Middle Class Tax Cut Act

Madam President, I indicated to the majority leader before the Senate convened today that I wanted to have a discussion, the two of us, on several items.

No. 1, I understand my friend the majority leader, last night on MSNBC, said it was his intention at the beginning of the next Congress, if Democrats were in the majority, to change the rules of the Senate by a simple majority. So I want to begin by asking my friend the majority leader if his comments at the beginning of this Congress, on January 27, 2011, are no longer operative. At that time, my friend the majority leader said:

I agree that the proper way to change Senate rules is

through the procedures established in those rules, and I will

oppose any effort in this Congress or the next to change the

Senate's rules other than through the regular order.

So my first question to my friend the majority leader is: Is that statement no longer operative?

I gather then my friend the majority leader's commitment at the beginning of the Congress, that we would follow the regular order to change the rules of the Senate, is no longer operative. So let me turn to a second area of discussion.

The principal advantage of being in the majority is you get to schedule legislation. And of course there are a number of things that can be done with a simple majority of 51. So I would ask my friend the majority leader why it is his view Republicans have somehow prevented the Senate from passing a budget, which could have been done with a mere 51 votes anytime during the last 3 years?

Madam President, I would say to my friend the majority leader, he knows the Parliamentarian disagrees with his view that we already have a budget. But let us assume for the sake of discussion we do have a budget. Then I would ask my friend the majority leader why we haven't passed a single appropriations bill?

Madam President, what we just heard is that it is not the

Senate's fault, it is the House's fault that the Senate won't schedule appropriations bills that have been marked up in the Senate appropriations committees.

My concern here is that nobody is taking responsibility for the Senate itself. We are not responsible for what the House is doing. And typically these differences in what we call 302(b)s; that is, what each subcommittee is going to spend, are worked out in conference. We can't have a conference on any of the bills because we haven't passed any of the bills across the Senate floor.

So the majority leader doesn't want to do a budget. He doesn't want to schedule votes on appropriations bills. Then I would ask my friend, why don't we do the DOD authorization bill?

Madam President, it is pretty obvious that the reason the Senate is so inactive is because the majority leader doesn't want to take up any serious bills that are important to the future of the country. He mentioned cybersecurity. Why isn't it on the floor? Defense authorization: Why isn't it on the floor? Appropriations bills: Why don't we call them up? These are not partisan bills. They are widely supported. They are the basic work of government, including the budget. And I understand his view is that the Parliamentarian is wrong and that we really did pass a budget. But the budget could be done with a simple majority. The appropriations bills are not partisan in nature. If there are differences in the 302(b)s, they could be worked out in conference, which is the way we did it for years.

We have followed the regular order occasionally, and when we have Senators have been involved, they were relevant in the process. I will give five examples. The Export-Import Bank reauthorization, trade adjustment assistance patent reform, FAA reauthorization, the highway bill, and the farm bill are all examples of when Senators were made relevant by the fact that we took up bills that actually came out of committees, that were worked on by Members of both parties, that were brought up on the floor, amendments were offered, and in the end bills passed.

The core problem here is that my good friend the majority leader as a practical matter is running the whole Senate because everything is centralized in his office, which diminishes the opportunity for Senators of both parties to represent their constituents.

Look, we all were sent here by different Americans who expected us to have a voice, to have an opportunity to effect legislation.

I would say to my good friend the majority leader, we don't have a rules problem, we have an attitude problem. When is the Senate going to get back to normal?

I can recall my friends on the other side saying repeatedly that the difference between the House and Senate is you get to vote; it is not a top-down organization the way the House is, it is really kind of a level playing field in which the majority leader has a little more advantage than any of the rest of us and the right of first recognition, but really, once a bill is called up, it is a jump ball.

What my friend the majority leader is saying is that it is inconvenient, it is hard to work with all these Senators who have different points of view and want to do different things. Well, heck, that is the way legislation is passed. It is not supposed to be easy, and Senators are supposed to have an opportunity to participate.

I would argue that in the examples I just cited where Senators did participate--both in the committee and on the floor--the Senate functioned the way it used to. And all this talk about rules change is just an effort to try to find somebody else to blame for the fact that the Senate has been ruled essentially dysfunctional by 62 efforts by my good friend the majority leader to fill up the tree--in effect, deny Senators, both Democrats and Republicans, the opportunity to offer any amendments he doesn't select. That is the reason we are having this problem. So it doesn't require a rules change, it requires an attitude change. And I sense on both sides of the aisle--this is not just a Republican complaint, I would say to my friend the majority leader. I have talked to a lot of Democrats about this too. They would like to be relevant again, and the way Senators are relevant is for their committee work to be respected and to be important and to become a part of the bill coming out of committee or, if it didn't, an opportunity to offer an amendment to effect it on the floor.

Sure, we don't have rules of germaneness. We generally are able to work that out. When we were in the majority, we got nongermane amendments from the Democratic side, and I used to tell my Members that the price of being in the majority is you have to cast votes you don't want to cast because that is the way you get a bill across the floor and get it to completion.

So I would say to my good friend the majority leader, quit blaming everybody else. It is not the House; it is not the Senate; it is not the motion to proceed. Why don't we operate the way we used to under leaders of both parties and understand that amendments we don't like are just part of the process because everybody here doesn't agree on everything? That would be my thought about how to move the Senate forward.

But at the beginning of this discussion, the majority leader made it clear that what he said at the beginning of the Congress is no longer operative. It is now his view that the Senate ought to operate like the House--it ought to operate like the House, with a simple majority. I think that is a mistake. I think that would be a mistake if I were the majority leader and he were the minority leader, which could be the case by the end of the year. And now I will probably have to argue to many of my Members why we shouldn't do what the majority leader was just recommending about 6 months before.

Let's assume we have a new President and I am the majority leader next time and we are operating at 51. I wonder how comforting that is to my friends on the other side. How does it make you feel about the security of ObamaCare, for example? I think that is worth thinking about.

The Senate has functioned for quite a number of decades without a simple majority threshold for everything we do. It has a good effect because it brings people together. To do anything in the Senate, you have to have some bipartisan buy-in.

My colleagues, do we really want the Senate to become the House? Is that really in the best interests of our country? Do we want a simple majority of 51 to ramrod the minority on every issue? I think it is worth thinking about over the next few months as the American people decide who is going to be in the majority in the Senate and who is going to be the President of the United States.

Madam President, most people think a filibuster is a lot of talking to stop the bill from passing. In fact, cloture is to end debate. And what we have had here on at least 62 occasions while the majority leader was running the Senate are examples of times when Senators were not allowed to talk, not allowed to offer amendments, and not allowed to participate in the process. Cloture is frequently used in order to advance a measure, but, as you can imagine, when Senators have no opportunity to have any input, it tends to create the opposite reaction.

But what is all of this really about? It is about making an excuse for a completely unproductive Senate, much of which could have been done with simple 51 votes, passing a budget, and not even bringing up bills that we all want to act on--all the appropriations bills, the Defense authorization bill. And on the rare occasions when the majority leader has turned to a measure that Senators have been involved in developing, we have come to the floor, we have had amendments, we have had votes, and the bills have passed. That is the way the Senate used to operate.

So this isn't a rules problem, this is a making-excuse argument to try to blame somebody else for the lack of productivity of a Senate that I sense on a bipartisan basis would like to be a lot more productive, which would involve the use of Senators' talents, speaking ability, voting, and debating on the floor of the Senate.

Since when did that go out of fashion?

Yes, we have a big difference of opinion about the way this place is being run. It is not a rules problem; it is an attitude problem. It is a looking for somebody else to blame game.

I say to my friend the majority leader, I think what we need to do is get busy with the serious business confronting the American people. Where is the Defense authorization bill? Where are the appropriations bills? Don't blame it on the House. Don't blame it on Senate Republicans. We want to go to these bills. Our Members have been involved in developing this legislation. In the Armed Services Committee, in the Appropriations subcommittees, Senate Republicans are involved in developing that legislation. We would like to see it brought up on the floor, debated, and considered.

What is more important than funding the government? What is more important than the Defense authorization bill? Why isn't it on the floor? That is my question to the majority leader.

We can have the rules debate later, and apparently we will, but why aren't we doing anything now is my question for my friend the majority leader.

The reason I am having a hard time restraining my laugher, I actually know Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann. They are ultra ultraliberals. Norm Ornstein is the house liberal over at the American Enterprise Institute. Their problem with the Senate is the Democrats don't have 60 votes anymore. Their problem is the Republicans control the House. Their views about dysfunctionality of the Senate carry no weight, certainly with me. I know they have an ideological agenda, always have, and usually admit it--although it is cloaked in this particular instance.

But I think the best way to wrap it up is nobody else is keeping the majority leader from calling up the appropriations bills, from calling up the Defense authorization bill, from calling up a budget. That is his responsibility. He has a unique role in this institution. He has the opportunity to set the agenda, and just because all 100 Senators do not immediately fall into line--and it may be a little bit difficult to go forward--is no excuse for not doing the important and basic work the American people sent us to do. It is time to bring up serious legislation that affects the future of the country that the American people expect us to act on and not expect 100 Senators to all agree on every piece of legislation from the outset.

Passing bills is inevitably difficult but not impossible. That has been demonstrated on at least five occasions when the majority leader allowed the committees to function, allowed the Senate floor to function, allowed Members to have amendments, and we got a result.

Have you tried calling up any of them?

Just one final point on that. The reason it has been difficult to get on bills is we cannot have an agreement with the majority leader to let us have amendments once we do get on the bill. So the reaction on this side is, if the majority leader is not going to let us have amendments, if the only result of invoking cloture on a motion to proceed is that he fills the tree and doesn't allow us to offer any amendments, why would we want to do that? All this is much more easily avoided than you think.

The majority leader is basically trying to convince the American people it is somebody else's fault that the Senate is not doing the basic work of government. Regardless of the blame game, the results are apparent: no budget, no appropriations bills, no Defense authorization. We are not doing the basic work of government and that ought to stop. It is within the purview of the majority leader to determine what bill we try to turn to, and just because it may be occasionally difficult to get to a bill, particularly when the majority leader will not say we can have amendments, is no good excuse for not trying. We spend days sitting around when we could be processing amendments and working on bills. All we would need is an indication from the majority leader that these bills are going to be open for amendment. We tried that a few times and it worked quite well. It is amazing how the Senate can function when Members are allowed to participate, offer amendments, get votes, and move forward. I recommend we try that more often.

Madam President, the final thing I would say is just last week the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Inouye, said his committee has been working hard to have the bills ready to go. To date, the panel has cleared 9 of 12 annual bills. Senator Inouye is quoted, on July 10, just last week, ``After putting us all to work like this I expect some of these bills to pass.''

I recommend that my good friend the majority leader heed the advice of the chairman of the Appropriations Committee of his party, let's pass some appropriations bills.

