A bill to repeal unwarranted provisions from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and to more efficiently use taxpayer dollars in health care spending.

I agree with what Senator Brown is saying. This is a very complex bill. It is a very complex area. But what we are talking about is a very simple proposition. We can either limit the size and leverage of too big to fail financial institutions, such as the bill which Senator Brown and I are offering now will do or we will suffer the economic consequences of their potential failure later. I personally believe breaking apart too big to fail banks is a necessary first step in preventing another cycle of boom, bust, and bailout. Even if they do that, this bill is required if, in fact, we are going to limit too big to fail.

This debate is a test of whether the power of that idea can spread and gain support. Although it is clearly the safest way to avoid another financial crisis, this idea must overcome tremendous resistance from Wall Street banks and their politically powerful campaigns against any kind of structural financial reform. Moreover, the idea must overcome the inertia and caution in a Congress drawn to easier ideas that may work. But how much should we gamble that they will work? Limiting size and leverage are fail-safe

provisions to prevent a dangerous outcome. Senator Brown and I are proposing a complementary idea to limit the size and leverage, not a substitute for breaking the banks apart.

The current banking bill has many important provisions we support. But under its approach, we must hope the financial stability oversight council can identify systemic risks before it is too late. We must hope that regulators will be emboldened to act in a timely manner when before, in the recent past, they failed to act. We must hope better transparency in financial data will produce early warning signals of systemic dangers so clear that a council and panel of judges will unhesitatingly agree. We must hope that capital requirements will be set properly in relation to risks that all too often remain purposefully hidden from view. We must hope that resolution authority will work, when we know it has no cross-border authority to resolve global financial institutions.

Under the current bill, we must hope all future Presidents will appoint regulators as determined to carry out the same strict measures preached belatedly by today's regulators who have been converted by the traumatic experience of their own failures.

All rules to restrict excessive risk taking in banking have a half life. That is because the financial sector is full of very smart people with an incentive to find their way around the rules, particularly to load up on risk, as this is what provides them their excessive profits and gigantic bonuses. I would rather not pin the future of the American economy on so much hope. I would rather Congress act now, definitively and responsibly, to end too big to fail.

The changes in regulations envisioned today in the bill we are proposing would help initially, particularly until the next free market candidate who wins appoints regulators who only believe in self- regulation. This bill establishes hard lines. One of the greatest sayings is: Good fences make good neighbors. This builds the fences. Then we let the regulators do it, and we don't have to worry about the President picking the right regulators. Our bill would provide a legislative size and leverage restriction that would last far longer than the half life of who is appointed to be regulator. We want this to operate for a generation.

In 1933, our forebears, after the Great Depression, made hard rules. They passed Glass-Steagall. They set up the FDIC. They set rules against margins, and they set the uptick rule. We should do no less. Remember, when they passed those bills in 1933, they helped us avoid a financial crisis for almost 50 years.

Some argue we need massive banks, but recent studies show that with over $100 billion in assets--and by the way, these banks, as Senator Brown said, have over $2 trillion worth of assets--financial institutions no longer achieve additional economies of scale. They simply become dangerous concentrations of financial power that benefit from an implicit government guarantee that they will be saved if they fail. With this implicit guarantee, these firms will continue to have every incentive to use massive amounts of short-term debt to finance the purchase of risky assets. This bill would deal with their ability to be able to do that and would stop it. They would go on and be able to do this without us. They have done it in the past, and there is no reason to think they won't do it in the future until they cause the next crisis and taxpayers must bail them out again. While $100 billion banks would be smaller, they are not small banks. Such banks would have no trouble competing around the world.

Under this bill, we would still have banks far bigger than even that size. People say: Look at other countries. Look what they are doing. Just because other countries subsidize megabanks banks that could send those countries spiraling into a financial crisis should not make us want to do the same.

Everyone agrees--as the Senator from Arizona said--the most important thing is too big to fail. How much can we risk that by doing what other countries are doing, when they are creating banks that are clearly too big to fail? Most people in the oil industry did well under the breakup of Standard Oil, including its shareholders, and the breakup of AT&T helped the telecom industry become more dynamic, competitive, and profitable.

