Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, most every Republican in this body and probably outside of this body would admit that President Obama inherited a very bad economy by the time he was sworn in. The only thing is, by every measure of the economy, this economy is much worse now than what he inherited.

The Obama economy is bad because there is a prospect of taking more money from the American taxpayers with the biggest tax increase in the history of the country next year; and many brand new regulations that are very costly to the economy. Particularly small businesses do not know where they are going to be hit next and where their costs will be.

We have this big budget deficit that is a damper on the economy. In every respect, things this administration are doing are putting a wet blanket on the economy. We have wrongheaded energy policies as well.

We hear the President say, when he puts forth his jobs bill, touring the country in his bus: Pass this bill right now. Pass this bill right now. We have had some experience with efforts to pass bills ``right now.'' They got passed, like the stimulus bill, 1 month after he was sworn in, which was supposed to keep unemployment under 8 percent. But it has never been under 8 percent since 1 month after that time. We have to pass the health care reform bill ``right now.'' And the health care reform bill was passed that very first year when the other party controlled everything, all three political branches of government. They had everything their way. And it was passed ``right now.''

We are finding out that passing something right now is not the way to do business, particularly if it is done in a partisan way. I think the extent to which the President would lead instead of being on the fringe would help this process along, because he is the only elected official in this country who speaks for the national voice. Each one of us representing our constituencies has a national perspective, but we also have to be worried about the needs of our constituents.

Let's go to what the latest effort is of this President to turn this economy around his way and get this bill passed ``right now.''

Just a few weeks ago, the Senate considered a so-called jobs bill that would have provided $35 billion of the $447 billion for the purpose of creating or saving jobs for teachers and policemen and firefighters. This bailout was included by President Obama in this $447 billion stimulus bill No. 2 that he proposed in his speech before Congress this September.

When it became apparent the Senate leadership didn't have the necessary votes for the whole package, then Majority Leader Reid chose to move this bill in parts instead of in one big package. Most of the reason he had to do that is because people in his caucus were not ready to vote for big tax increases or taking more money away from the American people and sending it to Washington.

Proponents of that bill argued that this $35 billion bailout was necessary to prevent the layoff of teachers and public safety employees. Don't forget, this isn't the first time the Senate has considered this type of bailout because it was that bailout that just had to pass ``right now,'' in February of 2009, which was supposed to keep employment under 8 percent. That was the $814 billion stimulus bill Congress enacted in early 2009. It included bailout money for State and local governments.

That is one of the reasons it didn't work, because whether it is the State, local, or Federal government, governments consume wealth. They don't create wealth. When we put half of that $814 billion bill into public employment, it doesn't create jobs. That money should have been used to stimulate private sector employment.

President Obama stated that bill would save or create up to 4 million jobs over the following 2 years. That bill was supposed to create or save 150,000 jobs for teachers, nurses, firefighters, and police officers according to our President.

Then, in August 2010 Congress passed another State and local bailout, this time sending $26 billion to States to save or create public sector jobs. At that time, Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, stated that this bill was ``a very important proposal, particularly to ensure that 160,000-plus teachers don't get fired as a result of bad State budgets.'' This $26 billion was the second effort by Congress to help States plug their budget holes while claiming that we were saving the jobs of teachers and other government workers.

The truth is, these efforts to save State and local public sector jobs are more simply a bailout of State and local governments that have failed to rein in their own spending. State and local governments became addicted to tax-and-spend big government policies, and Federal bailouts have only aided the addiction.

Rather than making the necessary and difficult budget decisions, these State and local governments come to rely on the spendthrift behavior of their Congress to spend more and plug budget holes. Nationally, the debt held by States is approaching $3 trillion. That doesn't even figure in unfunded pension liabilities. Some of the States in the worst trouble are Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, and California. The increase in debt has had a significant impact on their budgets or on their bond rates and their ability to find competitive bond rates and competitive financing.

The free-spending State legislatures, coupled with a huge public work force, have driven up the cost of doing business in these States. It has negatively impacted their unemployment rate and their economic growth.

For much of the history of our country, States have been responsible for financing their schools, police, firefighters, first responders, and other public employment. We know that throughout the 224-year history of our country most of the time these State and local governments have done a pretty darn good job. States that have done well have grown economically and attracted more jobs. With economic

growth we are going to have more taxpayers. What this country needs is more taxpayers, not more taxes.

States that haven't managed their budgets well have had, as you might expect, the opposite result. This competition among States has created a system that demands and rewards good government and, in the process, attracts employers and workers.

A Federal bailout of States upsets this balance. It rewards bad behavior and ultimately hurts the American economy. Federal bailouts eliminate the risks associated with poor economic policies. The moral hazard of Federal bailouts is that it sends a message to bad actors that there are no negative consequences for their failure to effectively govern.

At the same time, this type of Federal stimulus is ineffective at saving or creating jobs, and it does nothing to promote private sector growth. Annual Federal deficits are close to about 8 to 9 percent of GDP, and our national debt is $15 trillion. We cannot afford to bail out States and continue to encourage poor fiscal behavior by our States.

The bailout of Democratic Governors and State legislatures--and I suppose I ought to include Republican Governors and Republican State legislatures, as well--and public employees may be good politics, but it is terrible economics and creates even worse fiscal situations. Rather than propose political solutions during this economic downturn, the President should work with Congress to find real, authentic, genuine solutions to our economic and unemployment problems.

The recession began in December 2007, and nearly 1 in 10 Americans remain unemployed today. More than 26 million Americans are either unemployed or underemployed. The policies of the past 2\1/2\ years have not worked; they have made things worse.

Now, for the benefit of people--and maybe we can't say this too often because it looks strictly partisan--but we all ought to admit that this President inherited a bad economic situation. It is nothing to be proud of for a Republican President or any of us Republicans who were in office at that time. But by any measure of the economy, this President has made things worse.

The time for political documents has long past. It is time to govern, to work together, to get our economy growing again, and move the Obama economy into a bipartisan economy, at least to job creation.

For those who are unemployed, it is a depression. It is time we did something to help turn this situation around. Private sector employers need an international trade agenda that opens new doors to sell U.S. agricultural goods and manufactured products and services. Obviously, I am glad the President finally sent to the Senate three trade agreements and that they were passed last month. They were delayed, though, unnecessarily for years, and the rest of the world is moving ahead without us. We are more than capable of increasing exports, but we need the markets to do it. It is very simple. Why worry about exports? Because only 4 percent of the people on the face of the Earth live in the United States. The other 96 percent live outside the United States. Who are we going to market to, the 4 percent? Yes. But if we are going to expand our economy, we are going to have to market to the other 96 percent.

Thank God, President Obama has set an agenda that he wants to double exports. But in order to reach this goal and do everything possible to generate economic activity and opportunity in the United States, the President needs to move forward on other job-generating and trading initiatives without delay.

It is time to put an end to job-killing Federal regulations--as I move on to a new subject of why the economy is not so good. New regulations from EPA, the Department of Labor, National Labor Relations Board, and others are making it harder for businesses to grow. Understand that I said ``new'' regulations. I think sometimes people, when they hear us talk about a moratorium on regulations, they think we ought to take all of the present regulations off the books. They may not necessarily be good, but the economy has accounted for them already.

When we have 9.1 percent unemployment, and we have all these new regulations coming out--66,000 pages of new regulations so far just this year--that just makes it very hard to decide whether we ought to hire somebody--particularly, for small business.

Remember, small business creates 70 percent of the new jobs and about 25 percent of all employment in America. In some cases, new regulations are actually destroying jobs. With unemployment at 9.1 percent, it is time for the Federal bureaucracy to stop harmful, job-killing, new regulations.

What we are calling for is not to stop ever regulating into the future, but to put a short-term moratorium on regulations so that people have a chance to get us out of the hole we are in with this 9.1 percent unemployment--let's say a measure of getting unemployment down to 7 percent before we have new regulations.

It is also time to develop domestic energy resources that will create jobs while increasing domestic energy supplies. Nobody seems to be very concerned about spending $830 million every day--just in case that sounds phenomenal, $830 million a day is the amount of money we send overseas to bring oil into this country. That is a terrible subsidy to the volatile Middle East, which wants to train Americans to kill us or to reward Hugo Chavez, who badmouths us almost every day.

We need to make more energy available, driving down prices, making our country more energy independent. The President's energy agenda is moving us backward because of not enough emphasis on the fossil fuels that are available in this country. It was only 3 years ago that natural gas was $14, $15 per unit because we thought we were using it all up in America. Recent discoveries tell us that we have natural gas for maybe 100 years. It is down to around $4 or $5 now per unit.

But it is not a case of finding fault with the President on green energy because whatever source of energy we have, if we want a growing economy, we are obviously going to use more energy. We just must use it more conservatively. We ought to encourage conservation, and we should also encourage the use of fossil fuels wherever it can be found. It ought to encourage all sorts of green energy, and that is all the biofuels we in the Midwest talk about--the wind energy that my State is second in production of, and it is also solar, biomass, cellulosic, biofuels, all of the above.

I said conservation, and I guess the fourth one would be nuclear energy. It is time to change course and develop energy sources at home and create jobs in the process.

