Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, we are waiting for the two party conferences to conclude and for the majority leader to come to the floor and kind of talk about the path forward. Let me outline the pending business here.

We are now continuing the 30 hours mandated under cloture on the continuing funding resolution. Other Senators have come to the floor and spoken quite passionately about the budget that Senator Murray and Senator Sessions have worked on. I am eager to get to that discussion, too, because it will be about the fiscal funding for 2014 and the path ahead.

The way we get to the budget is to finish the bill I have pending. The methodology for getting to that is for yielding back the 30 hours. So if you want to get to the budget--which I really want to--let's yield back the time under the 30 hours. Right now it is scheduled to expire sometime after midnight. We can talk about talk, we can talk about bills, or we can actually move expeditiously to conclude the continuing funding resolution. Because, remember, when we finish our business on the continuing funding resolution, it must return to the House for them to say yea or nay to our substitute which we are sending back.

I know we are waiting for the leaders to come. We have had great cooperation on both sides of the aisle. I am very appreciative of the cooperation I have received within the Democratic caucus and the cooperation from the other side, which we too have done. But if you want to get to the budget, let's yield back time on the continuing funding resolution.

I know the Democratic leadership will be here momentarily and others are waiting for what the leader has to say. In the meantime, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I would be pleased to join my colleagues.

I thank the Senators for their comments and would be pleased to work with them on this important issue and ways to maintain a 50-State weatherization program.

The Senator is correct.

I object.

I object.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I want to bring my colleagues up to date on where we are. Right now the vice chairman of the committee, Senator Shelby, and I are in conversation on some possible agreements we could make on the outstanding amendments so we can get them down to a manageable list. We are waiting for his arrival. He was at the airport, and we have been in communication. Our conversations have been constructive. When Senator Shelby arrives, we look forward to perhaps presenting something to the Senate that will give us a clear path on specific amendments.

While we are waiting for that, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business about some very sad events that occurred in Maryland.

Madam President, over the weekend, we in Maryland were saddened by three separate yet poignant deaths.

CPT Sara Cullen, one of our very own--a wonderful woman who served in the U.S. military--died in Afghanistan. Kristina Quigley, a young woman who showed enormous promise, was killed in an awful bus crash. She was the lacrosse coach at Seton Hill. Also, someone beloved to so many of us, Larry Simns, was the head of the watermen's association. For those who are from different parts of the country, they are called fishermen's associations. For people who enjoy Maryland crabs and oysters, they are harvested by the men who sail the Chesapeake Bay in open waters. The head of their association was Larry Simns.

I wish to talk briefly about all three.

Honoring Our Armed Foreces

Captain Sara Knuston Cullen

Captain Cullen died on March 11 from a crash in a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter in the Kandahar Province in Afghanistan. It was during a training mission in a very heavy rain. She was assigned to headquarters and the combat aviation brigade. She was a wonderful woman with enormous promise. She was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. She graduated from West Point in 2007, and she got married very recently to another pilot, Chris Cullen.

I want to comment that we in Maryland mourn the loss of Captain Cullen. She was well known and well regarded here locally in Carroll County. She went to a school called Liberty High School. Isn't that a great name? She wanted to go to West Point. She was not nominated by me but by another member of the Maryland delegation. We try to share that responsibility in order to maximize our talent. I know the gentlelady from Hawaii does that as well. We have so much talent in Maryland, we don't want to waste one nomination, so we all work together.

By all accounts, Captain Cullen was on her way to being an outstanding officer with a deep commitment to her country. Friends and family of hers in Eldersburg, a community in Carroll County where she grew up, said she was dearly loved.

``She was always looking for the next adventure, the next challenge, and the next task to being a better person,'' said her best friend Katie Owens.

NATO told us of the crash last week, and I was mortified about this over the weekend. On behalf of all of Maryland, we want to extend our condolences to her husband, to her family, and to her parents, who obviously gave her a great home and saw to her education. It is a sad day when we lose somebody in Afghanistan, and it is a very sad day for those of us in Maryland.

Remembering Kristina Quigley

We also remember another wonderful woman by the name of Kristina Quigley. Kristina Quigley grew up in a community called Dundalk. Dundalk is a blue-collar suburb outside Baltimore City. She went to Dundalk High School and then to Duquesne and then, because she was a great athlete, she went on to a sports career in college at Duquesne and then fulfilled a dream of hers to be a coach.

On a road trip of the college women's lacrosse team, there was a terrible accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The bus went off the road and she was, obviously, sitting in a place where she received one of the first impacts. She was only 30 years old. She was married with a young child. She was 6 months pregnant at the time of the accident. Her unborn child perished as well.

This is very sad. There were many who were injured on this bus. Several were from Maryland who were also members of the team, and the assistant coach is also from Maryland. The assistant coach is from Baltimore. There were 23 students on board when this happened in Cumberland County. We are now awaiting details. We are now awaiting the investigation. But it is a very sad day when this promising young woman with the world ahead of her who, by all accounts, was not only an athlete who could teach athletics, but she was an inspirational leader. Girls and young women just loved her. Lacrosse is a tough sport to play. They were on their way to a great game. Seton Hill is a great Catholic college. There was excitement on the bus, anticipation, and we are sorry about this terrible tragedy.

Again, we extend our heartfelt condolences to her parents who live in Baltimore and to her husband who lives on the Seton Hill campus.

Remembering Larry Simns

In addition, because each one has a story, is my own pal and good friend Larry Simns. Larry Simns was a great Marylander. His official name was Lawrence Simns, Sr., and he passed away Thursday. He fathered three children. He had 5 stepchildren, 12 grandchildren, and 3 great- grandchildren. He was a friend to a host of people up and down the Chesapeake Bay. If you were involved in cleaning up the bay or

making sure the people who live alongside the bay had jobs, you knew Larry Simns. He was a true champion. For me, he was a wonderful adviser on how we could clean up the bay but ensure that our watermen could continue to work on the bay.

We have been plagued over the last several years with the declining of our species, including our crabs and our oysters. If we want to save them, it means rules and regulations. If my colleagues know our watermen, they know they are kind of like the Wild West guys who want to ride the range. They don't like rules and regulations. They are not rules and regulations kind of guys, but they also know we have to be able to save the species.

For decades Larry himself saw the bay's declining health: poor water quality, fewer fish and crabs, barren oyster reefs. Then he worked with me to help the watermen navigate through these tough environmental factors, tough economies, and stiff regulations. He did not have an easy job, but he approached it with such tenacity, such persistence, and in such a way where he spoke with humility about what God had given us, this spectacular Chesapeake Bay, and how we had to preserve it and the jobs. He became an unlikely spokesman because, he said: I am not much for words; you know me. We did know him and he spoke eloquently for these men and women.

I worked very hard with the watermen on how we could help them clean up the bay, along with Senator Cardin and the Members of the House delegation, and worked with our watermen and worked with our scientists studying the bay so we could make sure we could preserve the livelihoods and heritage of the bay and the men who work on it. Fortunately, working together, we were able to do many wonderful things. But we could only do it because Larry Simns was such a great advocate.

We are going to miss him. I just can't believe Larry will not be with us anymore. When I first came to the Senate--now over 20-some years ago--Larry was one of the first to reach out to me, to help me learn the ways of the watermen, learn what they were up against, including tough weather, harsh working conditions, escalating fuel prices, because our men and women go out on those waters using boats that consume diesel oil, and, again, the declining species. But working together, we were able to accomplish a lot.

So I wish to say to his family: Thank you for lending Larry to us, because he spent much time in government meetings, regulatory hearings, sitting with me at Fisherman's Inn or pulling the watermen together for a roundtable so we could talk things over to find a sensible center to preserve their jobs and still have the smart science and smart regulations. We want to thank Larry for all the time he put in, taking a very green Senator--and by green I don't mean only in the environmental sense but as a new Senator--and helping me learn the ways of the people because we want to preserve their way of life.

It is a sad day. It is a sad day for all of us. So when Memorial Day comes and the restaurants open and piles of Maryland crabs start coming in and the restaurants start serving the steamed crabs and so on, I just want to say this: Larry, wherever you are, whenever I pound the crab claw, I will be thinking of you and all you meant in terms of what we did to be able to create jobs, clean up the environment, and be able to keep our way of life going on the Chesapeake Bay.

The Presiding Officer can see we had three great Marylanders, each doing a very different thing. But what I am so proud of with Captain Cullen, Larry Simns, and Kristina Quigley is that each in their own way was trying to make a difference, one to protect America, the other to protect jobs and a way of life on the Chesapeake Bay, and the other to inspire young women not only to be ready for the playing fields of lacrosse but for the playing fields of life. All three in their own way were inspirational leaders. All three in their own way made a difference in the lives of the people I came in contact with. I wish to say God bless them and God treat them kindly and may their souls rest in peace.

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

Mr. President, I rise to ask all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote for cloture on the Senate bill. I want to say to my colleagues, we have come very far on this bill, and as of Thursday we had 126 amendments. I love the Senate. We love to talk, and we love to amend. Everyone has, in many instances, outstanding ideas to improve the bill. We are now at the point where we have dueling amendments. We have matters of policy to discuss, but we are now at the point where the bill must come to a close, and that is why we proposed this limited number of amendments. Some of my colleagues have amendments on the issue related to flexibility.

If I could ask the Senator from Kansas a question, it is not that we dispute what the Air Force is going to face or what our poultry farmers are going to face. Both sides of the aisle--whether it is Blunt of Missouri, Isakson of Georgia, Pryor or Boozman of Arkansas, or Mikulski and Cardin of Maryland, chicken is the mainstay of our eastern shore. We are all facing this.

In my original underlying bill, I had a 1-percent transfer authority subject to the approval of Congress that would have solved all of these problems. It was the other Chamber--and even those on the other side of the aisle--that insisted I remove that from this bill. For all of those who wanted flexibility, I wanted to fix it. We could not fix it. Believe me, I wanted to fix it. Each and every one of these individual amendments has merit in and of itself.

We are now at the point where we have to decide whether we want the Senate bill to stand and be voted on with further amendments subject to the Parliamentarian determining what is germane and therefore eligible for consideration or do we want the House bill? It is as simple as that.

We have come so far. I want to thank the vice chairman, Senator Shelby, his staff, and all the clerks on the other side of the aisle for working so assiduously.

We have to decide: Do we want to make the perfect the enemy of the good? Do we want to have a bill that substantially improves the House bill? It does not accomplish every objective we want, but, in fact, does do several things.

No. 1, it would avoid a government shutdown. Say what, Senator Mikulski? Avoid a government shutdown? We could show that we could actually govern and that we could actually pass a bill that I believe the House will accept as well. Hallelujah. That in and of itself would be a major accomplishment. We would have taken the House bill and we would have made substantial improvements that I think both sides of the aisle agree are important. We could get that done. The question is: Can both sides of this Chamber take yes for an answer? If we take yes for an answer, again, we avoid a government shutdown. We will show we can govern and make substantial improvements not only in the areas of defense and national security, but in other areas where people protect us, such as border control and food safety. Do we get what we want? No. But we do get a bill that we can feel has made a major accomplishment.

I could go through this item by item. I have a speech that would take me 20 minutes to go through. I am not going to go through it. What I am going to say to my colleagues is: Both sides of the aisle have worked together for the common good in such areas as the security of our country, meeting compelling human needs, and investments in research and technology. I think we ought to say yes and vote to move to cloture on the Senate bill.

Mr. President, I want to follow up.

To be clear, the first vote is on the cloture for the Senate bill. If this vote on cloture fails, we will go to the House bill. We have two choices tonight; we have two paths which we can go down. We can go down the Senate path, which is bipartisan in its approach. It is a good and solid bill, but if it goes down, we will immediately go to cloture on the House bill. If that passes, then essentially everything that we as U.S. Senators have worked on will be rubberstamping what the House sent us. So the path and choice are ours.

