Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, how much time remains on the Democratic side on the nomination for USTR?

Mr. President, I intend to speak for 10 of the 16 minutes. I will reserve the 6 minutes for others.

Mr. President, we are dealing with the nomination of Mr. Kirk to be trade ambassador, the head of the trade office in our Government. I intend to support his nomination, but I wanted to come to the floor to take the opportunity to say that ambassador after ambassador after ambassador has left that trade office with large and growing trade deficits that I think weaken and undermine our country. And I want to make certain Mr. Kirk and others know what I think is the urgency to address these significant trade deficits.

We are a country that is consuming 3 percent more than we produce. No country can do that for a very long period of time. We are buying more from abroad than we are selling abroad--$2 billion every single day. We import $2 billion every day more than we export.

We are facing a very severe financial crisis in this country now. At least one of the causes of that crisis, which is never discussed by anybody, is an unbelievable trade deficit.

Our merchandise trade deficit last year was $800 billion. You can take a look at what has happened in recent years. These red lines represent the deep hole of trade deficits. That is money we owe to other countries because we are buying more from them than we are selling to them.

Now, I am for trade, and plenty of it, but I insist it be fair, and I also believe there are mutual responsibilities of trading partners. The trade deficit, for example--in the $800 billion merchandise trade deficit we have--with China is $256 billion. Think of that: $256 billion in a year. And we have very serious trade problems with China with respect to the issue of counterfeiting and piracy.

Part of what we are producing in this country these days is intellectual property--computer programming and software, various types of music and movies, and all kinds of inventions. Our intellectual property is being pirated and counterfeited on street corners all across China. And it is not as if China doesn't know how to deal with that. When China held the Olympics, they knew how to deal with their logo. There was an Olympic logo for the Chinese Olympics which belonged to the Government of China. All of a sudden, that had value, and they decided to protect that. People started showing up on street corners in China selling mugs and banners with the Chinese Olympic logo, and they shut them down just like that. They stopped it just like that because that belonged to the Government of China. Well, what about all the intellectual property that is pirated and counterfeited and reverse- engineered in China that is sold on their street corners in violation of everything, which helps result in this $256 billion trade deficit with China?

That is something our U.S. trade ambassador has to confront.

Let me give an example--and this is just one; I could give a dozen-- of part of our problem. We have a trade deficit with South Korea. Ninety-eight percent of the cars on the streets of South Korea are made in South Korea because that is what they want. They do not want foreign cars in South Korea. Our country signed two separate trade deals with Korea in the 1990s, which supposedly meant that Korea would open up their auto market. Those agreements are apparently not worth the paper they were written on. So Korea sent us 770,000 vehicles last year-- 770,000 Korean-made vehicles. Those are Korean jobs--vehicles made in Korea, sold in the United States. Yet we are able to sell 6,000 American vehicles in Korea. Now, think of that: 770,000 cars coming our way, and we get to sell 6,000 there. Why? Because the Korean Government doesn't want American cars on their roads. They want one-way trade, which I think results in unfairness to our country, lack of jobs in our country, and a growing trade deficit in our country that undermines our economy.

The same is true with respect to China. For example, we negotiated a bilateral trade agreement with China. Only much later did we learn the ingredients of that agreement. China is now creating a significant automobile export industry, and we will begin seeing Chinese cars on American streets in the not too distant future. They are gearing up for a very robust automobile export industry. Here is what our country agreed with in a bilateral agreement with China. We agreed that any American cars sold in China after a phase-in could have a 25-percent tariff imposed by the Chinese. Any Chinese cars sold in America would have a 2\1/2\-percent tariff. Think of the absurdity of that. A country with which we have a $200 billion trade deficit--last year, $260 billion--and we said: It is okay for you to impose a tariff that is 10 times higher on U.S.-made automobiles sold in your country than we will impose on your automobiles sold in our country. That is the kind of ignorance, in my judgment, and unfair trade provisions that result in our having an $800 billion merchandise trade deficit.

Now, Warren Buffett has said--and Warren Buffett is a bright guy, and I like him, I have known him for a long while--this is unsustainable. You can't run these kinds of trade deficits year after year. It is unsustainable. Why? Because when we buy $800 billion more from other countries than we sell to them, it means they end up with our money or a debt, and that debt will be repaid with a lower standard of living in our country.

My point is that the financial crisis in this country is caused by a lot of things, at least one of which is an unbelievable growing trade deficit that has gone on and festered for a long while, and no administration has done much about it. Oh, the last administration, I think the last time they took action was against Europe, and they announced with big fanfare that they were going to impose tariffs on Roquefort cheese, truffles, and goose liver. That will scare the devil out of some country--Roquefort cheese, truffles, and goose liver. We not only negotiate bad trade agreements, but then we fail to enforce them. And when we do enforce them, we don't enforce them with any vigor.

Mr. President, I know there has been discussion in the last couple of days about trade with Mexico. Mexico had a $66 billion surplus--or we a deficit with them--last year. We have had a nearly \1/2\ trillion dollar trade deficit with Mexico in the last 10 years alone, and Mexico is accusing us of unfair trade? I am sorry. We have a \1/2\ trillion dollar deficit with Mexico in trade relationship in 10 years, and they believe we are unfair?

The recent action by Mexico against the United States is due to the fact that a large bipartisan majority of both Chambers of Congress objected to a Mexican long-haul trucking pilot program that the Bush Administration wanted to establish. The inspector general of the Transportation Department had said that in Mexico there is no central repository of drivers' records, no central repository of accident reports, and no central repository of vehicle inspections. We don't have an equivalent system. Well, there is nothing in a trade agreement that requires us to diminish safety on our roads. When we have equivalent systems or when we have conditions in both countries that are equivalent, you will hear no complaint from me about any pilot program of this type, but that is not the case today.

Just as an aside, at a hearing I held last year, we were told that one of the rules for the cross-border trucking program was that the drivers who were coming in with the big trucks were going to be required to be fluent in English. One way they would determine whether they were fluent in English is they would hold up a highway sign, such as a stop sign, to the driver and ask him: What is this sign? And if the driver replied, ``Alto,'' which means ``stop'' in Spanish, they would declare that driver fluent in English. Look, this made no sense at all. Let's make sure we protect the safety on America's roads. I have no problem with cross-border trucking as soon as we have equivalent standards. That is not now the case.

