Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, today, the Senate will confirm six more of President Obama's judicial nominees. Four of these vacancies have been deemed to be judicial emergencies. With these votes, we will have confirmed over 44 percent of the judicial nominees submitted by President Obama during this Congress, and 66 percent of all his judicial nominees.

As I have stated, the confirmation of executive and judicial appointments is one of the highest responsibilities of the Senate. It is a duty I take seriously. It is not, as some have suggested--a pro forma process. We are not here to merely rubberstamp the President's nominees. Sometimes that process takes a little time. It is the Senate's right and duty to review thoroughly the record, qualifications, and temperament of nominees. Above all, the process is to be treated with respect and with dignity. This is important for the nominees, for the Senate, and for public confidence in our constitutional process.

So I was disturbed to read recent news reports regarding what was described as an induction ceremony in the Northern District of California for

Judge Edward Chen. I believe, at this event, Judge Chen showed disrespect to the Senate and to the confirmation process. I regret that I would have to spend any time on this, and take away from the confirmation of the pending nominees. But there are important points that need to be addressed to protect our process and our members.

The Senate confirmed Judge Chen last May by a 52-46 vote. Needless to say, he was not a consensus nominee. Among the concerns about this nomination was Judge Chen's judicial philosophy, his willingness to adopt the ``empathy standard,'' and concern that he would not set aside his personal views--largely shaped by his long association with the ACLU. Remarks reportedly made at this recent event indicate our concerns were valid.

I have not seen a transcript of the event, but an article entitled ``Chen Toasted, Republicans Roasted'' makes this look more like a political rally rather than a judicial event. Chief Judge Ware, in commenting on Judge Chen's confirmation quipped, ``It made me wonder if Judge Chen should be running for political office.'' That is what many of us thought was more appropriate for Judge Chen, rather than appointment as a Federal judge.

The news article describes remarks made by Judge Chen, which I can only describe as mocking one of our members, Senator Sessions. This is distasteful, if not ironic. It was only after a personal appeal by Senator Feinstein to Senator Sessions that the vote on Judge Chen went forward. Senator Sessions agreed to that vote and pressed other Members to let the vote proceed. If the press accounts are accurate, I believe Judge Chen owes an apology to Senator Sessions.

Judge Chen went on to again embrace his ACLU background, stating, ``Having the ACLU in your DNA is not a disease, it's an honor.'' As I have said before, Judge Chen's advocacy on behalf of the ACLU is not disqualifying, by itself. But I have to wonder about the impartiality of Judge Chen. More importantly, what are potential litigants appearing before Judge Chen to think. If the ACLU is an opposing litigant, is there any way to think Judge Chen can be fair and impartial. I would think mandatory recusal would be required in any ACLU case coming before him.

Federal Judges must abide by the code of conduct for United States Judges. I will withhold judgment on whether or not Judge Chen violated those canons, but in my opinion he clearly went too far--particularly with regard to the requirement to uphold the integrity of the judiciary, to avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities, and to refrain from political activity. I hope Judge Chen realizes the important responsibility he has and acts accordingly in the future. I also hope this is a lesson to other nominees--that they treat this process with respect, even after confirmation and appointment.

I have been working throughout this Congress to confirm consensus nominees. I continue to remind my colleagues of the progress we have made. With a hearing in the Judiciary Committee scheduled for tomorrow, 85 percent of President Obama's judicial nominees will have received a hearing. At this point in President Bush's presidency, only 77 percent had been afforded a hearing.

Not only have we processed a higher percentage of nominees, but we have done it in shorter times. President Obama's circuit court nominees have only had to wait, on average, 66 days for a hearing. President Bush's circuit court nominees were forced to wait 247 days. In fact, we will be hearing from a Fourth Circuit nominee tomorrow after only 26 days in committee. None of President Bush's circuit court nominees were afforded a hearing that quickly. President Bush's Fourth Circuit nominees were particularly treated in a harsh manner. My friends on the other side of the aisle allowed four qualified and consensus nominees to languish at a time when the Fourth Circuit was one-quarter vacant.

President Obama's district court nominees have also received better treatment. On average, they have only waited 79 days for a hearing. President Bush's district court nominees waited 247 days. These nominees are also being reported out of committee at a quicker pace as well. On average, President Obama's circuit and district court nominees have been reported more than 66 days faster than President Bush's.

All in all, we have taken positive action on 85 percent of President Obama's judicial nominees this Congress. Even though I am proud of this progress, I must note, I will continue to focus on quality confirmed over quantity confirmed.

Shortly, we will be voting on Henry Floyd, who is nominated to the appeals court for the Fourth Circuit. This is President Obama's fifth nominee to be confirmed to the Fourth Circuit alone. President Bush's nominee to the Fourth Circuit from South Carolina, Steve Matthews, did not receive the same treatment. In fact, he went 484 days without so much as a hearing, let alone an up-or-down vote. Not only that, he was blocked from being considered. I would note the seat to which he was nominated was subsequently filled by a nominee from North Carolina, rather than South Carolina where the vacancy arose.

Another vacancy we will be voting on tonight is the District of Arizona seat held by the late Judge Roll before his tragic and untimely death on January 8, 2011. The entire judicial community felt this great loss. After Judge Roll's murder, I repeatedly implored the administration to focus on filling this seat as quickly as possible. It was deemed to be a judicial emergency instantly. However, it took over 5 months for the administration to nominate Judge Jennifer Guerin Zipps to the seat, even though she was a sitting magistrate judge. Since the President took his time in submitting a nomination, I felt it appropriate to work with the chairman to move this nomination through in an expeditious manner. Nominated in late June of this year, Judge Zipps received her hearing a mere 34 days later. Judge Zipps was reported to the floor shortly after we returned from the August recess and I am happy we have continued this fast pace and are confirming her to a lifetime position today.

In addition to Judge Floyd and Judge Zipps, we will confirm Nannette Jolivette Brown to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana; Nancy Torresen to be United States District Judge for the District of Maine; William Francis Kuntz to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York; and Marina Garcia Marmolejo to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Texas.

I am pleased to support each of these nominees. I thank them for their public service and congratulate them on their prior accomplishments and confirmation today.

I would like to say a few words about each of the nominees.

Henry F. Floyd, is nominated to be a circuit judge for the Fourth Circuit. This seat has been deemed to be a judicial emergency. Mr. Floyd is currently a U.S. district court judge for the District of South Carolina. He was nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush in 2003, and has sat by designation on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit several times.

Prior to joining the bench, Judge Floyd was elected by the South Carolina General Assembly to serve as a circuit court judge for the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit in 1992.

He began his legal career in private practice, first as a solo practitioner and eventually forming the law firm of Floyd & Welmaker, which then merged with Acker & Acker. He focused on civil, criminal and domestic litigation as well as trust and commercial law. He also served as an attorney for Pickens County while maintaining his full-time law partnership. Judge Floyd is a graduate from Wofford College and received a Juris Doctorate from the University of South Carolina. It was during his second year of law school when Judge Floyd was elected to the South Carolina House of Representative, serving three terms until 1978.

The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has rated Judge Floyd with a unanimous ``Well Qualified'' rating.

Nannette Jolivette Brown is nominated to the Eastern District of Louisiana. Ms. Brown currently serves as city attorney for the city of New Orleans, where she represents the city as its chief legal officer. Prior to that, Ms. Brown was in private practice, working on real estate, environmental, personal

injury, insurance, commercial and business law. She taught a number of courses at Southern University Law Center, and was a clinical professor at Loyola University.

From 1994 to 1996, Ms. Brown served as the Director of Sanitation for New Orleans. She was also a teaching fellow at Tulane Law School. Ms. Brown is a graduate from the University of Southwestern Louisiana and received her J.D. and L.L.M from Tulane Law School.

The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has rated Ms. Brown with a unanimous ``Qualified'' rating.

Nancy Torresen is nominated to be United States District Judge for the District of Maine. Since 2001, Ms. Torresen has served in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of Maine. She has investigated and prosecuted Federal crimes in the northern half of the district.

From 1994 to 2001, the Department of Justice detailed Ms. Torresen to the Maine Department of the Attorney General Criminal Division in the Appellate Section. In this position, Ms. Torresen represented the state of Maine in appeals of serious violent crime convictions.

From 1990 to 1994, Ms. Torresen served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Maine. She represented a variety of federal agencies in litigation involving medical malpractice, employment and discrimination cases.

