A resolution making majority party appointments to certain Senate committees for the 111th Congress.

Mr. President, I wish to pause for a moment. I know we are on the bill, and I am most anxious to proceed with the Defense authorization bill, having served on the committee since 1994 and before then in the House. It is imperative now that we get as robust a bill as possible.

Before doing that, let me mention one thing because I haven't yet spoken about this. I have been watching several of our colleagues who have come to the floor to speak about a great Senator, Norm Coleman, who is no longer seated in the Senate but who is a remarkable character.

A good friend of mine, Paul Weyrich, who recently died, wrote an op- ed piece, and it is called ``The Workhorses and the Show Horses.'' He talked about so many of the Members of the House and the Senate who are out there just to make themselves look good. They are the ones who are show horses. Then there are the workhorses. We talk about someone such as Norm Coleman, who was always there and getting deeply involved in issues, many of which are not popular issues if you are using them to run for reelection. I am thinking of a close friend, a mutual friend of ours named Ward Brehm. Ward Brehm and I have been working together for a long time on some things in Africa, as the Chair is aware, and he was talking about being from Minnesota and how much involved Norm Coleman got in various international affairs issues that don't have any votes behind them, but he was willing to do it. Every time you turned around, he was willing to do things that other people weren't willing to do.

I remember several years ago when he and I met with a delegation from Burundi and Rwanda and the DRC. This was a group that was over here in conjunction with the National Prayer Breakfast. He and I always worked together during the time that we had the National Prayer Breakfast. We would get these people to come all the way over here from different countries, but we kind of concentrated on Africa. I remember him standing there talking about, for a long period of time--keep in mind he is a Jew. I was never real clear where in New York he was from--I think the Bronx or someplace. But anyway, he was very strong in the Jewish community, and I am not. I am on the Christian side. But we would always get together and talk to them about Jesus and talk to them about loving God. And then when he would pray--at the end of these things, we would offer a prayer, and he would end up giving a prayer in Hebrew--an amazing guy.

At the National Prayer Breakfast African dinner 2 years ago--I had sponsored the dinner that was for all the Africans who had come over for the Prayer Breakfast and stayed for the African dinner--he was a major player in that. So these are things people didn't know about Norm Coleman.

The idea is scripturally based; it is Acts 2:42. It is kind of a genesis of these weekly Prayer Breakfasts in the Senate. On Wednesday mornings, we had a Prayer Breakfast and about 20, 25 Senators showed up every Wednesday and Norm Coleman was the chairman of that and was always in these groups. But he was also one who was helping us in forming these same groups with members of Parliament from all over Africa. He was a tireless worker in that effort, which was not something out there to get any votes.

I talked to him the other day, having gone through this election and then the 8 months or so, whatever it was, in recounting and all of that. I told him that many years ago I was mayor of Tulsa, and I did a pretty good job, I thought. I was supposed to win hands down. Someone came out of obscurity and because of a set of circumstances that should have gotten votes, not lost votes, I had lost unexpectedly on that Tuesday.

Well, we had scheduled our Tulsa Mayor's Prayer Breakfast the next morning. Bill Bright, who died not too long ago, came by as the speaker. Keep in mind, here he was the speaker at the Mayor's Prayer Breakfast the morning after I lost the election. He gave the most brilliant speech. I remember how he said it and the words he used. He said: A lot of times we think in terms of what is happening to us today, looking at our own careers, but, he said, God is still up there and there is a plan for all of us. He said in a very clear way that I thoroughly understood, the day after I lost the election I wasn't supposed to lose, that God opens a window and he closes a door and that window is going to be bigger. I can tell you right now I wouldn't be doing what I am doing today if it had not been for that.

So I would just say about my friend, Norm Coleman, God has a plan in mind for you, Norm, and it is one we will look back someday and say perhaps this is the best thing that could have happened to you. In the meantime, we love you, Norm, and God bless you.

Amendment No. 1511

I wish to also speak in terms of a program that I think a lot of people don't understand, and on which I know there is honest disagreement.

The F-22, people have said, is something like a Cold War aircraft. It is not. To quote Secretary Donnelly and General Schwartz both, because they both said the same thing, they said the F-22 is unquestionably the most capable fighter in our military inventory, not just air to air, as some on this floor have insinuated, but also precision attack air to ground, as well as intelligence collection. In contrast, almost every other piece of military equipment in our inventory today--air, land, and sea--is Cold War equipment that needs to be replaced.

I think about the Bradley vehicle. It has been around since the 1960s. I think about the Abrams tank. It has been around since the 1970s. I think about the Paladin, even though we have had about five major upgrades on the Paladin, that is our artillery beast, and that was actually World War II technology where you had to get out of the thing after every shot and swab the breach. You hear that and people can't believe it. Well, fortunately, we are going to go through an improvement on that. But the point I am trying to make is most of the stuff we have is Cold War stuff and to find that F-22 isn't needed because it wasn't flown in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think, is pretty narrow-minded. We have a lot of people we have to defend America against for contingencies that we don't know are out there and we don't know what our needs are going to be. The need certainly wasn't there in terms of Afghanistan and Iraq, but we don't know where the next enemy is going to be coming from or what the next contingency is. I wish we did. I can remember being on the House Armed Services

Committee my last year there in 1984. We had people testify. They said--these are smart people. They said: You know, in 10 years, we will no longer need ground capability. And look what has happened since that time.

So no matter how smart our people are, there is no way we are going to be able to determine where the next guy is going to come from and what our capability is going to have to be. Is it going to be in the air, sea, strike vehicles, lift capacity, cannons? So we need to keep that in mind because the only thing we have in the form of a fifth- generation fighter is the F-22, and it is uniquely designed and equipped to penetrate a hostile environment and be a savage air dominance for our ground forces. The F-22, I look at it as an investment in the future, not just 10 years down the road but 20 years and beyond. What we build today is going to have to be able to determine and deter and defeat adversaries for decades. Just look at the age of our entire military today. We talked about all these vehicles, but we have such things as the national security in long term, 40 years. We can't even see what we are going to need 10 years from now.

Now we talk about the F-35. Well, the F-35 is great. I am a strong supporter of the F-35 and working on it and getting it up as fast as possible. Its mission requirements are not the same as the F-22. The F- 22 is out flying today, and we have that capability today. Only five F- 35s are flying, and it is still in the testing period. It is impossible to assess the full capabilities of the F-35 until operational tests are completed in, I think, 2014. Well, that is 2014. This is 2009. There is a lot of time between now and 2014.

While we discuss cutting the only fifth-generation fighter in production today, China and Russia are continuing to move forward with the development of their fifth-generation fighters. I think they call the Chinese one the J-12 and the Russian is the T-50. They are out there right now talking about building these things. Today our Legacy, our F-15s, F-16s, F-18s are less capable than other fourth-generation fighters, such as the SU-27 and the SU-30 series aircraft.

I might remind the President that we have--we already know other countries are buying these capable fourth-plus generation aircraft that are better than what we have now, except for the F-22. We know of one sale, and I remember this--it has been quite awhile ago now--for F-27s from China, 240 of these. Now they are talking about cutting our number of F-22s--and I will talk about the numbers in a minute--down to the 187 and stopping the amendment that would increase that by seven vehicles. I don't want to see our Legacy fighters outmatched by fifth- generation fighters developed by China and Russia. I have always said our pilots are better, our training is better, but they have to have at least comparable equipment to survive.

So our air-to-air threat is only one aspect of the threat our Air Force faces today. Our surface-to-air threat remains to be a real serious problem. You just think about what the Russians are making now, the S-300s and the Chinese 4000s. They are capable of tracking up to 100 targets and getting as high as 90,000 feet in the air.

Now, that is priceless. These systems that make penetrating hostile airspace difficult and deadly for a legacy aircraft, including unmanned vehicles, such as our Predator, which has performed brilliantly, are uncontested facts. Only the F-22, with its advance stealth technology and weaponry and supersonic speeds, can successfully penetrate what we call denied airspace, hunt and destroy strategic ground targets during the day or night, and collect and provide battle intelligence and awareness, and maintain our superiority in the air.

The Air Force officials have repeatedly stated no less than 243 F-22s would be sufficient to maintain a moderate level of risk. We are talking about the deaths of Americans. If that is the goal, that is what we should have. In the beginning, it was 750 F-22s. We have slowly gone down. That is what this amendment is about today.

GEN John Corley, Commander of the Air Force Combat Command, said:

At Air Combat Command, we have held the need for 381 F-22s

to deliver a tailored package of air superiority to our

Combatant Commanders and provide a potent, globally arrayed

asymmetric deterrent against potential adversaries. In my

opinion, a fleet of 187 F-22s puts the execution of our

current national military strategy at high risk in the near

to mid term. To my knowledge, there are no studies that

demonstrate that 187 F-22s are adequate to support our

national military strategy. Air Combat Commandment analysis,

done in concert with the Headquarters Air Forces, shows a

moderate risk force can be obtained with an F-22 fleet of

approximately 250 aircraft.

So we are talking about a bare minimum number, and whether it is 243 or 250, that should be a bare minimum number.

While the F-22 hasn't deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, a theater security package of six F-22s are on a continuous rotation to Guam in the Pacific Theater of Operations and have been forward deployed in Japan.

Why? Because it is the only fighter capable of stealthy penetration of North Korea's air defenses.

Finally, there continues to be allegations about the costs and operations of the F-22--to include an article last week in the Washington Post. The bottom line is, these allegations are false or intentionally misleading. The F-22 cost per flying hour is $19,750, not more than $44,000, as they were trying to say. The F-22 maintenance trends have improved from 62 percent to 68 percent. The F-22 skin is not vulnerable to rain. Finally, the fly-away cost for F-22s multiyear this Congress approved is $142.6 million, not $350 million.

One final point on all of these supposed studies about the F-22: We have been through this before with the approval of the multiyear and are going through it again. I have been briefed on both classified and unclassified studies, and while the range of numbers varied, each study concluded that 183 F-22s is not enough. So we need to continue to build the F-22s and look at exporting this aircraft to our allies. Fortunately, some of that is taking place today. Japan, Australia, and Israel have expressed considerable interest in the purchase of F-22s.

Nations around the world realize the F-22A Raptor is the only operational fighter-bomber available that can successfully defeat and destroy air and ground threats of today and tomorrow.

So what we are talking about is--in the markup, we increased the number by seven aircraft. The chief mover of this, I have to say, was Senator Saxby Chambliss. As I told him, this is not enough. He agreed, but it was the most we thought we could do.

I believe when the time comes for an amendment to cut that number down, we need to give serious consideration to that amendment and not allow it to pass.

There is an expectation of the American people--and I have gone through this before with other airframes and other ground platforms-- the American people think we give our kids who go into battle the very best of everything. I can tell you that is not true. I gave an example. There are five countries, including South Africa, that make a better non-line-of-sight cannon than we have today.

To me, that is unacceptable. It is unacceptable to the American people when we explain that is the situation. The F-15, F-16, and the F-14 have done a great job, but they need to move on to the fourth and fifth generation, and the only way to do that is with the F-22, which has been a success story.

Guantanamo Bay

I have another interest I want to share today, and that has to do with Gitmo. People are probably tired of hearing me talk about Gitmo, but I think we are about to make a mistake. The administration is making the demand that we close Gitmo. I have stood on the floor of the Senate many times and talked about my experiences there--the fact that anybody who wants to close Gitmo, if you ask why, they will say that for some reason people associate that with the types of torture that allegedly went on at Abu Ghraib and all of that.

This has nothing to do with that. There has not been a documented case of waterboarding at Gitmo. It is a state-of-the-art prison.

When President Obama talked about the 17 locations in America where we can take terrorists and relocate them from Gitmo to America, one happened to be Fort Sill in my State of Oklahoma. I went down to Fort Sill, and there was a lady in charge. She is a young major in charge of the prison where they would put these terrorists.

She said, ``I don't understand what people are thinking.'' This young lady, named SMA Carter, said she had two tours at Gitmo, and it is designed for terrorists. They have a court system where they can do tribunals.

We have six classifications of security in Gitmo. It is one of the few good deals the government has. We have had it since 1903. I have told the Presiding Officer this before. We only pay $4,000 a year for it. Do you have a better deal than that in government? There isn't one.

I have to say the terrorists are still at war with the United States, and we are legally entitled to capture and hold enemies and fighters in the hostilities. We detain terrorists and supporters to prevent them from returning to the battlefield, saving the lives of our service men and women and the lives of civilians who are innocent victims. I have spent a lot of time there. I am familiar with some of the terrorists there who are really bad people. They want to kill everybody who is listening right now. That is their mission in life.

We have had about 800 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists who have been sent to Gitmo since 9/11--people who are really bad. I looked through there, and we saw Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He was the architect of 9/11. There was also the guy who was the explosives trainer for 9/ 11, who provided information on the September 2001 assassination of the Northern Alliance leader, Masood, and on the al-Qaida organization's use of mines. There was also the terrorist financier who provided detailed information on Osama bin Laden's front companies. There was the Taliban fighter linked to al-Qaida operatives connected to the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings. Remember that, in Tanzania and Kenya? Down there we also had an al-Qaida explosives trainer who designed a prototype shoe bomb for destroying airplanes, as well as a magnet mine for attacking ships.

These people are unlike the types of prisoners we have had in other wars. If we look back during any of our wars, we had soldiers fighting for their countries. These people are not soldiers fighting for a country. They are fighting for a cause, and that cause is to destroy us.

To date over 540 prisoners have been transferred or released, leaving approximately 230 at Gitmo. They include members of al-Qaida and related terrorist organizations, planners of major terrorist attacks worldwide, including 9/11. These are the types of people there.

The intelligence gained from detainees at Gitmo helped the United States and its allies identify, exploit, and disrupt terrorist operations worldwide, saving untold lives. There have been a number of terrorist attacks. For a long time, they were classified, but most are no longer classified.

In 2007, the Senate voted 94 to 3 on a nonbinding resolution to block detainees from being transferred to the United States, declaring:

Detainees housed at Guantanamo should not be released into

American society, nor should they be transferred State-side

into facilities in American communities and neighborhoods.

On May 20, 2009, the Senate voted 90 to 6 on a bipartisan amendment by myself and Senator Inouye to prohibit funding for the transfer of Gitmo detainees to the United States. Unfortunately, the supplemental appropriations conference report deleted that provision, allowing detainees to be transferred to the United States for trial.

If we put them into our Federal system--I can speak this way because I am not an attorney, so I can stand back and cite the obvious. If we do that, then the rules of evidence are different.

There are a lot of these guys who are picked up, and even now they talk about Miranda rights. That blows my mind when I think about it-- when this goes on now and we have the opportunity to get these people and extract information from them. Thinking about the idea of trying them in the Federal court system where, if they cannot get a conviction--and many times they could not for one reason, which is that the rules of evidence are different.

