A bill to limit Federal emergency economic assistance payments to certain recipients.

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Georgia. He has been a prime sponsor of this legislation. There are very few people around here I admire any more than I admire him. He is a terrific addition to the Senate. I am honored that he would be on this bill and be willing to speak for it. That means a lot to me, and it is going to mean a lot to the folks in his home State and all over this country. It is the right thing to do. I thank him personally for being such a great Senator.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I wish to take a moment to discuss the role of the State service commissions under this bill and the existing national service system. One of the things that was very important to me when we drafted this legislation was to make sure the States were given a primary role in the program so we would have 50 State laboratories using this program. We didn't just want to add a level of Federal bureaucracy. Time and time again, it has been shown that State governments are more responsive and in tune with the needs of their communities and, with this bill, we will put that resource to good use.

For those who do not know, State service commissions are Governor- appointed public agencies or nonprofit organizations made up of more than 1,110 commissioners--private citizens helping lead the Nation's philanthropic movement. The Nation's 52 State service commissions currently grant more than $220 million in AmeriCorps funds and $28 million in State-based initiatives with State or private funds to support citizen service and voluntarism in America.

In Utah, this role is filled by the Utah Commission on Volunteers, which is overseen by our Lieutenant Governor, a great Lieutenant Governor named Gary Herbert. They oversee the work of more than 8,000 Utahans who participate in national service programs, including the AmeriCorps, Learn and Serve, and, of course, Senior Corps programs, to mention a few.

The Serve America Act will triple the oversight and programming for commissions over the course of the next 5 years, increasing participants from 75,000 to 250,000. Effective grants oversight and planning by commissions is essential to the integrity of these new programs. The State commissions will administer five new corps, five grant competitions, and the Serve America fellows program, which is an individual placement program that will be administratively intensive but vital to get members to rural communities and small organizations.

Increasingly, State commissions take the lead role of managing volunteers and donations in response to natural disasters, which has been particularly important in the gulf coast hurricane recovery and Midwest flood relief.

For example, the Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service last year set up eight volunteer reception centers, staffed with AmeriCorps members, that helped increase and better utilize traditional volunteers in Iowa's historic flooding and tornadoes of last summer. Those centers connected over 800,000 volunteer hours to families who called in for help. These centers became the central points for deployment for faith- based groups, schools, and businesses that sent volunteers to help.

AmeriCorps members often led teams of unaffiliated volunteers after training them to gut and muck out houses, as well as clear the miles of debris that littered the Iowa landscape. This effort was valued at over $13 million by FEMA in savings to the taxpayers, and it is still going on today. In fact, two of the centers are being run for the rebuilding phase and over 1,000 AmeriCorps members will help support the massive rebuilding efforts of this past summer.

I think it is clear the State service commissions are up to the task of overseeing much of the work that will be done under the Serve America Act. I certainly will be glad to see them take on this much larger role that this bill gives them the opportunity to do.

I am a firm believer of one reason why our economy has run so well in the past and one reason why we have a Federal Republic that has lasted all these years is because we recognize that with these 50 States, we have 50 State laboratories to test out these programs. Then we can pick and choose which ones are the most successful and why. It is great to have them competing against each other, having them setting examples for each other, having them open doors for each other. There is a lot to that. This bill basically turns over the effective running of all these funds to State representatives and to State volunteer movements and commissions, State service commissions, if you will.

We will learn a lot from this. We have already learned a lot, but we will learn even more, and as we move toward 250,000 volunteers under this program, that will be extended to probably at least 7 million or 8 million more volunteers, none of whom will be paid for giving this type of service--at least these 7 million or 8 million. We do pay people a small stipend that is less than

the minimum wage, less than the poverty level, but that extrapolates into as many as 7 million people, maybe even more--we hope more--who will actually volunteer at no cost to the Government and save trillions of dollars over the years.

This is a conservative program in many respects and it is a liberal program in the sense that it helps so many people. Conservatives want to help all these people too. I guess the best thing to say is it is neither conservative nor liberal, although it has the best instincts of both sides who come together in the best interest of helping their fellow men, women, and children in this great country.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, almost every group that the distinguished Senator from South Carolina has mentioned is helped by this bill, and every one of them wants this bill. This bill is basically run by the States. I agree with the Senator, they do it better than anybody else.

As we close today's debate, I want to take this opportunity to focus on the economic case for national and community service, to articulate why the Serve America Act makes sense from an economic standpoint, and to highlight why the bill will generate a good return on investment right when the country and so many individuals need it most.

In today's environment, every bill we consider must be viewed through an economic lens. What role does the legislation play in fueling our economic recovery? How can we cost-efficiently make Government a partner with the private and nonprofit sectors? How can we ensure we support efforts that are effective and shut down those that are not? What are the short- and long-term effects of what we do?

Unfortunately, the economic recession has had a dramatic effect on our nonprofit sector and civil society. In the wake of the downturn, senior centers, soup kitchens, nursing homes, nursery schools, and other nonprofit organizations serving the vulnerable have seen a threefold crisis. As the markets have fallen, wealth has evaporated and decimated charitable donations. By the way, I do not agree with the President's recommendation to cut back on tax benefits to those who give to charity. The State and local budget crunch has hit the nonprofit sector especially hard. And the human need for help from community-serving institutions is skyrocketing right at a time when their resources are shrinking. One report called it America's ``Quiet Crisis.'' I believe that we here in the Senate should give this crisis more public attention and ensure that our civil society and our Nation's volunteers, which are the bedrock of efforts to meet needs in our country, remain strong. We need to help give more Americans opportunities to do good works in hard times.

Research has uncovered disturbing evidence of civil society's growing troubles. Churches, which are typically our Nation's great engines of compassion, deliver social services to the poor and needy. Our country depends on faith-based institutions to meet needs that they are uniquely equipped to meet, far better than distant Government bureaucracies. Unfortunately, churches raised $3 to $5 billion less than anticipated in the last quarter of 2008, crippling efforts to keep pace with growing humanitarian needs. Other nonprofit budgets are shrinking. Chicago's Meals on Wheels, which delivers hot meals to homebound seniors, trimmed its budget by 35 percent; and half of all Michigan nonprofits say their financial support has dropped.

Meals on Wheels is a Federal program. It would not exist without support from the Federal Government. It is handled very well at the local level.

These trends are occurring just as need for help is rising. United Way call centers saw a 68-percent increase over the past year in the number of calls for basic needs, such as securing food, shelter, and warm clothing, and is receiving 10,000-15,000 more calls every month than in 2007.

Lorna L. Koci, services director for the Utah Food Bank, recently visited my office to talk about increasing needs in my home State. The top three reasons people dial 2-1-1 in Utah to reach the United Way call center is for emergency food assistance followed by health care and housing needs. In the

past 6 months, calls requesting food assistance have doubled and food pantry visits by Utah families are up at least 30 percent. Now you can imagine what that is in other States. Utah takes care of our people. My own church has a church welfare plan. No one in my faith should go without food, shelter or clothing. Most of the people served are the working poor, but many families are seeking assistance for the first time. These people were contributors and are now recipients. At alarming rates, needs are growing in Utah and across the Nation.