She began her legal career as a law clerk with the Honorable Conrad K. Cyr, of the United States District Court for the District of Maine. In 1988, she joined Williams and Connolly as an associate, working on medical malpractice, libel, and contract disputes. Ms. Torresen is a graduate from Hope College with a B.A. and from the University of Michigan School Of Law with a juris doctorate.

The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has unanimously rated Ms. Torresen as ``Well Qualified.''

William Francis Kuntz, II, is nominated to the Eastern District of New York. This seat also has been deemed to be a judicial emergency. Since 1986, he has been a partner with a number of private law firms. While he has focused his practice on commercial litigation, he has represented financial services institutions, and large industrial entities.

From 1987 through 2010, Mr. Kuntz was appointed by Mayors Koch, Dinkins, Giuliani and Bloomberg, and confirmed by the New York City Council, to serve on the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, CCRB. As a commissioner, he has reviewed thousands of complaints filed by citizens against New York City police officers. Mr. Kuntz has taught courses in American Legal History at Brooklyn Law School.

Mr. Kuntz received his bachelor of arts, a master of arts, a juris doctorate, and a Ph.D from Harvard University.

The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has unanimously rated Mr. Kuntz as ``Well Qualified.''

Marina Garcia Marmolejo, is nominated to the Southern District of Texas. This is another judicial emergency seat. Ms. Marmolejo is currently a partner with Reid Davis LLP., where she has been focusing on complex commercial cases. Prior to this, she served as Of Counsel for two firms, working on complex Federal and State criminal defense matters, public corruption matters, criminal tax fraud, health care fraud, and mortgage fraud.

In 1999, Ms. Marmolejo worked briefly for the law offices of Jesus M. Dominguez before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas. As an AUSA, Ms. Marmolejo was assigned to the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force where she handled narcotics cases and money laundering investigations.

After graduating from law school, Ms. Marmolejo joined the Federal Public Defender's Office for the Western District of Texas as Assistant Public Defender where she remained until 1998. She then moved to the Federal Public Defender's Office for the Southern District of Texas where she again served as an Assistant Public Defender until 1999.

Ms. Marmolejo is a graduate of the University of Incarnate Word and received her master of arts from St. Mary's University Graduate School, and her Juris Doctorate, cum laude, from St. Mary's School of Law.

The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has rated Ms. Marmolejo unanimously ``Qualified.''

Jennifer Guerin Zipps, nominated to be United States District Judge for the District of Arizona. As I mentioned, this seat has been deemed to be a judicial emergency. Judge Zipps has served as a U.S. magistrate judge since 2005. Prior to her serving on the bench, Judge Zipps served as an assistant U.S. attorney. While in that role, Judge Zipps was promoted to chief of the civil division. She also has private practice experience, serving as an associate in the firm of Molloy, Jones & Donahue. She began her legal career as a clerk for Judge William C. Canby of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Judge Zipps is a graduate of the University of Arizona and received her juris doctorate from Georgetown Law. The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has rated Judge Zipps unanimously ``Well Qualified.''

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

Mr. President, we are on judicial nominees; is that right?

I would like to, first of all, yield such time as he might consume, before I speak, to the Senator from South Carolina so he can speak about one of the judges that are up for nomination.

Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on the nomination of John Andrew Ross to be U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Missouri, and also Timothy M. Cain, to be district judge for the District of South Carolina.

Both seats have been deemed to be judicial emergencies. With these votes, we have confirmed 67 article 3 judicial nominees during this Congress. Of these, 23 have been for such judicial emergency type districts. I am pleased that we continue to have great progress in lessening the burden of our overworked courts, particularly concentrating upon judicial emergencies.

I am somewhat surprised in the delay in bringing these votes we are going to have today to the full Senate, at the majority leader's request.

Senate Republicans cleared these votes nearly 2 weeks ago, with the anticipation that the Senate would vote on these nominees last Monday, September 12. So I hope everyone understands these nominees could have been confirmed 8 days ago. It was not the Republicans then holding up these for the last 8 days.

As I noted, we continue to make great progress in proceeding to President Obama's judicial nominees. These votes today are somewhat of a milestone. They are the 99th and 100th confirmation of President Obama's judicial nominees. As of today the Senate has confirmed 63 percent of President Obama's judicial nominees since the beginning of his Presidency.

Earlier today the Senate Judiciary Committee held its 14th nomination hearing. We have now heard from 82 percent of President Obama's judicial nominees this Congress. At this point in the 108th Congress, only 79 percent of President Bush's judicial nominees had received a hearing. We have also reported 69 percent of President Obama's judicial nominees compared to 67 percent of President Bush's.

I am pleased with the progress and will continue to move forward with consensus nominees.

Now I would like to say a few words about these two nominees.

John Ross is nominated to be U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Missouri. He presently serves as a circuit judge for the 21st Judicial District in Missouri. Appointed to that position by the Governor in January 2000, Judge Ross was retained by the voters in Missouri in the retention elections of 2002 and 2008. During his tenure, Judge Ross was elected assistant presiding judge by his judicial colleagues in that circuit and served in that office from 2005 to 2009. He was subsequently elected as presiding judge and has served in that capacity from 2009 until now.

Prior to his appointment to the State bench, Judge Ross served as county counselor for St. Louis County and in the St. Louis County's Prosecuting Attorney's Office. He is a graduate of Emory University and the Emory School of Law. The American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary unanimously rated Judge Ross ``well qualified.''

Timothy M. Cain is nominated to be U.S. district judge of South Carolina. Judge Cain presently serves as a South Carolina Family Court judge in the Tenth Judicial Circuit. The South Carolina General Assembly elected him to that position in 2000 and reelected him in 2004 and 2010. In 2005 the chief justice of South Carolina's Supreme Court appointed Judge Cain to serve as the chief administrative judge for the Family Court of the Tenth Judicial Circuit. By designation of the chief justice, Judge Cain also served as acting associate justice for the South Carolina Supreme Court on several occasions.

Prior to his judicial service, Judge Cain had a distinguished private practice in South Carolina. He maintained a general practice and assisted in representing several local governments and municipal clients. During his years of private practice he also served the public sector. Judge Cain served as a part-time assistant public defender with the Oconee Defender Corporation in that State.

From 1988 to 1990 he served as assistant solicitor general for the Solicitor's Office of the Tenth Judicial Circuit, where he represented South Carolina in prosecuting child abuse and neglect cases and various criminal cases.

In 1992 the county supervisor appointed Judge Cain as county attorney for that home county.

He is a graduate from the University of South Carolina and the University of South Carolina School of Law. The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary unanimously rated Judge Cain ``qualified.''

I congratulate both nominees and yield the floor.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I wish to address the Senate for about 6 or 7 minutes on a trade issue that normally I would be offering an amendment on. I am not going to offer an amendment during this debate because I think it is very important we move forward with this legislation so, hopefully, the President will stop moving the goalposts and send to the Senate Panama, Colombia, and South Korea.

But the reason I address the issue of the general system of preferences is because, quite frankly, I am sick and tired of a lot of nations--that may not be considered developed yet but advanced very rapidly in the last 20 years--taking advantage of our GSP system. I do not mind them taking advantage of our GSP system, but what irritates me is a lot of times in WTO negotiations, they are the very same countries that are finding fault with the United States and Europe not giving enough on agricultural issues, as an example, at the very same time these countries have very high tariffs on our products getting into their country, when they get, under GSP, their products into our country duty free.

So, Mr. President, I want you to know I appreciate the fact we are finally debating the merits of trade legislation.

Most people agree that one way we can help our economy is by opening and expanding markets for American-made products. I look forward to the President, as I just said, sending us the free-trade agreements. In the meantime, much of the discussion has centered on the bill before us, the GSP and the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program.

While it is important for us to have a discussion on the merits of TAA, I do not want my colleagues to overlook the significance of the underlying bill. This bill extends the general system of preferences. This program provides one-way--and I want to emphasize--duty-free access to U.S. markets. So over a period of several decades, we have been awfully good to a lot of countries that we think we ought to help and we have been helping.

The basic principle, then, behind the GSP is to provide certain goods made in developing countries with preferential market access to the United States in the form of this duty-free status. The intention is to help spur economic growth in developing nations.

I support the premise that we can help developing countries by promoting trade. But I can also tell you that our patience is getting very thin with some of those countries, particularly when we see them not reciprocating in a way that they have the capability of reciprocating. Our trade relations, however, should increasingly be based upon reciprocity by which other countries will provide the same open access to U.S. exports. In other words, as those countries become more developed, we need to require that they move toward operating on a level playing field with the United States.

