A bill to provide for a sequester replacement.

Mr. President, if I may interject, I believe I have the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to interject just for a moment to sort out the order on the floor.

I apologize to the Senator from Arizona for the last exchange. I thought I had the floor at that point. I understand now this is a colloquy.

I think Senator Ayotte seems to be in order, but the chairman of the Appropriations Committee is here, so perhaps she could be recognized at the conclusion of Senator Ayotte's remarks. I see Senator Inhofe, so if he could follow Senator Mikulski and then I will follow Senator Inhofe, I offer that as a proposal.

The Senator has that right, and she will yield to him.

I yield for a question.

Having the floor, why don't I propose now that at the conclusion of my remarks Senator Toomey be recognized.

Madam President, I am rising today in strong support of Leader Reid's proposal to stop the sequester. We need to reduce our debt and deficit. We should do so in a thoughtful manner.

We have so often on this floor heard our Republican friends criticize Democratic legislation as job killing: a job-killing bill, a job- killing proposal. We hear that all the time. Often that charge has been without much factual support, but it is part of the common rhetoric in this room. But now we face an event that actually is expected to cause the loss of 1 million jobs, and yet so many Republicans support these cuts in their fixation, frankly, on what economists call budget austerity, cutting your way out of a recession.

How has the budget austerity record worked? There is a record now, because a lot of countries have tried it--from Spain to Portugal to Greece, countries slashed spending to address deficits in the name of budget austerity. Their record? Lousy. Persistent double-digit unemployment and negative economic growth.

The U.S. unemployment rate of 7.9 percent--which is actually even higher in my home State--is for sure too high, but it is far better than the rate of 26 percent unemployment in Spain and Greece, the record of 16 percent unemployment in Portugal. Our 2.3 percent growth rate may seem inadequate, and it is; but as we recover from the deepest recession we have seen since the Great Depression, it is much better than the negative growth rates in the countries that took the austerity path. The results are clear. The evidence is in from the austerity experiments. The countries that cut the deepest have been hurt the most.

If we want to continue growing our economy and creating jobs, we need to resist the European path that is championed by Republican austerity advocates. We need to maintain the balanced approach that has brought the U.S. economy up out of recession--admittedly, not fast enough. But look at what the alternative has been.

Leader Reid's bill would replace the indiscriminate cuts of the so- called sequester with targeted cuts to agricultural subsidies and defense spending--as the chairman of the Appropriations Committee said--after the troops are home when the costs can necessarily come down, paired with revenue not from raising taxes but from closing a loophole, a tax loophole that allows the highest paid people in America to pay lower tax rates than regular middle-class families.

I heard the passion of Senator McCain--and I respect him immensely-- on the harm the sequester will do to the military. We have a way out. It is a question of priorities. Do you really want to protect the military from these cuts or is it more important to protect the low tax rates of billionaires? That is the choice, and that is the choice they are making. Leader Reid's is a smart and balanced bill, and I hope it will pass.

To put this into some context about where we are on spending cuts, the ranking member of the Budget Committee said this week that President Obama was opposed to spending cuts. I have the transcript of what he said in

committee here: The President believes no spending, even wasteful spending, should be cut.

Well, let's look at the facts. Through the Budget Control Act of 2011 and several other measures, we have cut spending almost $1.5 trillion in the budget period of the next decade. When you include interest savings--the top part--from that reduced borrowing, it comes to $1.7 trillion in spending cuts and associated interest savings.

On the revenue side, we have only generated a little over $700 billion from ending the Bush tax cuts for the top 1 percent--at least over $450,000 in income--and from the associated interest savings. This together puts us $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction toward our goal of $4 trillion in total deficit reduction that most economists agree is needed to stabilize our budget. But notice, in the balance between spending cuts and new revenues, spending cuts are ahead by $1 trillion.

The ranking member of the Budget Committee said President Obama believes no spending, even wasteful spending, should be cut. And he is $1 trillion ahead on spending versus revenues. We have cut $7 of spending for every $3 of revenue, even though right now U.S. Government revenue is at its lowest percentage of GDP in more than 50 years, more than half a century. Our proposal going forward is 50/50, spending cuts and revenues. So let's not pretend we are immune to or allergic to spending cuts. There have been more spending cuts than new revenues. We have tried to find a balanced approach and so far, in this $2.4 trillion, we have not even looked at tax loopholes, at spending that happens through the Tax Code that mostly benefits big corporations, special interests, and super-high-end American earners.

Take a look at how big that amount is. We collect, in individual income tax revenue, a little over $1 trillion every year from individuals. But the total liability of individuals under the Tax Code is over $2 trillion. What happens to this other $1.02 trillion? It flows back out. It never comes into the government as revenues. It goes back to people as tax deductions, loopholes, and various ways that we spend money through the Tax Code.

If you look at the corporate income tax side, it is about the same. We look at our corporations--which, by the way, contribute about one- sixth as much into our national revenue as they used to. They are at an all-time low in terms of contributing to our national revenues in the last couple of decades--60 years, I want to say. They are at $118 billion that actually gets collected and becomes revenue. And there is another $157 billion that is corporate tax liability, but we let them get it back through loopholes in the Tax Code. You put them together and you have $1.16 trillion that we can use to help defeat or replace the sequester.

It is a big deal to look at the tax spending as well as just the revenues that come in. We have done nothing on that yet. That should be part of this discussion. That is what we do in the proposal I put out.

Last year we spent a great deal of time in this body debating whether the top income tax rate should be 35 percent or 39.6 percent, and we ultimately set the rate at 39.6 percent for families whose income is over $450,000. But what we know is that many of those families will never pay anything close to that rate. The Tax Code is riddled with those special provisions that I talked about, the loopholes, the tax spending that disproportionately benefits high-income folks. They are special deals for special interests. Of them all, perhaps the most egregious is the so-called carried interest loophole that allows billionaires--literally billionaires--to pay lower tax rates than regular families. That is why in the last election it became apparent that Mitt Romney was paying something like an 11-percent tax rate.

It is not just Mitt Romney. The IRS tracks the effective tax rates paid by the top 400 highest income earners in the country. In 2009, the last year they have data, the top 400 earned an average of over $200 million each, 1 year's income, over $200 million each. What did they pay in taxes on average? About 20 percent. About 20 percent on average. Some paid more. The nominal rate was supposed to be 35 percent. How many Mitt Romneys are there paying 11 percent in order to average to 20 percent? And 20 percent is the same rate that an average firefighter pays in Rhode Island, or a brickmason pays in Rhode Island. Don't tell me a billionaire hedge fund manager cannot pay a higher tax rate than a brickmason.

It is not just the top 400. The Congressional Research Service estimates that about a quarter of people in America who make more than $1 million a year, about a quarter of them pay lower tax rates than over 10 million middle-income taxpayers. In that sense the Tax Code is upside-down in favor of these high-income earners. Loopholes let them do that.

So we cut across all these loopholes with the so-called Buffett rule. They are supposed to pay 39.6 percent. The Buffett rule says: Ok, take all the loopholes you want, but you cannot go below 30 percent. We will let you take off 9.6 percent of the rate the law says you are supposed to pay but you cannot go below 30 percent. You can't go to 11 percent. You cannot be paying lower than a brickmason pays. That is in our sequester replacement bill. It produces $71 billion.

