To preserve existing rights and responsibilities with respect to waters of the United States, and for other purposes.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, here we are again in the Senate on yet another day when families and students across this country are wondering if we are going to do our duty. Are we actually going to move legislation that will keep the interest rate at 3.4 percent on subsidized student loans or are we going to let it go to 6.8 percent-- double--on July 1?

We have legislation and we brought it to the floor. Yet yesterday my Republican colleagues voted to not even proceed to it. I think the people of America are saying that this shouldn't happen. We should be able to work these things out. We should move legislation, not obstruct it.

Everyone now agrees we should keep the interest rate at 3.4 percent. The Republicans say they want to keep it at 3.4 percent and we say we do. The Republicans were initially opposed to this, but they have gotten onboard. That is fine. I have been here on the floor listening to my colleagues talk about this since Monday. Everyone agrees we have to keep it at 3.4 percent and not let it go up, so it ought to be a bipartisan issue. We ought to be able to move this rapidly and move on to other matters. There are other issues confronting us in the Senate. Yet here we are on the floor again today discussing the student loan interest rate.

As I said, we had the vote yesterday to move it forward, but my Republican colleagues blocked us from doing that. They agree we should keep the interest rate at 3.4 percent, but not on how to pay for it. Well, OK, fine; that is a legitimate point of debate and discussion and votes. So why don't we move the bill forward, bring it to the floor, and let's have a debate and discussion on how we pay for it. If they want to offer an amendment, they can offer an amendment and we will vote on it. It seems to me--at least I think--that one of the responsibilities, and maybe privileges but responsibilities, of the majority party in the Senate, whichever party it might be, is to initiate legislation and bring it to the floor. The privilege and responsibility of the minority party is to be able to amend it, to try to make it better as they may see fit. I don't think it should be a privilege and responsibility of the minority party to block everything, but we have seen that happen more and more over the last few years. Republicans won't let us bring a bill to the floor because under the rules it requires 60 votes rather than 51 votes to bring a bill forward. So, again, we are stuck because we can't bring the bill forward.

I hope we have another cloture vote. Let's keep having these cloture votes and maybe Republicans then will say, OK, let's move it forward and let's debate it and move on. So I hope that is what we are going to be doing rather than stopping the process in its tracks.

It is interesting to note that House and Senate Republicans were silent on this issue until students from around the country became aware of the impending increase and made their voices heard. Democrats were already hard at work on the solution. I would remind my colleagues that earlier this year, in the budget debate in the House, an amendment was offered by Democrats during the House budget process to extend the current rate of 3.4 percent. That amendment lost by a straight party vote. Instead, the Republicans proposed to pay for this by taking money from the Prevention and Public Health Fund. That is not an appropriate solution, killing the fund that is preventing cancer and preventing unnecessary diseases in the United States.

My friends on the other side would have us believe that nothing bad will happen if we eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund. They call it a slush fund. There is no truth to that at all. The truth is that the elimination of this fund would have disastrous effects on the health of our kids and our families. To eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund will cost us billions in the future for taking care of people who have chronic illnesses and chronic diseases and obesity. We know that an investment in immunizing our kids--for example, for every dollar, it saves us $16 in saved health care costs. To eliminate this fund would lead to a resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases in every State due to the expected loss of more than 1.5 million doses of lifesaving vaccines and nearly 1,100 skilled public health workers.

Again, eliminating the Prevention and Public Health Fund would mean eliminating vaccines for our kids, eliminating public health workers who know how to deliver these vaccines and respond to outbreaks. We would be losing public health staff at the State and local levels.

Eliminating this fund would end support for increased calls to the tobacco quitline, meaning smokers encouraged to quit by the fund's strategic and evidence-based investments thus far would not have the support to keep that quitline going. If current smoking rates persist, 6 million kids living in the United States today will ultimately die from smoking. If we eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund, we will be forced to reduce the availability of mental health and substance abuse services to very vulnerable Americans.

Eliminating the fund, as the Republicans want to do, would reduce investment in public health laboratory capacity at the State and local levels, thereby reducing the speed with which we can detect and respond to outbreaks and, yes, maybe even terrorist events. It would cut the number of disease detectives that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can train and deploy. These disease detectives are our first line of defense against infectious diseases.

Eliminating this fund would result in layoffs, as I said, of public health officials in every State and community who are working on chronic disease prevention, immunization, health-care-associated infections, and other health problems.

An elimination of the prevention fund--again, I use the word ``elimination.'' The Republican proposal wouldn't just take some money from the prevention fund, it would kill the prevention fund. It would take every single penny out of it.

My friends on the Republican side say: Well, President Obama in his budget took money out of the prevention fund. In fact, Democrats joined with Republicans earlier this year in taking $5 billion out of the life of this fund to help pay for extending the unemployment insurance program for the remainder of this year, as well as extending the payroll tax cut. They use that example to say, Well, we can kill the whole thing. I must be very frank.

I was not in favor of that $5 billion cut, but be that as it may, as I used the analogy yesterday, it is one thing to take a couple of pints of blood and another to take all the blood. A person can live if a couple of pints of blood are taken; they can live and get healthy. That is what is happening to the prevention fund. The Prevention and Public Health Fund is alive and well and doing its job even though some money is taken out of it. What the Republicans want to do is take all the blood out and kill the whole program.

President Obama has said he will veto this bill if there are any cuts in the Prevention and Public Health Fund. So there has been a line drawn. We took some money out of it before, but no more. That is it; no more money is coming out of this prevention fund because of the good it is doing in this country.

An elimination of this fund, which the Republicans want to do, would stop in midstream across our country efforts to address the risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer--the leading causes of death and health care costs. Yesterday in this Chamber I read from a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that finds that if we could prevent the obesity rate from increasing past its current 34-percent rate right now, we could save nearly $550 billion in the next 20 years.

In 1980, the obesity rate was right at about 15 percent in this country. Today, as I said, it is 34 percent. If it increases at the rate they expect, looking at all indicators now, 42 percent of all Americans will be obese by 2030 and one out of every four of them will be severely obese. That means a huge increase in adult onset diabetes and all the accompanying health care risks and costs, including heart disease and stroke, that accompany obesity.

We know how to address it. We have evidence-based programs that we know work in keeping the obesity rate down. That is what the prevention fund does. The Republicans want to kill it. They say no, get rid of it.

Cuts to our chronic disease prevention programs would mean 120 million Americans--1 in every 3 citizens--would lose access to preventive services. It would mean $103 million no longer available to States and counties and local jurisdictions to provide these services. Over 20 million Americans in rural areas in New York and in Iowa and all across this country would no longer have access to preventive services and programs.

The American people get it. Our citizens, whom we represent, get it. They understand. A poll was taken which said that voters overwhelmingly support more investment in prevention. This is from a 2009 public opinion poll: 71 percent of Americans polled said yes, do more, invest more in prevention. Our fellow citizens are crying out to us for help. They want help. They want to know what to do. How do they change? What can we do in our communities, our schools, our workplaces, our clinics, our community health centers? What can we do so that we don't get sick, so we don't get obese or diabetes, so we don't have heart disease? Most people don't know what to do. They need some help. They need information. They need support.

That is what this prevention fund does. We know it works. We know. We have evidence-based programs out there that work. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is doing an outstanding job across this country in these programs: from community programs, to public health infrastructure, to clinical preventive services, research, tobacco prevention programs, detection and prevention of infectious diseases, and training and preparing the public health workforce--all of this.

That is why prevention is not just something people go into a doctor's office to get a shot for or get a prescription for and people get a pill for. Prevention encompasses a lot of different things-- everything from newborn screening, immunizations for children, school- based programs, and better food and nutrition in our school meals for kids.

Communities change the way they operate and do things--more walking paths, more bike paths. The other day there was something said about Illinois had used some of this for signage and walking paths for kids. I pointed out, yes, they did. What happened is the number of kids walking to school increased, and that cut down on the number of buses they had to use. It saved the school some money, and the kids got healthier.

I have often used the example that when I first moved to Washington in 1979, when I was in the House, my wife and I purchased a home in Virginia. We still live there. One of the reasons we bought it was because we were about a mile away from a school, a high school. We thought: That is great. The kids can just walk to school. Little did I know there were no walking paths to the school. It was a busy street. There was a sidewalk for a little ways, and then there was not one. The kids could not walk. So they had to take a bus just to go 1 mile.

So, again, communities putting in sidewalks, safe passages for kids to do that, that is healthy living. I have seen instances in my own State where communities have put in walking paths for the elderly, for senior citizens, so they do not have a lot of steps and things to go up and down. You would be amazed how many people use that and stay healthy.

Supporting systems in our workplaces, making our workplaces more healthy, helping businesses understand what they can do to provide a healthier workplace for people--examples abound all over this country.

I say to the Acting President pro tempore, I am sure I do not know all the instances in New York State, but I will bet you communities there have gotten together and thought about how to make life a little bit more healthy, how to support a more healthy infrastructure for their people.

Some communities are coming up with very ingenious ideas. I say more power to them. That is what the Prevention Fund is for--to help them, to encourage them, to give them the kind of support they need to provide that healthy living.

I have said many times, it is interesting that in America it is easy to be unhealthy and hard to be healthy. One would think it should be the other way around. It should be easy to be healthy and harder to be unhealthy. It is just the other way around.

So what we are trying to do with some part of the prevention fund-- not all of it; part of it--is to make it easier to be healthy, to make that an easier option for people.

So if we both agree--Republicans and Democrats--on the fact that we need to keep the interest rate on student loans at 3.4 percent, then the debate is just on the offset. As I have said, Republicans want to kill the prevention fund. The American people have said loudly: No, we do not want to do that. We want more investment in prevention. We do not want to get sick. We do not want to get obese. We want to quit smoking. We want our kids to be healthy. We want them to have healthier food, better exercise. Republicans are saying: Well, we are just not going to do that. I guess we will pay more for it in chronic illnesses and diseases down the line.

Well, our offset is one that I think is legitimate and sound, closing a loophole in the Tax Code. That means more money would go into the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and it would help us keep the interest rate at 3.4 percent.

Education has always, and I hope will always, remain a bipartisan issue here. I urge my Republican colleagues to come to the table with a serious offset--a serious offset. If they do not like what we have proposed, please come with something that is serious. Eliminating the prevention fund is a no-starter. As the President said, he would veto it. So why push it?

