Continuing Extension Act of 2010

Mr. President, it has been 2 weeks since we last spoke on the floor on this issue. There has been a lot written in the press and a lot of things that have been said. I will reiterate what I said earlier in that debate before we took an inappropriate spring break, and that is the fact that everybody thinks those who are unemployed and are eligible should be getting unemployment checks. That is not a partisan issue. It is a fact we want to support those who need our help right now.

The real question, however, is what will we do to make sure that effort is an effort that has some real meaning behind it and that these are not hollow words. The debate around here becomes partisan and labels get applied, and I admit that I am partisan--but not from a party standpoint; I am partisan for our children.

The question isn't whether we should make sure that unemployment benefits are there. The question isn't whether people can get health insurance under COBRA. The question isn't whether we ought to do the right thing for those who are depending on us. The question is, where do we get the money?

It is simple. We have two options. One option says: Time out; this is so important that it doesn't matter where we get the money; we have to supply it. The other option is--and by the way, the first option belies the fact that we have any waste in the Federal Government. I don't think we can do a poll that would come so close to unanimity as a poll on which we would ask the American people whether the Federal Government is efficient and effective. I doubt that we would get anybody on the ``yes'' ledger side on that.

The real question, then, becomes do we have the goodwill and the presence of mind to do this in a way that doesn't jeopardize our children? You see, we are not just fighting about unemployment benefits. We are not debating the issue of unemployment benefits. We are debating the issue of whether we take from those who come after us and give to those today.

Many times I have used this poster of this young lady. Her name is Madeline. Madeline was caught in DC wearing this poster. I have gone over the numbers. When she wore the poster, her debt was $38,375. Her debt today, without us extending this bill after last year, is over $45,000. So the question is competing priorities. We have the priority of making sure that we help those who need our help in a time of economic decline. And then we have the priority of making sure we have not mortgaged the opportunity of freedom for children such as Madeline.

Who will fight for the Madelines? Who will stand up for our grandchildren and say we can find $9.2 billion out of an almost $4 trillion budget and pay for it and not charge it to the Madelines of this world? That is what we are doing when we declare something an emergency.

I would also make the point that we passed a 9-month extension for many of these programs. It was paid for. In other words, we didn't add to the debt when we passed a bill that would extend this for 9 months. The Senate did its work. That bill hasn't come back because the House is unlikely to pass it with the pay-fors in it and, frankly, several were used to pay for the health care bill that passed.

Who will protect the Madelines of the world? Since the beginning of this year and the famed passage of a statute called pay-go, which says we will no longer create new spending without cutting the spending somewhere else, we have spent $120 billion of Madeline's future, and every Madeline who is out there--every 3-year-old and 4-year-old who is out there. We have done it by waiving the new statute that says you have to pay as you go. Congress--and the Senate specifically--increased our budget 5.6 percent this year. In a year where true costs were down we increased our own budget. Yet, we refuse to look at the hard choices that are necessary for us to make a future for the Madelines of this world.

What happens if we continue this? What happens if we continue to say we will borrow from the future instead of making the tough choices now? I will tell you what happens. Madeline's future--her opportunity for prosperity--is mortgaged. We tend to think in the short run, and the vision our Founders had was thinking in the long term.

So where do we find $9.2 billion? If I get an opportunity, I will offer five amendments that will pay for that. I wager that nary a person would ever miss the money. We could find $9.2 billion in the Defense Department. They have at least $50 billion worth of waste. But, no, we won't go there. We have $700 billion in unobligated balances of which well over 20 percent has been sitting there for 2 years. That is $140 billion. We can pay for this for a year, but we won't go there. We have ineffective spending in the stimulus bill that hasn't been rolled out yet that I will put forward as a greater priority than the money intended left in the stimulus bill is for. But we are not going to go there. What we are going to do--and we will pass a motion to proceed today to this bill. But what we are going to do is take the easy, the soft road of not paid for. We cannot continue to do that.

Last year--and we will continue this year--out of every dollar the Federal Government spent we borrowed 43 percent. So 43 cents out of every dollar the Federal Government spent last year we borrowed. We ended up with a real deficit of close to $1.6 trillion by the time you get out of the accounting gimmicks that Washington uses. That is what we added to the Madelines of the world. We are going to do that this year again.

The February deficit was the highest on record ever for the Federal Government. So we are going to have an excessive $1.4 billion or $1.5 billion or probably a $1.6 trillion deficit this year, and we are going to add another $9.2 billion with this bill.

How is it fair? How is it right that in this country we cannot do two right things, we can only do one right and one wrong thing? I posit that stealing money from our kids' future and mortgaging their future is morally wrong. I posit that helping people who need our help on unemployment benefits is morally right. Why can we not do both? We ought to be able to do both.

I sent a letter to the minority and majority leaders when the bill first came up. I will read it because I think it is important to understand the thinking on why we should pay for this--realizing that we passed a 9-month extension that was paid for, and because the House hasn't acted, we don't feel an obligation to protect the Madelines of the world. The letter says this:

I am writing to notify you that I would like to be

consulted on any unanimous consent agreements regarding the

consideration of H.R. 4851, the Continuing Extension Act of

2010, which would extend the number of federal programs for

one month.

No one is arguing that Americans who are currently

unemployed should not have their unemployment insurance

payments extended. But once again, Congress is refusing to

find a way to offset the $9.15 billion cost of the bill with

cuts to less important federal spending.

Time and time again, Congress intentionally waits until the

last minute to consider important legislation and then

declares the billions of dollars in foreseeable costs as

``emergency'' spending in order to avoid having to find a way

to pay for the bills' price tags.

In the last 6 months, Congress has passed four major

extension bills. H.R. 4851 would be the fifth such bill. The

total cost of these bills is almost $30 billion.

Additionally, over the last year Congress has increased

funding totaling $64.9 billion for the Highway and

Unemployment Insurance Trust Funds without offsets.

This shortsightedness sticks taxpayers with billions of

dollars in additional debt and treats the unemployed, doctors

and Medicare patients, hard working men and women who help

make our roads and bridges safe, and others relying on

federal funds as pawns in Congress' borrowing and spending

game.

When the previous last-minute one month extension (H.R.

4692) was brought up days before the funding authority for

numerous federal programs, including Unemployment Insurance

and the Highway Trust Fund, which expired at the end of

February, 2010, a United States Senator was attacked for

objecting to passing the bill without any debate or

amendments because the bill was unpaid for and added $10

billion to our nation's debt.

In other words, there is something wrong with Senator Bunning raising the question of whether we ought to pay for it.

As always, those who prefer to borrow to avoid making the

tough budget decisions won out, and the taxpayers were stuck

with another $10 billion in debt.

The Madelines of the world.

Congress has continually resisted the need to act like

every family in the United States of America and to budget

and live within their means. Our debt is now over $12.6

trillion. The 2010 deficit is projected to amount to $1.3

trillion and we are borrowing 43 cents on every dollar; yet,

Congress continues to increase spending without any

correlating spending cuts.

Congress' inability to prioritize and manage national needs

results in real consequences for Americans, whether it be

furloughs, market uncertainty that leads to lower investment

and job losses, or Americans being saddled with higher debt

and taxes.

If Congress keeps approving temporary extension bills

throughout the calendar year without finding offsets,

Congress will have added almost $120 billion to our national

debt. Additionally, the Senate has already approved more than

$120 billion in new federal spending not offset, even though

it passed Pay-Go legislation just over one month ago claiming

to prohibit such activity.

In the House, Appropriations Chairman David Obey has

indicated that some new spending needs to be offset with

unused, unobligated funds. Chairman Obey suggested rescinding

$362 million in reserve stimulus funds for the Women, Infants

and Children nutrition program; $112 million from a Commerce

Department program designed to provide coupons to households

to help buy analog-to-digital converter boxes; $103 million

from USDA rural development programs; and $44 million from

the Transportation Department's Consumer Assistance to

Recycle and Save Program . . . to offset the cost of a

different spending bill. The Senate should likewise find a

way to offset this one-month extension bill and create a

sustainable precedent.

The Senate can start with federal unobligated balances.

According to the White House, in Fiscal Year 2011, 33 percent

of all federal funds were unused and obligated. The total

dollar amount of these unobligated balances was estimated at

$703 billion. Rescinding only discretionary funding that has

been available for more than two years would likely result in

roughly $100 billion in offset spending. The Senate could

also tap into $228 billion in unobligated stimulus funds as

Chairman Obey has suggested.

At the very least, Congress should reconsider transferring

the almost $100 million budget increase it approved for

itself for 2010 to offset the cost of additional spending.

Congress should not be increasing its budget by 4.5 percent

when our economy shrunk by 2.4 percent and inflation was at

less than 1 percent.

I have also detailed through numerous oversight hearings,

reports, and legislation how the federal government wastes

more than $300 billion every year. I have suggested hundreds

of offsets to new spending, including consolidating

duplicative programs, and eliminating federal programs that

address parochial concerns.

We all think our Americans in need of financial assistance

are worth the $9 billion bill cost, but do we think our

children and grandchildren are worth paying for these costs

up front, rather than passing the cost to them?. . . .

Thank you for protecting my rights regarding this

legislation.

I ask unanimous consent to have this letter printed in the Record.

Mr. President, so what are we going to do? We have before us a need. It is a good need. It is something we ought to do. We are going to borrow 43 cents out of every dollar we spend this year. We are going to put the Madelines of this world in a position that by 2020, this number is not going to be $45,000; it is going to be $95,000. That is where she is going to be. That is every man, woman, and child in terms of what they owe in terms of the direct national debt.

Can we continue on this pace? We hear we will fix it later. Later is not good enough for the Madelines of this world. Later is today. Now is the time for us to do the very hard work. It is not easy to come up with spending offsets. It is not easy to not increase the national debt. It is very easy to simply put the credit card into the machine and say: Because they are out of sight, out of mind--the Madelines of the world--we will just charge it to them.

That is what is being proposed here. If you oppose that, all of a sudden you do not care about the people who are unemployed. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard that in the last 2 weeks; that it is obstruction that you want to pay for it. Should we be working hard to secure the future of the children such as Madeline?

We are told that over the next 9 years, we are going to borrow an additional $9.8 trillion, based on the budget projections that are out there. Of that $9.8 trillion, almost half of it is money we are going to borrow and turn around to pay interest on what we already owe. That is eerily close to those of us who get into trouble with credit cards. We get another credit card, borrow the max on it to pay off the other credit cards. Then we get in trouble with that one and get another one. Pretty soon, we cannot pay anything.