Addressing this quiet crisis in our civil society is a matter of jobs, not just charity. The nonprofit sector accounts for 5 percent of GDP and 11 percent of the American workforce, with 9.4 million employees and 4.7 million volunteers nationwide. For perspective, the nonprofit sector is greater than the auto and financial industries combined. It contributes more than $322 billion in wages and its workforce outnumbers the combined workforces of the utility, wholesale trade, and construction industries. What happens to our nonprofit sector will have a big effect on our country, both from the standpoint of employment and meeting needs of the most vulnerable in our society.

We have spent a lot of time on the floor of this Senate discussing ways to ``bailout'' industries and to get our economy moving again. I certainly have not agreed with the levels of spending, and I worry about the long-term effects of our actions on the Federal deficit and the national debt. I don't think many of our actions have been wise, in the short term and certainly not for the long term. Thomas Jefferson warned of the moral problem of leaving a crippling debt to future generations. With the changing demographics in this country and the growth of entitlements, we are setting ourselves up for a fiscal crisis of tremendous significance.

Yet the economic debate has almost completely ignored the platoons of civil society, those individuals, volunteers and nonprofit institutions in local neighborhoods and communities that do most of the social service work in our country to meet vital needs and do it at low cost to governments and society.

There also has been so much talk of ``bailouts'' in our debates, let's just bail out this industry or that industry. We need to move from talk of bailouts to a spirit of challenge in our country. Where is the personal responsibility? Where is the support for efforts that truly enlist Americans in local communities to step forward to lend a hand? Our answers are not going to be found in the Federal Government. Our Government can offer resources, but it cannot love a needy child, offer the hand of compassion to help the elderly live independently in their homes with dignity, or help provide the deft human touch that gives hope in times of despair.

So our debates on this floor should no longer exclude our nonprofit sector and civil society and the citizens who stand ready to help in times of trouble. No sector, quite frankly, offers more bang for the buck and generates a better return on investment than investments in our Nation's most precious asset--the talents and skills and enterprise of our people.

Let's first talk about the important task of getting Americans into productive work. Community and national service efforts target two populations that have been hit particularly hard by the economic downturn--our Nation's young people, including college graduates, and older Americans. While unemployment rose for all age groups during 2008, the increase was dramatic for America's young people. And we know from research that youth unemployment rates are a good barometer of the overall health of the economy, since young people typically face the greatest difficulties in finding steady employment, due to their lack of experience. By February 2008, the overall unemployment rate had reached 8.1 percent. The youth unemployment rate for individuals 16 to 19 years old was nearly triple that at 21.6 percent. In particular, African-American youth were the most likely to be unemployed at a rate of more than 36 percent. Remember, during the Great Depression, we saw rates of unemployment for the adult population hovering around 25 percent.

High rates of youth unemployment are detrimental not only to jobless youth but to our economy as a whole. An individual who experiences early unemployment is more likely to have lower future earnings as well as repeated spells of joblessness. This is not the future we want for our young people. The demoralizing effects of long-term unemployment may lead to risky behaviors, such as crime and drug use.

Unemployment rates for college graduates are increasing. In fact, the college graduate unemployment rate has broken the record for college graduates, and some researchers predict the rate, which is at 4.1 percent, will exceed 5 percent in 2009.

Our economic troubles are not just affecting the young. Many older Americans are quickly finding themselves out of work. In January 2009, 5.2 percent of workers 55 and older were unemployed, an increase of 63 percent from last year, with 1.5 million older workers now facing joblessness. In October 2008, one out of every three jobless Americans age 55 and older had been out of work for at least 27 weeks. A decline in the value of retirement funds--nearly $3 trillion from America's retirement accounts over the past 14 months, with the average American losing 34 percent on retirement holdings--has forced many older Americans to return to the job market.

Investing in community and national service to put America-- particularly younger and older Americans--into productive work is a low-cost solution to fight unemployment and a vital bridge to permanent, higher paying employment in the private sector. Since the beginning of full-time and part-time national and community service in 1993, an initiative that began with the Commission on National and Community Service under President George H.W. Bush, more than 540,000 Americans have tackled the Nation's most challenging problems, not through Government, but through an extensive network of nonprofit organizations working at the local level. Well known nonprofits such as Habitat for Humanity that builds homes for low-income Americans, Teach for America, which sends bright teachers to the highest need communities, and City Year, which puts young Americans into productive work meeting needs in our Nation's cities.

Every year since 2004, thanks to President George W. Bush's commitment to ramp up national and community service through his USA Freedom Corps after 9/11, our Government has offered 75,000 opportunities to adults of all ages to serve not through some government bureaucracy, but through nonprofit organizations created by the innovation of our people. These public-spirited Americans who give a year of their lives in service to community and country are given a below-poverty monthly living stipend and receive a small award to help defray the costs of college at the end of their year of service.

In addition to creating jobs at lower cost to Government or the private sector, national and community service programs and members leverage impressive resources within their communities. These 75,000 national service participants leveraged 2.2 million traditional volunteers who receive nothing from government to work on behalf of meeting the needs of a nation. As I stated earlier, that is nearly a 1 to 30 ratio of national servicemembers to traditional volunteers. In fact, this is the power of so many nonprofit partnerships today.

It bothers me when I hear comments such as those recently made on the floor: We are forcing Government into everybody's lives. My gosh, we are providing a means of support for people--without making it the minimum wage or without giving them welfare--by helping them become servants and servers to the community at a lower cost. Millions are served without any pay at all because of these programs. How can anybody find fault with these programs?

Imagine placing one national servicemember in a Habitat for Humanity build. That individual, who organizes the building project, recruits, trains and puts to work volunteers, dozens of them at no cost to Government, to ensure home after home rises to meet the needs of low- income Americans. It is a great model. And it is not only about increasing the number of volunteers. In

2007, our national service programs leveraged an impressive $231 million in financial resources to meet local needs. It is a successful model of a public-private partnership, where the private participation in the form of resources and volunteers together outpaces the public.

National service programs also have been shown to meet critical needs in communities. Independent evaluations have shown that teachers in Teach for America have made greater gains in math among their students compared to other teachers; participants in Citizen Schools show higher school attendance, a significant predictor of whether a student will stay on track to graduate from high school, and higher math and English grades; and third graders working with Experience Corps members scored higher in reading tests and exhibited better behavior in schools than children in control schools. African-American men in Youth Corps programs were more likely to have experienced more employment and higher earnings, to have voted in the last election, and scored higher on measures of personal and social responsibility than members in a control group. And 75 percent of former participants in the YouthBuild program, most of whom are high school dropouts, had found gainful employment, were going to school, or were training for jobs. Research has also shown that participants in Youth Corps programs were more likely to secure better employment after completing their service and that former members, particularly African-American and Hispanic males, had higher wages than their peers not in the program.

