Floor Statements

Mr. President, this weekend, driving around the Twin Cities, I was listening to public radio. The host of the program introduced a Republican member of the House Budget Committee. The member, whom I will not name to spare him or her a great deal of embarrassment, was asked about the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling.

The member assured the host and listeners that failing to raise the debt ceiling would not create a default for a number of reasons. Among them was, according to this member, we can pay out all the Social Security checks to seniors because--and I quote--``the money is in the trust fund.''

Well, of course, there is $2.6 trillion of assets in the trust fund, but the Social Security trust fund is composed entirely of Treasury notes. Allow me to quote from the Congressional Research Service:

By law, Social Security revenues credited to the trust fund

. . . are invested in non-marketable U.S. government

obligations. These obligations are physical (paper) documents

issued to the trust fund and held by the Social Security

Administration. When the obligations are redeemed, the

Treasury must issue a check (a physical document) to the

Social Security trust fund for the interest earned on the

obligations.

CRS continues:

However, unlike a private trust that may hold a variety of

assets and obligations of different borrowers, the Social

Security trust fund can hold only non-marketable U.S.

government obligations. The sale of these obligations by the

U.S. government to the Social Security trust fund is federal

government borrowing (from itself) and counts against the

federal debt limit.

Now, I have no idea what this Republican member of the House Budget Committee believes is in the Social Security trust fund. Stacks of hundred-dollar bills? Gold bricks? Warehouses of freezers with steaks in them?

To me, it is shocking--shocking--that a Member of Congress--let lone a member of the House Budget Committee--can be so wildly ignorant of the basic workings of our government. We come to Washington to work together to solve our Nation's problems. How are we to do that if Members are unwilling or unable to come to even the most rudimentary understanding of our government?

None of us is immune to making mistakes. Yet we find ourselves in this moment of existential crisis, with the full faith and credit of the United States being held hostage by a menagerie of ideologues who invent their own realities and are only too happy to share these fantasies with an unsuspecting public.

We are playing with disaster. Can we please just stick to the facts? The fact is, if we do not act immediately, we will see a downgrade of our credit rating and possibly even default on our debt. Both would be entirely counterproductive to our goal of shrinking our deficits and growing our economy. We cannot control the fantasies of clueless ideologues, but we must act responsibly and do our jobs. And we must do it now.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

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

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

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about our debt crisis, our short-term debt crisis and our long-term debt crisis. I come here today to discuss ways to address them and ways not to address them.

Our most immediate debt crisis is now upon us. In order to maintain the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government, Congress will have to vote to raise the debt ceiling within a matter of weeks. This is something Congress has done as a matter of course many times over the years as our national debt has grown.

Let us be clear about what exactly it means to raise the debt ceiling and why it is necessary. As a nation, we have accumulated $14.3 trillion in debt. This in and of itself is a very bad and dangerous thing. That means our national debt is currently 93 percent of our gross national product. Again, this is a very bad and dangerous thing. We have been in this situation before. Actually, it has been worse. After World War II, our national debt was at 121.7 percent of our gross national product. We certainly had something to show for it. We had won World War II.

Through the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, we worked our way to a point where our national debt fell to 32.5 percent of GDP in 1981. We did this through a combination of growth and some inflation. Our debt was in pretty good shape until we hit the 1980s, during which we quadrupled our national debt under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

We have hashed over time and again who is to blame for the situation we find ourselves in. But let me leave that alone for the moment and get back to what it means to raise the debt ceiling. As I said, our debt currently stands at $14.3 trillion. I think we can agree on this: That number reflects past choices, not current ones.

The debt ceiling also stands at $14.3 trillion. We have to raise the debt ceiling because we as a nation have certain obligations we must meet. We have to pay for the wars we are currently engaged in. We have obligations to veterans who have served our Nation. We have obligations to have the dedicated men and women at FEMA who have been responding to the many floods and fires our Nation has been facing.

We have obligations to seniors who have paid into Social Security all their working lives and have a right to expect a check every month of their retirement.

We have obligations under Medicare, not just to seniors, who again have paid in, but to clinics and hospitals and health care providers and to those who supply medicine and medical equipment.

We have contractual obligations of all kinds to many different businesses, whether they are building roads or water towers or providing IT services to the VA or the Park Service or the Senate. I think almost everyone would agree it is good to have guards in our Federal prisons, except maybe the prisoners. The list of obligations goes on and on, and one of our most fundamental obligations is to pay principal and interest to bondholders who have invested in what has been for decades and decades considered the safest investment in the world: the U.S. Treasury bond.

Currently, we simply are not taking in enough revenues to meet all these obligations, so we must borrow more. Of course, we must pay interest on our debt, at an interest rate that is now actually quite low.

The surest way to increase the interest on our debt would be to default on our debt obligations. And make no mistake, that is exactly what will happen if we fail to raise the debt ceiling. Even an increase in interest rates of just 1 percent would add $1.3 trillion to our interest payments over the next decade. So, as you can see, defaulting on our debt to make a point about the seriousness of our current position would, to say the least, be counterproductive. Yet some of my colleagues are willing to do just that, and that is irresponsible.

As to the notion that bondholders could be paid while other obligations were postponed, Scott Elmendorf, Chair of the Congressional Budget Office, said:

Defaulting on any government obligation is a dangerous

gamble.

We are not absolutely certain what exactly will happen if we default, but we have a pretty good idea. We know it would roil the international financial markets, induce rating downgrades of our Treasury notes, create fundamental doubts about the creditworthiness of the United States, and force us to pay higher interest rates to induce people to buy our bonds. It would damage the dollar and the special role of Treasury securities in global markets for decades to come--a dangerous gamble, one we cannot afford to take.

Defaulting on our debt would also be, as David Brooks so aptly put it, a stain upon our national honor. Are we actually going to become a country that cannot be relied on to pay its debts?

Yet we have Members of the House and Members of this body threatening to vote against raising the debt ceiling unless the President and Democrats in Congress meet their demands on how to address the deficit going forward.

Are my friends suggesting we act like a deadbeat who buys a new car and then, some time down the line, decides: ``You know, I just don't feel like making the payments''?

I think these Members are doing an enormous disservice by holding our Nation's economy and, indeed, the entire global economy hostage to their demands. Because the U.S. Treasury bond has been the foundation of the world financial system, it is not an overstatement to say that defaulting on our debt at this fragile point in the global economic recovery could throw us into a worldwide depression.

I am hardly alone in this regard. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce shares my alarm. It is no small secret that the Wall Street backers of the Republican Party are beseeching their allies in Congress to come to their senses.

Yet Republican leaders know there are also those in their party who believe this is their chance. This is their opportunity to exact concessions from the White House and Democrats in Congress precisely because the situation is so fraught with peril. They know the President of the United States cannot play a game of chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States of America. And in a game of chicken, the irrational and irresponsible player holds a distinct strategic advantage over the rational and responsible player.

So we find ourselves in this place at this time.

What are the demands?

Well, Republican leaders here in the Senate are holding the debt ceiling hostage so they can end Medicare as we know it. Democrats are trying to protect Medicare and ensure its solvency, and the Affordable Care Act is already doing that. Not only does the Affordable Care Act provide more benefits to Medicare recipients, it also extends the solvency of Medicare by 7 years. That is the conclusion of the most recent report of the Medicare trustees.

Of course, the first big idea from our friends on the other side of the aisle this Congress was to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and they all voted to do that. So please understand that one of their first votes this Congress would

have had the effect of diminishing the solvency of Medicare, shrinking the solvency of Medicare by 7 years.

Not only that, but according to the Congressional Budget Office, the Affordable Care Act will reduce the debt over the next decade by $210 billion, and over the decade following that by more than $1 trillion. So rather than saving money by making our health care system stronger, making our delivery of care more efficient, and keeping our constituents healthy, Republicans voted to repeal the health reform law. So the big Republican contribution to the sustainability of Medicare and our national debt was to vote to shorten Medicare's life expectancy by 7 years and to add well over $1 trillion to the debt in the next two decades.

There is no doubt that the biggest threat to the sustainability of our long-term debt is the cost of health care. That is why so much of the Affordable Care Act is designed to address the cost of the delivery of medical care.

