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Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I want to spend a few minutes talking about the bill we are going to vote on this afternoon. I am starting my 10th year in the Senate. During that period of time, my No. 1 goal in coming to the Senate was to try to right our financial ship and almost everything I have done in the Senate has been related to the fiscal consequences of our dereliction of duty as Members of Congress--of both parties. There is nothing partisan about that statement. We have seen different Presidents and different parties control both bodies, always to the same result.

We have before us a bill today that is a purported compromise. I want to describe who it is a compromise for. It is a compromise for the politicians. It is not a compromise for the American people because what it does is increase spending and increase taxes. The net effect, even if you take all the budget gimmicks that are in this bill that are not actual savings, and even if you believe people 10 and 11 years from now will actually hold true to what this bill pretends to have us do, which is what we are not doing--something we did 2 years ago through this bill, we are still going to spend more money than we would have and we are going to charge people revenues, some $24 billion--$28 billion, pardon me--increased revenues which we are not calling tax increases but Americans are going to pay that so it is money that is going to come out of their pocket.

What we have before us is a bill that is a political compromise for the parties in Washington to keep us from doing what we really need to do--the hard things. I am going to go through some criticisms of this bill. It is not meant to reflect on any one individual. It will apply just as much to the Republicans as it does to the Democrats. But we have a bill that supposedly fixes things until past the next election so we do not have to face these gigantic problems of ``deadlock.''

The other thing I would note as I go through this is it is my contention we do not have a problem getting along. It is my contention we get along way too well. We get along way too well; otherwise, we would not have a $17.7 trillion debt. We would not have $124 trillion in unfunded liabilities. And we would not have debt per American in this country which is now $57,000 per person and unfunded liabilities that are over $1 million per household, not including that debt repayment.

How did we do that? We had to agree to do that. Both parties had to agree to do that. The President had to sign it. My contention is we get along way too well, when it comes to ruining the financial future of our country. My main criticism--I do not criticize compromise, I criticize compromise that ignores the facts of our financial situation.

I want to make a point. I put a book out yesterday. It is called the ``Yearly Wastebook.'' I do it every year. I do it somewhat in jest but to make a very real point. I outlined over $31 billion, what I think and I think most Democrats would agree and that the American public, 95 percent of them, would agree with this--that when running a $700 billion deficit, maybe we should not be spending these moneys on these things which go far further in actually solving our problems for compromise in terms of creating a solution to the long-term problems and giving the American people what they want.

We really do have a 6-percent approval rating, right? That is true. I think we have earned it. This bill, I believe, proves it because we did exactly the opposite of what the American people would like to see us do. We solved our problem as politicians but we made their problem worse. We did not fix the things that are obvious to fix.

I was on the Simpson-Bowles Commission, I was a member of the Gang of 6, I have worked in a bipartisan fashion with anybody who will work with me to try to solve the big problems in front of our country, except we as a body, and the House, really don't want to solve them because the thing put at risk when you really solve them is political careers, and as a group of politicians, the people in Washington care much more about their careers--by their actions it is proven--than they do about the long-term fiscal health of this country. That applies to both parties.

So when we have a deal brought before us that will avoid confrontation come January 15 and we have all sorts of budget gimmicks in it that are not truthful, they are not real, in the hopes that somebody will grow a backbone 9 and 10 years from now and actually keep their word to the American public--and we are demonstrating right now we can't even keep our word from 2 years ago--why would we be proud to vote for that? Does it solve a real problem? No. It puts a real problem off and actually makes the problem worse to the tune of $68 billion. Through this bill we will borrow an additional $68 billion, $50 billion of it, close to, in the next year and $20 billion some after that, and in the year after, and then hope and pray that Congresses that follow us will do what we suggested.

Everyone in this body knows that is not going to happen. So when you vote

on this bill you are voting for your political career, you are voting for the Washington establishment, but you are not voting for the person out there who now has a $57,000 debt they are servicing, and their family, $1 million per household in this country in unfunded liabilities.

It will pass. I have no doubt it will pass. I feel like John the Baptist in the wilderness. But mark my words. If we continue to do what we are doing today, we will be remembered as the people who could have fixed the problem and didn't; who could have made the courageous decisions and chose not to; who could have stiffened their spines and said we don't care what Republican extremists or liberal extremists say, the future of our country is more important than any political career in this town. And what we have before us is just the opposite.

Why wasn't in part of this agreement some of the $250 billion that GAO has identified as waste, fraud, duplication, and mismanagement? There is not one thing in this bill that addresses one thing that GAO has recommended to Congress over the last 3 years--not one. So we have the ``Wastebook''--$31 billion of what I would consider--and it is not partisan. There could be a difference in terms of agreement about what is important and what is not. But, again, I would say in terms of the ``Wastebook,'' it is: Should we be spending money now when we are borrowing money, in light of the fiscal situation that we have, on some of the things that we outlined? It is a listing of 100. It has $31 billion worth of savings. I will outline a few of them for you.

We are going to be taking up NDAA next. None of the amendments that I offered are in the NDAA. Every one of them was structural to the Pentagon to make it more responsible and accountable to its constitutional duty, which it has not performed, of giving account to Congress on how it spent its money. For example, the Army commissioned a contract to have a warfare overseeing blimp. They spent $297 million on that blimp. It flew for a short period of time in this country. We sold it back to the contractor for $300,000.

I have two questions: No. 1. Whoever signed that contract and made that decision, did they get fired from the Federal Government? Did they get demoted in rank? And, No. 2, was the contract actually executed to the requirements that the military set out for it?

It is called accountability. The answer to both of those is no. There is no accountability. So we are going to have an NDAA bill come through that requires them to meet an audit. They have been required since 1992 to meet an audit. They did not do it in 2014 and they will not do it in 2017 and they won't do it in 2018, because there is no hammer on the Pentagon to make them do it. That is because all hammers have been taken out because we don't want to force them to meet their constitutional responsibility. It is too hard.

We never told them it was too hard to go to Iraq or Afghanistan. But it is too hard for them to follow their constitutional duty to report on how they spend their money. What I would put before us is, if you cannot measure what you are doing, you cannot manage what you are doing. What is obvious from the waste, fraud, and abuse, contract failures within the Pentagon, is they have no clue on what they are doing. All you have to do is take the Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier, the littoral combat ships, the F-35--all of those major defense programs are at risk, over budget, behind schedule. I am not talking a little bit over budget. We did not do the oversight; we have not forced that. You will never get control of those programs until you make them be able to account for what they are doing.

My first training, my first degree, is in accounting. I understand the reason accounting is important is because it tells you where to go to manage your problems. The Pentagon cannot do that. The Pentagon ordered--at the insistence of us, by the way--some airplanes for Afghanistan. Guess what we have done. We have taken delivery here and we have sent them straight to the Arizona desert, just $422 million worth of them. By the way, the ones that did go to Afghanistan, we are going to cut up, destroy. We are not going to send them to Africa for relief missions. We are not going to send them somewhere else. We are going to cut them into pieces, another $200 million worth of airplanes. And by the way, since the Afghan Air Force wants the same thing America has, we have already given them two C130-Hs, and we are going to give them two more. That is another $400 million. So what we have done through poor management is waste over $700 million on one item.

There is nothing in this bill that corrects that. Yet this bill is going to come to the floor--the NDAA--and not one of us who actually knows what really needs to be done in terms of changing the financial picture in the Pentagon is going to have an opportunity to influence that bill--not one of us. It doesn't have to be that way. That bill came out of committee in May of last year, but we have chosen to operate that way.

Camp Leatherneck, which is in Afghanistan, is a $34 million new camp for troops, and it sits abandoned today. It has never been occupied. Who was the general or colonel who authorized that in anticipation of our drawdown? Who executed the order to build it and then ordered that we abandon it? Is there any accountability in the Pentagon or in any other agency? Are we doing our job of holding them accountable?

The ``Wastebook'' is not all about the Defense Department, but I brought a couple of those up just so we could see what is going on. The ``Wastebook'' is about poor judgment across all the agencies. You may disagree with me about some of what is in the ``Wastebook,'' but the question you have to ask yourself is: At a time when we have done what we have done to the American people in terms of unfunded liabilities, in terms of individual debt--the average family now has over $220,000 worth of debt that they have to pay back which we borrowed--should we spend money the way we spend it?

We spent $978,000 to study romance novels. Certainly that is a priority right now in our government. Everybody would agree with that; right? Sure they would. They would agree with it. Yet we put that contract out last year and spent money to study the background of romance novels, both on the Web and off, and why people write them. We didn't just study about them here, we studied about them everywhere.

How about $400,000 to Yale University, by the National Science Foundation, to actually study whether people who align with the tea party have the cognitive capability in terms of science? Guess what. We spent that money and the professor got the biggest surprise of his life. Here is what the study said: People who are aligned with the tea party have far exceptional cognitive abilities when it comes to science, math, and financial aptitude. It totally surprised the professor because the whole purpose was supposed to undermine people who are constitutional conservatives. Yet we spent $400,000 on that study.

Those are just a few of the small examples of the silliness which goes on. People say: Well, $400,000 isn't much; $900,000 isn't much. The State Department spent $500 million during the last week of the fiscal year. What did they spend it on? Does anybody know? To buy brand-new crystal stemware for all the embassies throughout the world. We didn't need new stemware, but we had to spend the money, so we spent it.