When they were captured, they went by the rules of evidence for military tribunals. So we could have some who would be turned free, and many of them in the United States.

Recent polls show that a majority of Americans oppose closing Gitmo and moving detainees to the United States. By a margin of 2 to 1--which is huge in polls--those surveyed said Guantanamo should not be closed, and by more than 3 to 1 they oppose moving some of the accused terrorists housed there to prisons in the United States.

Again, one of the prisons the Obama administration talked about of the 17 prisons happened to be in Oklahoma. It should be obvious to everybody if we have 17 locations where we are housing terrorists, that becomes a magnet for terrorism--17 magnets in the United States.

A recent Fox News poll said President Obama made a mistake when he signed the order to close Gitmo. Seventy-seven percent of all Americans say that was a mistake, that Gitmo should not be closed, 60 percent of all Americans, up from 53 percent in April and 45 percent in January. You can see the trendlines. The vast majority--nearly two-thirds--is saying he should not close Gitmo and Gitmo prisoners should not be transferred into prisons in the United States. Sixty percent of all Americans say that is true. Sixty percent in polling is a huge number, a vast majority.

I encourage Senators who will be voting on this significant amendment to keep that in mind. Since President Obama announced he intended to close Gitmo, it has become widely circulated that these detainees could be transferred to American prisons for prosecution in U.S. criminal courts and potentially released in the United States. Moving detainees to prisons here would require significant investment in restructuring existing facilities and would cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

Currently, the United States only has one Supermax facility located in Florence, CO. According to the Bureau of Prisons, as of May 21, ``only 1 bed was not filled at Supermax.'' So if we want to give maximum security to these people, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we better decide who is going to be in that one bed because we don't have the capacity. The capacity of all the high security Bureau of Prison facilities at the beginning of this month was 13,448 inmates, while the total prison population was approximately 20,000.

So what we are talking about is they are overcrowded, and that is flat not going to happen. Despite claims by Senator Durbin that the Supermax prisons in the United States are ready to receive Gitmo detainees, the Supermax prisons in the United States are at or above their maximum capacity.

FBI Director Robert Mueller said there is the very real possibility that the Gitmo detainees will recruit more terrorists from among the Federal inmate population and continue al-Qaida operations inside the walls of prison. That cannot happen in Gitmo because they are all terrorists there. That is how the New York synagogue bombers were recruited, in our own prison system.

In 2002, an entire wing of a jail in Alexandria, VA, was cleared out for the 9/11 ``20th hijacker,'' Zacarias Moussaoui, to be housed for his trial--just for one detainee. Bringing Gitmo detainees to the United States could also place America and its citizens at risk by inevitably creating a new set of targets for the jihadist terrorists. Gitmo, on the other hand, is a state-of-the-art prison. I cannot find anyone who has gone over there, including unfriendly media, media that was bent on closing Gitmo--once they go over there and see it, almost all of them change their mind. It is a state-of-the-art facility that provides humane treatment for all detainees. It is fully compliant with the Geneva Conventions and provides treatment and oversight that exceed any maximum security prison in the world, as attested to by human rights organizations, the Red Cross, Attorney General Holder, and an independent commission led by Admiral Walsh. This is state of the art, and this is not a place where torture takes place. It is the only facility of its kind in the world that was specifically designed to house and try these types of dangerous detainees.

If President Obama ever decides to visit Gitmo, I am sure he would equally

be impressed as everyone else, including, I might say, Attorney General Holder. He came back and gave a glowing report and said how great this was and, at the same time, said the President still wants to close it.

When you look at the Gitmo situation, there are, on average, two lawyers for every detainee. There are 127 doctors and nurses. The ratio is 1 to 2 in terms of health care specialists to take care of these prisoners. Here we are talking about health care in this country. Maybe they want to go to Gitmo. They would be a lot better off. Current treatment and oversight exceeds that of any maximum security prison in the world.

There is also a $12 million expeditionary legal complex. This is very significant because if we are going to do tribunals, we cannot do tribunals in our court system in the United States because it is not set up for that. Obviously, there are some things in testimony that takes place that have to be private. You cannot have these things go out because that would endanger American lives. We spent $12 million on this complex. It is a courtroom at Gitmo to try detainees, and specifically that is what it is there for. It is the only one of its kind in the world, and it provides a secure location to try detainees charged by the Federal Government. They have full access to sensitive and classified information, full access to defense lawyers, and protection by the full media, access by the press. But it is set up to take care of that specific type of an incarcerated individual.

Senator Harry Reid declared, in a press conference after my bipartisan amendment was adopted, that ``We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States.'' I applaud Senator Reid for that statement and hope he will stay with that because that is something the American people are not willing to tolerate.

He went on to say he opposes imprisoning detainees on U.S. soil, saying:

We don't want them around the United States . . . I can't

make it any more clear than the statement I have given to

you. We will never allow terrorists to be released in the

United States.

Senator Durbin said:

The feeling was at this point we were defending the

unknown. We were being asked to defend a plan that hasn't

been announced.

I think Senator Durbin was correct then and is correct now.

There are lots of questions, very few answers. What is the impact? Let's say we close Gitmo. What is the impact of placing detainees in the U.S. prison system--pretrial and posttrial? Has an assessment been done to determine the risk of escape, as well as potentially creating targets in the United States for terrorist attacks? Will Gitmo detainees be segregated from the regular prison population? Keep in mind, these guys are trained to recruit. That would be a garden spot for them to get into the American prison system to recruit people to become terrorists. What facilities exist in the United States today that can hold these detainees? We talked about that. They tried to locate 17 facilities, and it will not work.

By the way, the State legislatures in each one of those States that have one of these facilities have passed resolutions or some type of a document saying: We don't want them in our States. That is what they are saying from the States, and we need to listen to them. One might ask, where will the military commissions be held--at Guantanamo or the United States? Obviously, if you close Guantanamo, you lose that facility. Assuming military commissions are held in Guantanamo, where will detainees who are convicted serve out their sentence, if not there, because there is no other place that has the capability of doing that. There are all these questions.

What additional constitutional rights will a detainee gain if they are tried in the United State versus Guantanamo?

Are there differences in the rights awarded to detainees tried in a Military Commission versus civilian court? Could location or geography affect the right afforded to detainees--somewhere in the U.S. versus Gitmo?

How do we handle protection of classified information during trials?

What are the long-term implications on future conflicts of trying these detainees in a civil court versus military commissions?

Why is the administration reading Miranda rights to some detainees captured or held in Iraq and Afghanistan? How many are being read Miranda rights? How many have invoked their rights?

What is the impact of requiring the reading of Miranda rights to terrorists captured on the battlefield and advising them they have the ``right to remain silent''?

What if a detainee is found not guilty--where will he be released?

What does the administration plan to do when a Federal judge orders the release of a detainee but the administration knows is too dangerous to release of transfer?

What do you do with a detainee you cannot try or release due to national security concerns?

Despite not having a plan, the administration continues in its quest to empty Gitmo regardless of the cost or the risk.

The Obama administration initially talked with the small South Pacific island of Palau, population 20,000, to accept transfer of a group of 17 Chinese Muslims currently at Gitmo, called Uighurs, at the cost of some $200 million. That is $11.7 million per individual. This is not a cheap thing he is talking about doing. The total cost to build Gitmo was only $275 million. As I said, it has been on lease since 1903 for $4,000 a year. The Wall Street Journal just yesterday had a government official who said that well over 50 detainees have been approved for transfer to other countries and that negotiations are continuing with Saudi Arabia to take a large group of Yemeni detainees. Attorney General Eric Holder has estimated that more than 50 detainees may end up on trial by U.S. authorities. This news comes as more and more Americans are growing opposed to the closure of Gitmo, placing them unnecessarily at risk in order to satisfy political goals.

I think we need to stop, sit back, take a deep breath, and look at some of the things that are going on today. The idea that we would have Miranda rights for terrorists, people who have killed Americans, is pretty outrageous.

Finally, on June 9, the Obama administration again went against the will of the Congress and the American people by transferring the first Gitmo detainee to the United States for his trial in New York City.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani has been indicted for the 1998 al-Qaida U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 224 people, including 12 Americans. Ghailani was later captured in Pakistan in 2004 while working for al-Qaida, preparing false documents. Intelligence shows he met both bin Laden and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Afghanistan and remained a close associate with al-Qaida until his capture in 2004.

This bonafide terrorist will have the privilege of a U.S. civilian court trial in the United States--I think it is New York. To me, it is inconceivable that could happen. The press reported that Ghailani was smiling when the charges were read to him in New York.

Despite the Obama administration's intentions, they will find themselves in a position where they cannot even try or safely transfer or release Gitmo detainees. As of May 2009, 74 transferred/released detainees have returned to the fight--74. These are the ones we captured again. We know they returned to the fight. How many more are there out there? If you release these people, they go right back to their practice of killing Americans. Former Guantanamo Bay inmate Mullah Zakir, also known as Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, is leading the fight against the U.S. Marines in the Helmand Province in Afghanistan. He surrendered in north Afghanistan in 2001, was transferred to Gitmo in 2006, and then released. He is out there killing marines today. That is what is happening currently. There is no alternative to Gitmo.

I go through all this not to be disagreeable with anyone except to say there is an answer, and there is only one answer.

Today, we are considering the Defense authorization bill. I have an amendment to that bill. I now have, in a matter of 3 hours, 22 cosponsors. This is amendment No. 1559 to the Defense authorization bill, S. 1390. This does something very simple. I like simple bills because they cannot be misunderstood. They are not like the health insurance bill with over 1,000 pages no

one has read. They are not like the cap-and-trade bill that passed the House with no one reading it, over 1,000 pages. This is just two pages. That is all. It is easy to read. Let me tell you what it says. I am wrong, it is one page. It says an amendment offered by Senator Inhofe:

Sec. 1059. Prohibition on transfer of Guantanamo Detainees.

No department or agency of the United States may

(1) transfer any detainee of the United States housed at

Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to any facility in the

United States or its territories.

That is No. 1.

No. 2 is, we cannot ``construct, improve, modify, or otherwise enhance any facility in the United States or its territories for the purpose of hous- ing any detainee described in para- graph (1) . . .''

No. 3: We cannot ``permanently or temporarily house or otherwise incarcerate any detainee described in paragraph (1) in the United States or its territories.''

That is a very simple solution. It is all in three sentences on one page.

I have a feeling there are going to be many people who know that we are on the right side of this issue, know that the American people are overwhelmingly, by more than two to one, in support of an amendment such as this, and are going to offer some amendment full of loopholes that will still allow them to close it. It will sound good. But this is the only one out there.

Mr. President, I say to my colleagues, if their interest is to really do something about keeping Gitmo open, there is only one vehicle out there. We are on it right now--the Defense authorization bill. That is amendment No. 1559. All it does is prohibit us from transferring any detainee from Gitmo to any facility in the United States of America or its territories; it prohibits us from constructing, improving, modifying, or otherwise enhancing any facility in the United States or its territories for the purpose of housing any detainee described in paragraph 1 above--that is the terrorist; and No. 3, it prohibits us from temporarily or otherwise incarcerating any detainee described in paragraph 1 in the United States or its territories. Period. That is all it does.

I say to those two-thirds people of America, there is a vehicle now we can use to make sure that facility, one of the really true state-of- the-art resources we have in this country, stays open and keeping those detainees, those terrorists out of America. If you want to keep them out of America, this is the way to do it.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I notice no one else is on the floor right now. I was only going to address those three subjects, but I do want to make a couple of additional comments. If anyone comes in and seeks the floor, I will come to a close.

There is one other major issue that we are dealing with right now--we have had a number of hearings--and I would like to kind of put it in perspective so people will understand.

There are a lot of complaints around the country about the cap and trade bill that was passed by the House of Representatives-- interestingly by one vote over the majority--which is 219. Most of the bill actually was written at about 3 o'clock in the morning and passed the same day--a thousand pages. I applaud John Boehner over there for saying that we want to establish some kind of a program whereby anything we are going to consider on the floor should be on a Web site so all of America can read it at least 72 hours before it is voted on. I applaud that, and I hope we will be able to do that.

I certainly hope we will be able to do that with a bill that I am sure will be passed from the Environment and Public Works Committee of the Senate--the cap and trade bill that has yet to be drafted. The chairman of that committee, Senator Boxer, has stated it is going to basically be the framework of the Waxman bill from the House that was passed by a margin of 219 votes to 212, I think it was.

Anyway, that at least gives us something to talk about. I would like to go back historically to my first exposure to this whole issue. Back about 10 years ago, when we had the Kyoto Treaty, the Kyoto Treaty was a treaty the Clinton-Gore administration was trying to get us to ratify in the Senate. It was a treaty that would establish a cap-and-trade type of arrangement to limit the number of CO2--and the proper term is anthropogenic gases--anthropogenic, man-made gases, methane, CO2.

The theory behind that, and I believed it at that time because everyone said it was true, was that these man-made gases were causing global warming. I assumed the science was there and was settled. As I say, everybody thought it was. It was at that time that the Wharton School of Economics came out with the Wharton econometrics survey. That survey quantified how much it would cost America in taxes if we in the United States ratified the treaty and lived by its requirements. The result was in the range between $300 billion and $330 billion a year.

Now, I have often said one of the most egregious votes ever taken in the Senate was the vote that took place in October of 2008 when we gave an unelected bureaucrat the $700 billion to do with as he wished. It was just unconscionable. I voted against it. I was opposed to it, but we lost. We did it, and now, most of the people who voted for it, are sorry. I tried to equate at that time what $700 billion was, and I said if you take all of the families who file tax returns and pay taxes and do your math, it is $5,000 a family--$5,000 for every American family, not just the ones in Oklahoma but everywhere. So I thought, as bad as that was, that was a one-shot deal. If we pass cap and trade, we are talking about a $300-plus billion tax increase every year, not just once.

So at the time we looked at this, and the Wharton School came out with these figures, I thought, let me be sure in my own mind, as a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, that the science is there. So I looked into it, only to find out this whole thing came from the United Nations' IPCC--the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. All we have seen are just the reports not from scientists but from politicians on the summaries they give policy donors. So we started talking to real scientists only to find out that really well- established scientists--and this is 10 years ago--who looked at this said: Well, yes, there could be a connection between man-made gases, CO2, and global warming. However, it is not a major significant contribution.

Now, to fortify this, then-Vice President Gore was trying to build his case on why we should ratify this convention and he did his own study. He hired a guy--one of the top scientists in America--named Tom Wigley to do an analysis. Now, here was his challenge. If all of the developed nations in the world--America, France, Western Europe and the rest of the developed nations--would ratify this treaty and would live by its emission requirements, how much would that lower the temperature in 50 years? So if all the countries in the developed nations did this, how much would it lower it in 50 years? The result of the study was seven one-hundredths of a degree Celsius. Well, I said that is not even measurable. And I said, if his own scientist says that, we have to have a wake-up call here in America. And that is when I made this statement that people have been throwing at me for 10 years--the idea of the notion that man-made gases significantly contribute to global warming is probably the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.