These are the programs we are helping; programs that are doing all this work for free and making a difference in the lives of children and families. These are the programs that enlist seniors who would like to give back to the community. How can the argument be made that these programs should not be in effect?

The economic benefits of traditional volunteering are also significant. In 2007, more than 60 million Americans--or more than 26 percent of the adult population over 16--gave 8.1 billion hours of volunteer service. The cost of that service, had it been done by paid workers, would have amounted to approximately $158 billion. Volunteering in America rose significantly after 9/11, I believe thanks in no small measure to the leadership of President George W. Bush, who asked every American to give 2 years of service to the country over their lifetimes. Volunteering rose from 59.8 million Americans the year after 9/11, which was a very high baseline, given that we knew volunteering would rise in this year, to 65.4 million Americans from 2004 to 2005. The story here is that America did respond to 9/11 and sustained the wave of service and patriotism for which the President and we in the Congress had hoped. The Mormon mission--which is often for a period of 2 years in service abroad or domestically--was one of the inspirations for the President's 2-year call to service. Almost every young Mormon male serves, as do many adults and females. They learn to care for people and give to communities. The spirit of service remains strong today at around 61 million volunteers within the last year.

We clearly have room to grow the pool of volunteers and the ServiceNation coalition, consisting of more than 125 organizations from the AARP to Colin Powell's America's Promise Alliance for Youth, has endorsed this effort to increase our volunteer base from 61 million to 100 million every year. According to a recent report by AARP, entitled ``More to Give: Tapping the Talents of the Baby Boomer, Silent and Greatest Generations,'' a majority of older Americans are healthy and free of caregiving obligations, and tens of millions of them are prepared to increase their volunteer service in a world they believe they are leaving in worse condition than they inherited. This may be the first generation to believe this and they want to make it right. They have the capacity to do so. The 77 million baby boomers are the longest-living, best educated, healthiest, and most highly skilled generation in our history and represent enormous potential to meet significant needs throughout our country. We should be more creative in enabling more of them to serve.

As the Nation's economy continues to sputter and organizations continue to operate on shrinking budgets, volunteers will become even more essential to the Nation's work. We need to do all we can to harness this productive capacity in these difficult times, and Americans seem very willing to shoulder more responsibilities to get the country moving again.

The Serve America Act gives our country a hat trick--it puts Americans into productive work at low cost to Government, meeting the needs of the Nation, and with no new bureaucracy, since volunteers work through an established network of well-known and trusted nonprofit organizations created by the social enterprise of innovative people. The legislation also targets the two populations most in trouble from the economic downturn--our young people and older Americans. A new volunteer generation fund will tap, train and help deploy more traditional volunteers to meet needs identified by local communities. We saw the wellspring of American compassion in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. We need more of those efforts every day, not just in times of disaster.

The bill also creates 175,000 more opportunities for full-time and part-time national and community service, mobilizing our people to tackle problems like the high school dropout epidemic and growing poverty. These 175,000 members, if current leverage ratios continue, would mobilize approximately 5.25 million traditional volunteers to help in these and other vital efforts. Together with the 75,000 who already leverage 2.2 million Americans, we could have around 8 million Americans participating every year in efforts to address specific challenges in education, healthcare, poverty, energy, and the environment. In hard times, we could use their good works.

The Serve America Act also fosters a culture of service among younger and older Americans. Service-learning opportunities in our Nation's schools have been shown to boost student attendance and engagement, which in turn have a positive effect on keeping students on track to graduate from high school. On the other end of the spectrum, the bill also provides Encore Fellowships to older Americans who want to use their lifetime of skills and talents to help meet the country's needs. And national and community service programs will engage not just the young, but older Americans in their full-time and part-time efforts.

Times of trial have always summoned the greatness of the American people. These are such times. Putting millions of Americans into productive work, not through the instrument of the government, but through the innovation of nonprofit and other community serving organizations, is a smart way to foster a spirit of challenge in the country and tap the innovation and expertise of our people. Government cannot stand on the sideline; it has an important role to play in partnering with the private and nonprofit sectors to further enable this innovation and release the energy of more Americans to give back in times of trouble. By putting hundreds of thousands of Americans to work in full-time and part-time national and community service; leveraging millions of additional volunteers to help meet urgent community needs; fostering innovation among the next generation of social entrepreneurs; and engaging nonprofit institutions in helping to meet challenges in key areas, we can help strengthen our economy and do something this country has always done well since its founding--release the energy of millions of Americans to do more good works in hard times.

Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from Colorado is in the Chamber. I know he wishes to speak, so I will turn the time over to the distinguished Senator from Colorado.

Mr. President, let me begin by thanking my colleague from Delaware for his generous comments. He has been an advocate and strong supporter of the notion of service, and for that I thank him. I also commend my colleague from Maryland, Senator Mikulski, as well as Senator Hatch, Senator Ted Kennedy, and Senator Enzi, who have all been strong supporters, over the years, of the idea of providing venues and opportunities for people to serve our country in one capacity or another.

I rise this afternoon to offer my support for the Kennedy-Hatch Serve America Act. Four and a half decades ago, I was with my parents on a very cold January 20, not very far from where I am standing today, watching a young man by the name of John F. Kennedy, at the age of 43, become the President of the United States on the east front of the Capitol. It was a bitter cold day--we had a terrible snowstorm on the day before that January 20, 1961. As a very young boy of 12 or 13 years of age, I listened to the President excite a generation to get involved in things larger than ourselves. I was so motivated by his remarks, as were millions of others, that a few years later when I finished college, I joined the Peace Corps. I traveled to the Dominican Republic, not far from the Haitian border, where I spent 2 years in the mountains of that country working with the people in the small village of Benito Moncion in the province of Santiago Rodriguez. It was a life- changing experience. I came back from that experience a very different person than when I had left.

I was joined by millions of others, who went off and joined VISTA, the military, and community action organizations all across the country. I have been asked so many times over the years why I joined the Peace Corps. Why did other people go into the Marine Corps, the Justice Department, and serve their country? The reason I have given over these last four and a half decades is, because an American President asked me to. It's not any more complicated than that. Someone asked me to serve, and the thought that someone believed I could do something to make a difference was a form of flattery, I suppose, but it also provided the opportunity for me to meet that challenge. It did so by creating the structures that allowed us to step into a program that gave us the opportunity to serve.

That is what we are doing again here today: providing the structure that will allow for people today--who are no different from any other generation of

Americans over our two centuries as a Republic--to be asked to serve. People today want to serve, and they have the same desires and ambitions to make a difference for our country in their local communities, in our States, and in our Nation.

