abuse photos. as you're well aware of, there are some photos that allege -- of alleged detainee abuse that existed for many years. more of the same. nothing new. the president has decided to oppose their release. the aclu filed a lawsuit asking for these photos to be released. in the court documents general petraeus and general owe owed o. it will insight violence against men and women serving overseas and american civilians in theater. there is nothing new to be learned according to the president. this is more of the same. the people involved in abu ghraib and other detainee abuse allegations have been dealt with. and the effect of releasing these photos would be empowering our enemies.

every photo would become a bullet or i.e.d. i want to applaud the president for saying that he opposes their release. there is a stay on the second circuit order that would allow the photos to be released until the supreme court hears the petition filed by the supreme court. i have been promised two things important to me to remove my holds and let the supplemental go without objection. that there will be a freestanding vote on the lieberman-graham vote. the senate has previously allowed this legislation to become part of the supplemental war funding bill. it would prevent the disclosure of these photos for a three-year period if the secretary of defense said that they were harmful to the national security interest to be renewed for three years. senator reid indicated to me before july 8, we will have a chance to vote on that provision as a freestanding bill, which i think will get the senate back on record in a time fashion

before the next court hearing. i wanted to be assured by the administration that if the congress fails to do its part to protect these photos from being released, the president would sign into -- an executive order that would change their classification to be classified national security documents that would be outcome determined in the lawsuit. rahm emanuel assured me that these photos would not see the light of day. they agreed that the best way is for congress to secretary. in light of that, i will hold the bills that i have a hold on and i will support the supplemental. i think it is important for our soldiers, airmen, marines, anybody deployed and civilian contractors to know that there is a game plan. we will support petraeus and all of our combat commanders to make sure that these photos never see light of day. now i think we have a game plan that will work. it starts with a vote in the senate. i'm urging the house to take

this up as a freestanding bill. we have 266 votes to include this in the supplemental. it was taken out. i'm disappointed it was taken out. we have a chance to start over and get this right. with the understanding that wee will have a freestanding vote on the lieberman-graham amendment and that the administration will make sure that these photos will never see light of day if congress fails to act, i will lift my hold. and i yield. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from utah. a senator: when the founding fathers wrote the constitution and gave us our government, they did so out of a deep distrust of the power of government coming out of their experience with king george. and they created a government that limits the use of power deliberately setting up a system of checks and balances, a

doctrine of separation of powers and so on with which we're all familiar. mr. bennett: out of that americans have become used to the idea that there are limits on governmental power. and one of the concerns that i hear when i visit with my constituents in utah is that they are afraid there are now no limits on government power. or at least there is certainly not enough limits on government power. i'm asked: where does it stop? the government can take over insurance companies. the government can take over financial institutions. the government can take over an automobile company. the government can dictate who gets to be chief executive and how much he or she will be paid. aren't there supposed to be limits on government power? now today we have a proposal brought forward by the administration with respect to how the regulatory pattern for

our financial institutions should be changed and as i look at that proposal, i ask the same questions my constituents are asking: shouldn't there be some limits on government power? isn't this going a bit far? indeed, i think it's a legitimate question and i want to address it here for a moment. now, first let's understand a fundamental truth about the economy and that is that all wealth comes from taking risks. farmers take risks when they plant seeds not knowing what the weather is going to do. business men and women take risks when they open businesses not knowing what the market is going to do. new wealth comes out when we have a bumper crop. new wealth comes out when a business started in a garage turns into hewlett packard. but in every instance, you take

risks. now the second element that has to be added to risk taking is the access to accumulated wealth. sometimes it comes by a wealth you've accumulated yourself. sometimes it comes from loans from your brother-in-law. sometimes it comes from running up your credit card. sometimes it comes from venture capitalists. in many instances it comes from banks. but you take a risk and you have to have access to some kind of accumulated capital or you cannot create new wealth. all right. why do people take risks? because they expect their -- there will be a reward in the form of a return on the taptal that they have taken. whether it comes from a bank loan they can pay back, whether it comes from investor capital that will then receive dividends, there will be a reward.

the risk-reward relationship is at the base of the growth an power of the american economy. now, in the present crisis we've had people saying yes, but there are some entity that's are simply too big it fail. we must not allow them to fail. and particularly in the financial services industry and so that's why we have this proposal today from the obama administration. they want to deal with systemic risk or those tier one entities which they describe which comes down basically to what i said: they're too big to fail and we're not going to allow them to fail. and this is the regulatory regime we will setup. mr. president, if there are companies or entities that are too big to sale, this regime is too big to function.

it is so focused on preventing failure that it is stacked in such a way that it will penalize the risk taker and prevent the risk taker from taking a risk and, therefore, from reaping any kind of a reward. there's a heavy emphasis on consumer protection. i'm all for consumer protection. i think we should have all of the kinds of regulations that say you need labels on things that might not be safe. that protects the consumer. you need nutritional information on things that might make you too fat. that protects the consumer. but let's not protect the consumer to the point where the consumer cannot buy anything. or in this case, protect the system from any possible failure to the point that there is no risk and, therefore, ultimately no reward. by giving the federal reserve the kind of powers that this

proposal does, we are moving down that road and once again raising the question: are there no limits on the amount of power that government can have -- government can accumulate? i am convinced that if this massive, new expansion of power in the hands of the government goes forward unimpeded, we will see the shutting off of sources of credit and, therefore, the contraction of the economy and ultimately the need for more bailout, more expenditures of federal funds to try to keep funds -- to keep entities alive. they can stay alive if they can attract capital from the private market but that's risky. so if we say no, we're not going to allow the risk, we shut off the incentive of the private market to invest in some of