Let me give you a couple of examples. First, the value index. The value index will direct that health care providers be reimbursed by the value of the care they provide rather than by the volume--the quality of the care rather than the quantity of care. In Minnesota, for instance, we do health care a lot better than most other States. We provide higher quality care at a lower cost than almost any other State. There is room for improvement in Minnesota, of course. As a health care economist told me: In Minnesota, we get an A, but that is because we grade on a curve.

In Texas, they get reimbursed 50 percent more per patient in Medicare than we do in Minnesota and yet we have better outcomes.

Why? Well, we have a different health care culture in Minnesota. We tend to do more coordinated, fully integrated care. We tend to see patients as people who we want to keep healthy and out of the hospital. In Texas, patients are more often viewed as profit centers. There are some excellent, high-value centers of health care in Texas, such as Baylor University. Then, there are some egregiously low-value ones, like some in McAllen, TX. And, by and large, Texas doctors order more procedures than Minnesota doctors so they can bill for more procedures.

But the idea here isn't to pit Minnesota against Texas. The idea is to incentivize low-value States to do health care more like high-value States. Imagine if we could bring down the cost of health care in Texas by one-third. Imagine the savings to Medicare and Medicaid.

One more example. Senator Lugar and I wrote a provision into the bill called the Diabetes Prevention Program. It is based on a CDC program piloted in Indianapolis and in St. Paul. They took folks that had been diagnosed with ``prediabetes'' and gave them 16 weeks of nutritional training and 16 weeks of physical exercise at the YMCA, all at a cost of only about $300 per person.

The number of people with prediabetes who later developed full-blown type 2 diabetes was reduced by almost 60 percent--60 percent! Caring for chronic disease is the most expensive piece of our health care system in this country. One of the most common chronic illnesses is diabetes. It costs our Nation $218 billion a year to treat diabetes.

A couple weeks after the Affordable Care Act passed, I brought the Under Secretary of Health and Human Services into my office to meet with diabetes experts from the CDC and with United Health Group, the country's largest insurance company. The goal of the meeting was to get HHS on board to bring the piloted Diabetes Prevention Program up to scale nationwide. The executive from United Health said she would definitely reimburse their policy holders for going through the 16-week program. She said, ``You know why? Because for every dollar we spend, we'll save four dollars.''

The value index and the Diabetes Prevention Program are but two of the many programs in the Affordable Care Act that have been written into the law. Jonathan Gruber, the MIT professor who helped put together the health reform system in Massachusetts when Mitt Romney was Governor there, has said of the Affordable Care Act, ``It's really hard to figure out how to bend the cost curve, but I can't think of a thing to try that they didn't try . . . You couldn't have done better than they are doing.''

Since then, in the House, Representative Paul Ryan and the Republicans in Congress have taken an entirely different approach. Instead of putting in the long, hard hours of consulting with health care providers, health care economists, patient groups, hospitals, rural health groups, and medical researchers to actually try to build on protocols that have been proven to bring down the cost of delivering quality medicine, Representative Ryan decided just to slash the funding of Medicare, give the money left over to seniors, and let them fend for themselves to buy their own health care from insurance companies.

Now, we know there was no functional market for health insurance for folks 65 and over before Medicare and Medicaid started in 1965. It is doubtful that there would be one now. Under the Republican plan, seniors would essentially get a voucher for a significantly lower amount than their Medicare is worth now. Remember that the cost to Medicare for administering its program is less than 2 percent. Insurance companies, on the other hand, spend around 11 percent on administration. The CBO estimates that under the Ryan plan, out-of- pocket cost for health care for each senior will more than double to over $12,500 a year.

This is not Medicare as we know it. It is not Medicare. So, understand this: the Republican plan to end Medicare would make huge cuts in Medicare benefits and put insurance companies in charge of seniors' health care. This would double the out-of-pocket costs for seniors and toss aside all the new benefits offered by the Affordable Care Act.

There is no question which vision of Medicare holds more hope for seniors and which takes a scientific, evidence-based, best practices approach to addressing the long-range cost of delivering health care to all Americans.

And yet my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are telling us that they are willing to risk throwing the global economy into depression if Democrats don't act more responsibly on Medicare.

Well, ok. Here is an idea. Allow Medicare to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies on drugs for Medicare Part D. The VA does it. And guess what. The VA pays an average of 48 percent less than Medicare does for the top 10 most prescribed drugs. Now the pharmaceutical industry tells us they need us to pay the higher price because they need the money for research. But, in fact, they spend more money on advertising and marketing than they do on research.

Almost every other developed country uses its size to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies. Why does the American taxpayer have to be the chump who pays full price? I say we negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies and bring down the cost to Medicare by as much as $24 billion a year, or $240 billion over the next 10 years. That could go straight to paying off the debt. There. I got you a $240 billion cut to Medicare. Now can we please vote to raise the debt ceiling and avert a worldwide economic catastrophe?

If my friends on the other side are really serious about getting our deficit under control, couldn't we start by getting rid of a measly $2 billion a year in taxpayer subsidies to oil companies--the companies that are getting record profits because the price of oil is so high? Unfortunately, according to my Republican colleagues, this would be a tax hike.

In order for us to agree to balance the budget, everyone has to pay. Who is in a better position to give? Exxon or a little girl in Minnesota named Evelyn. You see, Evelyn was born with cystic fibrosis. When she was 10, her liver failed, and her own toxins started to poison her. But Medicaid helped her get the care she needed. That is what this is about. Exxon or Evelyn. Frankly, it makes me kind of sad.

So there are some more billions for deficit reduction. Get rid of the subsidies to the five biggest oil companies--$21 billion over the next 10 years. And you know what? If we are seriously going to address our debt crisis, we have to increase revenues.

Now under the Republican plan, the cuts to end Medicare as we know it and to slash Medicaid all go to pay for tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. That's right. The Republican plan cuts taxes on the top marginal rates for millionaires and billionaires from 35 percent to 25 percent.

Now my Republican friends like to say that tax cuts always produce revenue increases. Besides the fact that that is simply not true, it also contradicts the other argument Republicans use for not raising taxes. Raising taxes, Republicans often argue, would just give the government more money to spend. According to that oft-repeated Republican argument, cutting taxes will lower revenue and ``starve the beast.''

Here is President Ronald Reagan making this exact point in 1981:

There were always those who told us that taxes couldn't be

cut until spending was reduced. Well, you know, we can

lecture our children about extravagance until we run out of

voice and breath. Or we can cure their extravagance by simply

reducing their allowance.

In other words, cutting taxes cuts revenues and forces the children, in this case, the government, to cut spending.

So, at the heart of my friends' argument on why we must cut taxes are two completely contradictory, mutually exclusive arguments. On the one hand, according to my friends, lowering taxes always increases revenues and therefore brings down the deficit. On the other hand, they argue, lowering taxes decreases revenues. Which is it? Because you can't have it both ways.

I will try to provide some context for my friends. After President Reagan cut taxes in 1981, we immediately started amassing enormous deficits. They were so bad that President Reagan felt compelled to raise taxes in 1982 and then again in 1983. In fact, President Ronald Reagan, the supply-side icon, raised taxes 11 times. If President Reagan did that today, the Tea Party and, in fact, the entire Republican Party would run him out of town on a rail.

But, you see, President Reagan knew that to raise revenue, you have to either raise marginal tax rates, or get rid of tax loopholes for the wealthy and for big corporations. Which is what he did repeatedly.

Even so, our national debt nearly tripled during the Reagan Presidency. The national debt continued to grow rapidly during the George H. W. Bush administration. In fact, in 1993, he handed President Bill Clinton what at that point was the largest deficit in history.

So what did President Clinton do? Well, in his 1993 deficit reduction package, he added two new marginal tax rates at the top end--36 percent for those making over $180,000 and 39.6 percent for those making over $250,000. Every Republican voted against the package. They said that raising the top marginal tax rate would cause a recession. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich said:

I believe this will lead to a recession next year. This is

the Democrat machine's recession, and each one of them will

be held personally accountable.

Senator Phil Gramm of Texas said:

The Clinton plan is a one-way ticket to recession. This

plan does not reduce the deficit. But it raises taxes and it

puts people out of work.

Representative John Kasich, then ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said:

This plan will not work. If it was to work, I'd have to

become a Democrat.

