Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business. However, if anyone wishes to come in and talk about the pending bill, I will certainly defer to them.

I certainly amend it accordingly.

Again, I would say if anyone wants to come in and talk about this vote that is coming up, I will yield to them.

Guantanamo Bay

I seem to be involved in four missions right now and one of them happens to be the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. I have had occasion to be down at that facility right after 9/11 and then, of course, the other day I was there again. There are some very serious problems I think many Members of this body are not aware of. One is that when President Obama gave his excellent speech that was his inaugural speech, he recognized we need to determine what we are going to do with those who are currently detained at Guantanamo Bay and those who may come into that facility as a result of the escalation of activity in Afghanistan before making a determination that it has to be closed. Unfortunately, 2 days after he made that speech, he stated it was going to be closed and the prison would be closed within a year.

On February 2, I took a group down there with some Senators who had never been to Guantanamo Bay. All they could do on the way back is say: Why are we considering giving up this facility? In fact, shortly after that, I introduced legislation that would prevent any transfers of detainees from Guantanamo Bay to anywhere in the United States or its territories. The reason I did this is because while this has been used to detain some 800 al-Qaida and Taliban combatants, they are down right now to about 525 of those who have been tried and departed from Gitmo for other countries. Today, there are approximately 245 detainees left. This is the problem. These detainees--about 170 as near as we can determine--are very serious detainees such as Khalid Mohammed and others who were directly involved in the planning of 9/11. Many of the countries will not accept them back. They cannot be repatriated to any country; nobody wants them. So the choices are limited either to keep them at that facility or to figure out some way to put them in, as has been suggested, to some facility in the continental United States. They have talked about some 17 places that could detain these terrorists.

The problem we have with that is these would become 17 magnets for terrorism in the United States. I can't find one Member of the U.S. Senate--not one--who is willing to have any of these detained in his or her State. I often wonder what is this obsession that people have to closing this facility. It is kind of funny because it is one of the few good things that is out there--few good deals we have. We have had this facility since 1903. We are still paying the same amount of money-- $4,000 a year--for this facility, and it is the state-of-the-art place for the United States to take care of this type of detainee. Let's keep in mind that we also have a complex called the expeditionary legal complex located at Gitmo. It is about the only place of its kind in the world where you can try these cases. If you don't try them there, very likely they could find their way into our justice system. Of course, I think we all understand the rules of evidence are different in that facility than they are in our Federal judiciary system.

I had occasion to go to Fort Sill in my State of Oklahoma, which is 1 of the 17 that have been named as possible areas for detention of these individuals.

Sergeant Major Carter was there, the one running the facility. She had occasion to be stationed for over a year at Guantanamo. She said: Why in the world would we give up that facility to send them down here to Fort Sill? First of all, we don't have the capacity to keep them in the various classifications in security that they do at Guantanamo. Second, she said that the ratio is 1 to 2 in terms of health care facilities. There is just one health care person in most locations, but there are doctors and nurses for each two detainees at Guantanamo Bay. We don't have anything like that at Fort Sill or Leavenworth or any of the other suggested places.

Consequently, they have studied and found and determined that never has there been a case of abuse in the way of human rights abuses with the detainees. There has never been a case of waterboarding or of any kind of torturing. Yet they are there, and nobody has been able to say why it is that they should be closed down.

What troubles me most is that the Obama administration seems more focused on closing Gitmo and protecting the rights of those detainees than on conducting the war on terror and protecting our country and our people from the terrorists currently held there.

It is interesting that Attorney General Holder went down to look at Gitmo to determine what we should do. He came back with a glowing report about the conditions. The Pentagon released a report stating that Gitmo meets the highest international standards, the very highest standards. Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems bent on closing Gitmo--I guess for political reasons. Yet I have not heard the reasons why it is that people are so obsessed with the idea of closing it down.

I think it is time for the Members of Congress to weigh in because as we look at the evidence and the problems, we have to find a place to put the detainees who are there. I say to my friend from Vermont, it is not just the 245 detainees currently there, it is the ones who are going to be there as a result of the surge. People say there are two prisons in Afghanistan, there is Bagram and Kandahar. The problem with that is, it is my understanding they will only accept detainees who are Afghan. You have others going from Saudi Arabia, from other areas, and there is no place else they can be put.

I think we have an opportunity there to have a place that is secure, with the highest standards. Again, the only alternative would be to put them in places where we have detainees--where we have other facilities in the United States.

In 2007, the Senate passed a resolution by a vote of 94 to 3. It stated that the detainees housed at Gitmo should not be released into American society, nor should they be transferred stateside into facilities in American communities and neighborhoods. That vote was 94 to 3.

Madam President, I suggest to you that we will have the opportunity to call on those 94 Members, and certainly their constituents back home, who don't want to have them released and housed in any area other than Gitmo. My State of Oklahoma is not the only State where the State legislature has passed resolutions saying we don't want any of those detainees housed in our State. I think we will have an opportunity-- since the vote is taking place in a minute and my time has expired--an opportunity in the next few days, before any final action takes place, to allow the Members of both the House and Senate to express a very strong position that they don't want to have these detainees placed in any of the stateside facilities.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is my understanding that I have 1 hour. I did not mind the Senator going over. I was enjoying the comments of my friend from Florida. But I want to make sure I still have that hour.

I ask unanimous consent that I do.

Let me say this to my friend from Florida. Coincidentally, I was talking to my friend, Senator Vitter, who went over this with me. I have instructed my staff to add me to the Senator's bill as a cosponsor.

As the Senator from Florida will remember, he and I have agreed on a lot of the problems we are having today with China; for one thing, the threat that is out there, both in terms of energy and military buildup. I have been very much concerned as I go through--and my friend from Florida and I are both very active in trying to get things done in Africa--as we go through Africa, individually or together, we notice one of the major things we see taking place there, particularly in the area of the Sea of Guinea and other places in Nigeria where they have huge oil reserves, is the Chinese are building all of these new and shiny bridges and all that, which is competing with us since we have the same problem they have in terms of a lack of energy.

So I would enjoy joining him in some of these problems we see that we are having with China.

I wanted some time this morning. I actually have four causes going on right now. I am not going to have time to address all four of these. But I will just briefly say what they are, then I will start with the one I think is the most critical right now. First of all, one of my causes is having to do with Guantanamo Bay.

The fact that people are talking about closing it, President Obama has stated--actually in his inaugural address he did not, but then later on said, yes, we are going to close it in spite of the problems that would come to us if we did close it.

I am anxious to have time on the floor to talk about the frequent visits I have made to GITMO. One of the few good deals the Government has today is Guantanamo Bay. It might be that the Presiding Officer is not aware of the fact. It is one of the good deals out there. We only pay $4,000 a year, the same thing we paid in 1903, for the use of this great facility.

There has been no evidence of any kind of abuse of prisoners or detainees. They have a judicial center that is unlike anything in the United States. These are tribunals.

We cannot put these terrorists, these detainees, into our

prison system. That is not going to work. If it does, I would

like to know which Member of the Senate wants to have those

detainees housed in their own State. I am sure the Presiding

Officer is not excited about having them in Illinois. I am

not excited about having them in Oklahoma.

What would happen is, anyplace where they would be detained in the United States would be a magnet to terrorist activity. But I hope I will have a chance to talk about that.

Climate Change

The next thing would be on some of the recent developments in what they used to call the global warming problem. Since we are in the fifth year of a cooling period, they are trying to change that to ``climate change.'' But this is something a lot of people in this body are pursuing.

I would say this: There are not the votes for a major tax increase. A cap and trade on carbon would now constitute somewhere between $350 and $400 billion each year as a tax increase, and it is something that would not accomplish anything.

In fact, if there are a few people still remaining out there who believe global warming is caused by carbon dioxide and we need to restrict it in some way, let's keep in mind, if we do something unilaterally in the United States of America, then what few manufacturing jobs we have left in this country are going to go to places where they can provide energy in places such as China and Mexico, where they have no restrictions on emissions on CO2.

So I would only say I hope we have time to talk about that.

The problem is focused on one number. If they talk about that this is not a cut in defense spending, we need to look and examine that, which I will do in a few minutes. Actually, thanks to the Obama administration, overall defense spending has been cut by $10.7 billion in 2009. You might say 2009 was not his year. It was. The second half of the emergency supplemental fell under his jurisdiction, so that is an accurate figure. It would be cut again in fiscal year 2010, based on projected inflation and the potential use of what is now being called overseas contingency. I call that the global war on terror. They want to rename it now. It sounds a little more palatable to some of these editorial liberals to whom I have already referred.

We have reached a crossroads where we will have to choose to either invest in the modernization and readiness of our military or kick the can down the road. That is what we have been doing for a long time.

We had a hearing yesterday in the Readiness Subcommittee, chaired by Evan Bayh. The ranking member is Richard Burr. We went over all of this with some of the top people in the military. Quite frankly, they agreed with all these comments that I am making today and I made yesterday on this committee. Based on the projected defense budget for the next 10 years, it looks as though the administration is taking us down the same path that led to a weaker and poorly equipped military.

It is interesting that a lot of the people over the years who have been critical of defense spending--talking about liberals who are here in this Chamber--are the same ones now saying: Wait a minute, our Guard and Reserve can't handle the op tempo. That is a term used, ``operation tempo,'' number of deployments and all this. The problem we have is that we gone through--and I will show this in a minute--a period of time in the 1990s where we downgraded the military, and then we turned around and along comes 9/11. All of a sudden, we have a President who has to prosecute a war, at the same time trying to build a military.

The plan he announced is intended to reshape the priorities of America's defense establishment and profoundly reform how DOD does business. I agree that we need to have procurement reforms in the Pentagon. There is no question about that. But let's don't use that for an excuse to cut modernization programs.

I was in Afghanistan at the time this decision was announced, and it comes at a time in our history when we have dramatically increased our domestic spending in trillions of dollars under the umbrella of emergency bailouts and stimulus packages and all of that. If you stop and think about the amount of money this administration has really spent--look at the $700 billion bailout. Then you have the $789 billion stimulus package. Then you have the omnibus bill that is $410 billion. That adds up to $2 trillion. That is in the first 3 months. So when you look and think of the stimulus package, how much better would it have been if we could have had more defense spending at that time. There is nothing that employs more people, that better stimulates the economy than defense spending. We tried to do that. Of course, that was defeated. So this President is on track to grow this country's obligations to 22 percent of our GDP while he shrinks defense spending probably down to 3 percent. Right now, it is at 4 percent of GDP. As I calculate, it will be down to 3 percent.

Let's see the chart. I would like to show people so there is no question about this. The chart we have here shows what happened back in the 1990s. The black line on top is when Bill Clinton came into office. That is fiscal year 1993. As it is projected forward for the next 8 years, the black line would say--let's say we want to keep defense spending in terms exactly as it is today, back in 1993, except for inflation. That black line is where it would be if we had kept that level of defense spending. The red line was the Clinton budget. That is what I am saying. We are going through the same thing now percentage- wise, almost the same thing that we went through there. So the difference between the Clinton budget and what would have happened with the level of spending is $412 billion. So you can say that is a $412 billion cut.

Many of us on the floor of the Senate in the 1990s--me probably more than anybody else--talked about these dramatic, massive cuts in procurement and modernization. With very few exceptions, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines have been using the same weapons systems while fighting a two-pronged war for 8 years, weapons and weapons systems from back during the Cold War, the same ones we are using today. We have been unsuccessfully trying to get past this bow wave created in the 1990s when the military budget was cut by $412 billion and acquisition programs and research and development were pushed to the right. That is a term we use that means if you are going to delay something, you push it to the right.

The cost of kicking our military modernization down the road is twofold in that the increase in the cost to modernize and the increased cost to develop and fuel new weapons is an increased cost to operate and maintain. It gets to the point where it is like the car you drive. You buy a new car. You drive it for 20 years. At least that is what I do. You finally get to the point where you are paying more to maintain that car than if you would get a new one. A lot of that is because of the accounting system that Government has. It is somewhat guilty of forcing this type of thing. But that is what has happened. We have forced ourselves to use older and older stuff.

Our major combat systems that our troops are using today are those developed and procured during the 1980s. Some of them go all the way back to the 1950s. The Reagan administration was handed a military, everyone agrees now, that was a hollow force. No one questions that. At that time, people thought: There is not going to be any problem now. And then when the Cold War was over, everyone had this euphoria: We no longer have a threat out there. The Cold War is over. The term they used, if you will remember, was--I can't remember what it was now. It was a great benefit to put that money into social programs, which is what we are doing today. A peace bonus, that is what it was.

So anyway, our combat systems are older and older, and the Reagan administration expanded the military budget, increased troop size, reenergized weapons procurement, revived intelligence capabilities, and returned this country to its superpower status that it had been in the past. He guaranteed the superiority of the U.S. military's weapons systems capabilities through long-term investments and ensuring that our troops were provided with the most advanced equipment available.

Secretary Gates said in January of 2009:

Our military must be prepared for a full spectrum of

operations, including the type of combat we are facing in

Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as large-scale threats that we

face from places like North Korea and Iran.

I want to say one more time that I don't blame Secretary Gates. I am glad he is the Secretary of Defense. I just wish he had a better hand dealt him so he could do a better job. I think he is operating under the limitations of a White House that is just not a prodefense White House. Far too often, we have learned the hard lessons that we don't have a crystal ball to precisely predict what our needs will be in the future.