The Chinese own over $900 billion of our bonds, the Russians $800 billion. Have we considered the fact that our problems, in terms of our foreign policy with Iran and our ability to put sharp, tough sanctions on somebody who wants to use and develop nuclear weapons could possibly be inhibited by the fact that two of the countries opposing those strong, tough sanctions own a lot of our bonds and that we are dependent on them? Could it also be that the week before last, when the Treasury option was very soft because the Chinese did not participate, that is a warning shot across our bow? We are in waters this country has never seen before. If we pass this bill and we continue to pass more bills, not having made the tough choices, we are steaming toward a catastrophe.

What will that look like? It is not that we cannot fix the problem. It is not as if we could not go and find $9.2 billion out of a nearly $4 trillion budget. It is that we refuse to. It is not that it is impossible. We refuse to. We refuse to do the same things families across this country do every day; that is, make a choice about priorities.

My office just last week, with the help of the Congressional Research Service and the GAO, identified 70 duplicate programs on nutrition across three Federal Departments. We now have 70 programs for food and nutrition across three departments, with thousands upon thousands of Federal employees, thousands upon thousands of pages of bureaucratic gobbledygook and regulations. I would propose probably we ought to have one good program on food and nutrition. We do not address that. The authorizing committees do not. The appropriating committees do not.

We have 105 programs that encourage people to go into math, science, technology, and engineering across six different agencies--105 programs. There is not one agency that does not have considerable waste in it, and there is probably not one American who would not think that we could not cut 1 or 2 or 3 percent from every agency and drive efficiency. But we will not do that.

The real question is: Why won't we? We will beat up people because they will not agree to spend Madeline's money and her future, but we will not agree to trim the waste, the fat, duplication, and fraud out of the Federal Government. It is no wonder the public has such a poor image of Congress because we are actually not doing what they are asking us to do.

It would be different if there was not waste in the Federal Government. If everything was fine-tuned, effective, and efficient, one could make an argument for borrowing this money. But nobody I know of believes the Federal Government is efficient and effective throughout its myriad departments and agencies. If the majority might feel that way, that it is not, why would we not do the hard work of paying for this bill?

What does it mean to borrow $9.2 billion this month and $10 billion last month and $10 billion before and the $120 billion we passed in the first 3 months of the second session of the 111th Congress? What does it mean? It means we do not think we have to play by the same rules as the rest of the American public. We have a tilted sense of reality. There is no obligation on us to eliminate waste to provide a good for those people who are depending on us.

We will go forward this evening on a motion to proceed to this bill unpaid for, charged to the Madelines of this world, and all you have to do is take $9.2 billion--it is not much in Washington speak; it is twice the size of Oklahoma's budget for a year--and we will charge it to a credit card to our kids.

Ultimately, what we are doing is stealing a college education from our kids. We are stealing a job opportunity from our kids. We are stealing the ability for our kids to own a home and to provide for their children what was provided for them. You see, the heritage we have that built this country was one of sacrifice, where we make decisions that require us to make a sacrifice to create opportunity. When you turn that upside down, the American experiment fails. When we steal opportunity from the future so we can benefit for today, we eliminate the genius that made this country great. It is time we reversed that.

It is not really a partisan issue. I know the press is going to say that. It is partisan for our future. It is partisan for our kids. And we can do both. We can find $9.2 billion that isn't as effectively spent as will be spent on COBRA or unemployment insurance or on flood insurance or on fixing the SGR for a short period of time. We can do that, but we won't because we are in the habit of not making hard choices. We are in the habit of doing the least best thing rather than the best thing.

The best thing for our budget, the best thing for our future, the best thing for our children's future is for us to say X, Y, and Z are not nearly as important as unemployment insurance benefits, are not as important as COBRA benefits, are not as important as fixing the SGR for a short period of time. When will we muscle up the courage to start making those kinds of decisions?

We can't continue doing what we are doing. We can't grow to $20 trillion worth of debt--over 100 percent of our GDP. At the rate we are going, in 2010, we will have $24 trillion worth of debt, and $24 trillion, at 6 percent interest, is $1.5 trillion a year in interest payments. We can't make it. We cannot handle that. And the reality will only come home when it is too late.

Senator Reid, when we passed the pay-go bill, said it was a new start. He said we are going to open our billfold, and if the money is there we will spend it but we are not going to spend money that is not in our billfold--to paraphrase his quote. Well, this bill goes to an empty billfold. The money is not there. So we can either increase our debt, which will make life for the Madelines of this world tougher or we can actually take on some tough decisionmaking as a body and actually eliminate lower priority programs. Would that have some impact on some programs? Yes. I mean, we could actually take a 1-percent across-the-board cut and come up with $30 billion easily. Americans know we could get 1 percent out of the Federal agencies. But we are not going to do that either.

The question is, When will we start acting in the responsible role with which we are charged? When will we start thinking with a long-term perspective about what is going to happen to our country if, in fact, we don't start making the hard choices now? No matter how much scorn, no matter how many derisive statements are made, the Madelines of the world are worth it. When we sit and relax and think this is not as big a problem as we hear described, we fall into the same trap as every other republic in history. And they all collapsed. No republic has survived more than 250 years, and they all collapsed for the same reason. They all collapsed ultimately because they lost control of their fiscal policy--taxes, spending, priorities.

So we have a choice in front of us. This isn't the first time we are going to have this choice, and it won't be the last. But a question that I think the American people ought to be asking is, When is the Congress going to start acting in a responsible manner? When are they going to start following the guidelines every other prudent financial decisionmaker makes, whether it be the head of a household, a wage earner, a small business, or a small nonprofit? They all live within a budget, and what they do is they say: Here is the most important priority and here is the least, and they go down the line. When the money runs out, they either generate efficiency to allow that money to be more effective and more efficient in how it is spent or they eliminate the lower priority items.

It would be a wonderful search for people to go on thomas.gov to find out the number of programs that have been eliminated versus the number of programs that have been created in the last 2 years. I guarantee you they will outnumber 200 or 300 to 1. In the Judiciary Committee this week, we will have two bills up that duplicate existing programs. I will have the same fight in the Judiciary Committee, and I will lose. We will extend new programs that are doing the same thing other programs are doing, and yet I will lose the battle and we will create new programs to do the same thing we already have government programs doing. Why is that? Because you cannot manage what you do not measure. We don't put metrics on hardly anything in the Federal Government programs, and conveniently so. Therefore, we can say: Well, we can't know whether they are efficient.

The time for our comfort with where we find ourselves financially is over. The American people already understand that because 72 percent of them, in a recent poll, said their No. 1 issue is debt and spending. They already get it. They are wondering when we are going to catch up with them. They are for supporting unemployment insurance benefits but not charging them to their children. They are for us making the hard choices.

So as we go forward, the hope would be that we would get out of the short-term thinking we find ourselves in and start looking down the road of what is coming. I have been quoted as saying that I think we have less than 5 years to fix our ship. I think that is probably generous. I don't think there is one problem in front of our country that we can't fix. However, if we ignore the realities of our financial situation, if the elected leaders in this country fail to make priority decisions, which means you are going to offend some of the supporters of the lower priority programs, then we are not going to solve the problems that are in front of us. If our focus is parochial only--in other words, only the concerns within our own States--rather than that of our Nation as a whole, we are not going to fix the problems in front of us.

I have five grandchildren, and in thinking of the future, I often wonder what things will be like for them.

Thinking backward, when I was 17 and 18 and going to college for the first year, there was this tremendous vision on the horizon that I saw in front of me. I could go to school because I had parents who could afford to pay for my college, and wherever I wanted to go, whatever I wanted to do was out there on that horizon. That is a limited possibility today for our kids. Is it going to be a possibility for the Madelines of the world?

Thinking forward, if you take everyone who is 25 years of age and younger in this country and go out 20 years, here is where they will be: That group, 45 and younger, will be responsible for $1,113,000-- each and every one of them will be responsible for $1,113,000 worth of debt and unfunded liabilities, every one of them, if we are on the same course we are on today. Take 6 percent of that, and you will see they are going to have to come up with about $67,000 a year just to pay the interest costs on that debt. That is before they pay income taxes. That is before they pay rent or pay a mortgage. That is before they pay for a car or a car payment. That is before they put food on the table. That is before they clothe their kids and themselves. That is before they give to a charity or their church.

We are stealing the American dream every time we fail to be cognizant of what the future holds, if we don't change course. So the debate really isn't about unemployment insurance; it is about when are we going to change course? When are we going to start recognizing the need to live within our means?

We are going to hear that we have always done it this way, that we have passed three other short-term extensions and that we call them emergencies so we don't have to pay for them. I would say it is time that we not always do it the way we have always done it because the way we have always done it has gotten us $12.6 trillion in debt and is sending us out to sea without a rudder and without enough fuel oil to get back to shore.

My hope is that our debate will focus on what the real problems are in this country, the real long-term problems, because you really solve short-term problems when you start attacking the long-term problems and when you really start making the tough decisions.

I say to my colleague from Montana, as head of the Finance Committee, he knows what would happen if we sent a signal that we were really going to start getting tough about our budget. He knows what would happen to bond rates. He knows what would happen to our ability to lead in the world if we all of a sudden became cognizant and acted in a way that was fiscally responsible. Investment would come flowing back into this country, bond yields would go down, not up, and the cost of our debt would go down. It would be a home run every way we look at it. It would be a home run for the Madelines of this country, and it would be a home run for those who are unemployed.

If you read the financial news, you have been seeing what is happening to Greece. Greece got rescued just in the last week, partly through the IMF, but mainly the money is going to come from Germany and France. They are going to get to borrow for a short period of time at 5 percent instead of the 7\1/2\ percent the market reflects.

I would say that there is no Germany or France to bail us out. There is no one who will come to bail America out. It is highly doubtful that Greece has the political will to do what it has to do to solve its own problem. The question is, In 2 or 3 years, are they going to be saying the same thing about our country? Do we have the political will to dig out of the hole we have, in fact, dug for ourselves? When I say ``we,'' I am not talking about the American public, I am talking about the Congress of the United States. You can't blame it on any President. You can't blame it on the courts. The blame for our financial situation lies solely with the U.S. Congress. Whether it is lack of oversight of financial firms or Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae; whether it is the lack of oversight of the SEC; whether it is the tremendous amount of waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government--$300 billion, at least, per year--it lies with us.

We are going to hear a lot of reasons why we should pass this--just pass the charges on to our kids. My hope is that the American people will reject that because when they accept that it is OK to just charge it to our kids, what they are doing is conditioning us to continue doing the same thing--continuing to spend the future opportunities of our children and grandchildren. Our heritage is much greater than that. Our kids and grandkids are worth much more than that. Let it not be said of this Congress that we failed to act in the time when the tough get going and that we made the tough decisions about not increasing the debt, streamlining the government, eliminating some of the $300 billion worth of waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication that is in the Federal Government.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, if anybody has been watching the Senate today, there was a point of order made that the spending we are going to pass to pay for unemployment insurance extension benefits and benefits for health insurance for those people, in terms of buying through their former employers, as well as the sustainable growth rate formula, failed to be overriden.