Well, it worked. Not only did we have an unprecedented expansion of our economy for 8 years, creating more than 22 million new net jobs, but we balanced the budget and Bill Clinton handed George W. Bush a record surplus. I call that ``working.''

Now President Clinton, and especially the Democrats in Congress, paid a political price for the 1993 deficit reduction package. The Democrats went down to defeat in 1994, losing control of the House for the first time in 40 years. You could say that Democrats took a shellacking.

Nevertheless, between 1993 and 2001 the Nation created an unprecedented number of jobs benefiting every quartile of our economy, decreasing the number of Americans in poverty, increasing median income, and creating more millionaires than ever--to which my colleagues on the other side of the aisle might say, ``Sure, it worked in practice. But does it work in theory?''

President Clinton's deficit reduction plan not only reduced the deficit as planned, it eliminated it entirely and gave incoming President George W. Bush a record surplus. In fact, when President Bush took office, we were on track to completely pay off our national debt with $5 trillion of surpluses projected over the next 10 years. In other words, we would have zeroed out our national debt this year.

Five days after President Bush took office--again, after President Bush took office--Alan Greenspan testified to the Senate Budget Committee that we were in danger of paying off the national debt too quickly and entering uncharted territory in which the Federal Government would have too much money. The Federal Government, Greenspan warned, would have to put its excess money into private equities, thereby distorting and decreasing the efficiency of our markets.

President Bush told the country that a surplus meant that Americans were paying too much in taxes. This was our money, he told us, and so we all deserved a tax cut. Then after the economy went into recession, Bush told us that what we needed was another tax cut to stimulate the economy. So, in other words, ``when the economy is going strong, tax cuts are in order.'' And ``when the economy is weak, tax cuts are in order.'' Combine those with the aforementioned contradictory ``tax cuts reduce revenues forcing government to spend less of our money'' and ``tax cuts always increase revenues'' and you have an exquisitely incomprehensible economic theory.

But that exquisitely incomprehensible theory needed just one more element to make it downright dangerous. And that element would be provided by Vice President Richard Cheney.

By late 2002, the surplus President George W. Bush had inherited from Bill Clinton was turning once again into huge deficits. According to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, he tried to warn Vice President Cheney that budget deficits were growing at an alarming rate, posing a threat to the economy. Vice President Cheney cut O'Neill off, saying, ``You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter.''

By the end of his Presidency, George W. Bush left President Obama a budget deficit projected at $1.2 trillion for fiscal year 2009. Meanwhile, President Bush had doubled our national debt.

What was to blame? Could it have had anything to do with the fact that for the first time in history we cut taxes while we were at war?

Well, not according to the Republican leader. In July of last year Senator McConnell said: ``There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue.''

But adjusting for inflation, since the Bush tax cuts were enacted, revenues have fallen 17 percent. And that is not even taking into account growth in our population, which was 9 percent over this period. When you add the effect of population growth, revenues declined by about 24 percent per capita. I think this clearly constitutes evidence that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue.

So it should be no surprise that reduced revenues are responsible for a lot of our deficit, as you can see here. This chart by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is based on CBO data and shows that the Bush tax cuts were responsible for 25 percent of the deficit in 2010. And that is only going to grow. By 2019, the tax cuts will account for almost 60 percent of our deficit.

And the fact is that not only did the national debt double during the Bush administration, we also had a dismal record of job creation. And during the Bush years, for the first time since we started keeping records, median income fell in America. And more Americans fell into poverty. One in five children in America now lives in poverty. It is even higher in rural America.

There is one group that did very well during the Bush years, and continues to do very well: The extremely wealthy.

We now have in this country the greatest disparity in income and wealth that we have had since the 1920s.

So the one thing that there is no evidence whatsoever of is that cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans can

create jobs and keep the deficit under control.

So why would we do it, when the evidence is so stark that the Bush tax cuts coincided with a huge spike in both the debt and unemployment?

Why not look back on what has worked in the past and learn from it?

As I said earlier, after World War II our debt as a percentage of GDP was, in fact, significantly larger than it is today. But what did we do? Well, we passed the G.I. bill so that our troops returning from the war could go to college.

Truman started the Marshall plan to help Europe get on its feet.

And it is not as if we had smooth sailing as far as Defense spending. We went to war in Korea, losing nearly 35,000 Americans. After that war ended, we found ourselves in an extended Cold War. We built the largest infrastructure project in our history, the Interstate Highway System-- it added enormously to our economic development, because now we could transport our goods around the country so much more efficiently.

When the Soviets launched Sputnik into space, we jump-started our space program and our investment in science and math education. My brother and I were Sputnik kids. He was 11 and I was 6 when it was launched. My parents took us into our living room in Minnesota and told us that we had to study math and science in order to beat the Soviets. I thought that was a big burden to place on an 11-year-old and a 6- year-old. But we were obedient sons, and so we studied math and science. And wouldn't you know it, my parents were right. We beat the Soviets.

The space program created all kinds of dividends in technology and to our economic development. I watched a Senate debate last fall in which the Republican candidate said that government had never created a job. The debate, of course, was broadcast by satellite.

I think you get the idea. The fact is the investments we made in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s in science and technology, in our State universities, in infrastructure that was the envy of the world brought our debt as a percentage of GDP from 121 percent in 1945 to 33 percent in 1980.

Erskine Bowles is right. We can't get out of our current debt crisis with growth alone. But I will tell you most certainly that we will not get out of it without growth.

And so we have to choose wisely in what we invest in, in when we invest, and in how we invest; and in what we cut, and when we cut, and how we cut--which we must do--and in how we increase revenues, when we increase revenues, and from whom we get those revenues.

Why not invest in retrofitting our buildings when we have so many in the building trades out of work, sitting on the sidelines, and knowing that we can recoup that investment in energy savings within 3 to 5 years? Let's find creative ways of financing that, such as PACE financing, which lets families get a loan from their local government and pay it back on their property taxes. This is how cities pay for streetlights and sidewalks. It adds value to homes; and when the family moves, the loan stays with the property. We should also create incentives for banks to lend to small businesses for retrofitting commercial buildings.

There is a company in Minnesota called McQuay that makes heating and air conditioning systems for commercial buildings. They are actually supplying the system for the new World Trade Center, and their systems are so energy efficient that they pay for themselves in 3 to 5 years through energy savings.

They have been taking out loans from banks since they are a large creditworthy company, but then they give out loans to customers who install their systems. It is a win-win, because they are selling more units and putting people back to work, and their customers are actually making money in the long run through energy savings. McQuay has a good model, and we should be figuring out how to encourage others to do the same thing.

Why not cut our Defense spending when $100 billion in cuts have been identified by our service chiefs at Secretary Gates' request, and when cost overruns on our weapons systems are absurdly high? The GAO recently revealed that when you add up the growth in costs of major Defense weapons systems over their original estimates, the total is over $402 billion.

Why not raise revenue by increasing taxes on the wealthiest in this Nation--those who have benefited the most from the economy in recent years--especially when we can look to the recent past and see that their tax cuts created virtually no jobs and contributed mightily to our deficit?

Only when the middle class is strong does our economy grow, because the middle class has always been the part of our society that creates demand. There are just not enough rich people to buy enough stuff. The middle class spends its money. But today, companies are sitting on trillions of dollars because there is just not enough demand. And that is because there is a lot of unemployment and because wages for the middle class have gone down over the last decade.

Creating a middle class is not an end unto itself. A strong middle class leads to strong consumer spending, and therefore to a strong economy and to national prosperity. The middle class is also where you get entrepreneurs and small businesses--it is the engine of our economy.

Why not invest in early childhood education when we know that the return on quality early childhood education is up to $16 for every $1 spent? We know that children who have had quality early childhood education are less likely to need special education, less likely to repeat grades, they have better health outcomes, and that the girls are less likely to get pregnant as teenagers. We know children who have quality early childhood education are more likely to graduate from high school, more likely to go to college, more likely to get a good job and pay taxes, and much less likely to go to prison.

My friends on the other side say that we must cut the deficit for our children's sake, and I agree. But why then are such a disproportionate amount of the cuts aimed at programs that help kids? As I said, one of every five children in America lives in poverty, and even more in rural areas.

