Floor Statements

Mr. President, first I wish to thank my colleague from Arizona for not just his remarks during the last few minutes but for his service here. I think everyone on our side knows the Senator from Arizona has strongly felt views, many times different than many of ours, but that they are sincere, they are heartfelt, they are honorable, and that they are not ``political,'' and I very much appreciate that.

Let me say a few things, though, about these rules changes. The overwhelming fact that hovers over this Chamber is that it is broken. Nobody disagrees with that. The Senate is broken. This great, wonderful institution that has had such a legendary history--perhaps the greatest legislative body the world has ever seen--is dysfunctional. None of us disputes that. We have to start from there. How do we change it so it is no longer dysfunctional?

My colleague the Republican leader says, Well, it is personalities or it is character or whatever. That explanation doesn't wash. The amount of good character in this body is probably no different--no more, no less--than the amount of good character in previous Senates that were far more functional. I would argue that good character is pretty high. By and large, we respect our colleagues as individuals and as Senators on both sides of the aisle and across the aisle. So it is an easy way out to say, Change character. I guess when one says ``change character,'' they mean change their character. The bottom line is that the Senate is broken and we cannot maintain the status quo.

I wish to quote my great colleague from Michigan Senator Stabenow--I hope she won't mind--from a meeting we had this morning. She talked about a constituent she had who said, When are you going to change the rules? The constituent said, You sound like somebody who has suffered from spousal

abuse and keeps suffering from it and suffering from it and suffering from it and says they can't change it. Of course that person can change it and of course we can change things.

What we are trying to do on this side is come up with some changes that will make the Senate flow better but, at the same time, preserve the essential character of the Senate. If we were to propose a rules change that would say we need 51 votes for everything, we would be no more, no less, than the House of Representatives. There are some on our side, frankly--I think my colleague from Iowa at one point--who have argued, Let's move the number down to 55. We are not doing that. The rules changes we are entertaining are done with preserving the character of the Senate and making sure an individual Senator's rights are protected and that the rights of the minority are protected and the place is not stampeded by majority votes. In the House, they can have a majority of one and still pretty much get their way. In the Senate that wouldn't happen, even if we had 55 or 58 or even 60 Senators with the changes we have proposed.

So let's look at them. There have been attempts to not change the rules but, rather, to sort of come to some degree of comity between the parties. I know because under Leader Reid's direction, I was involved, and under Senator McConnell's direction, Senator Alexander was involved. Two years ago, when there was an attempt to do rules changes, it was particularly Senator Alexander, for whom I have enormous respect in the same way I have respect for Senator Kyl, who proposed that instead of changing the rules we try to work things out better. There is a basic rule here in the Senate which is that the majority gets to propose the agenda. That is an enormous privilege and an enormous advantage. We get to set the agenda in the committees and on the floor. But the minority has the right to offer amendments which either poke holes in what we have proposed or even talk about other subjects because we don't have a rule, as they do in the House, where just about everything has to be germane. So Senator Alexander and I attempted to do that. We said, on the one hand Republicans will not block motions to proceed, and let us go forward and debate bills, and on the other hand we would allow a reasonable amount of amendments--germane and some not germane--to the bills that came up.

Well, obviously, it failed early on in the Senate. The basic gentleman's agreement didn't work. It is our view the agreement fell apart when our colleagues on the other side of the aisle said they will not allow the President's nominee for the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Board, to move forward. She will now join us in the Senate and discuss rules changes, in one of the ways that history works in strange ways now. So we said we would allow some amendments. They said, No, we are not letting her come up, period. That was against the spirit, at least, of the agreement. I am sure if my colleague from Tennessee were here, he might have a different interpretation, but at least that is ours. But the overall point is the so-called gentleman's agreement fell apart early in the Senate, never to be resurrected.

It is our belief on our side that we should allow amendments from the other side, but they should not be abused. There should not be 50 of them. They should not talk about everything under the Sun. Yes, there can be some nongermane amendments--we understand what those are all about--but it shouldn't be a piling on. It is our view, frankly, that the goal of many of the other side was simply to obstruct whatever happened here, to show that the government didn't work, in hopes that there would be an electoral advantage to that argument and people would change the Senate majority. Well, it didn't happen. So now there is a new opportunity.

Our colleagues on the other side say the only reason we filibuster is because you guys fill the tree. Well, let's look at the numbers. In the last Senate--in this Senate up until now--there have been 19 tree fillings by Leader Reid. There have been 110 cloture motions. That is 6 to 1, a little less than 6 to 1, more than 5 to 1, less than 6 to 1. So, clearly, the filibuster--the use of the motion to proceed to prevent us from getting on a bill unless it has 60 votes--has far exceeded the number of times the leader has filled the tree. It has been done on things that aren't even amendable, including judges, appointments. There couldn't be objections that we wouldn't allow amendments on those things. You can't amend: Let's have half the judge be nominated to the sixth circuit or let's have the Assistant Secretary of State only have these powers. That doesn't happen. So even on those things, there have been filibusters. We asked right now--I think there are about 20 judges pending--to move them. No, we are going to filibuster. Yesterday, a sportsmen's bill, which has a lot of dissension on our side and probably has more agreement on the other side than this side, was filibustered. This goes on and on and on.

So the rules changes we are proposing will not prevent the minority from exercising its rights, from being able to offer amendments, and, in fact, from filibustering. The goal here is simple: Use the filibuster sparingly, not 110 times in a session of Congress. Even in the days of the great southern barons and the civil rights debates where the people from the South regarded filibuster as their only weapon to stop something they strongly--in my opinion very wrongly-- disagreed with, it was used a handful of times only on the major debates of the time. Now the filibuster is used for everything, including district court judges, offering small, minor amendments.

What we basically want to do, as some have proposed, led by the Senator from Oregon, Mr. Merkley, and the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Udall, is say, If a Member wants to have a filibuster, they have to talk; they can't just have one person get up and say ``I object'' and then we need 60 votes or the bill doesn't come up. What will that do? In my opinion, that restores the proper balance to the Senate. If a Member has to talk--not just one person but everybody who is against it--a Member is only going to be able to sustain that filibuster on major issues. No doubt the other side would have had the ability to sustain--even if we went 24 hours, 7 days a week--they would have enough passion and enough enthusiasm and enough bodies that they would filibuster the health care bill. Probably they would do the same on Supreme Court Justices, as would we if we were in the minority, if we vehemently disagreed with a proposal. But if a Member has to be on the floor and actually filibuster as opposed to just invoking the rules, they will use it sparingly because they cannot sustain it for every amendment or every minor bill or, frankly, for bills that have a large amount of support. We know there is a small number of our colleagues who are much more focused on offering their own amendments or stopping the whole Senate. We can name them from the other side of the aisle. But under this rule, they would have to get more support than just four or five people to do it over and over, and it wouldn't happen. So then the filibuster would be used as it should be. We are not saying no to filibustering. We are not suggesting going back to 51 and simple majority rule. It would be used on major issues where there is a real division and a lot of passion and strong feeling and conviction as opposed to simply trying to block everything and tie this place in a knot.

