A bill to provide that before the Secretary of Defense may furlough any employee of the Department of Defense on the basis of a lack of funds, the Secretary shall suspend any nonessential service contract entered into by the Department of Defense, and for other purposes.

Mr. President, today we are facing a crisis in the mortgage markets on a scale that has not been seen since the Great Depression: over 2 million homeowners face foreclosure at a loss of over $160 billion in hard-earned home equity; the Conference of Mayors recently reported, November 26, 2007, that they expect a decline of $1.2 trillion in property values in 2008 because of the crisis; over one out of every 5 subprime loans is currently delinquent according to First American Loan Performance, an industry research firm. These high default rates have frozen the subprime and jumbo mortgage markets and infected the capital markets to the point where central banks around the world have had to inject liquidity into the system to avoid the crisis from spreading to other segments of the market.

One of the fundamental causes of this serious crisis is abusive and predatory subprime mortgage lending. The Homeownership Preservation and Protection Act of 2007, which I am introducing today with a number of my colleagues, is designed to protect American homeowners from these practices, and prevent this disaster from happening again. The legislation will: realign the interests of the mortgage industry with borrowers to insure the availability of mortgage capital on fair terms both for the creation and sustainability of homeownership; establish new lending standards to ensure that loans are affordable and fair, and provide for adequate remedies to make sure the standards are met; and create

a transparent set of rules for the mortgage industry so that capital can safely return to the market without bad lending practices driving out the good.

The fundamental problem in the subprime market today is that the mortgage system has become extremely fragmented, with different entities responsible for selling, underwriting, originating, funding, and securitizing the loans. Too few of these entities have a stake in the long-term success of the mortgage. A recent article in The Economist, February 17, 2007, described the process succinctly:

Banks are traditionally supposed to know a bit about the

borrowers on their books. But, in many cases, their loans did

not stay on their books long enough for them to care.

Mortgages were written for a fee, sold to investment banks

for a fee, then packaged and floated for another fee. At each

link in the chain, the fees mattered more than the quality of

the loans. . . .

As the GAO concluded, ``Originators [mortgage brokers and lenders] had financial incentives to increase loan volume, partially at the expense of loan quality,'' October 10, 2007. For example, mortgage originators have an incentive to get a borrower to take out a larger loan than he or she needs, and at a higher interest rate than that for which the borrower would qualify, because the originator gets a higher commission for such loans.

Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan recently described the corrosive impact of this system on underwriting standards. In a speech to the American Bankers Association October 9, 2007, Mr. Dugan said:

When a bank makes a loan that it plans to hold, the

fundamental standard it uses to underwrite the loan is that

most basic of credit standards that . . . the underwriting

must be strong enough to create a reasonable expectation that

the loan will be repaid. But when a bank makes a loan that it

plans to sell, then the credit evaluation shifts in an

important way: the underwriting must be strong enough to

create a reasonable expectation that the loan can be sold or

put another way, the bank will underwrite to whatever

standard the market will bear.

The vast majority of subprime loans were made to be sold, and, hence, their underwriting standards simply were not sufficient to ensure a reasonable prospect of repayment for too many Americans.

While the focus of much of the news coverage has been on the impact of the crisis on financial institutions and markets, I ask my colleagues to keep in mind the affect this is having on individuals who are losing their homes, and on their neighbors, who are seeing their home equity erode as foreclosures in their neighborhoods increase.

It is important to keep in mind that only about 10 percent of subprime mortgages in the past several years have been made to first time home buyers. This market has not been primarily about creating a new set of homeowners; a majority of subprime loans have been refinances. While maintaining access to subprime credit on fair terms is important, too much of the subprime market in the past several years has actually put the homes and home equity of American families at risk.

The legislation seeks to set high standards for brokers, lenders, appraisers, servicers, and Wall Street and provide for strong remedies to restore accountability to the system. Specifically, the legislation will establish new protections for all borrowers including a prohibition on steering prime borrowers to subprime loans, which the Wall Street Journal recently found was widespread in the market. The bill establishes a fiduciary duty for mortgage brokers towards borrowers. It provides for a duty of good faith and fair dealing toward borrowers for all lenders.