I think this is an opportunity for all of us to come together and show the American people this body is not broken; we can work with each other and get things done for the good of our people. Again, I encourage my Republican colleagues to allow us to move forward on the bill. Do not keep blocking it. If they want to offer a different offset, fine. Not this one, not the elimination of the prevention fund because that is not serious. That is not going anywhere. If they have some other ideas, bring them forward. As of yet we have seen nothing from my Republican colleagues other than stopping the bill--stopping it, stopping it, stopping it.

So I hope they will come to the table, and I hope we can move this bill forward.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, yesterday Republican Senators voted to block the bill to prevent the doubling of the Federal student loan interest rate on July 1. As long as they continue their filibuster, there is no clear way forward to prevent that devastating rate hike less than 2 months from now.

If that happens, more than 7.4 million American students will be required to pay an average of $1,000 more per year of school. This is especially important to my State of Iowa--and it is important to all States--where nearly 72 percent of Iowa's college graduates have student loan debt, the fourth highest percentage in the Nation. Those borrowers are carrying an average of $30,000 in student loan debt, which is the third highest in the Nation.

In floor debates this week, Republicans claimed that they, too, want to prevent the rate hike. I welcome their support. But if they want to join with us in preventing the rate hike, why in the world won't they let us proceed to the bill? That will give us all the opportunity to debate the bill and offer amendments.

I call on my Republican friends, if they want to keep the interest rate hike from doubling on students, to call off the filibuster and let's move ahead with the bill. I am not the only one who wants to end this obstruction by our friends on the Republican side. I have heard from constituents in Iowa who are frustrated at the Senate's failure to act. This is a kitchen-table issue for middle-class Americans, families all across the country.

I have heard reports that over 500,000 signatures from students around the country have been delivered to the Hill to show their support for keeping the rate at 3.4 percent. I know many Senators have come to the floor to share stories from their constituents about how the interest rate hike would affect them. I will share a story I received from an Iowa student.

Dear Congressman, [or Senator, as the case may be] I am

writing you on behalf of myself, current college students,

and future college students everywhere. I recently re-

enrolled in college to further my education. This decision

came after much time and deep thought. The problem wasn't

that I didn't want to attend school, it was whether or not I

could afford to attend school.

I live on my own, hold a full time job that I previously

attended a technical school to obtain. This job supports me

fully, and as much as I love parts of my job, I know that my

decision to re-enroll in school to further my education was

the right decision for me.

. . . In the middle of all of this preparation, I came

across an article in the USA Today that said the Federal

Government might raise student loan interest rates. Not just

raise, but double them, unless Congress intervenes.

I could not believe what I was reading, and feel so

passionate about the subject that I had to write a letter to

you. I am already struggling on a daily basis to support

myself. I live paycheck to paycheck and often have to rely on

the savings account I worked so hard to save before

graduating high school, along with consistent help from my

parents and grandparents. I wish to be independent from this

help even though I am thankful that it is there.

This increase in interest rates on loans . . . was not only

disappointing, it was infuriating to me. This will have an

effect for many years beyond what it should and not only for

me.

I live in Stanwood, IA, a place that not many people have

heard of, and I commute the 35 miles to Cedar Rapids every

day for my job. . . .

So when I saw that these loans that I am relying on to

support me and fund my education were going to double, I was

heartbroken and I wonder what is wrong with my country? I am

very proud to be an American, and more so an Iowan. . . .

I believe that the one thing the USA has going for it:

supporting our future, but that is quickly fading in front of

my eyes. I hope that you read this and feel every ounce of

disappointment in our great country as I do, and do

everything in your power to not let the interest rate on

student loans increase on July 1.

I hope you can put faith in the American students who are

relying on these loans to

educate themselves, and together get our country back on the

right track, not headed down the wrong one. Thank you so much

for your time, and I hope to hear great things from my

representatives soon.

Sincerely, a proud fellow Iowan.

This is just one of the many stories I have received from my constituents, telling me how detrimental it would be if the rate were to double on July 1.

This increase is a looming reality for many students and families if this Senate continues to do what it is doing--and that is to do nothing to bring the bill up and having Republicans filibuster it, and not even letting us proceed on it.

For the past 3 days, we have been hearing from Republicans that they want to keep the interest rate at 3.4 percent, but they don't like how we are paying for it in our bill. I have said many times that if they don't like that--and our leader came out here, as many have, saying, look, if my Republican friends don't like how we pay for it, let us get on with the bill and they can offer their offset or pay-for. We can vote on it and they can vote on ours. But that is not acceptable to the Republicans. They don't even want the bill to go forward.

We have been hearing from Republicans that our offset, which is closing a loophole in the Tax Code that affects subchapter S corporations--and I might add it only affects a very small sliver of subchapter S corporations, very tightly drawn; they can't have more than three shareholders. How about that. And you have to have more than $250,000 in income, and it pertains only to those subchapter S corporations that provide certain kinds of professional services. In other words, it doesn't pertain to real estate, or manufacturing, or anything like that. It only has to do with certain professional services, such as lawyers and accountants, people such as that.

Well, the Republicans say that if we do this--close that loophole--it will hurt the ``job creators.'' How many times have I heard that, job creators--that we are going to hurt small businesses. The other side would have you believe that we are doing this for political gain, that somehow we Democrats are doing this for political gain. Well, if that were the truth, why would we pick an offset, a pay-for, to fix a problem that conservatives have railed against in the past? Yes, the problem that we are trying to fix in subchapter S corporations is a problem that conservative Republicans have railed against in the past. I want to refresh my colleagues' memories and set the record straight on this issue of S corporations, the offset we have.

For starters, in 2004, the Wall Street Journal editorial page said this on July 13, 2004:

Conservative Support for Closing the S Corp Tax Loophole.

Senator Edwards talks about the need to provide health care

for all, but that didn't stop him from using a clever tax

dodge [these are the words of the Wall Street Journal, not

mine] to avoid paying $591,000 into the Medicare system.

While making his fortune as a trial lawyer in 1995, he formed

what is known as a ``subchapter S'' corporation, with himself

as the sole shareholder. Instead of taking his $26.9 million

in earnings directly in the following four years, he paid

himself a salary of $360,000 a year and took the rest as

corporate dividends.

Since salary is subject to 2.9 percent Medicare tax, but

dividends aren't, that meant he shielded 90 percent of his

income. That's not necessarily illegal, but dodging such a

large chunk of employment tax skates perilously close to the

line . . .

CPA Magazine lists it as number 11 of its 15 best

underutilized tax loopholes.

I ask, is the Wall Street Journal in favor of--what did they say?-- hurting job creators? Are they in favor of that? Is the Wall Street Journal in favor of ``raising taxes on the very businesses we are counting on to hire these young people,'' as the minority leader said on Monday? I repeat, we limit it to only three shareholders. They are going to count on them to hire these young people, he said. What is the minority leader talking about? That same year, in 2004, the late conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote:

It is one of the last loopholes left in the Internal

Revenue Code, and it is a big one.

Here is the whole statement:

How can John Edwards explain setting up a dummy

corporation--subchapter S--to avoid paying an estimated

$290,000 in Medicare taxes in the 2 years before he ran for

the Senate? This is a classic subchapter S corporation

devised to shelter income, mainly for professionals, such as

lawyers (and also syndicated columnists, but not me). It is

one of the last loopholes left in the Internal Revenue Code,

and it is a big one.

That is Robert Novak. Has anyone ever questioned his conservative credentials?

Sean Hannity said this:

Hey, John Edwards is worth, what, $30 million to $40

million, set up a sub-S corporation to keep him from paying

Medicare taxes on 90 percent of his income, and then he

lectures the rest of us how Medicare is going broke.

Finally, Rush Limbaugh himself said this:

. . . and he [Senator Edwards] has also compounded that by

structuring his own personal finances to avoid paying

Medicare taxes on 90 percent of the nearly $27 million he

earned over four years.

I ask my Republican colleagues, are Robert Novak, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and the Wall Street Journal all in support of raising taxes? Are they all in support of killing job creators? These are their statements. That is the record.

For the last several years, conservative Republicans have been going after this loophole, until they obviously found a Democrat who used it, John Edwards. Lots of people use it, a lot of lawyers and accountants and doctors. A lot of different kinds of professionals have used this loophole to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

Here is another classic case where the Republicans say we are using this for political gain. Wait a minute. They are the ones who have been going after this loophole for years. We said: Hey, we finally have something on which we can agree. The Wall Street Journal and all these other people are saying we have to close this loophole. We have the opportunity to do so, and in doing so raise the money both to help Medicare and Social Security and to keep the interest rates on student loans at 3.4 percent. Yet the Republicans will not even allow us to bring it to the floor.

So who is playing politics, I ask? Who is playing politics?

Well, as I have said before, and I will say again, we have come here with a serious offset--one, as I said, that has been supported--at least closing this loophole has been supported--by conservative Republicans in the past. If anything, it is worse today than it was in 2004. More and more people are finding out about how they do this. They form this little subchapter S corporation and avoid paying their taxes. It is time to close that.

We came up with a serious offset we thought would be acceptable on both sides because of the history. We are ready to do this now--ease the concern of so many students and families across the country. The Republicans came and wanted to pay for it by eliminating the Prevention and Public Health Fund. They want to eliminate the one thing that is going to prevent obesity, heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes in the future and save us a lot of money. They want to end that and take that money and put it into keeping the interest rates low. They are pitting the low interest rates for students against the health care of children--immunizations for kids--which is what we use this prevention fund for. And for diabetes prevention. That is what we use the fund for. They want to take that away, pitting students against the health of our country. That is not a serious offer. That is not a serious offer by the Republicans.

That alternative is going nowhere. Besides, the President has said he would veto that. So I ask my colleagues on the other side to quit playing politics. Quit playing politics with this. Let's bring it up for a vote.

Maybe they should listen to the Wall Street Journal, and the now deceased Novak and Fox News and even Rush Limbaugh and Hannity. Let's close this loophole once and for all and do something good with it. Let's do something good with it. Keep the interest rates low for our students in this country.

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

Mr. President, first I thank my colleague and friend, Senator Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for coming to the Senate floor and speaking about our mutual friend and colleague, Senator Dick Lugar, who serves as the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

I am a newcomer to that committee, but I am not a newcomer to my knowledge of Dick Lugar--who preceded my arrival in the Senate 16 years ago when he was well known throughout the Midwest for his extraordinary service as mayor of Indianapolis, where he did something that was miraculous--he combined and made more efficient local units of government, and I think the rebirth of Indianapolis is attributed to those early steps by Dick Lugar.

