A bill to establish a moratorium on aerial surveillance conducted by the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Will the majority leader yield for a question.

I would like to ask the majority leader if he is aware of the statement we had on the floor of the Senate by Senator Whitehouse, who has been one of the leaders in putting together the cyber security bill relative to an incident at the Chamber of Commerce? I would like to read it, if I may, very briefly. And I quote Senator Whitehouse from page S5720 of the July 31 Congressional Record:

Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been the completely

unwitting victim of a long-term and extensive cyber

intrusion. Just last year the Wall Street Journal reported

that a group of hackers in China breached the computer

defenses of the U.S. Chamber, gained access to everything

stored in its systems, including information about 3 million

members, and they remained on the U.S. Chamber's network for

at least 6 months and possibly more than a year. The Chamber

only learned of the break-in when the FBI told the group that

servers in China were stealing their information.

Even after the Chamber was notified and increased its cyber

security, the article stated that the Chamber continued to

experience suspicious activity, including a ``thermostat at a

townhouse the Chamber owns on Capitol Hill . . . [that

communicated] with an Internet address in China . . . and . .

. a printer used by the Chamber executives spontaneously . .

. printing pages with Chinese characters.

As Senator Whitehouse has said:

These are the people we are supposed to listen to about

cyber security.

Can I ask the Senator from Nevada if he was aware that the chamber opposition to the cyber security bill certainly belies the fact that they have been hacked by the Chinese themselves, and they didn't even know it until the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported it?

That is right.

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

The Senator asked whether this side would like to explain our position. I would be happy to do it at this point, but I can wait until my colleagues finish their colloquy, so it is their choice.

There is no need to die. I hope the Senator from South Carolina will continue living a good life because he is such a great Senator. But I am asking if my colleague wants me to join in this dialogue or would he rather make his presentation?

I did not know if the Senator wanted to make his unanimous consent request that he came to the floor to make.

The Senator is not going to make it?

Yes, I will.

Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Arizona. Occasionally, historically, on the floor of the Senate there is a debate, and this may be one of those moments. I hope it is because it is a worthy topic.

Let's get down to the bottom line. I have served on the Intelligence Committee, as some of my colleagues have. We know the important work done by the intelligence community to keep America safe. They literally risk their lives every day for us, and they are largely invisible. We do not see them at the military parades and other places where we acknowledge those warriors who risk their lives, but these men and women do it in so many different ways.

When I spent 4 years on the Senate Intelligence Committee--and my colleagues, I am sure, feel the same--I went out of my way to make sure I was careful with classified information so as to continue to protect this country and never endanger those who were helping us keep it safe all around the world.

So the obvious question raised by the Republican side of the of the aisle is whether this President, President Barack Obama, thinks differently; whether President Obama believes we should cut corners and not be so careful when it comes to the leaking of classified information.

My answer to that is look at the record. Look at the record and ask this basic question: When it comes to prosecuting those believed to have been

guilty of leaks of classified information, which President of the United States has prosecuted more suspected individuals than any other President, Democrat or Republican? Barack Obama.

On six different occasions--five in the Department of Justice and one in the Department of Defense--they pursued the active prosecution of those they believed were guilty of leaking classified information that might endanger the United States.

Let me add another personal observation. It was last year when my friend Bill Daley, then-Chief of Staff to President Obama, came to Chicago for a luncheon. It was a nice day. We had a nice luncheon. It was very successful. He said he had to get back to Washington. He was in a big hurry. He never said why. He told me later--he told me much later--after this occurred: I had to get back because we had a classified meeting about hunting down Osama bin Laden. We were sworn to secrecy at every level of government so that we never, ever disclosed information that we were even thinking about that possibility.

Bill Daley took it seriously. The President takes it seriously. Anyone in those positions of power will take it seriously. To suggest otherwise on the floor of the Senate is just plain wrong, and it raises a question about this President's commitment to the Nation, which I think is improper and cannot be backed up with the evidence.

Now, let's look at the evidence when it comes to the appointment of a special prosecutor. Let me take you back to those moments when a special prosecutor named Patrick Fitzgerald from the Northern District of Illinois was chosen to investigate the leak of classified formation.

Let me put it in historical context. We had invaded Iraq. We did it based on assertions by the Bush-Cheney administration about the danger to the United States. One of those assertions dealt with Africa and certain yellow cake chemicals that might be used for nuclear weapons and whether they were going to fall into the hands of the Iraqi leadership.

It was one of the arguments--there were many: weapons of mass destruction, and so forth, that turned out to be totally false--leading us into a war which has cost us dearly in terms of human lives and our own treasure.

So one person spoke out. Former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who identified himself as a Republican, said: I do not believe there is any evidence to back up the assertion about the yellow cake coming out of Africa.

Well, he was punished. Do you remember how he was punished? He was punished when someone decided to out his wife Valerie Plame. Valerie Plame had served as an intelligence agent for the United States to protect our Nation, and someone decided that in order to get even with Joe Wilson they would disclose the fact that his wife worked in the intelligence agencies.

Then what happened? If you will remember, when that story broke, the intelligence community of the United States of America said: We have been betrayed. If one of our own can be outed in a political debate in Washington, are any of us safe? A legitimate question.

So there was an obvious need to find out who did it, who disclosed her identity, endangering her life, the life of every person who had worked with her, and so many other intelligence agents.

Mr. President, do you recall what happened? I do. The Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, recused himself from this investigation. It was the right thing for him to do because the questions about this disclosure of her identity went to the top of the administration. He recused himself and appointed Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, a professional, a professional prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Well, the investigation went on for a long time. At the end of the investigation, the Chief of Staff of the Vice President of the United States was found to have violated a law. That came out, and eventually we learned the identity of who actually disclosed the name of Valerie Plame. It was a serious issue, one that called for a special counsel, and, if I remember correctly, there were even Republicans at that point joining Democrats saying: Let's get to the bottom of this. If this goes all the way to the top, let's find out who is responsible for it. So it was the appropriate thing to do.

Now, take a look at this situation. This President, who has activated the prosecution of six individuals suspected of leaking classified information, takes very seriously the information that was disclosed related to the al-Qaida techniques and all the things they were using to threaten the United States.

What has he done as a result of it? Let's be specific because I really have to call into question some of the statements that have been made on the floor. To say that the administration is covering this up, as to this leak, is just plain wrong.

At this point, the Department of Justice has appointed two highly respected and experienced prosecutors with proven records of independence in the exercise of their duties. U.S. Attorney Machen has recently overseen a number of public corruption prosecutions in the District of Columbia. U.S. Attorney Rosenstein has overseen a number of national security investigations, including one of the five leak investigations that have been prosecuted under this President. The Justice Department has complete confidence in their ability to conduct thorough and independent investigations into these matters in close collaboration with career prosecutors and agents.

This is not being swept under the rug. This is not being ignored. This is being taken seriously by this administration, as every leak of classified information will be taken seriously.