A good example of the problem is the bill we are on right now. The Stabenow bill bypassed the committee entirely. It was introduced a week ago and placed on the calendar. This is not the way legislation is normally done. It is crafted in somebody's office. Rule XIV is brought up by the majority leader. I expect it has something to do with the campaign. We spent a week on it when we could have done the DOD authorization bill. Chairman Inouye says: Where are the appropriations bills?

That is my point.

What are we doing here? Is the Senate a messaging machine or are we doing the basic work of government? We are not doing the basic work of government, but we can change. There are a vast majority of Senators of both parties who would like to become relevant, who would like to participate in the legislative process, and who would like to do the basic work of governing.

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

Mr. President, we know with some certainty that on January 20, 2013, regardless of who the President is, he will swear, to the best of his ability, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States; that more than 60,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines will remain deployed in Afghanistan, and that our All-Volunteer Force will stand ready to defend American interests in the Strait of Hormuz, in the Republic of Korea, as well as defend our allies across the globe.

Our forces will remain committed on that day to denying the Taliban a return to Afghanistan, to denying al-Qaida a safe haven, to training the Afghan national security forces, and to fulfilling the operational plans of our regional commanders. As important: the troops in the training pipeline and the schoolhouse, the F-35s in production, and the basic research and development programs in progress will provide the capabilities to meet future threats.

What is not certain is whether the President who is sworn in on that day will have to attempt to manage the damage done on January 2, 2013, by across-the-board cuts to the Defense Department of roughly $50 billion. But he will if the President and the Democrats in Congress fail to act on the cuts to defense that the President has insisted on, but which his own Secretary of Defense has said would be ``devastating.''

Let me say that again. These are cuts the President is insisting on, but his own Secretary of Defense says would be ``devastating.''

That is why I and my Republican colleagues call on the President to make his plans for these cuts clear right now. The President owes it to our forces around the world and to their families to put a plan on the table for all to see now rather than waiting until after the November elections pass. To keep these details secret and to leave the defense sequester in place as written would be irresponsible regardless of the outcome of the Presidential election.

Think about it. If Governor Romney is elected, he will be responsible for managing $50 billion of programmatic cuts before he or a new Secretary of Defense has even had a chance to conduct a review of the Defense Department's plans, programs, and strategy. And if President Obama is reelected, the arbitrary spending cuts directed by the Budget Control Act of 2011 that he insisted on would eviscerate the President's own defense strategic guidance issued earlier this year.

No wonder Secretary Panetta has said these cuts would be like ``shooting ourselves in the head.'' The weapons systems and capabilities required to provide a dominant presence in the Asia- Pacific Theater, attack submarines, amphibious ships, marines afloat and ashore, the next generation bomber, completing acquisition of the F-35, and the Ford class aircraft carriers will be required to deter and defeat aggression and to project power.

Investments in these capabilities must be made while we continue to combat and pursue al-Qaida, deploy and equip special operations forces, and, of course, seek to deter Iran. That is why the President should prepare for the possibility of a possible transition in power now and should do so with the same foresight and concern for our operations that previous administrations have demonstrated.

The last two transfers of political power, that from President Clinton to President Bush, and that from President Bush to President Obama, are instructive in how past administrations have managed the transition of the Defense Department's leadership both in peace and in war.

Early in 2001, before the Senate majority changed control from that of Republicans to Democrats, before the attacks of September 11, and before an envelope containing anthrax was sent to the Hart Building, Secretary Rumsfeld assumed his duties as the Secretary of Defense. He informed the Congress that he would conduct a strategic review of the Department's plan and programs and submit an amended budget later in the year.

That document was ultimately provided to the Congress in June 2001. Secretary Rumsfeld had months--literally months--to develop an initial plan. And this, by the way, was prior to the war on terror, or as we thought it then, during peacetime.

At the end of the second term of President Bush, Secretary Gates found himself responsible for the first Presidential transition during wartime in 40 years. Secretary Gates established a transition staff and a briefing process to ensure all incoming Obama administration officials were well prepared during a time of war. He encouraged political appointees to remain in office and to help with the new administration. Ultimately, he ended up staying on as Secretary.

Just consider the plight of what a President-elect may face in January 2013. Iran has shown no willingness to end its uranium enrichment effort. A young, inexperienced, untested leader is in charge of North Korea. The Taliban patiently waits for the United States and NATO to withdraw from Afghanistan. And al-Qaida's senior leadership, though weakened, and al-Qaida and an affiliate remain determined to strike the homeland. Egypt and Libya struggle with forming new governments. The revolt in Syria threatens regional stability, and al- Qaida affiliates stay active in Mali, North Africa, and Yemen.

As the next President attempts to have his Cabinet Secretaries confirmed, he will be dealing with managing a disruption in procurement contracts and deliveries, actions that are likely to elevate the cost of weapons systems and lead to layoffs in our industrial base. Troops preparing for deployment will see training curtailed. Permanent change- of-station orders will likely be delayed. Training and maintenance readiness levels will decline. All of this will occur while a new administration is reviewing war plans in Afghanistan.

Think of what this would say to a President-elect: As you are developing your new national security strategy, attempting to seat your Cabinet, and assessing the war in Afghanistan, the sequester will slash every program under review. Welcome aboard, sir. You have your hands full.

More important is what this will say to every soldier and marine still fighting in Regional Command East: Despite the outcome of the election, you may still be fighting the Taliban, attempting to train and mentor an Afghan soldier, conducting a drawdown of forces, and handing off operational responsibilities at the same time the funding of your operational training, weapons maintenance, and operations of your base childcare center are being slashed. If you are wounded, the funding for the defense health program and the care you receive will also be cut. That is why allowing the sequester to go into effect as currently written and as demanded, demanded by the President, would break faith with the forces we have sent abroad.

To confront a new President with this level of disruption as he transitions to wartime command would be deeply irresponsible. We must deal with defense sequestration prior to the election. The sequester should be equally concerning to President Obama.

In January of this year, the Department of Defense released strategic guidance that entails a rebalancing of our forces with an emphasis on a growing presence in the Asia-Pacific Theater. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the counterinsurgency strategy used in both campaigns required an expansion of our Marine Corps and Army ground forces. President Obama has announced plans to reduce the Army by 72,000 soldiers between 2012 and 2017 and the Marine Corps by 20,000 between 2012 and 2017. Yet the force structure required to conduct counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan is far different from that required to convince friend and foe alike that our presence in Asia is significant and sustainable.

We must invest in a new generation of warfighting capability. The President's budget insufficiently funds this new strategy, and that is actually before sequestration. This year's budget request delayed construction of a large-deck amphibious ship, a new Virginia-class submarine, and announced the early retirement of other ships. These reductions are envisioned without those related to sequestration. Naval, air and forced-entry capabilities to combat anti-access weapons are the capabilities required under the new strategy, and they are underfunded in the President's budget. This comes at a time when military expenditures in Asia are outpacing those in Europe.

Let me be clear. The failure of the administration to match the President's budget request to his new strategy is not an argument for growing the defense top line, it is emblematic of the difficulty our regional commanders will have in fulfilling current operational plans before you even get to the sequester.

Although the administration has emphasized that the rebalancing of our forces in Asia is not a strategy to confront the growth of China's military, if we fail to match our commitment to Asia with the requisite force structure, China's influence, military posture, and sphere of influence will actually expand. As the Pentagon's own Annual Report to Congress makes clear, China is committed to annual military spending increases of roughly 12 percent, and it has undertaken a broad-based effort to expand the capabilities of the People's Liberation Army.

Both Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey have made it clear that the ability of our Armed Forces to execute the new strategy under sequestration would be at risk. As General Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has stated, under sequestration, ``it's coming out of three places: equipment and modernization--that's one. It's coming out of maintenance, and it's coming out of training. And then we've hollowed out the force.''

In his new strategic guidance, President Obama articulated a commitment to our enduring national security interests; the security of our Nation, allies, and partners; the prosperity that

flows from an open and free international system; and a sustainable international order. Needless to say, those interests will be extremely difficult to maintain with a hollow force.

Just as the next President will take the oath on Inauguration Day, we too take an oath as Senators. We have a responsibility to raise and support armies and provide and maintain a navy. If we let sequestration as currently written go forward and do not act, we will have failed. That is why I am so disappointed with the President's failure of leadership on this issue and that of Senate Democrats as well.

Both House and Senate Republicans have offered proposals to replace the savings from sequestration with more thoughtful and targeted spending cuts. Both of those proposals also either eliminated or reduced the sequester on nondefense programs as well.

Last week, Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Cantor, Senator Kyl, and I sent a letter to the President asking him to work with us to find a bipartisan solution before the end of the fiscal year. With a $3.6 trillion annual budget, clearly there is a smarter, more thoughtful way to achieve at least $110 billion in savings.

It is simply outrageous that this President and Senate Democrats are missing in action on this issue. We are committed to finding a solution on this before we recess for the election. Are they? Or are they committed to jeopardizing our national security? When will they sit down and work with us to find a solution?

The House overwhelmingly passed the Sequestration Transparency Act today by a vote of 414 to 2. This bill is modeled after a Thune- Sessions bill. It asks the President's Office of Management and Budget to submit a report to Congress on the impact of sequestration on both defense and nondefense programs. Every single Democrat in the House Budget Committee supported it--every one. Will that bill die in the Senate because Democrats not only do not want to address sequestration, they want to hide the ball on the impact of sequestration until after the November elections? If they resist this effort to get more information on sequestration out in the open, it is clear that they wish Congress to be both blind and mute when it comes to our national defense and the fate of those who volunteer to defend it.

We need President Obama to tell this Congress his plan for avoiding the sequester, for preventing the gutting of his strategy, for responsibly transitioning to a new Commander in Chief, and for keeping faith with the warriors we have sent into combat. In all of this, our overriding objective--in fact, our duty--should be to work with the President to achieve the level of savings called for in the Budget Control Act without doing harm to our national security or to our military.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

With regard to the impact on the economy, I wonder how many Boeing employees, for example, there may be in the State of Washington. Does the Senator have a number on that?

So I say to the Senator from Texas, it is not just the impact on the military, which is devastating enough, but on our economy as well, correct?

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

Madam President, there is an old adage that sunlight is the best disinfectant. The reason it is an old adage is it is true. That is why I introduced the Financial Disclosure to Reduce Tax Haven Abuse Act of 2012. I introduced this months ago. It would require candidates for Federal office and certain Federal employees to disclose any financial interests they or their spouses have in an offshore tax haven. If the bill becomes law, individuals who file financial disclosure reports would be required to list the identity, category of value, and location of any financial interest in a jurisdiction considered to be a tax haven by the Secretary of the Treasury. The Secretary would be required to provide a list of those countries to filers and to consider for its inclusion on the list any jurisdiction that has been publicly identified by the Internal Revenue Service as a secrecy jurisdiction.