But my larger point with Mexico, as with other countries, is that we have a large and growing trade deficit--$66 billion last year with Mexico; \1/2\ trillion dollars in 10 years. This country can't continue that. We have to have fair trade with other countries and fair trade agreements. And when we do, it seems to me we should be aggressive in trying to sell worldwide. We are good at this. We can prevail. We don't have to have an $800 billion deficit that threatens our country's economy. No one talks about it much, but the fact is, this enormous deficit undermines the strength of the American economy. It sucks jobs out of our country and moves them overseas in search of cheap labor. We can do better than that.

I intend to support Ron Kirk. I think he will be a good choice. However, I hope this trade ambassador understands that while our country stands for trade and our country stands for open markets, we ought to, for a change, also stand for fair trade agreements and we ought to stand for balance in trade and get rid of an $800 billion-a- year deficit in which we end up owing other countries a substantial amount of our future. It makes no sense to me.

So I am for trade, and plenty of it, but let's try to get it right for a change, to strengthen this country and put this country on the right track.

Mr. President, 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.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley.) Without objection, it is so ordered.

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

Mr. President, most Americans have read in their newspaper and heard on news accounts the story about the company called AIG that has been the recipient of some $170 billion of guarantees by the American taxpayers, because of an unbelievably failed business strategy and being involved in very risky financial products.

They had an outfit in London with several hundred people in it who were involved in trading credit default swaps and steered that company right into a ditch. We have recently learned that that company, which has lost a substantial amount of money, just paid $165 million in bonuses to executives in its financial products unit, and the American people are furious about it and should be.

I think it is a disgrace that a company that has been engaged in the kind of essential wagering that has been involved in here is now paying bonuses. What do they teach in business school, that a company that loses money and helps create a significant problem for this country's economy ought to be paying bonuses, especially after they received American taxpayers' funds, to employees who helped the company lose money?

I want to mention one additional point. I think it is disgraceful to have those kinds of bonuses being announced for AIG employees. But we have another circumstance that is even worse. Merrill Lynch lost $27 billion last year and still paid $3.6 billion in bonuses to its employees last December.

There were 694 employees of that company got more than $1 million each in bonuses. Think of it. And then, by the way, a week or two later, the company that took them over, Bank of America, got tens of billions more of TARP funds from the American taxpayer.

All of this is disgraceful. My colleagues and I have decided we are going to do everything we can to try to claw back those bonuses. They do not deserve bonuses. Where is the responsibility here on the part of people who helped steer this economy into the ditch? Where is the responsibility on the part of people who made bad business decisions, that in Merrill Lynch's case lost $27 billion in a year, and then decide, you know what, let's decide how much we should pay in bonuses this year?

Well, you know what, the answer ought to be, zero. Where do you get the notion you pay bonuses for losing money? Where do you get off deciding you are going to pay bonuses after you have taken tens and tens of billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money, through TARP funds and other emergency assistance, and then sit around and say, all right, now we have had to take all of this taxpayer money because we have lost a bunch of money because we gambled, we had several hundred people in that office in London who had massive gambling enterprises going on and credit default swaps, and so now we decide we are going to pay them bonuses. I do not understand that.

By the way, there is another issue, a very short issue. All of the counterparties who are getting money that the taxpayers are sending into AIG are being recompensed to the tune of 100 percent. Where is this notion about everybody sacrificing a bit? Why is it that the big interests that are counterparties to this are getting a 100-percent return on their investment? How about taking a haircut here? But nobody is doing that. Everybody is sitting around trying to figure out, how do I get mine, even in circumstances where employees now are getting big bonuses for losing money.

There has to be some accountability at some point. What is happening is disgraceful. And we have every right and responsibility as a Congress to decide that we are going to try to claw back these ill- gotten bonuses.

The AIG bonuses for the employees in its financial products unit could total as much as $450 million. Fifty-five million was paid in December. The outrage right now is about $165 million paid last week. But there is another $230 million in AIG bonuses that could come later this year or next. It is time for this Congress to take a stand on behalf of the American people. We need to claw back those bonuses. We need to say to all of those companies: No more. We are not going to put up with it anymore. This is disgraceful. How about some economic patriotism? How about standing up for the interests of this country and the interests of these taxpayers?

I will have more to say about it tomorrow, but I wanted to point out that the anger around this country, reading this kind of nonsense, is palpable and real. This Congress understands it and we are going to do everything we can to try to claw back these bonuses that, in my judgment, are disgraceful.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for as much time as I may consume.

Last evening, I was driving from the Capitol and listening to Jim Lehrer News Hour. They had a report about transit systems in this country that are facing significant financial problems. The report was fairly interesting. It turns out to be a subject with which I am fairly familiar. The report was that there are more than a couple dozen transit agencies in some of America's largest cities that are in deep financial trouble. Why? Because they had sold their subway system or bus system to a bank in order to raise needed revenue. Under what is called a SILO, a sale in/lease out transaction, a city can sell its property to a bank, so the bank takes title to the property. The bank then leases it back to the city, and the bank gets a big tax writeoff because it can depreciate the property. So the city still gets to use its subway system because they are leasing it back.

All of a sudden, a couple dozen cities discovered that this transaction they entered into, which I think is kind of a scam, landed them in huge trouble because the transaction was insured with a derivative that went through AIG. AIG's credit rating collapsed, and now the banks are calling in substantial penalties on the part of the transit system that they cannot meet. So they are in trouble.

Surprised? I am not particularly surprised. I have been on the floor of the Senate talking about what is happening with respect to these so- called sale in/lease out, SILO practices. I have talked about banks and about Wachovia Bank, by the way, which was buying German sewer systems. I will describe a couple of these transactions. These are cross-border leasing provisions, sale and lease back.

Wachovia Bank buys a sewer system in Bochum, Germany. Why? Is it because it is a sewer specialist? Do they have executives who really know about sewers in Germany? I don't think so. This is a scam. It has always been a scam. An American bank buys a sewer system in a German city so it can depreciate the assets of that sewage system and then lease it back to the German city. The Germans were scratching their heads, saying: This seems kind of dumb, but as long as we are on the receiving end of a lot of money, we are certainly willing to do it.

I am showing this example of a bank called Wachovia, which used to be First Union, that originally started some of these transactions. I believe Wachovia itself, which was in deep financial trouble, has now been acquired by Wells Fargo. First Union was involved in a cross- border lease of Dortmund, Germany, streetcars. What is an American bank doing leasing streetcars in a German city? To avoid paying U.S. taxes, that is why.

We have seen all kinds of these transactions going on. I have described them on the floor of the Senate previously.