Well, when we stop and look back now at what has happened in the scientific community, many members of the community were the recipients of grants and had those grants held up unless they would come in and say, yes, we are going to have to do something about CO2 in order to stop global warming.

By the way, I have to just say that at this time we are in our ninth year of a global cooling. People seem to forget we have been going through these ups

and downs all throughout recorded history. God is still up there, and we are going to have warming and cooling periods.

The same individuals who are so hysterically behind this idea of passing a cap and trade--putting a huge tax on America at this time-- are the same ones in 1975 that were saying we are going to have to do something because another ice age is coming. Well, anyway, this has been going on for a long period of time.

So as we have progressed through the years, more and more scientists have come over who were on the other side. And I call to mind now, just from memory, Claude Allegra, from France. Claude Allegra is a socialist over there--very prominent scientist. He was marching through the aisles with Al Gore 15 years ago, and he has now reversed his position and said, wait a minute, everything we thought from the modeling didn't happen. This thing is not real. He is solidly on the skeptic side now, saying I was wrong back then. This Claude Allegra is the guy Sarkozy now is talking about putting in as the environmental minister of the country of France. Now that is the caliber of people we are talking about.

David Bellamy was the top scientist in the U.K. and David Bellamy was solidly on the other side 10, 12 years ago. He is now saying, we have looked at the modeling and we have changed and this is just flat not true.

A guy named Nir Shaviv from Israel, another top scientist, he was on the other side of this issue and he has now come over.

And for my colleagues who want to really see the fortification, see the numbers we are talking about in terms of scientists who have reversed their position, go to my Web site, Inhofe.Senate.Gov, and look it up. There are a lot of speeches I have made from the floor of the Senate, but one was about the 700 scientists, most of whom were on the other side of the issue and are now saying the same thing as Claude Allegra, David Bellamy, Nir Shaviv, and others have said because they have changed their minds on this thing.

So clearly the science has turned around, and that gives a sense of urgency for some people who want to respond to some of the extremists-- mostly in California, and mostly in Hollywood--to go ahead and pass something. Get something passed and get it passed quickly. It is kind of like health care. They want to get it passed before people have a chance to read it.

So now we have a bill that is going to be put together and drafted in the Environment and Public Works Committee, which was going to be coming to the floor of the Senate prior to the August recess--just a few weeks from now--but Chairman Boxer has now decided to put it off until after the recess. I applaud her for that, because time is not the friend of the people who are trying to make believe we are going to have to pass an expensive tax to address what they consider to be a more serious problem than I consider it to be. And during the August recess, during those 30 days, you are going to have a lot of Members of this Senate be approached by people--such as people in the agricultural community.

I had the opportunity of going and talking to the National Farm Coop the other day and discussing with them what would happen if we were to pass a cap-and-trade system and what that would do to the farmers of my State of Oklahoma and all throughout America. Stop and think about it. Seventy-one percent of the cost of a bushel of wheat is in fertilizer and in energy costs. That is what would go up. So you would be talking about doubling the price of wheat, or I could use soybeans or any other commodity. It would be disastrous for our farmers in America.

So the years have gone by, and slowly people have caught onto this thing, and that is why there is such a sense of urgency by people who want to pass this before the public realizes what it is. Fortunately, the public already understands, and the vast amount of recent polling shows that, just like the issue of closing Gitmo, which I talked about a few minutes ago, they are solidly on the side of not passing a cap- and-trade tax which would constitute the largest tax increase in the history of America to address a problem that people aren't really sure exists to start with.

So I think we will defeat that in the Senate. It will, of course, pass out of the committee. It is a very liberal committee. I love everyone on that committee, but they will pass anything that has to do with a cap-and-trade package, so it will be on the floor of the Senate. But it will not pass the Senate. And the reason I say that is we have had several votes in the Senate--the House had never had any votes. We have considered this five times, and actually voted three times--2003, 2005, and 2008.

In 2003, it was called the McCain-Lieberman bill. At that time, I was the only one on the floor. For 5 days, 10 hours a day, I talked about this and was trying to defeat that thing. For 50 hours, only two or three Senators came down for a short period of time to help me. Now, fast forward from 2003 to 2005 to 2008. The bill was called the Warner- Lieberman bill. We had 23 Senators who came down, and it didn't take 5 days to defeat it; it was just 2 days.

So I think in terms of passing the tax increase called cap and trade, they have about maybe 34, 35 of votes, and it takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass it. Really, I am happy our forefathers were divined and inspired when they thought of the two Houses so we could have checks and balances.

So I think that is what will happen. I know there are other names I could mention but cannot because some of the things I know are at a level of confidence. But some of the new Senators who have been elected, they don't really want to go back and say--whether Democrats or Republicans, but, in fact, it is the Democrats I have in mind-- saying to the people who have just elected them: Aren't I doing a good job for you, coming back from my first session and passing the largest annual tax increase in the history of America? That isn't going to happen, Mr. President. People are so sensitive right now with the level of spending that is going on in this country.

I can remember in 1993, it was the first year of the Clinton administration, and I was complaining at that time on the floor--I was serving in the House of Representatives--of the huge tax increase he was pushing, and all of the things that were going on--with gun control, the Hillary health care, which we all remember. At that time, I remember complaining on the floor: He even has a budget of $1.5 trillion. Well, guess what. This one is $3.5 trillion. We can't sustain that. We can't do that in America.

So I think one at a time we are going to have to stop these expensive programs, one being the health care program--I know we can't afford that--another being cap and trade. I think we will defeat that, and I believe America is now going to look a lot more carefully, and they are going to applaud the efforts being made to make sure any bill that comes up for consideration of this magnitude should be on a Web site, as Mr. Boehner suggested, and several other Senators have suggested, including myself, for at least 72 hours so we and the American people can read and see what it is going to be. I can assure you, if that had happened when the cap-and-trade bill passed the House, it would not have passed the House.

With that, I see there is someone else on the floor wanting to have the floor, so I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I withdraw Senate amendment No. 1469.

Mr. President, to explain where we are, let me take a few minutes, first of all, on the procedures. Then I want to go back and make some comments about the Levin-McCain amendment, which will come back. This is temporarily withdrawn because we could not get to a vote.

The bottom line is we were here all day yesterday. We attempted repeatedly to obtain an agreement as to when we could vote on the Levin-McCain amendment.

We had a lot of time yesterday for people to make speeches. We had time the day before. We have time anytime. But we have to get to a vote on that amendment.

The reason we were not able to get to a vote is because of the next amendment, which the majority leader indicated is going to be taken up on this bill, the so-called hate crimes amendment. We have a law relative to hate crimes. This had been an important amendment to the law to add a group who had been left out, two groups previously left out of the existing hate crimes law. It would have also had an important definition of Federal interest in this hate crimes legislation.

Hate crimes legislation is not new. This body had approved hate crimes legislation a couple years ago on the Defense authorization bill. The argument was made at that time that the hate crimes bill should not be offered on a Defense authorization bill. Senator Kennedy offered hate crimes legislation a couple years ago on the Defense authorization bill. The debate was extensive at that time as to why on this bill.

The reason it was offered on this bill is obvious. This is legislation. The Senate rules allow for amendments such as hate crimes or any other amendment to be offered on legislation that is pending before the Senate. The minority has offered many nonrelevant amendments this year on legislation. On the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, there was an amendment relative to ACORN. On the DC voting rights bill, there were amendments relative to guns and to the fairness doctrine. On and on and on. The Senate rules permit nongermane, nonrelevant amendments to be offered to pending legislation. It is not at all new. The opportunity to do that has been taken by many of us this year, last year, the year before and, I am sure, next year. First, it is not new. It is common in the Senate to offer amendments which are not relevant to a bill that is pending. That is allowed under our rules.

The hate crimes amendment is an important amendment. I don't think anybody would deny the importance of this amendment. With hate crimes going up in the United States, it is critically important we strengthen our hate crimes law. There are Senators who oppose the amendment. That is the reason we are here, to debate, to argue for or to argue against. But I don't think one can argue it is uncommon, unusual or improper to offer nonrelevant amendments to legislation which is pending. Regardless of one's position on hate crimes, it is very difficult to argue it is not significant legislation.

Thirdly, as Senator Kennedy so powerfully argued--and those of us who joined with him a few years ago on this amendment surely agreed--the values that are involved in this legislation, the effort to make America a better place, a place freer of hate crimes, surely is one of the values our men and women put their uniforms on and fight for. The closer we can come to a society which is freer of hate crimes, the better off we are internally, the closer we will live up to what we stand for in our basic fundamental documents and our history. It is what men and women who fight for the United States and carry out their missions are fighting for--not just physical threats to this country but for the values for which we stand, for freedom from hate, for diversity, for freedom from intimidation and violence based on one's religion, ethnicity or the other attributes listed in the hate crimes legislation.

It is important legislation. It relates to the values of this country, values which our men and women take such risks for when they go into harm's way. The rules of this body allow for it.

Somehow or other, the fact that we were going to proceed to a hate crimes amendment on this bill, even whether it was next in line or whether it was down the line in terms of amendments, the fact that it was made clear that, again, on a Defense authorization bill, as we have in the past, in the past with 60 Members of this body supporting it, the fact that that was made known in an open and honest way to Members of this body apparently precipitated a determination on the part of some that they not allow us to get to a vote on the pending Levin- McCain amendment. That prospect, that open statement

that there would be a hate crimes amendment offered on this bill became the impediment, apparently, from all we can determine, to our getting agreement for a time for a vote on Levin-McCain.

The question is, How to remove that impediment. There were two choices: Either agree not to offer the hate crimes amendment or remove the impediment. We have to now remove the impediment. There is not a willingness on the part of a significant number of Senators--and I believe a majority--not to offer a hate crimes amendment. It is pending legislation that is before us.

The amendment is an important amendment. It has been offered before. There is precedent for offering it on the Defense authorization bill. The rules allow for it, so we don't need a precedent, but there is a precedent for doing so. There are dozens of precedents for offering nonrelevant amendments to legislation which is pending before the Senate.

We will come back, obviously, to the Levin-McCain amendment. The Levin-McCain amendment is a very important amendment on this bill. We have to deal with the decision of the Armed Services Committee, on a close vote, to add F-22 planes, which uniformed and civilian leaders of the military indicate they do not want and do not need and we cannot afford. We have had some debate. We had plenty of time for others to debate it. Everyone who wanted to speak on the subject, I believe, had more than enough opportunity to do so. Last night we heard from the Senator from Georgia as to his reasons for offering the amendment in committee to add the additional F-22s. I compliment the Senator from Georgia for all the hard work he has done on our committee. It is another example of how the Armed Services Committee works together. Our Presiding Officer is a distinguished member of the committee so he knows this firsthand, how we work together, guided by one basic principle: for the good of the Nation, for the good of the men and women in the armed services. We disagree, obviously, on the Levin- McCain amendment. There is surely, however, agreement that our intentions are always to adhere to that principle--what is best for our Nation, what is best for the men and women who put on the uniform of the Nation.

So while there was committee disagreement and disagreement on this floor on the question of whether additional F-22s should be produced, the disagreement is not along party lines and rarely, if ever, is along party lines on the Armed Services Committee. I wish to, again, compliment not only the Senator from Georgia but also other members of the committee for sticking to that very important principle.

I also agree with something the Senator from Georgia said last night relative to another of our operating principles. We have the right and the duty to challenge assumptions made in the bill sent to us by any administration and to act in accordance with our best judgment about what is right and what is in the best interests of the Nation. We are not a rubberstamp to every proposal offered by the executive branch. The Congress, hopefully, never will be.

The Senator from Georgia pointed out a number of cases where we have acted as anything but a rubberstamp to a budget request. We added funds, for instance, in this bill for a larger pay raise than the executive branch requested to honor the service of the men and women in the military who have been bearing an extraordinarily heavy burden for the country fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. We added $1.2 billion for a more mobile variant of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle, called the MRAP. This MRAP variant is called the MRAP all-terrain vehicle. The reason we did this is because we knew there was an emerging requirement for these new vehicles to support our forces in Afghanistan that had not been reflected in the budget request. I don't believe any member of the Armed Services Committee or any Member of this body should act as a rubberstamp for any budget request, and the evidence will show over and over again, year after year, that our committee does not act as a rubberstamp.

The question on the Levin-McCain amendment is whether we are right, that the leadership of our military, both civilian and uniformed, made a sound judgment when they, similar to their predecessors in the Bush administration, determined that we should end production of the F-22. The debate is not about whether we will have the capability of the F- 22. It is a debate about how many F-22 aircraft we should have and at what cost.

We are talking about whether we will accept the recommendation of two Commanders in Chief, two Secretaries of Defense, plus the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their chairmen, that 187 F-22s is all we need, all we can afford, and all we should buy. Senator McCain and I have made a number of arguments about why we believe stopping the F-22 program at 187 is the right thing to do. I will not repeat all those arguments now, particularly since we have temporarily withdrawn the amendment. But it is important that I clarify promptly a number of points made by the Senator from Georgia during the debate yesterday so they do not remain uncontested.

First, the Senator said that the Air Force had not been involved in any of the studies that led to determining that 187 F-22s was the correct number of aircraft to buy. A few days ago, the committee heard contrary testimony from the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that there are at least two studies that support the department's plans for tactical aviation, including stopping F-22 production, including a recently completed study.

This is what he said:

There is a study in the Joint Staff that we just completed

and partnered with the Air Force on that, number one, said

that proliferating within the United States military fifth-

generation fighters to all three services was going to be

more significant than having them based solidly in just one

service, because of the way we deploy and because of the

diversity of our deployments.

So the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs referred to a recent study that led to the conclusion that Senator McCain and I support. That study was partnered with the Air Force, unlike what was stated last night by the Senator from Georgia that these studies did not have Air Force involvement.

There is a strong analytical underpinning for the decision of the administration, including the Air Force. A letter from the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force on this matter is one underpinning, one of the strong evidences that that conclusion is correct. The letter is already part of the record so I will quote briefly from it. The Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force concluded in part, as follows:

In summary, we assessed the F-22 decision from all angles,

taking into account competing strategic priorities and

complementary programs and alternatives, all balanced within

the context of available resources. We did not and do not

recommended that F-22s be included in the FY10 defense

budget. This is a difficult decision, but one with which we

are comfortable.

That is from the letter of the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, so it should make very clear what the Air Force's position is on the matter.