The bill will establish new protections for subprime borrowers and borrowers who get exotic mortgages. First and foremost, brokers and lenders will have to establish the borrowers' ability to repay the loan, including for interest-only and option ARMs. In addition, the bill prohibits prepayment penalties and YSPs on these loans, and requires that these loans provide a net tangible benefit to the borrower.

The bill will tighten the definition of high cost loans and provide increased protections for these borrowers, including a prohibition of balloon payments, financing of points and fees, prepayment penalties and yield spread premiums, YSPs.

The bill will provide strong remedies to make sure these standards are met. The bill puts more ``cops on the beat'' by allowing state attorneys general to enforce the provisions of the law, and it does not preempt State law. States should be allowed the flexibility to address new abuses as they arise.

The bill will provide for limited liability for holders of a mortgage made in violation of law, whether it is the original lender or a subsequent investment trust. Unlike current law, which puts the burden on the borrower to find the party responsible for causing the harm, the legislation allows the borrower to go directly to the current mortgage holder for a cure.

The bill will also prohibit lenders from influencing appraisers, limit the ``junk'' fees mortgage servicers can charge, and require them to credit payments promptly, require foreclosure prevention counseling or loss mitigation before a foreclosure can take place, and uuthorize the hiring of additional FBI agents to fight mortgage fraud.

In the coming months, the housing crisis is going to get worse. We will need to continue to press lenders and servicers to provide real relief for homeowners threatened with foreclosure. FHA and the GSEs will have to play an expanded role. But as we deal with the cleaning up the current crisis, let us keep in mind the need to address the underlying problems that have created the crisis, and move to address those underlying causes by passing the ``Homeownership Protection and Preservation Act.''

Finally, I want to acknowledge the work of a number of my colleagues on this issue. Senators Schumer, Brown, and Casey introduced a bill on this topic earlier this year, S. 1299, from which I took some important provisions. In addition, Senators Reed and Menendez both made important contributions to the deliberations leading up to the introduction of this legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill and a detailed summary be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: What is the order before the Senate at the present time?

Amendment No. 3596

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, we have not seen the modification.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I join my colleague and concur in his remarks on the Sessions amendment. For a lot of subjects before us we get good ideas, interesting ideas that come up via amendments on bills. This isn't the first time it has happened. As Senator Chambliss said, this idea has been talked about, floated around for a while. Senator Sessions has perhaps focused it more than I have seen in the past on the savings account idea.

But I think Senator Chambliss is right. This is a very complicated subject. It involves a lot of different considerations and as well as interactions with other programs in agriculture. I would just say to my friend from Alabama that I would, with Senator Chambliss, be willing to have some hearings on this next year, and I invite the Senator to testify and bring some witnesses in, as Senator Chambliss says, some agricultural economists, some agricultural producers, and see what this proposal would do. If it has legs, if it has some merit, we could move it.

Just because we pass a farm bill doesn't mean that our committee is dormant for 5 years. We will be holding hearings and working on legislation. The occupant of the chair, too, will be actively involved in a lot of those discussions next year as a valuable member of our committee.

So I would just say to the Senator from Alabama, I am going to join Senator Chambliss in opposing the amendment. Not that I am absolutely, irrevocably opposed to it, but it is a little bit too much of a change on a bill now, without the kind of hearings and due diligence that we should apply to it. So I will oppose it. But I will say this to Senator Sessions: I look forward to having some hearings on it next year.

Mr. President, when I hear the Senator describe how the money is going out, of course it sounds bad. No one wants EQIP money going for doctors who buy a little bit of acreage and want to put in a pond and have a fishing hole. We don't want EQIP money going for that, and it should not go for that.

But the way the amendment is drafted, it just says two-thirds of your income has to be from farming before you can qualify for EQIP. The problem with that is there are a lot of young, beginning farmers who are farming, but they are not making enough money from the farm to sustain themselves, and they and their spouse need to work at other jobs. They may have a night job and the spouse may have a job. Most of their income may not be from that farming venture, but the money they are earning is going into the farm and they are building up their farm asset base. I see this happening, and we don't want to discourage that. Those are the people who may need some EQIP money. They may need to build a fence for livestock production. That EQIP money ought to be there for them to do that. Maybe they are improving their land and they need a water-holding facility to provide livestock with water on an around-the-year basis. That happens in our State, and I am sure it happens in Oklahoma too. They may not be getting two-thirds of their income from farming for a while. Later, they may, as they build up their assets and become better farmers and they get more income from farming.