This one is the transit system railcars in Belgium. Since many of these transactions are confidential, I don't know which American company bought Belgium National Railway cars. One of our corporations bought the Liefkenshoek Tunnel under the river in Antwerp, Belgium. Why? To save money on taxes. Some companies don't want to pay their taxes to this country.

PBS Frontline's Hedrick Smith did a piece on it. The cross-border leasing contracts appear particularly hard to justify because all the property rights remain as they were even after the deal was signed. The Cologne purification plant keeps cleaning Cologne's sewage water. In the words of Cologne's city accountant:

After all, the Americans should know themselves what they

do with their money.

If they subsidize this transaction, we gratefully accept.

I mention this because the tax shelters that big American banks and some cities have discovered are unusual and, I think, raise very serious questions about whether they are fair to do.

Here is a Wall Street Journal article about how the city of Chicago actually sold Chicago's 9-1-1 emergency call system to FleetBoston Financial and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking. Why would a city sell its 9-1-1 emergency call system? Why would somebody buy it? It is in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

The reason I mention all of this is, last evening, I heard about the transit systems being in trouble in this country. Why? They are engaged in this. They were engaged in exactly the same thing. A transit system that is established by a city to provide transportation for folks in that city decides it wants to get involved in a transaction to sell its transit system to a bank someplace and then lease it back, allowing the bank to avoid paying U.S. taxes and, all of a sudden, they are in trouble. Do you know what? I do not have so much sympathy for people who are involved in those kinds of transactions. It reminded me, last evening, listening to this issue of cross-border leasing, SILOs and LILOs, and all these scams going on for a long time, many established by U.S. companies who apparently, in their boardrooms, are not only trying to figure out how to sell products but how to avoid taxes through very sophisticated tax engineering.

I think it raises lots of questions about the issue of economic patriotism and what each of us owes to our country. It reminded me again of another portion of this financial collapse and financial crisis that we now face in this country. It reminded me of the work that the attorney general of New York, Andrew Cuomo, is doing and something he disclosed. We should have disclosed it, but we didn't know it. We know it because Andrew Cuomo, the attorney general of New York, dug it out. Let me tell you the story.

Last year, Merrill Lynch investment bank was going belly up. So the Treasury Secretary arranged a purchase of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America in September to be consummated in January. And it happened. What we now understand and learn is that Merrill Lynch, which lost $27 billion last year, in December, just prior to it being taken over by Bank of America, paid 694 people bonuses of more than $1 million each. I will say that again. They paid 694 people bonuses of more than $1 million each, with the top four executives sharing $121 million.

Moments later--that is, in a couple of weeks--the American taxpayers, through the TARP program, put tens of billions of dollars more into the acquiring company, Bank of America. At least a portion of that would have been attributable to the takeoff of Merrill Lynch, which just lost $15 billion the previous quarter. It appears to me that this was an arrangement, and Bank of America understood it was buying Merrill Lynch. Merrill Lynch lost a ton of money--$27 billion--last year but wanted to pay bonuses to its executives. So 694 of their folks got more than $1 million each--just prior to the American taxpayer coming in and providing the backstop to the acquiring company, Bank of America, at least in part because of the purchase.

Is there any wonder the American people get furious when they read these kinds of things? The top four executives received $121 million. The top 14 received $250 million. I describe this because we didn't know this. We are the ones who are pushing TARP money. This Congress appropriated TARP money--now $700 billion. This Congress has appropriated that money, but we don't know what is going on. That is why I introduced, with Senator McCain, a proposal for a select committee to investigate the narrative of what happened with respect to this financial crisis. These tax scams are just a part of it. It is the way everything was happening around here, with some of the biggest institutions in the country.

There is plenty of blame to go around. The Federal Government was running deficits that were far too large. Corporate debt was increasing dramatically. Personal debt, household debt, doubled in a relatively short time. It is not as if everybody doesn't have some culpability. Our trade deficit, $700 billion a year, is unsustainable. You cannot do that year after year. There were a lot of reasons.

Then the subprime loan scandal--this unbelievable scandal. At the same time the subprime loan scandal ratchets up, we have a circumstance where regulators, who were appointed by the previous administration, essentially advertised they were willing to be willfully blind and not look. ``Self regulation'' is what Alan Greenspan called it.

So then there grew a substantial pot of dark money that was traded outside of any exchanges. Nobody knew what they were. The development of newly engineered products, credit default swaps, CDOs--you name it, was very complicated--so complicated that many could not understand them. I was asked by a television interviewer 2 days ago: If you did a select committee to investigate all of this, with due respect, do you think Members of the Senate could understand these very complicated products?

I said: I think if your question is could we understand them as well as the heads of financial institutions who steered their companies into the ditch with these products, can we understand them as well as they did, yes, I think so. I think we are capable of figuring out what caused all this, but we would not do it without looking. We would not do it, in my judgment, without the establishment of a select committee with subpoena power to develop the narrative of what happened, who is accountable, what do we do to make sure this never happens again.

I believe we ought to go back a ways, go back to 1999, when the Congress passed something called the Financial Services Modernization Act that took apart the Glass-Steagall Act that was put in place after the Great Depression, and it separated banking from risk. It said you cannot be involved in deposit-insured banking and then involved in real estate and securities as well.

In 1999, Congress passed legislation that said that is old-fashioned. Let's get rid of Glass-Steagall. Let's abolish Glass-Steagall. Let's create big financial holding companies for one-stop financial capabilities for everybody. I was one of eight to vote no. I said on the floor of the Senate 10 years ago that I think this will result in a big taxpayer bailout. I said that during the debate, not because I knew it but because I felt it. You cannot take apart the protections that existed after the Great Depression and somehow believe you are doing the country a favor. We were not.

We have to reconnect some of those protections and separate banking from the substantial risks that are involved in things such as the derivatives and some of the complex products with great risk that now exist as something called toxic assets deep in the bowels of some of the largest financial institutions of our country.

We have a lot to do and a lot to do in a hurry to try to fix what is wrong in this country. I said before that I do not think you can fix what is wrong unless you clean up the banking system. I understand a banking system is a circulatory system for an economy. You have to have a working system of finance.

I was asked the other day: Do you believe in nationalizing the banks?

I said: That is a word that is thrown around. I don't know what words to use. But I think perhaps for the biggest banks in the country that have failed that are loaded with massive, risky toxic assets and are now saying to the American taxpayers: Bail me out, but keep me alive because I have a right to exist because I am too big to fail, I said I think instead we ought to run it through a banking carwash. Start at the front end--I know ``banking carwash'' is a goofy idea--start at the front end and when they come out new, you have gotten rid of the bad assets, keep the good assets, change the name, perhaps change their ownership, put them back up. We need banks, I understand that. But there is no inherent right with all the banks with the current names to exist if they ran into the ditch, taking on very big risks and then decide the taxpayers have to retain them because it is their inherent right to exist. I don't believe that is the case.

