Floor Statements

Mr. President, today I pay tribute to my distinguished colleague from Utah, Senator Robert Bennett, who will be retiring from the Senate at the end of the 111th Congress.

I have worked with Bob since coming over to the Senate in 1998. I have also had the privilege of serving on the Senate Energy and Banking Committees with Bob. In fact, we sat next to each other for years in the Banking Committee.

He is a man of integrity and devotion. As a young man, he worked as a staffer on Capitol Hill and moved on to become a successful entrepreneur in Washington, DC. In 1992, he followed in his father's footsteps and was elected to the U.S. Senate. Over the course of his three consecutive terms in the Senate, Bob has fought hard for our shared conservative values of fiscal discipline, securing our borders, and energy independence.

Bob has served the people of Utah proudly as their Senator. His leadership on the Banking Committee and in the Senate will be missed.

I am honored to know him and to have worked with him. I would like to thank Bob for his contributions to the Senate and to the country we both love. I wish him and his family the best in all of their future endeavors.

Kit Bond

Mr. President, I wish to join my fellow Senators to honor a colleague and a friend, Senator Christopher Samuel ``Kit'' Bond, who, like me, will be retiring from the Senate at the close of this Congress.

I have had the privilege of working with Senator Bond on a variety of issues in the Senate for over a decade. He is an advocate of our Nation's military, infrastructure and energy needs, and intelligence community. The two of us have stood together on numerous issues--most notably advancing coal technology and maintaining a strong national defense.

Representing Missouri, home to major military bases and installations, Senator Bond has been instrumental to ensure that all citizens who are a part of our armed services--including servicemembers, family members, and survivors of veterans--are provided the world-class care and benefits they have earned. Additionally, whether the items of the day were funding for our Armed Forces and intelligence communities or improving U.S. relations among the international community, Senator Bond brought a voice of wisdom and reason to the Senate and governing bodies worldwide.

The Senate will not be the same without Senator Kit Bond. In a time when America has needed leadership in the Senate to address threats from conventional and unconventional means, Senator Kit Bond has continued to rise to the occasion by giving those who defend us the critical tools needed to prepare and protect our nation. I will miss my friend Kit Bond.

Sam Brownback

Mr. President, I rise today to honor my friend from Kansas, Senator Sam Brownback.

Born in Parker, KS, Sam has dedicated his time to serving the great people of Kansas. Beginning his service as the secretary of agriculture in Kansas, Sam has represented Kansas with dignity and honor.

Following his election in 1994, I have had the opportunity to work with Senator Brownback in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. While in the Senate, Sam and I worked tirelessly on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to utilize the energy resources we have in this great country.

Sam has created a long list of accomplishments on a wide range of issues for the people of Kansas and this Nation. I know his family and the people of Kansas are proud to call him one of their own. His leadership in the Senate will be missed, but our loss is a gain for the State of Kansas as Sam prepares for his new role as Governor. It has truly been an honor serving with him during these many years.

I would like to thank Sam for his contributions to the Senate and wish him and his family well as they embark on this new chapter in their lives.

Judd Gregg

Mr. President, I wish to honor my colleague from New Hampshire, Senator Gregg, who is retiring from the U.S. Senate after serving 18 years in this Chamber and serving 8 years in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Born and bred in New Hampshire, Judd has dedicated his life to public service. Judd served on the Executive Council of New Hampshire in 1978 before running for national office. In 1980, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and was elected to three additional terms before returning to New Hampshire. In 1988, Judd became the Governor of New Hampshire, a seat formerly held by his father Hugh. During his two terms as Governor, Judd managed to balance the State's budget and left Concord with a surplus. Following his tenure as Governor, Judd returned to Washington in 1993 and has represented New Hampshire in the Senate ever since.

While working in the Senate, I have had the opportunity to serve with Judd on the Banking Committee and the Budget Committee, where he currently serves as the ranking member. I have respect for the manner in which Judd has conducted himself in the role of ranking member and the Republican leader on the Budget Committee. I also admire the fact that he always keeps our national deficit in mind when making touch decisions, whether or not these decisions are going to be popular.

Judd has a long list of accomplishments to show for the people of New Hampshire and the United States. His leadership in the Senate will be missed, and it has truly been an honor serving with him.

I would like to thank Judd for his contributions to the Senate and wish him well as he closes a chapter in his life and begins another.