My wife Loretta and I came to know Dick and Char personally through the Aspen Institute, which is an effort that I think we need to encourage where members of both political parties, House and Senate, come together to discuss foreign policy issues--no lobbyists, no special interests. Dick Lugar was there and always a major contributor when it came to issues of importance.

Before I arrived in the Senate--while Senator Kerry was still here-- he teamed up with Senator Sam Nunn to deal with an issue which related literally to the peace and security of the world.

What would happen, as the Soviet Union crumbled, to all of those nuclear weapons? Would they fall into the wrong hands? Would they fall into disrepair? And what could we do about it? Sam Nunn and Dick Lugar stepped up and said: We are going to work together on a bipartisan basis to deal with them.

Time and time again throughout his career Dick Lugar has focused on issues of strategic importance to the United States and our security. I can't agree with Senator Kerry more. He looked for a bipartisan approach to so many things. We always knew he was a Hoosier conservative. You weren't going to push over anything when it came to Dick Lugar. He was strong in his values, but he always listened and he was always a gentleman.

What a disappointment last night. I know Senator Kerry feels, as I do, that once you have been in this Chamber for a few years, you kind of reflect on those lions of the Senate who have come and gone, some because of the decision of the electorate and some because of passage of time and then fateful decisions that ended up with their departure. We think back on some of these great people.

John Chafee. John Chafee and Dick Lugar were soulmates in terms of their view on the Republican side of the aisle about how to work across the aisle to get things done.

A mutual friend--and I know Senator Kerry's close personal friend-- Senator Kennedy. Senator Kennedy's success has always reached across the aisle. I noticed that. Sometimes to the frustration of those on the Democratic side who said: We have enough votes, Ted. We don't have to do this. He would reach across.

Of Bob Byrd, who used to sit right next to where Senator Kerry is sitting now, we think: What will the Senate be like without these great lions? Well, the Senate will go on. But the question is, Will we have learned from their example? Will we take their lives and their careers to build on to make this a better place or, as some have said, are we going to succumb to the temptation of just making this place more partisan, more hidebound, more dedicated to obstruction than moving forward?

I know that Dick Lugar in the remaining months is going to be an extraordinary servant to the people of Indiana and the Nation as he has been throughout his career, and I look forward to seeing him back on the Senate floor working, as he will, for the remainder of his term. But it is a loss. It is a loss to the Senate that he is leaving, and it is a sad day on both sides of the aisle when Dick Lugar won't be part of the Senate in person.

Tribute to Senator Mark Kirk

I would like to speak about another Republican Senator while I have the floor: my colleague, Mark Kirk. Some of you have seen the video.

Mark had a stroke in January. He wrote about it in this morning's Chicago Tribune. He is 52 years of age, the picture of health, a Navy Reserve officer and a U.S. Senator from Illinois, actively engaged in our State, going back and forth, county to county, city to city. We work together on so many things. Then on that fateful day he was stricken, and with this stroke he suffered some very serious damage.

I was a little bit disturbed when his physician/surgeon came out and said, ``Well, here is what we can expect.'' And I am not going to go through the graphic details, but they were all sobering to think that he would be limited in any way by the stroke. I was upset because I thought: He doesn't know Mark Kirk. That isn't going to happen. Mark is going to fight back. He is going to be back, and he is going to defy the odds in terms of stroke victims.

Yesterday he released a video. It is inspiring. I hope everyone gets a chance to see it--I am sure it is readily available--showing him going through rehab, showing the efforts he is making to come back to the Senate. Mark called me earlier this week. We talked on the phone a couple of times since the stroke. He has been actively engaged mentally in everything we have done since the stroke occurred. But every day he tells me that he spends time on a treadmill, miles and miles walking on a treadmill so he will be able to come back. I told him we are on a different treadmill here and I am sure he wants to get back on it with us in the Senate.

He will be back. He said something I think we all ought to remember. He said he asked the staff to count the steps from where he would park outside the Senate Chamber up to the Senate Chamber. They counted the steps and they told him 45 steps and he would be back in the Senate. He said the day is going to come, and I am sure it will be soon, when he will walk those steps, and there will be many, myself included, from both sides of the aisle, cheering his return to the Senate. For Mark, his family, his doctors, his medical staff, and all: Thank you for this battle. Thank you for your efforts on behalf of our State. We look forward to your early return.

Mark and I have a joint town meeting, Republican and Democratic, every Thursday morning. The people sit there politely as we discuss issues and love it when we disagree because we do it without getting angry with one another. He will be back soon, not only at those meetings but also covering the State of Illinois as an effective, engaged Senator.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time from 2 p.m. until 5 p.m. be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, and that all quorum calls in that period also be equally divided.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Delaware for speaking to some critical issues. It is a shame we are not in a position where we can offer the Senator's amendments, but, as he knows and as he spoke to in his speech, the decision yesterday by the Republicans to go into a filibuster--which is what we are having on the floor and which is why there are so few people and nothing really happening aside from some really outstanding speeches--is a decision they have made time and again.

This was rarely used in the history of the Senate--the filibuster. Oh, ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington''--some people will remember that movie, and in the 1960s during the civil rights debate, they may remember that too. Sometimes it was used during the Vietnam war, maybe. But it has rarely been used. Now it has become so routine, so commonplace, that day after weary day people who subscribe to C SPAN on their cable channels are calling in to the cable providers and asking for their money back because nothing is happening on the floor of the Senate. And whose fault is that? It is our fault. It is our fault. When an issue such as this--the one that brought on this filibuster--is explained to the American people, they shake their heads and ask: What are you doing in Washington?

Well, here is what this is all about. On July 1, the interest rate on student loans through the Federal Government doubles. It goes from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent unless we do something. So we have a bill we brought to the floor yesterday. We said: Let's bring this bill in, debate it, vote on it, and let's change the law so that we can protect these students and families. Let's freeze that increase and keep it at the original 3.4 percent. Now, what is that worth? For someone borrowing $20,000 over the course of their college education, it is worth $4,000. If that is your son or daughter and you happened to cosign with them, $4,000 is nothing to sneeze at.

The Pew Foundation did a survey of working families across America, I say to the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Vermont, and they asked a very basic question of the working-family population. The question was how many of them could come up with $2,000 in 30 days--2,000 bucks. Maybe there was an emergency in their home--a water pipe just broke or the furnace broke down. My daughter just went to the hospital. But how many could come up with $2,000 was the question, and only half responded that they could. Half of the working families in America have access to $2,000. So what does $4,000 or more in interest being paid mean? For a Senator, not much. For an average working person, a lot.

Now, what happened yesterday? We called this bill and said: Let's move it, let's start debating it, and let's get it done before July 1. We all agree we should. President Obama and even Governor Romney said we should get this done. But not a single Republican Senator would vote with us--not one. Not one Senator would join us to bring the bill to the floor. That is why we sit here literally wasting our time and the time of taxpayers over an issue we should not even have to debate.

I don't know about the Presiding Officer, but I had to borrow some money to go to school, and I borrowed it from the Federal Government. It was called the National Defense Education Act. They created it back in the late 1950s, early 1960s, because we were scared to death of the Russians and sputnik. We thought, they can take over the world. They have the bomb, and now they are the first in space with that little basketball-sized satellite. So we thought it was time for America to get up and get moving, and we created, for the first time in our history, student loans available to nonveterans. We gave help to veterans in the GI bill after World War II, but these were for nonveterans. I got one. I signed up for it.

When I graduated from law school in the late 1960s, they added up all the money I had borrowed--college and law school--from the Federal Government.

I remember the day I brought the letter home to my wife, baby in arms and another one on the way, and said: My student loans have all been added up.

She said: How much?

I said: It is $8,500.

She said: We will never be able to pay that back.

And I said: I know, but we have to try. We have a year before the first payment is due.

My first job out of law school paid $15,000 a year, to put things in perspective.

Now look what students are faced with today. They are lucky to get out with an average indebtedness of $24,000--very lucky. For a lot of students, that isn't even possible. They get more deeply in debt as they go through school. They say: Well, you told me to finish my education so I would have a better life and realize my dream. I can't quit now. I have to borrow some more money and finish next year and the following year or I have wasted it all. If I am a college dropout, what do I have to show for it--no diploma, just the debt.

So we asked families across Illinois to get in touch with us and tell us about student debt as they see it in their lives. We know nationally that student debt in October of 2010, for the first time in history, surpassed credit card debt. People owe more money on student loans than on their credit cards, and it is growing--dramatically growing. When you meet these families, it is sometimes a sobering moment.

I was at a college in Chicago last week and met a student, a lovely young lady majoring in art, which my daughter majored in, so I have no problems with that because she is a great

artist and doing well, thank goodness. This young lady said: I am about to get my bachelor's degree with a major in art, and my student indebtedness at this moment is $80,000. But I am going on for a master's. I think it will be about another $60,000 of debt.

I think she was 25 years old. Think about that. Think about what she has just done to herself. First, she did what she was told to do--to get a college degree. Then she got so deeply into debt that she is going to come to realize--sadly come to realize--it is going to influence so many decisions in her life. Will she ever be able to buy a car, get married, buy a home, have children? Each one of those decisions along the way is going to be based on her student loan indebtedness.

So is it right for us to keep the interest rate low on student loans? Of course. Why do we want to make it any worse for her or anyone else who borrows money after July 1? We should be doing this, and we shouldn't be squabbling over it. We were sent here to solve these problems, not to go into filibusters--one more Republican filibuster. I don't want to get partisan about it, but they didn't provide a single vote--not one--to help us move to this issue.

So on our Web site we asked families to tell us their stories. I just spoke about a young student, but many of these students have parents and grandparents who sign up to help them. They say: Yes, we will cosign the note because we want our granddaughter or our daughter to finish school; let me help.

About 6 weeks ago, the New York Times reported a story in which a woman had her Social Security check garnished for student loans. It wasn't a loan she took out, it was a loan she guaranteed for her granddaughter. Her granddaughter defaulted, and they went after grandma. She now receives a smaller Social Security check because of the student loan and her goodness in helping her granddaughter. That is the reality of this debt. It trickles through entire families--families with guaranteed loans that, when they go into default, mom and dad keep working well past what they thought was their retirement age.