We will have another vote on that because the majority side was missing one Member, and they will eventually win on that. What that says is, we are once again back to the point where we refuse to make the hard choices to pay for things we need to do today by eliminating things that are not as important.

The point of order was on the fact that it is an emergency so, therefore, we can say: Time out. But those who voted to override it fail to recognize the other major emergency that is happening in our country. We have $12.8 trillion worth of debt as of today. We are going to add another $1.4 to $1.5 trillion this year, this calendar year; that the increase in the cost of that debt over the last 12 months will require an additional, next year, $125 billion worth of expenditures.

There has to come a point in time when we grow to the responsibility that has been given to us; that is, make hard choices. It is very easy to pass an unemployment insurance bill by charging it to our children. The majority leader has graciously agreed to give me an opportunity to offer three different ways to pay for that. I am going to put those out today. One amendment now, which we will vote on, another amendment later, and then a third amendment later.

Most of the ideas for cutting spending, quite frankly, have come from my colleagues on the other side, and many of them you have already voted for. So it is going to be an interesting exercise today. The majority leader also spoke to me before lunch saying it did not matter because I was going to lose anyway.

That sends a signal. The leadership of our Senate today says: We do not have to pay for things.

Prior to leaving here, we agreed on a compromise of tax loophole closures that would have paid for this for a period of 30 days. The bill we voted on back then was for 30 days. We have now before us an identical bill before us for 60 days. It is going to cost $18.2 billion. That is what CBO says. The question I have to ask is, is it morally right for us to steal that money from our children's future or make hard choices about wasteful spending today? The choices are not hard other than in our stubbornness that we don't want to agree.

When businesses are taken over, when a larger business buys a smaller business, the first thing they do is become great cash managers of the business. In other words, they make sure the money in the business is always working for the business. So if there is excess cash lying around in accounts, they take that money and reduce whatever outstanding debts they have or forgo borrowing money and use that cash in a more efficacious and serious manner. The first amendment I will offer is asking us to do nothing but the same.

At the end of last year, the Federal Government had on its books money it borrowed but had not spent of $676 billion. That is what is sitting in accounts, money we have borrowed that is not being utilized efficiently. At the end of next year, at the end of fiscal 2011, according to the OMB, it will be $614 billion. That is almost half of the debt we will borrow this year. This first amendment simply says: Let the administration utilize its executive prerogatives and instead of us borrowing $18.2 billion from our children and then paying interest on that--and, by the way, the interest on that $18.2 billion that will go on in perpetuity, because we are not retiring any debt, is about $900 million, almost $1 billion a year. Why would we borrow money when we have money sitting there that is not being utilized effectively and pay almost $900 million every year? Why would we borrow again next year an extra billion to pay for the money we are going to borrow to fund this program?

Let me give an example of where this money lies. In our own accounts to run the legislature, we have $1.450 billion sitting there. In other words, it has not been promised to do anything. It is sitting there. It was sitting at $1.876 billion at the end of last fiscal year. It is projected to be $1.481 billion next year. We are keeping that money in the bank and not using it.

The Department of Agriculture has $20 billion and is estimated in 2011 to have still $12 billion sitting in an account that we are paying interest on that is not being utilized, not obligated for anything at the time, unobligated.

What all these figures show when you total them up is that we are sending money so fast to agencies, they can't spend it. In other words, we are throwing money at the agencies far faster than they can spend it, and it would be wise and prudent of us to send less money--still with the same rules, still with the same instruction, to utilize their money better.

The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Congressman

Obey, has already agreed to do that on the summer jobs program in certain accounts.

The idea behind this amendment is to take some of the $1 trillion that is sitting in accounts that is not obligated--in other words, it will not be utilized this year; it won't be utilized for at least 2 years--and utilize that rather than charge our children.

I have used Madeline's picture a lot, but I don't think you can overutilize this picture. This little girl was caught on the street outside of Washington protesting. Obviously, her parents put her up to it. At the time she was wearing a sign that says: I am already $38,375 in debt and I only own a dollhouse. At the end of this fiscal year, she will be $45,000 more in debt, and she will still only own a dollhouse. Why would we want to do that?

This bill adds $500 for every man, woman, and child in this country. Why wouldn't we want to not charge it to them and utilize what we have in excess now, the inefficient use of the cash balances we have, to pay for something we all agree we want to pay for but the disagreement is over whether we should steal it from our children or actually make hard choices? These are not even hard choices. These are easy choices. We were told, when we came to an agreement prior to the April recess, that the reason this wasn't acceptable in the House is they didn't want to set the precedent of starting to pay for things when we are spending money. I would put forth that the American people are ready for us to start doing that. They are ready for us to start making tough choices. They think we need to make tough choices.

Out of every dollar we spend, we are borrowing 43 cents against the future. That is what happened last year. It will actually be probably higher this year. Maybe not. But somewhere about 43 cents out of every dollar the Federal Government spends is borrowed. Is there a time that we should stop and pause and say: Maybe a review is in order of our priorities, looking at the priorities of the Federal Government? I know that builds a lot of resistance in this body. But what I would like somebody to tell me is, when is that time? Is it when the Chinese won't buy our bonds anymore? Do we wait for the firestorm to come where we are at critical mass and then the choices are limited and few? Or do we start making the proper decisions now and live up to the authority and responsibility given to us?

There is a saying that the easiest thing in the world is to spend somebody else's money. I also think it is the most addictive thing in the world. We can see that. It doesn't matter whether it is Republicans in charge or Democrats. We have not seen the kind of behavior in Congress that will get our Congress out of the financial problems we face.

In terms of an almost $4 trillion budget, $18 billion doesn't seem like a lot, but if you keep doing that every 60 days, in a year you have done over $120 billion that you will add to the debt. Our kids will get to pay it back, but they will get to pay it back on compounded interest.

The interesting thing is what the OMB and CBO agree to. Actually, CBO came out with the latest numbers. We are going to borrow $9.8 trillion if we don't change things over the next 9 years, and fully 50 percent of that will be borrowed money to pay interest on the money we have already borrowed. Should we not do what is right for the unemployed but also what is right for the Madelines of this world in terms of protecting their future?

I call up amendment No. 3723 and ask for its consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Here is a fairly painless way--just more efficient management of the money we have--of paying for this needed program without charging it to the children. We don't have to go to the bond market to borrow more. We don't have to incur an additional $900 million a year of debt, a tremendous benefit to those who follow us. The question is, when will we decide to start being responsible?

I am going to be offering two other amendments, if this one is not agreed to, that will give specific choices. Wait to hear the howling. In other words, nothing is less important than unemployment insurance. Said the other way, everything is more important. In other words, we can't cut anything to pay for unemployment insurance.

Let's talk about that for a minute. Just through competitive bidding, if we had mandatory competitive bidding in the Federal Government--in other words, we will not buy things that are not competitively bid--we would save $62 billion a year. But we have sweetheart deals out the kazoo. We have earmarks that have noncompetitive bidding. We have contracts that the government does without competitive bidding. We could save $62 billion a year by instituting competitive bidding.

Here are examples. It was recently reported that the Defense Department rewards no-bid work to small contracts for repairs at military bases costing taxpayers $148 million more than they were competed for. This is in 1 year on repair contracts. That is just on the repair of small items on military bases. We could save $148 million a year. Federal funds were spent by the State of Wisconsin, $47.5 million, on two Spanish-made passenger trains, no competitive bid. The Legal Services Corporation, 37 out of 38 consultant contracts had not been competitively bid. The Department of Interior inspector general issued a report on sole-source contracting within the Department of Interior total savings; $44.5 million, had they used competitive bidding.

If we go through all of the agencies, what we come up with is a potential savings of billions and billions of dollars; as a matter of fact, enough to extend this same bill for 7 months, if we use competitive bidding. But that will not be considered important. It is going to be too important to do that so we will borrow the money from our children.

Let's look at ourselves. In 2010, the legislative branch received $4.7 billion in discretionary funding, a 6-percent increase over last year. Do we know of any other people who got those kinds of increases who work in small business or private enterprise in a down economy? Last year and this year alone, every day without this bill we are adding $4.3 billion to our debt a day. Is that an emergency? I think that is the real emergency, that we are absolutely stealing opportunity from our children and grandchildren.

When Members of the Senate or the House don't utilize all their funds--and I average turning back about $600,000 a year--that money does not go back to the Treasury. It is consumed in other areas of the legislative branch. There is a disincentive for Members to be efficient with the dollars they are allotted as they represent their individual States. We ought to change that. There ought to be an incentive to be efficient. We ought to change it to where whatever we turn back goes to retire the debt, not goes back to spend on something that is not a priority.

If you look at the Department of Agriculture, for which one of my amendments will have some recommended eliminations, there are hundreds of millions of dollars that are wasted every year. But when we offer an

amendment that is going to have a program that both the Bush administration and the Obama administration have recommended be removed, we are going to have people say: Oh, no, you can't do that because maybe 1,000 people or 1,500 people want that gravy train, when we have 10 million people unemployed. So we are going to keep the gravy train for the small numbers and borrow the money from our children and grandchildren to take care of unemployment benefits.

In 2009, the Department of Agriculture made errors in payments and overpaid by $4.2 billion in that year alone. Think about that. That is just the Department of Agriculture. Should we not eliminate that to pay for unemployment insurance or should we borrow from our children? Which is it we should do? Should we make the hard choice and force the Department of Agriculture to clean up its act or should we borrow the money from our kids? It is a lot easier to just borrow it from our kids. Then we do not have to work. Oh, by the way, we do not get any of the complaints from the administration that: You are making our job too hard--let alone the fact that they are not efficient and oftentimes not effective.

In 2008, the Agriculture Department had 7,000 different employees attend conferences around this country. There was $22 million of expenditures in 2005 alone. The USDA is ranked among the four worst Federal agencies in paying its travel credit bills on time. As a matter of fact, they get charged interest because they cannot even pay their bills on time. Ten percent of their travel cards are in delinquent status. They have embezzlement cases on their credit cards. But have we done the work to clean that up? No. Have we gone after the $4.5 billion in overpayments? No. Mr. President, $4.5 billion a year for 10 years is $45 billion. Just cleaning up one aspect of improper payments at only the Department of Agriculture will pay for this bill for 4 months. But we will not do the hard work. We do the easy work. And the easy work is to put the credit card into the machine and not think about how that is going to steal opportunity and potential from those who follow us.