The American people might be surprised to know that we do not already ask whether candidates and Members of Congress are sheltering their money offshore to avoid paying taxes in America. That is because under current law those individuals--that would be candidates and Members of Congress--are not required to account for where their financial interests are held. Candidates for Federal office, including President, do not have to explicitly disclose their holdings in tax havens. The bill, which I introduced months ago with Senator Franken, would change that.

Today it seems that we have a tax system with two sets of rules: one for those who are very wealthy and one for the rest of the people in America. The wealthiest Americans are able to take advantage of certain breaks, loopholes, to pay lower tax rates than working families. We should not have a political system where a candidate can claim to champion working people while that same person is secretly betting against America through tax avoidance and tax haven abuse.

Without this bill, the American people will not know whether a candidate has taken advantage of foreign tax havens to avoid paying his or her fair share. Offshore tax havens and other similar loopholes cost taxpayers in America $100 billion a year which otherwise would be paid by these Americans who are using these offshore tax havens.

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan may be joining me shortly. I hope he can. He has held an extensive set of investigative hearings in the Permanent Committee on Investigations on this particular issue. No one has explored it more than Senator Levin of Michigan. I am hoping he can join me and share his findings.

The money that is invested in these offshore tax havens is money that could be invested in America. It could be invested in America's schools, America's roads, America's Medical research, America's jobs, and it could be paying down America's deficit. Instead, that money is headed to Swiss bank accounts and holding companies in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

Senator Levin and Senator Conrad, who will be joining me, have both done extraordinary work to shine light on these practices and what they mean to the American economy. Those two Senators, Levin and Conrad, successfully included a provision in the Senate Transportation bill that will give the Treasury Department greater tools to crack down on offshore tax haven abuse. Unfortunately, that provision was not included in the conference report, and so we have to continue to fight to put an end to offshore tax haven abuse.

The American people are rightly concerned that wealthy and well- connected Americans are skirting our laws to avoid paying their taxes. They deserve to know that the people who hope to represent them in Washington are not cheating the system.

Nothing in my bill impinges on any individual's right to hold financial interests anywhere in the world. If there is a legitimate reason for a candidate or a Member of Congress or any other individual who files a financial disclosure to hold their money, let's say, in an account in the Cayman Islands, they should not have any problem explaining that to the voters. But any individual who has or wants to have the public trust should be honest about the practices they have engaged in that, in fact, cost American taxpayers, whom they may wish to represent, literally billions of dollars every single year.

This is an important step we must take to restore the public trust. I would hope that this issue, like the one we just finished debating in the previous several days, is one most Americans will understand. It is one that should be bipartisan.

I happen to have had the good fortune of coming into politics being schooled by two people who were my mentors and inspired me, Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois and Senator Paul Simon, both of whom enjoyed positive reputations after the end of their public career for being honest people. One of the things Senator Douglas started doing--and Senator Simon followed--was to make public disclosure of income and net worth. They did it long before it was the law and always did it to a greater degree and greater detail than was required by law.

I have followed that practice, and sometimes it has been hard. I can remember coming out of law school and going to work for then-Lieutenant Governor Paul Simon in Springfield, IL. There I was, deep in student loan debt with a beat-up old car, a wife and two babies, filing an income and net worth disclosure. My first filing, because of my student loan debt, showed me with a negative net worth. I took a little bit of ribbing as a result of that. But I continued to do it every single year I served on a public staff and every year I was a candidate or elected to office.

So there is a rich trove for anyone who is summarily bothered and wants to spend some time, if they would like to read what happens to a public official over the span of a lifetime, when they are in this business, in terms of their own personal wealth. There have been moments when the detail I have provided in these disclosures has been an invitation to the press; it makes their life easier to take a look at things that I and my family do. I can recall when, regarding my daughter Jennifer, I got a question from a reporter about what was her financial interest in Taco Bell. It turned out her financial interest was as a person working at the Springfield Taco Bell making tacos. That was it. But because we go into detail, those things are open for investigation and provide some clarity about my financial circumstance.

Paul Simon used to always say: When my career comes to an end, I want people to look at my record and say I never understood why he voted this way or that way, but he said I never want them to question my honesty in making a political decision. That has been my goal as well.

What I am suggesting is to expand the disclosure of Members of Congress and candidates for Federal office, such as President of the United States, to include foreign tax havens. I think it is an important element that people who are running for office and serving in office stand and basically explain why they felt it was a better idea to put money, for instance, in a Swiss bank account.

I have made a point of asking people--Members of Congress and business leaders--why would anybody have a Swiss bank account? I asked Warren Buffet, who is one of the wealthiest men in America. I said: You have been a successful businessman for decades. Why would you have a Swiss bank account? He said: I don't know. I have never had one. We have good banks in America, so why would I go there?

There are two reasons: One is to conceal their wealth and how they are changing, moving the money around; and second, if they happen to believe the Swiss franc is a stronger currency, a better bet than the U.S. dollar. That is it. There are no other reasons for an American to have a Swiss bank account. Yet people do. I think they should disclose it, and then they should stand ready to explain which of those two explanations stands behind their decision.

Senator Carl Levin has come to the floor. At this point, I will yield to him because he has done extensive investigation on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations about these foreign tax havens. He and Senator Conrad have probably told us more about dollars lost and tax collected and what is happening in some of these tax havens and shelters around the world. I yield to Senator Levin.

Mr. President, I have a unanimous consent request that when the colloquy is finished with the five Republican Senators on the floor, I be recognized.

Mr. President, for the last hour my friends on the Republican side of the aisle have had the floor, and they have presented their point of view. I would like to--and I am joined by the Senator from Vermont--I would like to spend a few moments, if I can, reflecting on what they said and perhaps making some observations that disagree with some of their conclusions.

There are some points on which we agree. The deficit is a serious national problem. Right now we are borrowing 40 cents for every dollar we spend. Whether we are spending that dollar on education, student loans, food stamps, missiles, or the paychecks for our soldiers, we borrow 40 cents for every dollar we spend. No company, no family could survive borrowing 40 percent of everything they spend. That is a fact. So we need to be serious about reducing this deficit.

We are confronted, however, with a reality in terms of our economy. Since 2008 we have had a weak economy. We have had a recession that has killed off a lot of jobs. We are coming back but slowly. If we are not careful in the way we reduce the deficit, we can make it worse. I think everybody agrees with that premise on both sides of the aisle.

So we have a massive deficit, and we have a weak economy. We have to be careful how we reduce spending and raise revenue in a way that doesn't kill off the recovery. Ultimately, we cannot have a strong American economy unless we start putting people back to work in larger numbers. I think both sides will agree on that.

Here is an area where we start to disagree. How do we achieve this? Several years ago the majority leader, Senator Reid, asked me to serve on the Simpson-Bowles Commission. I sat for over a year listening to testimony about ways to reduce the deficit. At the end of the day I came to a conclusion that turned out to be bipartisan, and 11 out of 18 of the members of the Commission voted for it--Democrats, Republicans, public members.

It basically said this: Any honest approach to reducing our deficit puts everything on the table--everything. It puts spending cuts on the table for sure, but it also puts on the table revenue. And entitlements.

I can tell you, there is a great deal of pain in addressing some of these issues.

On the Republican side of the aisle when you say the word ``revenue''-- I wouldn't dare use the word ``taxes''--but when you say the word ``revenue'' they race for the door.

On our side of the aisle, when you mention the entitlements--my colleague from Vermont and I and many others share a real concern about the future of programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the basic insurance policy for senior citizens of America and the safety net for the poor and disabled. So you can understand this becomes extremely difficult in terms of cutting spending, raising revenue, reducing the deficit, and not killing off an economic recovery.

What happened last year? Last year we faced what is called the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is a vague term that not many people understand. Let me try to put it in simple words, if I can.

The debt ceiling is America's mortgage. America's mortgage is growing in size, unlike many home mortgages which go down. America's mortgage is growing because our national debt is growing. Periodically, we have to borrow more money to cover what we have spent. So Members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle who vote for the spending--whether it is for a war or for education or health care--ultimately know the day will come when we have to borrow more money to cover the 40 percent of what that expenditure is that we are not raising in revenue.

The debt ceiling came up for us to consider last year, and for the first time--the first time--the Republicans in the House and Senate said: Let's default on the national debt.

What would happen if you started missing mortgage payments at home? After a month or two somebody might give you a phone call. Then on the third month you might get a letter from a lawyer. On the fourth month you might be in foreclosure proceedings. In other words, you were not a trustworthy borrower and your credit rating is being destroyed by your failure to pay your bills.

The same thing would happen to America if we did not pass the debt ceiling, if we did not extend our mortgage, if we did not make our timely payments on our debt. But that was what the Republicans threatened. So in order to get through this crisis, the possibility that our entire economy would shut down over this default on our national debt, we came up with a plan. Here is what the plan was.

We would create a bipartisan House and Senate supercommittee. We said to that supercommittee: Come up with $1.5 trillion in deficit reductions over the next 10 years--$1.5 trillion in deficit reduction. We did not say to the committee how to do it, but we told them if they fail to come up with this savings of $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, there will be automatic spending cuts--automatic spending cuts called sequestration. We said specifically what they would be: $500 billion from defense spending, $500 billion from nondefense spending. That was the alternative. Reach an agreement, cut the deficit, or face this automatic penalty.

What we have heard on the floor of the Senate today are the protests of a half dozen or more Republican Senators to what we are now facing. You see, the supercommittee could not reach an agreement. There was no agreement because basically the Republican side refused to even consider raising revenue--raising taxes on anybody over the next 10 years. So the alternatives were to continue to cut spending and/or cut Medicaid and Medicare.

It broke down. So the automatic spending cuts, sequestration is now looming. January 2 they are looming as a possibility. The protests on the floor today from Republican Senators are over the possibility of a $500 billion cut in defense spending over the next 9 years, $55 billion a year--not an inconsequential cut by any means.

Here is what is interesting. I asked for the transcript from the Republican Senators in describing the defense sequestration cut, and every one of them came to the floor to condemn it. The words they used in describing it are ``predictable,'' ``devastating,'' ``arbitrary,'' ``irresponsible''--one after the other. That is how they described this.

Then I asked my staff to please get me a copy of the rollcall of Senators who voted for this option. Of the Senators--Republican Senators--who spoke on the Senate floor this afternoon protesting the defense sequestration as devastating, irresponsible, and arbitrary, the following Republican Senators voted for it: Senator McConnell of Kentucky, Senator McCain of Arizona, Senator Thune of South Dakota, and Senator Cornyn of Texas. In fact, the entire Republican leadership team voted for what they are now branding as devastating, arbitrary, and irresponsible. So it is a little hard for me to understand how on this date, August 2, 2011, in the early afternoon, they could vote for this and now come to the floor and condemn it.