This actually happened to me. The last year I served in the House was 1994.

I was on the House Armed Services Committee at that time. I will always remember we had someone come in and testify and say that in 10 years we will no longer need ground troops. They were talking about all the precision stuff the Air Force does and the technology that was coming. That was testimony a lot of people rejoiced to hear so they could start cutting the Marine Corps and the Army, which is exactly what happened. Then what happened? Then we had Bosnia and we had Kosovo and we had Iraq and we had Afghanistan. Now, after 7 years engaged in the war on terror, we know he was wrong.

The strategic environment has become increasingly complex, dynamic, lethal, and uncertain. Today, our military is fighting with equipment that is decades old and with a force structure that is 40 percent less than it was in the 1980s. That is essentially what was cut during this timeframe right here. It was a cut of about 40 percent, if we take the budgets at the beginning and the end of it.

So we are talking about force structure and modernization. Right now, the Air Force has 2,500 fewer aircraft. The Navy has cut its fleet size in half. The Army has reduced its force to half the number of divisions it had during the first gulf war. This all happened in the 1990s. For the past 17 years, our military has been asked to do more with less.

One of the concerns I had back during the 1990s, when they were cutting the force strength--that was back during the time they were all rejoicing with this euphoric attitude I mentioned that the Cold War was over and we do not need a military anymore--so they were cutting it back at that time and believing we were not going to have to have the needs we were going to have. Unfortunately, what took less than a decade to field in the 1980s will now take us several decades to field. In the case of KC-X, the KC-X was supposed to be online. We were supposed to actually have it by this time. Right now, our fueling capability is done with KC-135s.

I will say this: At Tinker Air Force Base, they do a great job of taking these ancient aircraft and continuing them in service. But there will come a point where we can no longer continue to do that. In the United States, we are going to have to build and sustain military capabilities required to respond to possible future threats across the spectrum.

Wouldn't it be great if we knew what the next war was going to be like? We have never been in that position. We have tried to guess, but we have always been wrong. The next war will not be like the past one or even like the one we are in now. History has taught us that very hard lesson. It also does not mean the next war will be like the one we might have to fight 5 or 10 years from now. The decisions we make today on the Senate floor will set the stage for what happens in the next 40 years. I wish there were time. I wish we could instantly determine what our needs will be 20 years from now and not

have to prepare in advance. We cannot do that. Does anyone want to hazard a guess what the world will be like in 20 years?

There is a Marine Corps general. I have his name down here somewhere. In just this past February, he made this statement to a bunch of young marines. I was over there at the time he made it. This is a quote I want to read:

You say the next conflict will be a guerrilla conflict. I

say, it depends. In my lifetime, we have been in 5 big fights

and a bunch of little ones. In only one of those 5 big ones--

And Desert Storm is what he was referring to--

had we prepared for the type of war we wound up having to

fight.

That is one out of five.

It is one thing to say that a certain type of fight is more

or less likely; it is quite another to say it is certain to

be one or the other. In war, the only thing certain is

uncertainty.

He went on to say:

It may be that nobody can beat us in a conventional fight

today, but what we buy today is what we will have to fight

with in 2020.

Furthermore, advertising that our focus of effort is on the

low-to-mid intensity fights of the future reduces the

deterrence that powerful conventional capabilities

demonstrate to traditional state actors. Non-state actors,

guerrillas, terrorists are not likely to be deterred by our

capabilities. Nation-states are.

See, we are used to that. He is dead right in this case. We knew during the Second World War who the enemies were: Germany and Japan. We knew their capabilities. During the Cold War, we knew the capabilities. I sometimes look wistfully back on the days of the Cold War because at least then it was predictable. We knew how they thought, their thinking process. We knew their capabilities.

He goes on to say:

We had better well have the capability to fight the

guerrilla and the nation-state, regardless of which of these

is more or less likely.

That is a very wise man. He is advising his young marines, and they listened, and it makes sense.

We were not able to predict the fall of the Soviet Union, the rapid growth of the ballistic missile capability of North Korea, or the rise in the asymmetric warfare in which we are currently engaged. It does not matter how great our military leaders or intelligence is, our strategic thinking will always be imperfect. We have a lot of smart generals out there, and they are going to try to tell us what we are going to need 10 or 15 years from now, and they are going to be wrong because they have always been wrong. They understand that, as that Marine Corps general stated.

In order to provide stability, America is going to have to be able to deter or defeat any threat, be it an insurgency or a challenge from a near-peer competitor. We cannot any longer fool ourselves that we are still sending our sons and daughters out with the best equipment.

When I talk to people around the country, there is an assumption out there that when we go to war, regardless of what kind of war-- asymmetrical or conventional warfare--we are sending our kids out with the best of equipment. That is not true.

In a minute, I am going to show you that there are other countries that have things that are better than what we have in our defense capability, in our effort to conduct warfare. But before I do that, let me at least address what all these critics of me were saying when we talked about how much less money right now we are going to be projecting into our force structure, in our military spending, if we do the math. So let's go ahead and do it.

As I stated earlier, we need to look at the total defense budget-- what DOD actually spends on all its operations.

During the Bush administration, the sources that funded our defenses were not all just DOD or the Department of Defense, appropriations and authorizations. They were also the DOE funds. DOE has a lot of funds for nuclear ships and weapons. We have certainly wartime supplementals. All of those added up to what we spent on defense. What they are trying to do now is say, well, the DOD appropriations are actually going to be greater today than they were in fiscal year 2009. Well, that may be true, but that is not the total amount of defense spending. That is just a small part of it.

I think the best evidence of that is to see what systems we have to cut in order to act under the confines of this budgeting.

First, there is a net loss in defense spending in 2009 of $10.7 billion. This is the second increment of the supplemental that came under the jurisdiction of the current administration, the Obama administration. President Bush increased the total defense budget in 2009 by $37.2 billion.

He also approved $65.9 billion in supplemental funds for the first part of fiscal year 2009.

President Obama's supplemental request of $75.5 billion for defense needs funds an increase of 21,000 troops. Well, I agree with his message that we need to increase the number of troops and increase the number of troops in Afghanistan. That is very reasonable. But we are going to have to pay for those troops, and we cannot pay for those troops with the same amount of money we had when we had 21,000 fewer troops.

The GAO report on the cost of the Iraq withdrawal said it will be a ``massive and expensive effort'' . . . that costs would more often increase in the near term. In other words, as you draw down in Iraq, that is going to increase the actual cost.

It went on to say that the cost of equipment repairs, replacements, closing, and turning over 283 military installations in Iraq and moving troops and equipment home ``will likely be significant.''

Unfortunately, defense spending actually decreases in 2009 by $10.7 billion due to President Obama's decreased total supplemental request from $189 billion to $141 billion.

So let's compare 2009 to 2010, where I have been accused of not being able to do the math.

Defense spending does increase from 2009 to 2010 by $14.9 billion. But according to President Obama's letter to Speaker Pelosi, there will be no more supplementals. If we take the supplementals out, then it is a dramatic reduction in spending. That would mean DOD would have to fund all wartime operations out of the hide to the tune of $100 billion-plus.

However, President Obama does fence off $130 billion for ``Overseas Contingency Funds.'' Well, that is within the budget, and I guess that is what he now calls the war on terror. Even adding the $130 billion to defense spending--which is never the case with supplemental funding-- the overall increase in defense spending for 2010 is $3.5 billion.

I say that because we know when we have an emergency supplemental, everybody puts everything they can into it, and that is where the effort is taking place.

Now, we add the accelerated growth of the Army and Marine Corps--a 65,000 and 22,000 increase, respectively--at a cost of approximately $13 billion to cover pay and health care costs, and we start to see the beginnings of how our military modernization gets gutted.

The DOD has certain ``must pays,'' things they have to pay. They have to pay personnel, operations and maintenance, ongoing wartime, and contingency operations. With a zero supplemental fund, the money to pay for these ``must pays'' will be taken from the base Defense budget, and the areas that are always hit are research and development and acquisition. There we are talking about modernization.

So what I would like to do--well, first of all, just look at what is being cut. We know about the Future Combat System. I am going to cover these in a minute, but there are the F-22s, the C-17s, the national missile defense system, the future bombers, and it does not stop in 2010.

As we look at the projected defense budget through 2019, we see a decreasing defense budget compared to GDP starting at 3.8 percent in 2010 and ending with 3 percent in 2019.

This is interesting to compare, to use the percentage of GDP. If we go back and look at what happened in the entire 20th century--for 100 years--and we take the average of defense spending as a percentage of GDP, it is 5.7 percent--5.7 percent. I have been asking to just keep it at no less than 4 percent. Right now, it is a little under 4 percent, but it would go down to 3 percent with the budget expectations we are looking at right now.

So when compared to a sustained annual defense investment of 4 percent of GDP to recapitalize and modernize our military, the 10-year proposed Obama defense budget is $1.3 trillion in the

red. It is so similar to what we went through in the 1990s. I do not like to be overly critical, but there are a lot of people who are liberal people who generally, in their own mind, do not think we need a military. I have listened. They will never admit it. But they say, well, if all nations would stand in a circle and hold hands and unilaterally disarm, all threats would go away.

I respect people who have this opinion, even though the opinion is wrong.

So we have ships and naval aircraft that currently average being 18 years old, and Marine Corps aircraft that now average being over 21 years old. Refueling tankers--I am talking about the KC-135s--are over 44 years old; Air Force fighter aircraft, 19 years old; special operations aircraft, over 27 years old. Special ops--everyone realizes what a great job they are doing. It is kind of like the Marine Corps. They always have to make do with older equipment but never complain about it.

In order to keep 40-year-old KC-135s in the air, the DOD had to reprogram almost $3 billion from the KC-X to repair KC-135s. For the KC-X, we might remember--that was kind of confusing--a contract was let, and that contract was challenged. That would have given us--not immediately, certainly, but over the next 20 years, we would be able to replace the KC-135s.

I think it is easier--rather than to spend any more time talking about very complicated things in terms of budgeting--to just look and see service by service. The Army's current fleet of combat vehicles was developed and procured between 30 and 60 years ago.

We have the M1 Abrams tank, which has done a great job, that was developed back in the early 1970s and fielded in the early 1980s. The M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle--we are still using that right now, and it is 25 years old. It is on its third significant modification, and it has been crucial in defending our troops against the IEDs the RPGs. Both of these combat-proven vehicles continue to undergo fleetwide resets. Yet they are so old.

So let's look at another particular one, the best artillery piece we have in the U.S. Army. It is called a Paladin. The Paladin is a technology developed in World War II. You actually have to get out after each shot and swab the breech.

Now, it has gone through some new reiterations, and currently there is another one that is taking place. But again, this is what we have. There are five countries now, including South Africa, that make a better artillery piece than our Paladin. This is one of the programs that is a part of the FCS program that is going to be cut. Secretary Gates didn't say it was completely cut; he just said it is delayed. That is a nice way of saying it is cut, it is gone.

So I would hope one thing: That when we are going through what they call the PIM Program--the Paladin Integrated Management Program--we keep these running, to upgrade them so they will be somewhat competitive in the battlefield. I would say at the very least we should keep that PIM Program going if we cut the future combat system. We should keep the future combat system on track, but if we dump the FCS, we don't want to dump the PIM with it. So even with that PIM update, the Army expects to keep the Paladin in use until 2060, and that is 100 years on the battlefield.

Our Army is long overdue for a thorough and comprehensive modernization. I would just go back again to 1994 when we had people testifying that in 10 years we would no longer need ground capability or ground fighters. The proposed Defense budget would cancel the Army's future combat system and the modernization programs intended to replace the Paladin. FCS would bring improved armor and would save lives. Nonetheless, that was one of them that was cut.

Let's go to the Air Force. For nearly two decades, our Air Force has dominated the skies and ensured air superiority. But a recent GAO study stated that air sovereignty alert operations--the post-9/11 operations that protect our homeland--are at risk due to aging aircraft and insufficient procurement. The Air Force grounded 259 of its 441 F-15 Eagles from November 1997, and last May the service parked 500 of its T-38 Talons, the trainers. A lot of those were taking place at Vance Air Force Base in my State of Oklahoma. They don't have quite enough of them yet, but again, that is part of the problem we are having right now. Our aging fleet is out of service. Last October, the Air Force ordered more than half of its 356 A-10 fighters to stay put because of cracks inside the wings. While we have enjoyed the benefit of investment during the 1980s of the F-15, the F-16, the A-10, the F-117, which is now out of service, the service is talking about retiring 137 F-15s, 177 F-16s, and 9 A-10s. I say that creates a problem.

We had a very courageous general named John Jumper. John Jumper ended up being the Chief of the Air Force, but before he was Chief of the Air Force--and this was about 1998, so it was during the Clinton administration, and it took a lot of courage for a uniform to stand up and admit publicly, with his background that no one would question, that now--back in 1998--he said the Soviets--the Russians--are making the SU series that are really fifth-generation fighters and we don't have anything that can really compete with them that is better than our F-15s or F-16s, which is all we had at that time. So in spite of all of the above, President Obama is shutting down the F-22, the only fifth- generation fighter we have. Remember, we were going to have 750 of them, and he is going to stop at 187. If you stop the production line at 187, we are not going to be able to produce any more of these things.

If some President comes along in 4 years and says: No, they made a mistake 4 years ago, we are going to have to get that line going again, the first ones would cost about twice. So this is one of the problems we are having.

