Floor Statements

Would the Senator yield for a question?

I think the point the Senator is making is really important. I want to ask a question of him, through the Chair. So what we just voted on, basically, that 53 Members of the Senate--that used to be a winning number around the Senate until this new era of we have to have 60 votes for motherhood and apple pie--53 Members of the Senate voted to make sure everyone in America had no tax increase on their first $1 million in income. Is that correct?

So it is not that we are not passing a tax cut for everyone, we are passing a tax cut for every person in America. We are just saying, maybe on that second million, we might ought to take that $300 billion and put it in deficit reduction. So it is not the first million, it is the second million and the third million and the fourth million and the fifth million that you would have to go back to a rate that we had in the days when we had massive job creation, and these guys did well.

Mr. President, I must compliment both my colleagues, Senator Dorgan and Senator Boxer, for calmly laying out the issue. Frankly, I feel a little bit like I am in the Twilight Zone. I certainly paid attention to the results in November. Anybody who is in this building paid attention to the results in November. Somehow the Republican Party thinks what happened the first Tuesday in November is that the American people wanted them to raise taxes on 99.9 percent of Americans in order to make sure the tiniest little sliver at the top gets a deficit-busting, China-borrowing, print-more-money tax bonus? I do not think that is what the people were saying.

It is beyond comprehension that these folks have talked about deficit reduction. Oh, ``deficit reduction''--how many speeches have we listened to--``our grandchildren.'' I have listened to Dr. Coburn and I have listened to Senator DeMint and I have listened to so many Republicans talk about deficit reduction, deficit reduction, deficit reduction, and the tiny little fig leaf they are hiding behind is the complete fallacy that a small differential in personal tax rates to people on their second million dollars of income is going to create jobs. It is not going to create jobs.

The people who are making more than $1 million are not going to take a 3-percent personal tax cut differential and create jobs. The job creation occurs with small businesses. It occurs with people in the middle class. It does not occur when someone has another $100,000 to put in their investment fund or another $300,000 to put in their investment fund.

I think people need to understand that 53 Senators voted to give a tax cut to everyone--everyone, we do not care how rich you are--because you get a tax cut on your first $1 million of income. So even if you make $3 million, you are getting the tax cut. If you make $5 million, you are getting the tax cut. If you make $10 million, you are getting the tax cut. You are getting it on the first $1 million.

So everyone in America was denied a tax cut, by the vote that just occurred, by the minority of the Senate, not the majority. The majority of the Senators who were elected to come here voted to give 99.9 percent of America a tax cut and thinks maybe that other $300 billion will be saved on that little 0.1 percent of America. That $300 billion, that would be a good thing to put against the deficit. It would be a great thing to put against the deficit.

So do not take these guys seriously about deficit reduction. Do not take them seriously. It is a joke. Some of these people who voted no just now did not even vote for the Bush tax cuts. Some of the people who just voted no on giving a tax cut to 99.9 percent--in fact, to give a tax cut to everybody in America on their first $1 million--some of the people who voted no did not even vote for the Bush tax cuts. They knew they were irresponsible at the time. But now they have somehow tried to convince the American people they are looking after them.

As I said yesterday, I tell you who they are looking after. They are looking after the families who are deciding which home to go to for Christmas: Should I go to my home in Florida or my home in California or maybe up in the mountains or should I stay in the city or the people who are deciding: Where should we spend New Year's Eve? Should we go to Paris? Maybe we should go to Rome for New Year's Eve. They are not focused on the folks who are trying to figure out if they can get what their kids want for Christmas.

And 53 votes--if you think about that, there was a time in the Senate that all kinds of things--in fact, my recollection is that is the exact number of votes Clarence Thomas got to join the Supreme Court. Can you imagine in this day and age a controversial Supreme Court nominee not having to get 60 votes? Clarence Thomas got the same number of votes as we just cast to make sure everybody in America gets a tax cut on their first $1 million in income.

I come from a State where elections are very close and, in fact, I remember when I passed my first amendment on the floor of the Senate. The vote was 51 to 49. It seems amazing to me now. That was just a few short years ago that we had votes that were 51 to 49. They were not requiring 60 votes. That was back before motherhood and apple pie needed 60 votes. One of the Senators came over to me after that amendment vote--it was 51 to 49--and they said: Boy--they were teasing me about how close the vote was. I said: Senator, in Missouri we call that a landslide.

This vote we just had--53 votes--in Missouri is a landslide. It is depressing to me that we have gotten to this level of posturing, that they are saying: If you do not give people a tax break on their second million, nobody gets one.

I am going to say it again: If you don't give people a tax break on their second million, nobody gets one.

Really? Are they going to hold on to that position? Deep down in my gut I cannot believe they are going to do that, that they are going to go home and explain to their voters: Yes, well, you don't get a tax cut because this guy I know on Wall Street who makes $15 million in his bonus this year didn't want to have to pay the same rate he paid in the 1990s when everybody cut a fat hog and did very well. We created millions and millions of jobs in the 1990s with these same tax rates.