But the Republicans want to cut Head Start and Early Head Start. We currently serve about 40 percent of children who qualify for Head Start and less than 4 percent of children who qualify for Early Head Start. Do we really want to cut that? Do we really want to cut Pell grants? The Republican budget slashes Medicaid. About 50 percent of the recipients of Medicaid are children. We know we are going to have to make shared sacrifices to get the budget under control, but do we really think that sick kids should make those sacrifices?

You know, immediately after this last election, Republican leadership said that their No. 1 priority was seeing to it that Barack Obama is a one-term President. They didn't say their No. 1 priority was getting Americans back to work, or educating our kids, or even balancing the budget.

Their No. 1 priority was winning the next election. But I don't think that is what Americans want. The American people want us to get to work to solve problems, to improve their lives. We don't have to agree on how to do that but they sent us here to work together. If the time between elections just becomes about jockeying for the next election, then what in the world is the point of getting elected in the first place? I thought we were here to work together constructively in the interest of the American people.

Now the Senate Republican leader is saying that raising any new revenues is off the table; that he will not vote to raise the debt ceiling if part of our compromise on the budget going forward involves any tax increase on anyone, no matter how wealthy they are, no matter what their income.

I ask all my colleagues, for the good of the country, to step back from the brink, to step back from brinksmanship on this debt ceiling. Let's not panic. We are going to be on this planet for a while. Let's have some confidence in ourselves to do this in a smart thoughtful way so that our children will say, ``Well, they might not have been the Greatest Generation, but they were a Pretty Good Generation.''

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I would like to honor a leader from my home State of Minnesota, William A. Hawkins. Bill, who is retiring with distinction as the chairman and CEO of Medtronic, has achieved great professional success through his dedication to and advancement of life- saving innovations. Approximately every 4 seconds, the life of someone somewhere in the world is improved by a Medtronic product or therapy.

Medical technology is an important solution to our Nation's health care challenges. Under Bill's leadership, Medtronic has helped to maintain Minnesota's world leadership in medical innovation.

Bill has nearly 35 years of career experience in the medical device industry, serving in leadership positions at Novoste Corporation, American Home Products, Johnson and Johnson, Guidant Corporation, and Eli Lilly. He began his medical technology career with Carolina Medical Electronics in 1977. While reflecting on his career at Medtronic, he recently said, ``I have seen many product launches--from the ear thermometer to the automatic external defibrillator.''

He joined Medtronic in 2002 as senior vice president and president of the company's vascular business before serving as corporate president and chief operating officer. Bill Hawkins was named chief executive officer of Medtronic in 2007 and assumed the additional role of chairman in 2008.

Under his guidance, Medtronic's capacity to serve patients extended further to provide an array of diagnostic, preventive, and chronic disease management solutions. With a breadth and depth of expertise across more than 30 major chronic conditions, he recognized the unique position to play a larger role in the health care industry.

In March of 2010, Bill received the Biomedical Engineering Society's Distinguished Achievement Award. This award is given to recognize those that have made great contributions to the field of biomedical engineering and bioengineering.

Mr. Hawkins serves on the Board of Visitors for the Duke University School of Engineering and the Board of Directors for the Guthrie Theater and the University of Minnesota Foundation.

I ask my colleagues to join me, his friends, family, and colleagues in commending Bill Hawkins on his numerous achievements and wishing him well as he begins a new journey.

Congratulations, Bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

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

I thank the Chair.

Madam President, I rise today to discuss what I think is one of the clearest threats to Americans' digital privacy and to discuss legislation I think will go a long way toward addressing this problem.

Americans have valued and sought to protect their right to privacy for a long time, and so have the representatives they have elected to be a part of this Chamber. But in the past few decades, there has been a fundamental shift in the nature of our right to privacy and the privacy threats we face. Because when I was young, when people talked about their right to privacy, they talked about protecting themselves from the government--from government intrusion. They asked: Is the government keeping tabs on my political beliefs? Is it staying out of my family business?

Today, we still need to worry about protecting our privacy from the government, but we also need to protect our privacy from private entities--from corporations that are obtaining and aggregating increasingly large amounts of our personal information. Nowhere is that need clearer and more urgent than on the Internet. Within the Internet ecosystem, I would argue that some of the most sensitive information out there comes from our phones.

Smartphones are the future of the Internet and can actually be more powerful than desktop computers from a decade ago. There will be more smartphones sold in 2012 than laptops and desktops combined. There is a reason for that. These are incredible devices. Using a smartphone, a mother or

father can see his or her child, wish him or her goodnight, even if that child is half a world away. A smartphone can give a driver directions and can tell that driver where the nearest gas station is. Smartphones also enable emergency responders to find and respond to an accident in a matter of seconds.

But the same technology that allows these wonderful benefits also raises very clear privacy concerns. Our smartphones know where we are all the time. Unfortunately, the last 6 months has shown that our legal framework hasn't kept up with technology and isn't protecting our privacy when we use these devices.

Last December, an investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that of 101 top applications for Apple iPhones and Google Android devices, 47 disclosed information about a user's location to third parties, without asking consent from the user.

In April, security researchers discovered that for almost a year, Apple iPhone devices have been creating a detailed log of the different places a user had visited--and stored that log on both the phone and on every computer a user synched his or her device to in an unencrypted manner. That same month, Americans learned that both iPhones and Androids were automatically transmitting location information back to Apple and Google. In the case of the iPhones, the user had no clear way of knowing this was happening. In many cases, they actually had no way to stop it.

In February, I became chairman of the Judiciary Committee's new Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. I decided to use my new role to dig down and find out more about smartphone privacy. When I learned of the events in April, I wrote Apple about what was going on, and in May, I held our first subcommittee hearing on the issue. We took testimony from the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, privacy advocates, technologists, representatives from app developers, and we took testimony from Apple and from Google. I will tell you, the more I learned about this problem, the more I became worried for consumers.

I learned that an app on your phone can access an incredible amount of information on you. It can monitor your Web browsing habits. It can access and read your address book. And, of course, it can access your location. But in most cases, a user has no way of knowing that all of this information can be freely sent to third parties that the user has never heard of. A recent study of the top 340 free applications found that only 19 percent provide users with a link to a privacy policy. That is less than one in five apps.

I also learned that our Federal laws on this subject are a confusing hodgepodge full of gaps and loopholes, and that in many cases our current Federal laws explicitly allow wireless companies and companies such as Apple and Google to disclose our location information to whomever they want.

Let me give you an example. If I use my smartphone to make a phone call, my wireless company cannot go out and give my location to third parties without getting my express consent. But if I use that same smartphone to search the Internet, my wireless company can disclose my information to almost anyone they want.

Here is another example. If I use a mapping application on my smartphone to find out where I am or to find the nearest supermarket, Apple and Google would have to ask my consent before telling third parties where I am. But if my same phone automatically transmits my location to one of these companies without my knowing it, then, arguably, under current Federal law, again, these companies would likely be free to disclose my information to almost anyone they want.

You do not have to take my word for it. Over the past several months, I have asked privacy experts and officials from the Department of Justice and the Department of Commerce about these issues, and they have confirmed that this is, in fact, the case. This does not make sense. In fact, it is kind of a problem.

But the most alarming thing I heard is that there are real-life consequences when we do not do enough to protect location information on our smartphones. The very first group that contacted me after I wrote my letter to Apple in April was the Minnesota Battered Women's Coalition. They told me they have seen time and time again how smartphone location technology can be abused by batterers and stalkers.

I asked the Minnesota Battered Women's Coalition to submit testimony for my hearing. Two stories from their testimony jumped out at me. One was of a woman from St. Louis County, MN. The Presiding Officer knows St. Louis County very well. It extends from Duluth all the way up to the Canadian border. It is a huge county, actually.

Recently, this woman had gone to a domestic violence program located in a county building. Within 5 minutes of entering the building, her abuser sent her a text message and asked her: Why are you in the county building? Soon after that, an advocate helped her get an order of protection against her abuser. To get that, she needed to go to the local courthouse. Soon after she filed the order of protection, the abuser texted her again. This time he asked: Why did you go the courthouse? Did you file for an order of protection against me? The advocates later concluded that this woman's abuser was tracking her via a location tracking service on her phone.