When filibusters would decline and there would be no motions to proceed that would be debatable, what would happen? I guarantee my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that more amendments would be allowed to be offered because we wouldn't be in this tit-for-tat situation. Would we have unlimited amendments? No. Would it be that every time we have a bill we have to debate a passion of a single Senator from a single State over and over and over? No. But would there be plenty of amendments and would the minority not being able to filibuster most bills have sort of high ground, whomever that minority is, that amendments should be offered? Absolutely.

The bottom line: We cannot do nothing. There is too much at stake in our Nation to have the Senate paralyzed once again. The House is a partisan body. It passes a lot of things in a very partisan way. The Senate must still be the cooling saucer envisioned by the Founding Fathers, by George Washington and James Madison. There must

be the ability where the ``passions of the people'' cool in this government, and it resides in the Senate. The changes we have proposed continue that tradition but prevent--mitigate strongly against, if not totally prevent--paralysis, which is where we are right now.

Remember: 110 cloture motions. And that will happen again in the next session, the next Congress, in the Senate, if we don't do something to change it. The idea, once again, of just blaming this person or that person is not seeing the larger problem that needs change and correction. The proposals that I believe this side will make--and we haven't yet discussed them in our caucus--will return the Senate to the way it was envisioned by the Founding Fathers: a body where minority rights have much greater strength than the majority, but a body where bipartisan compromise is encouraged, not discouraged.

So to my colleague from Arizona I say: We are open to suggestions, but suggestions that say ``you just change your ways'' we would say back aren't going to reduce the gridlock. I believe Senator Alexander and I and Senator McConnell and Senator Reid, when we proposed this gentlemen's compromise 2 years ago and didn't change the rules, all had the best of intentions, but it failed. We have our reason for why it failed and they may have another, but it is indisputable that it failed. We have to look at something new. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, if they don't agree with the proposals we are likely to make, will have their own suggestions but suggestions that go beyond just change the personalities, change the individuals, whatever.

In conclusion, this is a wonderful body. I have served in it for 14 years. I respect it, I revere it, and I still love, with all the dysfunction, coming to work Monday morning, which is a test for me in life. But our country has so many issues and so many problems and needs the Senate to lead and needs a Senate that is not paralyzed in gridlock. Without changing the rules, I fear we will have a repeat of the last 2 years, where each side blames the other and nothing gets done.

With that, I yield the floor. I know we have several colleagues on the Senate floor who want to speak.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in recess until 2:15 p.m.

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

Mr. President, I rise to discuss the state of the ongoing negotiations to avert the fiscal cliff.

So far there has been little progress reported at the negotiating table. Since the President's very productive meeting with the bipartisan leaders from the House and Senate on November 16, the subsequent staff talks have produced no breakthroughs. Republicans in the room are not yet acknowledging the need to let tax breaks for the very wealthiest Americans expire, nor are they offering the kind of reasonable reforms to entitlement programs that Democrats can be expected to support.

But despite this impasse, as Leader McConnell described it on the floor yesterday, I am optimistic we can still get a deal by Christmas. I detect a great deal of progress being made beneath the surface. You only need to turn on television these past couple of days to observe the signs of this progress.

For nearly three decades, a rightwing Washington lobbyist has exerted a stranglehold on mainstream Republicans over the issue of taxes, threatening political retaliation against any lawmaker who dared to vote for any fiscal solution that asked the wealthy to pay their fair share. But in the 3 weeks since the election, one Republican after another has been rebuking this lobbyist for his uncompromising stance on taxes. Republicans in both the House and Senate are deciding they no longer want to be married to this pledge. Republicans are saying they want a divorce from Grover Norquist. That alone is a leading indicator that a fiscal deal is within reach. Both sides are still far apart and discussions over the next few weeks will be difficult. But with each new Republican disavowing Grover Norquist, the chance of a deal rises sharply.

First there was Saxby Chambliss, an honorable Member of this body and a charter member of the Gang of Six, who has spent the last 2 years trying to negotiate a bipartisan compromise in the best of faith. Senator Chambliss is a signer of the Norquist pledge, but he went on TV--not somewhere else but down in Georgia--last week and bravely said:

I care about my country more than I do about a 20-year-old

pledge.

Then on ABC this past Sunday, Lindsey Graham said:

The only pledge we should be making is to each other to

avoid becoming Greece.

On the very same program, my friend from New York, Congressman Pete

King, said the pledge no longer applied because, ``the world has changed. And the economic situation is different.''

These were just two interviews with George Stephanopoulos. But sometimes progress on the Sunday news shows can foreshadow progress in the negotiating room. In fact, these comments by Senators Chambliss, Graham, and Congressman King appear to have started a trend.

Yesterday, Senator Corker echoed their sentiments. He released his own fiscal plan, which contains $1 trillion in new revenues. Asked whether his inclusion of revenues puts him at cross purposes with Grover Norquist, Senator Corker said:

I'm not obligated on the pledge. The only thing I'm

honoring is the oath I take when I serve, when I'm sworn in

this January.

Senator Murkowski said similar things yesterday. Even Senator Sessions showed hints of compromise when he said, about the pledge:

We've got to deal with the crisis we face. We've got to

deal with the political reality of the President's victory.

And then this morning, the vaunted Wall Street Journal editorial page even seemed to distance itself from Mr. Norquist. Of the need to compromise with President Obama, the Journal counseled:

This is where Mr. Norquist can give some ground. If taxes

are going up anyway because the Bush rates expire, and

Republicans can stop them from going up as much as they

otherwise would, then pledge-takers deserve some credit for

that.

We disagree with the forms of revenues that most of these Republicans have in mind. Many of the Republicans expressing openness to revenues want to pursue them only through tax reform next year. And even then, they are only willing to consider limits of deductions as opposed to rate increases on the very wealthy.

Democrats, on the other hand, believe that even if Republicans want to kick tax reform into 2013, a significant downpayment on revenues must be enacted before January 1. And we further believe that the fairest, most straightforward way to make that downpayment on revenues is by decoupling the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Limiting deductions is a necessary revenue-raising component of a grand bargain, but it does not and cannot replace the need for restoring the Clinton-era rates for the top two tax brackets. Republicans are not quite there yet in terms of acknowledging this, but they are moving slowly in the right direction.

As the Washington Post reported this weekend, for the first time in decades there is a bipartisan consensus in favor of asking the wealthy to pay a little more to reduce the deficit. The question is how to do it. This is an encouraging development. It suggests that Republicans are slowly absorbing one of the lessons of the 2012 election which is that elections continue to be won in the middle, and victories will remain elusive for any party that caters to special-interest groups that occupy either the far left or the far right.

Over the years the Democratic Party has wrestled with the same issues Republicans are facing. When I was elected to Congress in 1981, crime was ripping apart my district. I came to Washington with the goal of working to pass new laws to crack down on crime. Lo and behold, I found that the Democratic Congress at the time was literally outsourcing the drafting of crime legislation to the ACLU. I have great respect for the views of civil libertarians. But at that time, the activists' motto was, Let 100 guilty people go free lest you convict 1 innocent person. That view was far outside the mainstream, but it dominated our party's thinking on crime for better than a decade. Our party suffered for it. We didn't snap out of it until President Clinton passed the crime bill in the 1990s. After that, we won back the trust of moderate, middle- class voters.

I know the echo chambers some of our Republican colleagues are in and I know how difficult it is. But if history shows anything, after suffering some bad losses at the polls earlier this month many Republicans are now realizing the need to snap out of it on taxes.