It is not like we are going back to the Roosevelt era of taxes. We are not going back to 75 percent of your income going to taxes. We are talking about a 3-percent difference for people who make more than $1 million.

So I hope this gets through to the American people, and I hope they realize this is not what this election was about. This election was about holding down government spending, and my colleagues and I agree. I have been working on trying to get a cap on Federal spending with Senator Sessions for over a year. It is about tightening our belt on spending. But it is also about having a level playing field for the middle class in this country and not making it about the special interests that have jammed this Tax Code with so many provisions.

Most people do not realize that over 70 percent of Americans do not even itemize. So imagine how many tax provisions have been written for the wealthy. We have books and books of tax loopholes for the wealthy. As Warren Buffett has said--he does this great exercise every year in his office, which I think is fascinating. He has everyone who works in his office--from the people who clean the boardroom, to the people who park the cars in the parking lot--they calculate all the taxes they pay every year and figure out everything from sales tax, personal property tax, Federal tax, State tax--earnings tax in some localities--they calculate all of it and figure out what their real tax rate is. He said the folks who work for him who have very modest incomes, pay, I think it is 33 percent, 34 percent of their income in taxes, and he pays 16 percent.

Now, what is wrong with this picture? Listen, I have nothing against people who have captured the American dream. My husband is one of them. His first job out of college was in a steel mill. Since then he has taken huge risk as an entrepreneur, huge risk, and he has created thousands of jobs--thousands of jobs--in his lifetime, and he has done very well. We are very blessed. Does he need this tax cut? No. Do we need it? No, we do not. I think the people who are in that tax bracket have a great deal in common with my family, those who are worried about going back to the 1990s tax rate on their second million and their third million and their fourth million.

Mr. President, I also rise today to talk about a subject that is, frankly, as depressing--in fact, more depressing--than the reality we just faced this morning on the floor; that is, the heartbreaking incompetence that has been uncovered at Arlington National Cemetery.

This is, in my opinion, the most sacred ground we have in this country. This is where our highest ideal of an American is laid to rest. The ceremonies that take place every day, day in and day out, at Arlington National Cemetery are a great source of national pride. For the thousands of families who have loved ones buried there, they deserve to know that location is being run with the highest level of integrity and professionalism.

In July of this year, my subcommittee on contracting discovered they have to be bitterly disappointed because due to contracting problems, you cannot be assured that people are buried where Arlington National Cemetery tells you they are buried; that even though we spent millions of dollars on contracts to make sure the system was reliable in terms of the location of the burial of these heroes, the contracts have produced nothing. In fact, the discovery was made that there were many instances where what it said on the tombstone was not true.

We began working and the hearing was mind-boggling because there was so much finger pointing--``not my fault,'' ``not my fault,'' ``not my fault''--discovering there was no real chain of command at Arlington National Cemetery. Unlike the rest of the military and the rest of the Army, it was not clear who the people at Arlington even reported to. That is the management incompetence that breeds all kinds of nonsense, when there is no accountability. And there was no accountability.

So I think the Army has taken this seriously. They clearly are embarrassed, as they should be. They are working to methodically go through the cemetery and make sure they find any instance where there is a discrepancy in terms of the burials. Just a few weeks ago, we learned that they now discovered another grave site where eight urns of cremated remains were located. The tombstone was marked ``Unknown.''

Now, can you imagine there is actually someone who went back eight times to the same location to dump cremated remains in one grave?

We have been able to identify some of those remains, and those families have been notified and they will have the proper burial. They will know the location. Unfortunately, one of the sets of remains we cannot identify. It has been reburied ``Unknown.''

But as we methodically go through the cemetery and try to correct these instances of heartbreaking incompetence, we have to have some legislation in place that provides the right accountability and oversight. I had introduced a piece of legislation along with my ranking Republican on the Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, Senator Brown of Massachusetts, and we have tried to work this through the process, which everyone around here knows is painfully slow, and even more painfully slow over the last 18 months since the Republican Party has been rewarded for their strategy of block everything, including things they support.

I am encouraged that it is my understanding that after I came to the Senate floor yesterday and said I was going to make a unanimous consent motion, not only have the Democrats all cleared this legislation but the Republicans have also. I think that is a good sign. I wish we had more good signs. But this at least is a good sign.

So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Veterans Affairs' Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 3860 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a McCaskill amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I am proud we have been able to get this passed today. This is a giant Christmas present with a bow on it or a Hanukkah gift with a bow on it to thousands of American families, to let them know we are paying attention. We have very short attention spans around here. When the cameras aren't rolling, we have a tendency to move on to something else. We are always kind of gravitating toward the political fight.