Just think about that. We are responsible for that. We allowed that to happen. There is no oversight here. There is no aggressiveness in terms of controlling costs, and our default position is our agreement on this budget which doesn't address any of those problems.

The American people are going to be asking questions about why we get along so well. The political story is not that Washington spends out of conflict and partisan bickering because the facts don't lie. We get along way too well. We are going to get along so well that we are going to pass another bill that solves the problem for us, as politicians, but, in fact, actually hurts the American people.

I am not going to be a part of that, and I am going to keep yelling from the canyons and from the mountain tops until we start doing what we are supposed to do because this is not going to change.

It is my hope that some of us will wake up and start looking at some of

the real facts. So $30 billion can make a big difference. If we just eliminate the items in this ``Wastebook'' for next year, we would be able to take care of one-third of the sequester. There are just 100 items here. I can give you 300 items.

I can give you $150 billion worth of stupidity every year, but we choose not to do anything about it. We choose not to do anything about it because you have to be a committee chairman in order to have an oversight committee dig into this stuff. You actually have to do the hard work to find out where the administration is spending the money.

President Obama doesn't want money to be wasted this way. He needs our help. Yet we will not help him. We will not help the American people. Consequently, the future of our country is at risk when it should be gloriously great. It is at risk not because of the American people; it is at risk because of us. We ought to change that.

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

I object.

Mr. President, there will be an objection to a rollcall vote because the opportunity to amend this bill has not been made available to Members of the Senate. I have two specific concerns with the bill--I am writing my whole letter right now on this bill--and until they are addressed, I am going to hold this bill until I have an opportunity to make them known.

I yield the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I congratulate the Senator from Missouri for his comments. Sometimes I think Republican Senators especially should begin and end every speech with an answer to the question, What would the Senator do if he were in charge? And the Senator from Missouri has said that very eloquently. It is not the first time what Republicans would do has been said on this floor. He mentioned that the law was passed 3\1/2\ years ago. We counted it one time. We mentioned 173 times on this floor the Republican step-by-step proposal for a different approach to health care in this country.

We said: Don't expect Senator McConnell or any other Republican to come in with a 3,000-page Republican bill in a wheelbarrow. We don't believe in that. We believe in a different direction, a different approach. We don't believe we are wise enough in Washington to write 3,000 pages of rules to govern every aspect of our health care system in America that takes 18 or 19 percent of the economy.

We live in the iPhone age, where we want to increase the personal freedom of Americans to live longer, better, safer, and healthier. We want people to be able to do these things for themselves. We want to increase choice, competition, and in that way lower costs. If we lower costs, then more people will be able to afford to buy health insurance. That is the real way to expand health insurance in America--make it more affordable; make it so people can afford it.

So I am beginning these short remarks with a salute to the Senator from Missouri for talking about what we would do if we were in charge, and I am going to end in that way as well.

For the last couple of months, we have heard countless stories from constituents who are losing the health plans they purchased on the individual market.

According to America's Health Insurance Plans, there are 19 million Americans in the individual market. The Obama administration knew in 2010 that the rules it wrote for health plans would mean that 47 to 60 percent of those policies could not be legally offered under ObamaCare by 2014. Nevertheless, the President still said, ``If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.''

Now we all know that wasn't true. According to news reports collected by my staff, at least 5 million Americans, including 82,000 Tennesseans, will lose their individual plans starting January 1. That is an unwelcome Christmas present for those 82,000 Tennesseans. 16,000 Tennesseans are losing their Cover Tennessee plans; these are people who especially need help. There are also 66,000 Tennesseans who will lose their Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee coverage.

I heard from a woman named Emilie, who is from Middle Tennessee. She is 39 years of age and has lupus.

She wrote:

I cannot keep my current plan because it doesn't meet the

standards of coverage. This alone is a travesty. CoverTN has

been a lifeline. . . . With the discontinuation of CoverTN, I

am being forced to purchase a plan through the Exchange. . .

. My insurance premiums alone will increase a staggering 410

percent. My out-of-pocket expense will increase by more than

$6,000 a year--that includes subsidies. Please help me

understand how this is ``affordable.''

Unfortunately, Emilie is not the only one experiencing rate shock. Millions of Americans are losing their insurance plans. They are being forced to buy new plans, many of them with higher premiums, deductibles, and coinsurance.

According to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, Tennesseans can expect to pay up to three times more on the exchanges being set up under ObamaCare for the health insurance they now have.

In 2013, a 27-year-old man in Memphis can buy a private insurance plan for as low as $41 a month. On the exchange, the lowest State average is $119 a month--a 190-percent increase.

Today, a 27-year-old woman in Nashville can buy a plan for as low as $58 a month. On the exchange, the lowest priced plan in Nashville is $114 a month--a 97-percent increase. Even with a tax subsidy, if she made $25,000 a year, the plan would be $104 a month--almost twice what she could pay today if the $58 plan was all she felt she needed.

Today, women in Nashville can choose from 30 insurance plans that cost less than the administration says insurance plans on the exchange will cost, even with the new tax subsidy.

In Nashville, 105 insurance plans offered today will not be available in the exchange.

According to HealthPocket Inc., a consumer-oriented health research firm, the average individual deductible for a bronze plan on the federally-run exchange is $5,081 a year. That is 42 percent more than the average deductible of $3,500 for an individually purchased plan in 2013. According to Deloitte, that is 348 percent more than the $1,135 average deductible for an employer health plan in 2013.

These are a lot of numbers, but Americans--millions of them--are getting familiar with these numbers because this has gone from being political to very personal.

According to Avalere Health, 90 percent of bronze plans require patients to pay 40 percent of the cost of their tier 3 and 4 drugs out of their own pockets, compared with 29 percent of employer-sponsored plans that most Americans currently use. Most silver plans also require patients to pay 40 percent. For cancer patients and those with chronic illnesses, this kind of cost sharing could mean they will pay thousands of dollars out-of-pocket or go without the drugs they need to stay healthy.

Americans had to wait until the exchanges opened on October 1 to find out just how much they were going to have to pay for insurance in 2014. With such dramatic hikes in premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, it is no wonder that Americans are outraged.

Then, just before Thanksgiving, we learned that the Obama administration is delaying open enrollment for 2015 until after the midterm elections in November. The only American consumers this change will help are Democratic politicians who voted for ObamaCare because it would delay disclosure of some of the law's most insidious effects until after the election.

Senators Barrasso, Enzi, and I introduced today the Premium Disclosure Act. We want to change the open enrollment date back to October and provide Americans notice of their premiums and cost-sharing requirements

30 days in advance so that they can plan for the future knowing their health care costs for the next year. This is a commonsense proposal that I hope my colleagues will support.

As my colleague Senator Barrasso likes to say, what we know now about ObamaCare is just the tip of the iceberg. Much of the media attention has focused on the disastrous rollout of the Web site and the 19 million Americans in the individual market. But just below the tip of the iceberg are 160 million Americans--nearly 10 times more than have individual policies--who the Congressional Budget Office says get their insurance through the job, employer insurance.

Think about issues such as restrictive grandfathered plan rules, limits on the number of hours employees can work and be considered part time, the mandate that employers provide government-approved insurance or pay a fine, and the millions of dollars in new taxes on health plans. All of these issues will have an impact on employer-sponsored health insurance in both the public and private sector. We are already seeing that. Employers such as Sea World, Trader Joe's, The Home Depot, and other companies have publicly said they are reducing worker hours or dropping part-time employee health benefits. The chief executive officer of Ruby Tuesday, a restaurant company, told me that the cost to implement ObamaCare would be equal to the profit his company earned all of last year.

In case you think these are isolated examples, the National Association of Manufacturers says that more than three-fourths of manufacturers cited rising health care and insurance costs as the most important business challenge. The U.S. Chamber also has a membership survey saying that 74 percent of businesses are reporting that the health care law makes it harder for their firms to hire new workers. This is at a time when jobs are supposed to be the principal concern in our country.

Many of these businesses self-insure, meaning they design and pay directly for the health plans they offer their employees. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than 100 million Americans currently have employer-sponsored health plans that are self-insured.

Self-insurance is a method of providing health insurance that has worked well since its inception in 1974. It needs to be preserved. Last month Senators Rubio, Risch, McConnell, and I introduced a bill to make sure the Obama administration doesn't change that, doesn't change the rule that allows the companies to insure themselves against a medical claim that could bankrupt them. Any effort by the Obama administration to change the rule on companies that self-insure will break the President's promise to millions of Americans. It won't matter if they like their employers' health plans; they won't be able to keep them.

It is not only the private sector facing fiscal challenges because of ObamaCare. Our Nation's schools, colleges, and universities are also being hit hard. There is no shortage of examples in my State of Tennessee of local leaders dealing with the burdens of ObamaCare.

The Franklin Special School District has begun limiting substitute teachers to working 4 days a week in order to avoid paying between $1 million and $4.5 million more per year in health care costs.

Maury County Schools, south of Nashville, is also limiting its substitute teachers to no more than 28 hours a week for the same reason. One school board member told the local news:

Students struggle enough having one substitute teacher, but

then now we're going to have to possibly split the substitute

time between two substitute teachers. It just makes it hard

on the students to learn.

