Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 20 minutes.

I ask unanimous consent that the letters I will be speaking about be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.

Recently the Obama administration has been talking a lot about income inequality and poverty. Yesterday I spoke about the issue, about the war on poverty, its successes and its failures. As I said yesterday, the United States has spent trillions of dollars in the last 50 years fighting the so-called war on poverty. I said yesterday that the results have been marginal, in some cases successful, reducing the poverty rate from 19 percent down to the 15 percent it is now. But a lot more needs to be done.

Now, in the fight against the war on poverty, this administration, like a lot of administrations, wants to spend more money on more programs. Some of that may be justified, but that does not seem to fix the problems. If you just hand this money out with no strings and no oversight, it gets diverted and misused. That is the purpose of my speaking today on the subject of public housing.

Wasted money does not help the poor. There are a lot of people who make a nice profit from the poverty of others. This administration has been helping a number of these profiteers while the poor suffer. I want to be clear as to some of these issues I am talking about--their genesis goes back to previous administrations as well. Through my oversight work, I have seen this happen over and over, that a few people profit from trying to help the poor, but the money does not go there. The Department of Housing and Urban Development hands out $4 billion in Federal money every year to local housing authorities. This money is supposed to help provide clean, affordable, safe housing for the poor. But, while no one is watching, much of the money gets spent on high salaries and perks for the people who run the housing authorities. These housing authorities have other sources of money. For most of them, up to 90 percent of their total funding comes from the $4 billion contributed by the Federal taxpayers.

Housing and Urban Development argues that because housing authorities are State and local government entities, there is no reason to scrutinize them from here in Washington, DC. As far as I am concerned, HUD is missing the point for 4 billion reasons. Those are dollar reasons. Taxpayer money should come with Federal oversight. We need to make sure that the Federal authorities who disburse it make sure they oversee that it is spent in the legal way--to help the people who need the help.

I have been conducting oversight of the wasteful spending at housing authorities for almost 4 years. I have been urging the Obama administration to look at what is happening and to take action. But there is little if any interest in the oversight of these Federal dollars by the folks writing the checks here in Washington, DC. They just want to send the checks and pat themselves on the back. They do not want to talk about what actually happens to the money once it is disbursed.

Federal funds end up feathering the nests of local housing bureaucrats instead of housing the poor. I will show you how that is done. Here are some of the most egregious examples of how ineffective the Department of Housing and Urban Development has been at policing local housing authorities.

Bradenton, FL, is an area of the country which was hit extremely hard during the foreclosure crisis, but employees at Bradenton Housing Authority only have to work 4 days a week. They get 2 weeks off at Christmas, bonuses in June and December, and the option to cash out up to a month of sick leave twice per year. They get free use of a car purchased by the housing authority. After 15 years of employment, they get to keep the car when they leave or take $10,000 instead; it is their choice.

There are generous fringe benefits, but many housing authorities also provide very lucrative salaries. These salaries far exceed the salaries of Federal employees right here in Washington, DC, who hand out the taxpayers' money to the housing authorities. The biggest salary jackpot winner I have encountered so far is the Atlanta Housing Authority. At least 22 employees there earn between $150,000 and $303,000 per year. The Atlanta Housing Authority benefits from a special HUD designation called ``moving to work.'' That program exempts designated housing authorities from certain requirements, including salary justification. This is not just an isolated example. The executive director of the Raleigh, NC, housing authority receives about $280,000 in salary and benefits, plus up to 30 vacation days. He also accumulates comp time for any hours he works over 7\1/2\ hours per day. He has used over 20 days of comp time per year since 2009. Add that to his regular vacation time, and he is out of the office

nearly 3 months per year. Nine months of work for $280,000 is an annualized salary of $375,000 per year. Very few taxpayer-funded jobs pay anything close to that amount.

So what is the justification for such high salaries, particularly considering the fact that they are supposed to provide safe, affordable housing for low-income people? After years of ignoring the issue, HUD finally capped Federal funding for executive salaries at $155,500 per employee. Of course, this was only after various local media and I exposed deep-rooted problems and pushed the Department of Housing and Urban Development to act. But now housing authority executives have turned to creative accounting tricks to get around that limit of $155,500 per employee. Since some of their money comes from other sources, the housing authorities simply claim that any salary over the Federal limit comes from one of those other sources, whereas the money from those other sources ought to be used to help low-income people have affordable, clean, and safe housing.

Because of my oversight letters on this subject, HUD recently notified the housing authorities that they must document the original source of the funding used to pay salaries over the Federal limit. That is good news, but there are still larger problems. The Department is still not making this salary data public in a reasonable timeframe. I will give an example. This administration refused to release the 2010 set of data for almost a year. I hope we do not have to wait a year to get the most recent data.

Like many of our Federal agencies, some housing authorities spend large amounts of money on travel for conferences and training. Some of that may be legitimate, but I am raising questions about the extent to which it is done and the amount of money that is consumed. Staff and board members often attend the same conferences throughout the United States year after year. They often attend multiple conferences in a single year. In addition to travel costs, housing authorities must pay a conference fee for each attendee they send, often ranging from $400 at the low end to $1,000 per employee at the higher end.

That money could easily be used to improve conditions and make needed repairs in public housing facilities. Instead, it is frittered away on conferences. In other words, forget the low-income people they are supposed to be helping and spend the money someplace else.

The Tampa Housing Authority has spent more than $860,000 since 2009 for staff and board members to attend various conferences, seminars, and training programs--$860,000 that could have been used to provide affordable housing for low-income people. Tampa also has been sending 20 or more employees per year to conferences sponsored by the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. That alone costs more than $177,000 per year.

The Atlanta Housing Authority spent more than $480,000 since 2009 for the employees to attend conferences and training sessions. In fact, the housing authority paid over $68,000 in conference fees to a software company after giving them a multimillion-dollar contract for a new computer system.

I wonder--I don't know, but I think it is legitimate to question--if the housing authority executive director thought to ask for a discount. Many of the housing authorities with questionable spending don't limit the abuses to salaries or travel.

The Tampa Housing Authority purchased a new $7 million administrative office that includes nearly $3 million in renovations and upgrades. That could have helped hundreds, if not thousands, of poor people needing the housing. They are also paying nearly $800,000 in salary and benefits for a public relations department while at the same time paying an employee another $170,369 as a PR consultant.

Other housing authorities are also spending exorbitant amounts for outside consultants. Some of these consultants are former employees of the local housing authority.

In 2013, the Pittsburgh Housing Authority retained 10 law firms for a total of $3.5 million over 3 years. One law firm has been representing the housing authority during inquiries by the Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Inspector General and the city controller.

Think about that. It is bad enough that taxpayers' money meant to help the poor is wasted, but when the taxpayer also pays the lawyers to defend the very organization from scrutiny about whether the taxpayers' money was wasted is even more outrageous. Of course, that adds insult to injury.

In Philadelphia, outside lawyers blocked the inspector general's office from assessing spending data for months, and that cost the taxpayers millions of dollars.

The Pittsburgh Housing Authority also paid an outside consulting firm $1.25 million in the year 2012. The vice president at the consulting company billed the housing authority $404,000 for 2,400 hours of work. That is 48 hours a week for a year. It is more than double the $168,000 salary of the housing authority executive director.

Harris County, TX, is one of the most egregious examples of out-of- control spending. In 2013, the HUD inspector general questioned the mismanagement of over $27 million in Federal funding for Harris County. The IG provided the following examples of fraud and abuse: over $1.7 million in excessive payroll expenses; $190,000 for statues and monuments; $66,000 for employees' shirts embossed with logos; $27,000 for trophies, plaques, and awards; $14,500 for a helicopter, a chartered bus, and golf cart rentals for a grand opening; and $18,000 for letters written by Abraham Lincoln.

I continue to send my oversight letters to the Senate appropriators and the Senate banking committee. These are the letters I received permission to put in the Record at the end of my statement.

The Senate appropriators and the Senate banking committee members have jurisdiction over the Department of Housing and Urban Development. They have the authority to do something about these abuses. My colleagues need to know the extent of the problems, and that I am ready to work with the Members of this body to address these issues.

Employment at public housing authorities should be about public service. That is why we have a program serving the needs of low-income people. It is supposed to be providing clean, safe, affordable housing for those in need, not helping bureaucrats live high on the hog on the taxpayers' dime.

As I said in my opening, this problem didn't start with this administration. There is a culture here that had to start back a long time ago. But now, bringing these problems to the attention of this administration, I hope it will take them seriously. If this administration is truly serious about income inequality--and not only using it for political purposes--it would stop shoveling taxpayers' money out the door with practically no oversight, no controls, no limits, and the waste of money I have just expressed. If President Obama is truly serious about income inequality, he would take the money high-income public housing authorities waste and give it to the benefit of low-income patrons of public housing to provide what the law is meant to provide these people: safe, affordable, healthy housing.

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

Mr. President, tomorrow night we have the State of the Union Address, and news reports say that one of the issues the President will be speaking about is income inequality. That brings me to something I should have spoken on a couple of weeks ago, because January 8, 2014, marked the 50th anniversary of President Johnson's call for a war on poverty. This anniversary provides a time to reflect on and reevaluate its twin aims of poverty relief and economic opportunity.

The goal of poverty relief is to ensure that even those who might find themselves in tough times have sufficient assistance to meet their basic human needs while lifting themselves out of abject poverty. In other words, we have to make sure people have a roof over their heads and food on their table, as minimums.

The goal of economic opportunity is to ensure the lower rungs on the economic ladder are strong enough to support that climb out of poverty. Economic opportunity is another term for the American dream that through hard work, as we know, we can improve not just a person's own lot in life but that a person's children and a person's children's children will be better off.

If we judge the war on poverty according to the first aim, a good case can be made that we have been very successful. Looking at the official poverty level that is based on income prior to many transfer payments, little has changed since 1964. However, consumption-based studies show the poor are much better off today than they were decades ago. A study available from the National Bureau of Economic Research that looks at consumption rather than income shows over a 26-percent decline in poverty since 1960.

There is little doubt that programs from Social Security to food stamps, from Medicaid to heating assistance, have helped increase the standard of living for those at or below the poverty level. However, economic growth and the general decline in the cost of technology have also been a great source of poverty reduction.

While providing relief from poverty is an admirable goal, the American dream has always been about opportunity. As President Johnson said in his State of the Union Address 50 years ago, the goal of the war on poverty ``is not only to relieve the symptoms of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.''

It is this goal of the war on poverty that has largely fallen flat. As I referenced earlier, the official poverty level has changed little in the 50-year fight on poverty, despite spending trillions of dollars on antipoverty measures. In 1964, around 19 percent lived in poverty. Today, according to the most recent census data, that number stands only slightly lower at 15 percent.

We all know America is the land of opportunity. In America, we have no caste system. Laws and social norms do not relegate any individual or any group of individuals to lower social status. It can be tough, but individuals can and do climb their way to the top. Sometimes this process can take generations, but it has always been a

source of pride that the next generation is better off and has more opportunities than the generation that came just before.

Indeed, there is considerable upward mobility in our economy. A 2007 Treasury study on income mobility found that between 1996 and 2005, around half of those taxpayers who found themselves in the bottom quintile in 1966 moved to a higher income group in 2005.

How about the very top of the income distribution my colleagues are fixated on? Contrary to what some may claim, those at the top are not the same year after year. The Treasury study found of those taxpayers who were in the top one-hundredth of 1 percent in 1996, only 25 percent remained in that group in 2005.

While there is upward mobility in America, there is always room for improvement. And there certainly are those who feel trapped in a cycle of poverty.

Unfortunately, too often programs meant to help the less fortunate can act as an anchor, preventing Americans from climbing up the ladder of success. I have no doubt the vast majority of those living at or below the poverty lines are very hard-working people. Our programs do not act as an anchor because of the poor themselves but because too often programs meant to help actually turn out to punish success. Too often those who are seeking to escape generations of poverty feel as if the harder they work, the further behind they get.

The landmark welfare reform legislation Congress passed in 1996 sought to lift the anchor off the backs of the poor. It sought to increase opportunity by incentivizing individuals to work.

The welfare reform law was meant to reward personal responsibility and a strong work ethic rather than punish these traits so essential to success.

The landmark law established work requirements, requiring individuals to work when job ready and within 2 years after coming on assistance. To receive funding, States must require a minimum amount of work, and that participation must be in hours by families receiving assistance. This meets one of TANF's--Temporary Assistance for Needy Families-- primary goals: to end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation.

In other words, if you are going to move up the economic ladder, you have to be in the world to work. If you are shunted off to the side of society, out of sight, out of mind, then there is no opportunity to move up.

In the years that followed, those who argued dire consequences would result, particularly for single mothers--these people were proven wrong. Following the enactment of welfare reform, there was a precipitous decline in welfare caseload and usage. At the same time, the single mother labor force participation rose and their incomes rose.

Unfortunately, President Obama has persistently implemented policies that erode these statutory regulations; thereby, discouraging personal responsibility and a strong work ethic.

On July 12, 2012, the administration issued what is referred to as guidance to States about this TANF Program. This guidance explained how States can now seek waivers of work requirements for welfare recipients for the first time since the TANF Program was created in the 1996 welfare reform law.

The 1996 welfare reform helped families to enjoy the dignity of self- sufficiency. It reduced poverty. Instead of pushing families out of poverty, the President's policies trapped Americans in soul-crushing government dependency.

While welfare reform made strides, too often those working hard to get a leg up feel as if they are only treading water. In November 2012, the Congressional Budget Office released a report looking at the effective marginal tax rate of low- and moderate-income workers; that is, how much extra tax or reduction in government benefits is imposed on an American worker when he or she earns an additional dollar of income; in other words, people are pretty sophisticated about looking at how much they get in a government program, and if they go into the world to work, are they going to be penalized for it instead of drawing help.

According to CBO, in 2013, the average marginal effective tax rate faced by low- to moderate-income workers was 32 percent. Keep in mind this is just the average. Many workers experience marginal effective rates far exceeding the top statutory rate of 39.6 percent paid by the highest income people in America.

For an example, an economist with the Urban Institute calculated the marginal effective tax rate of a single parent with two children under various scenarios. Just one scenario examined what would happen if a household income rose from $10,000 to $40,000.

Perhaps a single mother was able to increase her skills and earning potential by taking classes at night at a local community college. If this single mother had been receiving all the benefits she was eligible for, she would face a marginal effective tax rate of 80 percent as a reward for trying to make a better life for her and her family. That is a far higher marginal tax rate than most on the left even proposed for the much derided top 1 percent.