They are talking about increasing the F-35s--that is the Joint Strike Fighter--but that is a different mission. It certainly can't compete with the F-22.

Well, we have a very serious problem. Again, it gets down to, do we really have an expectation in America--we send our kids into battle in the air or on the ground--that we are going to get them the best equipment to work with? I wish that were the case, but it is not the case.

The Navy. At a time when the U.S. Navy is being called on to project its presence in more parts of the world than ever before, the recommendation that is coming from the White House is that the Navy shrink its carrier fleet to 10 aircraft carriers by 2012 and delay the acquisition of the other portions of its fleet. We see what is happening now. We have these aircraft carriers staged all over the world, and to be cutting that fleet, to me, is totally irresponsible.

I remember when I was first elected to the House. My first year was 1987. The first weekend I was in the House of Representatives, and I was going to be on the House Armed Services Committee, I spent the weekend down off the coast of Virginia on the USS Coral Sea. I went out there and landed on the carrier. I thought I had died and gone to heaven, it had such capability. At that time, in 1987, as we looked as the Sun was coming up, we could see the Soviet ships that were going around with their periscopes, the submarines, looking at what we had. Now that is out of commission; the Coral Sea is gone. These things don't last forever. The opposition--China, right now, is building these things. We have to stay better than they are. Yet we are cutting our carrier fleet.

This reduction of aircraft carriers goes further below the previous QDR--that is the Quadrennial Defense Review--of 12 carriers required for moderate risk. So we have a situation where we need 12 carriers-- not 10 but 12--for moderate risk. Moderate risk is a term that is used in the military as to lives. If you have no risk, you are not going to lose human lives. If you have high risk, you are going to lose a lot of human lives. This is moderate. So we are saying we are willing to cut two aircraft carriers below what we call moderate risk or loss of life. I am not willing to do that.

In the last few weeks, we have seen how important the Navy is in watching some of the pirate counterterrorism operations off the coast of Africa. I was over there in Somalia and in that area just a week ago. We are having some successes in our battle with the pirates, but again, a very critical part of that is our carrier capability.

Meanwhile, Russian and Chinese submarines continue to be a threat to our

forces, with China operating over 60-something quieter subs. Since the 1990s, China has been unilaterally hedging its maritime power to exclude the U.S. Navy from the Taiwan Straits and along China's coasts. We all know that. Now we have China, Japan, Australia, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore, Bangladesh, and South and North Korea either now or planning to acquire submarines to compete against ours. In all, we now have found it acceptable in this budget that is coming out of the White House to cut our total ships down to 300. I remember when there were 700 ships.

Missile defense. This is something I think everyone should understand now. We think about the tragedy of 9/11. We think, as bad as that was, how much worse it would have been if they had had the capability of the nuclear warhead on a delivery system, hitting a major city in America. We wouldn't be talking about 3,000 deaths; we would be talking about 300,000 or maybe 3 million deaths.

On February 3, Iran launched a satellite on the 30th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, demonstrating key technologies of propulsion, staging, and guidance. This is what they did. We are talking about just 2 months ago in that demonstration. Then, going all the way back to 1979, I recall in--I was concerned in 1998 as to what the capability was going to be for North Korea in terms of having a multistage rocket capability, and the administration at that time, the Clinton administration, said it will be from 8 to 10 years, on August 24 of 1998. Seven days later, even though they said it would be 8 to 10 years before they had the capability, they fired one, and that demonstrated the capability they had.

It makes you wonder how accurate we are right now in our assessment of their capability. Nonetheless, this budget recommended a 16-percent cut in the missile defense budget by $1.4 billion, and this is something that is totally unacceptable. We are going to have to reverse this.

It wasn't long ago that we recognized we had to have a capability in the Czech Republic and in Poland. We wanted to have a radar capability in the Czech Republic and an interception capability in Poland, next door. Why do we need this? Because as they develop their capability in Iran and they want to come and shoot something at Western Europe and possibly to get to the east coast of the United States of America, the only place we can reliably, with our technology, shoot that down would be in that area of Eastern Europe.

So we went and negotiated with the Parliaments. I was there. Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, who happens to be one of my favorite people in the world--and he is one who helped us get this through Parliament. It wasn't easy. The thinking was: Well, is this going to be a threat? Are we going to have Russia coming down and complaining, saying this is an act of aggression? No. We are just trying to knock down a missile that might be coming from a place such as Iran or Syria or someplace else going toward Western Europe and the United States. Well, they finally agreed. The Parliaments of Poland and the Czech Republic agreed, and now we pull the rug out from under them with this proposed budget.

The airborne laser--where is the chart on the missile defense?

All right. I know this is heavy lifting, and this is not an easy thing to understand. But if you look at a missile defense system--let's keep in mind, this is the 26th anniversary of Ronald Reagan, saying SDI--members of the Strategic Defense Initiative--everyone criticized them: No one will ever be able to hit a bullet with a bullet. Well, they hit a bullet with a bullet. We have had several tests demonstrating that we can do it. Well, how do you knock down a missile coming in? You have three phases. There is a boost phase, a midcourse phase, and a terminal phase. We are currently in good shape on the midcourse phase and the terminal phase, but the main area where we are stark naked is in the boost phase. We don't have anything.

We have the airborne laser. That is getting very close to being able to deploy a system to knock down an incoming missile when it is easiest to hit them. That is the boost phase, before they are going all that fast. And they cut that out of this budget.

We need to have--we decided on a policy several years ago, and certainly the Senate Armed Services Committee as well as on the House Armed Services Committee that was headed at that time by Duncan Hunter and I think agreed to by the Democrats and Republicans at that time, that we need to have redundancy in all three areas if we are going to be able to knock down an incoming missile.

I don't think there is anyone in America today who denies that the capability of, No. 1, hitting America is there and, No. 2, of being able to knock it down is there if we continue with this program. But we have to have that capability in the boost phase, and this budget takes that out. I am just as concerned about that as I am about the fact that we really lied to the Czech Republic and to Poland and put them in a very awkward position.

So I guess in conclusion I agree with the President and Secretary Gates that we are going to have to reform our Defense acquisition system. There is a lot of waste in that. The Presiding Officer and I both serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and we know we need to do some work, but we don't want to be doing this at the risk and at the expense of properly modernizing our services. I have stated many times in this Chamber that the greatest trust placed upon Congress by the American people is to provide for their security by maintaining a strong national defense.

Tom Cole, a House Member from Oklahoma, said it best the other day. He said that eloquence and charm are a poor substitute for a strong national defense. You can be very eloquent, as our President is, and very charming, as our President is, and talk about these things and act as if the threat is not there, but we need to have a strong national defense.

I think Ronald Reagan said it better. He said just to be sure we are prepared. He said: Trust but verify. Trust but verify. We trust these guys over there that they are not going to attack us, but let's verify it.

We can avoid this far too frequent debate on the defense budget by ensuring a minimum level of funding for our military.

So this is where we are today in our situation. I again look at something totally unprecedented. I have something here, if I can find it, that is rather interesting to compare. What we have done--and this is something no one has seen yet because we are still working on it, but we are taking a comparison of 1993 and today. That was the year President Clinton was elected. He also had control of the House and the Senate and the White House, just as the Democrats do today. And we went through the election process. We understand that. But the things they are doing, that President Clinton did at that time and President Obama is doing today, are just remarkably similar.

In the military, the Army was cut back in the Clinton administration by 18 divisions down to 12 divisions, and here we are doing the same thing today. At that time on health care--right now, the President is talking about a universal Government-run health care system. Back then, they called it Hillary health care.

They called it Hillary health care, the same thing. Gun control, the same type of thing. I will wait and do this all at once. I am trying to get to the amount of money. I was on the floor criticizing President Clinton because he proposed $243 billion in tax increases. The current President is talking about $1.4 trillion in tax increases. The budget they are operating with right now--I don't have it here--at that time, he talked about a budget of $1.5 trillion. That was Bill Clinton in 1993. Now it is over twice that much. These are numbers we never thought about before. If you add together the $700 billion bank bailout, the $789 billion stimulus plan, and the $410 billion omnibus spending bill, that adds up to over $2 trillion, which is unheard of. It is very similar. It is just on a larger scale than that of 1993.

That is the concern I bring to the floor today. I have only a few minutes left. I will cover one of my other three concerns. I have talked about the TARP funding on the floor. The TARP funding was supposed to be used to buy damaged assets. At that time, in October of 2008, the Secretary of the Treasury promised that if we would give him

$700 billion, he would spend it to buy damaged assets. Some in this Chamber believed him. I didn't. I said put it in writing, let's get it into the law. But they were in too big a hurry and said: We have to do it now or we will have another Great Depression. He spent the money to bail out many banks that didn't even want to be bailed out and banks that previously both Geithner and Paulson were associated with. So that was a problem and we should now try to salvage what we can out of that program. So that is another subject--one I have spent quite a bit of time on over the last 7 years.

Seven years ago, when the Republicans had a majority in the Senate, I became chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. At that time, we were very close to ratifying the Kyoto Treaty. We remember this all started with the United Nations and then, of course, the people in Hollywood, the Hollywood elitists, moveon.org, and the Michael Moores of the world--and they had a right to do it--were saying we are going to have to stop emissions of greenhouse gases, and that the anthropogenic gases and manmade case gases were causing global warming.

I remember so well, in 1975, in the State legislature, at that time the same magazines that are putting on the front page this idea that global warming is taking place--they are not doing it now, but they were up until about 5 years ago. Back then, they were saying: Get ready, another ice age is coming, we are all going to die. I remember using the term that this has to be the greatest ``hoax'' ever perpetrated on the American people.

Fast forward to the late 1990s, when Kyoto was there, when I was chairman of the committee and I believed that manmade gases were causing global warming, until the Wharton Business School came out with the Wharton econometric survey. They showed clearly that if we were to sign on and ratify the Kyoto Treaty, it would cost the American people in the range of between $300 billion and $330 billion a year. Then, if you fast forward that to the next McCain-Lieberman bill, it was even more than that, and the Warner-Lieberman bill was even more than that.

When I looked at it at that time, back when we were very close to ratifying the treaty, I found out that the science was not there. A lot of scientists were saying it was there, but it wasn't. Today, if anybody wants to get into my Web site, inhofesenate.gov, you can see all of the scientists. We have over 700 of them who used to be on the other side of this protecting their grants. They had to play this game to do it. They are now coming over to the skeptic side.

As we listen to the current administration, they are now going to try to, by regulation, impose this giant tax on the American people because they know they cannot get it through this Chamber. We defeated it a year ago today--the last effort to have a cap-and-trade tax on the American people--by almost a 2-to-1 margin. They are going to try to do it again. When you talk about the $700 billion bailout and the stimulus bill, at least that is a one-shot deal. With this, you are talking about a regular annual tax increase on the American people of about $350 billion. The estimates are between $3,000 and $4,000 a year per family. What good would that do? Even if it is true, if people listening to me today, including fellow Members, believe manmade gases are causing global warming--if they believe that to be true, what good would it do us in the United States to unilaterally say we are going to impose these restrictions and pay $400 billion a year? And what good will it do if we do that, because our manufacturing base will go into countries where they have no restrictions. That would happen.

I inquire as to the time remaining?

Mr. President, I think the other speakers are here. Later on, I will talk about the assets we have, and that we have to keep Guantanamo Bay--Gitmo, as it is referred to. It has performed well for us since 1903. I cannot think of one statement, other than political statements, as to why we have to get rid of that great asset.

With that, I thank the Chair for his tolerance and I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

To: CSIS J. Board of Trustees, Advisers, and Friends

From: John J. Hamre

Date: April 13, 2009 (Number 298. Two pages)

Re: Cancelling weapons systems

I was out of the country last week when Secretary of

Defense Gates announced his recommendation for wholesale

termination of a large number of weapon systems. This was

such a big deal that he skipped the 60th anniversary

celebrations of the founding of NATO in order to prepare for

the announcement.

Secretary Gates epitomizes what Americans want in public

service--fairness, decisiveness and decency. And he clearly

captured broad public support with his recommendations. In

dozens of conversations, I always heard some version of ``it

is about time we had a leader that did this.'' This is

usually followed up by a question ``do you think he will be

reversed by Congress?''

There is a myth in American politics, that defense

contractors are powerful manipulative forces in Washington.

Ever since President Eisenhower coined the term ``the

military-industrial complex'' the popular sense is that

defense companies manipulate the Department and the Congress

to get whatever they want. I have been in and around the

defense business for 30 years. My experience has been that

they are not the all-powerful force of popular imagination.

Defense contractors are hugely vulnerable because they are

entirely dependent on the attitude of one customer--the

Defense Department. If the Secretary of Defense decides we

don't need something (and the Joint Chiefs go along with the

decision--a crucial factor), defense contractors have

virtually no recourse.

Yes, Congress has occasionally reversed the decision of a

defense secretary. I remember when the Congress kept the B-1

bomber alive after President Carter recommended its

termination. But the B-1 would never have been built had it

not been for President Reagan who used it to symbolize his

different approach to defense policy.