Finally, in 2009, President Obama said we don't raise taxes in a recession. He stated his position clearly: The last thing you would want to do is raise taxes on anyone during a recession because it would harm businesses and economic growth. We know when he said that unemployment was under 8 percent. So if we have 9.1 percent unemployment now and will for quite a bit into the future, aren't we still in a recession? So isn't the President's own benchmark the benchmark we ought to be using yet today? Yet we have the biggest tax increase in the history of the country--taking more money away from the taxpayers and sending it to Washington--coming up next year.

Wouldn't it do a great deal of economic good if this President said exactly what he said about the time he was sworn in; that we shouldn't increase taxes during a recession. Yet we have all these jobs packages put before the Senate that include job-killing tax hikes. That is why they have been received with bipartisan opposition. To those who say the packages the President has proposed have been killed by Republicans, one of the reasons the majority leader had to change the President's tax packages for a vote here a couple weeks ago is because there is opposition within his own conference about that. A few courageous Senate Democrats have consistently said no to their leadership when it comes to raising taxes on small business and other job creators.

The only bipartisanship we have seen so far is the bipartisan opposition to ill-conceived political documents. The Democratic majority needs to get serious about addressing our economic problems. It is time to consider policies that will get people back to work without harming the economy. It is time to stop the political aspects of this debate. The best way to do that, it

seems to me, is to look at the other body--controlled by Republicans-- that has passed 15 pieces of legislation that will help turn this economy around. We haven't taken up any of them, although I think we are about ready to take up, thank God, one of the 15 that is referred to as the ``3-percent withholding.'' Unemployed Americans need to know we are going to do something to help create jobs and grow the economy, and taking up more of those 15 bills would be getting something done in a bipartisan way. Unfortunately, so far the Democratic majority and President Obama are more interested in political strategies than creating jobs and economic growth. The only reason I say that is it seems to me there is little intellectual honesty on the part of the President when in a speech given to a joint session of Congress one evening--as he did in September--he would plead for bipartisan support and then, the very next day, go out on the road on a political venture and say he can't get the cooperation of the Republicans--pass that bill right now.

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

Mr. President, I would like to alert my colleagues that I intend to object to any unanimous consent agreement for the consideration of S. 1014, the Emergency Judicial Relief Act of 2011. While the sponsors of the legislation adopted one amendment I offered during debate in the Judiciary Committee, and that amendment improves the legislation, the bill remains deeply flawed and I cannot support it.

I oppose S. 1014 in its current form for a number of reasons, and I will just briefly describe them here. First, I believe strongly that we should analyze critically any expansion of the Federal Government, and first and foremost, determine whether there is a more efficient and cost effective way to allocate taxpayer resources. This is especially true during a time when our Federal debt is at historic levels.

In its current form, this legislation creates 10 new judgeships and converts two judgeships from temporary to permanent. The legislation does not pay

for the increased spending by cutting a corresponding amount of Federal spending. Rather, it raises the filing fees imposed on litigants.

The sponsors of the legislation have argued, based on caseload statistics, that these districts have some of the highest caseloads in the country. That may be true if you believe that the caseload statistics accurately describe how busy a particular district is. I am not arguing, today, that these statistics are necessarily inaccurate, but I would simply note that there have been some questions raised over the years regarding how well those statistics describe the caseloads. Regardless, based on those same statistics, there are other districts that are slow and getting slower.

If we conclude that some districts are disproportionately busy, and therefore conclude that we should increase the number of judgeships in those districts, then it only makes sense to offset the increase in judgeships by reallocating judicial resources away from districts that are slow. For this reason, I offered an amendment in the Judiciary Committee that would have reduced the number of judgeships in other districts by a total of 10. I will not take the time here to go through the statistics in each of the districts where I proposed eliminating judgeships. Suffice it to say, in each district slated for a reduction, the caseloads have decreased over the last 5 years, with the exception of 1 district, where the caseload has remained flat. And, even after you reduce the number of judgeships in these districts, they would still have caseloads that are well below the national average, across all 94 districts. If we are going to add judgeships, I believe this is the most appropriate way to do it.

The amendment I proposed in committee would also have delayed the effective date for the creation of the new judgeships until after the next Presidential election. Because none of us knows for certain who will be sworn in as President in January 2013, delaying the effective date would remove politics from the debate. Not only would it remove politics from the discussion, but it is consistent with how this issue was handled in the past. For instance, when the chairman of the committee introduced legislation to create additional judgeships during the 110th Congress, this is the approach he embraced.

Finally, I would note that the sponsors of the bill agreed to adopt a separate amendment I offered in the Judiciary Committee that would extend Whistleblower protection to Judicial Branch employees. This is an improvement. My amendment ensures that Judicial Branch employees are not simply left without redress when they face retaliation for blowing the whistle on fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. While I appreciate the bill's sponsors' willingness to adopt my amendment, and I believe it is an improvement, the underlying legislation remains deeply flawed for the reasons I have discussed. Therefore, I must oppose it. I urge my colleagues to do the same.

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak for such time as I may consume, but it will probably be in the neighborhood of 20 or 25 minutes.

Mr. President, today I wish to take a few moments to talk about the importance of the oversight work of the Congress. It is a very critical function of Congress. As one of the three branches of government, Congress is a very important pillar of our government. Our system provides for checks and balances between the three branches of government. Not only do we in the Congress legislate, but we must make sure the other two branches are not overstepping their power, and that is the function of oversight.

I have been conducting oversight of the executive branch since I first came to the Senate. I take oversight very seriously. It is often an overlooked function for Members of Congress. It is not a glamorous function. It is a lot of hard work.

Some people have said recently that my oversight work is political. Quite honestly, people who say that are the ones who are, in fact, political or may be ignorant of what I do because I happen to be an equal opportunity overseer. I do not care if it is a Democrat or a Republican occupying the White House; if something needs to be investigated, I am going to investigate it.

In 2008, I was glad to hear the President-elect talk about the most transparent government ever that he was going to institute under his administration. Unfortunately, up to this point, this administration has been far from transparent--at least far from transparent in the way he said he was going to be so transparent. If any of us thought it was bad before, it is worse now.

But my message about oversight is combined with a very important reminder about the rule of law, a philosophy upon which our country was founded. So I would like to talk about this administration's evasive and disappointing response to Congress about two different policies: first, the immigration policy and administrative enforcement of that, and second, Operation Fast and Furious. I will first discuss immigration.

Since the founding of our country, our immigration laws have been a source of discussion. We were born a nation of immigrants and still are welcoming to people coming to our country legally. We have welcomed men and women from diverse countries and provided protection to many who flee from persecution. We have been generous, and we will continue to be generous. Yet we have seen our country face many challenges and have attempted to restrict immigration levels. The first immigration law of 1790 tried to limit citizenship to certain individuals and institute what is called the ``good moral character'' requirement. We created quotas in the 1920s, to only do away with those quotas 45 years later. We even provided amnesty to millions of undocumented and hard-working people in the last big immigration law to pass Congress in 1986. Today, we are faced with another challenge of how to deal with more than 10 million undocumented persons.

Congress struggles with this challenge on a yearly basis. It is important for lawmakers to bear in mind that the policies we make should benefit our country in the long term and that they must be fair to current as well as future generations.

People in foreign lands yearn to be free. They go to great lengths to be a part of our great country. It is a privilege that people love our country and want to become Americans. At the same time, however, we must not forget the great principle upon which our country was founded, and that great principle is the rule of law. We want to welcome new Americans, but we need to live by the rules we have set. We cannot let our welcome mat be trampled on, and we cannot allow our system of laws to be undermined.

As a Senator, like all of my colleagues, I took an oath of office to honor the Constitution. I bear a fundamental allegiance to uphold the rule of law. That is why I am deeply concerned about the immigration policies that are coming from this White House. The President's policies may be an impermissible intrusion on Congress's plenary authority over immigration law. They are pushing the envelope, and there is little transparency into their actions at a time when transparency was promised by this administration at the time they were sworn in.

As many of you know, last summer I exposed an internal homeland security memo that outlines ways President Obama could circumvent Congress and grant legal status to millions of undocumented individuals. So this is where oversight becomes very important--whether or not this memo is an intent to get around a law Congress passes which the President of the United States, under his oath of office, has pledged to faithfully enforce. This memo was entitled ``Administrative Alternatives to Comprehensive Immigration Reform.'' That title in and of itself kind of signifies efforts to get around law, to get around what Congress intended. Its purpose was, in their words, ``to reduce the threat of removal of certain individuals present in the United States without authorization.'' Now why, if you are enforcing and faithfully executing the laws of the United States, would you want to ``reduce the threat of removal of certain individuals present in the United States without authorization''? Aren't those words, ``without authorization'' in and of themselves an indication that people might be here illegally?