George Voinovich

Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to my friend and colleague, Senator George Voinovich. Over the past 12 years I have had the opportunity to work with Senator Voinovich on many issues that impact our adjoining States and this Nation. While working with Senator Voinovich, I gained respect for his firm commitment to his principles.

Prior to our time together in the Senate, I only knew of Senator Voinovich through his reputation as mayor of Cleveland and Governor of Ohio. In these positions, he cut spending, fought corruption, and created jobs. These experiences taught Senator Voinovich how to make tough decisions, and he never lost that quality here in the Senate.

Senator Voinovich also never forgot his roots. As a child of Yugoslavian parents, the Senator never lost interest in the Balkans, and through his work on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he made sure that this region was not forgotten by the U.S. Government. I also worked closely with him on Department of Energy issues because Ohio and Kentucky have neighboring DOE uranium sites.

Although Senator Voinovich accomplished many things in his life, his greatest achievement has been as a father and husband. George and his wife

Janet have been married for over 47 years. I wish him nothing but the best as he embarks on a new chapter in his life.

George LeMieux

Mr. President, today I would like to honor my distinguished colleague from Florida, Senator George LeMieux, who will be retiring from the Senate at the end of the 111th Congress.

George has humbly served the people of Florida for many years as deputy attorney general, chief of staff to the Governor, and most recently as a Member of the U.S. Senate. While his time in the Senate might have been short, his list of accomplishments is not. George has proven to be a principled leader that is unafraid to tackle the difficult issues facing our Nation. He has offered thoughtful and proactive solutions to problems that many would rather defer to a future Congress and a future generation. The people of Florida should be proud to have been represented by a man of such dedication and character.

I am honored to know George and to have worked with him. I would like to thank him for his contributions to the Senate and wish him and his family the best in all of their future endeavors.

Evan Bayh

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Missouri, a dear friend of mine and someone who has unusual wisdom in his remarks today. I listened to many of them. I just hope I have a few that are as well thought out as my good friend from Missouri.

I wish to take a few moments to thank all my colleagues and other individuals who have come to the Chamber to hear me bid farewell. That doesn't mean I will not speak again. That just means I am bidding farewell and this is a farewell speech.

I have had the great fortune of having three wonderful careers during my life: one as a husband and father of 9 children and a grandfather of 40, one as a Major League baseball player for 27 years, and one in public service for 30 years. Many people often talk to me about how different my baseball and public service careers are, but they really are not so different.

I have been booed by 60,000 fans in Yankee Stadium, standing alone on the mound, so I have never cared if I stood alone in the Congress, as long as I stood by my beliefs and my values. I have also thought that being able to throw a curve ball never was a bad skill for a politician to have.

I came to Washington, DC, in 1987, when the people of the Fourth District in northern Kentucky gave me the distinct honor to serve them. I did not know then that the people of Kentucky had bestowed upon me the privilege of representing them for 24 years. I have the same conservative principles in 2010 that I had when I first was elected to Congress.

Over the years, I have always done what I thought was right for Kentucky and my country. I did not run for public service for fame or public acclaim. When I cast my votes, I thought about how they would affect my grandchildren and the next generation of Kentuckians, not where the political winds at the time were blowing. Words cannot express my gratitude to the people of Kentucky for giving me the distinct honor of serving them for 12 years in the House of Representatives and 12 years in the Senate.

Here I stand, though, in the Senate Chamber about to say goodbye after nearly a quarter of a century in Congress. I have reflected much about my time here. As I stand here at the desk of Henry Clay, the great Kentuckian, I am proud to have had the opportunity to serve in a place in history. I thought it fitting to discuss the legislative items of which I am most proud.

I have three bills I am particularly proud I was able to accomplish signing into law. One of the things I am most proud of during my time in Congress is helping pass legislation that repealed the earnings limit on older Americans under the Social Security system. Social Security used to penalize many older Americans for working by reducing their Social Security benefits by $1 for every $3 they earned, if they made more than the earnings limit which was about $12,000 in 1995. This was an unfair tax on seniors and punished them for continuing to work. I worked hard for many years in both the House and Senate to get this unfair earnings limit eliminated.

Finally, in 2000, after I had been elected to the Senate, it passed and was signed into law. This law has helped many hardworking seniors stay involved in their communities, remain independent, and contribute to society.