On another matter that was raised by the Senator from Georgia last night, listening to his arguments, one might conclude that the F-22 is the only aircraft we have or are planning to have that could operate effectively in the presence of very capable enemy surface-to-air missile systems. But the Department has provided contrary evidence. In his letter to myself and Senator McCain on July 13, the Secretary of Defense said the following:

. . . the F-35 is a half generation newer aircraft than the

F-22, and more capable in a number of areas such as

electronic warfare and combating enemy air defenses. To

sustain U.S. overall air dominance, the Department's plan is

to buy roughly 500 F-35s over the next five years and more

than 2,400 over the life of the program.

The key words in that sentence by the Secretary of the Defense in his letter is that there will be a ``more capable'' aircraft in the F-35 than the F-22 ``in a number of areas such as . . . combating enemy air defenses.''

I think we all agree our military needs to maintain air dominance. But as the Secretary's letter points out, the F-22 aircraft is not the only aircraft the Department is relying upon to contribute to making that air dominance a reality. In fact, in certain areas, such as electronic warfare and combating surface-to-air missiles, the Department of Defense is counting on

the F-35 fleet to meet those missions with greater effectiveness even than with the F-22.

The Senator from Georgia, last night, argued that proposing cuts in a number of areas--just like the committee 13-to-11 vote indicated and his proposal accomplished--that shifting funds to the F-22 program and shifting money from other areas was not doing any harm to other programs within the Defense Department.

I have previously talked about the specifics relative to this issue, and I wish to summarize the difference on this point very briefly, as, again, we will be coming back to this issue. It is withdrawn temporarily, but, obviously, we will return to this issue and resolve this issue prior to the determination of this bill.

First, we did not assume any first-year savings from acquisition reform or business process reengineering. Both these initiatives will yield savings. The Senator from Arizona and I, and with the support of our colleagues on the Armed Services Committee, all unanimously supported acquisition reform.

At the time we adopted that, and at the time the President signed our bill, we indicated there will be significant savings from reforming the acquisition system. But those savings do not occur in 2010. Nobody has alleged, and there is no support for any conclusion, that savings from acquisition reform are going to occur in the first year it is in effect. As a matter of fact, its main thrust is to apply to new weapons systems to make sure their technologies, for instance, are mature so we do not end up producing equipment that has technologies incorporated in it that have not been adequately tested.

So we are not going to see savings in fiscal year 2010, as the Senator from Georgia assumed in his amendment that was adopted barely by the committee to fund the F-22 add-on. The result is $500 million he assumed from savings ends up as across-the-board real program cuts.

I also would point out that the cost estimate of S. 1390 that we just received from the Congressional Budget Office did not assume any savings from those initiatives. Those, again, were savings which helped to fund the additional F-22s--alleged savings. They are phantom savings in the first year.

Secondly, on the operation and maintenance reductions that were used to fund the F-22 add, the original committee position on this matter-- O&M, operation and maintenance reductions--was developed consistent with the Government Accountability Office analysis. The reductions, however, that were taken in operation and maintenance by the Senator from Georgia when he offered this amendment in committee to add the F- 22s go far beyond what was indicated by the Government Accountability Office's analysis and far beyond what is prudent.

Finally, relative to the offsets that were taken, the $400 million cut applied to the military personnel funding top line will greatly complicate the Department's ability to manage the All-Volunteer Force and to provide for bonuses and incentives that will be needed to support the force. It might even be troublesome enough that the Department of Defense would be forced to ask for a supplemental appropriations--something we wanted to get away from this year and finally have.

So one other thing is, there are some who suggest: Well, the F-35 is just a paper airplane that is the future. We have the F-22 now. The F- 35 is not here yet. It is here. There are--in this budget alone, in the fiscal year 2010 budget, which is the fourth year, by the way, of production of the F-35--there are 30 F-35s being produced for the military. So this is not a future deal when we talk about F-35s. This is a here-and-now deal. We are already into low-rate initial production. There are already at least five test aircraft flying, and we have 30 F-35s funded in this bill which is before this body now.

Let me summarize the situation relative to the Levin-McCain amendment that would strike the additional funding for the F-22s, the additional planes that the military does not want, does not need, and says we cannot afford.

First, the F-22 is a very capable aircraft. There should be no doubt about it. We have them. We need them. And they are valuable.

Next, the Air Force has already bought, and will pay for, 187 F-22 aircraft. So the debate is not about whether we will have that capability of the F-22 for the next 20 years. We will. We should, and we will. The debate is over how many F-22s are enough to meet the Nation's requirements. Two Presidents--President Obama and President Bush--two Secretaries of Defense, three Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, current members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff all agree that 187 F-22s is all we need to buy and all we should buy.

The debate also concerns what damage will be done if we do not reverse the cuts that were taken to pay for the additional F-22s--to pay for the $1.75 billion in the F-22 add. Those cuts are $400 million to military personnel accounts, $850 million to operations and maintenance accounts, and $500 million across-the-board reductions to the Department of Defense budget.

We received a letter from the President this week saying he will veto the Defense authorization bill if it includes the F-22 production.

So our amendment is a critically important amendment. It involves a lot of money, and there is a lot of principle involved as to whether we should continue to be building weapons we no longer need and we have enough of. We need the F-22. There is no doubt about that. But we have enough of the F-22, according to all our military leaders--civilian and uniformed leaders alike.

But we cannot get to a vote, and that is the fact of the matter. We have waited for an agreement to get to a vote on the Levin-McCain amendment. Repeatedly, I have asked whether we can set a time for a vote, and the answer has come back: We cannot set a time for a vote. It is clear that for some reason, which, frankly, I do not fully understand--the reason we are not permitted to get to a vote on the Levin-McCain amendment is because of the prospect, the fact that either the next amendment or somehow down the line on this bill there is going to be offered a hate crimes amendment.

How that and why that should result in a denial of an opportunity to vote on the Levin-McCain amendment escapes me, I must say. Because we are going to get to the hate crimes amendment whether we are allowed a vote on the F-22 amendment. Not allowing us a vote, not agreeing to a time for a vote on the Levin-McCain amendment does not obviate the fact there is going to be a hate crimes amendment offered. As a matter of fact, it is now the actual amendment before us. And everyone knew that.

So I do not understand the logic behind the refusal to permit a vote on an amendment--the Levin-McCain amendment--because of objection to going to a vote on hate crimes, when we are going to that hate crimes amendment anyway and when we are going to have to come back to the Levin-McCain amendment. Everybody knows it. We are going to have to resolve both those amendments. So the decision some made to deny us an opportunity to vote at this time on Levin-McCain simply stymies this body from doing what it is going to do.

There are many people who disagree with the Levin amendment. Fine. There are many people who disagree on the hate crimes amendment. That is their right. But what is undeniable is, we are going to resolve both, one way or the other. We are going to resolve both of those and hopefully a lot of other material and a lot of other amendments. They are both going to be resolved, one way or the other, on this bill. Argue both sides, argue neither side, but you cannot argue, it seems to me, that we should not allow a vote on the first amendment before us-- Levin-McCain--because of opposition to another amendment which is going to be offered.

I know there is strong opposition to hate crimes. I understand it. I understand why people say it should not be on this bill, despite the rules which allow it. I respect the right to disagree with it. But I do not understand the logic or the strategy which denies us the opportunity to vote on an amendment which has been thoroughly debated-- the Levin-McCain amendment--because there is another amendment down the line which is going to be offered which people object to, when they know it is coming up. Despite strong feelings that it should not come up, it is coming up. It is now before us. Everyone knew it was going to come up.

So now we are stymied. We are stymied from resolving an amendment which has to be resolved, one way or the other--Levin-McCain--because of objection to another amendment being offered. I don't get the logic. I don't understand the strategy. I understand the feelings and I respect the feelings, although I disagree with people who oppose the Levin-McCain amendment and I disagree with people who oppose the hate crimes amendment. So I understand the feelings. I don't share the feelings, but I respect them, and I respect their right to fight against these amendments. But for the life of me, I do not understand why we are denied an opportunity to vote on Levin-McCain because of an objection to another amendment. All it does is slow down this body. It stymies this body from resolving issues which are going to be resolved. As certain as this body is here, this is going to be resolved. These are going to be resolved like a lot of other amendments. I don't know how they will be resolved. That is not certain; it never is. But they will be resolved because that is the nature of the Senate, to resolve these issues.

Again, I thank my good friend from Arizona. I know there are differences on the question of whether hate crimes ought to be offered on this bill. I respect him deeply, and I respect his positions and his right to hold them. While I surely disagree with the decision that has been made to not permit us to move at this time to a resolution of Levin-McCain, I nonetheless have a great understanding of the feelings here. I appreciate them and I respect them.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Colorado, not just for his statement and for his support for this bill but for his work on this committee. He has made a major contribution already. We look forward to his continuing work with us. As he knows and has so well expressed, this is a bipartisan effort on the part of the committee. It is important that we continue that way, and his instincts have shown already very dramatically that those are his views as well.

So I thank him very much, not just, again, for the support of an amendment that we plan on getting back to as soon as we dispose of the hate crimes bill but also, and even more importantly, for his great work on our committee.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after my remarks, which will be no more than 5 minutes, Senator Brown be recognized for up to 10 minutes, and then Senator Chambliss be recognized for 15 minutes.

Mr. President, first, my dear friend from Arizona has spoken very eloquently about the transcendent importance of the Levin- McCain amendment. I could not agree with him more. We tried for 2 days to get an agreement to vote on that amendment. It is a critically important amendment for the reasons he has given and for the reasons I hopefully have given persuasively around here, and others have as well.

We have this President, the previous President, this Secretary of Defense, the previous Secretary of Defense, this Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the previous Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and the Secretary of the Air Force saying we have enough F-22s. We have to move on to the F-35, which is under production, by the way. We have 30 F-35s funded in this bill.

We have tried to get the Levin-McCain amendment to a vote. We tried to reach an agreement and a time. We could not get an agreement on the time. That is what has then precipitated the decision of the majority leader to move on to the hate crimes amendment. We have simply tried, day after day, to get a vote, without success.

I could not agree more that this is a critically important amendment, and we have to end production of a weapon system that we no longer need, according to top civilian and military experts, and focus more on the F-35, which is going to be used by all three of the services, not just one. It will have greater capabilities in very critical areas than the F-22, and it will cost significantly less than the F-22. But we could not achieve that.

I don't understand the logic or the strategies involved that say we cannot have a vote on the amendment that is pending--Levin-McCain amendment--and then when faced with the majority leader's amendment on hate crimes, forces that to a cloture vote, which is going to be held-- in other words, everybody understands both of these amendments are going to be addressed on this bill one way or the other. Nobody can guarantee the outcome on these amendments. But what can be guaranteed is that these amendments are going to be debated on this bill because the majority leader has made that clear for a long time. The procedures of this body allow for it.

The precedents of this body are full of amendments such as this. As a matter of fact, the hate crimes amendment was adopted on the Senate Defense authorization bill 2 years ago, after the same kind of debate. Debate is fair. Debate is important. Every one of us should protect the right of everyone else to debate. Whether it should go on this bill or another, we can debate that. But it is offered on this bill, as was noticed by the majority leader days ago. It is what we have done years ago. It is totally consistent with the rules of the Senate. As a matter of fact, it has been done repeatedly in the Senate.

Maybe we should adopt a new rule that says you have to be relevant or germane to offer an amendment to a pending bill. We don't have that rule, never had that rule, and probably never will have that rule.

But that is the way the Senate operates. These are important amendments. Again--and I am going to close with this--I don't get the logic of not allowing us to proceed to the Levin-McCain amendment because another amendment that some people don't like and don't think should be offered is going to be offered on this bill, when what is certain is that both amendments are going to be offered on this bill. Nothing is accomplished by refusing that vote on the Levin-McCain amendment except delay. That is the only thing accomplished by the refusal of whoever it was who refused to agree to a time to vote on Levin-McCain, nothing was accomplished except delay. And that, I don't think, is in anybody's interest, for the reasons Senator McCain gave.

We want to get this bill passed. We want to get it conferenced. We want to get it to the President, hopefully, by the time this fiscal year is over because the troops deserve us to act.

I am going to vote for the hate crimes amendment. I believe it is very appropriate that it be on this bill. I spoke 2 years ago to this effect, and I will speak again at the right time, perhaps tomorrow if there is time, as to why the hate crimes amendment belongs on this bill. It is an important amendment. It involves acts, as the leader and others have said, of domestic terrorism. The values reflected in the hate crimes legislation are values which our men and women who put on the uniform of this country fight for and put their lives on the line for, a country which believes in diversity, a country that believes you ought to be able to have whatever religion you want, be whatever ethnic group, whatever religious group, whatever racial group you are part of, whatever your sexual orientation, whether you are disabled, regardless of your gender, that you should be free from terror and physical abuse.

That is what the hate crimes law does now, except it does not include some groups who should be included, including the disabled and including people who are gay. That is what is involved here.

It is not a new debate. We debated it 2 years ago. It is not new on this bill. It was added in the Senate 2 years ago.

I hope we can reach an agreement to get to a vote on both these amendments. They are both going to be resolved on this bill. That is a certainty. Again, how they are going to be resolved no one knows. We can guess as to what the outcome will be. They will both be close votes, I believe. Let's get on it and get through those votes.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I know there are a lot of other issues that are consuming the interests of my colleagues and the American people, such as the confirmation hearings of Judge Sotomayor; the HELP Committee, of which I am a member, is reporting out one of the most massive takeovers and expenditures of taxpayer dollars in history; and we have this bill on the floor, and there are other issues. So it has probably gone unnoticed that we have seen another really--if not unprecedented, certainly highly unusual action on the part of the majority.

Frankly, to my colleagues on this side of the aisle and the American people, elections have consequences. What we have just seen is an amendment before this body and a piece of legislation before this body that I think one could argue is probably of more importance than any other we consider because it authorizes the measures necessary to preserve the security of this Nation, care for the men and women who are serving in the military, and meet the future threats we will face in the 21st century.

So what has happened here is that the majority leader, with the agreement of my friend from Michigan, whom I highly respect and regard, has made it clear that their highest priority is not that. Their highest priority is a hate crimes bill--a hate crimes bill that has nothing to do whatsoever with defending this Nation.

My friend from Michigan just complained that we haven't had a time for the vote. Of course we haven't had a time for the vote on the Levin-McCain amendment because we have been made aware that a hate crimes bill--and by the way, not an ordinary, small, specific amendment, but 17 pages, plus 6 additional pages, encompassing a piece of legislation that is before this body that has never moved through the Judiciary Committee. It has not moved through the Judiciary Committee, the appropriate committee of oversight.

So the majority leader of the Senate comes to the floor, after prevailing upon the distinguished chairman to withdraw his amendment-- an amendment of some consequence, a $1.75 billion expenditure, and, far more important than even the money, a real confrontation between special interests and the national interests--so that we can move to the hate crimes bill.