The Department of Defense--everybody says: Well, you can't go after the Department of Defense. My question is, Why not? It is the only Federal Government agency that cannot even come close to an audit anywhere. We cannot even audit their books they are in such a mess. But what we do know is we can save at least $36.5 billion from the Department of Defense by putting in competitive bidding, by making cogent management changes that every small business in this country runs on in the practices that are there. But it has not been changed. We have not insisted it be changed. We have not limited funding in areas that are noncritical to our troops to force the Department of Defense to come up and save this $36.5 billion.

Mr. President, 10 to 15 percent of everything that is spent in the Pentagon is wasted. Why wouldn't we go after that? Because somebody will accuse us of not supporting our troops? Well, what are our troops fighting for? They are fighting for the future of their kids and our country. Yet we refuse to look where the payments can be made in a way that is more efficient in the elimination of waste and fraud, with the institution of competitive bidding so we are not borrowing $18.2 billion against our kids and grandkids. Why do we refuse to do that? Is it too hard? Do we love our jobs so much that we love our jobs more than our children and our grandchildren? I do not think that is the case. I think the case is that we are focusing on the wrong emergency.

The emergency in front of us is that in 2020 we are going to have a debt-to-GDP ratio of 90 to 100 percent. Every economist in the world will agree that will suppress our potential growth by at least 2 percent a year. So we will go in a downward spiral. When you have that kind of a debt-to-GDP ratio, what happens is the debt service--the money that pays the interest--is not available to invest in capital and equipment to grow jobs, to improve efficiencies, to expand our Nation's economic base. We are adding to that problem by being irresponsible in terms of paying for an $18.2 billion program.

Over the past 4 years, I have identified in the Federal Government waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication in excess of $350 billion a year. When I bring those amendments to the floor, they get voted down--not because they disagree with them but because we do not have the political will to make the hard choices.

The Congress, in a historic move, passed the health care bill that is going to continue to allow $150 billion of fraud a year to come out of Medicare and Medicaid. We did not do anything to fix it. There are no significant changes in the health care bill that will address a source of $150 billion in losses. Why? Because it is too hard? Kids are not important?

We are at a turning point in our country like we have never been before. We have never been walking into a financial situation that will totally limit our ability to get out of a situation. We can come out of this recession. But if we do not change the trajectory of the way we spend money and put the government back within the limited role the Constitution says it is to have, then the future will not only be economically not bright but not bright from a standpoint of liberty.

I have told my colleagues--and we are going to have this on every bill that comes before the Senate--it does not matter if it is a supplemental spending bill for the war, we ought to be paying for it. Rather than borrowing it from our kids, we ought to be paying for it. We ought to be making the hard choices about what is not as important as supporting our troops rather than charging the extra funding to our grandkids. So we are going to go through at least three cycles of votes on every bill that comes to the floor that is not paid for, that will add to the debt. I am not going to serve my last year in the Senate and say I did not do everything I could to try to put us back on track. So when we vote that this is an emergency and we do not have to pay for it, we are not hurting us. You are not hurting Tom Coburn. You are hurting the generations that follow us.

It would be different if we had an efficient, effective, well-run Federal Government that was within the bounds of what the Constitution said we were supposed to be doing. But we are not anywhere close to that. There is so much fraud, so much waste, so many well-connected goodies going to the well-endowed and well-heeled in this country because they have a connection politically, and we need to clean it out.

Everything ought to be competitively bid. There is no reason for it not to be competitively bid. To pass up that $65 billion a year because we do not do it--there is another thing we do. We spend $8 billion a year maintaining properties the Federal Government does not want. Think about that. For 3 years, I have tried to get through real property reform and cannot get it through. We either need to tear these structures down so we quit spending money on them or sell them, but we should not continue to spend $8 billion a year on buildings and properties we do not need. We have not done a thing to solve that problem in the last 3 years.

I have a book full of further examples. Just think about this: We want people to go into math, engineering, science, and technology. Everybody agrees with that. We know if we can get our younger students going into those areas, that is where they are going to have their greatest benefits of having a wonderful living in utilizing those skills.

The Federal Government has 105 different programs through six different agencies to incentivize math, engineering, science, and technology. The administrative cost for 105 different programs is ridiculous, and not 1 of them has a metric on it of whether it is working. So every time somebody raises the issue, some Senator comes and creates another new program, and we pass it, and we never look at what we are doing already. We do not eliminate things that are not effective. We do not put metrics on it to say we are going to look at this every year, and if it is not working we are going to get rid of it or we are going to fix it, and we are not going to create another program. Yet we have 105 different programs.

In the month of December, my staff found 640 separate instances just like that where we have duplication of programs across government agencies. In

the last debt limit extension, we passed one of my amendments that said the GAO must report to us a governmentwide assessment of all the duplications in all the programs because Congress does not know it. We do not know what is out there. So we see another problem. It does not matter that we may have 105 programs working on it; we go create another one. That is called incompetence. It is also called laziness.

Just inside the Department of Education are 230 duplicative programs and $10 billion in waste, fraud, and mismanagement--230. Why? Because we refuse to do the hard work of oversight.

So when we vote on this amendment, what we are going to be voting on is whether we have the courage to start making choices. If you vote to defeat this amendment, what you are saying is you lack the courage to do the hard work to pay for something out of waste today and mismanagement of Federal funds and you think the Madelines of this world ought to pay for that lack of integrity and lack of hard work. And there is not another reason for it.

We are going to hear why you should not vote for this. We are going to hear why it is going to be hard if we take $18.2 billion out of the management accounts of all these agencies. It is just going to be, out of what is there, about 3 percent of the cash that is sitting idle-- about 3 percent of what will be idle in 2011. What is idle this year, it will be less than 3 percent; it will be about 2.5 percent. Yet we are going to vote it down. We are going to vote it down because we care more about making a political point than doing the hard work of getting our country back on track.

We do not have forever to get our country back on track. If we get to 90 to 100 percent of our GDP, the job of making these decisions becomes 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 and 7 times more difficult because we will have less growth. We have a precarious economy right now. It is coming out of a recession. We want that growth to boom. We want those jobs to be created. When we borrow more money, we are putting a brake on that.

So if we can utilize the money we already have, we get the stimulatory effect of getting people unemployment insurance that buys the necessities of life, but we are not adding to the debt, which depresses the economy.

I will close for right now on this amendment. I will ask for the yeas and nays at a time that is agreeable to the majority leader.

I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Stabenow control the time from 9:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.; that I control the time from 10 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.; that Senator Stabenow control the time from 10:30 a.m. to 11 a.m.; that I control the time from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.; and that Senator Stabenow control the time from 12 p.m. to 12:30 p.m.

I yield to the Senator from Michigan.

Reserving the right to object.

I think my colleague realizes that, in fact, this will add $9.2 billion to the debt, and she also realizes, in spite of her claim that we could vote, that there is nobody in town to vote because there are only 10 or 11 of us still in town. And because every Republican voted against adjourning so that we could stay and work this out, I would object.

Mr. President, let me set the record straight. Yesterday in this body we offered the same bill in a way that would not increase the debt. It was immediately tabled, with all Republicans voting not to table it and the majority voting to table it. So there is a little bit of confusion.

We worked out an agreement with Senator Stabenow and Senator Levin from Michigan where we came together with an agreement for 2 weeks where this would be paid for, so the reason this bill is not moving forward is because the House leadership rejected that compromise. In other words, we had a compromise. We developed a plan where our children will not pay for this, we will, by offsetting and not adding to the debt.

With that, I wish to recognize my colleague from Wyoming, Senator Barrasso, for what time he might consume.

Will the Senator yield for a moment.

He talked about a tornado in Oklahoma. When the Oklahoma City bombing happened and we sent emergency funds to Oklahoma City, we paid for them. We decreased spending somewhere else to pay for that spending. His point falls on a flat wall because when we had an urgency such as that in 1995, we paid for it.

Mr. President, I want to set a little bit of a tone. First, I thank the Senator from Michigan. Yesterday, it was through her work and Senator Levin's work that we were able to come to an agreement on a compromise in the Senate. I think that shows when we get down to issues we can work together; when we get to the position. It was her efforts, along with several others, that allowed us to reach that compromise.

But I wanted to make a point--a couple of points. No. 1, there is nobody on our side who does not want to extend the unemployment benefits. The difference is we want to extend them without hurting her future. Whether you are a conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, or an Independent, the consequences of our actions are going to affect everybody. I used this last year, and this little girl is saying: I am already $38,375 in debt, and I only own a dollhouse.

Well, let me show you what is going to happen this year. This year alone, she is $45,000 in debt. We moved from $39,000 to $45,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country. That only reflects the outstanding debt we do not owe ourselves, that we have stolen from Social Security and that we have stolen from other trust funds, that we put in an IOU.

There is another thing that is happening that Americans should be aware of. In the past year, the average interest rates on the debt obligations we are issuing have risen 1 percent. So we have $12.8 trillion worth of debt. Multiply that by 1 percent, and in this next year we are going to pay an extra $128 billion in interest just from that 1 percent.

So for every 1 percent interest rates go up, we have interest costs of $128 billion. What will happen as we continue to project trillion- dollar deficits over the next 9 years is, that is going to rise and rise and rise.

She is the one that is going to pay for that, and this will not be $45,000; it will be $75,000. Then it will be $85,000, and then pretty soon--and by the way, that only reflects the debt. That has no reflection on the unfunded commitments that we have made to veterans, social security benefits, Medicare, none.

If we add those in, we have another $37 trillion that has to be accounted for just over the next four decades. So debt is a big problem for us. I would also make a point, the Senator from Michigan mentioned the long-term debt extender that we have. It is 12 months. It is going down each time we do it. We sent that to the House. You know what. It did not increase the debt because we offset it. We paid for it.

So the House has a bill the Senate has passed that was paid for, and they stole some of the pay-fors for the health care bill. So the House has not sent it back because the House refuses to make the hard choices to pay for the things that are necessary to be done right now. That is what happened yesterday. The Senate came to an agreement. We decided we would pay for 2 weeks so nobody will have any hitch in their unemployment, no hitch in their COBRA, no hitch anywhere. When it was sent over there, it was rejected.

Now, I want to posit something to you. The reason it was rejected is we do not want to create the precedent that when we spend money we have to pay for it. Where in the world is that a normal thinking process? In other words, we want to make sure we always have the option to spend money that is not paid for. There could be nothing more economically unreasonable than that.