I do believe all of us have to find a way to put together this banking and financial system in a manner that

works because business cannot exist without credit. We have plenty of businesses out there right now that have the capability to make money, have the capability to survive and get through this but cannot find credit. We have to find a way to put that together so our financial system works.

Mr. President, I agree with the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water that the House-passed language contains flaws that we would all like to see remedied. In response to his two questions I will state the following.

First, I am willing to work with him and any other Member who has a similar concern about the unintended impact of the language on these energy projects.

Second, I agree that the Department of Energy, including its Loan Guarantee Office, should not cease, delay or slow down its processing of any of these pending loan guarantee applications.

The Department of Energy should continue to take all actions and steps necessary and predicate for the issuance of a final loan guarantee so that a final loan guarantee can be issued upon enactment of the necessary technical corrections and competitive selection.

I can assure the ranking member of the Energy and Water Subcommittee that I will work with him to try to correct this situation. Accordingly, the Department of Energy and its Loan Guarantee Office should proceed to process these loan guarantee applications expeditiously so as to be prepared to act immediately on these pending loan guarantee applications to issue final loan guarantees if corrective legislation is enacted.

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 9:30 a.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct an oversight hearing to

discuss tribal priorities in the fiscal year 2010 budget.

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

Mr. President, on Wednesday, the Senate voted on an amendment offered by my colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Coburn. The amendment would have cut funding for thirteen congressionally directed projects. Eight of these projects are from the Energy and Water Development section of the bill.

Senator Coburn claimed these projects were included at the request of a firm that is under investigation. But every project named in his amendment was included in this bill at the specific written request of a Member of Congress.

In fact, thanks to reforms we made in the last Congress, anyone can go online and see exactly who requested these projects and where the funding is going. We have gone to great lengths to make the process as transparent as possible. Members of Congress who request funding for projects also have to file a letter with the Appropriations Committee to certify that they and their family members have absolutely no financial interest in the earmark.

Let me be clear, I did not personally sponsor any of these projects.

In fact, all of the projects in the Energy and Water Development section of

the bill that were targeted by Senator Coburn's amendment were included by the House in their version of the fiscal year 2009 Energy and Water Development appropriations bill. The Senate also carried one of the eight in our version of the bill.

So while I did not sponsor any of these projects, I find these projects are consistent with the work performed by the Department of Energy, and I saw no reason to eliminate them.

Let me briefly describe the sorts of projects that we are talking about.

One of the projects would provide $951,000 for the direct methanol fuel cell. This type of fuel cell has the potential to meet low power needs, less than 1 kilowatt, with increased performance and improved storage ability.

Another project is focused on solar energy, providing $951,000 to improve the efficiency of home windows, with the same goal--reducing net energy consumption.

As I said, every project on this list was requested by one or more Members of Congress. The process is fully transparent and the Members of Congress who requested this funding are fully accountable. That is why I opposed the Coburn amendment.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich.) The clerk will call the roll.

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

Mr. President, last evening President Obama had invited the chairs and ranking members of committees in both the House and Senate to the White House for dinner. I wanted to mention that the opportunity for Republicans and Democrats, both chairs and ranking members of committees, to spend some time with the President was very important, a very important signal by the President to the Congress that he wants to work with everybody. He didn't give a speech. He and his wife, the First Lady, welcomed the Members of Congress. I was pleased to be there. My point is, this President is trying to reach out and change the culture, which is so important.

This afternoon, I have been invited by the President to join a number of my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, to go to the White House for a health care summit. Once again, the President is reaching out to see if there are ways for Republicans and Democrats, who work for the same masters--that is, American interests and the American people--to come together and find ways to reach significant policy goals. Do we have a need to address our health care problems? Absolutely. We spend much more than any other group of people on the face of the Earth on health care. Our costs are much greater than anyone else's, yet the outcomes are not. We rank 41st in life expectancy despite the fact that we spend far more than anyone else in the world on health care. Health care costs are accelerating. They are injuring businesses paying for health care insurance for employees. Health care costs are strangling family budgets. Health care costs are hurting Government, which has to pay for Medicare and Medicaid.

We have to get a handle on it.

The President is saying: Let's try to find a sensible, thoughtful way to reform health care. A good start is to invite a group of Republicans and Democrats from the Congress, a group of people from the private sector, from the health care industry, from the consumer side, supporters and opponents of various kinds of reforms and changes, to a summit at the White House to say: Let's talk. Let's try to figure out how we address these issues.

I commend the President because we have to change the culture. This cannot possibly continue to be an ``us versus them'' Congress or a Congress and Presidency that is deeply divided.

This country faces very serious challenges. The fact is, we have to work together to solve them. The very serious financial challenge, the crisis we face, is going to require the best energies all of us have and the best ideas of all of us. Included in the financial crisis is what health care costs are doing to the economy. That is why the President has indicated that one of the first issues we have to tackle, even as we try to stabilize the economy, is to address the issue of the burgeoning cost of health care. So I commend the President, and I look forward to the meeting today at the White House. I think it will be a good start to at least begin discussing health care costs.

I want to talk about one piece of health care costs because yesterday Senator Snowe from Maine, myself, Senator McCain from Arizona, my colleague Senator Stabenow from Michigan--we announced, on behalf of 25 Senators, a piece of legislation we introduced yesterday dealing with prescription drug costs. One of the fastest rising items of health care costs is the cost of prescription drugs.

Now, we have introduced this legislation before, and it has successfully

been blocked. But things have changed in a very dramatic way. The makeup of the Senate has changed. One of the people who cosponsored our legislation in the last session of the Congress is now sitting in the White House--then Senator Barack Obama, now President Obama. He was a cosponsor. The Chief of Staff at the White House, Rahm Emanuel, was one of the key sponsors in the House. So the fact is, we think we have an opportunity to pass legislation that will put some downward pressure on prescription drug prices. This is bipartisan and nonpartisan. This stretches from John McCain to President Obama. Both Presidential candidates were cosponsors in the last session of Congress of this identical piece of legislation. Many other Republicans and Democrats have joined us, so that as we introduced it, there are 25 original cosponsors.

Now, let me describe the problem we face in this country. By consent, I wish to show two bottles that did contain medicine. These are bottles of Lipitor. Lipitor, by the way, is a drug that I think probably is the most prescribed drug in this country, or at least one of the top prescribed drugs in this country. It is a cholesterol-lowering drug. Lipitor is made in Ireland and then shipped around the world.