So according to the Economic Research Service data, this amendment would bar EQIP contracts for 71.2 percent of all producers who receive them in 2006. You cannot say that 71 percent of all those people are these rich doctors putting in a fence and putting their horses out there. That may be a small part of these contracts, but it seems to me you are going after a lot of people who deserve EQIP contracts to go after some who don't deserve them.

The farms that would still qualify under the Senator's amendment would tend to be relatively large farms--that is, with gross income on average over $654,000. Again, these are the producers that have a greater ability to pay for conservation. I repeat: the larger farms, where the producers get more than two-thirds of their income from farming, average over $654,000 in gross income. If you compare that to a beginning farmer, they would actually have more ability to pay for conservation on their own, but this amendment would hurt the younger farmers with lower incomes and second jobs to make ends meet.

As I said, I just think this kind of a shotgun approach isn't the way to go. I wish there were some way to refine it to get at the very problem the Senator spoke about.

Yes.

I could not agree with the Senator more. When I hear what he says, the answer is, yes, I wish we could figure out how we do that. We have not done that, and we should do that.

On the 71 percent, that might sound alarming, but that says to me there are a lot of people out there farming who aren't making a lot of money on the farm. They do have some farm income, but think about it this way: people who may be bona fide farmers or ranchers, but they may have another business in town--maybe they are an elevator operator or something, but they are farmers.

I think we have to be very careful about this. I think there are a lot of these people in that 71 percent--I haven't looked at the breakdown--who are these younger farmers and have to have some off-farm income to help make ends meet or maybe they need farm income to put away for college savings or something.

Sure.

That sounds interesting.

I give the Senator my word. I want the same thing he wants. It burns me up, too, to see some of these people who buy acres and they get EQIP money to put up a nice pond or a horse shed. I agree with him. Maybe we can get our staffs and get people to think about how we might fashion this to exclude those people from the EQIP program. I would love to see that happen.

If the Senator will yield further, maybe the Senator is onto something in terms of intent or what they are doing, coupled with, perhaps, the productive capacity and what that land is actually producing on an annualized basis.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, we are making good progress. Senator Chambliss and I have been working very hard today to get amendments up. I think we are down to just a few we will be voting on tomorrow, and we will do perhaps a little bit more work tonight. I would say to any Senator whose amendment is on the list who wants to debate it, we are here. They could debate the amendment tonight and get in order tomorrow. I have a couple of things I want to wrap up.

I ask for regular order with respect to amendment No. 3830.

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

It is just a second-degree.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3539. It is an amendment by Senator Durbin, No. 3539. I ask for its immediate consideration.

I ask that the second-degree amendment be agreed to.

I ask the amendment, No. 3539, as amended, be agreed to.

I am happy to yield to my friend from Maryland.

That is correct, Senator. Section 2361 provides an additional funding stream totaling $165 million from 2007 through 2012 to address the critical needs of the Chesapeake Bay. This funding is separate from EQIP and is not intended to offset funding allocated under that program.

First of all, I would like to take just a moment--we had an amendment No. 3530 which I think the committee has agreed to accept and will come to later, but I wanted to spend a moment talking about it.

Over the last 20 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has paid out $1.1 billion to dead farmers. Forty percent of them have been dead over 7 years; 19 percent of them have been dead over 11 years. Yet they continued to pay them. I very much appreciate the chairman and ranking member for their consideration.

What this will do is to make USDA go back and say: If you haven't gotten your estate settled in 2 years, you have to be talking to us rather than us continuing to make farm payments to people who are no longer alive. I appreciate their acceptance of that amendment.

Amendment No. 3632

I wish to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 3632.

Thank you, Mr. President. This is a fairly straightforward amendment. It fits with a lot of things they have done in this bill. This is about the EQIP program. This is about environmental capacity to save in terms of runoff, decrease load streams, and do a lot of things in terms of the environment, and the basic goals behind it are good. This amendment is very simple. All it says is that you ought to be a real farmer to get EQIP money.