The memo outlined more than a dozen ways to keep individuals in the country and to provide them with benefits or protections. I, along with my colleagues in the Congress, have asked repeatedly for assurances that those options were not being explored. But, you know what. Our concerns have not been addressed. The President and the Secretary of Homeland Security have only said they do not plan to provide such benefits to the entire population of undocumented individuals. They claim they will use their discretionary authority and pursue relief on a limited and case-by-case basis. To the extent to which it is limited and it is case-by-case, I confess, the law probably provides for some administrative discretion because if you are going to have people come to this country, Congress is not going to be able to write a law that is going to take every instance into consideration. But I go back to that title: ``Administrative Alternatives to Comprehensive Immigration Reform.'' So there is a need to change the laws on immigration, update them. So if everybody admits there is that need, why do you need administrative alternatives, unless you are trying to get around what Congress intended?

So we are asking these questions, and yet we have no idea if it is true that they want to do it strictly on a case-by-case and very limited basis because we have reason to believe we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people because we have no idea how many people are truly receiving the benefits and what standards are being used when determining that an individual is granted parole or deferred action. These are the questions that, in our oversight capacity, we are asking, but we are not getting very many answers, as I am going to show you here.

Again quoting the title, ``Administrative Alternatives to Comprehensive Immigration Reform,'' this memo from last summer also included a proposal to lessen the ``extreme hardship standard.'' Under current law, aliens are inadmissible for 3 to 10 years if they have been unlawfully present in the United States for 180 days in the case of a 3-year inadmissibility or 1 year in case of 10 years of inadmissibility. The Department has discretion to waive the grounds for inadmissibility if it would result in an extreme hardship. Again, I am willing to grant that there is some leeway in the law here.

The amnesty memo states: ``To increase the number of individuals applying for waivers and improve their chances of receiving them, Citizenship

and Immigration Services could issue guidance or a regulation specifying a lower evidentiary standard for extreme hardship.'' Now, ``extreme hardship'' ought to mean the same from administration to administration, not some special definition of ``extreme hardship'' because we have a President who maybe wants to find some way of getting around the immigration laws because he does not want to work hard enough to get immigration reform passed through the Congress.

Proponents argue that this redefinition of ``extreme hardship'' is needed for family unity and that the 3-year and 10-year bars are overly burdensome. Well, Congress did not consider the 3- and 10-year bars to be overly burdensome or we would not have put them in the law in the first place. If this standard is lessened, an untold number of undocumented individuals will be able to bypass the 3-year and 10-year bars that are clearly laid out in the Immigration and Nationality Act. My concern is that this policy, if implemented, is a blatant way to circumvent Congress and the law to keep as many undocumented aliens in the United States as possible.

It is difficult to ascertain if this change or any other proposal from the amnesty memo is being considered by the Secretary, so I asked the Secretary about this very proposal when she testified before the Judiciary Committee about 2 weeks ago. She admitted that existing immigration law is difficult, but the Secretary would not deny that discussions about changing the standards are even taking place.

Well, what about the memo to which I referred? Frankly, she refused to comment about the proposal during the hearing. Indeed, she said she was focused on exercising enforcement functions, which gets me to my next issue.

A year after the 2010 amnesty memo circulated, we learned that the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement--and we use the acronym ``ICE'' for that--which is the agency responsible for enforcing the law, apprehending and deporting undocumented people in this country, directed his agents to use ``prosecutorial discretion'' on those with whom they come in contact. What does this mean? In June of this year, Assistant Secretary Morton released a memo directing ICE officers to exercise prosecutorial discretion and to consider the alien's length of presence in the United States, the circumstances of the alien's arrival in the United States, particularly if the alien came as a young child. Also, take into consideration the alien's criminal history, the alien's age, whether there was service in the military, and whether they came here to pursue education in the United States.

On August 19 of this year, Secretary Napolitano announced an initiative to establish a working group to sort through an untold number of cases currently pending before the immigration review office and also before the Federal courts to determine if they can be ``administratively closed.'' This gets into big numbers. There are more than 300,000 cases pending before the Executive Office of Immigration Review. The Secretary claims this process will allow them to direct resources at higher priority cases.

This memo and initiative outlined by the Secretary are concerning, especially to those of us who said our country is based on the rule of law. These policies seem to contradict that very important philosophy underlying our whole system of law.

On September 26 of this year, I led 18 of my Senate colleagues in sending a letter to President Obama expressing dissatisfaction with these prosecutorial discretion policies. We said this administration was encouraging undocumented aliens to come forward in hopes of relief. This letter to the President is part of our constitutional responsibility of oversight. It is going to the President of the United States, who said he was going to have the most transparent administration ever in the history of the country. So wouldn't you think we would get a lot of answers?

We asked the President to rescind the June memo and end the initiative outlined in August, and requested that he make the Secretary available to all Members of the Senate to explain how his immigration policies are consistent with the rule of law. It is a very simple process: Have one of your Cabinet people come here and explain it all to us.

Do you know what the President did? He asked a bureaucrat from the Department to respond to us on his behalf. The letter from this bureaucrat didn't address any points we made in our letter and shows a complete disregard for the concerns we raised. I tell a lot of people in both Republican administrations and Democratic administrations that I am overseeing--doing my constitutional responsibility of oversight. The longer you stonewall, when the truth comes out, the more egg you are going to have on your face. That is going to be true in this instance as well.

This is what we expect from the administration. We have many unanswered questions about this prosecutorial discretion initiative. For example, how many cases will the working group sort through? You can quantify that pretty easily. What standards will be used for adjudicating cases? In the rule of law, you ought to be able to tell us what the process is and what the standard is. Will those already ordered removed be considered for relief? In other words, if somebody has already figured out you ought to be removed from this country, is someone going to step in and say, no, maybe you don't have to be removed? Will those with a criminal conviction be eliminated from consideration for discretion? We ought to know if you commit a crime in this country, besides coming here illegally, will you be removed or will you be given some discretion--what you call prosecutorial discretion? How much in taxpayer money will be expended for this effort, and when will the working group finish its work? Will the Department of Homeland Security keep the committee apprised and provide detailed information on who is granted a benefit, including work authorization? What will happen to individuals who have their cases ``administratively closed''?

Congress passes the laws, the President takes an oath to faithfully execute those laws, and we have a constitutional responsibility to make sure that what Congress intended is carried out. We are not saying that maybe Congress's intent isn't being carried out. We want questions answered to determine whether they are being carried out. These are pretty simple questions to the President. We ask for the Secretary to come and answer these questions, and that doesn't happen. We get a letter back from some low-level bureaucrat who doesn't even answer the question.

How far can you go, and be morally and ethically correct, as President of the United States, saying at the time you were sworn in that you are going to have the most transparent administration this country has ever seen, and then you stonewall Congress on simple questions such as this policy that you want to carry out, called prosecutorial discretion?

We await answers and can only hope they will be more transparent about these policies than on the amnesty memo--assuming we get answers to our questions.

The future of our country hinges, in part, on the policies this administration is making behind our backs. Congress has a role to play. That is not my position; that is the position of our Constitution.

We need more sunshine in our government in Washington on amnesty and numerous other issues, including one of my oversight investigations that involves a Federal law enforcement operation that went critically wrong.

I am now turning to Fast and Furious. This program was a multiagency effort, run by Federal prosecutors in Arizona and supervised by officials in the Justice Department headquarters here in Washington,

Mr. President, on Friday a week ago, the Secretary of HHS made a very important announcement regarding one specific provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Secretary Sebelius announced the administration would no longer be implementing the Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act. The acronym CLASS applies to that part of the health care bill. She said:

When it became clear that the most basic benefit plans

wouldn't work, we looked at other possibilities. Recognizing

the enormous need in this country for better long-term care

insurance options, we cast as wide a net as possible in

searching for a model that could succeed. But as a report our

department is releasing today shows, we have not identified a

way to make CLASS work at this time.

This is not an ``I told you so'' speech, although it certainly could be. It isn't as though folks weren't raising significant concerns about the CLASS Act a long time before it ever passed. Two years ago, during the debate, Member after Member of the Senate came to the floor to argue the CLASS Act was destined to fail. Senator Thune led the fight to raise awareness about the fiscal disaster the CLASS Act has now turned out to be. The Democratic chairman of the Budget Committee called it a ``Ponzi scheme.'' The Democratic chairman of the Finance Committee stated on the floor that he was ``no friend of the CLASS Act.''

When the Senate took a vote on the CLASS Act, 51 Senators, including 12 Democrats, voted to strip it from the legislation. The majority didn't rule that day because an agreement required 60 votes to strip it out.

I think special recognition should go to former Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. As ranking member of the Budget Committee while in the Senate, and a senior member of the HELP Committee, he was deeply concerned about the ultimate cost of the CLASS Act on future generations. He led an amendment to require the CLASS Act be actuarially sound. He did so not because he wanted to improve the CLASS Act but because he wanted to make clear the CLASS Act could not work from a fiscal standpoint.

His amendment showed that, once implemented, the CLASS Act would take in revenues in early years and then begin to lose revenues in the outyears, ultimately either failing or requiring a massive bailout with taxpayer money to salvage the program. In a strange twist of budget scoring rules, his amendment, once accepted, led the Congressional Budget Office to score the CLASS Act as producing savings on paper in the short term.

The score made clear the CLASS Act was doomed to failure, but as only happens here in Washington, a score showing the obvious failure of the CLASS Act then became an asset, particularly an asset because the Democratic leadership wanted to show this bill was revenue neutral or even revenue positive. It was used by the Democratic leadership not for what it provided beneficiaries but what it did for the overall health care reform bill.

