Floor Statements

Would the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from Illinois knows who has a hold on that nomination.

No, I do not. The reason I asked the question is these holds are, in some cases, anonymous. I spoke earlier today about a hold on a promotion for one of the generals in the Army to be a major general that has now been held up for nearly 6 or 7 months by Senator Vitter.

I use his name because I told him I was going to because he is demanding of this general something the general cannot do. I mean, that is an example. We happen to know where that hold is from.

But of these other 100-plus nominations, they sit here, day after day, month after month, and someone has put a hold on them for some reason. If I might mention one other, the woman who was to head the GSA, that was vacant for nearly a year because of a hold of one Senator, and when we finally got around to voting for her, it was 94 to zero.

The Senator who held her up for a year even voted for her. That is the kind of game that is being played. It is unfair.

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 2:15 p.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing on a discussion draft of the ``Indian Energy Promotion and Parity Act of 2010''.

Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 202-224-2251.

committee on rules and administration

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, while we are waiting, I want to speak about two issues. First is something called the Cobell settlement, which perhaps many will not know about. It is the settlement of a class action lawsuit against the federal government for mismanaging the trust accounts of American Indians for well over a century.

The trust accounts for American Indians come from property that belonged to the Indians that the federal government holds in trust. The trust was managed by the U.S. Interior Department and many accounts over a long period of time were mismanaged. Revenue from oil wells, from extraction of minerals, and revenue from leasing lands for cattle never showed up in the accounts or mailboxes of the Indians who owned the property. Many of these Indians and members of the class action have long since passed away, not having survived the 14 years of this lawsuit. The lawsuit has been ongoing for some 14 years now, and the Federal court has become very impatient while waiting for Congressional approval.

At long last, the Interior Secretary, Secretary Salazar, negotiated an agreement to settle the Cobell suit. Friday, April 16th, is the third date which the court set for Congress to act on this settlement. We will miss this date just as we missed the first two dates. The court has just now indicated that it will approve a fourth date by which the Congress must act to approve this settlement of Indian claims. The judge has also indicated that if Congress does not act, he will invite some Members of the Congress to his court to talk about why action was not taken. That would probably be an interesting constitutional issue.

In any event, the judge in this case is very impatient and wants to see the settlement approved by Congress.

The first Americans, Indians who are owed this money and for whom the settlement was acceptable and, the Interior Secretary, who has called me many times urging approval of the settlement, are also very impatient. I hope we will not miss a fourth deadline established by the Federal court.

Republicans and Democrats in this Chamber and in the House

of Representatives have an obligation. Literally, money was

stolen from American Indians, from property they owned and

the income from that property that was supposed to go for

their assistance and living conditions because it was owned

by them, and in many cases these accounts were mismanaged,

and in some cases the money was stolen.

This settlement, which will be paid from the United States Judgement Fund, is fair and is long overdue. It will settle a lawsuit that has languished for about 14 years. I hope, in working with the House of Representatives, we will not miss another deadline. Perhaps if we do, the judge will ask some Members of Congress to visit with him. We will see what happens as a result of that.

Mr. President, on another matter, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 more minutes as in morning business.

Mr. President, I would not criticize another Member of the Senate on the floor of the Senate--certainly not by name--unless I first had told the Senator I was intending to do so. I have done that, and I will shortly explain why.

There is a man named GEN Michael Walsh, a commander in the Corps of Engineers. He is an extraordinary general. He is a one-star general, a brigadier general, and he has been recommended for the rank of major general. That recommendation was made nearly 6 months ago.

Six months ago, the Armed Services Committee, with the support of Senator Levin, the chairman, and Senator John McCain, the ranking member, unanimously approved the promotion to major general for Michael Walsh. Six months ago that action was taken in the committee. There has been no major general rank for General Walsh because it has been held up on the Senate floor, with what is called a hold, by a Member of the Senate, Senator Vitter from Louisiana.

The fact is, this is an extraordinary general, a general who has been to war. This is a general who went to Iraq to fight for this country. This general has 30 years of distinguished service to America, a patriot. He doesn't make the policy at the Corps of Engineers. This is a commander who executes the policy at the Corps of Engineers.

My colleague, in letters to the Corps of Engineers, is upset with the Corps of Engineers and is demanding they do certain things that the Corps in some cases cannot and in other cases will not do because it is unwise. Some of the demands have been met where the Corps believed it was appropriate, although it has not been funded yet because that has to be done by the Appropriations Committee. The Corps cannot meet other demands. I opposed one of the significant ones brought to the Appropriations Committee, and upon my opposition, the full Appropriations Committee voted against it. So it is not going to happen.

But to hold up a general's rank to major general, hold up his promotion and have him now 6 months behind other generals both in pay and promotion and opportunity is just unfair. It is just not fair. This is not someone who can fix the aches and pains and ills and concerns of my colleague from Louisiana.

This is a general who is a patriot and has served this country for 30 years. I don't think he ought to be used as a pawn in some concerns about water policy or concerns about issues in New Orleans or Louisiana dealing with flood control and responding to the needs of that city and that State. As chairman of the committee that funds energy and water programs, I can tell you that we have sent billions and billions of dollars down to Louisiana and to New Orleans--I am proud to have done it--in order to say, after Hurricane Katrina and during the rebuilding, to the people of Louisiana: You are not alone, we are with you. We have spent a lot of money doing that. I am proud to have been a part of that.

But the demands that are required now by Senator Vitter in order for him to lift a hold on the move to the rank of major general for a one- star general who has served this country for 30 years and fought in Iraq, in my judgment, are unfair. We should not hold a general's promotion and career hostage to the demands of one Member of the Senate. That is exactly what has happened for 6 months.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a January 13 letter from my colleague to the Corps of Engineers. It is a letter from my colleague, Senator Vitter; a March 12 letter in response to that letter by the Corps of Engineers to Senator Vitter; a March 16 letter to the Corps of Engineers from Senator Vitter; and, finally, a March 19 letter back to Senator Vitter from the Corps of Engineers.

Simply, GEN Michael Walsh is someone I have known for a

long time. He is an extraordinary soldier and a patriotic American who doesn't deserve, and never deserved, to have his promotion derailed for 6 months by one Member of the Senate. That is not fair. That is using this person, this patriot, as a pawn in trying to extract from the Corps of Engineers something the Appropriations Committee has already voted against, in one case.

In other cases, it is something that the Corps of Engineers cannot legally do without authorization from Congress. We cannot do that to soldiers who have served their country. That is not fair.

I am not going to ask consent today because my colleague, Senator Levin, previously asked consent, and Senator Coburn from Oklahoma, on behalf of Senator Vitter, the other day objected to this promotion. But I will ask my colleague from Louisiana to stand down on this and give this soldier the respect and honor and the due that is owed him by the Congress.

The Armed Services Committee, with its chairman and ranking Republican member, unanimously decided that this good soldier should be promoted to the rank of a two-star general. That was 6 months ago. Six months later, he is a pawn on the floor of the Senate held by one person trying to extract from the Corps of Engineers some things that the Corps cannot possibly do, and some things that are not wise to do, and I would not support in any event.

As I said when I started, I would not come to the floor of the Senate and criticize a colleague without first informing him of that criticism. I did that. I don't take any measure of satisfaction in criticizing a colleague. But I will tell you this: What happened to this general is just flat wrong. There is no way for anybody in this Congress to justify holding this general hostage for 6 months in his promotion to major general.

I ask my colleague from Louisiana to end this hold, to give this soldier his due. This soldier has earned his second star, and 6 months ago this Congress should have voted in response to the unanimous vote by the Armed Services Committee to give this soldier his second star. I hope that soon my colleague will delete that hold so my colleague from Michigan can seek unanimous consent to do right by GEN Michael Walsh.

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

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

Mr. President, my colleague wishes to offer an amendment. I want to make sure there is time available to him.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I again ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 5 minutes.

Mr. President, we just completed a hearing moments ago in the Senate Commerce Committee on something that has received some headlines recently, although in the scheme of things, it is not ranking with health care or energy or education reform. It is the issue of a circuit court decision a week ago in the Comcast case dealing with the Federal Communications Commission and its ability or inability to be a referee with respect to the free market system and the Internet.

The Internet is an extraordinary innovation in our lives. We tend to take it for granted, I suppose, because it is so normal for all of us every day to use the Internet, whether it is a wireless device or a laptop computer, or whatever. We use the Internet in so many different ways.

The question is: What is the regulatory approach to the Internet? We know what we have done for telephones over the many years, the many decades of regulatory capability. What is it for the Internet?

What we have always had for the Internet from its origin is what is called a free and open Internet, the open architecture. Anybody can get on the Internet with their Web site, and anybody from the rest of the world who has broadband capability or Internet capability can access that site.

A man named Larry and a man named Sergey in a dorm room in California conceived of something which 10 years later we know as Google. What if somebody had said to Larry and Sergey: You know what, you are in a dorm room, you are not much of a business; you only have two employees. We want to charge you for being able to get on our system so others can see you. There would not have been Google, would there?

Free and open architecture of the Internet means anybody, anyplace, any time can access anything. I told a story in the Commerce Committee about going to the home I grew up in in a town of slightly less than 300 people. I had not been back to my boyhood home since I was a teenager. I knocked on the door in my hometown and asked the woman if I could see the home I grew up in. She said: Of course.

In the shed where you walk in first, there was cardboard and tape. And in the kitchen just off the shed, the woman had a camera and a little arm that stuck out of a little appendage she had by the kitchen counter. She was taking a picture of a bracelet that was hanging from this arm. I said: What are you photographing?

She said: I am photographing a bracelet because I sell jewelry on the Internet.

From a town of 250 or 300 people in my little two-bedroom white house in that small town, this woman has an Internet business. Her Web site can be accessed by anybody in the world. She is not a big business person. She makes some money. It could not have happened years ago but can happen now in that small town. It can happen in any town. Anybody around the world can access her Web site. But what if somebody said: We are going to decide which Web sites are going to get on our system. That is a gatekeeper, a provider

that is deciding we are going to pick winners and losers.