Congress needs to take, then, a hard look at GSP and scrutinize whether it is helping accomplish the U.S. trade agenda. I think we would find some of these countries coming up short. In another environment of discussing trade, I would be taking a different approach: that we would send a clear signal to some of these countries of our impatience, and they are going to have to graduate off GSP. If other nations believe they will always enjoy GSP, then what incentives do they have to open their markets to U.S. goods? That is why we ought to very much advance the system of graduating off GSP with some of those countries.

There are nations that benefit from GSP that, quite frankly, have moved beyond what I consider to be developing countries. I continue to question why we provide preferential treatment at all to the products from countries such as Brazil and India. These countries have at times worked against the trade interests of the United States, including resistance to reducing high tariffs on U.S. exports. Both of these countries have countless products competing in the global market with U.S. products.

I am not offering an amendment, as I have already said, to this GSP bill, not because I do not think my position is good but because I want to see the pending trade agreements submitted and approved by the Congress. I am not interested in raising any barriers that make that task more difficult than the President has already made it.

However, I will continue to push for reform of GSP. I urge my colleagues to take a close look at this program and consider the points I have raised in the past and I am raising right now but not raising in the form of an amendment that ought to be offered at this time.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I intend to object to proceeding to the nomination of Norm Eisen to be Ambassador to the Czech Republic at the Department of State for the following reasons.

I object to the proceeding to the nomination because of Mr. Eisen's role in the firing of the inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service, CNCS, and his lack of candor about that matter when questioned by congressional investigators. The details of Mr. Eisen's role in the firing and his misrepresentations about that matter are detailed in the Joint Minority Staff Report of the House Committee on Government Reform and the Senate Finance Committee, dated November 20, 2009. I would also ask unanimous consent that a letter of January 12, 2011, sent by myself and Congressman Issa to Mr. Bauer, then counsel to the President, be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senator Feinstein in cosponsoring a resolution designating the month of October 2011 as National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month. The abuse of prescription drugs and cold medicine is currently the fastest growing drug abuse trend in the country. According to the most recent National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), more and more people are turning to using controlled substances without a doctor's prescription. The same survey shows that nearly one-third of all respondents who initiated drug use in the past year used prescription drugs. People between the ages of 12 and 25 are the most common group to abuse these drugs.

More people are dying because of this abuse. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the unintentional deaths involving prescription narcotics increased 117 percent from the years 2001 to 2005. In my home State of Iowa, the Governor's Office of Drug Control Policy reports that at least 40 people died from an overdose of prescription painkillers in 2009. This represents a sharp increase in the last decade when only three people died from painkiller overdoses in 2000.

Abuse of over-the-counter, OTC, cough and cold medicines is also alarming. While these common cold medicines are safe and effective if used properly, the abuse of these medicines can also be destructive. According to a study conducted by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, nearly 1 in 10 young people between the ages of 12 and 17 have intentionally abused cough medicine to get high off its main ingredient dextromethorphan. This is a problem that cannot be ignored.

Millions of Americans use these medicines every year to treat a variety of symptoms due to injury, depression, insomnia, and the effects of the common cold. Many legitimate users of these drugs often do not use as much medication as the prescription contains. As a result, these drugs remain in the family medicine cabinet for months or years because people forget about them or do not know how to properly dispose of them. However, many of these drugs, when not properly used or administered, are just as addictive and deadly as street drugs like methamphetamine or cocaine.

According to the NSDUH, more than half of the people who abuse these drugs reported that they obtained OTC

and prescription drugs from a friend or relative or from the family medicine cabinet. As a result, groups and organizations like the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America have been reaching out to communities throughout the Nation to raise awareness of this growing drug abuse trend and encourage communities to tackle the problem head on. Many community antidrug coalitions, including those in Iowa, public health officials, and law enforcement officials have been holding townhalls, organizing community ``clean out your medicine cabinet'' events, and holding many other events to raise awareness of this growing abuse in an effort to reverse this trend.

We can stop the growing trend of medicine abuse in its tracks, but it will require all sectors of the community to join together to make it happen. The National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month resolution promotes the message that over-the-counter and prescription medicines must be taken as directed, and when used recreationally or in large doses they can have serious and deadly consequences. This resolution will help remind parents that access to drugs that are abused doesn't just happen in alleys and on the streets, but can often occur right in the home. I urge all my colleagues to join me in supporting this resolution.

Mr. President, I rise to rebut the points Senator Sessions made, and I do acknowledge, as he said on the floor, that 2 or more years ago I was on the same page he is on this issue. What has intervened, in the meantime, that causes me to differ from the position Senator Sessions is taking? It is a district court case giving justice to a company--as one client--that was denied that sort of justice because bureaucrats were acting in an arbitrary and capricious way.

Senator Sessions makes the point you get equal justice under the law from the judicial branch of government and that Congress should not try to override that sort of situation. Congress isn't overriding anything with the language in the House bill that he wants to strike because that interest was satisfied by a judge's decision; saying that a particular entity was denied equal justice under the law because a bureaucrat, making a decision on just exactly what counts as 60 days, was acting in an arbitrary and capricious way. So this language in the House bill has nothing to do with helping a special interest. That special interest was satisfied by a judge who said an entity was denied equal justice under the law because a bureaucrat was acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner.

This amendment is not about a special interest. This amendment is about

uniformity of law throughout the country because it is wrong--as the judge says--for a bureaucracy to have one sort of definition of when 60 days begins--whether it is after business hours, if something goes out, or, if something comes in, it includes the day it comes in. So we are talking about how we count 60 days, and it is about making sure there is a uniform standard for that based upon law passed by Congress and not upon one judge's decision that applies to one specific case.

I would say, since this case has been decided, there are at least three other entities that have made application to the Patent Office to make sure they would get equal justice under the law in the same way the entity that got help through the initial decision of the judge. So this is not about special relief for one company. This is about what is a business day and having a uniform definition in the law of the United States of what a business day is, not based upon one district court decision that may not be applied uniformly around our Nation.

So it is about uniformity and not about some bailout, as Senator Sessions says. It is not about some ferocious lobbying effort, as Senator Sessions has said. It is not just because one person was 1 hour late or 1 day late, because how do you know whether they are 1 hour late or 1 day late if there is a different definition under one circumstance of when 60 days starts and another definition under other circumstances of when a 60-day period tolls?

Also, I would suggest to Senator Sessions that this is not Congress interfering in a court case that is under appeal because the government lost this case and the government is not appealing. Now, there might be some other entity appealing for their own interests to take advantage of something that is very unique to them.

But just in case we have short memories, I would remind my colleagues that Congress does sometimes interject itself into the appeal process, and I would suggest one time we did that very recently, maybe 6 years ago--and that may not be very recent, but it is not as though we never do it--and that was the Protection of Lawful Commerce Act of 2005, when Congress interjected itself into an issue to protect gun manufacturers from pending lawsuits. It happens that 81 Senators supported that particular effort to interject ourselves into a lawsuit.

So, Mr. President, in a more formal way, I want to repeat some of what I said this past summer when I came to the Senate floor and suggested to the House of Representatives that I would appreciate very much if they would put into the statutes of the United States a uniform definition of a business day and not leave it up to a court to maybe set that standard so that it might not be applied uniformly and, secondly, to make sure it was done in a way that was treating everybody the same, so everybody gets equal justice under the law, they know what the law is, and they don't have to rely upon maybe some court decision in one part of the country that maybe they can argue in another part of the country, and also to tell bureaucrats, as the judge said, that you can't act in an arbitrary and capricious way. But bureaucrats might act in an arbitrary and capricious way, in a way unknown to them, if we don't have a uniform definition of what a business day is.

So I oppose the effort to strike section 37 from the patent reform bill for the reasons I have just given, but also for the reasons that were already expounded by the chairman of this committee that at this late date, after 6 years of trying to get a patent reform bill done-- and we haven't had a patent reform bill for over a decade, and it is badly needed--we shouldn't jeopardize the possible passage of this bill to the President of the United States for his signature by sending it back to the other body and perhaps putting it in jeopardy. But, most important, I think we ought to have a clear signal of what is a business day, a definition of it, and this legislation and section 37 makes that very clear.