Here is the reality. The reality is we need to deal with our deficit in a responsible fashion. We need to keep this economy moving forward. In order to deal with the deficit in a responsible fashion, I still believe the Bowles-Simpson approach is the right approach--put everything on the table and work through it in a responsible way. I thought it was right then; I still believe it is right.

I am troubled, though, by this concept about defense spending. Let me confess my own personal family feelings. An hour ago my nephew Michael Cacace, who is in the 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Totten, NY, came to visit me upstairs. He was a sight for sore eyes. I hadn't seen him in a long time. A little over a year ago he was a doorman letting people into the gallery upstairs, and then he enlisted in the U.S. Army and spent a year in Afghanistan. I thought about him every single day. We sent him care packages and got notes back from him and occasional e- mails, and in he walks to my office today safe and sound. I couldn't have been happier to see him. In just a few weeks he is off to Korea. He has 2 more years in his commitment to the Army.

I thought about him--and think about him and so many others like him--every time the issue of America and the military came up. While Michael and so many others are risking their lives for our country, we can do nothing less than to keep them safe--as Michael was able to do. I am committed to that personally, politically.

To suggest that any of us, in either party, would jeopardize the defense and security of America for political reasons I do not accept. Everyone here is committed to the basic premise of keeping America safe and standing behind our men and women in uniform. I also want to be realistic about the defense budget. It is a big budget.

The last time the Federal budget was in balance was about 10 years ago, and we hit the sweet spot when it came to taxes and revenue on one side and spending on the other. The sweet spot was 19.5 percent of our gross domestic product. That is the sum total and value of all the goods and services produced in America. So we raised 19.5 percent of our gross domestic product on taxes and that is how much we spent. We were in balance 11 years ago.

What has happened since? Senator Dan Inouye, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told us. Since the budget was last in balance, domestic discretionary spending for things such as education, health care, correction systems, highways, and all the nondefense items in our budget has not grown at all. It flatlined, zero growth. When it came to the entitlement programs, such as Medicaid, Medicare, veterans programs, and the like, they have gone up about 30 percent in costs since the budget was last in balance.

What about the defense budget? What has happened to the defense budget since we had a balanced budget? It has gone up 73 percent. Zero on domestic discretionary, 30 percent on entitlements, 64 percent on the military side. So what happened in the last 10 years? There were two wars we didn't pay for, a dramatic buildup in the military, and the reality is all of it was added to the debt.

When we had the Simpson-Bowles Commission, we brought in experts from the Department of Defense and asked them a lot of questions about our spending over there. There were some things there that were troubling. The F-35, which is supposed to be the fighter of the future, ends up dramatically overspent. There were cost overruns in every direction. You may have heard a lot about the Solyndra energy project. The cost overrides on the F-35

project are more than 10 times the money we lost on the Solyndra energy project. There has been a dramatic overrun on some of these major weapons systems.

We then asked the Department of Defense: How many contractors do you have working for you, not including civilian employees, in the Department of Defense or uniformed employees? Their answer to us was very candid: We don't know. We really don't. We hire contractors, and they hire people. We have no idea how many people work for us. It could be a million people, it could be 3 million people. It raises a question in my mind: Can we be safe as a country and still save some money at the Department of Defense? I think we can.

What I hear from the Republican side of the aisle is: Keep your hands off the Department of Defense. Well, I don't want to cut them and jeopardize our security or endanger our servicemen, but I do believe money can be saved there. How did we find ourselves in this position where we are even considering these cuts? Because the Republicans have steadfastly refused to consider revenue.

Before you took the chair, Madam President, our colleague and friend Senator Merkley of Oregon sent me a note to ask Senator Sessions of Alabama a question. I want to read it. He said: Ask Senator Sessions the following: What is more important, taking care of our national security or giving bonus tax breaks of over $100,000 a person for the richest 2 percent of Americans? What the President has proposed is that we cut the tax breaks off at $250,000 of income, and it means the top 2 percent of Americans would pay more. They would pay the rate they used to pay under President Clinton, and the Republicans have said: No way. President Obama's tax proposal would save us $800 billion. The Department of Defense cut over 9 years is $500 billion. So the Republicans here, almost to a person, are basically arguing that rather than raise taxes on the richest 2 percent in America at all, we would run the risk of jeopardizing our national security. That is a false choice. We can have a strong national defense and we must, but we can also have a rational approach to reducing our debt.

Our military is the best in the world, the biggest in the world, and larger than most other nations--the next 10 combined--and it is dramatically larger than any potential enemy of the United States. It has kept us safe as a Nation, and we want it to continue to do so. The men and women who serve us in the military are the best, but we can save money in the Department of Defense. We can do it and reduce the deficit.

What we need from the Republican side of the aisle is the willingness we found in the Simpson-Bowles Commission of a few Republicans to step up and say: Yes, we need to put everything on the table. Let's avoid deep cuts either on the domestic side or the defense side. Let's basically come up with an approach that is fair across the board, and we can do it. Let's spare those who are the most vulnerable in America, the homeless and helpless. For goodness sake, we all care for them. We should all care for America's needy. Those programs have to be protected.

When the Senator from Alabama comes to the floor and decries the fact that more people are using food stamps, I say to my friend from Vermont, who has probably seen the same thing I have: Meet these families on food stamps.

Meet them when you go to the soup kitchens and when you go to the food pantries. Many of them are working families. They can't make it on what they are being paid. They are struggling from paycheck to paycheck. At the end of the month, they are looking for something to put on the table. Sadly, families who have an income still qualify for food stamps because their income is too small.

The Senator from Alabama said the food stamp costs have gone up way too high. True, they are high, but they reflect the state of the economy and the troubling challenges that face working families and poor families across America. He also made a point of saying the entitlement payments are going up dramatically. Why? Because today in America 10,000 of our fellow citizens reached the age of 65. Yesterday was the same thing, tomorrow is the same thing, and for the next 18 years it will be the same thing: The boomers have arrived. And when they arrive at age 65, they look around and say: Well, we paid in all of our lives for Social Security and Medicare. Aren't we qualified? Aren't we entitled to our benefits?

Is the Senator from Alabama suggesting we walk away from those commitments? I don't think that is fair. We can make these better programs, we can make them more efficient, but we certainly don't want to give up on our commitment to Medicare, for example, as the Paul Ryan budget did. I think that is a serious mistake.

To my friends on the Republican side of the aisle, I think the message is clear: You voted for this, so don't keep coming to the Senate floor and criticizing it. They knew what they were voting for. It said if you failed to reach a bipartisan agreement on the supercommittee, this is what we would face.

Secondly, we can solve this problem still. We can avoid sequestration with a bipartisan approach that considers all of the key elements to bring deficit reduction in a sensible and thoughtful way, that doesn't kill our economic recovery.

Third, I will never question any colleague's commitment to the safety and security of this Nation, and I hope our friends on the other side won't either. Everyone is committed to that, and we are committed to our men and women in uniform. Now let's do them proud and make America's economy stronger and make America stronger. Let's invest in what we know will make us a strong Nation. In addition to our military, let's invest in our schools and education, research and innovation, clean energy projects that offer an opportunity for 21st century leadership for America, the infrastructure which serves our country from one side to the other and keeps products moving and keeps America competitive. We can make the investments in these key areas and not jeopardize our national defense. We can do that and reduce the deficit.

I yield to my colleague from Vermont, Senator Sanders.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alabama. A lot has been said, and those of us who serve on the Armed Services Committee have been watching what is going on with a lot of distress. I think it is important for us to understand how we got into this mess to start with. By his own budget, we have a President who has given us over $1 trillion in deficit each year for 4 years, totaling $5.3 trillion. So that is the mess we are in that we are trying to get out of. But in all that time, the one that has not been properly funded has been the military. The first budget he had he cut out the F-22, the C- 17, and the future combat system--all these systems that were so important--and it has gone downhill since then.

As you project the President's budget out, as has been said, we are talking about reducing about $\1/2\ trillion. Now comes sequestration. That is over and above. A lot of people don't realize it. They think we are talking just about the $\1/2\ trillion that will be cut over a period of time. I will use one of the charts that was actually put together by the Senator from Alabama that shows where this stuff is coming from. Everything seems to be exempt except the military. Food stamps, exempt 100 percent of it; Medicaid, 37 percent; and only 10 percent of the DOD base budget. So why is it we find ourselves in a situation where that is the problem?

The only thing other thing I want to mention is this. I have every reason to believe, because I have heard from people in industry, the President of the United States is trying to get them to avoid sending out pink slips until after the November 7 election. I would remind him that we have something called the Workers Adjustment Retraining and Notification Act--WARN Act--and that requires any of these companies, prior to sequestration on January 2, within 60 days, which would be November 2, to notify people of their pink slips.

But this is what I wish to remind people. They do not have to wait. If they want to do it today, they can do it. I think it is imperative the people--the workers who will be laid off work as a result of Obama's sequestration--know in advance of the November election, and we are going to do everything we can to make sure that happens.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, earlier today, we had a colloquy on this floor talking about the devastating effects of sequestration, and I think we covered most everything. One of the significant parts of this is how we got here in the first place.

Not many people realize that in our form of government the President of the United States, whether he is a Democrat or a Republican, comes out with a budget each year. Of course, we have not actually passed a budget in the Senate, so that becomes the budget.

In his budget, starting 4 years ago, he has had, each year, in excess of $1 trillion of deficit each year. Add them all up and it is $5.3 trillion of deficit.

I only mention that in conjunction with the concern we have on sequestration. How did we get here in the first place? This is something that is very much of a concern for us because it seems as if, when we look at all the increases, the deficit increases during this administration since 2008, the only area that has not been dealt with fairly, in terms of keeping up with our obligations, is national defense.

I am not too surprised this happened, but it did. In fact, I can remember going over to--let me interrupt myself.

Madam President, it is my understanding I have 30 minutes; is that correct?

Oh, fine. I like that better.

After the first budget, I can recall going over to Afghanistan, knowing this President would be disarming America in his first budget. I think he will go down in history as the most antidefense President we have ever had. But I remember going over there. I knew, with the tanks going back and forth in the background, that I would be able to respond and to get some attention of the American people.

Of course, that first budget, I remember it so well. He did away with our only fifth generation fighter, the F-22; did away with our lift capability, the C-17; did away with our Future Combat Systems, which would have been the first ground transition in 60 years. Then what I am going to talk about in another portion of my presentation this afternoon did away with the ground-based interceptor in Poland. Now that was the first budget.

Since that time, it has been deteriorating even more. So our national defense has been doing everything it can to try to stay afloat, try to support our troops who are over in harm's way. It is becoming more and more difficult.

If we project what this President has done and would be doing over the next 10 years, it would be cutting the military by $\1/2\ trillion. Now, that is bad enough, but what is worse is what would happen under sequestration.