With the CLASS Act and some imaginary savings in the bill, it made the overall bill look as if it actually saved money. Those savings, of course, were a gimmick. Everyone in Congress knew

it, but some chose to ignore it or, worse still, to celebrate it.

The very first action on the floor for the Affordable Care Act was for the majority leader to ask unanimous consent to prevent amendments from spending the imaginary savings--and I emphasize imaginary savings--generated by the CLASS Act. It wasn't a motion to protect the CLASS Act itself but a cynical motion to protect its precious ``savings'' and the political value it had. Only in Washington, with overwhelming evidence on the table making clear a program would fail, would defense of the doomed CLASS Act become a virtue.

The Chief Actuary at CMS stated:

There is a very serious risk that the problem of adverse

selection would make the CLASS program unsustainable.

The risks were known then, yet Democrats in Congress plowed ahead anyway. Why, you may ask. Well, Megan McArdle noted in the Atlantic on Monday:

The problems with CLASS were known from day one, but no one

listened, because it gave them good numbers to sell their

program politically.

And it wasn't just political cover. The imaginary savings gave them protection against potential budget points of order. Would the Senate- passed bill have been subject to a budget point of order without the imaginary CLASS Act savings in the bill? That is a very legitimate question.

The announcement by the Secretary of HHS provides an overdue vindication for Senator Gregg. His amendment made the announcement inevitable. Health and Human Services could not make a viable case for implementing the CLASS Act because of Senator Gregg's amendment requiring the CLASS Act to be actuarially sustainable.

Our next action is clear. Congress should repeal the CLASS Act. It was not in the House health care reform bill. A majority of the Senate voted to strip the CLASS Act from the Senate bill. It was passed under laughably false pretenses. The responsible action for Congress is to repeal it in the first relevant piece of legislation.

I take a back seat to no one on issues associated with improving the lives of seniors and the disabled. As ranking member of the Aging Committee, I oversaw critical hearings into deep and persistent problems in our Nation's nursing homes. I was the principal author of the Medicare Part D prescription drug bill, which is currently providing our seniors and people with disabilities with affordable prescription medications.

On the disability front, one of my proudest achievements is the enactment of legislation I sponsored, along with the late Senator Ted Kennedy--the Family Opportunity Act--which extends Medicaid coverage to disabled children. In large part through my efforts, the Money Follows the Person Rebalancing Act and the option for States to implement a home- and community-based services program were included in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.

Along with Senator Kerry, I introduced the Empowered at Home Act which, among other things, revised the income eligibility level for home- and community-based services for elderly and disabled individuals.

This is what I said about the CLASS Act on December 4, 2009:

If I thought that the CLASS Act would add to this list of

improvements to the lives of seniors or the disabled, I would

be first in line as a proud cosponsor of the CLASS Act. But

the CLASS Act does not strengthen the safety net for seniors

and the disabled. The CLASS Act compounds the long-term

entitlement spending problems we already have by creating yet

another new unsustainable entitlement program. The CLASS Act

is just simply not viable in its current form.

That is the end of the quote I made on December 4, 2009, when that provision of the health care reform bill was up.

But this is not an ``I told you so'' speech. No, Mr. President, I am here because I am offended by the way this administration and proponents of health care reform have used the disability community throughout the debate over the CLASS Act.

Congress and the administration knew the CLASS Act would fail when it was being considered. The administration now somehow manages to treat this as a shocking discovery, and the fact that they are doing that is beyond me. But the way the administration has tried to soften the blow for the disability community rubs me the wrong way, because in the Secretary's statement on the CLASS Act I referred to, the Secretary said this:

In fact, one of the main reasons we decided not to go ahead

with CLASS at this point is that we know no one would be hurt

more if CLASS started and failed than the people who had paid

into it and were counting on it the most. We can't let that

happen.

Of course, they could have opposed the inclusion of the legislation and told the disability community the exact same thing back in 2009. Apparently, the administration is trying to tell the disability community that even though HHS can't implement the statute, they don't want to repeal it. Nicholas Pappas, a White House spokesman, said:

We do not support repeal. Repealing the CLASS Act isn't

necessary or productive. What we should be doing is working

together to address the long-term care challenges we face in

this country.

After putting the political value of the savings ahead of the doomed policy, the administration finally admitted the CLASS Act was a failure. They apologized to the disability community. They said they don't support repeal of the CLASS Act.

After years of dodging reality, it is time for the President and the majority party to treat the disability community respectfully and honestly. If the President believes the CLASS Act can and should be saved, he should put revisions on the table much as he threatened to in early 2010 but never managed to.

Congress should weigh repeal of the CLASS Act against revisions that could be proposed to make it a legitimate program. We should do so with a full score--meaning from CBO--and in the context of our current fiscal climate with all our cards on the table, not the stealthy way it was handled in 2009. We should have a healthy and open debate.

The insipid strategy of passing something into law with a wink and a nod toward making it all better in the future is unacceptable and disrespectful to the disability community purported to be served by the legislation.

Our course is clear. For those of us who care about the disability policies, the days of ignoring reality must come to an end. We should repeal the CLASS Act and move on to other legislation that gets the job done in a fiscally responsible way.

I yield the remainder of the time.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I ask the Chair to please inform me when I have spoken 10 minutes. For other people who want to speak, I don't think I will speak that long.

My amendment No. 860 is a good government amendment for which I hope we can get broad support. There are special interests in Washington making the rounds opposing this amendment. These groups have argued this amendment will unduly burden the Justice Department, take away grant money for worthy causes or erroneously ban grantees from future funds. These special interests are trying to protect their income streams of

Federal grants and don't want somebody looking over their shoulder to make sure they are spending taxpayer dollars wisely.

This amendment is a response to the lack of oversight, accountability, and responsibility for how American taxpayer dollars are spent by grant recipients. It is a response to my work in the Judiciary Committee, uncovering fraud, misappropriation of funds, offshore bank accounts by nonprofit organizations.

Can you understand that? Nonprofit organizations in America have offshore bank accounts, and many other shenanigans are occurring in grant programs administered by the Justice Department.

To fix this, my amendment includes an accountability and fraud prevention package for grants administered by the Department of Justice. I am glad to report the National Taxpayers Union, an independent nonpartisan advocate for taxpayers, supports the amendment.

For the last decade the inspector general has continuously labeled grant management at the Department of Justice a top management and performance challenge. That is from the inspector general. Despite the large sums of money the Department provides the grantees, the inspector general has repeatedly found inadequate controls on spending, inadequate oversight, and a general failure to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent by grantees in accordance with the programs.

Each year, the inspector general audits only a small fraction of grants awarded by the Department. In fact, last year the inspector general audited 21 grant recipients. Keep the figure 21 in mind. The inspector general questioned more than one-quarter of all the taxpayer dollars these grantees received. These questioned costs occurred on a random selection of grantees and represent less than 1 percent of the total grant recipients. So we only audit--go over 1 percent, but of that 1 percent, 25 percent of them were found to have a waste of taxpayers' money or not proper accounting.

Perhaps the most concerning part of these audits is that they are randomly selected. If the inspector general's random selection of grantees universally uncovers unauthorized errors, then we can see why we have a much larger problem. If the findings of the audit from 2011 were extrapolated through all the grants, that would mean nearly $500 million in questionable costs annually.

My amendment requires the inspector general to audit 10 percent of the grants. It also requires the Attorney General to ban grantees for 2 years if they are found to have serious problems that have gone unremedied for longer than 6 months after the inspector general makes a negative finding. By requiring this remedy within 6 months, it ensures there is enough time to fix inadvertent mistakes but also ensures that truly bad actors are taken off the government rolls.

My amendment also requires the AG to reimburse the Federal Treasury from the Justice Department budget if funds are given to an excluded entity and then requires the Department to recoup lost grant money from those grantees. It also includes a limitation on conference spending at the Department. Just a few weeks ago, the inspector general issued an audit on conference spending at the Department.

We all heard about this audit, which revealed $16 muffins, the $32 Cracker Jack snacks, $5 cans of cola, the beef wellington appetizers, and other abuse of the money of the taxpayers by the Justice Department. What we have not heard is how, by this administration, spending at the Justice Department increased from $47 million in fiscal year 2008 to 1 year later $73 million and now 2 years later $91 million. Despite the biggest Federal deficit in history, the Justice Department, under this administration, has doubled spending on conferences in just 2 years. This is unacceptable, and it is why my amendment requires the Deputy Attorney General to sign off on all conference spending.

My amendment would prohibit the Attorney General from providing any grant to a nonprofit charity that holds money in offshore bank accounts for the purpose of evading Federal taxes. If it is nonprofit, one would think they would be using their money for nonprofit purposes.

This provision was the result of an investigation I conducted into the Boys and Girls Club of America, the national umbrella organization for thousands of local clubs. In response to my inquiry, the Boys and Girls Club of America admitted that, despite closing hundreds of clubs nationwide, it held nearly $222 million in investment, of which $54 million was in offshore investments and another $54 million in partnerships. When asked why this money was held offshore, I was told it was held to `` . . . avoid issues with unrelated Business Income Tax generated by hedge funds that use leverage.''