This past June, I addressed this issue in a floor statement, and I want to quote from that because I wanted my colleagues to understand why I hoped the House-passed bill would contain section 37 that was not in our Senate bill but that was passed out of the House Judiciary Committee unanimously. Speaking as ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee now and back in June when I spoke, I wanted the House Judiciary Committee to know that several Republican and Democratic Senators had asked me to support this provision as well.

Section 37 resulted from a recent Federal court case that had as its genesis the difficulty the FDA--the Food and Drug Administration--and the Patent Office face when deciding how to calculate Hatch-Waxman deadlines. The Hatch-Waxman law of the 1980s was a compromise between drug patent holders and the generic manufacturers. Under the Waxman- Hatch law, once a patent holder obtains market approval, the patent holder has 60 days to request the Patent Office to restore the patent terms--time lost because of the FDA's long deliberating process eating up valuable patent rights.

The citation to the case I am referring to is in 731 Federal Supplement 2nd, 470. The court found--and I want to quote more extensively than I did back in June. This is what the judge said about bureaucrats acting in an arbitrary and capricious way and when does the 60 days start.

The Food and Drug Administration treats submissions to the

FDA received after its normal business hours differently than

it treats communications from the agency after normal

business hours.

Continuing to quote from the decision:

The government does not deny that when notice of FDA

approval is sent after normal business hours, the combination

of the Patent and Trademark Office's calendar day

interpretation and its new counting method effectively

deprives applicants of a portion of the 60-day filing period

that Congress expressly granted them . . . Under PTO's

interpretation, the date stamped on the FDA approval letter

starts the 60-day period for filing an application, even if

the Food and Drug Administration never sends the letter . . .

An applicant could lose a substantial portion, if not all, of

its time for filing a Patent Trademark Extension application

as a result of mistakes beyond its control . . . An

interpretation that imposes such drastic consequences when

the government errs could not be what Congress intended.

So the judge is telling us in the Congress of the United States that because we weren't precise, there is a question as to when Congress intended 60 days to start to toll. And the question then is, If it is treated one way for one person and another way for another person, or if one agency treats it one way and another agency treats it another way, is that equal justice under the law? I think it is very clear that the judge said it was not. I say the judge was correct. Congress certainly should not expect nor allow mistakes by the bureaucracy to up-end the rights and provisions included in the Hatch-Waxman Act or any other piece of legislation we might pass.

The court ruled that when the Food and Drug Administration sent a notice of approval after business hours, the 60-day period requesting patent restoration begins the next business day. It is as simple as that.

The House, by including section 37, takes the court case, where common sense dictates to protect all patent holders against losing patent extensions as a result of confused counting calculations. Regrettably, misunderstandings about this provision have persisted, and I think you hear some of those misunderstandings in the statement by Senator Sessions.

This provision does not apply to just one company. The truth is that it applies to all patent holders seeking to restore the patent term time lost during FDA deliberations--in other words, allowing what Hatch-Waxman tries to accomplish: justice for everybody. In recent weeks, it has been revealed that already three companies covering four drug patents will benefit by correcting the government's mistake.

It does not cost the taxpayers money. The Congressional Budget Office determined that it is budget-neutral.

Section 37 has been pointed out as maybe being anticonsumer, but it is anything but anticonsumer. I would quote Jim Martin, chairman of the 60-Plus Association. He said:

We simply can't allow bureaucratic inconsistencies to stand

in the way of cutting-edge medical research that is so

important to the increasing number of Americans over the age

of 60. This provision is a commonsense response to a problem

that unnecessarily has ensnared far too many pharmaceutical

companies and caused inexcusable delays in drug innovations.

We have also heard from prominent doctors from throughout the United States. They wrote to us stating that section 67 ``is critically important to medicine and patients. In one case alone, the health and lives of millions of Americans who suffer from vascular disease are at stake . . . Lives are literally at stake. A vote against this provision will delay our patients access to cutting-edge discoveries and treatments. We urgently request your help in preserving section 37.''

So section 37 improves our patent system fairness through certainty and clarity, and I urge my colleagues to join me in voting to preserve this important provision as an end in itself, but also to make sure we do not send this bill back to the House of Representatives and instead get it to the President, particularly on a day like today when the President is going to be speaking to us tonight about jobs. I think having an updated patent law will help invention, innovation, research, and everything that adds value to what we do in America and preserve America's greatness in invention and the advancement of science.

In conclusion, I would say it is very clear to me that the court concluded that the Patent and Trademark Office, and not some company or its lawyers, had erred, as is the implication here. A consistent interpretation ought to apply to all patent holders in all cases, and we need to resolve any uncertainty that persists despite the court's decision.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I urge my colleagues to oppose all three amendments to the patent bill so we can send this important jobs bill to the President of the United States for his signature.

I then urge my colleagues to support final passage of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. This is a strong bipartisan bill that will enhance America's innovation and give us economic growth. It will protect inventors' rights and improve transparency and third-party participation in the patent review process. It will strengthen patent quality and reduce costs and will curb litigation abuses and improve certainty for investors and innovators.

The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act will also help small entities with their patent applications and provide for reduced fees for micro entities and small businesses. It will help companies do business more efficiently both here and abroad.

The bill includes a provision that will prevent patents from being issued on claims of tax strategies. These strategies can add unwarranted fees on taxpayers for attempting to comply with the Tax Code.

Finally, the bill will enhance the operations of the Patent and Trademark Office with administrative reforms, give the Patent and Trademark Office fee-setting authority which we hope will then lead to a reduction of backlog and improve the ability of the Patent and Trademark Office to manage its affairs.

I thank Chairman Leahy and Senator Hatch, the lead sponsors of this legislation, for the tremendous amount of work they put into this America Invents Act, not only for this Congress but over the past 3 to 4 years that this bill has been worked on. This has been a long process spanning those several Congresses, and without the leadership of these two Senators on patent reform we wouldn't be ready to cross the finish line today.

In addition, I thank the staff of the Judiciary Committee: Bruce Cohen, Aaron Cooper, Curtis LeGeyt of Chairman Leahy's staff, Matt Sandgren of Senator Hatch's staff, and Joe Matal of Senator Kyl's staff. I would like to thank the floor staff for their help in processing this bill in an efficient manner, and I would like to especially thank Kolan Davis and Rita Lari Jochum of my staff for their hard work on the bill.

So for a third time I urge my colleagues to vote for the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act and to oppose the three amendments we are going to be voting on so we can keep the bill clean and send it to the President without delay.

Senator Leahy has made it very clear to all 100 Senators that, if we support this bill, it is a gamble to say it will be law if we have to move it beyond the Senate to the House. This bill will help American inventors create innovative new products and services and stimulate job creation. The bill will upgrade and strengthen our patent system and keep America competitive in an increasingly global economy. This is a good bill, and I urge all of my colleagues to support it.

Madam President, how much time do I have?

I would urge my colleagues--because I rebut Senator Sessions' amendment--to keep in mind that when somebody tells us this is to bail out one company, understand that one company has gotten justice from the judicial branch of our government because a judge has said for that company that they were denied their rights under the 60- day rule to file for an extension of patent. So what that judge said was bureaucrats in our agencies acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner by not having the same rules that designate when the 60-day period of time starts.

So we have a judge that says so, so maybe people can refer to that opinion and get what they want. But we ought to have it in the statute of what is uniform, and that is what the bill does, and the Sessions amendment would strike that.

I yield the floor.

How much time do I have?

I think the Senator from Alabama has given me a reason to suggest the importance of the language of the bill he wants to strike because he said that law ought to be equally applied.

The law for this one company is that they were not given justice by bureaucrats who acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner and they were denied their rights under the law. So that company is taken care of because there was an impartial judge who believed they had been abused in their rights under Hatch-Waxman to be able to extend their patent.

You might be able to argue in other places around the country when you are likewise denied your right that you have this court case to back you up, but we cannot have one agency saying when a 60-day period of time starts for mail going in or mail going out to exercise your 60- day period, and for another agency to do it another way. That is basically what the judge said, that Congress surely could not have meant that.

The language of this section 37 does exactly what Senator Sessions wants, which is to guarantee in the future that no bureaucrat can act in an arbitrary and capricious way when they decide when does the 60- day period of time start. We put it in the statute of the United States so the courts look at it and the bureaucrats look at it in exactly the same way.