I suspect that most of the Secretary's recommendations will

hold. Every year the Congress receives the president's

defense budget, tears it apart and puts it back together, and

usually approves 97% of what is requested. A powerful member

of congress can add $10-20 million here or there for

something, but adding billions of dollars to reverse the

Secretary's decision on a single weapon system is almost

impossible. We are again returning to an environment when

adding something to the defense budget must be offset by

cutting something out. A congressman can strongly plea to add

$2 billion for program X, but very rarely offers offsetting

cuts in other programs. And with each instance, the pleading

congressman has to ultimately argue ``my judgment is superior

to that of the Secretary of Defense''.

Board of Trustees and Counselors

CSIS trustees are drawn equally from the worlds of public

policy and the private sector. They contribute a wealth of

expertise to the Center's mission and management. One

asterisk (*) denotes a member of the Executive Committee and

two asterisks (**) denote a CSIS Counselor.

Chairman: Sam Nunn* **--Cochairman & CEO, Nuclear Threat

Initiative since 1999.

Vice Chairman & Co-Founder: David M. Abshire--President,

Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.

Chairman of the Executive Committee: William A. Schreyer*--

Chairman Emeritus, Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.

President & Ceo: John J. Hamre*--President & CEO, CSIS.

Trustees: George L. Argyros--Chairman & CEO, Arnel &

Affiliates; Richard Armitage--President, Armitage

International; Reginald K. Brack--Former Chairman & CEO,

Time, Incorporated; William E. Brock**--Counselor and

Trustee, CSIS; Harold Brown**--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS;

Zbigniew Brzezinski**--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS; William

S. Cohen--Chairman & CEO, The Cohen Group; Ralph Cossa--

President, Pacific Forum/CSIS; Richard Fairbanks--Counselor

and Trustee, CSIS; Henrietta H. Fore--Former Administrator of

the USAID; William H. Frist--Trustee, CSIS; Michael P.

Galvin*--President, Harrison Street Capital, LLC; Helene D.

Gayle--President & CEO, CARE USA; Linda W. Hart*--Vice

Chairman & CEO, The Hart Group, Inc.; Ben W. Heineman, Jr.--

CSIS Trustee and Senior Adviser; Thomas O. Hicks--Chairman,

Hicks Holdings LLC; Carla A. Hills**--Chairman & CEO, Hills &

Company; Ray L. Hunt--Chairman of the Board, President and

CEO, Hunt Consolidated, Inc.; E. Neville Isdell--Chairman,

The Coca-Cola Company; Muhtar Kent--President and CEO, The

Coca-Cola Company; Henry A. Kissinger**--Chairman & CEO,

Kissinger Associates, Inc.; Kenneth G. Langone--President &

CEO, Invemed Associates, LLC; Chong-Moon Lee--Chairman of

Board of Directors, Nara Bancorp, Los Angeles; Donald B.

Marron--Chairman & CEO, Lightyear Capital; Joseph Nye--

Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard University, Kennedy

School of Government; Thomas Pritzker--Chairman & CEO, The

Pritzker Organization, LLC; Joseph E. Robert--Chairman and

CEO, The J.E. Robert Companies (JER); Felix G. Rohatyn--Vice

Chairman, FGR Associated, LLC; David M. Rubenstein--Cofounder

and Managing Director, The Carlyle Group; Charles A.

Sanders--Former Chairman & CEO, Glaxo Inc.; James R.

Schlesinger**--Former Secretary of Defense and Energy; Brent

Scowcroft**--President, Forum for International Policy; Rex

Tillerson--Chairman & CEO, Exxon Mobil Corporation; Frederick

B. Whittemore*--Advisory Director, Morgan Stanley.

Trustees Emeriti: Betty Beene--Former President & CEO,

United Way of America; Amos A. Jordan--President Emeritus,

CSIS; Murray Weidenbaum--Hon. Chair, Weidenbaum Center,

Washington University; Dolores D. Wharton--Retired Chairman

and CEO, Fund For Corporate Initiatives, Inc.

Counselors: William E. Brock--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS;

Harold Brown--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS; Zbigniew

Brzezinski--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS; Frank C. Carlucci--

Counselor, CSIS; Richard Fairbanks--Counselor and Trustee,

CSIS; Carla A. Hills--Chairman & CEO, Hills & Company; Zalmay

Khalilzad--Counselor, CSIS; Henry A. Kissinger Chairman &

CEO, Kissinger Associates, Inc.; Theodore McCarrick--

Counselor, CSIS; Sam Nunn--Cochairman & CEO, Nuclear Threat

Initiative; James R. Schlesinger--Former Secretary of Defense

and Energy; Brent Scowcroft--President, Forum for

International Policy; John Warner Counselor, CSIS.

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

Mr. President, I ask for the regular order so that I may offer a second-degree amendment to the Reid amendment.

At this point, I wish to offer a second-degree amendment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, today I am offering an amendment that I have offered on two other occasions. It is called the National Language Act of 2009. I offer it as an amendment to the Reid amendment No. 984. This legislation recognizes the practical reality of the role of English as our national language. It makes English the national language of the U.S. Government, a status in law it has not had before, and it calls on Government to preserve and enhance the role of English as the national language. It clarifies that there is no entitlement to receive Federal documents in languages other than the English language unless required by statutory law, recognizing decades of unbroken court opinions that civil rights laws protecting against national origin discrimination do not create rights to Government services and materials in languages other than English.

Let me be clear, there is nothing in the amendment that prohibits the use of a language other than the English language. When I offered this before, I remember several times people would stand up and object and the basis of that objection was that we were not able to use other languages. We can use other languages. I have spoken languages, such as the Spanish language, on the floor of this Senate. It has nothing to do with that.

There is no prohibition against giving Medicare services, for example, or any other Government services in languages other than English. All this amendment does is simply say there is no entitlement unless Congress has explicitly provided so. This bill does not ban translation services being offered by Federal employees who have the language skills to do so. Instead, it eliminates the notion that once one translation is provided to someone in one language, a legal entitlement has been created to provide translations to anyone in any language they wish.

The aim is to prohibit class action lawsuits based upon perceived entitlements that some individuals claim.

The National Language Act is an attempt to legislate a common sense language policy that a nation of immigrants needs one national language. Our nation was settled by a group of people with a common vision. As our population has grown, our cultural diversity has grown as well. This diversity is part of what makes our nation great. However, we must be able to communicate with one another so that we can appreciate our differences. When members of our society cannot speak a common language, misunderstandings arise. Furthermore, the individuals who do not speak the language of the majority miss out on many opportunities to advance in society and achieve the American dream. By establishing that there is no entitlement to receive documents or services in languages other than English, we set the precedent that English is a common to us all in the public forum of government.

I want to empower new immigrants coming to our Nation by helping them understand and become successful in their new home. I believe that one of the most important ways immigrants can achieve success is by learning English.

There is enormous popular support for English as the national language, according to polling that has taken place over the last few years. Eighty-seven percent of Americans support making English the official language of the United States. Seventy-seven percent of Hispanics believe English should be the official language of government operations. Eighty-two percent of Americans support legislation that would require the Federal Government to conduct business solely in English. Seventy-four percent of Americans support all election ballots and other government documents being printed in English. This polling data refers to making English an ``official'' language of the United States, or further creating an affirmative responsibility on the part of government to conduct its operations in English. While I have drafted legislation that accomplishes this as well, the National Language Act is more measured, simply stating that no entitlement shall arise to government documents or services.

OMB reported in 2002 that they could not accurately endorse any single cost estimate of providing materials and services to Limited English Proficiency--LEP--persons, but that the estimate ``may be less than $2 billion, and perhaps less than $1 billion.'' When talking about dollar amounts of this magnitude, we know the cost is high regardless of the OMB's ability to accurately calculate, and it is likely becoming higher. If we are spending all this taxpayer money for services in a foreign language, we need to at least clarify that there is no legal entitlement to such.

My colleagues who have followed this debate will remember that the National Language Act of 2009 is identical to S. 2715 from the 110th Congress. It is also the same as the English amendment that passed the Senate in 2007 as Senate amendment No. 1151, and in 2006 as Senate amendment No. 4064, each being part of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of each respective Congress. Senate amendment No. 1151 was agreed to in the Senate by a vote of 64 to 33. Senate amendment No. 4064 was agreed to in the Senate by a vote of 62 to 35. As you can see, there is widespread and bipartisan support for this legislation, and I hope that you will join me this Congress in supporting the National Language Act of 2009.

This is one of the few things that comes along that everyone is for. The lowest percentage we have from polling in the last 3 years as to people's acceptance of English as the national language is 87 percent. Interestingly enough, we even have polls showing that 71 percent of Hispanics would rather have English as the national language.

It is interesting, I have been around quite a bit, around the African countries quite a bit. Several of the African countries, including Ghana in West Africa, have English as their national language. When you try to explain to people in the real world--when you get out of Washington and get back to Illinois or the State of Oklahoma, you find people ask the question: Why is it some 52 countries have English as the national language and we don't here? There is no logical reason.

It probably enjoys a larger popularity than any amendment we have had in recent years. I ask that it be considered as a second-degree amendment to the Reid amendment.

I ask the Chair, at such time as we take up the Reid amendment, I will offer this as a second-degree amendment.

I ask unanimous consent to set aside this amendment for the purpose of offering an amendment to S. 386.

I understand and appreciate that.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, just for clarification purposes, generally, we go back and forth on both sides, but it is fine with me to do it this way so Senator Klobuchar can follow the Senator. Does the Senator think the two of you will be more than 30 minutes all together?

That is fine. Thank you very much. I do not object. I further ask unanimous consent that following Senator Klobuchar, I have at least 30 minutes. I believe that is the time that is allotted me.

Mr. President, it was my understanding earlier that I had about 15 more minutes than the 30 minutes that I understand are allotted me now. So if there is time at the end of my main message, I wish to address the problem of the David Hamilton nomination. In fact, I will announce that I will filibuster that nomination. The EPA endangerment findings, the Obama gun control, and then the DHS report that is very damaging to our veterans.

Obama Defense Budget

First of all, the main reason I am here is to speak out about a great concern that we are now heading down a very dangerous road leading to the gutting of our military and settling for adequacy as opposed to supremacy. I first made my concerns known on a YouTube video that I did when I was in Afghanistan immediately following the announcement by the Obama administration. My concerns drew an interesting reaction from the left. Not only did they say I was wrong to say that there were proposed cuts to the budget, they actually said the Obama administration proposed to increase the budget. I must confess it is a rare day when liberals actually claim to support increasing our Nation's military.

MSNBC was so outraged with my video that three of their prime time hosts took aim at my comments from Afghanistan that very same night. MSNBC host Ed Schultz featured my video as part of his regular feature ``Psycho Talk'' and called my concerns ``absolutely false'' and said I was joining Cheney and Giuliani.

Keith Olbermann said I should ``do the math'' and his guest, the very unbiased Speaker Pelosi, said my criticism of the Obama defense budget was simply ``desperation'' and that we are going to be spending more on defense than in 2009.

Not to be left out, Rachel Maddow repeated the same talking points and said once again the budget was actually going to increase. Then she brought on a guest, Eugene Robinson, an associate editor and columnist with the Washington Post, who went so far as to say I was making stuff up and lying.

Not to be outdone, CNN's Rich Sanchez said he was doing a ``fact check.'' He called my words ``ridiculous'' and brought on a liberal think tank policy wonk, whom Sanchez referred to as a ``moderate,'' to defend his claims. It is interesting that all of the liberal journalists were jumping on and assailing me but not the moderate ones.

I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my remarks, this editorial from the Wall Street Journal be printed in the Record.

The problem is that the left is focused on one number, one piece of military spending, when they need to look at the total defense budget--what DOD actually spends on military operations, and how that money is used to maintain our military capabilities.

In actuality, thanks to the Obama administration, our overall defense spending has been cut by $10.7 billion in fiscal 2009 and then cut again in 2010. You might say fiscal 2009 was from the previous administration. But the second part of the emergency supplemental is where the cuts came in, and that was done by the Obama administration.

We have reached a crossroads where we will choose to either invest in modernization and readiness of our military or mistakenly ``kick the can down the road,'' which we have been doing.

Based on the projected defense budget for the next 10 years, it looks as if this administration is taking us down a path that leads to a weaker military that is poorly equipped. Two weeks ago, on April 6, Secretary Gates announced a broad plan of cuts and adjustments in the fiscal year 2010 DOD

budget. His plan intends to ``reshape the priorities of America's defense establishment'' and ``profoundly reform how the DOD does business.''

However, the programs and systems he intends to cut will severely affect the ongoing effort to rebuild and modernize our military. I was in Afghanistan when this decision was announced. Most of the liberal journalists responded.

This plan comes at a time in our history when we have dramatically increased domestic spending by trillions of dollars under the umbrella of ``emergency bailouts'' and ``stimulus packages.''

Think about it. I think that $700 billion, quite frankly, was thrown away. It was supposed to be used for damaged assets and it was used to bail out friendly banks. I will defend Paulson a little, because it was Tim Geithner who was the architect behind all of this. I will elaborate on that later.

If you want to stimulate the economy, there are three ways to do it. One would be for military spending, defense spending; another is infrastructure investment--highways, construction, bridges--and another is tax cuts.

Sadly, this President is on track to grow the country's obligations to 22 percent of our GDP, while he is shrinking defense spending in relation to GDP to 3 percent in 2019.

This chart shows that during the Clinton administration, in the 1990s, we took a holiday from the procurement of new weapons and modernizing the aging weapons systems. This black line is what he inherited in the beginning. If you add inflation to it, that is what it would have been. This line was the Clinton budget--$412 billion less than what normal inflation would be. It looks like that is where we are going from this point on.