Wilson County Board of Education wrote to tell me that ObamaCare's reinsurance fee will cost the district an additional $165,000 in 2014 alone.

At least eight other Tennessee school districts are reportedly limiting employee work hours or entire jobs, including Clarksville, Rutherford County, Johnson City, Carter County, Washington County, Oneida Special School District, Scott County, and Stewart County.

Cumberland University in Lebanon has adopted a new policy to limit adjunct faculty to no more than three courses each term, meaning they won't be able to offer a course even if they are the most qualified instructor available.

The impact of ObamaCare on education is by no means limited to Tennessee. Investor's Business Daily has identified well over 100 school districts and institutions of higher education nationwide that have made cuts or limited employee work hours because of ObamaCare. That number is climbing daily, again suggesting this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Remember, what we are hearing about today are individual policies. What we are going to hear about next year are employer policies being cancelled, new costs, and there are 10 times as many Americans with employer policies as individual policies. Who pays the price for this? Our children. Cash-strapped schools simply don't have the money to absorb these costs, so they are forced to make difficult choices.

For these reasons--broken promises, higher costs, fewer choices-- ObamaCare was an historic mistake. It expanded a health care delivery system that already costs too much and left Americans with fewer choices.

I said at the beginning of my remarks that I would like to end in the same way, and I will do that with an answer to this question: What would we do if we were in charge? What if we elected a Republican Senate and even a Republican President in 2016? We would replace ObamaCare, not by moving backward, but by moving in a different direction.

Remember, ObamaCare's real problem was it expanded a delivery system that already costs too much. What we would do instead is go step by step to introduce new ways to increase choices, to have more competition and to lower costs. We would make Medicare solvent, so seniors can depend on it. We would give Governors more flexibility with Medicaid so they can create programs with lower costs. We would repeal the ObamaCare wellness regulation--the Senator from Missouri talked about that--and replace it with one that makes it easier, not harder, for employers to give employees lower health insurance costs if they live a healthy lifestyle. We would let small businesses pool their resources and offer low-cost insurance plans for their employees. The Congressional Budget Office says that Senator Enzi's bill would allow coverage for 750,000 more Americans at a lower cost if we did that. We would allow families to purchase insurance across State lines. If there is a policy regulated by Kentucky that fits my needs, and I want to buy it, why shouldn't I be able to do it if I can afford it? We will expand health savings accounts. We would incentivize the growth of private health insurance exchanges. That is beginning to develop all across our country, giving more choices to employees. We would make it easier for patients to compare prices and quality of doctors and medical services. We would incentivize States to reform junk lawsuits. Those are the steps in the right direction where we would like to go.

When Irving Kristol died not long ago, James Q. Wilson wrote a tribute in The Wall Street Journal which struck me. He said when they began their association as neoconservatives--they were mostly Democrats--he said we were policy skeptics. He said that was mainly what our common view was. By that, I think he must have meant they did not believe Washington could, through a comprehensive piece of legislation, fix our whole health care system; that what Washington should do, particularly in this iPhone age, is to go step by step in a direction that gives more personal freedom to consumers, to Americans, so they can live longer, live healthier, live safer, and be happier.

That is what we would like to do. That is how we would like to change ObamaCare, and we would like to have that opportunity.

So unfortunately, an unwelcome Christmas present this year for 82,000 Tennesseans is that they are losing their individual policies. Even more unfortunately, an unhappy New Year is coming, in which hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans will lose their employer policies--the policies they get through their employers--because of ObamaCare. We are ready to go in a

different direction and create a way for Americans to have more choices, more competition, and insurance they can purchase at a lower cost.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I know we are going to be voting on the budget that was negotiated by Senator Murray and Paul Ryan. Sixty-seven Senators voted for cloture on that, so we will have a vote on passage this afternoon, I think about 4:30.

But I wanted to raise an issue that has been raised previously-- yesterday; that is, the process by which the Senate is operating where no amendments are being allowed either on the budget or on the Defense authorization bill, which is the next bill we will turn to by the decision of the majority leader.

I have congratulated Senator Murray and I congratulate Congressman Ryan for their negotiation. But I do think there is an error that has been identified that needs to be corrected in the bill and which could easily be corrected if the majority leader would reconsider his decision not to allow any amendments. This specifically has to do with the discriminatory way in which Active-Duty military pensions are being penalized in a unique way that not even Federal workers who are going to be treated differently prospectively, not even civilian Federal workers, are being treated in the same way our Active-Duty military are.

Several of my colleagues came to the floor yesterday--the Senator from New Hampshire, the Senator from South Carolina and others--and pointed out the discriminatory treatment which could easily be fixed. I do not have any doubt but that the Senate would--as we attempted to do yesterday, the Senator from Alabama offered an attempt to take down the amendment tree the majority leader has filled.

For people who do not follow the minutiae and the detail of what happens here in the Senate, the majority leader has basically blocked any opportunity to offer an amendment that would remedy this discriminatory treatment for our military servicemembers.

I have heard at least two of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say: We can come back and do it next year.

Why do it next year if we could do it now? I believe that if the Senate was given an opportunity to make this correction--I don't blame the Senator from Washington and Congressman Ryan in their efforts to come up with a budget to do what they did. I do blame us if we don't fix it this week when it is within our power to do so, and it is within the power of the majority leader to allow us to vote on that and to make that happen.

I don't have any doubt whatsoever that if we were able to come up with an appropriate pay-for and a substitute for this cut in military pensions, it would pass like a hot knife through butter in the House of Representatives when they reconvene.

Unfortunately, this is a product of the way the majority leader has decided to run the Senate. I have another example of that, which I wish to turn to. This has to do with an amendment that I have offered on the Defense authorization bill, which is a bill we will turn to after authorization of the budget. The Defense appropriations bill is a very important piece of legislation, and I congratulate Senator Inhofe and the House, both in the majority party and the minority party, for coming up with a pretty good bill. The problem is once again the majority leader has decided to transform the Senate into basically a railroad and to jam this bill through this week, probably by tomorrow night, without any opportunity to offer any amendments.

That is a terrible mistake. The last time in recent memory that the majority party decided to jam through a piece of legislation was ObamaCare. I remember voting on Christmas Eve--something I hope we don't repeat this year--and that was a party-line vote in the House and the Senate.

We are discovering, as ObamaCare is being implemented, that a lot of the promises that were made to the American people, such as: If you like what you have, you can keep it, and the cost of your health care will go down an average $2,500 for a family of 4--all of those were false.

That is what happens, the kinds of mistakes that are made, when there are not bipartisan efforts to come up with compromise legislation. Instead, the majority party uses the power it has to jam things through. We make mistakes. Things aren't adequately considered.

I don't care who you are; we all can benefit from other people's ideas and suggestions, and that is the genius of the checks and balances under the Constitution and under our form of government. But the majority leader has decided to put all of that aside.

I read today in Politico that he has said he doesn't care that people are complaining about his ``my way or the highway'' approach. But it is not only about our rights as Senators to participate in the process--it is not only

about the rights of the 26 million people that I represent in Texas, who are essentially being shut out of the process--this is about making mistakes that hurt people, mistakes that we would not make if we had taken the time in a bipartisan way to try to address some of these concerns. This discriminatory treatment of the military pensions is one example.

Another example is when members of Al Qaeda struck our Nation on September 11, 2001, they made it clear they viewed the entire American homeland as the battlefield.

We were reminded of this again about 4 years ago when a radical jihadist, who happened to be wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army, MAJ Nidal Hasan, opened fire at a Fort Hood Army base in Killeen, TX. That shooter killed 12 American soldiers, 1 civilian, and shot and injured 30 more.

This is a terrible tragedy. I remember President Obama coming down for the memorial service where we honored the lives of these people who lost their lives in this terrible attack. But no matter how we slice it, this was a terrorist attack on American soil, not much different-- except in the means by which it was carried out--than what happened on September 11, 2001.

Prior to committing this terrible terrorist attack, the Fort Hood shooter exchanged no fewer than 20 emails with a senior Al Qaeda operative, al-Awlaki, who was subsequently killed by a U.S. drone attack in Yemen by the President of the United States.

The shooter, Major Hasan, had become more radicalized over time--and this is a problem with our military that seemed to have turned a blind eye. But there is also a problem when the Federal Government calls this workplace violence and doesn't call it a terrorist attack, which it actually was. He opened fire in the name of global jihad in the hopes of defending the Islamic empire and supporting his Muslim brothers.

That is why he asked the late Mr. al-Awlaki if Islamic law justified ``killing U.S. soldiers and officers,'' and that is why he yelled out ``Allahu Akbar'' before committing this massacre.

If a U.S. soldier is killed in Afghanistan by an Al Qaeda-inspired terrorist alongside the Taliban, he or she will posthumously be given a Purple Heart award and his or her family will receive the requisite benefits that go along with losing your life in service to your country.

Yet the U.S. Government has chosen to discriminate against these people who lost their lives at Fort Hood 4 years ago at the hands of a terrorist, who tragically happened to be a member of the uniformed military of the United States, MAJ Nidal Hasan, who has subsequently been convicted of these crimes.

Even though Major Hasan saw himself as an Islamic warrior serving the cause of an officially designated terrorist organization, the U.S. Government has chosen to treat this as something that it is not, which is an ordinary crime or, in the Orwellian use of the phrase, workplace violence. It is an exercise in political correctness run amuck. But the government's argument is that because the Fort Hood shooter was not acting under the direct and explicit direction of a foreign terrorist group, the victims of this terrorist attack 4 years ago were not eligible for the Purple Heart awards or the benefits that they deserve.