I intend to vote aye on the Senate bill and I urge all of my colleagues on this side of the aisle to follow my lead. I know Senator Shelby feels the same about it.

Madam President, what a wonderful speech. I am proud to serve with Senator McCain. America has so few heroes. America needs all the heroes we can get, and people whom we can identify with--not comic book figures wearing weird costumes. There are men and women who put themselves in harm's way and do daring and dashing things for the good of other people, and it is just an honor. We have our dustups, but that is part of the fun.

I just want to salute Senator McCain in the warmest and most sincere way. God bless Senator McCain, and we wish him good health--and even a good voice and occasionally a good amendment. Again, it is an honor.

If I might speak to the Republican leader, I am so glad Senator McConnell did this today because I think we need to take a pause to understand why we are in it together, why we should respect each other, work with each other, and take a moment or two to recall a great story about a great hero.

I thank the Senator.

Madam President, I have a unanimous consent request that I understand has been cleared on both sides of the aisle.

I ask unanimous consent that it now be in order for Senator Coburn to call up his amendment numbered 66; that there be 60 minutes equally divided in the usual form for debate on the Harkin and Coburn amendments to run concurrently; and that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the Harkin and Coburn amendments in the order offered; that there be no amendments in order to either amendment prior to the votes; and both amendments to be subject to a 60-affirmative-vote threshold.

Madam President, I note that the Senator from Oklahoma is on the floor.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Coburn amendment. I am not going to go into the process of wanting to keep the bill as free of amendments as possible which has been something the House has requested us to do. This is the continuing resolution. It is not the authorization legislation and so on. We have to get this funded for the rest of the fiscal year 2013.

I wish to comment about the Senator from Oklahoma in that he is often on to something very good. Sometimes we are so worried about clinging to party positions we don't listen to one another. He has been a big help to me on my Commerce-Justice-Science bill, where we uncovered just ridiculous catering situations, and we had a very good amendment one time that addressed an agency paying $4 for each meatball at some reception. I mean, truly folly, truly stupidity. So at this time, whether it is big government or small government but smart government, we do have to have a sense of frugality.

However, I will come back to this: The Coburn amendment would propose a hiring freeze on all Federal employees except those deemed essential.

In late February, OMB issued guidance instructing agencies to apply increased scrutiny to areas such as new hiring and to ensure that such actions were taken only when vital to carrying out the agency's mission as a result of the uncertainty in terms of agencies facing a possible government shutdown on March 27 and the Draconian sword of sequester that is already underway. The Coburn amendment would force agencies to rely on contracting out functions the Federal Government should be handling or that are more expensive to outsource simply because they are not allowed to hire necessary staff.

We can debate essentials, but we are not going to do that this morning. What is an essential Federal employee? I have close to 300 people working as Federal prison guards in Garrett County this morning. They have increasingly violent prisons. We are increasingly overcrowded because of the skimpy funding that even I and the Justice Department have to put into the prisons. We had a prison guard killed just a few weeks ago in our neighboring State of Pennsylvania.

In any organization, whether it is a Federal agency or Microsoft, there might be a position we don't want or need or when we hear about it, it seems to have no value. Let's take the travel specialist. I am not standing here with a manual of all the civil service jobs, but here is what I think a travel specialist does.

The Department of HHS has to travel, whether it is the CDC, whether it is NIH. They are involved with other agencies in other parts of the country and they are involved with counterparts in other parts of the world. They have to get the best deal when they travel. How many of us, when we have tried to book an airline--booking an airline is similar to commodity trading; one day it is this, one minute it is that if I call Delta. Maybe American is going the way I want to go, but they only land at 7:17, when I have to be there at 12:14. So it is akin to being a commodity trader. Should Sebelius be doing that on her own? I don't think so. Should the head of CDC be doing that? No. They need a travel specialist who knows how to work it and maybe, in the long run, provide safe travel.

I support the direction the Senator is going in. He told me something I didn't know about, where some of these VA international conferences take over 50 people, for which I don't know what more than 50 people would do. So he is on the right track with many things. I think we have to be very careful when we are dealing with the entire civil service-- millions of people, 2 million people who work for the Federal Government--and put a freeze on them. Some Federal agencies have had a hiring freeze for some time. The Department of Defense is already under a civilian hiring freeze.

It is important to recognize a hiring freeze would only have limited savings. A hiring freeze does not solve these problems, and it is just one more blow to a battered civil service. Remember, we have had civil service pay freezes in effect. So we have now frozen their pay for several years. They are facing increased costs in their pension program and now they are going to face furlough, and then we are going to tell them we don't think a lot of you are essential.

I come back to what I said a few days ago. If we are going to have a democratic government, we need to have an independent civil service. We might not always like what they do. We might not like every position that is in an agency. We need a civil service that goes beyond party, goes beyond the administration, and performs their jobs based on educational qualification and a skill set, and one that is meritocracy based. We then can focus on making sure we have the best civil service in the world so we can point to what a real civil service is; thereby, encouraging new, emerging democracies to be able to follow our lead.

I hope we do not accept the Coburn amendment. I hope if we are going to talk about the size of the government, we should do that next week on the budget bill.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I will not, I just want to seek clarification from the Senator from Texas. About how long will the Senator seek recognition?

That is more than agreeable. We know the topic and we are anxious to hear it.

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

Madam President, I want to tell my colleagues and anyone watching that just because Senators are not speaking on the Senate floor doesn't mean nothing is going on. I am incredibly impressed by the cooperation on both sides of the aisle as we try to get a finite list of amendments, as well as the proper sequence of those amendments in order to complete the business of moving to the continuing resolution. So there is a lot going on in other offices. These are not back rooms; they are not deal cutting. This is the workman-like way a parliamentary democratic institution does business.

There are Senators who have ideas to improve the bill. Senator Shelby and I think our bill needs no improvement. We think we ought to just move to it, do it, send it to the House, and avoid any kind of gridlock of a government shutdown. However, Senators do have the right to offer amendments, and they have now offered their amendments. People are scrutinizing the amendments to make sure they understand the policy consequences and also that we don't have unintended consequences. Although it looks as though there is no debate going on here on the floor, there is a lot of discussion going on in Member offices. We hope that in a very short time we will be able to move to amendments so we can discuss and dispose of those amendments in a way that satisfies both parties.

I just wanted people to know that. When we talk to folks back home, they say: I watch C-SPAN, all I hear is Senators' names called out in alphabetical order. They also may know that there might not be an official hearing going on, though we do know some are going on today. I just wanted to talk about some of what is going on and that this is part of the process. This is a big bill, and I hope that a big bill-- one that includes every aspect of the Federal

funding--is not done this way in fiscal 2014. I want to continue the cooperation that has begun between Senator Shelby and myself and the mutual leadership. For the funding bills, we wish to move them in a regular order.

For instance, the two biggest departments are the Department of Defense and Labor, Education, Health and Human Services. We want to go through them and look at what is the appropriate funding level and is there any way we are going to achieve more frugality and more value.

The Senator from Oklahoma is on the floor, and he is my red-team guy. He often takes a look at the bill and has pointed out some things that cause heartburn. This is the way a democracy should work. I want to get back to a regular order where we know what we are doing and the American public understands what we are doing.

We are moving expeditiously. I would dearly love to be able to bring this bill to a closure tonight. I am not sure it is possible. That is why we are scrutinizing and scrubbing these amendments now. We cannot proceed to any other amendments until we see the whole package and look at the best way to organize it and sequence it.

I wanted to share this with my colleagues who are watching from their offices and committee rooms.

I yield the floor.

The CR is on the floor. Does the Senator wish to speak in morning business?

How long does the Senator wish to speak?

It could be.

Madam President, I note the absence of a quorum so we can discuss how we are going to proceed on the debate.

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

Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that the pending Inhofe amendment, No. 29, as modified, be agreed to; and that upon disposition of the Inhofe amendment, Senator Toomey or his designee be recognized to call up amendment No. 115.

Mr. President, we note the Senator from Pennsylvania is coming to offer his amendment. While we are waiting for him to get ready to proceed, I would like to thank Senator Inhofe, Senator Boxer, and all who worked on a satisfactory resolution of the Inhofe amendment. It shows if the Senate takes a minute or two, keeps its powder dry and sticks to the issues, we can move this bill forward.

We now look forward to a discussion on Toomey No. 115. I note the Senator from Pennsylvania is on the floor to offer his amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Landrieu and myself, I object to the Senator's request.

Mr. President, before we proceed to debate on the Toomey amendment, I say to my colleague from Ohio that his strong advocacy for working people is appreciated. From the standpoint of discussion, the Senator has some excellent ideas, and I hope he and the Senator who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee can talk about how we can reach some type of consensus to generate jobs, retain the integrity of a professional workforce, and keep our economy going. I salute him for the work he does every day in that area.

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

Mr. President, I rise to speak on the Toomey amendment.

I want to reiterate what my colleague from Illinois said about this amendment. Senator Durbin chairs the Subcommittee on Defense. He recently took this over with the passing of Senator Dan Inouye. Senator Dick Durbin has now assumed the Chair. It is a committee we are now looking at funding.

I too have met with the Department of Defense--whether it was Secretary Hagel, Deputy Secretary Ash Carter. I have talked things over with General Dempsey. When they talk about what are the big-buck expenditures in defense--is it guns? Is it bullets? Is it body armor? Is it tanks or planes? The exploding costs are in the area of military personnel. We have to pay our people, so we agree with that. Then there is the issue of providing health care. Wow, after a 10-year war where we have asked too much from too few for too long, people are coming back with the permanent wounds of war. All are coming back with the permanent impact of war. Health care problems are showing up among them. But to my surprise--I was not surprised about that--I was surprised that one of the largest expenditures in DOD is energy. I already knew that DOD is the Federal Government's largest energy consumer and that the Congressional Research Service notes that since early 1990, the cost of buying fuel has increased faster than any other DOD budget category. Isn't that a surprise, that it is increasing faster than health care? I actually believed health care would be the fastest because of what our troops and their families have endured. But it is the fastest growing category.

Some numbers. I know a lot of our colleagues are numbers people. Between fiscal years 2005 and 2011, the Department's petroleum use actually went down. Their use of petroleum went down by 4 percent. You would think their costs went down. But guess what. Their spending on petroleum rose 381 percent in that same period. What an amazing number. When your use goes down but your cost goes up 381 percent, it is time to take a new look and begin to find new ways to deal with this challenge. Our Department of Defense went right to work.

DOD tells us that for every 25-cent increase in the price of a gallon of oil, the Federal Government and DOD incur over $1 billion in additional fuel costs. Every time a gallon of oil goes up 25 cents, the Federal Government ends up spending $1 billion more at only DOD. That is $1 billion that could go a long way in either making sure we have modern weapons or for our returning troops--and they are returning--to have the health care they need.

We need to modernize the military. Senator McCain has challenged us. We need to make sure we don't hollow out the military.

We need to make sure we address the new emerging threats not only in geographic areas but in cyber space. I am on the Select Committee on Intelligence. Those cyber threats are eye-popping when you study the issue.

We need to do something about our cost of fuel. The Navy had planned to spend close to $200 million on advanced biofuels between fiscal year 2009 and 2012. The $60 million we are talking about is a small fraction of the Navy's annual cost for petroleum-based fuel--approximately $4.5 billion in fiscal year 2011.

Secretary of the Navy Mabus has talked about how energy security is a growing national security issue not only for our country but also specifically for the DOD. What is the answer to that? We have to be able to look at funding for the advanced biofuel program. As Senator Durbin said, the Senate has already voted twice in support of DOD's biofuels programs. The Department continues to spend money in fiscal 2012 for biofuels. The fiscal 2013 year will maintain funding to pursue the program in future years.