I support the mission of the Boys and Girls Clubs, truly I do. It is true nothing they did was illegal. However, given our current fiscal crisis, I cannot support Federal tax dollars being awarded as grants to those who hold millions of dollars offshore--I should say tens of millions of dollars offshore.

Finally, I will note that my amendment includes a 25-percent matching requirement for grantees, as I heard the special interest lobbyists have been calling and sending panicked messages to many Members in the Senate opposing the matching requirement, arguing it would shut off Federal money to many grantees.

This provision mirrors one recently included at a Judiciary Committee markup supported by all Judiciary Committee Democrats and some Republicans. Matching requirements are often required by grant programs that virtually all members have supported. The Government Accountability Office even reported in a 2006 report on grant management that to strengthen grant management, Congress should ``ensure mechanisms are of sufficient value'' when implementing grants. This is GAO speak for including a matching requirement so grantees are financially involved, not simply spending Federal taxpayer dollars.

That said, I wanted to modify my amendment and strike this provision. However, I understand people on the other side of the aisle objected to that request so it would be easier to defeat my amendment. Remember, this is an amendment Republicans and Democrats accepted in the Judiciary Committee. This is big money at stake with Federal grants. Talk about special interests, the special interests have spoken. Those who oppose my amendment oppose holding grantees accountable for how they spend taxpayer dollars. Those who oppose my amendment are supporting giving nonprofit charities with money in offshore bank accounts taxpayer dollars. It will be interesting to see who opposes this provision, especially given the fact that everyone should oppose giving taxpayer dollars to those who hold money offshore.

My amendment is a commonsense way to ensure that taxpayer dollars are protected. It is something we should have done long ago. I encourage all my colleagues to join me and send a signal that waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars has no place in a Federal grant programs at the Department of Justice. That would include all of them but particularly to organizations that hold money offshore to avoid taxes.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this is a good-government amendment, and it goes after the Justice Department grant management program because the inspector general has had grant management at the top of his 10 major management challenges. The inspector general says that management of grants at the Justice Department is abominable, so this amendment is trying to take care of what the inspector general has said is needed to be done for a long period of time. Grant recipients would be held to basic principles of accountability. There are only a handful of grants audited each year, but out of that handful 25 percent talk about mismanagement, fraud, and things of that nature.

A vote against my amendment would be a vote to allow fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayer-funded grant programs. A vote against my amendment would allow nonprofit charities to continue to hold money in offshore bank accounts for tax purposes and still receive Federal grants. I have a letter in my office that justifies $54 million in offshore accounts.

I hope my colleagues will vote for this good-government amendment.

It is supported by the National Taxpayers Union.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, earlier this afternoon we voted on a good government proposal that would have improved accountability for taxpayer dollars. That amendment focused on grants awarded by the Department of Justice. Soon we will be voting to repeal another good government measure; that is, the provision to ensure that government contractors pay their taxes by requiring that governments withhold 3 percent from payments to contractors as prepayment for their taxes. The provision was enacted in direct response to a series of Government Accountability Office, or GAO, reports about Federal contractors not paying their taxes.

I have always said that taxpayers should pay what they owe--not a penny more, and not a penny less. And several GAO reports indicate that information reporting and upfront withholding significantly improve compliance. In fact, that is why the Federal Government withholds taxes from individual paychecks.

Since the provision was enacted, I have heard repeatedly about the costs of implementation. I am disappointed by the misinformation that has been spread by the various outside groups--just like the ones that lobbied against my Justice Department grant amendment today.

Specifically, one fictitious estimate by an outside group states that the cost to implement this provision is $75 billion. There is another made-up estimate that it would cost the Department of Defense $17 billion to implement this provision.

I have a very long history, over 30 years in the Senate, of doing oversight of various Federal agencies. I cut my teeth in oversight by combating waste, fraud, and abuse at the Defense Department. I knew both the 75 billion and 17 billion numbers were bogus the first time I heard them.

The Congressional Budget Office, or the CBO, the nonpartisan, objective scorekeeper for Congress, has estimated the cost of implementation to the Federal Government, including the Defense Department, to be $85 million over 5 years.

Mr. President, I am a firm believer in reviewing laws that aren't working. This provision never even had a chance to work. However, I have heard from small business owners across Iowa about the burdens the withholding provision would impose on them, particularly with the economy still being in the dumps.

For that reason, I support repealing this provision. My preference would have been to fix the provision so that small businesses and State and local governments would be exempted. However, that would have likely created even more complexity.

Let me just say that, despite the rhetoric, large corporations would not have been impacted in the same way that small businesses would have been.

They, especially defense and Medicare contractors, are not operating on a cash flow basis or on profit margins of 3 percent. They are just riding the coattails of small businesses in pushing for repeal of this provision.

As we proceed to vote on repeal of this provision, let me remind my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that tax cheats are a very real problem. Tax delinquent contractors continue to be awarded Federal contracts, despite the administration's efforts to clamp down on awarding contracts to them. The most recent example is the award of stimulus contracts.

A GAO report from May of just this year indicated that $24 billion in Federal contracts were awarded to contractors who owed more than $750 million of back taxes. This is not chump change.

In the past year or so, Members of the House and Senate have supported measures to ensure that Federal employees pay their taxes. Well, Federal contractors should not be treated any differently. The country is in the midst of an unprecedented fiscal crisis. Tax increases are off the table so we need to ensure that we are collecting every dollar that is owed to the Federal Government.

Senator Baucus and I continue to work on an alternative to 3 percent withholding. This alternative would prohibit the Federal Government from awarding contracts to tax cheats.

In order to assist contracting agencies in identifying tax cheats, we would enable those agencies to check a contractor's tax status with the Internal Revenue Service. This new approach would be much narrower in focus than the 3 percent withholding provision. It should only impact the bad actors. When we have an opportunity to consider this provision, I would hope that my colleagues would support us in enacting it. Preventing tax cheating should be a bipartisan issue.

I ask unanimous consent that the CBO estimate be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on three more judicial nominations. With these votes, we will have confirmed 14 nominees this month and 52 nominees this year. We continue to achieve great progress in committee as well. Eighty-four percent of the judicial nominees submitted this Congress have been afforded hearings. Only 78 percent of President Bush's nominees had hearings for the comparable time period during his Presidency. We have reported 76 percent of the judicial nominees, compared to only 71 percent of President Bush's nominees. In total, the committee has taken positive action on 83 of the 99 nominees submitted this Congress, or 84 percent. Overall, we have confirmed over 70 percent of President Obama's judicial nominees since he took office.

I will support the confirmation of each of the nominees today. I have a few words to say about each nominee.

Mark Raymond Hornak is nominated to be U.S. district judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Mr. Hornak graduated with a B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1978, and with a J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1981. He began his legal career as a clerk for Judge Sprouse on the Fourth Circuit. Since his clerkship, the nominee has spent his entire career at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney where he practices labor and employment law, representing primarily employers and public agencies.

Mr. Hornak received a unanimous ``well qualified'' rating from the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary.

Robert David Mariani is nominated to be U.S. district judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, a seat deemed to be a judicial emergency. He received his A.B., cum laude, from Villanova University in 1972, and his J.D. from Syracuse University College of Law in 1976. Mr. Mariani began his legal career by practicing labor, employment, commercial, real estate, civil, and criminal law. During this time, Mr. Mariani also served as the Solicitor to the Scranton-Dumore Sewer Authority.

Beginning in 1980, Mr. Mariani dedicated himself to the exclusive practice of labor and employment law. His expertise includes collective bargaining, labor arbitration, and employee pension and benefits law under ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code. Mr. Mariani has practiced before Federal and State courts, the NLRB, the EEOC, and the Pennsylvania Human Rights Campaign. He also serves as counsel to the Northeast Pennsylvania School District Health Trust and the Berks County School District Health Trust. In addition to his practice, Mr. Mariani also serves as an arbitrator, where he resolves complex labor disputes through negotiation.

Mr. Mariani received a unanimous ``well qualified'' rating from the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary.

I had some initial concerns regarding Mr. Mariani's nomination. Mr. Mariani has expressed labor policy preferences against at-will employment and in favor of card check for union employees. I asked him about these statements at his hearing and in followup questions. Based on his responses, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he will be able to be fair and impartial as a judge.

Robert N. Scola is nominated to be U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Florida, another seat deemed to be a judicial emergency. Judge Scola earned his B.A. in 1973 from Stanford University and his J.D. from Boston College of Law in 1980. From 1980 to 1986, Judge Scola served as a prosecutor in State court. He began with misdemeanor cases and finished with prosecuting first degree murder and death penalty cases.

From 1986 to 1995, Judge Scola served as a criminal defense attorney. He practiced solo for most of this time. From 1992 to 1993, he joined two other attorneys in criminal defense. Judge Scola specialized in criminal defense in both State and Federal court.

Governor Lawton Chiles appointed Judge Scola to his current position as a circuit judge for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida in and for Miami-Dade County in 1995. Since then, the circuit has elected and reelected him without opposition in 1996, 2002, and 2008. He has served in the family division, civil division, and has also served as an appellate judge for county court and administrative law cases.