Al Qaeda, as we know, doesn't issue business cards or staff IDs, so sometimes it is a little bit difficult to say which terrorists are ``officially'' part of Al Qaeda and which ones are not, but the distinction is irrelevant. The war on terrorism, as we know, has evolved considerably since September 11, 2001. Al Qaeda has evolved too. Whether it is in Iraq, Afghanistan, or now Yemen and in other places, Al Qaeda has morphed.

Several months ago, the group's top leader, al-Zawahiri, urged his followers to conduct exactly the kind of terrorist attack that occurred at Fort Hood and occurred in Boston in 2013. Zawahiri said, ``These dispersed strikes can be carried out by one brother, or a small number of brothers.''

Let us imagine that a radical Islamist heard these words, contacted an Al Qaeda cleric to ask about killing Americans, and then went on to slaughter a number of U.S. soldiers. It shouldn't matter where those killings took place, and it shouldn't matter whether the killer had ``formal'' ties with Al Qaeda or not. There really isn't any doubt about Hasan's ties to Al Qaeda or his being inspired by someone who the President of the United States put on a kill list for a drone because he knew they were recruiting and inspiring attacks against the American people.

If it is good enough for the President of the United States to order a drone attack on an American citizen in Yemen, it ought to be good enough for this body to recognize this was a terrorist attack because of Hasan's inspiration and communication with this very same terrorist. We ought to award these families the Purple Heart awards that these servicemembers are entitled to and the benefits that they deserve.

It is clear that these casualties at Fort Hood were part of America's struggle against Al Qaeda and the global war on terrorism. They were casualties of a war that continues to rage in Afghanistan and that only recently claimed an additional four American lives. It also extended to places such as Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans were killed.

Whether or not the Fort Hood shooter had Al Qaeda stamped on his forehead is irrelevant. He was unquestionably a disciple of Al Qaeda's poisonous ideology, which has fueled death and destruction around the globe and here in our homeland.

As I have indicated at the beginning, I have sponsored legislation that would make the Fort Hood victims eligible for the honors and benefits available to their fellow U.S. soldiers and troops serving in overseas combat zones. I offered a modified version of that bill as an amendment to the Defense authorization bill, which we will take up immediately following the passage of the budget legislation this afternoon.

The majority leader has refused to allow a vote on it. We may recall, before the Thanksgiving recess, we had, I believe, two amendments to the Defense authorization bill, and then the question was what other amendments might be offered. The majority leader made clear he wasn't going to allow any other amendments--except of his own choosing--thus denying the minority any opportunity to help amend and improve the Defense authorization bill, one of the most important pieces of legislation this body takes up every year.

So cloture was not invoked, and now in the waning days before the Christmas holidays, the majority leader seeks to jam through this bill that was agreed upon by basically four people behind closed doors and deny me--representing 26 million Texans--and deny those of us who care about calling a spade a spade when it comes to terrorism an opportunity to offer an amendment on the Defense authorization bill. It is a mistake, no less a mistake than denying an opportunity to fix the mistake of discriminatory treatment of our servicemembers whose pensions are being cut as a result of the budget negotiation.

Not only has the majority leader refused to allow a vote on this Purple Heart awards amendment, he has refused to allow any other amendments, both on this budget negotiation or on the Defense authorization.

As I said, the budget agreement passed by the House of Representatives would slash military retirement benefits by about $6 billion over the next decade. I have heard on cable TV at least two Members of the other party of this body who said we need to fix that. The Senator from New Hampshire has offered legislation, I believe. I heard the Senator from Virginia, Mr. Kaine, say we could come in and fix this with a scalpel after the fact.

We don't need to wait; we could do that today. I am confident that we could reach an agreement in this body today to remove that discriminatory treatment for our active duty military contained in this underlying bill, if the majority leader would only listen, listen to his own Members, listen to the American people, and listen to those who care about our servicemembers and want to make sure that they are not treated in such an unfair and discriminatory fashion. But, instead, the majority leader has decided ``it is my way or the highway.''

We know these cuts will even affect combat-wounded veterans who have been medically retired.

My State is the proud home to more veterans than any other State other

than California, and many of my constituents are outraged that the majority leader won't even allow us to vote on this issue.

I would tell my friends across the aisle, it is going to come up again. It came up yesterday, and it will come up again. We will be reoffering these amendments to fix this discriminatory treatment as long as we are in session, and I hope Members of both parties can put politics aside for 1 minute, come together, and address the needs of our military families and those who have worked so hard and sacrificed so much to preserve our freedom.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, Madam President, it is unfortunate that the Senate's schedule is completely full with pending cloture motions on controversial or completely nonurgent nominations. I ask if the Senator would consider amending his request to withdraw all of the pending cloture motions on executive nominations and that the Senate would proceed immediately to consideration of S. 1797, the unemployment insurance extension, and that the majority leader and the minority leader would be recognized to offer amendments in an alternating fashion so that these important issues can be considered this week. I ask the Senator to consider amending his request and reserve my right to object.

I object.

Mr. President, first of all I want to commend my friend, the Senator from Tennessee. There is no one in this body who is more thoughtful, works harder on issues, and has shown more willingness to find common ground on a host of issues.

I also want to compliment the earlier speaker, the Senator from Missouri, who laid out a series of items that should be components of any kind of health care reform.

As somebody who is a former Governor, as is the Senator from Tennessee, I have managed a Medicaid program. As somebody who has been a private sector employer and managed private health insurance plans, I know this is a conundrum that has to be solved.

What I don't hear sometimes is folks recognizing the status quo was leading this country down a path that was unsustainable, and I look forward to working with the Senator from Tennessee, the Senator from Missouri and others to see how we can go about fixing the challenges in ObamaCare. I remember when I voted for what I called a very imperfect piece of legislation, but recognized the status quo was not a place that could be maintained.

There are a couple of points I want to make, although I am here to talk about the budget. When we talk about the very attractive components of not discriminating against folks with preexisting conditions--and I say that as somebody who has a daughter with a major preexisting condition--and when we talk about preventive care and other items that are the ``nice to have'' or ``we like'' components, those of us who have wrestled with health care--and I started the Virginia Health Care Foundation 20 years ago--realize that when you push on one end of health care it pops out someplace else. It would be great to be able to do this in segmented parts, but I believe to get the kind of reform that was necessary you have to make a more extensive program.

As someone who stands here speaking from an IT standpoint, let us acknowledge the unprecedented disaster of the rollout of the Web site. But what I don't hear from my colleagues is that beneath all these challenges there are positive points. Look at the rise of health care costs on a macro basis, back 3 years past, when Simpson-Bowles and those of us involved in the budget--which is what I am here to talk about--were engaged in this issue. You look at the decrease in the amount of health care cost increase. If you look at the slope's decline, it is hundreds of billions of dollars of savings in the projected CBO cost of Medicare and Medicaid.

Look at one of the areas that was of enormous concern, one of the broken parts of our health care system--hospital readmission rates. Those rates have dropped dramatically.

I hear the stories of folks who are upset with the implementation of ObamaCare, but I also hear the stories of folks who have never had health care and who are finding it now at rates that are more affordable than in the past or in the past they didn't even have an option of getting health care. This is going to require fixes.

Let me comment on one of the areas most talked about--this notion of the President saying if you want to keep your health care policy, you can keep it. What this Senator has tried to do, as we move past the rhetoric into how we actually try to fix this, I have worked with our State insurance commissioner to take advantage of the opportunity for plans within the Commonwealth of Virginia to extend their coverage for at least 1 additional year, and we are starting to see some progress-- not as much as I would like but some progress.

Today, with a group of my colleagues, we have written the administration to suggest that so there is not a gap in coverage, particularly for those folks above the age of 30, because of the transition, who may find themselves faced with higher costs, let's present at least a catastrophic plan under the hardship exemption and view that in a broad way. Again, this is so that folks can find, during this transition period, health care that is affordable.

As someone who believes we need to ensure the commitment of the President and others--I have stated it as well--that you can keep your health care plan, I have joined with Senator Landrieu for a legislative fix, if these other items don't go far enough.

As other Senators have said, there will be other issues coming up. When you are going through the reform of 17 to 18 percent of our whole economy that is connected to health care, it is going to take the willingness and good faith of people on both sides of the aisle to actually not simply relitigate the direction but to recognize how we move on from here, and I would welcome any colleagues who are willing to engage in that kind of productive dialogue, discussion, and laying out of ideas.

But this afternoon, we actually are going to be doing something that, in an otherwise fairly bleak year of accomplishments and in a Congress that may set record lows in terms of legislation passed and approval ratings, will actually end the year with something we should at least recognize as a step forward.

I remind my colleagues it was just 2 months ago we were in the midst of an unprecedented government shutdown, where millions of Americans were furloughed; where America had furloughed three Nobel prize-winning physicists who work at NASA and who were somehow deemed nonessential; where private sector folks in the tourism industry--whether in New Mexico or Virginia--were seeing a dramatic fall-off in tourism because of national parks being closed; where we were inflicting upon this economy somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 billion to $40 billion of unpredicted economic loss simply because we couldn't get a budget. But this afternoon it is my hope we will at last close that chapter. My hope is this afternoon we will vote on a budget agreement for 2 years. While it is not as grand or as comprehensive as I would have liked, it will perhaps demonstrate to the American people that although we have had to crawl before we could walk, walk before we could run, we have put forward a bipartisan compromise.