Another woman in Minnesota had a similar experience when she secretly entered a domestic violence shelter and her abuser started sending her text messages asking her: Why are you at a shelter? In fact, he started calling taxicabs to wait for her outside the shelter at all hours of the day. Again, in this case, advocates realized that this woman's abuser was tracking her through an app on her phone.

My goal with the Privacy Subcommittee is to try to find a balance between the wonderful benefits of modern technology and our need to protect our privacy. Right now, when it comes to smartphone location technology, we have an imbalance, because we are getting all the wonderful benefits, but we are not keeping our privacy. I think we can get both.

This problem is not going to fix itself. Let me tell you why I say that. After the hearing with Apple and Google, I asked representatives from each of those companies a simple question: Will you require that the apps you sell have privacy policies? In fact, I also asked them this: Even if you do not require that all the apps you sell have privacy policies, will you at least require privacy policies for just the apps that can get your location?

Well, by last week, both companies had answered my questions. Let me summarize their answers: No.

I think Congress needs to act. That is why today I am introducing the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011. This piece of legislation is founded on a simple principle: that consumers have a right to know what information is being collected about them and how it is being used, and that they have a right to decide who will get that information, and with whom they can share it.

This bill will fill gaps and loopholes in current Federal law to give consumers four simple protections.

First, the bill says that anytime your wireless company or a company such as Google or Apple or an app developer wants to get your location from your smartphone, they need to get your permission first.

Second, if they want to give your information to a third party, they also need to get your permission. This does not mean that our smartphones are going to be clogged with permission screens. No. This can be done with one simple screen. My bill does not require a new permission screen from every subsequent company that gets your location. That would be impractical. It would not be smart.

The third thing it does is require companies that collect and aggregate the location information from thousands of consumers to take reasonable measures to protect that information from foreseeable threats.

Finally, if a consumer writes one of these companies and asks: Hey, do you have my location information, that company has to answer that user yes or no. And if the user asks for his or her information to be deleted, the company has to honor that request.

When I wrote the bill, I looked at the way other current digital privacy laws were being enforced. Most of them have

what is called a private right of action that allows a consumer to get their day in court if their rights are violated. I know that many entrepreneurs find these burdensome, so I wrote the private right of action clause such that it would only kick in if no Federal or State authority decides to act.

I also included exceptions in the bill to make it easier for parents to keep track of their children, for companies to protect against fraud and use location information that is anonymous, and for emergency responders to get to the scene of an accident without any redtape.

In fact, this bill does not cover law enforcement at all. It governs only what private companies do with our information, and what companies they share it with.

I am proud to have worked on this bill with my friend from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal. I am equally proud the bill has the support of the Center for Democracy and Technology, Consumers Union, Consumer Action, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the National Consumers League, the National Women's Law Center, the National Center for Victims of Crime, the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group.

This bill will bring us back to a better balance between the benefits of smartphone technology--and they are wonderful--and our right to privacy, which is basic. It was written with input from consumer advocates and industry alike. But even after today, I will continue to work with these groups to make sure our bill is getting that balance right. I look forward to those conversations.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 15, 2011, at 9:30 a.m. in SR 328A.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 15, 2011, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 15, 2011, at 10 a.m. in Dirksen 406 to conduct a hearing entitled, ``The Clean Air Act and Public Health.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 15, 2011, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 15, 2011, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 15, 2011, at 10 a.m.

Mr. President, I rise today to express my strong opposition to the amendment offered by my colleague from Oklahoma which we will be voting on tomorrow. Before I talk about the substance of the amendment, I wish to comment on the procedure through which it was offered. There was no warning to Senate leadership or to any of our colleagues. And while technically it wasn't in violation of Senate rules, it undermines the basic comity that makes this body work. It is a disservice to do business this way--to our colleagues, to bipartisanship, and to the American people who sent us in Washington to get work done by working together. So I am disappointed in the way this was handled.

Now let me talk about the amendment itself. Today, families in Minnesota and around the country are paying painfully high prices at the pump as oil still hovers around $100 a barrel. What this amendment does is cut the legs out from under the most viable alternative to foreign oil we have. Despite decade after decade of rhetoric about weaning our country off foreign oil, we are still dependent on it. And while about a third of our oil imports comes from Canada and Mexico, close to half come from the Persian Gulf, Africa, or Venezuela.

Last year at this time we were dealing with the gulf oilspill, the worst environmental catastrophe we have ever had. That was maybe the most jarring reminder of what has been clear for decades--that we have to kick our addiction to oil. While that is not something we can do overnight, we need to do everything in our power to transition to alternatives.

There is no more viable alternative than biofuels. Today, the industry that has been most successful in displacing oil is under attack. We are talking about an industry using homegrown American resources, an industry that has created thousands of jobs and catalyzed economic development across

rural America. The first generation of biofuels has paved the way for the next generation of advanced biofuels. The first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant is being built this year in Emmetsburg, IA, where it will be making ethanol from corncobs.

According to a recent study done by the researchers at Iowa State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the growth in ethanol production reduced wholesale gas prices by an average of 89 cents per gallon in 2010. In the Midwest, that number was higher: $1.37 per gallon. Let me repeat that. At a time when so many American families are struggling to pay their bills and make ends meet, they would have paid an average of 89 cents more per gallon of gas last year had we not had ethanol.

But instead of giving this industry the tools it needs to grow and reduce our oil dependence even more, this amendment hangs the ethanol industry out to dry. It makes no sense.

I share the concern of my colleague from Oklahoma about the deficit and our national debt. To cut our deficit, everyone in America will have to make some sacrifices, and that includes the ethanol industry. The easy part here is that the ethanol industry agrees. Ethanol producers stand ready to phase out the ethanol blenders credit. But we need to be consistent. If the ethanol industry is being asked to make some sacrifices, other fuel industries need to be willing to do the same. Yet, just a month ago, many of my colleagues, including my colleague from Oklahoma, voted against repealing billions of dollars in subsidies we pay every year to the biggest five oil companies. We are talking about companies that have made almost $1 trillion in profit over the last decade. My colleagues chose to leave those tax breaks in place, amounting to 21 billion in taxpayer dollars to oil companies over the next 10 years. Expert after expert has basically concluded these subsidies are not lowering the cost of gas and would not cause it to increase if they were eliminated. But we do not need experts to tell us that. Subsidies for oil and gas are on the books right now, and some have been on the books since as far back as 1916, but they have done nothing to stem the skyrocketing gas prices that are squeezing the budgets of American families. Yet when we are talking about ethanol--a homegrown alternative to foreign oil that lowers prices at the pump--my colleagues seem to think it is absolutely imperative to repeal this tax credit now.

When it is repealing subsidies for oil and gas companies operating in oil-producing States such as Oklahoma, that somehow is a tax hike. But cutting a tax credit that supports an American renewable fuel, that is ``fiscal responsibility.'' The hypocrisy here is stunning.

Regardless, America's ethanol producers are ready and willing to phase out this credit. But there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. The Coburn amendment, which abruptly ends the credit at the end of this month, is the wrong way. The right way is to responsibly phase out the tax credit in a manner that allows the industry to build out the infrastructure it needs to bring advanced biofuels into the U.S. market.

Today my colleagues and I are introducing legislation that does it the right way, and I urge every Member of this body to support it. Right now, our biofuels industry is hitting a wall because of the national 10-percent ethanol blend limit we have had on the books. It also is hamstrung by the inability of most cars and gas pumps to use blends higher than 10 percent ethanol. That means cellulosic ethanol and other advanced biofuels have no market access or market to grow into. This isn't an industry problem, it is a public policy problem.

The EPA's E15 waiver was a step in the right direction to address this very problem. But without pumps that can deliver higher ethanol blends, American consumers have no way to access additional ethanol that would and should be on the market. What our legislation does is reform our ethanol tax policy by ending the ethanol tax credit in its current form at the end of the month. It then invests part of the savings into biofuels infrastructure, part toward extending the cellulosic ethanol credit, and puts $1 billion toward reducing our deficit.

Reducing America's dependence on oil is going to require a national strategy, and biofuels are just one part of that strategy. We also need to do things such as deploy more electric vehicles and make our entire economy more energy efficient. We have to recognize that if we don't fix our national policies to allow the biofuels industry to grow, we are actively choosing foreign oil and dirty fossil fuels over domestic, homegrown, renewable fuels.