You ought to get two-thirds of your money from agriculture before you are eligible for getting this money. Why is that a problem? The problem is that our real farmers are not getting the vast majority of the money; it is our nonfarmers. If you buy 160 acres, what the marketing guy says is: I have a way for you to refence this land and build a new pond, and it will increase the value and you can turn around and sell it, except the American taxpayers pay for 40 percent of the improvements on it. You never have to run a head of cattle on it; you never have to raise a crop on it. You can just invest in the land and qualify. That is not the intended purpose for EQIP or why we created it. I believe EQIP funds ought to go for what they are intended. What this does is take the doctor who is play-farming or play-ranching and using American taxpayer money to improve the value of his land so he can turn around in a year and a half and sell it and make money. It doesn't save us anything in terms of the intended purpose of EQIP.

All this says is that if you are a real farmer and you get two-thirds of your income from farming, agriculture, this would not apply to you. But if you are gaming the system, gaming EQIP to advantage yourself, and not as a person in production agriculture but as an investor in land or as a speculator in

land, you ought not to be able to use these moneys to increase the value. Fencing hardly improves the environment. Yet we spend money out of EQIP for farms and ranches that are small and are not owned by real farmers but gentlemen farmers who don't produce anything. Yet they go out and have fun on some land they own and they qualify. We ought not to be paying for that with American taxpayer money. It is straightforward. It says you ought to be a real farmer before we allow EQIP money to be used to improve the environmental conditions on your farm.

There is a marked increase in the demand for these EQIP dollars. We see pivots. We can markedly decrease water consumption if we have modern pivots. We help farmers to put them in. We use less water, get less runoff, and do more no-till farming. So the demand for the dollars associated with EQIP, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, was designed for working farms and working ranches, not for the weekend farmer.

The Environmental Quality Incentive Program emerged as the most important USDA program providing financial assistance for conservation on working farms and ranches and is measured by the number of participants and acres under contract--the largest financial assistance conservation program in all of USDA. Yet we have real farmers and ranchers who cannot get enough help to make a difference when it comes to the environment.

I want real farmers who are really in it to produce agriculture to have this money available, and I don't want the American taxpayers paying for somebody else who has the money to do it already but is using their money to enhance the value of their property, and they are not real farmers, not real ranchers, they are not a vegetable farmer, they are not in production agriculture, they are not an orchard farmer, they are not in timber, but, in fact, they own 40 acres of timber, and therefore they qualify even though it is purely an investment and they have no intent to harvest a crop, but they are utilizing taxpayer money.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

If 72 percent of the people getting EQIP money today would not get the money, that means 72 percent of the people who are getting EQIP today get less than 66 percent of the money from agriculture. That is an even bigger problem. In fact, three quarters of the people who are eligible aren't primarily getting the vast majority of their income from agriculture. Yet we are sending three quarters of the money to those people. I see that as an even bigger problem.

Would the chairman work with me to try to figure out a way to exclude those who are advantaging themselves and have no intention of working into an agriculture position as a lifestyle or as a primary vocation? Would he agree to work with me so we might come to a point where we can define the difference between those who are primarily interested in agriculture and building a young farm and excluding those who are using the American taxpayer money to improve the quality of their land so they can turn around and sell it?

Will the chairman yield for another question?

Would the Senator think a certification as to intent by people who apply for EQIP that their primary vocation is either now or is intended to be agriculture would be a way in which we might accomplish the goal? I am willing to withdraw this amendment if we can work on that.

I don't want the small farmer to be excluded, but I think the amount of money going to nonfarmers is a lot greater than you think it is. It is not going to real farmers who have real needs and the vast majority of the acres where we are going to make the biggest difference on the environment. I ask if he would work with me between now and the time the bill comes out of conference to see if we cannot address that, and if he would do so, as well as the ranking member, I will ask unanimous consent to withdraw this amendment.

I think we can work that out.

Amendment No. 3632, withdrawn

I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment, and I will work with the chairman and ranking member on this issue.

Mr. President, what is the pending business before the Senate? Is there a unanimous consent request as far as further amendments?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Under the consent order, is it possible that a modification to the amendment be sent to the desk?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to send to the desk a modification to my amendment No. 3807, as discussed with the chairman and ranking member.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I am here to speak briefly on my amendment, which is amendment No. 3810. I am going to reserve most of my time for tomorrow because some of my colleagues want to address this bill.