Here is the way Lipitor is shipped in these bottles: same size, same cap; the only difference is, one is blue, one is red; the same pill put in the same bottle, made by the same company, FDA inspected. This red one goes to the United States. This blue one goes to Canada. The difference? This red one costs twice as much.

The U.S. consumer is told: You pay more than twice as much for the same prescription drug. Why? By what justification should not just Lipitor but other medicines be priced in a manner that says to the American consumer: You pay much more than we are asking others around the world to pay for the identical prescription drug? There is no justification.

Zocor, here is an example of a cholesterol-lowering drug. The United States and Canada--$5.16 for a 20-milligram pill in the United States; $2.45 in Canada.

Let me describe where these drugs are coming from. We are told by the opponents of this: Well, if drugs were to come into this country from outside the country, there might be a counterfeiting problem. Well, do you know what. Most of these drugs are made outside of our country. Lipitor is made in Ireland. Nexium is made in France. Tricor is made in France. Vytorin is made in Singapore and Italy and the UK.

Now, my point is simple: We have a law in this country that says the drug companies can import drugs into our country, made in other regions of the world, but consumers cannot, registered or licensed pharmacists cannot, and wholesalers cannot. Our piece of legislation is very simple. It says, let's provide some competition here. If the prescription drug industry is selling their drugs in virtually every other country in the world for a fraction of the price they sell those drugs here, let's let licensed pharmacists in our country purchase them from Canada or another country and pass the savings along to the consumer. Let's let wholesalers who are licensed in this country access those lower cost prescription drugs. Let's allow American consumers to access those drugs from Canada.

Now, I sat on a hay bale out on a farm 1 day at a little town meeting where there were 40 or 50 farmers, and we sat and talked about life and about the farm program and about what was going on in their region of North Dakota.

There was one old codger there who was kind of lamenting what it was costing him to live. He said: We don't make much money. We don't have much spendable income. And he said: I'm over 80 years old, and my wife has been fighting breast cancer for the last 3, 3\1/2\ years. He said: She has to take a drug called Tamoxifen. He said: So we have been going to Canada to try to buy Tamoxifen because it costs 80 percent less in Canada. It is the same drug--exactly the same drug--prescribed for an elderly woman who is fighting cancer, but you can pay much, much, much more here in the United States or much, much, much less in other countries. He said: For us, we have to drive to Canada to try to access this drug.

Americans should not have to do that. This ought to be a fair pricing strategy for American consumers, and today it is not. So we have introduced legislation that has substantial safety requirements attached to it. We provide substantial additional funding for the Food and Drug Administration. We provide pedigree requirements for drug lots produced anywhere in the world. We provide much more inspection of plants that produce drugs the FDA is approving. By the way, we know that substantial amounts of ingredients come from China and elsewhere. We also know that despite the fact there are supposed to be inspections of many of these plants, the inspections are few and far between.

The legislation we have introduced will dramatically increase the margin of safety--not decrease it--increase the margin of safety. What it will do is allow the American public to have access to lower cost prescription drugs. If one part of driving up the costs of health care in this country, as rapidly as it has gone--if one part of that is the rapidly increasing price of prescription drugs, then we can remedy that. We can simply say to the pharmaceutical industry: Give us the opportunity to have the same kind of pricing the rest of the world has. We can make that happen, not by asking them to give it to us, but by requiring a circumstance where our pharmacists and our wholesalers can access those same lower cost drugs.

Now, what does it mean? Well, we could save with this legislation about $50 billion in the next 10 years for American consumers; and about $10 billion of that would be saved by the Federal Government for its programs, Medicare and Medicaid.

Here is a New York Times piece. It says: ``More Americans Are Skipping Necessary Prescriptions, the Survey Finds.'' That was from January of this year. It says: One in seven Americans under 65 went without prescribed medicines, as drug costs spiraled upward in the United States, a nonprofit research group said.

Well, we can fix this. We can pass this legislation. As I indicated earlier, finally I think we have a bit of a tailwind here. We have a President who wants this. He put it in his budget. So now we have put in the architecture of a complete piece of legislation. We have worked on it for many years. My colleague, Senator Snowe, and I, and many others--from Senator Kennedy, Senator McCain, Senator Grassley, Senator Stabenow--all of us have worked to make this happen: increase the margin of safety, reduce prescription drug prices, and give the American people the opportunity to have some sort of competitive prescription drug prices that others all around the world have as a result of the current scheme that--let me not use the term ``scheme''-- as a result of the current pricing policies of the prescription drug industry.

Let me complete my statement by saying, we introduced this legislation yesterday. We will continue to try to access more and more cosponsors. Whether this is a part of a health care reform bill or passed on its own, I think it is going to be good news for American consumers.

Let me say one more time that the President's call today for a health care reform summit at the White House is one more example of bringing Republicans and Democrats together. This President is determined to do that. That is good news because there are a lot of good ideas that can come from every corner of this Chamber and every corner of the political system.

We ought to work together to give the American people the best of what both political parties have to offer rather than the worst of each, and nowhere is that more important than to do it in health care reform.

I thank the President for creating this summit this afternoon. One of the issues I will raise there will be the prescription drug importation bill, which I think could put some downward pressure on prescription drug prices, and that would be good for the people who live in this country and be good for this country's budgets and business budgets and so on.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise briefly to oppose the amendment offered by my colleague, Senator Thune from South Dakota. I supported and worked with Senator Thune and Senator Kyl on Indian law enforcement issues and health care issues with respect to a very sizable authorization bill that was passed last year. It was actually an amendment to another bill. It was enacted into law. We now have an authorization for an Emergency Fund for Indian Safety and Health that is very important, and it needs to get funded.

I had not been aware of this amendment proposed by Senator Thune. I don't know with whom Senator Thune talked about it. He did not visit with me.

In any event, his amendment would provide funding for a range of Indian issues, which I think are very important issues, with an across- the-board reduction in other areas. His original amendment was drafted in a way that would have cut $90 million out of current Indian programs to pay for this Emergency Fund. He has since modified that amendment so that it is now an across-the-board cut on a much broader array of programs.

He makes the point that it is not a significant cut. I do not disagree with that. It is, however, a cut in Indian health care programs, a cut in Indian housing programs, a cut in programs that are so desperately in need of funding. I would be anxious to work with my colleague. I think those of us who have worked so hard together, including Senator Thune and others, need to collaborate on these issues and determine how we can come up with some additional funding for the authorization we worked together to complete last Congress.