We do not do that. We let the marketplace pick winners and losers on the Internet. That is why the Internet grew. Its origin and growth was under something called a nondiscrimination rule. You cannot discriminate. Just like telephone service, you cannot discriminate.

The FCC, under former Chairman Powell, moved the Internet from a telephone service to an information service, and that is what the lawsuit was about. Comcast brought a lawsuit and said under Title I of the Communications Act, as an information service, the FCC does not have the authority with respect to Internet freedom as I call it, to impose net neutrality rules. The circuit court said the FCC does not have that authority under Title I. That gets very technical and very legal.

The question is: What does the FCC do now? The question is what should we aspire to achieve for the Internet in the long term? Some say hands off, let's have what is called in the hearing today a light touch. I said: I am not interested in a light touch; I am interested in the right touch by regulators. I have just seen a decade in which regulators at the SEC and the CFTC and others who engaged in financial regulations said: We are engaged in light touch. In fact, we are engaged in no touch. We will be blind for 8 years. We will not even look. We are regulators, but we intend to get paid. We do not even care what you do. That is the ultimate light touch, but I have had a bellyful of that. I want regulators to regulate effectively to make sure the market remains open and free and fair. That is the job of a regulator. That is the job of the FCC.

We are going to have a big debate about this in the Congress. But first and foremost, I hope the Federal Communications Commission takes action under its own authority because it has plenty of authority to respond to this decision. It has authority under Title II of the Communications Act, and it has other authorities it can use. I encourage it to proceed. I hope that is the case.

Second, Senator Snowe and I and others on a bipartisan basis will continue to press the Congress to enact net neutrality, what I call Internet freedom, legislation, because if the FCC does not do it, let's make sure we do it in law.

This is a very important issue. The issue of the Internet and the question of who controls the Internet, if anybody, is very important.

At town meetings when somebody says, The Federal Government cannot do anything right, I say there are a number of things it cannot do right, but answer the question, Who invented the Internet? Who created the Internet? The Federal Government did that. It started here. It is a wonderful innovation that has changed our lives in so many wonderful ways. I just described one with the woman living in my former boyhood home. It changed her life. But that is multiplied a billion times around this world.

We need to make certain the Internet remains open and free. The free market system is the best system I know with which to allocate goods and services. I know none better. But I also understand that the free market system needs referees to make sure it remains free and open, to call the fouls, to wear the striped shirt with the whistle and call the fouls when necessary. It did not happen in the financial area. It did not happen at all. When people traded things that did not exist, buying things from people who did not have them, making money on both sides, all of a sudden there should have been regulators saying: Wait, this is gambling. You can't do that. You are putting the American people at risk. On the telecommunications side, we need effective regulatory capability, not to stifle or injure the free market but to protect it.

This is a very important issue in the wake of the circuit court decision. I believe Chairman Genachowski has the capability and authority to move forward in the Federal Communications Commission to do the right thing, and I encourage him to do that.

I know as well going forward that legislation, perhaps not this year but legislation in future Congresses will reaffirm the opportunity for the FCC to protect and nurture a free and open architecture of the Internet. I believe it is critically important.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Montana. Let me state the reason for the urgency. I described it today, but it has been said in other venues. Mr. Whitacre from AT&T most famously said it: These are my pipes. I want Google to pay for the use of my pipes. That was a famous statement by Mr. Whitacre. Yes, those pipes belong to the providers, but there is a requirement there be a nondiscrimination approach to the use of those pipes. We do not want providers to set up tollbooths or gates to say: OK, you are a big site out there. We are going to charge you to use this. Maybe that person cannot pay the charge. The billions of people who would access that site now will not have access because there is a gatekeeper who said: We are only going to allow these folks to be on our site. That is the point of it.

There is, it seems to me, a potential problem that could not have existed previously when the nondiscrimination rules existed. But now that the nondiscrimination rules were obliterated, we need to restore them.

The Senator from Montana asked the question how can the Federal Communications Commission do this. I believe there are general powers in the Federal Communications Commission Act, and I believe the Commission itself has general powers that will allow it to act in a manner that the court would view to be in compliance with the law.

The FCC is not interested in doing something that it does not have the legal authority to do. I believe they have the capability. They certainly have the capability to determine that the Internet is regulated under Title II in which they would have the capability to enforce the nondiscrimination rule.

Again, this is not going to be one of those headline issues, but nonetheless it is a very important issue and one we need to get right. The last time we had a discussion about this issue in the Commerce Committee, it was a very contentious discussion. Senator Snowe and I offered an amendment that lost on an 11-to-11 tie. This is not an easy issue. There are a lot of people who feel strongly on both sides, but I come down on the side of saying the way the Internet was conceived and the way it grew and the way it flourished was with nondiscrimination rules that say anybody--it is the ultimate democracy--anybody anywhere can set up a site and anyone in the world can access that site. That is the genius of this great innovation in our lives.

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

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

Mr. President, we invoked cloture last evening on a motion to proceed to legislation that will extend unemployment benefits during what has been the deepest recession since the Great Depression. We have had objections from the other side to extending unemployment benefits as an emergency, saying these cannot be extended because they will cost too much and add to the deficit and this and that.

It is interesting to me that in this country, when our country has experienced an economic downturn, we have always dealt on an emergency basis with the most vulnerable Americans by extending unemployment insurance benefits. Why? For two reasons. No. 1, when you work for a living in this country, you actually pay premiums for an unemployment insurance plan that then kicks in when you lose your job. This is not as if somebody is getting something for nothing. People who are working in this country are actually paying into a plan that provides for unemployment insurance. And, No. 2, extending unemployment insurance during a severe economic downturn is just the right thing to do for the most vulnerable Americans.

I find it interesting that the very people who have been standing in the way of doing this, saying it is the Federal budget deficits, that they are too big--I agree they are too big. But I have not seen any of these folks out here when it really matters. This is taking on the most vulnerable Americans. They are out here taking on that issue.

How about the big issues? How about fighting a war and not paying for one penny of it over a 10-year period? In the 8 years of the previous administration, we went to war, and we were told by President George W. Bush: You are not going to pay for a penny of this; and if you try to pay for it, I will veto the bill. It is all going to be emergency spending. The fact is, we should have seen the same folks out here complaining about that issue.

Or how about going back 10 or 11 years when legislation was passed that built these huge corporate financial pyramids that got engaged in all kinds of unbelievable risky speculation and ran the country into the economic ditch and caused $15 trillion of American wealth to vanish and cause these unbelievable increases in deficits? I did not see them out here on that issue either. In fact, many of them voted for the legislation that repealed the protections that were put in place after the Great Depression and actually allowed to happen what has happened in the last 10 years that caused this collapse.

I don't know. It seems to me this last stand on the budget deficit, to say let's have the last stand when it comes to the most vulnerable Americans, that is our last stand--how about a last stand, for example, on some of the affluent Americans? How about a last stand on carried interest? I encourage my colleagues who have been out here worried about the budget deficit to come out here while I am here and talk about changing the carried interest rules.

What does that mean? It sounds like a foreign language to some. It means some in this country are earning more income than anybody in America and paying the lowest income tax rates. Why is that the case? That is what the law allows them to do. We have been trying to change the law, but some of my colleagues do not want to change the law. That would be increasing taxes.

Let me give an example of increasing taxes. How about increasing taxes on a person who made $3.6 billion in a year--which, by the way, is about $10 million a day--and pays 15 percent income taxes? How about if we say to that person and others like him or her: How about you pay the same kind of taxes everybody else in this country pays? That will reduce the Federal budget deficit.

I ask my colleagues, do you want to join me to do that? I am all for reducing the Federal budget deficit. Tighten our belts, reduce spending--I am all for that. But, also, how about asking people to pay their fair share of taxes?

I said yesterday, as I said before, that we have some of the biggest financial institutions in this country that in the last decade decided to buy sewer systems from foreign cities in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes. How about let's make sure we close all loopholes, such as that loophole, that say: You want all the benefits America has to offer? How about paying the taxes and being responsible as an American citizen for things that you are required to do?

If we want to reduce the Federal budget deficit let's take some real big hunks at doing that by, yes, reducing some spending, and there is plenty of waste. I chaired 20 hearings on the biggest waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of this country; that is, the contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will not go through it in detail today. I am telling you, it is the biggest waste in American history in these contracts.

Let's cut some of that spending. Let's raise some taxes on those who are not paying their fair share, those who are doing everything they can to avoid paying taxes in this country. Let's cut the deficit, but let's not come out here and pretend that the last stand is to take on the most vulnerable Americans at a time when we should extend unemployment insurance. That makes no sense.

Mr. President, if you know much about economics, you understand during a steep economic downturn there is substantially less revenue coming into the Federal Government. We have lost something like $400 billion a year in revenue. At exactly the same time when we have a steep economic downturn, the economic stabilizers kick in--unemployment insurance, food stamps, and other programs for people who have been laid off, out of work, in trouble. That is exactly what we do during

an economic downturn. We have less revenue and more spending. That is temporary because the minute we come out of this and restore economic health, then we do the things necessary to get rid of those budget deficits and put the country back on track to a better course.

I don't know, this has been a Byzantine circumstance to see who comes to the floor of the Senate and say: You know what. Now we are going to make our last stand, and it is going to be when you want to give some unemployment insurance to the most vulnerable Americans, those who have lost their jobs.

Someplace in this country, all around the country today, about 17 million people or so woke up jobless. They have lost their jobs. They do not have work. They got dressed and went out with some hope in their hearts that maybe they could find a job. But tonight will come and they will not have found a job. The question they ask is, Am I going to get the funding I was told would exist, for which I paid insurance premiums for unemployment insurance? Am I going to get that help during this period of time? This was not my fault. I was laid off because of a very steep economic recession.

The answer should be from this Congress: Yes, you are going to get that help. We understand the obligation and the need to do that during this economic recession.

