A bill to amend the Clean Air Act to define next generation biofuel, and to allow States the option of not participating in the corn ethanol portions of the renewable fuel standard due to conflicts with agricultural, economic, energy, and environmental goals.

I am pleased today to come to the floor of the Senate to talk about the PATRIOT Act. I am pleased we have cracked open the door that will shed some light on the PATRIOT Act. I wish the door were open wider, the debate broader and more significant, but today we will talk a little bit about the constitutionality of the PATRIOT Act.

I was a cosponsor of Senator Leahy's amendment, and I think it would have gone many great steps forward to make sure we have surveillance on what our government does. It would have authorized audits by the inspector general to continue to watch over and to make sure government is not invading the rights of private citizens, and I do support that wholeheartedly.

Jefferson said if we had a government of angels, we wouldn't have to care or be concerned about the power that we give to government. Unfortunately, sometimes we don't have angels in charge of our government. Sometimes we can even get a government in charge that would use the power of government in a malicious or malevolent way, to look at the banking records of people they disagree with politically, to look at the religious practices of people they disagree with. So it is important that we are always vigilant, that we are eternally vigilant of the powers of government so they do not grow to such an extent that government could be looking into our private affairs for nefarious reasons.

We have proposed two amendments that we will have votes on today. One of them concerns the second amendment. I think it is very important that we protect the rights of gun owners in our country, not only for hunting but for self-protection, and that the records of those in our country who own guns should be secret. I don't think the government, well intentioned or not well intentioned, should be sifting through millions of records of gun owners. Why? There have been times even in our history in which government has invaded our homes to take things from us. In the 1930s, government came into our households and said give us your gold. Gold was confiscated in this country in 1933. Could there conceivably be a time when government comes into our homes and says, We want your guns?

People say that is absurd. That would never happen. I hope that day never comes. I am not accusing anybody of being in favor of that, but I am worried about a government that is sifting through millions of records without asking: Are you a suspect; without asking, are you in league with foreign terrorists? Are you plotting a violent overthrow of your government? By all means, if you are, let's look at your records. Let's put you in jail. Let's prosecute you. But let's not sift through hundreds of millions of gun records to find out whether you own a gun. Let's don't leave those data banks in the hands of government where someday those could be abused.

What we are asking for are procedural protections. The Constitution gave us those protections. The second amendment gives us the right to keep and bear arms. The fourth amendment is equally important. It gives us the right to be free of unreasonable search. It gives us the right to say that government must have probable cause. There must be at least some suspicion that one is committing a crime before they come into one's house or before they go into one's records, wherever one's records are. The Constitution doesn't say that one only has protection of records that are in one's house. One should have protection of records that reside in other places. Just because one's Visa record resides with a Visa company doesn't make it any less private. If we look at a person's Visa bill, we can find out all kinds of things about them. If we look at a person's Visa bill, we can find out what doctors they go to; do they go to a psychiatrist; do they have mental illness; what type of medications do they take.

If someone looked at my Visa bill, they could tell what type of books or magazines I read. One of the provisions of the PATRIOT Act is called the library provision. They can look at the books someone checks out in the library. People say, well, still, a judge has to sign these warrants. But we changed the standard. The standard of the fourth amendment was probable cause. They had to argue, or at least convince a judge, that you were a suspect, that you were doing something wrong. Now the cause or the standard has been changed to relevance. So it could be that you went to a party with someone who was from Palestine who gives money to some group in Palestine that may well be a terrorist group. But the thing is, because I went to a party with them, because I know that person, am I now somehow connected enough to be relevant? They would say, Well, your government would never do that. They would never go to investigate people. The problem is, this is all secret. So I do not know if I have been investigated. My Visa bill sometimes has been $5,000. Sometimes we pay for them over the phone, which is a wire transfer. Have I been investigated by my government? I do not know. It is secret.

What I want is protection. I want to capture terrorists, sure. If terrorists are moving machine guns and weapons in our country, international terrorists, by all means, let's go after them. But the worst people, the people we want to lock up forever--the people all of us universally agree about: people who commit murder, people who commit rape--we want to lock them up and

throw away the book, and I am all with you. But we still have the protections of the fourth amendment.

If someone is running around in the streets of Washington tonight--at 4 in the morning--and we think they may have murdered someone, we will call a judge, and we will get a warrant. Just because we believe in procedural protections, just because we believe in the Constitution does not mean we do not want to capture terrorists. We just want to have some rules.

I will give you an analogy. Right now, you have been to the airport. Most of America has been to the airport at some point in time in the last year or two. Millions of people fly every day. But we are taking this shotgun approach. We think everyone is a terrorist, so everyone is being patted down, everyone is being strip-searched. We are putting our hands inside the pants of 6-year-old children. I mean, have we not gone too far? Are we so afraid that we are willing to give up all of our liberty in exchange for security? Franklin said: If you give up your liberty, you will have neither. If you give up your liberty in exchange for security, you may well wind up with neither.

Because we take this shotgun approach, we take this approach that everyone is a potential terrorist, I think we actually are doing less of a good job in capturing terrorists because if we spent our time going after those who were committing terrorism, maybe we would spend less time on those who are living in this country, children and otherwise, frequent business travelers, who are not a threat to our country. Instead of wasting time on these people, we could spend more time on those who would attack us.

I will give you an example--the Underwear Bomber. For goodness' sakes, his dad reported him. His dad called the U.S. Embassy and said: My son is a potential threat to your country. We did nothing. He was on a watch list. We still let him get on a plane. He had been to Nigeria. He had been to Yemen twice. For goodness' sakes, why don't we take half the people in the TSA who are patting down our children and let's have them look at the international flight manifest of those traveling from certain countries who could be attacking us? For goodness' sakes, why don't we target whom we are looking at?

My other amendment concerns banking records. Madam President, 8 million banking records have been looked at in our country--not by the government. They have empowered your bank to spy on you. Every time you go into your bank, your bank is asked to spy on you. If you make a transaction of more than $5,000, the bank is encouraged to report you. If the bank does not report you, they get a large fine, to the tune of $100,000 or more. They could get 5 years in prison. They are overencouraged. The incentive is for the bank to report everyone. So once upon a time, these suspicious-activity reports were maybe 10,000 in a year. There are now over 1 million of these suspicious-activity reports.

Do I want to capture terrorists? Yes. Do I want to capture terrorists who are transferring large amounts of money? Yes. But you know what. When we are wasting time on 8 million transactions--the vast majority of these transactions being by law-abiding U.S. citizens--we are not targeting the people who would attack us.

Let's do police work. If there are terrorist groups in the Middle East and we know who they are, let's investigate them. If they have money in the United States or they are transferring it between banks, by all means, let's investigate them. But let's have some constitutional protections. Let's have some protections that say you must ask a judge for a warrant.

Some have said: How would we get these people? Would we capture those who are transferring weapons? We would investigate. We have all kinds of tools, and we have been using those tools.

Others have said: Well, we have captured these people through the PATRIOT Act, and we never could have gotten them. The problem with that argument is that it is unprovable. You can tell me you captured people through the PATRIOT Act and I can believe you captured them and you have prosecuted them, but you cannot prove to me you would not have captured them had you asked for a judge.

We have a special court. It is called the FISA Court. The FISA Court has been around since the late 1970s. Not one warrant was ever turned down before the PATRIOT Act. But they say: We need more power. We need more power given to these agencies, and we do not need any constitutional restraint anymore.

But my question is, the fourth amendment said you had to have probable cause. You had to name the person and the place. Well, how do we change, get rid of probable cause and change it to a standard of relevance? How do we do that and amend the Constitution without actually amending the Constitution? These are important constitutional questions. But when the PATRIOT Act came up, we were so frightened by 9/11 that it just flew through here. There were not enough copies to be read. There was one copy at the time. No Senator read the PATRIOT Act. It did not go through the standard procedure.

Let's look at what is happening now. Ten years later, you would think the fear and hysteria would have gotten to such a level that we could go through the committee process. Senator Leahy's bill went to committee. It was deliberated upon. It was discussed. It was debated. It was passed out with bipartisan support. It came to the floor with bipartisan support. But do you know why it is not getting a vote now? Because they have backed us up against a deadline.

There have been people who have implied in print that if I hold up the PATRIOT Act and they attack us tonight, then I am responsible for the attack. There have been people who have implied that if some terrorist gets a gun, then I am somehow responsible. It is sort of the analogy of saying that because I believe you should get a warrant before you go into a potential or alleged murderer's house, somehow I am in favor of murder.

I am in favor of having constitutional protections. These arose out of hundreds of years of common law. They were codified in our Constitution because we were worried. We were incredibly concerned about what the King had done. We were concerned about what a far distant Parliament was doing to us without our approval. We were concerned about what James Otis called writs of assistance. Writs of assistance were pieces of paper that were warrants that were written by soldiers. They were telling us we had to house the British soldiers in our houses, and they were giving general warrants which meant: We are just going to search you willy-nilly. We are not going to name the person or the place. We are not going to name the crime you are accused of.

If a government were comprised of angels, we would not need the fourth amendment. What I argue for here now is protections for us all should we get a despot, should we someday elect somebody who does not have respect for rights. We should obey rules and laws.

Is this an isolated episode we are here talking about, the PATRIOT Act, and that there is an insufficient time, that it is a deadline: Hurry, hurry; we must act. It is not an isolated time.

We have had no sufficient debate on the war with Libya. We are now encountered in a war in Libya, so we now have a war in which there has been no congressional debate and no congressional vote. But do you know what they argue. They say it is just a little war. But you know what. It is a big principle. It is the principle that we as a country elect people. It is a principle that we are restrained by the Constitution, that you are protected by the Constitution, and that if I ask the young men and women here today to go to war and say we are going to go to war, there darn well should be a debate in this body. We are abdicating those responsibilities.