Judge Scola received a unanimous ``well qualified'' rating from the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary.

Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on the nomination of Cathy Bissoon to be U.S. District Judge for the Western District

of Pennsylvania. Today's vote marks the 49th judicial confirmation this year and the 11th in just 2 weeks.

In committee we continue to achieve great progress as well. Eighty- four percent of the judicial nominees submitted this Congress have been afforded hearings. We have reported 77 percent of the judicial nominees. We have another hearing scheduled for later this week, our 16th nomination hearing of this year. In total, the committee has taken positive action on 85 of the 98 nominees submitted this Congress, or 87 percent.

Let me say just a few words about the nominee we are considering today.

Judge Bissoon graduated summa cum laude from Alfred University with a bachelor of arts in 1990. In 1993, she earned her juris doctorate from Harvard Law School. Judge Bissoon began her career at Reed Smith in Pittsburgh, PA, and then clerked for Judge Gary Lancaster of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Following her clerkship, Judge Bissoon returned to private practice at Reed Smith where she worked primarily with employment and labor litigation. Judge Bissoon also served as the Firmwide director of diversity and as the firmwide practice group leader of Reed Smith's employment practice group. From 2007 to 2008, Judge Bissoon continued to practice employment and labor law as the Director and Department head of the labor group at Cohen & Grigsby.

In August 2008, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania appointed Judge Bissoon as a U.S. magistrate judge.

Judge Bissoon received a unanimous ``Qualified'' rating from the ABA Committee on the Federal Judiciary.

I support this nomination and congratulate her on her professional accomplishments.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record my letter dated October 17, 2011, to the minority leader regarding S. 1385.

Well, can you believe it, we are finally here. After several years of waiting for these trade agreements to come to the Congress, it looks as though we are going to be able to vote on them, pass them, and send them to the President for his signature, and they will become law.

Quite frankly, I thought soon after May 10, 2007, we would be voting on the Colombia trade agreement because President Bush was anxious to send it to the Hill. But the Democrats took over the Congress after the 2006 election, and the way it was negotiated by the Bush administration wasn't good enough. There wasn't enough negotiation to go far enough on labor and environment, so the new Democratic- controlled Congress said we have to do more on those negotiations for environment and labor.

So more was renegotiated, and on May 10, 2007, there was a news conference announcing a bipartisan result between the Bush administration and the Democratic Congress on an agreement with Colombia on better environment and labor issues that had been reached. So a bipartisan agreement, particularly when you have a Democratic Congress and a Republican President, you would have expected that right away we would be having at least Colombia up here. At that time, South Korea wasn't completely negotiated. But the other party turned into a protectionist party and so nothing has happened until now. The goalposts have been moved several times, but the free trade reality of creating jobs has come back to the other political party. So I am glad we are here at last, even though it may be 4 years late. We are doing the right thing, even though it is being done later than it should have been done.

Everybody knows that every day in this Congress, and rightly so, with 9.1 percent unemployment, the topic is jobs. And that is as it should be. The question gets asked a lot: What policies can we implement here in the Congress to create jobs or at least to encourage jobs. With over 9 percent unemployment in this country, we should, in fact, be talking about how to have an environment that creates jobs, and freeing up trade is one of the best ways to create jobs. These aren't just creating jobs, these are good-paying jobs. On average, jobs related to international trade pay 15 percent above the national average.

The truth is for years we have known one clear and simple way to create jobs and stimulate growth in our economy, and that is international trade. The Colombia, South Korea, and Panama trade agreements will create and support thousands of jobs, and I believe even hundreds of thousands of jobs. So we must implement the trade deals reached with Panama, South Korea, and Colombia, and we must do it today, even though it should have been done, in the case of South Korea, a year ago and in the case of Panama and Colombia 3 or 4 years ago.

We entered into these agreements back in 2006 and 2007, and there is no excuse why we have had to wait nearly 5 years--until now--to get to them. Yet congressional Democrats, and later President Obama, continued to move the goalposts, putting up barriers that prevented their consideration and passage until this day. There is no clearer or easier way of creating jobs in the near term, and good jobs lasting for a long period of time, than passing these trade bills and doing it now. Thank God the President has said he would sign them.

According to the National Association of Manufacturers, 100,000 jobs will be created by the implementation of these trade agreements. There are estimates from other sources that suggest the number of jobs may be even higher. The administration--and I believe rightly so--believes that the higher number of jobs being created would be in the few hundred thousand. The Obama administration estimates in the case of the Korea trade agreement alone 70,000 additional jobs for the U.S. workforce will be created.

Not only do these trade agreements expand opportunities for U.S. workers, they also present tremendous opportunities for American agriculture. It is estimated that the Korean agreement could increase the price farmers receive for pigs by $10 per head. So you see in the case of Delaware, where Senator Carper says it is good for his poultry industry because that is so dominant there, where larger livestock is so dominant in the Midwest, in my State of Iowa, it is going to be a very good agreement as well.

The Colombian agreement will level the playing field for U.S. corn farmers so they can begin to reclaim some of the market share they lost due to high tariffs for our products going down there. We have lost markets not just because of the high tariffs but because Colombia, in the last 5 years, has reached agreements with other countries that have allowed those countries, through their agricultural products-- particularly grain--to take over the share of the Colombian market that American agriculture previously had.

The agreement with the country of Panama will bring about better opportunities for a variety of agricultural products, including beef, poultry, and pork, to name a few.

We have been waiting a long time to get to this point, and so, as I have said two or three times, because I am satisfied we are going to get the job done, I am eager to cast my vote in support of all three agreements. But as the finish line nears on these agreements, the American people should be asking why President Obama has dragged his feet on these agreements for so long. There has been a lot of wasted time and tax dollars with stimulus programs that were supposed to create jobs but did not produce any measurable amount of jobs; whereas, if these agreements had been in place, these jobs we are talking about creating from this day forward would probably have already been created. The stimulus plan failed to do what President Obama promised Americans, but I am telling you these trade agreements will do what President Obama promises the American people, they will do in the way of creating jobs.

Of course, the President wants to try it again with yet another costly stimulus program, as we were debating yesterday. We don't need more government spending to create jobs. We know that doesn't work. What we need to do is create an environment so the private sector will create jobs. We know what works, and these agreements are part of what works to create jobs. We need to continue opening markets for U.S. exports, and that is what these agreements will do. We need to pass these trade agreements and do it now. American workers need them now and the unemployed need the new jobs that will be created as a result of these agreements.

But for the economic future of our country, we should not stop with these

three trade agreements. The President can provide certainty to businesses, farmers, and workers by renewing his commitment to expanding trade opportunities. The best way to do that is to ask Congress to renew his authority to negotiate free-trade agreements through a long-used cooperative process between the Congress and the executive branch of government, involving the Congress giving the President what is called trade promotion authority so he can work further agreements.

In January of 2010, the President said he wanted to double exports by 2015, and that was welcome news. But actions speak louder than words, Mr. President. The President has repeatedly delayed these trade deals. He has routinely dodged the question of when he would request authority for trade promotion to negotiate new agreements, and he has not laid out a clear strategic plan for in fact reaching the trade goals he expressed at the beginning of 2010. We are now nearly 2 years further down the road from that discussion he had.

While it may be tough to reach the goals of doubling exports by 2015, we can still push on toward that goal, as we should. The more we do to open new markets and then get out of the way, the more we will help our struggling economy. There are three steps to continue helping U.S. businesses, farmers, and most of all the workers of America-- particularly the unemployed workers of America. First, we need to pass these three trade agreements with no more political gamesmanship by this administration, and I think we are over that hurdle. Secondly, Congress should pass trade promotion authority so the administration can responsibly seek opportunities for greater market access for U.S. products. Finally, the administration must make it a top priority to actually seek more opportunities for opening foreign markets for our products.

We live in a global economy. We once led the way in forming trade agreements and expanding trade relationships. The rest of the world waited for the United States to take the first step.

In recent years, we have lost our way. The rest of the world isn't going to wait on the United States as they did for the last 60 years. That is why we have lost market share in Colombia that I just spoke about as one example.

We need to reestablish our position as a world leader in opening and expanding markets. Passing these trade agreements is crucial and long overdue, but it is a necessary first step. The next step is for the President to seek trade promotion authority and get back in the game leading the rest of the world.

I urge my colleagues to help U.S. businesses, farmers, our workers, and, most importantly, our unemployed workers by voting in support of the Panama, Colombia, and South Korea trade agreements.

I yield the floor.

I would like to take a few moments before we have a vote this afternoon to discuss a serious concern I have about the original stimulus package, and I want the Senate to consider my remarks and my research as we consider the President's latest modified so- called jobs bill--in actuality, stimulus bill No. 2. I want to ensure the taxpayers' money is spent responsibly on programs that create viable, long-term jobs, not lost to waste, fraud, and abuse. The marching orders for the stimulus funding under the Obama administration have been ``spend now, chase later.'' But when governments spend money quickly, it

leads to massive waste, fraud, and abuse.