This legislation should send the appropriate signal to our Nation's military, to our Nation's veterans and, most importantly, to the families who have loved ones buried at Arlington National Cemetery that we are paying attention and that we are going to continue to pay attention until we get this right. Our American pride depends on it. It is the ultimate act of patriotism. So I am proud of the fact that we have been able to get this legislation passed today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Rules Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 6399 and that the Senate then proceed to its consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times, passed, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table; further, that any statements relating thereto be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 2 p.m. on Monday, December 6; that following the prayer and the pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and that following any leader remarks, the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, there will be no rollcall votes during Monday's session of the Senate. Senators should expect a live quorum at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, December 7, to begin the impeachment trial of Judge G. Thomas Porteous.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

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

Mr. President, back in July of this year, the subcommittee I chair on contracting oversight held a hearing about heartbreaking incompetence at Arlington National Cemetery.

Because of a series of management errors, bungling, neglect, the contracts that were supposed to be executed to make sure we were keeping track of America's heroes in our most sacred place in this country--we discovered that, in fact, the officials at Arlington National Cemetery were not sure who was buried where.

The reaction I have had to that hearing has been so reassuring because as I travel around Missouri, person after person comes up to me, so many veterans, saying: Thank you for getting on top of this disaster at Arlington National Cemetery.

Since that hearing, when it was very clear there was no direct line of authority in terms of managing Arlington National Cemetery--that they had no problem issuing multiple contracts for millions of dollars and getting absolutely nothing for it, an acknowledgment that they did not have a system that was adequately keeping track of the location of burial for potentially thousands of America's finest--we have continued to stay on top of this and have realized that more and more problems continue to arise.

This morning, it was reported nationally that they now found a grave site that has eight different urns buried--eight different urns-- cremated remains buried in one location with a tombstone that said ``Unknown.'' And, of course, they have been able to identify some of those remains--gratefully, they have--and they are contacting those families.

But as a result of the hearing, I filed legislation, along with Senator Brown, who is with me on that committee as the ranking member of that committee. Together, we filed a bill, with a number of cosponsors, setting up some basic oversight of Arlington going forward--basic but very important--making sure we have review of contract management, making sure we have compliance with an Army directive, making sure we have a report on the grave site discrepancies that have arisen, so we can be assured that every family in America who looks upon Arlington as the last resting place for

their family member can be assured that when they go to visit their loved one, they are indeed visiting their loved one. So we filed this bill, S. 3860. After we found out about these additional problems that have arisen, I now feel a sense of urgency about this.

I know my colleagues on the other side have said we are not doing any other legislation except making sure we get a tax cut for millionaires. I am hoping they will make an exception to the rule because if we do not provide adequate oversight right now, when will we? Is there a subject more important than our oversight and making sure those we should honor the most are, in fact, being treated with the kind of dignity and respect they deserve rather than just being thrown in a gravesite that says ``Unknown''?

So I am going to make a motion tomorrow--we will be in session tomorrow--for unanimous consent to pass this legislation. I know I am being impatient. We are supposed to let these things sit on the calendar for months and months, and we are to hope that nobody puts a secret hold on it, and we are to get frustrated not knowing who has a hold on it or why. We have 38 members of the judiciary who have been sitting on the calendar who came out of committee unanimously. But, no, we can't take those up. We can't do anything until we do unpaid tax cuts for millionaires.

I am hoping my Republican colleagues will give the millionaires a rest tomorrow. I am hoping they will get off the case of helping the millionaires and the billionaires so we can unanimously pass this bill. That is the best we can do right now to make sure our loved ones-- because they are all of our loved ones. We love the men and women who are buried at Arlington National Cemetery, from John F. Kennedy to the soldiers none of us has ever met. We love these Americans, and we need to do everything we can to make sure there is proper oversight of what is going on at Arlington National Cemetery.

So, tomorrow, I am hoping we get an exception to the edict that we got from our friends on the Republican side of the aisle. I am hoping they will allow this bill to go through by unanimous consent because, I will tell my colleagues, I am not comfortable going home for my Christmas holidays with my family until I am sure we have done everything we can for the families who lost loved ones who reached a final resting place on this Earth at Arlington National Cemetery.

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

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

I say to the Senator through the Chair that an awful lot of economists have met with I think all the Senators about the frustrations we have with this economy. So the question we have asked over and over is, What is the most stimulative thing we can do for the economy? What can we do in terms of our actions that will provide injection of the most money into the economy and therefore create the most jobs?

I am wondering if the Senator could share with us what it is that is the most stimulative thing we can do.

Let me ask another question.

We obviously passed this tax cut a decade or so ago, and they decided to make it temporary, not permanent, when it was passed. So there was a decision made by the Senate that it wasn't worthy of being permanent, that it was temporary. So now here we are, it was temporary, and we have to decide whether we make it permanent. That is really where the rubber meets the road because--and correct me if I am wrong--they made it temporary to see if this tax cut for the wealthy would create jobs.