We are not debating the PATRIOT Act sufficiently. We are not having an open amendment process. It took me 3 days of sitting down here filibustering, but I am going to get two amendment votes. I am very happy and I am pleased we came together to do that. I wish we would do more. I wish Senator Leahy's bill was being voted on here on the floor. I wish there were a week's worth of debate.

The thing is, we come here to Washington expecting these grand debates. I have been here 4 months. I expected

that the important questions of the day would be debated back and forth. Instead, what happens so often is the votes are counted and recounted and laboriously counted. When they know they can beat me or when they know they can beat somebody else, then they allow the vote to come to the floor. But some, like Senator Leahy's bill--I am suspicious that it is not going to be voted on because they may not be able to beat it. I support it.

So the question is, Should we have some more debate in our country? We have important issues pressing on us. I have been here for 4 months, and I am concerned about the future of our country because of the debt burden, because of this enormous debt we are accumulating. But are we debating it fully? Are we talking about ways we could come together, how Republicans and Democrats, right and left, could come together to figure out this crisis of debt? No. I think we are so afraid of debate but particularly with the PATRIOT Act.

The thing with the PATRIOT Act is that it is so emotional because anyone who stands up, like myself, and says we need to have protections for our people, that we should not sift through the records of every gun owner in America, looking and just trolling through records-- interestingly, we have looked at 28 million electronic records, when the inspector general looked at this--28 million electronic records. We have looked at 1,600,000 texts. If you said to me: Well, they asked a judge, and they thought these were terrorists, I do not have a problem. The judge gives them a warrant, and they look at these text messages or electronic records. But do you want them trolling through your Facebook? Do you want them trolling through your e-mails? Do you want a government that is unrestrained by law?

This ultimately boils down to whether we believe in the rule of law. So often we give lipservice to it on our side and the other side, and everybody says: We believe in the Constitution and the rule of law. When you need to protect the rule of law is when it is most unpopular. When everybody tells you that you are unpatriotic or you are for terrorism because you believe in the Constitution, that is when it is most precious, that is when it is that you need to stand up and say no.

We can fight. We can preserve our freedoms. We are who we are because of our freedoms and our individual liberty. If we give that up, we are no different from those whom we oppose. Those who wish to destroy our country want to see us dissolved from within. We dissolve from within when we give up our liberties. We need to stand and be proud of the fact that in our country it is none of your darn business what we are reading. It is none of your business where we go to see a doctor, what movie we see, or what our magazines are. It is nobody's business here in Washington what we are doing. If they think it is the business of law enforcement, get a warrant. Prove to somebody--at least have one step that says that person is doing something suspicious.

The thing is, these suspicious-activity reports--8 million of them have been filed in the last 8 years. The government does not have to ask for this; it is sort of like they have deputized the banks. The banks have now become sort of like police agencies. The banks are expected to know what is in the Bank Secrecy Act. They are expected to know thousands of pages of regulations. But do you know what they tell your bank. If you do not report everybody, if you do not report these transactions, we will fine you, we will put you in jail, or we will put you out of business.

That is a problem. It is a real problem that that is what has come of this. I think we need to have procedural protections.

Madam President, if at this point there is a request from the Senator from Illinois to yield for a question or a comment, I would be happy to, if it is about the PATRIOT Act.

OK. The amendments I will be proposing will be about two things, and we will have votes on them. We have been given the time to debate, which I am glad we fought for. We will basically be given a virtually insurmountable hurdle. This will be maybe the first time in recent history I remember seeing this, but they will move to table my amendments. In order for me to defeat the tabling motion, I will have to have 60 votes. It is similar to the votes we have when you have to overcome a cloture vote or you have to overcome a filibuster. But we really are not having any vote where there is a possibility of me winning. There is really a forgone conclusion. The votes are counted in advance.

I am proud of the fact that I fought for, though, and we got some debate on the floor and that maybe in bringing this fight, the country will consider and reconsider the PATRIOT Act. But we need to have more debate. Senator Leahy's bill needs to be fully debated and needs to come out. Maybe when there is not a deadline, maybe it will come forward. Maybe we can have some discussion.

But I guess most of my message is that we should not be fearful. We should not be fearful of freedom. We should not be fearful of individual liberty. And they are not mutually exclusive. You do not have to give up your liberty to catch criminals. You can catch criminals and terrorists and protect your liberty at the same time. There is a balancing act. But what we did in our hysteria after 9/11 was we did not do any kind of balancing act. We just said: Come and get it. Here is our freedom, come and get it. We do not care whether there is review in Congress. We do not care whether there is to be an inspector general looking at this.

One of my colleagues today reported: Well, there is no evidence those 8 million banking investigations are bothering or doing anything to innocent people. Well, there is a reason for there being no evidence: They are secret. You are not told if your bank has been spying on you. If your bank has put in a suspicious-activity report, you are not informed of that.

So the bottom line is, just because there is no complaint does not mean there have not been abuses. There is something called national security letters. These are written by officers of the law, by FBI agents. There is no review by judges. There have been 200,000 of these. There has been an explosion of these national security letters, and we do not know whether they are being abused because they are a secret.

In fact, here is how deep the secret goes. When the PATRIOT Act was originally passed, you were not allowed to tell your lawyer. If the government came to you with an FBI agent's request, you could not even tell your lawyer. This, is very disturbing. They finally got around to changing that. But you know what. If I had an Internet service, if I am a server and they come to me with a policeman's request, and they say: Give us your records--if I tell anyone other than my attorney, I can go to jail for 5 years.

What we have is a veil of secrecy. So even if the government is abusing the powers, we will never know. How much time remains?

Does the Senator from Illinois wish to interject?

I will finish up then. As we go forward on these, I would hope there would be some deliberation and that the vote, as it goes forward, people will think about that we need to balance our freedoms with our security. I think we all want security. Nobody wants what happened on 9/11 to happen again.

But I think we do not need to simplify the debate to such an extent that we simply say we have to give up our liberties. For example, I cannot tell you how many times people have come up to me in Washington, unelected officials, and said: We could have gotten Moussaoui, the 19th hijacker, if we had the PATRIOT Act.

The truth is, we did not capture Moussaoui because we had poor police work. Ask yourself: Did we fire anybody after 9/11? We gave people gold medals. We gave them medals of honor for their intelligence work after 9/11. To my knowledge, not one person was fired.

Do you think we were doing a good job before 9/11? We had the 19th hijacker in prison, in custody for a

month before 9/11. We had his computer. When they looked at Moussaoui's computer 4 days after 9/11 or the day after 9/11, they connected all of the dots to most of the hijackers and to people in Pakistan.

Why did we not look at his computer? Was it because we did not have the prerogative? They did not ask. An FBI agent in Minnesota wrote 70 letters to his superiors saying: Ask for a warrant. His superiors did not ask for a warrant. Do you think we should have done something about that after 9/11?

We gave everybody in the FBI and the CIA medals. We gave the leaders medals for meritorious service, and no one blinked an eye. What did we do? We passed the PATRIOT Act and said: Come and take our liberties. Make us safe. But to make us safe, we should not give up our rights to protect what we read, to protect what we view, to protect where we go and who we associate with. We should not allow governments to troll willy-nilly through millions of records.

You have heard of wireless wiretaps. A lot of these things are unknown because they are so secret that nobody knows. Even many of us do not even know the extent of these things. But I can tell you, there is a great deal of evidence that we were looking at millions of records and that millions of innocent U.S. citizens are having their records looked at.

Now, are we doing anything? Are we imprisoning innocent folks? No, I do not think we are doing that. I think they are good people. I think the people I have met in the FBI, the people I have met in our government want to do the right thing. But what I am fearful of is that there comes a time when we have given up these powers--for example, the constitutional discussion over war.

If we say: Well, Libya is just a small war. We do not care. We say Congress has no say in this. What happens when we get a President who decides to send 1 million troops into war and we simply say: Who cares. You know, we let the President do whatever he has to do because he has unlimited powers.

We fought a war, we fought long and hard to restrict--we wanted an Executive that was bound by the chains of the Constitution. We wanted a Presidency, an executive branch that was bound by the checks and balances. That is what our Constitution is about. It is about debate. Debate is important. Amendments are important. Bringing forward something from committee that would have reformed the PATRIOT Act is incredibly important, to have those debates on the floor of the Senate.

That is why there is a certain amount of disappointment to having arrived in Washington and to see the fear of debate of the Constitution, and that we need to be debating these things. We need to have full amendments.

Can there be any excuse why the inspector general should not be reviewing other agencies of government to find out if our rights are being trampled upon.

So I would ask, in conclusion, as these amendments come forward, that people think about it. Think about our constitutional protections. But do not go out and say the Senator from Kentucky does not want to capture terrorists or the Senator from Kentucky wants people to have guns and to attack us because the thing is, we can have reasonable philosophical debates about this, but we need to be having an open debate process. We need to talk about the constitutional protections, the provisions that protect us all, and we need to be aware of that.

I tell people: You cannot protect the second amendment if you do not believe in the fourth amendment. You cannot protect the second amendment if you do not believe in the first amendment. It is all incredibly important.

I hope as we go forward on this vote, and even though I will likely fail, because of the way the rules are set up on the vote, I hope as we go forward that at least somebody will begin to discuss this, somebody will begin to discuss where we should have some constitutional restraint; that Senator Leahy will have a chance to bring his bill forward, and that there will be a full and open debate.

I hope we have cracked the door open and I have been a small part of that.