A great deal of the credit goes to Chairman Murray and Chairman Ryan. This agreement says for at least the balance of this fiscal year and for the next, we will take off the table the threat of another shutdown, of unprecedented furloughs. It says we will not relax our focus on deficit reduction, and we will not add to the debt, but we will actually do a little more--about $20 billion more in deficit reduction--and we will demonstrate this institution can actually put the country ahead of partisan interests.

In this compromise not everyone got what they wanted. I would have argued strongly that the big enchilada remains. How do we really take on, in a major way, that $17 trillion debt that clicks up about $4 billion a night? That would mean both political parties have to give on their sacred cows. It means we have to generate additional revenues through meaningful reform of a completely disastrous Tax Code, and yes, it means for folks on my side, we have to make sure the promise of Medicare and Social Security and other entitlement programs are here not just for this generation but for 20 and 30 years from now.

Some of those challenges will have to be put off for another day, and there are many in this body on both sides of the aisle who may have a chance to surprise some folks next year in laying out some specific ideas on how we can move to that bigger bargain. But we should not underestimate what we do today.

I have spent a longer time in business than I have in elective office, and what this country is yearning for, what consumers are yearning for, what business leaders are yearning for is just a little bit of predictability. We have seen growth rates go up higher than estimated. We have seen job growth coming quicker--as monthly revisions are made--and going up even higher than we thought. The single best thing we can do is to make sure we remove the cloud of further disruption caused by Washington. So what we do today with this small step--but a step we shouldn't underestimate--is to get rid of that threat for the next 2 years.

So I look forward to supporting this bipartisan agreement. As I mentioned, it rolls back the most draconian parts of sequestration. Sequestration was set up to be the most stupid option so that no rational group of people would ever agree to it. I call it stupidity on steroids. So this budget agreement gets rid of the worst brunt of that sequestration and then gives this body and our colleagues in the House the ability to actually fashion a budget for 2 years that will also allow them to allocate within these still historically lower numbers.

So I will vote for this compromise, but as with any compromise, there are particular provisions of this compromise I would not have agreed to and that I do not support. One of those provisions is a component that unfairly singles out our military families. Our military families over the last decades-plus have fought two wars. They have made unprecedented sacrifices. Often they have been the only Americans making sacrifices through many of the years in the last decades.

Virginia is home to the Nation's largest concentration of Active-Duty and retired military personnel, and I consider it an honor to represent them here in Congress. The component of the budget compromise that singles out these military retirees for a decrease in their cost-of- living increase was not an appropriate component. But rather than saying let's flush the whole deal down, I will vote for this deal, with the idea in mind--similar to my approach to the health care bill--that we will attack this problem and fix it, and I have a fix I will propose to replace this component going forward.

I have been joined in this effort by my friend from Virginia, Senator Kaine, and former Governor Senator Shaheen, to introduce legislation which would eliminate this close to $6 billion hit on our military retirees. Our legislation doesn't add to the debt or deficit but would replace this unfair hit to our military retirees by closing certain corporate tax loopholes, which would generate sufficient revenue to make sure our military families would not be unfairly affected.

I know in a grander bargain all things may be on the table, but in this smaller deal we should not be singling out our military families and those retirees for this undue burden.

I believe and I hope other colleagues on both sides of the aisle, as we get this budget compromise passed, will join in this effort to substitute out this $6 billion provision for what I believe would be a much more readily acceptable $6 billion provision in terms of change in the corporate tax law. I know the chairman of the Budget Committee from our side of the aisle would welcome this kind of substitution. Her job was to get a deal and she did that job, she got a deal, and I look forward to supporting her.

I will close with these comments. Virginians have served with honor in our military for generations. I assure our service men and women that because of this provision--which doesn't take effect until 2016-- we have ample time to make this substitution.

We are being joined on the floor by Senator Shaheen, the original sponsor of this legislation, and I remain committed to working with Senator Shaheen, Senator McCain, and any Member of this body from either party, to work on this deficit reduction package, this substitution, which would relieve this burden.

I hope later this afternoon we can build on the overwhelming support this compromise budget measure received in the House, and believe a strong bipartisan vote today--actually, yesterday, when we cleared cloture--is an indication it will hopefully get the same kind of vote today.

Regardless, I believe we will pass this budget compromise and we will show this body can work, and American families can go into the holiday season without the potential threat of another government shutdown hitting them mid-January.

I again thank the chairman of our Budget Committee for the enormous amount of time she put into this effort. She had lots of folks pushing and pulling her from every direction. As someone who still aspires to be part of a grander bargain and a bigger deal, our day will come again; but in the meantime, later this afternoon we will do the people's work and make sure we do our most essential requirement, which is to present a budget which is fiscally responsible, takes down our deficit, and allows our government to move forward and our economy to grow.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, the Senator from Arizona is correct. The Simpson-Bowles Commission, in their report, asked for an elimination of the entire COLA, as the Senator outlined in his opening remarks today. The budget bill before us took a different approach, and I appreciate the Senator reminding all of us that is out there.

Madam President, the Senator from Arizona is entirely correct. There is no other legislation that can be brought before us at this time to prevent a government shutdown. As we know, the House of Representatives has gone home for the year. We know without the bipartisan agreement before us, the impacts across the country would be untenable. We have kind of been there. On top of that, if we do not have this budget agreement, the military itself will take another $20 billion hit, so those very military personnel whom all of us passionately care about would be facing layoffs, would be facing uncertainty, would be facing furloughs, would be facing tremendous hardship to themselves and to their families. So, yes, the Senator from Arizona is absolutely correct.

Madam President, the Senator from Arizona is correct. I have heard from every single branch of our military services that the impact in 2014, a few weeks from now, would be devastating if the current sequester continues to take place. I would add to the Senator from Arizona, coming from a State where we have a number of military bases, I have heard from the families of those soldiers and airmen and sailors that they are deeply worried about their loved ones and their lives if we do not replace the sequester.

I want to personally thank the Senator for his hard work and his support behind the scenes to help us get to where we are today, because without the Senator's voice in this, it would have been extremely difficult. I carry his voice and many voices into that conference room to take some very tough choices forward so those families, all the way up to those top generals, do not have to enact the further cuts of sequestration.

Madam President, I would agree with the Senator from Arizona. In fact, the often-touted and quoted Simpson-Bowles Commission report even in this debate over the last day is much more egregious in what they are seeking.

Secondly, I agree with everything he said except for one thing. The Senator from Arizona mentioned that we have 1 year to look at the commission report. It is actually 2 years before this goes into effect. Congress will have time to act. The Senate Armed Services Committee will be looking at the commission report. We will have an opportunity to look at this in its entirety before it is implemented. I truly want to thank the Senator for speaking up for our military, because I know more than any one of us on this floor that when the Senator speaks for the military, he understands the consequences of not enacting legislation today.

Madam President, I again want to thank the Senator from Arizona for his remarks. I appreciate his help and support.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with the Senators from Georgia, who join me on the floor today.

Madam President, I come today to address an unintended inclusion in the compromise deal that was worked out by the bipartisan budget conference and that was overwhelmingly passed in the House of Representatives earlier last week.

As a long-time champion myself of our Nation's veterans and military families, I want to make absolutely sure today that they know a provision included in this deal which mistakenly included disabled retirees and survivors for changes in pension growth will be addressed in short order following passage of this bill. In fact, I am going to be joining with the Senators from Georgia and others after passage of this bill to make that technical correction in a stand-alone bill.

I think all of us know our disabled veterans have made tremendous sacrifices for our Nation and deserve the peace of mind that their benefits will not be adjusted under this compromise legislation. They deserve to know also that government shutdowns and the constant crises that have unfortunately impacted wait times for our veterans' benefits, further growth in the disability backlog, and even jeopardizing their monthly checks should be a thing of the past. That is what is at the heart of this bill.

We are working to ensure the uncertainty and fear these veterans and military families faced last October is taken off the table for at least 2 years. We are working to ensure the government they fought for functions in a way that delivers on the promise we owe all of them.

In furtherance of that effort, this technical error certainly can, should, and will be addressed, and I join with the Senators from Georgia in ensuring our disabled veterans that it absolutely will be.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the final 20 minutes before the cloture vote be equally divided, and that I control the final 10 minutes.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I want to first note that every one of the reserve funds included in this bipartisan bill was also included and voted on as part of the Senate- passed 2014 budget resolution. None of this material is new. My colleagues have seen and voted on every one of those reserve funds.

In the 9 months since the Senate passed the budget, I cannot recall, frankly, a single time that a Member came up to me and raised an issue regarding one of those reserve funds.

I similarly would like to point out that reserve funds are not new. The Senate has actually relied on reserve funds to help it carry out its priorities under the annual budget process for nearly 30 years. The authority to include them is specifically authorized in law by section 301(b)(7) of the Congressional Budget Act.

In fact, reserve funds are so common and accepted by Republicans and Democrats alike that Senators actually filed more than 300 of them during the debate on the 2014 budget resolution.