My hope is we will get a little cooperation and see if we can do that. Again, I am very interested in tackling this Federal budget deficit. Let's tackle it in big ways in the areas where substantial additional revenue that should come in is now not coming in because people are avoiding paying their taxes, some of those who are the wealthiest Americans.

Let's also tighten our belt and cut spending in areas I just described. Let's not decide the last stand is to take on the most vulnerable Americans who woke up this morning jobless and, in some cases, hopeless and helpless if they do not have money to buy food, pay rent, and buy medicine.

We can do better than that. There is a moral imperative for this Congress to at long last do the right thing.

I did not come to the floor to say that, but because that is the business of the day, I wanted to, on behalf of Senator Baucus and Senator Reid and others, say that we have an obligation, and we are trying to work through this issue.

Last night by one vote we were able to invoke cloture with almost no help--we got a little help to get cloture invoked. Now we will get on with the business of seeing if we can, during a very deep economic downturn, extend unemployment insurance as we are required to do and as we have an obligation to do.

I hope the answer is yes. That is our responsibility. That is our obligation. If there are those who come to the floor later wanting to join me in dealing with the issues I just described--spending cuts, revenue increases from those who are not paying their fair share, some of the biggest financial companies in the country--let's join and do that. I am here and very happy to do it.

Energy

Mr. President, there are many things on the agenda for this country that need doing. We are trying to work through this list. We worked on a health care reform bill that I understand was very controversial. The fact is, health care is such a significant part of our economy and the costs are growing so rapidly that we have to try to address it, and we did.

There is another issue, however, that I want to talk about today, and that is the issue of energy. We do not think much about energy because it becomes kind of second nature to the way we live. We get up in the morning and the first thing we do is turn off an electric alarm clock, perhaps, and then flick a switch and lights go on. We do almost everything without thinking, and that reflects on our use of energy. Someone makes coffee. They turn on a stove to make coffee or plug in a toaster to make toast. They get in their car to drive to work, perhaps take a shower beforehand with hot water from a hot water heater. All of those, even before they get started, reflect the prodigious use of energy in our country.

Almost two-thirds of the oil that we use in this country comes from other countries outside our shores. I have spoken often about this fact. But we stick straws in this planet and suck oil out of it. We suck out about 85 million barrels of oil a day and one-fourth is destined to come to the United States because that is how much we need and how much we use. The problem is that about two-thirds of it comes from other countries. Some of it comes from countries that do not like us very much.

The question is, How do we provide greater energy security for our country, more energy security so we are less vulnerable? Second, and just as important, how do we change our mix of energy and our use of energy to protect our planet with respect to the issue of climate change?

Let me talk about this for a moment and say the following: First, climate change is important. There is something happening to our climate, and we ought to address it. Even the skeptics should at least be in support of a series of no-regret steps that if 50 years from now you decide that climate change was not happening, at least you have done something you don't have regrets doing because they were the right things to do. Even the skeptics should agree about that. But, yes, something is happening to our climate and we ought to take some steps to address them. I am in favor of capping carbon. The use of carbon and emitting it into the airshed is a serious problem. We need to have a lower-carbon future. I am in favor of capping carbon emissions. But it has to be done in a smart way and an appropriate way, and I am in favor of that. I am also in favor of putting a price on carbon.

There are some people who I think that I and others who want to bring the Energy bill to the floor of the Senate--which came from the Energy Committee and the work we did last year--don't support addressing climate change. I support the effort to address climate change. I support a cap on carbon, and I support the opportunity to decide that we are going to not only lower carbon emissions, but put a price on carbon, which is a way to accomplish all that. What I don't support is what is called ``cap and trade'' as the mechanism to do that because I don't have any interest or willingness to consign a $1 trillion carbon securities market to Wall Street to speculate on. There are other ways to do this.

Let me just say that the issue of restraining carbon and putting a price on carbon can be done in many different ways. Some of my colleagues say: Well, the only way to do it is what we call cap and trade. I don't believe that, and I don't support that for the reasons I have described. There could be a carbon fee, a straightforward carbon fee, which is much less complicated. There is the cap-and-dividend approach, which has some advantages as well. There is a sector-by- sector approach. There are a number of hybrid approaches being discussed. There is the command-and-control approach, where you simply say: Here is the restriction. So, there are many different approaches to this issue of restricting carbon and trying to price carbon.

But here is what is happening. We passed an energy bill out of the energy committee last June. It was bipartisan. Republicans and Democrats joined together and we passed an energy bill and here is what it does: It will reduce the amount of carbon emitted into the airshed, it will maximize the production of energy from wind and solar sources, which are carbon free, and it will build the transmission capability around the country, a superhighway of transmission so you can gather energy from where the sun shines and the wind blows and put it on the wire to move the energy where it is needed to a load center. We also have a renewable electricity standard, called an RES, requiring 15 percent of all electricity be done from renewables. I would offer an amendment to take that to 20 percent, if we can get the bill to the floor of the Senate.

That is just an example of what is in the bill. In fact, this is a chart reflecting that it will reduce our dependence on foreign energy and it will increase domestic production. It was my amendment that opens the eastern Gulf of Mexico for production. It is the only area that is not now open and has substantial reserves of both oil and natural gas. We establish a renewability

electricity standard, create a transmission superhighway. We electrify and diversify the vehicle fleet in our country. Seventy percent of the oil used in this country is used in the vehicle fleet. So that is very important. The bill contains substantial provisions dealing with energy efficiency and new green energy technology.

All those things are exactly what we would do if we had already passed a climate change bill to say: All right. Now how do you implement it? What are the provisions you develop in order to implement this, to have less carbon emitted? This is what you would do.

So many of us have been impatient about trying to get this bill to the floor of the Senate, but here is what I understand. I understand that those who say they want climate change legislation first have said they don't want an energy bill to come to the floor of the Senate because they want there to be some agreement on climate change, and until they get that, they don't want the Energy bill to come to the floor of the Senate. My view is, we should bring the Energy bill to the floor of the Senate. Let's all of us decide this is a priority. When the bill comes to the floor of the Senate, let's reach an agreement on some kind of climate change amendment to this bill and move ahead.

I wouldn't support cap and trade, but there are other things I will support that will put a price on carbon. But why would we end this Congress not having achieved some very substantial achievements in a bipartisan energy bill that will actually reduce the emission of carbon in the atmosphere? That makes no sense to me.

As we go forward, I know this is an issue that requires it fit into a broader set of issues--immigration reform is discussed these days, Wall Street reform or financial reform is going to come to the floor at some point, which will take some time, appropriations bills, and there are many other things--but I still believe it is very important that we diversify America's energy supply, that we maximize the production of renewable energy, and that we produce more here at home and, yes, that includes oil and natural gas. The use of coal is also very important, the use of coal using new technology to decarbonize. We can do all these things. Our legislation includes the provisions that will accomplish that.

So, what we need to have happen is to have our legislation come to the floor of the Senate from the Energy Committee. I would say to all those who wish to work on the broader piece of climate change to add to it as an amendment. I support a carbon cap, and I will support pricing carbon. That does not include support for cap and trade. If we haven't learned anything from the last decade or so about what Wall Street would do with a $1 trillion securities market, then we are pretty ill- prepared to legislate on these issues.

There are not a lot of weeks left in this legislative session, and my fervent hope, I would say to those who have been working on climate change and blocking our ability to bring an energy bill to the floor of the Senate, is that we can perhaps find a way to work together to bring the Energy bill to the floor. That is the way the Senate works. The Senate works by running things through a committee and working hard to achieve compromise. We did that on a bipartisan basis and passed a piece of legislation that is a Democratic-Republican energy bill that reduces carbon, maximizes renewable energy, opens additional areas of drilling in the eastern gulf, builds an interstate highway of transmission capability, has the first ever RES, renewable electricity standard, and all those things are important to this country. We should not leave them at the starting gate. Let's at least decide that this, too, is a priority for our country. Yes, health care is a priority, but so is energy.

Let me make one final point. If tomorrow morning, instead of flicking that switch, shutting off the alarm clock, taking a shower with the use of an electric water heater, putting a piece of bread in the toaster, taking something out of your refrigerator and using all that energy even before you get in your car to go to work, if, God forbid, somehow terrorists interrupted the pipeline of foreign oil coming to this country--and there are a lot of points where that possibility exists-- this country's economy would be flat on its back. We are, in my judgment, far too vulnerable with the percentage of our economy that runs on foreign oil and there is a way to respond to that and a way to address it and much of that is included in this legislation that has already passed the Energy Committee on a bipartisan vote.

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

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

Mr. President, we are going to have a cloture vote this evening at 5:30. It is about a subject that is very important. Yet I have been listening to the floor today and hearing the discussion about saving our country, about the issue of large Federal budget deficits, and the things that threaten our country's future.

I wanted to talk a little bit about some of those issues because I have been reading a book recently, quite an interesting book, called ``Too Big to Fail.'' I was listening this afternoon to some of the debate and thinking about too big to fail and too small to matter.

Interesting dichotomy: Too big to fail is talking about the biggest institutions in this country, the largest financial institutions in America, are too big to fail. So they run themselves into serious trouble. They get the benefit of no-fault capitalism. We are told if they fail, it will be a disaster for America's economy; therefore, we will have the taxpayers pony up $700 billion to make sure they do not fail. I am talking about the people at the top.

The question is, What about the people at the bottom, the people who work for a living, who like their jobs, want to have a better future for themselves and their children, but who discovered that as we sailed into this economic storm, while the people at the top got a big old parachute and they were lifted gently to the ground or allowed to get gently grounded, the folks at the bottom were just pushed off a cliff.

We ran into this serious economic trouble, and a whole lot of people lost their jobs. We have had millions and millions of people lose their jobs. We estimate somewhere around 17 million Americans woke up this morning without a job. They went looking today, as they do every day, but they have not found a job. They, their spouse, their children, they are all victims of this economy.