President Obama promised us he would use ``the new tools that the Recovery Act gives us to watch the taxpayers' money with more vigor and transparency than ever'' before. He also said that ``if a Federal agency proposes a project that will waste that money,'' he would ``put a stop to it.'' It is past time for the President to live up to his words because we all know, up to now, that certainly hasn't been the case. I will give several examples.

A year ago, I asked the Department of Labor to explain why $500 million in green job training grants had been spent when the Department had just asked the public to help them define just what a green job is. Now, over a year later, the Department of Labor's inspector general issued an audit report showing that the President's promises are much different from reality. The reality is that only 8,000 program participants found employment--only 10 percent of the promised results. The reality is that $300 million still remains unspent in the program. The reality is that this money won't be spent or produce the jobs before the grants expire. But instead of learning from this failure and using this money for more effective job training, the administration continues to push good money after bad into so-called green jobs, which I don't think has actually even yet been defined to this very day.

The administration left much of stimulus 1 oversight to the inspector general offices of the respective departments but has largely disregarded their findings and recommendations. I strongly support efforts of our inspectors general and am extremely frustrated that the administration ignores rather than enforces the recommendations of the various inspectors general.

Thanks to the audit work performed by these IGs, I have also questioned the administration's ability to track stimulus funding after it was distributed to the first recipients. For instance, the Department of Education provided $1.7 billion to the State of New York even though the inspector general reported that the State has ``serious internal deficiencies'' that would make tracking the money extremely difficult.

The Housing and Urban Development Office of Inspector General released a series of reports that questioned why additional funding was given to troubled housing authorities with significant financial and management problems. HUD Secretary Donovan stated that these housing authorities needed that money to improve their inventory and make needed upgrades.

The weatherization program has also been fraught with waste. The inspector general found that in many cases contractors never did the work, and some work was so shoddy that it endangered the health and safety of the owners.

I continue to raise strong concerns about the Department of Energy's failure to monitor State and territory programs.

I am not aware that the administration has ever demanded any of the taxpayers' money back, even for the blatant cases of waste, fraud, and abuse.

The administration also spent $84 million of the stimulus funding to establish the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to guard against wasteful spending. The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board can hold hearings and compel testimony about stimulus fund waste. I have referred two cases to this board, but so far it has refused to use this authority. In the first case, HUD's Office of Inspector General questioned nearly $32 million of stimulus money spent by the Philadelphia Housing Authority to rehabilitate scattered-site housing. According to the inspector general's report, most of the work was never done and the housing authority couldn't provide detailed invoices to show what the contractors were charging the government for.

I also referred the $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy to Solyndra because I understand the board may have detected possible problems with guarantees.

So President Obama made lots of promises about transparency and accountability when he asked Congress to pass the first stimulus bill. Before we consider giving him another over $400 billion, the President needs to turn his promises into reality or it is the American taxpayers who will lose once again, even beyond the examples I have already given.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the motion to proceed to this latest modified tax-and-spend proposal that even the Washington Post has called ``political.''

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, today we are going to consider the nomination of Jane Margaret Triche-Milazzo to be U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Before I make my remarks regarding the nomination, I want to respond to some comments made on the floor last Thursday evening because I am really amazed and very disappointed by the continuing allegations that Senate Republicans are delaying, obstructing, or otherwise blocking judicial nominations. One Member stated that we ``filibuster everything and require 60 votes on everything, including judges.'' That statement is without merit, and so I am here to set the record straight.

We are making very good progress in the consideration and confirmation of President Obama's judicial nominations. In fact, we have taken positive action on 84 percent of President Obama's judicial nominees. We heard from five judicial nominees in committee last week, reported five more to the floor, and continue to hold regular votes on judicial nominees. President Obama's circuit court nominees are waiting, on average, only 66 days to receive a hearing. Now, compare that to the 247 days President Bush's circuit nominees were forced to wait. The same can be said for district court nominees, who have only waited 79 days under President Obama. Nominees

from President Bush waited on average 100 days for a hearing. You can understand why I am disturbed because some people say there is a Republican effort not to cooperate on moving these judges.

The reporting process has also favored President Obama's judicial nominees. On average, President Obama's circuit court nominees have only waited 116 days to be reported out of committee. President Bush's circuit court nominees waited over 369 days to be reported. District court nominees are no different. President Obama's nominees for the district courts have waited 129 days, while President Bush's district court nominees waited over 148 days.

The accusations that we are filibustering or requiring 60 votes on everything including judges is not supported by the facts. We have confirmed 43 judicial nominees this year. With the vote today we will have confirmed over 66 percent of President Obama's judicial nominees since the beginning of his administration. During our consideration of the 98 judicial nominations submitted during this Congress, there have been two cloture votes. One of those nominees was confirmed. The other was withdrawn.

In the last Congress there were four cloture motions made in relationship to 105 judicial nominations submitted. I remind my colleagues that at least 18 of President Bush's judicial nominations were subjected to cloture motions, many of them having multiple cloture votes. According to my count, there were approximately 30 cloture votes on Bush judicial nominees.

There has to be a double standard on the part of my colleagues who somehow forget the history or somehow do not know how to count or sometimes, if they do read the numbers, do not know what the numbers mean.

Another colleague of mine stated last Thursday night that he could not remember a time during his long service in the Senate when judges would sit on the calendar for months. It was not that long ago, while the current majority party was in the minority, when qualified nominees sat on the Senate calendar for months. In most cases, when finally afforded a vote, they received unanimous support. These included Juan Sanchez, who was nominated for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania; William Duffey, Jr., who was nominated for the Northern District of Georgia; Mark Filip, who was nominated for the Northern District of Illinois; Gary Sharpe, who was nominated for the Northern District of New York; and James Robart, who was nominated for the Western District, State of Washington. These are just a few of President Bush's district court nominees who sat on the calendar for well over 3 months, yet received unanimous support in their confirmation votes.

I wonder if my colleagues remember William Haynes, President Bush's nominee to sit on the Fourth Circuit. He waited 638 days on the Senate calendar in the 108th Congress alone before being returned to the President. All in all, Mr. Haynes put his life on hold for 1,173 days without ever receiving an up-or-down vote.

Another of President Bush's circuit court nominees, Raymond Kethledge, waited 23 months before being confirmed by the Senate and was then confirmed--can you believe it--on a voice vote.

I am not providing these facts to engage in a tit-for-tat, but when I hear colleagues misstate facts and can't understand numbers and can't count, I have to set the record straight.

Shortly we will vote on Jane M. Triche-Milazzo, who is nominated to be the U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana. She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree from Nicholls State University in 1977 and then worked for some time as an elementary school teacher before beginning to work in her father's law office. In 1992, Judge Triche-Milazzo graduated with a juris doctorate from Louisiana State University, Paul M. Herbert Law Center. She spent the entirety of her legal career practicing at Risley Triche, LLC, first as an associate and later to become a partner.

In 2008 she was elected judge for Louisiana's 23rd judicial district. She is a Louisiana State District Court judge for Division D of the 23rd judicial district bench. She was the first female judge elected to that judicial district bench. Judge Triche-Milazzo received a unanimous ``qualified'' rating from the ABA Committee on the Federal Judiciary, so I am pleased to support this fine nominee and thank her for her service.

Madam President, I am here to discuss S. 1619, the currency exchange rate oversight bill. I support this bill. Back in 2007, I helped draft some of the language that is contained in this current bill.

China is a big beneficiary of international trade, yet it fails to allow its currency to float freely. As a result, U.S. exporters get cheated. It is time we do something to send the message that enough is enough.

I am all for free trade, I want free trade. Free trade helps our farmers, manufacturers, and our Nation as a whole. There is talk that this bill will cause a trade war with China. I am not convinced that is the case. Plus, keep in mind, this bill is about more than China. This bill is a much needed overhaul of a law that dates back to 1988. This bill puts in meaningful consequences for countries that do not address their currency manipulation.

All of that being said, I have to say I do not support the way this bill is being brought to a vote. While I want a vote on this bill and I want to vote for this bill, my colleagues should have the right to offer and debate their respective amendments. The majority leader's use of cloture to prevent the meaningful debate on motions is unacceptable. It is more of the same partisan politics that the American people are tired of. And in this instance, when there is bipartisan support for the bill, the majority leader's heavyhanded approach just doesn't make sense.

That is why, even though I support the currency bill, I am voting against cloture. If cloture fails, I sincerely hope we can have a meaningful debate and still move toward passage of this important legislation.

Mr. President, today, I have the great honor and pleasure to recognize this year's Fellows for the Davidson Institute for Talent Development. This year, 18 young people under the age of 18 have been awarded scholarships of $50,000, $25,000, or $10,000 for having demonstrated superior ability and achievement and having completed a significant piece of work in the areas of science, music, literature, mathematics, or technology. I would like to take this time to introduce each of these scholars and the various projects they have undertaken.