Let me repeat that for everyone. Senators filed more than 300 reserve funds this year, including, by the way, a few from my friend, the Senator from Alabama.

So if there is anything that should be noncontroversial, it should be including some of these reserve funds that were debated and agreed to last spring.

More fundamentally, the bipartisan agreement now before the Senate will ensure that the Senate once again has a budget. That is a good thing. Having a budget and the discipline of enforceable spending levels will strengthen enforcement, not weaken it. If you do not have a budget, you do not have a spending level you can enforce, you lose discipline and the ability to raise certain points of order. We fix that actually in this agreement.

I object.

Does the Senator need additional time?

How much additional time?

It is gone.

Mr. President, I believe the unanimous consent that was previously entered allowed me the last 10 minutes, and the Senator from Alabama the prior 10 minutes, so most of that time has been used.

I am not sure--I do not object to the President pro tempore's request for 1 minute.

Maybe I can help us all out here. The Senator from Alabama has been speaking for about 25 minutes. I am pleased to give the Senator from Alabama 4 minutes, the President pro tempore 1 minute, and I will take the final minutes.

The American people are sick and tired of the constant crises that we have seen in Washington, DC, over the past few years. They want us to work together, they want us to solve problems, and they want us to focus on jobs, families, and broad-based economic growth. That is why I am so pleased we are now headed to a final vote on the budget agreement that Chairman Ryan and I reached that breaks through this partisanship and gridlock and shows that Congress can function when Democrats and Republicans work together to make some compromises for the good of the country.

The Bipartisan Budget Act puts jobs and economic growth first by rolling back those automatic and harmful cuts to education, medical research, infrastructure investments, and defense jobs for the next 2 years. If we didn't get a deal, we would have faced another continuing resolution that would have locked in those damaging automatic cuts or, worse, a potential government shutdown in only a few short weeks.

This bill we are about to vote on replaces almost two-thirds of the cuts for this year to the domestic discretionary investments and, importantly, it prevents the next round of defense cuts that is scheduled to hit in January.

It is not going to solve every problem the automatic cuts have caused, but it is a step in the right direction and a dramatic improvement over the status quo.

This bill builds on the $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction we have done since 2011 with an additional $23 billion in responsible savings across the Federal budget.

Crucially, we protected the fragile economic recovery by spreading the savings out responsibly over the next 10 years and maintained the key precedent that sequestration cannot be replaced with spending cuts alone.

This bill isn't exactly what I would have written on my own--and I am pretty sure it is not what Chairman Ryan would have written on his own--but it is what the American people have called for, a compromise. That means neither side got everything they wanted and both sides had to give a bit.

I am hopeful this deal can be a foundation for continued bipartisan work, because we do have a lot of big challenges ahead of us for our families and communities that we all represent.

As we wind this down and go to a vote in a minute, I especially wish to thank my colleague across the aisle, Chairman Ryan, for his work with me over the past 2 months. He stood with courage, an honest broker, and a tough negotiator, but in the end we were able to come to an agreement and I wish to commend him for that.

I thank ranking member Chris Van Hollen, who worked steadfastly with us.

I thank Leader Reid and all of our leadership for their support throughout this budget process as we worked to negotiate this deal and move it through the Senate.

I also particularly thank the members of the Senate Budget Committee who worked so hard to pass a budget, start a conference, and reach this bipartisan deal--Senators Ron Wyden, Bill Nelson, Debbie Stabenow, Bernie Sanders, Sheldon Whitehouse, Mark Warner, Jeff Merkley, Chris Coons, Tammy Baldwin, Tim Kaine, and Angus King. They were great members of our Budget Committee, and I thank them for their diligent work this year, as well as all of the Republicans on our committee who worked so hard with us.

Finally, I thank all of our staffs who have spent so many hours on putting this together.

From my office, Budget Committee staff director Evan Schatz; our deputy staff director John Righter; Budget Committee communications director Eli Zupnick; my chief of staff Mike Spahn; and all of our staff members, too numerous to mention right now, but I want each and every one of them to know how much I appreciate the intense work they put into all of this. I will insert all of their names in the Record.

I also thank Chairman Ryan's office: Budget Committee staff director Austin Smythe; policy director Jonathan Burks; and many more who helped us be successful.

I also thank David Krone from Leader Reid's office and Kris Sarri from the Office of Management and Budget.

I thank Director Doug Elmendorf, Bob Sunshine, Pete Fontaine, and all of the staff at the Congressional Budget Office for their innumerable hard work and support.

We are at the end of the time. I urge all of our colleagues now to support this Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013. We are about to put jobs and economic growth first and, most importantly, we are going to give the American people back some certainty that they do deserve.

Has all postcloture time expired in the motion to concur with respect to H.J. Res. 59?

I ask unanimous consent that the motion to concur with an amendment be withdrawn.

I ask for the yeas and nays on the motion.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Madam President, I ask if the chairperson of the Budget Committee will engage in a brief dialogue, colloquy.

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

Madam President, I would ask my friend, the chairperson of the Budget Committee, who has done extremely hard work on the budget agreement, is the Senator aware that under the Simpson-Bowles plan-- which was embraced by many, many Members of this body, including on this side, including on the other side, including those who have now announced their opposition to the agreement, the Ryan-Murray budget-- that the Simpson-Bowles plan recommends scrapping COLAs, cost-of-living adjustments, entirely? It not just cuts them, but the Simpson-Bowles plan--I wonder if the

chairperson knows--eliminates COLAs entirely for working age military retirees?

The Simpson-Bowles plan, which was so embraced and everybody thought was the greatest thing since sliced bread, said:

Defer Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for retirees in the

current system until age 62, including for civilian and

military retirees who retire well before a conventional

retirement age. In place of annual increases, provide a one-

time catch-up adjustment at age 62 to increase the benefit to

the amount that would have been payable had full COLAS been

in effect.

So basically what Simpson-Bowles recommended was scrapping the cost- of-living adjustment for working age military retirees. Please correct me if I am wrong, but the provision in the Senator's bill is a 1- percent reduction--far, far less than scrapping it entirely, as Simpson-Bowles recommended.

I would ask again, where was the outrage, to quote my old friend Bob Dole, where was the outrage when this provision in Simpson-Bowles was included, which would have scrapped it completely? It was not through the Armed Services Committee. It was the Simpson-Bowles plan, which was a commission. I would ask the distinguished chairperson.

Madam President, could I ask the chairperson, is it not true that what you have proposed is 1-percentage point for military retirees--to reduce the annual cost-of-living adjustment by 1 percentage point for military retirees--which means, according to House Budget Committee staff: A person who enlisted at age 18 and retired at 38 as a sergeant first class in the Army would see approximately a 6- percent overall reduction in lifetime pay because of the COLA reduction; that is, that person would receive about $1.626 million in lifetime retirement pay instead of $1.734 million.

So that is as compared to what Simpson-Bowles envisioned: complete elimination, as opposed to this 1-percent reduction.

I would also ask, again, to the chairperson of the Budget Committee, is it not true that this cost-of-living adjustment reduction, the 1 percent, does not kick in until 2015, the end of 2015? And is it not true that Senator Levin, and I, and all others, have committed to reviewing this provision, with the outlook, at least in my view, to repealing it if necessary? But also there is a commission, supported by Members on both sides of the aisle, which looks at this entire issue of cost-of-living adjustments, of retirement, of TRICARE, of all of these issues because of the increasing costs of these benefits--in the words of Secretary Gates, former Secretary of Defense, who all of us admire so much--that are ``eating us alive.''

So again, the Simpson-Bowles plan, which was embraced almost unanimously on both sides of the aisle, eliminates the cost-of-living adjustments for any retirees during their working age. This plan, which is met with such outrage, is only a 1-percent reduction--by the way, I want revised as well--that they would receive $1.626 million instead of $1.734 million.

Finally, I would ask the distinguished chairperson, does she know of another plan, another idea, another legislative proposal that will prevent us from shutting down the government again--something I refuse to inflict on the citizens of my State? I refuse to disturb their lifestyles, to destroy their income, to shut down essential government services, the nightmare we just went through.

So I guess my question to the chairperson is, does the Senator know of another avenue between now and I believe it is January 15 when the government would be shut down again that we could pursue that would prevent another government shutdown?

I would further ask the chairperson if she has, as I have, heard from every single uniformed service leader of the four armed services, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that further effects of sequestration will do unsustainable damage to our national security, that the pain inflicted because of the way that sequestration acts in 2014, the really significant effects, are that we will destroy or certainly dramatically impact our ability to defend this Nation? Is that not the unanimous opinion of our uniformed service commanders to whom we give the responsibility to defend this Nation? I would ask the chairperson if she has heard from our military leadership in uniform as well on this entire proposal, particularly its effect from sequestration?

If I may ask the chairperson, in summary: One, there is no legislative proposal between now and January 15 that anyone sees that could pass both Houses of Congress and be signed by the President of the United States that would prevent another government shutdown on January 15. I would ask the chairman if that is true.

Second, is it not true that if we go through the sequestration again, particularly because of the nature of the sequester legislation, that there is a sharp drop in 2014, and then a sort of a restoration in following years? In other words, the worst year of the entire sequestration process would be next year, unless we soften the blow. Is it not true that nobody cares more about those who serve in the military than their uniformed leaders, and unanimously those uniformed leaders have said they support this legislation?