I know it is an election year. We are fewer than 100 days away from the election, and I know the floor of the Senate is used by both parties this close to the election. But I want to make it clear this President has a record of commitment to protecting the men and women who gather intelligence for America. He has a record of prosecuting more suspects for leaks of this information than any other President in history. He has, through his Attorney General, appointed two career criminal prosecutors to look into this case and said they will have the resources and authority they need to get to the bottom of it. That is the way to do it.

Will the day come when we say perhaps a special counsel is needed? I will not ever rule that out. Perhaps that day will come. But it is wrong to come to the floor and question this President's commitment to our intelligence community. It is wrong to come to the floor and question the credentials of these two men who have performed so well in the service of the Department of Justice in years gone by.

I thought Senator McCain was going to make a unanimous consent request. If he wishes to, let me yield to him at this point.

First, let me say that whatever the rank of the individual--private, specialist, chief petty officer--if they are responsible for leaking classified information, they need to be investigated and prosecuted, if guilty.

So the fact that a private is being investigated should not get him off the hook. I would----

I would say to my friend from Arizona, if I am not mistaken, it was a noncommissioned officer at best and maybe not an officer in the Army who is being prosecuted for the Wiki leaks. So let's not say that the rank of anyone being prosecuted in any way makes them guilty or innocent. We need to go to the source of the leak.

Of course. It should be taken to where it leads, period. But let me also ask--I do not know if quoting from a book on the floor means what was written in that book is necessarily true. Perhaps the Senator has his own independent information on that.

I would say to the Senator, I do not know if that has to do with the information that was ultimately leaked about al-Qaida. It seems as though it is a separate matter. But it should be taken seriously, period. What more does this President need to do to convince you other than to have more prosecutions than any President in history of those who have been believed to have leaked classified information?

If you will come to the floor, as you said earlier--and I quote, the investigation is ``supposedly going on.'' I trust the administration that the investigation is going on. What evidence does the Senator have that it is not going on?

Let me say to the Senator that in that case, the Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, recused himself--recused himself. He said there was such an appearance of a conflict, if not a conflict, he was stepping aside. It is very clear under those circumstances that a special counsel is needed. In this case, there is no suggestion that the President, the Vice President, or the Attorney General was complicit in any leak. So to suggest otherwise, I have to say to Senator McCain, show me what you are bringing as proof.

When did the program begin?

I say to my colleague and friend Senator McCain, I deeply regret the loss of any American life, particularly those in service of our country.

And I feel exactly that about this individual and the loss to his family. But let's make sure the record is complete. The Fast and Furious program was not initiated by President Obama, it was started by President George W. Bush.

Secondly, this Attorney General, Mr. Holder, has been brought before congressional committees time after time. I have been in the Senate Judiciary Committee when he has been questioned at length about Fast and Furious, and I am sure he has been called even more frequently before the House committees.

Third, he has produced around 9,000 pages of documents, and Chairman Issa keeps saying: Not enough. We need more. Well, at some point it becomes clear he will never produce enough documents for them. And the House decided to find him in contempt for that. That is their decision. I do not think that was necessarily proper.

But having said that, does that mean every decision from the Department of Justice from this point forward cannot be trusted?

The Republican majority.

I do not see the connection. If the Attorney General and the President said: We are not going to investigate this matter, Senator McCain, I would be standing right next to the Senator on the floor calling for a special counsel. But they have said just the opposite. They have initiated an investigation and brought in two career criminal prosecutors whom we have trusted to take public corruption cases in the District of Columbia and leaks of classified information in other cases. And he said: Now you have the authority. Conduct the investigation.

They are not ignoring this.

And ultimately report to the people.

May I turn to one other issue the Senator raised, if he has a moment?

The pending bill, cyber security--this is a bill which I hope we both agree addresses an issue of great seriousness and gravity in terms of America's defense. I know the Senator from Arizona and some of his colleagues have produced an alternative. I support the bipartisan bill that Senators Lieberman and Collins have brought to the floor.

The major group who opposes the passage of the cyber security bill is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an organization that represents the largest businesses in America, and what I have heard the Senator from Arizona say over and over is that they have to be an important part of this conversation and this discussion. I think Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins would say: We have engaged them. We have listened to them. We have made changes consistent with what they were looking for. But clearly they have not reached the point where they are satisfied.

I learned yesterday, when Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island came to the floor, that, in fact, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce really turns out to be pretty expert on this issue of cyber security. And I call the attention of the Senator from Arizona, if he is not aware of it, to a Wall Street Journal article of December 21, 2011. This Wall Street Journal article is entitled ``China Hackers Hit U.S. Chamber,'' and it starts by saying:

A group of hackers in China breached the computer defenses

of America's top business lobbying group and gained access to

everything stored on its systems, including information about

its three million members, according to several people

familiar with the matter. The complex operation involved at

least 300 Internet addresses. . . . Four chamber employees

who worked on Asian policy had six weeks of their emails

stolen.

The article goes on to say that the Chamber of Commerce did not notice this breach that went on for 6 months. The Federal Bureau of Investigation brought it to their attention. And then they learned that the Chinese had not only hacked into the computer mainframe, they had somehow hacked into the computer-driven thermostats in their office, and at times in the office of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, their copy machines and fax machines were spitting out pages with Chinese characters on them. They were completely compromised by this cyber attack. Now they come us to as experts on how to avoid a cyber attack.

I ask unanimous consent that the Wall Street Journal article be printed at this point in the Record.

I am sure that wasn't the case. I am sure it was a fascinating treasure trove of great insights and information.

But let me just say to my friend from Arizona, I am asking only for a little humility on both sides, both in the public sector and the private sector, by first acknowledging, as our security advisers tell us, that this is one of the most serious threats to our country and its future, and we should be joining with some humility, particularly if you have been victimized, whether in your campaign or in your offices, to understand how far this has gone. The FBI, according to Senator Whitehouse when he came to the floor, found 50 different American businesses that had been compromised and hacked into by the same type of operation. Forty-eight were totally unaware of it. They did not even know it occurred. What we are trying to do is to get these businesses to cooperate with us so that we share information and keep one another safe.

At the end of the day, it is not just about the safety of the businesses--and I think it is important that they be safe--but the safety of the American people. This is really a serious issue.

I say to my friend from Arizona, I hope we get this done this week. I know it is a big lift, and it is a lot to do. But I believe the threat is imminent, and I believe it is continuous. If we don't find a way through our political differences to make this country safer, shame on us.

I believe Senator Collins is from the Senator's side of the aisle and is proud of that fact. So it is a bipartisan effort. She worked with-- --

Well, it is clearly bipartisan with Senators Lieberman and Collins. I also say that to raise the question of Dodd-Frank and appropriate government oversight and regulation--I suggest that we reflect on three things: LIBOR, Peregrine Investments, and the Chase loss of $6 billion.