I have to say, the more I watch this, the more I am concerned about this student debt bomb that could go off, if it hasn't already. I worry about what it will do to these families and to the reputation of a college degree. There are people who are skeptical today about mortgages. They wonder, why would I take out a mortgage on a home if the value of the home is going to plummet? That skepticism doesn't help us build hope in communities and neighborhoods. What if we reach that level of skepticism when it comes to higher education? So this is part of the conversation.

Let me tell my colleagues about some of the stories I have heard.

Dewaine Nelson from Rockford contacted our office. Dewaine's daughter went to a private college costing about $30,000 a year. She has been a file clerk for 11 years since graduating. He wanted to help her, but he lost his job in 2001. He says:

Once you fall on hard times you can never get a good job in

the finance or insurance industry. Your credit is no good.

Bad credit means no good job.

Then he decided to go back to school to pursue his MBA in marketing. Still, with no decent pay, he couldn't repay his student loan. So he went back to school so he could defer the student loan again. He still doesn't have a job that pays enough for him to pay off his loan balance and help his daughter pay her balance.

So here we have mom and dad still with student debt and struggling to find a decent job.

Sharon Sikes from Chicago wrote about her son. She lost her job shortly before her son started college. Each semester his tuition kept going up. This is something we hear about very often. Her son's degree is in journalism and mass communication--not a field where you can find a lot of jobs these days. His loan payments are about to kick in, and he works as a cook in an Irish pub. He makes enough for his basic expenses--food and keeping his bicycle running so he can go back and forth to work. She said she honestly doesn't know what he is going to do when the student loan payments kick in. His debt from the State university tuition has left the family with more than $60,000 in loans, and he is cooking in an Irish pub.

Sharon says she is in her sixties and nobody is lining up to give her a job. She had hoped to be able to help her son pay his loans off sooner. She says:

He deserves a chance to follow his passion without being

saddled with years of debt.

Jill Shakely from Rockford started out at Rock Valley Community College, which I think is a smart decision--to go to a community college if you are not sure or at least you want an affordable first year or two of college. She started out at Rock Valley, and when she graduated in 2002, she decided she wanted to continue her education and pursue a 4-year degree. She didn't have any support from her family. They couldn't help her pay for it. So she took out students loans. The tuition was $26,000 a year, and it added up quickly. She doesn't own a home and makes a salary some would say is pretty small. She spends a large percentage of her salary on her loans. She would like to go back to school but can't take on any more debt. She is worried about how it will affect her future. She said that keeping interest rates low will help students like her.

Who wants to argue against this situation? Who believes we ought to raise the cost of student loans? Who thinks that is in the best interest of this country in terms of encouraging young people to go to school and getting them out of school without a mountain of debt which crushes them?

That is what this debate is all about. The fact that we couldn't get one single vote from the other side of the aisle--not one--to move to this bill to even debate it is a sad commentary.

This Senate Chamber is supposed to be about deliberation, amendment, and debate. At the end of the day we put our fate in the hands of those gathered here and have a vote, up or down, win or lose. I know the Presiding Officer has had some that have won and some that have lost and so have I. But that is what it is supposed to be all about. Instead, my voice echoes through an empty Chamber. The people who forced the filibuster and stopped us from taking up the student loans are gone. Not a one of them is here.

Last night, I was one of the last speakers, and I looked over there to an empty side of the aisle and I said: Of all the people who objected to our going to the bill, not a single one of them is here. They are all out to dinner. That isn't right.

I know the Presiding Officer has been pushing for changes in the Senate rules. It would strike me that if someone wants to stop the consideration of a bill before the Senate, they ought to park their posterior in one of these chairs and be prepared to take on all comers to explain why. If they don't have the time or inclination to do it, then for goodness' sake don't start a filibuster. One of the rule changes we have talked about says that if it is that important to stop the business of the Senate--as we are doing now--they ought to at least have to stay on the floor of the Senate to defend their position. Is that too much to ask, that they don't go out to dinner and check in the next day to make certain that lunch is going to be served on time?

I think this issue gets to the heart of what our economy is facing, what families are facing, and what the Senate refuses to face. This Republican filibuster has stopped us from taking up a measure that would reduce the interest rate on student loans from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent. In my State of Illinois, 365,000 students will be affected if that interest rate goes up. It isn't fair to them. It isn't fair at all. It isn't fair to be stuck in the middle of a filibuster when we ought to be rolling up our sleeves and tackling this issue.

The House passed a bill on student loans. Just to give an idea of how there is a different approach to things, the House Republicans--with very little, if any, Democratic support--said: OK. We will lower the interest rate on student loans, and here is how we will pay for it. We will take money out of a preventive health care program. In other words, we will reduce childhood immunizations, and the money we save by not vaccinating children, we will use that to bring student loan interest rates down.

How about that for a Faustian choice? How about that for a deal with the devil? We will run the risk that children will get childhood diseases,

and we will take the savings from that and help the kids who are in college. Is that what it has come to now, your money or your life? That is the choice we have? That is all? I don't think so.

Why is it that the Tax Code in this country has become a sacred document? One would think that some people, instead of putting their hand on the Bible and swearing to uphold the Constitution, put their hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Tax Code as it stands, without a word being changed. I didn't. That Tax Code is a law written by men and women, some of great intellect and some bowing to special interests. Our job every year is to look at it and see if it makes sense.

The way we pay for the student loan interest rate to stay affordable is closing a loophole in the Tax Code used by accountants and lawyers to avoid paying taxes. They have made out pretty well under that provision for a while. But why should they have that for life? Are they now entitled to that? Is that an entitlement they get for life? I don't think so. I think it is a loophole we can close, save the money, and reduce student loans--not at the expense of children being immunized against whooping cough and measles. That is what it comes down to.

House Republicans seem to think that is a pretty good tradeoff. I don't. Let's at least debate it on the floor of the Senate instead of getting locked into a worthless filibuster again and again and again. That is where we are.

Many of us have gone to our official Web sites and invited people living in our States to send us their stories about student loans. I have read three of them here. I can tell you many more from those I witnessed just this last week going through my State, going from Chicago to Peoria to Decatur and all points in between. The stories just come crushing in one after the other, and they are reminders that what we do on the floor of the Senate makes a real difference in the lives of families across America.

I have said it before: I wouldn't be standing here today without student loans. The government loaned me the money, and somehow or another I paid it back. I didn't think I could, but I did, hoping the next generation could use that money to get their own student loans. It is part of the kind of trust we have, one generation helping another. So are we going to let these students down? Are we going to let this filibuster be the end of the conversation?

I have listened to the Republican leader come to the floor day after day and say: Oh, this is just a political stunt. Where is the stunt? What it comes down to is we want to bring the bill to the floor and open it to an amendment process.

To my friends on the Republican side, give us your best ideas. Put them in amendment form. Bring them to the floor. Let's debate them. Let's vote. We will do the same. Who knows, we may find some common bipartisan agreement and get this problem solved. We will not get it solved stuck in another filibuster, which is where we are right now, wasting the time of the Senate and the time of the taxpayers and endangering a lot of families across America who desperately need our help.

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

Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be permitted to proceed as in morning business.

Mr. President, later I want to speak for a few minutes about our colleague Senator Lugar.

First, I want to comment about what the Senator from Wyoming was saying on the health bill.

Very quickly, I could not disagree more with the Senator from Wyoming in his comments with respect to the health care bill. This morning we had a meeting with Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who was outlining to us all of the gains we are making with respect to health care in America as a result of the legislation.

What is interesting is that our colleagues who keep coming to the floor and saying repeal the health care bill never offer alternatives to Americans. I hope Americans who are buying into this notion that somehow the health care bill doesn't serve them because they are angry about one thing or another will look at what the health care bill does because, in point of fact, if you were to repeal the health care bill, and they have no alternative to replace it, here are some of the things that happen: One, you immediately add $2 trillion to the deficit of our Nation. Bang, done deal. That goes right away on that. The health care bill is judged by the CBO to reduce the deficit. It has specific savings in it. If you get rid of it, those savings go away and, bang, the deficit goes up.

No. 2, 47 million to 50-some million Americans who have no health care or didn't have it before the bill will return to the status of having no health care.

Now, does everybody in America think it is better to have 50-some million Americans walking around without health care who, when they walk into a hospital--perhaps they get hit by a car or have an accident and go to a hospital--receive care that everybody is paying for but they are paying for it in the most inefficient way possible? The burden is being paid for by people who have the health care. It goes into their premiums. It isn't shared by people buying their insurance and sharing the risk of getting sick. So all of a sudden, if you get rid of the health care bill, we return America to the days when millions of Americans had no care. And guess what happens when they have no care. They jam the emergency rooms because that is the only place to get the care. The emergency room becomes the place of primary care. But my colleagues do not answer that question. They never deal with reality. They deal with politics and ideology and they throw a lot of baloney at people.

The fact is, if we were to get rid of the health care bill, all those people who used to get sick and would get a letter from their insurance company saying: Gee, sorry to hear you have terminal cancer, but you are not covered--and that is what happened all the time in America-- that would start happening again. People were thrown off their policies that they had been paying for for years, and all of a sudden they had no coverage. But they do not address that.

There is another issue: preexisting conditions. Again and again and again, people would be denied the ability to buy health care coverage because they had a preexisting condition of some kind. So if 10 years ago someone had a cancer, even if they were cured of their cancer, the insurance company could either refuse them or charge them a higher set of premiums. People were denied coverage--they just didn't get it. Women who were pregnant and were applying for insurance heard: Oh, sorry, that is a preexisting condition. You are pregnant. We are not going to cover that.

So in America we drove people into poverty for a long period of time. They had to sell their homes or sell down everything they had to become impoverished in order to get to a point where they could get some help.

What about kids in school today? Under the health care bill, up until the age of 26, a child can now be covered by their parents' program. It is not free, it has to be paid for, but they can be covered by it. That would be eliminated.

So all of a sudden we would have a whole bunch of people who would be automatically eliminated and going out fighting to get insurance in the marketplace.

Let me tell you what else happens. There are a whole bunch of reforms to the health care system that our friends never talk about. Today Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, laid out for us the enormous gains we are making in Medicare fraud. We are beginning to make huge savings for people. The average senior is now saving over $4,000 on their health care bills because of what has been put in place by the health care bill. There are a whole series of things. I don't have them all here at my disposal now because I wasn't planning to talk about this when I came to the floor, but there are a series of reforms about how we pay hospitals, bundling the payments to a hospital, requiring greater accountability from hospitals. I mean, don't we want greater accountability from hospitals? That will vanish. That will be gone if we do away with the health care bill.