High-earning professionals can perform another trick. They can avoid paying Social Security and Medicare taxes simply by calling themselves corporations for tax purposes. You heard the Republican Presidential candidate say corporations are people. This is the flip side. These people are corporations. If you make enough money you can afford to turn yourself into a corporation to dodge paying your Social Security and your Medicare contributions. So the second item on my list closes that loophole too, which is another $9 billion.

The next item on the list contributes $3 billion by ending special depreciation rules for private jets. Private jet owners can depreciate their aircraft faster, for tax purposes, than commercial aircraft. I am very happy for anybody who is successful enough to have a private jet. But that luxury need not be subsidized by taxpayers. Setting aside the need for this because of the sequester, this is a change that makes sense just on fairness grounds. It stands on its own and it is another $3 billion.

The fourth provision in my bill would end tax breaks for big oil companies. Over the past decade the big five oil companies have collectively enjoyed over $1 trillion in profits--yes, trillion with a T. Repealing taxpayer giveaways to them is something we should be doing anyway. It is another $24 billion toward getting rid of the sequester.

The final provision in my plan helps replace the sequester by ending a tax break that, unbelievably, rewards manufacturers that close up shop in the United States and move jobs to other countries. It does that by allowing those corporations to indefinitely delay paying taxes on profits from those foreign overseas operations. Ending the deferral loophole for companies that manufacture goods overseas for sale to American customers is something we should do anyway to support our domestic manufacturers. It adds almost $20 billion toward replacing the sequester cuts.

Each one of these five provisions would make the Tax Code more fair for ordinary Americans. I love our chairman of Appropriations. She can speak to issues on the floor of the Senate like nobody else. When she said these are cushy, lobbyist-driven earmarks, she is dead right. They do not deserve to stand on their own. And we can get rid of some of the smelliest ones and spare ourselves the sequester and the loss of a million jobs at the same time? Gosh, I think we ought to be doing that.

I strongly support Leader Reid's bill to replace the sequester cuts with a 50/50 mix of revenue and spending. But I also want to show we can avoid the sequester for the coming year by looking at the vast tax spending we do through loopholes and gimmicks in the Tax Code--usually for the benefit of powerful corporations, special interests, and very high-income individuals. When you set that against the economic harm the sequester is going to cause to our country, closing those loopholes should be a higher priority, on economic grounds and on grounds of fairness.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, I don't need to be in this lineup. I will be talking later on. I only wanted to ask one question of Senator Ayotte when she has the floor.

Would the Senator yield for a question before she starts?

Yes, of course. The question is this--and I know the Senator already knows this, but others may not know, and I want to make sure they are aware.

I am in support of the Senator's bill. I am a cosponsor of the bill and have been since way back when the Senator first started with Jon Kyl a long time ago.

I agree with what was said by both the Senator from Arizona and the Senator South Carolina. In fact, it was my request that Senator Ayotte's measure be the Republican alternative. So I just wanted to make sure everyone knew that. I think it is a good idea.

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

Madam President, I thank my friend from Utah for his comments. I think it is important, since we have two votes coming up starting in less than 30 minutes, that we talk a little bit about the background, where we are today and what we are going to be faced with in these votes and what the options are.

Back about 5 weeks ago, when it looked as though sequestration was going to kick in, there was concern. I understand there is a lot of concern on the domestic side and on the defense side, but my concern is mainly on the defense side. I am the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I am concerned about what has been happening under this administration in the last 4 years, the disarming of America and the devastation that has taken place already. A lot of people do not realize, under this administration we are now projecting cuts already to hit $487 billion in defense.

If sequestration should come in, it would raise that to $1 trillion, and $1 trillion over that period of time is, in fact, devastating. The Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, came out immediately and said: This cannot happen; we cannot adequately defend America if we allow this to take place. He was talking about sequestration.

Sequestration, I think people kind of lose sight of what it is. It is the equal cutting all the way across all of these accounts in order to come up with a savings, which I think is kind of interesting. Here we are talking about all this anguish we are going through right now just for $1.2 trillion, when you stop and realize in the President's own budget, over 4 years he has a $5.3 trillion increase. So we are talking about 10 years to come up with $1.2 trillion when he was accountable for $5.3 trillion in 4 years. That is not even believable. When I say it back in my State of Oklahoma they shake their heads and think there must be some miscommunication, it cannot be right.

The problem has been, in this administration, over the past 4 years all the cuts have come from the military. They have not come from anywhere else. It is an oversimplification, but you can make the statement that they are cutting--I will yield to my friend from Utah because I understand he has a unanimous consent request. I will be happy to do that, but I ask unanimous consent the floor be returned to me.

Will the Senator yield?

I asked unanimous consent I be recognized after the two of you went through this. Can I inquire as to about how much longer it will be? I am the author of the bill that is coming up in just a few minutes.

I appreciate that. It is my understanding, responding to my friend, that the other author of this bill, Senator Toomey, wants to be heard for 2 minutes prior to the vote. I would like to be heard for a few minutes of time.

Right after his time, yes.

I appreciate that.

Prior to the time we propounded the unanimous consent request, I was talking about my frustration about what has been happening fiscally in this Senate during the last 4 years and the mere fact that under this administration we have increased deficits by $5.3 trillion. Now we are trying to come up with something far less than that in a period of 10 years. To me, people look at that and say: What is this all about? But that is not the reason I bring this up.

I bring this up because the amount of money that has come out of the military is actually a reduction. If you look at the increase in the spending in the last 4 years, it has all come out of defense accounts, so it is defense that has taken the hits on this. Government has expanded approximately 30 percent across the board. At the same time our military has been reduced in terms of our budget for defense accounts.

Anyway, when this came up a few weeks ago, I thought it was not going to happen. I thought we were going to have something come up and change this whole idea of having to make these reductions. So what I did at that time was draft a bill. The bill merely said if we are stuck with sequestration, let's allow the chiefs--speaking of the military--to reevaluate everything that is included so they can look and see where we can take cuts and it will not be as devastating.

In fact, I called each one of the five service chiefs and I said: Would it be less devastating if you were able to take the same amount of money out but take it out selectively, out of accounts where it would be not as significant?

They said: Yes, it would.

I said: Would you be able to prepare for this in the next 4 years?

The answer is yes. That is where we are today. They said they are able to do that.

The frustrating fact is this President--I am getting criticized on both sides. People are saying you are giving too much to the President. We are not because we have safeguards in here, which I will explain in a minute. But at the same time, the President comes out and says he will issue a veto threat against this bill. What does this do? It gives flexibility for the President.

I am going to read something. This is a statement that President Obama said on February 19, 2013. He said:

Now, if Congress allows this meat-cleaver approach to take

place, it will jeopardize our military readiness; it will

eviscerate job-creating investments in education and energy

and medical research. It won't consider whether we are

cutting some bloated program that has outlived its

usefulness, or a vital service that Americans depend on every

single day. It doesn't make those distinctions.

He goes on to say that he wants that flexibility. This is the President asking for it on February 19, 2013. Here we come along with a bill that gives him that flexibility with certain restrictions so that he can't pick and choose areas that we find are against the policy that has been set. I will give an example.

We had the National Defense Authorization Act. It was one that took months and months to put together. It took a long time to put together, and we made evaluations, with a limited budget, on what we could do. All this does is say if we have to make some changes from the across- the-board cut, let's make them consistent with the National Defense Authorization Act.