I hope we understand what are the real costs facing the Department of Defense. Just because you do not like a program--let's look at these programs in terms of the challenges facing our military. We think the challenge facing our military is terrorism, and it is al-Qaida. Gosh, when one thinks about those marines up there, as we speak, in the mountains of Afghanistan, it just gives you chills. When they are up there fighting for us, they need to have resources. They need to have the weapons, they need to have the armor to protect themselves, but they also need to have the fuel to get around. As Senator Durbin said, they are often incredibly at risk because they are riding over roads loaded with these mines. We have come a long way in learning how to deal with IEDs, but the hurt locker continues to exist. We have to do something to protect our military, protect those in the military who support the frontline troops. That means they need to have the fuel on which the DOD will continue to run.

We need to look for alternative sources. The policy is a good one. I think the amendment of Senator

Toomey is well intentioned, to fund operations and maintenance, but operations and maintenance is really also having the right fuel, which means we have to develop alternatives to what we have now.

I wanted to comment on this. As I have taken over the chair of the full committee, I have learned a lot more about the funding of the Department of Defense and the challenges they face. The more we scrutinize it, some of the really big-buck expenditures that support the troops are not visible in the public eye, but they are visible as we look at our expenditures.

We need to support our military, and we need to do it not only in the way we are supporting them today, but to have the new technologies for the kind of support they will need in the future.

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

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

Mr. President, that also takes me to the fact that there are these growing issues in the area of health care that we need to take a look at. There are a variety of challenges facing the Department of Defense that we need to look at and address, but let's do it through the regular order, through our appropriate authorizing committee, and through our appropriate Appropriations Committee.

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

Mr. President, to my colleague and friend from Illinois, through you, I also express my condolences to the Athens family. Andy was a good friend to me. We had such a warm, cordial, affectionate relationship. But he made that easy because of the kind of man he was--a real entrepreneur in that immigrant sense, starting with very little and really creating a business. But along the way, he not only built a business, he raised a family and he built a community. And I enjoyed so much working with him on the issues.

Yes, we did work on Cyprus, the fact that Cyprus is yet to be unified and is still occupied in northern Cyprus. But was the Senator from Illinois aware of his work in creating health services in Russia and in the Orthodox community there--he was like a one-man NGO in

what he did. Was the Senator aware of that?

I am going to put that in neon here this evening, yes.

What did he pass away from?

Absolutely. I am so pleased, if I may comment, that the Senator brought this to the attention of the full Senate. I will submit my own statement. We would welcome to know how to get in touch with the Athens family. But let me say it to the Senator.

Mr. President, I know we are going to go out. I thank the majority leader for his kind words. I assure the leader and the Republican leader that the staffs on the Appropriations Committee will be working once again through another weekend to scrutinize these amendments.

We now have 99 amendments pending. In order to properly advise the Senate and to ensure that they would get good scrutiny from both a budgetary standpoint and policy, to be able to consult with one another, it requires us working through the weekend. We are ready to do it. We worked last weekend. Senator Shelby and I were in frequent contact. We were in frequent contact with our House counterparts, Congressman Rogers and Congresswoman Nita, who graciously made themselves available to get their view on their lay of the land. So we will do it again.

Every Senator has a right to offer amendments. Every Senator has a right to have his or her day. But I would hope they wouldn't do it all on this amendment or all on this bill.

This is the continuing funding resolution. We have worked with such diligence and such a sense of cooperation and bipartisanship. Our goal is to get the Federal Government funded through the fiscal year October 1 to avoid a government shutdown. This isn't a Barbara Mikulski threat. We have a due date on March 27, when it expires. Congress leaves for the Easter-Passover break next Friday, March 22.

So I would say to my colleagues, now that we have the amendments, we will do our due diligence, and Senators will know our analysis and their own respective staff's analysis.

So on Monday, once again, on the floor will be Shelby-Mikulski, Mikulski-Shelby. We will be ready to move amendments. We need our colleagues ready to move on their own amendments and to cooperate with us on offering them, debating them, and putting them in the sequence that has the greatest leverage to get the job done.

I really can't say enough about the help I have gotten from Senator Shelby, my vice chairman, the distinguished Senator from Alabama, his staff, and the cooperation we have received from the minority. This is not the usual slamdown party politics. This is a big bill. It is the funding for the government of the United States. There is a lot of pent-up desire to participate in policymaking. Let's keep it not to what we would like to do, but let's keep it to what we must do. What we would like to do can come on the budget next week and can come as we bring up individual bills, where we can really dive deep into the issues and policies and the funding. So let's do what we can.

I would hope that on Monday Senators come ready to really wrap it up because we would have liked to have sent our bill to the House at noon today. Well, it didn't work out that way. So we are ready to do business. We are ready to get the job done. We would love to get this job done Monday night, if we could.

Mr. President, I again thank everyone. I also thank our staffs on both sides of the aisle who have been working so assiduously for the last several weeks to get this bill ready to present to the Senate on the floor and for what they will continue to do to help us do our jobs.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, thanks to the cordiality and cooperation of Members on both sides of the aisle, but particularly those who initially had an objection to us going forward, we now can move forward. We are waiting for the junior Senator from Texas, Mr. Cruz, to come to the floor. He will be offering the first amendment. As soon as he gets here, we are off and running.

I am going to thank everybody for getting us to this point: Senator Shelby for working with me on the bill, Senators Reid and McConnell, and particularly now Senators McCain and Coburn. We have a way of addressing their concerns. So we are ready. We are waiting for the Senator.

I note the absence of a quorum.

Weird?

Madam President, as the manager of the bill, I thought we were going to--of course Senator Cruz has offered his amendment--but we were going to rotate speakers from the Democrats and Republicans. There was no agreement to do roundrobin here, where the Senator from Texas would yield to the Senator from Utah. I think there is some confusion. I wish to follow the traditional regular order, where the Senator from Texas, the proponent of the amendment, has full and ample time; then other Senators respond, and then Senator Lee. I am not going to make a scene, but that is the way we usually do it.

Has the Senator from Texas concluded his remarks?

And for the Senator from Utah, we all have scheduling issues. What we would want to do is make sure everybody has their say. If the Senator from Utah has a statement he wishes to put into the Record or wishes to return, we welcome him back. We in no way want to impede his ability to speak.

Madam President, we will be alternating on both sides of the aisle. I regret Senator Lee had to leave, and we welcome those who support the Cruz amendment to speak before we have to take a break.

I have to go to a meeting with Senator Reid and other members of the committee at 12:30 p.m. We ask those who have views on this to come forward and speak. I do have some comments on the Cruz amendment.

First of all, we welcome Senator Cruz. He is the new Senator from Texas. He replaced a very dear friend, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Senator Hutchison and I were close friends and we usually agreed on goals, but there were times we didn't agree on methods. With Senator Cruz we agree that we do need a job-creating strategy. We know we need to promote economic growth in whatever we do and even follow the physician's adage of ``do no harm.'' That is why I absolutely disagree with the Senator's amendment. The very things he wants to accomplish and his underlying premise--though obviously well argued from his view in a persuasive way--I totally disagree with.

First of all, let's talk about what the Cruz amendment does. It prohibits discretionary funds from being used for the Affordable Care Act. It is affectionately known by some of us as ObamaCare, because Obama does care. So the Cruz amendment would prevent the Department of Health and Human Services from implementing the Affordable Care Act. This would mean the staff, for example, CMS, could not issue or enforce regulations on insurance abuse practices, such as gender discrimination. Quality reforms that improve the care that everybody does and actually lowers cost would also be affected. For example, Johns Hopkins lung transplants were cited as one study--Madam President, I could go on, but if the Senator from Utah is ready to speak, I will yield the floor. We were alternating, so it is actually the Senator's turn.

Madam President, as robust as my remarks would be, I will yield to give the Senator from Utah his rightful chance to speak.

Madam President, I rise to speak on the Cruz amendment. I am glad Senator Lee had a chance to speak.

As I said, the Cruz amendment would prevent the Department of Health and Human Services from implementing funding for the discretionary spending aspects of the Affordable Care Act. Since the Presiding Officer knows the Affordable Care Act so well and played a major part in it when she was a Member of the House of Representatives, she knows this amendment would have disastrous consequences. It would essentially defund the Affordable Care Act. They call it ObamaCare. I call it ObamaCare. As I said earlier, Obama does care, and that is why we passed the legislation in the first place.

The Cruz amendment means that CMS couldn't do their job to, for example, issue regulations on ending gender discrimination. It has been said that there are all these pages of regulation. But why should we pay more for health insurance than men of comparable age and health status--as much as 50 percent more?

The Affordable Care Act also ends discrimination on the basis of preexisting conditions. As the Presiding Officer knows, in eight States women were denied health insurance because domestic violence was deemed a preexisting condition. They were battered in their own home, and then they were battered by their insurance agency. What are we doing here? This is not where we are going.

Excuse me. I promised I wouldn't try to incite; I would try more to inspire. But I feel very strongly and passionately that the Cruz amendment should not pass. It should not pass.

I wish to speak to what the Senator said about economic growth. He said he is for economic growth. I want to be on that list. He is a progrowth Senator. I want to be on that list too. I think it is a committee of 100. What I want him to know is that without a form of health care that provides universal access but insisting on delivery models of reform, we will have a catastrophe and not only in an earned benefit program such as Medicare. What happens is if people don't have health insurance, it gets shifted onto other people who do have health insurance and the employers who have the generosity and wherewithal to pay for it.

So if we want to be for economic growth, the first thing we need to do is clean up our own act here. This is what we need to do here. The politics of brinkmanship, ultimatum politicians, shut down, show down, and slam down must end. That is what we are trying to do here. What we are trying to do is move legislation so there is no government shutdown.

Businesses don't invest in creating jobs because they don't have certainty. They don't have reliability. Where is the Federal Government going? What is it going to do? How is it going to get its act together so businesses can invest, whether it is in their own employees or perhaps bringing money back home from overseas, legally earned profits, to put into infrastructure? So if a person is progrowth, they want to have health insurance.

The two costs business cannot control are the cost of health care and the cost of energy. We can control the impact on reforming the cost of health care through ObamaCare. Why do I say that? First of all, if a person doesn't have health insurance, they get sick and go to the emergency room. Do my colleagues know what the average cost of an emergency room visit is? It is $1,000. Do my colleagues know what a primary care doctor gets? He gets $40. Now, what is wrong with that picture? He gets $40, not $400, by the time all of it is taken out.

I wish to bring to the attention of my colleagues a fantastic documentary that was on CNN on Sunday night. It was called ``Escape Fire.'' It was a complete 2-hour documentary from CNN, not some lefty think tank or nothing like the Institute of Medicine. This was a CNN documentary on the cost of health care and how the system we have now increases costs but does not increase or improve health outcomes.

I am not going to argue all those dynamics here today, but if we really want to lower the cost of health care, we want to have President Obama and our Affordable Care Act. This is what businesses want. What they don't want is cost-shifting. Because some people don't have it or because they got it too late in their own situation, the cost is actually greater.

The other side has talked about small business. Senator Cruz just told this wonderful story about his father--a Cuban refugee, essentially--who came to this country. Because he couldn't speak English, he took a job where it wasn't required, washing dishes. And then here we go, one generation later, Senator Cruz is a Senator. I think that is a wonderful personal story. He then went on to talk about business.