We also have greater coordination of care for patients from the beginning of their private care through their admissions and into their discharges. What happens today is there is no coordination of that care, and so a lot of people are discharged, and the readmission rate is staggering because there isn't the coordination between their postoperative, postsurgery care and their

primary physicians and the hospitals. Now there are a number of different pilot projects in place to help coordinate that.

Similarly, we are coordinating the care of what are called dual eligibles--the people who are eligible for Medicare but also eligible for Medicaid. That care has not been well coordinated, so we have huge duplication, enormous costs we don't need, and the result is a waste of money. All of that is being eliminated and/or reduced to a significant level.

There are so many other examples. Let me cite another one. The Senator talked about wanting to take money out of preventive medicine. Preventive medicine? We are told by the doctors, who are the experts and who deal with diabetes, that if we had early screening, which comes by having health care coverage, we could eliminate an enormous amount-- maybe as much as $100 billion--of surgery costs and dialysis costs as a result of people not discovering they have this ailment until it is too late for treatment by the more accessible and easier means. There are some oral medications and other things people can take to deal with this disease, but they have to get there at the early stage. If they get there too late, they wind up having to do amputations of limbs or the patient winds up on dialysis, all of which is far more expensive.

There are also pilot projects in the health care bill for helping people receive care at home and not be forced into a higher priced care environment, such as a nursing home or a longer term care kind of environment. This allows them to receive care at home and be in the dignity of their own home and independent and, obviously, with much less cost. All of those things would be wiped out by this notion that we are just going to get rid of this bill.

What this whole notion is built on is the early negative branding-- very effective negative branding--that took place and was wrapped around the so-called death panels and the other things, none of which are in this legislation. It is not in it. So this is political. That is why they call it ObamaCare, not health care. They call it ObamaCare to make it a pejorative and to do their best to try to wrap it up in the negativity of politics in our country today. And it is a tragedy because it doesn't do justice to the kind of thinking that ought to go into and did go into this bill in terms of how we do things that really create competition in the marketplace and allow people to get better health care.

What is astonishing is that we spend something like, I think, $15,000 per patient in America. I think that is the average cost. There are countries spending half of that and a lot of countries spending around $11,000 a patient that, I am sad to say, are getting better health outcomes than we get in the United States of America. The United States of America is not No. 1 in health outcomes for the money we are spending in the system, and there are a whole lot of reasons for that, but that is part of why this reform is so critical to our country.

I could say a lot more about this, but I am not going to say it now. Every time we hear from people who are just talking now about how we have to get rid of the health care bill, we have to stand and make it clear to people why this bill is good. A lot of Americans have not heard enough about how this legislation works for them, works for the country, and will improve our system. Is it the cure-all--no pun intended--of the health care system? No. I don't pretend it is. We will have to do more. We will have to tweak it. But it is a beginning step, with critical components that take 4 and 5 and 6 years to put into place so that we can get the full measure of their impact.

I will say this. We have it in Massachusetts. We have it now, and businesses are not complaining. In fact, we have one of the best economies of any State in the country. I think our unemployment rate is now down around 4.9, 5 percent, somewhere in that vicinity. So we have this program. We have had it for a few years now, and 98.6 percent of the people in our State are covered. It has been mandatory since the beginning, and it is working. It is beginning to bring down costs in the individual marketplace. The premiums have gone down by something like 45, 50 percent.

So I think we have to look at facts, as we do on a whole lot of issues here facing this country today, rather than continuing this silly talking past each other, completely contrived, political, ideological debate that is calculated to win power and not calculated necessarily to serve the best interests of our Nation. I hope we are going to engage on this over these next months, and I look forward to defending this health care bill because I think the bill is good for America. I think this bill, while it obviously needs some refinement, some changes, and some tweaking here and there, has accomplished an enormous amount already and is on track to accomplish an enormous amount going forward.

I think the administration has a much better story to tell about it than has been told, and I am glad the President has said he looks forward to going out and talking to the country about it because I believe that as the country learns more about it, in fact, they will say: Wow, that makes sense; that seems like a pretty sensible thing to do.

For our opponents who want to just get rid of the legislation, they have an absolute obligation to put the full deal on the table about what they are going to do in return, and not just Medicare, with the Ryan proposal--which makes it more expensive for seniors and undoes Medicare as we know it, not just that part of it--but the whole of it. How are they going to cover the uninsured? What will they do to take care of all those medical institutions that are struggling to teach doctors for the future? How are they going to hold those folks in a way that continues medical education in our country and so forth? They owe it to the Nation to answer those questions.

Mr. President, that concludes the portion of my remarks I wanted to make in response to the Senator from Wyoming.

Tribute to Senator Richard Lugar

Mr. President, I wish to take a few moments to share a few thoughts, not about the results of the election last night in Indiana per se, but I do wish to talk about the consequences for the Senate of the loss of Senator Lugar as of next year and particularly for the Foreign Relations Committee.

It is no secret that Dick Lugar's loss last night is going to be particularly felt by all of us who have had the privilege of working with him on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, whether he was the chairman of the committee--and I served under him when he was chairman--or whether as a member of the committee and the ranking member, as he is now and as I am now privileged to serve with him.

Whether we agreed with him or not, whether he had the gavel or he didn't have the gavel, Dick Lugar had an approach to the Senate and to governing that was always the same: He was serious, he was thoughtful, and he refused to allow this march to an orthodoxy about ideology and partisan politics to get in the way of what he thought was the responsibility of a Senator and, indeed, the need of the country to have people come together and find the common ground. He dug deeply into some of foreign policy's most vexing issues, and his expertise on complicated issues that were honed over 36 years really can't be replicated. That is something we are going to lose--the institutional experience, the judgment, and the wisdom of the approach on some of those issues, such as the constitutional questions he would call into account when no one else would, the question of not being stampeded by popular opinion with respect to the use of force in one instance or another. All of those are essential to making this institution live up to its full capacity.

Already since last night's news, we have been hearing again and again on some of the news shows and elsewhere about the work of the Senator from Indiana on nuclear nonproliferation. It is no secret his Nunn- Lugar efforts have become almost shorthand for bipartisanship in foreign policy, and they should be recognized. But I want to emphasize here and now that is not all Senator Lugar contributed to this field of foreign policy. He is a leading expert on some of the urgent issues that are off the beaten path, from food security and the eradication of hunger worldwide, to his work with Joe Biden and then with me, I am privileged to say, to change our relationship with

Pakistan, helping prevent their economy from unraveling and encouraging them to cooperate with interests vital to America--indeed, to the stability of that region--and to establishing what he called a ``deeper, broader, long-term strategic engagement'' with Pakistan.

I am privileged to say, for me, the personal journey with Dick Lugar began before that, and I think it epitomizes who he is and why he will be missed. It has nothing to do with ideology.

Back in 1980, shortly after I came here--I was elected in 1984, and I started on the Foreign Relations Committee in 1985. Right away, we began to work together on the issue of the Philippines, free and fair elections in the Philippines. I had traveled over there a number of times as a freshman Senator. I had met with Ferdinand Marcos. I was concerned about the torture taking place and the political prisoners and other violations of rights. Yet we were sort of aiding them notwithstanding our values and our standards.

Well, Dick Lugar joined with me in that effort. He didn't have any reason to join with a freshly minted Senator, wet behind the ears, but he did. Together we sort of became a team that started to focus on the Philippines to figure out how we could hold Marcos accountable. He was serious and he was fair-minded, and I saw firsthand during our trip to the Philippines which we made at the time of the election--after we had done a whole lot of groundwork to set up an accountability system for that election--that he had a very personal and special understanding of what the United States meant to the rest of the world with respect to our values. That cause animated this man whom we all know is dignified and reserved and humble but who proudly came back and recounted with some animation to President Reagan the difference that the United States of America makes when it gives voice to people's aspirations for freedom--and, in this case particularly, the people of the Philippines.

The fact is it was that discussion with Ronald Reagan and the results that came out of the accountability in that election that forced Ferdinand Marcos to leave and we saw Cory Aquino come to power and the Philippines move back into genuine democracy.

I saw the same commitment with Senator Lugar a number of times over the years, but never more so than 2 years ago when we worked together on the New START treaty. His wisdom and his patience was invaluable in laying out the case, particularly in building support across the aisle so we could find the path to 71 votes.

I said then, and I say it again today, given the bitter, divisive, partisan, continual political squabbling that seems to dominate life in the city today, 71 votes is probably the equivalent of the 98 votes we used to get on those kinds of efforts. So I am grateful to him for his willingness to work to do that. He worked to give Members more time to work through problems, to find a way to solve individual objections. It reminded me of the way you actually work in what is now sometimes, unfortunately, sarcastically referred to as the world's greatest deliberative body. He deliberated and he helped us deliberate.

I thought it was one of the finer and prouder moments of the Senate in recent years.

I am confident Dick Lugar's record in our committee is going to be one of those which is remembered for a long time. Sadly, last night it was remembered in the context of Senator Fulbright, who also came to lose a primary in the end and paid a high price for his concern about global affairs and his involvement with those issues. But I think he is also remembered significantly for the enormous legacy he built about American foreign policy and how to make our country stronger.

Dick Lugar does that, and I think he has made it clear--there is no doubt in the mind of anybody on our side of the aisle--that Dick Lugar is a conservative and his votes through the years have shown that. He is a proud Republican.

But I think probably because he served as a mayor before he came here, he applied what we call the LaGuardia rule to foreign policy-- which is the rule that Theodore LaGuardia applied to doing things in New York. It didn't matter whether you were a Republican or Democrat as long as the streets got cleaned and the potholes got filled, and they didn't have any labels on them. That is pretty much the way foreign policies ought to be.

It used to be under Arthur Vandenberg that we said that politics ends at the water's edge, and we do what is in the best interests of our country. Only in the last years in the Senate have I seen a complete diversion from that where, unfortunately--as has been true on both sides--politics has entered into choices people have made with respect to major issues of conflict, potential war and peace, and interests of the security of our country.