I yield back my time.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Klobuchar.) The Senator from Illinois.

Madam President, I am happy to yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, we had an unfortunate series of votes last night, in my opinion, because it was all arranged by our leadership in the Senate to have a series of votes to do nothing. That is unfortunate because the United States of America, and the Senate are proceeding with an idea that they do not have to have a budget. In fact, the majority leader, Senator

Reid, said it would be foolish to pass a budget. And as one of the staffers said, on background: Well, if we pass a budget, we will have to tell people how much we are going to raise their taxes and talk about spending reductions, and that will not be popular.

What did they do? One of the most incredible things I have ever seen in the Senate. Did they express regret that they could not pass a budget, that they would not state for the American people a vision for spending and the financial future of America? No. What did they do? They have the majority in the Senate. They called up the budget passed by the House of Representatives, which is a really historic budget, an honest budget that deals fairly and objectively with the challenges we are facing, reduces spending, actually was able to reduce some taxes, and proposed, a decade out, that the Congress confront Medicare because it is going broke. So what did they do? They called up that budget. Did they call it up to amend it? Did they call it up to offer us a chance to debate it and offer amendments and fix anything anybody did not like about it? No. That was not what was done. They brought it up only with the most limited debate before all four votes. They stacked all four votes on four different budgets and projections and just voted them down. They voted down every budget that was offered.

I have on my desk in my office the President's budget. It is four volumes, hundreds of pages, and it lays out a budget. Every President submits budgets. They have a 500-person Office of Management and Budget staff. Every year, they produce a budget. The law requires them to produce a budget. This is the Code, the United States Code Annotated, and in this is the law that says a President should submit a budget and the date by which he should do it. It says the U.S. Senate should commence markup in the Budget Committee by April 1 and the Congress should pass a budget by April 15. Last I heard, April 15 is long since passed.

How do you get a budget out of committee and to the floor of the Senate? What are we supposed to do by April 1? The chairman is supposed to call a markup, and he is supposed to bring up the budget he proposes, offer it to the Budget Committee. It is open for amendment, change, and debate, then it is voted on. A budget should then come out of the committee to the floor of the Senate. It has expedited procedures, but you are allowed to offer amendments, and there is 50 hours of debate--not too much. It does not require the normal 60 votes we have to have for legislation here; it only requires a majority, 50 votes.

That is basically designed, frankly--when the people wrote the Budget Act back in the 1970s--to allow the majority party to be able to pass a budget because there were too many filibusters of budgets and no budgets were getting passed. If you have the majority in the Senate, at least you should be able to produce a budget. So it provides the Democratic majority--the 53 Democratic Senators they have--the opportunity to produce a budget on a partisan basis if it cannot be done on a bipartisan basis. So the normal process is, you work with your colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and if you think a good agreement can be made in a bipartisan fashion, you do so and move a bipartisan budget.

I remember last year when Senator Gregg, our Republican ranking member, talked about his conversation with Senator Conrad, and he said: He is not letting me see the budget. It is going to be produced the next morning. What that means is, he is going to produce a partisan budget. He does not want our opinion. He is not going to show us what is in his budget until the day of the mark-up.

So this year, we wrote--all the Republican members; I am the ranking member now--we asked the Budget chairman to show us his mark 72 hours before the mark-up because he had not consulted with us and it appeared he was going to produce a partisan budget. Actually, he told me the date the hearing would commence to mark up his budget, but he did decline to give us any advance notice or opportunity to see what was in it.

All I am saying is that the procedure is set up realistically under the Budget Act to allow the majority party to meet its responsibility to pass a budget. They do not need a single Republican vote to pass a budget. I think it is better if you can get a bipartisan agreement. Oftentimes in the past, there have been. But since budgets represent visions for America, oftentimes in recent years they have gone on pretty much a party line but not 100 percent. That is what I would say.

So the President submitted his budget, and it was roundly criticized around the country, and I was a very severe critic of it. So we offered that budget last night. That was one of the four budgets that was offered. We brought it up. It is the only Democratic budget to be produced. I believe the Progressive Caucus produced one in the House, but, of course, it did not pass. It had a lot of tax increases, a lot of spending increases in it. It had no chance whatsoever of being passed. The American people sent us a message last year that they want us to get spending under control. They want us to reduce the size and scope of government. That is what they asked us to do.

So the President's budget came up last night, and, 97 to 0, every Democrat voted against the President's budget. Well, they should because it was unacceptable. I have referred to it as the most irresponsible budget in the history of our country because we are in a deeper financial hole than we have ever been. That is just a fact, and it is not a short-term, little problem; it is a problem that is getting worse in the years to come.

So the American people have come to the conclusion that we need to change the trajectory of debt that we are piling on year after year, month after month, day after day, by the billions--trillions, really.

The President's budget, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office, would produce uncontrolled debt year after year after year, in amounts never before contemplated in our country, making the debt trajectory of our current baseline spending worse, not better.

I was under the impression everybody understood we had to change and get better. I thought, when we came in with this Congress, the debate would be over how much to change in the right direction, how much could we do to reduce the deficits, put us on the right path. Not the President's budget, which made things worse.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, which analyzed his budget and scored it, as we say, the lowest single deficit that budget would produce is $748 billion, the lowest deficit to be produced under his 10-year budget. President Bush was criticized for spending. The highest budget deficit he had was $450 billion. That was the highest President Bush had, and he was criticized for that by many of my Democratic colleagues quite vociferously.

President Obama is now heading to his third trillion dollar budget deficit. This year, it is going to be $1.5 trillion, it looks like three times the size of President Bush's highest deficit. As I said, the lowest deficit they are projecting is $748 billion, and then it starts going back up again. In his 10th year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the deficit will be $1.2 trillion.

It is an indefensible, irresponsible budget. I am stunned that it was presented here. It has been widely criticized, as well it should be. So it was voted down last night.

If you are going to vote down something, should you not offer something in its place? That is what the fiscal commission that President Obama appointed said. That was their rule. That is what they promoted publicly: If you oppose a budget, you should offer your own. And, in fact, after Congressman Ryan, who served on the fiscal commission with Mr. Bowles and Senator Simpson, the cochairmen, he produced a budget. They gave him great credit. They said it was honest and courageous, and it faced the challenges of America, and it deserved respect, and then said: Anybody who does not agree with that should show what they would do.

So yesterday afternoon, we had the spectacle of Democratic Senators hammering and complaining about the Ryan budget, which in my opinion is the most historic and responsible budget to be produced in decades. No, it is not perfect. It is perfectly acceptable to believe that it ought to be amended.

But it was a historic, honest attempt at dealing with the fiscal challenges we face, and would put us on a financial path to solvency and stability and eliminate the risk we are facing. We probably should do more to reduce spending than he proposed. But it was courageous and bold and honest and without gimmicks. I thought a very impressive document. I looked forward to debating parts of it in our Budget Committee.

So what did we have last night? Yesterday? They just brought it up and every Democratic Member voted it down. And why? Because he had the gumption to actually suggest that for people 55 and younger, we should begin to create a Medicare system that would be solvent and effective and save Medicare, because the trustees have reduced the year again at which it goes insolvent. Senator Reid and Senator Schumer had cleverly thought up this theory and were explicit about it. Their theory was they would not bring up their own budget. They would not tell the American people how much they wanted to increase their taxes. They would not tell the American people they were going to cut anything, because they might make someone unhappy and be unpopular. They would just call up the Ryan budget and attack Republicans as wanting to kill Medicare, and produce nothing in response. They do not have any plan to fix the situation we are in.

I am disappointed about that. It is unthinkable that we would be recessing and going home for a week without commencing markup hearings in the Budget Committee to produce a budget that we are required by law to produce. It is unthinkable we would do that.

I will be presenting to the majority leader a letter today from Senators on our side of the aisle--large numbers of Senators have signed it, saying, we do not need to go home until we have confronted this problem, and you have shown us how we are going to move forward to meet our statutory responsibility to pass a budget.

I think that is reasonable. That is what we are going to be asking today. I am not going to vote to go home without having met our duty. We call up our young men and women in uniform. We say: You will go to Iraq for a year. They say: Well, I would rather not go. It is in your contract. You signed up. You have to go. It is your duty. And they say, yes, sir, and they go.

Many of them have lost lives and limbs and we ought to remember them this Memorial Day. But Do not we have a duty here? I think we do. I think we have a duty to the United States of America to produce a budget, whether or not it is law. But it is law in the United States Code. That is our duty. We do not need to be going home until we fulfill it, and we have a plan to go forward with it. I want to say this is not a little bitty matter with me. We are not going to have four votes--as we did yesterday--and then the majority leader is going to say, see, it is foolish to produce a budget. I told you we could not produce a budget. We are not going to fool with having a budget this year.

It has been 757 days since the Senate has had a budget, because the majority leader did not bring up a budget last year either. Does anybody have any wonder about why we are going to have a $1.5 trillion deficit this year, why 40 cents of every dollar we spend is borrowed? We spend $3.7 trillion and we take in only $2.2 trillion.

Experts and financial wizards all over the world are telling us, what are you doing in the United States? You are about to threaten the world's most prominent economy. It could have worldwide ramifications. Our debt to GDP compares with Portugal and Spain, almost as high as Greece. It will be 100 percent by September 30 of this year.

And we are going away without a budget again. The people who have asked to be given a leadership responsibility in the Congress cannot even comply with the Budget Act. They refuse to stand before the American people and say what they want to tax, what they want to spend, what they want to cut--because it would not be popular. It would be foolish.