His story is a lot like my own family's story. We came from Poland. When we came from Poland, it was not because we were rich; we came because we thought that Lady Liberty and her shining light really meant something. My family started small businesses. My grandmother ran one of the best Polish bakeries in Baltimore. My father had a small grocery store. Because of a large family, he left school in the eighth grade, but through his own grit and determination, with my mother at his side, he served a community. Over 700 people came to my father's funeral because they loved him as much, in their own way, as we did. My father, through his grit, determination, and working--the same as Senator Cruz's father--my father worked 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. He sent his three daughters to college to be sure they had an education in post-high school.

He wanted to have health care. My father was crazy about Social Security and BlueCross and BlueShield. My father couldn't get on Social Security until the 1950s because small business was excluded. The reason he liked Social Security was that he worried about my mother and he worried about his girls. He was worried that if he died, would his own insurance--my father had insurance. My father was a planner and a provider--a planner and a provider--but he worried about whether that would be enough to take care of us. So when he was eligible for Social Security, he said: I will pay my fair share so if anything happens, fine, and if nothing happens, I am glad to pay my fair share.

As a small businessman, he didn't have access to big markets, but through the Maryland Grocers Association--again, in the 1950s--he could come in on BlueCross and BlueShield. He wanted health insurance for himself, for my mother, for his daughters, and, if he could, for the few people who worked for him because he knew that people were one financial bankruptcy away if a big illness happened.

What my father faced in the 1950s America is facing now in 2013.

So what does ObamaCare do? It improves access for 35 million Americans who are without health insurance. It ends the punitive practices of insurance companies, one of which is gender discrimination. The other is the preexisting condition denials. It also strengthens Medicare in a way that actually reduces health costs. Data has been released in the last several days that actually shows health care costs are going down, and it is not because of the recession. It is because our reforms

are going into effect, such as the famous Pronovost checklist developed at Johns Hopkins University that was quoted in another study: If we wash our hands and take care of certain things in the OR, we won't get an infection. And if we don't get infections, we don't stay in the hospital longer than necessary.

I chaired the quality initiatives committee that examined how we could, through improvements in quality, not only save lives but would it save money, and the answer was a resounding yes. I didn't make that up.

They said: Mikulski, you are a social worker. What do you know about delivering health care?

It wasn't my idea. I went to learned societies, such as the Institute of Medicine, that said to err is human, but it is also costly. I am not talking about the medical malpractice stuff--infections, returning admissions to hospitals within 10 days or 30 days because of the way people are often discharged, the issue of prevention.

I am the author of the so-called preventive amendment that went into the health care bill.

What was that all about? It meant that early detection and screenings save lives--early detection and screenings save lives. That means if you get your mammogram, if you get your PSA test for a man, you are more likely to find it.

But it is not only for that dread, awful ``C'' word. Let's take a ``D'' word: diabetes. A lot of people walk around and do not know they have diabetes or high blood pressure. Both are silent killers. They can result in strokes or death. If you have undetected diabetes, it can kill you through a coma and other things, but it can also kill you slowly. The consequences of prolonged diabetes can result in the loss of eyesight, the loss of a kidney, diabetic myopathy, where you cannot walk. And if you come in so late, you are often--rather than facing an amputation, wouldn't it have been better to find it 10 years before and get you into the right program, with the right diabetic educator, to make sure we not only control your diabetes but we are not paying for amputations, which is a heartbreak for the family and the person and a budget buster to us?

This is what prevention is all about. It is not some gooshy-pooh thing. It is not like a slogan on a cereal box. This is the real deal. If you find certain of these chronic conditions sooner, you can manage their escalation. That helps the family and the patient. It also helps control our costs.

This is what we are talking about. This is why we care so much. And for women, we were helped through this bill, dealing with gender discrimination, preexisting conditions. Children were helped. And now, right now--because ObamaCare is not fully implemented--it stops insurance companies from denying families health insurance or charging sky-high premiums because their child has a preexisting condition.

What are we talking about here? We are talking about autism. We are talking about type 1 diabetes. We are talking about even children who have arthritis.

The other day I had such a poignant thing happen. I was dashing to the elevator, and there was a family with a young lady, a young girl about my height, but about--well, she was 13 and a tween. When they showed me their picture of the last time we met, that tween, that young lady, was in a wheelchair. We do not think of someone around 11 or 9 having arthritis, but she does. This is going to be a chronic condition with this young lady. But through the work of NIH, other great research, and working with a biologic that was used for other medical issues but allowed under FDA to work with her, under very strictly controlled conditions, with parental consent, of course, this young lady stood next to me. We laughed and we joked, back to back, because the little girl that was in the wheelchair is now a tween, and she is a lot taller than I am. We had a good laugh. But I will tell you, when I got on that elevator I had a good cry, and I was so emotional about it, I even feel it today.

What are we doing here? Don't we want to give this little girl a break? When her mother and father applied for health insurance, do we want the schoolmarmish no--the nos of the insurance company saying: No, that kid has arthritis. We cannot insure you.

That kid does have arthritis, but she is walking today. She is standing proud with her mother and father, joking with a U.S. Senator, doing well in school. Isn't that what we want for our country and for our young people? Why would we want to repeal legislation that does that?

I could talk a lot about this bill. I feel so strongly about the incredible infrastructure we have in our United States--NIH, academic centers of excellence, learned societies from IOM to the American Academy of Pediatrics that have advised us along the way--all of us working together. The biologic was developed by the private sector--the private sector--working with doctors, working with FDA, to say: Can we try an off-label that meets all the ethical things where children are involved?

We did it, and look at the story. That is just one story. We are a country of 300 million people. That story is being acted out every single day, and it is being acted out right now in the ER. If you came to the ER with me at Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland, at Mercy Hospital, are there people who are there from trauma? Yes. Are there people there who were in an automobile accident? Yes. I was there 3 years ago myself with a fall coming out of church. Yes. But over 70 percent who are there are there because they do not have health insurance. And they are using a thousand dollars a visit being in there. What kind of system is that?

So if we repeal the President's Affordable Care Act, the consequences on families, the consequences on business, will be horrific. We are simply shifting the cost rather than solving the problem.

Are there reforms necessary? Yes. Do the Senators from Texas and Utah, who spoke, offer suggestions? Yes. But let's let ObamaCare go forward. Let's evaluate, let's do due diligence, and let's do oversight and make sure health reforms we have instituted are working, but do not repeal it. We will endanger lives, and we will endanger our economy.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time until 2 p.m. be equally divided between Senator Cruz and myself or our designees; that at 2 p.m. the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the Cruz amendment; that there be no amendments in order to the Cruz amendment prior to the vote; further, that upon the disposition of the Cruz amendment, the next amendment in order be an amendment offered by Senator Harkin relative to Labor-HHS appropriations.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time in the quorum call be equally divided.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, could we just have quiet. We are going to have our first vote on this bill.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Madam President, I wish to speak on the bill and comment on the amendment.

First of all, I want to say to the Senator from Iowa how much I admire him and the fantastic job he has done on behalf of the poor, people who didn't have health care, and the disabled people who had no voice in Washington. I want the Senator to know I am so sorry he is retiring. I really am. The Senator is neither shy nor retiring in the leadership role he played and the very pragmatic solutions he came up with over the years.

If I may ask, how long has the Senator chaired the subcommittee on Labor-HHS?

The Senator is correct. If I might comment back, we sound like two war horses at the VFW Hall. The next thing, if it wasn't prohibited, we would be doing shooters on the Senate floor.

This would be, in 2014, essentially the Senator's diamond jubilee, 25 years.

We could exchange a lot of things about diamonds, but that would be quite a benchmark.

This is what I am going to say: What we would like to do is return to regular order where the Senator could have brought his bill to the floor all by itself--not in the midst of a threat of a showdown, shutdown, lockdown. He could have brought it up with his ranking member. Now you have the Senator from Kansas, Mr. Moran, and we have open, public debate, transparent, going through category after category: education, special education, funding for the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Labor, all of those things.

The Senator's subcommittee is one of the most robust, other than defense, and second in size in expenditure. It funds the entire Department of Labor, the entire Department of Education, and the entire Department of Health and Human Services. Under that, there are spectacular agencies and independent agencies, such as the Social Security Administration, which is literally headquartered in my hometown of Baltimore.

It has, I would say, 40 percent of the domestic expenditures which meet compelling human need. It also funds the kinds of programs we need for the workforce of the future and our research of the future.

The Senator deserves to have his day. Anyone who wishes to analyze it, scrutinize it, amend it, improve it from both sides of the aisle should do this.

I say to my colleague, what I want to do is get this bill through this Senate, working with my colleague Senator Shelby, who has been my ranking member over the years and who is so well versed on the agreement. Essentially, the ideal situation would have been regular order where we would have passed our bills before October 1. You could have been on the Senate floor.

Now we are in something called a continuing resolution where the entire Federal Government is in one package. Everybody is trying to parse it, understand it, and they should. This is not the way to govern. We shouldn't be threatened with these deadlines and kind of an ultimatum-type situation.

We are going to try to do the best we can. The Senator has made his point and done it robustly. He produced a great bill, along with Senator Shelby, in terms of coming out of the subcommittee, and then fashioned it. It is not only great on content, policy, but it has the sense of receiving value for the dollar as well and keeps an eye on that.

At the same time, we were able to fashion a bipartisan agreement, but you couldn't move the bill. Here we are now into this larger issue. My job is to get this bill through the Senate, working with Senator Shelby. This is our job.

I am going to say to Senator Harkin and to all Members on both sides of the aisle, we need to get back to regular order. We can't be doing big bills nobody understands, that everybody is suspicious of. We need to be able to do this the way the founders of the Appropriations Committee wanted us to, committee by committee, out in the open, with full and open debate where we could focus on the content. When we bring Commerce-Justice-Science, we can focus on the Justice Department, focus on Federal law enforcement, and focus on science programs.

We can look at Labor-HHS, which has such an enormous labor impact on our economy and an impact on the future of our economy. Remember, research and development, the workforce of the future, through education, Pell Grants, are all of the great things on this bill.

As the Senator proposes this amendment and the Senate works its will on this amendment, I want to say get the job done. Let's get the bill passed and then let's solve the sequester problem, which has a Draconian shield hold over us. Let's get rid of brinkmanship, shutdown, showdown politics.

Let's return to our regular order where we may produce bills, debate them in the full sunshine of the Senate--and not only do a good job, but the American people can understand what we are doing. There aren't just views on policy. This is America. That is what a democracy is and what a parliamentary body is. We should be able to bring process and procedure. This means following a regular order with our legislation.

I thank the subcommittee chairman, Senator Harkin, for his advocacy in the last 2 years. He and Senator Shelby worked together to produce a great bill. We are where we are, and I hope we do all we can to pass the bill and return to regular order.

Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.

Would the Senator withhold?

First of all, I know the Senator has been waiting patiently to file his amendment. I have been waiting patiently for him to be able to do it. As I understand it, we are trying to negotiate a sequence to vote on the Harkin amendment and for the Senator to be able to offer his amendment as promptly as swiftly as we can.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum without violating the Senator's rights.

Mr. President, I wish to say the Senator who currently now chairs the Subcommittee on Defense will speak on the amendment of the Senator from Arizona. I wish to speak about the process and about sequester.

First, the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense finished its work before the August recess. The authorizers didn't get it done until December 20. There is a gap here because Senator Inouye--a very happy, blessed, and beloved memory--moved his committee in an expeditious way, which appropriators are supposed to do.

Remember, appropriations are supposed to be done before October 1. Senator Inouye chaired the committee, chaired the full committee and then chaired this Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. Senator Inouye did his job under the authorization that was present before him.

The authorizers didn't pass their bill until December 20. We want to respect the authorizers not only on defense but on every committee. They need to pass their bills before we pass ours. We work on our bills by holding our hearings under regular order beginning when we get the President's budget, which we wish would be up-tempo a bit. Then we start our hearings, mark up our bills in May and June, and begin to move them through the process.