So about 4 years ago this time, Dick Lugar received the Paul Douglas Award just off the Senate floor over in the Mansfield Room, and he summed up his approach to the Senate. I think after last night it is important for all of our colleagues to be mindful of his words and to think about them as we go forward in these next 6, 7, 8 months.

Dick argued that bipartisanship isn't an end to itself, and it is sometimes mistaken for centrism and compromise when, in fact, it is the way he called being a constructive public servant. It is the way a constructive public servant approaches his or her job--with self- reflection, discipline, and faith in the goodwill of others.

He said:

Particularly destructive is the misperception in some

quarters that governing with one vote more than 50 percent is

just as good or better than government with 60 or 70 percent

support. The problem with this thinking is that whatever is

won today through division is usually lost tomorrow. The

relationships that are destroyed and the ill will that is

created make subsequent achievements that much more

difficult. A 51 percent mentality deepens cynicisms, sharpens

political vendettas, and depletes the national reserve of

good will that is critical to our survival in hard times.

That is actually about as fundamentally, philosophically, as conservative as one could ask for. I think every one of us who have seen the difficulty of the last few years of our politics, who have been frustrated by the sheer inability of the institution to work, would agree there is nothing liberal or conservative or moderate about what Dick said. It is just common sense about how human nature works, about how people work. It seems to me we would do well to get back in touch.

I often hear people talk about how we need to change the rules here in order to get something done. Actually, we don't. These are the same rules we operated with when Everett Dirksen was here, when Bob Dole was leader, George Mitchell was leader. But we got things done.

In the 1990s, we balanced the budget of our Nation four times in a row without a constitutional amendment. It didn't take a piece of paper to tell us to do it or new words written in the Constitution. It took the common sense and courage of people on the floor of the Senate to do what was right. We don't have to change the rules. We have to change the thinking--or change the people who don't want to do it.

But every great moment in this great institution, when people look back at the history with pride and point to the Missouri Compromise or point to Henry Clay or Daniel Webster or all these great Senators--or Ted Kennedy more recently and others on the other side of the aisle-- when they do that, they are talking about people who operated by the same rules but found the common ground because they had the intelligence and willpower to put the country and its interests ahead of everything else.

So that is what Dick Lugar's loss last night means to us. I don't know who will replace him. We certainly know the cross-currents of some of the campaign, and we certainly know what Senator Lugar himself chose to say last night about his opponent's quest for more partisanship, not less.

So the alarm bells have been sounded. My prayer is that this election year is going to help purge this country of this incredible waste of opportunity that we are living through.

This Congress isn't over. For those of us who were here and remember 1996, it bears repeating that even in Presidential years the Congress can actually defy conventional wisdom and get some things done. That is why I know that Dick Lugar is going to finish out his

sixth term in the Senate with the same determination and effectiveness that has marked every year of his service. He is going to have a lot more contributions to this institution that he reveres and that respects him so enormously.

Madam President, I move that the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 2343, and I ask unanimous consent that the time until 2 p.m. be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first 30 minutes and the majority controlling the second 30 minutes.

Madam President, the clerk just read the matter before the Senate, which is to prevent the interest rate on loans students receive to go to school--the money they borrow--from doubling from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. That is the pending matter before the Senate.

Yesterday the Republicans continued to filibuster our plan to prevent that from happening. We do not want the rates to double. We don't want them to go up at all. There are 30,000 people in Nevada who are depending on our doing something to freeze those rates. But what is worse, in my estimation--and I think that of the American people--is that Republicans seem proud of blocking this legislation. Not a single Republican voted to allow the debate to go forward.

This isn't an issue of saying: OK, if I vote for this, this will be the legislation. They would not even let us go forward to debate it. They have said they like the bill, except they do not like the way it is paid for. Fine. Let's get on the bill and offer amendments to pay for it. But no--every single Republican voted no. Every single Republican said: We are not going to allow a debate.

The American people certainly shouldn't be surprised because this has been going on for 3 years, almost 4 years. Everything is a fight. They are blocking legislation that would allow us to stop the increase of the rate on student loans. That is wrong. And the person who signed this legislation into law, making this interest rate such as it is, was President Bush. So I hope Republicans will come to their senses and work with us to accomplish this, but I am not holding my breath because, as I indicated, they seem proud they have stopped another piece of legislation altogether.

Now, what does this mean, that they are hanging together to stop legislation, to stop progress? Well, as we work to create jobs and make college affordable, our colleagues--my Republican friends on the other side of the aisle--operate under a different set of priorities.

In the House, for example, there are efforts now underway to undo a hard-fought agreement of last August to cut more than $2 trillion from the deficit over the next decade. That agreement came after threats by the tea party-

driven House--and now 40 percent of the people over here are tea party advocates--to shut down the government. And they wanted to do that in a couple of different ways: not allowing us to continue funding for government programs, and then, for the first time ever, there was a knockdown, drag-out fight over weeks and weeks as to whether we should increase the debt ceiling in this country. During President Reagan's time in running the country, this had been done dozens of times. But, no, these folks will do nothing without a big fight. As a result of that, we came to an agreement that was bipartisan. Now, some say the agreement was forced upon the Republicans, but they voted for it, an agreement to reduce the deficit, and the deficit we couldn't reduce before August of last year. We said: OK, fine, if we don't do something about it this year, then there will be automatic cuts called sequestration.

Now the House is doing everything they can to walk away from the agreement we made and the bipartisan vote we took. They are doing everything they can. They have a Republican budget, the so-called Ryan budget. And I say ``so-called'' because they are trying to make a reconciliation bill, but they can't do it because they are not following the law to do that. So they not only have reneged on this bicameral, bipartisan agreement to reduce spending, but they have fundamentally skewed priorities because they hand out even more tax breaks to multimillionaires and shield corporate defense contractors, all at the expense of hard-working, middle-class families, the elderly, and those who can least afford it. That is what they are doing in the House. They are going to have a so-called rule today and vote on it shortly thereafter. They would slash investments to strengthen our economy and just shred our social safety nets.

I want to quote from President Dwight Eisenhower. And let me remind everybody that he was a Republican. He was a tremendous President, and each day that goes by, people are looking at him more favorably. Here is what he said:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every

rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those

who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not

clothed.

This isn't some leftwing, socialistic-leaning liberal. That was Dwight Eisenhower--a five-star general who led the invasion of Normandy and did many other things, such as starting the National Highway System. Let me repeat what he said:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every

rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those

who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not

clothed.

I didn't make that up. That is what he said. In a balanced world--one where a strong national defense and a strong social safety net are both valuable pillars of a successful society--that need not necessarily be true, is what President Eisenhower said. But the Republican plan would enshrine into law a set of unbalanced priorities and ensure the kind of terrible math General Eisenhower envisioned.

Unlike defense contractors and billionaires, ordinary Americans don't have high-priced lobbyists to protect them. That is our job. That is our job. There is not a person on this side of the aisle who doesn't believe it is good that we have wealthy people in America. We have Senators here, Democrats, who are wealthy--certainly not all Democrats, but there are some. We don't look down on people who are rich, but we do have to look out for people who are in need of our help. Most of these rich people have all kinds of lobbyists here to help them, but the people in Henderson, Ely, and Winnemucca, NV, don't have people here to help them. They have us. So Republicans are going after those who can't fight back--hard-working Americans and struggling families.

Let's review a little bit of history again. The sequester isn't the first bipartisan agreement to reduce the deficit. When I became the Democratic leader, I thought--having served on the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the House of Representatives and being very interested in America's involvement in foreign affairs, I took a trip to Central and South America. That was so necessary. And I took Democratic and Republican Senators with me. I was very careful in picking two Senators whom I wanted on that trip. One was Judd Gregg, a very fine Senator from New Hampshire, who has retired, I am sorry to say. I recommended that Senator Gregg be a part of President Obama's initial Cabinet. He agreed to take the job, but something came up, and he didn't do it. But he is a wonderful man. I also wanted Kent Conrad on that trip. And I don't know which one knows more about the inner workings of the finances of this country, Gregg or Conrad, but they are both good, and I wanted them to go together, and they did.

Senators Gregg and Conrad spent hours and hours seated in that airplane working on doing something about the deficit. They both believed it needed some really difficult, hard work, and they decided to do what the base-closing commission did; that is, prepare legislation and give it to a commission that would send it back to us. There would be no amendments, no filibuster, just an up-or-down vote. That was their legislation. They wrote that and brought it to the floor.

As the leader, I decided I would move to proceed to it, and so I did move to proceed to it, thinking it should be a slam dunk. But seven Republicans, who had cosponsored the legislation, voted against it. I couldn't bring it to the floor. That was where Bowles-Simpson came from, as a result of the Republicans walking away from their own efforts to reduce the deficit.

Now, Bowles-Simpson was very difficult. There were 18 members, and they had to get 14 of the 18 to approve it. That didn't work. They couldn't get that many people to vote for it.

In the meantime, President Obama was working as hard as he could with the lead spokesman of the Republicans, the Speaker of the House, John Boehner. John Boehner said: I didn't get elected to do small things, I want to do big things. And President Obama, to his detriment with his base, said: I will do something to change Social Security and Medicare. And all these things he agreed to do publicly. But the Republicans-- John Boehner--could never go against Grover Norquist. The Republicans shake in their boots. They will not do anything, even though the American people by a more than 70 percent majority say people making more than $1 million a year should contribute to what the problems are in this country. So that fell apart.

Then we had the Gang of 6 Senators--three Republicans, three Democrats--who had been on the Bowles-Simpson Commission, who said we should do something about this. They were in the press, they had press conferences, and this was going down the road and doing all kinds of great things. While that was going on, there was a decision made, and a law was passed to create a supercommittee, to which I appointed Senator Patty Murray of Washington to run. No one in the Senate, Democrat or Republican, has more respect than Patty Murray. She worked so hard with the other 11 Members of Congress to come up with something.

A few days before they were to arrive at a decision--and the Gang of 6 members are out here doing all this stuff all the time--I get a letter signed by virtually every Republican Senator saying: We are not going to raise revenue for anything. The supercommittee didn't work there. The Gang of 6 is gone. So we passed this last August to fund government for 2 years and to say if we don't arrive at another $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction during this year, it automatically kicks in at the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

So that is where we are, and the Republicans in the House are trying to change that. So that is what this little history lesson has been all about.