If you are a citizen of this country, you ought to know what your rights are. You ought to know that a bureaucrat treats you the same way they treat, in like situations, somebody else. You cannot have this sort of arbitrary and capricious action on the part of faceless bureaucrats that denies the rights. This puts it in statute and solidifies it so everybody knows what the law is, rather than relying upon one judge or in the future having to rely upon the court someplace else. I ask my colleagues not to support the Sessions amendment because it would deny equal rights to some people in this country, as this judge said those equal rights were already denied.

Mr. President, our Nation will soon observe and reflect on the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

A decade after vicious terrorist attacks killed thousands of innocent people and caused immeasurable grief to victims and survivors, America has shown the world that 9/11 may have changed life as we knew it, but it has not changed America's commitment to freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The national tragedy tapped an overwhelming sense of solidarity and sacrifice among Americans from across the country. Consider the selfless acts of courage and patriotism from the moment the hijackers commandeered three airplanes on that clear September morning 10 years ago: from the passengers aboard United flight 93, to the first responders who reported to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the heroes who serve on the front lines from within the Nation's military and from behind-the-scenes in our intelligence and counterterrorism operations.

Thanks to the allegiance of public servants and private citizens, our men and women in uniform and our captains of commerce and industry, the United States of America continues to serve as a beacon of hope, freedom and opportunity to the rest of the world. Those who sought to undermine the exceptionalism of the American people underestimated the resiliency of the American people.

Consider the recent protests across the globe, where after decades of oppression, the people of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have thrown out autocratic regimes in the pursuit of self-government, economic opportunity, higher standards of living and personal freedoms. The 10th anniversary of 9/11 offers Americans and our friends around the world the opportunity to embrace the common threads that tie us together.

For more than two centuries, the United States has attracted millions of newcomers to live and work in the land of opportunity. Generations of Americans have scaled the ladder of economic and social mobility, enjoyed the freedoms of press, speech and religion, and embraced the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, risk-taking and innovation. Unleashing the power of the individual has served as a catalyst for economic growth and prosperity for the last 235 years.

Along the way, the United States evolved as an economic, cultural and military leader in the world. The 9/11 terror attacks dealt a devastating blow to America and all of humanity. And yet, 10 years later, America still stands as the shining city on the hill. Despite the economic downturn, America still bears the promise of better days ahead. Despite high unemployment and unprecedented public debt, the American dream still serves as the magical elixir that ultimately defines the Nation's resiliency and bone-deep belief in the goodness of America.

That bone-deep belief in the goodness of America flows through the veins of those called to serve their country in the U.S. military, including one of Iowa's own hometown heroes who lost his life in the line of duty this summer. Jon Tumilson enlisted in the Navy after graduating from high school in 1995. A 35-year-old Navy SEAL from Rockford, he was one of 30 Americans killed in one of the deadliest attacks on U.S. forces since 9/11. My wife and I were able to pay our respects to this fallen Navy SEAL at his funeral in August. The long- time Iowa Hawkeye football and wrestling fan left behind family members and loved ones, including his beloved Labrador retriever named Hawkeye. The black lab led family members into the school gymnasium for the service and proceeded to lie next to the casket of his owner. They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words. The image of Tumilson's dog lying next to the flag-draped casket brought three words to mind; loyalty, loss and love.

I honor the memory of the many Iowans who've died in military service since 9/11, and all the soldiers and veterans who have served their country to protect U.S. national security and preserve our American way of life.

May their sacrifice remind us of their bone-deep belief in America's goodness. We must keep their legacy and love of country close to mind as we work to put America back on the right track towards economic growth and prosperity.

(At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

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

Mr. President, is there a nominee to report?

Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 1249, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. This bipartisan legislation will make our patent system more effective and more efficient. It will enhance transparency and patent quality and improve certainty in the patent process. It will also enhance the ability of the Patent and Trademark Office to cut its backlog and process patent applications in a more expeditious manner. Ultimately, this bill will help promote innovation and technological advancements and will provide a stimulus for American businesses and, obviously, will help generate new jobs.

My colleagues will recall the Senate passed the bill we entitled the America Invents Act earlier this year by a margin of 95 to 5. The House bill is very similar to our Senate bill, so Senators should not have a problem supporting it. In addition, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act enjoys the widespread support of a large number of industries and other stakeholders from within the United States patent community.

I am pleased to support the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, and I urge my colleagues to vote for cloture on the motion to proceed so we can get this bill done as soon as possible.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, as an Iowan, it is with great sadness but also a sense of pride that I rise to pay tribute to Navy SEAL Jon T. Tumilson who gave his life for his country along with 29 other American heroes as the result of a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on August 6. He worked hard to get where he did and was extremely proud to have become a Navy SEAL. The people of the State of Iowa, and particularly his hometown of Rockford, are extremely proud to call him a native son.

Petty Officer Tumilson is described as someone who committed fully to everything he did and he applied that intense dedication to serving his country. We as a nation must be grateful that we have brave and selfless Americans like Jon Tumilson who are willing to undertake the incredible training necessary to become a Navy SEAL so that they can then put their lives on the line repeatedly in some of the most dangerous missions imaginable. Our country has lost a powerful force for good, and his fellow sailors have lost a brother in arms. Of course, his loss will be felt particularly deeply by his family, friends, and neighbors. My prayers go out to Jon's parents, George and Kathy, and all those who are grieving. Nothing can compensate for his loss, but I hope they can take comfort in knowing that he died a true American hero. Jon Tumilson's memory will now join the honored ranks of those patriots who, since the Revolutionary War, have fought to defend American liberty.

Chief Petty Officer Robert Reeves

Mr. President, during the past few weeks and months, Congress and the President have been involved in discussions to raise the debt ceiling, and reduce spending, deficits and debt. This discussion is a result of the elections last year. The voters sent a strong message that it was time for Washington to stop the spending spree. And it is because of that message that we are even having this debate. Even the President now agrees that to address our fiscal situation we need to reduce spending.

That has not always been the case, though. Just last year President Obama refused to endorse or advance the findings of his own National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. On February 14, President Obama submitted his budget proposal to Congress that refused to address our looming deficits and debt. Over the next 10 years, his budget would have added another $13 trillion to our national debt. President Obama's budget was so out of touch that it was rejected in the Senate by a vote of 97-0. Then he delivered a speech in April that magically found $4 trillion in spending cuts.

In just a matter of weeks, President Obama found $4 trillion in spending that no longer needed to be spent.

The American people have to wonder how Washington can be serious about budgets and spending if the President, in a matter of weeks, can find $4 trillion of spending that was of national importance on February 14, but is no longer necessary on April 13. It is this type of behavior that leads people to be cynical of Washington and the Federal Government. It is little wonder that lofty commitments from Washington are received in Middle America as just more empty promises and political rhetoric.

Up until a few months ago, President Obama and members of his administration were calling for a clean debt limit increase with no spending cuts. He simply wanted Congress to provide him a blank check.

The debate has shifted. We are no longer discussing spending increases. The entire debate today is about cutting spending, how much and from where. The fact that we are here today in agreement on the need to cut spending is an enormously important development. I commend all of those who worked and insisted that spending cuts be included in this agreement, and I thank those who were involved in working out this hard fought agreement.

Unfortunately, this bill does too little to address our overspending, deficits and debt. Virtually none of these cuts in this bill come in the next few years. It is all back loaded with no guarantee that Congress won't reverse course, and undo these spending reductions. And, there is no guarantee that entitlement programs that are driving the long-term fiscal problems will be reformed. These programs need reform so they remain viable, affordable and available for generations to come. But this bill has too little to ensure those reforms take place.

The American people sent us to Washington to confront these problems. They want us to stop overspending. They want us to chart a path to fiscal responsibility, where Washington spends only what we take in, like the American people themselves must do. And, while this bill is a small step in the right direction, I believe the American people expect and deserve a giant leap in the right direction.

In addition to its timidity on spending reductions, I fear that this bill will set up a process to increase taxes on the American people in the belief that more tax revenue would lower deficits. This bill creates a bicameral, bipartisan committee that will be tasked with producing the second tranche of deficit savings. Despite the fact that our government has a spending problem and not a revenue problem, President Obama continues to insist that higher taxes must be a part of a major deficit reduction plan. It is his desire for bigger government, and higher levels of taxation that will likely prevent any serious follow-on deficit reduction or entitlement reform package.