Before we attack the Appropriations Committee, we should attack the process and get back to regular order, where authorizing and appropriating are in sync.

The second thing I wish to comment on is sequester. I want to acknowledge what the Senator from Arizona said about the impact of sequester. Sequester is an awful, awful, awful thing. That is not on this bill. When the Budget Committee comes up, along with the negotiations by the President with the leadership of the House, I absolutely agree with him, we must cancel sequester and ensure that not only our Defense Department but others who defend America, such as our Border Patrol guards, are not unduly harmed. And we are hollowing out, to use the quote from General Amos, an extraordinary Commandant.

What we need to do is get a process in order to have the proper policy debates.

I note that the subcommittee chairman will now comment on the specifics.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the Senate is not in order. I know there is a lot of gloating over this amendment--I don't mean yours. Could we kind of keep it quiet so Senator Inhofe can offer his amendment.

Mr. President, before the Senator leaves the floor, the chair of the Budget Committee--first of all, I want to compliment her on the work she has done on the Budget Committee. It is indeed impressive. I want to compliment her because she is headed for a balanced approach, really. Increased revenue. We are not talking about rates, we are talking about getting rid of tax break earmarks, earmarks that go on not for one group for 1 year but go on indefinitely, such as subsidies for corporate jets and sending jobs overseas.

But the other areas she is looking at are how we can be more frugal in our spending, and then a rigorous review of mandatory spending. We have to review it to see how we can get more value for our dollar.

The Senator has championed veteran's health care. She and I know we can get more value there. I compliment the Senator on that.

I am going to ask the Senator a question about timing and process. Does the Senator have a time mandate that has been assigned to her to complete her bill?

It is the economic framework for the United States of America.

Well, I want to share the Senator's sense of urgency to get her bill done. In order for her to get her bill done, I need to get my bill done. I want to pledge my cooperation, and I believe that of my vice chairman, Senator Shelby. We have a sense of urgency to move our bill because we must take it over to the House. There, we have a deadline that is a Draconian one: If we do not have a continuing funding resolution passed before the Easter-Passover break, we will face a government shutdown. That is horrific in terms of our economy and the people who want the U.S. Government to govern itself. It is also one more sign that we have a problem governing. I say that because, while the Senator is marking up her bill tomorrow, we want to move through here so that we are done.

I would like to have this bill done tomorrow. There are those who have obligations in their States and even at an international conference. I would like to support that, but Senator Shelby and I need support too. So we do not doubt people offering amendments, we do not question their content or their policy, but we have timing and process.

Our bill is not meant to be ``pin the tail on the donkey.'' It is not meant to

solve every problem the U.S. Government has. Our job is to keep the continuing resolution.

I want to say to the Senator, while, speaking to a much larger audience, I know there is pent frustration not to be able to offer amendments and debate. We are doing that. You win some, you lose some. That is called the Senate. I want the Senator to know we want to work with her so that we do not interfere in her work. But I believe one of the ways we can get to the budget, which is the real framework for how we can even vitiate sequester, is to get out our bill, meaning the continuing funding resolution.

So I want to compliment the Senator on her work. I pledge to support it, but I ask the support of all of the other 98 of our colleagues. Let's look at what we need to get done on the continuing funding resolution, not what we would like to get done.

That is right. An open and transparent process in that legislation that we put together over a weekend, 571 pages. Senators McCain and Coburn were right, but I could not do any more because I did not get it from the House until Thursday. So, again, I am not here to debate process, but I am the prodder of the process. So I am out here prodding and pleading: Please, let's get a simple, contained order of amendments. We thank the other side of the aisle. They are working with us.

In terms of the floor staff who is working on this, we need the cooperation of the Senators.

Absolutely. I see my colleague from Maryland, such an able and active Member, a member of the Finance Committee that is known to make a contribution. We want him to make a couple of trillion dollars' worth of contributions, as a matter of fact.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to express my deep condolences to the family of LT Valerie Delaney who was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in 2009, whose life was cut short by jet crash in Washington State.

Lieutenant Delaney graduated from the Naval Academy and was a wonderful young lady. She was not my appointment but appointed to the Academy by Congressman Elijah Cummings. She was a great naval officer who married 1 year ago. She had a promising life and a promising career ahead of her.

To her family who resides in Howard County in the wonderful community of Ellicott City, I, Senator Cardin, and the other Senators wish to extend our heartfelt condolences.

Valerie did everything well. She was popular with other officers and well regarded. When she sought nomination, she needed to take 1 year off for prep school, which she did. She was diligent, persistent and terrific.

We deeply regret this tragic accident which occurred. I wanted to inform the Senate of this accident and let her family know we extend our sympathy.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: Has all time expired from the respective parties utilizing their morning business allocation?

Mr. President, I am rising to speak on the continuing resolution to keep government funded for the rest of the year.

I chair the full committee of the Appropriations Committee. My very able and esteemed colleague, Senator Shelby, is the vice chairman. We come to the floor to talk about our legislation, which is an amendment to the House CR to fund the Federal Government for the rest of the fiscal year. It continues the bipartisan tradition of the Appropriations Committee working closely with both sides of the aisle, and I wish to thank Senator Shelby for his excellent cooperation and his wise counsel in doing this and actually cosponsoring this.

Our leadership, Senators Reid and McConnell, has been critical to allowing us to come to the floor and have our bill be debated openly, to have appropriate amendments, and then to have it voted on by the full Senate. In today's toxic environment in Washington, I must say our conversations have been characterized by civility, collegiality, and absolute candor--what we can do; what we can't do, not what we would like to do but what we must do to keep the government's doors open.

I also want to comment on the excellent tone and conversation we have had with the House, specifically our House counterparts, Hal Rogers, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Congresswoman Nita Lowey. We have talked with each other and worked together, and if we continue to do that without other intervening dynamics, we can get this bill done.

Before I go into our bill to offer its content, I want everybody to understand there are three things at play in Washington this week. We use arcane language, so nobody knows what is going on. There is the sequester, there is the continuing resolution, and there is the Budget Committee. Everybody is going to get confused because everybody is getting it commingled. All of it is getting press and the American people don't understand there are three separate solutions to three separate problems.

Let me go to the Budget Committee, which will be on the floor next week, and Senator Murray is vociferously and persistently working on that bill. That is for fiscal year 2014. That is the framework on how we are going to approach our overall budget: What are we going to spend, what revenues we are going to have to raise, if any, and also a review of mandatory spending. That is going on over there. That is for fiscal year 2014.

The Mikulski-Shelby continuing resolution is the appropriations bill--not a personality bill--that will fund the government through 2013. The American people might say: Didn't you do that in October? Isn't our fiscal New Year's Eve October 1? Well, not really. What happened is we were going into the heat and passion and prickliness of an election year, so the wise heads thought it best to extend it where cooler heads would prevail in March. So here we are. We are the cooler heads, and we are ready to prevail. What we have here now is that legislation.

Everybody needs to understand this: On March 27, that continuing resolution expires. If we do not pass our bill and then have an agreement between the House and the Senate that is signed by the President, we could face a government showdown. There is no will on either side of this institution that wants to do that. We are absolutely committed to no shutdown, no showdown, no lockdown, no slamdown. We want to do the job, and that is why we have been working very carefully to do that.

What we will offer today is funding through the fiscal year, which will take us to October 1, and that meets the mandatory cap assigned to us by the Budget Committee of $1.4 trillion. That is a lot of money, but it is a big government with big responsibilities. It includes everything from defense--defending us over there--to the border control--defending us here--to meeting compelling human need and making investments in science and technology while ensuring we do what we need to do.

Our legislation is quite simple and straightforward. It includes five appropriations bills. Two are already in it from the House--defense, military construction, and veterans. It will also include agriculture, homeland security, and a subcommittee that Senator Shelby and I are chair and vice chair of that funds the entire Justice Department. That means FBI, Federal law enforcement, and science and commerce. So we have Ag, CJS, homeland security and defense. Defense and military construction are identical to the House. Agriculture, CJS and homeland security are consistent with bipartisan and bicameral agreements negotiated last fall.

Remember, we are reaching across the aisle, we are reaching across the dome. That is how we are trying to do it. However, there are seven remaining bills in the continuing resolution, and they are energy and water--money for things such as the Corps of Engineers--interior and environment, financial services, transportation, Labor-HHS, state and foreign ops, and the legislative branch. That means they are provided current funding levels and policies with some very limited changes to fix present problems. These are called anomalies.

The Senate version, as I said, totals $1.43 trillion, which is equal to the House CR. So the top line is the same; the difference is how we achieve national goals. It is equal to the House continuing resolution, and it is the same as required by the Budget Control Act. We are absolutely in compliance with the Budget Control Act.

Sequester mandates another $86 billion in cuts. That comes over what we do, and that solution is to be negotiated by the President and the leadership with the concurrence of both bodies. That is part of the charm offensive that is going on now. OK. Sequester needs a balanced solution, and we will be listening and awaiting their ideas, but right now we are looking at our bill that includes bipartisan amendments, minimizing the problems of operating and returning to a regular order for fiscal year 2014.

The amendment we offer is much better than an extension of the current continuing resolution. Why don't we take a date and just change 2012 to 2013? We don't do that because our bill makes reforms. We actually get more value for the dollar. If we just extended it, we would sometimes be spending money on unneeded programs, one of which would be--in our bill, CJS--$500 million for a space shuttle that doesn't exist. We want to change that and put it where it belongs, into the proper defending of our Nation and investing in science and technology. So a date change in a continuing resolution is not workable.

The Senate amendment improves the House CR by adding those three domestic bills and, as I said, includes a number of changes. I could go through each and every one of those changes, such as in agriculture, but what I wish to do is explain the process now. I do want to explain the content of my bill; however, I am going to take 1 minute now and yield to Senator Shelby for his opening statement and then I will come back and explain the details of our actual funding.

I must say again, I have appreciated not only the civility and the collegiality but the candor. We had to look at not what we would like to do and not even what we should do but what we must do to keep government operating, to achieve the national goals America wants: our national security, both those who wear the uniform of the U.S. military as well as others who defend the Nation, such as border control, Federal law enforcement, law enforcement at the local

level, food safety and drug safety inspectors, to make sure we meet compelling human need in the fields of education, biomedical research. This is what we are trying to do--weather satellites that predict future natural disasters.

Again, we don't have a bill that is what we would like to do, what we have is a bill that is what we must do. If we all work together--and we ask those who have amendments to be working with our leadership--we believe we can move this bill by the middle of this week; that by the week's end, the certainty of government funding will have been established and we will have shown we can govern.

I yield the floor so my vice chairman can say what he wishes to say to add to the debate.

Mr. President, you can see our tone. We need everybody's cooperation, if they have amendments, to bring them to us and also to the leadership which is helping us negotiate which ones will come up, and I think we can get this bill done this week.

But I wish to say why getting it done is worthwhile. I want to speak about agriculture, and I wish to speak about some of the content we have, and do it in alphabetical order because it is easier for folks to follow.

In agriculture, our amendment makes sure we fund the Food Safety Modernization Act which is not included in the House bill. This is the first major reform of food safety laws in 70 years and is much needed. CDC says 48 million Americans suffer from food-borne illness each year.

This morning before I came to the floor, I attended a hearing on the Select Committee on Intelligence that I am a member of. General James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, along with key people from the military, civilian agencies such as FBI Director Mueller, gave us a 30-page report on threats to the United States. One of the things they talked about was the safety of our food supply. We need to make sure we have inspectors on the ground for what might occur through bacteria or what might also be induced. So food safety is a big issue.