To say that we should not have government oversight of our financial institutions that dragged us into this recession we are still trying to recover from--I see it differently. We vote differently when it comes to that. I think there is a continuing need for government oversight of these financial institutions.

I thank my friend, the Senator from Arizona. I hope other colleagues will engage in this kind of exchange. I don't know if we convinced one another, but we certainly leave with the same level of respect with which we started. I hope those who have followed the debate have heard a little more about both sides of the issue in the process.

Madam President, I rise to speak about the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which is numbered S. 3414.

Last night, the majority leader, Senator Reid, filed a cloture motion which would ripen for a vote on tomorrow. Senator Reid said he was saddened to have to file that motion. He also used a word we don't hear much when he said he was ``flummoxed'' by the need to file a cloture motion on bipartisan legislation that responds to what all of the experts in security in our country from the last administration and this one say is a critical threat to our security, which is the lack of defenses in the cyber infrastructure that is owned by the private sector.

Senator Reid was saddened, as I was, that he had to file for cloture because, of course, there can be disagreements about how to respond to this threat to our security and our prosperity. Hundreds of billions of dollars of American ingenuity and money have already been stolen by cyber thieves operating not only from within our country but, more often, from outside. So you can have differences of opinion about how to deal with the problem. But the fact that people started to introduce totally irrelevant amendments, such as the one to repeal ObamaCare-- well, that is a debatable issue. We have debated it many times, as the House has, but not on this bill, which we urgently need to pass and send to the House and then go into conference and then, hopefully, pass something and send it to the President.

I was at a briefing with more than a dozen Members of the Senate, representing a wide bipartisan group and ideological group, with leaders of our security agencies--cyber security agencies, including the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, NSA, and they could not have been clearer about the fact that this cyber threat is not a speculative threat. The fact is we are under attack over cyber space right now. In terms of economics, we have already lost an enormous amount of money. GEN Keith Alexander, Chief of U.S. Cyber Command, described the loss of industrial information and intellectual property, and just plain money, through cyber theft as ``the greatest transfer of wealth in history.'' That is going on.

We are also under cyber attack by enemies who are probing the control systems, the cyber control systems that control not the mom-and-pop businesses at home, not the Internet systems over which so many of us shop these days, but the cyber systems that control the electric supply, that control all of our financial transactions, large and small, that control our transportation system, our telecommunication system--all the things we depend on to sustain our society and our individual lives. That is who we are talking about here.

It is the greatest transfer of wealth in history. But our enemies are already probing those private companies' cyber systems that control that kind of critical infrastructure I have described. There is some reason to believe that because of the vulnerability of those systems and lack of adequate defenses, they have already placed in them malware, bugs--whatever we want to call it. In the old days, we used to call it a sleeper cell of spies and, more recently, in terms of terrorism, a sleeper cell of terrorists.

Let me put it personally, without stating it definitively on the floor. I worry that enemies of the United States have already placed what I call

cyber sleeper cells in critical cyber control systems that control critical infrastructure in our country. Everybody will say that some companies that own critical infrastructure are doing a pretty good job of defending it and us, but some are not. That is one of the reasons this bill has occurred--to try to create a collaborative process where the private sector and the public sector can act together in the national interest.

The businesses themselves that control cyber infrastructure--God forbid there is a major cyber attack on the United States--are going to be enormous losers. They are going to be subject, under the current state of the law, to the kind of liability in court that may bring some of them down. It may end their corporate existence.

I would be glad to yield to my friend from Delaware for a question. He is the cosponsor of our main bill, S. 3414.

I thank the Senator from Delaware very much. I think he crystallized the moment we are in.

I mentioned that Senator Reid filed a cloture motion that will ripen tomorrow. Again, he did it in sadness, and I was sad he had to do it. This is an issue on which I had hoped we would overcome gridlock-- special interest driven, ideologically driven, politically driven--but we couldn't do it, so the majority leader did exactly what he had to do, in my opinion, in the national security interest.

This does two things. One, as my colleagues know and I repeat just to remind them, we have a 1 p.m. deadline when any Member of the Senate can file a first-degree amendment to this bill. That is important to do. And I want to say that the managers of the bill--Senator Collins' staff, the Republican cloakroom, my staff, the Democratic cloakroom-- are going to be working on these amendments to see if we can begin to move toward a finite list so we can give some sense of certainty.

Senator Reid has been very clear. He has not wanted to, to use an idiom of the Senate, fill the tree, which is to say limit amendments. He has wanted to have an open amendment process, which really ought to happen on a bill of this kind, but open for germane and relevant amendments, not amendments on repealing ObamaCare or, I say respectfully, on enacting more gun control. Those are both significant and substantial issues, but they are going to block this bill from passing if people insist on bringing them up here.

So the first and positive consequence of Senator Reid's cloture motion--one we all signed--is to require that amendments people have been talking about filing have to come forward by 1 p.m., and bipartisan staffs will be working to winnow that down to a finite list.

Second, if we don't have an agreement on a finite list and we cannot vitiate the cloture vote for tomorrow, then Members of the Senate-- every one, in their own heart and head--will have to make the decision as to whether to vote against taking up this bill while all the nonpolitical experts on our security--GEN Keith Alexander, Director of Cyber Command within the Pentagon, head of the National Security Agency, and one of the jewels and treasures of our government protecting our security, appealed to Senators Reid and McConnell in a letter yesterday stating that this legislation is critically necessary now.

This legislation will give our government and the private sector operators of critical cyber infrastructure powers they do not have now, authorities they do not have now to collaborate, to take action, to share information, to adopt what General Alexander in a wonderful phrase said is the best computer hygiene, the best cyber hygiene to protect our country.

So that is the question facing Members of the Senate in the face of that kind of statement of the urgency of some form of cyber security legislation in this session from the Director of Cyber Command, an honored, distinguished veteran of our uniformed military--U.S. Army in this case.

Are we going to find it hard to get 60 Members of the Senate to vote to take up this bill and debate it? I hope not. For me, it would be hard to explain--I will put it that way--why I would vote against it no matter what the controversy is.

I would say to my friend from Delaware, who has been involved, that I will yield to him if he wants to make a statement, but we have been working really hard with three groups: the group who sponsored S. 3414, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012; the group who sponsored SECURE IT, Senators Hutchison, Chambliss, McCain, et al.; and the third group, the bipartisan group that sprung up because of the urgency of this clear- and-present danger to America, led by Senator Kyl and Senator Whitehouse, who is also on the floor and really has played an important role in bringing the two sides--if I can put it that way--closer together. Frankly, there was a chasm that separated us at the outset. We have changed our bill. We have made it much more voluntary--carrots instead of sticks, as the Senator and I have said. But still there are differences, and I would just say shame on us if we can't bridge those differences on national security, of all topics.

So this is an important day to see if we can come together. Senator Collins and I are ready and willing to meet with the sponsors of the other bills--Senator Kyl, Senator Whitehouse--to see if we can come to some kind of agreement on critical parts of this legislation and to come up with a finite list we can support.