Another bill I am proud of is the 2004 Flood Insurance Reformation Act. In 2004, I wrote the last reauthorization of the national flood insurance program. That law provided significant reforms to the program just in time for the 2004-2005 hurricane season, including Hurricane Katrina. Had the law not been in place, homeowners all over the gulf coast would not have had coverage for the flood damage to their homes. The 2004 law is still the framework for the program today. It was not a Republican accomplishment or a Democratic accomplishment. It was a bipartisan accomplishment.

I worked very closely with Senator Sarbanes and Representatives Bereuter and Blumenthal to write and pass that law. While I believe that further changes are still needed to the program, the 2004 law made meaningful changes that put the program on a more sound financial footing.

Unfortunately, passage of the bill was not the end of the story. What happened or, more accurately, what did not happen illustrates one reason people are fed up with Washington: because government does not do what it is supposed to do. Despite the fact the bill passed both the Senate and the House unanimously, FEMA refused to implement all of its provisions in a timely manner. The most glaring example was the appeals process created by the bill for property owners to appeal claims they thought were not settled fairly or correctly. The law gave FEMA 6 months to write the rules. FEMA, instead, took almost 2 years from the day the bill passed to put even draft rules out. They probably would not have done it then, if it was not for the right of one Senator to object. I had to hold the nominee to head the agency to get the attention of the Bush administration and move the Secretary of Homeland Security to finally publish the rules. It should not have been that way.

The third bill I am grateful was signed into law is the Emergency Employee Occupational Illness Compensation Program. The Paducah, KY, gaseous diffusion plant is the only operating uranium enrichment plant in the United States. When I came to the Senate, I held the first hearing to look at cleaning up the contamination the Department of Energy left at the site. After the hearing, I focused on cleaning up the site. A lot has been cleaned up since that first hearing 10 years ago. I also worked hard to provide compensation to workers who suffered serious illnesses as a result of their employment at the DOE nuclear weapons program plant.

This energy employment compensation program was set up because many workers served our country's nuclear programs during the Cold War and their health was put at risk without their knowledge--the first compensation bill passed in 2000, with the help of a bipartisan group of Congressmen and Senators. I then became aware that DOE was slow- walking claims processing and payment to many claimants and their portion of the compensation program. So in 2004, again, with the help of a bipartisan group of Senators and Congressmen, I spearheaded legislation that moved the entire program over to the Department of Labor which had sped up and streamlined compensation for the sick nuclear workers.

Along with many of my achievements, I also had time to reflect on some of the disappointments I wish I had been able to fix during my time here. I am deeply concerned about the state of entitlement programs--Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. It is clear that our government cannot meet its future obligations and ultimately the American people will suffer, unfortunately. Too many Members of Congress are willing to look the other way and let the financial problems of these programs fester instead of making hard decisions. Congress just cannot get the courage together to address these issues head on.

In fact, after President Bush's second election, Congress briefly focused on the problems of Social Security solvency. At the time, I was a strong supporter of private investment accounts but certainly realized that the whole system needed an overhaul and was open to many different options. Toward the end of the debate, I was willing to tackle Social Security reform even if we did not do investment accounts, as long as we did something. However, it quickly became apparent that many Members of Congress--even some in my own party--were not willing to get serious about this. Six years later, Congress still has not touched Social Security reform, and the program is even in worse financial shape.

Medicare and Medicaid are in the same position. In 2006, Congress finally got serious about spending in these programs and passed the Deficit Reduction Act. This bill slowed the rate of growth--the rate of growth--in Medicare by $6 billion and in Medicaid by $5 billion over 5 years. Let me be clear about this. We were not cutting spending in these programs. We were just slowing the growth.

Well, you would have thought the sky was falling when we did this. The longer Congress takes to honestly tackle these fiscal challenges, the harder it will be to fix these programs. This means bigger cuts, bigger deficits, and bigger tax increases.

Health care is another area where Congress should have done better. The other side of the aisle's stubborn refusal to compromise and, more importantly, listen to the desires of the American people on health care reform led to the passage of a bill that is one of the worst pieces of legislation I have seen in Congress in 24 years.