Many of us in the Senate and in the House repeatedly spoke on the floor during the 1990s. We were concerned about the dangers of the massive cuts in personnel and procurement that were taking shape. With very few exceptions, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines have been using the same weapons systems while fighting a two-fronted war on terror for 8 years. They are weapons and weapons systems designed and produced during the Cold War--weapons used repeatedly over the past two decades around the globe--weapons and weapon systems still in use today.

We have been unsuccessful in trying to get past a bow wave created in the 1990s, when the military budget was cut $412 billion and acquisition programs and research and development were pushed to the right--delayed.

The cost of kicking our military modernization down the road is a twofold increase in our cost to modernize--an increase to develop and field new weapons and weapon systems, and an increased cost to operate and maintain our aging equipment.

It is also forcing the military to accept more risk as they decide how to operate with less equipment, how to fight with equipment increasingly difficult to maintain, and what to do when weapon systems reach the end of their service life without an operational replacement.

The major combat systems that our troops use today are those developed and procured during the 1980s and, in some cases, going back to the 1950s.

The Reagan administration was handed a military that was a hollow force in many respects--low morale, low pay, outdated equipment, and unable to maintain the equipment it possessed. Ronald Reagan expanded the military budget, increased troop size, reenergized weapons procurement, and revived our intelligence capabilities, returning this country to its superpower status. He guaranteed the superiority of the U.S. military's weapon systems and capabilities through long-term investment and ensuring that our troops were provided with the most advanced equipment available.

As Secretary Gates said in January 2009, our military must be prepared for a ``full spectrum'' of operations, including the type of combat we are facing in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as large-scale threats that we face in places such as North Korea and Iran.

By the way, I don't blame Secretary Gates for all of this. He had to use the numbers that the Obama White House gave him.

Far too often we have learned the hard way that we don't have a crystal ball to precisely predict what types of national security threats the Nation will face. During a hearing in the House Armed Services Committee--this happened when I was on that committee in 1994. We had somebody testify who said that in 10 years we will no longer need ground troops. Look at this. After 7 years engaged in the war on terror, we know he was wrong. The strategic environment has become increasingly complex, dynamic, lethal, and uncertain.

Today, our military is fighting with equipment that is decades old and a force structure that is 40 percent less than what we had in the 1980s.

The Air Force has 2,500 fewer aircraft. The Navy cut its fleet size in half; that is down to 300 ships. The Army reduced its force to half the number of divisions it had during the first gulf war.

For the past 17 years, our military has been asked to do more with much less and older equipment. It is taking a toll on our troops. Unfortunately, what took less than a decade to field in the 1980s will now take us multiple decades to field. A case in point: The KC-X, which will take up to 30 years to replace. We are using KC-135s for these capabilities. The KC-X program would have modernized that. In the case of the KC-135s, some are 50 years old. It gets to the point where the maintenance is more than buying something new.

The United States will have to build and sustain military capabilities required to respond to possible future threats across the spectrum of conflict, and there are numerous potential threats that could impact our national security.

The next war will not be like the last one. We cannot predict. You can talk to smart generals and ask what do we have to pay for 20 years from now, and they are smart, but they will be wrong, just like the guys who said we would no longer need ground troops in 10 years. We don't know.

In February of 2009, a marine general wrote to one of the young marines:

You say the next conflict will be a guerrilla conflict. I

say, it depends. In my lifetime, we have been in five big

fights and a bunch of little ones. In only one of those

five big ones (Desert Storm) had we prepared for the type

of war we wound up having to fight. It is one thing to say

that a certain type of fight is more or less likely; it is

quite another to say it is certain to be one or the other.

In war, the only thing that is certain is uncertainty.

We weren't able to predict the fall of the Soviet Union, the rapid growth of the ballistic missile capability of North Korea, or the rise in asymmetric warfare. We were wrong in all of that. It doesn't matter how great our military leaders or intelligence are, our strategic thinking will always be imperfect.

In order to provide stability, America must be able to deter or defeat any threat, be it an insurgency or a challenge from a near-peer competitor.

We can no longer afford to fool ourselves that we are sending our kids out with the best of equipment. Quite often, I talk to people who are really not into this. They are working hard and paying taxes for all this fun we are having up here. When you tell them that our kids are going out there without the very best of equipment, they are outraged. They cannot believe it. Unfortunately, that is the case.

Let's do the math that they are so critical of. As I said, we need to look at the total defense budget, everything DOD spends. This includes national defense funds, DOD funds, DOE funds for nuclear ships and weapons, and other defense-related items, such as selective service system, plus the wartime supplemental.

First, there is a net loss in defense spending in 2009 of $10.7 billion. President Bush increased the total defense budget in 2009 by $37.2 billion. He also approved $65.9 billion in supplemental funds for the first part of fiscal 2009.

President Obama's supplemental request for defense spending is only $75.5 billion to cover an increase of 21,000 troops in Afghanistan, increased operations in Afghanistan, continued operations in Iraq, and then withdrawing from Iraq. A GOP report on the cost of Iraq withdrawal said it will be a ``massive and expensive effort''--that costs would more often increase in the near term. What they are saying is that these things were not included in Obama's budget, but we will pay for them anyway. So he comes out with a

figure that he says is going to be more costly.

They went on to say that the cost of equipment repairs, replacements, closing and turning over 283 military installations in Iraq and moving troops and equipment ``will likely be significant.'' This is what we call the cost of withdrawal.

Let's compare 2009 to 2010, where I have been accused of not being able to do the math. Defense spending does increase from 2009 to 2010 by $14.9 billion. But according to President Obama's letter to Speaker Pelosi on April 9, there will be no more supplementals.

That would mean DOD would have to fund all wartime operations out of the hide of DOD to the tune of about $100 billion plus.

However, President Obama does fence off $130 billion for overseas contingency funds, which could be used for getting out of Iraq and increased operations in Afghanistan.

Even adding the entire $130 billion to defense spending, which is never the case with supplemental funding, the overall increase in defense spending for 2010 is $3.5 billion.

If we estimate 2 percent inflation for cost growth of just the defense budget, defense spending actually decreases by $7.3 billion.

Now, add in the accelerated growth of the Army and Marine Corps--a 65,000 and 22,000 increase, respectively, which will cost approximately $13 billion to cover pay and health care costs, and you start to see the beginnings of how our military modernization gets gutted.

DOD must pay for personnel, operations and maintenance, ongoing wartime and contingency operations. With a zero supplemental fund, the money to pay for these ``must pays''--the things we have to buy--has to be taken from DOD's base budget, and the areas that are always hit are R&D and acquisition.

Look at what is being cut. If you question what I am saying here in terms of dropping down the costs, look at the programs we have to have that they are cutting. They are eliminating future combat systems. This is something we started putting together 8 years ago--the first transformation of ground operations and capabilities in probably 30 years. The C-17s--we need more of them. They have cut the additional C- 17s. And the F-22--I am proud that we finally bit the bullet and realized we want to send our kids out in strike vehicles that are better than the ones they are making in Russia. That is the F-22, the fifth generation. They have stopped that.

Originally, we were going to have some 750 F-22s. Now they are stopping it in this budget at 187. So historical defense spending as a percentage of GDP has been 3 percent during the Clinton drawdown; 4.6 percent during the gulf war; 6 percent during the Reagan buildup; 8.9 percent during the Vietnam war; 11.7 percent during the Korean war; and about 35 percent during World War II.

When compared to a sustained annual defense investment of 4 percent of the GDP to recapitalize and modernize our military, the 10-year proposed Obama defense budget is $1.3 trillion in the red.

We have a similar chart that we had here during the Clinton administration. One thing the Obama defense budget guarantees is that the oldest military in the history of the Nation will get older and more expensive to maintain and operate.

Ships currently average 18 years; Naval aircraft averages 18 years; Marine Corps aircraft, 21 years. Refueling tankers are over 44 years old; Air Force fighter aircraft, 19 years old; special operations aircraft, over 27 years old; and bomber aircraft, over 33 years old.

In order to keep 40-year-old KC-135s, as I mentioned a minute ago, in the air, DOD has to reprogram almost $3 billion from the KC-X program to repair KC-135s. That means the program that was there to pay for modernizing, to buy new aircraft--the KC-X it is termed--now we are drawing down from that just to repair the old, ancient KC-135s.

In the Army, the current fleet of combat vehicles was developed and procured 30 to 60 years ago and is aging at an increasingly rapid rate. The M1 Abrams tank developed in the 1970s and fielded in the eighties is currently on its third iteration and update and being used extensively on the battlefield.

The M2 Bradley fighting vehicle, also developed over 25 years ago, is on its third significant modification and has been crucial in defending our troops against IED and RPG threats in Iraq.

Both of these combat-proven vehicles continue to undergo fleetwide reset programs because of their rate of use in the war on terror.

The oldest combat vehicle in the Army inventory is the Paladin Howitzer. This is kind of interesting because this is part of the FCS and is the furthest along right now in its development. The Paladin technology is World War II technology. Every time you fire it, you have to get out and swab the breech. There are now five countries, including South Africa, that make a better cannon than our kids are using.

Over 19,000 artillery rounds were shot from the Paladins in Iraq in 2008; over 27,000 were shot in 2007. Despite some parochial criticism in the media and in this Congress, the fact remains that the U.S. Army is using a system developed over 50 years ago.

By the way, people accuse me of doing something that is parochial. If we look at the footprint that was given by the lead systems integrator, it shows Oklahoma in the bottom 20 in terms of getting funding for the FCS program.

Our artillery soldiers are using this system that has a chassis design that is a half century old and slated to undergo its seventh modification. Let me say at this point that I believe the defense budget should at the very least continue the PIM Program--the Paladin Integrated Management Program--just to keep those vehicles going. We should keep the FCS on track but don't dump the PIM Program with the FCS Program.

Even with the implementation of the PIM update, the Army expects to keep the Paladin in use until 2060. That is 100 years on the battlefield. Our Army is long overdue a thorough and comprehensive modernization program instead of throwing billions of dollars toward updating and maintaining decades-old vehicle platforms.

The proposed defense budget would cancel the manned vehicle portion of the Army's Future Combat System, the modernization program intended to replace the Paladin, Abrams, and the Bradley over the next 25 years.

The FCS vehicles would bring improved armor, a state-of-the-art communications network. These are life-and-death issues. These are our troops on the ground being able to have something that is actually better than our prospective enemies. That is what we are losing in this defense budget.

The Air Force: For nearly two decades, our U.S. Air Force has dominated the skies to ensure our superiority around the world. However, the most recent GAO study stated that the Air Sovereignty Alert Operations--the post-9/11 operations that protect our homeland-- are at risk during aging aircraft and insufficient procurement.

The Air Force grounded 259 of its 441 F-15 Eagles in November to January while it looked into the breakup of an F-15C.

Last May, the service parked all 500 of its T-38 trainers. Last October, the Air Force ordered more than half of the 356 A-10 fighters to stay put because of cracks in the wings.

While we have enjoyed the benefit of the investment during the 1980s of the F-15, F-16, A-10, and the F-117s, the F-117 is now retired and the Air Force will be retiring 137 of the F-15s, 177 of the F-16s, and several of the A-10s.

What we are saying is, we are already shutting down and the only way to replace them, if we are going to have a fifth generation strike vehicle, is with the F-22. We are supposed to have 750 of these F-22s. This budget stops the line at 187. That means if something comes along and we have a more responsible, defense-oriented administration coming in, they would have to start up the line, and it will cost much more.

This is being done at a time when Secretary Gates told reporters that the intelligence he has seen indicates a Russian fifth generation fighter could become operational about 2016, and previous estimates by the Pentagon on China's J-12 fifth generation fighter could be fielded by 2020.

Increasing the number of F-35s is not going to do it; the functions are different; their missions are different.

The Navy: At a time when it is being called on to project a presence in more parts of the world than ever before, Secretary Gates has recommended the Navy shrink its carrier fleet to 10 aircraft carriers by 2012 and delay the acquisition of other portions of the fleet.

This reduction of the aircraft carriers goes further below the previous QDR. That is the Quadrennial Defense Review. They stated 20 carriers would be required for moderate risk. When they use ``moderate risk,'' we are talking about lives of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

In the last 3 weeks, we have seen how relevant and important the Navy is while watching the various pirate activities off Somalia and some of those activities that are going on now. We did not realize we needed to do that prior to that time. It shows how fluid this is in terms of our expectations and our needs.

China, Japan, Australia, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore, Bangladesh, South and North Korea either now have or are planning to acquire submarines to compete with ours.

In all, the Navy would be left with less than 300 ships, and that is about half of what it was during the eighties.

Missile defense: I am going to run out of time. I should have had this on before. On February 3, we all know, Iran launched a satellite on the 30th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, demonstrating key technologies for propulsion, staging, and so forth.

Two weeks ago, North Korea furthered their missile and nuclear development by launching the Taepodong 2 missile in the South China Sea, despite widespread world condemnation. Despite this, the administration has recommended a 16-percent cut in missile defense. It is interesting, this would come along right at the time of the 26th anniversary when Ronald Reagan put SDI together, recognizing, so prophetically when we were going to have a system, the technology to hit a bullet with a bullet. We have it now.