Just a final word. I wish to thank the majority leader, Senator Reid. Senator Reid has a tough job, and it is obviously battered by the political moment we are in, whenever we are in it. And of course this is a particularly political moment--partisan--because of the election season and the campaign we are in. But I have known Harry Reid for quite a while, and I have the greatest confidence and trust in him and an awful lot of affection. He is a personal friend. He got briefed about the cyber security threat more than a year ago, and he called me in and we talked about it. He said he was really worried, that we had to do something in this session of Congress to protect our security, and he has been steadfast in that belief and has refused to give up.

Senator Reid filed the cloture motion to bring this to a head and hopefully to get to that finite list of amendments. And I think he is going to stretch, within the process and time, the great authority and power the majority leader has--some people say it may be the only power these days, but I think he has more because of his skills--in controlling the schedule. I think if there is a hope that we can bring a bill together and pass a cyber security bill, Senator Reid is going to give us every opportunity to do that. So I wanted to put on the record my thanks to him for his own commitment to improving the cyber security of our country because he has listened to the experts and they have convinced him. This is rising to be a greater threat to America than any other threat we face today, and that is saying a lot, but I believe it.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor for my friend from Delaware.

Again, I thank our friend from Rhode Island for the extraordinarily constructive role he has played--unusual here, unfortunately--in bringing the group of eight Members, four Democrats and four Republicans, together. Senator Whitehouse, along with Senator Kyl of Arizona, created a bridge that really invited Senators Collins, Feinstein, Rockefeller, Carper, and me to come halfway across to change our bill from mandatory to voluntary.

So my answers to the Senator's two questions are yes and yes. We are a lot closer than we were really just a month ago--a matter of weeks ago. There is a remaining difference, and it is real. But considering where we have come from, if we show a willingness to compromise--and again, as I have said over and over, not a compromise of principle-- that acknowledges that if everybody in the Senate insists on getting 100 percent of what they want on

a bill, nobody is going to get anything because nothing is going to pass. So we have come back from our 100 percent quite a lot, and we are still open to ideas that will enable us to achieve what we need to achieve here in improving our cyber security, which means changing where we are now.

That is why, as my friend from Rhode Island knows, we are going to keep meeting today with the other leading sponsors of the bill and with the peacemakers in between to see if we can find common ground and avoid what I think could be a very disappointing cloture vote--a very divisive, very destructive cloture vote--tomorrow.

The second point is a very important one; that is, the House has acted, but it has only acted with regard to information sharing. This is important, but it is only half the job. The information sharing, in brief, says that private companies that operate critical infrastructure can share with other private companies if they are attacked or as they begin to defend themselves so they mutually can strengthen each other. They can also share with the government, and the government, particularly through the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency, can help the private sector strengthen itself. Those kinds of communications, which are critical and would seem natural, don't happen now in too many cases because the private sector is anxious about liability that it might incur. Even the public sector is limited in how much it can reach out or help. So it is important that the House has addressed that part of it.

I will say--and not just parenthetically--that there has been very significant concern of a lot of Americans and a quite remarkable coalition of groups--remarkable in the sense that it is right to left, along the ideological spectrum--about the personal privacy rights of the American people, that they not be compromised as a result of this information sharing.

Those privacy advocacy groups are not happy with the House information-sharing bill. I am pleased they have praised what we have tried to do as a result of negotiations with colleagues in this Chamber who are concerned about privacy. The point Senator Whitehouse makes is so true, but that is only half the job. Everybody who cares about cyber security has said it.

There was, I must say, an encouraging, inspiring, for us, editorial in the New York Times today, supporting essentially S. 3414, the underlying bill, and crying out to us to take action and not get dragged down into gridlock by special interest thinking. But here is a statistic that jumped out at me. I saw it once before, but we have not heard it in this debate. In a Times editorial today entitled ``Cybersecurity at Risk,'' this sentence: ``Last year, a survey of more than 9,000 executives in more than 130 countries by the PricewaterhouseCoopers consulting firm found that only 13 percent of those polled had taken adequate defensive action against cyberthreats.''

That is worldwide. But I can tell you from what I know, the number in our country is not much better. That is why we need this set of standards, best practices, computer hygiene--no longer mandatory but we create an incentive. It is as if a company chooses to go into what my friend from Rhode Island has quite vividly described as Fort Cyber Security. We are going to build Fort Cyber Security of the best practices to defend cyber security, and we are going to leave it to the companies that operate critical infrastructure totally on their own whether they want to go into Fort Cyber Security. If they do, they will have some significant immunity from liability in the case of a major attack.

My answer to the Senator's questions are yes and yes. I just want to come back to something the Senator said at the outset of his remarks. I never know how much this argument weighs on Senators' minds, but once again it is being made here, which is this bill has received no hearings; it is not ready for action.

Good God. I went back and looked at the Record. I attended my first hearing on cyber security held in what was then the Governmental Affairs Committee--it is now the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee--chaired then by Senator Fred Thompson in 1998, 14 years ago. I can tell my colleague that in recent years, Senator Collins and I have held 10 hearings on the subject of cyber security. That is only in our committee. That is not counting judiciary, intelligence, commerce--I think foreign relations may have held some hearings on it too. In fact, we held a hearing just earlier this year, I believe it was March, on cyber security and the legislation that we knew we were going to bring forward. This has been heard.

I wish to say this too. I mentioned Senator Reid's commitment to doing something about cyber security. Last year--I am trying to think, but I cannot remember a time on another bill where I saw this happen-- Senator Reid asked the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, to join him in calling in the Democratic chairs and the ranking Republican members of all the relevant committees, relevant to cyber security that we just talked about, and made an appeal that we work together to bring one bill which he would then, as he has done before when a subject covers more than one committee, blend into a single bill and bring to the floor under majority leader's authority pursuant to rule XIV of the Senate rules, which he has done today.

So there has not been a specific hearing on this bill, but Lord knows there have been a lot of hearings and this bill has been vetted and negotiated not only with many Members of the Senate but by our committee and all the other committees--by stakeholders, private stakeholders, by some of the very businesses and business organizations that now seem to be the main block to moving forward on the bill.

I probably responded to my friend at greater length than I might have or perhaps more than he expected, but his questions were right on target, and I thank him for giving me the opportunity.

Yes.

Basically, I would say I agree. There is not much I could add to that. This is not legislation that is a solution in search of a problem. This is a real problem. Again, we are hearing it from all the cyber security experts.

If the private sector owners of critical cyber infrastructure-- electric power grids, telecommunications, finance, water dams, et cetera--if they were taking enough defensive action, we wouldn't want to act, but they are not. And we understand why. We have talked about this. A lot of the CIOs--chief information officers--in companies get frustrated that their CEOs don't want to devote enough time and resources to beefing up their cyber defenses.