So then the question is, the difference between too big to fail-- those institutions, by the way, which for some of our colleagues, they could not be quick enough to get the pillow and the aspirin to say: Can we help you to bed? Is there any way we can be of help? Here is $700 billion on the too-big-to-fail side. But on the too-small-to-matter side--it is the person who lost their job--we had folks in here saying: You are just out of luck. We do not have the ability or willingness to deal with you.

I taught a little economics a couple of years in college. We always understood the basic lessons on economics are simple enough when you run into a very severe recession or depression. But let's talk about recession, a deep recession, and in this case the deepest since the Great Depression. The government's revenues dried up; we have lost somewhere around $400 billion a year in revenue. The economic stabilizers that are required in a recession would be unemployment insurance, food stamps, and those kinds of things to try to help people out, help them through some difficult periods. I am talking now about helping people at the bottom of the economic ladder. Those things automatically go up.

So the revenue goes down, that goes up, and your deficit balloons. There is no question about that. Everybody understands that. I understand why the deficit has gone out of sight. I also understand it is a very serious problem for our country. But I think we should all understand we should not do the things that would move us right back into a recession. The economic stabilizers and the expenditures on them is very important in order to get us out of this problem and in order to help those at the bottom of the economic ladder who cannot help themselves.

What bothers me is we have people coming to the floor of the Senate saying: I am the champion to try to reduce the Federal budget deficit. I am the person who is going to solve this.

Well, I would say to those folks: Where were you? Where have you been? It has been a decade and you were not around. I recall nearly 10 years ago when President Bush came into office, and he said: We have a budget surplus. Yes, they did. The first budget surplus in three decades under the last year of President Clinton's Presidency, a budget surplus at the Federal level, the first one. By the way, that resulted from a series of fiscal policy judgments that were made beginning in 1993. I voted for it. It passed by one vote in the Senate. It passed by one vote in the House. Senators such as--I guess I will name him because he was proud of it--Senator Phil Gramm from Texas stood up and said: You pass this, you will bankrupt the country. No, it did not bankrupt the country. It actually led us out of the problems we were in to a budget surplus in the year 2000.

President George Bush came to town and said: You know what. We have this budget surplus. It looks as though we are going to have budget surpluses for

the next 10 years. Let's give very large tax cuts to people, but the largest tax cuts to the highest income people in America.

Well, I stood on this floor and said: I do not support that. What if we do not have these surpluses for 10 years. These are just economic predictions by economists who cannot remember their phone numbers for 3 days, and they are telling us what is going to happen in 3, 5, and 10 years. Let's be a little bit conservative.

President Bush and his colleagues on the floor of the Senate said: Katey, bar the door. We are pushing this. They did, and they had the votes. They passed it, and all of a sudden we substantially cut the revenue that was coming into the Treasury.

Then what happened almost immediately? Then we were hit with 9/11, a terrorist attack in this country. Then we were at war in Afghanistan. Then we went to war in Iraq, and year after year after year the President brought to this Congress proposals for emergency spending for the war. This President said--I am talking about President George W. Bush--we do not intend to pay for a penny of it. Every single penny for the war is going to be on an emergency basis, put on top of the Federal debt.

I did not hear those folks who now say they are going to stand between us and catastrophe come to the Senate floor then to say that did not make any sense. I did. I said: Why don't we pay for some of this?

The President said: If you try to pay for it, I will veto the bill.

There we were for 8 years spending money we did not have on a war we probably should not have fought, borrowing every single penny of it. Now the folks who speak the loudest these days about these issues are the ones who decided: Oh, that made a lot of sense: cut the government's revenue, fight a war without paying for any of it.

By the way, many of them, 10 years ago when we voted on the floor of this Senate to repeal the restrictions that were put in place after the Great Depression to protect our country, they were the ones who voted for the repeal to say: You know what. Let's let these big financial companies create holding companies, and you can put them all together. You can put real estate and securities and banks and investment banks, FDIC-insured banks, put them all in one big holding company. It will be just fine.

Well, I was on the floor of the Senate saying: This will not be just fine. It will be a catastrophe. I said 10 years ago--I did not know for sure, but I said: Within 10 years we are going to see big taxpayer bailouts if we do this.

Some of the same people on the floor of the Senate back then were saying: Look, let's create these big financial behemoths so we can compete. It will be good.

Then the President, George W. Bush, brought in regulators who boasted they were willing to be willfully blind for almost a decade: It does not matter what you do, you can do that. We will not watch. They said: There is a new sheriff in town. We are business friendly.

So in all of these agencies where we were supposed to have regulators to make sure the free market worked, regulators who were the referees with a striped shirt to blow the whistle to call the foul when the free market was the victim of a foul, they were not around. They were just in a Rip Van Winkle sleep for nearly a decade.

Meanwhile, Wall Street went out to play, and they created the most unbelievable instruments of deception: credit default swaps, synthetic credit default swaps, CDOs. I mean it is unbelievable. The circumstances that developed, the subprime scandal, the creation of these exotic financial instruments, the development of substantially more lending approved by regulatory agencies--all of this set us up for an unbelievable fall.

Some of the same people who were cheerleading for these very activities are now telling us they are going to protect America. And you know where they are going to make their last stand? Their last stand on these deficit issues is to deal with the poor people by saying: No, you cannot get that unemployment insurance extension.

By the way, unemployment insurance is something that people pay for out of their paychecks. Unemployment insurance is something we pay for out of our paychecks. Extending it during a recession is certainly the thing to do. It is something we have always done. Yet this is the last stand.

What about making the last stand when it comes to bailing out Wall Street? How about making the last stand a couple of weeks from now when we have Wall Street reform on the floor of the Senate, when we have a real fight about trying to do reform that is necessary on Wall Street?

In 2008, the financial firms on Wall Street--I am just talking about the Wall Street firms now--the biggest financial firms lost $36 billion and paid $18 billion in bonuses.

I have an MBA. I went to graduate business school. There is nowhere they teach in graduate school that if you go out and lose $35 or $36 billion, you ought to expect to be able to pay $17 or $18 billion in bonuses to those who helped you do it. Yet that is exactly the kind of carnival that existed in this country at the top of the financial food chain.

So we are going to have a big fight about that in a couple of weeks. How do we plug the holes? How do we solve this problem of Wall Street reform? We are going to have a lot of votes, and it will be interesting to see whether those who now speak the loudest about being able to protect the American taxpayer, standing up on the issue of debt and deficits, whether those are the people who are going to join us in taking the action to try to make sure that cannot happen again because, when we talk about what has contributed to this country's debt and deficit, the largest contribution by far are the supportive votes of those who were friends of Wall Street, and in the last 10 years have given them every single opportunity to do what they have done--that is, to create a casino-like economy and to have FDIC-insured banks trading on their own proprietary accounts.

They may just as well have had a blackjack table in the lobby. I mean, it is unbelievable. To fuse together inherently risky investment banks with FDIC-insured banks and having both of them, instead of providing the kinds of things banks used to provide--that is, doing lending--and having both of them trading securities on their own proprietary accounts in order to make big fees and big money. It is unbelievable.

The question is, Who will stand up for our economic interests? Spending on someone who is out of work in a deep recession, is that where you want to take your last stand?

Let me help with a couple other suggestions. How about making a last stand in asking people, like one person who made $3.6 billion in one year, to pay their fair share of taxes to the government. My calculation says that is a $300 million-a-month paycheck. When that person comes home and the spouse asks, Honey, how are we doing? Every single day he can say: We are doing really well. Ten million we earned today. But even better than that, he can now say: And by the way, we paid one of the lowest income tax rates in America. We get to pay a 15- percent income tax. People who work with their hands for a living can't do that. People who take a shower in the morning and after work can't do that. People who work hard all day pay tax rates far higher than 15 percent. We have some of the biggest income earners paying just a 15- percent tax rate on carried interest.

I say to my friends: If you want to do something about the deficit, join me. Let's get rid of that nonsense.

Or I wish they would have joined me the dozen times I have been here talking about the tax dodges that allow people to avoid paying taxes by creating shams. I have shown pictures of American banks that buy German sewer systems. You can't actually touch them. You wouldn't want to feel them. You can't move them. But American banks buy a sewer system in a German city and then lease it back to the city so the city keeps using the system, and the bank gets to write off a sewer system to reduce its American tax obligation. They want all the benefits of being American, but they don't want the responsibility of paying taxes. I say to somebody who comes to the floor and wants to reduce the Federal budget deficit: How about joining me and getting rid of these things?

Or perhaps you could have joined me on the floor when I have shown the picture of the Ugland House, now reasonably famous, a 5-story white building on Church Street in the Cayman Islands. When I showed the photograph, it was an enterprising piece of reporting by a man named David Evans from Bloomberg News who went to the Cayman Islands and found a 5-story white building that in 2004 was the official home to 12,748 corporations. No, they don't all fit in that building. I understand that. It was a legal dodge by companies setting up an address in order to funnel revenue through that address to avoid paying taxes to the United States. By the way, since that time, since 12,748 corporations used that little 5-story house to avoid paying taxes, it has now grown to over 18,000 corporate addresses, as I understand. I say to my friends talking about dealing with budget deficits, how about helping me on that? How about helping me close those loopholes? Those are unbelievably ridiculous loopholes that allow some of the people and companies who make a great deal of money to pay almost no income tax.

That is the tax side. I could talk forever about that, but I won't. But if we got a little help on that, we would reduce the budget deficit.

On the spending side, I have held 20 hearings on spending dealing with contracting in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a place in Iraq. If somebody ever gets there, I suggest they drive by and take a look at it. It is American taxpayer dollars sitting in the desert. It is called Kahn Bani Sa'ad. We paid for it. We built it. We tried to build it. I think we spent $20 to $30 million for the first contractor and then fired the contractor and brought in another one. When the other one was finished, the money was gone. But there is a prison sitting on the sands of Iraq that the Iraqi Government said they didn't want and would never use that our Federal Government insisted be built. It is now sitting unused, and it doesn't even look like a finished building. It is huge. Millions, tens of millions of dollars were spent, poured down a hole in the desert. I held 20 hearings on the most unbelievable waste, fraud, and abuse on war contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan that I think has occurred in the history of the country. There is an area of spending we can tackle. We ought to tackle. There are so many areas for us to decide to do something about.