It is difficult to blame an individual in this situation who becomes disgruntled and just gives up, not seeking employment. It is we in the government who have tilted the scales against those low-income Americans trying to realize the American dream. In order to alleviate this disincentive, there must be a better coordination between benefits and how they are phased out.

Instead of reducing this disincentive to work, in recent years we have actually made it worse. The premium tax credit and cost-sharing subsidies that were enacted as a part of the Affordable Care Act will increase marginal tax rates by an average of 12 percentage points. Moreover, according to an analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation, when the premium tax credit is fully in effect, some workers could experience ``infinite marginal tax rates.''

Some of you may wonder what is an infinite marginal tax rate. To put this into more understandable language, this means some workers could actually face marginal effective rates exceeding 100 percent.

For a worker in this situation, it means if they decide to put in a few more hours at work or get a second job to earn extra cash, they could actually end up worse off financially. Of course, this is an absurd result that tells people do not work hard, do not try to advance your situation, because if you do, we are going to take it all away from you.

Harvard economics professor and former chief White House economist Greg Mankiw recently opined on this result saying: ``It is hard to believe that the law is so badly written as to have this feature.'' Well, Professor, believe it or not, the President and the majority party did enact this law with this feature, and they did so with the full knowledge of the Joint Committee on Taxation analysis which I had made public.

Often I hear my colleagues on the other side come to the floor to pound the table about income inequality--something we are going to hear the President talk about tomorrow night in his State of the Union Address, we are told. There are a number of studies that examine income inequality. There is great variation among these studies on how income inequality is measured and the degree to which it has actually increased over the years.

However, all these studies do point to some degree of increasing inequality over the last several decades. That we have to admit. This has occurred during both Republican and Democratic administrations. It has also been occurring across most of the developed countries. It happens not just in the United States but other places as well.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle often cite income inequality to justify whatever Democratic policy agenda is up at that particular time. Whether it is taxing the rich, raising the minimum wage or extending unemployment benefits, they cite income inequality to justify their aims.

However, these policies either fail to address the root causes of inequality or are nothing more than a temporary bandaid. Income inequality is a symptom of much larger structural problems, not the disease itself. Raising taxes might be successful at generating revenue to fund greater wealth transfer payments, but it does nothing to rectify what caused the inequality in the first place.

Soak-the-rich policies do not create greater opportunity for low- income individuals. In fact, because of the negative effects on economic growth and capital formation, they can reduce opportunity not only for the poor but for all Americans. Our country has historically been a land of opportunity. Whether such policies are well intended or cynical political opportunism, they are not worth trading away our Nation's legacy of opportunity.

You do not have to take my word for the antigrowth effects of increasing taxes. Research by Christina Romer, President Obama's former chief economist, found that a tax increase of 1 percent of GDP reduces economic growth by as much as 3 percent. According to this study, tax increases have such a substantial effect on economic growth because of the ``powerful negative effect of tax increases on investment.''

In effect, what those who pursue wealth-destroying redistributionist policies are saying--to quote Margaret Thatcher--is that they ``would rather that the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich.''

That may reduce inequality but at the expense of making us all worse off. Our goal must be to create wealth and to create opportunity for all Americans.

I reject the notion that in order to improve the lot of one individual someone else must be made worse off. The leadership of the majority has become fixated on redistributing the existing economic pie. I believe the better policy is to increase the size of that pie. When this occurs, no one is made better off at the expense of anyone else.

This is best achieved through progrowth policies aimed at growing the economic pie, not by taking from some and giving to others.

Similarly, increasing the minimum wage or extending emergency unemployment benefits also fail to address long-term causes of inequality. These proposals are well intended, and I myself have supported both under the right circumstances but neither strike at the heart of income inequality.

While there are many contributing factors, much of the research points to the widening wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor. If we are to address income inequality, the primary focus must be on ensuring individuals have the skills necessary to compete in a 21st century economy.

One way to accomplish this is through greater competition in education through increased school choice. We should also further expand our efforts made in 1996 to incentivize individuals to work and ensure those who want to work can gain the skills that are necessary for a 21st century economy.

There are certain ways we can help reduce poverty and promote opportunity. However, just throwing more and more money at existing programs is not the answer. According to a Congressional Research Service report, Federal spending on low-income assistance programs as a percent of Federal outlays has more than doubled since the 1970s.

No amount of money then will change the tried-and-true formula for escaping poverty; namely, graduate high school, wait until marriage to have children, and find a job and keep it for at least 1 year. While even those who follow this formula can fall on tough times, statistically it is rare that they will find themselves poor for a sustained period of time.

We should be sure our laws and programs encourage rather than discourage these three keys to success. One place to start is to take a look at reducing or eliminating the marriage penalty that can arise in both our tax laws and benefit programs.

The war on poverty will not be won as long as the value of marriage is diminished.

You cannot disagree with the facts. Children in single-parent households will face more challenges and are more likely to be poor.

Some economists say that children raised in single-parent homes are four times more likely to be living in poverty. According to census data, in 2012 just 6.3 percent of the families headed by married couples are poor. In contrast, 31 percent of those in single-parent households are poor.

Today, more children are born out of wedlock, more marriages are dissolved, families are not as strong as they could or should be, and we have a social problem that cannot be cured with more government spending. The war on poverty must be solved in part by encouraging and nurturing healthy families.

Of course, there is no magic cure-all for poverty. In fact, that is the point. The notion that experts in Washington can wage a successful war on poverty with spending programs as a weapon was never realistic. We are dealing with real people, with real lives trying to realize their dreams, not pieces on a chess board that we can move around as we wish.

Our goal should be to tear down the barriers to economic opportunity and simply get out of the way. When we discover that well-intentioned programs designed to help the poor are actually trapping them in generational poverty, we need to have the courage to chart a new course.

The American dream is not to be dependent upon others for bare substance but to have the opportunity to get ahead through your own hard work and perseverance. All Americans deserve the self-respect that comes from earning your own success in life.

Millions of immigrants have flocked to our shores because America offered greater economic opportunity than any other nation. We are at risk of losing part of what has made our society unique. We should seize the opportunity of this anniversary of the war on poverty 50 years ago to reevaluate our approach to ending poverty and get back to what has historically worked for generations of Americans, and that is simply to promote economic opportunity.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to continue the discussion about the description of the Senate as a deliberative body and continue to echo the call for the distinguished minority leader for a return to a functional Senate. I have spoken on this issue before. I think it is best to go back to the Constitution and the people who wrote the Constitution for an understanding of what was intended when the Senate was set up. So I do not intend to dwell on the use of the so-called nuclear option related to the filibuster.

The reason I am not going to spend my time on the nuclear option today as in previous speeches is the majority leader claims the Senate's dysfunction is related to some unprecedented use of filibusters. I think that has been thoroughly debunked. This claim is directly refuted by the very source he has pointed to, the Congressional Research Service.

More importantly, it has been debunked by fact checkers in important media sources in America. Yet, as we know, the Senate is dysfunctional beyond a doubt. To get to the bottom of how and, more importantly, why the Senate is not functioning, we must have a clear understanding of just how the Senate is supposed to function. As I just said, we should turn to the Constitution.

For an understanding of what the Constitution means, there is no better source for this than going back to the Federalist Papers. I have referenced the Federalist Papers before on this subject, but it is worth the detail about what the Framers of the Constitution had in mind when the Senate was created.

Federalist Paper 62, which is usually attributed to the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, begins to lay out the rationale for how the Senate is to operate. He mentioned that the number of Members and the length of terms are different between the House and Senate. Then he said this--but before I quote, I hope you understand that when something was written in 1787 and 1788, they use a little different form of English than what we use. But it is pretty clear what they intended to say about explaining the difference between the House and the Senate. So here begins my quote of James Madison:

In order to form an accurate judgment on both of these

points, it will be proper to inquire into the purposes which

are to be answered by a Senate; and in order to ascertain

these, it will be necessary to review the inconveniences

which a Republic must suffer from the want of such an

institution.

End of that quote, but I will have several other quotes from the Federalist Papers. In this specific quote, in

other words, Madison is going to tell us the purpose of the Senate, starting with the problems a Republic would face without a Senate and how the Senate is designed to correct those problems. As we hear from Madison about how our legislative process is supposed to work, I would encourage my colleagues to think about major legislation that has been considered in the Senate in recent years.

In fact, arguably the most major bill that has passed in recent years, President Obama's health care law, serves as one example. When that law was considered, one party held all political branches of government: the Presidency, the House of Representatives, and even had a supermajority in the Senate. That means they could run the Senate like the House, without the need to compromise with any in the minority.

At that particular time, my party was then and still is in the minority. We are now dealing with daily problems caused by the way the health care law was written, which is something to keep in mind as Madison describes in these coming quotes. The problems the Senate was designed to prevent, here is the first problem Madison discusses. It is a fairly long quote from the Federalist. First he says:

First. It is a misfortune incident to republican

government, though in less degree than to other governments,

that those who administer it may forget their obligations to

their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important

trust. In this point of view, a senate, as a second branch of

the legislative assembly, distinct from, and dividing the

power with, a first, must be in all cases a salutary check on

the government. It doubles the security to the people, by

requiring the concurrence of two distinct bodies in schemes

of usurpation or perfidy, where the ambition or corruption of

one would otherwise be sufficient. This is a precaution

founded on such clear principles, and now so well understood

in the United States, that it would be more than superfluous

to enlarge on it.

Then Madison goes on:

I will barely remark, that as the improbability of sinister

combinations will be in proportion to the dissimilarity in

the genius of the two bodies, it must be politic to

distinguish them from each other by every circumstance which

will consist with a due harmony in all proper measures, and

with the genuine principles of republican government.

I see it this way: In other words, Madison is saying having a second Chamber of Congress designed to operate differently from the House makes it less likely that a partisan agenda that does not reflect the views of Americans will pass. That is not a function the Senate currently performs, as it has been run on a purely partisan term since 2007.

For example, we will recall that the President's health care proposal did not enjoy widespread public support. Yet it passed the Senate along strictly partisan lines with little input sought or accepted from the minority party. In fact, before a final bill could be passed reconciling the House and Senate bills, a special election was held in the liberal State of Massachusetts, resulting in an election of an opponent of the health care reform proposal.

Instead of moderating the proposal based upon public will and doing it maybe just a little bit so it could attract even one Republican vote, the House passed a draft Senate bill, then they used a budget tool called reconciliation to ram another bill through the Senate with a simply majority to change items in the first bill.

That is not how Madison intended a bicameral Congress to work. The next point Madison makes:

Secondly. The necessity of a senate is not less indicated

by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to

yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to

be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and

pernicious resolutions. Examples on this subject might be

cited without number; and from proceedings within the United

States, as well as from the history of other nations. But a

position that will not be contradicted, need not be proved.

All that need be remarked is, that a body which is to correct

this infirmity ought itself to be free from it, and

consequently ought to be less numerous. It ought, moreover,

to possess great firmness, and consequently ought to hold its

authority by a tenure of considerable duration.

That describes what he thought the Senate should be, what the Senate is. But my point is, the Senate is not functioning that way. In other words, if we have just one legislative Chamber with a large number of Members, it is likely to make laws hastily based on a partisan agenda without thinking through all the long-term consequences. A hastily passed partisan agenda that ignores the long-term consequences, does that not remind you of the health care law? Remember how then-Speaker Pelosi said the House had to pass a bill to find out what was in it?

They were in such a rush they could not be bothered to read it.

The Senate is intended, as Madison just said, as I quoted, to be smaller, to be more deliberate, and to be less partisan. Imagine if the Senate had been allowed to operate in a deliberative fashion and craft a truly bipartisan health care proposal. If that had happened, we certainly could have come up with something more workable than the current law.

Madison continues his explanation of the rationale for the Senate:

Thirdly. Another defect to be supplied by a senate lies in

a want of due acquaintance with the objects and principles of

legislation. It is not possible that an assembly of men

called for the most part from pursuits of a private nature,

continued in appointment for a short time, and led by no

permanent motive to devote the intervals of public occupation

to a study of the laws, the affairs, and the comprehensive

interests of their country, should, if left wholly to

themselves, escape a variety of important errors in the

exercise of their legislative trust. It may be affirmed, on

the best grounds, that no small share of the present

embarrassments of America is to be charged on the blunders of

our governments; and that these have proceeded from the heads

rather than the hearts of most of the authors of them. What

indeed are all the repealing, explaining, and amending laws,

which fill and disgrace our voluminous codes, but so many

monuments of deficient wisdom; so many impeachments exhibited

by each succeeding against each preceding session; so many

admonitions to the people, of the value of those aids which

may be expected from a well-constituted Senate?

A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to

the object of government, which is the happiness of the

people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that

object can best be attained. Some governments are deficient

in both these qualities; most governments are deficit in the

first. I scruple not to assert, that in American governments

too little attention has been paid to the last. The federal

Constitution avoids this error; and what merits particular

notice, it provides for the last in a mode which increases

the security for the first.

That is a long quote. But Madison is essentially saying that the House is to be composed of a representative slice of American citizens while the Senate is supposed to be composed of individuals who have more experience and approach public policy more thoughtfully. I am sure many people might question whether individuals in the House or even in this Senate match those descriptions today that Madison lays out.

But it is true that the rules of the House allow for new ideas to be quickly translated into legislation.

By contrast, the process in the Senate has historically been slower and more deliberative to refine those ideas into law that can stand the test of time. Note that Madison complains about all the ``repealing, explaining, and amending laws'' that have had to be passed by the unicameral legislatures of that time--of the early days of our Republic.

Our early experiences with passing bills quickly, without thinking things through, led to the understanding that we should take our time and get it right in the first place.

Getting back to Madison and those quotes I gave, that is what the Senate is supposed to do. Failure of the Senate to take the time, examine, and take time to revise legislation is quite obvious. It results in bad laws that don't work.

We now have a situation with the health care law where the President claims the authority to unilaterally suspend or reinterpret parts of the law that are clearly unworkable.

That is very similar to the embarrassing situation Madison refers to, to have a constant stream of ``repealing, explaining, and amending laws,'' except the President is doing all of the repealing, all of the explaining, and all of the amending, unilaterally.

Our constitutional system is not designed to pass a lot of legislation quickly, and that can be frustrating, particularly to any majority party anxious to enact its agenda.

