A resolution to improve procedures for the consideration of legislation and nominations in the Senate.

Madam President, I rise to speak for a few moments about the cloture vote we just had and the confirmation vote that is upcoming.

First of all, let me start by saying I think Mr. Hochberg is a good, capable, and competent person. The point I am making is that the candidate for President of the Ex-Im Bank, for whom we just granted cloture and are likely to confirm, is a capable individual.

I voted against cloture, and I am going to vote against this confirmation. It is not about him. I wish to explain what this is about for me and why I think this is a lost opportunity. Precisely, it is this: By invoking cloture, as we have just done, and confirming Mr. Hochberg, as we are no doubt about to do, I think we are going to miss a big opportunity to insist on some modest reforms that are necessary at the Ex-Im Bank and we are going to miss an opportunity to pressure the administration and the Ex-Im Bank to follow existing law in ways that are not currently being followed. I wish to touch on a couple of these.

First of all, just by way of background, a reminder about the Ex-Im Bank: This is a taxpayer risk. This is a bank that makes taxpayer- backed loans and guarantees to countries and companies that buy American products. In 2012 we reauthorized the ongoing existence of the Ex-Im Bank and increased its lending authority to $140

billion. Now, not only are taxpayers taking a risk every time a loan is made by the Ex-Im Bank, but the taxpayers are systematically being undercompensated for that loan. The pricing on these loans is necessarily not reflective of the full risk to the taxpayer. How do we know that? Because if they were fully pricing in the risk, then the Ex- Im Bank wouldn't have a competitive advantage over other private banks. They would be more than happy to finance exports. In fact, the export bank exists for the purpose of subsidizing these exports, and they do it in the form of consciously and intentionally underpricing the loans so that the taxpayers do not get an adequate compensation and certainly not a market compensation for the risk they take. That is just the reality. That is the nature of the Ex-Im Bank.

I would also point out that Ex-Im Bank's inspector general issued a report in September about some of the issues they discovered in the management of the Ex-Im Bank. They recommended that the Ex-Im Bank undergo stress testing. We require this of all of the big private financial institutions. They require that they go through all kinds of analyses about what would happen to their institutions under different economic and market circumstances that could occur, and then we evaluate how well they hold up to the stress of changes in interest rates, changes in economic conditions, and so on. The Ex-Im Bank has promised they will do this, but we haven't seen any results.

The inspector general also suggested some at least soft limits on concentration because the Ex-Im Bank is massively concentrated in a single industry. Almost all of the financing it provides is in a single industry, and that creates a risk to the taxpayers, of course, if there is a problem in that industry. The Ex-Im Bank has rejected considering any concentration limits.

The third thing I would point out is that the inspector general's report suggested that the board have more oversight authority. The Ex- Im Bank has not agreed to increase the board's oversight authority.

There is another problem with the Ex-Im Bank, it seems to me; that is, by its very nature it picks winners and losers in ways that are inappropriate. I will give a few examples. Because it is a government entity, it is ultimately controlled by the political class and its activities ultimately get politicized. It has already happened. For instance, in an entity that is supposed to be all about subsidizing exports for job creation purposes, there are mandates that a certain amount of their business has to be green activity. It has to be what some people think is acceptable or preferable in the energy space. That is a judgment which has nothing to do with maximizing overall exports. It is a political decision that is imposed on the Ex-Im Bank because politicians can. There is also a mandate on small business, which is to favor one sector over another.

There was an amendment when we were considering this bill. One of our colleagues offered an amendment that would force the Ex-Im Bank to make sure a certain amount of their business was subsidized loans to African companies and countries. I am sure this Senator has a very sincere interest in supporting Africa in various ways. That is fine if he has that interest, but is the Ex-Im Bank the vehicle we are supposed to use to do that? Let's keep in mind that when we establish a minimum statutory lending hurdle for some geographical area and Ex-Im is not there, they have to lower their standards to reach that goal, so it increases taxpayer risk for this political goal.

My point is that it is inevitable, it is guaranteed, it is already happening that this process becomes politicized, and that is not a good idea.

There is another problem with the activity of the Ex-Im Bank, which is that taxpayer-backed loans and guarantees also inevitably help some American companies at the expense of others. That is the nature of this, and that is a problem. One clear example is commercial air carriers. We have American companies that are airlines, they are commercial carriers, and then there are foreign companies that do this as well, and they compete directly against American carriers. Well, if you are a foreign airline, you get the Ex-Im Bank subsidy loan to buy your aircraft, and if you are an American airline, you don't. This happens. It happened recently. Air India got a $3.4 billion loan subsidy from Ex-Im Bank so they can buy their aircraft, and Air India competes directly with American companies that are not eligible for the loans because it is not considered an export.

These are the sorts of unintended consequences that occur when the government creates these mechanisms for meddling in the markets.

By the way, under current law the Ex-Im Bank is required to provide an analysis and make the analysis public about any adverse impact on American companies when they engage in this sort of activity, and we haven't seen that analysis. In fact, we have a court decision that criticizes the Ex-Im Bank. The court of appeals found that they had, in fact, failed to comply with this law about assessing the negative financial impact on U.S. companies; nevertheless, they are continuing to make these loan guarantees in this context.

All of these problems have been discussed in the past. We have had this debate before. One of the very constructive things we did in the 2012 reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank was that we said: What is the reason--why do we do all of this? The proponents always give the same argument--it is always the same--and it is that other countries around the world do this to subsidize their exports, and if we don't subsidize ours we will be at a competitive disadvantage and we can't have that.

That is the justification we always get. One can question the wisdom of that justification. We could have a big debate about that. But let's put that aside for a second because there is a potential solution to that problem. It is that in global trade talks and bilateral and multilateral trade talks, we, the United States--the world's biggest trading country, the world's biggest economy--could insist on a process by which we have a mutual wind-down of this economically unhealthy activity. The countries of the world that have these export-subsidizing banks could mutually agree to phase them out. Then we wouldn't have to do it because they do it, taxpayers wouldn't have this risk, and we wouldn't be unfairly benefiting some companies at the expense of others. We could phase this out.

In fact, that is exactly what the 2012 authorization bill requires. It requires the administration to begin negotiating with our trading partners for a mutual phaseout of all export subsidies. I believe that is the right solution to this admittedly difficult problem. Let's all agree we are going to phase out this activity.

Well, despite the fact that this mandate is in the reauthorization bill we passed a year ago--it is the law of the land--it is not happening. It is just not happening. There are no such discussions under way. There are no such negotiations. This is certainly not a priority of the administration's trading activity. I am not sure it exists at all as a priority. This is the main reason I came to the floor this morning and voted against cloture.

Cloture--the requirement to get the 60 votes to cut off debate to then consider the vote on the underlying nominee--is a very important tool. If we had held 41 votes, 41 Senators who refused to agree to cut off debate, the administration would have been in a little bit of a pickle because by the end of this month, in the absence of a newly confirmed President, the Ex-Im Bank couldn't do any business. So what would have happened? Would the Ex-Im Bank have just shut down? No. That wasn't ever going to happen. But what might have happened is we might have had a discussion: Can we get the administration to actually begin the negotiating they are supposed to do under existing law? Could they please begin to observe the law? Could the Ex-Im Bank actually begin to respond to the inspector general's reports? And in the pressure, frankly, of this moment, I think we would have had progress. Instead, we have voted for cloture. I think later today we are going to vote to confirm the nominee, who, as I said, is a very capable, very competent individual. So none of this is going to happen. What we are going to do is confirm the status quo, continue business as usual, business as it has been.

This, of course, occurs in a context, right? It occurs in the context of this argument we have been having about whether Republicans have been obstructing nominees, and I think, frankly, it infects the judgment about how Senators might consider voting on something such as a cloture measure. I would just remind everybody that going into this discussion earlier this week, the Senate had confirmed 1,560 of the President's nominees and was blocking 4--1,560 to 4. Some are suggesting that is an outrageous activity on our part because it denies the President the opportunity to assemble his team. Really? He has 1,560 confirmed, and there are 4 we are holding. That works out to 99.7 percent of the President's nominees confirmed, and we are portrayed as preventing the President from assembling his team. I completely reject that characterization. I think the President has enjoyed a tremendous opportunity and reality of getting his team in place, getting them confirmed.

We ought not relinquish the power the Constitution gives to the Senate to advise and consent. Remember, the Constitution doesn't just say that the Senate shall advise, it says advise and consent. ``Consent'' has a very specific meaning. If we do this automatically and routinely and we think that--I guess those who object to our approving 1,560 and objecting to 4--it seems to me the implication is that we are supposed to simply routinely rubberstamp everyone, there can't be any objections ever, whatsoever. That is not what the Constitution calls for. As a matter of constitutional principle, that is a very flawed analysis.

I wanted to speak this morning because this is a very real, specific case of where, had we exercised more fully, in my judgment, our opportunity to deny cloture, we would have made a little bit of progress in better observation of existing law, further reducing risk the taxpayers take, and getting the Ex-Im Bank to comply with some of the recommendations in the inspector general's report. I wanted to share that.

I know how this vote is going to go. I know Mr. Hochberg is going to be confirmed. I hope we will be able to make progress anyway, but I am sure we would have had a better chance of making meaningful progress if we had used this moment.

As we consider future nominees, I hope we will remember that this is a fundamental and important role for the Senate to play--to use confirmation as a moment to focus the attention of the administration on what is important to our constituents, to our taxpayers, and I hope we won't relinquish that opportunity.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I understand we are now in postcloture debate on this nominee. I understand there is up to 8 hours that can be consumed for that purpose, if I am not mistaken.

I certainly hope we don't have to take that much time. For this nominee and the other four to follow, I am hopeful we can get through them today and get the nominees to the President before we leave here this evening.

Today is a day that I and many of my colleagues have long waited for. Because of the bipartisan deal reached on the President's nominees, it looks as though we finally have a path forward to confirm a full slate of nominees to the National Labor Relations Board. A fully confirmed, fully functional board will be a huge step forward for workers and employers in our country, and this will be the first time in over a decade this has happened.

Over 75 years ago Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act, guaranteeing American workers the right to form and join a union and to bargain for a better life. For both union and nonunion workers alike, the act provides for essential protections. It gives workers a voice in the workplace, allowing them to join together and speak out for fair wages, good benefits, and safe working conditions. These rights ensure that the people who do the real work in this country see the benefits when our economy grows and aren't mistreated or put at risk on the job.

The National Labor Relations Board is the guardian of these fundamental rights. Workers themselves cannot enforce the National Labor Relations Act; the Board is the only place where people can go if they have been treated unfairly and denied the basic protections the law provides. Thus, the Board plays a vital role in vindicating workers' rights. In the past 10 years the NLRB has secured opportunities for reinstatement for 22,544 employees who were unjustly fired. It has also recovered more than $1 billion on behalf of workers whose rights were violated in the last decade.