In the area of science, we have eight young students with remarkable projects that have contributed to scientific progress. Among this group of scholars is Shalini Ramanan. A 17-year-old young woman from Richland, WA, Shalini Ramanan worked with a natural dietary component of the spice turmeric called BC to test its effectiveness in treating cardiovascular diseases. Through cell migration assays and western blot techniques, she discovered that BC inhibited platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF)-induced vascular smooth muscle cell migration and signaling. Using bioinformatics, she identified target genes connected with signaling pathways. PDGF-stimulated cell-migration and proliferation are key pathological events in a variety of diseases including atherosclerosis and cancer. Her studies may help design and characterize novel drug molecules with clinical applications.

A 17-year-old young man from Mahopac, NY, Jayanth Krishnan developed an approach to infer regulatory mechanisms governing changes in gene expression and identified possible proteins that induce cancer. By creating a web interface that could predict transcription factors for dis-regulated genes, and mathematical models using MATLAB, he was able to predict proteins that are correlated with certain cancer families. Using this information, he calculated several combinations of drugs, for 60 different cancers, that have the potential to counteract the inducing agents and better guide therapeutics.

Lucy Wang, a 17-year-old young woman from Garnet Valley, PA, developed a predictive model to detect adolescent depression with an overall correct classification of 83.66 percent. Untreated depression is the No. 1 cause of suicide and the third leading cause of death among teenagers. Using factor analysis and logistic regression, she focused on quantifying variables that may lead to adolescent depression, including student self-reported experiences and demographics. Lucy's model

will offer a robust instrument for school psychologists to evaluate the risk of future depression.

A 17-year-old young man from Houston, TX, Sunil Pai constructed an inexpensive, nanotechnology-based system to determine quantum energies of superoxide. By examining oxygen in the liquid phase instead of the gas phase, his potentiostat system can determine the quantum structure for the electron attachment reaction of oxygen to superoxide. The determination of oxygen's physical properties is essential to fully understanding the role oxygen and many free radicals have in cell processes. This experimentation method may establish other molecular properties that will offer new insights into biological and environmental processes.

Caleb Kumar, a 15-year-old young man from Blaine, MN, developed an algorithm that automates the diagnosis of bladder cancer. Bladder cancer is on the rise with more than 71,000 new cases in 2009. By first identifying indicative bladder cancer cellular characteristics, Caleb programmed morphometric algorithms to quantitatively examine the bladder cell images, and then engineered a Java neural network that differentiates cancerous cells from normal cells based on shape, color and curvature. Caleb's software is accurate, quick and inexpensive compared to current methods, and has the potential to provide faster, cheaper and more precise diagnoses of cytological diseases.

A 17-year-old young man from Bloomfield Hills, MI, Siddhartha Jena demonstrated that the immediate effect of elevated cholesterol is dysfunction of active water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide transport by the red blood cells. Using a spectrofluorometer and Zeta Sizer, he showed that exposure of red blood cells to two compounds: ONO-RS-082 and glyburide, results in an amelioration of cholesterol's detrimental effects. Results from his work broaden the understanding of one of the most significant health risks facing our society, and the possible mechanism for its future treatment and management.

Benjamin Clark, a 15-year-old young man from Lancaster, PA, determined the frequency at which M stars form close binary star systems using spectroscopic data from over 39,000 M dwarf stars. Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, SDSS, Benjamin designed a methodology to use the extremely large, but low resolution and signal-to-noise ratio database, to calculate the close binary fraction. Star formation has long been an open question in astrophysics and this data can be used to test theories of how this process occurs.

A 16-year-old young woman from Lancaster, PA, Marian Bechtel designed a seismo-acoustic method for detecting landmines. Approximately 70 million landmines plague 80 countries worldwide, claiming one victim every 22 minutes. With Marian's method, two high-sensitivity, non- contact microphones are swept above buried landmines that resonate in response to a remote seismic source. The recorded sound is noise- cancelled in real-time, creating a characteristic, audible null in the noise-cancelled waveform that isolates the mine's location. This efficient and inexpensive method could make important contributions to humanitarian demining.

Raja Selvakumar, a 15-year-old young man from Alpharetta, GA, developed the gastro microbial fuel cell, GMFC. Based on the microbial fuel cell, the GMFC generates electricity using gastrobacteria, to be used to power capsular nanobots. Current lithium ion batteries in biomedical capsular nanobots are not able to sustain power for long periods of time; the GMFC has the potential to solve this problem. The GMFC-powered capsular nanobot can play an important role in treating gastrointestinal diseases through intracellular diagnosis and surgery.

In the area of mathematics, there are three young people who I would like to recognize at this time. Matthew Bauerle, a 16-year-old young man from Fenton, MI, outlined how the Newton direction can be computed by solving a weighted linear least squares problem. When fitting a model to data, such as a line to a set of points, the least squares method is currently the most popular technique. Matthew's work focused on minimizing the L1 norm of the error which is the sum of the absolute values of the individual errors. Matthew's work has potential in the medical imaging and scanning fields, as well as facial recognition and fluid dynamics simulations.

A 16-year-old young woman from Carmel, IN, Rebecca Chen studied a generalized version of the Yang-Baxter equation. The Yang-Baxter equation provides a systematic method for discovering braid group representations, important in topology and quantum information science. Using algebraic computations and computer numerical checking, she classified three families of 8x8 matrix solutions to the generalized Yang-Baxter equation. These solutions provide a way to generate braiding quantum gates needed in quantum computing, and contribute to the ongoing effort to build a large-scale quantum computer, bringing advances in fields as far ranging as materials sciences and cryptography.

Anirudh Prabhu, a 16-year-old young man from West Lafayette, IN, established the first nontrivial analytic lower bounds for odd perfect numbers. The search for odd perfect numbers is one of the oldest unsolved problems in mathematics. Many upper bounds for odd perfect numbers are established, however, no nontrivial analytic lower bounds had been reported prior to Anirudh's work. By narrowing the gap between analytic upper and lower bounds, his work suggests an approach for proving the nonexistence of odd perfect numbers and could contribute to data encryption technology.

Two remarkable young people received awards for their technology projects. A 16-year-old young man from Columbia, SC, Arjun Aggarwal created GNut-III, an anthropometric interactive robot with vision, intelligence and speech. He found the lack of an economically efficient and functional human robot has prohibited researchers from continuing to expand the field of robotics. To counter this, the GNut-III is economically efficient and functional for testing robotic algorithms. In addition to the GNut-III, Arjun has outlined a scattered open source community to work on a standardized platform that could transform robotics in the same way it has transformed computing.

A 16-year-old young woman from Rochester, MN, Cheenar Banerjee developed a method for emotion detection by computers. It remains a challenge for computers to recognize and respond correctly to the emotional states of an interactive user. After removing some facial detail by converting facial images to black-and-white sketches, Cheenar used fractal analyses to differentiate among emotions using the fractal dimensions. This process has the potential to be simpler, cheaper and more effective than current techniques of emotion detection by computers.

In the area of music, I would like to recognize three more scholars. A 14-year-old young woman from Seattle, WA, Simone Porter, in her violin portfolio, Performance as Soundtrack of Process and Identity, examines the progression of performance preparation, from the development of technique and interpretation, to the emergence of a professional identity. This process led her to comprehend the transformative, inspirational and transcendent potency music possesses. Through performance, Simone believes music has the potential to aid our society, and help achieve a kinder, more tolerant attitude toward ourselves and our natural environment. Simone was a featured performer on PBS' ``From the Top at Carnegie Hall.''

A 16-year-old young woman from Gates Mills, OH, Arianna Korting, in her portfolio, Celebration of Life through the Piano, showcased Haydn, Ginastera and Liszt. Through the piano, she hopes to bring audiences into the lives of the great composers to experience their humor, tenderness and brilliance. She believes music has the power to transform space and time because it has been a constant presence even through the most difficult moments in history. Arianna has been featured on NPR's ``From the Top,'' and started The Animato Project, an interactive program of classical music for elementary school children.

Reylon Yount, a 16-year-old young man from San Francisco, CA, created a yangqin, or Chinese hammered dulcimer, portfolio that has contributed

to the preservation of Chinese music, to the introduction of Chinese music to people in the United States, and to the overall interconnection of the music world. His work attempts to take people past the conventional shapes and forms of Western music, helping them appreciate the universality of art. He hopes that such cross-cultural music will build a deeper connection between the East and West, and inspire people to love all music.

And finally, I would like to introduce Bonnie Nortz, a 17-year old young woman with superior achievement in the area of literature. Bonnie's portfolio, Run and Run and Run, explores relationships, identity, materialism, oppression and emotion, and covers topics as broad as tourism, grammar, dreams, cartography, winter and even pre- calculus. Her goal was to find the extraordinary in the mundane, the pure in the imperfect, and to describe that moment of awakening when everything is just the way it should be. Bonnie hopes to teach others how to go through life with an everlasting energy and curiosity and to appreciate the fantastic emotional and intellectual complexity that comprises our human existence.

I have long said that America's gifted and talented students possess remarkable potential for our great Nation. These 18 young individuals have demonstrated more than potential. They have already made significant contributions to their fields and our society in their short lives and one can scarcely begin to imagine how much they will contribute to their fields and society in the years to come, thanks in no small part to the encouragement of the Davidson Institute as well as their, family, friends, and mentors. These young men and women are an inspiration and a reminder that if we fully support our most talented young people, we can look forward to a bright future.