The current Senate bill contains many important provisions that address the causes of the financial crisis, but why risk leaving oversized institutions in place when they potentially are too big to fail? Instead, we should meet the challenge of the moment and have the courage to act, as in this bill, to limit the size and practices of these literally colossal financial institutions, the stability of which are a threat to our economy. This bill is the best hope to ensure future decades of financial stability and the livelihoods of the American people. This bill will put the days of too big to fail forever behind us.

Lapdogs is another way of saying people who believe self-regulation will work.

Alan Greenspan also was quoted as saying we should breakup the banks; Standard Oil wasn't bad. At the time he said, after it was over, a year later he gave a speech and said: I really thought self-regulation would work. I am dismayed that it didn't.

The way I put it, it is as if there were a whole group of folks, not just in the financial regulatory area but all over the government, who basically believed the markets are great. I am a big believer in markets, but I also like football. The idea that someone would say: Football is great, but those referees keep blowing their damn whistles. Let's get the referees off the field so football players can be football players. We know what would happen if we pulled all the referees off the field in a game. I wouldn't want to be in the second pileup.

That is what we said with this. We said we are going to pull the referees off the field and see what happens. These were good people. They just didn't believe they had to regulate, and we are now seeing the results.

People say to us, when we propose these things--I have had several press people say to me--why don't we leave it up to the regulators? They can set these numbers. We shouldn't set these numbers.

Let me read from a couple things. The 1970 Bank Holding Company Act amendments gave the Fed the power to terminate a company's authority to engage in nonbanking activities, basically doing what we are talking about doing, if it finds such action is necessary to prevent undue concentration of resources--I wonder if that went on recently-- decreased or unfair competition, conflicts of interest, or unsound banking practices. The Fed had the power to do this. They did not do it.

The Financial Institutions Reform Recovery Enforcement Act also gave regulators the power to restrict an institution's growth and limit its size.

What we are talking about now is giving the regulators essentially what they already have in the present bill. What Senator Brown and I are saying--and the other cosponsors--is, the buck stops here. We should tell the regulators what these percentages are going to be. Because if we leave it up to the regulators, as Senator Brown said, these are very powerful people and very powerful institutions.

They hire the very best people to come and make their arguments.

So if you are sitting there running a regulatory agency and you are saying: Oh my God, I don't want to do this, I don't want to shrink these things down--and remember one other thing too. As bad as things were in this latest crisis, think about what has happened during this crisis. They have all exploded. What did we have happen? JPMorgan Chase now includes Washington Mutual, a $400 billion bank.

Bank of America now includes Merrill Lynch. We can go on from there. Wells Fargo now has Wachovia. These things were big. We had this mess. We deregulated. We put the regulators in. We changed laws. Now they are bigger. As the Senator says, their assets are 63 percent of the gross domestic product of this country. Fifteen years ago, they were 17 percent of gross domestic product.

What do we have to do before someone sends the message that these things are too big and that this Congress not pass the buck to the regulators, who did not do the job in the past? Let me just say this. I think the world of our regulators now. I do not think there are people in regulating now who basically believe they should not be regulated.

In 1933, we made a decision that helped us through three generations. What are we doing as Senators on the floor passing legislation based on the fact: I trust my regulators now. Why are we not passing legislation that will work over the next two or three generations--something that will work whether we get a President who believes in the fact that we should have a market or not, whether we have a good regulator or a bad regulator? Why shouldn't the Senate of the United States do its job and basically lay out restrictions of the kind that are in this bill so the regulators have them? Then they can enforce it. They can do the enforcement, which is their job. We should send a clear message to people that this is what we have to do.

We just have to give the regulators the tools they need to do their job, and the guidelines because we know what these guidelines are. These are not really terribly strict guidelines; they are just to have the ability to stop what is going on now, to get banks back to the size where they can be managed.

As Senator Brown said, these banks have a competitive advantage because when they are too big to fail, not only do we have to worry about bailing them out, but all their interest rate charges are lower. We know that. The interest rate charges on CDs with these major banks-- they get higher interest rates than the other banks, and it is unfair competition for all the other small banks around this country.