Grover Norquist has had a good run. It has lasted far longer than 15 minutes. But his stringent views make him an outlier now. It is not unlike what happened to his longtime friend Ralph Reed, who steered the Republican Party too far right on social issues in the 1990s and is hardly heard from anymore.

Mr. Norquist will likely not be departing the scene anytime soon, but perhaps he could switch his focus to immigration. He makes a lot of sense on the need for a comprehensive immigration reform bill, and I would be first to work with him on that. But as the events of the last weeks show, on taxes, Grover Norquist is out on an island.

In conclusion, I salute my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have disavowed his group's pledge. I will encourage others to do the same. The more who do, the closer we will come to a bipartisan agreement on our fiscal problems.

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

Mr. President, today I wish to congratulate the four national winners of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's 2012 United States Professors of the Year Award. Since 1981, this program has saluted outstanding undergraduate instructors throughout the country. In addition to the national winners, a State Professor of the Year was also recognized in 31 States. New York's 2012 State winner is Rees Shad, who is coordinator of the Media Design Programs at Hostos Community College of the City University of New York.

These awards are recognized as one of the most prestigious honors bestowed upon a professor. To be nominated for this award requires dedication to the art of education and excellence in every aspect of the profession. Professors personally vested in each student shape the leaders of tomorrow. These individuals and every one of us should be proud of their accomplishment.

I am also particularly proud that one of the four national winners is from my State of New York. Professor Todd Pagano, associate professor and director of the Laboratory Science Technology Program at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology, is the 2012 Outstanding Master's Universities and Colleges Professor of the Year. In recognizing Professor Pagano, judges admired Todd Pagano's program for deaf students in laboratory science technology, which he helped to design, implement, and lead, coupled with the opportunities he has created for undergraduate research and internships that are critical to his students' success. Not only has Professor Pagano helped open up a new profession for an under- represented group, but he is also a scholar of science education for deaf students, an editor of a leading journal in the field, and an advocate in the professional chemistry community for students, scientists and technicians with special needs.

We need more professors and educators like Todd Pagano. He is a native of Rochester, NY, and decided to come home to educate the next generation of New Yorkers and Americans. He has instilled not only a love and passion for science, but he has given hope and direction to students who are deaf or hard of hearing. His work typifies the high educational standards at National Technical Institute for the Deaf, which is a stellar institution that leads the Nation in the technical education of all students, especially those that are deaf or hard of hearing.

Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to join me in recognizing and thanking Professor Pagano and all the winners for their leadership and passion for educating. They have undoubtedly inspired an untold number of students. I again offer my congratulations and best regards.

The four national award winners are as follows:

Outstanding Baccalaureate Colleges Professor of the Year; Christy Price, professor of psychology, Dalton State College.

Outstanding Community Colleges Professor of the Year: Lois Roma- Deeley, professor of creative writing, Paradise Valley Community College.

Outstanding Doctoral and Research Universities Professor of the Year: Autar Kaw, professor of mechanical engineering, University of South Florida.

Outstanding Master's Universities and Colleges Professor of the Year: Todd Pagano, associate professor of science and mathematics, director of laboratory science technology program, Rochester Institute of Technology/National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

The 31 State winners are as follows:

Arkansas--Stephanie Vanderslice, professor, Department of Writing, University of Central Arkansas;

Arizona--Albrecht Classen, university distinguished professor of German studies, University of Arizona;

Colorado--Barry Fagin, professor of computer science, U.S. Air Force Academy;

Connecticut--Deborah A. Carroll, professor of psychology and director, B.S. psychology, research specialization, Southern Connecticut State University;

Washington, DC--Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, associate dean for undergraduate studies, School of International Service, American University;

Florida--Pat Anderson, professor of aerospace engineering, Embry- Riddle Aeronautical University;

Georgia--Judith Lupo Wold, clinical professor and interim associate dean for educational innovation, Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Emory University;

Idaho--Daniel Bukvich, distinguished professor, University of Idaho

Illinois--Gary Creasey, professor of psychology, assistant director, U.S. Department of Education, TEACHER+PLUS Project, Illinois State University;

Indiana--Michele T. Villinski, Hiram L. Jome professor and associate professor of economics and management, codirector of the Environmental Fellows Program, DePauw University;

Kentucky--Tom McCollough, Nelson and Martha McDowell Rodes professor of Religion Centre College;

Massachusetts--Michael Barnett, associate professor of science education and technology, Lynch School of Education, Boston College;

Maryland--John Hamman, professor and chair, Germantown Mathematics Department, Montgomery College;

Michigan--Stephen DeBacker, Arthur F. Thurnau professor of mathematics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor;

Missouri--Eric William Nelson, professor of history, Missouri State University;

Montana--Michael W. Morrow, professor of biology, University of Montana Western;

Nebraska--Rita M. Lester, professor of religion, Nebraska Wesleyan University;

New Jersey--Kent Fairfield, associate professor, Fairleigh Dickinson University;

New Mexico--Kenneth J. Martin, regents professor of finance, New Mexico University;

Nevada--Alfredo Fernandez-Gonzalez, associate professor of architecture; director, Natural Energies Advanced Technologies Laboratory, University of Nevada, Las Vegas;

New York--Rees Shad, coordinator of the Media Design Programs, Hostos Community College of the City University of New York;

Ohio--Gillian Oakenfull, associate professor and director of experiential learning, Department of Marketing, Miami University;

Oregon--Juliet W. Brosing, professor of physics, Pacific University;

South Carolina--Alliston K. Reid, Reeves family professor of psychology, Wofford College;

Tennessee--Michael Pinter, director of the Teaching Center and professor of mathematics, Belmont University;

Texas--Greg Sherman, professor of physics, Collin College;

Utah--Michael Christiansen, professor of music, Utah State University;

Virginia--Robert Swap, associate professor, University of Virginia;

Washington--Karl Fields, professor of politics and government and Asian studies, University of Puget Sound;

Wisconsin--Gregory S. Aldrete, Frankenthal professor of history and humanistic studies, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay; and

West Virginia--Dan Hollis, associate professor of journalism and mass communications, Marshall University.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be given 3 minutes, the Senator from Indiana be given 3 minutes, and the Senator from Rhode Island then be able to continue his remarks.

Madam President, I wanted to follow up on the Democratic and Republican leaders' conversation. This is not the first time we have seen obstruction for obstruction's sake over noncontroversial, consensus nominees to the Federal bench. It has been going on for 4 years.

In 2008 we cleared all 10 of President Bush's district court nominees pending on the floor by unanimous consent. Now, of course, we are being blocked. Well, I don't think Oliver Wendell Holmes could get unanimous consent from our Republican colleagues to be a district court judge today.

In the Western District of New York, nominee Frank Geraci has total bipartisan support. His slot has been vacant for years. We need him to fill that judicial emergency post. His nomination has been pending on the floor for more than 2 months. Why can't we confirm him today? He passed the Judiciary Committee unanimously with strong bipartisan support.

In the Southern District, another nominee, Lorna Schofield, has also been awaiting confirmation for 2 months. She also has complete and total bipartisan support. What is more, she would be the first Filipana confirmed to the Federal bench. The Southern District is one of the busiest benches in the country, and the judges hear among the most important cases, such as complex civil litigation, insider trading, terrorism. You name it, they do it. Why can't we confirm her today?