So this is not a battle about not wanting to help the people who need our help today, this is a battle about helping the people who need our help today without hurting the children of tomorrow, without rescuing them.

If we are talking about emergencies, the fact is, because we cannot control our appetite for spending, our interest costs have gone up another $128 billion this year. That is an emergency. The other thing is that we have over $300 billion worth of waste, of fraud, of duplication in the Federal Government every year. So if you dispute it, you can say there is only--let's say it is half that. Why would we not get rid of that and pay for this rather than charge this intermediate $9.2 billion to those little children?

I actually had the pleasure of meeting this little girl in my office after I saw this photo. She has parents. They are worried. So what is her future going to be like? Is she going to have the same opportunity I have? So what I would posit forth is that we can do both. We can meet the needs of those who are dependent upon us now because of the economic downturn, and we can protect her and all of those of her generation.

To not do so says we are going to take the easy way out. We are not going to act responsibly. We are not going to act like every other family in America acts. They look at what is there, what is the priority, what we can do, and what we cannot do. Then they make a decision about what is most important.

The process the Senator from Michigan wants us to do, even though she agreed yesterday, is to not put a priority on it that considers both the short term and the long term; that cares both for the children as well as the unemployed; that considers both the future of our country and her opportunity to take advantage of the freest Nation in the world.

This is not a Republican-Democrat thing. Republicans have been irresponsible in spending too. It is a whole new era now. Everything has changed. It does not matter what party we are in. If we do not get hold of the debt in this country, everyone is going to suffer.

I spoke on the Senate floor yesterday, and I will reiterate it: Whether you call it a filibuster or whether you call it obstruction, as a grandfather of five children, truly reflective of tons of grandparents out there and tons of grandkids out there, I am not going to agree in the future to spend money we do not have until we get rid of the things that are not a priority, the $300 billion, before we move. Someone has to start saying no to the addiction we have that every time we have a problem we will just spend money.

Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 4915

I would like to make a unanimous consent request. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to H.R. 4915, a revenue measure from the House; provided that the only amendment in order be a substitute amendment, the text of which is the 2-week extension that we agreed on yesterday of unemployment benefits that is paid for, that will not increase the debt, with agreed-to offsets from the Finance Committee that was agreed to yesterday; proceeded further that the amendment be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, with a motion to reconsider laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I am sorry we have an objection. The fact is, we agreed to it. The fact is, the Senator from Michigan is having to protect the House of Representatives. She knows we are not going to go forward with this unless we pay for that, until we get back.

The only way to do that is through unanimous consent. The only way we are going to accomplish that is what we agreed to yesterday and send it to the House and let them do it by unanimous consent, even though they said they will not do it.

The fact is, we agreed in the Senate. We came to an agreement, and because the House has said they will not do it, they do not want to-- they want to increase the debt to do it rather than to do it and not increase the debt. I think that speaks of where we are in the country.

We cannot do this. We have agreed on the way to do it in our body.

After we had an agreement yesterday that maybe the House did not like, it actually solved the problem and solved the problem for these little kids as well as those unemployed in Michigan and across the country. We now have the House saying: No, we cannot do it.

So I am sorry. I apologize to the Senator from Michigan for putting her in that position. I sincerely do. But I think we have to be recognizable of the fact that what looks like may be happening as both Houses recess is that it will not get done. It will not get done because we cannot get it done. It will not get done because the House refuses to take a position to not add to the debt as we solve this problem, as we meet both priorities--those people who are hurting and the priority of what is to come in the future. I think that is unfortunate for us.

I would yield the remaining time I have, which is only about 2 or 3 minutes, to the Senator from Georgia, and then I hope he will join me when we come back.

I must say to my colleague, I agree with him--what he said--but under the conventions that we use, Senators can ask others to object on their behalf, and, regrettably, I have been asked to do that and will do that on Senator Vitter's behalf.

Mr. President, I would be happy to give the Senator some additional time, and we will roll the time off of your later time, if you would like time now, I say to the Senator.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, again, I would note this is the fourth time I have done this and, regrettably, because we had an agreement yesterday that the House would not go along with, I have to object because we will be adding to the debt.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, since the majority took an additional 5 minutes of our time, that our original unanimous consent be changed to give us the time from 11:05 to 12:05, and the majority from 12:05 to 12:30.

Mr. President, I yield to Senator Chambliss at this time.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Georgia. I ask unanimous consent to have a colloquy on our side between the Members who are here. If there is no objection, I wish to proceed with that.

I recognize the Senator from Florida and the Senator from Alabama to start that off. I yield to the Senator from Alabama.

I thank the Senators from Alabama and Florida for their comments.

Many have heard us use the word ``pay-for'' sometimes. When we say that, what we are actually saying is, we don't want the debt increased. So we don't want to get that confused.

I also want to make one comment in relation to what Senator Reed from Rhode Island said earlier today. He said nobody on the other side of the aisle will be objecting to the supplemental coming for the military if it is not paid for. I want to state for the record that I voted against it the last two times. It is not because I don't want to support the military, but it wasn't paid for. We didn't make the hard choices. I will vote against it again, and I will try to make that a pay-for. So it is an unfair characterization to say ``nobody.'' I am pretty consistent on that. If we are going to spend new money, we should cut some of the money we are spending now that isn't as important.

Under the Constitution, the No. 1 responsibility for us is defending the country. One of the reasons we are in trouble is we have ignored the enumerated powers clause of the Constitution, which sets out a very limited role for the Federal Government and reserves the rest of the programs we are talking about to the States and to the people.

With that, Mr. President, I would like to recognize the senior--the Senator from Arizona, Mr. Kyl. I started to say senior, but that is not so.

I comment on the Senator's point, there is not anybody in this body, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, who does not want a great future for our kids. Everybody does. The Senator from Oregon has a set of twins, beautiful kids. He wants the best for them. What we want is the same thing other Americans want.

I showed this little sign earlier. I actually got to meet this girl because I thought it was so unique that she had the wisdom or somebody in her family had the wisdom to make the contrast. She doesn't even have a home yet, and when she had this her share of the debt was $38,375. That is just external debt. That does not include what we borrowed and stole from Social Security and all the other trust funds. If we included that, she would have been about $42,000. I marked through that this morning because it is now at the end of this year, September 30 of this year, every man, woman and little girl and little boy will be responsible for $45,000. It is going to grow $6,000 per man, woman, and child this year alone. That is just talking about the external debt. That is not talking about what we are stealing from other people.

Is there a point in time when we are on a downslope, where we get to a point in time where there is no return? We know that. Senator Sessions talked about it in terms of 90 percent of GDP, and how that has a depression. I made the point earlier. We saw a 1-percent increase in interest rates last year. We owe $12.8 trillion. That is $128 billion we are going to pay more in interest in this next year than we paid in the last year, as you float through all the bonds and recognize that 1 percent increase. What was 2.4 percent 1\1/2\ years ago on 10- year Treasury bonds is 3.88 percent right now, this morning. I checked it before I came over here. That is 1.48. As our debt balloons, that interest cost is going to go up.

You heard Senator Sessions say in 2019 we will spend $850 billion on interest. We are going to spend $850 billion on interest. Of the $9.8 trillion we are going to borrow over the next 9 years, $5.6 trillion of that is going to be interest. So now we are borrowing trillions of dollars to pay the interest on trillions of dollars.

It has to stop. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle recognize that. It is not that they do not want to fix it too. I agree with the Senator from Arizona. I think we will come to that realization across party lines. I was proud of the Senate yesterday because we actually worked together and came to a compromise that we could all agree to, and we got shot down by those who are thinking short term.

I am not doing this to score political points, as the Senator from Michigan alluded. I am not doing anything that I have not believed all the time I have been here, and my colleagues all across this body know that. The problem right now in our country is the debt. It is the debt.

If, in fact, we want a future--I have a 7-month old new one. I have five grandchildren. She is as cute as she can be. Her name is Katie Rose. I got to see her a couple weeks ago as my daughter came through. She hadn't seen me in a couple months and didn't like what she saw. I can't blame her for that. But the fact is, everybody has a Katie Rose. If this is your child, the new birth we are going to celebrate, Senator LeMieux's this weekend--everybody has one. So the contrast is, Can we do both? Can we take care of the Katie Roses of this world and take care of the unemployed or do we just say: No, it is too hard. If it is too hard, we are over. And I believe it is not over. It does not have to be. We can come together and solve both the debt problem and the needs of our country. We can do that.

I wish to give one little example. In the month of December, I had my staff search through programs that are duplicative. In 2 weeks, my staff found 640 duplicative programs--640. Let me just give one example. In our Federal Government, we have 105 programs run by nine different agencies to encourage people to study math, science, engineering and technology. One hundred five? So after that experience in December on one of the bills out here we put through, that passed, my colleagues on both sides of the aisle agreed we should have GAO do that study for us to give us all of them. That is just what we found in 2 weeks--there are thousands--because that tells us where to start eliminating duplication, start asking for metrics on what you are doing. If you have a program for math, engineering, science and technology, we ought to measure whether it is effective. We might only want to have one program instead of 105.

In the Judiciary Committee in the past 2 months, we have had two different bills that have come forward to solve problems. When the bills were offered, we didn't even know we had agencies out there and a program ready to do it.

There were some positive things with the health care bill. There are tons of negatives in my experience as a doctor who has practiced 27 years. But one of the negatives is, we are going to have 88 new government programs and we are probably going to add about 50,000 or 60,000 or 70,000 people to that. I know we are going to add 16,500 to the IRS to make sure you bought your health insurance. Why would we do that?

It is time for us to make the difficult choices. The choice does not have to be do nothing or pay for it. The choice can be we can take care of both.

I will close with this discussion. This is what we did last year--43 cents of everything the Government spent we borrowed from Katie Roses. That is who is going to pay it back. We are not going to pay it back. This year it is going to be over 45 cents, maybe 46 or 47 cents this year, because when you take the real projections for what our addition to the debt this year is--in terms of recognizing all the debt such as an accountant would do, not like the Government does--we are going to have a $1.8 trillion deficit.

This means, externally and internally, we are going to borrow $1.5 trillion externally, but internally we are going to borrow $300 billion from trust funds and programs and everything else we have.

Let me give you a little example people never think about. It is called the Inland Waterway Trust Fund. It is the trust fund that has paid for all of our inland waterways. There is no money in it because we have taken it all out. We cannot do what we need to do on our navigable waters where we haul freight and barges because we have stolen all of the money. There are hundreds of those trust funds where we have emptied the coffers.

I will end with this last request. When we come back, my pledge is to work with anybody in this body who will seriously work with me on making the appropriate tradeoffs of what is important and what is not in terms of priorities.