I am so sick of hearing on every TV show in America, well, if you give a 3-percent tax differential to the wealthiest people in America, they are going to create all these jobs. Well, I am trying to figure out where the jobs are that this tax cut for the wealthy created. This was an experiment. It didn't work. It didn't create the jobs. That is why we have this debate right now.

We have to decide whose side we are on. Are we on the side of the middle class, with shrinking income, with more frustration because they can't do some of the basic things with their families that they always assumed they would be able to do in America or are we going to continue a bonus to the wealthiest Americans which doesn't even stimulate jobs?

In fact, what we are going to do today is we are going to make a number of unanimous consent requests for things that will create jobs and see whether we can get our Republican colleagues to go along.

The Senator was here for that debate, but I am assuming one of the reasons it was temporary was to see if this experiment in more bonuses for the wealthy would trickle down and create these jobs. It has been a decade, and I ask the Senator, how well has it worked?

Mr. President, my friend from Wyoming, who is a good guy, just said that the motions we are making, unanimous-consent motions--that these things could have been brought up earlier. Oh, if only it were true. If only it were true that we could have brought these things up earlier. If anybody has been paying attention, they would understand that our friends across the aisle have been blocking everything, including motherhood and apple pie, for the last year. They have voted unanimously to move judicial nominations out of the Judiciary Committee, and then they languish and they will not allow us to bring them up for a vote.

Then my friend said we need to stop the theater. Well, let me tell you what theater is. Theater is when a Senator says: If we cannot get everything resolved and all of the spending decisions made by Monday, well, then, I just don't think we can do the START treaty. Theater is having 42 Senators say: We will not participate unless you do what we want to do today. That is theater. That is theater. Theater is saying: Well, you could have brought this up earlier, when everyone knows they blocked everything we wanted to bring up. That is theater. What you are seeing on this side right now is a healthy dose of indignation on behalf of the American people who are hurting.

I think back. I think back to elections past when great patriots were accused in the most vivacious ways of being soft on national security. I remember a Senator who lost his limbs in battle who had advertisements run against him that somehow he was soft on terror because of a twist and distortion of a vote he had cast in the Senate.

Now fast forward. We have a treaty that the military unanimously supports, that the Secretaries of State for those Republican Presidents who warned us about loose nuclear weapons and terrorists--their Secretaries of State have stood up and said this is the thing to do. The ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, Senator Lugar--is there anyone more respected on what we should be doing to protect this Nation than Senator Dick Lugar? And they are holding this treaty hostage to protect millionaires. Has it come to that? They now are willing to risk national security, the security of this Nation, because they refuse to allow us to stop the extra-big tax bonuses to millionaires and billionaires. Can you imagine what would have happened to somebody in my party who had the nerve to stand up in the face of our allies, our military, bipartisan support, everyone from Pat Buchanan to Colin Powell, who has said to the American people that this START treaty is necessary? And they are saying: Well, if you don't give us a tax break for millionaires by Monday, we are going to go home. Really? It takes your breath away. It just takes your breath away. I have some unanimous-consent requests I will also make today, but I really want that to sink in.

We have reached every goalpost they have put up on the START treaty, and then they have moved it. We have no verification of nuclear weapons in Russia right now, and we haven't for months, and they are nibbling around the edges because--do you know what I believe this might be? I might believe this is part of the strategy that was announced by the leader of the Republican Party that their No. 1 priority is to defeat President Obama, to damage him. They want to deny the passage of this treaty, I believe--it certainly has the appearance, anyway, that this is about damaging President Obama.

We should be focused on our national security. We should be focused on giving tax cuts to Middle America. We should be focused on tax cuts to small businesses. We have done net tax cuts in this country of $300 billion in the last 18 months, and all of those tax cuts were focused like a laser on the middle class and on small businesses.

Do not let anybody sell you a bill of goods that the Democratic Party is not fighting for tax cuts for Middle America and small business. Now, we are not so excited about the millionaires. Those are not stimulative. They have not created the jobs. It has been an economic experiment that has failed. Once again, the trickle down did not trickle. And it is time for us to get busy, make these tax cuts permanent for the middle class, and continue to try to reduce our deficit.

I see my friend. Nobody has worked harder, and I have tried to be a partner with him to reduce spending in the Federal Government. But this all of a sudden ``we are going to take our football and go home if you don't give us what we want by Monday''--and here is the richest part of this. The person who is saying ``we are going to go home on Monday if we don't get it by Monday'' is the person who is negotiating. He is supposed to be negotiating at 5:30. I mean, it is like looking in the mirror and saying: Hey, if you don't get it done by Monday--if he wants to get it done by Monday, then be reasonable about the millionaires. Be reasonable about the millionaires, and we can get this done, and we can go home and celebrate Christmas with our families and come back and start hard next year to reduce this deficit with a good downpayment-- $300 billion going to reduce the deficit because we are not going to give a very small, incremental tax increase to people who have plenty of cash right now. What they really need, those millionaires, they need the middle class to have some money to spend to create the demand. That is the economic policy that makes sense in this climate.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, I yield the floor so the Senator from New York can be recognized.