I do not think so. It is not acceptable. You asked to be the leader of this Congress. You asked to be the President of the United States. You have a responsibility to submit a responsible budget, an honest budget, a fact-based budget, a budget the American people have an opportunity to understand, to read and study before we vote. And if the American people find we have cast a bad vote, they can cast a good vote to throw some people out of Congress.

They threw some people out last fall. It does not look like we have gotten the message--Business as usual. We are in denial. We do not have to change. Oh, no, you cannot cut this spending program. What do you mean you cannot cut spending programs? Give me a break. The Alabama Governor, Dr. Bentley, had to announce a 15-percent reduction in discretionary spending. Why? He did not have the money. Is that something we have forgotten in Washington--when you do not have money, you should not spend it?

Well, you say, it is all because of this economy, or something else. Look, under President Obama, nondefense discretionary spending in 2 years went up 24 percent. We are going broke. We are increasing spending on all the government programs. On an average, in the last 2 years that is 12 percent a year. You know, the value of your money will double in 10 years if your interest is 7 percent. At 12 percent, I guess the size of government would increase and double in 6 years.

Great scott. No wonder people are upset with us. We have been spending incredibly recklessly. Also the 12 percent I mentioned--24 percent in 2 years--that does not include the stimulus package, the almost $900 billion stimulus package that was thrown out the door with almost no oversight. It was just designed to spend. And do you remember, it was supposed to stimulate the economy.

We probably have had the slowest ever rebound from a recession. It has been a very shaky recovery. They will say, well, we should have spent more. But Rogoff and Reinhart, the professors, tell us, when your debt gets as high as that of the United States, then you begin to show a decline in growth. One percent of GDP growth is reduced when your debt reaches 90 percent of GDP. We reached that this year, and we will go over 100 percent by September 30.

This is the budget that the President has submitted to us. He has a large staff over there. They maintain it. A large number of them have been there for many years. The President submitted to us a budget. It was rejected yesterday 97 to 0. It confirms the fact that we do not have a legitimate budget before us. The President's budget has been rejected utterly. The Democrats have refused to produce one.

They say: Why don't you have a mark-up and offer your budget? I cannot call a mark-up. The chairman calls the mark-up. The majority leaders confer and tell the chairmen when to call a mark-up. They decided not to call a budget mark-up. We do not have an opportunity to go to the Budget Committee and pass a budget.

We had such tremendous interest, and a lot of the new people who got elected to the Senate last fall wanted to be on the Budget Committee. They traveled their States. They had heard from their people all over their States that they wanted us to control spending. They wanted to be on the committee. It was the committee which had more interest and more people pushing to be on it than any other committee. We finally selected a fabulous group of people to serve on the committee. And now we do not meet. Now we are not even going to mark up a budget. What a disappointment for those new Members coming here with vim and vigor and ready to do something about the future of the Republic.

You know, one of the things that was interesting about the President's budget is how much praise it got from our Democratic colleagues who voted it down last night when it came out. This is what Senator Schumer said about it: ``This is a responsible proposal. I believe this approach should have bipartisan support.'' Senator Bill Nelson: ``I personally think the President's budget is a step in the right direction.'' Senator Max Baucus: ``The President's budget strengthens our economy.'' Senator Ben Cardin: ``President Obama has given us a credible blueprint.'' Senator Tom Carper: ``The President's budget is an important step forward.'' Senator Frank Lautenberg: ``President Obama's budget presents a careful evaluation of what our Nation needs.''

They all voted no last night. You know, with friends like that, you do not need enemies, as they like to say. But what about Mr. Erskine Bowles, the man President Obama chose to serve as chairman of the debt commission? Mr. Bowles talked about the budget. He was rather stunned actually when it came out. It came out I think on Friday. On Sunday, Mr. Bowles said: ``It comes nowhere close to where they will have to go to avoid a fiscal nightmare.''

Can you imagine? This is the man President Obama chose to head the deficit commission, and he hammered this budget.

He said it is nowhere close, and it is nowhere close to doing what we have to do. So I believe what we went through yesterday was a sham, a mockery, a joke, and had no meaning. It was nothing but politics, nothing but an avoidance of responsibility to help provide leadership.

We all know some serious choices have to be made, and I will close with these thoughts. We are going to need a partnership in the Senate between our parties. There are going to be some tough choices which have to be made. In my view, we simply cannot continue at our rate of spending. It has to be reduced. But we have people in denial, who don't think it has to be reduced. But when your lowest deficit in 10 years is projected to be $740 billion, and this year's will be the highest in the history of the Republic, $1.5 trillion or more--how do we get there?

We are going to have to make some choices. I have saluted the Gang of Six, who have tried. Apparently, they have fallen on hard times and the prospects aren't good for that. Now the Vice President is meeting. There is some excuse, they say, that we don't have to do our business openly and before the public and stand and be accounted for because that would not work. People are afraid to make tough choices and decisions in public.

I believe the American people are not happy with us. I know they are not happy with us. Seventy percent of them believe this country is on the wrong track, and the biggest part of that, surely, is our fiscal management. They know this debt cannot be sustained. So we need to do something. The best way to do it is to follow the regular order, follow the legally constituted method of budget processing. Let's have a Budget Committee meeting, and if the Gang of Six has ideas, let's have them brought up in the Budget Committee and vote on them. If Vice President Biden wants to send something over, I am glad to hear it. If the President wants to send his people over to defend this budget that has been rejected 97 to zero, let them do it.

I will tell you what he and his Budget Director, Mr. Lew, said--can you believe it? They said this budget will allow us to live within our means and not spend money we don't have. That is the way they promoted this budget. It was rejected last night. If it caused us to live within our means and allowed us to pay down our debt then I would vote for it. It did not come close to that. Yet the President talked about it all over the country, and his staff ran around saying this budget will allow us to live within our means. That is totally inaccurate, and that is irresponsible. What the President should have done, and what our Democratic leaders have to help us with, is go to the American people and, with clarity, without equivocation, say we cannot continue. We must tell them big changes have to be made, and we are so sorry this country has gotten in the shape we are in. We must say that we are going to make some changes, and we urge you to help us stick together and do it. We must do this to put the country on the right path.

But what do we have? We have Congressman Ryan, in the Republican House, who had the temerity, the courage, the discipline, and the sense of duty sufficient to pass a budget that would actually do what needs to be done. They called it up and attacked it with everything they had, but they will not produce anything of their own.

It cannot be denied that this is a failure of leadership. I believe the process and path we are on now is dangerous; it is not public, it is secret. They tried to produce a secret plan on comprehensive reform of immigration. The American people heard about it, and down it went. They tried to negotiate in secret this health care reform bill. They were able to hold their votes on a straight party-line vote--60 to 40-- but the American people were not happy with the process or results and a lot of people who participated in that spectacle didn't come back after this last election.

That is not the path we are hearing from our constituents. Our constituents are saying: You work for us. We want to see you publicly stand and defend the values we believe in. If you don't do so, we are going to hold you accountable. I think that is democracy in America, and that is healthy. I don't think there is anything wrong with it. I respect the American people who are watching Congress and demanding that we change the trajectory we are on.

I believe strongly that we need to do better. I believe strongly that this Congress should have in play and commit before we recess--or not recess--a plan to deal with the financial crisis our Nation faces. When we do that, we can feel like we are fulfilling our duty both in law and morally to the people who have given us the honor of serving in this body.

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

Mr. President, I wish to thank the Senator from North Dakota for allowing me to go first. I will be relatively brief.

I have spoken on the floor on a number of occasions regarding my frustration about the Senate not spending enough time debating what I think is the key, essential issue and challenge facing us, probably greater than any other challenge facing this body in a long time. My frustration only grew yesterday as we voted down four budget proposals.

You know, it has been 757 days since we have passed a budget in this body, and so far, no budget has been proposed this year out of the Budget Committee for us to examine. The President offered up a budget earlier this year that would have spent more, taxed more and borrowed more. It was voted down last night in what I think probably was a historic vote. I did not go back and check the records, but I am not aware of any budget that has ever been presented by the executive branch to the Congress for approval that has not received at least some votes.

The vote last evening was 97 to 0 against the President's budget. It is almost unthinkable that a President--the executive branch--would send a budget to the floor to be debated and voted upon and not achieve one vote. I think what it tells us is that, obviously, that budget was not designed to gain any kind of bipartisan support. But it didn't even obtain any partisan support.

It was not taken seriously, at a time when we need to have in front of us a serious budget to debate and vote on. As I said, there have been 757 days without a budget before us. You cannot run a company, a family, or run anything, unless you prepare a budget and avoid going into debt. That is where we are today.

Republicans did come forward with three proposals. Unfortunately, all of those were voted down. You can argue that none of those three were sufficient

to garner enough support. All three received a significant level of support--particularly two of them. Yet there were not enough votes to pass this body. So while the House has passed a budget, which we voted on yesterday, but unfortunately fell short, these are the only proposals we have had in front of us to debate. These are the only proposals we have had to vote on and set the structure for how we are going to spend the taxpayers' money.

So here we are now approaching the month of June, 5 months into the current calendar year, and 9 months into the fiscal year, and we still don't have a handle on how we are going to spend the taxpayers' money, what restrictions and restraints we will put on that, and how we can live within our means.

This is the debate this Congress should undertake, and it has not been undertaken. Many of us have come to the floor in situations such as this where we have asked for some time to speak, but the issue itself has not been put before us. We know there are negotiations going on relative to how to put a plan into place, but we are a long way from that.

I am here once again to try to urge my colleagues to work together and try to achieve a result--or at least a product on which we can have serious debate to determine the future of how we are going to spend the taxpayers' dollars in a responsible way. The most important factor we have to address is the need, in my opinion, to rein in Washington's excessive spending. The bottom line is that government spending is out of control. The public understands this. I think the response in 2010 to those of us who were running in all the elections sent an unmistakable, long, loud, easily understood signal: We have too much government, we cannot afford the government we have, and we cannot continue to add even more government, which pushes us deeper into debt.