We hear one excuse after another for filibustering judges--recess appointments, funding for some area unrelated to judges, the so-called Thurmond rule, which has never applied to district court nominees.

I support the majority leader's motion for unanimous consent for these pending district court nominees, and I hope our colleagues will think about it. Before we leave this week, I hope we can come together and do what we have been doing together for decades--confirm uncontroversial judges.

I yield the floor and yield back the remainder of my time.

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

Mr. President, it is nice to see Paul Ryan back in Congress. It will be even nicer to see him back as a full-time Member in January.

There has been a lot of controversy about Mr. Ryan and some of the things he states, why he states them, and the contrast with what he says and what he has done. Perhaps the least credible claim of all about Congressman Ryan is the idea that he is a serious deficit hawk and that his budget is a serious attempt at deficit reduction. He is not and it is not.

The Paul Ryan budget is about ideology rather than commonsense solutions to the country's economic and fiscal problems. As more and more people are learning, it certainly is not about, as Bill Clinton said, arithmetic.

In Ryan's budget, any savings achieved by his plan to privatize Medicare and gut investments in the middle-class do not go to reducing the deficit. He is saying he is creating that pain because we need the pain for deficit reduction. He uses all those savings to pay for further tax cuts to the wealthy.

This chart explains it pretty well. Independent studies have found that the Ryan budget would raise taxes on the middle class up to $2,600. People earning between $50,000 and $100,000 pay $1,300 more a year, people earning between $100,000 and $200,000 pay $2,600 more a year, and then there is a whopping savings to people whose income is over $200,000.

As a result of the massive giveaways to the wealthiest Americans, the Congressional Budget Office found that Ryan's plan failed to balance the budget until 2040. But even this conclusion relies on rosy assumptions supplied to CBO by Ryan himself.

Ryan's plan could take longer to improve the fiscal outlook under a more realistic set of assumptions, even taking the unrealistically rosy assumptions that Ryan stipulates in his budget, for instance, that revenue levels would be 19 percent of GDP. That is almost certainly not true. His plan would not balance the budget until 2040.

Independent experts, such as the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, challenged these assumptions. Under more realistic assumptions, Ryan's plan would take far longer to balance the budget and cause the Federal debt to rise even further.

Moreover, Ryan's spending cuts are totally unrealistic. Outside of Medicare and Medicaid, Mr. Ryan would slash the government, including defense, to 3.75 percent of GDP by 2050. Defense alone is 4.6 percent today. According to CBO the total has never been below 8 percent since World War II and defense has never been below 3 percent. Mr. Ryan would either have to make massive defense cuts--the very same defense cuts he decried on the campaign trail yesterday--or he would need to virtually eliminate the rest of the government, such as transportation, security, education, FBI, scientific research, and food testing. We know that is not going to happen.

The larger point is this: In terms of deficit reduction, the Ryan plan is--there is no other way to state it--a fraud.

This should come as no surprise. After all, Congressman Ryan supported the Bush policies that got us into this deep fiscal hole in the first place. From the Bush tax cuts to two unfunded wars to the unpaid-for creation of Medicare Part D, Congressman Ryan's fingerprints are all over the big-spending

Bush policies that turned Bill Clinton's surpluses into the record deficits inherited by Barack Obama.

Ryan voted against the Simpson-Bowles framework. When Paul Ryan had a chance to walk the walk on deficit reduction, he joined all the other House Republicans on the Commission in voting down the report. He urged Speaker Boehner to abandon the grand bargain talks with President Obama.

The New York Times reported that during the summer of 2011, Ryan appealed to Representative Cantor to cut off negotiations between the Speaker and the White House because he didn't feel the terms of the emerging agreement adhered strictly enough to his conservative principles and the deal might politically benefit President Obama.

It is not a secret the Ryan budget both hurts the middle class and does nothing for deficit reduction. The only people who would benefit are the very wealthy and, God bless them, they are doing well in America, but as recent statistics just showed, they are the only people gaining in income.

One other thing I wish to add about Mr. Ryan, he seems like a nice man, a nice family, but his recent speeches have been so revealing. He did the same thing yesterday, once again showing he has learned nothing from the mistakes he has made in the last few weeks. When it comes to the big debates facing our country, Paul Ryan either has an extremely poor memory or he has a tendency to play fast and loose with the facts. In one speech, Congressman Ryan falsely blamed President Obama for shuttering the GM plant that actually announced it was closing during President Bush's term; for $716 million in Medicare savings that Congressman Ryan included in his own budget; and, third, for the Simpson-Bowles blueprint that Congressman Ryan himself voted against. That is just a sampling.

Just yesterday he did it again. There you go again, Paul Ryan. He was giving a speech back in Wisconsin when he blamed the President--solely the President--for the year-end trigger, the sequestration, that was part of the Budget Control Act. Never mind that Congressman Ryan voted for the very same sequestration himself. Never mind it was his side's idea, in fact, to hold our credit rating hostage in the first place and insist on these dollar-for-dollar cuts he now decries. Never mind the fact that we all know that if Paul Ryan had opposed the sequestration proposal--the chairman of the Budget Committee in the House--it certainly would have failed. Now he goes to Wisconsin and said the President is to blame for sequestration. It is the same thing he did with Simpson-Bowles. It is not fair. It is not right. All we can do is shake our heads at this ``what is good for me is not good for you'' kind of double standard.

I would say to Paul Ryan: You haven't learned much from your mistakes in the past few weeks. There you go again. Your budget proves it, and even your speeches, including the one yesterday, prove it again.

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

Mr. President, I too wish to offer congratulations and gratitude to Dr. James H. Billington on the occasion of his 25th Anniversary as Librarian of Congress on September 14, 2012.

Dr. Billington was sworn into office as the 13th Librarian of Congress on September 14, 1987, after being nominated by Ronald Reagan and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. A distinguished Rhodes Scholar, author, and humanitarian, he has received over 40 honorary doctorates and has authored several books on Russia and the former Soviet Union. Earlier in his career he served in the U.S. Army and taught history at Harvard and Princeton Universities. Later he went on to become the director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. where he founded the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies and seven other new programs as well as the Wilson Quarterly.

Mr. Billington's tenure at the Library has been remarkable for his vision, his commitment to excellence, and for the wide-ranging intellect and experience he has applied to making the Library of Congress one of the most respected citadels of knowledge in the world.

Dr. Billington led the Library into the digital age, giving on-line access to its many treasures to Members of Congress and people throughout the world with the Library of Congress National Digital Library Program, the THOMAS data base, and the Open World Program. He oversaw the establishment of the Kluge Center, an endowment fostering scholarly interaction between world thinkers and policy makers that includes a million-dollar prize honoring lifetime achievement in the study of humanity. His encouragement and enthusiastic leadership led to the creation of the Packard Campus Audio-Visual Conservation Center which consolidated all of the Library's recorded sound and film collection in a single, state-of-the-art facility for conservation and permanent archival storage. These are just some of the many accomplishments for which he will be long remembered.

Dr. Billington has also overseen the restoration of the Thomas Jefferson and John Adams buildings. Today, the Thomas Jefferson building, with its pristinely restored marble columns, staircases, mosaics, and paintings is considered to be one of the most beautiful public buildings in America.