Yet the last stand on the floor of the Senate on a Monday is to say: We have ratcheted up all the strength, the muscle, the courage we have to say we don't think those at the bottom of the economic ladder, those who have lost jobs, those who are out of work, those who feel hopeless and helpless, those whose families are victimized, we don't think they ought to get unemployment insurance extended or we will put enough conditions on it to delay it. The same folks rushed to the altar to say: We can give $700 billion to the biggest financial firms in the country that ran this country into a ditch.

My point is not that we don't have a very serious economic problem. We do. The budget deficits are unsustainable. We have to fix them. My point is, there are some Johnnies-come-lately going on in this Chamber by people who have never come to the floor of the Senate on these issues in the last decade and now believe this budget deficit problem began to emerge on January 1 a year ago. That is not the case. This budget deficit problem, which is serious, results, in significant part, because this country ran into a very serious economic recession. It was not some natural disaster such as a flood, a fire, or tornado we couldn't do anything about. This was manmade. I warned about it 10 years ago. Those warnings were largely ignored.

Bad choices and bad policies have brought us to this position. Now it is required of us to make good choices. One of the good choices would be to recognize our responsibility to those at the bottom of the economic ladder, the folks who have, millions of them, lost their jobs in this recession and didn't do anything wrong. They weren't underperformers at work. They just were swept away by a very substantial recession. They paid for unemployment insurance in their paychecks. We all do.

My hope is we will get some cooperation on this vote today. It is a vote by which an effort to extend unemployment insurance for those who are the most vulnerable in the country has been blocked so we have a cloture petition. It ripens today at 5:30. My hope is we can do that and then move ahead.

There are plenty of us who are anxious to work on reducing the Federal budget deficit. This government needs to tighten its belt in a wide range of areas. There is no question about it. The spending side is important. We need to tackle the spending side and do it seriously. But it is not the only side. There is a whole series of folks who are not paying taxes who should pay. There are some of the biggest corporations in the country avoiding taxes that they should be paying. We ought to bring in the revenue we are required to bring in, ask some to pay what everybody else is paying, and we also ought to tighten our belt. All of that can help us address this very serious economic problem.

Let me look forward again 2 weeks to say if this is the last stand by those who are worried about the Federal budget deficit; that is, trying to make those at the bottom of the economic ladder, the most vulnerable Americans, wait and wonder whether they will get help from this Congress--if that is their last stand, 2 weeks from now, when we take on Wall Street reform and decide to do the things that are necessary to fix what caused this economic problem, fix what caused a substantial portion of the Federal budget deficits and fix what caused this deepest recession we have been in since the Great Depression, will we not get some help in 2 weeks? By the way, the bill that came out of the Banking Committee is a good first step. It needs to be strengthened in a number of areas. But even that bill didn't get any Republican support, not one vote in the Banking Committee. There are a lot of people here who support making sure that we are not too aggressive in trying to deal with the Wall Street folks and Wall Street interests. If we are not aggressive enough to make sure we have closed the loopholes and make sure we have tightened the reins so the American people have some confidence this will not happen again, we will rue the day if we end with a result that doesn't measure up in the minds of the American people.

Again, my point is to suggest we have a very serious, unsustainable budget deficit. It ought not to be surprising to anybody in this Chamber, moving along for a decade, fighting wars without paying for them, running into a very deep recession with revenues drying up when expenditures increase for economic stabilization. That is not surprising. But we need to come together and work together to find ways to not only get the taxes paid that are owed while at the same time we reduce the Federal budget deficit through those means, tighten our belts, and do the things that are necessary to move away from a decade of irresponsibility. If we are going to fight a war, send men and women off to war but don't have the courage to pay for it along the way, that is unbelievable to me. I have been to so many sendoffs, and every one of my colleagues has.

We are prepared to take people away from their families and send them off. I was just at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo last week visiting the troops. They are away from home for a year. They have courage. When the country asks, they go. When they are called, they don't ask why. Shouldn't this Congress have the same courage to say: If we are going to send people to war, we will pay for it; we will have to ask the American people to pay the cost of that war? That is another significant part of this debate about how to deal with Federal budget deficits.

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

Madam President, this is a pretty disappointing thing to see on the floor of the Senate--a discussion about the potential of having unemployment insurance at this point in time lapse, let it lapse during one of the steepest recessions since the Great Depression.

Unemployment insurance is not some abstraction when we have 15 million, 16 million, 17 million people who got up this morning in this country and looked for work, people who lost their jobs and then searched valiantly to find a new job and could not find a new job, and so they pay their rent, they buy food, they provide for their children, they buy school clothes with unemployment insurance.

We are told: We cannot reach an agreement, so we will just let it expire. We will not extend it. It will be OK.

It will be OK for everybody here who gets up and showers in the morning and puts on a nice blue suit and comes to work. There is nobody here who is unemployed, but there are a whole lot of people in this country who are unemployed.

If ever there were a need to extend unemployment insurance, it is now. We cannot do that to the most vulnerable people in this country.

It is very interesting. It was not too many months ago that there was a proposal on the floor of the Senate: Let's give $700 billion to the biggest financial firms in America to bail them out. They ran this country into the ditch with unbelievable greed and speculation and recklessness. Then after running this country into the economic ditch, there is a bill brought to the Congress that says: We need to bail them out, $700 billion--a three-page bill. They said: We need to have it passed in 3 days--$700 billion. I did not vote for it, but there are plenty of people who did who now say it is too much

to extend unemployment benefits to people who are out of work.

It is the same old story, and it has been going on for decades in this country--big shots get in trouble, and you give them an aspirin, fluff up the pillow, put them to bed, and ask if there is anything else you can do for them. Ordinary folks get in trouble, lose their job through no fault of their own, and then when push comes to shove, they are told: You know what, we just cannot agree. Your unemployment insurance has run out. Get along. Tough luck. I find that unbelievable.

Let me go back. The fact is, we have budget deficits. They are serious, and they are unsustainable. We have to deal with them, there is no question about that. But it is important for us to understand how all of this happened.

Now we come to this moment, and we choose to say that unemployment insurance is where we are going to make the stand. Help for people who have lost their jobs--that is where we are going to make the stand.

It was 10 years ago on the floor of this Senate when we were told: We have the first budget surplus in 30 years, and they expect budget surpluses as far as the eye can see.

President Bush came to town and said: We are going to give large tax cuts, and we are going to give the biggest tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. If you earn $1 million, guess what, we are going to give you something very special. You get an $80,000 tax cut a year.

I said: I will not support that. Let's be a little conservative. What if we do not have these budget surpluses in the outyears? What if they do not exist?

They said: Don't worry about that, it will be fine.

They drove through a tax cut that benefited the wealthiest Americans. Then we were in a recession. Then 9/11, a war in Afghanistan, a war in Iraq, and then supplemental after supplemental request to increase defense spending, none of it paid--none of it--all of it emergency.

Then at the end of that period, when the biggest financial firms ran this country into the ditch, the question was, What is going to happen to this economy? We were told: Now you have to have a $700 billion bailout for the biggest institutions in the country. That was done. Nobody paid for that. That was all ladled right on top of the debt. But today, in this ``let them eat cake'' moment, we are told: No, no, let's just let unemployment insurance expire. Just let it expire. It will be fine.

It will be fine for everybody in this Chamber who wears a suit and claims it will be fine because they are not unemployed. But what about those people who are unemployed and are right at the cusp of losing their home? They have lost their job. They have lost hope. The only thing that keeps them going to pay the rent and to pay for food and to try to help their kids is the unemployment insurance while they are looking for a job. And this Congress has people who stand up to say: We will not allow them to extend unemployment insurance, even after they voted to give $700 billion to the biggest financial firms in America that ran the country into this big economic wreck we have had. I do not understand that at all. How do you go home and tell people that is what your priority is? How do you do that?

If there is anything that ought to represent a priority for us, it is to say to those who are the most vulnerable in our society, those who have lost their jobs with a recession they did not create, those who are looking for work in the morning and cannot find it, those who now have no income because they have lost their jobs, probably lost their homes, and many of them lost hope--we say to them: It will be fine; you do not need this money to get along.

Unemployment insurance is just that--it is insurance. That is why it is called insurance. Every one of their paychecks while they were working paid for a portion of this. I just cannot believe that this afternoon we would decide it is not a priority for us to help the most vulnerable in this country, especially during this period in which we have just ladled money out the door in terms of tens and tens of billions of dollars in emergency funding for almost everything.

I held 20 hearings on the issue of waste, fraud, and abuse in contracting in the war in Iraq. They threw money away. In fact, not just threw it away, they actually loaded $100 bills on pallets and sent them over in C-130s and shoveled them out the back of pickup trucks, for God's sake, wasting taxpayers' money. I did not hear anybody stand up on the floor and say: Here is where we draw the line. No, you draw the line with the most vulnerable people. You won't notice you don't have the funds to buy your food, pay your rent, or for your kids.

We have more responsibility than this, in my judgment. I hope by the end of this afternoon we will decide to meet that responsibility.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

The issue of slots and the perimeter rule at Reagan National Airport has a long and very complicated history. Many of my colleagues have interests on both sides of this debate. I have been pleased to work closely with Senator Warner, a member of the Aviation Subcommittee that I chair, on this matter, which has the most immediate impact on his constituents in Virginia. I can also sympathize with my colleagues from Western States who would like the opportunity for their constituents to be able to access National Airport.

The FAA reauthorization bill that was approved by the Senate Commerce Committee and is before the Senate today does not make any changes at National Airport. However, the House FAA reauthorization bill does increase the number of slots at National Airport. So we know that this is an issue that will need to be addressed in conference with the House and that the end result will be some change to the status quo.