The Senator said something very important, which is cyber theft and cyber attack is so insidious that a lot of people and companies who are victims of cyber attack don't even know it. My great fear is that there is a lot of malware or bugs--I called it cyber cells earlier--planted in some of our critical cyber control systems in our country waiting for the moment when an enemy wants to attack us.

Senator Reid yesterday pointed to the terrible tragedy in India where the power system has gone out. There is no evidence there was a cyber attack, but I saw today that 600 million people are without electricity. It has had a terrible effect on quality of life, on the economy, et cetera. Unfortunately, this is what an enemy who is capable today could do to us, and they are out there.

I thank my friend. And, of course, I agree. That is why we are legislating--but we are trying to legislate as minimally as we possibly can--to begin to solve this problem.

I yield the floor. The Senator from Maryland is here. The Senator from North Dakota is here.

In the order of fairness, we yield to my friend from North Dakota.

Madam President, I ask to engage in a colloquy with the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Chambliss, the Senator from South Carolina, Mr. Lindsey Graham, and if he wants to, the Senator from Indiana, Mr. Coats.

Madam President, before I go to the issue we want to discuss, I want to point out in this debate that has become so impassioned that the issue of cyber security is one of transcendent importance, and I want to again reiterate my respect, appreciation, and affection for both Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins.

I also point out to my colleagues that the people who are directly affected by this--and that is the business community of the United States of America--are unalterably opposed to the legislation in its present form. They are the ones who will be affected most dramatically by cyber security legislation. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents 3 million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region, has a strong letter which supports the legislation we have proposed.

I finally would just like to say that I have had hours and hours of meetings with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle trying to work this out. I believe we can work this out. We understand that cyber security is important and of transcendent importance. But to somehow allege that the business community, the 3 million businesses in America, should be left out of this discussion, of course, is not appropriate nor do I believe it will result in effective cyber security legislation.

National Security Leaks

I really came to the floor today to talk about the issue of the leaks, the leaks which have directly jeopardized America's national security. At the Aspen Security Forum, just in the last few days, the head of Special Operations Command, Admiral McRaven, observed that the recent national security leaks have put lives at risk and may ultimately cost America its lives unless there is an effective crackdown. Admiral McRaven, the head of our Special Operations Command said:

We need to do the best we can to clamp down because sooner

or later it is going to cost people their lives or it is

going to cost us our national security.

This is another national security issue, my friends, and I appreciate very much the fact that Governor Romney rightly referred to these leaks as contemptible and a betrayal of our national interests.

I wish to point out to my colleagues that, yes, there are supposedly investigations going on and, according to media, hundreds of people are being interviewed. Well, I am no lawyer. I am no prosecutor. Senator Graham may have some experience in that. But what about the 2009 G20 economic summit when, according to the New York Times journalist David Sanger, ``a senior official in the National Security Council'' tapped him on the shoulder and brought him to the Presidential suite in the Pittsburgh hotel where President Obama was staying and where ``most of the rest of the national security staff was present.'' There the journalist was allowed to review satellite images and other evidence that confirmed the existence of a secret nuclear site in Iran.

I wonder how many people have the key to the Presidential suite in that Pittsburgh, PA hotel? We might want to start there. Instead, we have two prosecutors, one of whom was a strong and great supporter of the President of the United States. And the same people--I am talking about the Vice President of the United States and others--who strongly supported a special counsel in the case of Valerie Plame and, of course, the Abramoff case. We need a special counsel to find out who was responsible for these leaks.

I ask my colleague Senator Graham if he has additional comments on this issue. It has receded somewhat in the

media, but the damage that has been done to our national security is significant. It has put lives at risk, and it has betrayed our allies. This is an issue we cannot let go away until those who are responsible are held accountable for these actions.

Could I ask my friend, isn't it also true that this individual had some 23 family members whose lives were also placed in danger because of the revelation of his identity?

Mr. President, before we turn to our friend from Illinois for his, I am sure, convincing explanation as to why a special counsel is not required, even though it was, in the opinion of his side, in a previous situation, I want to just, again--and the Senator from Georgia and the Senator from South Carolina will also corroborate the fact that we have been working and working, having meeting after meeting after meeting, on the issue of cyber security.

We believe we have narrowed it down to three or four differences that could be worked out over time. Among them is liability. Another one is information sharing. But I think it is also important for us to recognize in this debate the people who are most directly affected in many respects are the business communities, and it is important that we have the input and satisfy, at least to a significant degree, those concerns.

There are those who allege that a piece of legislation is better than no legislation. I have been around this town for a long time. I have seen bad legislation which is far worse than no legislation. So we understand certainly--I and members of the Armed Services Committee and others understand--the importance of this issue.

We also understand that those who are directly affected by it--those concerns need to be satisfied as well. I commit to my colleagues to continue nonstop rounds of meetings and discussions to try to get this issue resolved. To this moment, there are still significant differences.

I say to my friend from Illinois, I look forward to hearing his convincing discussion.

I thank the Senator and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Illinois be involved in the colloquy.

No.

No. The Senator will object.

I would be glad to respond to my friend.

First of all, obviously, he is in disagreement with the chairperson of the Intelligence Committee because she said these leaks were the worst in the 11 years she has been a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. So, obviously, the Abramoff and the Valerie Plame investigations are not nearly as serious, and they certainly were not when we look at the incredible damage, according to Admiral McRaven, according to anyone who is an observer of the incredible damage these leaks have caused.

Again, the chairperson of the Intelligence Committee said it is the worst she has ever seen. Admiral McRaven, as I said, said these have put lives at risk and may ultimately cost Americans their lives.

I wonder if my colleague from Illinois is concerned when, according to his book, Mr. Sanger said: ``A senior official in the National Security Council'' tapped him on the shoulder and brought him to the Presidential suite in the Pittsburgh hotel where President Obama was staying, and--I am quoting from Mr. Sanger's book--where ``most of the rest of the national security staff was present.'' There, the journalist was apparently allowed to review satellite images and other ``evidence'' that confirmed the existence of a secret nuclear site in Iran.

When leaks take place around this town, the first question you have to ask is, Who benefits? Who benefits from them? Obviously someone who wants to take a journalist up to the presidential suite would make it pretty

easy for us to narrow down whom we should interview first. Who had the key to the presidential suite? Who uses the presidential suite in a hotel in Pittsburgh? These leaks are the most damaging that have taken place in my time in the Senate and before that in the U.S. military. Yes, six people have been prosecuted. Do you know at what level? A private. The lowest level people have been prosecuted by this administration. And this administration says they have to interview hundreds of people in the bottom-up process.

I can guarantee you one thing, I will tell the Senator from Illinois now, there will not be any definitive conclusion in the investigation before the election in November. That does not mean to me that they are not doing their job, although it is clear that one of these prosecutors was active in the Obama campaign, was a contributor to the Obama campaign. I am not saying that individual is not of the highest caliber. I am saying that would lead people to ask a reasonable question, and that is whether that individual is entirely objective.