As Chairman of the Joint Committee on the Library and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, I extend my appreciation to Dr. Billington for his visionary leadership and extraordinary accomplishments that have made the Library of Congress, one our greatest national institutions, the remarkable place that it is today.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to praise my Senate and House colleagues for passing H.R. 6336, a bill that will allow a statue of American hero and Rochester resident, Frederick Douglass, to reside permanently in the U.S. Capitol. I am proud that after a 5-year delay, Congress is acting to ensure that millions of visitors who come to Washington every year will see Frederick Douglass among the pantheon of statues of great Americans in our Capitol.

I want to thank my good friend and colleague Senator Dick Durbin for working with me and co-sponsoring the Senate bill that would ultimately lead to the passage of H.R. 6336. I also want to thank Representatives Lungren and Brady for their bipartisan support in the House that helped bring this bill to the Senate for final passage. Lastly, I want to especially thank Delegate Norton for her tireless efforts towards bringing the statue of this great American to our Capitol.

Bringing Frederick Douglass to the U.S. Capitol is an important step toward ensuring that Americans depicted in the art of the Capitol reflect the true heritage of our Nation and the people who have helped to make it great. Currently there are only two African Americans depicted in the U.S. Capitol: Sojourner Truth in Emancipation Hall and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Rotunda. There is little doubt that more needs to be done to make sure that a greater diversity of outstanding Americans is represented in the U.S. Capitol. There is no doubt that a statue of Frederick Douglass, a man of towering influence not only during his lifetime in the 19th century but also, through his writings and actions, to the present day, has earned a place in our Capitol.

He was born into slavery in Maryland, and at the age of 20 escaped to freedom. After living in Massachusetts, he moved to Rochester, NY, where he spent 25 highly productive and influential years and gained prominence as a leading national voice for the causes of human freedom and equality.

During his time in Rochester, he published and edited The North Star, the most prominent African American newspaper in the country. Douglass was also a leader in the Underground Railroad in Rochester and Western New York. His influential best-selling autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, served as a rallying cry for the abolitionist movement and helped bring an end to that cruel institution.

During the Seneca Falls Convention, a historic gathering near Geneva, NY, to promote women's rights in 1848, Douglass participated as the only African American and one of only 37 men out of 300 attendees. Douglass' presence at the convention in Seneca Falls visibly displayed his belief that the women's rights movement and that of emancipation went hand-in-hand. Douglass' beliefs on equality helped shape our great country and inspired generations of men and women elected to serve here in the halls of Congress. The passage of H.R. 6336 rightfully guarantees that Douglass' legacy will forever be recognized in the Capitol of a grateful Nation.

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

Mr. President, We rise today to honor three great American heroes and their devoted organization. In Long Island, NY there are three American nuns that have been working to ease the burden of the poor and the sick and educate our youth for the past 80 years.

Sister Francis Gerard Kress, Sister Edward Joseph Murphy and Sister Alice Francis Young are all nuns with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood, NY and have given this order and their community over 80 years of service.

Mr. President, we would like the United States Senate to

recognize and honor the work of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood, NY; and the lifelong dedication of Sisters Francis Gerard Kress, Edward Joseph Murphy and Alice Francis Young for their 80 years of service to their religion, professions and country.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Minnesota for his great remarks. He really does care about Minnesota. It is a nice State.

Iran Sanctions

Mr. President, in a few hours the Iran sanctions bill is likely to pass both the House and the Senate. That is very good news because when it comes to Iran, time's a wastin'. We need to ratchet up the pressure. And this is a powerful package that will paralyze the Iranian economy. It tightens the screws tighter, tighter, tighter, so that the Iranians will have no choice but to see their economy basically in desperate shape if they continue to pursue obtaining a nuclear weapon.

I thank my colleague, Chairman Johnson of the Banking Committee, who has put so much time and effort into the Iran sanctions bill and done such a great job.

I thank Ranking Member Shelby. We go to the gym in the Senate at about the same time early in the morning, and we have talked about this bill repeatedly. I know how much he cares about it.

I thank my colleague from New Jersey, whom I have worked with on this issue long and hard and who has taken a great leadership role. Senator Menendez has been relentless in pushing this bill, and the many of us who wish not to see a nuclear Iran owe Senator Menendez a great deal of thanks.

I thank my friend Senator Kirk, who, even though he is not physically present in the Chamber, has made this his highest priority. We have worked together on this issue a long time, and we continue to wish him a speedy recovery.

I believe that when it comes to Iran, of course, we should never take the military option off the table, but I believe--as almost everyone in this Chamber believes, our President believes, Prime Minister Netanyahu believes, and most Israelis believe--that economic sanctions are the preferred way to choke Iran's nuclear ambitions. If we can achieve sanctions and Iran truly backs off, not with a feint but in reality, by meeting the three standards that both President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu have set--turning over any 20-percent enriched uranium, stop producing any 20-percent enriched uranium, and destroying the new facility at Qom--then we will have achieved great victory. So we have to move forward.

Earlier this year a group of bipartisan Senators--I was proud to be amongst them--led by Senator Lieberman called on the European Union to exert more pressure on Iran by imposing an oil embargo on this rogue regime. Our European partners have done just that, and their oil boycott is working. That, too, is furthering to ratchet the pressure on Iran's nuclear program.

Last November the report on Iran's nuclear program by the IAEA was its most alarming yet. It proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. And according to published reports, they could have at least one workable weapon in less than a year and another in 6 months after that. So we don't have much time, and ratcheting up the economic pressure is imperative. We cannot dawdle. We cannot sit around and say: Let's wait 6 months and see if the existing sanctions are working. We have to ratchet up that pressure so that Iran sees that it is not in its interests economically, politically, militarily even, to pursue the path they have thus far chosen. The IAEA report details a highly organized program dedicated to acquiring the skills necessary to produce and test a nuclear bomb. And earlier this year DNI Director Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Iran's leaders even seem prepared to attack U.S. interests overseas. So we know Iran is on the path to continued evil.

Just last week a suspected suicide bomber killed 6 people and wounded 30 aboard an Israeli tourist bus in a coastal town in Bulgaria. Israel believes--and I tend to agree with them--that Hezbollah and Iran are to blame. Many questions remain about the bomb, but many Western counterterrorist officials share the suspicions that Israel and I, frankly, both have.

By giving our government the capability to impose even more crippling sanctions on Iran should they continue with their nuclear weapons program, the House and the Senate are putting forth a tough, smart plan to ratchet it up and prevent, hopefully, God willing, the very real threat Iran poses to the United States and our allies, particularly Israel.

I am not going to go over what the bill does. That has been talked about. But I want to mention one other part of the bill before I sit down. I am really happy and grateful to Chairman Johnson that the measure before us will also include language adopted from the Syrian Human Rights Accountability Act. That is legislation I cointroduced this year with my friend and colleague from New York, Senator Gillibrand. The legislation would require the administration to identify violators of human rights in Syria, it would call for reform and protection of the prodemocracy demonstrators, and it would also block any financial aid and property transactions in the United States involving Syrian leaders involved in the crackdown on protesters.

If the Syrian Government, which in many respects operates as a client state for the rogue Iranian regime, will not willingly change its brutal approach and continues to violate the human rights of those seeking to exercise their voices, then we have to do everything we can to send the strongest message possible to that nation's leadership that this behavior is beyond the pale and not without consequences.