The Board does not just protect the rights of workers and unions; it also provides relief and remedies to our Nation's employers. The Board is an employer's only recourse if a union commences a wildcat strike or refuses to bargain in good faith during negotiations. The NLRB also helps numerous businesses resolve disputes efficiently. For example, when two unions picketed Walmart in 2012, Walmart filed a claim with the NLRB, and the NLRB negotiated a settlement. So by preventing labor disputes that could disrupt our economy, the work that the Board does is vital to every worker and every business across the Nation.

Earlier this year I received a letter from 32 management-side and 15 union-side labor attorneys from across the country who made this point particularly well. It urged the swift confirmation of a full package of five NLRB nominees and said:

While we differ in our views over the decisions and actions

of the NLRB over the years, we do agree that our clients'

interests are best served by the stability and certainty a

full, confirmed Board will bring to the field of labor-

management relations.

I could not agree more. Confirming these nominees swiftly is vitally important because the National Labor Relations Board must have a quorum of three Board members to act. If there are less than three Board members at any time, the Board cannot issue decisions and essentially must shut down. Although the Board currently has three members, Chairman Pearce's term expires on August 27--next month. At that point the Labor Board would be unable to function unless we confirm additional members. Now, that is more than just an administrative headache. It would be a tragedy that denies justice to working men and women across the country. So it is imperative that we act to avoid this and keep the Board open for work.

Up until recent times, all of us in Congress agreed that the Board should function for the good of our country and our economy, but in the last few years that understanding has broken down. As I said, it has been a decade since the Board has had five Senate-confirmed members. It is not that qualified people have not been nominated, because they have. The problem is that a few of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--I am not saying everyone, but a very vocal minority--have been trying to use the nominations process to undermine the mission of the National Labor Relations Board.

They, first of all, do not like the National Labor Relations Act, but they

know they could never repeal it outright. So what is their solution, this vocal minority on the Republican side? Keep the NLRB inoperable by refusing to confirm nominees regardless of their qualifications. In this case, one of my Republican colleagues announced his intention to filibuster the NLRB nominees 6 days before the nominations were announced, and he openly admitted his intention was to shut down the agency.

We have seen lots of nominees deemed unacceptable simply because they have worked on behalf of workers or unions and they support our system of collective bargaining. These nominees have been accused of being biased and called unfit to serve because they worked for labor unions or were lawyers for labor unions. But I would like to point out what the National Labor Relations Act--the law--actually says. I have often quoted from the National Labor Relations Act on this point, and I will do so again right now. Here is what the law says:

It is declared to be the policy of the United States to

eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to

the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these

obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the

practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by

protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of

association, self-organization, and designation of

representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of

negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or

other mutual aid or protection.

That is what the law says. The purpose is, again, to encourage ``the practice and procedure of collective bargaining'' for the good of our workers, for the good of our economy, and for the good of our Nation.

So if we have a nominee who comes up for the Board who supports collective bargaining, I would think that nominee would be more qualified, not less qualified, to serve on the Board because that nominee understands what the law says. So we should be seeking nominees who are, in the words of one of the nominees before us today, not pro- union, not pro-worker or pro-management, but ``pro-Act''--``pro-Act.'' If you are pro-act, the act says that we should be ``encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing.'' That is what the law says.

I am optimistic that the nominees before us today will bring this perspective to their work at the Board. All five nominees have diverse backgrounds and are deeply steeped in labor and employment law. While I certainly do not agree with the politics or perhaps the ideology of each nominee, it cannot be disputed that this is a competent and experienced group of lawyers. Given their diverse backgrounds and qualifications, there is no reason this package of nominees should not be confirmed with strong bipartisan support.

All five of these nominees have been thoroughly vetted. For the two most recent nominees--Kent Hirozawa and Nancy Schiffer--the vetting process has been quick, but it has been thorough. They have submitted all of the paperwork that we receive for our nominees. They have appeared before our committee in a hearing, answered any questions. They have met with staff for both sides, and they have answered all the written questions posed by members of my committee. They have demonstrated themselves to be impressively qualified and capable, and I look forward to their future service on the Board.

So I believe the time has come to start a new chapter for the NLRB. It is time to ratchet down the political rhetoric that has recently haunted this agency and let the dedicated public servants who work there do their jobs. Indeed, I hope today's votes mark a new beginning for the Board, with a new energy and vitality, a new spirit of collaboration. A revitalized NLRB is a critical part of our continued efforts to build a strong economy and a strong middle class. It is long past time to put the Board back in business and to tone down the rhetoric.

I say to my friends on the other side--again, a vocal minority-- certainly they can vote against the nominees. That is their right. That is their privilege. But do not use the nomination process to try to shut down the Board or to thwart the implementation of the National Labor Relations Act.

I am sure there were times when a majority of the Board was appointed by Republican Presidents and they were probably more promanagement. I cannot think of one right now, but I am sure they probably made some decisions that I would not be in favor of. But they did it openly. There are also times under a Democratic President when the Board would probably have three members who would be more from the labor side than management side. But that is the ebb and flow.

Quite frankly, for most of the times in the past, even though Republican Presidents had put nominees on the Board who were probably more promanagement or came from the management side--they would have three of those and then two from the worker or labor side--they still ran the Board in a nonpartisan fashion and reached agreements in an open fashion that were implementing the National Labor Relations Act. I would be hard pressed to think of a time when the Board acted in contradiction to what the act actually says.

Until recently--and this has just broken down in the last few years when President Obama's nominees to the Board, in the first instance, were filibustered when the President had to give recess appointments to nominees. Of course, a recess appointment can only last so long, and then that person has to leave the Board. As I said, there was a threat by a Member on the Republican side to filibuster nominees before they were even sent down. That means the Board would have been unable to operate. So the President then gave a recess appointment to two nominees to keep the Board functioning. That then found its way into the courts.

We have a couple of courts that decided the President did not have the power to do a recess appointment the way he did it. Other courts have taken different pathways. So that set of facts in that case is winding its way to the Supreme Court. It probably will be decided some time next year. But that is what happens when people do not let nominees who are fully qualified--fully qualified--come to the floor to get an up-or-down vote.

So I am very pleased this agreement that was reached a couple weeks ago to not filibuster nominees included the National Labor Relations Board. So we have an agreement from the Republican side that they will not filibuster these nominees. We have five of them. This is the first, Mr. Hirozawa. I am hopeful that, again, since they have been thoroughly vetted, we can move ahead expeditiously to vote on them and that we will not take the full 8 hours to debate these nominees and that each one of them--each one would have 8 hours. But, hopefully, we can collapse that and have the votes on the nominees at some time later this afternoon, and, as I said, turn a new chapter in the NLRB. Put them down there on the Board and let them do their work, and tone down the political rhetoric a little bit on the National Labor Relations Board.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that time during all postcloture quorum calls on the Hirozawa nomination be charged equally to both sides.

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

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

Mr. President, I wish to speak today on the nomination of Richard Cordray to be the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I want to speak against this confirmation.

Why is this nomination important? Once the Director is approved by Congress, by the Senate--not all the Congress, just by the Senate--we will no longer have any control over a bureau that collects everyone's financial records in detail and can cancel a loan up to 180 days even if both parties to the loan are happy.

Mr. Cordray was recess-appointed. I think it was because the President thought he would not be approved by Congress.

What I am about to tell you already is under the direction of this nominee. That recess appointment put him in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It sounds like a good title, but the reason this is of utmost concern to me and has been for the past 3 years is the lack of congressional oversight and blatant privacy intrusions of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CFPB.

The Dodd-Frank Act, which created the CFPB, has been a hot topic of conversation since its passage in 2010. There are a lot of important discussions about different parts of the bill and some of the consequences we are seeing now, 3 years down the road. These are all important conversations to have, but today I am focusing on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The Bureau, as allowed by the Dodd-Frank Act, could direct up to $600 million every year, but it is not subject to the congressional appropriations process--the same congressional appropriations process that approves the budgets of the other agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Instead, the agency is funded from revenues from the Federal Reserve--the Federal Reserve--before the revenues come to the Treasury, funds that are supposed to be remitted to the Treasury for deficit reduction.

Some might ask: Isn't there a cap to the funding available to the CFPB? Yes, there is, but here is what it looks like. The cap was 10 percent of the Federal revenues for fiscal year 2010, 11 percent for fiscal year 2012, and it will be 12 percent for fiscal year 2013, with an inflation factor each and every year after that. This means 12 percent of the combined earnings of the Federal Reserve System, which was $4.98 billion in 2009. At that time, 10 percent would have been $500 million. These numbers are astonishing, and anyone saying that the Bureau is not funded by taxpayers is trying to pull a sleight-of-hand. The funds may not come directly from the Treasury, but taxpayers are going to have to take up the slack for funds they are no longer receiving from the Federal Reserve. I am not sure how we do that constitutionally, to move somebody outside and still take Federal money.

In addition, the Director of the Bureau has unlimited discretion over how the agency's money--these hundreds of millions of dollars I just talked about--is spent. Let me repeat that. The Director of the Bureau has unlimited discretion over how the agency's money is spent. He doesn't submit a budget. Nothing is approved.

Not only that, the Director is allowed to put fines and penalties collected by the Bureau into a slush fund that it does not have to return to the Treasury the way other agencies have to do. Do you think that might encourage a lot of fines and penalties by this Bureau? I think it would. I don't think it ought to be done that way.

The same Director who has so much unchecked authority doesn't even answer to the Office of Management and Budget and only has to submit routine financial information to the Office.

There is also no inspector general for this Bureau. Here is one example of why that is a problem. The Dodd-Frank Act expressly exempted auto dealers from the oversight purview of the Bureau. They listened to me when this bill was passing and found out that loans could be canceled within 180 days by the Bureau without the approval of the automobile dealer or the person who bought the automobile.

However, the Bureau doesn't think auto dealers should be exempt from oversight, so it found ways to exert itself through the banks. Banks are now looking at auto loans made, and the Bureau has issued its first significant penalty in connection with the vehicle financing.

The Bureau has also issued what it calls a fair lending guidance bulletin directed at institutions that make indirect automobile loans. In it the Bureau says indirect lenders will be viewed as participants in any discriminatory pricing by dealers due to their role in the auto loan credit decision process and suggests lenders impose controls on dealer markup and compensation policies. Is this revenge for them getting an exemption in the bill?

The Bureau's interpretation of Dodd-Frank and this guidance will have wide ramifications for indirect lenders and ultimately auto dealers. Because the bulletin issued is considered guidance and not a rule, there has been no opportunity for the public--including consumers, lenders, and dealers--to comment on this policy interpretation that will affect an industry that was exempted from the Bureau oversight.

The lack of accountability and congressional oversight over the Bureau's budget and Director are troubling, to say the least, but the picture becomes even more concerning when the lens is shifted to what kinds of oversight power are afforded to and being practiced by this Bureau--this Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It sounds like it is for everybody.

Here is what I said when expressing my concern about this Bureau and the Dodd-Frank Act on May 20, 2010:

This bill was supposed to be about regulating Wall Street;

instead it's creating a Google Earth on every financial

transaction. That's right--the government will be able to see

every detail of your finances.