The health care bill is clearly unconstitutional, will force millions of Americans to lose the health insurance they currently enjoy, give the IRS--that is the Internal Revenue Service--the power to police and tax Americans who do not have health insurance, and takes over $500 billion out of Medicare programs to pay for new spending.

Despite all the rhetoric from the administration and Democratic leaders about being transparent and open and willing to compromise, it quickly became clear that they only wanted Republican support if we agreed to everything they wanted to do. Well, compromise does not work like that. A compromise means you actually have to take ideas from other people instead of just giving lip service.

One of the other recent disappointments was the financial regulation bill passed earlier this year. Before my first election, I spent 31 years working in the security business. That was back when baseball players did not make millions of dollars a year and had to have jobs in the off-season to pay the bills. I spent nearly all of my time in Congress on either the old House Banking Committee or the Senate Banking Committee, so this is something I know a great deal about and care about.

There were, and are, real problems in our financial system. But that bill is not going to fix them and almost certainly sows the seeds for the next banking and financial crisis while, at the same time, adding more burdens on the economies struggling to recover.

That bill did not replace bailouts with bankruptcy. It made bailouts a permanent part of the financial system. The bill did not force the too-big-to-fail banks to get smaller. It gave them special status. The bill ignored the role of housing finance and left Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac alone. The housing crisis could not have happened without Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Senate failed to act on a bill to reform Fannie and Freddie passed by the Banking Committee in 2006, and that failure is going to end up costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Congress has to do something soon to get them off the taxpayers' life support they have been on since 2008. But, unfortunately, that did not happen in the financial reform bill.

The bill also ignores the Federal Reserve's failures as a regulator and, instead, gave them more power. And, worst of all, the bill did nothing to rein in the largest single cause of the current financial crisis and most other financial crises in the past: flawed monetary policy by the Federal Reserve.

Nothing Congress has done will stop the next bubble or collapse if the Fed continues with its easy money policies. Cheap money will always distort prices and lead to dangerous behavior. No amount of regulation can contain it.

For many years, I was a lone critic of the Federal Reserve. Particularly, no one questioned Alan Greenspan, despite his policies causing two recessions and two asset bubbles. I was the lone vote against Ben Bernanke in 2006. I was the lone vote because I thought he would continue the Greenspan monetary and regulatory policies. Well, he did. He kept it up--a flawed monetary policy--and was slow to regulate. Then, in 2008, he took the Federal Reserve into fiscal policy by bailing out Bear Stearns and, later, AIG, and just about every other major financial institution in the country. As we saw, even last week around the world, Chairman Bernanke compromised the independence of the Fed and turned it into an arm of the U.S. Treasury.

Things have not gotten better since then either. Chairman Bernanke is continuing with the easy monetary policy, and a month ago started the printing presses again to buy up more Treasury debt. While the Fed may be propping up the banks with plenty of cheap money, he is undermining our currency.

Other central banks are moving away from the dollar and gold is continuing to climb. Just like the soaring national debt and entitlement costs, the destruction of the dollar is not sustainable. Congress must act to rein in the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the Fed before they destroy our currency and permanently damage our economy and financial system.

Public awareness of what the Fed is doing is increasing, while public opinion of the Fed is falling. Chairman Bernanke had nearly twice as many votes cast against him in the Senate earlier this year than any other Fed Chairman in history. It is just not outside the Fed that opposition is growing. Regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents are speaking up and voting against Fed policy. Even some members of the Fed Board are recognizing the dangers of Chairman Bernanke's policies. I am more hopeful now than ever that Chairman Bernanke and the Fed will not be allowed to continue the flawed policies and act as an arm of the Treasury and the major banks.

As I stand here and reflect upon my time in Congress, I can honestly say I am gratified, despite the ups and downs, to have had the opportunity to serve my country and serve the people of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Twenty-four years is a very large portion of my life and my family's life. I thank my nine children: Barb, Jim, Joan, Cat, Bill, Bridget, Mark, Amy, and David, and my 40 grandchildren, who inspired me to try to make this country better and better for the next generation to live.

I also want to give a special thanks to my wife Mary, the mother of my nine children and my childhood sweetheart from the fourth grade. I thank her for being at my side through all of the road trips, the late nights I spent in the House and the Senate. She is my better half, who supported and stood by me. She is my lighthouse that always shone in the dark during the good and the bad times of public service. She prayed me to my wins in public service and in baseball, and I never could have done any of these achievements without her.