The hate crimes bill is not without controversy, I say. In fact, it is interesting that on June 16, 2009, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights sent a letter to the Vice President and to the leaders of the Congress opposing the hate crimes bill.

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

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights sends a letter saying:

Dear Mr. President and distinguished Senators: We write

today to urge you to vote against the Matthew Shepard Hate

Crimes Prevention Act.

That is basically the bill the majority leader has just inserted into the process of legislation designed to defend this Nation's national security. Of course there are strong feelings on it. This is a complete abdication of the responsibilities of the Judiciary Committee but, more importantly, could hang up this bill for a long period of time. While we have young Americans fighting and dying in two wars, we are going to take up the hate crimes bill because the majority leader thinks that is more important--more important--than legislation concerning the defense of this Nation. I am sure the men and women in the military serving in his home State would be interested to know about his priorities.

So here we are. Now we will go through--I am sure the majority leader will file cloture, we will go through 30 hours of debate, and we will have another vote. All of this is unnecessary. Why couldn't we move the hate crimes bill--remember, this is not a single-shot amendment on a specific small issue; this is a huge issue, the whole issue of hate crimes. It is a huge issue. It deserves hearings and debate and amendment in the Judiciary Committee. But what are we going to do? For reasons that I guess the majority leader can make clear because I don't get it, he wants to put it on the national defense authorization bill and pass it that way. He will probably succeed, and he will call it ``bipartisan.'' The last time I checked, it has 44 Democratic cosponsors and 2 Republicans. That is the definition, by the way, around here of bipartisan bills. That is the way the stimulus package was bipartisan. That is how the omnibus spending bill was bipartisan. And I am pretty confident that if health care ``reform'' passes, it will probably be in another ``bipartisan'' fashion.

So we will have some hours of debate. We will have more exacerbated feelings between this side of the aisle and that side of the aisle. I would imagine that the hate crimes bill, given the makeup of this body, may even be put on a defense authorization bill--a huge issue. A huge issue will now be placed on a defense authorization bill and passed through the Congress and signed by the President. That is a great disservice to the American people. The American people deserve debate and discussion and hearings and witnesses on this legislation. They deserve it. They don't deserve to have a hate crimes bill put on this legislation which has no relation whatsoever to hate crimes.

I will probably have a lot more to say about this in the hours ahead. I have been around this body a fair amount of time. I have watched the Defense authorization bill wind its way through Congress, and occasionally, including at other times, I have seen amendments put on bills which are nongermane, but I haven't seen the majority leader of the Senate--the majority leader of the Senate, whose responsibility is to move legislation through the Senate--take a totally nonrelevant, all-encompassing, controversial piece of legislation and put it on a bill that is as important to the Nation's security as is this legislation. We are breaking new ground here, let's have no doubt about it. It is one thing to sometimes have one Member or two or others propose amendments that happen to be their pet project or their pet peeve. It is an entirely different thing--it is an entirely different thing, and I have never seen it before--that the majority leader of the Senate comes to the floor and introduces an irrelevant piece of legislation that is controversial, that is fraught with implications for this and future generations, to a bill that is totally nonrelevant. After 30 hours of debate, we will have a vote on closing that debate and including it in the legislation. I am deeply, deeply disappointed, and I question anyone's priorities who puts this kind of legislation ahead of the needs of the men and women who are serving our military with bravery, courage, and distinction.

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

Mr. President, I wish to repeat and emphasize the unprecedented fashion that we are now addressing legislation that concerns our Nation's security and the well-being and welfare of the men and women who are serving it.

I always thought the job of the majority leader of the Senate was to move legislation through the Senate. Obviously, the majority leader has come to the floor of the Senate and, at the request of the majority leader, the chairman of the committee has taken out an amendment that addresses a $1.75 billion F-22 amendment that the President has placed his personal stamp on passing, that the Secretary of Defense has viewed as one of his highest priorities, as did the Secretary of the Air Force and other administration officials. What did we do? We come to the floor and withdraw the amendment, withdraw it so we can take up a major piece of legislation.

I am reminded that there are amendments proposed by various Members of this body who believe their amendments need to be proposed and believe there is no other avenue but to put them on pending legislation. The majority leader of the Senate can bring up legislation wherever he wants to. That is the privilege of the majority. That is the right of the majority.

Here we are trying to address an issue of paramount importance to the well-being of the men and women of the United States of America. Here we are trying to address an issue of $1.75 billion, which has far more importance, in many respects, than the actual cost of the F-22s themselves, and without a hearing in the Judiciary Committee, without a bill reported out by the Judiciary Committee, which is the committee of oversight, the majority leader of the Senate has one very important amendment pulled and then puts in a piece of legislation which is far- reaching in the consequences and very controversial.

I introduced into the Record a little while ago the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights opposes this legislation. Doesn't this legislation, the hate crimes bill, deserve the amending and debate process that legislation is supposed to go through--committees and then on the floor of the Senate, open to amendments? No, it has been inserted now on the Defense authorization bill, and within a short time, I am sure the majority leader will come to the floor and file a motion for cloture to cut off debate on an issue of significant importance to all Americans and railroad it through on a ``bipartisan basis,'' with possibly two Republican votes.

That is not the way this body should work. It is an abuse of power. It does not make for comity on both sides of the aisle. In fact, those of us who are committed to seeing this authorization bill done as quickly as possible because we are worried about the security of this Nation take great offense when the majority leader of the Senate, whose job is to move legislation through the Senate, brings extraneous

and unrelated legislation to a bill as important as this to the men and women of this country and our Nation's security. To somehow equate that with other amendments that have been proposed, from time to time, by Members on both sides, I think is not an appropriate comparison. I resent it a great deal. It is not good for the health of this body, in my view.

Perhaps there is precedent for this. Perhaps there is precedent when a Defense authorization bill, an issue probably, as I say, of the highest criticality, with an amendment on it that the President of the United States has fully weighed in on and committed on, is taken off the floor, is taken away from consideration in order to put in an extraneous and very controversial full package of legislation.

The hate crimes bill before us is not an amendment. It is legislation. It is an encompassing bill, 20-some pages long. We are going to have about 30 hours of debate, a discussion on it, the majority leader will come and cut off debate and we will probably pass it, thereby exacerbating a situation where those of us who oppose this legislation--and it is important legislation--will be faced with a dilemma of choosing between a bill which will harm, in my view, the United States of America and its judicial system and defending the Nation. I do not think that is fair to any Member of this body.

I yield the floor.

I will just take a few minutes.

That would be fine with me.

I am not sure what the Senator's reaction will be to what I have to say. I can't give him a specific time agreement. I am sorry. This is a vital issue we are addressing.

I will make my remarks as short as possible. I believe the Senator from Illinois has the floor; is that correct?

Madam President, I want to point out again, the legislation which is now pending has replaced the F-22, the Levin- McCain amendment. My argument is that the majority leader has put in legislation which is not relevant to the pending legislation, which is the Department of Defense authorization bill. I am perfectly willing for the hate crimes bill to come up under the regular order. Why it should be put on the Defense authorization bill, which will then not allow adequate debate and discussion of amendments, not to mention the fact that it hasn't gone through the committee of jurisdiction-- frankly, I do not think it is the appropriate way of using the Defense authorization bill. In fact, I think it is highly inappropriate. Therefore, why don't we do this, I ask the Senator from Illinois: agree that as soon as the Defense authorization bill is complete, we take up the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act under the regular order and do business the way the Senate should do business?

Unanimous Consent Request--S. 909

So therefore, Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be immediately withdrawn; that no amendments on the topic of hate crimes be in order to the pending legislation; further, I ask that when the Senate completes action on the Department of Defense authorization bill, it be in order for the Senate to proceed to S. 909, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, under the regular order.

So, Mr. President, here are the facts. The fact is, the majority leader, whose job it is to move legislation through the Senate, is now blocking progress of Defense authorization--that progress through the Senate--by proposing an unneeded, irrelevant amendment, which is a large piece of highly controversial legislation.

The Senate majority leader will come to the floor and he will file cloture. Then, after some hours--with no amendments because he will probably fill up the tree--the Senate will pass a highly controversial, highly explosive piece of legislation to be attached to the authorization for the defense and the security of this Nation. That is wrong. And why--I want to put it this way: It is unanswerable that we do not just take up the hate crimes bill in the regular order and allow Senate debate and discussion. That is how the Senate is supposed to work--not put it on a major piece of legislation.

I will also point out to my friend from Illinois something he knows. It is one thing for someone who sits back there to propose an amendment to pending legislation because they feel that is the only way they can get their argument heard. The majority leader of the Senate has the authority to move whatever legislation he wants. And the majority leader of the Senate should move the hate crimes bill if he wants it considered rather than give it priority over the legislation that accounts for the national security of this country and the men and women who serve it.

So I am sure there will be all kinds of comments about the Republicans blocking a vote, blocking this, blocking that. Why don't we take up legislation in the regular order? Hate crimes has been opposed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. This is a very controversial issue. By putting it on the DOD bill, we are not going to have the adequate debate, discussion, and amendment an issue such as this deserves. There is passion on both sides of the aisle.

So it is obvious, whether it is the intention or not, what is happening here is the whole process of debate and amendment will be short-circuited, because we on this side of the aisle are more than willing to take up the legislation as a separate piece of legislation, debate, amend, and discuss it, and let the American people decide. Instead, the men and women in the military right now today are being shortchanged by putting irrelevant legislation that is highly controversial and highly complex on a bill designed for defense of this country and for the men and women who serve it.

Actually, I will be glad to yield. But if the Senator wants to have a colloquy, go ahead.

Could I respond to that?

It is one thing to have the chairman of the committee support it; it is another thing to have the legislation go through the committee with the proper debate and discussion and amendment. But go ahead.

In deference to the Senator from California, I will make my answer brief, just to say I do not think--as I have said in my previous argument, it does not belong on a defense authorization bill, particularly so moved by the majority leader of the Senate. But, Mr. President, the Senator from California is waiting, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I will object, I am not asking that there be a time agreement on hate crimes, I am asking that the hate crimes bill be brought up as a standing bill. The Senator has 60 votes. The Senator could bring it up whether this side of the aisle objects or not as a freestanding piece of legislation. I object to it being considered on the Department of Defense authorization bill. It has no place for it. It should not be there. The longer we wait, the longer the delay is in providing the men and women of the military the tools they need. So I do object. And we should take this up. I am sorry my unanimous consent request was not agreed to--that we would take it up as a freestanding bill after the consideration of the Department of Defense bill.

Mr. President, I yield the floor. I thank the Senator from California for her courtesy.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, from the story of the Burmese prison, let me quote:

Human rights campaigners say incarceration at the top

security prison, which is known as the ``darkest hell-hole in

Burma'', could be tantamount to a death sentence--especially

as the 63-year-old's health--

Referring to Aung San Suu Kyi's health----

is known to be fragile.

Bo Kyi, now joint secretary of Assistance Association for

Political Prisoners (Burma), has firsthand experience of life

in Insein jail.

He was jailed for more than seven years for political

dissent, and was kept in solitary confinement for more than a

year, in a concrete cell that was about 8ft by 12ft. . . .

There was no toilet in the cell--just a bucket filled with

urine and faeces. He slept on a mat on the floor.

Mr. Kyi says he was tortured and beaten by the prison

guards. He was shackled in heavy chains, with a metal bar

between his legs, which made it difficult to walk.

Every morning for about two weeks, he says he was made to

``exercise''--forced to adopt awkward positions and if he

failed he was brutally beaten.

During this time he was not allowed to shower and was

forced to sleep on bare concrete.

It goes on.

So she is there in that prison. I hope and pray the treatment she is receiving is not anywhere along the lines of what this prison is well known for.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for his words concerning the parliamentary situation we are in. Of course, I am very appreciative of his words about the long service we have shared together, both in the other body and in the Senate. Since I have returned from the campaign trail, I have appreciated his kind words about my service to the country. I must say, while the majority leader is still on the floor, I might point out that they are dramatically different from the comments he made about me during the campaign--not just our political differences but my qualifications to serve and other statements about my character. All those things are said in political campaigns, but I am certainly glad to see sort of a significant change in his comments concerning me, and I am always very grateful.

Can I also say that the distinguished leader said he couldn't understand that I couldn't understand. Well, the thing I can't understand is the fact that the majority leader can, by virtue of being majority leader, put legislation at any time before this body. I have never been majority leader, and in all candor I never want to be majority leader. I think the majority leader in the Senate has a very tough job. I appreciate the hard work he does in trying to move legislation through the Senate. My former colleague and one-time majority leader, Senator Lott, once said that being majority leader of the Senate was like herding cats, and I certainly agree with that assessment.

So let me say I appreciate the work the majority leader does, but if I had been majority leader, I would never have had to do any of those amendments. The majority leader sets the agenda for the Senate. All he has to do if he wants the hate crimes bill up is to schedule it to be taken up and debated and discussed and amended--but in the

regular order of the Senate. Instead, he chooses to put it on the Defense authorization bill, a bill that is vital to the future of the security of this Nation.

I understand his passion concerning hate crimes. I have heard speakers come to the Senate floor all day, and they, in very graphic and moving terms, described events, as I am sure the next speaker will--about the terrible crimes committed in this country by some of the worst of the worst people who have ever inhabited this country.

But the question remains: Why should a bill of this importance--the hate crimes legislation--not have been, at the majority leader's direction, moved through the Judiciary Committee, reported out, and reported to the floor of the Senate? We have been in session since January. I am sure the Judiciary Committee has a lot to do. This has been described by proponents, as they come to the floor, as one of the most important issues of our time. If it is, why not move it through the Judiciary Committee, move it to the floor, and allow us to amend, debate, and discuss the issue? Instead, it is put, as an amendment, on the Defense authorization bill.

That is not right, Mr. President. The fact is, the amendment the majority leader just, very rightfully, extolled, the Levin-McCain amendment--and I appreciate his strong remarks about the importance of it--is the one he wanted withdrawn. The reason we are not debating it now is because the majority leader told the chairman of the committee to withdraw the amendment.

I appreciate his passionate advocacy of this issue. I also want to reemphasize this isn't just about $1.75 billion. This amendment is about whether we are going to change, fundamentally, the way we do business.

If the opponents of the amendment succeed, and we fund additional F- 22 aircraft, which as the majority leader pointed out has never flown in Iraq or Afghanistan, that signal to the military industrial complex, which President Eisenhower warned us about is business as usual in our Nation's Capitol.

So this is an amendment that has transcendent importance. The President has guaranteed a veto. The Secretary of Defense came out and staked his reputation on succeeding here and eliminating, bringing to an end the F-22 production line and moving forward with the F-35 production line.