Let me tell my colleagues something: We are never going to see a massive ethanol spill in the Gulf of Mexico that kills 11 workers, destroys thousands and thousands of livelihoods, and does irreparable harm to vital ecosystems. We are never going to see foreign countries collude to restrict the supply of ethanol and drive up gas prices for American families. As we transition to advanced biofuels and expand this industry, we are not going to see these jobs go overseas. This is an American industry, it is American jobs, and it is American energy independence. I urge my colleagues to make the responsible choice--one that will keep this industry moving forward.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the confirmation of Professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. As a member of the Judiciary Committee for the past 2 years, I have had the opportunity to meet with Professor Liu and vote on his nomination on several occasions. He is a singularly talented individual, and I wish to associate myself with the remarks all my colleagues have made in support of his confirmation.

But the strongest arguments I have heard in support of Professor Liu haven't come from my colleagues. In fact, they haven't even come from a Democrat. No, the most persuasive arguments I have heard for confirming Professor Liu come from the former chief ethics lawyer for the administration of President George W. Bush, a gentleman named Richard Painter. Professor Painter, a Republican, is now a prominent law professor at the University of Minnesota.

Earlier this year, Professor Painter wrote a lengthy article that systematically catalogued Professor Liu's strengths and systematically answered his critics. This is his conclusion:

In sum, Liu is eminently qualified. He has support from

prominent conservatives. . . . He is pragmatic and open-

minded, not dogmatic or ideological. . . . Many, though by no

means all, of his scholarly views do not align with

conservative ideology or with the policy positions of many

elected officials in the Republican Party. . . .

Nevertheless, his views are part of the American legal

mainstream. The independence, rigor, and fair-mindedness of

his writings support a confident prediction that he will be a

dutiful and impartial judge.

When I circulated Professor Painter's article to the members of the Judiciary Committee, my Republican colleagues sent me a series of articles critiquing Professor Liu. I would like to take a few moments to rebut the criticisms in these articles because they simply don't hold water.

The first and most common criticism of Goodwin Liu is that he somehow believes in a so-called living Constitution. His opponents are especially worried about his suggestion that in interpreting the Constitution, judges should consider the ``evolving norms and traditions of our society.''

Professor Liu has written an entire book about his theory of constitutional interpretation. On page 2 of that book, he writes that we need to consider a lot of different things when we interpret the Constitution. We need to consider the original understanding of the Framers. We need to consider the purpose and structure of the Constitution. We need to consider precedent. We need to consider the practical consequences of our laws. Lastly, we need to consider the evolving norms and traditions of our society. So this is just one thing--one thing--that we should take into account.

But even more important, this idea that we should merely consider the evolving standards of our society in interpreting the Constitution is not a radical idea. In fact, it isn't even a new idea. This issue frequently comes up in fourth amendment cases. Over 40 years ago, in a 1967 case called U.S. v. Katz, the Supreme Court was asked to determine whether a wiretap constituted a search under the fourth amendment. If it did, law enforcement would have to get a warrant to get a wiretap.

The problem, of course, was that the Founders never anticipated the telephone, let alone the wire to the telephone. So this was a new question for the Court. But the Court voted 7 to 1 to find that a wiretap was, in fact, a search under the fourth amendment, and one of the main reasons they cited was that people in modern society had come to expect and assume that their phone calls were private. Two years later, in a separate case called Smith v. Maryland, the Court formally adopted the rule that the fourth amendment will protect people where our society recognizes a reasonable expectation of privacy. So for 40 years, it has been the law of this land that you have to look at social norms when interpreting the fourth amendment.

Here is another example, one that Senator Feinstein cited, but still, it bears repeating. This is what Chief Justice Marshall said about the Necessary

and Proper Clause in McCulloch v. Maryland.

. . . [t]his provision is made in a constitution, intended

to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted

to the various crises of human affairs.

McCulloch v. Maryland was decided in 1819. So the idea that we should merely consider the state of our society when we interpret the Constitution isn't new, it is old. It is very old. In fact, it is arguably older than the Senate Chamber we are standing in, which first opened in 1859.

Professor Liu's detractors have also accused him of believing that judges may ``legitimately invent constitutional rights to a broad range of social `welfare' goods, including education, shelter, subsistence, and health care.'' That is the accusation. This argument is based on an article Professor Liu wrote in 2008.

But if you actually read the article, you will find this statement right in the introduction. This is a quote from the article:

[B]ecause the existence of any welfare right depends on

Democratic instantiation of our shared understandings, the

Judiciary is generally limited to an interstitial role within

the context of a legislative program. Courts do not act as

`first movers' in establishing welfare rights . . .

In other words, Professor Liu is being accused of saying judges can invent welfare rights because of an article he wrote where he said judges cannot invent welfare rights.

The final point I wish to address is the idea that Professor Liu somehow supports ``using foreign law to redefine the Constitution.'' Professor Liu's critics cite an obscure speech he gave at a Japanese law school 5 years ago. According to his critics, he said in this speech that it is ``difficult for him to grasp how anyone could resist the use of foreign authority in American constitutional law.''

I went and got a copy of the speech. If you read it, you will see that Professor Liu was referring to a series of Supreme Court decisions written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, where Justice Kennedy reviewed the laws of foreign countries on certain issues. Justice Kennedy didn't use the laws of foreign countries to decide the cases before him, he used them to get a sense of how other countries were resolving the legal issues before him.

Professor Liu was basically saying he found it difficult to grasp how people could disagree with Justice Kennedy. He has repeatedly said in his testimony, under oath, that he does not believe that foreign law should be binding in any way on Federal law.

There are other critiques against Professor Liu that I will not go into further, but I urge my colleagues to dig behind these blanket statements. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, I think you will find there is no there there.

I think what my colleagues will find is an extraordinary intellect, a fundamentally decent man, and someone who will be a strong and impartial jurist. I urge my colleagues to vote for cloture and to vote to support his nomination.

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

Madam President, I rise to talk about a Minnesota icon. Minnesotans and baseball fans across this country are celebrating the life of Harmon Killebrew today. We lost the great slugger yesterday.

I never met Mr. Killebrew, which is kind of hard for me to believe, because, similar to so many Minnesotans, I felt that I knew him. He was the heart of the Minnesota Twins franchise, not just because of the towering home runs he hit but because, on and off the field, he carried himself with so much dignity and grace and humility.

I was 9 years old when the old Washington Senators moved to Minnesota and became the Minnesota Twins. We were so excited to have a major league team in Minnesota, and Killebrew was the heart and the anchor of the franchise, batting cleanup and cracking out 400-foot-plus home runs with his unbelievably powerful swing.

By 1965, Killebrew, along with Tony Oliva, Zoilo Versalles, Bob Allison, Earl Battey, Jim Perry, Jim Kaat, and Mudcat Grant unseated the Yankee dynasty and took the American League pennant. I was sitting along the left field line of Metropolitan Stadium the game before the All-Star break that year when Killebrew hit a ninth-inning walk-off homer to beat the Yankees. It was not a typical Killebrew home run. It was a line drive that just shot out of the park into the left field stands, and it sent us into the All-Star break in first place. I, along with lots of Twins fans, believe that was the blow that was the key to that season.

As I said, that rope of a homer was not a typical Killebrew home run. He was known for these towering blasts. I remember one in particular. I was watching the Twins on TV one summer night with my dad and my brother, and the Twins were playing the Tigers in Detroit in the old Tiger Stadium.

And Killebrew got ahold of one and it cleared the left field roof, one of just four shots that cleared that roof in the 87-year history of the stadium. My recollection is that by its trajectory, the ball was estimated to be a 480-foot home run. Killebrew hit the longest ball in the history of Metropolitan Stadium--a 530-foot shot!

Now Killebrew was not that big a man. He was 5 feet 11 inches and about 210 pounds. In his major league career, Harmon Killebrew hit 573 home runs, all without the aid of steroids. Killebrew grew up in rural Idaho. According to one press account I read last night, Killebrew claimed to have gotten his strength from carrying 10-gallon milk cans during the summers as a youth.

But I know a little something, second hand, about where the power for those home runs really came from. His legs. See, about 20 years ago, a friend of mine did a little film with Killebrew, and travelled to his home in Idaho.