Americans need an objective investigation by someone they can trust, just as then-Senator Biden and then-Senator Obama asked for in these previous incidents, which, in my view, were far less serious and, in the view of the chairperson of the Intelligence Committee, are far more severe than those that were previously investigated. I would be glad to have my colleague respond to that.

Absolutely.

I do not think it gets him off the hook. I think it has some significance as compared to this kind of egregious breach of security that has taken place at the highest level. We know that.

No. But my friend would obviously acknowledge that if it is a private or a corporal or something, it has not nearly the gravity it does when a person with whom the Nation has placed much higher responsibilities commits this kind of breach.

But no one has challenged Mr. Sanger's depiction. No one in the administration has challenged his assertion that he was taken by ``a senior official in the National Security Council to the presidential suite.'' No one has challenged that.

I say to my friend, it is not a matter of trust, it is a matter of credibility because if an administration has the same argument that then-Senator Biden used and Senator Obama used in opposition to the administration investigating the Abramoff case and the Valerie Plame case--they argued that it is not a matter of trust, it is a matter of credibility with the American people whether an administration can actually investigate itself or should there be a credible outside counsel who would conduct this investigation, which would then have the necessary credibility, I think, with the American people. I think that there is a certain logic to that, I hope my colleague would admit.

I am bringing you proof that this Attorney General has a significant credibility problem, and that problem is bred by a program called Fast and Furious where weapons were--under a program sponsored by the Justice Department----

Let me just finish my comment. A young American Border Patrol agent was murdered with weapons that were part of the Fast and Furious investigation. What has the Attorney General of the United States done? He has said that he will not come forward with any information that is requested by my colleagues in the House.

So I would have to say that, at least in the House of Representatives and with many Americans and certainly with the family of Brian Terry, who was murdered, there is a credibility problem with this Attorney General of the United States.

I am convinced of that.

Which, in my view, does not in any way impact the need for a full and complete investigation.

No. But what I am saying is that there is a significant credibility problem that the Attorney General of the United States has, at least with a majority of the House of Representatives----

On this issue, which then lends more weight to the argument, as there was in the case of Valerie Plame and Jack Abramoff, for the need for a special counsel.

Those two counsels report to whom? The Attorney General of the United States.

So I would think, just for purposes of credibility with the American people, that a special counsel would be called for by almost everyone.

Look, I understand the position of the Senator from Illinois. We have our colleagues waiting. I appreciate the fact that he is willing to discuss this issue. I think we have pretty well exhausted it.

Sure.

First of all, could I say that is just unfair. They are not claiming to be experts on cyber attacks. They are claiming that there are issues of liability, issues of information sharing, and other issues that they believe will inhibit their ability to engage in business practices and grow and prosper. So to say that somehow they claim they are experts on cyber security, they are not, but they are experts on how their businesses can best cooperate, share information, resist these attacks, and come together with other people and other interests to bring about some legislation on which we can all agree.

There are 3 million businesses and organizations that are represented here, I say to my colleague, so it seems to me that we should continue this conversation with them, particularly on issues of information sharing and liability. But to somehow say ``well, we talked to them, but we did not agree with anything they wanted to do'' is not fair to those 3 million businesses. We are making some progress. But please don't say they portray themselves as experts.

By the way, they hacked into my Presidential campaign, which shows they really were pretty bored and did not have a hell of a lot to do. But, anyway, go ahead.

Can I say to my colleague, first of all, to somehow infer that businesses in America are less interested in national security than they are in their own businesses is not, I think, a fair inference. But let me also say that what they want to do is be more efficient in the way they can do business.

For example, information sharing--as you know, there is a serious problem with liability if they are not given some kind of protections in the information sharing they would do with each other and with the Federal Government. So we want to make sure they have that security so that they will more cooperatively engage in the kind of information we need. That is a vital issue. That is still something on which we have a disagreement.

I have no doubt that the comments of the Senator from Illinois about how important this issue is are true. Nobody argues about that. But we have to get it right rather than get it wrong. The Senator from Illinois and I have been here a long time, and sometimes we have found out that we have passed legislation that has had adverse consequences rather than the positive ones we contemplated. By the way, I would throw Dodd-Frank in there. No company is too big to fail now. I would throw in some of the other legislation we have passed recently, which has not achieved the goals we sought.

That is why we need, in my view, more compromise and agreement. I believe we can reach it. I give great credit to both of our cosponsors of the bill, but please don't allege that this is ``bipartisan'' in any significant way. Most of the Republican Senators oppose the legislation in its present form. All Republican Senators understand the gravity of this situation and the necessity of acting.

It depends upon your definition of ``bipartisan.''

These institutions are not averse to government oversight. They are averse to legislation that harms their ability to share that information because if they face the threat of being taken into court for that, then obviously there is some reluctance. They also know how much has been lost because of the lack of cyber security to China and other countries. They are the ones who have been most directly affected. They are intelligent people, smart people, and they want this legislation to pass in a way that is the most effective way to enact legislation on this very serious issue.

I look forward to continuing the conversation with my friend from Illinois. I think both of us learn a bit from our conversations, and I thank him for his continued willingness to discuss the issue.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am waiting now for them to bring up a bill I have filed today and will have a number to go with it which I will announce in a moment.

First of all, let me say that the talk of the whole country right now is on the sequestration problems we are having. I would only observe that I don't know why it is so difficult for people to understand, but President Obama has written four budgets and these budgets have come before us, and if we add up all of the deficits in the four budgets, it comes to $5.3 trillion worth of deficits. I suggest that is more deficit than all Presidents in the history of this country for the past 200-plus years.

So, people say, how did we get into this mess? Because when we have those kinds of deficits over a period of time, we wonder where it is coming from. Let me tell my colleagues where it didn't come from, where it wasn't spent, and that is military.

I went over the first budget President Obama had. I went over to Afghanistan so I could make sure I could get the attention of the American people and let them know how this disarming of America by President Obama is going. Of course, if one of my colleagues was part of that first budget, they would know that it cut out our only fifth- generation fighter, the F-22; our lift capacity, the C-17; the future combat system; the ground based interceptor in Poland. That was just the first budget. Then it has gotten worse since that time. Since there isn't time to go over that detail year by year, I can only say that the President has already cut in his budget over the next decade $487 billion, roughly $500 billion, $\1/2\ trillion--from defense spending over the next 10 years.

I would suggest to my colleagues that the American people--this is something that is very frustrating, because they assume that when we send our kids into battle, they have the best of equipment, and this just flat isn't true. The British have an AS90, a Howitzer that is better than ours. The Russians have the 2S19 that is better than ours. Even South Africa has a system that is a better nonline-of-sight cannon than we have in our arsenal. The Chinese have a J-10 that is better than ours. In fact, they are now cranking them out to where they rival our F-15s, F-16s, and F/A18s.