A lot of my friends ought to understand this is not just about cutting or eliminating or ending production of the F-22. It is also about the F-35 aircraft. If I had been majority leader, I would have-- when he described those amendments I put on bills that were before the Senate, it was because I could not get them up in any other way.

Let me say this: Hate crimes legislation deserves the attention of the Senate in the normal legislative process with amendments, debate, and discussion. If it is so important, and speaker after speaker, including the majority leader, came to the Senate floor talking about how important and vital it is and all of the terrible things that have happened as a result of, in their view, not having this bill--although that is not in agreement with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. But the fact is, then you would think we would want to take it up in the regular fashion and debate it, and that we would want to improve it and make it more effective through the amending process. But, no, we are not going to do that. We are going to take down the pending amendment that is probably one of the most significant amendments we have had in recent history of the Senate--at least as far as defense is concerned-- and replace it with a piece of legislation that is complex, certainly controversial, and certainly deserves the full attention of the Senate.

I proposed earlier a unanimous-consent request, which was rejected by the majority, that we move back to the F-22 amendment, that we dispose of this legislation, and then that we move to the hate crimes bill, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, even bypassing the Judiciary Committee, which is not a normal thing to do given the complexity of the issue.

I am deeply moved by the stories the majority leader told, and both Senators from California came to the floor, and many others have given very graphic and dramatic and compelling stories recounting terrible things that have happened to our citizens--horrible, awful, horrifying things. I understand that and my sympathies and thoughts and prayers go out to their families. We must do everything in our power to make sure these kinds of horrendous acts are never repeated.

Let me point out another thing, if I could. There are also men and women in the military who are in harm's way now and who have been gravely wounded. The sooner we enact this legislation, we will make preparation and be able to better care for them.

Mr. President, I don't usually tell these anecdotes. I heard a lot today, and I sympathize with them. Before the majority leader took the floor, I was outside the Senate Chamber. There was a young man there who said he wanted to meet me--a young marine in a wheelchair, badly wounded. He was there with his family. He was escorted by Congressman Kennedy. I was gratified and moved that he wanted to meet me.

Do you know what. That made me want to come back here and pass this legislation as quickly as possible because this legislation, No. 1, provides fair compensation and first-rate health care and addresses the needs of the injured and improves the quality of life of the men and women of the All-Volunteer Force--Active Duty, National Guard, Reserve, and their families. That is the No. 1 priority of this legislation.

Instead of moving this legislation as quickly as possible through the Senate, we have now withdrawn the amendment and moved on to a piece of legislation that has nothing to do with the purpose and our obligation to the men and women serving this country.

I understand what numbers are, and I understand what the outcome of elections is. I understand there is a majority on the other side of the aisle. But what is being done by withdrawing an amendment that has transcendent importance and putting another totally unrelated piece of legislation in--it may set a dangerous precedent for this body.

This is not a one-shot deal; this the hate crimes bill. This is not an amendment to say you can carry a gun in a national park. This is not a single specific issue bill--hate crimes. We are talking about a very large, encompassing piece of legislation that, by any rational observation, demands to be considered through the proper committee and on the floor through the proper process.

We are now holding up the progress of legislation that is important to the future security of this country and the men and women who serve it, to give them the resources, training, technology, equipment, force protections, and authorities they need to succeed in combat and stability operations.

I understand and appreciate the passion of the advocates of hate crime legislation. They have made it very clear and told compelling stories on the Senate floor. I believe we must take it up and enact it as immediately as possible. What we should be doing is taking up the hate crimes bill in the Senate for full debate and discussion as soon as we finish the Defense authorization bill. There is no connection between the Defense authorization bill and hate crimes. It is a complex and detailed--26 pages, as I recall--piece of legislation.

Again, I appreciate the kind comments of the majority leader, who came to the floor and said he couldn't understand certain things I have done. I hope the majority leader understands better now. If he doesn't, I will be glad to come to the floor again and point out that what we are doing is wrong. It is wrong for us to get off the legislation that provides for the defense and security of this Nation. It is wrong to take up a piece of legislation that should go through the appropriate committee.

This is what we teach kids in school in Civics 101--that a bill is proposed and goes through the proper committee, is reported out, and then it comes to the floor of the Senate for debate and amendment. Instead, we are violating the fundamental rules of procedure of the Senate.

As we continue and vote at 2 a.m.--or whatever it is that we are going to do--

all we will have done is delay the responsibility we have, which is to provide for the security of this Nation.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we are currently on the Department of Defense authorization bill and an amendment that has been offered by the Democratic majority leader relative to the creation of a new Federal crime of hate crimes.

Earlier, the Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain, came to the floor to question the wisdom of adding that kind of legislation to a bill related to the Department of Defense. Most people, when they hear that argument, would say: Why don't they do these bills separately? It turns out that under the Senate rules, oftentimes there are few opportunities to move a bill forward. It is not at all unusual for Senators to come forward and offer what appears to be, and may in fact be, an unrelated amendment to a bill that is likely to pass and be signed by the President. Too often, we pass bills that die in transit to the House or once over in the House never see the light of day. They have the same complaint about the Senate.

This is legislation, hate crimes legislation, which we believe is timely, important, and which we want to make part of this debate and ultimately would like to offer it to the President for signature. It has been debated in the House of Representatives, and it is a bill that I think we can quickly come together with the House on and agree on common terms. So it is an important opportunity.

I might say to Senator McCain that I have offered what we would call unrelated amendments in the past, and he has as well. Going back many years, in 1993 Senator McCain offered a line-item veto amendment to a bill involving voter registration. He also offered that same amendment to research bills and to a bill involving the travel rights of blind individuals. He had a supermajority requirement to increase taxes added to a bill--unrelated--on the subject of unemployment compensation. So it is not unusual. I have done it. Senator McCain has done it.

In fact, this year we have seen it happen repeatedly. In fact, most of the amendments have come from the other side of the aisle. Senator Vitter--on a bill that tried to put the economy back on track--offered an amendment that was critical of an organization known as ACORN. It had nothing to do with the stimulus package. It was his personal feeling about that organization that led to the amendment. Senator Ensign of Nevada offered a controversial amendment which, in fact, stalled a bill that was relating to the voting rights of the citizens of the District of Columbia. Senator Ensign's amendment dealt with gun control, which didn't have a direct bearing on the question of DC voting rights. Senator DeMint raised the question of the fairness doctrine of the Federal Communications Commission--another amendment to the DC voting bill. Senator Thune of South Dakota offered an amendment relative to concealed firearms, again on the DC voting rights bill.

The list goes on. To suggest what was done this morning is unusual is to ignore the obvious. For the better part of this year, amendments have been coming from the Republican side of the aisle that are unrelated to the subject matter of the bill, and that has been a fact of Senate life.

This amendment being offered by Senator Reid, as well as many others relative to hate crimes, is a very important one. I would like to speak to it.

I speak in strong support of the passage of this hate crimes legislation. We plan on voting on it as an amendment to the Defense authorization bill. For several years, the Senate has taken up these two measures, and for several years both the House and the Senate have passed the hate crimes bill only to see it blocked by filibuster threats or veto vows.

We are fortunate to have a new President who supports this hate crimes legislation. When the House of Representatives took up this legislation just a couple months ago, President Obama issued a statement which said:

I urge Members on both sides of the aisle to act on this

important civil rights issue by

passing this legislation to protect all our citizens from

violent acts of intolerance.

What a difference a year has made. When Congress took up the hate crimes bill last Congress, President Bush called it ``unnecessary and constitutionally questionable.'' He promised to veto it.

The American people said last November that they wanted a President who will take our country in a different direction. President Obama is doing that, and he is doing it on this issue as well.

The hate crimes bill has another important supporter who, sadly, cannot be with us on the floor today, and that is Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, who has been our leader on this issue for over 10 years. I wish he were here to make another impassioned speech for its passage. Nobody speaks to this issue with more authority and clarity than Senator Kennedy. Senator Kennedy has been called the heart and soul of the Senate. Passing this bill will honor the great work he has given in his public career to the cause of civil rights.

The Kennedy hate crimes bill now before us is one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation of our time. I am proud to cosponsor it. I generally believe Congress should be careful in federalizing crime. In the case of hate crimes, there is a demonstrated problem and a carefully crafted solution.

Here is the problem--in fact, it is twofold. First, the existing Federal hate crimes law, passed in 1968 after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, covers only six narrow categories. In order for the current law to apply, a person has to be physically assaulted on the basis of race, national origin, or religion, while engaging in one of the following specific activities: using a public accommodation, serving as a juror, attending a public school, participating in a government program, traveling in interstate commerce, or applying for a job.

The Kennedy hate crimes bill now being considered would expand coverage so that hate crimes could be prosecuted wherever they took place as long as there is an interstate commerce connection, such as the use of a weapon. Federal prosecutors would no longer be limited to the six narrow areas I mentioned earlier in the bill passed some 41 years ago.

Secondly, the bill would expand the categories of people covered under the Federal hate crimes law. The current law provides no coverage for hate crimes based on a victim's sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability. Unfortunately, statistics tell us that hate crimes based on sexual orientation are the third most common after those based on race and religion. About 15 percent of all hate crimes are based on sexual orientation. Our laws cannot ignore this reality.

Let me address some of the arguments that have been made against this hate crimes bill. Some of my constituents--in fact, most of those who write in opposition to the bill--are writing either personally or on behalf of churches. There are people who believe this bill would be an infringement on religious speech. Their concern is that a minister could be prosecuted if he sermonizes against homosexuality, and after that a member of his congregation assaults someone on the basis of their sexual orientation. I understand their concern, but it is misplaced.

The chair of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy, held a hearing last month on the hate crimes bill. Attorney General Eric Holder was the star witness. I attended the hearing and asked the Attorney General pointblank whether a religious leader could be prosecuted under the facts I just described. I talked to him about a minister in a church who might stand before his or her congregation and argue that the Bible states clearly, from their point of view, that persons engaged in homosexual conduct are sinners, and if after that sermon someone sitting in the congregation, in anger, turns and strikes someone who is gay, can the minister be held responsible for inciting this person to strike someone of a different sexual orientation. This is what the Attorney General said in response to this hypothetical question I raised:

This bill seeks to protect people from conduct that is

motivated by bias. It has nothing to do with regard to

speech. The minister who says negative things about

homosexuality, about gay people, this is a person I would not

agree with, but is not somebody who would be under the ambit

of this statute.

Based on that representation from the Nation's top law enforcement officer, I hope some from religious communities who have been writing to my office will understand that my response to them over the months and years that they have been writing is consistent with the interpretation of this hate crimes bill by the Attorney General of the United States.

It is also important to point out that the Kennedy hate crimes bill requires bodily injury. It does not apply to speech or harassment. It does not apply to those who would carry signs with messages of their religious beliefs. Attorney General Holder assured the Senate that, unless there is bodily injury involved, no hate crimes prosecution could be brought. I don't know how he could have been clearer or more definitive. I am certain that some who don't want to accept the clear meaning of his words will dispute him, but he was very clear for all of the people of good faith who would listen.

And listen to the words of Geoffrey Stone, a first amendment scholar at the University of Chicago Law School:

It is settled First Amendment law that an individual cannot

constitutionally be punished for attempting to incite others

to commit crimes, unless the speaker expressly incites

unlawful conduct and such conduct is likely to occur

imminently. The last time the Supreme Court upheld a criminal

conviction for incitement was more than a half century ago.

I also note that 24 States--nearly half of the States in America-- have hate crime laws on the books that include sexual orientation, and religious leaders are not being prosecuted in those States. That is just not the purpose of the hate crimes laws. Prosecutors aren't going around looking to put ministers or people with religious beliefs contrary to certain sexual orientations in jail.

Moreover, I think it is time that many people in the religious community would come forward and support this legislation. They should take comfort in knowing that if they believe intolerance and hate are not part of their spiritual message, this law is a good law in support of their beliefs.

This law would go beyond the six narrow areas I covered earlier. It would be an important consideration since 20 percent of all hate crimes are committed on the basis of a person's religion. This hate crimes law will actually protect those discriminated against because of their religious belief. That should be another reason for those of faith to come forward and consider supporting it.

Another criticism of the Kennedy bill is one that has been around for a long time. It is an argument about States' rights. They argue there is no need to pass a Federal hate crimes law because the States can do the job on their own.

This argument is remarkably similar to one we faced almost a century ago when Congress debated an antilynching law. Between 1881 and 1964 there is evidence that almost 5,000 people--in fact, 4,749--were lynched in the United States. Predominantly the victims were African Americans. Yet Congress resisted addressing this problem for generations.

Let me read some quotes from a 1922 Congressional Record when Congress debated whether to pass a bill making lynching a Federal crime. One Member of Congress said:

The great body of the good people of the country know that

the Federal Government should let the States solve these

purely local questions. They know that peace and confidence

cannot come from distrust and suspicion and that this

Congress cannot, by statute, change God's eternal laws.

Another House Member said:

The question is whether or not we shall duplicate the State

function by conferring the same power upon the Federal

Government as to this class of crimes. Ours is a government

of divided Sovereignties.

The arguments this year against the hate crimes bill sound very similar to the arguments in 1922 against the antilynching law.

We can all agree that criminal law is primarily a State and local function. It is estimated 95 percent of prosecutions for crimes occur at that level. But there are some areas of criminal law in which we have agreed the Federal Government can and should step in to help.

There are over 4,000 Federal crimes, 600 of which have been passed in the last 10 years. Hate crimes are a sad and tragic reality in America. Last month's horrific shooting, not far from here, at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, was the most recent reminder that hate- motivated violence still plagues our Nation.

Earlier this year in my home State of Illinois, two White men in the town of Joliet used a garbage can to beat a 43-year-old Black man outside a gas station while yelling racial epithets and stating: ``This is for Obama.'' The victim sustained serious injuries, lacerations, and bruises to his head.

Last year, a University of Illinois student was walking near his college campus with three friends when an attacker, yelling antigay slurs, pushed him so forcefully he was knocked unconscious and suffered a head injury.

These are incidents in my home State, which I am proud to represent, but I am not proud of this conduct, and I do not think America should be proud of this kind of intolerance and assault--physical assault-- that has taken place.

According to FBI data, which is based on voluntary reporting, incidentally, there are about 8,000 hate crimes in America every year. Some experts estimate the real number is closer to 50,000.

The Kennedy hate crimes bill will not eliminate hate crimes in America, but it will help ensure these crimes do not go unpunished.

When Senator Kennedy introduced the hate crimes bill in April, here is what he said--for Ted, whom I wish could be with us today, I will repeat his words so he is part of the Record in support of this bill. Here is what he said:

It has been over 10 years since Matthew Shepard was left to

die on a fence in Wyoming because of who he was. It has also

been 10 years since this bill was initially considered by

Congress. In those 10 years, we have gained the political and

public support that is needed to make this bill become law.