these entities or to loan money to some of these entities and then we say, but the entity is so important to our economy, we can't allow it to fail and so we turn to the taxpayer and say, let's put more taxpayer money into the entity because it's too big to fail, that is what i see down the road nor proposal. -- down the road for this proposal. now, i may be wrong. but i would point out, mr. president, that we in the congress have, by law, created a commission to study what got in -- what caused the present mess we're in and report back to the congress. and we wrote into that law a specific date, the 15th of december, 2010, to make sure the commission had enough time to examine all of the possibilities, to delve deeply enough into the issue to fully understand it, and then to report back to us their

findings. now we are being told, forget the commission, forget the analysis of what happened. we think we know of the let's put this regulator regular -- we think we know. let's put this regulatory regime in place, one that is too big to function, now. let's do it quickly. let's have it done by august recess. all right, we can't get it done by august recess. we're going to have health care down by august recess, so we'll do it before halloween, or whatever artificial date some may choose to put on it. the reality is, the issue is huge, the issue needs to be examined carefully, and we need to do it within the parameters of the basis suspicion the founding fathers had about the government. we should do it with an understanding that there are limits to government power and that government power has the capacity to damage the economy every bit as much as it has the

power to help it move forward. so, mr. president, i say let under the circumstances not move with the speed and the haste -- let us not move with the speed and the haste with which we are moving forward. let's exfoes to the most careful of examination that we can throughout the processes of congress. and make sure that when we do make regulatory changes with respect to the financial institutions, we do them in a way that will not fail and that can properly function. i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will please call the roll. quorum call:

mr. dorgan: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from north dakota. mr. dorgan: mr. president, i ask consent the quorum call be vacated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. dorgan: mr. president, i want to visit about two things today, the first of which is a bill that we passed out of the senate energy committee earlier this morning, and i want to give a little context of what we've done, because what we've done will perhaps not get as much notice as it should but it will be headed to the floor of the united states senate to deal

with energy policy and it affects everybody virtually all of the time. all of us who get up in the morning, we in most cases use our hands to flick a switch and turn something on, or we plug something in or we turn a key and we have an engine, w we hava light bulb, we have a toaster, we have an electric razor. in every way, energy affects our lives in a very profound manner. and what we did today has a significant impact on that. first let me describe part of the challenge. out of this planet every single day, we stick little straws in the earth and suck out oil. every single day there's about 84 million barrels of oil taken out of this earth. and it's a big old planet with a lot of people living on this planet, and of the 84 million barrels of oil that we take out every day from the earth, one-fourth of it is destined to be used in the united states. we use one-fourth of all the oil every single day.

why? because we have a standard of living and a big, old country that is far above most other places in the world and we want to drive vehicles and we use oil in a very substantial way. an enormous appetite for oil. so here's the deal, one-fourth of all the oil that's produced every day comes here because we need it, and nearly 70% of the oil that we use comes from outside of our country and much of the oil that's produced comes from very troubled parts of the world -- saudi arabia, kuwait, iraq, venezuela, and more -- so 70% of the oil that we need comes from outside of our country and nearly 70% of the oil that we use is used in transportation. so you see the dilemma here. the dilemma is that we are unbelievably dependent and vulnerable on something over which we have very little control and that is if, god

forbid, tonight terrorists interrupted the supply of oil coming into this country from other countries, this economy of ours would be flat on our back. we are unbelievably dependent on oil from other countries, and we have to begin backing away from that dependence. so how do we do that? and by the way, as dependent as we are, visit last year once again and remember what happen happened. speculators took control of the oil market and drove the price of oil to $147 a barrel in day trading. the tries of gasoline went up -- the price of gasoline went up to $4, $4.50 a gallon just like that. there was no excuse for it and no justification for it. there was nothing in supply and demand that justified the price of oil and, therefore, the price of gasoline going up like a roman candle and then in july last year starting to come right back down. and the speculators that made all the money on the way up made the same money on the way down. and the taxpayers of this

country and the people that drove cars and pulled up at the pumps to fill up with unbelievably expensive gasoline were the victims. and no one has still done the investigation to find out who did this, how did it happen. how is it when the supply of oil is up and demand is down that price rises? i was prepared to offer an amendment this morning to the energy committee -- i didn't have the snroat votes in that ce to offer it so i simply described it -- i'll offer it on the floor when the energy bill gets here -- that requires the investigation and gives the federal agency, the energy information administration, the requirement to investigate and the subpoenas with which to investigate to find out what happened and how do we make sure it doesn't happen again. oil prices are on the rise again. $70 a bear frel $38 a bear -- barrel from $38 a barely h barr0 a barrel. even when supply is up and demand is down.

describe that to me t. doesn't makes sense. so that's a little bit of the background so where we find ourselves. unbelievably dependent on oil, most of which comes from parts of the world which are troubled, over which we have very little control, and so we need to be less dependent on oil. how do we do that? we wrote an energy bill that does a lot of everything, and i believe in doing a lot of everything. i believe that we ought to produce more oil here onshore and on the outer continental shelf as well. we should produce more oil and natural gas. we should conserve more. we are prodigious wasters of energy. we should make all the things that we use more efficient. efficiency's an unbelievable component of what we can do to save energy. and we should maximize the capability of producing renewable energy. the fact is, energy from the sun shines on this earth every day far excess of the energy we need if we are just smart enough and capable enough of doing all the research and science that allows us to use all that energy. the wind