This amendment is also better at improving clean water to rural communities, and provides 165 rural communities with clean water and waste disposal, creating construction jobs today, and improving community health. I am very well versed in that because, along with Senator Cardin, we represent 2,000 miles of the Chesapeake Bay. We have older communities. We have issues related to wastewater treatment that are not only polluting the Bay but are very difficult to repair because of the very nature of our population--wonderful, patriotic people who don't have a lot of cash to pay a lot of taxes for wastewater. But in helping them, we improve public health and we save the Chesapeake Bay with all its seafood industry. That is just me. But we could go everywhere.

Commerce, Justice, Science, that is a subcommittee I chair. Boy, do I like it. Why do I like it? Because it goes to everything we are talking about: about justice, about jobs today and jobs tomorrow. When we look at our Department of Commerce, which should be the point place for American business really promoting private sector initiatives and, most of all, promoting exports--not sending jobs overseas but sending products and services--that is where the trade negotiation goes. This is part of our economic vitality. This is where we have bipartisan agreement. Let's engage in free and open and fair trade. That negotiation staff and so on is funded through our subcommittee.

We also want to protect our borders. That is going to be in homeland security. In our justice funding, we fund Federal law enforcement and provide funds to local communities on a competitive basis to put cops on the beat and to give them the appropriate things they need to protect themselves.

Let's look at the Byrne grants, the main Federal tool that helps State and local law enforcement. We provide more money. That means more money for body armor, more money for them to learn the latest tips and so on, and stopping the gang threat. It also provides COPS on the Beat grants. Both of those are modest increases over the House funding. When I say modest, do you know what I am talking about? For all that local law enforcement does, we are going to provide $15 million. That is not a lot of money by Washington's terms, but to the local police departments it will be a help.

Commerce-Justice also supports innovation. It is in this subcommittee that we fund the National Science Foundation $220 million more than the House. That means we will be able to provide more help to 7,000 scientists and teachers making new discoveries for new products that will lead to new companies and new jobs. This is what we do.

We are better than the House also in homeland security. This amendment does more to protect the Nation from cyber warfare. Cyber warfare is one of the greatest threats facing America. Again, in this 30-page report we have on threats, the first five pages were devoted to all of the cyber problems. What kind of cyber problems? Cyber attacks, cyber espionage, and the growing nexus between organized crime and nation states, preventing hacking, stealing our state secrets, our trade secrets and also the human trafficking of children and women, weapons of mass destruction. Where you sell women and children as a commodity across the borders of the world through organized crime and corrupt government officials, you will also sell other kinds of things, including weapons of mass destruction. So this is where we need to fund homeland security, the Department of Defense, the FBI, our contribution to Interpol. All of that is in the bill, and we do better--not a lot better

because we are frugal; again, not what we would like to do, but what we must do.

Also under homeland security, we make sure we look at that which puts people in harm's way. In my own State, and others, there is the issue of fires. Most fire departments in big cities are run by professionals, but in most rural communities they are run by the great volunteer fire departments. We have a fire grant program that I helped start that trains and equips local firefighters. What we do here is provide more money--$33 million above the House--to help provide those grants, and we also provide additional funds to help State and local fire departments.

In the area of compelling human need, I want to talk about the Subcommittee on Education, Labor, and Human Services. This is the subcommittee that funds compelling human need. And what do we do here? We look after childcare development block grants, we support care for 9,000 more children, and we also make sure we adequately fund Head Start by providing modest sums there.

In addition, we also provide more money to the National Institutes of Health, $71 billion. But put that into the context that they are going to take a $1.5 billion hit in sequester.

I know the Presiding Officer represents a great State, Hawaii. Who wouldn't love Hawaii? But I wish the Presiding Officer would look at Maryland. Not only do we have the wonderful Chesapeake Bay, a Super Bowl championship, but we have other ``super bowl'' winners. They are called the National Institutes of Health, the National Security Agency, the National Weather Agency.

Just the other day when I was over at NIH, they told me--and told America through their communications--that NIH's work, working with clinicians and the private-led science sector, has reduced cancer rates in the United States of America by 15 percent in breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer. And it is all those wonderful researchers at the Bethesda campus and in academic centers of excellence all over America. But instead of pinning medals on those people and encouraging young people to come into science, we could end up giving them a pink slip. What are we doing?

I not only want to lower cancer rates, but I want to improve and raise the discovery rate. This is what we do in this CR. We are working with them on a bipartisan basis. This is helping American people and giving us products that are approved by FDA that we can sell and ship around the world, particularly to countries that could never do it.

So I am all about jobs--jobs today and jobs tomorrow. That is why what we do in transportation, housing, and urban development is also a big step forward. In addition to looking out for the homeless, we provide an additional amount of money for highway and road safety programs, where people actually working with funds going to Governors at the local level--not some shovel-ready gimmick--can identify projects in the pipeline we could generate in construction. We can improve public safety by smart highways. And, literally, we can help get America rolling again; we have a fragile economy.

I could go on about this bill, but this is a general outline, and I will talk more about it. I feel very passionate about it because we have squeezed every nickel, we have looked at it very fastidiously to make sure that we are right within our mandated spending cap to assess our national priorities: national security, compelling human needs, how we can help create jobs, look out for the middle class, and make those investments that improve the lives of the American people and generate jobs tomorrow.

I think we have a very good bill. I ask everyone's cooperation to get it passed.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Virginia for his comments. He and Senator Warner are on the other side of the Potomac, and sometimes we are friends, sometimes we are rivals. But it is such a dynamic State. The junior Senator from Virginia knows his State has some of the greatest Federal assets there--the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency. It is a home of vibrant technology. That is why we sometimes come as rivals.

But I want to ask a question of the Senator from Virginia, if the Senator will yield?

When we are moving the continuing resolution and he talks about being in the cafeteria and going table to table, which is something I do myself, and I know he enjoys it,--is it his point that we protect the men and women in uniform but the civilian employees, many of whom are veterans, would be at risk?

So just to prove our policy goal here, we cannot have government funding expire. The consequences of a government shutdown would be horrendous. What would it be on the Virginia economy?

Speaking from the old days as a Governor.

I thank the Senator for his insightful and cogent comments. He is a great fighter from Virginia. I look forward to working with the Senator from Virginia--just as I have worked with Senator Shelby--where there is no brinkmanship, no ultimatums. We just want to get the job done. We need to do our job so other people get to do their job so America keeps rolling.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, shortly we will go to our respective party caucuses. I understand that we are going to be joined by the President of the United States so he may share with us his insights and recommendations to deal with our economy so we can get it going.

I know one of the issues that often comes up is the so-called entitlement reform. This is not the subject we are dealing with on the Appropriations Committee, but I would like to talk briefly about how we do impact the funding of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

I would like to take a minute to talk about Medicaid. I want to talk about what Medicaid funds. Remember, Medicaid, by and large, is not in our Appropriations Committee. Medicaid is not in our Appropriations Committee, but the people who work for Medicaid are. And that is a different topic.

I want everybody to understand Medicaid because it is a subject of great debate--and often a prickly debate. Eighty percent of the beneficiaries on Medicaid are children. Usually they are children of the working poor. It helps them to get the health care they need for the early detection of hearing problems. It may also be for a child with diabetes the family is concerned about.

Although 80 percent of the beneficiaries are children, 80 percent of the money goes to seniors or people in nursing homes or assisted-living homes due to some form of neurological or cognitive impediment.

Now, I don't want to sound like an MD, I don't even have a Ph.D, but from talking to my constituents, I do know 80 percent of those in long- term care facilities are often there due to something related to dementia, such as Alzheimer's or a neurological impediment such as Parkinson's.

Let's talk about NIH--and, remember, NIH does funding at the Bethesda campus in Maryland, and it also gives grants to brilliant researchers who are usually working in academic centers of excellence. Those centers could be Johns Hopkins or the University of Maryland or the University of Alabama or Kentucky. Those grants are competitive and peer-reviewed.

Let me get to the point I am trying to make. By funding NIH and the National Institutes of Aging, we are on a breakthrough trajectory for finding the cognitive stretch-out for Alzheimer's.

I have been on this for more than 20 years because my dear father, who ensured my education and looked out for me all the way through raising me as a young lady, died of the consequences of Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is an equal opportunity catastrophe for the high and mighty and for the ordinary. Our own endearing President Ronald Reagan died of the consequences of Alzheimer's, as did my father, ordinary people, men and women who helped build America.

So we need to make public investments in research to find the cure for Alzheimer's and, if not a cure, cognitive stretchout. What do I mean by cognitive stretchout? It means if we have early detection, new tools, new MRI technology, new ways of identifying it early on, what could we do to prevent memory loss? If we could do it in 3 to 5 years, we would reduce the cost of Medicaid spending. If we find a cure for Alzheimer's alone--and I am not even talking about Lou Gehrig's disease or Parkinson's--we could reduce the Medicaid budget by 50 percent--5-0.

Nancy Reagan has spoken about it. Sandra Day O'Connor has spoken about it. Barb Mikulski is speaking about it. Most of all, America speaks, through the Alzheimer's Association and other groups. They march for the cure. They march for the stretchout. In that one area alone, we could have a dramatic impact on the lives of American families and on the future of Federal spending in Medicaid. It would meet a compelling human need. When a person has Alzheimer's, the whole family has Alzheimer's. I remember my dear mother, as my father became more and more lost in his memory, had to work a 36-hour day, as the family did as well, looking out for him. We were more than willing to do it.

I was born in the 1930s. I was a school girl in the 1940s and 1950s. There wasn't much talk about educating girls. But not from my father. I have two wonderful sisters. My father wanted his girls to have an education. He felt that by giving us an education, he could give us something nobody would ever take away from us so we would be ready for whatever life sent us.

I ask unanimous consent for 3 additional minutes.

Oh, I am sorry. I didn't realize----

Let me just finish this, if I might. I need just 2 minutes. I didn't realize the Senator from South Carolina was on the floor.

I just want to make this point. My mother and father saw to my education. My father's business burned down when I was a senior in high school. My mother moved Heaven and Earth for me to go to college. When my father was stricken with the consequences of Alzheimer's, I was determined to move Heaven and Earth to help him. There was little help available.

It is not just about my father. It is about mothers and fathers everywhere. Let's spend the money where the people want us to spend it. Let's meet a compelling human need now and do the research we need to do to help those families and help the Federal budget in the future.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, other Senators on the Appropriations Committee--and all are welcome to come and comment, but those on the Appropriations Committee actually assigned to do the work will be coming throughout the afternoon to actually describe the content of the bill. I would like to talk about the content.

We on Appropriations have 12 subcommittees. Of those 12 subcommittees, each has a chair and a ranking member from the other party. The reason I am telling you this is to describe what it takes to do a bill.

So through all of last week, after we got the guidance of our caucus, the guidance of the authorizing committee, the guidance from the leadership, we began to put a bill together. It is not easy. My own staff and Senator Shelby's staff worked through that first snowstorm we had, took computers home and worked all day and through the evening. I was back and forth. We wanted to make sure there was no fog in our bill. And then out of that the subcommittees gave recommendations.

The reason I say that is that took us to Thursday. We didn't complete, from our end, the framework and substance of the bill until Saturday. That means me, the Democratic majority--the majority party has the responsibility of putting the bill together, but this is not a one-woman show here. So after we did, we gave it to our counterparts, who have been in consultation on broad principles, negotiations between the subcommittees, consultation with the authorizing committees on policy, where we are heading.

Then when we got it to Senator Shelby and his staff, they had to exercise their due diligence. We wanted them to do the due diligence. We wanted them to look through every aspect of that bill to make sure with our word of honor, which we have had together for more than 25 years, that there were no hidden agreements, that there were no surprises parachuted in that if we woke up, neither would be happy about.

I must compliment Senator Shelby and his staff. They worked through the weekend doing every line item to make sure, when they gave Senator McConnell and the Republican caucus their best assessment, they had a chance to look at every single line item, and they sure did it, and they worked hard.