I don't like to sequester. I wish we didn't have to do it. It was a hard pill to swallow, but it was the right thing to do. If we are ever going to reduce the staggering deficit, we are going to have to make some hard decisions. So that is what this is all about. But that is the point: It is hard to do; therefore, we have to do it, to sequester-- which, in effect, would take almost $500 billion from domestic programs and almost $500 billion from defense programs. They were designed to be tough enough to force two sides to reach a balanced deal. It hasn't happened yet.

As I said earlier with General Eisenhower's statement, I didn't make that

up. That is what he said. My complaint about the Republicans being so unreasonable about everything is something where I am not a lone wolf crying in the wilderness. We have two long-time nonpartisan watchers of Congress, one from the American Enterprise Institute, which is a conservative think tank, another from Brookings Institute that wrote an article saying: It is the Republicans. Can't you see what they are doing? Here is one thing they said:

We have been studying Washington politics in Congress for

more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this

dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both

parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we

have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the

problem lies with the Republican party.

They further said:

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American

politics. It is ideologically extreme; of scornful

compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts,

evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its

political opposition.

What brave men to do that, to write these comments--which are true. I have been saying that I don't want to fight about everything. Republicans insist on balancing the budget on the backs of the middle class, seniors, students, single mothers, and those who could least afford it. That is what they are doing over there today. It is their refusal to compromise that leaves us facing the threat of sequester, and it is difficult but it is balanced.

Going back to the August budget agreement now in order to protect wealthy special interests is no solution. Neither is refighting the battles of last year. Democrats agree we must reduce our deficits and make hard choices, but we believe in a balanced approach that shares the pain as well as the responsibility.

Is the sequester the best way to achieve that balance? No. But Republicans refuse to consider a more reasonable approach--one, for example, that asks every American to pay his fair share while making difficult choices to reduce spending. Democrats will not agree to a one-sided solution that lets the superwealthy off the hook while forcing the middle class and those in greatest need to bear all the hardship.

Democrats believe we can protect Americans' access to health care, create jobs while investing in the future, and protect the poor and elderly. But we can't do it alone. It will take work and compromise, and so far Republicans have been unwilling to make a serious effort to achieve that result.

Republicans have rejected our balanced approach. Their one-sided solution to across-the-board cuts would take away from the many to give to the few.

Here is what the plan would do--not all of it, but here is what their plan would do. Remember, they are taking it up over there in the House today.

It would cut Medicaid benefits, increasing the number of uninsured children, parents, seniors--and that is in addition to people with disabilities--by hundreds of thousands, just eliminate them. It would also put seniors in nursing homes at risk. Some of them would have to move out of the nursing home, I guess.

It would punish Americans who receive tax credits to purchase health insurance when their financial circumstances change, causing 350,000 Americans to have no coverage. This would add to the tens of millions who already exist that way.

It would weaken Wall Street reforms, protecting big banks at the expense of consumers. Their legislation would once again target middle- class workers, food inspectors, air traffic controllers, Border Patrol agents, drug enforcement, and FBI agents. They would have to be laid off.

It would cut funding for preventive health care programs that fight chronic illnesses--such as heart disease, cancer, strokes, and diabetes--that cause 70 percent of the deaths in America. Preventive care would be reined in.

It would slash block grant funding in the United States to help 23 million children, seniors, and disabled Americans live independently and out of poverty.

No segment of the population is immune from this painful, absurd Republican plan--except maybe millionaires, billionaires, and wealthy corporations. The Republican proposal cuts Meals on Wheels and reduces food assistance for almost 2 million needy people. One of the Republican candidates running for President said President Obama is the Food Stamp President.

There are more poor people. Our economy has been in bad shape. People are struggling. The millionaires are doing fine. And in addition to what I have already mentioned, this thing that they are taking up in the House today cuts off almost 300,000 children from free school lunches at a time when one in five children lives in poverty.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said the Republican plan fails ``a basic moral test.'' This budget sets very clear priorities. The problem is what they are taking up in the House sets up the wrong priorities.

President Franklin Roosevelt said:

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened

the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be

cruel to be tough.

So Republicans would do well to remember our Nation is judged not only by the strength of its military, but also by the strength of its values, so says General Eisenhower and President Roosevelt.

Reservation of Leader Time

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

Mr. President, during the day I flipped on the TV that we have in

our offices and looked at it as often as I could. I was very impressed with my colleagues who came and talked about why it is so important that we not have an increase in the interest rate for student loans. I have been very happy with my Democratic colleagues who have come here and made such a profound case. But I listened also to what the Republicans had to say, and it is beyond my comprehension how they can come to the floor with a straight face and say what they have said. I have listened as my Republican colleagues have come to the Senate floor to blame Democrats for stalling legislation to keep college affordable for 7 million people throughout our great country. The claim is pretty rich considering that Republicans voted unanimously yesterday to filibuster this legislation. What is a filibuster? It is stopping us from going to the legislation.

Our bill would prevent 7 million students from paying $1,000 more on their loans. With college already unaffordable for far too many young people, Democrats believe we should be doing all we can to provide access to higher education. That is what these student loans are all about.

Republicans have repeatedly claimed they support efforts to support legislation to keep loans from doubling this summer, but they sure have a funny way of showing it with this endless filibuster. Today, Republicans have said that Democrats should negotiate a way out of this stalemate--again, a very strange reasoning. It is hard to negotiate without a partner.

Every Tuesday after we do our weekly caucus meetings, I go to what we call the Ohio Clock. One of the reporters said: Your Republican colleague Senator McConnell said you should negotiate on this issue with Speaker Boehner.

Now, how do you like that one, that I, the leader in the Senate, should go to the Republican House and start negotiating with them? That is a strange, strange way of doing business.

The Republicans claim their only objection to our legislation is how it is paid for--by closing a tax loophole that allows wealthy Americans to dodge taxes they already owe. That is what we feel should happen. We don't believe it is a tax increase--just that people should pay what they are supposed to pay. They now have a way of avoiding taxes. Rich accountants and lawyers avoid it by claiming they are going to pay dividends and not ordinary income. It is not fair to everyone else.

So if the Republicans object to this, fine. Democrats are willing to consider alternative offsets. In fact, we are even willing to vote on the House Republicans' own proposed offset. Now, that is a doozy, the offset from the Republicans coming from the House, which takes away money for preventive care for virtually everybody. The leading causes of death in America are diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. They want to take away preventive programs to stop heart disease. And, as we know, there are programs now--mammograms, for example--that stop people from having to get too far behind with the dread of breast cancer. That is their offset. We strongly oppose that alternative, but we are willing to vote on it. We are not running from it. And once their proposal to slash programs that save money and lives fails on a floor vote--and it will fail--we Democrats are still willing to consider other options to pay for this legislation. My Republican colleagues on the other hand have refused to consider alternative ways to pay for a bill they claim they support.

So I say to my Republican colleagues, let us bring this bill to the floor. If Republicans are so interested in negotiating a solution, they should be willing to take that first step. Once the bill is on the floor, we can debate it, we can amend it with an offset on which both sides can agree. But until Republicans end their obstructionist filibuster, there is no path forward.

So for my Republican colleagues to come down here and say ``we support this legislation,'' I repeat, what a strange way of supporting this legislation.

Mr. President, first, I ask unanimous consent that immediately following my remarks, Senator Udall of New Mexico be recognized to speak.

Mr. President, I have been listening to these speeches for the last couple of days--3 days, actually. If one listens to the other side of the aisle, one would think Republicans are against college education. I don't think there is a person in America who believes that. One would also believe we want to raise the interest rates from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. There shouldn't be anybody in America who believes that either. We really think that for 1 year the rates on subsidized Stafford loans ought to stay at the 3.4 percent, and maybe beyond that.

The real issue isn't the interest rate, and we can tell that from the speeches that have been given. The real issue is the cost of college. Are we doing anything about the cost of college? No. Does Congress have anything to do besides debate this particular issue? Evidently not. We are being called a do-nothing Congress, but evidently we don't have anything else to do. It could be possible to go to something else, but instead we have had one vote on this, and we still weren't given an option for this side of the aisle to have a vote on our idea. So now we are going to get to vote on that same issue from Tuesday once again-- maybe sometime this week or maybe not until next week. Instead, we are going to stay right on this issue so that if we stay at exactly this point in this issue, it will fail again and then that side can say: Oh, those Republicans just want to raise interest rates. Not true.

I hope the American people have noticed that any bill that goes directly from the President to Harry Reid to the floor doesn't pass. A bill that goes to committee, regardless of where the source is, has a chance of a bipartisan solution.

I am the ranking member on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and we have a user fee bill that passed nearly unanimously out of committee. We have the support of the stakeholders. We have the support of the companies. We have the support of Senate Republicans and Democrats. We have even talked to the House people about it. It is a bill that ought to make it through here pretty quickly, and I suspect it will. When it does, I bet we don't hear any comment about it because that would make us look like a do-something Congress, which is what we ought to be.

My colleagues can't tell me this is the only issue that needs attention. Yet we are going to spend a whole week on this issue when both sides agree it ought to be at 3.4 percent. What we are disagreeing on is how we will pay for it. I have to tell my colleagues that the real answer isn't either side's answer, but it could be worked out if it went to committee.

I was told this was going to be a bipartisan, jointly discussed issue just before we left for the recess. Then this bill was put forward, and no further conversation was allowed on it. Our committee was left out of it. And we bring it to the floor, and they said we will have a fair and open debate. Yes, look at this--there are two of us on the floor, and he is waiting to speak and he is not listening to what I am saying, and there isn't anybody else listening to what I am saying. Well, they might be back watching the television and picking it up there, and I certainly hope they are.

Where we get the real discussion is in the committees. Small groups of people who are intensely interested in the issues come to those committees and we work it out. Senator Harkin and I will get amendments a couple of days before the bill is to be marked up in committee to find out what everybody's ideas are for how it ought to be changed, and we sit down and we look through those and we say: Well, look at this pile here. They are all pretty much the same amendment, but there are people from both sides of the aisle who are interested in it, so why don't we just get those four people or those two people or those five people together and see if they can't work something out. It is really surprising because they usually can come up with a few changed words that solve the problem in which they are interested. That is the way we get things done. That is not the way we are operating on the floor.

I am on the Finance Committee. The Finance Committee is supposed to be handling taxes. Let's see. How many markups have we had this year? I don't think we have had a single markup. We have not looked at a specific bill and tried to come up with a solution in committee. Nothing has been assigned to that committee to finish.