Mr. President, sometimes we selectively like certain testimony and dislike other testimony around here. My friend from Alabama is so proud of Mr. Zandi. I think it is important we put on the record what else Mr. Zandi said.

Mr. Zandi said if we had not passed the stimulus, we would have a depression. Now I hear the other side saying there was nothing worse than the stimulus. Mr. Zandi said if we had not done the stimulus, we would have a depression.

Now, I think Mr. Zandi would also say, if he were here right now, that the least stimulative tax cut we could do is a personal tax rate at the very highest bracket. Do you know what he would say is the most stimulative thing we could do to the economy right now? Unemployment benefits. And what are we fighting over? They are blocking the most stimulating thing we can do for the economy to do the least stimulating thing for the economy for the millionaires and billionaires.

Let's go over that again to make sure we understand this. The same economist my Republican friend is hanging his hat on has said, time and time again, the only thing that stood between this country and a depression was passing the stimulus. Now my colleagues want to use that same economist to justify holding up unemployment benefits, holding up the START Treaty, national security, and holding up any other business of the Senate, judicial nominations, work that needs to be done, to protect the millionaires and billionaires.

We do not need to argue about whether tax cuts are good. I think we have shown that. The proof is in the pudding. All my Republican friends know we have passed tax cut after tax cut. We have passed tax cuts for almost everybody in America. We passed tax cuts through payroll taxes. We passed middle-class tax cuts. We passed tax cuts for small businesses, which they were busy opposing. That is rich. They

opposed the tax cut for small businesses, and now they want to go to the mat for the millionaires.

People need to understand what they are saying. The reason the economists say do not raise taxes in a down economy is because we want money to go into the economy in a recession. We are trying to get money to circulate. We are trying to get investment. We are trying to get people to buy things. So that is why we look at spending on an emergency basis like a stimulus. And we look at tax policy and figure out what is the most stimulative thing we can do with the Tax Code to help this economy. That is why we focused on the middle class and small businesses. And they are stuck with those millionaires.

Now, I am very blessed; my husband's first job out of college was in a steel mill. I worked my way through college as a waitress. My husband has been very successful in business. When I talk to him--and he is an economist, very bright--when I talk to him about the various things we can do to stimulate investment--he has invested in many businesses through the years, created thousands and thousands of jobs--when I ask him is a 3-percent differential in your tax rate going to make a difference in your investment decisions next year, he kind of laughs. It may make a difference in terms of how much money he has to invest in one thing or another, but this is not the engine of our economy--a 3- percent difference in the tax rate for people who make millions of dollars. What does make a difference is a tax cut for the rest of America.

Here is where their argument falls apart even further. How many times have we heard our friends on the other side of the aisle talk about the deficit? Here is the dirty little secret. They do not want to extend taxes temporarily because we have a down economy. They want to do it permanently. They want to go borrow trillions of dollars from China to make sure we keep this tax break there for the millionaires permanently. They are not focused on the next year. They are not focused on the next 2 years. They want to blow the lid off this deficit and not pay for a dime of it by extending them permanently.

So he can say: Well, we don't raise taxes in a down economy. Then they ought to immediately acknowledge that this should only be a 2-year extension. But they will not even acknowledge that at this point. We agree on permanent tax relief for the middle class. Book it, Danno. We agree on that. Let's get that done: permanent tax relief for the middle class. All of us agree on that.

I, frankly, think it is time we start looking at the deficit, take the least stimulative money that we spend, which is this extra money for millionaires, and put that against the deficit. We will never get this deficit solved if anybody thinks we can do it on discretionary spending.

I have worked hard on discretionary spending. Senator Sessions and I have sponsored an amendment and put it before the Senate time after time trying to get our colleagues to accept a cap on spending. We have not been able to get it across the finish line. I am confident we will in the coming months, and we will put a cap on spending. That is part of the equation: take a hard look at entitlements, figure out if we really need to be buying prescription drugs for millionaires with tax dollars when we are in debt. I do not know. I do not think that makes a lot of sense. That is part of the entitlement program I think we should take a look at, as to how many rich people we are buying prescription drugs for. Then, finally, we need to look at tax policy. If we can't bring the tax rate for millionaires--not talking about a corporate tax rate, not talking capital gains, not talking about dividends, I am talking about the permanent tax rate--if we can't bring it back to the 1990s--find me a millionaire that didn't do well in the 1990s. I would like to meet one. Man, it was tall cotton in the 1990s for wealthy people in this country and, by the way, it hasn't been bad for the last 10 years. We haven't seen a lot of job creation after this tax cut. We created 22 million jobs in the Clinton years with the tax rate we want to go to for the millionaires, and they created 1 million after this tax cut was created--22 million versus 1 million. Really? We want to blow the lid off a deficit for that kind of job creation? No, we don't.