In conclusion, I believe my colleagues Chairman Johnson, ranking member Shelby, Senator Menendez, and Senator Kirk, have done an excellent job crafting a comprehensive plan to arm the administration with the tools it needs to put a stop to Iran's nuclear program. I urge my colleagues to unanimously support the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first, I wish to give two thank-yous: first, to my colleague from California for letting me go ahead of her-- I have a Finance Committee meeting--and second, to both my colleague from Maryland and my colleague from California, whose voices are so clear and clarion. I love to listen to the Senator from Maryland. She speaks right to the people. She has it. She gets it. And do you know what. If we could get every American in a giant football stadium and they could listen to Senators Mikulski and Boxer on health care, 80 percent would be for it. So I want to salute them and salute particularly Senator Mikulski for putting both the event earlier today and these speeches together.

I heard the minority leader speak, and it meant two things. First, it meant the Republican party does not want to do cyber security. It means the greatest threat to our Nation--probably even greater than terrorism, if you speak to some of our intelligence and military experts--will not be dealt with because we know what he is doing. He is asking for an unreasonable demand, unrelated to cyber security, to go on the floor, knowing that will stop us from moving forward.

It is a sad day. We have some of our colleagues from the other side of the aisle talking about that we must not abandon defense. Well, one of the strongest things the defense of our Nation needs is a strong cyber security bill. Because special interests--the Chamber of Commerce and others--do not want it, even though every military and intelligence leader has said how vital it is, it seems the other party's tea leaves show that the other party is going to block us from going forward. It is unfortunate and it is sad.

Then, second, the way he chose to block cyber security could not be worse in terms of substance and in terms of timing. Today, July 31, the minority leader wants to put on the floor the repeal of so many things that are going to happen tomorrow to women and to men across America that benefit them. So his timing could not be worse. The very day before we are going to see huge benefits for the American people, he wants us to debate repeal. Why don't we let the American people see the good parts of health care before we repeal it. And we are not going to repeal it.

I want to talk about this day--or tomorrow, actually--where so many portions of the Affordable Care Act go into effect.

Three million women in my home State of New York will benefit. From

Buffalo to Montauk, in Albany and in Manhattan, 3 million women will receive free basic preventive care for themselves and their children. So many women and men do not get preventive services because it is expensive to them. These services are free. But not only will they make those people healthier--the No. 1 goal--but they will reduce the costs of health care because every expert--Democrat, Independent, Republican; moderate, liberal, conservative--says if you do more prevention, you are going to save money.

Tomorrow, so many of those preventive services go into effect. More women will go in for annual preventive care visits to screen for cervical, ovarian, and breast cancers. More women will receive preconception and prenatal services, so their children can grow up healthy, active, and strong. More women will have access to contraception and its additional health benefits, such as reduced risk of breast cancer and protection against osteoporosis.

New mothers will have access to support and supplies for breastfeeding, and more women will be screened for domestic and sexual violence, sexually transmitted infections, and HIV.

To my colleagues on the other side of the aisle: When we say there is a war against women and they get their backs up--they want to repeal this and put nothing in its place, no preventive services, no access to contraception, none of the things I have mentioned--yes, it is a war on women. Because if they cared about women and they did not like ObamaCare, they would still have a proposal on the floor to keep these fine pieces of the legislation going forward so they are not cut off tomorrow, which is what they intend to do, but, of course, thank God, will not happen.

The change we are making helps every woman--who said: I would but I cannot afford it; it is just too expensive--finally get health care.

Removing the copays is a great thing. Cutting the costs of preventive care is something we long wished to do in America and can happen tomorrow.

What about all the other benefits that affect men and women alike: 2.5 million young adults who can stay on their parents' insurance; 5.2 million seniors--men and women--in the doughnut hole who save $3.7 billion on prescription drugs?

What about the idea that when your insurance company charges you too much, the money goes to profits and salaries and trips and advertising and not enough goes to health care? Starting tomorrow, you can get a rebate. We know our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--to them that is anathema, to make insurance companies give people a rebate.

So bottom line: We want to move forward on a cyber security bill, and we regret that the leader is putting logs in its way. And even more importantly, we want benefits to millions of women and millions of men to go forward, as was intended, as was voted for, as is the law of the land, and we will not let them deter us from bringing people those benefits.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first, I wish to salute my colleague from Delaware. We have a number of people in this body who will take on the very tough issues--issues, frankly, that can only succeed when there is bipartisan agreement but that are deep and complicated and take day after day, week after week, even month after month of effort--and there are not many who can craft that type of legislation. The Senator from Delaware is one of them. He did it on the postal bill. He is doing it here on cyber security. I believe on both of them he will have ultimate success, and we thank the Senator. We thank him for his good work.

Now I would like to discuss the cyber security bill. I am very hopeful that we will pass a bill that will find a good and workable balance--one certainly that ensures that our critical infrastructure has the most effective countermeasures to prevent cyber attacks but one that will also encourage our dynamic technology industry to continue to innovate, and protect freedom of expression and privacy on the Internet.

Let me remind my colleagues that the Internet was originally developed as a way for universities, governments, and companies to collaborate on research and other projects. The whole purpose of the Internet was meant to stimulate the open exchange of ideas, and as a result it has changed the world. We have seen it in Egypt, in Russia, in China. We have seen the Internet--people's ability to communicate, unfettered by government or other strong forces--create huge amounts of power--good power, positive power.

Just ask the entrepreneurs who developed whole new ways of selling products and developing services about how the Internet was made to stimulate the open exchange of ideas. It has given the opportunity to someone with an idea to actually take that idea and turn it into a business because it so reduces the transaction costs of doing so. Just ask the inventors and creators who have fostered new means of expression, allowing us to communicate in real time, efficiently and inexpensively, with our colleagues all over the world.

I am an efficiency bug. I like to use ``I am a busy fella.'' I love the work I do, and I like to use it as efficiently as possible--the fact that I can have a laptop or an iPad in the car while the car is driving forward. I am not driving; I am sitting there working. In the old days, you could not do that. It is amazing how it has improved our efficiency. It is sort of, in a certain sense, Adam Smith's dream because it reduces transaction costs and allows us to focus effectively on producing what people want and need.

In short, our cyber world is one we could have never imagined 30 years ago. It is both simple--it can be accessed through a few keystrokes or screen touches--and yet it is enormously complex in its infrastructure. We have to do everything we can to protect that free and open access--that is the theme of my speech today--although we also, of course, have to protect the critical infrastructure behind it.

We are all aware of the national security risks if we do not do a cyber bill. Many of us have sat up in the Visitor Center, in the secure room, and heard leaders of our military and intelligence agencies tell us that the greatest threat to America is a cyber attack on our critical infrastructure--in many of their estimation, even more dangerous than terrorism.

Hackers broke into the Pentagon's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter project, stealing the aircraft's design and electronic-related schematics. It is not hard to imagine a scenario where hackers break into a gas refinery or a nuclear powerplant to wreak havoc with the control computer systems, nor is it hard to see a scenario where Iran attempts to learn some of our nuclear secrets. So it is very important to deal with the critical infrastructure piece.