Your permission is not needed.

They can look at your transactions from the 50,000 foot

perspective or they can look right down to the tiny details

of the time and place where you pulled cash out of an ATM or

charged to your credit card.

Unfortunately, we are now finding this fear has become a reality. A recent Bloomberg article states that the Bureau is demanding records from banks and buying information from companies on at least 10 million American consumers for ``use in a wide range of policy research projects.'' This information gathering from banks includes credit card and checking account overdraft information as well as requirements to provide records on credit cards and on products such as credit monitoring.

In addition to the bank records it is collecting, the Bureau is collecting data on payday loans from debt collection agencies and building a mortgage database of loan and property records with information from agencies and other financial and property information holders.

The CFPD also says they are not including any personally identifiable information such as names and Social Security numbers while compiling all of this information. I made that statement at one of our listening sessions in Wyoming, and somebody from the audience yelled: No, they just check with the NSA.

What they are doing is taking all of that consumer data and layering it into consumer profiles to show a complete snapshot of each consumer's finances. For example, they can say: There is a consumer at a specified zip code who has $1,500 in the bank, $6,000 in credit card debt, $10,000 in student loan debt, and a $200,000 mortgage.

To the American people who are listening to me speak right now, what happens if you are one of the 10 million customers whose data is being collected? Does this make you angry and uncomfortable? What happens if you don't want all of your financial information compiled and used by the Bureau for policy research projects?

I am sure you would like to hear me tell you that you can call or write the Bureau and say you don't want the Bureau collecting your financial records from your bank, your student loan from a third party provider, your mortgage data, or your ATM data. I am sorry. You can't. You can't tell them to stay out of your records. It is not possible. If your data is being collected, you do not have the option to opt out nor does the CFPB need any kind of permission from you to gather your personal financial information.

This is another issue I tried to work on when the Dodd-Frank Act passed. I had an amendment that would simply require a privacy release, a signature from the consumer before the Bureau could collect the consumer's financial data. Unfortunately, my amendment was not accepted and we find ourselves in the situation we are in today: Americans cannot tell the government they don't want their personal financial information collected and stored.

What I would like to know is how this information is reining in Wall Street. The Dodd-Frank Act was sold to the public as a way to rein in Wall Street. As far as I can tell, it has turned out to be the perfect excuse for Big Brother to worm his way even further into our lives and our privacy.

Actually, Big Brother doesn't have to worm his way in. Dodd-Frank opened the door and invited him in, and that is what this lack of oversight is signaling. Go ahead and collect millions of consumers' information. Don't tell us what you are using it for, and don't feel the need to tell us much of anything else because this Director and this Bureau will not be accountable to Congress.

Meanwhile, the message we are getting from the Bureau, and some of my colleagues, is that Congress needs to sit back and butt out of the Bureau's business. We are hearing the message that asking for congressional oversight is akin to wanting consumers to be deceived and discriminated against.

Let's get one thing straight. None of my colleagues disagree that protecting consumers is important. We all want consumers to get a fair shake and be able to make informed financial decisions. I never envisioned the Federal Government making your financial decisions. I have championed financial literacy for much of my time in Washington and believe strongly in the value of individuals having the tools they need to make sound financial decisions for themselves and their families. I repeat: I never envisioned the Federal Government making your financial decisions, but that is not the issue. The issue is the need for checks and balances and for consumers to be able to make a choice as to whether their financial information is collected and used.

I cannot in good conscience, with these concerns weighing so heavily on my mind, support moving forward with the confirmation of a Director to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--the one already in charge of collecting your financial records--while doing a daily speech about his good work.

Wait until his confirmation. We will see more intrusion into our personal lives. Until it has changed so this man does not have this much power--power beyond anybody else in the Federal Government--there needs to be some changes that will balance consumers' protections with privacy protections and allow for a healthy and appropriate level of congressional oversight over an agency that wields this tremendous power and has its own source of revenue and no oversight. Not even an inspector general has this kind of power. Until that happens, I have to oppose this nomination. I hope my colleagues will join me.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to speak on this nomination and to oppose it because of the recent actions of the Office of Personnel Management with regard to the Washington exemption from ObamaCare. I voted just now against cloture on the nomination, and I will vote against the nomination itself later today because of these very serious matters.

OPM, the office to which this nominee is nominated and which she would head, has issued an illegal rule that is very offensive and flies in the face of the ObamaCare statute language itself, and this nominee has pledged to continue to enforce that illegal rule and illegal policy.

Furthermore, OPM has completely stonewalled Members, including myself, my colleague Senator Heller, and others regarding how they came to that decision and, importantly, whom they talked with, whom they e- mailed with, and whom they met with in coming to the decision to create this illegal Washington exemption.

Let me back up a little bit and explain exactly what we are talking about. Really, this story started several years ago in the ObamaCare debate. During the original debate on the ObamaCare statute, several conservatives, including myself, pushed an amendment that said every Member of Congress and all of our official congressional staff have to use the same fallback plan as is there for all other Americans-- originally, it was called the public option, and then it became known as the exchanges--no special rules, no special treatment, no special subsidy. In fact, that is one of the very few battles in that debate we won because that provision was adopted during the consideration of the ObamaCare statute. It was adopted right here in the Senate.

So in the statutory language as it finally passed into law is that section, and that section says very clearly that every Member of Congress and all of our official congressional staff have to go to the ObamaCare exchanges for our health care--the same fallback plan as is there for all other Americans--no special rules or privileges or subsidies or exemptions. We go there. Well, I guess this became an example of what Nancy Pelosi was talking about when she famously said: Well, we have to pass the law in order to figure out what is in it-- because the law did pass. It had that specific statutory provision. Then people on Capitol Hill started reading it, and they came to that section and a lot of them said: Oh, you know what. We can't live with this. We can't have this. We can't be pushed to the same fallback plan as all other Americans. We can't stand for this.

From that moment on, a furious lobbying campaign and scheming behind the scenes started to avoid that provision fully going into effect, to avoid the pain of that provision, the pain of ObamaCare that millions of other Americans are facing as we speak. Meetings happened, leadership meetings happened, Member meetings happened, furious scheming behind the scenes, and a lot of lobbying. Ultimately, that lobbying of the Obama administration paid off because in early August of this year, right after Congress got out of town for the August recess, conveniently right after Congress left the scene of the crime, the Obama administration issued a special rule with no basis in the law, in my opinion, no basis in the ObamaCare statute. This special rule was a special exemption for Congress, a carve-out to take all of the financial sting out of that ObamaCare section.

What this special OPM rule is--and, again, OPM, the Office of Personnel Management, was the agency that came up with this illegal rule after this furious lobbying, after President Obama became personally involved, literally personally participated in the discussions leading to this rule. What this illegal rule does is essentially two things. First of all, the rule says: Well, ``official congressional staff''--we do not know who that is. We cannot possibly determine who official congressional staff are, so we are going to leave it up to each individual Member of Congress to figure out who is their official staff.

Well, I would submit that is just ludicrous on its face. Congressional staff is congressional staff. Official staff is anyone who works for us through the institution of Congress versus outside entities and institutions, such as our campaign staff. So leaving it up to each individual Member of Congress is contrary to the statute on its face. It is outrageous on its face. But under this OPM rule, that is exactly what they do. So an individual Member of Congress can say: Well, these 10 people are not official staff. They are on my staff, but for some magical reason they are not official for purposes of this mandate. In fact, under this rule a Member can say: Nobody on my congressional staff is official staff for purposes of this mandate. And we see Members doing that as we speak. We see examples of that being reported in the press as we speak--Members deciding, ``Well, nobody is official staff. I do not have official staff'' because it will mean they will have to go to the ObamaCare exchange and live by the same rules through the same experience as other Americans. That is flatout ridiculous.

But that is not the only thing the OPM rule did. It did a second thing that is perhaps even more outrageous. It said Members of Congress and staff who do go to the exchange--they get to take along with them a huge taxpayer-funded subsidy that no other American at similar income levels has, enjoys, going to the ObamaCare exchanges. This is a huge subsidy worth at least $5,000 for individuals and $10,000 or $11,000 for families. Again, no other American at similar income levels is privy to that sort of subsidy.

Again, I believe this part of the OPM rule is flatout illegal. It is not in the ObamaCare statute. There was discussion of it. There were drafts that allowed that to happen, but the language that was put in the law did not include that subsidy. It was specifically left out. And, in fact, magically transforming what was, under previous law, a Federal employees health benefits plan subsidy, magically transforming

that into some ObamaCare exchange subsidy--that is contrary to law, and that is beyond OPM and the administration's legal authority, but they just did it because they could to bail out Washington, to bail out Congress. Well, this is outrageous and it is illegal.

As soon as I heard of this proposed rule in early August, I joined with many colleagues, House and Senate, and I appreciate all of their leadership. I am joined by many colleagues in the Senate whom I specifically want to acknowledge, who are fighting for this change: Senators Enzi, Heller, Lee, Johnson, Inhofe, Cruz, and Graham. We are also joined by House Members, led by Representative Ron DeSantis of Florida. All of us quickly got together and said: This is illegal, this is wrong, and we have to stop it.

So we came up with language to do just that, to reverse this illegal OPM rule and to make sure that every Member of Congress and all of our congressional staff go to the ObamaCare exchanges and that we go there just like other Americans go there--no special exemption or special subsidy or special treatment. Our fix also expands that to the President, the Vice President, their White House staff, and all of their political appointees because that is appropriate as well. So our language says to all those folks--Congress and the administration--you have to get your health care the same way other Americans are in the backup plan, in the fallback plan, in the so-called exchanges. You go to the exchanges, and you get no special treatment, no special exemption, no special subsidy.

This is very important for two reasons. First of all, basic fairness. It should be the first rule of American democracy that what Washington passes on America, it lives with itself. Washington should have to eat its own cooking. It is like going to a restaurant and hearing that the chef in the kitchen never eats there. Something is wrong with that restaurant. Something is wrong with that picture. And something is wrong with Washington when Washington exempts itself over and over from eating its own cooking.

The second reason this is important is a very practical one because the sooner we demand that Washington live by exactly the same rules it imposes on America, the sooner Washington will start getting things right on ObamaCare, on taxes, on regulation across the board. So for that very practical reason, we need to make sure the same rules apply to Washington the same way they apply to the rest of America.

Let me come back to OPM because what we are debating is the nominee to head the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, the bureaucracy that came up with this illegal rule. That nominee has pledged to continue to enforce that illegal rule, to continue to defend that illegal rule.

Also, OPM, to date, has been completely unresponsive-- ``stonewalling'' is the more appropriate term--to all of my and other Members' inquiries about the process they used to come up with this illegal rule. I have written OPM several times. I wrote them immediately after their draft rule was issued. I wrote them very soon after their final rule was issued. I specifically wrote them demanding all emails and other correspondence and other documentation and information they had from Members of Congress, from leadership, from the administration with regard to the work and discussion that went into their rule.