Mr. President, America's farm safety net was created during the Great Depression. It was created to protect struggling family farmers from volatile prices and from volatile weather. I think the reasons for that safety net still remain today. That is why I am a strong supporter of this farm bill.

I believe there are some forward thinking provisions in this farm bill, including with regard to energy, cellulosic energy--something near and

dear to my heart. We have worked hard on those provisions. The permanent disaster relief is so important for the farmers in my State. I think the safety net that helped our farmers in the 2002 farm bill and allowed them to take risks and revitalize a lot of the areas in this country are good. That is why I support this farm bill.

But I also believe there is a need for reform in this farm bill. I believe the money that is set aside for a safety net for our farmers should be going to the hard-working farmers in this country and not to urban millionaires. When you look at what happened over the last few years, there are scandals. There are people who should not have gotten this money. There are art collectors in San Francisco and real estate developers in Florida. When we look at where the money went, I think we can conclude there are not a lot of farms in, say, the District of Columbia, where we stand today. Mr. President, $3.1 million in farm payments went to the District of Columbia, $4.2 million has gone to people living in Manhattan, and $1 billion of taxpayer money for farm payments has gone to Beverly Hills 90210. The last time I checked, there is not a lot of farmland in those areas.

I believe we can fix this problem. As Senator Dorgan said today, if we don't fix it ourselves, someone is going to fix it for us. I believe the people who live in farm States have an obligation to make sure these programs are appropriate and that they are going to the right people.

That is why I am proud that in this last farm bill, as a member of the Agriculture Committee, we have included in this farm bill an end to the three-entity rule. We have eliminated it. It will cut down the abuse by applying payment limits strictly to individuals and married couples and to ending the practice of dividing farms into multiple corporations so they get multiple payments.

I also support the Dorgan-Grassley amendment that puts some sensible limits on the total number of subsidies. But also I believe it is very important that we put some reasonable limits on income eligibility.

Now, what we have here with our amendment is reasonable. Let me go through what the law is right now. Right now, the law, for full-time farmers, says if you get at least 75 percent of your income from farming, you have an unlimited amount of income and profit you can make, and you can still get Government subsidies. That is how it works. It says for part-time farmers, if you get $2.45 million--you may just be an investor in Beverly Hills--you can still make up to $2.5 million, and you get the subsidies. We know that with the budget problems this country is facing, we need to make some sensible reforms.

The President has proposed a $200,000 limit on income for both part- time and full-time farmers. The House-passed version has suggested a $1 million limit on income for full-time farmers and a $500,000 limit for part-time farmers. So it is more generous than the administration, but it is still a big change from what the current law is. Our Senate bill that came out of committee, unfortunately, still allows for unlimited income for full-time farmers, and then basically for part-time farmers ends up after a number of years at $750,000.

What our amendment does, the Klobuchar-Durbin-Brown amendment--and we have a number of people on the other side of the aisle who are going to be supporting this as well, as well as the Department of Agriculture. It simply says for full-time farmers, if you make in profit $750,000, at that point you are not going to get any more Government farm payments. Now, if you have a bad year, and disaster strikes and you go below that amount, you will be eligible for those payments. For part- time farmers, some of the investors, the people who are making less than 66 percent of their income from farming, if you make $250,000, then, at that point, you are no longer eligible for these payments.

Now, I don't think this is something outrageous. I think this is good policy. When I think about the farmers in my State, the average income of a farmer is $54,000. That is why as we look at this farm bill and what we want to do for the new and beginning farmers, we want to get more farmers involved in agriculture. We want to do more for nutrition, conservation, and most important to me, moving to this next generation of cellulosic ethanol, we have to acknowledge that at some point, multimillionaires who live in urban areas should not be getting these farm payments.