My friend asked Killebrew where his power came from, and Harmon said that it came from his legs. Killebrew told my friend that the Killebrews all had incredibly powerful legs and that his father, Killebrew's father, could jump over a cow from a standing position.

I had always hoped to meet Killebrew and ask him about that. I had a chance to. In 2005, there was a commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the 1965 Twins team. It was held in a tent after a Twins' game at the Metrodome.

I was in the tent and I got Tony Oliva's autograph, and Camilo Pascual's. And I saw Killebrew and he was surrounded by fans. And I just wanted to give him some space. He was a totally accessible guy. Every Twins fan knew that from his years on the team and his years in the Twins broadcast booth. But for some reason I decided to talk to another member of that great team, and figured I would talk to Harmon a little later. But by the time I tried to find him again, he was gone.

So, I never met Harmon Killebrew. But, again, like all Twins fans, I felt I knew him. A gracious, humble man that we in Minnesota were privileged to watch, and who we were privileged to have represent our State.

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

Mr. President, I rise in strong support of Senator Menendez's bill to eliminate subsidies to big oil companies. At a time when we have to make tough choices to address our budget deficit, when we are cutting cancer research, at a time when Minnesotans are paying $4 a gallon at the pump, and at a time when oil companies are raking in record profits, we have to stand and say: Enough is enough. It is time to end the subsidies. That is why I am a proud cosponsor of the bill.

We have had to make a lot of tough choices, and there are plenty still to come. To avert a government shutdown, Congress enacted billions of dollars in cuts. Some were pretty hard for me to swallow, frankly--cuts such as $182 million from job training, $650 million from community development funds that help communities provide basic services such as roads and sewers and affordable housing, even Pell grants.

These are cuts that will be felt by working families and people who are still struggling to find jobs and make ends meet. I voted for the spending bill that contained those cuts, not because they would be the cuts that I choose to make but because it was important to keep the government open. Addressing our budget deficits will take compromise. It will take shared sacrifice from everyone. That includes big oil companies that are making record profits because the price of oil is now at $100 a barrel.

The bill before us would end $1.2 billion in subsidies to the five largest oil companies in fiscal year 2012 and $21 billion over the next 10 years. These companies make up three of the top five Fortune 500 companies and have had nearly $1 trillion in profit over the last decade. While high oil prices are gouging the pocketbooks of American families, these companies are on a pace for a record profit this year. In the first quarter alone, these companies collectively made about $35 billion in profits.

I wish to ask my colleagues, how high do oil prices have to go--how big do the oil companies' profits have to be--before we can talk about doing away with their handouts? These companies have legacy wells that pump oil at a cost of about $10 a barrel--a little less. On average, oil production costs them $15 a barrel. When exactly don't they need these subsidies anymore? They are making record profits. At $100 a barrel, why do they need the subsidies? If oil goes up to $102 a barrel or $110, or $150, can they give us the subsidies back then? There is absolutely no rationale for these subsidies--none at all. How much money do these companies have to make before they do not need the government's help anymore?

To me it sounds as though these companies do not need to be subsidized by taxpayers. President George W. Bush thought so too. In 2005 he said:

With $55 dollar oil, we don't need incentives to oil and

gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives.

When testifying before Congress in 2005, one oil executive stated that removing many of these tax breaks would have no effect on his company's production activity. Today, with oil prices close to $100 a barrel, it is doubly true.

Let me say something about House Speaker Boehner's statement on the debt limit last week. The Speaker told us that in terms of dealing with the deficit, everything is on the table, except for revenues. How can we not look at billions of dollars in handouts to some of the most profitable companies in America?

This is sort of like a family that cannot pay its bills, and they cannot pay for food and heat and electricity and medical bills and the mortgage all at the same time. So they gather around the table and the dad says: ``To make ends meet, everything is on the table. We are paying for this stuff, except for one of us getting an extra job or working more hours or somehow bringing in more money. We can't do that.'' And the son says: ``Gee, dad, I could do more hours at TGI Friday's. I could do that.'' ``No, son. That's off the table. No more medicine for grandma. You go play with your Xbox some more.''

Revenues off the table, especially subsidies that do not do anybody any good? That does not make any sense and tells me that some of us are not serious about fixing the budget deficit.

A recent report from the Joint Economic Committee concluded that:

Repealing or modifying the tax incentives discussed in this

report . . . would have little or no impact on consumer

energy prices in the immediate future.

In 2010, 60 percent of the big five oil companies' profits went to stock buybacks and dividends to their shareholders, not to exploration. So even if they had fewer taxpayer subsidies and could only use, say, 59 percent of their record profits for buybacks and dividends this year, I am pretty sure they could get by just fine.

Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle think we have the wrong approach and they do not want us touching Big Oil's government handouts. Instead, they are pushing an alternative bill that would require the government to approve or reject a drilling permit in 60 days or it would be deemed automatically approved. This is a very dangerous idea. Just this morning, I asked Director Bromwich, who heads the agency in charge of offshore permitting, what he thought about this idea, and he said we would all be at greater risk from such a proposal.

This shows that some of my colleagues have not learned the lessons of the BP oilspill where a shoddy approval

process and numerous industry errors led to a monumental disaster in the gulf. This disaster brought economic hardship for thousands and cost 11 workers their lives. Let's not forget that.

Offshore drilling is becoming an increasingly complex industry. To insist on a one-size-fits-all permit process ignores the increasing technical challenges that offshore drilling presents. The Republican bill is reckless and irresponsible, and I urge my colleagues to reject it.

Instead of ending handouts to wildly profitable companies, my friends on the other side of the aisle are suggesting we throw caution and safety to the wind--and continue to dole out these subsidies. They want to make cuts to job training programs, Pell grants, and cancer research. They have proposed converting Medicare into a voucher program, which would end the longstanding guarantee that our seniors will have access to health care when they need it. It would end Medicare as we know it. But when we talk about touching one penny of big oil's subsidies, they say: It is off the table.

I believe Americans come together in tough times and make sacrifices. We are all not going to get everything we want, and that includes Big Oil executives. At a time when almost 14 million Americans are unemployed, at a time when job training and other assistance programs are being cut, it is unconscionable for companies making record profits to refuse to do their part. It is unconscionable for them to refuse to give up even one penny of subsidies that they frankly do not need.

I urge my colleagues to get serious about the deficit, to support the Menendez bill, and to end these wasteful handouts.

I yield the floor.

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

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

Madam President, I rise today to talk about the effort of the House last month to repeal the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules. Net neutrality is the very simple idea that all content and applications on the Internet should be treated the same regardless of who owns the content or the Web site. This is not a radical concept, in large part because it is what we see and experience every time we use the Internet. But the House wants to change all of that and effectively turn control of the Internet over to a handful of very powerful corporations.

I want to take a few moments today to tell you why I think the House's vote was a mistake, and why I am going to do everything in my power to make sure we don't make the same mistake in the Senate. But before I get into those details, I think it is important to take a step back and talk about the Internet we have today.

Let's be clear. The Internet we have exists because it is free and open, because we have always had net neutrality throughout the entire existence of the Internet. I have to give credit to my opponents on this issue who have done a masterful job of manipulating the American public into believing that net neutrality is something that it is not.

Net neutrality is not about a government takeover of the Internet. It is simply the idea that all content, whether it is a Web page, an e- mail, or a movie we are downloading can load onto our computers at home at the same speed, regardless of who owns or controls that content.

This is not a radical idea. It is what we experience today when we use the Internet. Right now, if we buy Rihanna's latest song from iTunes, it downloads as quickly as a song from a friend who started a band in his or her garage.

If you send an e-mail to your mother, it arrives in her inbox just as quickly as the e-mail she gets from President Obama. If you start a Web site for your small business, your customers are able to access your Web site and place orders for your products just as quickly as if they were buying from a multinational corporation.

I like to talk about YouTube's early days as a startup because it is such a

powerful example of why net neutrality is so critical and how this simple concept helped create a billion-dollar company practically overnight. YouTube's early headquarters were situated in a tiny space above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Francisco, CA. But just 6 months after the site was activated, over 100 million people were using YouTube to watch videos every day. Less than 2 years after it started, YouTube sold their business to Google for $1.6 billion. Isn't that incredible?