So there are those who would say: We would have liked to have had the bill sooner. We would have liked to have been able to get the bill sooner. But we are talking about the funding for the entire United States of America. That is a lot of lines and that is a lot of items that had to be gone through methodically, diligently, and meticulously, and we moved as expeditiously as we could.

So we then had our bill, and I really wanted to share it with the House. I think we have been working with the House in a very constructive way, communicating, but it took until very late yesterday afternoon for us to complete our process as members of the Appropriations Committee.

I would have really loved getting this bill to the floor and filing this bill sooner, but in order to do it right, and not only the right content but the right way, to make sure the appropriate committees were able to exercise their due diligence, their vigilance, their scrutiny, we now present a bill to the entire Senate.

So I hope we can move forward on our legislation. We want Members to take a look at it. We hope we can work on amendments this afternoon. I hope we have permission to go to our bill. We have two great amendments lined up--different philosophies, but that is what it is.

I talked to Senator Ayotte on the floor a couple of weeks ago during sequester. Bring up the amendments. We have an amendment by Senator Harkin on the Labor-HHS content, and we have an amendment to be offered on President Obama's health care bill. There is a Senator who would like to have the full Senate decide whether we should defund it. This is an important national debate. Let it come on out. The only way we can get to that is by letting us go to the bill.

We have an arcane procedure in the Senate called a motion to proceed. In order to be able to vote, we have to get permission to proceed. I want to get to amendments. I want to have a real debate on real issues. Where are we on Labor-HHS? What is the Senate's full view on the funding of ObamaCare? Let's get out there, and instead of fussing over procedure, let's get to real content. Let's talk about the real issues around funding and what we should be doing to pass the continuing resolution to keep America's funding going but where the majority rules and we have our bill.

So let's get to the situation where we can move through the bill, where we can offer amendments. Regardless of how you feel about amendments, we all feel Senators have the right to offer amendments. Let's get to it. Let's get the job done. Let's show we can function as the greatest parliamentary body in the world.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, if people are watching us on C-SPAN--and they do, in our own country and around the world--they will say: Well, it is Tuesday afternoon, 3:30. What is happening in the Senate? We see two Senators--able, seasoned, experienced. Where is the debate? Where are the amendments? Where is the clash of ideas in an open and public forum on what is best?

We are not doing that because we have arcane rules that Senators can put what they call a hold on a bill so we cannot proceed. In the old days that was a good idea; you placed a hold. This goes back to stagecoach days. You are an Indiana man, you understand that, I say to the Chair respectfully. But it was so you could get back. You would put a hold on a bill if you believed I offered legislation that could hurt Indiana, and in your stagecoach you could dash back here.

We don't have stagecoaches anymore. In fact, we are all right here. I would like to be able to move this bill. There are those Senators who want more time. They could actually be looking at the bill if they would let us go this afternoon, because we have two amendments that would take us to 5 or 6--well, gosh now--until this evening. But we would get two amendments done on two pretty big topics, one of which should be, are we or are we not going to fund the President's health care initiative?

We need to move this bill. What is it that Senator Shelby and I are trying to do? We are trying to pass a continuing resolution to fully fund the Federal Government with the scrutiny and oversight of the Congress by October 1. Right now we have the CR, as it is called, the funding. The continued funding expires March 27. Some people might say that is 15 days from now. Not really because we have to pass our bill, we have to go to the House, and then we have to have a bill signed by the President. We would like to do that before the Easter-Passover recess, for which we break next week. We would really like to do it.

I know one of my colleagues is on the Senate floor. I recognize the right for Senators to review and scrutinize a bill. I have done it myself. I respect that.

In the days when we were skeptical and even suspicious of one another, you wanted to look at it to make sure there were no cheap gimmicks, no little fast hand motions, no earmarks parachuted in. But I can say this: After the Democrats finished the bill, we gave it to Senator Shelby and his staff. This bill has been very much scrutinized so that any of those tricks of the old days are not here.

I really need everybody's attention. There is a lot of conversation going on.

What I want to say is this: If anyone spots something they think is a cute gimmick, I would sure like to know about it. I recognize the Senators' rights, but I ask them if we could at least proceed to the bill where, while we debate these two big amendments, we would do it.

Would I have liked to have made it available 72 hours ago? The answer is, yes. But given the magnitude of what we did and the due diligence necessary by the Republicans, it was physically and intellectually impossible, not with the scrutiny and oversight not done until yesterday. When we get back to regular order it will be better. But I feel like I have multiple decks I have been dealt: a real deck, a pinochle deck, a poker deck, and so on.

I am making a plea that we go to our bill, recognizing the Senators should scrutinize the bills and recognizing Senators' rights to offer amendments. That is simply my plea. Some of my colleagues are on the Senate floor, and I will be happy to engage in a conversation with them, two of whom I have enormous respect for.

Would the Senator from Arizona yield for a question?

We acknowledge the validity of the concerns of the Senator from Arizona. We also acknowledge that we would have liked very much for people to have seen this 72 hours in advance. There was no intent to stiff-arm. Please understand that. We weren't trying to be cute and come in late and all that. It was just the sheer physicality of moving the bill, not getting it from the House until Thursday. So there was no intent to not honor the request of the Senator from Arizona, in which he was very plain, and he has been consistent in every bill. The Senator's request was not unusual and it was no surprise. So that is essentially where we are.

I just wanted to assure the Senator from Arizona of that and I have respect for the Senator and his regard for the purse.

Does the Senator from Arizona have a sense of when he will be finished reviewing the bill?

We would appreciate it in any way the Senator feels he can exercise his traditional due diligence. We are not going to engage in arguments, but we would like to go ahead if we could get something going even later on this evening.

And if perhaps there are amendments the Senator from Arizona could share with Senator Shelby. I expect there to be amendments from Senators McCain and Coburn. It wouldn't have been a real bill if they did not offer amendments. It somehow or another wouldn't have counted in the process. So we look forward to it. If we can move it in an expeditious way, and courteously understanding the Senator's right to offer amendments, I think we can get going.

Mr. President, before the distinguished Senator from Vermont leaves the floor, I really wish to compliment him not only in the way he has moved legislation but really the values, the American values, behind it. I think he has worked steadfastly on a bipartisan basis with Senator Lindsey Graham on our foreign operations. This is what has been called soft power, but there is nothing soft about it. It is part of our smart power strategy.

And what has it meant? It has meant healing the sick, feeding the hungry, making sure children whose legs have been blown off with land mines have an opportunity for rehabilitation or for the children of Haiti who lost their limbs because of the horrific nature of the earthquake--taking lessons learned from other places in the world, that they have a chance to do it.

Baltimore is the home of the Catholic relief organization. These are people who serve the world without religious creed. They serve whomever is in need. The way they extol the virtues of what they have been able to do has been amazing. What they say to me is that because of the work Senator Leahy has done, they are able to leverage philanthropic dollars. Rather than being in lieu of government, they can leverage it because we are coming in to help the children, to help the children learn to walk, and they then come in with community development so that they learn a trade, so that we are literally rebuilding the lives of children in Haiti but also giving them a future where they are going to earn a livelihood. It is pretty terrific.

We have President Clinton, who does his global initiative like in Haiti, but we all have to be in it together, whether it is Bill Gates-- the women of the Senate on a bipartisan basis last week met with Melinda Gates in terms of the great Gates Foundation, and they talked about their health care initiatives.

We said: Well, what does all this mean in terms of us?

They said: If you do the job only government can do, we can then do what we need to do.

This is unique. I do not know of other countries in the world that quite work with this synergy, letting our private philanthropic community do splendid, inspirational work. But they need a government.

The other thing we are able to do in this bill is provide something very near and dear, which is embassy security. We know we wanted to do more. We know that over the last couple of years the House has denied $400 million in embassy security. So we are heartsick at the way our Ambassador died. And while there is all that back-and-forth over talking points, which we are not getting into, the fact is that we need to protect our American men and women working in embassies because they are at a duty station, and now that duty station has become a battle station. We need to make sure we provide embassy security in the best way possible. We can debate policy, management, and so on, but at the end of the day we need to put money in the Federal checkbook to do that.

We lost an Ambassador in Benghazi. I lost an Ambassador, and America lost many others a few years ago at Khobar Towers. One was our Consul General. His name was Bartley. He was the highest ranking African American in the Foreign Service. His son was interning with him. They blew up the Embassy. He and his son died. We need to look out for these people. There was also a young lady who was there from the community, from CDC, working to make sure we were doing the right health initiatives, teaching, educating the leadership there. She died. Again, they were at their duty station, which has now become a battle station.

So I compliment the Senator for the children, his work on land mines, and his work on feeding the hungry. And do you know what. We make wise use because of the strong oversight. I know the Senator from Vermont listens to the inspector general, scrutinizes those GAO reports. We get a dollar's worth of assistance, and at the end of the day America is stronger because of what we do in this bill.

I wish to salute the Senator for his sense of bipartisanship, his leadership and stewardship not only in this bill but over the years. The Senator should be saluted, and I want to make sure this bill moves forward so we can get on to next year and even do a better, smarter job.

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

I would like to compliment the Senator from South Dakota, who does an excellent job as assistant chairman on the Subcommittee on Military Construction, VA. He has worked steadfastly to bring up this bill. We are in agreement with the House. I wish to share a sense of urgency why this needs to happen.

In this bill, thanks to the leadership provided here, it increases funding to improve and accelerate claims processing to increase staff, business processes, and infotech enhancements. This kind of sounds bloodless and technocratic, but I stand before you today to tell you we have a claims processing crisis for our veterans, particularly in the area of applying for disability benefits.

I hate to tell you, Baltimore has one of the worst records. There are many reasons for this situation. It wasn't my fault. We let the infrastructure deteriorate, there are staffing issues, and there are an incredible number of our men and women coming back from the longest war we have fought with incredible injuries, with some bearing the permanent impact of the war, and

they are eligible. Many have multiple problems. This is not your World War II benefit claim.

So we have a backlog. We need to deal with that backlog; otherwise, shame on us. Those men and women fought hard. They gave it everything they had. Thanks to the skill and dedication of military medicine, we saved more lives in combat than in any other war.

I don't want to sound like an epidemiologist; I am a Senator. The fact is we have reduced what doctors call morbidity and mortality. That is the good news back to the hospital from the battlefields, from training medics, all the way to Germany, all the way now to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda.

What is the issue when they come back home? Because we have saved their lives, they have injuries. It means they have some level of disability. They may not be totally disabled, but they are eligible. If they have a permanent injury, they should have a permanent benefit from their government. While they were on the frontline, they should not need to stand in line to have their claims processed.

We have some claims which take as many as 3 or 4 years to complete. We need to pick it up. We need to up our game.

These are improvements. We have spoken to General Shinseki. I know the gentleman. The chairman of the committee has talked to him and was quite vigorous and insistent in his advocacy. I had General Shinseki come to Baltimore. I was ballistic about the claims situation in Baltimore. What did we need? We needed increased staff.

Did you know we do most of our disability claims by paper? We might as well be doing it by papyrus.

When you look at it--I am rarely brief, but I am short--the average disability claim, which I know you have gone to look at, sir, is sometimes 6, 8, and 12 inches tall. That is just the VA. In order to be certified you need to have the military give you information, you need to have Social Security give you information, and you need to have doctor information. In the meantime, somebody who lost a leg, somebody who has lost an arm, somebody who has lost so much time fighting a war, we ask too much from too few for so long who are there waiting for their benefit.

We need to go digital. If we are going to run government like a business, let's give them the standard business tools. That means more technology.