As this chapter in my life comes to an end and I flip the page into a new chapter, I thank very much all the other people in my life who have stood by me. Without the friendship and support of so many over the years, I never would have been able and had the privilege to represent Kentucky in the House and the Senate.

As I leave here today, I offer a little prayer for the next Congress. Pope John Paul II once said:

Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having

the right to do what we ought.

This is the motto I have tried to live by during my time in Congress. I pray that the Members of the next Congress do what is right for the country, not what is right for their fame and their future aspirations. My hope is that Congress will focus on the astronomical debt instead of continuing down the path of spending our future generations into higher taxes and a lower standard of living than we have now.

Godspeed and God bless.

With a sense of pride and gratitude, I will say for the last time, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to briefly explain for the record my votes on the nomination of Janet Yellen to be a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and to be Vice-Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Dr. Yellen is qualified to sit on the Board of Governors. She has already been a member of the Board, and is currently the president of a regional Fed--the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She has more monetary policy experience than most recent nominees and certainly understands what the job requires.

However, I have serious concerns about her views on monetary policy and her actions during the credit and housing bubble. In reviewing Federal Open Market Committee, FOMC, meeting minutes and transcripts, it is clear to me that Dr. Yellen will support easy money policies and I am afraid she will not take inflation seriously. I do not believe she will stand up to Chairman Bernanke or break the groupthink that exists at the Fed. The FOMC transcripts and minutes I reviewed only strengthen my concerns. I am also concerned that as president of the San Francisco Fed she did not spot or take action to address the housing and credit bubble while overseeing one of the most affected regions of the country. These reasons are why I oppose Dr. Yellen's nomination to be Vice-Chairman and will vote against her for that position when the vote is called.

The Record will thus reflect my vote against Dr. Yellen to be Vice- Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Mr. President, today I rise to pay tribute to Senator Ted Stevens, who will be laid to rest today at Arlington National Cemetery. Unfortunately, Senator Stevens was taken from us on August 9 of this year, but his legacy will live on through the countless lives he touched during his distinguished career in public service.

Senator Stevens will be missed by so many because of the tenacity he displayed fighting for his beliefs. This began when he volunteered for the Army Air Corps during World War II, where he supplied Chinese forces as

they defended their country from Japanese invasion. For his heroism, Ted Stevens received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal.

Senator Stevens took this same tenacity to the Senate where he served the people of Alaska for over 40 years. It is largely because of Senator Stevens that many Alaskans gained access to clean drinking water and their children received a quality education. Finally, Senator Stevens fought to create an oil pipeline that put thousands of Alaskans to work and provided affordable energy for this Nation. These accomplishments are just a sample of the many issues that Senator Stevens championed during his long career.

By the time I came to the Senate in 1998, I knew Ted Stevens was an outstanding legislator, but over the next 10 years, I learned so much more that defined his character. I found that Ted Stevens was one of the most sincere members of this Chamber. No matter what the issue, I could always count on Senator Stevens to speak with frankness and honesty, two traits that are sorely lacking in the modern Senate.

I also learned that despite his dedication to the Senate, he always put family first. Senator Stevens was the father to six children, and although there is over 4,000 miles that separates Alaska from our Nation's Capital, he always made time for his wife and children. I realize my words are little consolation to his wife Catherine or the rest of his family, but I hope they know Mary and I are grieving with them as they cope with the loss of this model family man.

The Senate was blessed to have Ted Stevens as one of its Members. His countless accomplishments guarantee him a prominent place in the pantheon of American history. I was fortunate to have him as my colleague for over 10 years, but even luckier to have him as a friend.

Madam President, I want to explain why I will vote no on the nomination of Robert D. Reischauer to serve as a public trustee of the Social Security and Medicare Programs.

Although he has a Ph.D. in economics and extensive experience with Federal budgetary matters as former head of the Congressional Budget Office, Dr. Reischauer claimed that he did not understand his basic responsibility under Federal law to report income on his tax returns from 2004 to 2008. He only paid back taxes on rental property in Canada when he brought his failure to the attention of the White House during the vetting process.

On his Finance Committee questionnaire, which he signed under penalty of perjury, he claimed this was an ``oversight'' he did not discover until 2009. But in discussions with bipartisan committee staff, he appeared to tell a different story and said it was a deliberate choice he made at the time he filled out his tax returns. In the same meeting, he said he was sorry that he told the White House.