Is it not true that the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the Armed Services Committee, will have an entire year, because this legislation will not take effect--this cost-of-living adjustment will not take effect until January 15, 2015, so we have an entire year of authorization committee consideration of this particular provision?

Is it also not true that it is recognized by all members of the Armed Services Committee and the Appropriations Committee and the chairman of the Budget Committee that we have continued increases in costs and benefits forever because of our inability to fund our national security? In other words, the dramatic increase in personnel and benefit costs are such that we are not going to have money left over for the mission, the equipment, and the capabilities?

Is it also not true--I would ask again what the obvious is: The Simpson-Bowles plan, which was embraced wholeheartedly by many of us, including this Senator, by the way, said to defer cost-of-living adjustment for retirees in all--that is all cost-of-living

adjustments for retirees in the current system until age 62.

Is this far more draconian, what is envisioned in Simpson-Bowles, than what is before the body today? So is it hard to understand why someone would embrace Simpson-Bowles and yet find this provision as objectionable as it is? I find the provision objectionable, but I have confidence, and I hope the budget chairperson would agree, that it deserves the review and legislating, if it needs to be fixed, because the fact is that we have to look at the entire retirement and benefits that are now present in the military--for example, TRICARE, where there has not been an increase in premiums I believe since 1985, while the cost of health care has skyrocketed.

So, again, I would ask the chairman of the Budget Committee if that is true. If it is true, then does it not deserve some consideration for those who care, as I do and I know the chairperson does, about the men and women who are serving in the military, and should we not listen to our military leadership who literally are saying they cannot defend this Nation if this sequester continues, particularly in the fashion, the meat ax fashion, with which sequestration is now impacting our Nation's defense?

I thank the chairperson for her hard work. I believe most Americans are a bit surprised that there is any agreement. I believe the chairperson would agree that this is a small step. But I think the chairperson should also deserve and be accorded great credit for tough negotiating, for a good agreement that I think will achieve many things, but, most of all, prevention of the shutdown of the government again which we should not and cannot inflict on the American people.

I am sure the chairperson would have had different provisions in it if she had written it herself, just as Congressman Ryan would say the same thing. But this is the essence of what we are supposed to be doing. The option of shutting down the government is something I do not really understand, why anybody, after what we just went through, would want to have as a viable option of our failure to act.

Again, I thank the chairperson.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I will vote in favor of the bipartisan budget compromise put forward by Senator Murray and Congressman Ryan.

I understand some of my colleagues are not happy with this budget deal. If any of them had been able to show me a better alternative that had the votes to pass in both the House and the Senate and prevent a government shutdown next month, then I would vote no on the measure before the Senate. Unfortunately, we did not have a better plan.

I share the concerns that many of my colleagues have with the provision that slows the growth of working-aged military retirees. This provision will not take effect until the end of 2015. I am confident that, before then, under the leadership of the chairman and ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, we will overturn this unfair provision.

My support for this budget deal centers primarily on two very important facts. First, this agreement will prevent another government shutdown; we cannot put the American people and the people in my State of Arizona through another government shutdown. And, second, the budget deal will go a long way in alleviating the devastating impact of sequestration on our military.

It is imperative that we do what is necessary to avoid sequestration if we are to expect our military to properly defend this Nation and provide for our national security. Defense Secretary Hagel has stated his support for this budget agreement, as have GEN Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Christine Fox, Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense, GEN Ray Odierno, Chief of Staff of the Army, and GEN Mark Welsh, Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate as if in morning business.

Mr. President, I rise today and associate myself with the remarks of my colleague Senator Shaheen that she delivered earlier today. She is a fierce supporter of our men and women in uniform, both when they serve our Nation and when they retire or leave the military. I am an original cosponsor of her Military Retirement Restoration Act, and I am also supportive of passing a bipartisan budget deal that prevents our government from shutting down and prevents our defense budget from being slashed.

The American people have made it crystal clear that they are tired of gridlock here in Washington, they are tired of partisan bickering, they are tired of the fact that it has led us to sequestration and the kind of crisis budgeting that has prevented us from getting our fiscal house in order.

Like every one of us, I do not support every provision in the bipartisan budget agreement, but I want to give great credit to Senator Murray and Congressman Ryan for their willingness to sit down together and negotiate in good faith and come up with a deal that moves our country forward. Let me make it clear that the budget compromise is not perfect, but it is far better than the alternative. Let's be clear what the alternative is: A $20 billion sequester cut for the Department of Defense on January 15 and a much higher likelihood of a government shutdown. Our country simply cannot afford more ideological standoffs that lead nowhere. Our men and women in uniform and our national security cannot afford to see those catastrophic cuts.

Like many of my colleagues, I believe we should find an alternative to the decreases in the cost-of-living adjustments for working age military retirees. That is why I am proud to cosponsor Senator Shaheen's legislation which would do just that. I am committed to work with Senator Levin and my other colleagues on the Armed Services Committee to continue to find additional ways to protect the retirement that our retirees and their families have earned. These proposed changes do not go into effect until 2015 and that gives us some room and some time to get together to work on addressing these areas where this bipartisan budget agreement falls short.

This is an important agreement. It is important to the Defense Department and to other programs like Head Start and Meals On Wheels that affect Coloradans every day. It will mean more resources for housing and economic development programs, for roads, small airports, and transit systems, for first responders and those who fight wildfires. The list goes on. This agreement provides predictability for the individuals and organizations, cities and businesses in Colorado that need to know what to expect from the Federal Government.

It does all of this while providing for a net reduction in the deficit, something we all know must be achieved more often. For all those reasons I support the partisan budget package and urge my colleagues to join me and continue to find ways to keep faith with our military retirees and their families. If you think about what we are doing with the bipartisan budget agreement, we are creating more certainty for our economy.

Production Tax Credit

Mr. President, I want to take a few additional minutes to talk about a driving force in our economy that is creating good-paying American jobs, and that is our manufacturing sector.

The manufacturing sector right now supports about 17 million jobs in the United States. Those jobs are the backbone of a strong, thriving middle class, and they prove that it is still possible to make it in America. In Colorado, our manufacturers literally have the wind at their backs. I say that because our wind energy industry is not only a critical part of Colorado's manufacturing sector, but it is also an essential component of our made-in-America strategy for energy independence. That is why I am proud to have successfully fought to ensure that the manufacturers who power our wind energy industry have the policies they need to create jobs and thrive.

These policies support American workers, and they ensure that we are giving a leg up to all sources of American-grown energy. I have been proud to lead these efforts here in the Congress, including when I delivered 27 speeches on the Senate floor last year that culminated in the extension of the Production Tax Credit for wind.

Wind energy, which is enabled by the PTC, supports thousands of manufacturing jobs across this country, and that is because building a wind turbine takes a heck of a lot of work, involving everyone from steelworkers to electricians to computer engineers. These are good- paying middle-class jobs that help grow our economy from the middle out. These are jobs that are not only not being offshored, they cannot be offshored. They are staying here, in Colorado and across our great Nation.

To prove that point, just look at this map of wind manufacturing facilities across the United States. There are more than 550 manufacturing facilities in every region of the country, spread across 44 States involved in the wind industry.

I am making sure the Presiding Officer's state is represented and I think it is--the great State of Delaware.

Here are some of the concerns all across our country. We have ZF Wind, which is a gearbox manufacturing plant in Georgia. TPI Composites is a turbine plant in Rhode Island. We have the Molded Fiber Glass blade plant in Texas, and I have to return to Colorado, where we have Vestas in my home State. They have a tower facility, among others. This all adds up to a wind industry that supports thousands of good-paying American jobs.

This job-creating industry is taking off, and it could not have come at a better time for our manufacturing base, which, after a lot of tough years in the wake of the recession, is ready for resurgence in a big way.

A lot of other companies and sectors are outsourcing American jobs. While that has been happening, the wind industry is cutting against the grain and creating good-paying manufacturing jobs here in the United States. In fact, more than 50 new manufacturing facilities entered the wind energy market in

the last 2 years alone. That is an impressive statistic. It is an accomplishment of which we should all be proud.

The success of the wind industry is having positive ripple effects on other areas of American manufacturing, and that is because the industry is not only growing, it is doing so while also increasing its use of American-made components.

This chart clearly makes my point. In 2007, 25 percent of all wind turbines included American-made parts. In 2012, as we can see, that number increased to more than 70 percent, and it is one of the main reasons for the dramatic increase of manufacturing facilities across our country that support this wind energy industry.

This is not just about the manifestations of the wind energy world that we think about in blades and towers. It is about gears, nuts, bolts, and all the other made-in-America components that are now helping to power our renewable energy future.

There are some worrying storm clouds on the horizon because despite all of this progress and despite all of the American jobs that are supported by this innovative industry, we are truly, again, at a crossroads for wind energy. The PTC, which I have championed, and others have joined me in this Chamber, has helped keep our American manufacturing sector strong, but once again it is going to expire in 20 days. Previously, I joined many of my colleagues on both sides of aisle--including Senator Chuck Grassley, the father of the PTC--to extend this tax credit. Now, with the clock ticking, we need to step up and give this industry the long-term certainty it needs to keep creating jobs and working toward true energy independence.

In our pursuit of a balanced approach to energy security, we have supported domestic energy production across the board.

I see my good friend from Oklahoma Senator Coburn is here.