What Senator Mikulski, Senator Kennedy, Senator Hatch, and Senator Enzi have done with this bill is to create the architecture by which when we ask people to serve, they have a place to come. We have a spot for you. We have a place where you can make a difference in our country. That is the brilliance of this idea. This bill expands opportunities not only to college graduates or to those out of graduate school; we actually begin in this bill by offering you the opportunity to serve as a middle school student, a high school student, or someone who does want to go on to higher education. Maybe most exciting of all, we offer these opportunities to people who perhaps have the most to give--the retirees in our country. The individuals who have been at work providing for their families, engaged in business practices by which they developed their wisdom and expertise over the years, and who have now reached a point in their lives where they would like to share that. What a wonderful opportunity for our country to reach out to that generation of retirees and say: Here is an opportunity for you to continue to make a difference.

After I finished the Peace Corps, I came back and served for 6 years in the Army Reserves, the National Guard. That was a good experience. It was very different, obviously, to go off to basic training at Fort Dix, NJ, but nonetheless a very worthwhile experience. So service covers a wide range of activities. In my case, it was the Peace Corps, then it was the Army Reserves, and then it was Big Brothers Big Sisters. I was a Big Brother in my State of Connecticut. So service has been a major part of my life.

I would like to think today that to the extent I have made a difference in this job, it was affected certainly by my family, first and foremost, but also by the people, whose names will never be known by others, who had a huge influence on me. People in that small village in the Dominican Republic, people in my community in Connecticut, people I met in the military service--all have shaped me and taught me the lessons of how serving each other, making a difference in each other's lives, can make a significant difference for many more.

In Connecticut, community members, both young and old, are giving their time.

In Hamden, CT, older Americans such as Mozelle Vann, a retired social worker, are working to make sure elementary school students don't fall through the cracks--one example, one woman, making a difference, affecting the lives of students who are going to be enriched and lead better lives because Mozelle Vann is giving something back.

High school students in Waterbury, CT, are giving back to their communities by taking part in the Youth Health Service Corps created by the Connecticut Area Health Education Center. This organization works with disadvantaged high school students interested in pursuing health careers. Lord knows we need people to move into professions relating to health care. These students complete rigorous training and dedicate their time to working with nursing home residents. So these high school students, in the midst of determining what their futures will hold, are being offered the opportunity to learn about health care services, making a difference in a nursing home that is most likely shorthanded, and serving people in that community.

This past year, residents worked with students to create a Martin Luther King, Jr., commemorative quilt and together discussed Dr. King's impact on our Nation.

There are as many examples as there are communities and individuals whom we represent of people who want to serve and want to give something back.

Senators Thad Cochran of Mississippi, my good friend, and I have offered four ideas to this bill, and I am very grateful to Senator Mikulski, Senator Hatch, Senator Kennedy, and Senator Enzi as well, for their willingness to accept these ideas. Representative Rosa DeLauro, the Congresswoman from New Haven, CT, is the author of these ideas in the House of Representatives.

The first of these we call the semester of service, giving students a chance to give something back, learning early the benefit and the value of volunteering, of stepping up and serving your community. The Semester of Service Act is one that will allow the opportunity for children within the educational system to serve our communities. This service-learning will take place right alongside math problems and book reports. With a semester of service, we ask our students to not only consider themselves residents in their communities but resources to them. Just as mine did, I have no doubt that the younger generation will respond to that call.

The Summer of Service Act is also a large part of the bill. The bill provides our middle and high school students unique opportunities to serve during the summer months. Already in Connecticut, more than 5,500 students take part in community service activities linked to academic achievement. With this legislation, that is something we will be able to do across the country.

The bill also includes many parts of the Encore Service Act, a bill Senator Cochran and I authored to help harness the enormous experience and wisdom older Americans have to offer in their communities, as I mentioned a moment ago. We have all heard about the challenges posed by the 78 million baby boomers nearing retirement age. Yet Americans are living longer and healthier lives than at any time in our history, and it is time to look at that growing population of experienced, capable Americans of different professions and backgrounds as the asset it is, and to realize what a difference it can make in our country.

Together, the programs included in this bill will encourage older Americans to serve communities with the greatest need, whether through AmeriCorps or through the Silver Scholars Program. The legislation also offers Encore Fellowships for older Americans who have already had full, successful careers to lend their professional expertise and experience to the cause of community and public service. It expands the capacity and builds on the success of current senior programs. So I again commend my colleagues for including that language.

And finally, we can't talk about expanding service opportunities without talking about the AmeriCorps program, which is the heart of national service in our country. The Serve America Act will expand AmeriCorps to include 250,000 members, allowing many more Americans to serve each other. Last year alone, 75,000 AmeriCorps members gave back to their communities, and they brought reinforcements. Those 75,000 members--and this statistic can't be repeated often enough--those 75,000 AmeriCorps members recruited 2.2 million community volunteers. You talk about a ripple effect--having 75,000 people across our country in AmeriCorps who then went out and recruited 2.2 million people in their communities to get deeply involved and serve those communities. That is the benefit. Some discuss the cost of the 75,000 AmeriCorps members, but the fact that they were able to attract 2.2 million people to also serve is tremendously worthwhile. Which is why I am pleased that in this bill, we increase the AmeriCorps education award and peg its increases to the Pell Grant.

I again thank the authors of this bill, of which I am proud to be a leading cosponsor, for the accomplishments they have achieved. As I said a moment ago, this bill is creating the opportunity for Americans to serve. Just as when I was standing on the steps of the east front of the Capitol, 45 or 46 years ago, and heard an American President not only ask us to serve, but provided with opportunities to do so, today we need to provide that same structure, that same ability for people to serve. They want to. People are anxious to. It is something all Americans take pride in, and it transcends party, partisanship, politics and ideology. People want to serve our country. We are benefitting from it in ways we can't even imagine. We need to see to it that this generation is going to achieve or have the same opportunities to fulfill that desire as well.

For all of the reasons I have mentioned, this bill is very worthy of our unanimous support, and I hope it will enjoy that. This is one of those moments when I think all of us, despite our political differences from time to time, recognize the value of this. Whether it is in faith- based organizations, whether it is in community organizations, we are a richer, stronger, more vibrant nation because people have the opportunity to serve each other. There is nothing more gratifying, nothing you will ever do that will give you a greater sense of gratification than knowing you have helped another human being. Particularly in times such as these when people are struggling--losing jobs, homes, savings--they want to know if anybody can help. Every single one of us can make a difference in the life of somebody else. Providing that opportunity today, with the structure that Senator Mikulski, Senator Kennedy, Senator Hatch, and Senator Enzi have created, is just what we need. So I commend them for it.

Let me mention as well that I know Mike Crapo, the Senator from Idaho, my good friend and a very valuable member of the Banking Committee, came to the floor and has offered an amendment, a proposal to deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Let me say that I support what Senator Crapo wants to do. This is an idea that I believe is necessary. The problem here is twofold.

One is, obviously, for this bill, we are hoping to move through without amendments. Members have worked very closely together to construct this bipartisan bill. That in no way diminishes the point Senator Crapo is making. In fact, we are working on another bill that includes more than just the Crapo amendment, which will be an important addition over the next number of days. We are trying to work it out. I hear there are some differences. I would say respectfully to my colleague from Idaho that I would hope he might reconsider offering the amendment on this bill for the reasons I have mentioned, not because his idea lacks merit--I support the idea--but if we add amendments to this bill, then it is going to make it that much more difficult to get it done.