Today, we have a President who is prepared to sign hate

crimes legislation into law, and a Justice Department that is

willing to enforce it. We must not delay the passage of this

bill. Now is the time to stand up against hate-motivated

violence and recognize the shameful damages it is doing to

our Nation.

In the words of Senator Kennedy, and in my own words as well, I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

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

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

Madam President, pending before the Senate is the National Defense Authorization Act which is an annual bill considered by

the Senate which basically authorizes the spending of money and certain policies for the Department of Defense. There is a lot of work that goes into this bill. It is put in primarily by the chairman of the committee, Carl Levin of Michigan, and by John McCain of Arizona. This bill looks to be over 1,000 pages long. They have put a lot of effort into this bill and are anxious to pass it.

An issue came up, an important issue about the F-22 airplane. This is a fighter plane that the current administration and others have said should be discontinued. Whenever a fighter plane is being built and is being discontinued, there are people who resist because each one of these Defense projects involves a lot of people, a lot of jobs, a lot of contracts that are important to businesses and families and communities. So there is resistance. But on the F-22 fighter plane, President Obama has gone so far as to say in writing: If you include more planes beyond the 187 allocated in previous legislation, I will veto the bill. That, of course, would call for a supermajority to override the veto, which is not likely to occur. So it is a promise or a threat from a President we have to take seriously.

The bill currently contains an amendment which expands the number of F-22 fighter planes that was adopted narrowly in the Armed Services Committee. The chairman and the ranking Republican have the same position as President Obama. They want to reduce or hold fast to the number of airplanes currently projected to be built and not to expand it, as this bill does. So they offered an amendment to stand with President Obama and delete the section of the bill which would call for more planes. That amendment, No. 1469, was offered on Monday to be considered by the Senate. A number of Members have come to support the amendment, and I am one of them. I support the President's position and the position of Senators Levin and McCain. There are others who oppose this amendment, clearly.

At one point, Senator Levin said: Let's move this to a vote. Senator McCain agreed, as we should. It had been pending for 2 days. Everyone knows what is at issue. It is contentious and clearly controversial, but we deal with those issues. That is part of our job.

At that point, the process broke down. The Republican side of the aisle objected to calling the amendment. That is when the bill came grinding to a halt. That is when Senator Levin said: We know that after this amendment on F-22s, we will go to an amendment on hate crimes legislation on the same bill. So he withdrew this amendment.

Clearly, the answer to this--one I hope we can work out at the leadership level--is for Republicans to agree that we have a vote on the F-22 airplane. We should. Senator McCain is anxious for that to happen so the bill can move forward. Once that vote is out of the way, we should schedule a reasonable time for debate and a vote on the hate crimes legislation, which is not new. We have considered this before. But we are bogged down.

At this point, tempers are flaring a little bit because this important bill is being held up over those two issues: whether the F-22 amendment by Senators Levin and McCain will come to a vote and whether the hate crimes legislation offered by Senator Reid will also then be considered and voted on. I hope both those occur. There is no reason why they should not. Those who think they might lose the F-22 amendment are resistant to calling it for a vote. But there will come a day when we have to face this issue with a vote. That is ultimately what the Senate is here for.

I might say about nonrelevant amendments, a position made on the floor by my friend from Arizona and others, it is a hard argument to understand in light of what we have been through.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a long list of nonrelevant amendments offered this year by the Republican side of the aisle to a series of bills considered on the floor.

They run the range of things. I talked earlier about some of these amendments: an amendment relating to the regulation of guns in the District of Columbia put on the voting rights bill; an amendment relating to the fairness doctrine and telecommunications on the same DC voting rights bill; an amendment related to congressional pay on the Omnibus appropriations bill. The list goes on and on. I won't go beyond including it in the Record.

What the majority leader did today with the hate crimes legislation is not unlike what has been done repeatedly by the Republican side of the aisle over the last several months. Ultimately, these came to a vote. They were considered and voted on. That is all the majority leader is asking for, to bring the hate crimes legislation to a vote on this legislation.

There is clearly a way out of this. It is for the Senate to do its job, to vote on the Levin-McCain amendment on the F-22 fighters up or down. Let's see who prevails, understanding that if this provision stays in the bill and Levin-McCain fails, the President will veto the bill. That is a pretty ominous prospect.

Also keep mind that the hate crimes legislation is timely. It has passed the House of Representatives and should be considered by us.

I would like to say a word on it and ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a publication by an organization known as Third Way which consists of statements of support from religious leaders for the Senate hate crimes bill.

Madam President, those who spoke in favor of the bill should be noted, their identities should be noted, because there is some argument, at least in the mail I have received from some religious leaders against the bill. Dr. David Gushee, distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University, has a well-thought- out statement in support of the bill; Rev. Derrick Harkins, senior pastor of the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in Washington, DC, the same; Dr. Joel Hunter, senior pastor at Northland, has also come out in support; and Rev. Gabriel Salguero, executive and policy adviser of the Latino Leadership Circle.

The point I tried to make earlier and the one their support makes is that there are religious leaders who believe this bill is necessary to protect those who may be subjected to physical violence because of religious belief--we don't want that to occur--that intolerance is not consistent with American values.

Secondly, to those who argue that if we include sexual orientation in this bill, a pastor who sermonizes against homosexuality based on his interpretation of the Bible could be arrested for it, that is not true. As I quoted earlier, the Attorney General said, clearly, hate crimes legislation is focused on physical violence--not words, not harassment, but physical violence. If the religious leader is not engaged in physical violence against someone of a different sexual orientation, they will not be subject to prosecution under this bill. That has been made clear by the Attorney General, and the support of religious leaders indicates they understand that as well. We need to protect the people of our country against hate crimes and intolerance, but we also need to honor our constitutional guarantees when it comes to speech and religious belief. Those are consistent.

I look forward to the Senate coming to a conclusion, but I think those who have come to the floor and criticized the majority leader for this situation have not told the whole story. The whole story is the F- 22 amendment by Senators Levin and McCain was ready to be called, should have been called for a vote, and if it is scheduled for a vote, it can be dispensed with. I will support it. I have made that clear to the sponsors. Then we can move to the hate crimes legislation which the majority leader has brought before us, not unlike the many different instances this year when Republicans did exactly the same thing on the floor.

I urge those who might be off to lunch in a few minutes to use this opportunity. I see my friend from Arizona has taken the floor. I hope we can find an opportunity to work these two things out, perhaps bring to a vote the F-22 amendment, which I do support, the Levin-McCain amendment, to remove language in the bill on the expansion of the F-22 program. The sooner we can get approval from the leadership on the other side of the aisle, the sooner we can dispense with it one way or the other, up or down. Secondly, I hope we can then move to the hate crimes legislation which has been debated at length and is not unlike many of the other amendments which have been offered on the Republican side of the aisle on a variety of different bills during the course of the last few months. Bringing these two matters to a vote, perhaps we can then take up other pending matters on the Defense authorization bill on which I know the Senators from Arizona and Michigan have worked so hard.

I am happy to yield.

I am going to yield the floor. Is the Senator seeking recognition?

Could I yield to the Senator from Arizona with the understanding that after he has spoken, the Senator from California would be recognized?

Could the Senator give an indication of how much time he may require?

I understand it is.

I will.

I think Senator McCain has asked to be recognized first. If I have any response to him, I will try to make it very brief. I ask unanimous consent that after the Senator from Arizona has spoken, the Senator from California be immediately recognized.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, I would say that the Senator from Arizona knows that on 16 different occasions this year Republican Senators have offered nonrelevant amendments to pending legislation. The Senator has done that himself. I have done it myself. It is not unusual or beyond the custom and rules of the Senate. And I believe Senator Reid has the right to do it on this critically important legislation which we can move to with dispatch. Based on that, I do object.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

I want to make sure Senator Boxer has her chance.

If I could make two points in the nature of a question to the Senator from Arizona.

First, Senator Reid offered this amendment on behalf of Senator Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who is now presiding over the Sotomayor hearings. I know he supports it, and I support it as well, the hate crimes legislation, but I want to make that a matter of record.

Yes.

The second point I would like to make to the Senator from Arizona is, when we asked for unanimous consent from the Republican side to move to the hate crimes legislation, there was objection. So it is not as if we have not tried to go through regular order. This seems to be the only path we can use to bring this matter to a conclusion. And I think it can be done in a responsible way quickly. It does not have to drag out over a matter of days. The Senator knows that. If we can get agreement on both sides to have a reasonable time for debate and a vote on the bill, I think that would meet the needs the Senator has suggested to get back on the substance of the Defense authorization bill.

Mr. President, if the Senator from California will allow me to make a unanimous consent request before she speaks.

Unanimous-Consent Request

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 12 noon, on Thursday, July 16, the Senate proceed to vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Leahy amendment No. 1511, with the time until then equally divided and controlled between the leaders or their designees; that if cloture is invoked on amendment No. 1511, then all postcloture time be yielded back and amendment No. 1539 be agreed to; that amendment No. 1511, as amended, be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that upon disposition of the hate crimes amendment, Senator Levin be recognized to offer the Levin-McCain amendment, and that the time until 5 p.m., Thursday, July 16, be for debate with respect to the amendment, with all time equally divided and controlled between Senators Levin and Chambliss or their designees; that at 5 p.m., Thursday, July 16, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the amendment, with no intervening amendment in order during the pendency of the F-22 amendment; further, that the mandatory quorum be waived with respect to rule XXII.

The purpose of this unanimous consent request is to achieve just what the Senator from Arizona asked for: a timely consideration of both amendments. We will be back on the bill on his amendment. I ask unanimous consent that we accept this schedule and move forward.

On behalf of Senator Leahy, myself, and others, I call up amendment No. 1511, which is at the desk.

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

I now ask for the yeas and nays.

I now call up a second-degree amendment which is at the desk.

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

I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. President, Senator Levin will give an explanation as to why the amendment was withdrawn. But my friend, the Republican leader, has the first right of recognition.

Health Care Week VI, Day III

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

Mr. President, under an order of May 5 and under the auspices of S. Res. 18, I made a temporary appointment of Sheldon Whitehouse to serve on the HELP Committee, while retaining my authority to make a permanent appointment to the HELP Committee. I now announce that as of today, Senator Al Franken is appointed to serve on a permanent basis to the slot that was occupied by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.

Senator Whitehouse

Mr. President, Sheldon Whitehouse, since coming to the Senate, has truly been a workhorse. There isn't anything I have asked this fine man to do that he has not come forward with enthusiasm to do it. We have seen the brilliant work he has done on so many different occasions as a member of the Judiciary Committee.

His other assignments in the Senate have been just as auspicious as his work on the Judiciary Committee. His background is significant. He has a real interest in health care. His work on the bill that was reported out of the HELP Committee today was essential. All members of the committee, Democrats and Republicans, are astounded at how good he was.

I repeat, he enthusiastically accepted this temporary assignment while we waited for the long, never-ending situation in Minnesota to come to a close. Senator Whitehouse was far from just a seat-warmer. He dove into the issues and, to no one's surprise, was a substantive contributor to one of the most important bills the committee has ever marked up in the history of this country.

Without belaboring the point, on behalf of the entire Senate, I greatly appreciate his service on the committee, and I personally thank him, as does the entire Democratic caucus. I bet if a poll were taken of those who serve as Republicans on the HELP Committee, they would acknowledge his brilliance and hard work. I know Senator Kennedy, whom we have missed on that committee and the vital work he has done for decades in the Senate, is someone who has watched from afar and applauded Senator Whitehouse.

Mr. President, I came to the House of Representatives in 1982. In that class of 1982 was a young man from Arizona, someone who came with a certain degree of fame. His name is John McCain. He had served our country valiantly during the Vietnam conflict and spent 5 years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Vietnam. I have great admiration and respect for him. I want the record to reflect that my respect for John McCain is very deep. Not only did we come to the House together, but we also came to the Senate together. We were elected together in 1986. Our seniority is as close as it can get. We both have the same amount of service in the House of Representatives, so seniority is determined by how many people are in the State of Nevada and the State of Arizona. There are more people in the State of Arizona than in the State of Nevada, so he is one up on me in overall seniority in the Senate.

Having said that, recognizing who this man is, he was proudly the nominee for Republicans in the last election. I watched his campaign and admired his courage, the stands he took. While I may not have agreed with him,

I recognize he has strong feelings. But so do I.

The senior Senator from Arizona today said he was ``deeply, deeply disappointed'' that what he considers an unrelated amendment; that is, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes bill, has been added to this bill, the Defense authorization bill. I wonder on which recent morning did the Senator from Arizona wake up and suddenly feel so strongly. Where has he been in the past? Let me make a couple of comments about the remarks of my friend from Arizona.

First, his is a new outrage over a very old issue. The hate crimes bill was first added to the Defense authorization bill in a previous Congress. I didn't do it. The amendment today was an amendment I offered on behalf of the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and other sponsors of this legislation. Senator Leahy would have been here, but he is a little busy with the Supreme Court nomination. The hate crimes bill was first added to the Defense authorization bill when George Bush was President, a Republican. Where was the Senator's disappointment then? I heard no big statements at that time, and no one else did.

Second, the Senator from Arizona has evidently not always held the belief he discussed today. This is a new conversion. He has evidently not always believed that bills must only contain amendments that relate directly to the underlying legislation.

It was just a while ago a bill came before the Senate known as the motor-voter bill, a bill to make it easier for people to register to vote. When they got their registration changed on their car, they would at the same time have the opportunity to register to vote. It was a unique and good idea, and it has allowed millions of people to register to vote who ordinarily would not register.

On that legislation, motor-voter, Senator McCain offered a line-item veto amendment. It had nothing to do with registration to vote. So it is hard to understand how his was the kind of related amendment he demands today. In fact, that issue went to the Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court declared it illegal, unconstitutional.

It was a year before that that Senator McCain offered the same amendment to a research bill. Again, it is hard to understand how his was the kind of related amendment he demands today.

Additionally, Senator McCain offered an amendment that would change Senate rules about tax increases to a bill about unemployment compensation. It is hard to understand how his was the kind of related amendment that he suddenly today demands.

He also offered his line-item veto amendment to a bill that would give more rights to blind Americans. It is hard to understand how the line-item veto had anything to do with the visually impaired. But it appears this was the kind of amendment he demands today.

Again, Senator McCain offered an amendment about Medicare to a bill funding energy and water development, having no relation, obviously. It is hard to understand how his was a kind of related amendment that he demands today.

The third point I want to make is that the Senator from Arizona is not alone in offering such unrelated amendments. His Republican colleagues do it all the time. In fact, they are quite fond of doing it.

Where has his outrage been when that has happened, Mr. President? Where has the outrage been from the Senator from Arizona when, for example, one of his Republican Senator friends twice offered an amendment about the ACORN group? This is an organization around the country that is involved in a lot of different things. But he wanted to do an amendment on the economic recovery package related to the ACORN organization. That was a bill, of course, that had nothing to do with voting registration.