Under sequestration, the way he has engineered sequestration, the cuts would take place--as was pointed out very effectively by the Senator from Alabama, Mr. Sessions--the amount of cuts that would come from sequestration would be coming almost entirely from the military. So not only is he projecting a cut of $\1/2\ trillion in our military as it is today, but if Obama's sequestration goes into effect, it is going to be another $\1/2\ trillion. So we know what this is going to do to jobs, we know what it is going to do to our ability, we know what it is going to do in terms of putting our troops in harm's way.

So I would only say, in my State of Oklahoma an article came out. It was by Marion Blakley, the president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association. She released a report, and it was covered very well by Chris Casteel in the Oklahoman in this morning's paper.

They talked about: Surely, Oklahoma could lose 16,000 jobs. Well, that is bad enough, but the figure actually is much higher than that when we throw in the uniformed presence we have and the jobs we would lose.

In my State of Oklahoma we have five major military installations. We have Tinker Air Force Base, which does a lot of the repairs on the heavy stuff, KC-135s, and so forth. We have Vance that does primary training, an excellent job. We have our depot and the ammunition depot that is in McAlester. We have Altus Air Force Base that trains people in flying the heavy stuff. And we have Fort Sill in Lawton, OK.

I have to say, this is a great compliment to my State of Oklahoma because we have had, since 1987, five BRAC rounds. It is called Base Realignment and Closure Commission rounds. These are rounds where they go through and make evaluation as to which of these military establishments are perhaps not making the contribution to our Nation's defense they should, and then they go through readjustment and realigning, and so forth.

I am proud to say in my State of Oklahoma, the five military establishments I just now mentioned all have benefited from each of the rounds in terms of numbers of missions and numbers of people. I have to say there is a reason for that. It is not political influence, as a lot of people might guess. It is community support.

I have people saying, well, every community, every State has that. No, it is not true. When there is a problem and a need, we pass bond issues such as

the very large bond issue in Oklahoma City to allow us to get the GM plant and, consequently, we have new missions going in. So I am saying that in a complimentary way.

On the other hand, with the sequestration that will be the Obama sequestration that will take place starting on January 2 of this coming year, we would have huge losses in Oklahoma. The estimate is probably closer to 22,000 jobs in the first year that we would be suffering in my State of Oklahoma.

It is bad enough what that will do to the economy in my State of Oklahoma, but what is even worse is what it does to our national defense. We have no way of knowing right now where that money is going to be coming from. I had a conversation--the first one in a long time yesterday--with Dick Cheney. Of course, we all recall not just his Vice-Presidential relationship, but he used to be Secretary of Defense.

He was one of those who was trying to make a lot of the cuts, and he did make a lot of the cuts. But he was talking about, if they do this and have these across-the-board cuts, it would be not just devastating--I mean, we all understand it would be devastating. That word was actually used by Secretary of Defense Panetta, who is under the Obama administration, saying the Obama sequestration would be devastating to our military.

But Dick Cheney was kind of pointing out some of the areas of interest. One of my backgrounds, and I still do it today, I have been a flight instructor for 50 years. I am sensitive to the need we have for pilots and how to train them. If we are to take across-the-board cuts, that would mean our pilots in the Air Force, in the Navy, and the Marines would not be subjected to the training I believe, in my opinion, would keep them as the crack pilots they are today.

The thing they would probably do is say: Well, we have simulators. We have simulators. That does not do it. Everybody knows that does not do it. So the cuts the Obama sequestration would make would be devastating to the whole country, devastating to my State of Oklahoma but more so, it would affect the lives of our troops.

You know, there is this kind of a myth out there, and the American people believe it, that the United States has the best of everything; when we send our kids into battle, that they have the best equipment always. That is not true. There are a lot of areas where we do not have the best. For example, the Non-Line-of-Sight Cannon. There are five countries, including South Africa, that have better equipment than we do.

So as we look down the road and we see these cuts that are taking place, and then come back, as I just did from the Farnborough Airshow, seeing the other countries--France and all the other countries--and their propulsion systems, they are developing vehicles that are actually, in some cases, better than what we are doing over here.

The problem we are having is the deep cuts that have taken place in defense. I would have to say there is one thing that I am concerned about. This is kind of a warning shot for manufacturers, for defense contractors around the country that it is my opinion that the President--and I have heard this from several of the defense contractors, saying the administration is leaning on them not to send pink slips out on firing these people as a result of the Obama sequestration until after the November 7 election.

Well, I think they are overlooking that there is a law that was passed back in 1988 called the WARN law. It was the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification law. It says if we go through something like this, we have to send out pink slips--or the contractors have to send out pink slips to those who are going to lose their jobs 60 days prior to the time that is going to take place.

Well, if sequestration takes place on January 2, that would mean November 2, only 5 days before the election. So I just want to make sure everybody knows. The law says they must do it by 60 days. But they can do it tomorrow if they want to. I think the people of this country who are going to lose their jobs due to the Obama sequestration should be entitled to know they are going to get their pink slips before the election so that could certainly affect what they are going to be doing in an election.

Missile Defense

That is not what I came down to talk about because we already talked about that before. But I would like to mention something that occurred in the last couple of days that has put us in a more dangerous position, and nobody is talking about it.

Back in December of 2002, President Bush issued a National Security Presidential Directive, Directive No. 23, announcing the plan to begin deploying a set of missile defense capabilities that would include ground-based interceptors, sea-based interceptors--land, sea, and space, kind of a triad system.

This is a system that people did not object to at that time because they remember back when people used to give President Reagan a hard time. When they talk about Star Wars, they talk about there will be a time when people have missiles that can be aimed at the United States, and they said the idea that we could shoot down a missile with a missile or shoot down a bullet with a bullet is inconceivable. They did not believe that would ever happen, but it is happening today and we all know it. We know the missile capability of countries that would like to kill all of us. So it is a very serious threat right now.

By the end of 2008 President Bush had succeeded in fielding a missile defense system capable of defending all 50 States and had security agreements with the Czech Republic and Poland on the construction of a third missile defense site. The radar would be in the Czech Republic.

I can remember talking to one of my favorite people, who was the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, about this subject. This took a lot of courage for President Bush to go in there and say: Look, we have a serious problem.

Let me kind of get into the record--I want to make sure people understand this. We have great ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California. I am confident that any missile coming in from that direction we can kill, we can knock down. The problem is if it came from the other direction, such as Iran, we do not have that capability. Sure, we might get one lucky shot from the west coast, knock it down, something coming into the east coast. With 20 kids and grandkids, that does not give me a lot of comfort.

Instead, in his wisdom and the wisdom of the administration under the Bush administration, we started building a ground-based interceptor in Poland with the radar located in the Czech Republic. Russia did not like that. They do not like the idea that we are defending ourselves in--you have to use your own judgment to decide why they have come to that conclusion. But it took courage for the Poles and the Czechs to come up and build this thing, and they agreed to do it.

I remember talking to Vaclav Klaus when it first started. He said: We want to make sure if we make this commitment and we anger Russia that you are not going to pull the rug out from under us. I gave them the assurance that was not going to happen.

Well, unfortunately that did happen. When President Obama was elected, he first cut the budget for missile defense by $1.4 billion, and he killed the ground-based interceptor in Poland. At that time-- this is very significant our intelligence had said Iran will have the capability of sending a nuclear weapon over a delivery system by 2015.

Well, the Obama administration cut that program. They said: No, they are not going to have that capability until 2020. Well, guess what happened. Just 2 or 3 days ago, Secretary Panetta said on ``60 Minutes'' that he believes Iran would be able to procure the nuclear weapon in about a year, and then it will take them another year or two in order to put it on a delivery vehicle. That would be 2015. So now we know we were right way back in the Bush administration. We know the danger that the Obama administration has put us in. I think people are going to have to understand that is true.

For us to use the system that President Obama wants to use, we would have to have capability--it is a system called SM32B. That missile would give us that protection we would have otherwise gotten by the system in Poland and the Czech Republic and would not be developed to be able to use until after 2020.

So this is something that is probably one of the most serious matters we are dealing with right now. I remember very well when President Obama was meeting with Russian President Medvedev on Monday, March 26, of this year, President Obama said--this is when the mic was on and nobody knew that he could be heard. He said:

On all of these issues, but particularly missile defense,

this, this can be solved but it's important for him to give

me space.

He was talking about Russian incoming President Vladimir Putin. These are his words.

This is my last election. After my election, I have more

flexibility.

What does that tell us? It tells us that not only is it bad enough what he has already done in taking out our ability to defend ourselves against an incoming missile from anywhere, specifically from Iran, but it is a crisis that we are dealing with that has got to be dealt with.

Law of the Sea Treaty

I want to mention one last thing because it is new--it is not new; it is something they have been trying to do for a long time. I quite often criticize the United Nations. Many times they do not have our interests at heart. I am very glad we got the 34th signature on a letter we were prepared to send saying: Do not bring the Law of the Sea Treaty for a ratification vote to the Senate because we will vote against it.

Now, 34 Senators signed that letter, which means they cannot do it. They are still having the hearings and all of that because they like to talk about it, I guess. But we are not going to cede our jurisdiction over 70 percent of the Earth's surface to the United Nations, nor are we going to give the United Nations the power, for the first time, to tax the United States of America. That is what we would find in this treaty.

That is when he signed this treaty. I only mention that because these treaties that come along somehow--I don't know what it is, but there is something about the internationalists, and a lot serve in this body. They don't think any idea is a good one unless it comes from the U.N. It makes you wonder where is sovereignty anymore.

Here is another one, the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, which they are trying to get through. Over the past 15 years, the idea of creating a global arms trade treaty has been debated at the United Nations. During the Bush administration, the United States stood in opposition to such a treaty. Yet it should come as no surprise that soon after entering the White House, President Obama reversed this position and went to work crafting and negotiating a U.N. arms trade treaty.

We all hear about gun control and what we are going to do with your ability to keep and bear arms. We hear about the second amendment to the Constitution, how it means very little to a lot of people.

It should be noted first that the treaty is currently being negotiated, so we cannot speak with certainty about the details. However, in March the president of the conference that is negotiating the treaty released a ``chairman's draft.'' Through the draft, we know that the treaty may seek to establish certain criteria that must be met before the international transfer of conventional weapons--including small arms and light weapons--is allowed to take place.

Here is what we are talking about. I remember that back during the Clinton administration they were saying: We have to do something about restricting arms in the United States. After all, they said, look at all of the things happening with the drug cartels in Mexico and in Central America; they are getting their weapons from the United States. That was the justification for having a gun treaty at that time. This isn't all that bad.

We don't know the details of this yet, but we know the draft treaty may seek to establish certain criteria to be met before we can sell to other countries. We have a lot of friendly countries out there to which we would like to sell.