Still, our deliberative process is a design and not a flaw. Based on experience, the Framers of our Constitution

determined that it was better to get it right the first time than to subject the American people to the upheavals of laws that need to be constantly amended or repealed. The House was designed to act quickly. The Senate was designed to be a deliberative body, implying a slower approach to legislating.

The fundamental problem is that the current majority leader is trying to run the Senate like the House, and the Senate was not designed to be operated in that way. Sure--with the majority then and now the majority, the same majority when they had 60 votes--it was possible to ram legislation through the Senate without any deliberation, but that is no longer the reality.

When the majority leader brings a bill to the floor, routinely blocking amendments and then rapidly moves to end consideration of the bill, that means the Senate is presented with a measure as a fait accompli and has to take it or, the opposite, leave it.

In other words, the majority leadership wants their agenda approved, no questions asked, or nothing at all.

The fact is, if the majority leader allowed the Senate to deliberate, we could get a lot more done than we have been doing. Sure, we might not get as many laws passed as some people might like. The full Senate, through its deliberation, may alter legislation somewhat from how the majority leadership would prefer. Still, we would be able to accomplish some important legislation. But, no, that is not acceptable, we are told. One week ago today there was a strong debate on that very issue. For all the talk about getting things done, the majority leadership has demonstrated repeatedly with cloture motion after cloture motion that it would rather grind this body to a halt than allow the slightest alteration of their agenda.

The latest message from the majority leadership is that they will respect the rights of Senators to offer an amendment only if they have certain assurances about the final outcome. The senior Senator from New York implied that is the way it used to be done.

Well, I want to assure that Senator that in the 33 years I have served in the Senate, it has never been done that way. I have managed a lot of bills over the years, and if I had tried to impose that requirement, I would have been laughed at, to say the least.

Since when did duly elected Senators have to negotiate for the right to represent their constituents? An open amendment process should be the default situation, not something that is granted at the sufferance of the majority party leadership.

We must get back then to what we call in the Senate regular order. I would say do things the way Madison intended. That means an open amendment process without preconditions or special limitations on what amendments will be allowed.

Cloture shouldn't even be contemplated until after a substantial number of amendments have been processed. That was the standard practice when the Senate got things done, when we accomplished things.

Again, Madison describes a Senate that is to represent all Americans, not only one party. It was designed to be more thoughtful and deliberative and, whether we like it or not, slower than the House of Representatives.

The Senate's purpose is to make sure that Congress passes fewer but better laws. We saw what happened when the Senate was controlled entirely by one party while the voices of the minority party and the citizens they represented were ignored. We got a deeply flawed health care law and the American people are paying the price. Yet the majority leader insists on running the Senate as if he still has 60 votes, doesn't have to compromise, and even refuses to compromise. That is not how the authors of our Constitution intended the Senate to work and, of course, it isn't working.

The Senate is facing a crisis, and the only way to solve it is to restore the Senate as a deliberative body envisioned by the authors of the Constitution and express it in an explanatory way in the Federalist Papers.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Senator McConnell has made a very important call to restore the Senate as

the great deliberative body it was intended to be. I would like to continue to add my voice to that call. In fact, I am going to expand on some observations I made previously before the Senate, I believe in the month of December last year.

The Senate is a unique body designed with a very unique purpose in mind. In the Federalist Paper 62, attributed to the father of the Constitution James Madison, the unique role of the Senate is explained this way:

The necessity of a Senate is not less indicated by the

propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to

the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced

by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious

resolutions.

When Madison talks about ``factious leaders'' and ``intemperate and pernicious resolutions,'' he basically means what we call partisanship and the ``my way or the highway'' approach to legislating all too common these days.

What might come as a shock to anyone who has followed the Senate lately is the fact that the Senate was specifically designed to check partisan passions and ensure that Americans of all stripes are fairly represented through a deliberative process. Clearly, the Senate is not fulfilling the role the Framers of the Constitution intended, in recent years.

To find out what went wrong, we first have to examine how the Senate was supposed to function. About this propensity of legislatures to be dominated by factious leaders acting intemperately, Madison goes on to say:

Examples on this subject might be cited without number; and

from proceedings within the United States, as well as from

history of other nations.

Note that in advocating for the creation of a Senate to counter this negative tendency, Madison references examples from proceedings within the United States. Many State legislatures in the early days of our Republic were unicameral, with frequent elections and weak executives. This led to many instances where a temporary majority faction would gain control and quickly pass legislation that advantaged the majority at the expense of the minority.

The Senate has been called the greatest deliberative body in the world because it was specifically designed to proceed at a measured pace and to guarantee that the rights of the minority party be protected.

James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper No. 10:

Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate

and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and

private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our

governments are too unstable, that the public good is

disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that

measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of

justice and the rights of the minority party, but by the

superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.

What is unique about the Senate is that the rules and traditions force Senators to work together to prevent Madison's ``overbearing majority'' from steamrolling the minority party. Because the rules of the Senate are built around consensus, as opposed to the House of Representatives where the majority party dominates, it forces Senators of all parties to listen to each other and to work together. While that was true most of my time in the Senate, it has changed in recent years. If anyone wonders why the tone in Washington has become so heated recently, the loss of the Senate as a deliberative body is certainly a big factor.

There is an apocryphal story which may or may not be historically accurate but which certainly depicts how the Senate was intended to function. The story goes that when Jefferson returned from France, where he was serving during the Constitutional Convention, he asked George Washington why the Senate had been created. Washington supposedly replied by asking Jefferson, ``Why did you pour that tea into your saucer?''

``To cool it,'' Jefferson said.

Washington responded, ``Even so, we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.''

In the House of Representatives, the Rules Committee sets out the terms of debate for each bill. If you want to offer an amendment in the House, you have to go hat in hand to the Rules Committee and ask their permission. If the House leadership doesn't like your amendment, you are out of luck.

By contrast, the Senate has a tradition of allowing extensive debate and amendments by any Senator without prior approval from anybody. However, that tradition has gone out the window under the current majority leadership. We have seen an unprecedented abuse of cloture motions to cut off the deliberative process paired with a tactic called filling the tree--blocking amendments from being considered. The Senate majority leader has effectively become a one-man version of the House Rules Committee, dictating which amendments will be debated and which ones will never see the light of day. He has done so again on the unemployment bill currently before this Senate. In fact, he has been quite unashamed about saying he is not going to allow any amendments. This strips the ability of individual Senators to effectively represent their State, regardless of political party. Blocking amendments also virtually guarantees that any legislation the Senate votes on will be more partisan in nature, violating the very purpose of the Senate according to James Madison.

By empowering the majority leader at the expense of individual Senators, the people of the 50 States lose their voice in the Senate and party leaders get their way instead. The people of Iowa sent me to the Senate to represent them, not to simply vote up or down on a purely partisan agenda dictated by the majority leader.

Everyone complains about the lack of bipartisanship these days, but there is no opportunity for individual Senators to work together across the aisle when legislation is drafted on a partisan basis and amendments are blocked.

Bipartisanship requires giving individual Senators a voice, regardless of party. That is the only way to get things done in the Senate. In the last decade, when I was chairman of the Finance Committee and Republicans controlled the Senate, we wanted to actually get things done. In order for that to happen, we knew we had to accommodate the minority, we had to have patience and humility and respect for that minority--attributes that do not exist on the other side anymore. We had some major bipartisan accomplishments, from the largest tax cut in history to the Medicare prescription drug program, to numerous trade agreements. Those kinds of major bills do not seem to happen anymore.

The Senate rules provide that any Senator may offer an amendment regardless of party affiliation. Each Senator represents hundreds of thousands to, in the case of California, 36 million Americans, and each has an individual right to offer amendments for consideration. The principle here is not about political parties having their say but duly elected Senators participating in the legislative process.

Again, as part of our duty to represent the citizens of our respective States, each Senator has an individual right to offer amendments. This right cannot be outsourced to party leaders. The longstanding tradition of the Senate is that Members of the minority party as well as rank-and-file Members of the majority party have an opportunity to offer amendments and get votes in the Senate.

The now-routine practice of filling the tree to block amendments has been a major factor in the destruction of the Senate as a deliberative body. This is usually combined with filing cloture to cut off further consideration of a bill, which has occurred to a truly unprecedented extent. In a deliberative body, debates and amendments are essential, so cloture should be rare. Abuse of cloture strikes to the very heart of how the Senate is intended to work.

It is important to note the majority leader has tried to pass off the cloture motions he has filed, which are attempts by the majority party to silence the minority party, as nothing but Republican filibusters. There seems to have been a concerted attempt to confuse cloture motions with filibusters. But the Washington Post fact checker has caught the majority leader in this distortion, giving his claim of unprecedented Republican filibusters two Pinocchios. In fact, a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service called ``Cloture Attempts on Nominations: Data and Historical Development,'' written by Richard S.

Beth, contains an entire section entitled ``Cloture Motions Do Not Correspond With Filibusters.''

The abuse of cloture, often combined with the blocking of amendments, prevents all Senators from doing what they were sent to do--not just Members of the minority party. It has even gotten worse. Even where the majority leader has decided he is going to be open to amendments, he has created out of whole cloth new restrictions to limit Senators' rights.

First, he normally only opens the amendment process if there is an agreement to limit amendments. This is usually only a handful or so of amendments. Then he has magically determined that only germane or relevant amendments can be considered. Of course, nowhere do the Senate rules require amendments to be germane, other than postcloture. Senators elected in the last few years appear to be ignorant of that fact. We will hear some of my colleagues argue against an amendment saying it is nongermane or nonrelevant. They have fallen totally for the majority leader's creative rulemaking, thus giving up one of their rights as a Senator with which to represent their State.

I cannot count how many nongermane or nonrelevant amendments I had to allow votes on when I processed bills when Republicans were in charge. They were usually tough political votes. But we took them because we wanted to get things done and that is the way the Senate operated. You do not see that nowadays. The current majority avoids tough votes at all costs. If you wonder why things do not get done around here in the Senate, that is one of the reasons they do not get done.

The American people sent us to get the work done and to represent our constituents and that means voting, not avoiding tough votes. We sometimes hear this is a question of majority rule versus minority obstruction. Again, that ignores that each Senator is elected to represent their State, not simply to be an agent of one of the political parties. There are policies that have majority support in the Senate that have been denied a vote. Understand, we have been denied votes on amendments that even a majority of this Senate supports.

What happened during debate on a budget resolution proves my point. The special rules of the budget resolution limit debate so it cannot be filibustered, but it also allows for an unlimited number of amendments. A Republican amendment to the Senate Budget Committee in support of repealing the tax on lifesaving medical devices in President Obama's health care law passed by an overwhelming 79-to-20 vote, with more than half of the Democrats voting with the Republicans rather than their party leader.

We also had a Republican amendment in support of the approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline to bring oil from Canada, and that passed 62 to 37. Votes such as these that split the Democrats and hand a win to Republicans are exactly what the majority leader has been trying to avoid by blocking those very same amendments on legislation. Of course, that is probably the explanation of why we did not take up a budget resolution for more than 3 years prior to this year.

Until we put an end to the abuse of cloture and the blocking of amendments, the Senate cannot function as James Madison and the Framers of the Constitution intended. We must bring back the Senate as a deliberative body. Our politics today desperately need the cooling saucer of the Senate, as George Washington described the Senate to Jefferson. The action by the majority leader to make it easier to consider nominations on a purely partisan basis went in the wrong direction. In the face of bipartisan opposition and with no Republican votes, the so-called nuclear option established a precedent, effectively overruling the rules on the books. A better move would be for the Senate to establish the precedent that filling the tree and abusing cloture to block a full amendment process is illegitimate.

It is time to restore the Senate so it can fulfill its constitutional role. Senator McConnell has made a thoughtful and well-reasoned appeal. I hope my colleagues will listen for the sake of this institution, for the good of the country as a whole, and out of respect for the Framers of the Constitution who set up the Senate as a unique deliberative body.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask, since I just arrived on the Senate floor, is it appropriate for me to speak on the judicial nominee we will be voting on.

Mr. President, we are going to vote on the third of three nominees to the DC Circuit. Today it will be Judge Robert Wilkins. I will oppose the judge's nomination, just as I did when the Senate rejected the same nomination in November of last year.

This circuit, of course, is far and away the least busy in the country. This is one of the reasons why the Democrats blocked nominees to this very same circuit, based on the very same arguments regarding caseload, during the Bush administration. There were only two differences between then and now. Back then the caseload was even higher, and back then there was a Republican in the White House. Today, of course, there is a Democrat in the White House, and also a Democratic majority here in the Senate.

Today, by pushing this nomination for a circuit where there are not more judges needed based on caseload, I say that the Senate majority-- meaning the Senate Democrats--do not want to play by the same rules they pioneered or by the same standards they established during the Bush administration.

Even though the Senate considered and rejected this nomination just a couple of months ago, today once again we will be voting on Judge Wilkins' confirmation. We will vote on the judge's nomination today because, on November 21, last year, the majority leader and the Senate majority invoked the so-called nuclear option. In one fell swoop, the majority leader did more damage to the institution than I have witnessed in more than 3 decades of service here in the Senate. In fact, when the majority leader broke the rules to change the rules last November and tossed aside two centuries of Senate history and precedent, he likely did more damage to this institution than any leader who preceded him.

It was a power grab. Of course it was a power grab. But it was more than that. It fundamentally has altered the way the Senate operates. It stripped the minority of its rights--under the rules, of course--but it was more than that as well. It cheapens the world's greatest deliberative body.

About 2 hours ago I spoke on this subject to the Senate based upon what James Madison said was the function of the Senate--to be a deliberative body, to bring stability to our political system, not to do things the same way the House of Representatives does.

As a result of the nuclear option, the Senate design has been forever altered, and it was done via brute force with zero buy-in from the minority. The result, as we have seen over the last 2 months, is less cooperation and more partisanship, something the people of this country abhor.

That is before you consider the current state of affairs regarding amendments here on the Senate floor. The majority leader routinely blocks all Senators from offering amendments by doing what we call ``filling the tree'' with amendments, and then sets aside his ``blocker amendments'' for only those amendments that the leader considers appropriate for us to discuss.

When you take into consideration the inability of Senators to offer amendments of their choosing and combine it with the leader's decision to strip the minority of their right to extend a debate on nominations, it becomes clear why today's Senate operates the way it does. There are two great rights Senators have: the right to debate and the right to amend. That is what makes us a deliberative body. That is what makes us so much different from the House of Representatives. By stripping away, on one hand, the right to extend the debate on nominations, and denying Senators, on the

other hand, the right to offer amendments, the leader has taken those two rights and shredded them. It is to a point where some Members of this body don't even have a full appreciation for the way the institution used to operate.