As I indicated, I was surprised by this amendment, as I am sure the Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, was as well. We have so many problems. For example, contract health care on Indian reservations. You know the word on reservations: Don't get sick after June because they are out of contract health care funds and you are not going to get admitted to a hospital.

We have people with bone-on-bone health conditions, and bad knees so painful they cannot walk. But, it is not considered life or limb, which means they will not get funding for it.

In the past, I held up on the floor of the Senate a photograph of a woman who showed up lying on a gurney at a hospital having a heart attack with an 8-by-10 piece of paper Scotch taped to her leg that said to the hospital: If you admit this person, understand you may not be paid for it because we are out of contract health care funds.

We are so desperately short of funds in these areas, I don't think we ought to be cutting an account like that, even for something of great merit such as adding law enforcement funding to this Emergency Fund.

I support law enforcement funding initiatives. We need to find funding for them. We have reservations where the level of violence is 5 times, 10 times, 12 times the rate of violent crimes in the rest of the country. I have held hearings on it in Washington and on an Indian reservation. I fully believe we need to fund these initiatives. But should we do that by taking funding out of contract health care funds? I don't think so. Contract health care where people cannot show up at the hospital door after June, when they have run out of funds, in very serious trouble with something taped to their leg that says: By the way, you ought not admit this person because you are not going to get paid.

Full scale health care rationing is going on. Forty percent of the health care needs of American Indians are not getting met. Little kids are dying and elders are dying. We are desperately short of money in these accounts. To cut any of these health care accounts in any amount, in my judgment, is wrong.

I am sorry I am not able to support that amendment. It is the wrong amendment. I am anxious to work with my colleague from South Dakota. My colleague has a record of working with us on the Indian Affairs Committee, and he has a record of working on Indian reservations on important issues. I am anxious to work with him and my other colleagues, including Senator Barrasso from Wyoming, who take a big interest in this issue.

I hope as we move forward that we will be able to provide the funding for the crisis that exists in health care, housing, and education on Indian reservations in this country. At the same time, we need to provide the funding for adequate law enforcement, which we have signed treaties to do and which we have a trust responsibility to do, but which we have systematically over a long period of time failed to do.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, let me thank my colleague from Idaho and my colleague from Connecticut. The Federal Trade Commission does not have jurisdiction over FDIC-insured banks. There was no intention in any legislation drafted here to give them that jurisdiction and I think this colloquy clarifies that. If there is any lack of clarity going forward, I certainly want to work with my colleagues from Idaho and Connecticut to make certain there is no confusion at all about what this applies to. This does not apply to FDIC-insured banks.

Yes, that is correct. Section 626 is not intended to alter the allocation of responsibility for the Federal oversight of lenders under current law. The FTC is currently authorized, under the Federal Trade Commission Act, to issue regulations defining unfair and deceptive acts and practices by mortgage industry participants that are regulated at the Federal level by the FTC, such as nonbank mortgage brokers. Section 626 directs the FTC to initiate such a rulemaking within 90 days, using procedures widely used by all agencies under the Administrative Procedure Act, instead of more protracted procedures specified for FTC unfair and deceptive practices rulemaking under section 18 of the FTC Act. Section 626 is not intended to apply to institutions including banks, thrifts and credit unions that are outside the FTC's jurisdiction.

Yes, the Senator from Connecticut is correct. Our intention was to permit state attorneys general to bring civil actions only against mortgage industry participants that are not supervised by the Federal banking agencies or are not Federal credit unions.

I agree, and commit to work with the Senator from Connecticut to clarify this provision as expeditiously as possible on the next appropriate vehicle.

Mr. President, my understanding is the Senator from Maryland is going to seek recognition next. I ask unanimous consent to be recognized following the presentation by the Senator from Maryland.

Mr. President, prior to the statement by the Senator from Maryland, I was listening to the discussion between Senator Grassley and Senator Durbin on an issue that I know Senator Grassley feels strongly about. I don't believe there is an amendment yet offered. I hope it is not offered, frankly. I have great respect for the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley. He and I have worked together on a range of issues, and he is a good legislator. He and the Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, were having a disagreement about this.

I come down on the side of the Senator from Illinois. This discussion is about the issue of using private collection agencies to collect certain Internal Revenue Service delinquent taxes. First, let me say that I think people who are delinquent on their taxes ought to be squeezed a bit to pay them. Unless there is some extraneous circumstance, I think most Americans voluntarily pay their taxes. They do not necessarily like to but they do because that is part of the cost of citizenship in this country. We have to do things together. We build roads together, and we have a law enforcement function in our communities together. We build schools, we have defense--we do all these things together. It costs money, so we pay taxes. That's part of the cost of citizenship.

There is great disagreement at what level those taxes should be and who actually pays it. I understand all that. But because we have a responsibility to pay some taxes and because there are some who do not, we have taxes that are delinquent in the Internal Revenue Service that need to be collected.

The Internal Revenue Service has on two occasions begun experiments with hiring private collection agencies to collect those taxes. The experience with those experiments has not been good. Because there has been a great move toward privatizing everything, we have hired private collection agencies to collect lower level delinquent taxes and, in fact, we have actually lost money in doing so.

It is almost unthinkable that someone who is going to collect taxes is going to lose money doing it. That is like being in business to sell tomatoes and someone is going to give me the tomatoes and you lose money.

Here is what the taxpayer advocate says. The tax advocate is someone who works independently inside the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of taxpayers. Taxpayer Advocate Olson says that since its inception-- this latest iteration of using private collection agencies--the IRS has spent roughly $80 million to set up and administer this program to collect delinquent taxes. They have spent $80 million but collected net revenues of only $60 million.

Think of that. You hire some private companies to collect delinquent taxes. It costs $80 million to get it going and administer it, and you collect $60 million. I took rudimentary math in a high school senior class of nine students in a town of 300 people. I can understand that equation. You spend $80 million and collect $60 million. It means you lost $20 million. It makes no sense to me.

By the way, the firms that did this also made $13 million in commissions. That is part of the shortfall here.

It is also estimated by the taxpayer advocate in the Internal Revenue Service that had they not hired a private collection agency and instead hired collectors at the IRS, they would have collected 13 times more money. This is about, in my judgment, common sense and waste. Common sense suggests you select the best alternative for collecting these taxes. The alternative that would give the taxpayers the most for their investment and waste is about deciding you are going to hire private collection agencies and spend $80 million and collect $60 million.