Although we all agree that a committed effort must be made to prevent terrorists and criminals from acquiring weapons, the treaty could undermine our foreign policy and national security strategy and infringe Americans' second amendment rights. In Oklahoma, maybe people are a little more sensitive to second amendment rights, but I seem to be hearing from them, and they are dead right. The heart of the problem with the treaty is the notion that bad actors will continue to be bad actors. We have seen this time and time again. Law-abiding nations will constrain themselves to the terms of the treaty, and rogue nations and corrupt states will contravene the explicit text of the treaty that only months ago they were negotiating and wholeheartedly endorsing.

I can remember using this argument on gun control in the United States. Gun control assumes that people out there are going to obey the laws. But they are not the problem people; it is the people who are not going to obey the law. Why would they single out a law on gun control that would preclude them from having guns if they are criminals to start with? It doesn't make sense. Internationally, the same thing is taking place.

This treaty is rife with opportunities for such behavior. In fact, the draft requires that provisions ``shall be implemented in a manner that would avoid hampering the right of self defense of any state party.'' One need look no further than the current conflict in Syria to see how ridiculous this requirement is. The arms that Russia is currently supplying to Syria obviously have a dual purpose--for its national defense against a foreign aggressor but also to be used in the oppression of its own people. We know that is happening. Just yesterday we watched this taking place. Russia would, of course, claim they are doing it for their own defense.

How, then, does anyone expect an arms trade treaty which would not have stringent enforcement mechanisms to have any impact whatsoever? The answer is, against bad actors and rogue nations, it will not. But against nations such as the United States, the arms trade treaty may have a considerable impact.

Take, for example, the requirement in the draft that arms should not ``be used in a manner that would seriously undermine peace or security, or provoke, prolong or aggravate internal, regional, subregional or international instability.'' Does anyone deny that each and every time we supply weapons to some of our greatest allies, such as Israel, Taiwan, and South Korea, that we are, in fact, prolonging regional or international stability? The answer is no. But this is instability that is necessary for international order and the prevalence of democracy in regions where it might not otherwise exist. Yet the terms of the draft treaty could be read to prohibit such weapons sales.

We can all agree that it is a great understatement to say that we don't want American gun companies selling weapons internationally when they might be used to commit violations of human rights, but, as everyone knows, we already have laws on the books that prohibit this. The export of firearms is already subject to a very strict and complex regime.

The U.S. international trade in arms regulations--that is why I call this the foot in the door, a first step--which has been promulgated pursuant to the Arms Export Control Act, already strictly limits the transfer or sale of firearms. This regulatory regime has been in place since the 1950s. The United States has been doing this for a very long time. Other nations--our allies primarily--have mirrored our export control regime because it is so comprehensive.

This goes back to my earlier point. The United States has been very responsible in the area of exporting firearms, but other nations will not be, even as signatories to this treaty. It gets back to the nations that are the bad guys--they will not pay attention to the treaty even though they signed it.

The final point is that this treaty, even if negotiations result this month in a finalized version, is just going to collect dust in the Senate. We already have 58 Members of this body who have already signed a letter in opposition, and I feel strongly that this will meet the same fate as the Law of the Sea Treaty and so many other U.N.-sponsored treaties.

So you know the administration is in constant negotiations with international groups, such as the United Nations, and we have to go around and get people, as we did on the Law of the Sea Treaty. We have 35 Senators saying they will vote not to ratify, and that means you are wasting your time. Why are we even talking about it if it can't

be ratified because it takes two-thirds for ratification? The same thing is true here, except we have 58 Members.

Keep in mind that the collectivists who are opposed to the private ownership of firearms, opposed to the second amendment rights, are the ones who are trying to do it internationally.

With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 442.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, the schedule here this morning is that the first hour will be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, the majority controlling the first half and the Republicans the final half.

Yesterday cloture was filed on the motion to proceed to the Bring Jobs Home Act. Unless an agreement is reached, this vote will occur tomorrow morning.

Measure Placed on the Calendar--S. 3393

Madam President, I am told S. 3393 is at the desk and due for a second reading.

Madam President, I object to any further proceedings on this bill at this time.

Madam President, if you want to do business in America today, your goal should be to make a profit. There is nothing wrong with that. That is good. Millions of hard-working American entrepreneurs are the backbone of our economy. And if your company boosts profits by sending jobs overseas, that is your right as a business owner. But American taxpayers shouldn't subsidize your business decision to outsource jobs, especially when there are millions of people in this country looking for work.

Over the last 10 years, about 2\1/2\ million jobs in call centers, sales centers, financial firms, and factories were shipped overseas, and American taxpayers helped foot the bill for sending those jobs overseas. Every time U.S. companies ship jobs or facilities overseas, American taxpayers help cover the moving costs. The Bring Jobs Home Act will end these disgraceful subsidies for outsourcing and would give a 20-percent tax break to cover the cost of moving those jobs back to the United States.

But Republicans are filibustering this commonsense legislation. It is no surprise Republicans are on the side of corporations--corporations making big

bucks--sending American jobs to China, India, and other places. After all, their Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, made a fortune in outsourcing jobs also. So Republicans are once again putting tax breaks for big corporations and multimillionaires ahead of the needs of ordinary Americans.

What most Americans need is a good job--a job here at home--and the assurance their taxes won't go up on January 1. Democrats, Republicans, and Independents across the country agree with our plan. It is only Republicans in Congress who disagree. Yet Republicans here in the Senate are filibustering legislation to bring jobs back to America. They have twice blocked a vote on legislation to keep taxes low for 98 percent of American families.

It was Republicans who asked for a vote on the plan to raise taxes for 25 million families and a vote on our plan to keep taxes low for 135 million American taxpayers. So we offered them what they wanted. We offered them up-or-down votes on both proposals--no procedural hoops, no delay tactics, just a simple majority vote on our plan and theirs. And they refused.

Maybe Republicans refused our offer because they don't have the votes for their plan to raise taxes on 25 million Americans or maybe they have refused it because the majority of Americans support our plan to keep taxes low for 98 percent of families, while asking only the top 2 percent to contribute a little bit more to reduce the deficit. Everyone across America--the majority of Republicans--supports our plan. Yet, still, Republicans here in the Senate are holding hostage tax cuts for nearly every American family to extort more budget-busting giveaways to millionaires and billionaires.

For a year, the budget deficit was all Republicans wanted to talk about. They were willing to end Medicare as we know it, slash funding for nursing homes for seniors, investments in education, and raise taxes on the middle class all in the name of deficit reduction. But now that Democrats have a plan to reduce the deficit by almost $1 trillion simply by ending wasteful tax breaks, Republicans have given up fiscal responsibility.

So I say this to my Republican friends: You can't have it both ways. You can't call yourself a deficit hawk and fight for more tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires while the deficit increases. You can't call yourself a fiscal conservative and fight to protect tax breaks for companies that outsource jobs to India and China.

Recognition of the Minority Leader

Madam President, through the Chair, I would answer my friend the Republican leader, as I have said here on the floor. I believe what took place at the beginning of this Congress was something that was very important for this body. It was led by Senator Udall of New Mexico and Senator Merkley of Oregon. They had been here a little while and they thought the Senate was dysfunctional. Well, they hadn't been here a long time, and I was still willing to go along at that time with the traditional view of let's not rock the boat here. But that was with the hope, and I thought the assurance of my Republican colleagues, that we would not have these continual, nonsensical motions to proceed filibustered, taking a week to get through that before finally moving to a piece of legislation.

So I said here in the Senate a few months ago that I was wrong. It is hard to acknowledge you are wrong. It is difficult for any of us to do, especially in front of so many people. But I said I think they were right and I was wrong, and I stick by that. I think what has happened the last few years of changing the basic rules of the Senate where we require not 50 votes to pass something but 60 votes on everything is wrong. I think we waste weeks and weeks on motions to proceed.

I had a conversation with a real traditionalist last evening--Carl Levin, the Senator from Michigan--where we talked about this at some length. He acknowledges the motion to proceed is a real problem here but he disagrees with me. Others can talk to him personally, but that is the way I understood him. But I am convinced something must change, unless there is an agreement to change how we focus on the motion to proceed.

I will try to end this quickly, but I think the leader deserves a full explanation. The filibuster was originally devised--it is not in the Constitution--to help legislation get passed. That is the reason they changed the rules here to do that. Now it is being used to stop legislation from passing, and so we have to change things because this place is becoming inoperable.

Madam President, that is an easy question to answer. We already have a budget. We passed, in August of last year, a budget that took effect for the last fiscal year and this fiscal year. It set numbers--302(b) numbers, in effect. There was no need for a budget this year. We already had one.

So the hue and cry of my Republicans friends that we need to have a budget is just a lot of talk. We already have a budget.

That also is an easy question to answer. The Republicans in the House--and this is a bicameral legislature--have reneged on the law that was passed last August where it set numbers. Their appropriations bills have artificially lowered the numbers and violated the law, in effect, here in this Congress. As a result, Senator Inouye has marked up his bill--subcommittee bills.

But I would also say the House is not serious about what they do. Energy and Water used to be one of the most important subcommittees-- the most popular, I should say, in addition to being important--in this body. I was fortunate to serve on that subcommittee for more than a quarter of a century under great leaders--Domenici, Bennett, Johnson, and the committee chairs switched back and forth. But the House sent over here an Energy and Water Subcommittee appropriations bill that has more than 30 riders directed toward EPA-type functions alone. I mean, they are not serious about doing legislation. They are serious about satisfying their tea party and the ridiculous messages they are trying to send.

I would also say one of the other problems we have is we have to fight to get to anything--any legislation. We have to fight to get that done. As you know, we have wasted--I said weeks earlier--months trying to get legislation on the floor. So appropriations bills, I want to get these done. I am an appropriator. But it has been unrealistic with the actions of the House.

The answer is pretty simple there too: We have spent the last many weeks working through procedural matters on bills the Republicans have held up.

We are now in a cloture situation. I spoke to Senator Levin last night about that. He is the chairman of that committee. I have spoken to John McCain several times on this matter. I know how important they feel this legislation is, and I think it is important also. But we can only do what we have to do.

One of the things I have an obligation for our country to get to is cybersecurity. I was asked to visit with General Petraeus. I did that a day or two ago. And we don't have to have a briefing by General Petraeus to understand how important it is to do something about cybersecurity. There are people out there making threats on this country every day, and we have been fortunate in being able to stop a number of them. So we are going to have to get to cybersecurity before we get to the Defense authorization bill because on the relative merits of the two, cybersecurity is more important. They are both important, but I believe that one is more important than the other.

Madam President, the Republican leader has asked a few questions, so I will proceed to answer.

I can remember reading with great interest George Orwell's ``1984'' book where, as you know, it came out that up was down and down was up. The Republican leader is living in a fantasy world if he believes what he said, and I assume he does. That is why two scholars, Mann and Ornstein, a couple months ago wrote a book. They have been watching Washington for three or four decades, and they said they have over the years been like a lot of people

who are writers--Democrats did this, Republicans did this--but their conclusion was that what has happened in recent years is the Republicans have stopped this body from working by all of their shenanigans on these motions to proceed, creating 60 votes where it never existed before.