In other words, all those weeks and months of work by the Senate Armed Services Committee and, I might say, the House Armed Services Committee would not be in vain. Those cuts would be consistent with the intent, to make sure the President would do this.

A lot of people say we can't trust the President; he is going to put more cuts in places where it would not be in keeping with what the Senate Armed Services Committee wants. But we have a provision called a congressional disapproval mechanism. That means if the President doesn't do what the intent of this legislation is, then we can go ahead and disapprove it.

We have those two safeguards. One is they have to follow the criteria that is consistent with the Senate Armed Services Committee, the national defense authorization bill, which is the House and the Senate. To be sure we will be able to do that it has the disapproval mechanism.

People do not realize the costs of this. If you take the same amount of money that we are talking about in sequestration and allow the service chiefs to massage this and make changes, give them flexibility to go after programs that are not as significant as some that might otherwise be cut--the bill allows the President to listen to the advice of his military leadership and offset some of the devastating impacts of sequestration. If the sequester is allowed to take place and the congressional resolution is not fixed, the Department of Defense stands to waste billions of dollars through the cancellation of contracts.

People don't think about this. We make commitments backed by the United Sates of America that we are going to do certain things. A lot of these are contracts such that if they are terminated it could cost quite a bit of money.

The termination of multiyear contracts is something that we would be concerned about. Providing the Department of Defense flexibility to determine how these cuts will be implemented will let us take this into consideration.

At this point, I ask the Senator from Pennsylvania how much time he would like for his concluding remarks.

Madam President, I appreciate that very much. He has been a great partner. I have given a background of what went on 5 weeks ago and our discussions with the service chiefs. I was hoping this day would not come and that we would not be faced with the continued devastation of our military, but the time is here. Tomorrow is the 1st of the month.

The Senator from Pennsylvania and I have come up with a bill that will be voted on, and it will minimize the damage and still preserve the cuts that are mandated and are out there.

One of the problems we have not talked about is the continuing resolution. When I was talking to the different service chiefs, one was General Odierno, who is in the Army. He said that just as devastating as how the CR is set up, this corrects that problem at the same time. We have something that is not going to cost any more money. Believe me, a lot of my closest friends--for instance, in the House of Representatives--think it is a good thing that we are making these mandatory cuts. They cannot argue with that, but we can at least minimize the damage in these cuts.

I will read something that shocked me when I saw the President had issued--I am not sure if it is a veto message. I am told it was a veto message.

Here we have a bill that gives him flexibility with the restrictions we

talked about. Yet he says he is now going to veto it. It is worth reading this again, and we need to make sure we get this in the Record.

This is his quote on February 19, 2013. This is the President speaking.

Now, if Congress allows this meat-cleaver approach to take

place, it will jeopardize our military readiness; it will

eviscerate job-creating investments in education and energy

and medical research. It won't consider whether we're cutting

some bloated program that has outlived its usefulness, or a

vital service that Americans depend on every single day. It

doesn't make those distinctions.

We are now giving him a vehicle that makes those distinctions so we have that flexibility. It has the safeguards to take care of the problems that have been brought up. I think it is not a good solution, but right now it is the only solution.

With that, I yield the floor.

Would the Senator yield?

Will my friend yield for a question?

Madam President, I appreciate Senator Reid taking the leadership here, and as I understand it--and I want him to confirm it-- what he has done is he has suggested the cuts that are hurting so many of our American citizens be restored and he is paying for that. He is not putting it on a credit card. He is paying for it by taking funds from the overseas account because we are winding down wars. Am I correct that what the Senator is doing is paying a price that equals the amount he is restoring of the sequester?

And I also want to say to my friend, I understand we are truly suffering in this country. I have examples of people who were turned away from cancer clinics. They can't get their chemotherapy. The Cancer Society--which is not a government entity--has said this is very dangerous.

Is my friend aware that patients are being turned away and not getting the

chemotherapy, grants are not being funded? I know he mentioned that. But I think the fact that patients who need chemotherapy who live--some are being denied this. Is my friend aware of that?

I would also say, I wonder if my friend knew--and I take just a city from the Midwest. In Cincinnati, 200 children will be dropped or denied access to Head Start. Anita Wolf, a mother of two special needs children, said she may have to choose which child can remain in Head Start enrichment programs.

I say to my friend, we are here because this is hurting people. This isn't about statistics, and I am very disappointed we can't work together to restore this. How long does my friend restore these cuts?

I thank the Senator from Nevada for yielding, and I will listen to my colleagues from the other side.

Madam President, I worked with my colleague from Alabama on a lot of issues. We do work together on occasion.

But on this particular issue we see the world very differently, which is to be respected, and it is with full respect that I say this sequester is not necessary. These across-the-board cuts were put into place to be so difficult and so painful that both parties would come together and come up with a solution. The President has tried and tried. He said to both parties: Why don't we meet in the middle? Let's replace the sequester, these mindless cuts, with other cuts that make sense and are not painful, and the other half with tax reform, doing away with subsidies, tax loopholes such as the billions of dollars a year oil companies have been getting that don't make sense, since they are the most profitable companies probably in the world.

But Republicans' answer to that: We are not going to look at taking away these tax breaks from big companies. We are going to not look at trying to see whether millionaires or billionaires can pay anymore. We want to replace the sequester with more cuts.

I know it is a fast-moving country we live in. Lord knows you have gone through some difficult times in Massachusetts and I thank the Presiding Officer for her leadership. But we do not have that short a memory. We remember this awful recession that almost turned into a depression. We know because it is basic--I am an economics major; it was a long time ago--but there was a basic understanding that when times are tough the government doesn't turn to austerity. The government helps us by saying: You know what, maybe this is a good time to fix those bridges, to build those highways, to do the things we need to do because a great country needs an infrastructure and this is the time to do it--because we need the jobs, too.

We have no partners over there. Now Senator Reid comes up with a very sensible plan and here is the plan: For the next 5 months we restore the sequester. We take away those mindless cuts, get us back to normalcy, try to find another solution, a long-term solution, but in the meantime, pay for stopping the sequester by cutting from an overseas war funding account. As we bring home our soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq, we have an account that can be drawn down. So when our colleagues say Senator Reid is raising taxes to do this, he is not raising taxes No. 1. He is cutting spending by taking savings out of this overseas war account.

It makes a lot of sense. The American people want to see the Afghanistan war come to an end. The American people want to see the Iraq war totally completed. We are saying take that money and how about spending it here?

Their answer today, which is so astounding, from Senator Coburn who objected to this very important bill--Senator Coburn said he has the answer. It is called flexibility. What does that mean? It means all of these cuts, these billions and billions of dollars in cuts, we will then tell the agency: Figure it out. You figure out where to fix it.

For example, in the FAA they have an airport improvement fund. They are saying we do not have to fire these air traffic controllers. Let's not do that. Take the money from the airport improvement fund.

If you know anything about the airport improvement fund, it is not an idle fund. It is a fund that is paid for by taxes that people pay so their airports will be improved, hence it is called the airport improvement fund. Whether it is making sure the runways are safe or making sure the terminals are secure--this is why we have airport improvement funds. You cannot rob Peter to pay Paul.