I really want to thank the Senator from South Dakota and his Republican vice chair for much of what they have done in this bill. What is nearest and dearest for me are two things: increased funding to deal with the claims process to receive what they deserve and also advance funding for VA medical to enable the veterans to receive the health care they were promised, they need, and they deserve. If you ever want to talk about an earned benefit, it is the men and women who need VA medical care and the men and women who need their claims processed to receive what they deserve and what they are entitled to.

This in and of itself is a reason to ensure we don't have a government shutdown and blow this program out of the window. I want to thank the Senator for his advocacy and also for taking good intentions and putting them in the Federal checkbook.

Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, you have heard me speak to the Democratic caucus and to the press that moving the continuing resolution, or I should call it the continued funding resolution-- remember, continuing the funding for fiscal year 2013 to our fiscal New Year's Eve, October 1, is our goal. We don't want a government shutdown, we don't want a government slam-down, lockdown. So we have been working very diligently on a bipartisan basis to fashion the bill that would get 60 votes so we would be filibuster-proof.

In the old days, majority ruled. Now it is supermajority. That is not a fight I am going to do here on this bill. My job is to keep the government funded, to work in an open, transparent, bipartisan and hopefully bicameral way.

I said this was like the last helicopter leaving a disaster area. I was trying to get the cargo on it to make sure we protected national security. We honored compelling human need, particularly for women and children in the area of education and health care, and we also looked at how we could generate jobs--not in government but government- generated jobs in the private sector, such as transportation, and make important investments in

science and technology that come up with the new ideas for the new products that will create jobs in our country and hopefully even for export around the world. That is what I have been trying to do.

I also had to give up a lot. I had to give up the funding for ObamaCare. This was not my choice. I know there will be an amendment offered to even defund it further. I happen to believe in what we did with President Obama's health care framework. I liked ending discrimination against women. I liked ending the discrimination against people who have children with preexisting conditions. I liked funding the amendment that provided access for women for mammograms, and for children for early detection and screening. But we could not do it.

One of the other things we could not do was we could not add a very modest pay raise for Federal employees. This bill will continue the existing pay rates. It is necessary to avoid a government shutdown for the entire government. Shutting down the government would make a tough situation worse for Federal employees. It would jeopardize our economic recovery. Shutting down the government would threaten the viability of small and medium-size businesses. It would even threaten the safety of our families, our economy, maybe even our country.

This is not a happy day for me and it is not a happy day for the millions of people who work diligently for the Federal Government. I have the great honor to represent 130,000 Federal employees--I wish you could tour Maryland with me, the way I have been up to your home State--each one doing important work for the Nation. And who are they, these employees? They are people who work at the National Institutes of Health, finding cures or ways to contain diseases--the next vaccine to help the flu endemic or protect us against a pandemic.

They are the civilian employees at the National Security Agency. We employ the largest number of mathematicians in the world. What do they do? They invent the kind of technology that breaks the codes and protects us--now in this whole new cyber domain. They are the people who run the weather satellites. The European model might have done a better job last week than they did, but do you know why? Because we have not had the resources to fund them the way the Europeans have.

I have employees at FDA right this very minute at their jobs, looking at medical devices to see if they are safe. Right at this very minute they are working with the private sector, which is bringing them new pharmaceuticals, new biotech and biologics that they could look at to see if they are safe and effective so they could go into clinical practice to help save lives here and be certified by the FDA, which would give us the ability to sell them around the world. We say to them: We know what you are doing, but tough luck; we can't give you a pay raise because we say we have out-of-control spending. I don't think we have out-of-control spending. Do we have to be more frugal? Do we have to be smarter? Do we have to get more value for the dollar? Absolutely. We are onto that. But don't attack Federal employees for the mismanagement of the Federal Government. That is right here. That is what we do. Don't blame them and don't make them pay the price. It is like making the middle class pay the price for more domestic cuts while we protect subsidies to corporate jets.

These 130,000 Federal employees help run the Hubbell Space Telescope, more discoveries--the most important telescope since Galileo invented the first one. I can't tell you how bad I feel that we are not at least giving them a .05-percent pay raise. And they are facing sequester, which could mean for many of them a 20-percent pay cut, if they are furloughed.

I visited NIH to see what was the impact of sequester. There was Carol Greider from Hopkins. She won the Nobel Prize 2 years ago. We are proud of her. NIH, within a week of my arrival there to meet with them, as I have done so often--they cut cancer rates 15 percent. Instead of pinning medals on them, we say: You don't get a pay raise. We have more important things to do with the money. You are the problem.

I don't think they are a problem at all. I think they are part of the solution--coming up with ways to help compelling human needs and creating jobs in our country in life sciences and giving us something to sell overseas. I think it is wrong to keep asking them for more when oil and gas companies make record profits and we don't ask them to give up tax breaks. It is wrong when we can't close one tax loophole that sends jobs overseas. When Senator Murray brings up her bill, I will talk more about these lavish tax earmarks. This is not the time and place. But it is time to say we have to protect our civil service.

Senator Rubio just spoke about Egypt and he said they have to be able to govern. It is not enough to just bring down a dictator. That is an excellent point. We have to govern, too. And the hallmark of a democracy is a civil service that has integrity, that is promoted on the basis of meritocracy, that is independent of politics, doing missions that serve the Nation in research, technology, administering programs that help get transportation funding to Governors to build roads, bridges, and fund our pent-up demand for physical infrastructure, and then in human infrastructure--education, health care. That is what a democracy does and you need a civil service that is independent, has integrity and is promoted and hired and so on on the basis of meritocracy. What is the hallmark of a despotic, autocratic government, be they Communist or just plain despots? They are corrupt. You get ahead by taking a bribe, by doing a party favor, by looking the other way, on so many other things where you cannot even open a business or get a permit or so on unless there is a series of tipping fees. You can't get through an airport unless you bribe your way through it. That is what a corrupt, despotic, autocratic government does.

But when you visit democracies, the first thing you see is they have a civil service. What is the civil service? Integrity, competency, incorruptible. But we say: Yeah, yeah, you know, we know you have a Ph.D, or we know you are the blue-collar worker who manages the facilities at NIH to keep the lights on so the researchers can do their work. It is those people who help us have a great country, and a country we can be proud of.

I hope we resolve this sequester thing, with layoffs and furloughs and potential cuts of 20 percent. I wish we could have at least said one thing to the Federal employees, that we are at least going to give you a .05--a half of 1 percent--pay raise. I didn't like it because I thought it was so skimpy and Spartan.

But I will say this. The helicopter could not take off if it was on it. I think this is a terrible mistake. I hope in next year's regular order we can make this up. But I want to say to my Federal employees this was a Draconian choice. Do we try to give you a pay raise that would be important to you? Every penny and every dollar counts.

You led the Consumer Protection Agency. You certainly have the reputation, Madam President, of being a real fighter for the consumer, and you were the first in America to do a study that showed people were going bankrupt not because they bought too many Volvos, ate out too much, or lived a life of brie and wine and so on. It was because of medical catastrophes that faced them. You were the first to tell us about that, so you know about family incomes and what makes them and what breaks them. But I say this to you: Thank you for your work.

And I want to say to the Federal employees, thank you for your work. I wanted to do it with a modest pay raise, but right now my duty in the situation I find myself in reluctantly is that the way I serve you is to make sure there is no government shutdown. Because you know what. In my heart and in my mind--and as I see how different places function-- there is no such thing as a nonessential Federal employee. Everybody at the workplace and who serves the Nation is doing their job with honesty, integrity, meritocracy, and is incorruptible. Let's make sure we honor them. We have to get this bill done. Let's get on the Murray budget and right our economy. Whatever problems we have, don't blame the Federal employees for the decisions made by the Congress to get us in the deficit and debt we are in.

They didn't do it, we did it. We should take the pay cut, not them.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I wish to comment on the remarks by our colleague from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal.

I say to the Senator, we in Maryland want to once again express our condolences to the people of Newtown. We have lost people in gun violence, nothing like you have, but we have it there. Most recently when a high school opened, a young man who needed mental help came in and one of our young men was shot. Fortunately, he survived. He is an intellectually challenged young man, full of spunk. He has been made an honorary Raven, honorary Oriole. Lady Gaga, who is his favorite, even sent him CDs.

We need to deal with this issue. We need to deal with guns and--I agree with the NRA--we need to deal with mental health. We need to put mental health in the Federal checkbook to train the professionals, do the research and know we are doing the right thing.

One of the fathers from the Newtown tragedy has cycled through Maryland to raise the issue through all of the awful rain in the only way he can to speak up for his daughter.

I want to congratulate the Senator and his colleague from Connecticut, Senator Murphy, for continuing to be steadfast. I wish to say we support you not only with words but deeds. It is wonderful to express our condolences, to send toys to the children, to do all of that. We need to put money in the Federal checkbook. We must first of all confirm our BATF Administrator. The very person in charge of guns should be confirmed. We need to then look at our own legislation about illegal guns, all of what the Senator is talking about.

On the mental health side, the Senator was a member of the HELP Committee. I know now Senator Murphy of Connecticut is on the HELP Committee, the Presiding Officer also. We need to look, even now as we look at the CR, how we may do the right research.

I wish to close with one melancholy thing, which is a consequence of the sequester. Senator Harkin with the HELP Committee held a hearing on mental health. The Director of the Institute on Mental Health was on that committee, and I believe the Presiding Officer was there. I asked him what would be the consequences of sequester on the National Institute of Mental Health, since everyone wants mental health, and that is the research.

This is what he replied: We are not going to fund certain research projects.

Let me tell you one that holds such promise it is going to be a sad day for us not to do it. Here is the test--and, please, I am not a scientist and certainly not a neurological scientist. But there are certain kinds of mental health problems that come on onset, particularly on young males, who are postpuberty, often after high school or as they go into college. As in Aurora, the young man who shot the people was already a graduate student. These things come on.

The Director of the NIH mental health said they wanted to do research for early detection, biochemical as well as environmental. This is not to earmark, paint them in a corner, or push them in a corner and stigmatize them, but they could receive that help early.

We need to know more. Whether that study is a good idea--I am sure it is, it is peer reviewed--I wish to say to the Senator, the reason we need to get this bill done, the budget done, and go on to regular order is to actually put money in the Federal checkbook to do what the American people want. We can do great gun control legislation on the this floor, but I want to support that mental health component.

I call upon the NRA and all of its members to support us to move the Federal budget, look at the mental health aspects. I believe we would have bipartisan support. I believe we would have grassroots support. At the end of the day not only would we prevent gun violence, but along the way, the President's brain initiative. We could learn a lot more and we could help our people. This is what I mean when I say we need to fund compelling human need and do the research. But I salute the Senator for his advocacy. And my condolences to the people of Newtown, but not with words, let's get to the deeds and let's get the deeds done.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I would like to compliment the Senator from Alabama, my vice chairman. He outlined how we tried to look at this bill and scrub it for nonsense or no sense, OK?

I know we are waiting for the Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Coburn, to lift his hold. I know he is looking closely at the bill. A few years ago, when I was moving the Commerce-Justice bill, he found that one of the agencies was hosting a conference and they were paying $4 a meatball, so we called it the lavish meatball amendment. Often, the Senator from Oklahoma has great ideas. You know, Madam President, that people from Oklahoma have great ideas, and so we would like him, as quickly as he can, to lift the hold so we can move our bill and he can offer amendments. And I hope he is scrubbing it. I am sure somewhere he will find a rogue meatball. I don't want to minimize what he is doing. He really does scrub for foolishness and folly, and if he has a foolishness-and-folly amendment, I probably will support it. I can't tolerate it either. My constituents really work hard for their money, and they want the money they pay in taxes to work hard for them.

So, Madam President, I see the distinguished majority leader here on the floor. I am hoping that we are going to have a solution to some of that deadlock here.

I yield the floor.