As I said in the beginning, this is a very simple proposition: Is the Senate going to do its job to make sure we have in place the ability to keep these banks from being too big to fail and preparing so we never have to get to the resolution authority?

By the way, let me say one thing about that. I am not for overregulation. But can you imagine, if we have another problem, what the regulation would be like then? Do you know what the proposals would be on this floor if, in fact, we have another problem? It would be draconian. It is important for all of us. We all care about our capital markets. One of the things that drive this country and make us great is the capital markets. We want them to be credible and we want them to be fair and we want them to work.

So we want to make sure we do not get faced with this. I think that is exactly what Senator Brown and I are trying to do. We are trying to do a little bit of prevention here so we never get to that end of the road where we have to get involved in resolution authority.

Right.

Mr. President, today I introduce with Senator LeMieux and Senator Brown of Ohio, the Teacher and Principal Improvement Act, to foster the development of highly skilled and effective educators.

We are slated to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act--ESEA--this Congress for the first time since 2001. My top priority for reauthorization is to build the capacity of our Nation's schools to enhance the effectiveness of teachers, principals, school librarians, and school leaders.

Decades of research have demonstrated that improving teacher and principal quality as well as greater family involvement are the keys to raising student achievement and turning around struggling schools. Studies have found that more than 50 percentile points of the difference in student academic performance is attributed to teacher quality. The world's top performing education systems invest heavily in supporting and developing teachers. Teachers in top-ranking countries such as Finland and Singapore get 100 hours of fully paid professional development training each year. It is clear that the United States must also increase its investments in our educators to stay academically competitive in an ever-expanding global economy.

Unfortunately, every year across the country thousands of effective teachers leave the profession--many within their first years of teaching. A 2003 study by Richard Ingersoll found that one-third of all new teachers quit after three years. That turnover rate increases to nearly half--one out of every two new teachers hired--after 5 years. A report by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future also estimated that the nationwide cost of replacing public school teachers who have dropped out of the profession is $7.3 billion annually.

However, research has shown that comprehensive mentoring and induction reduces teacher attrition by as much as half. New teachers need extra support and guidance. As such, our bill would help schools implement the key elements of effective multi-year mentoring and induction for beginning teachers, including rigorous mentor selection; ongoing mentoring with paid release time; training for mentors; and the use of research-based teaching

practices such as the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

The bill also significantly revises ESEA's current definition of ``professional development'' to foster an ongoing culture of teacher, principal, school librarian, and staff collaboration throughout schools. All too often current professional development still consists of isolated, check-the-box activities instead of helping educators engage in sustained professional learning that is regularly evaluated for its impact on classroom practice and student achievement. Effective professional development is collaborative, job-embedded, and data- driven. Research has shown that this type of professional development has a positive impact on student learning.

Research has also increasingly emphasized the important role that effective evaluation systems can play in teacher and principal development. Unfortunately, most evaluation systems nationwide have significant flaws, including a lack of: clear standards of expected performance; meaningful differentiation of teacher performance; ongoing evaluations and classroom observations; and rigorous training of evaluators. As such, our Teacher and Principal Improvement Act would for the first time in federal law require school districts to establish rigorous, fair, and transparent evaluation systems to assess whether teachers and principals are having positive impacts on student learning. If evaluation is done right, it provides teachers and principals with individualized ongoing feedback and support on their strengths, weaknesses, and areas in need of improvement.

Principals and school leaders also have a critical role to play in leading school improvement efforts and managing a collaborative culture of ongoing professional learning and development. Research has shown that leadership is second only to classroom instruction among school- related factors that influence student outcomes. As such, this bill would provide ongoing high-quality professional development to principals and school leaders, including multi-year induction and mentoring for new administrators. In this way, we will ensure that principals and school leaders possess the knowledge and skills to use student data to inform decisionmaking, communicate with families and local communities, and design and implement strategies for addressing student needs, including for students with disabilities and English Language Learners.