Robert Caro, who is writing the definitive work on Lyndon Johnson, one of my predecessors, said that I had a very difficult job based on how the Senate has changed with what the Republicans are doing.

Now, we have tried mightily. We have gotten a few things done. Whenever there is a decision made that they want to help a bill get passed, we get it done--for example, the highway bill. That bill took so long to get done. We had one major piece of legislation that we waited 4 weeks before they could get it out of their system that instead of doing highways, we should be doing birth control, determining what birth control women should be entitled to. All of these extraneous issues--important legislation held up. One of the Republicans over here decides they are a better Secretary of State than Hillary Clinton, holding up major pieces of legislation.

So I can take the criticism the Republican leader has issued. I assume it is constructive criticism, and I accept that. But I would just suggest to my friend that if a Democratic Senator--as the Presiding Officer knows--has a problem about anything going on around here, they talk to me. I don't think there is any reason for them to talk to the Republican leader. But if they do that, more power to them.

There have been volumes of pieces of legislation that have been brought to a standstill here. Why do we now have a rule that every basic piece of legislation has 60 votes?

I had a meeting with Senator Feinstein, Senator Tester, and Senator Lautenberg. In the course of the conversation, Senator Feinstein looked back and said: You know, I had really a controversial amendment dealing with what should happen to assault weapons. That passed on a simple majority vote. No one suggested filibustering that thing to death. That is new. That is new--legislation being used as an excuse to stop things.

Now, I want the record to be very clear--and I have made it all very clear in all of my public statements--about the need to get rid of the motion to proceed. I am not for getting rid of the filibuster rule. It is ``1984'' to suggest that I think the House and the Senate should be the same. But I do believe that when the filibuster came into being, it was to help get legislation passed. I repeat: It is now to stop legislation from passing. That is not appropriate.

So I am convinced that the best thing to do with filibusters is to have filibusters. I have been involved in a couple of them, and I am sure I irritated people on both of them, but I did that. One of them didn't last too long, but the first one lasted 11 or 12 hours. That is what filibusters are supposed to be, not throwing monkey wrenches into decisions we are trying to make and then walking off the floor.

The rules have to be changed. I acknowledge that, and I don't apologize for it for 1 second.

As far as how I attempt to run the Senate, I do the best I can under very difficult circumstances, as indicated by the two writers Mann and Ornstein.

Madam President, I think this best can be answered in my not responding directly but quoting. This is from an op-ed that appeared around the country by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein. ``Let's just say it,'' is the headline, ``The Republicans are the problem.''

I am quoting:

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently

captured on video asserting that there are ``78 to 81''

Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party.

Of course, it's not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from

either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What

made West's comment--right out of the McCarthyite playbook of

the 1950s--so striking was the almost complete lack of

condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other

major party figures, including the remaining presidential

candidates.

It's not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is

that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for

granted.

Understand, Ornstein works for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. They go on to say:

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American

politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of

compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts,

evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its

political opposition.

I am a legislator. I have been doing it for 30 years here and for quite a few years in Nevada prior to getting here. I have enjoyed being a legislator. These last few years, because of what we hear from Ornstein and Mann, has made it very unpleasant. For the Republican leader, with a straight face, to come and say: Why aren't we doing the Defense authorization bill? Why aren't we doing appropriations bills, everyone knows why we are not doing them. They have not let us get to virtually anything. To be dismissive of me because I say the Republican leadership in the House has been dismissive of the law we have guiding this country, I think says it all. I recognize we are a bicameral legislature. We have our own things to do. But we have to take this as a whole and look at the record--major pieces of legislation we cannot get to.

For example, we cannot get to something dealing with outsourcing of jobs. We are here filibustering a motion to proceed to that--a motion to proceed to it, not the substance of the legislation, a motion to proceed to it.

The record speaks for itself. The record speaks for itself:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for

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

dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both

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

have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the

problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP--

The Grand Old Party, the Republican Party--

has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is

ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by

conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science;

and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

Madam President, in one committee, the Energy and Water Committee led by Senator Bingaman--that committee alone has had hundreds of pieces of legislation held up. It can't get out of the committee. I am sorry it is an unusual thing to have Ornstein and Mann referred to as liberals, but whatever they are, working for the conservative American Enterprise Institute, one of them at least--it is very clear they view this body as being in deep trouble because of the Republicans being dysfunctional themselves.

I think it is very clear we have a situation--I understand there is a Presidential election going on. I clearly understand that. I know there are efforts to protect their nominee. We do what we can to protect the President of the United States. But that should not prevent us from legislating.

For my friend, who has been on the Appropriations Committee as long as I have, to talk about why aren't we doing appropriations bills--it is obvious. We have 12 or 13 appropriations bills. We have simply not been able to get to the appropriations bills----

Mr. President, I don't think it calls for my being interrupted. I have listened patiently to all his name calling and I do not intend to do that. But I do say this. I have tried to call up lots of things--lots of things, by consent or by filing motions, and virtually everything has been held up. The bills he is talking about, to stand here and boast about passing five pieces of legislation in an entire Congress is not anything any of us should be happy about. We should not be happy about that at all. We should be passing scores of pieces of legislation, as we did in the last Congress.

But, no, the decision was made at the beginning of this Congress--it may not be a direct quote but substantively accurate--my friend the Republican leader said his No. 1 goal is to stop Obama from being reelected, and that is what this legislation we have tried to get forward has had, the barrel we tried to get around continually. We are going to go ahead. We will have cloture tomorrow on another one of our scores of times we have tried to break cloture this Congress and move on to something else. We have had 13 cloture votes on motions to proceed in the second session of the Congress alone--13. Others just went away because we run out of time to do those kinds of things.

As indicated by the Republican leader, we passed five things. That is about one-third of the motions I have had to file to invoke cloture on motions to proceed, not on basic legislation.

Madam President, we are where we are. I think it is very clear from outside sources--take, for example, I repeat what Caro said, writing the definitive work of Lyndon Johnson, about the difficult job I have had because of the way the Senate has changed because of what has taken place in the last couple years. We have had bills we have been able to work things out with, with Republicans. That is pleasant, and I am glad we have been able to do that. Most of the time we cannot do that. We have, for example, one Republican Senator, when we are in tense negotiations with Pakistan on a lot of very sensitive issues, who wants to do something that is outside the scope of rational thinking, which holds up legislation. We have had--we have tried very hard all different ways to move legislation in this body. For the first time in the history of the country, the No. 1 issue in the Senate of the United States has been a procedural matter: How do we get on a bill? A motion to proceed to something--that has taken over the Senate and it needs to go away. We should not have to do that anymore.

I do not have a better friend in this body than the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. I have been one of his big fans. He has been one of my big fans. He, of course, is a national hero, a Medal of Honor winner, and great chairman of the Appropriations Committee. We work hand in glove. Everything I have said about the appropriations process will be underscored, will be and has been, by Senator Inouye. He supports what we are unable to do. He realizes that. He realizes his counterpart in the House has fumbled with the numbers and it makes it extremely difficult to get things done. We understand that.

But the main problem is we cannot get legislation on the floor because the No. 1 issue we have talked about in the Senate this entire Congress is how to get on a bill, and that is why the motion to proceed must go away.

Madam President, one of the most important issues facing America today is jobs being shipped overseas. Whether it is Olympic uniforms being made in China when they could be made by Hickey Freeman in New York and made here in America, outsourcing is an important piece of America that we now have to deal with. And, of course, we have the additional problem that Governor Romney has made a fortune shipping jobs overseas.

The American people care about this issue. We can sit here and point fingers and say: Boy, that is terrible. We are now going to have to deal with outsourcing. We should deal with outsourcing. We should have done it before, but we have had a problem getting legislation on the Senate floor. So I don't apologize to anyone for having the debate on outsourcing. Senator Stabenow has done a wonderful job on that. We couldn't have a better Senator to deal with outsourcing than her. Because of what we did in the stimulus bill, the American Recovery Act directed jobs back to Michigan, Detroit, and other places. With what we did with batteries, billions of dollars were saved. Instead of importing batteries, we are making most of them in America.

Governor Romney wanted to just let General Motors and Chrysler go bankrupt. We didn't do that, and as a result, that created almost 200,000 jobs in the automobile industry alone. Outsourcing is important, and it is a debate we are going to have.

Let me remind the Republican leader it wasn't Democrats who threatened to shut down government last year and took most all the time we had. First, it was the debt ceiling, and then after we got through the debt ceiling, then they weren't going to allow us to do anything for getting funding to take us through the end of the fiscal year.

It was the Republican Party last year that threatened to default the debt we have as a country. Now they are holding up tax cuts for 98 percent of the American people in an effort to satisfy this mysterious man I have never met, but he must be a dandy. He has gotten every Republican, with rare exception, to sign a pledge that they are not going to deal with the 98 percent because they have to protect the 2 percent.

We are here dealing with outsourcing because that is what we should be doing.

Reservation of Leadership Time

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

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. President, would the Chair please let me know when there is a couple of minutes remaining.

I thank the Chair.

Senate Responsibility

Mr. President, earlier this year I came to the floor with a group of Republican and Democratic Senators to congratulate the majority leader, Senator Reid, and the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, as well as the leaders of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Inouye and Senator Cochran. The reason for the congratulations was this: They said they were going to do their best to bring all of the appropriations bills to the floor and pass them. That may not seem like such a monumental pledge or promise, but it, in fact, is, because only twice since the year 2000 has the Senate gone through the whole process of bringing all 12 appropriations bills to the Senate floor and enacting them in time for the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1.

Why is that so important? Well, we are in the midst of a fiscal crisis. We are borrowing 42 cents out of every dollar we spend. One way to deal with that is through the appropriations process. That is our first constitutional responsibility. Judges judge; we appropriate. That is the first thing we do. We have control of the people's money. The appropriations bills I am talking about, the 12 of them together, constitute a pretty big number. More than a third--38 percent--of all the dollars we spend in the Federal Government go through those 12 bills. It used to be a lot more.

So when the majority leader and the Republican leader said, Yes, we are going to do our best to bring all of those appropriations bills to the floor, I thought the Senate had taken an important step in functioning the way the American people expect the Senate to function. The American people expect us to get about the serious business of this country so that, in the words of the Australian Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, we can show the people we recognize that we are really one budget agreement away from reasserting America's preeminence in the world. We have that within our power.

The economy of the country, the economy of other countries depends, to a great extent, on our ability to govern ourselves properly. So I was very encouraged when the majority leader and the Republican leader said, Yes, we are going to do our best to bring all 12 of those bills to the floor.

I regret to say I am equally disappointed that the majority leader suddenly announced last week he won't bring any appropriations bills to the floor. The reasons he gives are very puzzling to me. First he says, Well, the House is using a different number than the Senate. What is so new about that? That is why we have the House and the Senate. They are one kind of body and

we are another kind. They have their opinion; we have ours. We vote on our opinions. Then we have a procedure called the conference in which we come together and we get a result. We have had so few conferences lately that maybe some people have forgotten we do that, but we have a way to do it.