So the point I am making here is there has been no emphasis. If we go out and borrow and increase the deficit by $5.3 trillion as this President is doing, one would think we would be in a position to have a lot more robust military, but the military has been consistently cut over that period of time.

In the event the Obama sequestration as it is designed right now goes through, that will be another $\1/2\ trillion that will come out of the military. Even the President's own Secretary of Defense, Secretary Panetta, has said if these cuts take place--talking about the Obama sequestration cuts--in addition to what he has already cut, it would be ``devastating to the military.'' That means we would have the smallest ground fleet since the 1940s, we would have the smallest fleet of ships since 1915, and the smallest tactical fighter capability or force in the history of the Air Force.

So if we want the United States to continue providing the type of global leadership our people have come to expect and meet the expectations of the American people--when we talk to the American people, they are shocked when they find out other countries have things that are better than we have.

If we want to beat this, then we are going to have to do something about, No. 1, what is happening to the military; and No. 2, the sequestration.

I have it all in one bill. In a minute we will get a number for that bill. Anyway, it is called the Sequestration Prevention Act of 2012. It replaces the sequestration cuts with some smart reforms, and I am going to go over those in a minute to show my colleagues what they are. It replaces the $1.2 trillion and then has a lot of money left over.

Let me just kind of go over what this bill would do. People keep saying: We cannot do anything about it. We cannot do anything about the sequestration, the cuts.

We had this great committee that was supposed to be out there finding $1.2 trillion over a 10-year period and yet we have a President who was able to give us deficits of five times that much over just a 4-year period.

What it does, first of all, to come up with this $1.2 trillion, plus rebuilding the military--we want to rebuild the military, in my estimation, up to 4 percent of GDP. For the last 100 years, prior to 1990--for 100 years--the average defense spending constituted 5.7 percent of GDP. That was the average, in times of war and in times of peace. Now it is all the way down, after his sequestration, to below 3 percent; in other words, about half of that.

What I wish to do with additional funds that come from this bill I am introducing today is put that back into the military and bring us up to 4 percent of GDP--still considerably less than where we have been over the last 100 years.

The first thing it does is completely repeal ObamaCare and adopts Paul Ryan's approach to block granting the Medicaid Program so States have complete control over the dollars they use to reach their low- income populations with health care assistance. Together, these two changes will reduce spending by $1.1 trillion over 10 years.

Secondly, it returns nondefense discretionary spending to the 2006 levels. When this President came in, the amount of the nondefense discretionary spending surged. This would have a savings over that period of time of $952 billion.

The third thing it does is it block grants the Food Stamp Program and converts it into a discretionary program so States have complete control over the design of their nutrition assistance programs to best meet the needs of their low-income populations. This provision reverses the massive expansion we have seen of the Food Stamp Program under the Obama administration, which has literally doubled in size, up to 100 percent, since he took office.

On President Obama's inauguration day, just under 32 million people were on food stamps. Today, it is more than 46 million people, and they receive these benefits. It is going to have to stop. It will continue to go up if we do not do something about it. This provision saves $285 billion.

By the way, I think it is important to know, when we look at the farm program, the farm program is a welfare program because they increase all these provisions and call it part of the farm bill. But that is a different subject, and I will talk about it later, not today but later.

The fourth thing the legislation does is it reduces the Federal workforce by 10 percent through attrition. Nobody out there is going to be fired. There are not going to be any cuts. In fact, it would continue to have some modest increases in payment for those who are there. Through attrition, the savings would be about $144 billion over 10 years.

The fifth thing the bill does is it repeals the authority of the Federal Government to spend taxpayer dollars on climate change or global warming. This is kind of interesting because very few people know that--even though they remember that every time there has been a bill on cap and trade, there is a cost to the American people of somewhere between $300 billion and $400 billion a year, and people's heads start spinning when we talk about these large amounts. Sometimes in my State of Oklahoma, what I have done is take the total number of families who file Federal tax returns and then I apply this to it. This would be about $3,000 per family in my State of Oklahoma. Yet even the Director of the EPA admits that if we did this, it would not reduce CO2 emissions worldwide. That is the Director of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, and that is on the record. I appreciate her honesty in that respect.

If we do this right now--what people do not know is this President has spent $68.4 billion since he has been President on all this global warming stuff. That is without authority because we have clearly defeated all those bills. What he has done through regulations is what he could not do through legislation. But nobody knows about it, until now. Now they know about it.

Anyway, if we stop doing that over the next 10 years, that will save an additional $83 billion.

Finally, the legislation includes comprehensive medical malpractice and

tort reform. That is the same thing that was passed by the House of Representatives and that would save $74 billion over 10 years.

All told, all the savings generated would be $2.6 trillion--not $1.2 trillion--$2.6 trillion over 10 years. So do not let anyone tell you, we cannot get there from here. Clearly, we can get there from here.

We use the remaining amount to beef up the military to get back to our 4-percent level. I believe if we were to talk to the average American, they would say: Yes, let's go ahead and do this. Why aren't we doing it now?

Let me mention one other thing before I conclude; that is, we have something called the WARN Act. What that does is require the employers--who know because of sequestration there are going to be layoffs--to give pink slips at least 60 days prior to the time that will happen. Under sequestration, if they do not adopt my act, if they do that, then those pink slips would have to be out there by the 2nd of November.

The President does not want that to happen. He does not want the Obama sequestration to be pointed out and identified as to what is causing them to lose their jobs, so he is trying to get companies not to comply with the WARN Act.

Clearly, the WARN Act says ``an employer shall not order a plant closing or mass layoff until the end of a 60-day period after the employer serves written notice of such an order.''

The WARN Act states--this is very significant because if there are companies out there that are listening to the President when he is asking them not to issue the pink slips, this is what would happen to them--it states that ``any employer who orders a plant closing or mass layoff in violation of Section 3 . . . shall be liable to each aggrieved employee who suffers an employment loss as a result of such closing or layoff.''

In other words, if they do not do it, then that opens the doors for all the trial lawyers to come in. Just imagine the cases. At Lockheed Martin, they say they are going to have to let go of some 120,000 people. If they had a class action suit, each one who was let go would receive something like $1,000. That would be $120 million that company would have to pay. I cannot imagine the board of directors of any company anywhere in America not complying with this legal act called the WARN Act.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for the duration of my remarks.

Madam President, I rise today to speak on the 5-year anniversary of the horrific collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, and to pay tribute to those who lost their lives on that tragic summer day.

As I said the day after the bridge collapse, ``A bridge just should not fall down in the middle of America.'' Not a bridge that is a few blocks from my house. Not an eight-lane highway. Not a bridge that I drive over every day with my husband and my daughter. But that is what happened that sunny summer day in Minneapolis, MN.

I can't even begin to count how many times I have thought about that bridge, and everyone in our State actually remembers where they were the day it collapsed. It was one of the most heavily traveled bridges in our State, and in all that day 13 people lost their lives and scores were injured. So many more could have been killed if not for the first responders, if not for the volunteers, who instead of running away from the disaster, when they had no idea what actually happened, ran toward it and rescued their fellow citizens.