I want to be clear. I do not wish for the government to be launched toward a threat of default. My vote against this bill is not a signal that I would prefer default. I would not. But, I am compelled to vote against this package because I see this as a missed opportunity. We are providing President Obama with the largest increase in the national debt ceiling in history. But, instead of using this opportunity to address our near term and long term spending and fiscal problems, we are cutting a little now, and kicking the can further down the road.

This bill grants a $2.4 trillion increase in our Nation's debt limit, the largest increase in our history. The challenge for Congress and President Obama was to sketch a deficit reduction plan to address deficits and debt in a significant way. The uncertainty about Washington's fiscal management gets in the way of private-sector job creation and economic recovery. But this bill is insufficient in putting us on a path to live within our means.

To me, this is also a moral issue. It's wrong for this generation to over-spend and leave the bills for the next generation to pay. The trajectory of our debt is alarming. It will soon undermine our economy and our economic growth. If we do nothing, our children and grandchildren will have fewer economic opportunities than we have had. Without a plan to put our fiscal situation on a better path, the next generations will have a lower quality of life than the one we've experienced. We can't let that happen. But, I am afraid this bill will accomplish too little in this regard.

Again, I recognize that this hard fought compromise is a step in the right direction, and I am pleased that Congress and the American people have recognized the terrible fiscal path our nation is on. I only wish that this plan was proportional to the size of the problems we face.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today the Senate will confirm four nominees to be U.S. district judge. Three of these seats, the vacancy for the Southern District of Texas, the vacancy for the Southern District of Florida and the vacancy for the District of Colorado, have been designated as judicial emergencies. With the votes today, we will have confirmed 33 article III judicial nominees. Twenty-one of those confirmed have been for judicial emergencies.

We continue to make great progress in processing President Obama's judicial nominees. As we head into our August recess, the Senate has confirmed 62 percent of President Obama's nominees since the beginning of his Presidency. That is not including the two the Supreme Court Justices nominated by President Obama. As my colleagues are aware, those nominations consumed a considerable amount of time in the committee and on the Senate floor.

During this Congress, the Judiciary Committee has held hearings on more than 75 percent of the President's judicial nominees. During the comparable time period for President Bush, only 70 percent of President Bush's nominees

had hearings by this time. We have also reported 61 percent of the judicial nominees, which is comparable to President Bush's nominees.

I support these nominations and congratulate each of them. I would like to say a few words about each one of the nominees.

Sara Lynn Darrow is nominated to be U.S. district judge for the Central District of Illinois. Ms. Darrow graduated from Marquette University in 1992 and received her J.D. degree from St. Louis University School of Law in 1997. From 1997 to 1998, Mrs. Darrow worked in the law offices of Clarence Darrow, a small general practice firm in Rock Island, IL. She became an assistant State's attorney in 1999, where she handled juvenile, misdemeanor, and felony traffic cases. Upon promotion in 2000, she handled felony cases and serious juvenile abuse cases. In 2003, Mrs. Darrow began work as an assistant U.S. attorney, prosecuting Federal crimes including drug conspiracy, gun, racketeering, child exploitation, fraud, and bankruptcy. She has prosecuted approximately 300 defendants and tried 10 cases to verdict before a jury.

The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has given Ms. Darrow a unanimous ``Qualified'' rating.

Nelva Gonzales Ramos is nominated to be U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Texas. After graduation from the University of Texas School of Law in 1991, Judge Ramos began her career as an attorney at Meredith & Donnelly in Corpus Christi. She worked primarily in personal injury litigation, employment litigation, and insurance defense. In 1997, she resigned from the firm to enter duty as a municipal court judge. During her campaign for district court judge during 1999 to 2000, she briefly worked as a solo practitioner. During this time, she practiced primarily personal injury but also family and criminal law. While in private practice, she tried approximately 17 cases to judgment or verdict.

Judge Ramos was appointed as a municipal court judge for Corpus Christi in 1997 where she had a criminal docket. She presided over 500 cases that went to verdict or judgment. When she announced her candidacy for district court judge in 1999, she resigned from this position as required by the city charter. In 2001 she was elected as district court judge for the 347th Judicial District. She was reelected in 2004 and in 2008. As district court judge, she has presided over 1,200 cases that went to verdict or judgment. While serving as a district court judge she helped establish a domestic violence court, and served as the local administrative judge for the Nueces County district courts. In this capacity she presided over meetings of the district court judges, ensured compliance with local rules, appointed committees regarding court management, and handled assorted other administrative tasks regarding the court.

The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary gave her a split rating of ``Qualified''--substantial majority--and ``Well Qualified''-- minority.

Kathleen M. Williams is nominated to be U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Florida. She received her B.A. in 1978 and her J.D. in 1982 from the University of Miami School of Law. Ms. Williams began her legal career in 1982 as an associate attorney at Fowler, White, Burnett, Hurley, Banick & Strickroot. At Fowler White, she participated in insurance defense litigation defending insurance companies, city and county interests, hospital trusts and corporations.

From 1984 to 1988, Ms. Williams served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida. While an assistant U.S. attorney, she prosecuted individuals on charges ranging from simple narcotics and weapons matters to complex money-laundering and RICO Litigation. In 1988, Ms. Williams returned to the private sector as an associate attorney for Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. While at Morgan, Lewis, & Bockius, she represented financial institutions, government contractors, and multinational corporations in labor litigation and white collar criminal defense matters.

In 1990, Ms. Williams joined the Federal Public Defender's office as the chief assistant public defender, where she represented persons accused of violating Federal criminal statutes but who cannot afford to retain an attorney. In 1995, she was appointed to be the public defender for the Southern District of Florida, where she continues to serve. As a Federal public defender she has litigated a wide range of matters including immigration, complex fraud, and national security. She was also appointed to be the acting Federal public defender for the Middle District of Florida from 1999 to 2000.

The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has given her the rating of majority ``Well Qualified'' and Minority ``Qualified.''

Richard Brooke Jackson is nominated to be U.S. district judge for the District of Colorado. Judge Jackson received his A.B., magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1969 and his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1972. Following law school, Judge Jackson joined the firm of Holland & Hart as an associate, where he focused on a combination of commercial litigation and personal injury litigation. In 1978, he became a partner and opened the Washington, DC, office of the firm. Additionally, he served on a number of committees within the firm and was chairperson of the litigation department. His pro bono work focused on personal injury claims and occasional representation in criminal defense and family law matters.

In 1998, he was appointed to serve as district judge for the First Judicial District of Colorado. As a district judge, he handled a mixed docket of criminal, civil, and domestic relations cases. In 2003, he was appointed chief judge.

The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has given Judge Jackson the rating of unanimous ``Well Qualified.''

I didn't come to the floor to comment on what Senator Vitter just said, and I can sure appreciate his view that a decision that ends up with a $7 trillion addition to the national debt over the next 10 years is not getting us very far down the road compared to what the people of the United States, who have to live within their income, believe this Congress should accomplish. But a $7 trillion addition to the debt over that period of time, compared to what the President suggested we spend over the next 10 years when he issued his budget to Congress, on February 14, we could end up with $13 trillion added to the national debt--so somewhere along the line, between February 14 and last night, when the President announced his support for this compromise, he has come to the conclusion that we could spend $6 trillion less over the next 10 years.

Even though a lot of people see this as not making progress, the President admitted he has found ways of changing his mind about $6 trillion in the course of just a few months. I suppose it also might lead our constituents to think in terms of, there has to be something wrong with the thinking in Washington if, on February 14, they think we have to spend X number of dollars that will add $13 trillion to the national debt and here it is just 3 or 4 months since then and the President goes on television and says this is a good compromise and we can be at $6 trillion less in spending. It probably leads people to believe there has to be a lot of money wasted in Washington, DC, if, in fact, between February 14 and last night, the President can find consensus in spending $6 trillion less over the next 10 years. That is a comment on what Senator Vitter just said and not disagreeing with Senator Vitter's comments in any way.

When we are in the Senate of the United States talking about what to do about the deficit situation and how much deficit spending we are having, it probably gets lost in the minds of people that what we are spending today and adding to the national debt is creating a great legacy of debt to leave to our children and grandchildren. This debate around this issue brings me to this question: Is it fair to tax our children and grandchildren just because they cannot vote? Our children and grandchildren, for the most part, do not have any voice in this, except what is given by our generation and people representing the older generations, other than our children, making these decisions. That is because we, in fact, are doing just that; taxing our children and grandchildren by adding to the national debt. That is what we are doing with our irresponsible budget deficits.