Mr. President, let me commend you for your hard work in this area, along with the Senator from Arizona. We are still hoping and praying you guys can come to an agreement, along with the help of many. I know Senator Mikulski has been very active and many other of my colleagues, but the Presiding Officer's leadership has been exemplary as well, and I would apply the same words to you that I applied to the Senator from Delaware before in terms of working on complex, difficult projects and moving forward with them.

Anyway, it is so very important that we protect our infrastructure, but at the same time--and this is what makes the legislation even more difficult--we have to be aware of the risk to a critical part of our economy if we do not do it right, if we do not do it carefully, if we do not do it thoughtfully, and if we do not balance the need to protect infrastructure with legitimate rights of the freedom of the Internet and of privacy.

To be perfectly frank, I have a big dog in this fight. You see, the Silicon Valley may have given us the semiconductor, but New York City, in my opinion, will be the birthplace of the next great generation of Internet giants. New York entrepreneurs started Foursquare, Tumblr, and Kickstarter. CodeAcademy, TechStars, and General Assembly are training the next generation of Internet entrepreneurs. Venture capital is flocking to New York to help these startups. For the first time, we are getting engineers and scientists who want to be in New York. We are still not at the level of the Silicon Valley, but we are probably No. 2 in the country in this regard, and, like all New Yorkers, we want to be No. 1 at some point.

What is more, the existing Internet giants--Facebook and Google and Twitter--have all opened major offices in New York City. Google has over 3,000 people. I was proud to be at the opening of Facebook, and they are so happy with their office, they are expanding its role already. These companies know the talent and energy that are unique to New York, and they do not want to miss out on the next great idea. That, as I said, is likely to come from New York.

These ideas are not just important for New York but for America. Internet and tech companies around the country have ushered in a new era of change. They have made our world a drastically and dramatically different place than it was even 10 years ago--a better world, a more open world, a more productive world.

But one thing remains the same: We do not have a coherent and comprehensive national strategy to protect the critical networks that power our everyday lives--our homes, our businesses, and our computers. It is akin to protecting the Taj Mahal with a chain link fence and a bike lock. These networks protect our water systems and our financial information, the electric grid and our e-mail accounts.

This bill goes a long way in establishing a set of principles and programs that will make these vulnerable networks safer, but there are some parts of the bill I fear go a step too far in the name of security over privacy, and there has to be a balance. The same minds who have given us the great Internet innovations of the 21st century have told me, convinced me, educated me that we cannot cede too much power to one side of this equation.

We all know that in this very complex cyber world, we do give up some of our privacy, but unabated authority to stifle innovation in the name of cyber security is a bridge too far. That is why I am happy to cosponsor the amendment of my colleague from Minnesota Al Franken. He has become an expert on trying to figure out how we can preserve the dynamism, the effectiveness, the efficiency of the Internet but at the same time preserve our privacy.

As more and more of our economic lifeblood has shifted into the cyber world, we have an obligation to ensure that the infrastructure that validates credit card purchases, directs planes, and controls electricity is well protected against cyber attack. It is not a secret that people want to disrupt our way of life, and it is easy to imagine a world where terrorists attempt to take control of railroad switches and traffic lights to cause incredible disruption to our everyday lives. However, we must make sure that in protecting what we have, we do not stifle innovation, we do not trample on people's privacy rights. We have to leave room for the creation from the next Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or whomever, while protecting the security the average middle- class family, the Baileys, feel when they go online to buy birthday presents for their grandchildren.

So in the final bill, we must find the right balance to preserve the economic viability of the Internet; otherwise, there will be no critical infrastructure to protect. But we must protect privacy rights, and I think the Franken amendment--and I commend it to my colleagues; a lot of work has gone into it--puts the balance in the right place.

I hope that as we move forward on this bill--either now or in September when we return--we will get broad bipartisan support for that amendment because it enables us to, in a certain sense, have our cake and eat it too: protect our infrastructure but at the same time protect, nurture our creativity and the openness of the Internet and protect our privacy.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am happy to hear there is a commitment to pass the extension and modification of the Wool and Cotton Trust Funds this year. As my colleagues noted, the Wool Trust Fund compensates for the competitive damage caused by the fact that duties are higher on imports of raw materials, like wool fabric, than on imports of finished products, like trousers and suits. This ``tariff inversion'' gives foreign manufacturers a significant cost advantage over U.S. manufacturers like Rochester, NY's Hickey Freeman.

Hickey Freeman has been operating in Rochester, NY since 1899. Wool cloth imported by Hickey Freeman is cut and sewn into wool clothing which, in turn, is sold in stores across the United States and around the world. I am particularly proud to note--while our athlete's uniforms sadly were made in China, our announcers on NBC are wearing Hickey Freeman at the 2012 London Olympic Games.

The Wool Trust Fund is a successful program in curbing job losses and allowing American textile and apparel companies to expand their own export markets. Without the technical fix that we are asking for here today, the health of the Wool Trust Fund will be in peril.

I thank Senator Menendez for his tireless leadership in extending and modifying the Wool and Cotton Trust Funds and the Leader and Chairman Baucus for agreeing to work with Senators Menendez, Cardin and myself to ensure these important programs are dealt with by the end of the year.

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

Mr. President, I, like everyone else in America, have followed the terrible tragedy in Aurora, CO. Just awful. I was particularly moved when I read in one of our local papers the bios of the 12 who had died. So many of them were young, in the prime of life, in their late teens and early twenties. So many of them were brave, protecting others--a child, a girlfriend, a friend. I was so upset on reading this, seeing these people's lives snuffed out, just as they had great futures ahead of them--for nothing.

It was the same kind of feeling I had after the World Trade Center-- of course, magnified by much more because so many more people died, and I actually knew some of the people who died. But the same senseless killing of innocent people occurred.

Of course, in the days after the tragedy, and as the dust settled--it will never settle for the families whom my heart goes out to--we began our usual discussion about guns in America, and there were many voices on all different sides.

As somebody who has been very involved in these issues, I gave it some thought and wanted to share with my colleagues and with my constituents and my country some thoughts about this.

The question that comes up is: Can we do anything about guns in society? Of course, many would ask: Should we do anything about guns in society? Even the very thoughtful and erudite member of my own party, the Governor of Colorado, said a ban on weapons would not have stopped this tragedy from occurring, in all likelihood.

So I wish to share some of my thoughts briefly.

The bottom line is, maybe we can come together once and for all on the issue of guns if each side gave some. I have thought about this for a while.

As you know, Mr. President, I was the House author--the leader, of course, was my colleague from California--of the assault weapons ban. I am even prouder of the Brady law, where I was probably the leader, and that has saved so many lives.

So the question is: When we were able to pass those kinds of groundbreaking laws, why are we so paralyzed now?

Part of the reason--and this has not been mentioned--is that crime has actually decreased dramatically in America for a whole lot of reasons. I probably do not share the views of some of my colleagues on this side of the aisle as to why it happened. I am a pretty-tough-on- crime guy. But when crime went down, the broad middle that wanted to do whatever it took to stop crime--I remember how it ravaged my city-- stopped caring as much because they were safer. That is logical. So they sort of exited the field. Law enforcement, which had been some of our best allies in supporting the assault weapons ban and the Brady law, sort of left the debate. The debate was simply left to those who cared the most, a very small number on the side of more active laws against gun control and a much larger number on the side of those who were opposed.