But after spending more than 5 days on this FAA reauthorization bill in the Senate, I fear that a protracted debate on this contentious issue will derail the good bipartisan bill we are so close to passing. A number of my colleagues have filed amendments on slots and the perimeter rule. We understand that the Senate position needs to address access for citizens outside the current perimeter.

We cannot forget that this bill is about the safety and modernization of our nation's aviation system. This legislation takes important strides to bring our air traffic control system into the 21st century with the Next Generation Air Transportation System, NextGen. It includes provisions to ensure one high level of safety across the entire industry. After 11 extensions instead of a reauthorization bill that addresses these issues, it is time for the Senate to pass this legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized following the vote on the legislation to speak briefly about the FAA reauthorization.

Madam President, the vote just taken was unanimous, which is interesting. We were able to work on this for 5 days here on the floor of the Senate. But I also want to say we always talk about good staff work. We do have an exceptionally fine staff at the Commerce Committee and I want to say that Senator Rockefeller's work and Senator Hutchison's work was so important in order to move us in this direction to get this completed.

I think they would agree as well that the staff director Ellen Doneski, deputy staff director James Reid, Gael Sullivan, Rich Swayze on the Aviation Subcommittee staff, and I know Senator Hutchison's staff, Ann Begeman, staff director, Jarrod Thompson, and Tom Jones for Senator DeMint, is a fine staff.

The reason I wanted to say a word about this piece of legislation--I just got off an airplane myself, just came back from North Dakota. But I wanted to say that this piece of legislation, while not getting the attention that some other pieces of legislation are getting these days, notably health care, among others, is a very important piece of legislation, and it has some very important critical changes that I think will be beneficial and will save lives. I wanted to mention a couple of them.

No. 1, for the irritants that exist in air travel these days, and there are a lot of them, this includes the Passenger Bill of Rights--a lot of people probably do not know that, but just common sense, sound thinking about what are the rights of passengers here.

We worked with the airlines and the passenger groups and so on. This includes the Passenger Bill of Rights, the 3-hour limit. If you are on an airline some place and they want to have you sit on the end of a runway or on the tarmac for 5 or 6 hours, it is not going to happen, not when this legislation passes. We have a 3-hour limitation. That is just the start of it. But the Passenger Bill of Rights is important.

Most important to me are the safety issues. I held a number of hearings on safety in our subcommittee, and I appreciate very much the work of Senator Rockefeller. He was very interested in making sure that we pursue these safety issues in order that they can become a part of the FAA reauthorization bill.

A significant part of this bill is modernization of the air traffic control system. But this bill also is about aviation safety, and so I want to mention the safety provisions. We held a number of hearings to try to understand what could we learn from the tragedy that occurred at the Colgan crash in Buffalo, NY. We learned a lot, and a lot of things that were frankly, to me, very troubling. We have addressed a number of those provisions in this legislation.

Pilot training and experience. Frankly, were it not for the families of the victims of the Colgan crash who have witnessed here at every opportunity, in every circumstance, where there has been a hearing or something in which aviation safety was discussed, they were here pushing and prodding and asking the right questions.

We do advance the interests of aviation training and experience in this legislation. The FAA must revisit flight and duty-time limitations to address pilot fatigue in this legislation.

We do not yet and have not addressed the commuting issue which I think is an issue, but we have not yet addressed that, and could not in this bill, but that will continue to be an issue we will work on. We have an FAA-required report to the Congress now, annually every year, of all of the safety recommendations from the NTSB, and which have been followed and which have not.

This issue of the most-wanted list of safety recommendations, which in some cases has been on the list for 10 and 15 years, it is unforgivable that that has happened. We are not going to let that happen again.

Obviously, we prohibit the use of wireless communications devices and laptop computers in the cockpit that are not used for the purpose of the operation of the airplane. When I say obviously, an airplane that overflies its destination with a couple of pilots working on laptops, overflying the destination by 150 miles or so, does not make much sense to me that we do not have a prohibition in the FAA manuals to prohibit in every circumstance the use of these kinds of personal wireless communications devices for personal use in the cockpit during flight.

We enhance safety oversight of foreign repair stations, which is very important. It mandates two inspections per year by the FAA. A lot of people do not understand that a lot of the maintenance now is being done in some cases overseas, and in other cases, they are being done, farmed out and contracted out, to someone outside of the airline itself.

We require the disclosure of the airline operating flights. When a consumer buys a ticket on an airline, we want them to understand who is the company that is carrying them, not what is the brand on the airline, but what company is this, so they have some sense of who is in charge of that flight.

Access to all pilots records. You know regarding the captain in the Colgan flight, the CEO of Colgan Air said: Had I known the failures of that captain in certain exams and tests along the way, in certifying these various licenses, we would not have hired that captain. And yet the company did not know. That will not be the case in the future.

Those are just some, not all, of the safety issues. They are very important. I am convinced that lives will be saved. I do not suggest this is the entire set of issues that has to be resolved. More remains to be done and we will remain on the case to do that. We will continue even now with additional hearings.

Finally, I want to say on the issue of modernization, this too is so important. It relates to safety, but it relates to other things. It relates to the reduced use of fuel, more direct routing, better timelines for trips for passengers, because they will get to their destination more quickly; less spacing between airplanes in the sky. That is because, rather than fly to the old ground-based radar system, where you know about where an airline is, you only know about where it is when the transponder flashes a dot on that screen in front of the air traffic controller, and the next 7 or so seconds that airplane is somewhere else.

Well, using the GPS system which all of us, or at least some of us--I do not have, but many people use it in their car, use it on their cell phone. The common use of the GPS is all over the world these days, except we do not use it, by and large, for commercial airlines, and we should.

Air traffic control modernization means ground-based systems that need to be built, it means protocols that have to be developed, it means equipage in the cockpit. But we must get there not in 15 or 20 years, we must get there soon. So this piece of legislation dramatically advances those timelines.

Some talk about waiting and finishing this job in 15 years. We substantially truncated the time to say: No, let's get this done. So those are the significant issues.

Again, I want to thank Margaret McCarthy on my staff, along with the other staff I have previously mentioned.

I especially again want to say, I have served on the Commerce Committee for

a good many years, and we have worked on a lot of issues. It has such a wide jurisdiction, a wide range of interests and issues. Senator Rockefeller assumed control of the Commerce Committee just this Congress, and I think has done an extraordinary job. I appreciate his leadership. I appreciate the fact that he gave us not only directions but the reins to work in the subcommittee, and then he and the ranking member worked very hard at the full committee to put this piece of legislation together.

It is rare indeed in this day and age to find a piece of legislation that passes the Senate in a record vote, that is a piece of legislation of great consequence, that deals with many issues, some of them controversial, to be passed by the Senate with no negative votes at all. Think of that. No negative votes cast on this bill today.

Would not it be nice if we could see more of that kind of togetherness, coming together on public policy that all of us think is good for this country and its future.

I wanted to again say how proud I am of this legislation and how important it is to this country. I am pleased that this is the next step, an important step, and then we would conference with the House and bring a conference report back, and it will be signed by the President. We will have all done something to advance safety and modernization in aviation in this country; not just for commercial aviation, but for general aviation, which is an increasingly important part of our aviation system.

Madam President, I also want to take this opportunity to say a few words about the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise--DBE--Program and the Airport Concessions Disadvantaged Business Enterprise--ACDBE--Program, or the DBE Programs. As the Senate is well aware, this program was originally enacted by Congress to level the playing field for minority and women contractors working in airport related businesses.

While we have made considerable progress toward that goal over the years, unfortunately a good deal more work remains. The Commerce Committee examined disparity studies documenting the existence of discrimination in public contracting while considering and drafting FAA reauthorization legislation. We concluded that the DBE Program remains necessary to thwart ongoing discrimination and determined that several improvements to the DBE Programs were necessary. I am pleased that the FAA Reauthorization bill includes provisions to adjust the personal net worth calculation for inflation, to require certification training of officials involved in the review of DBE applications, to prohibit excess bonding requirements, and to ensure that retirement savings are not included in the personal net worth calculation.

The evidence of discrimination included in disparities studies makes clear that discrimination against minority and women owned businesses is still a serious problem in airport-related businesses and beyond. This is unacceptable. The DBE and ACDBE Programs are the only current safeguard against the problems of business discrimination in the airport context. I am encouraged that this bill includes provisions to ensure the continued health of the program and to promote a level playing field within the industry.

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

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, March 25, 2010, at 9:30 a.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct an oversight hearing entitled ``The Preventable Epidemic: Youth Suicides and the Urgent Need for Mental Health Care Resources in Indian Country.''

Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 202-224-2251.

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

Mr. President, this morning we are awaiting the opportunity to do a unanimous consent request that would then give us the road ahead to complete the FAA reauthorization bill on Monday. We have spent 5 days on the floor of the Senate, entertained a fairly large number of amendments and had votes on amendments. We have one large group of amendments that has been cleared by both sides. We will include that in the unanimous consent request as well.

We made a lot of progress last night in reaching some understandings about a couple of the complicated and controversial issues. It appears now, when we get the unanimous consent request, which I think we have agreed to--we are just getting it prepared--we will be able to get that done this morning. That will give us the road forward, and we will complete this bill Monday evening.

This is a very big achievement because the FAA reauthorization bill has been extended 11 times rather than completed and reauthorized. It has been extended 11 times without what we needed to do, such as authorize the activities to modernize our air traffic control system, update some of the safety issues that are included in this legislation, update the essential air service program, including the passengers' bill of rights--a series of provisions that are very important to make certain we have a modern aviation system that is as safe as it can be and that is as protective of passengers as is possible, giving the airlines and those in general aviation, as well, the opportunity to have a modern air traffic control system, the most modern in the world.

This is a big achievement. I appreciate the cooperation of all of our colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, who joined last evening in wanting to finish this bill. We were able to reach some understandings to do that.