I wish to clarify one thing. Senator Kyl didn't yield for a question. I didn't ever say there was a threatening on START in the letter written by the Republicans. I said Senator Kyl today--and let me read the quote.

If taxes all can't be resolved and voted on and completed,

and spending for the government for the next 10 months

completed by next Monday, I don't know how there is enough

time to complete START.

Keep in mind, we have had 16 hearings on START; close to 1,000 congressional inquiries. It is hard to find somebody who understands the threat who doesn't support START. They are saying: Well, the verification doesn't go far enough. We have no verification now.

So Senator Kyl is the one who is saying that if we don't get everything done by Monday, they are done on the START treaty. I think I can speak for my colleagues on this side of the aisle. We are not done. We are not ready to go home. We want to stay here until we make sure we cut taxes for the middle class and continue that tax cut for the middle class. We want to stay here until we get that START treaty done, and we want to stay here and make sure we get an agreement to continue to fund the government. We will stay here, and I think most of us are willing to stay here weekends, all night, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the day after Christmas. I think we will stay here as long as it takes to complete this work.

So the sooner we find out the compromises they are willing to make, the better. Will they hold the middle class hostage, are they holding unemployment benefits hostage, and now will they hold the START treaty hostage for tax cuts for millionaires, the least stimulative tax break we can give? I hope not. For the sake of our economy, the future of this country, our grandchildren, deficit reduction, and national security, I hope not.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I rise to talk about an amendment we

will be voting on tomorrow concerning earmarks. Since coming to the Senate, I have decided I am not going to participate in what I think is a very flawed process. I don't think it is the right way to spend public money. I am not going to quarrel that some of the projects that have been funded are not meritorious; they are. In my State, some of the projects that have received earmarked funds are wonderful expenditures of public money. But it is the way in which the money is expended that is a problem; the way to decide it is the problem. It is the process.

There have been a number of defenses of earmarking. I am going to spend a couple minutes debunking the defenses of earmarking. I will tell you my favorite one: We are somehow abdicating the power of the purse that is delineated in the Constitution. Give me a break. We decide every dime of Federal money. Congress makes the decision on appropriations for every Federal program. How is giving up a secretive process, where nobody is sure how it is decided who gets how much money--how is getting rid of that somehow removing our constitutional authority to make spending decisions? It is like they want the American people to believe that if we quit earmarking, the appropriations process is going to go away, that we will no longer pass judgment on the President's budget, that we will not have oversight over Federal money. It is silly and absurd. In some ways, it is almost insulting.

The constitutional powers to decide how Federal money is spent will remain with the Congress long after this bad habit has been broken. Make no mistake about it, it may not be this year, it may not be next year, but the American people are on to us. They now know and understand that earmarking is about who you are. It is about what committee you sit on. It is about whom you know.

If this is such a fair process, if this is something we should be proud of, then I want someone to come to the floor and explain to me how they decide who gets the money. I ask it at home all the time, and I say: If you know, will you tell me because I am a Member of the Senate and I don't know.

In some committees, the ranking member and the chairman of the subcommittee get more money than everybody else. In other committees, they don't. Where is that decided? In what room? Is there a hearing? Can I go and watch? When the money is split, who is in the room? Who is on the phone? If we are brutally honest with the American people, we will tell them that is a process we don't want them to see. Yes, we are better because we reformed. I am proud my party led the reforms on earmarking right after I came to the Senate. Now your name is on your earmark.

I will tell you what is not public. Do you know what people at home actually believe? They believe the Senators don't pick the winners and losers. They actually think there is some mysterious process, but what we don't know is what are all the earmarks that Senators say no to. Senators say no to these earmarks. It is not a committee that says no to these. It is not a chairman. Each individual Senator decides winners and losers. I don't think the losers know that. I think the losers think that Senator had nothing to do with them being a loser. If we can make all that public, this would be a much less popular activity because all of a sudden the people who wanted the bridge in this part of the State would realize that the Senator thought the bridge on the other side of the State was more important. So we take credit for the earmarks we get, but we are not willing to own the fact that we have chosen winners and losers.

Finally, this notion that somehow the bureaucrats are going to decide--most of the money taken for earmarks comes out of programs that are grant programs and formula programs and are decided by population or by local people. It is not Washington bureaucrats. They are supplanting the judgment of one person for the local planning process and the State planning process. That is not the way.