Nearly $1.4 trillion of our spending is discretionary spending that requires us to borrow money. That borrowed money increases our debt obligation reinforcing the need to rein in our spending. This is something we should debate, something that is part of the responsibility of the Congress and Senate. When we are talking about addressing a national debt of over $14 trillion, we need to get serious. A little nick here, a little nick there in spending reductions will not solve the problem. We need to look at the larger picture. We are staring down $14.3 trillion in debt. Credit ratings by Standard & Poor's have downgraded the outlook for the U.S. debt, with a negative warning. Economic growth is sputtering across the country. Unemployment remains high, and States are dipping deeper into the red, zeroing in on billions--which is a lot of money, but it is only a minuscule amount compared to the trillions we are saddled with in debt that we ought to be addressing. It is time for Congress and the administration to stop ignoring the obvious. The rapid growth of mandatory spending is endangering our financial future.

I point to this chart on my left. It simply points out the dramatic growth that has occurred and will continue to occur over the years in the future. It doesn't take a mathematician--although the math is pretty simple--when you spend $3.7 trillion a year and take in $2.2 trillion, that leaves you with a big deficit. But it doesn't take a mathematician or anybody with any sophistication in economics to understand that if we stay on the current path, we are going to continue to see this line escalate. This red on here is red ink. It is net interest we will owe. What does that mean? It means that to continue borrowing in order to finance what we are doing, we are going to have to pay larger and larger rates of interest to the lenders because of the risks associated with our potential inability to pay back the loans we have taken.

This flow of red ink, this red tide--if we don't address this, it is going to make it difficult for Americans to buy cars, pay their mortgages, purchase homes, and buy groceries. The prices of products will go higher because the interest rates will go higher. We are running ourselves into a desperate situation. I think everyone understands that. I think it has been made clear to the American people.

We don't have to spin this whole message here in order to convince the American people we don't have a problem. We do, and they understand that. That is what 2010 was all about. We cannot continue to go forward in 2011 without providing any basis of a real solution to assure the financial world and the people that we are taking steps in order to address this.

I think there is a consensus--and if anybody doesn't understand this, they haven't looked at the problem--that we could tax Americans to death, we can cut discretionary spending by massive amounts, and we won't begin to address the problem we have, unless we address the massive amount of spending on mandatory programs. We don't have control over mandatory programs in terms of budgeting; they are simply there, and if you are eligible, you get to draw from the program. All of that is fine, if you have money to do it. But we are running out of money to pay those recipients who are continuing to receive benefits from these entitlement programs. Unless we address those, we are not going to solve the problem.

Let's take a couple of these, and let's look at Medicare. Everybody says this is a political nonstarter. If you dare talk about it, you are going to get zinged in the next election, and you will be characterized as taking away benefits from the elderly, when the plans that have been put forward don't do anything of the sort. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the dimensions of the problem we are facing from this one entitlement. Over the next 10 years, Medicare spending-- spending on this one entitlement--is expected to double.

A few weeks ago, the Medicare trustees announced that the hospital trust fund would be exhausted by 2024--5 years earlier than estimated in last year's report. Who knows what next year's report is going to tell us.

The bottom line is this program is going to go broke. Failing to restructure Medicare jeopardizes the medical benefits of present and future elderly Americans. So rather than terminating Medicare, as has been charged but is not true, rather than destroying Medicare, which has been charged but is not true, what we are trying to do is find a way to restructure it in a way that Medicare will be viable and solvent so benefits will be available for future retirees.

When Medicare was first enacted in 1967, the program cost $2.5 billion. At that time, Congress predicted that the program would cost $12 billion by 1990. That wasn't the case. We underestimated it just a bit--by $86 billion, which is more than just a bit. When it starts at $2.5 billion, and you project it will be $12 billion, and you ended up being off on that estimate by $86 billion, you have to start asking yourself some questions. You have to start thinking that maybe we got this formula wrong, or maybe our assumptions didn't turn out as we thought they were going to on the cost of Medicare.

Today, Medicare is roughly $494 billion, with approximately $89.3 trillion in total unfunded liabilities. These are staggering numbers. They are numbers beyond our ability to comprehend. These numbers are beyond our ability to sustain.

There is no possible way on Earth, no matter how fast or how hard we grow, that we can reach solvency in the Medicare Program without any action. Why? Because after World War II, soldiers came home, and people had deferred having families, and the so-called baby boom generation was born. It has moved through our entire history, over the last 60 years or so, like a pig moves through a python. Early on, there was a rush to provide housing for soldiers and their families. There was a massive infusion of money into baby cribs and the need for hospitals and doctors and nurses to deliver children.

A few years later, all of a sudden, we had to build a massive number of new elementary schools. As this baby boom has moved through their lifespan, we have seen dramatic impacts on the economy--many of them positive. But the colleges that had to be expanded and built, and universities and training facilities, and the education that had to be provided, the employment that needed to be provided--all of this has had a dramatic impact on our economy. We have known for decades that eventually the pig moving through the python was going to reach the point of

retirement, and when it reached the point of retirement, it was going to have an enormous impact on our finances.

Instead of anticipating this coming and putting into place structural plans that would accommodate the needs, legitimate needs of those for retirement income and benefits, we have instead ignored this reality. We have pushed it down the road. Nobody wanted to touch it. Election after election, it was said we better postpone that debate for the next election because it is too hot to deal with now. Well, it is all coming undone. We are at the point almost of no return.

The proposals that have been put forward--you may not agree with every portion of them, and I don't. But the House brought to us a budget plan. You have to give Paul Ryan a great deal of credit for the extraordinary amount of work and effort he put into it. Maybe you don't like all of it, but it is at least a plan to debate, modify, and adjust; it is something that gives us an opportunity to start down the path of paying off our debt, of maintaining solvency for the Medicare Program.

That is what we ought to be debating instead of saying we are into another cycle of ``gotcha,'' and you have touched the third rail. You made the decision to put Medicare in play and go to the public and tell them we are going to take away their health care benefits when they retire. The opposite is true. We are trying to save that for those who are retiring. We are trying to look at ways to restructure the program so it doesn't break Medicare, or break our entire economy.

Today, the average man is living into his 70s, and an average woman into her 80s, or even 90s. As a result, more elderly Americans are on Medicare than originally anticipated. The Federal Government can no longer continue with business as usual. It is time for some honesty for the American people. Washington is promising to deliver benefits it can't afford. We can no longer nickel and dime doctors and hospitals and force them to pay for the care Washington promised elderly Americans. More and more doctors are forced to turn away Medicare patients. The American Medical Association revealed that 17 percent of the more than 9,000 doctors surveyed are forced to limit the number of Medicare patients they accept. And among primary care physicians, this rate is 31 percent. Why? Because we don't have the money to reimburse them for the cost it takes to provide that care.

The American Osteopathic Association said 15 percent of its members refused Medicare and 19 percent declined to accept new Medicare patients. Physicians and hospitals in my home State of Indiana are feeling the pain from the Congress's inaction as well. Hospitals such as Deaconess Clinic in Evansville, IN, say one-third of their patients are on Medicare. When hospitals and doctors are not receiving the necessary compensation for services conducted on one-third of their patients, it has a devastating impact on their businesses.

If we don't reform Medicare, we lose Medicare. Let me repeat that. If we don't take steps to reform Medicare, we lose Medicare. If we don't restructure the program, more patients will lose the care they desperately need.

Mr. President, a very prominent figure--a leader of this country-- made this statement:

Almost all of the long-term deficit and debt that we face

relates to the exploding costs of Medicare and Medicaid.

Almost all of it. That is the single biggest driver of our

Federal debt. And if we don't get control over that we can't

get control over our Federal budget.

That defines, in a very basic statement, exactly the challenge that is before us. It gives us the warning we need to heed, and it should spur us into action.

Let me repeat that statement once again.

Almost all of the long-term deficit and debt that we face

relates to the exploding costs of Medicare and Medicaid.

Almost all of it. That is the single biggest driver of our

Federal debt. And if we don't get control over that we can't

get control of our Federal budget.

That statement was made by President Barack Obama. It was not made by a Republican. It was not made by an editorial piece in the Wall Street Journal. It was not made by a tea party leader or advocate. It was made by our current President. Our President has said we cannot sustain what we are doing, and we have to address it or it is going to take down our whole budget.

I think that is true--it has been backed up by analysts who have looked at this whole situation, left, right, nonpolitical, political, whatever. Why then are we not going forward with addressing this very question? That is what people sent us here to do in 2010. That is what they are asking us to do now. Yet we are acting as if this statement by the President of the United States has nothing to do with what we need to do, that we can simply ignore this and go forward and just cut a little here and cut a little there but we can't touch the entitlements--we can't touch Medicare.

The papers are full today with headlines saying that the results of the New York special congressional race was because the people have been scared--well, they didn't say ``scared,'' but that it was people saying ``don't cut our Medicare.'' What it should have said is, those people who are saying ``don't cut our Medicare'' are basically saying ``keep mine going until this thing runs out. I am afraid I might live too long, and then I won't have benefits at the end.'' But for sure our kids won't have it, for sure our grandchildren won't have it because at its current rate, as the President of the United States has acknowledged, it is unsustainable.