Other colleagues of ours here in the Senate and also in the House have done the same. My distinguished colleague from Nevada Dean Heller talked to the then-OPM Director face to face. He asked the OPM Director: Did you speak with, were you lobbied by Members of Congress or the administration about this rule? That Director said: No, absolutely not. It now turns out that apparently is a lie. According to other sources, there absolutely were discussions, communications, emails, and the like between congressional leadership and the administration and OPM. So Dean Heller was lied to face to face about this by OPM.

I have asked for all of the emails, all of the correspondence, all of the discussions that happened leading up to this rule involving Members of Congress, leadership, and also the President and the Vice President and members of their administration. That request for information has been completely stonewalled.

So, first, OPM caves to intense lobbying from Washington insiders. Second, it caves and issues an illegal rule contrary to the statutory language of ObamaCare. Third, it stonewalls regarding the process and the conversations and the emails that led to that illegal rule.

We cannot stand for that. That is precisely why I am opposing this OPM nomination and why I voted no on cloture and why I will vote no on the nomination. We need answers. We need to reverse this illegal rule. Yes, we need a vote on the Vitter amendment the distinguished majority leader and others have blocked for months now. We need that vote. We need that vote that has been actively blocked by the majority leader for months.

Let's do things right. Let's get that information from OPM. Let's reverse this illegal rule. Let's vote on this important matter.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin.) The clerk will call the roll.

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

Mr. President, today we are debating whether the Senate is going to be allowed to vote on the confirmation of Patricia Millett. She is nominated to fill the vacancy that our current Chief Justice John Roberts previously occupied on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

If she is confirmed, as of course she should be, she will be only the sixth woman to serve on the DC Circuit in its more than 120-year history. She is an extraordinary nominee. She has impeccable credentials for this important appellate court.

I, like so many others across this country, hope that her confirmation is not going to suffer from the partisanship and gridlock that consumed Congress earlier this month.

Ms. Millett was born in Dexter, ME and now calls Virginia home, but growing up she lived in Kansas, Virginia, Ohio, and Illinois. She earned her undergraduate degree, summa cum laude, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her law degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School. She served as a law clerk for Judge Thomas Tang on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Phoenix, AZ.

Patricia Millett has had a brilliant legal career. She has argued 32 cases before the Supreme Court. Until recently, she held the record for the most Supreme Court arguments by a woman attorney before the court. She has argued dozens of cases in the Federal courts of appeal. She has briefed numerous cases in the Supreme Court and also appellate courts across the Nation.

Ms. Millett has extensive experience on issues that come before the D.C. Circuit. She served for 15 years in the U.S. Department of Justice in both Democratic and Republican administrations. She worked for 4 years on the appellate staff of the civil division. She argued cases in Federal and State appellate courts, including the successful constitutional defense of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the inclusion of ``In God We Trust'' on Federal currency.

She spent over a decade in the Solicitor General's office. Her stellar reputation led a bipartisan group of seven former Solicitors General to praise her as ``unfailingly fairminded.''

In 2004, Republican Attorney General John Ashcroft awarded Ms. Millett the Attorney General's Distinguished Service Award for representing the interest of the United States before the Supreme Court.

Since 2007, she has led the Supreme Court practice in the Washington, DC, office of Akin Gump. Her work in private practice spans commercial litigation, administrative law, constitutional matters, statutory construction, and even criminal appeals. She has represented Army reservists and business interests, including the Chamber of Commerce as well as civil rights plaintiffs.

Ms. Millett is a nominee with unquestionable integrity and character. She has committed herself to pro bono work. She has done this throughout her career. She has also engaged in some very significant community service. She helps the neediest among us, volunteering through her church to prepare meals for the homeless and serving regularly as an overnight monitor at a local shelter. Twenty years after serving as a law clerk in Arizona, Patricia Millet will return next summer with her family for a mission trip with the White Mountain Apache tribe in Fort Apache, AZ.

It is interesting that in a press conference I held yesterday when we had spouses of people in the military, we talked about another aspect of her career. Her husband is now a retired Navy reservist, but as a military spouse when he was called up, Ms. Millett has a personal understanding of the sacrifice we ask of our servicemembers and their families.

At the very height of her legal career, her husband was called on to deploy as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Of course he left, as those who are called to serve do, but she was left at home with two young children. And what did she do? She did what spouses all over this country do. She filled the role of both parents at home while her husband served in the Navy overseas.

In fact, just the other day the Senate passed a bipartisan resolution to honor families like Ms. Millett's family. We commemorate October 26 as the Day of the Deployed.

Not only is she committed to her own military family, she has helped to secure employment protections for members of our National Guard and Reserve through her pro bono legal work.

I know the distinguished Presiding Officer is concerned about the Guard and Reserve in his State of Massachusetts as I am in my State of Vermont. Ms. Millet also knows the strains that they face. In a case decided by the Supreme Court in 2011, Ms. Millett represented an Army reservist who was fired, in part, because some of his coworkers who stayed at home didn't like his military absences. She stood up for every Guard member and every reservist in Vermont or Massachusetts or any other State in this country. The successful arguments Ms. Millett helped craft have made it easier for all members of our Reserve and National Guard to protect their right under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.

Through her legal work, she has earned broad bipartisan support. This includes the support of Peter Keisler, Carter Phillips, Kenneth Starr, Ted Olson, Paul Clement, and a bipartisan group of 110 appellate practitioners, as well as 37 Deputy Solicitors General and assistants to the Solicitor General from both Republican and Democratic administrations.

She is supported by both the national president of the National Fraternal Order of Police, Chuck Canterbury; the Deputy Commissioner of the New York Police Department, Douglas Maynard; the President of the National Bar Association, John Page; and Andrea Carlise, the current President of the National Conference of Women's Bar Associations. Ms. Millet has the support of the military community including Major General Clark H. McNair, Jr., U.S. Army, Retired; Michael Hall, Command Sergeant Major, U.S. Army, Retired; Blue Star Families; and the Gallant Few.

Based on Ms. Millett's advocacy in private practice, she has the support of former executive vice president at the Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center, Robin Conrad, who declares that Ms. Millett is:

a non-ideological, non-partisan, `lawyer's lawyer,' who has

proven herself to be a trusted advisor to business with a

practical appreciation of the challenges faced by businesses,

large and small. She is open-minded, fair, even-tempered and

superbly qualified to serve on the District of Columbia

Circuit.

In fact, the list is so long, I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

If a President was to be given a textbook about the type of nominee to send to the Senate, or if Senators were given a textbook of the type of person to confirm, this would be the golden standard right here. We should not even be having this debate. She should have been confirmed unanimously weeks ago. She is the kind of nominee we should support because hers is a great American story of dedication, diligence, patriotism, and extraordinary professional ability.

I hope nobody is going to get involved in partisan politics and choose to filibuster her nomination. She deserves to be confirmed.

I understand that some Republicans have newfound concerns about the number of judges on the D.C. Circuit. During the Bush administration, Senate Republicans voted unanimously to fill four vacancies on the D.C. Circuit--giving the court a total of 11 judges in active service. Today there are only eight judges on the court. What has changed? It is not the caseload--that has remained fairly constant over the past 10 years. The only thing that has changed is the party of the President nominating judges to the court.

Incidentally, a Republican President nominated a man named John Roberts to the seat Ms. Millett has now been nominated to. When his nomination came up for a vote on the Senate floor, as I recall, all Democrats and all Republicans supported him for that seat. While Democrats did not agree with him philosophically on all issues, we knew he was highly qualified, and he was confirmed.

I don't think it is any stretch to say she is just as qualified. It is the same seat, but the only difference is it is a Democratic President who has nominated her. The standards should be the same. The same standards that allowed John Roberts to be confirmed to that seat with a Republican President are the same standards that should allow her to be confirmed to the seat with a Democratic President. She should be confirmed.

I want to talk about the caseload. The caseload was 121 pending appeals per active judge when President Bush was in office. The Republican-controlled Senate had no problem in confirming the 11th judge to that court.

Now, when the caseload is 185 pending appeals per active judge instead of 121 with a Democratic President, we are told: Gosh, we have to cut back. We have too many judges. It doesn't pass the giggle test. The fact is that this is what Republicans said. They voted for nominees to fill these 11 seats. Now, when three of those seats are vacant and we are trying to fill one--the same one John Roberts had-- some are saying maybe we have too many judges. Back then we had 121 appeals pending per active judge and now we have 185. No matter how we do it, the issue simply comes down to, is this nominee qualified?

I have had the great privilege of serving in this body for almost 40 years. I have voted on thousands of judges nominated by both Republicans and Democrats. I voted to confirm the vast majority of them whether we had a Republican President or a Democratic President. Thinking back through all of those thousands of judges, I have a hard time finding even a handful who were as well qualified as this woman is or where there is as much of a need to have somebody in there.

This is important. This is not only important on the merits--and on the merits it is an easy case--but there should be no delay based on politics. At a time when the American people are looking at the Congress and saying: What are you people doing--first the shutdown and then other things--we should not allow one more example that will bring the scorn of the American people toward this great body by saying no to somebody when every single person, no matter what their politics are and no matter what part of the country they are from, knows how qualified she is.

I was thinking yesterday about when the group representing spouses in the military spoke about what she did to maintain her legal career but first and foremost to take care of her family while her husband was abroad and even then to do such things as help provide food to food kitchens for those less able and less fortunate. When we see a background such as this, we think it is too good to be true, but in this case it is all true. So let's confirm her.

Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?

Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous consent that the time be equally divided.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with my colleagues from Delaware and Ohio for up to 30 minutes.

Mr. President, this is one of those all-too-rare occasions anymore where we all agree, and it is about making things. We will be talking for the next few minutes about what happens in our country and what needs to happen so we can not just make things again--because we still make lots of things, and we make them very well--but what we need to do to be able to make more things. What do we need to do to be sure we are at the competitive front of the line as we work to make things.

All of us are working on things together. Senator Brown and I have been working on advanced manufacturing--something that he has spoken about and we have spoken about together and that he has been a leader on for a long time--and all of our States benefit.

Missouri and Ohio have certainly been among the significant manufacturing States. In Missouri we have more than $32 billion a year in manufacturing. For about the last 4 years that has been the top manufacturing employment, has been in the agricultural industry, in food processing, as well as transportation equipment, fabricated metals, machinery of all kinds, and automobiles have been in the top of our manufacturing sectors.

I believe we are really at a point where so many things could easily come together, and the Federal Government and the Congress can help make those things come together by taking down barriers and by creating easier ways to work together. In the case of advanced manufacturing, we have talked about the centers of excellence and we have worked on that together, and we have both seen some of these ideas work.

I wish to ask Senator Brown some of the things he has seen and the things he thinks we can do better through the legislation we have been talking about.

The Senator's point is well made. These manufacturing jobs are goods jobs. The American workforce is competitive. As Senator Brown said, we have always been on the cutting edge, the outside of competition, making things in a better way than we did last year. Everybody who is competing today is trying to figure out how they can do whatever they did last year better. We see that and what we can add to that, how we can make that process work better.