You know that our nature as elected officials is not to offend anybody. If we continue with that process--I am talking about those who support programs we cannot afford--we are all going to be offended because every Katie Rose in the world, in our country, will have her future squelched.

And the last set of numbers you should pay attention to: If you are under 25 years of age today--that means from 25 to 1--20 years from now, you plus everybody who is born in that 20 years will be responsible for debt and unfunded liabilities of $1,113,000. Think about that. In the next 20 years, those under 25 and below and everybody born will be responsible for $1,113,000. Think about what that costs. If you apply a 6-percent interest rate to that, let's round it at $60,000--it is more than that; $66,000-something--you are going to have to pay $66,000 in carry costs either through interest on the national debt or through direct taxes before you ever pay the first income tax to run anything for the Federal Government. What does that mean in terms of opportunity for those Katie Roses and this little girl? It means they will have trouble buying a home. They will have trouble educating their kids to give them opportunity.

So I believe we are at a point where we have to start making the hard decisions. My pledge to my colleagues is that I will work with you in a way that is positive to make sure we do not put these people at risk. But I also will work with you to make sure you understand that I am going stand up every time, including the supplemental that is coming forward, and say that we must pay for it rather than charge it to our children.

With that, I yield our time to the Senator from Oregon. I would note that we have until 12:30 to finish this discussion.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Oklahoma.

Mr. President, we are here today because Republicans are objecting again to critical legislation and critical problem-solving efforts that are going to help middle-class families, that are going to help move us forward as a country.

We have seen, over and over, a pattern in the last year and 2 years ago when they first began to move this kind of a strategy forward, of blocking, blocking, blocking, saying no, saying no, saying no, rather than working together to solve critical issues. People are facing some of the most daunting challenges right now, more than they ever have in their lifetime--either trying to hold on to their job, trying to find a job, trying to make sure they have medical care for their families--and we have taken a very critical step this week to be able to ease some of those challenges and fears. Americans are struggling in an economy they didn't create, and when we look over this pattern, I am compelled to speak for a moment about it.

Over the history of our country, we have never seen such obstruction, efforts to block what we are doing, as we are now seeing. In the last 2 years, there were a total of 139 filibusters and efforts to block. That was in a 2-year period. Today, barely into the new year, after a little over a year, we are at 130 different times that the other party has said no to doing things that would help middle-class families, that would help small businesses, and that would help us move this country forward. One hundred thirty times. Unheard of, never happened before.

I know for people watching, they probably wonder: What in the world is going on here, and why should we care about procedure? We just want you to solve problems. But it is the effort we saw in the past with the Senator from Kentucky, who blocked for days our effort to move forward and extend unemployment benefits for families who are out of work through no fault of their own. People want to work, Mr. President, as you know, and they work hard. It is not their fault this economy went into a tailspin, which, quite frankly, in my judgment, was caused as a result of the policies of the previous administration that for 8 years chose to focus on just a few people. So the people in Michigan are saying: What about the rest of us? What about the rest of us? We are not the Wall Street fat cats. We are not the CEOs with the big bonuses or the people who got the big tax cuts. We are just working every day. We just want the American dream for our kids. We want to know things are going to be better. We want to know we can send our kids to college so they will have a great opportunity to be the best they can be.

That is who we are fighting for, and that is why we took subsidies from banks this week and gave the money directly to students, to create opportunities for those who want to go to college. That is why we have focused on lowering costs for middle-class families and small businesses on health insurance. But we are back here today because, unfortunately, our Republican colleagues are trying to score political points on the backs of people who have lost their jobs.

Now, I know a great way to bring down the deficit, and one that hasn't been tried. The 8 years that our colleagues were in control, along with President Bush, they focused on the people at the top and said that was going to do it. If it had worked, that would have been great, but unfortunately they left everybody else behind, and we saw what happened. So I have a great idea. Let's focus on putting everybody back to work so they can contribute to our economy by paying their taxes, and that will pay down the deficit. That is what President Clinton did. That is what the Democrats did when we were last in control. That is what we are focused on doing now--putting people back to work--because that is the formula for bringing down this deficit.

The challenge we have is that we have one job for every six people who are looking right now. So we aren't in a situation yet where we have the jobs available for every person who wants to work and is able to work. That is what we are laser-focused on here in the Congress. But we need to continue to understand, as Senator Harkin has said, that too many families are caught in this economic tsunami. Whether it is a flood, a hurricane, or the fact that your community got wiped out because a plant closed, it is an economic emergency.

We have always stepped up and funded the extension of unemployment benefits as an emergency with emergency funding. We have always done that, and now we are being asked to change that. We weren't asked to change it for Wall Street and the bailout. We weren't asked to change it for the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. But we are being asked to change it on the backs of working people, and I believe that is wrong.

We are still recovering from the worst economic situation since the Great Depression, but we are recovering. When President Obama took office, we were losing 800,000 jobs a month--too many of them in my great State of Michigan. We are now, at the end of the year, down to losing close to zero a month. That is better--not good enough, so we must stay focused, but we are hearing that we are going to have some pretty good numbers from March, where people are actually going back to work and jobs are being created. I don't want to stop and I know the Presiding Officer doesn't want to stop until every single person who is able to work and who wants a job has the dignity of work so that we give breadwinners the ability to bring the bread home. And that is what this is about.

So we are in a situation where we are in transition, and too many families are caught. In my great State, the unemployment rate is still the highest in the country--14.1 percent. It is coming down slowly, but it is still way too high. We have almost 700,000 people who have lost their jobs and are looking for work. But that is only the official number. That doesn't include the people who are working one part-time job, two part-time jobs, three part- time jobs trying to hold it together or people who have been out of work so long they no longer qualify for any kind of help. Those numbers are much bigger.

Every day, the unemployment insurance agency in Michigan gets 13,000 to 15,000 phone calls from people asking for help--every day. Every single day, up to 15,000 phone calls come in from people in Michigan who are desperate about what they are going to do in this situation. Well, we can help them. That is what this is about. That is what we are trying to do.

If this isn't an emergency, I don't know what is. The other side says: No, it is not an emergency. But for families who have lost their jobs and who are trying to find work, trying to put food on the table, I can assure you, this is an emergency. It is an economic disaster. When 14.9 million people around the country are unemployed, to me, that is a disaster. And those are the people we are fighting for today, yesterday, tomorrow. Those are the people who, when Wall Street got bailed out, said to us: What about us? Well, part of the answer is, to make sure they can keep a roof over their head and food on the table, to allow them to receive unemployment benefits. And these aren't huge numbers. They do not begin to match the Wall Street bonuses. We are talking about $250, $300 a week. But it may be the difference between being able to keep your family going or not.

In this legislation, we have a very important provision on health care--on COBRA. When COBRA was put in place, it was a great idea. If you lost your job, you could pay to continue the health insurance your employer was providing. The problem is, it is way too expensive when you are paying both the employee and the employer side. So last year, in the Recovery Act, we put some help in place: 65 percent would be paid for by the Federal Government to help families keep their insurance going. That is also a part of this--to keep that going so families can keep their health care. That is extremely important.

We need to focus on the real challenges families are facing today and work together across the aisle to tackle those. People are so tired of the

games. They are so tired of it. They watch what is happening here, and they say: What are these people thinking? What are they doing?

I know that politically folks may gain points by objecting, blocking, filibustering 130 times, but it makes the whole process look messy-- terribly messy. It causes people to lose faith in their government. That may seem to have some short-term advantage, but I believe that is a disastrous direction for our country. People want to know we are going to work together. People are going to want to know we put priorities in the right place so that we are focusing on the majority of Americans, not an elite few.

The great thing about our country is the middle class. That is what has always differentiated us from other countries--the fact that we make things, we grow things, and we add value to it. And by the way, we make things and grow things very well in Michigan, Mr. President. We will take on any State. We will take on anybody. We know how to do things. We know how to work, we know how to make things.

But we have not had this focus over the last decade on strengthening that middle class. We are turning that around now, and I am very proud of the fact that we are seeing manufacturing begin to turn, that we are seeing efforts that we put in place through the Recovery Act putting people back to work.

Too many families are not yet feeling that economic recovery, and this is for them. This is about saying to the American people, middle- class families across the country: You know what, we get it. We are sorry you are having to go through this, and we are going to do our part. We are going to do whatever we can to make sure you have the resources to keep things together while you are going out and looking for that job or going back to job training and holding things together with bits and pieces--odd jobs, part-time jobs--until this economy turns around.

We know, ultimately, that it is about jobs. We know, ultimately, it is about the private sector creating those jobs. But there is a partnership we need to have between the Federal Government and our industry so they can successfully compete in a global economy. Rather than focusing on Democrats versus Republicans, who can score the next short-term gain in the election, we should be coming together and realize that this is an economic race between the United States and China, it is the United States versus Japan, it is the United States versus Korea. We are in a global economic race. Instead of spending time objecting, playing games, filibustering at an unheard of rate in our history--absolutely unheard of; never before have we seen this kind of obstruction--we ought to be coming together and be laser-focused on China, which is spending $288 million every day--$288 million every day--to beat us on clean energy technology. Let's make that the fight. Let's make that the fight together.

This is the wrong place and time to be obstructing and playing games. It is the wrong place to say that suddenly we want to balance the deficit on the backs of people who are out of work through no fault of their own; that we are going to change the rules now; that it is no longer an emergency and no longer emergency spending. We shouldn't be changing the rules now and doing it to people who are out of work. That is not fair.

I say to my colleagues: Don't block democracy. Just vote--today. We can vote on this up or down. We can vote on it. Don't obstruct; just vote. You want to make a motion, you want to vote, a majority vote, fine. Let's vote. But don't force a filibuster and don't object and don't threaten a filibuster. Just vote. We are happy to vote.

Unanimous-Consent Request H.R. 4851

Mr. President, at this point, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 323, H.R. 4851, to provide a temporary extension of certain programs, and that the bill be read three times, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, could you indicate the time remaining on our side for this portion?

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, I would just indicate to my colleague that from our perspective this is an emergency, an economic disaster for families right now. We need to do as we have done three other times in the Congress and extend this emergency spending to help families who are out of work.

Given that, I will object.

Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to my distinguished colleague, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the terrific senior Senator from Michigan.

Yes.

Unanimous Consent Request--Executive Calendar

Mr. President, I thank my colleague for his extraordinary leadership on the Armed Services Committee and his efforts to make sure we have the staff, the leadership in our Department of Defense, our military, on behalf of our troops. It is very regrettable that once again we are seeing obstructionism, blocking us from moving forward.