I hope people vote for the Coburn-McCaskill amendment. This is the wrong way to spend public money. Whether it happens tomorrow or 2 or 3 years from now, make no mistake about it, the American people are tired of it.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Impeachment Trial Committee on the Articles Against Judge G. Thomas Porteous, Jr. will meet on Tuesday, November 16, 2010, at 10:30 a.m. to conduct an executive business meeting.

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Erin Johnson at 202-228-4133.

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

Mr. President, are we in morning business?

Mr. President, I come to floor today to tell a sad, sad story of hypocrisy. It is not the first time we have told stories of hypocrisy around this Capitol Building, but this one is a particularly sad story of hypocrisy because right now, the ending is ugly.

In America, we like nice endings. This story of hypocrisy has a very bad ending. The name of this story is, Who is trying to buy your government? There are folks out there right now trying to buy your government. The saddest part of this story is that we have no idea who they are. So why is it a story of hypocrisy? Well, we can start with how we got here.

I have heard so many times--I cannot count how many times I have heard my colleagues in the other party talk about the evils of an activist court: Well, we have to make sure we do not have activist judges. Well, no, I am not opposed to this nominee because he is appointed by a Democratic President; I am opposed to this nominee because of activism, evil activism. We have to watch out for activism.

So along comes the Citizens United case. If you looked up ``judicial activism'' in a reference book, you would find the title ``Citizens United.'' This Court went off the tracks. They created precedent out of whole cloth in an effort to turn our democracy into a race for the highest bidder.

I think it is hypocritical for people to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee and be eloquent--because these are all smart people--very eloquent about the evils of judicial activism and then proceed to dismantle a system that is all about the public's right to know.

There is another part of this that is hypocritical, besides the notion that somehow conservative people are not judicial activists. They are not judicial activists when they are active for something you believe in. Then it is not activism. In other words, judicial activism is in the eye of the beholder. I can think of a lot of Supreme Court cases that could back up that assertion.

The other thing that is so hypocritical about this is the ridiculous notion that so many people in this body have talked about transparency like it is so near and dear to them. We must have transparency. We must have an open door. We must have sunlight. Let me read a few quotes. This is rich:

Public disclosure of campaign contributions and spending

should be expedited . . .

Think about that term, especially when we realize where it came from.

Public disclosure of campaign contributions and spending

should be expedited so voters can judge for themselves what

is appropriate.

Good, old-fashioned common sense. That is from the leader of the Republican Party.

How about this one:

I think what we ought to do is we ought to have full

disclosure, full disclosure of all the money we raise and how

it is spent. And I think that sunlight is the best

disinfectant.

That came from the leader of the Republican Party in the House.

I think the system needs more transparency so people can

more easily reach their own conclusions.

I couldn't agree more. That comes from the Senator heading up the Republican effort to elect Republican Senators this year.

I could go on and on. We have a Supreme Court decision that turns the section of the IRS Code, 501(c), into an open bazaar. What was supposed to be not political and not for profit is now a mushrooming industry of nonaccountable, unaccountable organizations that nobody has any idea where they are coming from, who is writing the checks, and what their motivations are. These groups have fallen into a regulatory nirvana. There is no regulation. There is nobody watching. There is nobody asking questions.

These are social welfare organizations, 501(c)(4)s, like Crossroads, which is one that sprung up. It has been the top spender. It hasn't been the Republican committees or the Democratic committees. The top spender in the Senate races is a group we have no idea what it is or who is writing the checks.

We have to realize they don't even have to file anything with the government, with the IRS, until February, March, April. How many people think these organizations are going to be around after November? Really? How naive are you? They have to find some excuse, right, because this is embarrassing that they are blocking our efforts at making campaign finance contributions transparent?

One can't really say: Hey, we are going to change our mind about transparency because we have an election to win and we have a bunch of rich people out here who want to write big checks or big corporations that want to write big checks. So what do you do? You try to make it about the big, bad unions. These rules need to apply to unions too.

Unions are doing ads right now. They should be saying what unions are doing them. We should know where their money comes from. We do know where their money comes from. It comes from their members. But we ought to know who is doing it. This law requires the same thing of unions that it requires of anyone else writing big checks.

Who is going to buy your government? It could be like a game show. We could have a big wheel and spin the wheel and people could guess who is buying the government. I am worried about government contractors. There has been big money in government contracting. I have noticed from firsthand experience that when we start shaking the trees of these government contractors, they fight back. As I have tried to clean up some of the contracting messes that have littered the financial landscape of the Federal Government, I have run into an amazing amount of resistance from the underground power of these government contractors.

Let's look at Blackwater. We know they have created dozens of fake names to do business with the government. Many of them are noncompetitive. Many of them are highly lucrative. They are hiding the identity of their company for purposes of contracting.