Additionally, our bill recognizes the importance of creating compensated leadership opportunities for teachers to take on additional roles and responsibilities outside the classroom, which will increase collaboration and the sharing of expertise among teachers and staff and improve instructional practices throughout the school. It also seeks to include for the first time in law a requirement that districts conduct surveys of the working and learning conditions educators face so this data could be used to better target investments and support.

Another precedent set as part of this legislation is that it requires an independent, formal review of professional development, mentoring, and evaluation programs. This review would look at whether these programs are effectively implemented and raise student achievement; retain effective teachers; improve classroom and leadership practice; and increase family and community involvement. We must ensure that our teachers and school leaders not only have access to high-quality professional development opportunities, but also know whether or not those programs are actually working to improve classroom practice and student learning.

Lastly, throughout the bill, school district collaboration with teachers and staff is viewed as a key element, particularly in the development and implementation of the teacher evaluation system. Research has shown that true ``teacher buy-in'' is an important factor in ensuring the sustained success of school reform efforts. In Rhode Island, we have seen in recent months an example of this as the Providence School District, educators, and the local teacher's union partnered together to embark on critical school improvement efforts. I am pleased that the Administration also has recently recognized the importance of teacher buy-in when it awarded the first Race to the Top grants to Delaware and Tennessee--both states that had applications with nearly 100 percent local teacher union support.

I worked with a range of education organizations in developing this bill, including the Alliance for Excellent Education; American Federation of School Administrators; American Federation of Teachers; American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education; Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development; Center for American Progress; Educational Testing Service; National Association of Elementary School Principals; National Association of Secondary School Principals; National Board for Professional Teaching Standards; National Commission on Teaching and America's Future; National Middle School Association; National Staff Development Council; National Writing Project; New Teacher Center; New Teacher Project; Pi Lambda Theta; and Teacher Advancement Program. I thank them for their input and support for the bill.

I urge my colleagues to cosponsor this bipartisan bill and work for its inclusion in the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

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

Mr. President, when you look at Wall Street and you look at the relationship between far too many Senators and Wall Street, that is what got us into this mess. For the last 10 years the deregulation of the Bush administration, the people they appointed to watch, such as the head of mine safety in the Bush years was a mining executive, we paid the price for that, the people in my State, people in West Virginia. Too often families pay the price for a government not aggressive enough to regulate mine safety. We paid the price in this country because we didn't have a government aggressive enough to make the banks and Wall Street behave. That is why they were able to overreach.

That is why the legislation Senator Kaufman and I are introducing, with Senators Casey, Whitehouse, Merkley, and others, will address the issue of too big to fail. Too big to fail is not what you do if these banks are in trouble, how you pull them apart when they are about to fail, and we want to make sure we don't spend taxpayer dollars to bail them out. We make sure they don't hurt the whole financial system. Too big to fail means don't let them get too big. Even Alan Greenspan, hardly an ally in regulating the banking system, says too big to fail means too big. That is what Senator Kaufman and I are addressing in our legislation.

Let me give some numbers. Fifteen years ago, the six largest U.S. banks had assets equal to 17 percent, one-seventh. Fifteen years ago, the six largest U.S. banks had assets equal to 17 percent of overall GDP. Today the six largest banks have assets equal to 63 percent of overall GDP. Three of these megabanks have close to $2 trillion of assets on their balance sheets.

When that happens, we are setting ourselves up for one more round of serious problems. That is why homeowners in Youngstown lost their homes. That is why retirees in Sidney, OH lost a lot of their wealth. That is why workers in Newark, OH lost jobs--because we had a banking system that was overreaching, excessive, that became too greedy, and we didn't do enough about it.

Here is what has happened. The Ohio manufacturers I talked to this morning want to grow. They want to hire people. They have orders. They have capacity. They just can't get loans. Three of the largest banks slashed their SBA lending by 86 percent over the last year. SBA loans went from 4,200 in 2007 in Ohio alone to 2,100. At the same time banks have increased their Wall Street trading by 23 percent. Something was wrong in the last 10 years. We paid the price in the last 2 years. But something is still wrong when these banks get bigger and bigger. They trade more and more, and they lend to Main Street less and less.