We told the Czech Republic and Poland that we will be supporting them, putting together a radar and launch system. Now they don't know what we want because that also has either been delayed or canceled. I suggest it has been canceled.

By the way, if Iran develops the capability of doing something from Iran and aiming toward Western Europe, this is the only safeguard we would have. The Czech Republic and Poland have gone along with us, and now we are pulling the rug out from under them.

The last point I wish to make is on the Airborne Laser Program. I wish there was time to explain this program. There are three phases. You have the launch phase, midcourse phase, and terminal phase. These phases are necessary for a national missile defense system.

I agree we need to do something on the acquisition processes. We have been trying to do it for a long period of time. However, acquisition reform should be done in conjunction with, not in lieu of, modernizing and properly equipping our Armed Forces to dominate across the full spectrum of warfare.

I have stated many times in this Chamber that the greatest trust placed in Congress by the American people is to provide for their security by maintaining a strong national defense. We can avoid this far too frequent debate on defense budgeting by assuring a minimal level of funding for our military.

I believe when you talk to the average man on the street as to what is the primary function of Government, that function should be to defend America, and that is the threat we are facing now. Somehow this has taken a back seat to what we are supposed to be doing.

As the Congress considers the administration's budget recommendations in the coming weeks, we have to ask several questions: Are the forces being provided to our commanders in the field postured to counter the full spectrum of threats? Are we providing our troops with the best and most capable equipment available? Certainly we are not today. And can we afford to kick the can down the road further? The answer is a resounding no.

Finally, the total cost for 2010 to reach this expectation would require an increase of $28 billion in 2010. With the Obama budget of social welfare that will triple the public debt in 10 years, we have already spent almost $2 trillion. Mr. President, the $700 billion of a bank bailout we now know is Tim Geithner's plan to start with, and in October of 2008, we gave $700 billion to an unelected bureaucrat to do with as he wished with no oversight whatsoever.

I have to say this is the time when we look at the amount of money that is being spent on all the social welfare programs and say: Why not defend America? Clearly, that is not the primary goal of this administration.

I think my fellow Oklahoma Congressman, Tom Cole, said it best. He said: President Obama's charm and eloquence is no substitute for a strong national defense.

I believe that is right. I hope we have a chance to relook at this and make adjustments.

I also remind the administration, you can come out with all these cuts, cutting the F-22s and the Future Combat System and the C-17s and the national missile defense system, but that still has to go through. And thank God we have three branches of Government so we will be able to get the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee to review this and try to put America back in a position where its primary goal is to defend America. That is what this is all about.

EPA Endangerment Finding

I am very troubled by the EPA proposed endangerment finding that will unleash a torrent of regulations that will destroy jobs, harm consumers, and extend the Agency's reach into every corner of American life. Despite enormous expense and hardship for the American economy, these regulations will have virtually no effect on climate change.

It now appears EPA's regulatory reach will find its way into schools, hospitals, assisted living facilities, and just about any activity that meets minimum thresholds in the Clean Air Act. Representative John Dingell was right: the endangerment finding will produce a ``glorious mess.'' ``It is worth noting that the solution to this ``glorious mess'' is not for Congress to pass cap-and-trade legislation, which replaces one very bad approach with another.

Congress should pass a simple, narrowly targeted bill that stops EPA in its tracks.

gun treaty support

Next, we discovered that President Obama, in his announcement last week, plans to urge the Senate to ratify the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials, known by the acronym CIFTA.

The idea that American-manufactured firearms are responsible for the growing violence in Mexico is not grounded in reality, but the Obama administration is using this violence as justification to require stricter licensing requirements and markings on firearms by U.S. manufacturers. The majority of the gun violence that is occurring in the drug wars in Mexico is the result of assault weapons, including fully automatic versions, which are not even available for sale in the United States. Many of these weapons are coming from other countries in Central and South America and deserters from the Mexican military.

I am strongly opposed to placing more stringent requirements on U.S. gun manufacturers, especially when the evidence shows that they are not the problem. This is an instance of the Obama administration using alternative means to place greater regulations on the manufacture and sale of legal firearms in the United States. I believe that my colleagues in the Senate understand this to be the case and will do as they have for the last 10 years and not ratify this treaty.

Letter to DHS Expressing Outrage over Controversial Report

I was shocked to learn of a new report by the Department of Homeland Security entitled ``Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment'' which classifies the brave men and women returning home from combat and operational deployments around

the globe, who have been honorably defending our country, as potential terrorists.

As a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I am especially proud of our soldiers returning home, and I find it extremely regretful that they have been subjected to such an insult by this report. Furthermore, I find it reprehensible that within this report Americans who hold certain beliefs regarding issues such as immigration, the second amendment, and abortion fall under the report's broad generalization of rightwing extremists, and are, therefore, considered a potential threat. I believe this report to be very offensive to many Americans.

As a result, I joined Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, David Vitter of Louisiana, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Richard Burr of North Carolina, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to send a letter to Secretary Janet Napolitano expressing concerns.

david hamilton

Mr. President, I am not impressed with President Obama's judiciary and Department of Justice nominees. Eric Holder, David Ogden, Dawn Johnsen, Elena Kagan, and Thomas Perelli are all extreme liberals in their views on everything from the second amendment to abortion to pornography and obscenity. I applauded when President Obama kept Secretary Gates on as his Defense Secretary, and I really hoped that he would choose other individuals who were at least moderate in their political ideology, but that just has not been the case.

Just prior to recess, my colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee boycotted the nomination hearing of David Hamilton to sit on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. A hearing was scheduled a mere 2 weeks after the announcement of his nomination. Senator Specter and seven of my other Republican colleagues requested another hearing after the spring recess, citing a Senate rule that allows a majority of the minority side of the committee to request a followup. Many remember David Hamilton because of his 2005 decision as a Federal district court judge presiding over the case Hinrichs v. Bosmah, in which he enjoined the Speaker of Indiana's House of Representatives from permitting ``sectarian'' prayers to be offered as part of that body's official proceedings, meaning that the chaplain or whomever opened the proceedings with prayer could not invoke the name of Jesus Christ. In his conclusion, Hamilton wrote: ``If the Speaker chooses to continue any form of legislative prayer, he shall advise persons offering such a prayer (a) that it must be nonsectarian and must not be used to proselytize or advance any one faith or belief or to disparage any other faith or belief, and (b) that they should refrain from using Christ's name or title or any other denominational appeal.'' Further, ruling on a postjudgment motion, Hamilton stated that invoking the name of ``Allah'' would not advance a particular religion or disparage another. So, praying to Allah would be perfectly acceptable. I find this line of reasoning to be insane. Who in this body would not identify the name of ``Allah'' with the religion of Islam any less than they would identify the name of Jesus with Christianity? But I believe these are the kind of opinions we may see coming from the Seventh Circuit if David Hamilton is confirmed. I understand that Judge Hamilton's nomination is still pending before the Judiciary Committee, but I had to come to the floor to speak so that the American people, who are very concerned about this nomination, will know that I and my Republican colleagues on the Judiciary Committee are taking interest and are not just going to let this nomination sail through. In fact I will filibuster David Hamilton.

I would also like to speak for a moment on a couple of the nominees that we will be voting on this evening. Tony West, the nominee for Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division served as cocounsel for John Walker Lindh. As you all know, Lindh joined the Taliban and fought against our very own American soldiers in the liberation of Afghanistan. Lindh is a traitor and terrorist, but after a plea deal that Mr. West helped obtain, he is only serving 20 years in prison.

Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General nominee for the Criminal Division, helped obtain a great plea deal for Sandy Berger, who admitted to stealing classified documents from the National Archives. He received a $50,000 fine, probation, and community service. I understand that every criminal defendant is entitled to representation and that it was the duty of these men to vigorously represent their clients' interests, but it is also the choice of this administration who they nominate to these positions, and I truly believe that better choices could have been made.

Exhibit 1

The Pentagon's New Priorities

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a man not known for having

his head in the stars, announced his strategic Pentagon

blueprint this week, saying his proposals ``will profoundly

reform how this department does business.'' We hope he

informed Congress, home to 535 procurers in chief.

The Defense procurement system is a mess, and previous

Pentagon reforms have faltered thanks mostly to the

micromanagers on Capitol Hill who are often more interested

in funneling money to their home states than in spending

dollars most effectively. Democrats and Republicans both

belly up to this bar, usually while castigating the executive

branch for failing to make ``tough choices.''

So give the Defense Secretary an A for optimistic effort,

even if we have our disagreements with some of his strategic

choices. In announcing his spending priorities, Mr. Gates

said he wants to focus on the current wars in Iraq and

Afghanistan, rather than on the unknown wars of the future.

Among his cuts are the Army's Future Combat Systems and a

gold-plated new Presidential helicopter that is late and way

over budget. Meanwhile, he added money for unmanned aerial

vehicles, increased the number of special forces and

announced plans to recruit more cyberwarfare experts.

These seem like reasonable judgment calls, and the focus on

combating asymmetrical threats will help the U.S. in Iraq and

Afghanistan. But it's worth remembering that the reason our

enemies have resorted to terrorism and insurgency is because

U.S. conventional forces overwhelmingly dominate on the

ground, in the sea and in the air.

That's not an advantage we can take for granted as the

Clinton Administration did in the 1990s, when it slashed

defense spending to 3% from nearly 5% of GDP. China and

Russia are upgrading their conventional forces, and China in

particular is aiming to build a navy that can neutralize U.S.

forces in the Western Pacific.

Mr. Gate's strategy implies a shrinking Navy with fewer

ships and perhaps one fewer carrier group. It's good that he

wants to build more Littoral Combat Ships, which are handy

for operations such as tracing pirates. Even so, the Navy is

left with a fleet of fewer than 300 ships, which strikes us

as perilously small. When a U.S.-flagged container ship

was briefly taken by pirates off Somalia this week, the

Navy's nearest vessel was hours away.

Mr. Gates's decision to kill the stealthy F-22 fighter jet,

which outclasses everything in the sky, is also troubling. We

already have 183 F-22s--original plans called for 750--and

Mr. Gates wants to order just four more before shutting down

the production line. His proposal to double the number of F-

35 Joint Strike Fighters and Pentagon buys next year--to 30

from 14 in 2009--is no quid pro quo. The F-35 is a cheaper,

more multipurpose plane but it can't begin to compete with

the F-22 as a fighter jet.

Pentagon spending is now about 4% of GDP and is expected to

decline, which means too little investment against potential

threats. In particular, Mr. Gates's budget priorities give no

indication of how the Pentagon will ensure that U.S. military

dominance extends to the battlefield of the future, outer

space. President Obama has said he opposes the

``militarization of space,'' but space is already a crucial

area of operations and China is looking for advantages there.

The $1.4 billion in cuts to missile defense are especially

worrisome, with losers including the Airborne Laser, designed

to shoot down ballistic missiles in the boost phase, and

additional interceptors planned for the ground-based system

in Alaska. Instead, Mr. Gates favors theater defenses for

soldiers on the battlefield with $700 million more in

funding, arguing that this will address the near-term threat

of short-range missiles. But as North Korea's weekend launch

showed, rogue regimes aren't far away from securing long-

range missiles that could reach the U.S.

Mr. Gates shrewdly made no budget recommendations on

nuclear forces, except to say that he'll defer judgment until

after the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review. Perhaps he's

counting on being able to change President Obama's mind on

the need for updating U.S. strategic weapons and going

forward with the Reliable Replacement Warhead for America's

aging nuclear arsenal.

Mr. Gates's budget proposals now go to Congress. Since the

end of World War II there have been more than 130 studies on

procurement reform. Good luck.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. I ask unanimous consent that the time in a quorum call be equally divided between both sides.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment to call up amendment No. 742.

No. 742.

Madam President, let me withdraw that unanimous consent request and let me comment about what this amendment is about. There was a misunderstanding. I thought this was going to be voice voted at some point, or accepted.

It has been accepted on both sides. My cosponsor is Senator Akaka, who I think is down here now. I will briefly describe what it is and, hopefully, we will be able to get it in before the day is over.

There is a little bit of a problem we have in health care for our veterans, in that quite often--in fact, 19 out of the last 22 years-- Congress has been unsuccessful in passing annual funding for veterans health care in time. Over the past 7 years, the VA has received its final budget at an average of 3 months after the beginning of the new year.

There is a solution to this--this discontinuation of health care for our veterans--that doesn't cost anything, and that is what this bill is all about. It would allow us to have advanced appropriations for veterans health care. This is not unprecedented; it happens in other areas too.

In October 2008, during his campaign, then-Senator Obama said:

The way our Nation provides funding for VA health care must

be reformed . . . My administration will recommend passage of

advance appropriations legislation for the fiscal year 2010

appropriations cycle.

So this is a recommendation that actually came from the administration. I am joined by several others, including Senator Akaka, who is, of course, the head of the Veterans' Committee.

At the appropriate time, I wish to go ahead and get this through, and I will leave it up to the managers of the bill as to when that appropriate time will be.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, has the Senator considered my amendment No. 742, which is accepted on both sides to my knowledge? Senator Akaka and I put it forward, having to do with the health care of veterans. Nobody has objected to it.

I thank the Senator.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment No. 742 be considered.

Madam President, this is one of the rare amendments we have that is not going to cost anything but makes a rearrangement in the flow of funding. One of the problems we are having now is that in 19 out of the last 22 years, Congress has been unsuccessful in passing annual funding for veterans health care. In fact, over the last 7 years, there has been a delay averaging 3 months in the funding flow for the care of veterans.