Let me make a couple of observations about what the tax advocate has said about these issues. The tax advocate has said--and again, this is an employee inside the Internal Revenue Service:

Private debt collection initiatives are failing in most

respects. . . . Not meeting revenue projections, its return

on investment is dismal. Private collectors are no better at

locating or collecting tax liabilities than the IRS itself.

If the taxpayer advocate that we fund inside the Internal Revenue Service to look after the taxpayers says this is a failure, let's decide it is a failure.

The underlying legislation brought to the floor in this omnibus package effectively says let's get rid of this program. Let's have the collections done as they should have been done and were done for a long time at the Internal Revenue Service. They will not lose money. We will collect 13 times more revenue, in my judgment, based on the estimates.

Former IRS Commissioner Mark Everson in congressional testimony said:

I have freely acknowledged it is more costly to use private

collection agencies than it would be were the IRS to do it.

That is from an IRS Commissioner.

Former Acting Commissioner Kevin Brown told the House Ways and Means Committee:

We can do it more efficiently. We have the tools under the

law that obviously are going to lead us to being more

efficient.

My only point is, I hope there is not an amendment on this issue. I have great respect for my colleague from Iowa. But I think this is a program that should not have been started. Now that it is started and losing money, it ought to be abandoned. If we are looking after waste, fraud, and abuse issues and trying to protect the American taxpayer and shut down the waste of taxpayers' money, there is no better candidate, in my judgment, than the candidate that is in this omnibus package and this particular subcommittee by which we shut down the use of private collection agencies that have actually lost money for the American taxpayers. My hope is we do not have an amendment on this point. In any event, it is long past the time for us to have shut down a program that is costing the American taxpayers money--$20 million to hire private tax collectors who are collecting less money than it is costing us to hire those collectors.

One might, by the way, look at this and say: Man, how can that be controversial? It seems to me that is a slam dunk, that is common sense. If that is the case, if that is what you think, you do not understand how the system works because even things that are demonstrable failures are often hard to shut down. This is an example of that. We are close to getting that done.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, we will vote this afternoon on a number of amendments to the Omnibus appropriations bill. I want to comment briefly on one of them, and that is the Coburn amendment No. 596. That amendment presumably requires competitive bidding procedures to award contracts. That is a subject for which I have very strong support. I am all in favor of competitive bidding. I am tired of seeing sole-source contracts and contracts that go to special companies. I have held 18 hearings on the subject of contracting in Iraq. I have seen the most unbelievable waste, fraud and abuse that has ever happened in the history of this country. So sign me up as somebody who believes in competitive bidding and contracts. But let me make the point that this amendment goes way beyond the goal of requiring competitive bidding in support of saving the taxpayers money. This amendment does something much more than that.

This amendment--because it has not come through a committee and is not the product of a committee hearing--people don't understand. For example, it would set back 30 years of progress with respect to Indian communities and tribal governments where we have pursued something called Indian self-determination. The approach for self-determination on Indian reservations is to allow those tribal governments to access some of the funds in the programs designed explicitly for tribal governments dealing with housing, health care, education, and law enforcement. This amendment would essentially deny them opportunities to access those funds and move them off into a completely different process. It undermines the whole notion of self-determination for Indian reservations.

I know that is not what was intended by the author. I know that is not what was intended. But we should not, in any event, here in the twelfth hour, consider amendments that have not been the part of any hearing I am aware of. We should not pass legislation that would have the consequence

of undermining 30 years of progress. This progress is moving towards self-determination on Indian reservations where tribal governments are able to access those funds explicitly to best use them to benefit their tribal government.

We have the most significant poverty, unemployment, health care crisis, and homelessness anywhere in this country on Indian reservations. Many of them are living in Third World conditions. Health care is being rationed. It ought to be front-page news. Forty percent of the health care needs for American Indians is unmet. We have kids and elders dying because the money isn't there to provide adequate health care. The same is true with respect to education and housing. We have tried over the period to begin moving in the direction of self- determination in which, rather than have someone in some agency decide how tribes must address their housing or health care issue, self- determination for tribes allows them to begin to use that funding to best address their needs. I don't think anybody wants to upend the program. That wouldn't make any sense. We don't want to have a circumstance where we subvert progress that we have made in recent years on self-determination for Indian tribes.

This is only one issue. I am sure there are dozens with respect to this amendment. I couldn't support an amendment that, while it sounds good, has significant, unintended consequences for the first Americans. The first Americans were here to meet us, they are those who now live in substantial poverty, and those for whom legislation dealing with self-determination has tried to help by moving in a different direction. We should not undermine that. We should not in any way injure that approach to try to improve life on American Indian reservations. That is not the intent of the author, but I know that will be the consequence.

I hope my colleagues will join me in voting against the amendment.

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

Will the Senator yield for a question?

The minority leader indicated somehow or suggested that this is some new information, some large piece of legislation brought to the floor of the Senate without much scrutiny. Isn't it the case that the appropriations bills that are included in this omnibus were passed out of each individual subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, most of them worked on for months, then passed out of the subcommittee, and then worked on in the full committee and, in most cases, passed unanimously by Republicans and Democrats? This is the normal funding of Federal agencies that should have been done last year. It wasn't, for a lot of reasons. It is now being packaged into an omnibus bill to get done. But the ingredients of that bill are not something new.

Isn't it the case that most of these individual bills were passed in a bipartisan basis, many of them unanimously, after having been worked on for some months? There is nothing strange in here, is there?

I wonder if the Senator from Illinois will excuse me and respond to an additional question.

The point that is going to be discussed on the floor today and this week on this appropriations bill is very important. I just received the votes on the individual bills that have now been packaged together. If I might read them, the appropriations bill for Agriculture, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nutrition programs, farm programs, and so on, passed 29 to

0 by the full Appropriations Committee. That passed on July 18 of last year. Commerce, Justice, and Science passed, on June 19, 29 to 0, funds for Justice programs and so on. Energy and Water, which is the subcommittee I chair, passed 29 to 0. Financial Services passed, 29 to 0. Homeland Security passed 29 to 0. Virtually all of them passed unanimously.

To give you an example, in my subcommittee--that passed it unanimously, with Republicans and Democrats, by the subcommittee and the full Appropriations Committee--I, for example, in one account cut $100 million. Why? Because I felt that was not needed. I cut from previous years' expenditures $100 million. Now, if this piece of legislation fails, that extra $100 million is going to be spent by that account. It shouldn't be, in my judgment, but will be.