I want to say to my friend--he left the floor--and he is my friend, Senator Coburn: Flexibility is not the answer. If somebody comes to me, a colleague, and says: Senator Boxer, I left my wallet home and I am starving, can you lend me $10? And I say flexibility--what flexibility? He left his wallet home. Flexibility does not pay for air

traffic controllers. Flexibility does not pay for teachers. Flexibility does not pay for FBI agents. If we ever learned anything from the horror in Boston, it is the unbelievable first responders in addition to the citizens who rushed toward the blast. The people there, the professionals, the doctors who happened to be there--we pay those people.

Earth to the Senate: Not everybody lives off a trust fund.

People need to get paid. Flexibility does not do it. I cannot say, if I get a call from an air traffic controller: Oh, why don't you just volunteer on your day off? He will probably tell me he is going to figure out a way--on his day off that he is forced to have, his furlough--to make some money for his family.

Sometimes I wonder if we are in ``Alice in Wonderland'' around here. Nothing could be more true than today.

I want you to know that I have people in Los Angeles who are stuck on runways for hours and miss very important functions. How about one of my people in Los Angeles--I have his name. It is not important. He said he missed a funeral on Monday because his incoming flight was delayed. ``We had to cancel our whole trip because the funeral is tonight and we are not going to make it.''

Flexibility is not the answer. The answer is to restore the money from sequestration. The FAA announced plans to close 149 airport control towers nationwide, including many in my State.

How about people who are getting turned away who need chemotherapy and the American Cancer Society Action Network said that because of sequestration ``funding for cancer research and prevention programs are taking a dangerous hit.'' Again I say to my Republican friend, this is from the private sector on what is happening around here.

The National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program will provide 32,000 fewer breast and cervical cancer screenings this year to women who have no other option for affordable, lifesaving screenings. These are lifesaving screenings. Do you want to tell that woman: Flexibility? That is not the answer. The answer is restore the funds from the sequester.

Head Start, about to lose 70,000 of its 1 million slots for children. Let me tell you, in Cincinnati, 200 children will be dropped or denied access to Head Start.

Anita Wolfe, a mother of two special needs children, said she may have to choose which child can remain in Head Start's enrichment program. This is a bad situation.

In Oakland, the housing authority is losing $11 million, and expects 800 to 900 fewer families will get housing assistance.

In Indiana Head Start programs in two towns resorted to a lottery system last month to determine which kids could remain in the program.

Riverbend Head Start in Illinois has had to cut its school year by 2 weeks, leaving its staff unemployed and its participating families without childcare for those two weeks.

The Santa Clara County Housing Authority has lost $21 million in funding and is considering pulling housing assistance vouchers from some of the 17,000 households it serves. Local resident and mother of two Alicia Diaz fears that she may become homeless as a result.

The Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency expects to lose $13.9 million, affecting housing assistance to 1,700 families.

Many of the 24,000 Los Angeles families relying on Section 8 vouchers could lose all or part of their housing subsidy before the end of this year.

Customs and Border Patrol has furloughed 60,000 agents nationwide and restricted overtime. This is causing delays in cargo processing at the Ports of Hueneme, Long Beach and Los Angeles, which rely heavily on overtime because they are extremely busy ports.

More than 100 dockworkers in Port Hueneme were idled due to delays, and shipments had to wait to be inspected. Every minute of delay costs money for businesses receiving their products late. Customs and Border Patrol estimates that delays could become as long as 5 days.

We are seeing delays in our ports. We are seeing dock workers idled. With these delays, says one of my people, ``I have to hire the labor and pay them while I wait for Customs to clear the vessel.'' It is having an impact on our economy.

Just to finish up, Senator Reid took the leadership today. I am so proud to stand with him. He found a place to get the money to put the funds back in and avert the sequester, stop the pain at the airports, stop the pain at the clinics, restore Meals on Wheels to our seniors-- all the things I talked about, and he paid for it by going to the war fund that is winding down, and making sure we can fix this problem for 5 months.

It is shocking that my Republican friends would object to this when their constituency is feeling the same pain as the rest of us.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, in the last 2 weeks we have learned more and more what the across-the-board cuts for sequestration really mean for our families and our communities that we all represent. We have heard of workers who are on pins and needles about getting a layoff notice. We have heard from businesses that are expecting fewer customers. We heard from school superintendents wondering how they are going to absorb deeper cuts on the budgets that are already extremely tight.

After 2 years of watching our economy lurch from crisis to crisis, I think we can all agree the American people have dealt with more than enough of this. That is why I am here today urging our colleagues to support the American Family Economic Protection Act which will replace the automatic cuts from sequestration in a responsible and a fair way.

Our legislation builds on the precedent that was set in the year-end deal, and it is in line with the balanced approach that the American people favor. It would replace the first year of the sequestration with equal amounts of responsible spending cuts and revenue from the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations. Half of the deficit reduction would come from responsible cuts evenly divided between domestic and defense spending.

As the drawdown from Afghanistan is completed, our bill will make targeted reductions in an overall defense budget which will be phased in responsibly as the drawdown from Afghanistan is completed and are in line with the strong military strategy for the 21st century.

Our bill would eliminate the direct payments to farmers that have been paid out even during good times for crops that are not grown. Those are the kinds of cuts we can and should make, because responsibly tackling our debt and deficit is crucial to our country's long-term strength and prosperity.

But to do this in a way that puts American families and our economy first, we are all going to have to do our fair share, and middle-class families and seniors and the most vulnerable Americans shouldn't be asked to share the whole burden alone.

Our bill would replace half the sequestration with new revenues from the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations. It calls on the wealthiest Americans to pay at least the same marginal tax rate on their income as our middle-class families pay. It will help reduce the deficit by eliminating a tax break that encourages companies to ship jobs overseas and by getting rid of a special tax loophole for oil companies. At a time when there are so many American families struggling just to get their kids off to college or to pay their mortgage or to put food on the table, it only seems fair to ask those who can afford it the most to contribute to this national challenge as well.

My Republican colleagues will say the year-end deal closed the door on revenue. Most of them seem to think that closing loopholes for the richest Americans is too high a price to pay--even to replace the serious cuts to defense that are going into effect. Instead, they say all we need is more spending cuts.

But that is not how the American people see it. More than a month after the year-end deal, 76 percent of Americans--and, by the way, 56 percent of Republicans--favored a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases to reduce our deficit.

We also know the American people want an end to the cycle of looming deadlines and uncertainty and political posturing we are seeing here in Washington, DC. They have spent enough time wondering if infighting in Congress will affect their paycheck or the businesses they have worked hard to rebuild or the future they want for their children. I think we can all agree our constituents deserve a solution and some certainty.

So our legislation meets Republicans halfway. It reflects the balanced approach the majority of the American public wants. It protects families and communities we represent from slower economic growth and fewer jobs and a weakened national defense. And it allows us to move past this sequestration debate toward a fair, comprehensive budget deal that provides certainty for American families and businesses.

While the Democrats have taken a balanced and responsible approach in our sequestration replacement bill, Republicans have gone in a very different direction. They seem to be more focused today on trying to make sure President Obama gets the blame for these cuts than actually trying to stop them. We have all been hearing from our constituents. They want us to come together to solve this problem. They want to see compromise. They want to see a balanced replacement. But the Republican Inhofe-Toomey bill fails to meet these expectations. It does not solve the problem. It doesn't stop sequestration. It is not a compromise. I urge all of our colleagues to oppose it.