This can be corrected. What this amendment does, it offers a solution by providing advance appropriations for veterans health care. It does not mean it increases the cost. It means it actually comes in--and this is used in some other areas of Government. In fact, it is interesting that in October of 2008, then-Senator Obama, a candidate, said:

The way our Nation provides funding for VA health care must

be reformed. . . . My administration will recommend passage

of advance appropriations legislation . . .

For this purpose.

Senator Danny Akaka is a cosponsor on this. I ask it be accepted. I do not need a rollcall.

Yes.

I would like the same time my chairman has. I am ranking member on the committee and I have some specific thoughts.

Parliamentary inquiry.

There was some confusion with the last unanimous consent request. I know I get 3 minutes. I ask the Chair, is that correct, and when will that happen?

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, first of all, I appreciate the fact that I will have 5 minutes. However, I have to say, after listening to my counterpart, the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I have rewritten my speech.

First of all, let me make a couple comments about her comments. When gasoline was $5 a gallon, or approaching that, out in California, there was a reason for that, a reasonable justification at that time. It is that old thing most of us who are in earshot right now learned years ago; it is called supply and demand. Our problem is, the Democrats have restricted our ability to exploit our own natural resources. We have a moratorium on offshore drilling to make it more and more difficult. So as they restrict our ability to produce oil and gas, obviously, it is a supply and demand thing, and the demand is going to go up and the price is going to go up. It is a very simple principle.

I think it is also interesting to talk a little bit about the cap- and-trade thing. We keep hearing that for acid rain, cap and trade worked. For acid rain, there were two differences. First of all, there was a technology that was workable at that time. We had a technology that said: We know how we can restrict it. Of course, there is no technology in terms of greenhouse gases in using cap and trade. The second thing is, in the acid rain situation, there were about approximately, at most, 1,000 sources. Here, there are literally millions of sources. So there is no way we can actually get involved in this and understand just how many sources there are out there. It would be life-

changing for virtually everyone in our country.

The third thing, when the Senator from California was talking about the national sales tax, that it is not a national sales tax, we hang around Washington so long that we lose sight of the fact that if you are a poor person out there and you are spending half of your expendable income on driving your car and heating your home, and all of a sudden they double the cost of that, that is a tax increase; when you increase the cost of energy in America, it is not only an increase in a tax, but it is also regressive because those who have the least income are going to be spending a greater amount of their income on the purchase of energy.

The Senator from Illinois talked about global warming and all this and about the science. I will not get into the science thing because even though the science is mixed on this, even though there are quite a number of scientists who say there is not that relationship, that anthropogenic gases, CO2, methane, are not the major cause of global warming--or if global warming really exists--explain that to the people in Oklahoma. We had the largest snowstorm in the history of March 3 days ago. But nonetheless, we will go ahead and say: Well, for the sake of the debate on global warming, we could concede the science, even though the science is not there. The reason we can do that is we want people not to be distracted from the economics of this thing, what it really costs. This is one of the problems I have now.

The administration has talked about all the expenditures that are going on. We talked about the $700 billion bailout. We talked about the $787 billion stimulus plan. One thing about that is those are one-shot deals. The problem with this is, once you impose this cap-and-trade tax on the American people, this is every year. This is something that is not going to be just one time. I can remember arguing against the $700 billion bailout. I said: If you take the number of families who file a tax return and do your math, it comes to $5,000 a family. That is huge. But at least it is only once. This would be, as the Senator from South Dakota said, $3,000 a family every year. That is what we are talking about now.

When the administration came out and said it was $646 billion, that is probably understated about 1 to 4. The amount of money we know it is going to be in terms of all the studying that has taken place is around $6.7 trillion between now and 2050--$6.7 trillion. We had the other two bills up--when we had the McCain-Lieberman bill, that range was somewhere around $300 billion a year. When we had the Lieberman-Warner bill, that was a little bit more. When we had the Sanders-Boxer bill, that was about $366 billion a year. So the price tag goes up and up.

If we were to allow this to happen, this would be the largest single tax increase in the history of America. We cannot let that happen without going through the procedures, the normal procedures the Senate has provided.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. President, I have a unanimous consent request.

I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the remarks of the Senator from Colorado the Senator from Nebraska, Mr. Johanns, be recognized,

then I be recognized, and then the Senator from Hawaii, Mr. Akaka, be recognized.

I thank the Chair.

(The remarks of Mr. Inhofe pertaining to the introduction of S. 680 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. President, last week Congress was consumed in expressing its justified outrage over the bonuses for AIG executives. The House passed a bill that would tax those bonuses at 90 percent to get the money back. The Senate may consider something similar this week, and I think it is the Senate's job to proceed carefully as we do so. Though I think all of us would support taking back the payments, we need to give due consideration to the means by which we do this. The constitutionality of the House version is certainly questionable at best.

Now, the reason many are seeking expedited consideration of the AIG bonus bill is clear enough--to cover up the past mistakes of the majority party and the Treasury Secretary. We should recall the process that created the stimulus bill: No time to review the final bill before passage, a photo op masquerading as a conference committee, hasty consideration, no bipartisan input, and huge decisions about billions and billions of dollars being made behind closed doors by the majority. It was this process that allowed the provision to give out the AIG bonuses to find its way into law. There was a provision very deep in the Democratic stimulus bill that allowed these bonuses to be paid, and it was inserted at the behest of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

This gets us to the root of the problem: The bailout approach that Secretary Geithner epitomizes. The American people object to the midnight rescue packages, the ad hoc approach, the ``say one thing, do another'' programs. There is a complete lack of any policy framework, explanation of principles or coherent approach in dealing with our financial situation. I believe there is a lack of any transparency whatsoever and a seeming indifference to the taxpayers' interests.

Now, the $700 billion bailout bill last October was congressional ratification of Tim Geithner's approach to big banks: to bail them out. I objected to that at that time and I was in shock that 75 Members of the Senate voted to give an unelected bureaucrat, without any constraints, $700 billion to do with as he wished. Now, that was bad enough. It all started with Bear Stearns a year ago. The initiator of the Bear Stearns deal was not Secretary Paulson, it was not Chairman Bernanke, it was the--they signed off on it, but it was Timothy Geithner. After the deal was announced, Robert Novak reported in his column that an unnamed Federal official confided in him at the time: ``We may have crossed

a line'' in bailing out Bear Stearns. Mr. Novak wrote that was an understatement and that we wouldn't know the ramifications of this decision for a long time.

Well, I think we better understand those ramifications today. We are now trillions of dollars past that line and we are beginning to comprehend the course on which that decision has set us. I, personally, believe that trillions of dollars past that line, we are no better off. That is enough. Tim Geithner's bailout approach has taken us too far. Instead of Congress using the AIG bonus issue to cover up Tim Geithner's mistakes in allowing those bonuses, we should take it as an opportunity to fundamentally reevaluate the bailouts thus far and put an end to any more bailouts. Now, with the revelations of how AIG is being used to funnel money to foreign banks to make them whole on bad investments at the expense of the U.S. taxpayers, we need to put an end to the Geithner approach on bailouts. The taxpayers deserve no less.

The debate over the AIG bonuses, though extremely important, only scratches the surface of some much deeper issues. First, the furor over AIG bonuses obscured some other, perhaps more important, news about the AIG bailout regarding counterparties--or creditors--counterparties, to some of AIG's more exotic transactions. Second, the AIG bonus issue reveals a significant problem with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's bailout approach to failing financial institutions.

Under Tim Geithner, the $150 billion in taxpayer money AIG has received is being used to funnel money to AIG's counterparties, mostly big investment banks and foreign banks. Taxpayers are right to be angry about the bonuses, but they should be even angrier about how their taxpayer dollars used to bail out AIG are being distributed by them. Under the contracts AIG entered into with other big banks and foreign banks, AIG needs to come up with billions and billions of dollars when their investments are downgraded. Now, that is where all the AIG bailout money is going. AIG is basically being used as a front to funnel taxpayer moneys into large foreign banks that are taking no loss--no loss--on their investments. It is the taxpayer who is bearing the loss that these banks should have been able to take. Treasury Secretary Geithner needs to explain to the American people why foreign banks are getting 100 percent on their investment while the American people are taking the loss. Why can't any of these banks take a haircut on their AIG investments?

Now, I guess it is hard to explain to people because it doesn't sound believable, but what is happening is we have foreign banks--and I will name a few of them in a second--that have put their money into an investment into AIG. They planned to make a profit. If they had made a profit, I dare say they wouldn't have come back to say to our United States of America: We will write you a check for the profit we made. Instead of that, they wait until they take a loss, and then the American taxpayers have to come in.

I think the American people are getting completely fleeced on their $150 billion AIG investment. Secretary Geithner needs to explain to us why relatively healthy firms such as Goldman Sachs aren't taking any loss on a clearly bad investment in AIG. Why are all these foreign banks getting 100 percent of their investment at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer?

Here is a sample of the banks that are getting made whole by U.S. taxpayers--that is our taxpayers--people who elect us to office: The Bank of Montreal, Canada, $1.1 billion; the Societe Generale, France, $11.9 billion; investments made by a French bank. This is a French bank that bought an interest in AIG, they lost their money, they come back to us, and we pay them back for their loss. The BNP Paribas, $4.9 billion; the Deutsche Bank in Germany, $11.8 billion; the ING, Netherlands, $1.5 billion; Barclays, of the UK, $8.5 billion. This is just a sampling of the over $50 billion that foreign banks have gotten from AIG. In other words, $50 billion in taxpayers' money has gone to foreign banks. I don't think many people have caught on to that yet. The taxpayers are picking up the tab. Meanwhile, some U.S. banks are getting the same treatment. Goldman Sachs has received $12.9 billion. These are all investments in AIG. Merrill Lynch, $6.8 billion; Bank of America, $5.2 billion; Citigroup, $2.3 billion. All told, the U.S. banks have gotten around $45 billion through AIG from the U.S. taxpayer. What is interesting, as bad as it is that U.S. banks are getting back $45 billion for bad investments, the foreign banks are actually getting back more than the U.S. banks are. Not one of these banks I have mentioned has taken a dime of loss in their AIG investments--not one. AIG's counterparties have been made whole across the board by the U.S. taxpayer. Why is that? Why can't any of these banks take any of the loss on their AIG investment? Why is the taxpayer being asked to bear the full cost of all these bad investments? The American taxpayers have a right to know and Secretary Geithner needs to explain this.

I say this because I know people are outraged in my State of Oklahoma about the fact that there have been bonuses that have been made, but this is even far worse than that was. The American people are getting completely fleeced on their $150 billion AIG investment, $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, and billions in ad hoc bailouts, of which we have still not seen the end. Only this week, Secretary Geithner has announced that the Government will work with private investors to purchase between $500 billion and $1 trillion of toxic assets.

Now, at this point I would say, remember back when we were being sold a bill of goods, I voted against it, but 75 percent of the Senate voted for it--$700 billion to be given to an unelected bureaucrat to do with as they wished. We all remember that. What was that supposed to be used for? The bad part of the bill was not just the amount of money; there were no guidelines, no accountability. That was supposed to be used to buy toxic assets. I could quote right now things they said at that time: This money has to be spent for toxic assets, and if you don't do that, the whole country is going to go down and we are going to have another depression again. So the President's budget includes a placeholder for billions in additional banking bailouts. The American people have said enough a long time ago. We have to put an end to the Geithner approach on bailouts.

Looking back since last fall, more and more I feel I may have been overly critical of Secretary Paulson, at least when compared to Secretary Geithner. Geithner's handling of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout has been worse than Paulson's. Whether it is Paulson or Geithner, handing $700 billion over to an unelected bureaucrat to do with what he pleases is bad enough when three-fourths of the Senate voted to do it last October, and it is an even worse idea with Tim Geithner at the helm. What has happened with the taxpayers' investment in AIG is clear evidence of that. No matter how you look at it, it has been a bad deal for the U.S. taxpayers.

Now, in light of all of this, I have introduced legislation to do more than deal with the bonuses. This is S. 680, just introduced. S. 680 gets to the root of this problem. Of the $150 billion we have already given to AIG, it is my understanding that there is $30 billion more for AIG from TARP that has been agreed to by the Treasury Secretary but has not yet been drawn down. My legislation would prevent that from going forward. The taxpayers have given AIG about $150 billion so far. I think it is completely reasonable to say that once a single company gets $150 billion from the taxpayers, it should be cut off from getting more. There has to be a point beyond which Government cannot go, and there has to be an end to the road that is fleecing American taxpayers. This provides that end.

There is no other vehicle out there to do it. I can tell my colleagues right now, if this isn't brought up and voted on, the taxpayers of America are going to put another $30 billion into AIG to be used to pay off foreign banks. This is the only way we can stop it is with this legislation, so I encourage the leadership to help us bring this up for a vote. I can assure my colleagues it would pass with an overwhelming majority. That is S. 680, the only vehicle out there that would keep AIG from using taxpayer money to pay off other foreign banks.

Mr. President, last week Congress was consumed in expressing its justified outrage over the bonuses for AIG executives. The House passed a bill that would tax those bonuses at 90 percent to get the money back. The Senate may consider something similar this week, and I think it is the Senate's job to proceed carefully as we do so. Though I think all of us would support taking back the payments, we need to give due consideration to the means by which we do this. The constitutionality of the House version is certainly questionable at best.