We have a choice between a brighter future for our descendants or more social spending now; more social spending or, as President Obama might put it, investments. Any way we look at it, money we spend today and we do not pay for, we are putting this bill on future generations-- our children and grandchildren. This is a choice we should be thinking about as we arrive at a decision of whether to vote for or against this grand compromise that has come out of these negotiations.

It gets down to basic choices of what do we do to encourage private sector employment. It gets down to choices of what we do about the size of government. There is a real choice in this debate as we talk about how big government should be. The choice is, do we grow government or do we grow the private sector?

What are the philosophical differences as well as the economic differences between growing government versus allowing business and entrepreneurship to flourish in America? We have had these dramatic increases in expenditures over just the last 2 years; 22-percent increases in appropriations in the last 2 years, when the economy only grows about 2 percent. Everybody knows that is not sustainable. On top of that, we had a $814 billion stimulus package that did not do what it was supposed to do to keep unemployment under 8 percent. At this time, we have

gone from the national debt being 35 percent of the gross national product to today being about 65 percent and before the end of this year it is going to be 72 percent. And it is on a path to go to 90 percent. So we have seen government grow during the last few years out of proportion to the 20 percent of the gross national product that the public sector, represented by the Federal Government, took, compared to that growth from 20 to now 25.

Those 5 percentage points of growth in the government may not seem like a lot but just look at the difference between incentives for growth of the private sector for creating wealth as opposed to the Government consuming wealth. That is a fact. Government consumes wealth; it doesn't create wealth. People who are using their labor and their minds and investing are the ones who create wealth in our country. Those 5 percentage points make a difference because it is a very dramatic growth in government. As government consumes more--and I said it does not create wealth--it takes money out of the private sector, where it can grow more and create jobs and, consequently, then limits the opportunity for expanding the economic pie. That is what the private sector does through investment and labor, expands the economic pie. We can have economic growth so we can have more for more people.

But when government gets bigger, we restrict the opportunities for economic growth in the private sector and we have less pie for more people.

So a 5 percentage point growth in the government for the last 5 years compared to a 50-year average lessens the chance for a brighter future for our children and grandchildren, and that has to be a part of this debate as we decide the size of government versus the size of the private sector--the wealth-producing private sector.

If we keep government at 20 percent, then that is going to leave more in the private sector that is going to create wealth. It is going to be a more productive use of our resources.

The promise of our free market system can only be realized if we choose less social spending, if we choose less intrusive regulation and more efficient use of our resources in the private sector as opposed to the public sector.

We should be doing those things not only in this budget agreement, this deficit reduction agreement, but in all the decisions we make in the Congress. We should be doing more to encourage productive uses of our resources in the private sector, rather than consumption of those resources in the public sector.

President Obama has launched a campaign over the 30 months he has been in office to defend the welfare state and of course the woefully inefficient government-run health care system that is an example of that welfare state. I think we can learn some lessons from the rest of the world as well in looking at what is right for America. We should learn from history and not repeat the mistakes that have been made in other countries.

Since the 1950s, we have seen a lot of countries around the world use transfers of wealth from one generation to another or the transfer of wealth from one group of people to another. We have seen grants. We have seen a redistributive philosophy in a lot of countries. What did that do? It did very little to raise the living standards of those in Asia, Latin America, Africa. More open economies have proven otherwise. More open economies as we have had in Japan since the 1950s have lifted more people out of poverty in 10 years than welfare state programs have done in 50 years.

Japan--just using it as an example--forced its producers 50, 60 years ago to compete. Private sector resources are more productive than those of the public sector making the decisions on how to use those resources, or a command economy, as you might call it. After Japan, we had Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. More recently, in the last 20 years, China and India have been encouraging more competition and more productive uses of resources with less of it promoted by the government. There are more decisions being made by the private sector in Brazil, and even parts of Africa are learning that is the route to go. We should learn from that. We should not turn backwards and rely more on government than we have in the past. By doing that, we retire opportunity in America. We retire opportunity by growing government at the expense of individual initiative. I hope we don't go that route. I think this budget debate has something to do with whether we are going to turn this around from the direction that it has taken over the last few years. Those last few years have not just been the 30 months of this Presidency but a little bit going back into the previous Presidency as well.

In regard to President Obama's programs, we have had few results from the government becoming more involved in the economy. We have dealt with near zero interest rates for a long period of time. I have already mentioned the $814 billion stimulus. There are other things that have been done in recent months to turn this economy around. We still have unemployment above 9 percent. The recovery that was supposed to come from all of these programs that have had greater government involvement in our economy have made a recovery very elusive.

In fact, there are even questions in the media recently of whether we could be going into another recession. President Obama tried mightly and wastefully--and in the end, very ineffectually--to turn this economy around through a massive number of government programs, but it has not worked. Progress would have been greater if we had tried programs by President Reagan or even President Kennedy's policies. In both of those instances they cut marginal tax rates. They eliminated burdensome regulations. Instead, what do we have out there right now even today coming from the White House? Promises yet of higher taxes; almost a demand that Congress pass higher taxes right now, and more regulations.

I just recently read about a businessperson saying there are 29 onerous regulations coming out of EPA that will be detrimental to job creation because they are so costly. Another way of putting it is it might cause businesspeople to worry about the uncertainty of what government is going to do. When we have that uncertainty--and right now there is a heightened uncertainty--it retards growth. It retards growth because people will not invest. When there is not increased investment and hiring, there is less productivity. What these issues are all about is creating jobs, and we are not creating jobs right now. That is what people are going to see as a test as to whether we are out of a recession--regardless of the leading economists who made the decision that we have been out of a recession now for 2 months.

For people who are unemployed, it is not a recession; it is a depression. They are going to measure coming out of a recession or coming out of a depression by whether they have a job. Jobs are not being created.

President Obama promises what he wants is something that is fair and balanced. When I hear him talking about ``fair and balanced,'' I wonder if he is trying to steal those words from Fox News. Why is it fair to distribute more welfare to the present generation and today's voters by growing government at the expense of the wealth-creating private sector? That harms our children and our grandchildren who are going to end up paying for it with less productive uses of the resources of this country.

We should not be thinking, as Europe has thought, about growing government, having government consume more of the resources of the economy, leaving less to individuals to make decisions whether to save or spend and what to save and what to spend on. That is the way it is done in Europe. We should not go that way.

I always use a statistic that may seem so small to be insignificant, but I use a statistic of 1 percent. If we compare the United States with Europe over the last 25 years, our growth has averaged about 1 percent more in the United States than in Europe. Now that 1 percent may not sound like very much, right? However, over a generation, just 1 percent difference in growth--between the economy of Europe and the economy of the United States--adds up to 25 percent differential in per capita income.

It seems to me the issues of this debt reduction debate--or if you want to call it increasing the deficit ceiling, the borrowing capacity of the Federal Government--too often tend to be

about what is the situation right now, but it is really a debate about what is fair for our children and grandchildren because those are the decisions on borrowing that we are making today.

I have to go back to where I started with a question of whether it is fair for us to tax future generations for the borrowing that we are doing today, and simply say it is not fair to tax future generations just because they cannot vote.

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

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

I would ask to speak for 20 minutes.

Mr. President, while we are waiting for people to decide what the rest of us can vote on in regard to cutting down on the national debt and what we can do about being able to continue our government to function tomorrow, all of this is about uncertainty, and we read about the uncertainty every day in the newspaper because people don't know what we are going to do. That then causes businesses, small and large, not to hire, and it seems as though they have a lot of cash they would like to spend and invest wisely. Some of that would surely create a lot of jobs and get our economy moving. Of course, the situation today where the revision of the quarterly economic growth has come out even less for the second quarter than we anticipated, it brings a lot of things to mind as to what we can do to create jobs. With 9.2 percent unemployment, that has to be our concentration.

I would like to advise my colleagues that a lot can be learned from history. We must change course if we want to change jobs. The 2007 to 2009 recession was officially over during the year 2009, and here we are still with 9.2 percent unemployment.

So this month happens to be the second-year anniversary of the official start of the recovery. But what kind of a recovery, with 9.2 percent unemployment? It seems to be an unofficial recovery; in other words, a recovery in name only. We have had about 2.8 percent annual growth average per year of that 2 years; and, of course, I just said the growth of the last quarter was revised downward. When we compare what we have during this recovery from what was a very bad recession with the recovery of the last deep recession, which was in 1981 and 1982, we compare this 2.8-percent growth now with a 7.1-percent growth for the recovery after the 1981 to 1982 deep recession--of course, we can go even further because, as I said, compare 7.1-percent growth after the deep recession of 1981 and 1982 with the 2.8-percent average growth so far during this 2 years of recovery, which has now slowed down to probably 1.5-percent growth. So statistically and actually, and for the people who are unemployed, recovery has, in fact, been very stalled since its very beginning 2 years ago, as we celebrate the 2- year anniversary of a so-called recovery, and still with 9.2-percent unemployment.