The Republican Inhofe-Toomey bill would keep in place the massive cuts to both domestic and defense spending. It wouldn't replace them; it would lock them in. Instead of making the tough decisions required to replace those cuts with responsible deficit reduction the way our bill does, the Republican bill simply hands the problem off to the President. Instead of taking a balanced approach--the approach that is favored by the vast majority of the American people--the Republican bill would protect the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations from paying even a penny more in taxes to help us solve this, while pushing the entire burden of deficit reduction onto the backs of our families and our communities and national defense programs. Their bill would protect defense spending from cuts, open up nondefense spending to more cuts, and specifically prohibit raising revenue to replace the cuts.

One of my Republican colleagues who is very concerned about the cuts to defense spending that would be locked in by this Republican bill called this approach ``a complete cop-out.'' That

same Republican said if something such as this were to pass, Republicans would be forcing President Obama to make impossible choices and then ``every decision he'll make, we'll criticize.''

Another Republican opposed this approach as well, saying, ``I believe the appropriations process belongs in the legislative branch.'' That is us.

The Republican bill will be devastating to our economy. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that sequestration would cause 750,000 workers to lose their jobs by the end of this year. They estimate the economy would shrink by six-tenths of a percent by the end of the year. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Tuesday that rearranging these cuts would not have any substantial impact on the near-term economic picture.

Republicans have spent months talking about how they would not raise taxes on the rich and that we need a cut-only approach. But now they can't even agree on a bill that names a single cut. They want the President to do it. Leader Reid and Leader McConnell agreed to have these votes we are having today over 2 weeks ago, and it took the Republicans until last night to decide what they were even going to bring to the table. After all that time, they decided to play political games and not make any of the tough choices.

Tackling our debt and deficit responsibly is a serious issue, so I hope Republicans get serious. I hope they will listen to their constituents, come back to the table, and work with us on a responsible replacement to these automatic cuts that are scheduled to begin tomorrow.

I urge my colleagues to support our approach, the American Family Economic Protection Act, and to oppose the Toomey-Inhofe bill.

Vawa

Before I yield the floor, I wish to say that I am very pleased the House of Representatives just took up and passed the long delayed, very hard-won, and badly needed victory for millions of women in this country, the Violence Against Women Act that was just passed. That means that after over 16 months of struggle, tribal women in this country, the LGBT community, immigrants, and women on colleges campuses will now have the tools and resources this life-saving bill provides.

The passage of VAWA today is validation of what we all have been saying on this side, and I am proud of the Senate for its bipartisan work. I see Senator Crapo here today, and I thank him for his leadership on this critical issue.

I have heard from so many women throughout this months-long battle, and I especially want to mention one woman today: Deborah Parker, a member of the Tulalip Tribe from my home State who happened to be here the day many months ago when Congress wanted to dump the tribal provisions in order to move the bill. She stood up with all the courage she could muster and told the story she had never told before about the abuse she had suffered while she was a very young girl and watching the same person who abused her abuse other tribal members because she had nowhere to go for recourse.

Today, that changes, for Deborah Parker and for thousands and thousands of other tribal members and other women and men in this country. I am very proud of the bipartisan work and I am very excited that this President is going to sign this bill into law and pass something that is going to make a difference in the lives of many Americans.

Thank you, Madam President. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about the vote we are going to have today at 2:30 regarding sequestration, and I wish to strongly support the notion of giving the executive branch the flexibility it needs over the next 7 months to work through this situation in a more graceful way.

To put this in perspective for the American people, we are going to spend $47 trillion of your money over this next decade. It was incumbent upon a bipartisan group about a year ago to try to come up with about $1.2 trillion in savings over that 10-year period. Believe it or not, that didn't happen. The sequestration was a method to ensure that at least there was some reduction in the growth of spending. I do want to say that there have been a lot of discussions about reductions in spending.

The overall effect of sequester over this 10-year period is not to reduce any spending but to slow the growth of spending over the next 10 years. We are one of the few entities in the world that don't budget off of last year's spending. It is not like your city, your county, your State government, your household, or your business. We budget off of projections and growth.

The task a year or so ago was for six Republicans and six Democrats to come up with $1.2 trillion. It is beyond belief that this did not occur. The sequester was put in place as a mechanism to ensure that there at least was some slowing of growth. The first 7 months of the sequester is the most ham-handed portion of it. It is cut at the PPA level. It is across the board and focused on two important categories. I agree that it is ham-handed, and the only thing worse than sequestration, in my opinion, would be kicking the can down the road on some much needed fiscal discipline here in Washington.

I hope what we will do today is get behind a very thoughtful proposal that would say: Look, we are still going to reduce spending by this amount, but we are going to give the executive branch, because this first 7 months is handled so differently that what happens after that-- by the way, appropriators live within a top-line number, but they are able to weigh in on how that money should be spent, again, in two more specific categories than just the overall budget. So it is just this first 7 months.

I was at home last week in Tennessee and spoke with diverse groups of citizens.

Democrats thanked me for being willing to give some flexibility to the President to work through this.

Businesses obviously held this as incredibly intelligent. They need to deal with these kinds of issues right now. Many of them over the last several years have had to do the same kind of thing. Obviously, to them, it is very intelligent to give the executive branch a degree of flexibility where they have some transfer authority to work through this in a more graceful way.

Republicans thanked me because it was a way for us to at least begin turning the curve in a different direction

and certainly still having the cuts that are necessary in growth, I might add, not in real spending. That is where we are.

We have a proposal, the Toomey-Inhofe proposal, which gives the executive branch the flexibility to work through this. It is my understanding they don't want that flexibility. I can't imagine being President of the United States and having something that I thought was a little bit ham-handed and having Congress say: Look, we will candidly defer to you to make some transfers.

I have spoken with some of the folks in our security apparatus in this Nation. They said this to me: Corker, look, we understand we are going to have some reductions, but if you would just give us some flexibility, we could work through this gracefully. We could live within these constraints.

Speaking of these constraints, I want to say that there is a number that has been thrown out of $85 billion over the next 7 months. Again, know that this is Washington's language. We are really only talking about half that in real expected outlays. We have budgeted amounts and then we have outlays. We do things very differently than do most people back home. This is not nearly the amount of reduction people are talking about as far as real money flowing out.

I strongly support the Toomey proposal, the Inhofe proposal. I hope others will join in and at least move to debate this issue. I have a sense that is not going to be the case today. Maybe next week when some things happen, some others will be open to doing this.

I can't imagine why anybody in this body, if they think draconian things are happening in a specific area and some judgment could be used to really alleviate that, I can't imagine why anybody in this body would not want to give administrators of these various agencies the ability to have some degree of transfer authority to make it work better. I don't imagine there is a business in our country, whether it is a one-man shop or a large corporation, that wouldn't want that flexibility. I can't imagine a Democrat or a Republican really thinking it is a bad idea to give the administration the ability to be more graceful in dealing with this.

Today it looks as though we might have a partisan vote. It is a shame.

Again, this is ham-handed. We can make it work better. Hopefully, on March 27, if we continue on this course until that time--obviously, to me, the only thing worse than this ham-handed approach is not enacting the $1.2 trillion in cuts. This needs to happen, in my opinion.