Is it any wonder that it is difficult to get things done in today's Senate? Is it any wonder Senators don't feel compelled to work and consult together?

Today we will vote on a nomination the Senate rejected a couple of months ago. Now--perhaps because the other side is having a bit of buyer's remorse--some of my colleagues have been doing their best to rewrite history.

Senate Democrats claim that Republican opposition to the DC Circuit nominees was, in their words, unprecedented, but conveniently failed to mention that Senate Democrats set the standard during the Bush administration when they blocked qualified nominees to the DC Circuit based on caseload, which is the same argument I used, but in those days the caseload was even heavier than it is today.

As I have said, back then the caseload was higher. You can't say that too often. The fact is that DC is the most underworked circuit in the Nation.

I have given previous speeches on this subject, and I have given a lot of statistics, so I won't go through all those statistics again today, but with the most recent data released by the nonpartisan Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the numbers still show the DC Circuit has the fewest number of appeals filed and appeals terminated among all of the Federal circuit courts.

On a per-active-judge basis, the DC Circuit now has 111 total appeals filed per active judge. The national average is over three times higher, at 377. The busiest court, the Eleventh Circuit, comes in at over seven times higher than the DC Circuit, at 796. In other words, a Federal appellate judge sitting in Florida has a workload seven times heavier than the circuit judge sitting here in DC.

I hope people don't fall for the phony argument that cases in the DC Circuit are more complicated. There are other circuits that handle more of these so-called complex cases than even DC. The bottom line is the empirical data has shown, and continues to show, that these judges could have been better used in other circuits. I have a piece of legislation that would move these three judges from the DC Circuit to other circuits where the caseload is greater.

To confirm what the statistics show, early last year I decided to go straight to the source, the judges who serve in DC on this circuit. Before these nominations to the DC Circuit were even made, I submitted a questionnaire to each DC Circuit judge asking them about their workload. Their responses independently confirmed that the data showed that the court is severely underworked.

One judge responded: ``If any more judges were added now, there wouldn't be enough work to go around.'' I hope you understand that the vacancies that are being filled are going to cost the taxpayers $1 million-plus a year forever as long as these seats are filled.

After looking carefully at the data, and, of course, confirming my understanding with the judges themselves, I opposed these nominations based, in part, on the same standards established by the Democrats during the Bush administration when they blocked nominees to the DC Circuit. Then, of course, there was a Republican President, and now we have a Democratic President.

Of course, that wasn't the only reason for opposition to these nominees. For instance, gun rights supporters are opposed to Judge Wilkins, not based on caseload but because of the Dearth v. Holder case where Judge Wilkins held that nonresident U.S. citizens don't have the Second Amendment right to purchase a firearm.

The last nominee we confirmed to the DC Circuit was about the farthest thing from a mainstream nominee as you can get. I won't repeat everything I said about that nominee in previous speeches or what that nominee has said or written, but I will give one example. Consider former Professor Pillard's view on religious freedom. She argued that the Supreme Court case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church, which challenged the so-called ``ministerial exception'' to employment discrimination represented--in her words--a ``substantial threat to the American rule of law.''

The Supreme Court, on appeal, rejected her view 9-0, and the Court held that ``it is impermissible for the government to contradict a church's determination of who can act as its ministers.''

Think about that. Former Professor Pillard argued the challenge to the ministerial exception to employment law represented a ``substantial threat to the American rule of law.'' Yet the Court rejected the view 9-0, and held ``it is impermissible for the government to contradict a church's determination of who can act as its ministers.''

Do my colleagues honestly believe it is within the mainstream to argue churches shouldn't be allowed to choose their own ministers? I don't believe it is in the mainstream.

We know these judges aren't needed. Far from it. We know these nominations aren't mainstream. Far from it. Then why did our Senate Democrats go to such lengths to stack this court? Why go so far as to change the Senate rules in order to fill these vacancies? Why go so far as to abuse and violate the Senate rules to change the rules? Well, because the President and his allies will do whatever it takes to get their way even if it means breaking Senate rules, silencing debate, circumventing Congress, or stacking the judicial deck in their favor to ensure that their executive actions are rubberstamped by the courts.

It is no secret the President has decided to circumvent Congress by relying heavily on Executive orders and regulatory action to carry out an unpopular agenda. We all heard the President pledge repeatedly, ``If Congress won't act, I will.'' What he means, of course, is that he is going to do it all by executive action. He won't go to Congress. He won't negotiate. In fact, he will go around Congress. He decided he doesn't need legislators to make these changes. He will just issue an Executive order or issue new agency rules.

As I have explained before, in effect, the President is saying: If the Senate won't confirm who I want, when I want them, then I will recess-appoint them when the Senate isn't even in session, or at another time, the President would say: If Congress won't pass cap-and- trade fee increases, then I will go around the Congress and do the same thing through administrative action at the Environmental Protection Agency or, again, if Congress won't pass gun control legislation, then I will issue a series of Executive orders. Quite simply, that is what the President means when he says: If Congress won't act, I will.

But remember. Under our system, it is the courts that provide a check on the President's powers. It is the courts that decide whether the President is acting unconstitutionally. So the only way the President's plan works is if he stacks the deck in his favor. The only way the President can successfully bypass Congress is if he stacks the courts with ideological allies who will rubberstamp these Executive orders. That is why it is so important for the President that he and his Senate allies stack the DC Circuit even though the DC Circuit doesn't have enough work, and it will be an additional $1 million for each of the three judges who are now being stacked into this court.

As I have said, in the last few weeks the other side has attempted to rewrite history in an effort to justify the actions they have taken, but the other side's effort to rewrite history isn't limited to the history of the DC Circuit in particular. It extends to the number of so-called filibusters during the past few years.

Several times last week the Senate majority claimed that the Republicans filibustered 20 of Obama's district court nominees. According to their narrative, only 23 nominees have been filibustered in the history of the Senate, and 20 occurred in the past 5 years. That is not remotely true, and the majority knows that. As near as I can tell, this claim is based on the number of times a cloture motion has been filed on district court nominees. Of course, everyone knows a cloture motion isn't a filibuster. A filibuster is a failure to end debate.

Nonetheless, let's look at those 20 nominees. Seventeen nominees were

filed at one time back in March of 2012. That maneuver, of course, was a transparent effort to manufacture a crisis where no crisis existed. Every single one of these cloture motions was later withdrawn. As a result, not 1 of those 17 nominees even had a cloture vote, let alone a failed cloture vote.

In fact, of these 20 so-called filibusters of district court judges, the Senate held only 1 cloture vote on a district court judge, and that cloture vote passed the Senate. Yet the Senate majority still claims we filibustered 20 district court nominees. That is revisionist history if I have ever seen it.

Let's review the alleged Republican obstruction of the President's nominees. Since President Obama took office, the Senate has approved 218 of the President's lower court judicial nominees. That is 99 percent. So we have rejected only two. If the majority leader hadn't invoked the nuclear option, the number would have, in fact, been 5 instead of 2, but not 20, and not 34, as I have heard some claim. It would not have even been 10, which was the number the Senate majority blocked by the fifth year of President Bush's administration. Five nominees.

At the end of the day, the majority was willing to toss aside two centuries of Senate practice and tradition over just five judicial nominees. So I continue to oppose this nominee, just as I did when the Senate rejected the nomination before the Senate Democrats broke the rules to change the rules.

This judgeship wasn't warranted before the majority leader and the Democrats invoked the misguided nuclear option, and it certainly hasn't suddenly become warranted in the weeks since that time.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask permission to speak for about 10 minutes on the Yellen nomination.

Madam President, over the past 5 years the Federal Reserve has pursued unconventional and unprecedented monetary policy. As Vice chair of the Fed, Janet Yellen has been a strong proponent of these policies. As chair, she is likely to continue these same easy- money policies with the same, if not more, vigor as her predecessor.

I have deep concerns about the long-term effects of pursuing these policies. Historical evidence suggests that failing to rein in easy- money policies on a timely basis risks fueling an economic bubble or even hyperinflation.

It is true that one of the lessons learned from the Great Depression was that an overly tight monetary policy in a recession risks economic debilitating deflation. Thus, understandably, when the recession hit in 2008 the Fed sought to avoid the mistakes of the past by lowering interest rates to encourage investment. However, this expansionary monetary policy cannot continue into perpetuity without causing real and lasting damage to our economy.

Just as we should not repeat the mistakes of the Great Depression, we need to be careful not to repeat the mistakes that fueled our recent recession. Let us not forget that our current economic stagnation began with the bursting of the housing bubble in late 2007--a housing bubble fueled by rampant speculation that was driven, in part by historically low interest rates maintained by the Fed between 2001 and 2004.

Yet once again we see the Fed embarking on a policy of sustained historically low interest rates. The Fed has now maintained the Federal funds rate essentially at zero for over 5 years. What may be the future consequences of this policy? What new bubble will arise? At this point, I do not think anyone can answer these questions definitively. But no one can deny that the risks are real and could be devastating.

The Fed, though, has not just sought to maintain record-low interest rates. With its traditional monetary tool tapped out, the Fed has turned to a less conventional and more aggressive program in an attempt to jump-start our economy and lower unemployment.

The Fed is now engaged in an open-ended policy it has termed quantitative easing. Essentially, this is a fancy way to say the Fed is flooding the economy with trillions of dollars through large purchases of mortgage-backed securities and longer-term Treasury securities. As a result of this program, the Fed has seen its balance sheet more than quadruple from around $800 billion to nearly $4 trillion. Vice Chairman Yellen has not presented a plan to Congress on how the Fed plans to deal with this issue.

While I welcome the news from the Fed's December meeting that they intend to reduce the monthly purchases, I fear they may already be in too deep. It remains unclear how the Fed will be able to go about unwinding its nearly $4 trillion balance sheet without spooking investors.

The stock market has become addicted to the Fed's easy-money policies. This has led one notable investment advisor to question whether the Fed will ever be able to end the quantitative easing program.

While the stock market has become addicted to easy money, the benefit to Main Street has been questionable at best. Unemployment remains high, bank lending remains tight, and savers discouraged.

While the benefits to Main Street remain unnoticeable, they most certainly will feel the pain should the Fed carry on their easy-money policy for too long.

For an example of what Main Street could be in store for one need look no further than the late 1970s and early 1980s. The easy-money policies of the 1970s intended to spur employment resulted in stagflation, a period of hyperinflation and high unemployment. During this period unemployment topped 10 percent while inflation exceeded 14 percent.

The experience of the late 1970s and early 1980s made it clear that once you let the inflation genie out of the bottle it is very difficult to stamp it out. After suffering years of stagflation, Americans were then subject to the pain of unprecedented interest rates as high as 20 percent just to get hyperinflation back under control.

Statements by Ms. Yellen indicate she would be open to inflation exceeding the Fed target of 2 percent as a means to achieve full employment. While achieving full employment may be a noble goal, the Fed has a dismal record at being able to produce sustainable job creation through expansionary monetary policy.

While inflation may aid employment in the very short term, our experience with stagflation in the 1970's shows this tradeoff falls apart quickly as people's expectations change. Sustainable job growth comes not from inflation, but price stability that promotes long-run economic growth. We need a chairman focused on a strong dollar and low inflation.

My concerns about the Fed's easy-money policies and inflation led me to vote against Chairman Bernanke for his second term at the Fed. Because it appears that Ms. Yellen will continue to pursue these misguided policies, I cannot in good conscience vote in favor of her confirmation.

Madam President, today we consider the nomination of Brian Davis to be a District Court Judge for the Middle District of Florida. I will vote for him today (although there has been some controversy surrounding his nomination). I wish to take a minute to discuss the nomination.

Judge Davis made a number of controversial remarks a few years ago. During his hearing last Congress, Judge Davis was asked to provide some clarification regarding those comments. After carefully reviewing his answers from the hearing, many of us concluded that they didn't provide the clarity that we had hoped he would provide. For that reason, following his hearing, I asked Judge Davis some follow-up questions for the Record, hoping to get the clarity, in writing, that I didn't hear him provide during his hearing.

Unfortunately, after reviewing his written answers, I concluded that Judge Davis didn't fully appreciate why many found his comments so troubling. For instance, when I asked him about these statements he wrote that a ``number of my statements could be misunderstood'', but he neither apologized for them nor said anything to demonstrate that he fully appreciated why his comments were so problematic.

As a result, in the last Congress I reluctantly opposed his nomination.

Judge Davis, of course, was renominated this Congress. On September 12th, he submitted a letter to the Florida Senators.

In that letter, Judge Davis apologized for his comments--without qualification.

He wrote, ``I believe that several of the statements I made in the past were inappropriate and improper.'' He went on to write, ``I apologize for any inappropriate statements and deeply recognize the harm that they could cause if they gave the misimpression that I am anything other than impartial or that I maintain any bias or prejudice.''

As I wrote to Judge Davis in a follow-up letter on September 25th, unlike the last Congress, I believe the apology Judge Davis transmitted on September 12 for those comments was without qualification. Therefore, in my view, it demonstrated both courage and humility.

In my letter to Judge Davis, I asked him simply to confirm that he was apologizing for his comments regarding Dr. Henry Foster, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, and Justice Thomas.

In a follow-up letter he wrote to me on September 26, he confirmed those were the ``inappropriate comments'' he referenced in his letter to the Florida Senators.

I ask consent that both my letter to Judge Davis, and his response, be made part of the Record.

I have given this nomination a great deal of consideration. I believe Judge Davis has taken steps this Congress that, in my view, he didn't appear willing to take last Congress. Taking this into consideration, together with the fact that he enjoys the support of his home State Senators, I am willing to give Judge Davis the benefit of the doubt and will support his nomination today.

I yield the floor.

Washington, DC, September 25, 2013.

Judge Brian J. Davis,

Nassau County Courthouse,

Fernandina Beach, FL.

Dear Judge Davis: I write to follow up on your September

12th letter to Senators Nelson and Rubio, copying me and

Chairman Leahy, regarding concerns with your record Members

of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including me, raised last

Congress.