Now, the reason many are seeking expedited consideration of the AIG bonus bill is clear enough--to cover up the past mistakes of the majority party and the Treasury Secretary. We should recall the process that created the stimulus bill: No time to review the final bill before passage, a photo op masquerading as a conference committee, hasty consideration, no bipartisan input, and huge decisions about billions and billions of dollars being made behind closed doors by the majority. It was this process that allowed the provision to give out the AIG bonuses to find its way into law. There was a provision very deep in the Democratic stimulus bill that allowed these bonuses to be paid, and it was inserted at the behest of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

This gets us to the root of the problem: The bailout approach that Secretary Geithner epitomizes. The American people object to the midnight rescue packages, the ad hoc approach, the ``say one thing, do another'' programs. There is a complete lack of any policy framework, explanation of principles or coherent approach in dealing with our financial situation. I believe there is a lack of any transparency whatsoever and a seeming indifference to the taxpayers' interests.

Now, the $700 billion bailout bill last October was congressional ratification of Tim Geithner's approach to big banks: to bail them out. I objected to that at that time and I was in shock that 75 Members of the Senate voted to give an unelected bureaucrat, without any constraints, $700 billion to do with as he wished. Now, that was bad enough. It all started with Bear Stearns a year ago. The initiator of the Bear Stearns deal was not Secretary Paulson, it was not Chairman Bernanke, it was the--they signed off on it, but it was Timothy Geithner. After the deal was announced, Robert Novak reported in his column that an unnamed Federal official confided in him at the time: ``We may have crossed

a line'' in bailing out Bear Stearns. Mr. Novak wrote that was an understatement and that we wouldn't know the ramifications of this decision for a long time.

Well, I think we better understand those ramifications today. We are now trillions of dollars past that line and we are beginning to comprehend the course on which that decision has set us. I, personally, believe that trillions of dollars past that line, we are no better off. That is enough. Tim Geithner's bailout approach has taken us too far. Instead of Congress using the AIG bonus issue to cover up Tim Geithner's mistakes in allowing those bonuses, we should take it as an opportunity to fundamentally reevaluate the bailouts thus far and put an end to any more bailouts. Now, with the revelations of how AIG is being used to funnel money to foreign banks to make them whole on bad investments at the expense of the U.S. taxpayers, we need to put an end to the Geithner approach on bailouts. The taxpayers deserve no less.

The debate over the AIG bonuses, though extremely important, only scratches the surface of some much deeper issues. First, the furor over AIG bonuses obscured some other, perhaps more important, news about the AIG bailout regarding counterparties--or creditors--counterparties, to some of AIG's more exotic transactions. Second, the AIG bonus issue reveals a significant problem with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's bailout approach to failing financial institutions.

Under Tim Geithner, the $150 billion in taxpayer money AIG has received is being used to funnel money to AIG's counterparties, mostly big investment banks and foreign banks. Taxpayers are right to be angry about the bonuses, but they should be even angrier about how their taxpayer dollars used to bail out AIG are being distributed by them. Under the contracts AIG entered into with other big banks and foreign banks, AIG needs to come up with billions and billions of dollars when their investments are downgraded. Now, that is where all the AIG bailout money is going. AIG is basically being used as a front to funnel taxpayer moneys into large foreign banks that are taking no loss--no loss--on their investments. It is the taxpayer who is bearing the loss that these banks should have been able to take. Treasury Secretary Geithner needs to explain to the American people why foreign banks are getting 100 percent on their investment while the American people are taking the loss. Why can't any of these banks take a haircut on their AIG investments?

Now, I guess it is hard to explain to people because it doesn't sound believable, but what is happening is we have foreign banks--and I will name a few of them in a second--that have put their money into an investment into AIG. They planned to make a profit. If they had made a profit, I dare say they wouldn't have come back to say to our United States of America: We will write you a check for the profit we made. Instead of that, they wait until they take a loss, and then the American taxpayers have to come in.

I think the American people are getting completely fleeced on their $150 billion AIG investment. Secretary Geithner needs to explain to us why relatively healthy firms such as Goldman Sachs aren't taking any loss on a clearly bad investment in AIG. Why are all these foreign banks getting 100 percent of their investment at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer?

Here is a sample of the banks that are getting made whole by U.S. taxpayers--that is our taxpayers--people who elect us to office: The Bank of Montreal, Canada, $1.1 billion; the Societe Generale, France, $11.9 billion; investments made by a French bank. This is a French bank that bought an interest in AIG, they lost their money, they come back to us, and we pay them back for their loss. The BNP Paribas, $4.9 billion; the Deutsche Bank in Germany, $11.8 billion; the ING, Netherlands, $1.5 billion; Barclays, of the UK, $8.5 billion. This is just a sampling of the over $50 billion that foreign banks have gotten from AIG. In other words, $50 billion in taxpayers' money has gone to foreign banks. I don't think many people have caught on to that yet. The taxpayers are picking up the tab. Meanwhile, some U.S. banks are getting the same treatment. Goldman Sachs has received $12.9 billion. These are all investments in AIG. Merrill Lynch, $6.8 billion; Bank of America, $5.2 billion; Citigroup, $2.3 billion. All told, the U.S. banks have gotten around $45 billion through AIG from the U.S. taxpayer. What is interesting, as bad as it is that U.S. banks are getting back $45 billion for bad investments, the foreign banks are actually getting back more than the U.S. banks are. Not one of these banks I have mentioned has taken a dime of loss in their AIG investments--not one. AIG's counterparties have been made whole across the board by the U.S. taxpayer. Why is that? Why can't any of these banks take any of the loss on their AIG investment? Why is the taxpayer being asked to bear the full cost of all these bad investments? The American taxpayers have a right to know and Secretary Geithner needs to explain this.

I say this because I know people are outraged in my State of Oklahoma about the fact that there have been bonuses that have been made, but this is even far worse than that was. The American people are getting completely fleeced on their $150 billion AIG investment, $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, and billions in ad hoc bailouts, of which we have still not seen the end. Only this week, Secretary Geithner has announced that the Government will work with private investors to purchase between $500 billion and $1 trillion of toxic assets.

Now, at this point I would say, remember back when we were being sold a bill of goods, I voted against it, but 75 percent of the Senate voted for it--$700 billion to be given to an unelected bureaucrat to do with as they wished. We all remember that. What was that supposed to be used for? The bad part of the bill was not just the amount of money; there were no guidelines, no accountability. That was supposed to be used to buy toxic assets. I could quote right now things they said at that time: This money has to be spent for toxic assets, and if you don't do that, the whole country is going to go down and we are going to have another depression again. So the President's budget includes a placeholder for billions in additional banking bailouts. The American people have said enough a long time ago. We have to put an end to the Geithner approach on bailouts.

Looking back since last fall, more and more I feel I may have been overly critical of Secretary Paulson, at least when compared to Secretary Geithner. Geithner's handling of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout has been worse than Paulson's. Whether it is Paulson or Geithner, handing $700 billion over to an unelected bureaucrat to do with what he pleases is bad enough when three-fourths of the Senate voted to do it last October, and it is an even worse idea with Tim Geithner at the helm. What has happened with the taxpayers' investment in AIG is clear evidence of that. No matter how you look at it, it has been a bad deal for the U.S. taxpayers.

Now, in light of all of this, I have introduced legislation to do more than deal with the bonuses. This is S. 680, just introduced. S. 680 gets to the root of this problem. Of the $150 billion we have already given to AIG, it is my understanding that there is $30 billion more for AIG from TARP that has been agreed to by the Treasury Secretary but has not yet been drawn down. My legislation would prevent that from going forward. The taxpayers have given AIG about $150 billion so far. I think it is completely reasonable to say that once a single company gets $150 billion from the taxpayers, it should be cut off from getting more. There has to be a point beyond which Government cannot go, and there has to be an end to the road that is fleecing American taxpayers. This provides that end.

There is no other vehicle out there to do it. I can tell my colleagues right now, if this isn't brought up and voted on, the taxpayers of America are going to put another $30 billion into AIG to be used to pay off foreign banks. This is the only way we can stop it is with this legislation, so I encourage the leadership to help us bring this up for a vote. I can assure my colleagues it would pass with an overwhelming majority. That is S. 680, the only vehicle out there that would keep AIG from using taxpayer money to pay off other foreign banks.

Madam President, it is my understanding we are confined to 10 minutes during this timeframe. I will do so, although after listening to the presentation of the Senator from Rhode Island, I wish I had a little bit more time. It is mind-boggling that anyone in this country would look at the budget as put forth by this administration and the spending in the omnibus bill of $410 billion and the deficit for this year of $1.75 trillion, the $787 billion stimulus, as well as the national debt which, projecting forward 5 years, will double under this administration, if the President is successful in getting this spending done, and will triple in 10 years--it is going to be difficult for any Senator to stand and say there is anything fiscally responsible about the behavior of our current President. If you don't believe it, turn on the TV and watch all the tea parties going on around the country. The people understand. They know the level of spending and how outrageous it is.

Madam President, today is a very significant day. Right now we are actually looking at the sixth anniversary of the Operation Iraqi Freedom. We sometimes have forgotten about the butcher from Iraq and how bad that was. I had personal experience during the first Gulf War of being there and seeing some of the things that went on, the horrible torture and the things that this particular dictator had done to that country. When we went in 6 years ago, it was a very difficult time because we went in with a military that had been downgraded during the Clinton administration. If you take a straight line in terms of what the expenditures were the day he took office, that is how much we reduced it in force strength, in our modernization program. In fact, this euphoric attitude people were talking about, saying the Cold War is over, we no longer need a strong military, that is the environment we had. I think, under those circumstances, we did an incredible job.

I have never been so impressed with an all-volunteer Army. I happen to have been a product of the draft. I believed that offered more discipline. When I went there--and I honestly believe I have made more trips to Iraq and Afghanistan than any other Member as the second- ranking member of the Armed Services Committee--I was privileged to be in places such as Fallujah during all the elections that took place and to see our young people, not all that well equipped, take on difficult odds. The marines in Fallujah were part of this, and it was incredible to watch. It was more than the World War II door-to-door style of combat.

Then I was very proud to be a part of the training of the troops over in Afghanistan. I say that because it was Oklahoma's 45th Division that was involved in training the Afghans on how to train themselves in the A&A. I feel that to have witnessed this, to have been over there in Bagdad, in Kabal, in that whole theater during this time was so impressive to me.

I can remember going into the various mess halls, with our troops there--and at that time, IEDs, at an unprecedented rate, were killing and maiming our soldiers--and the bravery they had. One of the questions they used to ask me, in the early stages of this war--6 years ago and 5 years ago--was: Why is it the American people do not understand what we are doing here? Why don't they understand if we do not stop the terrorism here, it is going to be back at our borders the way it was on 9/11? My response to them was I think they are. We are not getting good reporting out of the media. That started changing as improvements came along.

As I witnessed the opportunities that were there, our troops, all of a sudden, during this surge anyway, were gaining a lot more support, and that completely turned it around. GEN David Petraeus did a remarkable job. In fact, all our generals over there did.

So I think it is incumbent upon us today to remember this is the 6th year. This is something that was absolutely necessary for the safety and the freedom we enjoy here in this country. We should be applauding all our troops as they come back.

To me, it was a little unconscionable, just 3 or 4 days ago, when the White House was coming out with a program that would have impaired our wounded veterans coming back from Iraq and the Middle East from access to VA health care. Because of all the people--I am sure the phones are ringing off the hook at the White House--last night they backed away from that. But, nonetheless, we are not getting the support we should be getting now for our military at this time.

Keep in mind, if we went through an 8-year period of dropping down the support, and then we look at the budget that is in today, it is an inflated budget in spending in every possible area except defense. I think it should be our priority now, as we remember what happened 6 years ago today.

With that, I yield the floor.

I oppose the nomination of Elena Kagan for Solicitor General of the United States. I previously spoke against her on the floor and talked about the reason I was opposed to her as well as David Ogden for his representation of the pornography industry. It is kind of hard for me to understand how someone who is the No. 2 position in the Justice Department has a history of representing the pornography industry. Then, of course, the nominations of Dawn Johnson and Thomas Perrelli I am opposed to because of their strong pro-abortion positions.

But as far as Elena Kagan, it is important for those who are going to vote in favor of her to know some of the things that have happened in her background. Because of its great importance, the office of Solicitor General is often referred to as the 10th Supreme Court Justice.

When serving as a dean of Harvard Law School, she demonstrated poor judgment on a very important issue to me. Ms. Kagan banned the U.S. military from recruiting on campus. She and other law school officials sued to overturn the Solomon amendment. The Solomon amendment originated in the House. Congressman Jerry Solomon had an amendment that said no university could preclude the military from trying to recruit on campus. This was a direct violation of the amendment. She actually was claiming that the Solomon amendment was immoral. She filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court opposing the amendment. The Court unanimously ruled against her position and affirmed that the Solomon amendment was constitutional.

The Department of Justice needs people who adhere to the law and not to their ideology. While certainly I oppose many of the positions taken by these nominees, I am even more concerned that their records of being ideologically driven will weaken the integrity and neutrality of the Department of Justice.

I oppose the nomination of Elena Kagan.

Mr. President, it is my understanding I have the first 15 minutes, and I would ask the Chair to advise me when I have 1 minute left.