So we have two options here. We can continue with the status quo--we can quibble over how much to cut from our discretionary spending, or that portion of the budget which we have control of--and continue ignoring the entitlement programs or we can make a commitment and have the political will to fulfill that commitment by saving those programs through some sound restructuring. This does not mean current recipients of Medicare are going to be knee-capped or have their benefits dropped. This does not mean that even those nearing retirement are going to face that prospect. What it does mean is, if we don't put the structural reforms in now to address the future problems, we are going to lose the whole program. The gravest threat to Medicare is doing nothing. If we do nothing, not only will Medicare collapse but so will our fiscal house.

In the papers today, a former President--another Democrat, Bill Clinton--has urged his fellow Democrats not to ``tippy-toe around'' Medicare. Continuing that quote, he said the program ``is part of a whole health-care system that has a toxic effect on inflation.'' He went on to say, ``We've got to deal with these things.''

Mr. President, I am here not to criticize the Democrats for putting us in this situation. I think we all bear some responsibility. The country does not want us to point fingers at each other, and they do not want us to use this as a political advantage for the 2012 election. They want us to do the right thing, which they all know needs to be done, and I believe they will reward us and recognize us for at least having the courage to step forward and address a real problem that I think everyone now understands and recognizes.

So whether it is the Paul Ryan plan coming out of the House, whether it is a Democratic budget plan coming out of the Budget Committee, whether it is some other plan coming out between the negotiations that are going on--or should go on--between the executive branch and the congressional branch, this is something we have to do. We have simply got to put aside our partisanship and concerns and worry about the 2012 elections and rise above politics. We did that in 1983 when we restructured Social Security. We had a Republican President, a Democratic House leader, and members of the Democratic congressional committee and Senate committee--the political people--all stood together and said: This rises above the election. It is too important not to address it.

We can just take this one issue and say: Let's take this out of politics. Let's stand together as Republicans and Democrats, along with the President, and do what is right for the country.

The bottom line is that no matter what we do here, if the President doesn't support us in this effort, it will not succeed. He has the veto pen, and he has the ability to lead or not lead. So I guess, as I have before, I am calling on the President and saying this important issue can only be successful

if he will engage and lead us and be part of this effort to solve a problem that affects every living American and those yet to be born in this country. It dramatically affects our future but sooner than any of us, I believe, think. It affects our economy and our ability to grow.

All of this has to be coupled with pro-growth policies. We can't cut our way out of all this. We can help restructure, we can help make cuts where necessary, and we can help our economy grow by putting policies in place that will stimulate the economy. That combination, put together in a package, is what we need to support. And I am hoping we will put politics aside for this one issue that is so important to the future of our country.

Mr. President, I have probably said more than I needed to say at this particular point in time. I appreciate the opportunity and again thank the Senator from North Dakota for agreeing to let me go forward here. As chairman of the Budget Committee, I know he is fully cognizant and aware of these issues and is working to try to address them also. I hope we can work together to find a solution to this very urgent problem.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Sessions be recognized to speak for up to 20 minutes for debate only.

Mr. President, the Senate is preparing to pass another 4- year extension of the USA PATRIOT Act. I have served on the Intelligence Committee for over a decade and I wish to deliver a warning this afternoon. When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the PATRIOT Act, they are going to be stunned and they are going to be angry. They are going to ask Senators: Did you know what this law actually permits? Why didn't you know before you voted on it? The fact is anyone can read the plain text of the PATRIOT Act. Yet many Members of Congress have no idea how the law is being secretly interpreted by the executive branch because that interpretation is classified. It is almost as if there are two PATRIOT Acts, and many Members of Congress have not read the one that matters.

Our constituents, of course, are totally in the dark. Members of the public have no access to the secret legal interpretations, so they have no idea what their government believes the law actually means.

I am going to bring up several historical examples to try to demonstrate what this has meant over the years. Before I begin, I wish to be clear I am not claiming any of the specific activities I discuss today are happening now. I am bringing them up because I believe they are a reminder of how the American people react when they learn about domestic surveillance activities that are not consistent with what they believe the law allows. When Americans learn about intelligence activities that are consistent with their understanding of the law, they look to the news media, they follow these activities with interest, and often admiration. But when people learn about intelligence activities that are outside the lines of what is generally thought to be the law, the reaction can get negative and get negative in a hurry.

Here is my first example. The CIA was established by the National Security Act of 1947 and the law stated that the agency was ``forbidden to have law enforcement powers or internal security functions.'' Members of the Congress and legal experts interpreted that language as a clear prohibition against any internal security function under any circumstances. A group of CIA officials had a different interpretation. They decided that the 1947 law contained legal gray areas that allowed the CIA to monitor American citizens for possible contact with foreign agents. They believed this meant they could secretly tap Americans' phones, open their mail, and plant listening devices in their homes, among other

things. This secret legal interpretation led the CIA to maintain intelligence files on more than 10,000 American citizens, including reporters, Members of Congress, and a host of antiwar activists.

This small group of CIA officials kept the program and their ``gray area'' justification to the program a secret from the American people and most of the government because, they argued, revealing it would violate the agency's responsibility to protect intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure. Did the program stay a secret? It didn't. On December 22, 1974, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh detailed the program on the front pages of the New York Times. The revelations and the huge public uproar that ensued led to the formation of the Church Committee. That committee spent nearly 2 years investigating questionable and illegal activity at the CIA. The Church Committee published 14 reports detailing various intelligence abuses which, in addition to illegal domestic surveillance, included programs designed to assassinate foreign leaders. The investigation led to Executive orders reining in the authority of the CIA and the creation of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

In 1947, President Harry Truman and his top military and legal advisers secretly approved a program named PROJECT SHAMROCK. PROJECT SHAMROCK authorized the Armed Forces Security Agency and its successor, the NSA, to monitor telegraphs coming in and out of the United States. At the outset of the program, companies were told that government agents would only read ``those telegrams related to foreign intelligence targets,'' but as the program grew, more telegrams were sent and received by Americans and they were read. During the program's 30-year run, the NSA analysts sometimes reviewed as many as 150,000 telegrams a month.

While the Ford administration said it made all pertinent information about PROJECT SHAMROCK available, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Justice Department had kept the program secret from the public. They argued that public disclosure was both unjustified and dangerous to national security, and it avoided Congress's questions regarding the legality of the program by stating that the telegrams present somewhat different legal questions from those posed by domestic bugging and wiretapping. That program didn't stay secret either.

The newly formed Senate Intelligence Committee ultimately disclosed the PROJECT SHAMROCK program on November 6, 1975, arguing that public disclosure was needed to build support--build support--for a law governing NSA operations. The resulting public uproar led to a congressional investigation. The NSA's termination of PROJECT SHAMROCK and the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which attempted to subject domestic surveillance to a process of warrants and judicial review.

Years later, during the Reagan administration, senior members of the National Security Council secretly sold arms to Iran and used the funds to arm and train Contra militants to topple the Nicaraguan Government. Selling arms to Iran violated the official U.S. arms embargo against Iran and directly funding the Contras was illegal under the Boland amendment. That was the one Congress passed to limit U.S. Government assistance to the Contras.

But the officials at the National Security Council were convinced they knew better. They were convinced that violating the embargo and illegally supporting the Contra rebels would help free American hostages and help fight communism in Nicaragua. Instead of engaging in a public debate and trying to convince the Congress and the public they were right, they secretly launched an arms program and hid it from the Congress and the American people. How did that work out for them?

The New York Times published a story of these activities on November 25, 1987. A joint congressional committee was launched to investigate the Iran Contra affair with televised hearings for over a month. The House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House and Senate Intelligence Committees held their own hearings. The first Presidential commission investigating the National Security Council was launched. Multiple reports were published documenting the administration's illegal activities, and the Nicaraguan Government sued the United States. Dozens of court cases were filed and National Security Council officials--including two National Security Advisers--faced multiple indictments.

Finally, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a handful of government officials made the unilateral judgment that following U.S. surveillance law, as it was commonly understood, would slow down the government's ability to track suspected terrorists. Instead of working with the Congress, instead of coming to the Congress and asking to revise or update the law, these officials secretly reinterpreted the law to justify a warrantless wiretapping program that they hid from virtually every Member of the Congress and the American people.

It is not clear how long they thought they could hide a large, controversial national security program of this nature, but they kept it so secret that even when it yielded useful intelligence, classification restrictions sometimes prevented the information from being shared with officials who could have used it.

I was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee at this point--a relatively new member--but the program and the legal interpretations that supported it were kept secret from me and virtually all of my colleagues.

Again, did that program stay secret? The answer is no. After several years, the New York Times published a story uncovering the program. The resulting public uproar led to a divisive congressional debate and a significant number of lawsuits. In my view, the disclosure also led to an erosion of public trust that made many private companies more reluctant to cooperate with government inquiries.

As most of my colleagues will remember, Congress and the executive branch spent years trying to sort out the details of that particular program and the secret legal interpretation--the secret legal interpretation--that was used to justify it. In the process of doing so, Congress also attempted to address an actual surveillance issue. I think all my colleagues who were here for that debate would agree those issues could have been resolved far more easily, far less contentiously, if the Bush administration had simply come to the Congress in the first place and tried to work out a bipartisan solution to them rather than, in effect, trying to rewrite the law in secret.

When laws are secretly reinterpreted this way, the results frequently fail to stand up to public scrutiny. It is not surprising, if you think about it. The American law-making process is often cumbersome, it is often frustrating, and it is certainly contentious. But over the long run, this process is a pretty good way to ensure that our laws have the support of the American people, since those that do not will actually get revised or repealed by elected lawmakers who follow the will of our constituents. On the other hand, when laws are secretly reinterpreted behind closed doors by a small number of government officials--and there is no public scrutiny, no public debate--you are certainly more likely to end up with interpretations of the law that go well beyond the boundaries of what the American people are willing to accept.