As you alluded in your letter, during your hearing last

Congress, Senator Lee asked you a number of questions

regarding various remarks and speeches you made throughout

your career. After carefully reviewing the answers you gave

during the hearing, I concluded your responses lacked the

breadth and clarity I had hoped you would provide when

afforded the opportunity. For instance, you conceded that

some comments were ``inappropriate,'' but then stated ``they

were inappropriate for the reason that an impression could be

gotten from them that somehow the court maintained a racial

prejudice.'' That response troubled me because it did not

appear to fully recognize the reason some find those comments

concerning. Specifically, the comments appeared quite plainly

to assign a racial motivation to those who opposed particular

nominees on purely policy grounds.

Consequently, following your hearing I sent you a number of

follow up questions for the record. Again, I was hopeful to

receive some clarity regarding those comments. But after

carefully reviewing your responses, I reluctantly reached the

conclusion that you still did not fully appreciate why some

viewed your comments as inappropriate. For instance, I asked

about your comments regarding President Clinton's nomination

of Dr. Henry Foster's nomination to be surgeon general. But

rather than concede what appears to be apparent by the words

you used, you answered instead that the comments were

inappropriate because they ``could be interpreted'' in a

particular way, and therefore that you lacked impartiality.

In my view, your answers to several other questions lacked

clarity in a similar fashion. For these reasons, among

several others, reluctantly I opposed your nomination last

Congress.

With this background, I received your letter of September

12th, 2013. In your letter you wrote, without qualification,

``I believe that several of the statements I made in the past

were inappropriate and improper.'' You went on to write, ``I

apologize for any inappropriate statements and deeply

recognize the harm that they could cause if they gave the

misimpression that I am anything other than impartial or that

I maintain any bias or prejudice.'' I note that these two

statements represent a step that you did not appear willing

to take last Congress. In my view, this demonstrates both

courage and humility. Thank you for that letter.

As your nomination is now again pending before the

Committee, I write to seek one further clarification. As I

noted, you wrote in your recent letter that you apologize for

``any inappropriate statements,'' but you did not specify the

statements to which you referred. I want to confirm that you

are referring to your comments regarding Dr. Henry

Foster, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, and Justice Thomas.

Thank you in advance for your prompt reply.

Sincerely.

Charles E. Grassley,

Ranking Member,

U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

Madam President, it is a great pleasure to thank my colleagues, Senators Warner, Collins, and Kaine, for their partnership in winning this breakthrough in newly-strengthened whistleblower protections for our troops. It is important to be clear about a cornerstone of our amendment, which is the guaranteed right to an administrative due process hearing in all whistleblower retaliation cases. New subsection f(3)(B) provides that if the Secretary does not make a finding of illegal retaliation and order corrective action, the case shall be forwarded to the appropriate Board for Corrections of Military Records to receive a mandatory administrative due process hearing, ``when appropriate.'' There should not be any confusion. It is always appropriate to forward the case for hearing if jurisdiction exists for whistleblower retaliation alleged in the servicemember's complaint. It is only inappropriate if another provision of law provides the relevant rights, procedures and remedies to resolve the complaint, such as when the alleged misconduct is sexual harassment per se as opposed to whistleblower retaliation for disclosing sexual harassment.

Mr. President, I rise for two purposes. No. 1, to discuss the National Defense Authorization Act and the fact that we cannot offer amendments to it and the process that has deteriorated in the Senate for deliberation. Second, I will speak very shortly about the nomination of Mayorkas, one of the first nominees we will be voting on this week.

The Senate is poised to vote on a final National Defense Authorization Act after considering only two amendments. The Senate has not been functioning like it should for some time, and the way that the National Defense Authorization Act has been handled is one example. I have served in the majority and the minority, with Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents. So I have seen it operate from every perspective. What is unique about the Senate is that the rules as well as the traditions force Senators to work together. That leads Senators to understand where the other side is coming from, resulting in mutual respect and scrutiny.

I hear from a lot of Iowans who are upset at the tone they hear in Washington and the lack of bipartisanship. I have often said that the Senate functions best when no party has more than about 55 seats. If you have much more than that, there is less of a tendency to want to work in a bipartisan fashion. That was true for most of my time in the Senate but not now. Despite a current margin of just 5 seats in the Senate, there has been very little bipartisan cooperation. I suppose some Democratic Senators really believe it when they say that this is all Republicans' fault. I think anyone who remembers how the Senate used to operate and has paid attention to how the current majority leadership has been running things in fact knows better.

In fairness, quite a few Members of the Senate do not remember how the Senate is supposed to operate because it has been dysfunctional ever since they were elected. Some Senators previously served in the House of Representatives, where the majority party controls everything that happens. In the House of Representatives, the Rules Committee sets out the terms of debate for each bill. If you want to offer an amendment in the House you have to go, hat in hand, to the Rules Committee and say: Mother, may I. If the House leadership does not like your amendment, frankly, you are out of luck.

If that sounds familiar, that is because it is how the current Senate leadership has been running things lately here in the Senate. We have seen an absolutely unprecedented use--or I should say abuse--of cloture motions paired with a tactic called filling the tree to block amendments from being considered.

That not only affects the minority party, but Democratic Senators are affected as well. I would say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle: How many times have you had an amendment you wanted to offer, that was important to your State, but you could not do it because amendments were blocked? The Senate majority leader has effectively become a one-man version of the House Rules Committee, dictating what amendments will be debated and which ones will never see the light of day. This strips the ability of individual Senators to effectively represent their States, regardless of party.

It also virtually guarantees that any legislation the Senate votes on will be more partisan in nature. I would ask my colleagues across the aisle: Isn't your first responsibility to the people of your State, not to party leadership? Are you really content to cede to your party leader the trust and responsibility placed in you by the voters of your State? How much longer can you go along with this proposition?

The people of Iowa sent me to the Senate to represent them, not simply vote up or down on a purely partisan agenda dictated by the majority leader. Everyone complains about the lack of bipartisanship these days, but there is no opportunity for individual Senators to work across the aisle when legislation is drafted on a partisan basis and amendments are blocked. Bipartisanship requires giving individual Senators a voice regardless of party. When Senators are only allowed to vote on items that are preapproved by the majority leader, those Senators lose the ability to effectively represent their State and, in the end, become mere tools of party leadership. It is no wonder Americans are so cynical about government right now.

In the last decade, when I was chairman of the Finance Committee and Republicans controlled the Senate, we wanted to actually get things done. In order for that to happen, we knew that we had to accommodate the minority. We had to have patience, humility, and respect for the minority--attributes that do not exist on the other side anymore. We had some major bipartisan accomplishments, from the largest tax cut in history to a Medicare prescription drug program to numerous trade agreements. Those kinds of major bills do not happen anymore.

The Senate rules provide that any Senator may offer an amendment regardless of party affiliation. Each Senator represents hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans, and each has an individual right to offer amendments for consideration. The principle here is not about political parties having their say but duly elected Senators participating in the legislative process, as imagined by the Constitution. Again, as part of our duty to represent the citizens of our respective States, each Senator has an individual right to offer amendments. This right cannot be outsourced to party leadership.

The longstanding tradition of the Senate is that Members of the minority party, as well as rank-and-file Members of the majority party have an opportunity to offer amendments for a vote in the Senate. That has historically been the case with the annual National Defense Authorization Act, the very bill that we are debating now. But not this year. It typically takes a couple of weeks to consider the National Defense Authorization Act. This year the majority party leadership chose to wait until a week before the scheduled Thanksgiving recess to bring it up, leaving little time for the customary open debate and amendment process.

Once the Defense bill was brought up, rather than promptly starting to process amendments, the majority leader immediately blocked amendments so that he could control what came up for a vote. Obviously, the Senate ground to a halt, wasting time that we did not have when we could have been considering amendments from both sides of the aisle.

This process, as everyone here in the Senate knows, is called filling the tree, where the majority leader offers blocker amendments that block any other Senator from offering their own amendment unless the majority leader agreed to set aside his blocker amendment so other amendments can be offered.

Filling the tree does not appear anywhere in the Senate rules. It is based upon combining two precedents, the precedent that the majority leader has the first right of recognition by the Presiding Officer and the precedent that only one first-degree and one second-degree amendment can be pending at any one time. Basically, the majority leader abuses his prerogative to cut in line and offer an amendment that does nothing more than simply change the enacting date by 1 day, for instance. That then blocks any other Senator from exercising his right to offer an amendment.

This so-called filling-the-tree tactic used to be relatively rare, but it has become routine under current leadership. This way the Democratic leadership can prevent other Senators from offering amendments that they do not want to have to vote on. Then, with amendments blocked, the majority leader makes a motion to bring debate to a close. Around here that is called cloture. When cloture is invoked, it sets up a limited time before a final vote must take place. By keeping amendments blocked while running out the clock, the majority leader can force a final vote on a bill without having to consider any amendments other than amendments that the majority leader might approve.

It should not be a surprise to anyone that Members of the minority party

who wish to offer amendments will vote against a motion to end debate until their amendments have been considered. When Republicans vote against the Democratic leader's motion to end debate, we are accused of launching a filibuster. In other words, unless we give up our right to participate fully in the legislative process, the other side says that we are filibustering.

Does that really count as a filibuster? No. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service answers this question, and has a very helpful report on cloture motions and filibusters that make this point very clear. The CRS report is entitled, ``Cloture Attempts on Nominations: Data and Historical Development,'' by Richard S. Beth. It contained an entire section called ``Cloture Motions Do Not Correspond With Filibusters.'' It starts out:

Although cloture affords the Senate a means for overcoming

a filibuster, it is erroneous to assume that cases in which

cloture was sought are always the same as those in which a

filibuster occurs. Filibusters may occur without cloture

being sought, and cloture may be sought when no filibuster is

taking place. The reason is, cloture is sought by supporters

of matters, whereas filibusters are conducted by its

opponents.

It then goes on to explain various scenarios to illustrate this point. Several Members of the majority have made a point of trying to confuse cloture motions with filibusters. We hear constantly that there have been an unprecedented number of Republican filibusters. They often point to a chart that purports to tally the number of filibusters and say that this is evidence of abuse of the Senate rules by the minority. The number they quote is the number of cloture motions, not the number of filibusters. It is true that there have been a record number of cloture motions, and I also agree that the number amounts to an egregious abuse of Senate rules, but, again, there is a very significant difference: Cloture motions do not correspond with filibusters. Cloture motions are filed by the majority party leadership, not by the minority party. This abuse of cloture is a major cause of the Senate's current dysfunction.

Again, this abuse of cloture, often combined with the blocking of amendment also prevents all Senators from doing what they were sent here to do, not just Members of the minority party.

It has gotten even worse. Even where the majority leader has decided he is going to be open to amendments, he has created out of whole cloth new restrictions to limit Senators' rights. First, he normally only opens the amendment process if there is an agreement to limit amendments. This is usually only a handful or so. Then he has magically determined that only germane or relevant amendments can be considered.

Of course, nowhere do the Senate rules require this, other than postcloture. Senators elected in the last few years appear to be ignorant of that fact. You will hear some Senators here argue against an amendment saying it is nongermane or nonrelevant. They have totally fallen for the creative rulemaking of the majority leader, thus giving up one of their rights as a Senator with which to represent their State. I cannot count on how many nongermane or nonrelevant amendments I had to allow votes on when I processed bills when Republicans were in the majority. They were usually tough political votes, but we took them because we wanted to get things done. We wanted the Senate to function.

You do not see that nowadays. The current majority leader avoids tough votes at all costs and that is why we don't get much done around here. The American people sent us here to represent them. That means voting, not avoiding tough votes.

We sometimes hear this is a question of majority rule versus minority obstruction. Again, that ignores that each Senator is elected to represent their State, not simply to be an agent of the other party. While the majority of Senators may be from one party, they represent very different States, and the agenda of the majority leader will not always be consistent with the interest of their States.

When one individual, the Senate majority leader, controls what comes up for a vote, that is not majority rule. In fact, there are policies that have majority support in the Senate that have been denied a vote.

What happened during Senate debate on the budget resolution this year seems to prove that point. The special rules of the budget resolution limit debate so it can't be filibustered but allow for an unlimited number of amendments.

A Republican amendment to support repealing the tax on lifesaving medical devices in President Obama's health care law passed by an overwhelming 79-to-20 vote, with more than half of the Democrats voting with the Republicans rather than with their party leader.

A Republican amendment supported the approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline to bring oil from Canada and passed 62 to 37.

Those are two examples, because votes such as these that split the Democrats and hand a win to the Republicans are exactly what the majority leader has been trying to avoid by blocking amendments.

That is why the Senate didn't take up a budget resolution for more than 3 years. Still, the budget resolution isn't a law, so unless legislation on those issues is allowed to come up for a vote, nothing will happen despite the support of the vast majority of the Senate as demonstrated by those two rollcall votes I just mentioned.

As a case in point, now we are on the National Defense Authorization Act, and one of the amendments the majority leader blocked would have imposed sanctions on the Iranian regime. Everyone knew this amendment enjoyed broad bipartisan support and would have passed easily had a vote been allowed to take place. It had majority support. But the Senate was not allowed to work its will.

Why? The Iran sanctions amendment was blocked because the President opposed it and it would have been a tough vote that divided the majority party. Is that a valid reason for shutting down the traditional open amendment process for the Defense bill? I don't think so.

Until we put an end to the abuse of cloture and the blocking of amendments, the Senate cannot function properly and the American people will continue to lack representation that they are entitled to.

Mayorkas Nomination

As I said, I have a few short remarks on the Mayorkas nomination. I spoke at great length on this yesterday and I won't speak at great length today, but I have concern with Mr. Mayorkas' nomination, so I have additional information today for my colleagues.

Today the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security released an embargoed version of its audit of the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program. The report states that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service has difficulty ensuring the integrity of the program and does not always ensure that regional centers meet all eligibility requirements.

Specifically, the report said:

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service did not always

enforce its own regulations and procedures to assist with

managing the regional center program.

Another quote:

Until improvements are made, U.S. Citizenship and

Immigration Service is unable to prevent fraud and national

security threats . . .

Another quote:

[I]t cannot report the results of the program accurately or

ensure the EB-5 program is benefiting the U.S. economy and

creating jobs for U.S. citizens as created by Congress.

We understand Mr. Mayorkas is in charge of these programs. The IG said the agency needed to improve coordination and rely on the expertise of other agencies.

The IG had several recommendations for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service that, frankly, should have been in place before now, if the Director was doing his job. In his comments on the draft report, Mr. Mayorkas claimed that he was already addressing the issues the inspector general raised. He said his agency had ``dramatically enhanced collaboration with key government partners,'' meaning he was cooperating with the FBI.