In our State, the average manufacturing job pays 21.5 percent more than the average wage. Mr. President, $52,000 or so for the average manufacturing job salary in Missouri is a significant improvement in where you might otherwise be. In Missouri we have 6,500 manufacturing firms. Almost a quarter of a million people work in manufacturing in Missouri. We used to have more than that. We used to have more than that, and I think we will have more than that again. The country used to do more in terms of manufacturing than it does now. But we are going to see that happen.

The Senator from Delaware just wrote an article in Congressional Quarterly that talked about what needs to be done, the great opportunities we have in energy. If we take advantage of those great energy opportunities, suddenly the utility bill is more predictable, the delivery system is more guaranteed.

I was talking to a manufacturer today in my office and this topic came up. At some point now, as you get further and further into innovation, people not only have to be better trained--the Senator talked about that too: the importance of a skilled workforce--but how the workforce competes with maybe a lower paid workforce in some other country maybe is not nearly as important as how the utility bill competes.

If you can run that facility--and I just gave him an example of another manufacturing facility in my hometown of Springfield, MO, that was making a significant expansion, I think about a $150 million expansion. They did not expect to hire any more people, but they expect to use that current workforce in a much more competitive way. Nobody was losing a job because of advanced competition. They are just expanding that workforce in a way that ensures they will keep their job and be more competitive. Of course, somebody, by the way, is building that expansion. There are jobs there as well. And those all matter.

We have all kinds of examples.

Perryville, MO, is a town of less than 10,000 people. In that town, they have become a hub--it is about 80 miles south of St. Louis--of 21st century manufacturing. A Japanese company is there, Toyoda Gosei, that makes plastic components for automobiles. Sabreliner makes aviation parts and is in the airplane industry. There is Gilster-Mary Lee, a much more traditional employer. But here is a town that has a significant number of manufacturing jobs.

The town of Cassville, near Springfield, for a number of years had more manufacturing jobs than they had population. Now, of course, that meant in the part of the country where I live lots of people may have been driving a significant number of miles to get to those jobs. But there are not very

many cities. This is a smaller community. It is the county seat of Barry County. But they had more manufacturing jobs than the number of people who lived in the community itself. It meant that is a competitive community. That is a community that knows how to build jobs.

Perryville is a community that has launched itself well into the 21st century. And the skills the Senator was talking about--the skilled workforce, the energy needs, the research component--one of the components of these hubs of excellence that we have been looking at and talking about, Senator Brown and I have been working on, is to create ways to encourage that higher education be part of that research component.

I think Americans are eager to produce. I bet the Senator and I both hear the same thing over and over: How can we have a strong economy if we do not produce? Well, you can have a strong economy in parts of the economy that do not produce, but I think not only do you need to produce, but there is something that defines who we are in a positive way when people see American production that is not only heavily competitive here but competitive all over the world.

I think that is what Senator Coons and I are talking about, the kind of bipartisan effort we need to make. I do not know any Republicans or any Democrats anywhere, or any Independents, who have said: Oh, we don't need to worry about making things. We don't need to worry about a competitive economy. Actually, private sector jobs should be the No. 1 domestic goal of the Federal Government today. And the jobs we are talking about are a significant component because they lead to lots of other jobs. All of the ripple effects of manufacturing jobs are great: the other businesses that spring up, the suppliers that come.

Of course, the Senator and I have talked about his father was a significant part of launching new things into the marketplace. I think that is what the Senator and I want to see this Congress encourage, as we can encourage things without law and look for legislative ways to facilitate a growth back toward manufacturing.

Let me just talk a little bit about the startup act that Senator Coons and I have worked on. The Senator mentioned, I think, all the cosponsors of that: Senator Rubio, Senator Stabenow, Senator Moran, Senator Kaine, Senator Schumer, and Senator Enzi.

What that does is try to extend the opportunity of research and development to startup businesses. The way the tax credit works, you can deduct those costs from the taxes you pay. Well, if you are a startup business, you often do not have any profit to deduct from. That is part of the courage, frankly, of starting a business. You are almost insured, guaranteed, that for the first weeks, months, sometimes the first years, depending on how big a venture this is, you are not making money yet. So what the Senator and I and our friends have done in the startup act is say--these people would have employees--so what we do is allow the same tax credit for a big corporation or a big business or a highly successful business with lots of profit to be applied against what they pay as taxes for their employees--the Social Security tax, the other taxes that are paid--and, again, trying to encourage innovation.

We all know that small business is the engine that drives the country. But also small business can be the engine that drives manufacturing, if we figure out a way to let them have some of the same benefits that existing businesses have that have already gotten themselves in a profit-making situation. This just gives them a place to go and utilize that credit.

That is the kind of thing we ought to be looking at. Startup businesses are important, encouraging traditional businesses to figure out how to upgrade their equipment, upgrade the way they do things so they are more competitive in an international marketplace. I really do firmly believe that for reasons the Senator mentioned--the wage gap is not what it was, the transportation costs are more than they were to get something made from somewhere else back to the greatest market in world, the United States of America; and the more we know about the utility bills--Senator Donnelly from Indiana, who is the Presiding Officer, and I have been working on things that pay attention to the utility bills. Again, that is a key component of future manufacturing. The more competitive you are, the more innovative you are, the more you are likely to be concerned about that part of your input costs. And sometimes when you expand, the utility bill is a bigger than the additional labor cost. But that may be exactly what ensures you can keep the labor you have and grow that labor by being able to make a commitment that you feel good about because you feel good about your ability to run that facility once you build it. You feel good that not only is it going to work this year, but, by the way, we are doing so well and doing so many things that 10 years from now we feel whatever the utility costs are going to be, they are

going to be within the range we can deal with and still produce right in Missouri, right in Ohio, right in Delaware, or right in Indiana.

That is the kind of thing we ought to be focusing on. How do we make things again? How do we create other kinds of private sector jobs, the No. 1 domestic priority of the country today?

Every time the Senator and I talk about manufacturing, I really do get excited about an America that is thinking about not are we going to be able to continue to make what we have always made, but what can we make better than anybody else that we are not making yet that is going to allow us to be out there in a world marketplace? Trade has become a much greater opportunity for the American workforce, as all of these other factors we have been talking about on the floor have come together to make our workforce what it is.

If Senator Coons has any final remarks, I would like him to finish our time here on the floor.

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

Madam President, I am back again to speak about carbon and climate and to remind my colleagues that it is long past time for us to wake up and to address the causes and consequences of global climate change. Carbon pollution is changing our world, and it is time that our national policies reflect the reality of that changing climate. We cannot pretend the change is not going to happen when it is actually already happening all around us.

Air and ocean temperatures are increasing, the sea level is rising, oceans are growing more acidic, seasons are shifting, and extreme events such as heat waves or powerful storms are becoming both more frequent and more intense. Well-established science tells us these changes are caused by carbon pollution in our atmosphere, mostly from burning fossil fuels. These changes to our planet will continue and likely accelerate, and the consequences will be dire. We had better be aware and prepared. Sometimes even little changes can have big effects.

For example, take the winter flounder in the waters of Narragansett Bay in my home State of Rhode Island. I am sure the Presiding Officer's home State has winter flounder as well. Many of our colleagues will not give a hoot about the winter flounder, but Congress always tends to care a lot about money, and the winter flounder has historically been a very popular and lucrative catch for Rhode Island fishermen.

In the 1980s, commercial landings of winter flounder averaged more than 2,500 metric tons per year, and as recently as 1989 it was still over 1,000 metric tons. Trawlers were a common sight on the bay in the winter and fishermen prospered. The most recent data from 2009 for the commercial landing of winter flounder is down to about 150 metric tons. It went from 2,500 metric tons down to 150, and today trawlers in the bay are a rare sight.

Narragansett Bay waters are getting warmer--4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the winter since the 1960s. Spring is coming earlier, and that is not good for the winter flounder. NOAA scientists working in Rhode Island found that winter flounder that incubated in warmer water are smaller when they hatch than those that incubated in colder water. Smaller juveniles are easier prey when predators return with the warmer spring water.

The juvenile winter flounder used to have time to settle to the bottom of the bay and grow larger before the abundant bottom feeders, such as the sand shrimp, were present. Now warmer water brings the shrimp in earlier while the flounder is still small enough to eat. So warmer waters load the dice against winter flounder in the Narragansett Bay, and the fishermen who relied upon them pay the price. They pay a real price.

These changes to Rhode Island are not unique to Rhode Island. We can find examples all over the country. The Pacific Coast has ocean acidification--driven by the higher levels of carbon dioxide in the water--which is killing off baby oysters as they try to form their shells in the acidified water. Again, I don't know how many colleagues care about baby oysters, but oyster farming is a serious cash crop on the Pacific Coast. An oyster hatchery in Oregon has seen 70- to 80- percent losses of its oyster larvae due to the acidic waters washing in from the sea.

It is not just the oceans and coasts that are affected. In our Heartland, rivers and forests are facing the changes coming with the warming climate. The water hyacinth is an invasive species spreading rapidly across the Southern United States, blocking waterways and choking native species.

The water hyacinth has been called the world's worst aquatic weed. The pest renders a body of water unsuitable for most other plants and animals, drains water from the drinking and irrigation supply, and can clog pumping stations and hydropower infrastructures, costing local economies millions of dollars. Water hyacinths cannot survive a winter freezing, but as the average temperature warms, this species spreads further and further.

In the Rockies, pine beetles are devastating native forests. The pine beetle larvae are killed by hard frosts, and so this kept them in lower latitudes and in lower altitudes where the temperature was warmer. With global warming and winters that are not so cold, the beetle is spreading northward and upward to higher elevations.

Fly over Idaho or Montana and look down. What was once miles and miles of green pine forest is now standing dead on the mountainsides. These forests provided timber, hunting, clear streams, and an entire forest environment for birds and animals. It doesn't look like they are ever coming back.

Winter flounder, baby oysters, water hyacinth, pine beetles, these species pinpoint just a few of the many changes scientists are observing in nearly every corner of our country. Thankfully, we now have the beginnings of a blueprint for adapting to these changes.

Last month, the Obama administration--in partnership with State and tribal industries--released its first National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy. It is an attempt to understand and head off--or at least prepare for--the changes carbon pollution is beginning to wreak on our country's wildlife, plants, coasts, and rivers.

Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, called the adaptation plan a ``science-based . . . commonsense, `look- before-you-leap' strategy [that] emphasizes long term planning and management for climate change on a fundamental level.''

The adaptation strategy stresses that we need research to understand the specific effects of climate change on local fish, wildlife, plants, and habitat. The faster you are driving, the better your headlights need to be, and it is scientific research that provides the headlights for us to see what is now coming at us.

We are past the point of avoiding what is coming at us. The big polluters have seen to that. With their lobbyists, their money, and their lies, they have prevented us from doing what we should have. Of course, Congress shares the blame. This institution prefers listening to self-interested polluters than listening to science or the signals of nature.