Maybe on March 27 when the appropriators come forth with a continuing resolution, they will have shifted this around to a degree that we end up with the same amount of spending reductions. This is the way regular order should work here, the way the Senate should work, the way the House should work. It is not that far down the road.

As a matter of fact, I am understanding that if the Appropriations Committee wanted to, they could pass out an omnibus--not a CR but an omnibus--that has already gone through the checks. I think the two staffs have been working; I am talking about at the House and the Senate. It is my understanding that they could pass something out in a week. I think maybe there are going to be some discussions about this later in the majority leader's office. Hopefully, he will give the green light to the chairman of the Appropriations Committee to move ahead with something like this, which would be very sensible, in my opinion. I think most people around here would love to see something actually happen under regular order.

These reductions are necessary, in my opinion, to get our fiscal house in order. Much more needs to be done beyond this $1.2 trillion-- much, much more. I don't think there is anybody who doesn't believe that deficit reduction greater than $1.2 trillion needs to occur. Right now we are focused on the cuts side. We focused on the income side at the end of the year.

As we move ahead and are able to deal with these issues under regular order, where committees have looked at the impact, this is the best way to go forward.

Again, sequester will kick in tomorrow. I think we all understand that. There is a better approach. There is a bill that would allow the executive branch to have the flexibility it needs to work through this in a way that is least harmful to the American people, and if that doesn't work, another step with a continuing resolution in 3 or 4 weeks--there is another way of hitting this in an intelligent way.

I hope we have the opportunity to work this out in a way that is better for the American people. At the same time, I hope we will not back away at all from at least $1.2 trillion in spending reductions. I wish we would move later this year into real tax reform, which is really where all the money is.

To the American people, the reason we are moving to sequester and the reason we are cutting discretionary spending is we don't have the courage in the Senate to deal with entitlements. When the word ``entitlement'' comes up, everybody runs for the hills. They know where the money is--62 percent of our spending, which in 10 years, combined with interest, will be 90 percent of our spending.

The reason we are here today is this body has not come to terms with the fact that we need to reform entitlements for them to be here for future generations and certainly people who are getting ready to retire.

This situation is a shame, and so we are going through this pain again due to a lack of courage in the Senate to address the real issues of the day. That is a shame, and what you are going to see playing out is solely because of that.

I have a bill which would deal with that. Lamar Alexander, my colleague from Tennessee, is a cosponsor. It was based on Bowles- Simpson, Domenici-Rivlin--bipartisan concepts.

For some reason, when it comes to dealing with the real issues of America, this body runs for the hills. Hopefully, soon we will be brought back together and we will deal with this in a mature way, deal with the real issues our Nation is dealing with, solve them, put it in the rearview mirror, and all of us will come together and focus on those things that would make our country stronger.

I ask unanimous consent that all quorum calls before the votes at 2:30 p.m. today be equally divided.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise to speak on behalf of the Democratic alternative that would cancel the sequester for this year.

Before the Senator from New Hampshire leaves, I would like to take a minute to compliment her on her energy, her passion, and the fact that she actually wants to present ideas to be discussed. I think that is excellent. I want her to also know I support the concept she is advocating of no more delay; that we cannot solve America's fiscal situation and also important public investments we need to make in research and innovation and keep our fragile economy going by just punting now. I think we agree on that.

The other thing we agree on is the goal to get our fiscal crisis in order, to strengthen our economy, and to keep America strong. We just are going to disagree on the means. But that is OK. That is called America. That is called the Senate. That is called debate. Let's let the world watch and hear that we actually have ideas, and just as we are doing this minute, we can do it with civility and with interest in what is being said. I found what the Senator from New Hampshire had to say very interesting, and I will have a few comments about that and what the Senator from South Carolina said, but I wanted her to know that I do think we must begin to move with urgency. I do think the politics of delay, ultimatum and brinkmanship, should come to an end. I like the idea of debating ideas and look forward to that both in conversation and so on.

I just wanted to say that to her.

Yes.

I absolutely will. Just to respond, first of all, I have a great vice chairman, Senator Richard Shelby, from the other side of the aisle, who shares that same idea.

What does the regular order mean? It means we bring out one bill at a time; that we don't have a $1 trillion bill on the floor at one time, where we can't discuss it, debate it, analyze it, and certainly no more of these 7,000-page bills, where we find things have parachuted into the bill in the middle of the night.

I agree with my colleague and I look forward to that, and I must say I have enjoyed working with her and look forward to doing more of the same.

Mr. President, I do want to speak in support of the bill that is offered as our Democratic alternative. It is a balanced solution to preventing the dysfunctional, disruptive, across-the-board spending cuts called sequester. Sequester is a Washington word and a Washington invention we came up with during the budget crisis debacle in August of 2011, where we would cut $1 trillion over 10 years or $110 billion at a time. That was supposed to have been resolved through the supercommittee, but that didn't happen. It was supposed to have been resolved through the fiscal cliff, all the way up to New Year's Eve. What happened? We punted. We delayed for 2 months, and so here we are.

While we are facing the Draconian implications of the sequester, we do have an answer. That answer is composed of a balanced approach, where we look at increased revenue and strategic cuts that will not cripple our economy nor weaken America's strength here or abroad.

What does it do? Yes, it does go to increased revenue. The revenue we are talking about is to close these juicy loopholes, to end these outrageous tax earmarks that happen in the stealth of the night. Look, we got rid of earmarks on the Appropriations Committee. Let's get rid of tax earmarks on the Finance Committee, and this is one of the ways to do it.

I want to compliment the Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Whitehouse. He has done incredible research on just exactly what these cushy, lobbyist-driven tax breaks are.

Our closing the loopholes cuts spending, and it also protects the middle class, ensures essential government services, and keeps America strong. What does it do? Yes, it does reform the Tax Code. The first loophole it closes is something called the Buffett rule. It saves $53 billion and it means wealthy taxpayers will pay lower effective tax rates than the middle class. In plain English, and this is what Warren Buffett said, a billionaire should pay the same tax rate as somebody who makes about $55,000 a year.

Guess what. We Democrats believe in entrepreneurship. We believe in rewarding hard work. So that tax doesn't kick in until your second million. If I were a billionaire, I would take that deal. I am not a billionaire. But, more importantly, neither are 99 percent of the American population.

We also eliminate a special loophole to the oil and gas industry for $2 billion where they get oil from tar sands. That would be also subject to a tax. But my favorite one is it eliminates tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, another significant amount of money.

I am an appropriator, so let me talk about spending cuts. We have come up with spending cuts: Yes, 27.5 in domestic spending, and 27.5 in defense.

Let me start first with defense, because much has been said about defense. Many tables have been pounded, many chests have been thumped talking about it. And we do have to look out for our military. But our $27.5 billion recognizes the reality of boots on the ground. The reality of boots on the ground. Our troops are coming home. They will all be home by the summer of 2014. Our defense cuts kick in in 2015, so nothing we do will in any way dilute, diminish, end or terminate money that would go to our men and women in harm's way. So our cuts don't kick in until 2015, and then it will be $3 billion a year over a 9-year period, which our generals and our Acting Secretary of Defense, Secretary Hagel, now concur with. So we are OK with defense. And, most of all, the military is OK with it.