Let me make clear that I think it is entirely legitimate for government agencies to keep some information secret. In a democratic society, of course, citizens rightly expect their government will not arbitrarily keep information from them, and throughout our Nation's history Americans have vigilantly guaranteed their right to know. But Americans do acknowledge certain limited exceptions to the principle of openness. We know, for example, that tax officials have information about all of us from our tax returns. But the government does not have the right or the need to share this information openly. This is essentially an exception to protect personal privacy.

Another limited exception exists for the protection of national security. The U.S. Government has an inherent responsibility to protect our people from threats. To do this effectively, it almost always requires some measure of secrecy. I do not expect General Petraeus to publicly discuss the details of every troop movement in Afghanistan any more than early Americans

expected George Washington to publish his strategy for the Battle of Yorktown. By the same token, American citizens recognize that their government may sometimes rely on secret intelligence collection methods in order to ensure national security, in order to ensure the safety of the American people, and they recognize that these methods can often be more effective when specifics are kept secret.

But while Americans recognize that government agencies sometimes rely on secret sources and methods to collect intelligence information, Americans also expect these agencies will cooperate at all times within the boundaries of publicly understood law.

I have served on the Senate Intelligence Committee for a decade, and I do not take a backseat to anybody when it comes to protecting what are essential sources and methods that are needed to keep the American people safe when intelligence is being gathered. But I do not believe the law should ever be kept secret. Voters have a right and a need to know what the law says and what their government thinks the text of the law means. That is essential so the American people can decide whether the law is appropriately written and they are in a position to ratify or reject the decisions their elected officials make on their behalf.

When it comes to most government functions, the public can directly observe the government's actions and the typical citizens can decide for themselves whether they support or agree with the things their government is doing. Certainly, in my part of the world, American citizens can visit the national forests and decide whether they think the forests are appropriately managed. When they drive on the interstate, they can decide for themselves whether those highways have been properly laid out and adequately maintained. If they see someone punished, they can decide for themselves whether the sentence was appropriate, whether it was too harsh or too lenient.

But Americans generally cannot decide for themselves whether intelligence agencies are operating within the law. That is why the U.S. intelligence community evolved over the past several decades. The Congress set up a number of watchdog and oversight mechanisms to ensure that the intelligence agencies follow the law rather than violate it. That is why the Senate and House each have a Select Intelligence Committee. It is also why the Congress created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It is why Congress created a number of statutory inspectors general to act as independent watchdogs inside the intelligence agencies themselves. All these oversight entities were created at least in part to ensure that intelligence agencies carry out all their activities within the boundaries of publicly understood law.

But the law itself must always be public. Government officials must not be allowed to fall into the trap of secretly reinterpreting the law in a way that creates a gap between what the public believes the law says and what the government secretly claims it says. Anytime that happens, it seems to me there is going to be a violation of the public trust. Furthermore, allowing a gap of this nature to develop is simply shortsighted. Both history and logic should make it clear--and that is why I brought these examples to the floor of the Senate--that secret interpretations of the law will not stay secret forever and, in fact, often come to light pretty quickly. When the public eventually finds out that government agencies have been rewriting surveillance laws in secret, the result, as I have demonstrated, is invariably a backlash and an erosion of public confidence in these government agencies.

I believe this is a big and growing problem.

Our intelligence and national security agencies are staffed by many talented and dedicated men and women. The work they do is very important, and for the most part, they are extraordinarily professional. But when members of the public lose confidence in these agencies, it does not just undercut morale, it makes it harder for these agencies to do their jobs. If you ask the head of any intelligence agency, particularly an agency that is involved in domestic surveillance in any kind of way, he or she will tell you that public trust is the coin of the realm, it is a vital commodity, and voluntary cooperation from law-abiding Americans is critical to the effectiveness of our intelligence agencies.

If members of the public lose confidence in these government agencies because they think government officials are rewriting surveillance laws in secret, it is going to make those agencies less effective. As a member of the Intelligence Committee, I do not want to see that happen.

I wish to wrap up now with one last comment; that is, as you look at these statutes, and particularly the ones I have outlined--where you have so many hard-working lawyers and officials at these government agencies--I wish to make it clear I do not believe these officials have a malicious intent. They are working hard to protect intelligence sources and methods and for good reason. But sometimes they can lose sight of the differences between the sources and methods, which must be kept secret, and the law itself, which should not. Sometimes they even go so far as to argue that keeping their interpretation of the law secret is actually necessary because it prevents our Nation's adversaries from figuring out what our intelligence agencies are allowed to do.

I can see how it might be tempting to latch onto this ``Alice in Wonderland'' logic. But if the U.S. Government were to actually adopt it, then all our surveillance laws would be kept secret because that would, obviously, be even more useful. When Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, it would have been useful to keep that law secret from the KGB so Soviet agents would not know whether the FBI was allowed to track them. But American laws should not be public only when government officials think it is convenient. They ought to be public and public all the time. The American people ought to be able to find out what their government thinks those laws mean.

Earlier this week, I filed an amendment, along with my colleague from the Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Udall, and that amendment would require the Attorney General to publicly disclose the U.S. Government's official interpretation of the USA PATRIOT Act. The amendment specifically states that the Attorney General should not describe any particular intelligence collection programs or activities but that there should be a full description of ``the legal interpretation and analysis necessary to understand the . . . Government's official interpretation'' of the law.

This morning, Senator Mark Udall and I--and we had the help of several colleagues: Senator Merkley, Senator Tom Udall--reached an agreement with the chair of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Feinstein. She is going to be holding hearings on this issue next month.

Senator Mark Udall and I, as members of the committee, will be in a position to go into those hearings and the subsequent deliberations to try to amend the intelligence authorization. If we do not get results inside the committee, because of the agreement today with the distinguished chair of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Feinstein, and the majority leader, Senator Reid, we will be in a position to come back to this floor and offer our original amendment this fall.

We are going to keep fighting for openness and honesty. As of today, the government's official interpretation of the law is still secret-- still secret--and I believe there is a growing gap, as of this afternoon, between what the public believes that law says and the secret interpretation of the Justice Department.

So I plan to vote no this afternoon on this legislation because I said some time ago that a long-term reauthorization of this legislation did require significant reforms. I believe when more Members of Congress and the American people come to understand how the PATRIOT Act has actually been interpreted in secret, I think the number of Americans who support significant reform and the end of secret law--the end of law that is kept secret from them by design--I think we will see Americans joining us in this cause to ensure that in the days ahead, as we protect our country from the dangerous threats we face, we are also doing a better job of being sensitive to individual liberty.

Those philosophies, those critical principles are what this country is all about. And we are going to stay at it, Senator Udall and I and others, until those changes are secured.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Indiana for his thoughtful presentation. There are parts of it with which I disagree, but the overall theme of what he has said is undeniably true.

I believe our country is in deep trouble. At the end of this year, we will have a debt that is 100 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States. We have had two of the leading economists in this country tell us, after a review of 200 years of economic history, that when a country reaches a gross debt of more than 90 percent of its GDP, its future economic prospects are diminished. And that is where we are. So I agree with the Senator from Indiana that this is the time. We must find a way to come together to craft a plan that deals with this debt threat.

Five years ago, the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, Senator Gregg, and I came up with the concept of a commission. That effort led to the commission that was in place last year, and it came up with a recommendation to reduce the debt $4 trillion over the next 10 years, and 11 of 18 commissioners supported it. Senator Gregg and I both supported it. We had five Democrats, five Republicans, and one Independent. That is the only bipartisan plan that has emerged from anywhere. But we needed 14 of 18 to agree for it to come to a vote in Congress.

There were many parts of that plan I didn't like. I would have gone further than that plan. I proposed to the commission that we have a $6 trillion plan of debt reduction because we could balance the budget in 10 years with that kind of plan. But it was a step in the right direction. It was a big step in the right direction. So I supported it, along with the other 10 commissioners who did.

I want to say to the Senator from Indiana that I respect the presentation he just made because, in larger terms, it says what has to be said. We all have to be truth-tellers. However uncomfortable the truth is, we have to be truth-tellers. I believe the truth is that when the revenue is the lowest it has been in 60 years as a share of GDP and spending is the highest it has been in 60 years as a share of GDP, we have to work both sides of the equation. We are going to have to cut spending, and I believe we are going to have to raise revenue.

None of it is very popular. If you ask the American people, they will say to you: Well, yes, get the deficit and debt under control, but don't touch Social Security, don't touch Medicare, and don't touch defense. And by the way, just those three are about 80 percent of Federal spending if you add up all the mandatory programs and add up defense. That is about 80 percent of Federal spending. And if you ask the American people, they say: Don't touch any of them. On the revenue side, they say: Don't touch that. Well, do you know what is left? Twenty percent of Federal spending.

If you start asking them questions about the elements of that 20 percent, they reject every one except one--foreign aid. They say: Yes, cut foreign aid. A majority supports that. The problem is that is only 1 percent of the budget. Here we are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend, and even if we eliminate all foreign aid, it does not make a material difference.

The other thing the American people support by a majority--the only other thing--is taxing the wealthy. Let me just say that I believe the wealthy are going to have to pay somewhat more. But that won't solve our problem because to solve the problem, you would have to have a top rate of 70 to 80 percent on corporations and individuals. What would that do to the competitive position of the United States?

So I believe we all are going to have to be truth-tellers, and before we are done, we are going to have to find a way to come together. I was part of that effort on the commission. I was part of that effort in this group of six, which is now a group of five because one of our members left. And there is this other effort under way that is a leadership effort with the White House being involved. At the end of the day, the White House has to be at the table.