He also wrote that when his agency has concerns with EB-5 cases, it doesn't decide the cases until it has ``fully coordinated its approach with enforcement and intelligence partners.''

I have seen examples of this so-called coordination that Mr. Mayorkas talks

about. But, again, his words don't comport with the actual practice.

When Homeland Security's law enforcement database, TECS, has a hit on someone applying for a regional center, the Citizenship and Immigration Service sends an email to the law enforcement agency that put the record in. But the problem is that the Citizenship and Immigration Service isn't waiting for law enforcement to make an investigation. In fact, information has come to my attention that CIS employees are told to move forward if law enforcement doesn't respond within 5 days. That is just 5 days to find out what sensitive security or fraud information caused that person to be flagged. If law enforcement doesn't get back to the Citizenship and Immigration Service soon enough, then that agency goes ahead and the person's application is approved.

That is not coordination. That coordination is a sham. That should be simply unacceptable to any of us who are concerned about the national security of our country. It is not the sort of way to run a program with national security vulnerabilities. Everybody should wait until law enforcement responds. We need to know who is coming into this country and not, and particularly when they are involved in a program where you buy your way into the country by buying a visa because you are supposed to be investing in this country and creating jobs in this country. But for some people who may want to get into this country for ulterior motives, they may violate our national security; they don't care about creating jobs. But if it gets them inside the country, they get here. So we have to know whether they are a threat to our national security.

The only reason the Citizenship and Immigration Service even does check on regional centers at all is because of a push within that agency that Mr. Mayorkas and his management resisted. Now they are trying to take credit for it.

More important is what his agency has not done. They refused to kick out regional centers that invite national security problems. Mr. Mayorkas claims he doesn't have statutory authority, but the inspector general audit recommended that Mr. Mayorkas should make clear on his own that fraud and national security concerns are a reason for regional centers to be kicked out of the program.

The bottom line is Mr. Mayorkas has not taken the steps that were within his power to guard against security vulnerabilities in the EB-5 program. The inspector general's audit report concludes:

Currently, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service cannot

administer and manage the EB-5 regional centers program

effectively.

Mr. Mayorkas has had ample notice of these problems for years. He has failed to take adequate action.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, like my colleagues, and as I have done several times before, I come to the floor to share the voice of one of many Iowans who have contacted me over the sticker shock that they are experiencing under the Affordable Care Act. This time I quote a constituent from Sioux County, IA, northwest Iowa. That constituent writes:

I am a pastor in rural Iowa and early this past summer,

trusting naively in the integrity of our President's repeated

promise that ``If you like your health insurance you can keep

it. Period[,]'' I made a change in my policy, moving to a

higher deductible to save the church money. Now I have been

informed that because of that change, my policy is no longer

grandfathered and therefore I will be forced out of it in a

year and compelled to purchase a much more expense

(un)Affordable Care Act-compliant policy.

I am young, male, healthy, and will not qualify for any

subsidy. In effect, because of legislation Democrats

supported, my government is kicking me off from health

coverage that I carefully researched, chose and like a lot--

and is forcing me to buy coverage that I do not need at a

price I scarcely can afford.

And the Government has the audacity to resort to Orwellian

doublespeak and call such a draconian policy the ``Affordable

Care Act.''

Please convey to your Democratic colleagues that I grew up

on a dairy farm and now pastor a church of farmers. I am the

epitome of middle class America that they claim to champion.

This bill is unjust. It is based on lies to Americans like

myself. It hurts real people, including the church I serve.

I have done my job. I have shared this constituent's message with my colleagues as he asked me to do. I hope they were listening.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to associate myself with the comments of the senior Senator from Washington and am pleased to know it is her intent that the use of not-for-profit servicers continues and that not-for-profit servicers will be permitted to compete on an equal basis in the future for additional accounts.

Madam President, soon we will be voting on the nomination of Mr. Mayorkas for Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. I have concerns about the nomination. First, I will discuss how Mr. Mayorkas has carried out the President's directive giving legal status to thousands of individuals who are in the United States unlawfully.

In 2012, Mr. Mayorkas was charged with implementing this President's directive known as DACA--DACA--Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. I have always questioned whether the President's directive is legal. The administration never responded to our requests for their legal basis or opinions. This administration has not been transparent about who is getting deferred action, how they are processing them, and whether those who have been denied have been processed for removal.

They may call this program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, but it clearly benefits older adults, and possibly people who intentionally broke our laws. The agency didn't deny any single applicant until after the 2012 election. We still don't know how many people were actually denied. We do know, however, that people were approved despite shoddy evidence, such as an Xbox receipt and Facebook posting. They always seem to find a way to get approval.

All denials for DACA have to be run through Washington. Adjudicators on

the line were given clear instruction they were not allowed to deny any applicant. Whistleblowers tell me that Mr. Mayorkas himself had to approve all denials.

Think about that. No denials were allowed unless the head of the agency personally approved the denial. What kind of message does that send to civil servants, the career employees trying to do their job under the law as the law requires, and to be very impartial. The boss has his thumb on the scales. That isn't the rule of law.

Mr. Mayorka's message to adjudicators seems to have been that they had better get to yes or he would personally get involved. This ``get to yes'' philosophy came up time and again with agency whistleblowers. The Office of Inspector General looked into the situation and the inspector general confirmed what employers had said. A quarter of Immigration Service Officers interviewed felt pressured to approve questionable applicants, and 90 percent felt they didn't have sufficient time to complete the interviews of those who seek benefits. The report of the Office of Inspector General clearly showed the agency had been pervaded by this ``get to yes'' culture.

Unfortunately, that culture hasn't changed under Mr. Mayorkas's leadership. In fact, based on concerns I heard from whistleblowers who contacted my offices in mid-July of this year, it seems to have even gotten worse. These whistleblowers were aware that Mr. Mayorkas had been nominated to this Homeland Security position by late June. They were also aware that since the fall of 2012, Mr. Mayorkas had been the subject of an Office of Inspector General investigation into allegations of ethical or criminal misconduct.

When Mr. Mayorkas's nomination hearing was scheduled, the whistleblowers were very surprised. They wondered why a hearing would proceed while the investigation was still open and pending, and then contacted my office to make sure Congress was told about the investigation. The existence of this investigation was news to me at that time. However, I didn't sit on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. So my staff contacted the staff of the ranking member of that committee, Senator Coburn. His staff was also unaware the nominee was under investigation by the Inspector General.

It is extremely troubling that a hearing was scheduled to proceed without the ranking member of the committee knowing about the pending investigation of the nominee within the executive branch. Both my staff and the staff of Ranking Member Coburn contacted the inspector general's office. We told his office about the whistleblower allegations and asked for confirmation as to whether there was an open inquiry.

This type of procedural information is routinely disclosed by an inspector general's office to Congress, and rightly so. Further, we asked for an explanation of why that information would be withheld while the committee was considering the nomination.

Understand, the Senate has a constitutional function of providing advice and consent on these nominations. In order to do our duty, every Senator who is asked to vote on that nominee needs to have all the relevant information about that nominee, and particularly when there is a pending investigation.

To its credit, the Office of Inspector General answered our questions and confirmed there was indeed an open criminal investigation. Their written description stated that the inquiry involves ``alleged conflicts of interest, misuse of position, mismanagement of the EB-5 program, and an appearance of impropriety by Mayorkas and other . . . management officials.''

How was it possible that this information was withheld from staff for the ranking member of the committee considering that nomination? If not for the whistleblowers who came forward, would we have known of the investigation?

When a nominee is under investigation, the Senate has no business approving that nominee until the facts are in. Historically, committees have followed this precedent. As ranking member Coburn explained last week, both the President and the Vice President supported this precedent when they were in the Senate.

In July 2005, one ambassadorial nominee owned a company under investigation. Then-Senator Biden spoke out and supported delaying the vote on that nomination because of the investigation. Eventually, the nominee's company agreed to settle the investigation against it. Then- Senator Obama's spokesman issued a statement saying that due to the fact that a settlement was reached, Senator Obama would not seek to block the nomination.

Like then-Senators Obama and Biden, I believe the Senate should wait for investigations to conclude or, if the executive branch is taking too long, then Congress should do its own fact-finding. But forcing Senators to vote in ignorance is not a legitimate option. In fact, it is irresponsible.

Voting to approve a nominee who is under investigation without waiting for the facts is incredibly risky. What if the investigation determines allegations are true? By rushing to approve the nominee, this body would have failed one of our key functions under the Constitution.

I pointed this out when the Senate was considering the nomination of B. Todd Jones to become permanent head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Mr. Jones was the subject of an Office of Special Counsel investigation due to allegations he retaliated against a whistleblower in the U.S. Attorney's office in Minnesota.

As Mr. Jones' nomination progressed through the Senate, the Justice Department and the whistleblower agreed to try mediation. The majority tried to claim the special counsel's case was, therefore, closed. However, I did state on the floor the special counsel's investigation would continue if mediation failed.

Nevertheless, despite the open special counsel investigation, we voted on July 31 to confirm Mr. Jones. In early September, the whistleblower's mediation with the Justice Department did, indeed, fail.

The special counsel has resumed its investigation of Mr. Jones, just as the special counsel had told the Senate that it would. So the retaliation complaint against Mr. Jones is still pending this very day. We don't know what the outcome will be because we did not take time to gather the facts, as Senators should. If we are unwilling to wait for an executive branch inquiry, then we should further gather the facts ourselves.

Last week, Ranking Member Coburn asked Chairman Levin of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations whether that committee would consider interviewing witnesses in the controversy involving Mr. Mayorkas. While he declined, Chairman Levin rightly noted if the subcommittee were going to launch such an investigation, the vote on Mr. Mayorkas would need to be delayed. I completely agree. This vote should not take place until someone has been able to gather testimony and draw conclusions about these allegations.

Whistleblowers have provided my office with very troubling evidence regarding the substance of some of the allegations. Much of the evidence involves the EB-5 regional center program, which Mayorkas is responsible for managing. The evidence appears to support allegations Mr. Mayorkas and his leadership team at Citizenship and Immigration Services are susceptible to political pressure and favoritism. Our immigration system should be governed by equal application of the law, not by who has the best political connections to the director of the agency.

I have given Mayorkas a chance to defend himself and explain the evidence, which seems compelling. Back in July and August I wrote several letters to Mr. Mayorkas outlining whistleblower allegations and attaching some of the documents the whistleblowers provided. I asked how he accounted for this evidence, but he has utterly failed to reply to my letters.

It has been 4 or 5 months since I sent Mr. Mayorkas these letters. Just like his personal oversight of DACA, these documents show Mr. Mayorkas being much more directly involved in individual EB-5 cases than he has led my staff or the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to believe. They appear to show him intervening in EB-5 decisions involving Gulf Coast Funds Management, an organization run by nobody other than Hillary Clinton's brother Anthony Rodham.

This decision benefited GreenTech Automotive, a company run by Terry McAuliffe which was receiving funding from Gulf Coast Funds Management.

This evidence about political influence and intervention is particularly troubling because of Mr. Mayorkas' prior history. In 2001 Mr. Mayorkas had a role in a group of pardons and commutations issued by President Clinton in the closing days of the second term. A 2002 House report found that then-U.S. Attorney Mayorkas inappropriately sought to influence a decision regarding whether drug trafficker Carlos Vignali's prison sentence should be commuted.

However, my concerns about the investigation pending against Mr. Mayorkas are about more than just improper political influence. Under his leadership over the last few years, the EB-5 Program has grown far beyond its original intent, which I supported. It is intended to be an avenue for foreign investors to participate in new commercial enterprises which actually create jobs in this country in exchange for a U.S. visa. The program was created as a pilot, allowing regional centers to pool funds from investors to create new businesses and jobs. In the process, the centers had to prove they were creating the jobs they promised to create.

Skeptics questioned whether the program truly creates jobs. Whistleblowers have expressed concerns that foreign investors are not being vetted carefully enough. They say Mr. Mayorkas is more interested in approving applications quickly than making security checks more robust.

Given what we know about these security concerns inside the agency, Congress needs to reexamine this program. It should serve its purpose without compromising our national security.

Mr. Mayorkas claims he has changed the program since learning of fraud and security concerns. The only tangible change we have seen is that additional economists have been hired and adjudicators from California were moved here to Washington, DC. Yet moving the EB-5 process to Washington increased Mr. Mayorkas' control over the program, just as he has in the DACA Program.

Whistleblowers have provided me with emails from Mr. Mayorkas saying that he wants to keep fraud and national security concerns about GreenTech or the SLS Hotel in Las Vegas ``close hold.'' As I said earlier, the rule of law isn't possible when the boss has his thumbs on the scales.

Further, the regional center program has serious national security risks that the Director hasn't addressed. He convened a working group with national security advisers but no formal product was finalized. The interagency collaborations seemed to fizzle. Whistleblowers say the working group was mere window dressing.

In the agency, employees received EB-5 applications from individuals with derogatory information about them in classified government files, but they were given little or no guidance about how to make sure that such were denied. Instead, they were pressured to approve applications as quickly as possible.

Simply put, the integrity of our immigration system is in question as long as the program continues without needed reforms which could be done this very day.

On May 15, 2012, Chairman Leahy and I wrote to Mr. Mayorkas regarding the program and expressed our concerns about the potential for abuse of the program. We asked for his commitment to administratively reform two aspects of the program. He responded that he was interested in the reforms. Yet it has been a long 19 months and he has taken no action.

Mr. Mayorkas says he is concerned with fraud and abuse of the program, but actions speak louder than words. Despite my recent letters with questions about fraud and security concerns, not to mention political influence, Mr. Mayorkas is either completely unwilling or unable to respond to the allegations.

I sat down with Chairman Carper on August 1, and he agreed that I deserved answers to my questions from the nominee. Now he has pressed forward without getting answers. I am truly surprised that this majority is not interested in getting to the bottom of these allegations--in other words, something that is under investigation--the same way that Senator Biden and Senator Obama demanded that we do during a previous Presidency.

If this body is unwilling to await the end of an investigation or if we aren't willing to conduct our own inquiry, one day this whole nomination will come back to bite us. As I said when B. Todd Jones was confirmed, eventually a situation will embarrass the Senate and damage the reputation of the Federal Government.