Then the majority leader said, Well, they in the House violated the Budget Control Act. The Budget Control Act was simply something we agreed on--I voted for it--to try to put some limits on the growth of discretionary spending in the budget. If we stick to that over the next 10 years, the discretionary spending--not the two-thirds of the budget that is entitlement spending but this one-third we are talking about-- will only grow at an little bit more than the rate of inflation. If our whole budget grew at that rate, we wouldn't have a fiscal problem.

Those aren't good reasons. We have a way to reconcile our differences. The Budget Control Act is only limits. The Senate actually has exceeded those limits, according to my colleague Senator Corker, already three times in this year. So there is no excuse whatsoever for not bringing up appropriations bills on the floor of the Senate.

If we think the Solyndra loan was a bad idea, that is the place to take it out. Or, if we want to spend more money for national defense, that is the place to put it in. Or if we think we are wasting money on national parks or too much government land, that is the place to take it out. Are those bills ready to come to the floor? Yes, they are. In the Senate, we have been doing our job in our committees. Let me be exactly right about this, but I believe we have nine of our appropriations bills that are ready to come to the floor, that we are ready to go to work on right now. The House of Representatives has already passed 11 of the 12 appropriations bills through committee and 6 of those have been passed by the House. So this month, we could be debating any of those appropriations bills. We could have amendment after amendment after amendment. We could reduce our spending. We could increase our spending. We could say to the American people: We are doing our job.

That brings me to my second disappointment. I was greatly encouraged this year--and a lot of the credit goes to Senators on the Democratic side as well as some on our side--who are saying, Wait a minute. We are grownups. We recognize we are political accidents. We have been given the great privilege of representing the people of our State and swearing an oath to our Constitution of the United States so we can help lead this country. So we want to go to work. We want to go to work.

What does the Senate do? Well, the Senate brings bills up through committee, it brings bills to the floor, and then, as the late Senator Byrd used to say, almost any amendment comes to the floor and we debate it and we vote on it, and then we either pass the bill or we don't pass the bill. That is what the Senate does.

We on our side have been saying to the majority leader: Mr. Majority Leader, let us offer our amendments. Don't silence the voices of the people in our States that we represent. So he has been allowing that to happen more. Of course, he has the procedural ability to stop that. The Senator from Michigan said: Let's try just having relevant amendments, so we said: OK, let's try that. So we began to make some progress.

There was a dispute over district judges. We resolved that. We have been confirming them. The Postal Service bill, the farm bill, the FDA bill, the highway bill--these are all important pieces of legislation that affect almost every American family, and what did we do? They went through committee; they had the expertise of the members who work on those committees; they came to the floor; we had a lot of amendments, we voted on them, and they were passed by the Senate. In other words, we did what we should do.

I thought we were on a lot better track until the last 2 or 3 weeks. Suddenly, what has happened? Suddenly, all that ends. We revert to political exercises--little bills of no real importance compared to the bills we should be debating. We have a jobs bill, the DISCLOSE Act bill, and the bill we are about to go to that the Senator from Michigan is proposing. The problem with those bills is they have not been through committee. They are not going to pass the House. Everybody knows that. So we are wasting our time at a time when we could be debating all of the appropriations bills of the U.S. Government. At a time when the U.S. Government is borrowing 42 cents out of every dollar we are spending, we are not even going to do our job and consider appropriations bills on the floor and amend them. What will the whole world think? What will our constituents think about our ability to govern ourselves if we can't pass--even consider--an appropriations bill in the U.S. Senate?

On top of that, we haven't had a budget for over 1,000 days. I remember when Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, came back and met with a group of Senators. She came back from Iraq early after their government was formed and she said, They can't even get a budget over there in Iraq. Senators looked around at each other, and here we have been a Republic for a long time and we can't get one, either. So I am very disappointed by the fact that after such a promising surge of activity that was bipartisan and that got results, we have suddenly reverted back to forgetting that we have a way to deal with our differences.

It is not because we don't have anything to do. Where is the cybersecurity bill? Where is the Defense authorization bill? Where are the appropriations bills? They are all ready to be considered, at a time when we are in a fiscal crisis, looking at a fiscal cliff which, if we don't solve, according to the Congressional Budget Office and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board yesterday, it will plunge us into a recession in the first 6 months of 2013. Those are the stakes we are playing with.

There is also a third area in which I must express my severe disappointment. We worked hard at the beginning of this Congress to accommodate a number of Senators who felt we needed changes in the rules, and we made some changes. But we preserved the Senate's integrity as a different sort of institution--as a place where the party that has 51 votes doesn't run over anybody else.

Alexis de Tocqueville said the two greatest problems he foresaw with the American democracy--this was back in the 1830s--were, No. 1, Russia; and No. 2, the tyranny of the majority. Well, the Senate, as Senator Byrd used to so eloquently say, is the single most important institution in our country, to protect minority rights and minority points of view. Sometimes we are in the minority on this side, and we will notice there are some fewer desks. Then after an election, maybe more people vote for Democrats and they come in and they pick up the desks and they move them over to that side. Whichever side is in the minority in the Senate still has rights, and those aren't just the rights of the Senators themselves, those are their rights to speak the voices of Tennessee or Maryland or Nevada or New York or Kentucky. It is those voices that need to be heard on the floor of the Senate. And when we can't debate, when we can't offer amendments and we can't vote, those voices are silenced.

So to my great surprise, the majority leader--and as I said, I came to the floor more than once to compliment him for this--said at the beginning of this Congress that he wouldn't seek to change the rules of the Senate except according to the regular order--except according to the rules of the Senate which say we have to have 67 votes. That is what the rules say. We agreed on that. What that meant was we needed a change in behavior, not a change in the rules, to show that the Senate could function.

Last night on television, apparently the majority leader said that in the next Congress--he had changed his mind and that if he is the majority leader, he will seek to change the rules of the Senate by 51 votes. That will destroy the Senate. That will make it no different than the House. I would say to my friends on the other side, if they want to make the Senate like the House where a freight train can run through it with 51 votes, they might not like it so well when the freight train is the tea party express, which it could be. Republicans could be in control of the Senate after this session. Republicans could have a President, and then where would ObamaCare be?

Where will a whole series of things be? There will be a great many Senators on the other side who will say, Wait a minute, let's slow down the train. Let's think about what we are doing. That was the original intention of the Founders of this country. The House is majoritarian and 51 votes control. A freight train can run through it day in and day out. But when it gets to the Senate we stop and think and minority rights are protected. As a result of that, usually that forces us to have a supermajority 60, 65, or 70 votes--in order to do anything big, such as the time when finally the civil rights bill was enacted in the 1960s. Senator Russell, who led the debate against the Civil Rights Act, filibustered it. He was finally defeated. He flew home to Georgia and said, It is now the law of the land; we support it. That is why President Johnson wrote the bill in the office of the Republican leader, even though the President was a Democrat. He wanted bipartisan support.

President Johnson knew he had the votes in the 1960s to pass the Civil Rights Act without Republican support, but he had the bill written in the office of Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader. I remember I was a young aide at that time. The Senators were in there and the aides were in there. Pretty soon everyone was invested in it. When it passed, as I said, Senator Russell went home to Georgia and said, it is the law of the land. We have to support it.

Now we are coming up on what the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board has called the fiscal cliff. This is a convergence of big issues ranging from the debt ceiling to how we pay doctors to the spiraling, out-of-control entitlements we have, to the need for a simplified Tax Code, to the need for lower rates. We have been working on this in various ways across party lines for several months.

There is a growing consensus that the time to act is after the election. It will require Presidential leadership, whether it is newly inaugurated President Obama or a new President Romney, and our job will be to see that the newly inaugurated President succeeds, whether he is a Republican President or a Democratic President, because if he does, then our country succeeds.

What are the stakes? The Foreign Minister of Australia, Bob Carr, put it very well when he said in a speech here--and he is a great friend of the United States and I have known him for 25 years--he said: The United States is one budget agreement away from reasserting its global preeminence--one budget deal away from reasserting our global preeminence.

But if we cannot even bring up an appropriations bill to debate it, to amend it, to vote on it, and to pass it, if we suddenly are dealing with bills that have not gone to committee that are nothing more than a political exercise, if we are sitting around in the Senate with nothing to do of significance--and there is only one person who can bring up issues here; that is, the majority leader--how is that going to convey to the American people we are capable of governing ourselves? I think it sends a clear message that we are failing to do that.

So having expressed my disappointment, I wish to express my respect for the majority leader and to say again how much I appreciated the efforts he made at the beginning of the Congress to say we would not change the rules of this institution, except according to the rules, and the effort he said he would make at the beginning of this year to bring up the appropriations bills and the efforts he has made to allow more amendments on a whole series of bills this year and say: Can we not go back to that, even though this is a Presidential election year?

The stakes are too high. As far as voting on amendments, that is why we are here. Why would you join the Grand Ole Opry if you do not want to sing? That is why we are here. We are here to express the views of ourselves and the people we represent to make sure their voice is heard, and then we are here to get results.

I hope my record is a pretty good record of working to get results. I sometimes say to my friends--they will say: You are being bipartisan. I am not interested in being bipartisan. I am interested in results. I learned in the public schools of Maryville, TN, how to count, and I know it takes 60 votes to get results. So anything important we do is going to require Democrats and Republicans. We are going to need a coalition of Democrats and Republicans, not 51 or 53 or 54, no matter who is in charge next year. We are going to need a coalition of 60 or 65 or 70 who will come around some of the most difficult issues we have had to face in terms of tax reform, in terms of deficit reduction, in terms of reining in entitlements--a whole series of issues. We are going to have to remember our pledge to the Constitution that we take at the beginning of each 6-year term, and we are going to have to honor that pledge.

That is the Senate I hope to see. That is the Senate I am working to create. I wish to create an environment in which the Democratic leader and the Republican leader can succeed on big issues in helping us put together results on the serious problems. I wish to make the Australian Foreign Minister--a great friend of the United States--I wish to show him we can answer his question and that we realize, just like he does, that we are one budget agreement away from reasserting America's global preeminence and that we in the Senate are perfectly capable of doing it.

By not bringing up appropriations bills, by reverting to political exercises, by leaving off the table many amendments that need debate, and by even suggesting we would change the nature of the Senate so a freight train could run through it with 51 votes, none of that encourages confidence in the ability of the United States to govern that I think exists.

I know my colleagues pretty well. I work hard with people on both sides. I respect them all and their opinions and I do not question their motives. It is my personal judgment that 80, 85 percent of us on both sides of the aisle want a result on the big fiscal issues and on every other big issue that comes here, and I would like to do my best to create an environment in which that could happen.

I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.