We need an ``all of the above'' approach. If we let the wind PTC expire, we will put one of the cleanest sources of American-made energy at a competitive disadvantage relative to traditional energy sources, and that is because even if the production tax credit for wind expires, tax credits will continue for traditional sources of energy, such as oil and gas.

We have a choice to make: Will we act to preserve American manufacturing jobs and support domestically produced clean energy or will we choose to do nothing and let other countries claim our manufacturing jobs and the leadership of the new energy economy?

These are not trivial questions. Allowing the wind PTC to expire will cost thousands of American jobs and billions of dollars in investment. All we have to do is look at what happened to wind capacity installation over the past 15 years when the PTC has expired. Every time it expires or comes close to expiring, wind installation stalls and American jobs are lost. We see that pattern on this chart. In the year 2000 it opened, and in 2002, 2004, and now potentially again in 2013 it will expire.

In my home State, one cannot talk about manufacturing without talking about the wind industry. Wind manufacturing employs about 1,500 people in Colorado today and supports about 5,000 jobs statewide. As I alluded to earlier, we are home to several manufacturing jobs, including a tower facility, two blade plants, and a nacelle facility, which are all operated by the great Vestas company.

Last year, due to the lack of certainty about the PTC, no new orders were placed for wind turbines, and Vestas was forced to let go over 600 employees in Colorado alone. That hurt cities such as Pueblo and Brighton, whose local economies have significantly benefited from the manufacturing jobs the wind PTC supports.

After my effort and the effort of others to extend the PTC last year, orders started to flow again and Vestas is again hiring workers to meet the market demand. That is good for Colorado. These are jobs with good benefits.

What concerns me--and I know it concerns Vestas and other Colorado- based companies--is that these jobs can vanish if we don't act. That is what this is all about. These jobs can vanish if we don't act. So I am back here and renewing my call from last year. We should act now to extend the wind production tax credit or we risk losing this industry and the manufacturing jobs it creates to our competitors. Where are those competitors? They are in China, Europe, and elsewhere all over the globe. That is the last thing our economy needs.

The men and women employed in manufacturing facilities across the country are calling on us again in Congress to act. Let's heed their call. Let's act now. The PTC equals jobs. Let's pass it as soon as possible. Let's save these American jobs by extending the production tax credit.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I am pleased and honored to join my colleagues this morning, Senators Blunt, Whitehouse, and Graham. They have been leaders on issues involving national security and defense and particularly in the intelligence and cyber area.

Senator Blunt has a long record of bipartisan leadership in this body, as well as in the House of Representatives and in government generally, in addressing issues without regard to partisan predilections or biases. He has not only led but produced results.

Senator Whitehouse has tirelessly pursued this area of cyber security. To his great credit, he has been with the movement for making our Nation more secure and also making the public more aware about the need for action in this area.

In truth, there is a saying that ignorance is bliss, but in truth, in areas of national security, that is rarely the case. In this instance, ignorance can do great harm and it is a source of peril. Our Nation is largely ignorant about the threats posed by national security and, more importantly, about the potential responses that must be mobilized to secure our infrastructure, our critical innovative information, and many other areas where we are at risk from a diverse source of threats. It is not only foreign governments, such as China; it is teenage hackers in eastern European countries, it is terrorists around the world who mean to do us harm and put their own movements at an advantage, and it is also competitors in the private world who seek competitive advantage against our own private enterprise companies that have intellectual information and assets. As a result of these cyber attacks, intellectual property is lost, identities are stolen, and America is made less safe.

Every day, the United States is under attack--literally every minute of every day--by individuals wishing to steal sensitive information from our government, from our Department of Defense, and from corporate information systems as well as home networks of individual Internet users. The cyber threat has become almost conventional wisdom in some quarters because we know that our military and intelligence communities are certain that this threat must be met. In fact, the next Pearl Harbor will come not from the sky but from a computer network that links to essential sources of intellectual assets and information in this country and degrades or, in fact, destroys them.

Senator Whitehouse and I, along with Senators Graham and Blunt, have introduced legislation that would institute new reporting requirements. These requirements apply to Federal agencies charged with reviewing and responding to cyber attacks. In effect, the Federal Government would lead by example. Leadership is important not only for State and local governments but also for the private sector. The legislation would help us better protect our country from hackers wishing to do harm, and it is based on the simple premise that we need to know about the threats we face.

The President has taken action--and I credit him--with the Executive order he has instituted, but that Executive order leaves great gaps. The legislation introduced by Senator Whitehouse and me--along with Senators Graham and Blunt--will institute new reporting requirements to us by our Federal agencies. This bill will require that information to be submitted from a variety of agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the FBI, and--in my view, most critically of all--the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Most Americans have very little idea about what the Securities and Exchange Commission collects by way of information, but, in fact, it is a treasure trove, a panorama and window into the workings of corporate America. Very importantly in this area, they can tell us what corporations--big and small around the country--are doing to protect themselves. It can tell shareholders what they should know. The shareholders, after all, are the owners of these companies, and they will ultimately bear the financial burden of failures by corporate America if they fail in their duties to protect their critical infrastructure.

Not only are shareholders affected but neighbors living near powerplants, as well as customers--banking customers, for example, whose critical financial information is entrusted to financial institutions. A vast variety of clients, customers, owners, and others affected by these corporations have a right to know from the Securities and Exchange Commission what is being done to protect against cyber attacks.

Senator Whitehouse and Senator Blunt have described in very powerful terms the advantages of this legislation, but let me say that equally important is what it does not do. We need to be mindful that 90 percent of our Nation's critical infrastructure--that is right, 90 percent of it--is owned by private companies, and those private entities have a responsibility to our Nation to ensure that their security standards meet the task of fending off cyber attacks.

This legislation should not be the only action Congress takes. In fact, Senator Rockefeller has championed legislation that is essential, and I am proud to be a supporter of it. I supported it in the Commerce Committee, and I am very grateful to him for allowing me to partner with him in helping to move it to the floor of the Senate.

This legislation is a very strong complement and supplement to that measure. In fact, that measure would require industry-driven voluntary cyber security standards for critical infrastructure. It would strengthen cyber research and development. It would improve the cyber workforce through development and education. It would increase public awareness of cyber risks and cyber security. I think the measure approved by the Commerce Committee is vital, and this measure very appropriately complements it.

America can't fully address a threat that it doesn't fully understand, and this legislation that Senator Whitehouse, Senator Blunt, Senator Graham, and I have introduced would increase public understanding of an issue critical not only to the Federal Government but to all the American people, and it would ensure that Americans know how they are safer or less safe as a result of the extraordinarily dangerous menace posed by a potential cyber attack.

I will yield the floor with a question to Senator Whitehouse regarding the Executive order issued by the President and ask, in light of that Executive order, does Senator Whitehouse still feel this legislation will perform a service to protect our Nation?

Mr. President, I offer my own concluding remarks by saying that Senator Whitehouse earlier referred to our failure. He characterized it as a failure to accomplish legislation during the last session of Congress. Senators Blunt and Graham were very instrumental in that effort, and I was proud to work with them. But that failure had consequences in alerting the executive branch and galvanizing their will to act. So I would not say it was completely without consequence or benefit.

I hope we will actually be successful during this session in passing legislation that is so important to moving the Federal Government even further in a direction where it should be going.

I thank Senator Whitehouse for that question. I would observe, in fact, that the executive branch, very importantly, followed a number of the leading ideas Senator Whitehouse and our group fashioned. Of course, we take no pride of authorship or ownership in those ideas, and many of them came from some of the best minds in the administration, who are, in fact, thinking seriously about this problem.

So I think it really has to be a partnership--not only a bipartisan partnership in the Senate and the Congress, but also a partnership between the executive and legislative branches.

I conclude with this thought: In many of the briefings we had as Senators, off the record or classified, I was struck by how horrified and at least alarmed most Americans would be if they heard some of the stories of how close America has come to the next Pearl Harbor, how close we have come to cyber catastrophe, and how vulnerable the Nation still is, despite the growing awareness in both the corporate and military sectors of our country about this threat.

So when we talk about creating awareness, we are talking literally about spreading information that is vital for Americans to know.

I will close with the thought that I hope the leaders of this country who have control over classifying information would seek ways to inform the American public about the risks and the dangers posed from cyber attack.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I join my colleague from Connecticut to address a specific provision in the Bipartisan Budget Act. Overall, while this deal is flawed, we are heartened to see both sides coming together to put in place a workable fiscal foundation for the next 2 years. But we want to make sure to clarify what we are intending to do with a particular provision in this bill. Specifically, section 203 of the act institutes new reforms to the Social Security Death Master File, which keeps an authoritative record of deaths in this country. These important reforms include a new certification process that will ensure only those properly authorized and able to maintain the information under significant safeguards can access the information on this master file on a current basis, helping prevent identity theft and other abuses. Release of the information to all others would be delayed by 3 years after an individual's death. We would like to emphasize, though, that this provision was not intended to interrupt in any way the legitimate use of the Death Master File in the interim. I will turn to my colleague to explain why we think this is so important and how we think we can avoid this situation.

I echo my colleague's recommendations. Overall, so long as we manage the transition appropriately, my friend and fellow Senator from Connecticut and I believe the new system will save hundreds of millions of dollars and also protect the identities of millions of Americans.