So I am going to reserve the remainder of my time for tomorrow because my colleagues want to address this issue. I think we will have a good debate. But I wanted to put it in people's minds tonight so they can go back and talk to their staffs about how important it is and how sensible it is to put some reasonable income limits on this farm bill. Right now, our Senate bill has no income limits for full-time farmers and goes all the way up to $750,000 for part-time farmers. I believe we can do better and still strongly support the family farmers in this country. I support them. My State is sixth in the country for agriculture; No. 1 turkey producer in the country. We have a lot of corn. We have some great people who are revitalizing our State because of the hard work they did, and the 2002 farm bill helped them. We want to keep those strong reforms in place, keep the safety net in place, add the disaster relief, add the conservation focus, but we also want to have some reasonable reforms so the money goes where it should go, and that is to our hard-working farmers.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today with my colleagues Senators Dole, Durbin, Feinstein, Stabenow, Salazar, Kerry, Brown, McCaskill, Schumer, Boxer, Levin, Bayh, Burr, Martinez, Clinton, Pryor, Leahy, Lincoln, Hutchison, Chambliss, Rockefeller, and Isakson to introduce legislation vitally important to the ability of our States to continue to fund their Medicaid programs and ensure access to health care services for low-income constituents. The legislation would extend the existing 1 year moratorium for an additional year on a

CMS rule limiting Medicaid payments to public and teaching hospitals as well as the ability of States to fund critical healthcare programs for rural residents such as through Sole Community Hospital programs.

On January 18, 2007, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS, published a proposed rule entitled ``Medicaid Program; Cost Limit for Providers Operated by Units of Government and Provisions to Ensure the Integrity of Federal- State-Financial Partnership'' that would make sweeping changes to public and other safety net provider payment and financing arrangements with State Medicaid programs. The proposed rule would: impose a cost limit on Medicaid payments to public and other safety net providers; impose a new Federal definition of public provider status; and, greatly restrict the sources of non-Federal share funding through intergovernmental transfers, IGTs, and certified public expenditures, CPEs.

National advocates report that over 400 comment letters were submitted to CMS on the proposed rule, none of which expressed support for the rule and the overall majority of which called for its withdrawal. In addition, a budget neutral reserve fund to block this regulation was introduced by me and approved by the Senate this year.

CMS subsequently issued an additional regulation that would force billions of dollars in additional Medicaid payment reductions to teaching hospitals, many of whom are public hospitals, hampering the ability of those providers to provide essential services including the education of the next generation of medical professionals despite a shortage of medical professionals. The proposed regulations would cut at least $5 billion in Medicaid funding for safety net hospitals nationwide over 5 years--weakening their effectiveness for all of us and jeopardizing the health of millions of vulnerable children and families.

In response to these rules, 66 Senators and 283 Members of the House have gone on record in opposition to the rules since they were released earlier this year. This includes a majority of the Finance Committee including Senators: Roberts, Snowe, Smith, Rockefeller, Kerry, Bingaman, Salazar, Stabenow, Wyden, Lincoln, Schumer, and Cantwell.

Furthermore, Congress showed its strong opposition to the rules by including a one-year moratorium in the recent supplemental appropriations bill, P.L. 110-28. The moratorium prohibits implementation of the rules for one year from the date of enactment of the supplemental. The supplemental was negotiated extensively by Congress and the White House and a deal was reached on May 23. On May 25--the day the President signed the supplemental, and the moratorium, into law--the administration put the final rule on display and published it in the Federal Register on May 29. The most damaging components of the proposed rule remain in the final rule, including Medicaid cuts limiting public and other safety net providers to cost.

Since then, CMS has issued a third rule of major concern to public and teaching hospitals. On September 28, 2007, CMS released a new proposed rule governing the calculation of the Medicaid outpatient upper payment limit, UPL. Many believe this action was in violation of the current moratorium enacted by Congress. For example, the outpatient regulation would exclude GME costs from the calculation of the Medicaid Outpatient UPL for all hospitals and would also eliminate many ancillary services from the UPL calculation for all-inclusive rate providers.

Major Medicaid reforms require a congressional role. By rushing to publish a final regulation, CMS has disregarded congressional opposition and attempted to usurp Congress's role. In addition, the status quo is now the administration's new policy, not what existed when Congress was in the process of enacting the moratorium. CMS's action requires states to prepare for implementation of the regulation and expend administrative resources to do so--all of this before Congress has the opportunity to address the key policy issues contained in the regulation.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this important legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill and letters of support be printed in the Record.