Then we also cut domestic spending. Here, we cut $27 billion in the farm bill. It eliminates subsidies we don't need to do anymore. The Presiding Officer is from an agricultural State. We love your cheese. We even from time to time cheer on the Green Bay Packers. So we know agriculture is important. But essentially, we have a tax subsidy structure that goes back to the 1930s--a different economy, a Dust Bowl, people vacating homes in Oklahoma and following the grapes of wrath trail to California. So we came up through the New Deal with a way of subsidizing farms, restoring the land, and restoring people to their land. But a lot of those subsidies aren't needed anymore and, quite frankly, a lot goes to agra business for crops not even planted. So working with the Agricultural Committee--Appropriations didn't do this out of the blue--we come up with $27.5 billion.

Much is said about asking Democrats if we know math. Yes, we know math. We have $27.5 billion cuts in domestic spending, $27.5 billion cuts in defense kicking in in 2015. That is $55 billion. Getting rid of tax-break earmarks and making those who make more than $2 million a year pay their fair share, we come up with 110. Quite simply, that is our plan.

I spoke quite a bit during this week about the impact of sequester. Sequester was never meant to happen. We have got to end sequester. We could do it this afternoon. For all those people who are crying their tears and don't want it, do they want to protect America's middle class, the 99 percent, or do they want to protect billionaire tax-break earmarks? That is the choice. So they can rally: We don't want to pay more taxes. You can't have a government without paying taxes. And ordinary people pay them every day.

Do you know what drives me wild? There is this fix the debt crowd flew in. I watched them fly in. I loved it. They stayed in Washington where they could take expense account deductions while they came to lobby us. And how did they come in? On their subsidized tax-break jets and their expense accounts that they could deduct, from sushi to Cabernet. They came to tell us to raise Social Security. Then they told us to raise the age in Medicare because, after all, people live longer. Maybe when you have all that wealth you can afford health care and you don't need Medicare. Nobody has to take Medicare. If you don't need it, you don't have to take it. If you don't need Social Security, you don't need to take it.

My whole point was, often the very solutions are given by people who get the most tax breaks. That is a pet peeve of mine.

But really what hurts me is this: I represent some of the great iconic institutions in America--the National Institutes of Health, the National Security Agency, each doing its own work to protect the American people. The Federal Drug Administration--I have 4,000 Federal employees keeping our drugs and medical devices safe for the American people. And food safety. We have to make sure those people work so our private sector works and we keep our economy strong.

The Democratic alternative is sound from the standpoint of policy, it is sustainable and reliable. We could end sequester this afternoon.

I will be back to talk more about it. But I think we have a good idea here. Let's not follow the politics and let's not dither in the U.S. Senate.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

I thank the Senator from New Hampshire who authored this amendment which Senator McCain and I support. She spent a lot of time and effort trying to fix sequestration in the first year and trying to look at programs that are not as essential to the Nation, in my view, as the Department of Defense.

Let me put this in perspective. I don't need a poll to tell me what I think about this. The majority leader referenced some poll out there about where the American people are. I appreciate polling. It is a tool all politicians use. I don't need one here to know where I stand.

The question is, Do the people in South Carolina think I am right or wrong? I will have an election in 2014. I am certainly willing to stand before the people of South Carolina and say what we are doing in this sequestration proposal is ill-conceived, dangerous, and despicable.

Let's start with the Commander in Chief. This is what Mr. Lew said, our new Treasury Secretary:

Make no mistake, the sequester is not meant to be policy.

Rather, it is meant to be an unpalatable option that all

parties want to avoid.

That was their view of sequestration.

According to Bob Woodward and comments since, this idea came out of the White House. The White House thought that if we created a penalty clause for supercommittee failure called sequestration, where we would have to take $600 billion of the $1.2 trillion out of the Defense Department, that would make the supercommittee more likely to achieve a result. If we took $600 billion out of nondefense, that would put pressure on the supercommittee to get the right result.

We are going to spend $45 trillion over the next decade. The next question for the country is, Could we save $1.2 trillion without destroying the Defense Department and raising taxes? Yes, we could if we tried. Put me in the camp that this is an achievable spending cut. This is not something that is unachievable.

What Senator McConnell said is very important. Two-thirds of the budget, almost, is exempt from sequestration. When you hear Republicans say surely we can find $85 billion out of $3.5 trillion in spending--to my Republican colleagues, stop saying that. That is not accurate. We are not cutting $85 billion out of $3.5 trillion. We are cutting $85 billion out of about 1.3, 1.25, because the Budget Control Act took off the table two-thirds of the government from being cut.

I will get to the President in a minute, but let me talk a little bit about my party, the party of Ronald Reagan, the party of peace through strength. This is the party that believes--at least we used to--the No. 1 obligation of the Federal Government, before it does anything else, is to get national security right. That was what made Ronald Reagan.

That is what I believe. I don't need a poll to tell me that. I don't care if 90 percent of the people in the country said the Defense Department is not my primary concern when it comes to Federal budgeting. Count me in the 10 percent.

The party of Ronald Reagan, even though it came out of the White House, this very bad idea, agreed to it. What did we agree to? We agreed to take off the table two-thirds of the Federal Government.

Pell grants. My sister received a Pell grant when my parents died. It is a very important program. It helps people go to college who are low- income Americans. In 2008 it was $16.25 billion and in 2013 it is $41.57 billion.

Food stamps. A lot of people need help, I understand that. The Food Stamp Program has doubled since 2008.

I guess the Republican Party believes the Pell grants, food stamps, the FAA, and home mortgage interest deduction, and all this other stuff in the Federal Government should be shielded, but those who have been fighting the war that protects us all from radical Islam should be on the chopping block. Ronald Reagan should be rolling over in his grave. Shame on everybody who agreed this was a good idea on our side.

I cannot tell you how disgusted I am with the concept that when it comes time to cut--because the budget politicians can't reach an agreement--we fire the soldiers and keep the politicians and every other social program intact and put half the cuts on those who are fighting the war.

So the next time you go to a military base, good luck. We will look those men and women in the eye--I don't see how you could. I don't see how you could go onto a military base or see somebody in the airport, shake their hand and thank them for their service given the fact you have taken the Defense Department and made it something not very special anymore.

Secretary Panetta said: After 10 years of these cuts we would have the smallest ground forces since 1940, the smallest number of ships since 1915, and the smallest Air Force in its history. This isn't like the drawdowns in the past when the potential enemy was disabled and in some way rendered ineffective. We are still confronting a number of threats in the world. It would decimate our defense. It would cripple us in terms of our ability to protect this country.

It would result in the hollowing out of our forces. It would terribly weaken our ability to respond to threats in the world. It is a ship without sailors. It is a brigade without bullets. It is an airwing without enough trained pilots. It is a paper tiger. In effect, it invites aggression. A hollow military doesn't happen by accident; it comes from poor stewardship and poor leadership.

I couldn't agree more.

To my Democratic colleagues, we are not going to raise any more taxes to spend money on the government. The next time I raise taxes, we are going to try to get out of debt. We are $17 trillion in debt, and every time there is a crisis in this Nation you want to raise taxes to pay for the government we already have. We have enough money to run this government. We need to spend it better.