Secondly, there is more to do than just what the Crapo amendment would suggest, and that is going to require a little more time to put that together. There is no immediate emergency here. I have been guaranteed by the FDIC, that although they would like it to get done, it is not something--I have been told--that in the next number of days or so that unless we act, there is a catastrophic event that could occur. But clearly we need to move on this. He and others have my commitment that we are going to achieve that, but at this hour, at this moment on this bill, I would respectfully urge my colleagues, if required, to table this amendment and preferably to have the amendment withdrawn so we wouldn't have to be in that situation.

With that, I yield the floor.

If my colleague will yield.

I thank him for his gracious comments about this young woman. My nephew graduated from college a few years ago and was in Africa for approximately a year and a half. He spent 6 months in Guyana working with the people there, increasing awareness on issues such as HIV/AIDS. These are wonderful examples, like the young woman the Senator described, of people who make a difference.

The great thing about the Peace Corps is not just helping people in a struggling country get back on their feet but it is the experience of returning home from service. It is the lessons learned that we bring back to our communities. There are 180,000 of us who are returned volunteers since the first group left from the south lawn of the White House to go to Ethiopia, and how blessed we are with the richness of opportunities here and the lessons learned.

I commend my colleague for being at that ceremony and reflecting on the impact this one individual made, this young woman, in service of our country. I can't think of a more compelling argument on why this bill being offered by our colleagues deserves our unanimous support. Again, I thank the Senator for his comments.

It is also not widely known--Senator Isakson mentioned President Bush and the Thousand Points of Light Program, which he sponsored--that President Ronald Reagan was a strong supported of the Peace Corps, increasing the budget significantly. Loret Ruppe was the director. I served with her husband, who was a Congressman from Michigan. She was a magnificent director of the Peace Corps. Every year of Ronald Reagan's Presidency, he supported the Peace Corps program. So it is a joy to see the bipartisan support that my colleague has mentioned.

I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I wish to speak for few minutes on the Serve America Act. I think this is a great opportunity to talk about what is good about a lot of the Members of the Senate. I certainly appreciate and applaud the sponsors of this bill for their good intentions and know their hearts are in the right place. Some of my best friends are supporting this bill. But I think, as we look at what is good about the hearts of many Members of the Senate, we need to recognize this bill does represent a lot of what is wrong with our Federal Government today--a lot of our philosophies, and a lot of our departures from a constitutional form of government.

What works in America today is our civil society--a lot of the volunteer groups that many of us have been a part of. I know for years I spent more time in United Way and a lot of the charity groups, being on their boards back in my community, and I saw what the volunteer arts groups and PTAs and health groups did to build a strong community. Civil society works in America. They are small groups. They are the true engines of character in our country. They promote service and patriotism. In this time where we have seen some of our economic institutions let us down, we have certainly seen our Government and our policies let us down, civil society does not let us down. It works in America today.

It is understandable why Congress would want to get involved. We see that passion to serve, that desire to do something that is greater than yourselves. We look at that working in our civil society and we want to get involved and expand it.

Unfortunately, our history shows us when Government gets involved, it tends to take something that is working and make it not work nearly as well. Civil society works because it is everything Government is not. It is small, it is personal, it is responsive, it is accountable. Civil society must be protected from any effort to make it more like Government.

That is what we are doing with this bill today. This bill centralizes control of important functions of our civil society. There is a downside to good intentions here in Government. The Founders created a limited government and our oath to support and defend the Constitution means that is our focus here. Our oath is to a limited government. The Founders wanted the people to be free from our good intentions. Government charity is anathema to what our Founders intended and what our Constitution stands for. Despite our good intentions, where we try to implement those good intentions and our compassion through the force of Government, we are effectively violating our oath of office here.

Well-intended legislation has left more than half of all Americans dependent on the Government. Today in America over half of Americans get their income from the government or a government source. About 20 percent of the country works for the government or an entity that gets its primary source of revenue from government. Another 20 percent gets their income and health care from Medicare or Social Security. Once you add in welfare and other subsidies, you make it so over half of all Americans are already dependent on the Government. This bill proposes to spend nearly $6 billion over 5 years, which means it will be probably $10 billion, probably more, over a 10-year period. It will have nearly a quarter of Americans working for it, which means it will be the 14th largest company, as far as employees, in the entire world.

What have we done here that suggests we can manage anything like that? Do you see anything in our history as a Federal Government that shows we have the ability to effectively manage something like that without extreme levels of waste and fraud and abuse? Look what we have done recently with the stimulus plan and the bailout plans. As soon as it comes to light what is actually happening with that money, people are outraged at what is going on. Despite the good intentions of this bill, we are creating a huge new government entity that will be unmanageable and violates some of the core principles of our civil society. Every time the Government steps in to solve a problem, it creates three new problems in its place.

This bill is everything wrong with how Congress sees the world. Government will make service organizations less effective, less responsive, and less personal. When the French historian de Tocqueville came to the United States not long after we were founded, one of the things that amazed him about our country that was so different from France was that in his home country when there was a problem, people would say: Someone ought to do it and government should do it; but in America we were different. When someone saw a problem, they went and got a friend and formed a small group and solved the problem themselves. Much of that was motivated by religious convictions that our place in this world is not only to help ourselves but to love and help those around us. That was key.

Jefferson called it little democracies, when he saw these little groups all around America voluntarily doing things to solve problems and make communities better. Burke called them little platoons. Most people who understand America know that those voluntary groups are what made our country great and what sustain us even today. Civil society binds communities, not by its fruits, but by its motives--charity, donations, giving without thought of getting anything in return. This is the selfless sacrifice that happens throughout America today. This is what works.

What does not work is what we are doing right here. The big difference is private service organizations exist for the people who receive the aid. Government service organizations exist for the people who give it--in this case, for the people who are paid to do it. You cannot pay people to volunteer and expect the organization to remain focused on its mission. Charity is a private, moral impulse, not a government program.

Government will not and, by definition, cannot strengthen and replace the civil society. Volunteerism is something that works in America. When we think of America, we do not think of Congress and Presidents, we think of Little League games and PTA meetings and bake sales.

Civil society is America. It responds to needs, meets challenges, and solves problems because it is free from Government. Because volunteers donate their time and money, accountability is acute. I have seen it. I have sat on a United Way board. Every year we evaluate every program and every dollar we have given to someone, and we determine is it working or can we make it more efficient.

If the program is not working, the money goes away immediately. That does not happen here. If the program does not work here, we add more money to it. That is going to happen with every program we start, including the one we are talking about today.