There is no avoiding it now. The National Wildlife Federation now recommends ``managing for change, rather than maintaining status quo conditions,'' and urges that ``[f]ederal land and water management agencies should explicitly incorporate climate change projections into their resource management planning.''

A coalition of 21 groups--including American Rivers, National Audubon Society, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Wilderness Society, and the World Wildlife Fund--have urged the Federal Government to account for climate change in all relevant programs and activities. They called this adaptation strategy ``a landmark . . . strategy for making wildlife and ecosystems more resilient to climate impacts.'' Clearly, they recognize that climate impacts are inevitable. Indeed, they are happening. The question is: How bad are they going to be? How much damage will we let the polluters do before we bring them to heel and ourselves to our senses?

The Natural Resources Defense Council echoed a recent Government Accountability Office finding that our current adaptation planning is inadequate and that this--for those who only care about money-- increases the Federal Government's fiscal exposure to climate change.

A group of 10 outdoor enthusiasts and sportsmen's groups, led by the Wildlife Management Institute, recently urged President Obama ``to stand firm on his commitment to develop and implement climate change adaptation strategies'' because they know we have to adapt.

The alarm has long been sounded by the scientific community which overwhelmingly warns about the effects of our carbon dioxide emissions on our atmosphere and oceans. Our defense and intelligence communities warn of the threats posed by climate change to national security and international stability. Economists recognize the market distortion of overlooking the costs of carbon pollution.

Let me say a word of appreciation to former Secretary George Schultz, who wrote an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal pointing out that this is, indeed, a market distortion that favors polluting fossil fuels and gives them an unfair advantage against other forms of energy that would do less damage to our planet.

Of course, government accountants list climate change as a threat to our fiscal stability. Even faith leaders appeal to our moral responsibility to shield communities--and particularly the poorest communities here at home and around the globe--from the devastating effects of carbon pollution on God's Earth.

Now the alarm is sounded by those dedicated to the conservation of America's wild spaces and living creatures. They are warning that thanks to Congress's neglect, change is coming to our planet locality by locality. They are warning that we had better understand and prepare for those changes and do what we can to minimize the eventual havoc.

The American people are not sitting idly by on this. They are demanding action. Three-quarters of those recently surveyed by Stanford University think the Federal Government should do something to reduce the effects of rising sea levels.

My Newport tidal gauge in my home State in the famous sailing port of Newport is up 10 inches since the famous hurricane of 1938. When the next big one comes, that 10 inches is going to mean a lot of additional damage. Americans believe national preparations for the climate change that is around us will more likely help the economy than hurt it, and they are right. These changes will help the economy.

Sixty percent of Americans believe that taking steps now to adapt would actually create more jobs while only 13 percent thought it would create fewer jobs. Sixty percent as opposed to 13 percent of Americans recognize that the real economic strength we will get is by addressing this problem, not by ducking it because of the pressure from the carbon polluters.

Americans clearly see the benefits of adapting for climate change. Again, for those who only care about money, Americans see the economic benefits of addressing climate change.

I will say once again it is time for us in Congress to wake up. We are sleepwalking through history. We are asleep to the urgent demands of our time. It is time to wake up and prepare our national strategy to protect our Nation's precious resources, protect our coasts and forests and plains, protect our animal and plant life, protect our people and our communities against the inexorable change that looms.

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

Madam President, I am glad an agreement has been reached in which President Obama will finally get Senate confirmation votes on his appointees to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Labor, and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. This agreement, as I understand it, will also provide that the President's new nominees for the National Labor Relations Board will be rapidly confirmed. That is a step forward.

While this agreement addresses the immediate need for the President of the United States to have his Cabinet and his senior staff confirmed, this agreement today only addresses one symptom of a seriously dysfunctional Senate. The issue that must now be addressed is how we create a process and a set of rules in the Senate that allows us to respond to the needs of the American people in a timely and effective way--something virtually everyone agrees is not happening now. The Senate cannot function with any degree of effectiveness if a supermajority of 60 votes is needed to pass virtually any piece of legislation and if we waste huge amounts of time not debating the real issues facing working people but waiting for motions to proceed hour after hour where nobody is even on the floor of the Senate.

The good news is that I think the Nation is now focused on the dysfunctionality of the Senate and the need for us to have rules or a process that allows us to address the enormous problems facing our country. When people ask why is it that Congress now has a favorability rating of less than 10 percent, the answer is fairly obvious: The middle class of this country is disappearing. Real unemployment is somewhere around 14 percent. The minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. Millions of people are working in jobs that pay them poverty wages. Tens of millions of people today lack health care, while we have the most expensive and wasteful health care system in the world. The greatest planetary crisis facing our Nation and the entire world is global warming, and we are not even debating that issue.

The Senate is a very peculiar institution. It is peculiar in the sense that any one Member--one of 100--can come down here on the floor and utter two magical words that bring the Senate to a complete halt; that is, ``I object.'' I will not allow the Senate to go forward, which means the whole government shuts down. I object. I object.

What we have seen in recent years--especially since Barack Obama was elected--is an unprecedented level of ``I object,'' of holds, of a variety of mechanisms that bring the functioning of the Senate to a halt. All of this takes place at a time when millions of people cannot find jobs and at a time when kids are graduating college deeply in debt and millions of others are now choosing not to go to college because we are not addressing the issue of higher education. It takes place at a time when our infrastructure--our roads and bridges and airports and rail systems--is crumbling, when our educational system is in need of major reform, and the gap between the people on top and everybody else is growing wider.

The American people perceive this country has major problems that must be addressed. What does the Senate do? We are sitting here waiting 30 hours for a motion to proceed, to see if, in fact, we can vote on a piece of legislation that requires 60 votes. Time and time again we do not get those votes.

When votes come up, I would like to win, to be on the winning side. That is natural. Everybody would. But what happens here--and the American people by and large do not fully understand it--we do not vote on issues. What happens is the debate ceases because we do not get motions to proceed. So we do not vote on a jobs program, we vote on whether we can proceed to a jobs program to create millions of jobs. We do not vote on whether we can keep interest rates low for college students who are borrowing money, we vote on whether we can proceed to have the vote.

What we have seen in the last several years is an unprecedented level of obstructionism and filibustering. Between 1917 and 1967 there was more or less an agreement in the Senate that a filibuster would only be used under exceptional circumstances. There were only some 40 or 45 filibusters in a 50-year period. When Lyndon Johnson was majority leader in the late 1950s, in his 6-year tenure as majority leader he had to overcome a filibuster on one occasion. Since Harry Reid has been majority leader in the last 6\1/2\ years, he has had to overcome 400 filibusters or at least requirements for 60 votes. The amount of time we are wasting is unconscionable.

Furthermore, what the American people do not know is that time after time we are winning. We have the votes to win and have shown that on very important issues. In terms of one major issue, just as an example, right now, rather tragically, we have a situation as a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision that corporations and billionaires can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on elections.

As bad as that is, what is even worse, they can hide their contributions--not make them public. Guess what. The Senate by a majority vote said: That is wrong. If you are going to contribute huge amounts of money into the political process, the people have a right to know who you are.

We have a majority vote on this issue. We could not get it passed because we needed 60 votes.

The American people know our tax system is enormously flawed. We have major corporations--General Electric and other corporations--that in a given year, after making billions of dollars in profits, pay zero in Federal taxes. Legislation was passed on the floor of the Senate by a majority--legislation that begins to address that issue--but we did not have 60 votes.

We provided emergency relief to senior citizens who several years ago were getting no COLAs for Social Security. We had a majority vote but could not get 60 votes.

We had a majority vote to say that women should be paid equal pay for equal work. A majority of Senators said that. We couldn't get it passed.

What we have seen in recent years is reasonably good legislation getting a majority vote, but we cannot get it passed because time after time we need 60 votes. What we are operating under now is a tyranny of the minority.

The American people go to vote. They elect Obama President, and they elect a Democratic Senate. People who campaigned on certain issues--as people go forward trying to implement their campaign promises, they cannot do it because we cannot get 60 votes.

Once again, at one point in Senate history, from 1917 to 1967, the filibuster was used very sparingly--only in exceptional circumstances. Since that point, have Democrats--and I speak as an Independent--have Democrats abused the system? Have they been obstructionist? There are times when they have been. But since 2008 what has happened is the Republicans have taken obstructionism to an entirely new level. Virtually every piece of legislation now requires 60 votes, and virtually every piece of legislation requires an enormous amount of time.

What do we do? My colleagues on both sides of the aisle have made the point that the Senate is not the House. And they are right. In the House there are 435 Members and majority rules. The majority has a whole lot of power. The minority doesn't have that much power. People have said: We do not want the Senate to be like the House, and I agree with that. The Senate should not be the House.

Senate Members should be guaranteed the right to offer amendments, not be shut out of the process. Whether you are the minority or the majority, you should have the right to offer amendments. There should be thorough and lengthy debate. If a Member of the Senate wants to stand here on the floor and speak hour after hour to call attention to some issue he or she believes is important, that Senator has the right, in my view, to do that. If that debate goes on for a week, it goes on for a week. Senators, whether in the minority or the majority, have the right to call attention and to debate and focus on issues they consider to be

important. But at the end of that debate there must be finality. There must be a majority vote--51 votes should win. The concept I support is what is called the talking filibuster. Minority rights must be protected. They must have all the time they need to make their point. But majority rights must also be protected. If democracy means anything, what I learned in the third grade was that the majority rules, not the minority.

What is happening in our country is not only enormous frustration about the very serious economic and environmental problems we face, there is huge outrage at the inability of Congress to even debate those issues.

For example, I am a very strong believer that the minimum wage in this country must be significantly raised. It is now about $7.25. I would like it to go up to $10 an hour, and even at $10 an hour people working 40 hours a week will still be living in poverty, but we have to raise the minimum wage. My strong guess is that if we do not change the rules, despite overwhelming support in this country for raising the minimum wage, we will never get an up-or-down vote here on that issue because Republicans will obstruct, demand 60 votes, and filibuster the issue.

If my Republican friends are so confident in the points of view they are advocating, bring them to the floor and let's have an up-or-down vote. Let the American people know how I feel on the issue, how you feel on the issue, but let's not have issues decided because we could not get 60 votes for a motion to proceed. Nobody in America understands what that is about. Do you want to vote against the minimum wage? Have the guts to come and vote against the minimum wage. Do you want to vote against women's rights? Come on up, have your say, and vote against women's rights. Do you want to vote against global warming? Vote against global warming. At least let us have the debate the American people are demanding.

I will conclude by saying I am glad the President will finally be able to get some key appointees seated. I was a mayor so I know how terribly important it is for a chief executive to have their team around them. I am glad he will get some key appointees.

Everyone should understand that what we are doing today is dealing with one very small part of an overall problem, which is the dysfunctionality of the Senate. I hope--having addressed the immediate crisis--we can now go on and address the broader issue, which is making the Senate responsive to the needs of the American people. Let's have serious debates on serious issues and let's see where the chips fall.