Can colleagues imagine what they are capable of if they get to write checks to influence elections with nobody knowing it? I am in big trouble. I have gone after a lot of these big contractors. Now I think my picture is probably on a lot of their dart boards. Now they don't have to worry about throwing a dart. They don't have to worry about it. All they have to do is anonymously write big checks. Millions of dollars. Write a check for $10 million. Blow out an election in a State. Nobody has to know who did it.

Foreign interests, yes; the Citizens United case created all kinds of loopholes that are actually delineated in the case. They explained the loopholes that are being created, if one reads the entire decision, for foreign corporations. It is like after that case we have fallen down a rabbit hole in terms of everything we should believe in in terms of our election processes.

In the old days, they used to have the term, ``the bagman.'' The bagman was not exactly a positive term for people. The bagman was the guy who was in charge of carrying the money around in a bag. There was a time in this democracy where they actually did that. Big bags of cash were carried around and delivered to people's desks in every level of government in the country. The people in this great democracy rose up and said: We want to clean up this mess. We want candidates to have to report how much money they are getting.

Some States said: We want to limit how much they are getting. We limit how much we get. I don't know why we are not honest about this. I don't know why they don't just propose an alternative bill that we do away with any kind of limits. Frankly, it might be a better tradeoff.

If somebody put a gun to my head and said: You have to choose. Do you want all the money being spent on campaigns disclosed where it is coming from or do you want limits, I think I would take the disclosure because I trust the American people. If they know who is paying the bill, they can make a good judgment whether they trust what that commercial says or what that mailer says or what that robo call says.

Trust is the great intangible around here. We can't do our jobs with dignity and with honor if we are hypocrites and if there is not trust. Does anyone imagine that the American people are going to trust us more when we have open season on elections by the highest bidder?

I implore my colleagues, clean up this mess with us. Don't put the last nail in the coffin of bipartisanship. This should be a bipartisan effort. One rich guy who has a grudge against you can make unfair commercials and never be held accountable, regardless of whether you are a Democrat or a Republican.

I am not as offended by the notion that wealthy people can spend their money however they want as I am by the notion that they can buy elections with it and not be held accountable. We have a very wealthy guy in St. Louis, Rex Sinquefield, who is spending millions of dollars influencing elections and issues in Missouri. I kind of admire the guy. He is up front about it. He is not handing checks off to Karl Rove somewhere. He is very up front.

Trust is the great intangible. Everyone who blocks the effort to require full disclosure of money that is being spent on political campaigns does great damage to the most precious commodity we have in this country, and that is the strength of our democracy.

I hope the American people, who are pretty cranky right now--and I get it; they are upset; they ought to be really mad about this--hold every one of us accountable. If you are not willing to support a bill that will require full disclosure of people who are spending money on political advertising, then I don't know how seriously we can take anything you say you stand for.

Let's get the DISCLOSE Act up now. Let's clean up this mess. I guarantee my colleagues, it is going to have an ugly ending. This story will not have a good ending unless we change the plot.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask the Senate to join me today in honoring the work of Reverend Sam Mann, a leader in the Kansas City community. Reverend Mann's retirement is yet one more wonderful milestone in a life of service.

Sam was raised in Eufala, AL, and made Kansas City his home as a young man. Over the years, he has been a tireless civil rights advocate in Kansas City and the Nation. He marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and participated in numerous activities to raise awareness of race and justice issues.

Since 1971, Sam has been the pastor of St. Mark's United Methodist Church in downtown Kansas City. He has been the executive director of United Inner City Services, a multiservice community-based agency, since 1967.

I have always known Reverend Mann as ``rubber band.'' This derives from the time I was walking with him through a roomful of young children who were attending a program he had designed that predated his establishment of the St. Mark center. From the beginning, Sam was always looking out for children. As we were walking through the room, the children were pulling on his coattail saying, ``Reverend Mann, Reverend Mann'' but it sounded like ``rubber band, rubber band.'' From that day forward, he has always been ``rubber band'' to me.

Sam believes in the importance of education and has been a strong advocate for early childhood education. Under his leadership, St. Mark Child and Family Development Center was established. This center started in a church basement and now is located in a beautiful state- of-the-art facility. In addition, the center serves as a neighborhood anchor, providing a safe, warm and attractive site for a variety of community services. St. Mark annually serves approximately 225 very low and low-income families through its early childhood education program, before- and after-school program and summer camp. These children and their families have been forever impacted by Sam's work and dedication.

Sam was the founder of the Presbyterian Urban Ministers Network, was a cosponsor of Kansas City's Urban Peace & Justice Summit, and served on the Board of the Black Archives of Mid-America. For 25 years, he has served as chair of Kansas City's local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

While we hope that retirement affords Sam some much deserved relaxation and time on the golf course, we also look forward to his continued involvement in education projects and social justice issues important to the lives of Kansas Citians.

Mr. President, I ask that the Senate join me in congratulating and honoring Reverend Sam Mann on his retirement.