Projects that do not work in a civil society get cut. Organizers who lose or abuse funds are dismissed. It is voluntary. So everyone is invested in its success. We know the large groups throughout America, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the United Way, the Salvation Army, the YMCA, Catholic

Charities, fraternal orders, groups such as Kiwanis, Rotary, Knights of Columbus. These are large organizations, but they work because they are locally controlled.

Smaller groups, local arts councils and community theatres, PTAs, youth sports leagues, the animal rescues, the book clubs, crisis pregnancy centers, soup kitchens, food and other clothes drives that go on, church service groups, they are everywhere.

Those are the little platoons, the little democracies that make this country work. For us to presume, in the Congress, that somehow we are going to reach out into all these groups and make it work better is pretty presumptuous based on our history.

Why now? Why at a time in economic crisis with unimaginable debt and spending do we come in and say: We need to spend another $10 billion over the next 10 years to create another Government program to do something that is already working.

At the same time, we are talking about creating this new bureaucracy to replace private voluntarism with Government programming. We are actually cutting some of the incentives for people to give to charity and for the private sector to work. The President's budget actually cuts the charitable donations of the people who give the most to charity in this country. So look at what we are doing. We are making it harder for the private sector to work.

You also look at what we have done over the years, forgetting that a lot of private charity and the motivation to serve God and community is a religious-based motivation. What have we done in this country?

We have essentially tried to purge that motivation from our country. Most public schools, or at least a lot of them, used to sponsor Boy Scout groups. But after being sued for years because the Boy Scouts have God in their pledge and they set standards for their leaders that some do not agree with, the threat of lawsuits essentially means our Government schools have thrown out the Boy Scouts.

More than half our astronauts, half our FBI agents, a lot of the most successful people in this country were trained in the Boy Scouts to serve their community, where their character was developed. But this Federal Government has forced them out of public places. For years we purged religion from our society. Religion was the primary motivation for a lot of civic groups, a lot of services, a lot of charities, a lot of hospitals that were formed, a lot of schools.

But we have said that has no place. Because we have unleashed the ACLU and other groups to constantly sue and intimidate groups, that religious motivation has been moved, has been purged in many cases.

Now we are going to come in and help solve the problem we have created. We want to promote voluntarism, we want to promote community service, when what we have done over the last several decades is essentially tried to destroy the motivation for people to serve a cause that is greater than themselves.

We cannot replace private charity with Government programs. If we try, a lot of people are going to miss meals, suffer cold winters, and leaky roofs. I wish to go back to where I started. I appreciate the motivation, the heartfelt sense of compassion and the patriotism that I know my colleagues feel in sponsoring this legislation.

But I think we need to come to a point as a government that we recognize we cannot do everything. That is why we take the oath to the Constitution to defend and protect the very limited form of Government. This Congress, this Government, does not need to start or expand an organization to a quarter million people, when we are paying people to do work that we decided needs to be done and take those decisions out of the hands of millions of Americans who look around every day and see what they can do to make their families, their communities, and their country a better place to live.

These are not Government decisions. We need to focus on what we were set up to do and do it much better than we are doing, instead of every week coming in here, bringing our good intentions and our compassion and every problem we see across the country we say something needs to be done. Then we say: The Government needs to do it.

That is the fatal flaw of the Congress today, is we forget that sacred oath of office that says: We will protect and defend the Constitution which says this Federal Government has a very limited function. And those functions that are not prescribed in the Constitution are left to individuals and to the States.

This is a huge well-intended mistake we are making. It serves a point that we need to realize this Government needs to stop spending and stop borrowing, stop taxing, and let America work.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, last week Congress was consumed in expressing its justified outrage over the bonuses for AIG executives. The House passed a bill that would tax those bonuses at 90 percent to get the money back. The Senate may consider something similar this week, and I think it is the Senate's job to proceed carefully as we do so. Though I think all of us would support taking back the payments, we need to give due consideration to the means by which we do this. The constitutionality of the House version is certainly questionable at best.

Now, the reason many are seeking expedited consideration of the AIG bonus bill is clear enough--to cover up the past mistakes of the majority party and the Treasury Secretary. We should recall the process that created the stimulus bill: No time to review the final bill before passage, a photo op masquerading as a conference committee, hasty consideration, no bipartisan input, and huge decisions about billions and billions of dollars being made behind closed doors by the majority. It was this process that allowed the provision to give out the AIG bonuses to find its way into law. There was a provision very deep in the Democratic stimulus bill that allowed these bonuses to be paid, and it was inserted at the behest of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

This gets us to the root of the problem: The bailout approach that Secretary Geithner epitomizes. The American people object to the midnight rescue packages, the ad hoc approach, the ``say one thing, do another'' programs. There is a complete lack of any policy framework, explanation of principles or coherent approach in dealing with our financial situation. I believe there is a lack of any transparency whatsoever and a seeming indifference to the taxpayers' interests.

Now, the $700 billion bailout bill last October was congressional ratification of Tim Geithner's approach to big banks: to bail them out. I objected to that at that time and I was in shock that 75 Members of the Senate voted to give an unelected bureaucrat, without any constraints, $700 billion to do with as he wished. Now, that was bad enough. It all started with Bear Stearns a year ago. The initiator of the Bear Stearns deal was not Secretary Paulson, it was not Chairman Bernanke, it was the--they signed off on it, but it was Timothy Geithner. After the deal was announced, Robert Novak reported in his column that an unnamed Federal official confided in him at the time: ``We may have crossed

a line'' in bailing out Bear Stearns. Mr. Novak wrote that was an understatement and that we wouldn't know the ramifications of this decision for a long time.

Well, I think we better understand those ramifications today. We are now trillions of dollars past that line and we are beginning to comprehend the course on which that decision has set us. I, personally, believe that trillions of dollars past that line, we are no better off. That is enough. Tim Geithner's bailout approach has taken us too far. Instead of Congress using the AIG bonus issue to cover up Tim Geithner's mistakes in allowing those bonuses, we should take it as an opportunity to fundamentally reevaluate the bailouts thus far and put an end to any more bailouts. Now, with the revelations of how AIG is being used to funnel money to foreign banks to make them whole on bad investments at the expense of the U.S. taxpayers, we need to put an end to the Geithner approach on bailouts. The taxpayers deserve no less.

The debate over the AIG bonuses, though extremely important, only scratches the surface of some much deeper issues. First, the furor over AIG bonuses obscured some other, perhaps more important, news about the AIG bailout regarding counterparties--or creditors--counterparties, to some of AIG's more exotic transactions. Second, the AIG bonus issue reveals a significant problem with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's bailout approach to failing financial institutions.

Under Tim Geithner, the $150 billion in taxpayer money AIG has received is being used to funnel money to AIG's counterparties, mostly big investment banks and foreign banks. Taxpayers are right to be angry about the bonuses, but they should be even angrier about how their taxpayer dollars used to bail out AIG are being distributed by them. Under the contracts AIG entered into with other big banks and foreign banks, AIG needs to come up with billions and billions of dollars when their investments are downgraded. Now, that is where all the AIG bailout money is going. AIG is basically being used as a front to funnel taxpayer moneys into large foreign banks that are taking no loss--no loss--on their investments. It is the taxpayer who is bearing the loss that these banks should have been able to take. Treasury Secretary Geithner needs to explain to the American people why foreign banks are getting 100 percent on their investment while the American people are taking the loss. Why can't any of these banks take a haircut on their AIG investments?