If this majority is determined to ignore ongoing investigations and at the same time ram through nominees, the American people should hold the Senate accountable for not doing its constitutional job--in fact, refusing to do its constitutional job.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are in postcloture debate on the nominee for the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia. I want to speak on that nomination, but I am also going to take time to speak on issues dealing with the Defense Department, the farm bill, and the new nominee for the Department of Homeland Security.

I will take a few minutes to discuss the President's ongoing scheme to stack the DC Circuit with committed ideologues so that the President's regulatory agenda doesn't run into judicial roadblocks.

Yesterday, the Senate confirmed the first of three nominees to the DC Circuit that the court does not need. Let me emphasize that: Does not need. Of course, the Senate denied its consent on these nominees just a few short weeks ago.

Some may ask: What has changed during that time? The vote count certainly has not changed. It is not as if Democrats persuaded some of their Republicans colleagues to change their minds.

That is what you would expect in a body that operates based upon rules that guarantee the minority a voice. That is what you would expect in what is supposed to be the greatest deliberative body on Earth. That is what you would expect under normal circumstances, but as I explained in an earlier speech this week on another nominee for the same court, these are not normal circumstances.

No, today's circumstances are different.

Today the President's legislative agenda cannot get traction in Congress. And, no, it is not because Republicans will not negotiate with the President. It is because the President of the United States is out of step with the American people.

Today the President's signature health care law, which was passed without a single Republican vote, is becoming more and more unpopular with each passing day. And no, it is not because the administration has not done a good job of ``messaging'' ObamaCare. It is precisely because of that message.

Today, the President can't get climate change legislation passed by Congress, and, no, it is not simply because of Republican opposition. It is because the President's agenda is too extreme even for some Senate Democrats.

The President and his agenda are out of step with the American people, and as a result, he cannot get his agenda adopted in this Congress. But that doesn't seem to matter to the radical liberal interest groups who support these policy initiatives. They want results--no matter what.

These liberal interest groups are not satisfied with constitutional separation of powers. They want the President and his allies in the Senate to do whatever it takes to get the same results they would get if there were 535 Members of Congress just as liberal as the President.

Those interest groups want the President to legislate by executive order and by administrative action. They want the President to suspend the law when it suits his purposes, just as the English kings used to do. In fact, the reason our Constitution requires--and let me emphasize requires--the President to ``faithfully'' execute the law is because the English kings would unilaterally--and selectively--suspend laws passed by the parliament. But none of this matters to the liberal interest groups. They want results--no matter what.

In fact, the President has made such a practice of legislating by Executive Order and administrative action, that he has created the expectation among

his most faithful supporters that there is nothing he cannot do unilaterally.

Just a week or two ago, the President was delivering a speech in California when one of his own supporters interrupted and heckled him for not issuing an executive order to stop all deportations.

The heckler shouted:

Use your executive order to halt deportations of 11.5

million undocumented immigrants in this country. You have the

power to stop deportations right now.

The President responded:

Actually, I don't. We are a nation of laws.

I must say, I understand the confusion. The most extreme elements of the President's supporters have witnessed him pick and choose which laws he will faithfully execute and which he will suspend, or as the President likes to say, ``waive.'' So, it is no wonder that those supporters would say: Just issue an executive order. We want results.

It is just like King George III.

It is no wonder that those supporters would say: We don't care that there isn't support in the Congress to pass legislation imposing cap- and-trade fee increases. We want results

Just like King George III.

It is no wonder that those supporters would say: We don't care if Democrats block judges to the DC Circuit based on the standards the Republicans are applying today. That was then, this is now. We want results.

Just like King George III.

It is no wonder that those supporters would say: We don't care about two centuries of Senate history and tradition that has been passed down faithfully from one majority leader to the next. We want results.

Just like King George III.

Climate change regulations are too important. Salvaging ObamaCare is too important.

So as we all know, the majority buckled to the pressure from these extreme liberal interest groups and broke the rules of the Senate to change the rules. They tossed aside two centuries of Senate history and tradition. This history and tradition--until 2 weeks ago--had been carefully guarded and preserved by each succeeding majority leader.

Those leaders remembered the history of King George III.

They did all of this just so they could install the President's hand- picked judges, so they could hear challenges to his signature health care law and to the rest of his regulatory agenda, such as climate change regulation.

But when a President selects a nominee for the specific purpose of rubberstamping his agenda--an agenda that has proven too extreme for even Members of his own party--he needs a judge who can be counted upon to follow through.

Given that it is inappropriate to ask prospective nominees how they would rule on particular cases, how would this White House make certain that their nominees would follow through and rubberstamp the President's agenda?

Based upon Professor Pillard's record--and that is the nominee we will be voting on tomorrow--apparently the White House looked out over academia and selected the most liberal nominee they could find.

Because Professor Pillard fits that bill to a T.

I have heard my colleagues come to the floor and argue that these nominees to the DC Circuit are mainstream. Professor Pillard may be a fine person, but make no mistake about it, she is not mainstream. She is the furthest thing from it.

I am sure that the White House is confident she can be counted upon to rubberstamp its agenda, but don't confuse her views with the mainstream of American legal tradition. I have a sampling of things she has written and said. I will read some of what she has written, and I then ask you to determine if she is mainstream.

She has written this about abortion:

Casting reproductive rights in terms of equality holds

promise to recenter the debate towards the real stakes for

women (and men) of unwanted pregnancy and away from the

deceptive images of fetus-as-autonomous-being that the anti-

choice movement has popularized.

Think of ``deceptive images of fetus-as-autonomous-being.'' Is that mainstream?

She argued this about motherhood:

Reproductive rights, including the rights to contraception

and abortion, play a central role in freeing women from

historically routine conscription into maternity.

Now, think about that: ``historically routine constriction into maternity.'' Is that mainstream?

She has also argued this about motherhood:

Antiabortion laws and other restraints on reproductive

freedom not only enforce women's incubation of unwanted

pregnancies, but also prescribe a ``vision of the woman's

role'' as mother and caretaker of children in a way that is

at odds with equal protection.

Is that in the mainstream?

What about her views on religious freedom? This really ought to shock you. She argued that the Supreme Court case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church, which challenged the so-called ``ministerial exception'' to employment discrimination represented a ``substantial threat to the American rule of law.''

The Supreme Court rejected her view 9 to 0. Nine to zero. And the Court held that ``it is impermissible for the government to contradict a church's determination of who can act as its ministers.''

Do my colleagues honestly believe that it is within the mainstream to argue that churches shouldn't be allowed to choose their own ministers? I don't think so.

I asked Professor Pillard about Hosanna-Tabor and religious freedom at her hearing. She testified this way:

And I have to admit, Senator Grassley . . . I really called

it wrong on that case. I did not predict that the Court would

rule as it did.

In other words, she tried to dodge the question by leaving the committee members with the impression that she had merely taken a stab at predicting the case's outcome and that she had gotten it wrong.

Of course, I wasn't troubled that Professor Pillard had wrongly predicted the outcome. I was troubled because she actually argued that a ruling in favor of the church would represent a ``substantial threat to the American rule of law.''

I don't believe that there is a single Member of this body on either side of the aisle who would subscribe to that argument anymore than the nine justices of the Supreme Court did. If I am wrong about that, then I would like to hear the Senator explain how it is mainstream to argue that granting our churches the latitude to choose their own ministers represents a ``substantial threat to the American rule of law.''

These are the so-called ``mainstream views'' the President wants to install on a court that will hear challenges to his most important priorities. Is it any wonder that the President apparently has high confidence will Professor Pillard rubberstamp his agenda?

Before I close, let me make one final point.

Given the circumstances surrounding how these nominees were selected and nominated;

Given all three were nominated simultaneously for the purpose of changing judicial outcomes and rubberstamping the President's agenda;

Given they were nominated and rammed through the process, without regard to the fact that there is not even enough work for them to do;

Given the President was originally denied consent under the Rules of the Senate;

Given that the President and certain far-left liberal interest groups successfully persuaded the majority of the Senate to cast aside two centuries of Senate history and tradition in order to get them confirmed;

And given the extremely liberal record I discussed;

If you were a litigant challenging the President, or one of his administrative actions and you drew a panel comprised of Professor Pillard, Millett, and Judge Wilkins, can you honestly say that you would be confident you would get a fair shake?

Of course not.

And that, my colleagues, is a sad commentary on the damage the President and the Senate majority have inflicted not only on the Senate but also on our judiciary and fundamental notions of the rule of law.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the Pillard nomination.

For several years, I have been trying to get the Defense Department inspector general to do its job, and I have had

several investigations, a lot of them implemented because of information that comes to me from whistleblowers. I will speak to that point now and talk about two important audits bungled by the Department of Defense inspector general's office.

There is something very important I need to say right upfront. A brandnew inspector general, Mr. Jon Rymer, is now in place. The events I am about to describe happened a few years ago, but none reflect on his leadership which I hope will bring about a big change in the inspector general's office at the Department of Defense.

When faced with a frontal assault on its audit authority by the target of one of its audits, senior IG officials got a bad case of weak knees and caved under pressure. They trashed high-quality audit work that was critical of a certified public accounting firm and its opinions. In doing this, they covered up reportable deficiencies, they allowed the audit target to run roughshod over sacred oversight prerogatives, without uttering one word of protest or asking one single question.

I am talking about audits of the financial statements produced by the Department's Central Accounting Office. This is what I refer to as DFAS, which stands for Defense Finance and Accounting Services. The audits were conducted by a CPA firm, but supposedly under the watchful eye of the inspector general, or IG, but not really under his eye.

The story of the two bungled audits is told in an oversight report which I have now posted on my Web site.

While I received the first anonymous email on this matter in April of 2012, my audit oversight work actually began more than 5 years ago. It was triggered by a steady stream of tips from whistleblowers complaining about the quality of these audits. These reports then grabbed my attention.

My colleagues may wonder why the Senator from Iowa is down in the weeds in such arcane issues. The reason is simple. It is the importance of audits.

Audits are probably the primary oversight tool for rooting out fraud and waste in the government. To protect the taxpayers, Congress needs to ensure that government audits are as good as they can be. They must produce tangible results. They must be able to detect theft, waste, mismanagement, and then recommend corrective action.

With mounting pressure for serious belt-tightening under sequestration, audits have taken on an even greater importance. Audits should help senior management separate the wheat from the chaff and apply mandated cuts where they belong. Sequestration cuts should be guided by hard-hitting, rock-solid audits. Unfortunately, rock-solid audits produced by the inspector general's office are hard to come by, and that is the problem.

After evaluating hundreds of audits, I issued three oversight reports in the years 2010 and 2012. With a few notable exceptions, I found that the inspector general's Audits were weak, ineffective, and wasteful-- wasteful when we consider that we spend $100 million a year to produce them. Poor leadership is part of the problem, but there is still another driver; that is, the Department's broken accounting system. It allows fraud and waste to go undetected and unchecked. That is bad enough, but the lack of credible financial information makes it very difficult to produce hard-hitting audits. Auditors are forced to do audit trail reconstruction work to connect the dots on the money trails and, of course, that is very labor intensive, very time-consuming work.

Although the Department continues to spend billions to fix the busted accounting system, I am sorry to say it is still not working right. The Department cannot pass the Chief Financial Officers Act audit test. It is unable to accurately report on how the taxpayers' money is spent as it is required to do each year under that law. By comparison, every other Federal agency has passed that test. Why not the Department of Defense?

So long as the accounting system is dysfunctional, audits will remain weak and ineffective and the probability of rooting out much fraud and waste during sequestration is low--and then still continuing to waste $100 million that we spend on the inspector general's office.

While I am talking about the need for better audits, I would like to offer a word of encouragement to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, John Sopko. He is the head of SIGAR, which is the name for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan, or SIGAR, for short. SIGAR is cranking out aggressive, hard-hitting audits, and I commend SIGAR for doing that--setting a good example. The audits I am about to discuss, by contrast, deserve darts, not laurels.

I first came to the floor to speak on this subject on November 14, 2012. At that point, I completed a preliminary review of seven red flags or potential problem areas that popped up on my radar screen. Since then, I have double-checked the facts. I have confirmed my preliminary observations. I did this by examining the official audit records known as work papers. So I will not walk the same ground again tonight. Instead, I will briefly summarize what I did, how I did it, what I found, why it is important, and offer some fixes for consideration.

To conduct this investigation, I had to examine literally thousands of documents. I could not have done it without the help and guidance of CPA-qualified government auditors. Evidence uncovered in the work papers were validated with interviews and written inquiries with knowledgeable officials. Together, these tell the story of what happened and of course it is not a pretty picture.

True, my report is nothing more than a snapshot in time, but if this snapshot accurately reflects the work being produced by the IG audit office, then we have big problems.

In a nutshell, this is what I found out: A CPA firm, Urbach Kahn & Werlin, which goes by UKW, had awarded an unblemished string of seven clean opinions on the central accounting agency's financial statements. Then the IG stepped in and took a 2-year snapshot for fiscal years 2008 and 2009. It was supposed to report on whether those statements and opinions met prescribed audit standards, but due to a series of ethical blunders, that job was never finished.

A third review was planned for 2010, but after the 2008-2009 fiasco, it was canceled, allowing DFAS--the Defense, Finance, and Accounting Service--it allowed DFAS to rack up another string of clean opinions through last year. All together, this work probably costs the taxpayers in excess of $20 million.

The work performed by DFAS in 2008 and 2009 was substandard. The outside audit firm rubberstamped DFAS's flawed practices using defective audit methods.

For its part, the inspector general was prepared to call foul on the CPA firm for substandard work but got sidetracked and then steamrolled by DFAS. The contract gave the IG preeminent oversight authority to accept or reject the firm's opinions. The whole purpose of the contract was to position the auditors to make that determination. If the firm's opinions met prescribed standards, they would be endorsed. If not, the IG would issue a nonendorsement report.

On both the fiscal year 2008 and 2009 audits, the record clearly indicates the IG's audit team determined that the firm's opinions did not meet prescribed standards. They did not merit endorsement. Though I cannot cite work papers to prove it, whistleblowers alleged that top management ordered them to endorse the 2008 opinion with this caveat: If known deficiencies were not corrected in the 2009 opinion, a nonendorsement was guaranteed. When the very same deficiencies popped up again--in other words, in 2009 as they did in 2008--the auditors prepared a hard-hitting nonendorsement report as promised. It was even signed. The transmittal letter was ready to go out the door.

The nonendorsement decision had been communicated to DFAS via email in unmistakable terms. In line with that decision and contract requirements, the IG took steps to cut off payment to the CPA firm based on advice of the inspector general's legal counsel.