That is why the legislation Senator Kaufman and I introduced with several other Senators today speaks to this. We need banks to serve this country. Ultimately, it is which side one is on. Are you going to side with Wall Street or Main Street?

Today in the Agriculture Committee we had Republicans and Democrats together passing legislation, strong legislation to regulate derivatives. It is a first, good bipartisan step. Senator Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, joined all of us on the committee to pass a strong bill, not a bill that Wall Street helped to write but a bill that works for American consumers, American small business, American homeowners and workers.

I yield to Senator Kaufman.

I thank Senator Kaufman.

Some people think about this as a pretty big step, to decide we want to limit the size of banks. It is not something we like to do. We don't want to do more regulation than we have to. We don't want to tell successful companies not to grow. But when we look at what has happened in the past, as Senator Kaufman said, we did this right in the 1930s, and it protected our financial system, with a few hiccups but no serious problems until the end of this last decade, when President Bush and the Congress, starting with President Clinton--President Bush accelerated it and weakened regulation--repealed regulation and appointed, you might use the term ``lapdogs''--that might not be a senatorial sounding word.

Exactly. I say to Senator Kaufman, you made a point maybe 5 minutes ago that some of the smartest people in the country are working on Wall Street. There is a huge incentive for smart people to go to Wall Street and be creative and invent new financial instruments to stay, in many ways, a step ahead of the regulators, in some sense, a step ahead of the ``sheriff,'' if you will. Those regulators, who are paid probably one-tenth or one-hundredth-- regulators are paid decent middle-class salaries that most Americans would be very happy with. But some of these very smart people on Wall Street are paid 100 times, 1,000 times--millions, tens of millions of dollars, and there is a huge incentive for them to figure out how to stay ahead of the regulators.

That is why it is so important that we have strong regulators. We always work to do that, and we have good regulators. It is important that a President appoint people who have the public interest in mind, which Presidents have not always done in the last decade. It is important that we write different rules, and that is exactly what we want to do to keep these banks from being so big.

We had problems with rating agencies that gamed the system. We had problems with mortgage brokers. We had problems with Wall Street. We had problems with people creating these new CDOs and other financial instruments, particularly these so-called synthetic ones that had no real basis in any wealth creation for society, only wealth creation for each other. Ultimately, that does not work for Wall Street. It certainly does not work for our country.

So in summary, as to this legislation that five or six of us are introducing today, we will likely offer it as an amendment in the next week or two. We ask our colleagues to support it. If we are going to deal with too big to fail, we surely want to deal with it on the end if there are banks that are about to fail. But we need to, sort of, ahead of time, in anticipation, deal with it by not letting these banks--no matter how good the regulators are--not letting these banks get too big.

If we do what Senator Kaufman said, if we do this right, it will take care of this problem so it does not happen in the next two or three generations, the way people in the 1930s did, or if we do not do it right, we are back at this in 5 or 10 or 15 years.

These capital markets which worked so well for many years are not working for local manufacturers, for small businesses today.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the related problems of corruption at the U.S. border with Mexico, turf wars between Federal investigators of corruption, and inadequate screening for corruption of law enforcement personnel. Solving these problems is crucial to ensuring we have a system that keeps drugs out, guns in, and maintains an effective defense against efforts by drug cartels to infiltrate parts of the Department of Homeland Security tasked with border security.

The Mexican cartels that dominate drug trafficking into the U.S. are sophisticated, ruthless, and well-funded. They operate widely in Mexico through bribery and corruption and smuggle up to $25 billion of illegal drugs as well as people into the U.S. They also smuggle illegal guns and drug money back into Mexico. In 2009, drug violence in Mexico resulted in over 9,600 murders. Already this year there have been over 3,300 murders. Some of the illegal drugs and money goes to and through my State of Arkansas.

The cartels used to operate differently in the U.S. relying mostly on stealth and a U.S. distribution network that reportedly includes operations in an estimated 230 American cities. In my State, the network includes the cities of Little Rock, Fort Smith and Fayetteville. The heightened U.S. border defenses have put a squeeze on cartels. They have tried to regain an advantage by exporting to the U.S. their experience and success in bribing and corrupting government officials who can facilitate their business.