While we are waiting for the opportunity to do the unanimous consent request--it is not yet completely written--I am going to give a presentation this morning on the subject of energy.

I will withhold on that. I know our colleague from Arizona is on the floor. Let me at this point yield the floor, and at some appropriate point I will spend some time talking about energy.

I yield the floor.

Let me ask unanimous consent to be recognized following the presentation by Senator Kyl.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Arizona for his comments, and I think his comments describe, No. 1, the rather complicated set of issues--slot rules, perimeter rules for Washington National, which are rather complicated, somewhat controversial. Yet I think he knows and I know and everyone understands that when there is a conference on the FAA reauthorization bill, the House brings to that conference some provisions the House has completed on slot rules.

So it is going to be an open discussion, and it seems to me all of us understand that things change, and the slot and perimeter rules will always be a subject of change. My expectation is there will be a change coming out of that conference.

I think the discussion we had last evening, as all of us work together trying to understand what is the optimum solution that relates to the needs of all of the interests concerned, is something we can and should strive to achieve, and I think we will do that.

So I appreciate the cooperation of the Senator from Arizona and certainly the strong feelings of the Senator from Virginia. My guess is that this will get resolved in the right way because I think all of us understand the good will here to do it, and that will allow us--in order to unlock this bill and get it finished Monday night, we needed to try to find a way to reach a common ending here. And if we can--and we will, I believe--on Monday evening finalize this bill, that will be a significant achievement at long, long last.

Energy

I want to talk about energy policy. I wanted to spend a little time speaking about another important subject. Right now, this Congress is very focused on health care, all the time these days, and for good reason because I think the health care debate is reaching a conclusion. It will get finished perhaps Sunday or Monday in the House and then taken up next week here in the Senate. But there is another issue out there that has had a lot of discussion, and it is very big, important, controversial, and urgent, in my judgment, and that is the subject of energy and climate change. There is a great deal of discussion about the intersection of energy and climate change; that is, energy security for our country and trying to protect our planet from climate change.

Typically, most of us do not think much about energy. We just use it, and we assume it comes from somewhere. But we use it, and we are pleased to be able to have access to it. Starting in the very early hours of the morning, when an electric alarm goes off, a sleepy hand reaches over and shuts off the alarm and then turns on a light and then perhaps even turns on a television or a radio. Then in many households, probably uses an electric toothbrush, a toaster, a coffee pot, and more. For those who shower in the morning, a hot water heater keeps that water nice and hot. For those who work really hard, of course, they shower after work, but all in all, it is the same hot water heater. And we do this all day long. We just take advantage of flipping a switch and a light goes on and putting a key in an ignition and the engine starts, but not realizing that all of this is made possible by energy, and we use a lot of it.

We had a circumstance in the Washington, DC, area a few years ago when a lot of homes were out of electricity, I should say, for upwards of a week. You know, only then did people understand what role it plays in their lives. All of a sudden, there was no television, no lights at night, or no hot water. So then people understood the importance and the role of energy.

So here is this issue of energy security. We import a lot of our oil from outside of our country. A substantial amount of the oil reserves in the world is produced in countries that don't like us very well. So is that a security issue? I think it is, and we ought to worry about that--being less dependent on others for our energy. Particularly in a day and age of terrorism, we

should be more concerned about the issue of national energy security.

Even as we do that and work on the issue of energy security, we are faced with questions about how we protect our planet. We now understand from the wide consensus of scientists is there is something happening to the global climate. Much of it is related to the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases that are emitted into the atmosphere from man-made sources. So how do we have a future that addresses our energy production and use and that reduces the CO2 to bring about a lower carbon future in order to protect our planet?

These two pieces must fit together and relate to each other: How do you promote greater energy security and how do you protect the planet with respect to global climate change?

Well, with energy security, there are about three major ways: one, you produce more energy; two, you conserve more energy and use it more efficiently in all kinds of ways; and three, you maximize renewable energy, even as you produce more from traditional sources. With respect to climate change, you take a look at what are the carbon emissions from fossil energy sources and then find ways to lower those emissions.

I want to talk a little about the dilemma we have, and I have spoken about it before. We wrote a bill in the Senate Energy Committee last June. We passed it out on a bipartisan vote, and it has been languishing on the Senate calendar ever since. The reason it has languished and not been brought to the floor of the Senate is because there is another group in this Chamber who says: We will not accept working on an energy bill--even though the bill, by the way, lowers carbon emissions and is taking steps to do exactly what you would do to actually reduce carbon. Even though that is the case, we have a group of other folks in this Chamber who say: We do not intend to allow an energy bill to come to the floor unless it is part of a cap-and-trade climate change bill. Well, I want to talk about that a bit.

My colleague, this past week--I probably will not name him--but, according to this article, ``came out swinging . . . against the idea of passing just an energy bill.''

``It's the `kick the can down the road' approach,'' said

[one of our colleagues]. ``It's putting off to another

Congress what really needs to be done comprehensively. I

don't think you'll ever have energy independence the way I

want until you start dealing with carbon pollution and

pricing carbon. The two are interconnected.''

He pledged to fight against bringing the Energy and Natural Resources bill to the floor of the Senate. Then he said it is a ``half-[blank]'' approach bill, and so on.

He is wrong. Everybody has a right to be wrong, of course, but he is wrong. The bill the Energy Committee passed actually reduces carbon emissions. If you want to reduce carbon emissions, you can have a debate in here about targets and timetables. But it is the actual energy policies that reduce carbon. That is exactly what we did in the Energy bill.

That Energy bill will maximize the production of energy where the wind blows and the Sun shines. If you can maximize renewable energy from the wind and the Sun, then you dramatically reduce carbon. The only way you can do that is to decide as a country: Here is where we want to go.

It is interesting to me that if you ask someone about Social Security or Medicare or a number of other things 50 years from now, they will give you their estimates of this or that. Then you ask them this: What kind of an energy future do you want America to have? What do we aspire to achieve? How will we use energy 50 years from now? They do not have the foggiest idea. They have not thought much about it. Well, they should, and we should.

But here is the situation. I feel we ought to produce more here at home. We ought to conserve more. We ought to promote much greater efficiency. We ought to maximize the use of renewable energy. We ought to do all those things. But I feel we ought to find ways to put caps on carbon. I also am willing to price carbon. I think a price signal on carbon is important.

What I do not support, and have never supported, is offering a trillion dollar carbon securities market to Wall Street so they can trade carbon securities on Monday and Tuesday--with their inevitable bubble of speculation--and then tell us on Thursday and Friday how much our energy is going to cost, as a result of the trades they made early in the week. I have no interest in doing this, given the history of what has happened on Wall Street, with the bubbles; and there have been plenty of them. The last bubble threw us right into the ditch as a result of the most unbelievable avarice and greed and speculative behavior we have seen in this country in about six or eight decades. I have no interest in saying to them: Here is a new trillion dollar carbon security market. You all grab it and trade it. By the way, they are already prepared to trade carbon derivatives--and probably very quickly synthetic derivatives. I have no interest in helping them do that.

But that is not the only way to address this issue. We could consider other options. We can do a carbon fee. We can do some sort of hybrid approach in which there are auctions by the government, just as we auction T-bills. There are other ways to do that. I support a cap on carbon, and I support finding a way to price carbon. I just do not, and will not, support a new carbon securities market for Wall Street to decide what the price of carbon is going to be.

Having said all that, my hope is that perhaps we all could get together and bring the Energy bill to the floor that actually takes steps to reduce carbon. By the way, if you are opposed to that, you are apparently opposed to reducing carbon. Bring that bill to the floor-- and if somebody here wants to do cap and trade, have them offer an amendment and try to bolt that amendment onto the bill. If they have the votes, good for them. I am willing to vote for an amendment that puts a price on carbon when a bill comes to the floor. I will consider voting for something that caps carbon and puts a price on carbon. Yet, I will not vote for cap and trade with Wall Street manipulation. I will vote for the underlying Energy bill, which should be done because that is the way you begin to lower carbon.

There are many important aspects of the Senate Energy bill. We build an interstate highway of transmission capability so you can gather the energy from the wind where the wind blows and then send it on transmission lines to the load centers that need it. The same is true with solar energy. We would have the first ever national renewable energy standard in the history of this country--the first ever--saying 15 percent of electricity must be produced from renewable sources. I would offer an amendment on the floor that would take that to 20 percent. I believe it should be at least 20 percent.

We have provisions to support building retrofits and greater efficiency. We do all of the things: maximize renewable with a national RES, support the development of an interstate transmission capability and more. Why on Earth, then, would they oppose bringing that bill to the floor, to do exactly what they suggest has to be done ultimately to meet the targets they want to propose? I want to mention, as we deal with this issue--the very fact there is an urgency with respect to energy and also climate change--the very fact that urgency exists means there are a lot of things going on.

I want to describe some of them that I think are very positive. I want to do that because in this Chamber on health care and virtually every other subject, most of what is discussed is negative. I understand that problem. That is what we work on. We work on the things that do not work. We find out what is wrong and debate that. And the old saying that I have described often: Bad news travels half way around the world before good news gets its shoes on--is true in this Chamber as well. It is what sells. But there is a lot of good news.

Let me describe some good news with respect to energy and climate change. First, in terms of the production of oil, we have had some important successes. In North Dakota, my home State, the U.S. Geological Survey has identified the largest reserve of oil that is recoverable using today's technology that they have ever surveyed in the history of the lower 48 States--4.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil. Here is how they get it. It is a 100-foot seam called the Bakken Shale which is about

10,000 feet below the Earth. They punch a hole in the planet with a little drilling rig. They go down 2 miles, make a big curve, and go out 2 miles. So they have one drilling rig. They are drilling a well down 2 miles, take a big curve out 2 miles, and then hydrofracture with high- pressure solution. With that, the oil begins to seep, and they pump the oil out. In North Dakota, they drill a new well about every 30 days.