I know you read in the newspapers: the power of money and the NRA. I have to say this, as somebody who has opposed the NRA and has been written up regularly in their magazines in not the most flattering way, the NRA's main strength is because they have 2, 3, 4 million people who care passionately about this issue, who may not care about other issues, and who are mobilized at the drop of a hat. So when there is a bill on the floor of the Senate which a majority of Americans may support--a majority of Americans support the ban on assault weapons-- even people in my State like New York hear much more from the people who are opposed to the assault weapons ban than the people who are for it. Now, 20 years ago, that would not have happened, again, because I think, more than any other reason, crime was so ravaging our communities that average folks would call and complain and worry about too many guns in society, which I think there still are now.

In any case, given that situation, which exists, that the activists, the people who care about this issue the most--not the majority of people--are on the side of no limitations or few limitations on guns, how can we address that balance?

I think there can be a balance. Those on my side who believe strongly in some controls on guns have to acknowledge that there is a right to bear arms. It perplexed many in the pro-gun movement how liberals would read the first, third, fourth, fifth, sixth amendments as broadly as possible, but when it came to the second amendment, they saw it through a pinhole--it only related to militias, which, frankly, is a narrow, narrow, narrow reading of the second amendment.

There were many back then in the 1980s and 1990s in the pro-gun control movement who basically felt there was no right to bear arms. I think in part, because of that, those on the other side of the issue became kind of extreme themselves. Their worry was that the

real goal of the left was not simply to have rational, if you will, laws that might limit the use of guns--what guns could be had, how many clips, who could have them; criminals, the mentally infirm--but, rather, that was just a smokescreen to get rid of guns. And there was enough evidence back in the 1980s and 1990s that people actually wanted to do that.

So if you look at the ads from the NRA and the groups even farther over, the gun owners of America, their basic complaint is that the Chuck Schumers of the world want to take away your gun, even if it is the hunting rifle your Uncle Willie gave you when you were 14.

I think it would be very important for those of us who are for gun control--some rational laws on guns--to make it clear once and for all that is not our goal, to make it clear that the belief is that the second amendment does matter, that there is a right to bear arms, just like there is a right to free speech and others, and if you are an average, normal American citizen, you have the right to bear arms.

I think if the people who are pro-gun and from the more rural areas, and different than Brooklyn, the city I am from, were convinced that there was a broad consensus even in the pro-gun control movement that there was a right to bear arms, they might get off their haunches a little bit. I think that is important for this part of the compromise. So the Heller decision, which basically said that--and now is the law of the land, but was not until a few years ago--should not be something that is opposed by those who are for rational laws on guns.

I saw that even the Brady organization, that I have worked very closely with--Jim and Sarah Brady helped us pass the assault weapons ban and the Brady law; I have worked with them closely and have known them for decades--but even the Brady organization, which in the past had not had that position, is now beginning to embrace it. I think that is for the good, and I think people should know that.

Once we establish that it is in the Constitution, it is part of the American way of life--even though some do not like that--but once we establish that basic paradigm: that no one wants to abolish guns for everybody or only allow a limited few to have them under the most limited circumstances--this is on a national level--then maybe we can begin the other side of the dialog.

The other side of the dialog is, once you know no one is going to take away your gun, if you are not a felon--your shotgun that you like to go hunting with or a sidearm if you are a store owner in a crime- ridden area--we can then say to those on the other side: OK. We understand that it is unfair to read the second amendment so narrowly and read all the other amendments so broadly, and you have seen us as doing that. But, in response, we would say, and I would say, that no amendment is absolute, and whether it is in reaction to what happened in the 1980s and the 1990s or because of fanaticism, or for maybe fundraising reasons, it seems that too many on the pro-gun side believe the second amendment is as absolute, or more absolute, than all the other amendments. They are taking the converse position to what I mentioned before--the left seeing the second amendment as minuscule, but the right seeing the second amendment as broader than every other amendment.

Certainly, the right believes in antipornography laws. That is a limitation on the first amendment. Certainly, most people in America believe what--I think it was Oliver Wendell Holmes or Louis D. Brandeis who said: You cannot falsely scream ``fire'' in a crowded theater. That, too, was a limitation on the first amendment.

Every amendment is a balancing test. That is what the Constitution has said.

No amendment is absolute or our society would be tied in a complete knot. And so we say to our colleagues, this is not a partisan issue completely. There are some Republicans who are for gun control and some Democrats who oppose it completely. It seems to be more of a regional issue than almost an ideological issue. But we would say to our colleagues from the pro-gun side of things, look, there is a right to bear arms. We are not trying to take guns away from people we do not have any reason to take them away from. But you have to then admit that you cannot be so rigid, so doctrinaire that there should be no limitation on the second amendment.

The Brady law is a reasonable limitation on the second amendment, saying that felons or the mentally infirm or spousal abusers should not have a gun. The Heller decision acknowledged that those kinds of reasonable limitations did not violate the second amendment, just as the Court has recognized they are limitations that do not violate the first amendment, all because it is a balancing test.

So I would argue--and we can all find the balance in different ways-- not only is the Brady law a reasonable limitation on the second amendment, it is not interfering with the average person's right to bear arms, but neither are the assault weapons. I know there was an argument between my colleague from California, with whom I agree, and my colleague from Wisconsin, with whom I do not agree: An AR-15 is used for hunting. But I have heard people say you should be able to buy a bazooka or a tank. My view is, the assault weapons ban that was passed, which was a rather modest bill, was less important in saving lives than the Brady law by many degrees. But I would argue it is a reasonable thing to do. A limitation that says you should not be able buy a magazine that holds 1,000 rounds, that is a reasonable thing to do. Rules that say we should be able to trace where a gun originated so we can find those who are violating some of these limitations such as the Brady law--gun shops that do not check your background even though they are required to by law--is a reasonable thing to do. Again, we can debate where to draw the line of reasonableness.

But we might, might, might--and I do not want to be too optimistic here, having years and years of having gone through this--but we might be able to come to an agreement in the middle where we say, yes, there is a right to bear arms, and, yes, there can be reasonable limitations on the second amendment just as there can be on others.

That is the place I suggest we try to go. Maybe, maybe, we can break through the hard ideological lines that have been drawn on this issue. Maybe, maybe, maybe we can tell those who are at the extremes on the far right and the far left that we disagree with you. And maybe, maybe, maybe we could pass some laws that might, might, might stop some of the unnecessary tragedies that have occurred, or, at the very least, when you have someone who is mentally infirm, such as the shooter in Aurora, limit the damage they are able to do. Maybe.

But I would suggest the place to start here is for us to admit there is a right to bear arms, admit the Heller decision has a place in the Constitution, just like decisions that supported the other amendments, and at the same time say that does not mean that right is absolute. That is just a suggestion. I have been thinking about this since I read those horrible articles about those young men and women being killed. I would welcome comments, particularly from my colleagues on the other side of this issue, whether they be Democrat or Republican, on those thoughts.

Just as we have fought over and over and over again on so many issues, and we have gotten into our corners--there may be none that we have gotten into our corners on more than on gun control. Maybe it is time, as on those other issues, to come out of the corners and try, people of good will, who will disagree and come from different parts of the country with different needs, maybe there is a way we can come together and try and try to break through the logjam and make the country a better place.

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, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with

Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.