Everyone was shocked and horrified, but on that evening and in the days that followed, the whole world watched as our State came together, as they did in the minutes and hours after the collapse. I was proud to be a Minnesotan.

The emergency response to the bridge collapse demonstrated an impressive level of preparedness and coordination that should be a model for the Nation. We saw true heroes in the face of unimaginable circumstances. We saw an off-duty Minneapolis firefighter named Shannon Hanson, who grabbed her lifejacket and was among the first at the scene. Tethered to a yellow life rope in the midst of broken concrete and tangled rebar, she swam from car to car searching for survivors up and down in that river.

We saw that schoolbus perched precariously on the falling bridge deck. I called it the miracle bus. Inside there were dozens of kids from a very poor neighborhood, who had been on a swimming field trip. Their bus was crossing the bridge when it dropped. Thanks to the quick action of responsible adults and the children themselves, they all survived, they all got off that bus.

Although you can never feel good about a tragedy like this one, I certainly felt good about our police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and all the medical personnel who literally saved dozens and dozens of lives.

On this, the 5-year anniversary of the bridge collapse, we should again honor those heroes and the countless lives they saved.

For a minute, I want to tell you a few examples. A woman named Pamela Louwagie, who writes for the Star Tribune, gathered some of their stories this weekend. Some of these people I know. Lindsey Patterson Walls was in a Volkswagen that went over the bridge; she kicked out the doors and windows and was able to get out and survive. She is putting the collapse to work in her career. She is a youth worker who counsels children and teens and she discovered that her trauma, as hard as it was, wasn't so different than that of her clients. She felt insecure in the world, wondering whether another bridge would collapse under her, and she realized that the homeless teens she counsels felt insecure, wondering where they would sleep at night. It is a lesson she takes with her every day in her job.

Betsy Sathers is someone I have come to know. Her husband was 29 years old when he died in that bridge collapse. They had just gotten married and they planned on having a family. She decided to adopt children from Haiti. In the aftermath of that earthquake, she already knew the names of these children she was going to adopt. She would not let those kids just be left in that rubble. She contacted our office. We worked with her and brought Alyse and Ross back from Haiti, and she is their mother. I saw them this weekend with their big smiles and their mom. That is an inspirational story.

The Coulter family was in their minivan--the kids, the mom, the dad. It was clear at the beginning that they were severely injured and the mom, Paula, they didn't think would survive. Also, after they learned that maybe she was going to make it--she had devastating injuries to her brain and her back--one time during one of the surgeries, they had to jolt her heart back to life. They had suggested that her family start looking for nursing home care. But she didn't give up--Paula and her family didn't give up. After 2 years, with the help of some great therapists, she could walk and move again and go back to her counseling job part time, and two summers ago she and her trainer ran a 5K race. That is inspirational.

Then there is the bridge itself. After it collapsed, it was so clear to us that we had to rebuild it and we had to rebuild it right away. In just 3 days, Senator Coleman and I worked together in the Senate to secure $250 million in emergency bridge reconstruction funding. Representative Jim Oberstar led the way in the House. Approval of the funding came with remarkable speed in this Chamber. It was bipartisan and we

were able to get the funding. From the moment that bridge started construction to the end, it took less than a year to rebuild a bridge that is now a 10-lane highway.

Today, the new I-35W bridge is a symbol of pride and the resilience of a community. This weekend, when I was at the Twin Cities heroes parade with our veterans, the organizer looked at me proudly and said: Tonight they are lighting up the 35W bridge red, white, and blue. So it literally has become a symbol of hope in our State.

The new bridge is a hundred-year bridge with more lanes than before. It is also safer. The bridge includes state-of-the-art anti-icing technology, as well as shoulders, which the old bridge didn't have.

Of course, bridge safety was on the minds of all Americans, especially those of us in Minnesota, following the bridge collapse. Immediately afterward, the Minnesota Department of Transportation inspected all 25 bridges in Minnesota with a similar design as the I- 35W bridge. This inspection led to the closing of the Highway 23 bridge in St. Cloud, where bulging of gusset plates was found. I remember seeing it. It accelerated its planned replacement of that bridge, which opened in 2009.

But the reforms were not all structural. Since then, the department of transportation in our State has improved the way the inspections and maintenance functions of the department handle critical information and necessary repairs.

Just as in Minnesota, bridge safety became a priority nationally as well. After the National Transportation Safety Board identified gusset plates as being heavily responsible for the collapse, a critical review of gusset plates was conducted on bridges across America, and there was new attention focused on deterioration of steel and weight added to bridges over the years through maintenance and resurfacing projects.

The national organization that develops highway and bridge standards, the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials, updated bridge manuals that are used by State and county bridge engineers across the Nation.

I will say that 5 years later we have still not made as much progress as I would have liked. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that over 25 percent of the Nation's 600,000 bridges are still either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

The American Society of Civil Engineers gave bridges in America a C grade in its 2009 Report Card for America's Infrastructure and a D for infrastructure overall.

We did take a positive step forward with the recent bipartisan transportation bill that will help State departments of transportation fix bridges and improve infrastructure.

For Minnesota, that bill means more than $700 million for Minnesota's roads, bridges, transit, congestion mitigation projects, and mobility improvements.

The bill gives greater flexibility to State departments of transportation to direct Federal resources to address unique needs in each State. It also establishes benchmarks and national policy goals, including strengthening our Nation's bridges, and links those to Federal funds. It reduces project delivery time and accelerates processes that will reduce in half the amount of time to get projects under way.

However, we all know more needs to be done. While other countries are moving full steam ahead with infrastructure investments, we seem to be simply treading water, and in an increasingly competitive global economy standing still is falling behind.

China and India are spending, respectively, 9 and 5 percent of their GDP on infrastructure. We need to keep up. We need to build our infrastructure. That is why I authored the Rebuild America Jobs Act last fall, which would have invested in our Nation's infrastructure. It would have also created a national infrastructure bank--something the occupant of the chair is familiar with--to help facilitate public- private partnerships, so that projects could be built that would otherwise be too expensive for a city, a county, or even a State to accomplish on its own. We included a provision to set aside a certain amount of funding for road projects. Unfortunately, while we got a majority of the Senate voting to advance this bill, we were unable to break the filibuster.

So 5 years to the day after the I-35W bridge fell into the Mississippi River, we know we have much to do to ensure our 21st century economy has the 21st century infrastructure we need. I know I am committed to move forward and work in a bipartisan way to address our Nation's critical bridge and infrastructure needs and prevent another tragedy like the collapse of the I-35W bridge.

They didn't distinguish on that bridge on that day 5 years ago who was a Democrat or Republican. Certainly those first responders--the cops and firefighters--didn't ask what political party somebody belonged to. They simply did their job. That is what we need to do in the Senate.

I yield the floor.