Now, I guess it is hard to explain to people because it doesn't sound believable, but what is happening is we have foreign banks--and I will name a few of them in a second--that have put their money into an investment into AIG. They planned to make a profit. If they had made a profit, I dare say they wouldn't have come back to say to our United States of America: We will write you a check for the profit we made. Instead of that, they wait until they take a loss, and then the American taxpayers have to come in.

I think the American people are getting completely fleeced on their $150 billion AIG investment. Secretary Geithner needs to explain to us why relatively healthy firms such as Goldman Sachs aren't taking any loss on a clearly bad investment in AIG. Why are all these foreign banks getting 100 percent of their investment at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer?

Here is a sample of the banks that are getting made whole by U.S. taxpayers--that is our taxpayers--people who elect us to office: The Bank of Montreal, Canada, $1.1 billion; the Societe Generale, France, $11.9 billion; investments made by a French bank. This is a French bank that bought an interest in AIG, they lost their money, they come back to us, and we pay them back for their loss. The BNP Paribas, $4.9 billion; the Deutsche Bank in Germany, $11.8 billion; the ING, Netherlands, $1.5 billion; Barclays, of the UK, $8.5 billion. This is just a sampling of the over $50 billion that foreign banks have gotten from AIG. In other words, $50 billion in taxpayers' money has gone to foreign banks. I don't think many people have caught on to that yet. The taxpayers are picking up the tab. Meanwhile, some U.S. banks are getting the same treatment. Goldman Sachs has received $12.9 billion. These are all investments in AIG. Merrill Lynch, $6.8 billion; Bank of America, $5.2 billion; Citigroup, $2.3 billion. All told, the U.S. banks have gotten around $45 billion through AIG from the U.S. taxpayer. What is interesting, as bad as it is that U.S. banks are getting back $45 billion for bad investments, the foreign banks are actually getting back more than the U.S. banks are. Not one of these banks I have mentioned has taken a dime of loss in their AIG investments--not one. AIG's counterparties have been made whole across the board by the U.S. taxpayer. Why is that? Why can't any of these banks take any of the loss on their AIG investment? Why is the taxpayer being asked to bear the full cost of all these bad investments? The American taxpayers have a right to know and Secretary Geithner needs to explain this.

I say this because I know people are outraged in my State of Oklahoma about the fact that there have been bonuses that have been made, but this is even far worse than that was. The American people are getting completely fleeced on their $150 billion AIG investment, $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, and billions in ad hoc bailouts, of which we have still not seen the end. Only this week, Secretary Geithner has announced that the Government will work with private investors to purchase between $500 billion and $1 trillion of toxic assets.

Now, at this point I would say, remember back when we were being sold a bill of goods, I voted against it, but 75 percent of the Senate voted for it--$700 billion to be given to an unelected bureaucrat to do with as they wished. We all remember that. What was that supposed to be used for? The bad part of the bill was not just the amount of money; there were no guidelines, no accountability. That was supposed to be used to buy toxic assets. I could quote right now things they said at that time: This money has to be spent for toxic assets, and if you don't do that, the whole country is going to go down and we are going to have another depression again. So the President's budget includes a placeholder for billions in additional banking bailouts. The American people have said enough a long time ago. We have to put an end to the Geithner approach on bailouts.

Looking back since last fall, more and more I feel I may have been overly critical of Secretary Paulson, at least when compared to Secretary Geithner. Geithner's handling of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout has been worse than Paulson's. Whether it is Paulson or Geithner, handing $700 billion over to an unelected bureaucrat to do with what he pleases is bad enough when three-fourths of the Senate voted to do it last October, and it is an even worse idea with Tim Geithner at the helm. What has happened with the taxpayers' investment in AIG is clear evidence of that. No matter how you look at it, it has been a bad deal for the U.S. taxpayers.

Now, in light of all of this, I have introduced legislation to do more than deal with the bonuses. This is S. 680, just introduced. S. 680 gets to the root of this problem. Of the $150 billion we have already given to AIG, it is my understanding that there is $30 billion more for AIG from TARP that has been agreed to by the Treasury Secretary but has not yet been drawn down. My legislation would prevent that from going forward. The taxpayers have given AIG about $150 billion so far. I think it is completely reasonable to say that once a single company gets $150 billion from the taxpayers, it should be cut off from getting more. There has to be a point beyond which Government cannot go, and there has to be an end to the road that is fleecing American taxpayers. This provides that end.

There is no other vehicle out there to do it. I can tell my colleagues right now, if this isn't brought up and voted on, the taxpayers of America are going to put another $30 billion into AIG to be used to pay off foreign banks. This is the only way we can stop it is with this legislation, so I encourage the leadership to help us bring this up for a vote. I can assure my colleagues it would pass with an overwhelming majority. That is S. 680, the only vehicle out there that would keep AIG from using taxpayer money to pay off other foreign banks.

Mr. President, last week Congress was consumed in expressing its justified outrage over the bonuses for AIG executives. The House passed a bill that would tax those bonuses at 90 percent to get the money back. The Senate may consider something similar this week, and I think it is the Senate's job to proceed carefully as we do so. Though I think all of us would support taking back the payments, we need to give due consideration to the means by which we do this. The constitutionality of the House version is certainly questionable at best.

Now, the reason many are seeking expedited consideration of the AIG bonus bill is clear enough--to cover up the past mistakes of the majority party and the Treasury Secretary. We should recall the process that created the stimulus bill: No time to review the final bill before passage, a photo op masquerading as a conference committee, hasty consideration, no bipartisan input, and huge decisions about billions and billions of dollars being made behind closed doors by the majority. It was this process that allowed the provision to give out the AIG bonuses to find its way into law. There was a provision very deep in the Democratic stimulus bill that allowed these bonuses to be paid, and it was inserted at the behest of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

This gets us to the root of the problem: The bailout approach that Secretary Geithner epitomizes. The American people object to the midnight rescue packages, the ad hoc approach, the ``say one thing, do another'' programs. There is a complete lack of any policy framework, explanation of principles or coherent approach in dealing with our financial situation. I believe there is a lack of any transparency whatsoever and a seeming indifference to the taxpayers' interests.

Now, the $700 billion bailout bill last October was congressional ratification of Tim Geithner's approach to big banks: to bail them out. I objected to that at that time and I was in shock that 75 Members of the Senate voted to give an unelected bureaucrat, without any constraints, $700 billion to do with as he wished. Now, that was bad enough. It all started with Bear Stearns a year ago. The initiator of the Bear Stearns deal was not Secretary Paulson, it was not Chairman Bernanke, it was the--they signed off on it, but it was Timothy Geithner. After the deal was announced, Robert Novak reported in his column that an unnamed Federal official confided in him at the time: ``We may have crossed

a line'' in bailing out Bear Stearns. Mr. Novak wrote that was an understatement and that we wouldn't know the ramifications of this decision for a long time.