I do not know the exact number now, but I know we have over 70 different positions that are being held up. They have been held up, many of them, for over a year now in the Obama administration--many related to jobs, to commerce, to trade, to the Department of Defense-- and it continues to be part of what we are seeing over and over and over again in efforts to just function, have government be able to function.

Mr. President, for so long--I know there are all the politics of people believing they can gain points because of debating whether government is good or bad, whether it is the problem, whether it is the solution--I think the majority of the American people just want it to work well. They want us to work together, and they want the services that are to be provided, whether it is supporting our troops in the military, whether it is providing education for our children, whether it is police officers on the street, whether it is making sure the water our children drink is safe, or whatever it is. They want it to work well and make sure every dollar we are spending on their behalf is spent with them in mind and it is done well and we are doing it efficiently and effectively.

I do have to say, in looking at the beautiful picture of the child my friend from Oklahoma held up--talking about children and the future-- this week, we completed a process that will make sure it is illegal to block that child from getting health insurance because of a preexisting condition. I wish our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle had chosen to join with us in that very important effort to make sure every child can receive the health insurance they need, that every parent can have freedom from the fear that when they go to bed at night they are not going to have to say one more time: Dear God, please don't let the kids get sick because I don't know what I am going to do.

So we do care about those children. We have put into place a health insurance reform plan that is going to make sure every pregnant mom gets prenatal care and has maternity care, which in a majority of private-sector insurance plans you can go out and buy for yourself, they do not cover it. I am happy to have a discussion about children and about making sure they can afford to go to college, which was also in the bill

we passed this week--providing more opportunity for children. I am happy to have that discussion.

But it is amazing to me we continue to be lectured by the people who got us into this mess because of their economic policies. We are now lectured on probably a daily basis about the size of the deficit. We understand that. I was very proud to be in the House of Representatives when President Clinton and the Democrats balanced the budget for the first time in 30 years. When I came into the Senate, the big debate was what to do about the surplus. We were looking at almost a $6 trillion surplus over 10 years. Well, unfortunately, under President Bush, under a Republican Congress, that went away pretty fast: by not paying for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans--somehow that was OK--by not paying for two wars, by not paying for a prescription drug effort under Medicare. During those 8 years, somehow it did not matter there was a credit card being run up, that a huge surplus that had been accumulated through tough decisions, very tough choices, in the 1990s was somehow squandered away. So I have a hard time hearing over and over again about the deficit and being lectured as if somehow President Obama or the Democrats caused that deficit.

I am not saying we do not have a challenge right now and a huge hole, and that we are not in a situation where we need to do emergency spending because of this economic disaster that has gone on. I understand that. I understand we are currently in a situation to be forced into a position because there are no savings to help people. Now we are in a deficit position. But I find it interesting that all of a sudden, when we are in a situation where middle-class families need help--all of a sudden, when working people in this country need help-- this is an issue, when it was not an issue for 8 years during the Bush administration. That is what I find difficult.

We have put back in place the budget rules that were in place during the Clinton years, and we are going to dig ourselves out of this deficit. We passed a health insurance reform bill that over the next two decades is going to decrease the deficit by over $1.2 trillion. We know there is a hole. We understand that. But we also understand that middle-class families--who are under the crunch, who are losing their jobs, who are trying to figure out how to pay the bills--did not cause that, and the solutions being proposed now would put it right on their backs. That is what we say no to. Because it is about time, as people in my State say, we focus on the rest of us. What about the rest of us in this country--not just those in the privileged, few powerful positions, the people on Wall Street? That is what this is about. This is fundamentally a debate about that. That is what we are talking about today.

I also want to indicate what we are talking about is extending an emergency program put in place in 2008 because of the economic disaster that families are facing. It is not the regular unemployment program. It is what was put in place in 2008 because of job loss, because of the fact that we got to a point where we are losing 600,000, 700,000, 800,000 jobs a month. That is a disaster as much as a hurricane, a flood, or anything else that could happen to families and communities.

Since that time, we have extended it--as we are asking to extend it-- on four different occasions. We are asking right now for at least 2 weeks until the long-term extension gets passed by the House. For 2 weeks let us extend it, or 30 days. Let us extend it so there is not a gap in coverage, so we do not have families, who are feeling stress already, now reading in the papers that the unemployment extension is going to stop and trying to figure out what in the world they are going to do during this period of time. We are asking for 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks to be able to extend it until the House is able to pass the long- term extension.

We are right back where we were again: objection, objection, objection on being able to do that--more objections than we have ever had in the history of our country in terms of process. We find ourselves in a situation where, even though we have not adjourned--I will emphasize that: Senator Reid, the majority leader, did not adjourn. We could have votes. I realize people have left. We could have voted last night. We wanted to vote last night. Our only option to overcome this was to start a process to stop a filibuster, which takes 2 days and voting and 30 hours, and all of this, and they know that. So we could have voted last night: yes or no. We could have done that last night. But, once again, as we have had 130 different times, we are in a situation where there has been objection, objection, objection.

This is very much about priorities. My friends on the other side of the aisle talk about priorities. Yes, this is about priorities. It is about values. And it is about who you are fighting for. Fundamentally, it is about who you are fighting for. I can tell you, the people in Michigan--hard-working people, middle-class Americans, families who care deeply about this country; they love this country--are tired of decisions being made for a few at the top. They are tired of the games and the obstructionism that has gone on and on and on. They want us to get things done--real things that affect their lives. That is what they want to have us get done.

I see my distinguished friend from Rhode Island on the floor--a champion on this issue, a fighter for Rhode Island, working men and women, and someone who has been on this floor over and over again fighting to make sure people who are out of work through no fault of their own have the opportunity to receive some help, some short-term help.

I now yield to my friend from Rhode Island up to 10 minutes.

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

Mr. President, we are going to have a cloture vote this evening at 5:30. It is about a subject that is very important. Yet I have been listening to the floor today and hearing the discussion about saving our country, about the issue of large Federal budget deficits, and the things that threaten our country's future.

I wanted to talk a little bit about some of those issues because I have been reading a book recently, quite an interesting book, called ``Too Big to Fail.'' I was listening this afternoon to some of the debate and thinking about too big to fail and too small to matter.

Interesting dichotomy: Too big to fail is talking about the biggest institutions in this country, the largest financial institutions in America, are too big to fail. So they run themselves into serious trouble. They get the benefit of no-fault capitalism. We are told if they fail, it will be a disaster for America's economy; therefore, we will have the taxpayers pony up $700 billion to make sure they do not fail. I am talking about the people at the top.

The question is, What about the people at the bottom, the people who work for a living, who like their jobs, want to have a better future for themselves and their children, but who discovered that as we sailed into this economic storm, while the people at the top got a big old parachute and they were lifted gently to the ground or allowed to get gently grounded, the folks at the bottom were just pushed off a cliff.

We ran into this serious economic trouble, and a whole lot of people lost their jobs. We have had millions and millions of people lose their jobs. We estimate somewhere around 17 million Americans woke up this morning without a job. They went looking today, as they do every day, but they have not found a job. They, their spouse, their children, they are all victims of this economy.

So then the question is, the difference between too big to fail-- those institutions, by the way, which for some of our colleagues, they could not be quick enough to get the pillow and the aspirin to say: Can we help you to bed? Is there any way we can be of help? Here is $700 billion on the too-big-to-fail side. But on the too-small-to-matter side--it is the person who lost their job--we had folks in here saying: You are just out of luck. We do not have the ability or willingness to deal with you.

I taught a little economics a couple of years in college. We always understood the basic lessons on economics are simple enough when you run into a very severe recession or depression. But let's talk about recession, a deep recession, and in this case the deepest since the Great Depression. The government's revenues dried up; we have lost somewhere around $400 billion a year in revenue. The economic stabilizers that are required in a recession would be unemployment insurance, food stamps, and those kinds of things to try to help people out, help them through some difficult periods. I am talking now about helping people at the bottom of the economic ladder. Those things automatically go up.

So the revenue goes down, that goes up, and your deficit balloons. There is no question about that. Everybody understands that. I understand why the deficit has gone out of sight. I also understand it is a very serious problem for our country. But I think we should all understand we should not do the things that would move us right back into a recession. The economic stabilizers and the expenditures on them is very important in order to get us out of this problem and in order to help those at the bottom of the economic ladder who cannot help themselves.

What bothers me is we have people coming to the floor of the Senate saying: I am the champion to try to reduce the Federal budget deficit. I am the person who is going to solve this.

Well, I would say to those folks: Where were you? Where have you been? It has been a decade and you were not around. I recall nearly 10 years ago when President Bush came into office, and he said: We have a budget surplus. Yes, they did. The first budget surplus in three decades under the last year of President Clinton's Presidency, a budget surplus at the Federal level, the first one. By the way, that resulted from a series of fiscal policy judgments that were made beginning in 1993. I voted for it. It passed by one vote in the Senate. It passed by one vote in the House. Senators such as--I guess I will name him because he was proud of it--Senator Phil Gramm from Texas stood up and said: You pass this, you will bankrupt the country. No, it did not bankrupt the country. It actually led us out of the problems we were in to a budget surplus in the year 2000.

President George Bush came to town and said: You know what. We have this budget surplus. It looks as though we are going to have budget surpluses for

the next 10 years. Let's give very large tax cuts to people, but the largest tax cuts to the highest income people in America.

Well, I stood on this floor and said: I do not support that. What if we do not have these surpluses for 10 years. These are just economic predictions by economists who cannot remember their phone numbers for 3 days, and they are telling us what is going to happen in 3, 5, and 10 years. Let's be a little bit conservative.

President Bush and his colleagues on the floor of the Senate said: Katey, bar the door. We are pushing this. They did, and they had the votes. They passed it, and all of a sudden we substantially cut the revenue that was coming into the Treasury.

Then what happened almost immediately? Then we were hit with 9/11, a terrorist attack in this country. Then we were at war in Afghanistan. Then we went to war in Iraq, and year after year after year the President brought to this Congress proposals for emergency spending for the war. This President said--I am talking about President George W. Bush--we do not intend to pay for a penny of it. Every single penny for the war is going to be on an emergency basis, put on top of the Federal debt.

I did not hear those folks who now say they are going to stand between us and catastrophe come to the Senate floor then to say that did not make any sense. I did. I said: Why don't we pay for some of this?

The President said: If you try to pay for it, I will veto the bill.

There we were for 8 years spending money we did not have on a war we probably should not have fought, borrowing every single penny of it. Now the folks who speak the loudest these days about these issues are the ones who decided: Oh, that made a lot of sense: cut the government's revenue, fight a war without paying for any of it.