To my Republican colleagues, there is not enough flexibility in the world to change the top line number. You either believe Secretary Panetta or you don't. You either believe every military commander--I don't trust everything a general tells me, but the question for me is do I trust all generals who tell me the same thing. Can all of them be wrong? It is one thing to have a dispute with a general or an admiral, but when every general and admiral tells you the same thing--and if we don't believe them, we need to fire them--we act accordingly.

As to the President, you have one obligation that nobody in this body has. You are the Commander in Chief of the United States. They trust you, they need you, and your primary goal is to take care of those in uniform and their families.

Mr. President, you have let them down. My party let them down, but you are different from any other politician. You are the Commander in Chief. How you could have considered this as an

acceptable outcome just makes me sick to my stomach. I don't know how any Commander in Chief could have been comfortable with the idea that if the supercommittee fails, we are going to cut the military. You haven't lifted a finger in the last year to do anything about it. You finally go to a naval base down in Virginia, after the election, a few days before this kicks in.

To me, this is pathetic leadership by the Commander in Chief. This is an abandonment of the Republican Party's belief in peace through strength. This is a low point in my time in the U.S. Congress.

We are not going to raise taxes to fund the government. We are going to raise taxes in my construct to pay down debt and fix entitlements. I cannot tell you how ashamed I am of what we have done to those who have been busting their butts for the last 11 years, to those who have been deployed time and time again, and to their families.

The thank-you you receive from your President and your Congress is we are going to put your way of life on the chopping block. God, if we can't do better than that then all of us should be fired--politicians.

Well, I don't know if they do or not. We have done everything we can--the three of us--to tell them what is coming our way. All I can say is that every general and admiral who has told us the same thing, I respect what they are telling us. Leon Panetta is a Democrat, but he is dead right. He has been a great Secretary of Defense. I trust their judgment.

I know enough about the military budget to know if we take $600 billion out of their budget, on top of the $487 billion, plus the $89 billion, we are going to make them less able to defend our Nation, putting our men and women at risk, and that is what this debate is about.

I wish to thank Senator Ayotte, who came up with an alternative to avoid this without raising taxes.

My time is up. I don't know who is next, but I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that in addition to the two cloture votes on bills dealing with the sequester today, there be set a time, to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the Republican leader, that without intervening action or debate the Senate proceed to a rollcall vote on the motion to proceed to my alternative bill dealing with the sequester which is now at the desk.

I thank the Chair, and I thank very much the Senator from Rhode Island for allowing me the opportunity to continue and for sorting out the order on the floor.

I will, and then, obviously, I would like to make a few comments.

I thank the Senator for that.

I thank the Senator for his statement and for his support and I certainly join in the comments and concerns that were just raised by my colleagues Senators McCain and Graham.

Here is where we are. We are in this position where, frankly, as Senator McCain said, this is a charade. Both parties are acting out this play where we are going to have one vote on the Democratic alternative that is going to fail, and then we are going to have another vote on one Republican alternative that is going to fail. So I put pen to paper and came up with some other ways to cut spending, which comes to about $250 billion in savings over the next 10 years, in order to address sequester and also to have an alternative because I believe the American people see through this charade of what is going to happen today and that, ultimately, as prior speakers have said, the sequester was set up to be resolved in a way where we had alternative savings that did not undermine our national security and some of the core services that could be put at risk in the way the sequester is structured.

I firmly believe, when we look at what has happened, this bill was ill-conceived from the beginning. I didn't support it. I didn't vote for it. One of the fundamental problems with it was it was a kick-the- can-down-the-road exercise where we gave our responsibility to find the $1.2 trillion in savings--the sequester--to a supercommittee, rather than the Senate and the Budget Committee doing our job of budgeting and prioritizing.

So stepping back, that is what has led us here. But I am also disappointed in my Republican colleagues, and that is why I offer an alternative of spending cuts, because it seems to me, the way this is structured we have already taken $487 billion in reductions to our defense. I serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee. For 1 year on that committee, I have been listening to our military leaders at every single level when asking them about the sequester. From the highest leaders, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Secretary of Defense, we have heard things such as we are going to shoot ourselves in the head, we are going to hollow out our force, and America will no longer be a global power, which is what General Dempsey once told us, as a result of sequestration.

This morning, we had leaders of our military before the Armed Services Committee and I asked Assistant Secretary Estevez: If we go with the flexibility approach, does this address the impact on our national security? In other words, will this address making sure we can still meet the needs of our national security?

Let us not forget this is happening at a time when Iran is marching toward a nuclear weapon, when we have conflict in Syria, and when we are still at war. By the way, with this sequester, the way it impacts the Department of Defense, our war funding was not exempt. Over 50 percent of spending, as this was set up from the beginning, was exempt from the sequester, which of course is no way to find savings throughout the whole government, but we didn't exempt the war funding.

So at a time of war, I asked the Assistant Secretary: Does the flexibility solve the problem to our national security? And he said: Certainly, flexibility

will help us deal with it, but it will not solve the problem in terms of our national security.

So that is why I decided to come up with some alternative savings. My proposal will not get a vote today. I think it is a time when, frankly, we should be bringing more ideas to the floor, not less ideas, and debating this vigorously in the Senate, instead of where we are right now, which is a charade. We are going to have one vote and another vote and then we are all going to go to our respective sides and say: OK, American people, we know there are real risks, particularly to the safety of this country, that we should be addressing. From my perspective, I believe we can address them through alternative spending cuts.

Through all this, we have the President, who has called leaders of both parties tomorrow to the White House. I have spent a year working on this issue. He was at the Newport News shipyard the other day. We were there in July talking about the impact on that shipyard. We traveled to States around the country--to military facilities--to talk to the people there at those facilities about the impact of sequester. I think the President should have been on this much sooner, but now it is time for his leadership as the Commander in Chief--leadership we could have used this past summer when we were all talking about it. We could have been in a position to try to resolve it then rather than continuing to be in these crisis moments in which we find ourselves in the Senate.

Where I am left on all this is that we owe it to our men and women in uniform to find alternative ways to save the money, still protecting our national security. Also, so people understand how this plays out, the way the cuts are taken in 2013--during a shorter period, not a full period--OMB has estimated on the defense end it is about 13 percent, on top of the $487 billion in reductions, and in nondefense spending it is about 9 percent over the additional $487 billion.

So I would just simply ask for a time to stop this charade, and it is my hope we could actually get down to resolving this in a responsible way for our country. That is why I put pen to paper. People can be critical of my proposal, but I think that now is the time when we should have a vote on every proposal and we should have every idea come to the table because it is a time to stop the charade and it is a time to solve this problem. Let's make sure we protect our country at a very dangerous time.

I will continue to work to do that for our country. I think we can do it, still addressing our deficit, still with savings, but we certainly need to do it, and having the charade vote we are going to have today will not solve it. The American people deserve better and we should be giving them better and solving this.

I thank the Chair for allowing me the time, and I yield the floor.

Would the Senator from Maryland yield for a brief comment?

I thank the Senator, and I wanted to first say I know she is the new chair of the Appropriations Committee and I congratulate her on that. As we go forward, as we look at why we are where we are, if we can get back to regular order in the Senate, with a budget and a regular appropriations process, I think we would do a great service for the American people and eliminate this crisis-to-crisis mode. I know, as the new chair of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Mikulski will play a leadership position in doing that.

I thank the Senator.