What Senator Gregg and I had recommended was that the Secretary of the Treasury be the chairman of the commission and the head of OMB be one of the 18 members. That wasn't adopted by the Congress. We got 53 votes in the Senate for our proposal, but 53 votes doesn't pass things around here. You have to have 60. You have to have a supermajority. So here we are.

Let me just say again that I thank the Senator for his thoughtful presentation because that is what it is going to take. We are going to have to be brave. We are going to have to show some political courage here to do what is right for our country. So I appreciate the thoughtful remarks of the Senator from Indiana.

Let me make a brief review in response to some of what I have heard this morning because I have heard some things with which I strenuously disagree that I believe require a response. We all agree we are on an unsustainable path. We are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar. That cannot be continued.

As I indicated earlier, this is a 60-year look at the spending and revenue of the United States. We can see the spending line is the red line; the green line is the revenue line. The spending of the United States as a share of national income is the highest it has been in 60 years. The revenue is the lowest it has been in 60 years.

Some of our colleagues say it is just a spending problem. Factually, I reject that. The facts show it is not just a spending problem-- although it is clear we do have a spending problem. When spending is the highest it has been in 60 years, clearly we have a spending problem. But as this chart reveals, revenue is the lowest it has been in 60 years. So, clearly, we have a revenue problem as well.

Yesterday we voted on the package that came from the House of Representatives. The package that came from the House Budget Committee was passed by the House of Representatives. Even though that package was defeated overwhelmingly and on a bipartisan basis here yesterday, again this morning we had colleagues come and talk about what a great package it was. I do not believe it was a great package. I think it was a terrible package, and here is why--and now I am quoting former economic adviser to President Reagan, one of President Reagan's economic advisers, Mr. Bartlett. He said, about the House Republican plan, the following:

Distributionally, the Ryan plan is a monstrosity. The rich

would receive huge tax cuts while the social safety net would

be shredded to pay for them. Even as an opening bid to begin

budget negotiations with the Democrats, the Ryan plan cannot

be taken seriously. It is less of a wish list than a

fairytale utterly disconnected from the real world, backed up

by make-believe numbers and unreasonable assumptions. Ryan's

plan isn't even an act of courage; it's just pandering to the

tea party. A real act of courage would have been for him to

admit, as all serious budget analysts know, that revenues

will have to rise well above 19 percent of GDP to stabilize

the debt.

This is a former economic adviser to President Reagan commenting on the House Republican plan that we rejected on a bipartisan basis here yesterday.

Why does he say it is a monstrosity? He says it because even though revenue is the lowest it has been in 60 years,

the first thing the Republican budget from the House did was cut taxes further, an overwhelming tax cut for the wealthiest among us after they already enjoyed very significant tax reductions over the last decade.

In fact, the plan that came from the Republican House would have given those who have over $1 million of income a year on average a tax cut of over $192,000. For those who are as fortunate as to earn over $10 million a year, the plan they sent over here would have given them on average a tax cut of $1,450,000. That is a fact. That is just a fact.

Does that make any sense at all when the revenue of this country is the lowest it has been in 60 years, that the first thing you do is dig the hole deeper, give another $1 trillion of tax cuts going to the wealthiest among us? It makes no sense.

It did not end there because the plan from the House also would permit a scam that is occurring to continue. The scam I am referring to relates to this little building down in the Cayman Islands, Ugland House. This little five-story building down in the Cayman Islands claims to be the home of 18,857 companies. Really, 18,000 companies are doing business out of this little five-story building down in the Cayman Islands? Please. Mr. President, 18,000 companies are not doing business out of this little five-story building down in the Cayman Islands. The only business that is going on is monkey business, and the monkey business that is going on is avoiding the taxes they legitimately owe to the United States.

You wonder why big companies making billions of dollars a year can announce they owed no taxes to the United States--none? It is because they are operating out of Ugland House down in the Cayman Islands where there are no taxes, and they show their profits in their companies down in the Cayman Islands.

When I was tax commissioner in my State I found a company that reported all of their earnings down in the Cayman Islands. They did business all across the country, but amazingly enough none of those companies showed any profits in the United States. They showed all their profits in the Cayman Islands where, happily, there are no taxes.

The Republican budget plan said: That is fine. Keep doing it.

That is not fine. It is not fair. We know from our own Permanent Committee on Investigations in the Senate that these offshore tax havens are proliferating. Here is a quote from our Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations:

Experts have estimated that the total loss to the Treasury

from offshore tax evasion alone approaches $100 billion per

year, including $40 to $70 billion from individuals and

another $30 billion from corporations engaging in offshore

tax evasion. Abusive tax shelters add tens of billions of

dollars more.

The Republican plan from the House says: No problem. Keep on doing it. In fact, we will go you one more. We will give you more tax cuts for the wealthiest among us.

I tell you, that plan cannot stand scrutiny. At the same time it says: You know, because we have the lowest revenue in 60 years, and because we are going to give even more tax preferences, more tax credits, more tax schemes to the wealthiest among us, we are not going to be able to keep Medicare.

I have heard colleagues say that these Draconian cuts to Medicare that are in the House plan are a way of saving Medicare. You don't save Medicare by destroying it. That is what the House plan does, make no mistake. It ends Medicare as we know it. Why do I say that? Let me just show you what it does.

Right now, under traditional Medicare, the individual pays 25 percent of their health care costs. That is how it works today. You pay about 25 percent. A senior citizen eligible for Medicare pays about 25 percent of their costs. Under the House Republican budget plan that they passed and sent to the Senate that we defeated yesterday by a bipartisan vote, they would increase what the individual pays from 25 percent to 68 percent, and they claim they are saving Medicare. It doesn't look to me like they are saving it. It looks to me like they are completely undoing it.

When we add it all up, what is most striking is that the House Republican plan, although it gives massive tax cuts to the wealthiest among us, another $1 trillion of tax cuts, even though it shreds Medicare and completely undermines Medicaid, which would mean another 34 million people do not have health care coverage in this country because they completely undo the coverage for health care passed last year so 34 million people are not going to have health care as a result of their plan--even with all of that and the other dramatic cuts--by the way, they cut support for energy programs to reduce our dependence on foreign energy, they cut that 57 percent; they cut education almost 20 percent--even after all that you would think at least they got the debt under control? No.

Amazingly enough their plan, according to their own numbers, would add $8 trillion to the debt. Wow. They shred Medicare, they cut education dramatically, they cut almost 60 percent of the funding for energy to reduce our dependence on foreign energy--they cut that 57 percent, and they still add $8 trillion to the debt. That is a good plan? I don't think so. I don't think that is a plan that can stand much scrutiny.

We also heard a lot of complaints from the other side that we have not gone to markup on the budget in the Senate. That is true. The reason we have not is because something is going on in this town that is very unusual. There are high-level bipartisan talks going on with the White House on what the budget plan should be to deal with our debt. This is something I have encouraged for years.

This year I have repeatedly called for a summit to deal with our debt, to get a plan in place to cut spending, and, yes, to raise revenue--hopefully without raising taxes but by eliminating tax expenditures, tax loopholes, this kind of scam we have just talked about of offshore tax havens and abusive tax shelters. That bipartisan leadership effort that is underway deserves a chance to succeed. If they reach a conclusion, they may need a budget resolution. They may need us to have a markup in the Budget Committee to implement their plan.

Some do not want to wait, they do not want a bipartisan agreement. But we simply must have a bipartisan agreement if there is to be any chance for success.

The House is controlled by the Republicans. The Senate is controlled by the Democrats. There is a Democrat in the White House. The only possible way that a plan is actually passed into law and implemented is if we work together. I did it for all last year on the President's commission. I have done it for months of this year with three Democrats, three Republicans, spending hundreds of hours trying to come up with a bipartisan plan to implement the recommendations of the committee. So I don't take a back seat to anybody with respect to being serious about trying to get a plan to get our debt under control because it is a fundamental threat to the economic security of the United States.

But here is what the Republican leader himself said about the effort that is underway, the bipartisan leadership effort:

[T]he discussions that can lead to a result between now and

August are the talks being led by Vice President Biden . . .

that's a process that could lead to a result, a measurable

result. . . . And in that meeting is the only Democrat who

can sign a bill into law; in fact, the only American out of

307 million of us who can sign a bill into law. He is in

those discussions. That will lead to a result. That is why we

have not gone to a budget markup, because we have the

patience to wait for the outcome of these bipartisan

leadership talks. The top Republicans are represented in the

Senate, the top Republicans in the House are represented, as

are the Democrats in the Senate and the House, led by the

White House.

The Republican leader said this as well about the talks:

We now have the most important Democrat in America at the

table. That's important. He is the only one of the 307

million of us who can actually sign a bill into law. And I

think that's a step in the right direction. And the Biden

group is the group that can actually reach a decision on a

bipartisan basis. And if it reaches a decision, obviously we

will be recommending it to our members.

That is the point. Why would we go to a partisan budget markup and refuse to wait for the leadership negotiation that is underway to succeed, when we know if they do succeed in all likelihood they will need us to do a budget

markup to implement what they decide?

I have the patience. I have spent 5 years working, first, with Senator Gregg, the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, then with all 18 members of the fiscal commission, now with the group of six--three Democrats and three Republicans--trying to put together a plan to implement what the commission recommended to get our debt under control.

I have the patience to wait a few more weeks to see if the combined leadership of this country, Republican and Democrat, working with the President of the United States, can come up with a plan to get our debt under control. We should all have that patience. We should all hope they succeed. But we are not going to be sitting and waiting. While we are hoping for a successful outcome, this Senator will continue to work with Republicans and Democrats to come up with a bipartisan plan to meet our debt threat. All of us have that obligation. All of us have that responsibility.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.