Well, I am here to tell you it would not have been possible without net neutrality. At that time, Google had a competing product, Google Video, which was the standard at the time but was widely seen as inferior. If Google had been able to pay Comcast or Verizon or any of the others large amounts of money to make its Web site faster than YouTube's, YouTube would still be floundering over that pizzeria or most likely it would have ceased to exist at all. Fortunately, Google couldn't pay for priority access, and the rest is history.

What I am saying is, we take, and have taken, this equality that YouTube enjoyed--this basic fairness or neutrality--for granted in large part because that is how the Internet has always been. Unfortunately, many Members of the House have twisted this concept and are misleading the American public into believing that the government wants to take over the Internet. That is simply not true.

One Member of the House actually got up on the House floor and said this:

Over the last 10 years, over $500 billion--billion with a

``b''--of private investment has been made to develop

broadband throughout the country. This is without any kind of

taxpayer money.

He is wrong on that point, but let's put that aside for now. He went on to say:

This is private sector money being put into the marketplace

to go and create jobs, to go and create the kinds of

technologies that allow you to view and use all kinds of apps

that are available on these kinds of devices. That was done

without net neutrality. They would tell you that they need

net neutrality in order to have this innovation. Of course,

they fail to point out that net neutrality was not in place

when all this innovation happened.

Yes, it was; it was in place. That is the whole point. All of this innovation occurred while net neutrality was in place. We are not trying to change anything. We are keeping the Internet the way it has been during this explosion in innovation.

Now, my fervent hope is that this Member of Congress was just horribly, egregiously misinformed because not only is his statement untrue, it is the opposite of true. It is 180 degrees opposite of the truth.

Please, everyone understand this, I beg you. Net neutrality has been in place since the beginning of the Internet.

From the very beginning, during all of that explosive growth, the Internet operated with an understanding that network providers must treat all content the same and must interconnect the pipes they have to customers' homes with the pipes that are owned by other operators. This was a fundamental design principle that was established by academics, engineers, and computer scientists who designed the earliest protocols for Internet traffic.

The fact is, the Internet started and grew because everyone realized they needed to cooperate and work together for customers to be able to have access to the content they wanted. They realized that is what consumers needed to create demand for Internet service, and they realized that is what would lead to the most innovation on the Internet.

The FCC isn't trying to change that. It has no interest in derailing free enterprise. Quite the contrary. The FCC is interested in protecting the innovators and entrepreneurs who have made the Internet what it is today. Because of the Internet, you no longer need a major studio to like your film or a television show you produce in order to have people see it. You no longer need a major record deal to start distributing your music. You no longer need a high school diploma or a fancy degree to launch a small business and sell your products online. We don't want to change that. We want to preserve that.

The FCC's only goal is to make sure the Internet we know and love does not become corrupted and altered by a small number of large corporations controlling the last free and open distribution channel we have in this country.

As telecom companies have grown larger and fewer and started owning not just the pipes but also the content, their incentives have changed. They are starting to care more about giving their own content a competitive advantage rather than promoting innovation and competition on the Internet.

The fight for net neutrality isn't about changing the Internet, it is about creating a few rules of the road to keep it open and free, to keep it the same, and to continue the innovation and growth that is such a creator of jobs and wealth.

The fight for net neutrality is about making sure large corporations are not allowed to put tollbooths on the information superhighway. This fight is about making sure that the Internet stays the way it is--free, open, equal, available to everyone regardless of how much they can pay to get their content.

There was a time not so long ago when net neutrality was a bipartisan issue that was not incredibly controversial. Three years ago, Mike Huckabee was talking about the need to keep the Internet a level playing field. In 2006, 11 House Republicans voted in favor of net neutrality on the floor. Rarely do you have the Gun Owners of America and the Christian Coalition joining with moveon.org and the ACLU to advocate for the same policy of nondiscrimination on the Internet. But they all agree on net neutrality. And so do the Catholic bishops.

Later today, I will receive 87,000 letters opposing the House's effort to undo the FCC's open Internet rules. These letters came from Americans across the United States, including 2,000 letters from Minnesotans who are worried about this issue. They want the Internet to stay the way it is--open and free from corporate control.

I am confident as more Americans realize what is at stake, we will hear from more and more constituents who will ask us to protect them from corporate takeover of the Internet.

What is most striking about this issue, which seems to have gotten lost in the rhetoric that my opponents use, is that experts from Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Wells Fargo, and Raymond James have all stated they do not believe the FCC's current rules will hurt investment. Citibank has called the rule ``balanced'' and Goldman Sachs said it is ``a framework with a lot of wiggle room'' that is a ``light touch'' by the FCC. Despite this broad and diverse coalition of businesses and interest groups, we are still arguing about something that should have been settled long ago.

Why is that? A lot has changed in the last couple of years. Control of the Internet has been placed in the hands of a small number of players. Media consolidation has raised the stakes for certain mega conglomerates which have a lot more to gain in a world without net neutrality. I was last year on the Senate floor talking about net neutrality back in December when the NBC-Comcast merger had not yet been approved by the FCC or the Department of Justice. At the time, I warned this would be the first in a cascade of media consolidation deals. Wouldn't you know it, 2 months later, AT&T announced another record-breaking $39 billion deal with T-Mobile.

That merger, which Wall Street applauded, is almost assuredly going to be a raw deal for consumers. If approved, we will have a duopoly in wireless telecommunications in this country. Eighty percent of the wireless space will be controlled by two companies--AT&T and Verizon.

I look forward to the hearing next week in the Antitrust Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee so we can further explore the details of this deal. But I think it is fair to say I am very skeptical because it is likely to raise prices and it certainly will reduce choice for consumers. I have always been skeptical of media consolidation because at the end of the day, when corporations have tremendous amounts of power to control prices and cripple competitors to benefit their bottom line, everyone loses.

But the impact of media consolidation in telecommunications is about more than just consumer prices. We

have always known that large corporations have the power to influence elections. Last year, the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United took a situation that was already terrible and made it worse--much worse. Now AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, and Comcast can spend unlimited amounts of money to support the candidate or campaign they care most about or try to weaken or kill net neutrality. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that when a single corporation--in this case AT&T--spends $15.3 million in a single year to influence Congress and has 93 full-time lobbyists on its roster, Congress might churn out legislation that AT&T likes.

How can American consumers, stuck with rising cable, Internet, and cell phone bills, ever be expected to counter that type of lobbying power?

With media consolidation, we have seen a shift in the net neutrality talking points of Members of Congress who are also receiving large checks from Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast. Yet the irony here is that the open Internet rules passed by the FCC earlier this year are actually pretty weak and riddled with loopholes. Actually, I think that is the ``wiggle room'' to which Goldman Sachs was referring.

These rules are, let's be honest, a mediocre compromise drafted to appease a handful of powerful Internet service providers.

I was not happy with these rules and thought the FCC should have done more, particularly to cover wireless Internet networks. But it did not. It did not in part because the Commission wanted companies such as AT&T to get on board with its plan, and AT&T did--more or less. AT&T did not think the rules were ideal, but it acknowledged the framework is a compromise that gives its investors certainty.

That has not changed how the House is framing its rhetoric about this rule, which is one of the reasons I think the vote last month was a political stunt designed to misinform Americans and appease a small number of very vocal critics. This is not what most Americans, entrepreneurs, or small businesses want. They and I want a world where the future Twitters, eBays, and Amazons of the world can grow and thrive without interference from big, mega conglomerates.

Finally, regardless of how one feels about the FCC's rules, I think we can all agree this issue requires thoughtful debate and discussion, not the kind of uninformed rhetoric I quoted earlier from the House debate. By forcing an up-or-down vote through the Congressional Review Act, the House leadership short circuited the normal legislative process and ignored the FCC's work on this issue.

The FCC spent months examining this topic and meeting with tons of stakeholders and Internet companies. It carefully considered and compromised on a range of issues that I, frankly, wish they had not budged on. To claim that the FCC engaged in a power grab is unfair and far from the truth.

The White House has said the President will veto this resolution, but I will be working hard in the coming months to make sure that we have enough votes to stop this before it reaches the President's desk.

We are at a pivotal moment. If we do not act to preserve the FCC's open Internet rules, the Internet as we know it today may cease to exist. I hope my colleagues will recognize this and will join with me in voting down the House's resolution of disapproval.

Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.