I used some of that money to increase carbon capture so we can protect the environment and continue to use coal. We have to find a way to capture carbon and decarbonize the use of coal. I invested some of that money in carbon capture research and technology. But these are the kinds of things that if we defeat this legislation--we have what is called a continuing resolution. That will be the first amendment this morning. That continuing resolution means we are effectively on autopilot, and the things that have been cut, the spending that has been cut in these subcommittees, and the spending that has been added because things need doing, that will be voided and we will instead be on an autopilot with previous years' judgments having prevailed when, in fact, all these bills passed the subcommittee, with the exception, I believe, of two of them. One was 28 ``yes'' and 1 ``no'' by the full Appropriations Committee, and the other was 26 ``yes'' and 3 ``no.'' With those two exceptions, every other piece of legislation that is included in this omnibus was passed unanimously by Republicans and Democrats in the full Appropriations Committee of the Senate.

Isn't it the case that to suggest somehow this is some mysterious bill that has not been seen, has not been considered, has not been heard, has not been reviewed--that is just not the case. This has been available since last June and July, and most of it passed unanimously on a bipartisan basis.

Madam President, let me withhold.

Madam President, let me yield myself such time as I may consume.

I will be brief this morning, but I wish to make a couple points. The appropriations bill that is on the floor of the Senate represents the bills that were not completed last year but were worked through in the individual subcommittees, and the full Appropriations Committee of the Senate, passed, as I indicated earlier, almost unanimously, for every piece of legislation, by all Republicans and all Democrats in the Appropriations Committee. So it is not as if there is something strange here.

The question is, Do we want to pass an appropriations bill, at least for the last half of this year, that funds the agencies the way Congress has determined they should be funded? Or do we want to defeat this bill and go on autopilot and say: Whatever was done last year, that is what we will do next year. That does not make much sense to me. What we might have done last year should be judged on the basis: Did it work? Did it not work? Where are the increases we probably ought to make some additional appropriations for? Or where are some areas that ought to be cut?

All these things represent a matter of judgment by Members of the Senate and particularly members of the Appropriations Committee who are funding the individual agencies.

I mentioned, a moment ago, there is an account I cut in the subcommittee I chair by $100 million because I felt it was not needed in the coming fiscal year, and I would move that $100 million to fund something else I thought was very important. Well, that is the kind of thing that will not exist if we decide: Whatever was spent last year in all those accounts, that is what we will spend going forward. That is devoid of any kind of judgment at all.

Let me mention some areas we have felt should be increased. I will give you some examples. One is the funding to prepare for a potential pandemic flu. Obviously, it is a very significant issue. This country needs to be prepared in the event we suffer in our lifetimes a pandemic flu. An influenza, pandemic epidemic that would move around this world would be very serious, kill a lot of people. The need to be prepared for that is very important. There are funds available in this legislation to begin that preparation.

The efforts to improve the warning systems to notify communities about severe weather: This deals with the funding that is necessary for the next-generation satellites. This is not just something that is convenient. When killer storms and hurricanes and other things are threatening population centers, it is a need to have the very finest capability to warn people. This is the money that is needed to continue that progress in improving warning systems through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather and climate satellites. That is in this bill to continue that work.

In my subcommittee, nonproliferation programs--and that is the issue of trying to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the programs we have to try to prevent terrorist groups from acquiring the kind of material with which they can produce nuclear weapons--we provide funding for that and increased funding for that, which is very necessary. It is funding to the National Nuclear Security Administration, and it is critical to our efforts to secure weapons- grade nuclear material around the world that even today, as I speak, terrorists are trying to acquire.

So that issue of nonproliferation--we have increased some funding for it. If we decide we are not going to proceed with the normal appropriations bills that have now been put in this omnibus and instead we are going to go with a continuing resolution, that extra funding to try to protect us and stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons is gone.

There are so many areas. The area of science: our National Laboratories. You know the Bell Labs, which used to be the jewels in our country of scientific inquiry and discovery, and all the unbelievable inventions and new knowledge, those labs are largely gone. Now our science laboratories in this country--and the three weapons laboratories and the array of science laboratories--represent the repository of the best and brightest Ph.D.s in physics and engineering and mathematics and so on. We have to keep our lead in the world in these areas. This legislation provides the increased funding for our science labs that our country has already made a decision to do. If we do not go forward, then we go backward, we lose some of those best and brightest scientists and engineers.

At one of our laboratories, we have something called the Roadrunner, which is the most powerful computer in the world.

That is not elsewhere; that is here in our country. They were telling me one day about the roadrunner, what is called a petaflop, which is a thousand teraflops. A teraflop is a computer that has capacity to do 1 trillion distinct functions per second. That is a teraflop. We reached that 11 years ago. Now we have done a thousand teraflops, or what is called a petaflop. One thousand trillion functions per second in this world's most powerful computer. What can you do with that? Well, they are talking about studying the synapses--1 billion synapses of the brain to work how it works together to produce what we call vision. We don't know that. With supercomputing, the potential to know a lot of things is breathtaking. That exists here. It is the most powerful computer in the world here.

We have to continue to keep our edge in science and knowledge and invention. Part of that will be dependent upon how we fund our national laboratories and whether we keep that group of scientists and engineers working on these breathtaking inventions and the development of new knowledge. We can only do that if we continue the commitment we have made to fund our science in our national laboratories.

Those are a few of the things I wanted to mention. Again, these were appropriation bills considered individually by a subcommittee of Appropriations, Republicans and Democrats, and then brought to the full Committee on Appropriations, Republicans and Democrats, and passed in every case, except two, unanimously, 29 to 0. In two cases, it was 26 to 3 and 28 to 1. Essentially, all of these pieces of legislation were passed unanimously. So when someone says, you know, this legislation is mysterious, new, and it has been thrust upon the Senate--that is not true. This legislation was prepared in June and July of last year. This Congress cannot continue to do appropriations this way.

The majority leader has made a commitment and one that I think makes a lot of sense. This year, this has to stop. We bring individual appropriation bills to the floor, vote on them, go to conference, have a conference report and send the bill to the President, one by one. That is the way this should work. It didn't work last year, or the year before, that way. As a result, for the last 6 months of the year, we were confronted with nine appropriation bills that were worked through on a bipartisan basis last summer and now need to be enacted.

My hope is that the Senate, working its will this week, will do the right thing and pass what is, for the most part, bipartisan legislation dealing with funding for Homeland Security, Justice, Energy, and so many different areas that are important to the functioning of our Government--and important to the American people as well.

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

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

I ask unanimous consent that the time of the quorum call be charged equally to both sides. We are in a time agreement.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.