The next step was to issue the nonendorsement report. But this is where the inspector general chickened out. In a power vacuum, DFAS moved swiftly to block the report with a blatant end-run maneuver to bypass independent oversight. So DFAS literally neutered independent oversight by the inspector general with two bold moves: On the

same day the IG's office notified DFAS in writing that a nonendorsement report would be forthcoming, DFAS unilaterally and proudly declared that it had earned a clean opinion and ordered that all disputed invoices be paid. This was an act of out-and-out defiance.

Next, it kicked the IG off the contract. Yes, my colleagues heard me right. The agency being audited literally kicked the inspector general--the oversight agency--clean off the oversight contract. In making this end-run maneuver, DFAS broke every rule in the audit book.

What happened was a frontal assault on the inspector general's oversight authority. The frontal assault was mounted by the agency being subjected to the audit and by an agency whose financial reports were found to be grossly deficient. In the face of such outright defiance, I would like to think that any inspector general would have stood up to the offending agency and held its ground and protected and defended its oversight prerogatives. That is the law--but not the Department of Defense inspector general.

Instead, the IG's knees buckled under pressure. The IG retreated before the onslaught. The IG caved and trashed the report. The IG rolled over and played possum, giving DFAS the green light to proceed full speed ahead.

The IG accepted these blatant transgressions without expressing one word of criticism, without expressing one concern, without raising one single question.

Other than a lone hotline complaint that disappeared down a black hole, no protest was ever lodged, no corrective action was ever proposed, and obviously no corrective action ever taken.

The inspector general's silence appeared to signal total acquiescence to a series of actions that undermine the integrity of the audit process, which is the basis for ferreting out waste, fraud and mismanagement and illegal activity.

For a Senator who watches the watchdogs, what I see is a disgrace to the entire inspector general community. The IG allowed DFAS to run roughshod over the contract, the IG Act, audit standards, and independent oversight. The audit firm probably got paid for the work that was never performed--payments that were alleged to be improper.

Instead of exposing poor practices and improper actions by both the accounting agency and the CPA firm, the Office of Inspector General allowed sacred principles to be trampled. It just kept quiet. It turned a blind eye to what was going on. It hunkered down. It tried to cover its tracks.

Two misguided acts set the stage for the collapse of oversight of these audits.

The problem began with the contract. At the insistence of the Department's chief financial officer and accounting agency, the IG agreed to a contractual arrangement that put DFAS--the target of the audit--in the driver's seat. This contract allegedly violated the IG Act and standing audit policy, according to the assistant IG who spoke out at that particular time.

To address this issue, a fragile waiver arrangement was crafted. It was supposed to address the legal issues and protect the Office of Inspector General's interests under the DFAS contract. All the parties involved agreed to abide by this questionable setup.

But being nothing more than an informal trust, it came unglued under the pressure and controversy generated by the nonendorsement decision.

Even the Office of Inspector General legal counsel voiced grave concerns about the fragile waiver arrangement. In his opinion, the terms of the contract ``transferred''--those words come from the Office of Legal Counsel--``transferred'' the Office of Inspector General oversight function to DFAS, the very component whose financial data was being subjected to the oversight. In his words--meaning the Office of Legal Counsel's words--the contract terms will leave the Office of Inspector General ``open to criticism on the Hill. . . . In two years some Senator will yell at us [about this]. If I had known about the arrangement,'' he said, ``I would have advised against it.''

Counsel's concerns were well-founded, and similar to a modern day Nostradamus, this prediction has come to pass.

The second problem was a failure of leadership at the top. When the inspector general's auditors reached the conclusion that the CPA firm's opinions did not measure up to prescribed standards, the current deputy IG for audit drove the final nail into that coffin.

The official audit records make it crystal clear. The deputy IG gave the fateful order: ``There will be no written report.'' This was a lethal blow. This is how the report got bottled up. True, it disappeared from public view. It got buried, and DFAS was promised it would never see the light of day; that is, until one of my investigators came along and dug it out of a pile of work papers. Here--for the benefit of my colleagues--here it is in my hand. I hold it up. It did not get buried like they thought it would get buried.

Once the deputy IG had smothered the report, DFAS knew it had the green light to bypass oversight with impunity.

All of this bungling could have harmful consequences.

First, compelling audit evidence, which undermined the credibility of the financial statements prepared by the Department's flagship accounting agency, was shielded from public exposure. The suppression of that evidence has helped to immortalize the myth of DFAS's clean opinions. It is so bad now that the myth is an inside joke. It is laughable, according to a former accountant. Here is what he said on the record to McClatchy News on November 22, 2013:

When I was there, DFAS would brag about getting a clean

opinion. We accountants would just laugh out loud. Their

systems were so screwed up.

If the output of the Defense Department's flagship accounting agency, which disburses over $600 billion a year is, indeed, laughable, then Pentagon money managers have another big problem. As that famous whistleblower Ernie Fitzgerald liked to say: ``It's time to lock the doors and call the law.''

Since the myth involves the reliability of data reported by the Department's central accounting agency, it has the potential of putting the Secretary of Defense's audit readiness initiative in jeopardy. DFAS's apparent inability to accurately report on its own internal housekeeping accounts for $1.5 billion--it is $1.5 billion that they have--casts doubt on its ability to accurately report on the hundreds of billions DOD spends each year. If the Department's central accounting agency cannot earn a clean opinion, then who in the Department can?

Second, the integrity and independence of the inspector general's audit process may have been compromised. If the independence of the audit process was, in fact, compromised, as my report suggests, then the Department's primary tool for rooting out waste and fraud could be disabled--at least it was in these cases.

If that did indeed happen, then it probably happened with the knowledge and silent acquiesce of senior officials in the IG's office, the institution that exists to root out fraud, waste, and abuse.

In simple terms, the watchdog appointed to expose waste--not only expose but stop fraud and waste--may have been doing some of it himself or herself. If true, it clearly demonstrates a lack of commitment on the part of senior management to exercise due diligence in performing its core mission.

Almost all of the key players allegedly responsible for the bungled audits still occupy top posts in the IG's audit office today. Surely, these officials did not act alone. This was a concerted effort. According to recent news reports, other higher-ups were allegedly involved. Senior IG officials must bear primary responsibility for this unacceptable and inexplicable failure of oversight. They could have, in fact, stopped it.

To address and resolve these issues, I made four recommendations in a letter recently sent to Secretary Hagel and the new Inspector General Rymer.

First, the Department of Defense CFO should pull the DFAS financial statements for the fiscal years 2008 and 2009 and remove those audit opinions from official records.

Second, the OIG needs to undertake an independent audit of DFAS's financial statements for fiscal year 2012 and determine whether those statements and the CPA firm's opinion meet prescribed audit standards. The fiscal year

2012 beginning account balances must also be verified. In response to my oversight, the inspector general has initiated what he called a postaudit review of DFAS's fiscal year 2012 financial statements. This is, in fact, a good move. But to ensure that it is done right this time, I asked the U.S. GAO to watchdog the inspector general's work. I want independent verification because last time there was none. This process will be completed next year.

Third, the inspector general should address and resolve any allegations of misconduct involving DFAS officials and make appropriate recommendations for corrective action.

Fourth, I am referring unresolved concerns regarding the conduct of IG officials to the Integrity Committee of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency for further review as provided under the IG Reform Act of 2008.

What happened here is almost beyond comprehension.

All of it happened under the IG's watchful eye. All of it probably happened with top-level knowledge. Most of it probably happened with top-level approval. Some of it was probably allowed to happen through tacit approval or silent acquiescence. All of it was bad for the integrity and independence of the audit process and the accuracy of financial information in the government's largest agency.

As I said a moment ago, the Department has a new IG, Jon Rymer. I hope he is a genuine junkyard dog who likes aggressive, hard-hitting audits. I hope Mr. Rymer will take a long, hard look at what happened and work with Secretary Hagel and others to find a good way to right the wrongs and get audits back on track. I know he can do it, and I stand ready to help him in any way I can. I want Mr. Rymer to know my door is open to him.

Mr. President, I wish to talk about the farm bill, specifically about reforming payment limits for farm programs, something this Senate agreed to in a bipartisan way.

Beyond saving money, these reforms help ensure farm payments go to those for whom they were originally intended, small- and medium-size farms. In addition, the reforms include closing off loopholes so nonfarmers cannot game the system.

Supporters of the farm bill need to take a hard look at what challenges were presented last year to getting a bill done. We need to forge ahead knowing some tough decisions need to be made.

There are more reforms we need to make in programs such as food stamps, and they are reforms that can cut down on waste, fraud, and abuse in the program but also safeguard assistance to the people who actually need it.

While I support closing loopholes in the food stamp program, I believe the farm bill should also close loopholes for farm programs that are so absurd they are just so obvious.

As we move forward on finalizing a new farm bill, I wish to state clearly that sections 1603 and 1604 relating to the farm payments-- which are in both the House farm bill and the Senate farm bill--should stay in that bill. There should be a ``do not stamp'' on those provisions under negotiation now between the House and Senate. Most important, for House conferees, they should remember that these provisions were put on the floor of the House of Representatives in an amendment sponsored by Congressman Fortenberry of Nebraska, with an overwhelming vote in the House of Representatives. So this is a case of where the majorities of both bodies support these provisions. Yet they are under attack by House conferees.

These farm payment reforms strike a needed balance of recognizing the need for a farm safety net, while making sure we have a defensible and responsible safety net. In case there is any doubt, we do need a farm program safety net. For those who argue we do not need a safety net for farmers, I argue they do not understand the dangers to a Nation which does not produce its own food.

For all the advances in modern agriculture, farmers are still subject to conditions out of their control. While farmers need a safety net, there does come a point where a farmer gets big enough that he can weather tough times without as much assistance from the government. Somehow, though, over the years, there has developed this perverse scenario where big farmers are receiving the largest share of the farm program payments.

We now have the largest 10 percent of the farmers receiving 70 percent of those farm payments coming out of the Federal Treasury. There is nothing wrong with farmers growing an operation bigger. But the taxpayers should not be subsidizing large farming operations to grow even larger, making it very difficult for young farmers to buy land or to rent land to get into the operation.

By having reasonable caps on the amount of farm program payments any one farmer can receive, it helps ensure the program meets the intent of assisting small- and medium-sized farmers through tough times.

My payment reforms essentially say that we will help farmers up to 250,000 per year, but then the government training wheels come off. Those new caps will also help encourage the next generation of rural Americans to take up farming. I am approached time and again about how to help young people get into farming.

When large farmers are able to use farm program payments to drive up the cost of land and rental rates, our farm programs end up hurting those they are intended to help. It is simply good policy to have a hard cap on the amount a farmer or farm entity can receive in farm program payments.

While both bodies of Congress have decided to cap farm payments, crop insurance is still available to large operations, no limits on indemnity. Section 1603 and 1604 which I authored and which Congressman Fortenberry authored, in our current farm bill, set the overall payment caps at $250,000 for a married couple.

In my home State of Iowa, many people say that is still too high. On the other hand, other farmers in other parts of the country say it is way too low. But I recognize agriculture can look different around the country. So this is a compromise. Just as important, however, to setting a hard cap on payments is closing loopholes that have allowed nonfarmers to game the farm program. The House and Senate farm bills also end the ability of nonfarmers to abuse what is known as the actively engaged test. In essence, the law says one has to be actively engaged in farming to qualify for farm payments.

Is that not common sense? However, this has been exploited by people who have virtually nothing to do with farming or with a farming operation and yet receive payments from the farm program. Not citing myself, but the Government Accountability Office issued a report I released in October outlining how the current actively engaged regulations are so broad that they essentially are unenforceable. Those comments came from the USDA employees who administer the program.

The report illustrated that one farming entity had 22 total members of which 16 were deemed contributing ``active personal management only'' to the farm. What does ``active personal management only'' mean? That means they are becoming eligible for farm programs because of one of the eight overly broad and unenforceable eligibility requirements that currently exist. More simply put, they likely are not doing any labor and are nothing more than a participant on paper to allow the entity to get more government payment.

Our Nation has over a $17 trillion debt. We cannot afford to simply look the other way and let the people abuse the farm safety net. I mentioned earlier how we need to assess some of the challenging areas of farm policy as we look to pass a 5-year farm bill. Some tough decisions need to be made.

However, my reforms to payment limits do not pose a tough decision. They are common sense. They are necessary reforms that are included in both the House and Senate versions of the farm bill. I wish to take this opportunity to thank Senator Stabenow, the chairman of our Senate committee, for fighting for these Senate provisions. You see, these provisions were part of the Senate bill, representing a majority of the Senate.

More important, these same provisions were added on the House floor by Congressman Fortenberry of Nebraska by an overwhelming majority. So Senator Stabenow has the high

moral ground in conference with the House conferees in fighting for payment limitation. She represents a majority of the Senate; whereas, the House conferees, in opposing her, represent a minority of the House of Representatives.

I object, and I wish to state the reason I object.

The reason I object for the minority to moving these votes is we should follow what regular order we have left on nominations, especially after the way the majority changed the rules on nominations 2 weeks ago.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, there is more wrong with the Affordable Care Act than just the Web site not working. In fact, the Web site is just a symptom of bigger problems.

Similar to my colleagues, I wish to share the problems Iowans have with the Affordable Care Act. So I come to the floor today to share just one of hundreds of emails, letters, and phone calls from my constituents in Iowa expressing sticker shock about the Affordable Care Act.

A working mother in Decorah, IA, who lost her employer-sponsored coverage for her family because of rising costs, wrote to me and said the following:

. . . comparable plans do not seem to exist on the

healthcare exchange. The closest we can come (and still see

our own doctors) cost almost $1050 per month. This represents

a 247% increase in cost over our prior employer provided

plan--and with much higher deductibles!

My husband is a self-employed small business owner. We

covered our family of 4 on my group health plan, which

includes a 21 year old adult daughter in college, who is not

a legal tax dependent. If we receive any `subsidy', it will

be insignificant in relation to the total jump in our out of

pocket costs related to the so called ``Affordable Care

Act''.

The general public seems to believe that anyone who does

not qualify for premium subsidies can easily afford a premium

increase--no matter how outrageous. Yet an increase of almost

250% in our personal cost of providing an inferior policy for

our family--which represents an increase in costs of roughly

20% of our gross income--can only be described as an absolute

disaster.

I think this email from a real person who is really living this train wreck of a health care law speaks for itself.

I yield the floor.