I yield the floor.

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, over the last few years, I have spoken on the floor about how the Department of Defense procures major weapons systems--a system that is, to a large degree, broken, unfortunately. It is now even more important. With defense funding likely to be constrained to reduced levels in the coming years, our role as legislators overseeing major defense acquisition programs to make sure they are efficient and effective is as important today as it has ever been--indeed, even more so.

A recently released Government Accountability Office--GAO--report that is highly critical of the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship Program brings me to the floor today. On that program, the Navy plans to spend over $40 billion to buy a total of 52 seaframes and 64 so-called ``plug-and-play'' mission modules. These are modules that would be moved on and off, depending on the mission in which the Littoral Combat Ship is engaged. The combined capability of those modules with the seaframes is supposed to give these ships their intended lethality.

Until recently, my main concern with this program has been the unbridled growth in the cost to build the seaframes of the lead ships: the Freedom--the steel hull version--and the Independence, which is an aluminum trimaran version. The Navy appears to have addressed that problem. While the cost to build the seaframes for the follow-ships is still about double the program's original, overly optimistic cost estimate--which is not unusual--the cost to complete the construction appears to have stabilized at about $450 million each.

Today I am concerned about another very serious problem: that the Navy will buy too many of these ships before the combination of their seaframes, with their interchangeable mission modules, has been proven capable of performing the missions these ships are supposed to perform. In other words, the Navy will not know whether this Littoral Combat Ship meets the combatant commanders' operational requirements until after it has procured more than half of the 52 planned ships. This is particularly troubling inasmuch as the Littoral Combat Ship fleet will comprise more than one-third of the Navy's surface combatant ships.

The Littoral Combat Ships' stated primary missions are antisubmarine warfare, mine countermeasures, and surface warfare against small boats, especially in the littorals. These three primary missions appear oriented toward countering, among other things, some of the littoral or coastal anti-access/area-denial capabilities that have been fielded in recent years by potential adversaries.

The Navy took delivery of the first of two ships--the Freedom and Independence--more than 3 years ago. But the ship called Freedom actually deployed, albeit with limited capability, to Singapore in March and has experienced many of the technical challenges normally associated with a prototype ship. The decision to deploy the ship Freedom prior to the completion of critical developmental and operational testing may be good salesmanship on the part of the Navy, but the current plan to buy more than half of the total Littoral Combat Ship fleet prior to the completion of operational testing plainly contradicts defense acquisition guidelines and best procurement practices--and amounts to a case of ``buy before you fly,'' to borrow a phrase from aircraft acquisitions.

It also increases the risk that the program will incur additional costs to backfit already built Littoral Combat Ships with expensive design changes identified through late testing and evaluation or, worse, operational use.

As is the case in several other major defense acquisition programs, the problem here is ``excessive concurrency''--that is, an overlap between development and production that exposes the program to a high risk of costly retrofits to earlier units in the production run. It sounds simple, but this is the problem that for years rendered the Joint Strike Fighter Program effectively unexecutable and that led to the terminations of the Army's multibillion-dollar Future Combat Systems Program and the Air Force's Expeditionary Combat Support System Program.

As to the Littoral Combat Ship, the General Accountability Office spelled out this problem in the report it released just a few days ago. According to the GAO:

There are significant unknowns related to key LCS

operations and support concepts and the relative advantages

and disadvantages of the two variants. The potential effect

of these unknowns on the program is compounded by the Navy's

aggressive acquisition strategy. By the time key tests of

integrated LCS capability are completed in several years, the

Navy will have procured or have under contract more than half

of the planned number of ships. Almost half of the planned

ships are already under contract, and the Navy plans to award

further contracts in 2016, before the Department of Defense

makes a decision about full rate production of the ships. The

Navy will not be able to demonstrate that mission packages

integrated with the seaframes can meet the minimum

performance requirements until operational testing for both

variants [the Freedom and the Independence] is completed,

currently planned for 2019.

I repeat: 2019.

I again voice my concern that the Navy plans to purchase many, if not most, of the Littoral Combat Ships in the program before knowing whether the ships will work as advertised and as needed.

The GAO report's bottom line recommendation is to limit future seaframe and mission module purchases until the LCS Program achieves key acquisition and testing milestones that would help make sure that the program delivers required combat capability. I agree completely with the GAO. GAO's concerns are shared by the Pentagon's independent chief tester and even the Navy itself, in an internal report called the ``OPNAV Report'' or ``Perez Report.'' I highly recommend that anyone who has an interest in the Littoral Combat Ship read these reports.

In terms of the costs to national security and to the taxpayer, we simply cannot afford to continue committing unlimited resources to an unproven program that may eventually account for more than one-third of the surface combatant fleet. The LCS seaframe and mission modules are at different points along the acquisition life cycle. We need to put a pause on additional ship purchases and synchronize the plans for testing the seaframes and the mission modules to make sure the Navy is executing a coherent acquisition strategy that will deliver combat capability responsive to what our operational commanders actually need.

Also, the Navy has to lay out a clear top-level plan on how these ships will be used in response to reasonably foreseeable, relevant threats around the world. In other words, it needs to decide the concept of operation--or CONOPS--that this ship class will support. According to a declassified internal Navy report released last Tuesday, ``There are two options: Building a CONOPS''--that means concept of operations--``to match LCS' current capabilities or modifying the ship to better meet the needs of the Theater Commanders.''

The report goes on to say: ``The ship's current characteristics limit operations to a greater extent than envisioned by the CONOPS. . . .'' The second option is to ``modify the ship to support the warfighting requirements. Our review identified opportunities to modify several of the ships' characteristics to more closely align with the intent of the original CONOPS.''

Right now, it seems as though whatever combat capability LCS can muster is driving its mission, not the other way around, as in most ships. In other words, the Littoral Combat Ship appears to be a ship looking for a mission. But just to perform its three currently intended primary missions, the Navy is looking at significant design changes and increasing Littoral Combat Ships' crew size, even though it has already bought about 30 percent of all of the LCS ships it intends to buy. That could increase its procurement and life cycle operation and support costs well beyond current estimates and strain its affordability. Given how many frigates, minesweepers, and patrol crafts the Navy currently plans to retire over the next 5 years in favor of Littoral Combat Ships, this is particularly troubling.

Notably, the Government Accountability Office also reports: ``Current LCS weapon systems are underperforming and offer little chance of survival in a combat scenario.''

In this regard, the Government Accountability Office appears to agree with the Pentagon's chief independent weapons tester. As this top Pentagon official has noted, before proceeding beyond early production, this program should complete initial operational testing and evaluation to determine that it is effective, suitable, and survivable. But LCS is not doing so. Why not? We need an answer to that. If, for whatever reason, the Navy believes it must deviate from that practice, what plan will it put in place to mitigate the resulting concurrency risk?

Let me be clear. To justify the purchase of the remaining 32 ships in the program, the Navy must first provide credible evidence based on rigorous, operationally relevant and realistic testing and evaluation, that this ship will in fact be able to adequately perform its primary stated missions and meet combatant commander requirements. Congress must, at a minimum, thoroughly review this program before authorizing funding in fiscal year 2015 to buy the next four LCS's and require the Secretary of the Navy to certify, on the basis of sound written justification arising from sufficient initial operational testing and evaluation, that the LCS ships will be able to adequately perform their intended missions and provide our operational commanders with the combat capability they need.

The American people are--quite rightly--tired of seeing their taxpayer dollars wasted on disastrous defense programs such as the Air Force's failed ECSS Program or the Army's Future Combat System Program or the Navy's VH-71 Presidential Helicopter Replacement Program. LCS must not be allowed to become yet another failed program in an already unacceptably long list of amorphous acronyms that--after squandering literally billions of taxpayer dollars--have long since lost meaning.

On the LCS program, the Navy must right its course--today.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I thought I would make a couple of comments regarding the activities of this Chamber a few minutes ago. We had 71 votes in favor of closing debate on the nomination of Richard Cordray to be Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CFPB. The CFPB is vested with the responsibility of protecting consumers from predatory financial practices.

We all discovered in the runup to the great recession just how important this protection is. We had many crazy predatory practices.

On credit cards we had fees that came out of nowhere and shifting time periods from month to month in terms of when the payments were due, even shifting destinations of where the credit card payments got mailed to, and also fees that could be wracked up on unsuspecting consumers.

We certainly found out on mortgages how important financial protection is because we had, starting from 2003 forward, a booming industry in predatory teaser rate mortgages, where the mortgages might be 4 percent for 2 years but then were changed after 2 years to 9 percent. One would think most would-be homeowners would look at that deal and say: That is not a good deal. But here is what happened. They went to a mortgage broker, and the mortgage broker said: I am your financial adviser. Mortgages have gotten very complex, they are very thick, and there is a lot of fine print, so you are paying me to sort through and find the best deal for you.

So first-time home buyers trusted their mortgage brokers. Unbeknownst to the new homeowners, those brokers were being paid kickbacks called steering payments. They were being paid special bonuses outside the framework of the deal in order to steer the unsuspecting first-time home buyer--the customer--into a predatory loan when the first-time customer actually qualified for a prime fixed-rate mortgage. Well, those predatory mortgages proceeded to be put into securities, and those securities were bought up by financial institutions across America and beyond because the folks who were buying the securities understood that in a couple of years the interest rate would go way up and they would make a lot of money off those securities.

So this was a system rigged against the first-time home buyer, against the home buyer who wanted to start their journey to owning their piece of the American dream.

Those predatory practices should never have been allowed. Some here will remember the responsibility for consumer protection was vested in the Federal Reserve. But what happened in the Federal Reserve? The Federal Reserve carried on with its responsibility on monetary policy, but it put its responsibility for consumer protection down in the basement of its building. They locked the doors, they threw away the key, and they said let the market be the market. They abandoned our consumers across this country.

That is why we need a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It doesn't have a conflict in its mission. It is not obsessed with a different mission such as monetary policy. We need a bureau that says: New predatory techniques will crop up and we will try to end them, try to end practices in predatory payday loans that can charge 350 to 550- percent interest on unsuspecting citizens. We need a bureau that will look out and say we need to stop the practice on which online payday lenders get your bank account number and, without your permission, do a remotely generated check and reach in and grab the funds out of your account. The list of predatory practices is endless because the human mind is endlessly inventive. So we have an important bureau--but an important bureau that cannot do its job unless there is a director to run it.

Two years ago Richard Cordray was nominated to head the Bureau. He has been waiting to get cloture on his nomination and a subsequent vote for 2 years. He has been an interim appointee during that period of time and, by all accounts, from everything I have heard from folks in this Chamber, doing a very good job, working very hard with the great technical details of the financial world to find a fair and solid way forward.

The fact is his nomination, so long delayed, is not a reflection on him personally. In fact, many Senators who have opposed allowing the vote to take place have come forward and said it is not about him personally; it is about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Forty-three Senators in this Chamber wrote a letter to say they would oppose any nominee for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It was a bold attempt to change back to a situation where there was no one to fight for consumer protection for our citizens in this Nation.