Another Republican Senator offered an amendment about prescription drugs to a bill that funds homeland security--no relation whatsoever. Where was the outrage of my friend from Arizona about that?

Another Republican Senator offered an amendment about the fairness doctrine--a fake issue meant exclusively to excite a very small segment of our population--to a bill that would give DC residents, finally, the right to vote. Where was the outrage of my friend from Arizona about that?

Another Republican Senator offered the same amendment; that is, the fairness doctrine; another Senator, same amendment, on the same conjured issue to the Omnibus appropriations bill. That is the bill we passed to keep our government running and complete unfinished business from the Bush administration. Where was my friend's outrage about that?

Another Republican Senator offered an amendment about union dues to that same Omnibus appropriations bill, having nothing to do with what we were trying to accomplish here.

Another Republican Senator offered an amendment about congressional pay to another appropriations bill, having no relationship whatsoever.

Another Republican Senator offered an amendment about rules surrounding charitable donations to the national service bill--no relationship whatsoever. I did not hear my friend say one word about that. The Senator from Arizona did not complain 1 minute about that.

Another Republican Senator offered an amendment about national language to a bill that helps us crack down on mortgage fraud. Now try that one. That is something that might stir up a little outrage but not from my friend from Arizona.

Another Republican Senator offered an amendment on auto dealers to a bill that funds our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where was the outrage on that--an amendment on auto dealers on a bill that funds our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the supplemental appropriations bill?

Mr. President, there are lots of other examples. Those are just a few. It is hard to understand how any of these amendments were the kind of related amendment Senator McCain demands today. But it is even harder to understand why the Senator from Arizona did not feel the need to express, as I have said, the outrage he did this morning.

Finally, I want to say that I would gladly, as a matter of principle, keep each of these bills separate; that is, hate crimes, Defense authorization. But the reality is, the Republicans' relentless and reckless strategy of slowing, stopping, and stalling has made it impossible for us to do so. My friend, the senior Senator from Arizona, knows the most recent example of this all too well. His Republican colleagues refuse to let us vote on his amendment, which I support. I support the F-22 amendment. I support that. Why can't we vote on that? This could have been done yesterday, the day before, today, but for the stubbornness of the Senate Republicans.

We have lots of work to do, a lot of priorities to fulfill, and a lot of mistakes in the last 8 years to correct. And we are trying to do that. The bottom line is, we would not have to take the time for such steps if the Republican minority would not waste the American people's time and money by making us jump through procedural hoop after procedural hoop just to do our jobs. Last Congress, 100 filibusters; this Congress, I think we are at 21 already this year--21.

To my knowledge, Senator McCain has never supported hate crimes legislation. If I am mistaken, it certainly would not be the first time, but that is the information I have. It is my understanding he does not think there probably is ever a good time to pass this important and overdue bill.

This is an issue here, a very important issue. And that is the real reason the Republicans, I assume, do not like to talk about the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill. But I am not afraid to talk about the issue.

A man by the name of Luis Ramirez was picking strawberries and cherries to support his three children and a woman he wanted to marry. When he was not working the fields, he worked a second job in a local factory in Shenandoah, PA. It is a coal town of only 5,000 people.

As he was walking home one Saturday night, six high schoolers jumped him in a park. They taunted and screamed racial slurs at Luis, who came to this small town in the middle of Pennsylvania from a small town in the middle of Mexico. But the boys did not stop with the taunting and screaming racial slurs. That was not enough.

They punched, beat, and kicked him. When Luis's friend pleaded with the teenagers to stop, one yelled back: Tell your Mexican friends to get out of town, or you'll be lying next to him.

These boys stomped on Luis so hard that an imprint of the necklace he was wearing was embedded into his chest. They beat him so badly and so brutally that Luis never regained consciousness. He is dead. On July 14, 2008--2 days after the beating and exactly 1 year ago yesterday-- Luis Ramirez died. He was 25 years old.

Hate crimes embody a unique brand of evil, and that is why the legislation is so important. It is terrorism; it is just a different kind than we normally see or think of. A violent act may physically hurt just a single victim and cause grief for loved ones. But hate crimes do more. They distress entire communities, entire groups of people, and our country.

Our friend, Senator Ted Kennedy, has for many years courageously fought for the legislation Senator Leahy and I offered as an amendment today to the Defense authorization bill. Senator Kennedy has correctly called hate crimes a form, I repeat, of domestic terrorism. It is our obligation to protect Americans from this domestic terror.

The hate crimes bill will help bring justice to those who intentionally choose their victims based on race, color, religion, nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, or disability. Disability--there are examples all the time of someone who may not be what ``normal'' may be; maybe they are mentally challenged. There are all kinds of examples of people for that reason taking advantage and hurting them. That is a hate crime.

Hate crimes are rampant and the numbers are rising. The Department of Justice estimates that hundreds happen every day. Now State and local governments are on their own when it comes to prosecuting even the most violent crimes and conducting the most extensive and expensive investigations. State and local governments will always come first, as they should, but if those governments are unwilling or unable to prosecute hate crimes--and if the Justice Department believes that may mean justice will not be served--this law will let the Federal authorities lend a hand to State and local authorities.

I spent some time yesterday with Judy Shepard. I have five children. I have four boys. I had never met Judy Shepard until yesterday. My wife, within the past few months, had lunch with her and a number of other people and sat next to her. She told me what a wonderful person she is. When I met with her yesterday, the thing she said that was so traumatic to me was: I only have one boy left. Two children; Matthew is dead.

The bill we have is named after Matthew Shepard, Judy's son. He was a 21-year-old college student when he was tortured and killed for being gay--and did they torture, did they torture. And that was not good enough for them. In the cold Wyoming night, they took him, before he was dead, and hung him on a barbed-wire fence.

When Wyoming police pursued justice in Matthew's murder, they needed resources they did not have. Laramie, WY, is where it is. Police could not call in Federal law enforcement for help--the law would not allow it--and their expensive investigation devastated that small police department. It was a police department of 40 people--not all police officers. As all police officers, some of them took care of the little jail, did jail duty, and they were responding to phone calls. Out of this 40-person police department, they had to lay off 5 people so they could prosecute this crime, this vicious crime, this hate crime. But it cost that little town a lot. When this bill becomes law, that will never happen again in Laramie, WY, or anyplace else in the country.

We must not be afraid to call these crimes what they are. The American people know this is the right thing to do. Hundreds of legal, law enforcement, civil rights, and human rights groups know this is the right thing to do. The U.S. Senate knows this is the right thing to do.

This bill simply recognizes that there is a difference between assaulting someone to steal his money or doing so because he is gay or disabled or Latino or Jewish; that there is a difference between setting fire to an office building and setting fire to a church, a synagogue, or a mosque; that there is a difference, as we learned so tragically last month, between shooting a security guard and shooting him because he works at the Holocaust Museum.

It is a shame that we often do not discuss our responsibility to do something about horrific hate crimes until after another one has been committed. It means we always tend to act too late. But does this mean we should not act now? Of course not. It means, in fact, the opposite: it means we must act before another one of our sons or daughters or friends or partners is attacked or killed merely because of who they are.

We must act in the name of people such as Thomas Lahey, who, in 2007, was beaten unconscious in Las Vegas. Why? Because he was gay.

Not far from my hometown of Searchlight, NV, is a place called Laughlin, NV--25 miles away. It is on the river, a little resort community. We must act in the name of Jammie Ingle, who, in 2002, was beaten and bludgeoned to death in Laughlin, NV. Why? They thought he was gay.

We must act in the name of Tony Montgomery, who was shot and killed in Reno. Why? Because he was an African American.

We must act in the name of those who worship at Temple Emanu-El in Reno, a synagogue that has been firebombed time and time again by skinheads. We must act in the name of Luis Ramirez, whom I already talked about who died 1 year ago this week. We must act in the name of Judy Shepard, of her son, Matthew Shepard, whose family has fought tirelessly since his brutal death, his brutal murder, so others may know justice. If their country doesn't stand for them, if we don't stand for them, who will?

The F-22 is an airplane I have seen. A number of them are stationed at Nellis Air Force Base. Nellis Air Force Base has almost 15,000 people who are involved in that air base, civilian and military personnel. We are so proud of that. Nellis Air Force Base is named after Bill Nellis from Searchlight, NV. Bill Nellis was a war hero in World War II. He joined then the Army Air Corps, already having two children, was way beyond the age when he would be drafted, but he volunteered. He served 69 missions before a dive bomber went down in Belgium where he is now buried. We are proud of Nellis. We are proud the F-22s are there. But we have had enough F-22s at Nellis Air Force Base. We have enough F-22s anyplace else.

The F-22 is a Cold War weapon that has not flown a single mission over Iraq or Afghanistan--not one; not a training mission, not any kind of a mission. It is a powerful plane built to fight superpowers. But as we all know, the wars we fight today are not against superpowers. This generation of our military bravely fights a new generation of warfare against terrorists and insurgents. For today's national security needs, the F-22 is an overpriced and underperforming tool. And the nearly 200 we already have in our fleet is sufficient. It is a sufficient deterrent to the potential of conventional war. But some want us to spend at least $2 billion to keep making more of them. That is only the first step. Actually, it is $1.75 billion. I rounded it off to $2 billion. It is a very expensive plane to build and a very expensive plane to fly. It costs taxpayers $42,000 an hour to operate.

This technology is not suited for today's warfare. The radar in the F-22 means that when it flies over heavily populated cities such as the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, its position is easily given away. We have at Nellis Air Force Base in the ranges there what we call red flag activities.

A couple times a year, we bring our fighting forces there, our air fighting forces, and they do mock exercises. It is a wonderful place, one of the few places in the world this can take place. They do all kinds of good things. Aircraft from all over the world come there to participate in these war games. If the F-22's radar is turned off to avoid being so easily detected, its agility is significantly compromised. We know that. This was proven recently in a recent exercise at Nellis Air Force Base, when an F-16 brought down in a war game an F-22 that simply had turned its radar off in a test fight.

There is broad bipartisan consensus that ending the F-22's production is in our national security interests. Here is a list of some who agree: Chairman Levin; Ranking Member McCain; Commander in Chief Barack Obama; the previous Commander in Chief, President Bush; the Secretary of Defense; the previous Secretary of Defense; the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I repeat; the ranking member, I repeat, of the Senate Armed Services Committee; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Secretary of the Air Force; the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Can you believe that? And we are going to try to move forward in doing this, and no one wants it in the military. All of those have prudently pointed out that buying more F-22s that we don't need means doing less of something we do need.

Some have encouraged us to continue making this Cold War-era plane because it creates jobs for those who build them. Being a little bit personal here, the stealth airplane was developed in the deserts of Tonopah, NV. It was a wonderful thing our country did. Each of these airplanes had its own hangar up in the desert because the Soviet satellites came over, and they couldn't come out in the daytime. These pilots were trained so efficiently; everything they did was in pitch darkness, but that is where these airplanes were developed and flown.

There came a time after it became public that we had these stealth aircraft that they had to put them someplace. They put most of them at Nellis Air Force Base. The Pentagon, after they had been stationed there for a matter of months, made a decision: That is not good. We need to move them to New Mexico to an airbase. Pete Domenici, my friend, was concerned about whether they should go to New Mexico or Nevada. I said: Pete, I got a deal for you. I, personally, don't believe that what we do for the military is a jobs program. I think it is to make our Nation more secure. Let's have the General Accounting Office do a study, and if they come back and say it will save the country money and it will make our country more secure if they move them to New Mexico, I am not going to say a word about it. It took the General Accounting Office a matter of a few months to do this. They came back and said these stealth aircraft would be better off in New Mexico, and it will make our country more secure; they can train better there because of how much activity there is at Nellis, and it will save the country money.

That is how I feel about the military. I think we have to have the most sophisticated, secure weapons systems that exist, but it has to be something that is good for our country. It is obvious--with all these people from President Obama to President Bush to the Secretaries of Defense in the past to now--these airplanes are not necessary. They prudently point out that buying more F-22s that we don't need means doing less of something else that we do need.

I repeat: Some have encouraged us to continue making this airplane because it creates jobs for those who build it. I don't believe that is the purpose of why we are here. I understand the importance of jobs, but a more advanced jet, the F-35, which can be used by all branches of the military service, would create similar jobs--jobs that actually will enhance our national security. That is what this is all about. That is what this bill is about, the Defense authorization bill.

Finally, President Obama has pledged to veto this Defense authorization bill if it includes continuing to build this obsolete airplane. And he will veto it. That is a risk, and why would anyone want to take it? I spoke to the President's Chief of Staff yesterday. The President is going to veto this bill. This is kind of an: Oh, he will never do that. He will.

Cutting funding for wasteful programs is good for our economy, good for our workers, and good for the continued military dominance of our country. I oppose continuing to build a weapon that will compromise our national security. I oppose continuing to fund a program that will jeopardize our economy. I oppose wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer money on a plane that doesn't defend us in our wars that we fight today and will not defend us in tomorrow's wars. I support moving our military into today's century the 21st century, not go back to the last century.

Now, finally, let me say this: I have called my friend, the Republican leader, and he will call in just a minute when he has some time because I didn't call him while he was in a meeting. I wanted to speak to him before I came to the floor, but I have something else I have to do tonight. We are going to vote on invoking cloture. We will see if we can get 60 votes on this hate crimes amendment that is on this bill. I would like to work it out so we can do it conveniently for everyone, sometime tomorrow. What I would like to do is set aside some more time if we want to debate more the hate crimes, set aside more time to do that, and if people want to do the F-22, let's do that. Let's get these two out of the way. I can't force an amendment vote on the F-22, but I can force a vote on cloture, and we are going to do that. We will do that tomorrow. Tomorrow may spill over until a little after midnight Friday morning, but we are going to do this. So everyone should understand the hate crimes bill is going to be voted on either tomorrow or very early Friday morning. I have said Friday there will be no votes, and that is by day. This will be in the middle of the night. I hope we don't have to do that, but that is when time runs out on this.

I think these two amendments are important. I understand the anxiety of those who would rather not have hate crimes legislation on this bill. I accept that. But I spent a lot of my time here on the floor, as I have outlined, wondering why in the world other people don't complain when they offer these ridiculous amendments on legislation that is so important. I have indicated that we are going to go back to the way we used to do business in the Senate. I have done that during the time I have had this job. We have this--this year we have had an open amendment process except on rare occasions. I have stood here when we have done abortion amendments, gun amendments, you name it. I have told Senator McConnell I wish this were not the case, but that is why we are here, to make tough votes and easy votes both.

So I hope we can work something out, where we can resolve this matter tomorrow during the daylight hours; otherwise, we will do it tomorrow night.