By the way, many of them, 10 years ago when we voted on the floor of this Senate to repeal the restrictions that were put in place after the Great Depression to protect our country, they were the ones who voted for the repeal to say: You know what. Let's let these big financial companies create holding companies, and you can put them all together. You can put real estate and securities and banks and investment banks, FDIC-insured banks, put them all in one big holding company. It will be just fine.

Well, I was on the floor of the Senate saying: This will not be just fine. It will be a catastrophe. I said 10 years ago--I did not know for sure, but I said: Within 10 years we are going to see big taxpayer bailouts if we do this.

Some of the same people on the floor of the Senate back then were saying: Look, let's create these big financial behemoths so we can compete. It will be good.

Then the President, George W. Bush, brought in regulators who boasted they were willing to be willfully blind for almost a decade: It does not matter what you do, you can do that. We will not watch. They said: There is a new sheriff in town. We are business friendly.

So in all of these agencies where we were supposed to have regulators to make sure the free market worked, regulators who were the referees with a striped shirt to blow the whistle to call the foul when the free market was the victim of a foul, they were not around. They were just in a Rip Van Winkle sleep for nearly a decade.

Meanwhile, Wall Street went out to play, and they created the most unbelievable instruments of deception: credit default swaps, synthetic credit default swaps, CDOs. I mean it is unbelievable. The circumstances that developed, the subprime scandal, the creation of these exotic financial instruments, the development of substantially more lending approved by regulatory agencies--all of this set us up for an unbelievable fall.

Some of the same people who were cheerleading for these very activities are now telling us they are going to protect America. And you know where they are going to make their last stand? Their last stand on these deficit issues is to deal with the poor people by saying: No, you cannot get that unemployment insurance extension.

By the way, unemployment insurance is something that people pay for out of their paychecks. Unemployment insurance is something we pay for out of our paychecks. Extending it during a recession is certainly the thing to do. It is something we have always done. Yet this is the last stand.

What about making the last stand when it comes to bailing out Wall Street? How about making the last stand a couple of weeks from now when we have Wall Street reform on the floor of the Senate, when we have a real fight about trying to do reform that is necessary on Wall Street?

In 2008, the financial firms on Wall Street--I am just talking about the Wall Street firms now--the biggest financial firms lost $36 billion and paid $18 billion in bonuses.

I have an MBA. I went to graduate business school. There is nowhere they teach in graduate school that if you go out and lose $35 or $36 billion, you ought to expect to be able to pay $17 or $18 billion in bonuses to those who helped you do it. Yet that is exactly the kind of carnival that existed in this country at the top of the financial food chain.

So we are going to have a big fight about that in a couple of weeks. How do we plug the holes? How do we solve this problem of Wall Street reform? We are going to have a lot of votes, and it will be interesting to see whether those who now speak the loudest about being able to protect the American taxpayer, standing up on the issue of debt and deficits, whether those are the people who are going to join us in taking the action to try to make sure that cannot happen again because, when we talk about what has contributed to this country's debt and deficit, the largest contribution by far are the supportive votes of those who were friends of Wall Street, and in the last 10 years have given them every single opportunity to do what they have done--that is, to create a casino-like economy and to have FDIC-insured banks trading on their own proprietary accounts.

They may just as well have had a blackjack table in the lobby. I mean, it is unbelievable. To fuse together inherently risky investment banks with FDIC-insured banks and having both of them, instead of providing the kinds of things banks used to provide--that is, doing lending--and having both of them trading securities on their own proprietary accounts in order to make big fees and big money. It is unbelievable.

The question is, Who will stand up for our economic interests? Spending on someone who is out of work in a deep recession, is that where you want to take your last stand?

Let me help with a couple other suggestions. How about making a last stand in asking people, like one person who made $3.6 billion in one year, to pay their fair share of taxes to the government. My calculation says that is a $300 million-a-month paycheck. When that person comes home and the spouse asks, Honey, how are we doing? Every single day he can say: We are doing really well. Ten million we earned today. But even better than that, he can now say: And by the way, we paid one of the lowest income tax rates in America. We get to pay a 15- percent income tax. People who work with their hands for a living can't do that. People who take a shower in the morning and after work can't do that. People who work hard all day pay tax rates far higher than 15 percent. We have some of the biggest income earners paying just a 15- percent tax rate on carried interest.

I say to my friends: If you want to do something about the deficit, join me. Let's get rid of that nonsense.

Or I wish they would have joined me the dozen times I have been here talking about the tax dodges that allow people to avoid paying taxes by creating shams. I have shown pictures of American banks that buy German sewer systems. You can't actually touch them. You wouldn't want to feel them. You can't move them. But American banks buy a sewer system in a German city and then lease it back to the city so the city keeps using the system, and the bank gets to write off a sewer system to reduce its American tax obligation. They want all the benefits of being American, but they don't want the responsibility of paying taxes. I say to somebody who comes to the floor and wants to reduce the Federal budget deficit: How about joining me and getting rid of these things?

Or perhaps you could have joined me on the floor when I have shown the picture of the Ugland House, now reasonably famous, a 5-story white building on Church Street in the Cayman Islands. When I showed the photograph, it was an enterprising piece of reporting by a man named David Evans from Bloomberg News who went to the Cayman Islands and found a 5-story white building that in 2004 was the official home to 12,748 corporations. No, they don't all fit in that building. I understand that. It was a legal dodge by companies setting up an address in order to funnel revenue through that address to avoid paying taxes to the United States. By the way, since that time, since 12,748 corporations used that little 5-story house to avoid paying taxes, it has now grown to over 18,000 corporate addresses, as I understand. I say to my friends talking about dealing with budget deficits, how about helping me on that? How about helping me close those loopholes? Those are unbelievably ridiculous loopholes that allow some of the people and companies who make a great deal of money to pay almost no income tax.

That is the tax side. I could talk forever about that, but I won't. But if we got a little help on that, we would reduce the budget deficit.

On the spending side, I have held 20 hearings on spending dealing with contracting in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a place in Iraq. If somebody ever gets there, I suggest they drive by and take a look at it. It is American taxpayer dollars sitting in the desert. It is called Kahn Bani Sa'ad. We paid for it. We built it. We tried to build it. I think we spent $20 to $30 million for the first contractor and then fired the contractor and brought in another one. When the other one was finished, the money was gone. But there is a prison sitting on the sands of Iraq that the Iraqi Government said they didn't want and would never use that our Federal Government insisted be built. It is now sitting unused, and it doesn't even look like a finished building. It is huge. Millions, tens of millions of dollars were spent, poured down a hole in the desert. I held 20 hearings on the most unbelievable waste, fraud, and abuse on war contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan that I think has occurred in the history of the country. There is an area of spending we can tackle. We ought to tackle. There are so many areas for us to decide to do something about.

Yet the last stand on the floor of the Senate on a Monday is to say: We have ratcheted up all the strength, the muscle, the courage we have to say we don't think those at the bottom of the economic ladder, those who have lost jobs, those who are out of work, those who feel hopeless and helpless, those whose families are victimized, we don't think they ought to get unemployment insurance extended or we will put enough conditions on it to delay it. The same folks rushed to the altar to say: We can give $700 billion to the biggest financial firms in the country that ran this country into a ditch.

My point is not that we don't have a very serious economic problem. We do. The budget deficits are unsustainable. We have to fix them. My point is, there are some Johnnies-come-lately going on in this Chamber by people who have never come to the floor of the Senate on these issues in the last decade and now believe this budget deficit problem began to emerge on January 1 a year ago. That is not the case. This budget deficit problem, which is serious, results, in significant part, because this country ran into a very serious economic recession. It was not some natural disaster such as a flood, a fire, or tornado we couldn't do anything about. This was manmade. I warned about it 10 years ago. Those warnings were largely ignored.

Bad choices and bad policies have brought us to this position. Now it is required of us to make good choices. One of the good choices would be to recognize our responsibility to those at the bottom of the economic ladder, the folks who have, millions of them, lost their jobs in this recession and didn't do anything wrong. They weren't underperformers at work. They just were swept away by a very substantial recession. They paid for unemployment insurance in their paychecks. We all do.

My hope is we will get some cooperation on this vote today. It is a vote by which an effort to extend unemployment insurance for those who are the most vulnerable in the country has been blocked so we have a cloture petition. It ripens today at 5:30. My hope is we can do that and then move ahead.

There are plenty of us who are anxious to work on reducing the Federal budget deficit. This government needs to tighten its belt in a wide range of areas. There is no question about it. The spending side is important. We need to tackle the spending side and do it seriously. But it is not the only side. There is a whole series of folks who are not paying taxes who should pay. There are some of the biggest corporations in the country avoiding taxes that they should be paying. We ought to bring in the revenue we are required to bring in, ask some to pay what everybody else is paying, and we also ought to tighten our belt. All of that can help us address this very serious economic problem.

Let me look forward again 2 weeks to say if this is the last stand by those who are worried about the Federal budget deficit; that is, trying to make those at the bottom of the economic ladder, the most vulnerable Americans, wait and wonder whether they will get help from this Congress--if that is their last stand, 2 weeks from now, when we take on Wall Street reform and decide to do the things that are necessary to fix what caused this economic problem, fix what caused a substantial portion of the Federal budget deficits and fix what caused this deepest recession we have been in since the Great Depression, will we not get some help in 2 weeks? By the way, the bill that came out of the Banking Committee is a good first step. It needs to be strengthened in a number of areas. But even that bill didn't get any Republican support, not one vote in the Banking Committee. There are a lot of people here who support making sure that we are not too aggressive in trying to deal with the Wall Street folks and Wall Street interests. If we are not aggressive enough to make sure we have closed the loopholes and make sure we have tightened the reins so the American people have some confidence this will not happen again, we will rue the day if we end with a result that doesn't measure up in the minds of the American people.

Again, my point is to suggest we have a very serious, unsustainable budget deficit. It ought not to be surprising to anybody in this Chamber, moving along for a decade, fighting wars without paying for them, running into a very deep recession with revenues drying up when expenditures increase for economic stabilization. That is not surprising. But we need to come together and work together to find ways to not only get the taxes paid that are owed while at the same time we reduce the Federal budget deficit through those means, tighten our belts, and do the things that are necessary to move away from a decade of irresponsibility. If we are going to fight a war, send men and women off to war but don't have the courage to pay for it along the way, that is unbelievable to me. I have been to so many sendoffs, and every one of my colleagues has.

We are prepared to take people away from their families and send them off. I was just at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo last week visiting the troops. They are away from home for a year. They have courage. When the country asks, they go. When they are called, they don't ask why. Shouldn't this Congress have the same courage to say: If we are going to send people to war, we will pay for it; we will have to ask the American people to pay the cost of that war? That is another significant part of this debate about how to deal with Federal budget deficits.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.