Well, I think we better understand those ramifications today. We are now trillions of dollars past that line and we are beginning to comprehend the course on which that decision has set us. I, personally, believe that trillions of dollars past that line, we are no better off. That is enough. Tim Geithner's bailout approach has taken us too far. Instead of Congress using the AIG bonus issue to cover up Tim Geithner's mistakes in allowing those bonuses, we should take it as an opportunity to fundamentally reevaluate the bailouts thus far and put an end to any more bailouts. Now, with the revelations of how AIG is being used to funnel money to foreign banks to make them whole on bad investments at the expense of the U.S. taxpayers, we need to put an end to the Geithner approach on bailouts. The taxpayers deserve no less.

The debate over the AIG bonuses, though extremely important, only scratches the surface of some much deeper issues. First, the furor over AIG bonuses obscured some other, perhaps more important, news about the AIG bailout regarding counterparties--or creditors--counterparties, to some of AIG's more exotic transactions. Second, the AIG bonus issue reveals a significant problem with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's bailout approach to failing financial institutions.

Under Tim Geithner, the $150 billion in taxpayer money AIG has received is being used to funnel money to AIG's counterparties, mostly big investment banks and foreign banks. Taxpayers are right to be angry about the bonuses, but they should be even angrier about how their taxpayer dollars used to bail out AIG are being distributed by them. Under the contracts AIG entered into with other big banks and foreign banks, AIG needs to come up with billions and billions of dollars when their investments are downgraded. Now, that is where all the AIG bailout money is going. AIG is basically being used as a front to funnel taxpayer moneys into large foreign banks that are taking no loss--no loss--on their investments. It is the taxpayer who is bearing the loss that these banks should have been able to take. Treasury Secretary Geithner needs to explain to the American people why foreign banks are getting 100 percent on their investment while the American people are taking the loss. Why can't any of these banks take a haircut on their AIG investments?

Now, I guess it is hard to explain to people because it doesn't sound believable, but what is happening is we have foreign banks--and I will name a few of them in a second--that have put their money into an investment into AIG. They planned to make a profit. If they had made a profit, I dare say they wouldn't have come back to say to our United States of America: We will write you a check for the profit we made. Instead of that, they wait until they take a loss, and then the American taxpayers have to come in.

I think the American people are getting completely fleeced on their $150 billion AIG investment. Secretary Geithner needs to explain to us why relatively healthy firms such as Goldman Sachs aren't taking any loss on a clearly bad investment in AIG. Why are all these foreign banks getting 100 percent of their investment at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer?

Here is a sample of the banks that are getting made whole by U.S. taxpayers--that is our taxpayers--people who elect us to office: The Bank of Montreal, Canada, $1.1 billion; the Societe Generale, France, $11.9 billion; investments made by a French bank. This is a French bank that bought an interest in AIG, they lost their money, they come back to us, and we pay them back for their loss. The BNP Paribas, $4.9 billion; the Deutsche Bank in Germany, $11.8 billion; the ING, Netherlands, $1.5 billion; Barclays, of the UK, $8.5 billion. This is just a sampling of the over $50 billion that foreign banks have gotten from AIG. In other words, $50 billion in taxpayers' money has gone to foreign banks. I don't think many people have caught on to that yet. The taxpayers are picking up the tab. Meanwhile, some U.S. banks are getting the same treatment. Goldman Sachs has received $12.9 billion. These are all investments in AIG. Merrill Lynch, $6.8 billion; Bank of America, $5.2 billion; Citigroup, $2.3 billion. All told, the U.S. banks have gotten around $45 billion through AIG from the U.S. taxpayer. What is interesting, as bad as it is that U.S. banks are getting back $45 billion for bad investments, the foreign banks are actually getting back more than the U.S. banks are. Not one of these banks I have mentioned has taken a dime of loss in their AIG investments--not one. AIG's counterparties have been made whole across the board by the U.S. taxpayer. Why is that? Why can't any of these banks take any of the loss on their AIG investment? Why is the taxpayer being asked to bear the full cost of all these bad investments? The American taxpayers have a right to know and Secretary Geithner needs to explain this.

I say this because I know people are outraged in my State of Oklahoma about the fact that there have been bonuses that have been made, but this is even far worse than that was. The American people are getting completely fleeced on their $150 billion AIG investment, $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, and billions in ad hoc bailouts, of which we have still not seen the end. Only this week, Secretary Geithner has announced that the Government will work with private investors to purchase between $500 billion and $1 trillion of toxic assets.

Now, at this point I would say, remember back when we were being sold a bill of goods, I voted against it, but 75 percent of the Senate voted for it--$700 billion to be given to an unelected bureaucrat to do with as they wished. We all remember that. What was that supposed to be used for? The bad part of the bill was not just the amount of money; there were no guidelines, no accountability. That was supposed to be used to buy toxic assets. I could quote right now things they said at that time: This money has to be spent for toxic assets, and if you don't do that, the whole country is going to go down and we are going to have another depression again. So the President's budget includes a placeholder for billions in additional banking bailouts. The American people have said enough a long time ago. We have to put an end to the Geithner approach on bailouts.

Looking back since last fall, more and more I feel I may have been overly critical of Secretary Paulson, at least when compared to Secretary Geithner. Geithner's handling of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout has been worse than Paulson's. Whether it is Paulson or Geithner, handing $700 billion over to an unelected bureaucrat to do with what he pleases is bad enough when three-fourths of the Senate voted to do it last October, and it is an even worse idea with Tim Geithner at the helm. What has happened with the taxpayers' investment in AIG is clear evidence of that. No matter how you look at it, it has been a bad deal for the U.S. taxpayers.

Now, in light of all of this, I have introduced legislation to do more than deal with the bonuses. This is S. 680, just introduced. S. 680 gets to the root of this problem. Of the $150 billion we have already given to AIG, it is my understanding that there is $30 billion more for AIG from TARP that has been agreed to by the Treasury Secretary but has not yet been drawn down. My legislation would prevent that from going forward. The taxpayers have given AIG about $150 billion so far. I think it is completely reasonable to say that once a single company gets $150 billion from the taxpayers, it should be cut off from getting more. There has to be a point beyond which Government cannot go, and there has to be an end to the road that is fleecing American taxpayers. This provides that end.

There is no other vehicle out there to do it. I can tell my colleagues right now, if this isn't brought up and voted on, the taxpayers of America are going to put another $30 billion into AIG to be used to pay off foreign banks. This is the only way we can stop it is with this legislation, so I encourage the leadership to help us bring this up for a vote. I can assure my colleagues it would pass with an overwhelming majority. That is S. 680, the only vehicle out there that would keep AIG from using taxpayer money to pay off other foreign banks.