I say we must change course. If we want to go back to comparing now with the 1983 and 1984 period of time when we had a much more vibrant recovery, people tend to blame the weak economy today, during this recovery, on high personal savings rates. But, in fact, people are spending more now than they did in the 1983 to 1984 recovery because, today, the savings rate is about 5.6 percent, and in 1983 to 1984, the other recovery, it was 9.4 percent. So we can't say people aren't spending enough is why we don't have a recovery.

Then they tend to blame it on weak housing, but if we look at the difference between now and 1983 and 1984, that doesn't seem to be a very good reason.

Net exports are less now than they were in the 1983 and 1984 recovery. The growth of consumption and the growth of investment is 60 to 70 percent less now than it was in the 1983 and 1984 recovery.

So what can we learn from this history that made the recovery of 1983 and 1984, the last great recession we had compared to this recession, better than the recovery now? Why have we stalled today when we didn't stall in a comparable period of recovery after the last great recession? If the above doesn't explain it, then what does explain it? Why, then, was the recovery of the 1980s so much more vigorous than the recovery now if we are, in fact, in a recovery--and people would doubt that.

That is the question where I think we can learn from history. Political leaders ought to learn from the lessons of the past. There are a lot of lessons that can be learned going back over a long period of time: mistakes made in the Great Depression of the 1930s, or let's say the gigantic inflation of the 1970s. The 1930s and the 1970s were tough decades, but during those tough times and remembering them--and maybe other tough times as well; I am just picking out the Great Depression of the 1930s and the gigantic inflation of the 1970s--but these lessons learned by political leaders in the 1980s and 1990s led us to very unprecedented growth during those two decades when 44 million jobs were created. If 44 million jobs were created during those decades, why do we have such small job growth now? I think the answer is that we went back to basic principles that this country was founded upon: political and economic freedom. The principles that dominated the decades of the 1980s and 1990s when 44 million new jobs were created aligned with the principles that are the foundation of our country: political and economic freedoms. Those were limited government, incentives to produce, incentives for entrepreneurship, emphasis upon private markets, and rule of law. These tended to be in ascendancy during the decades of the 1980s and 1990s and it led to monetary

policy that brought about price stability. It brought about lower marginal tax rates. Regulations encouraged competition and innovation. We had welfare decisions that were devolved down to the States where they could be handled more efficiently, and we had spending restraints that led to balanced budgets during the late 1990s, paying down $568 billion on the national debt.

So there was great hope that what was done during the 1980s and 1990s that brought about 44 million new jobs would extend into the 21st century and that we would continue to bring market-based principles into Social Security and other entitlement programs, bring market-based principles into education, bring market-based principles into health care. Because if these market-based principles worked during the 1980s and 1990s of the last century and created 44 million jobs, the success of that ought to carry over into other government policies so we could continue down the road of creating jobs instead of stagnating as we have now.

But sometime after 2000--and that doesn't mean just after President Obama was elected, because there was a Republican President before that--but sometime after 2000 both political parties compromised--and I want to emphasize both political parties--on the principles of limited government. They did it for a multitude of reasons. Some of these reasons were that they thought government ought to control business cycles to a greater extent, that we ought to increase home ownership, and we know how that worked out: We ought to have a policy that people ought to be able to buy a house they can't afford. Now we know that is a stupid policy, but at the time we didn't know it; also the prescription drug issue, as an example, although there were some market-based principles put into that.

But, anyway, there were a multitude of reasons why we ought to compromise the principle of limited government, but it ended up more interventionist and it made the Federal Government more powerful, and we ended up with unintended consequences: the financial crisis we still remember and we are still trying to get out of; the recession, which I have already talked about, of 2007 and 2009, of which we are celebrating 2 years of supposed recovery that isn't real recovery; we have had a great amount of expanded government debt; and now we have this nonexistent recovery with 9.2-percent unemployment.

I think, looking back, how did this happen? I was here when it happened. It reminds me of the story about--well, I guess I ought to say it and then give the story. It happened so slowly, and all of these things added up to be bad to bring about the great recession, and now not a very good recovery, because each one of them happened independent of the other and without one relating to the other. So it reminds me of the story of the frog and the water. If you throw a frog in boiling water, he will jump out and live. If you put a frog in cold water and gradually heat it up to a boil, it is going to accommodate the changes and die. So these policies slowly developed and we got into the situation we are in right now. I will say it again: Change came so slowly, it crept up on us.

Then, of course, what happened? The crash came. We had this Federal intervention in housing. I stated it before: Buy a house even if you can't afford it. We eliminated a lot of Federal Reserve accountability, particularly when they didn't have to report on monetary growth on a regular basis as they did before. Then we had these countercyclical fiscal policies that failed. We had, during periods of growth in our economy, unrealistically low interest rates by the Federal Reserve action. Then, of course, we had government bailouts. This has led to things all getting worse since 2009. We had more intervention. We had loose monetary policies, QE1 and QE2, of the Federal Reserve. We had a stimulus plan that was supposed to keep unemployment under 8 percent, and since it was passed in February of 2009, unemployment has never been below that. It has always been above 8 percent. It is 9.2 percent now, but it was even over 10 percent. We had the Cash For Clunkers Program. We had the first-time homeowners tax credit. All of these together have not brought recovery, even though the economists tell us we are in the second-year anniversary of a recovery.

What did they bring that has stalled the recovery? What they have brought is more uncertainty, and more uncertainty is bad for the economy because, as I said when I started out, there is plenty of money out there in corporations. There are plenty of small businesses that want to hire, but they do not know what we in this Congress are going to do to them so they are not moving forward. Consequently, the unemployment rate is not going down. And right this very hour, as people are trying to find something that can pass this body and the other body so we do not have default, it even brings more uncertainty, and you read it in the morning paper, this morning's paper. So you have to come to the conclusion, with all of this intervention bringing about all this uncertainty, that big government is not a very good manager.

Then, as I said, this did not happen just since President Obama became President. This happened over the period of time of this decade and maybe even going back a little bit into the other decade. But just since President Obama was elected, we have added yet more complex intervention: the health care reform bill, Dodd-Frank, the Consumer Protection Bureau.

The President this very week has been talking about increasing taxes, only he does not use the word ``taxes.'' We have to have more ``revenue'' or we have to have ``balance.'' But it still adds up, all of these things out there, that government does not know what all these rules and regulations--do you realize that in health care reform, there are 1,690 delegations of authority to the Secretaries to write regulations? And they are not going to be written for years. But that brings so much uncertainty.

So we have more uncertainty, plus unintended consequences that come out of these, like right now, rising health care costs because of the bill, deterring new investments because of Dodd-Frank and deterring risk-taking. Risk-taking is what entrepreneurship is all about, and entrepreneurship is mostly related to small businesses, where 70 percent of the new jobs are created.

Government intervention is the problem because government intervention or government not making decisions all adds up to more uncertainty. So I think the solution is to unwind government intervention in all these regulations of EPA and all the other government agencies. Every day in the newspaper, you see some new regulation coming out. If you want to get people to hire, you ought to just shut down the printing presses for a while.

One sure thing though: We can thank God we have run out of monetary and fiscal ammunition because it has not worked anyway. We are going to probably have a great deal of inflation because of what the Fed did. We have no more spending we can do because all the spending we have done has not done the good it was supposed to do. We need no more greater debt, and we do not have any more zero interest rates to put out there because that is practically where it is right now.

Instead, what we need is spending controls, and what we need is free market principles. Historical evidence shows what works and what does not. I said what works and what does not is shown from the lessons learned from the depression of the 1980s and the gigantic inflation decade of the 1970s. So people in the 1980s and 1990s changed to policies that were market-oriented, and we created 44 million new jobs. So we ought to be learning from history. Historical evidence shows what works and what does not. And right this day, in this town, interventionists in the market control today. We need to restore less intervention, the policies of the 1980s and the 1990s to restore jobs. Remember, it created 44 million new jobs.

I yield the floor.