Today, I am introducing legislation and sending a letter with three other

senators to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to reverse what has become a successful campaign by drug cartels to infiltrate U.S. law enforcement. At risk here is more than drug trafficking. National security is also threatened because border weaknesses can be exploited by terrorists to transport operatives and weapons into the U.S.

At a recent hearing I chaired in a subcommittee of the Homeland Security Committee, witnesses revealed that while an array of U.S. Government agencies have been targeted for infiltration by the cartels, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, known as CBP, has been shockingly susceptible to the threat. Federal investigators testified that 129 CBP officials have been arrested on corruption charges since 2003. In addition, the DHS Inspector General opened 576 allegations of corruption within CBP in 2009. Now, the vast majority of CBP officers are good, decent, hard-working people. That is why we need to help them root out those that are corrupting the system.

Some of CBP's susceptibility to infiltrate is the result of the high- threat environment in which CBP works. But it is also because the dramatic increases in staff levels since 2003--which is a good thing-- means that the agency doesn't always meet its own guidelines for screening of job applicants and existing employees. That is not as good, and we need to take action to make sure that the processes in place to uncover infiltration and corruption are effective.

Established personnel integrity policies call for polygraph examinations and background investigations of all job applicants for CBP law enforcement positions as part of the screening process prior to being offered employment, however less than 15 percent received the full screening in 2009. CBP also has a 10,000 person backlog on these reinvestigations of existing personnel.

There are also indications that there may be coordination and information sharing problems between the DHS components responsible for investigating corruption. Evidence of these problems include a December 16, 2009, memo from the DHS Inspector General's office and a March 30, 2010, Washington Post article detailing a lack of coordination between Federal investigators regarding corruption cases.

As we seem to learn over and over again, cooperation and coordination by Federal, state, and local law enforcement is essential to identifying and defeating threats to our national security. The threat of infiltration by drug cartels is no different.

I am deeply concerned that the department responsible for the security of our homeland is falling short in these important areas.

To address these problems, I am sending a letter along with Senators Feingold, Wyden, and Burris to DHS Secretary Napolitano requesting that she resolve turf issues between investigators and integrity screening shortcomings at CBP. I ask unanimous consent that this letter be inserted in the Record after my statement.

I am also introducing the Anti-Border Corruption Act of 2010. My bill requires DHS to address the integrity screening problems at CBP and make progress reports to Congress. Specifically, it requires that DHS take such actions as necessary to ensure that the backlog of periodic background investigations is cleared up within 60 days. It also requires job applicants to receive the polygraph test as required by DHS policy within 2 years.

Finally, I close with a message about and to the men and women at Customs and Border Protection. Despite the unfortunate actions of a few that dishonor a proud tradition at CBP, we know the vast majority of CBP employees are patriotic, honest, and hard-working. We know and value the contribution they make to the safety of America and the risks that they take on our behalf. They deserve and have our thanks, support, and commitment to help them weed out bad elements in their organization.

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

Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to repeal unwarranted and inappropriate ``sweeteners'' that were added to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the days before final passage of the bill.

These ``sweeteners'' are unjustifiable and only detract from our collective goal of putting America's health care system on a better and more sustainable path. They also undermine public confidence in the legislative process and in elected representatives in Congress.

In some cases, there are valid policy or fairness reasons why certain states or interests may receive seemingly different treatment. But several provisions were included in the health reform bill that create, rather than diminish, inequity.

This legislation would repeal four provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. These provisions are not supported by policy rationales and do not address any inequity in current policy. Simply put, they are intended to provide an undeserved windfall to specific states.

This legislation also amends one provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act providing increased Medicaid assistance to States recovering from natural disaster. Because there is some justification for Louisiana receiving additional help to cope with the continued aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, my legislation leaves this provision intact, but it decreases the amount of assistance available.

I was pleased to support the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. That law will strengthen America's health care system and reduce the national deficit and the five changes to the law that I am proposing would help us better meet those goals.