Today we end that drama in favor of fairness for American citizens, in favor of taking strong action against predatory mortgages and the predatory practices of the future. In 8 hours we will be voting up or down on his nomination, as we should have long ago.

But let me shift gears here and say the vote we took today is symbolic of much more than the important function of establishing an effective Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The vote we took a short while ago is central to ending the paralysis that has generally haunted this Chamber. That paralysis is something new. In

the time from Eisenhower's Presidency through Ford's Presidency, there was not one filibuster of an executive nominee. In President Obama's 4\1/2\ years, there have been 16 such filibusters. So if we talk about the norm and tradition of the Senate, the norm and tradition of the Senate is a reasonable and timely up-or-down vote. That is the tradition, and it is a tradition that fits with the Constitution. The Constitution calls for a supermajority for treaties to be confirmed, but it only embeds a simple majority requirement for nominations. There is reasoning behind that: because our Founders envisioned three coequal branches of government. They could never have envisioned it would be OK for the minority of one branch to be able to deeply disable another branch, be it the executive branch or be it the judiciary.

So the vote we took today is part of a larger conversation about ending the paralysis and focusing on the challenge of executive nominations getting timely up-or-down votes.

Absolutely.

I would say to my colleague from Illinois that, indeed, these are key milestones where the journey is to restore the functionality of this Senate so it can take on the significant issues Americans expect us to take on.

The path forward is not yet one without obstruction. We have these two important milestones--one of going forward on immigration, a second of going forward in terms of putting a functioning Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fully together. We have had some other recent moments that fit this pattern, including passing the farm bill out of this Chamber for the second time, passing a Water Resources Development Act that would fund enormous amounts of infrastructure across this country to help provide both water supply infrastructure and wastewater treatment infrastructure. These are good moments. But we also are reminded that the path is not completely clear.

For example, at this moment we should be in the middle of a conference committee on the budget. The Senate passed a budget and the House has passed a budget, but the conference committee is being filibustered by this Chamber. That is evidence of the model we are trying to break that is unexplainable to the American people. Folks back home want to know why we can't get a bill on the floor of the Senate to address the sequester. Because fewer kids are getting into Head Start, fewer kids are getting their inoculations, title I schools are not getting their funding. And, of course, there is a lot of concern within the military world about our national security where programs are being compromised. But we couldn't get the bill to the floor of the Senate because it was filibustered.

So we have important milestones to grab hold of that are presenting a vision of the restoration of this Senate as a deliberative body, but we are going to have to work together in this bipartisan fashion we speak of to continue on this road.

Madam President, I appreciate my colleague from Illinois emphasizing the important role of bipartisanship in making this Chamber work. His question gave me an opportunity to talk about what has just transpired as an important victory--an important victory for this Chamber and its deliberation, an important victory for people across America, families working to have their financial foundation solid rather than torn asunder by predatory practices.

In this journey, this effort to achieve a Senate that can again function as a deliberative body, I want to take this moment to thank my colleague Tom Udall. Tom Udall and I came into the Senate together. Tom Udall immediately recognized that the Senate needed to address its internal functioning because we were becoming more and more paralyzed. He proposed before this body that we have a conscious debate every 2 years about how to adjust the rules and to make this Senate Chamber work much better, because we are not only being paralyzed on executive nominations but we have this terrible paralysis on legislation, with a few important exceptions that my colleague from Illinois and I spoke about.

I want to thank Tom for his work to help motivate this body to take on these issues and to restore the functionality. I have been pleased to be a partner with him on this journey. I know it is a journey that is not yet done, but I do thank my colleagues--across the aisle and on this side of the aisle--for the very frank discussions last night in which for 3 hours we bared our hearts, if you will, about what is working and not working in this Chamber. That too is an important moment

in this journey to make the Senate work. So I applaud the spirit that came into the Chamber today that resolved the 2-year standoff in regard to having a functioning chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and to set the tone, hopefully, for changing dramatically the partnership to restore the functioning of the Senate going forward.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to speak on why I had a hold on this particular nomination.

Contrary to some who are speculating on this issue, I am not voting against this specific nominee. My concerns are with the way OPM determines who can ask questions and who can receive answers.

Imagine, there is a Federal Government agency which determines who can ask a question to them and who can get an answer. Whether a Member of the minority or majority, every Member should be able to ask questions and to receive those answers. Frankly, if you ask a question, you should be able to get an answer; and when you get the answer, it probably should be truthful. That is my argument, and that is the purpose I have this hold.

I want to be very clear that I am not voting against the nominee as an individual. I am voting against the agency itself.

OPM, in my opinion, has become one of the most politicized agencies in Washington, DC. I believe the Office of Personnel Management has refused to do its part to ensure that all Americans are treated fairly under ObamaCare. Specifically what I mean by that is I believe what is good for the American people should probably be good for Congress, and what is good for Congress should be good for the American people. I believe that is a standard which many of us in the Senate live by. I think there are some who don't, but I think the majority do. If something is good for the American people, it should be good for Congress. And I think ObamaCare is a good example of that.

For me, the most concerning issue is whether OPM engaged in negotiations with the Senate and House leadership to secure exemptions and subsidies for Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. I wish to thank a colleague of mine from Louisiana, Senator Vitter, for his hard-fought effort on this particular issue.

I am not the only person here in this Chamber who can't get questions answered from OPM. I would like to walk for a minute the time line and the difficulty I have had with OPM over the last couple of months trying to get direct and truthful answers from this agency.

I will start on August 28. I wrote OPM asking specifically from the agency to ensure that all congressional staff, including leadership and committee staff, be fairly treated under ObamaCare.

This is what I said:

This is a missed opportunity for the Office of Personnel

Management (OPM), which currently administers and operates

Congressional health care, to ensure that all Congressional

staff, including Committee and Leadership, play by the same

rules as the American taxpayer.

I go on to say later:

As you issue your final rule in order to comply with

Section 1312 of the Affordable Care Act, I encourage you to

clarify this issue once and for all and require in addition

to Members of Congress that all Congressional staff--

Committee and Leadership--to go into the exchanges.

I wanted the dialog. I wanted this conversation. That is why I wrote to OPM. Of course I was looking to hear back from them, and I received no answer. I received no answer from the agency, so I followed up on September 13. From August 28 to September 13, I got no answer.

On September 13, I wrote:

I would like to first express my disappointment with your

agency's lack of response to my stated concerns. In addition,

I would like to reiterate my request that the Office of

Personnel Management (OPM) clearly mandate in its final rule

that all Congressional staff, including Committee and

Leadership, be subject to the consequences of ObamaCare.

I think that is a fair dialog and a fair question to ask. That was on September 13. Finally, on September 18, I got the response. Not the response that I wanted, as you can imagine, but I did get a response. In their letter, it says:

In issuing our final rule, OPM will address this specific

issue as well as others raised by members of Congress and the

public at large.

So in this letter on September 18, I wanted to have a discussion with OPM, and OPM says: You can read the final rule. We are not going to have a discussion with you. We are not going to reach out. We are not going to come to your office. We just want you to read the final rule, like every other American, and we are not going to have a discussion prior to issuing the rule.

Obviously, I wasn't going to take that for an answer, so I reached out and I requested a formal briefing with the Acting Director. Sure enough, we had that meeting on September 26. So this is from August 28 all the way to September 26. I will tell you, frankly, it was a good discussion. They were frank. They had a couple of members of their staff there. I raised concerns about possible back door negotiations that would allow for special treatment under the law. I asked specifically whether OPM had engaged leadership on this issue. I asked that question: Have you engaged leadership on this issue? I asked the question three times: Did you engage with leadership on either the House side or Senate side on how you wrote these rules? Three times I asked that question and three times OPM had insisted that they had not, that the answer was no. So they said no three times. They formulated their proposal based on the advice of their lawyers.

I was OK with that. We had discussions on other principles of the bill itself, but that was the essence of the conversation I had and I was fine with that. Frankly, I was ready to release my hold. But what I did want was answers in writing. I wanted to memorialize the conversation that we had in my office, so I sent them another letter on September 28, formally requesting OPM to provide me with a detailed list of all conversations or negotiations that they had with staff members of the Senate or House leadership when crafting the proposed rule.

I want to be super specific. On September 28 we had numerous questions but question No. 4 that I had:

Provide me a detailed list of all conversations or

negotiations you had with any staff member of Senate or House

Leadership when crafting your proposed rule specifically, the

provision giving each Member of Congress the authority to

determine who on their staff goes to the Exchange. If you

engaged in any discussions--both formal and informal--with

Leadership staff was there any undue pressure received from

staff during these discussions? Do you believe this to be a

conflict of interest?

So that question, that letter, was sent out. We had a great discussion. Please memorialize, please respond, and I received none. That was September 28. Please respond to that. They refused to do that.

On October 1, I started reading press reports, press reports both in Politico and also in the National Review. After I asked OPM have you ever dealt specifically with leadership in either House on these proposed rules and they told me no three times, then we find out in Politico that leadership worked for months--months to save these very same longstanding subsidies, according to documents and emails provided to Politico.

I go back to the original question and my concern, if you talk to an agency, do you have a right, whether you are in the majority or minority, to talk to OPM? Do you have a right to receive an answer, and when you get an answer, should that answer be truthful? Three times they told me no, they had not dealt with leadership, and you can see in the press reports, the emails that were released that was not the case.

What was reported in these stories is directly counter to what OPM told me in our meeting. I followed up with another letter dated October 8. I asked for OPM to provide me with detailed lists of all conversations or negotiations that they had with leadership staff. So this is what I said specifically:

In light of recent press reports that Congressional

Leadership staff negotiated with the Office of Personnel and

Management (OPM) regarding changes made to the Federal

Employees Health Benefit Program, I respectfully reiterate my

request that you provide me with a detailed list of all

conversations or negotiations with any staff member of Senate

or House Leadership. These news reports run directly counter

to statements that you made with [me and] three other OPM

staff members during our meeting two weeks ago.

This time I got a response. I finally get a response. OPM told me they couldn't answer my question. They told me they couldn't answer the questions because the government was shut down.

Pretty convenient and, frankly, very disturbing. All I am asking is what OPM told me in our meetings--is it true or whether the press is reporting the truth? Where is the truth? Senators have a right to ask questions. They have a right to receive answers. Those answers should be truthful. That is why I put on the hold. That is why I voted against cloture on this nominee. This is why I will vote against the nominee, not because I have an issue with the nominee herself. I have a problem with this agency.

I want to reiterate and again express my appreciation with others in this Chamber who are as frustrated as I am with OPM--Senator Vitter being one of them--of not being able to get answers, to receive answers back from this particular agency. I want to say I still believe--and I think most in this Chamber believe this--that what is important and good for the American people should be good for Congress; what is good for Congress should be good for the American people. I stand by that and will be voting against final confirmation on this nominee.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.