Byron Dorgan

I am all for that statement: Why waste money? I am all for that. If the proposition is, what I am trying to do is tell the Defense Department, don't waste money, then sign me up and count me in.

No, it does not. First of all, read the last words, ``development, testing, or engineering,'' and then compare that to (b) in which I am talking about the feasibility study. I am withholding the funds from the feasibility study. I was…

I am sorry, if the Senator wants to talk about credibility, let me correct the Senator, if you do not mind. On page 2 of my amendment it prohibits it for the year 2004, because that's all I can do, with respect to 2004.

My point is to ask you whether you believe, whether the committee believes that it is somehow not relevant to this bill to be talking about the Base Closure Commission that was created by the Defense authorization bill in the Senate, or to…

When someone works 20 years in the military for this country and then retires and earns a retirement pay, if during that time they were disabled, what our current law says, in most cases--not all, but in most cases--is that you are not…

But, yes, the Senator is correct. I darn well expect to be able to offer this amendment. If I have to reword it, I will reword it. But I was trying to ask the question, Is this what you expected to try to prevent? You say we were just…

Let me ask this, if I might ask the Senator from Michigan. I don't disagree with you at all. I understand you don't want 100 extraneous amendments that have nothing to do with this, so you want a relevancy test. But as I understand, the…

If 8 million senior citizens are paying $1,500 more in taxes because of the change in 1993 and you want to repeal that change, then this particular amendment will reduce taxes for those 8 million Americans. Is this a greater priority than…

If you are saying that there is nothing that prohibits this insurance company from covering a prescription drug purchased from a pharmacy in Canada, then we need to resolve it with this insurance company.

Do you believe that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Dakota should cover a prescription drug that is an FDA-approved drug purchased at a drug store in Emerson, Canada, brought back for personal use by a senior citizen in North Dakota?

I profoundly disagree about what you have just said.

The purchase of Coumadin in that drug store is as safe as purchasing Coumadin at a drug store in downtown Washington, D.C.

Do you believe an insurance company should prohibit coverage when an American senior citizen... goes over and brings a prescription drug back?

My question remains, do you want the FDA to be on record... telling an insurance company that they may be criminally liable?

That is not the question. You are not answering the question I have asked.

Was that the intent of this letter? Would you really have intended, for example, to tell a Sylvia Miller...

By God, we have the right to demand fair trade, whether it is with China, Japan, Europe, Canada.

But Madam Secretary, we already know they are not implemented properly. We already know that the Chinese are cheating.

Let us decide to have a backbone, a spine, some stiffness of spirit here, and stand up for the wheat producers in this country.

Should we not do that? And should we not do that immediately?

But we got those agreements bilaterally from China?

The fact is an official in USTR, the week before he left, said publicly it is undeniable they are cheating.

The Trade Policy Review Group, a group that is made up of USDA as one member, had given the green light to take a WTO case against China.

We have been pushing on the Chinese for years. They now have a $103 billion trade surplus with us.

Let me tell you why I believe he says that it is undeniable that the Chinese are cheating with respect to wheat trade.