We have 100 drilling rigs in North Dakota right now. Last year, for the first time in a long, long, long time, we actually produced more oil than we did in previous years. Over decades, we have been on a slow decline in production. But not last year because we are discovering more oil and more natural gas. So there is good news in those areas.

With respect to wind, take a look at wind turbines that are going up all across this country. We are seeing the same with solar. There is so much good news about the production of energy.

Let me tell you about the inventiveness because I think inventiveness is going to solve some of these problems. We have people coming in all the time wanting to get through what is called the valley of death, if they have a new idea. A new idea needs to get sustained funding and support in order to demonstrate at scale. Often it is hard to get the money. That is part of the problem in terms of the valley of death that they have to go through. Some of them never make it through.

There is a person who is developing synthetic microbes that can be used to consume, or in layman's terms, eat the coal and leave methane in its wake. Wouldn't that be interesting: synthetic microbes that would turn a coal seam into methane.

There is a person who has what he described as a lollipop-shaped microbe they discovered that breaks cellulose more efficiently than any other known microbe that would then make cellulosic ethanol that you would put in your car that is one-third less expensive. That would be a big deal. I do not know whether it works, but they claim it does.

I have had a presentation by a guy who says he has a diesel engine that gets 100 miles to the gallon that is being tested. We have had presentations from a guy who has invented a process for taking the flue gas from a coal plant, mineralizing it, and turning it into a product that is harder than concrete which also contains CO2. So you get rid of the CO2, which is the problem, by creating a product that has value that is harder than concrete.

We have projects around the country now of taking the CO2 from a power plant and using the CO2 to produce algae--that single-cell pond scum that you see in wastewater, the green stuff-- producing algae with CO2 and then harvesting the algae for diesel fuel. Isn't that something? You take a problem and you turn it into a fuel.

We have another group working on algae that excretes the lipids, and with very little treatment it becomes the fuel. There are so many people doing so many things. I had a group come in to tell me about their new patent that will make a different kind of wind tower--blades and turbines--that they believe will reduce the cost of producing energy from wind towers by 50 percent. Well, maybe that is the better mouse trap. Maybe the world will beat a path to their door. I do not know.

But there are so many breathless new ideas that are being discovered. Our national laboratories are studying the guts system of a termite. Why are we studying 200 strains of bacteria in the guts system of a termite? Because when a termite eats your house, a termite creates methane gas. Well, that is not so unusual. That happens with a lot of organisms that eat something. But it also produces hydrogen. This little bug that eats your home produces hydrogen. If we can figure out a way to turn wood into fuel, just as a termite does, then we would have something interesting and important, and those experiments go on.

We can take the CO2 from a coal-fired power plant, transport it, and invest that into oil wells and pull up much more oil from wells that were nearly depleted. This is called enhanced oil recovery and has been used for years. All of these things are happening around our country, and all of them, it seems to me, have very interesting potential.

We had testimony at one of our hearings from a Ph.D. from Sandia National Laboratory who talked about experiments they are doing there using a sunlight heat engine and putting CO2 into one side, water into the other side, fracturing the molecules, and then chemically recombining them and producing a fuel, water, and CO2. My point is this: There is a race to the finish here in this country by a lot of inventive people to find new ways to produce new energy and find new ways to be able to continue to use our abundant sources of energy while at the same time protecting the atmosphere and our planet. I am absolutely convinced that some of these ideas are going to be the ideas that represent the silver bullets.

We appropriated about $37 billion to the Department of Energy through the Recovery Act funding, which has been described as the largest venture capital firm in energy in the history of humankind. Through the leadership of Dr. Chu, Matt Rogers and others at DOE, they are funding a lot of inventive, interesting new approaches to address these diverse energy challenges. How do you continue to use current fossil energy while protecting our planet? How do you continue to use coal through geologic sequestration or beneficial use of CO2? How do you create new kinds of fuels? How do you expand the use of renewables? All of these things are happening now, and all of them, I think, are exciting, and I think will have a profound impact on what we do 5, 10, 25, and 50 years from now.

We are working very hard to try to electrify the automobile fleet, and I believe in the years ahead we will see a much greater movement to a predominantly electric vehicle fleet. So those are the kinds of changes we will see.

I know this is important for two reasons. We stick holes in the Earth, and we suck out about 85 million barrels a day. We also know that of that roughly 85 million barrels a day, one-fourth of it needs to come to the United States of America because that is our appetite for that oil. We are a country whose people depend on and whose economy runs on oil and on energy.

We know the Chinese and Indians look at this, and in India and China, we know there are people who want to drive vehicles. In the very near future, I expect that hundreds of millions of additional people will be driving cars around this planet. They are going to want to find a gas station to stop at once a week to put fuel in those cars.

What does that mean for us, for our supply of energy that is necessary to run the American economy? That is why all of these things are important.

Let me go back to where I started. We are having this debate about whether the Energy bill that was passed out of the Senate Energy Committee on a bipartisan basis should come to the floor of the Senate. My response is, yes, it should come to the floor of the Senate. I am a little tired of somebody saying it is not a worthwhile bill to debate. This person isn't on the Energy Committee. This person doesn't know the specifics of that bill or at least misrepresents it in a press article.

If there are those who wish to have a cap-and-trade debate in the Chamber, let them come, but let's bring the Energy bill to the floor. That is the way the Senate works. You work a bill up through the Energy Committee, doing something you think is good for the country. In this case, our bill increases energy security and begins to reduce carbon emissions. We should bring that bill to the floor through the regular order. Then, if somebody wishes to offer amendments to cap carbon, I will be supportive of those amendments. If somebody wants to offer amendments to put a price on carbon, I could be supportive of that. However, I will not support the aspect of cap and trade which creates a further abyss by giving Wall Street a $1 trillion carbon security market with which to trade for our energy future.

I know I have given this speech five or six times, the first five times to no avail. Perhaps, I hope, now that we are nearing D-day, wherein if we don't get an energy bill to the floor, we will have finished last year and this year having done nothing about what I think is an urgent national need. We will not have taken steps to bring about greater energy security and doing the kind of things that are necessary to reduce carbon emissions.

The Senate Energy Bill takes both of those steps. The fact is, we have now

lost nearly a year's time because others have wanted to bolt on cap- and-trade provision, or they won't allow it to come to the floor unless they bring their cap-and-trade proposal to the floor.

Understand that I am in favor of capping carbon. I am willing to price carbon. However, I am not willing to agree that we ought to abandon the work of the committee which actually begins to reduce carbon. I am also not willing to agree, given Wall Street's recent history, to dive into a pool of carbon derivatives with carbon securities so they can determine our energy pricing future.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we have reached a unanimous consent agreement, which I will read momentarily, with the minority and the majority agreeing to the request. It is the way forward to a final vote on the FAA reauthorization bill on Monday afternoon.

It is an important moment because it has taken a long while to get an FAA reauthorization bill through the Senate. Finally, on Monday that will be achieved. It will accomplish many objectives that are so important for our country, air safety, and investment in infrastructure, the passengers' bill of rights.

It is bipartisan. It represents all the best of what we should be doing around here. It came out of the Commerce Committee on a bipartisan basis. We have had this long discussion.

There are a couple discussions prior to the completion of the bill, and one of them deals with the subject my colleague from Maryland was just describing. But let me read the unanimous consent request. It has been agreed to by the minority and the majority.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that no further amendments, other than those covered in this agreement, be in order to H.R. 1586; and that when the Senate resumes consideration of the bill on Monday, March 22, the time until 4:30 p.m. be for debate only, equally divided and controlled between Senators Rockefeller and Hutchison or their designees; further, that at 4:30 p.m., the Ensign amendment No. 3476 be reported for consideration and that it be modified with the changes at the desk; with the time until 5:30 p.m. for debate with respect to that amendment, and that the time be equally divided and controlled between Senators Warner and Kyl or their designees; that at 5:30 p.m., the Senate proceed to vote in relation to amendment No. 3476, as modified, that adoption of the amendment require an affirmative 60-vote threshold, and that if the amendment achieves that threshold, it be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be made and laid upon the table; that if it does not achieve the threshold, then it be withdrawn; further, that it also be in order for the amendment to be withdrawn prior to the vote; that upon disposition of amendment No. 3476, as modified, the pending McCain amendment No. 3527 be withdrawn; the pending McCain amendment No. 3528, if not disposed of, the Senate then proceed to vote in relation to the amendment; that upon disposition of the McCain amendment No. 3528, the managers' amendment, which is at the desk and cleared by the managers and leaders, be considered and agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that the substitute amendment, as amended, be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that the bill, as amended, be read a third time, and the Senate then proceed to vote on passage of the bill; that upon passage, the title amendment, which is at the desk, be considered and agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, that is a long unanimous consent request. The potential would be only one vote on Monday or the potential might be three votes or somewhere in that neighborhood. But it does, upon its execution on Monday, allow us as a Senate to finish the FAA reauthorization bill. It has so much to commend

for our country. I am pleased to have negotiated with so many people-- Senator Hutchison, Senator Kyl on that side, Senator Warner and others--that we were able to reach agreements so we will have a way forward dealing with only a couple controversial issues that will remain and then we will have final passage.

I know the Senator from Florida wishes to speak.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar Nos. 497, 498, 499, 655, 710, 711, 712, 736, 737, 738, 739, 744, 745, 746, 748, 749, 750, 751, 752, 753, 754, 755, 756, 757, 758, 760, 761, 762, 763, 764, 765, 766, 767, 768, 769, 770, 771, 772, 773, 774, all nominations on the Secretary's desk in the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy; that the nominations be confirmed en bloc, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc; that no further motions be in order; that any statements relating to the nominations appear at the appropriate place in the Record as if read; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 451.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it recess until 2 p.m. on Monday, March 22; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate then proceed to a period for the transaction of morning business until 3 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each and with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees; that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 1586, as provided for under the previous order.

Mr. President, on Monday, the Senate will resume consideration of the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization legislation. Senators should expect up to three votes to begin at approximately 5:30 p.m. on Monday.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it recess under the previous order.