Do we think we have any tax problems in this country? I think so. We keep talking about tax reform, but we are not doing anything on tax reform. Instead, we are talking about the interest rate on college student loans. It is extremely important to the 40 percent of the students who have a subsidized loan who are going to be protected by this. It is extremely important to them. We keep talking about college and the cost of college, but are we doing anything about the cost of college? No, we are not. That should be disappointing to America. We ought to be covering the big issues.

Our committee did a bunch of hearings, and I asked for those hearings to be on the cost of all college education. Instead, what we did was beat up on private for-profit colleges. We did hearing after hearing after hearing, and some of those were a little suspect because I know at least one of the witnesses called in to testify fell short in the market and was able to run down the colleges and thus make a lot of money off of his testimony. That is not how it is supposed to work. We could have looked at all college costs and found some ways to drive down the price of college, but we didn't do that. So now we are standing here and saying: Those darned Republicans aren't interested in the cost of college. How wrong can you be?

We started this debate on Monday, we voted on it on Tuesday, and then we decided we would reconsider the vote. That means the pollsters said that this is a pretty good issue for that side of the aisle, and if they can drag it out longer, they can do better. That is not what Congress is about. Congress is about solving problems.

There are two sides to this, and in the debate earlier, I said that if we would just allow a side-by-side so that you get a vote and we get a vote, we could get something done and move on. The Senator from Iowa, Mr. Harkin, said: I would let us do a side-by-side.

The next thing I know, the media is saying: You were offered a side- by-side but you did not take it. Not true. We were offered an opportunity maybe to put a substitute amendment in at a future time-- maybe. That is not the same. That is not the same as getting the same kind of a vote on the same kind of an issue. And that is always what has been done. We have always allowed side-by-sides. But not on this one. We would rather have the debate going on and try and convince America that both sides of the aisle are doing the wrong thing.

Not only are we giving the impression that we are a do-nothing Congress,

we are giving them the impression there is nothing for us to do. Let's see. We did not do a budget and we have not done any appropriations bills yet, and there are 12 appropriations bills that have to pass this body, and it takes at least a week for each appropriations bill. We have the authorization bill for defense which we debate each and every year, and about 100 other issues that need to come up here. But instead, we are not voting this week, except the earlier vote on this particular bill and another reconsideration vote. If you keep doing the same thing, you ought to expect the same kind of results.

One of the reasons we are voting against the bill that is on the floor is it has not been to committee so it has a lot of flaws in it. This is a poorly drafted bill. Here is kind of how it works: We have said that dentists and doctors and other professionals who are in small corporations--we are picking on small business here--are cheating on their taxes. They are not paying a payroll tax on their dividends.

There is a law against that, and the IRS can enforce that law, and does enforce that law. The examples that have been given are times that they actually caught people doing that and enforced it and won. But to do an audit on this, it would probably take a maximum of 30 minutes of computer time to find every small business corporation that might be cheating on their payroll taxes. But instead of doing that, we are going to use it as a pay-for, and we are saying it is only doctors and dentists and lawyers and accountants and other professionals who are doing this.

Well, there are a whole bunch of people who have small business corporations. Small business corporations are an important way to finance small businesses, and it is a little less complicated than the big corporations. But we usually do not pick on them specifically, and we usually do not separate them into separate groups. This one is just the professionals. It does not cover the rest of them.

I asked the question earlier. I said: Does that mean you are saving the others for a pay-for for something else? If there is a problem, we ought to solve the problem. But the problem can easily be solved by the IRS by doing the proper job of auditing, if that is the case. But these small business corporations are declaring that a lot of their profit is a dividend.

Here is an interesting part: We are not talking about the income tax they pay on that. They are having to pay the income tax. Unlike a big corporation, they are paying the income tax on their personal tax form the minute it is earned, not when it gets actually distributed.

Most of the small businesspeople have to pay the tax on it but leave it in the business so they can grow their business. I have been there. I have had a small business corporation. I know, while you would like to take the money out, if you want your business to succeed, you have to keep reinvesting and reinventing. That means you do not get to take the money out.

If we were being fair, we would say anybody who makes over $250,000 in dividends a year would include that as payroll tax. In other words, this is another Warren Buffett thing. How many millions do you think he makes in a year that come into him as dividends? If those did not count as dividends, he would have to pay a Medicare percentage tax on every dime of that. That is what we are talking about here with the professionals whom we are going to discriminate against in a bit. We are saying that anything that counts as a dividend for them, they are going to have to pay the Medicare tax on. Why just pick on the professionals? Why not pick on all small businesses?

Of course, small business is the job creator for the country, so we should not be picking on any of them. We should be making sure they are paying the taxes they owe, but that is not what we are doing. And we are saying Warren Buffett is a special case out there, even though we like to talk about a Warren Buffett tax every once in a while, but we are not going to in this case.

What we are talking about is the tax that would be for Social Security and Medicare. If they are not paying that, they ought to be paying it. But we are saying that is a good pay-for.

How many times do you think we can take the money that is supposed to go to Social Security and Medicare and spend it on something else and hope Social Security and Medicare continue to exist? That is what we are doing here. We are saying we are going to take the money from the doctors and the dentists and other professionals and we are going to make them pay a Social Security and Medicare tax, but we are not going to put that into Medicare, we are not going to put that into Social Security. Instead, we are going to give it to college students so they have a reduction in their loan.

It is kind of interesting. The Department of Education borrows their money at 2.8 percent, maximum, and they are loaning it out to college students at 3.4 percent for subsidized student loans and 6.8 percent for unsubsidized student loans. The law says that on July 1 it is supposed to go to 6.8 percent for both subsidized and unsubsidized student loans. Where do you think that profit goes? Well, we already spend that on other projects. That is why it needs to go to 6.8 percent, so we can pay for what we promised we would pay for. But if we freeze the interest rate on subsidized loans at 3.4 percent for one- year, we still have to pay for the other things. So what we are going to do is, we are going to take money that ought to go to Medicare, and we are going to give it to college students. So it is a dilemma.

We want to make sure the rate stays at 3.4 percent. But this body, debating back and forth, without getting any votes, is not going to resolve it. Even if we got to do an amendment or two--that is a big deal around here: to get to do an amendment or two on the floor--we still would not be able to resolve it because we would not have gotten the people from here and the people from there together in a small group to work out a solution. That is what the leader ought to be doing. That is why you send things to committee. But we are not doing that.

The other side has assured me that even though we are not putting this money into the Medicare trust fund, that the Medicare trust fund will still have all of its money. Let me tell you how that works. As an accountant in the Senate--and there are only two of us now. For 15 years, I was the only one. But there are two of us now. Here is how it works: When the money comes in, a bond is put in the Medicare drawer that says the Federal Government owes Medicare that amount of money. But we go ahead and spend the money.

They say: Well, this trust fund is still intact. No. It only has debt in it. It does not have money in it. I discovered that trying to get some money out of a trust fund once. They said: Well, you cannot get it out unless you put money in. What kind of bank account is that? What kind of a trust fund is that? That is what Social Security and Medicare are. They are a bunch of bonds in a drawer that the Federal Government says we are good for. The way we are spending, we may not be able to be good for that. People ought to be concerned about that.

So that is where we are. We are talking about taking the Medicare money and the Social Security money, putting bonds in a drawer, using the money, and saying all is well in the world and everything is paid for.

Our side has said, there is a health care slush fund and there are not any criteria set up on it. There are some broad categories it can be spent on, but there are no real criteria on it, and it has more than enough money to pay for this. The only person who gets to decide how that money is given out is the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and she has a lot of flexibility on that. There is a lot of money coming in--maybe at least $2 billion every year allocated to that, and there is already money in that fund, as it started with more. I think the estimate was actually $80 billion over the life of the health care bill. The President himself has helped himself to that when we did the payroll tax holiday extension. That is where the money came from for that.

So our side has said: Why don't we use that again? That is supposedly real money. But one thing that both sides are doing--they are saying: OK, we are going to freeze the interest rate for 1 year, but we are counting revenue that is supposed to come in for 10 years.

How many people in America can say: I am going to have this salary, and I might have it for 10 years, but I need

to spend it all this year. If I spend it all this year, how do I live the other 9 years of the time? That is what we are faced with every time we do a 10-year receipt of money in exchange for a 1-year spending project. And we are doing that more and more and more.

But, again, under our accounting system, that does not go down as the same kind of liability and debt situation that increases the debt ceiling or increases the debt for the country. So it is a very clever tactic to use, but it is not honest with the American people.

Yes, I am upset we are spending all this time on this reconsideration of a vote that we had. When you do not make any changes, you can expect the vote to come out exactly the same. But it allows us days to harangue each other, and that is the wrong way to do it.

I have asked the leader to pull this bill down, send it to committee, give them a limited amount of time to work on it, and see if they can come up with a solution that both sides would like and one that does not have a lot of loopholes in it.

Loopholes? Well, when we are talking about these small business corporations for doctors and dentists, et cetera, we said: If they make more than $250,000 a year and if the small business corporation has three stockholders or less. I do not think they are cheating to the degree that they say this money would come in. But if they are, I can see the wheels turning out there and people saying: Let's see, I have three people in my corporation. Oh, my son is not in the corporation yet, so we will make that a fourth one. When we get the fourth person in the corporation, we are exempted from this.

How much money do you think is going to come in through that proposal? That is what can be worked out if it goes to committee. So, I again ask the leader to send it to a committee, give them a limited amount of time to work on it, and see if they can come up with a solution that both sides will like because both sides said the interest rate ought to be 3.4 percent for the next year.

Then we ought to take a look at the cost of all college education. As all the people have said, college is important. Education after high school is important. We had one hearing on that in the HELP Committee too. When we were scheduled to have that hearing--I make a weekly trip out to Wyoming and travel around the State so I get to talk to a lot of people--I happened to be talking to some sixth graders, and I said: We are going to have this hearing, and the title of it is: Is education after high school important? Do you know what. Those kids all said yes. We did not have to bring in some people from Harvard and Stanford to convince us of that. We could have been talking about the cost of college, which would get more people going to college, and not just college but some of the tech schools too because we are going to need a lot of different professions in future years.

Let's get this thing to committee and get it resolved and get on with some of the issues we need to be working on--some of the ones that are big money that affect all of America, not just 40 percent of the students at about a cost of $7 a month.

So with that plea, I yield the floor.