And while he said that he had offsetting expenses that would have canceled out his tax liability and produced a loss, Dr. Reischauer kept no receipts or records of those expenses, saying that he paid off workers in cash.

It appears that Dr. Reischauer was not truthful or careful about his Federal responsiblity to report income. Someone who has not earned the public trust is not qualified to be a public trustee, and that is why I oppose his confirmation.

I ask that the Record reflect my vote against Dr. Reischauer's confirmation.

Madam President, during the August recess, I am sure we all have met with people who expressed frustration with how things are going in Washington. Very recently, a poem, written by Norman Klopp of Cleveland, OH, was given to me. I think it represents what many people across the country are feeling about their government. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I would like to recognize the 50th anniversary of the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators, NASBLA, a Kentucky-based nonprofit organization.

Recreational boating is one of America's most popular pastimes with over 13,000,000 recreational vessels registered nationwide, of which 200,000 are in my home State of Kentucky. In 1958, Congress recognized the growing interest in recreational boating, and passed the Federal Boating Act, which led to the creation of the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators in 1960. NASBLA is a national, nonprofit association of State officials responsible for the development and implementation of State boating programs.

NASBLA's mission is to strengthen the ability of State and territorial boating authorities to ensure a safe, secure, and enjoyable recreational environment. NASBLA addresses its mission by fostering partnerships among States, the Coast Guard, and others to streamline boating laws, maintain national education standards, strengthen homeland security on our waterways, and communicate to Federal agencies on behalf of the States' boating programs. The tireless work of NASBLA has helped to significantly reduce the number of recreational boating fatalities since 1970. However, even with such progress in safety, there is still room for improvement. In 2008, recreational boating accidents still claimed the lives of 709 Americans, of which more than half may have been saved with the proper use of a personal flotation device.

Due to the efforts of the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators and its members over the last

five decades, our Nation's waterways are safer and more enjoyable for the boating public. I congratulate the NASBLA as it celebrates 50 years of service and wish it great success over the next 50 years.

Mr. President, today I rise to speak on the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be a Justice on the United States Supreme Court.

After much consideration, I cannot support this nomination. I have been following this progress very closely. I have been reading her memos and other documents from her career, and I watched her confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I met with her one on one and was able to ask her eight different questions. Unfortunately, I find her unsuitable to serve a lifetime appointment as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

When I spoke on the nomination of Justice Sotomayor last year, I pointed out the problems of the Supreme Court and other judges trying to replace Congress and State legislatures. Important social issues have been taken out of the political process and decided by unelected judges. I can say for certain that this is not the way the Founding Fathers and the authors of the Constitution intended for it to work. The creation of law is reserved for elected legislatures chosen by the people. The Supreme Court is not a nine-person legislature created to interact with or replace the U.S. Congress.

When judges and Justices take the law into their own hands and act as if they are a legislative body, it flies in the face of the Constitution. Because of this, whether it is the Supreme Court or the lower courts, many people have lost respect for our judicial system. This cannot continue to happen.

In addition to the obvious constitutional concerns, if some day the public and the rest of the political system begin to tune out the courts and ignore their decisions altogether, it would be very dangerous for our country. I opposed Justice Sotomayor's nomination because I did not feel she understood this. I am afraid I have to say the same for Ms. Kagan.

The first problem I wish to discuss is her lack of experience. According to a Congressional Research Service analysis, Justices without prior judicial experience practiced law for an average of 21 years before their appointment to the Supreme Court. Recent polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of Americans feel that prior judicial experience is an important qualification to be a Justice on the Supreme Court.

Of modern Supreme Court Justices, former Chief Justice William Rehnquist was the last person nominated without judicial experience, and that was almost 40 years ago. However, Chief Justice Rehnquist was a practicing attorney for years prior to his nomination.

Ms. Kagan herself said:

It is an embarrassment that the President and Senate do not

always insist, as a threshold requirement, that a nominee's

previous accomplishments evidence an ability not merely to

handle but to master the ``craft'' aspects of being a judge.

Prior to her appointment to the Solicitor General's job in 2009, Ms. Kagan was a stranger to the courtroom. She never tried a case to verdict or served as a judge. She argued her first case as

a lawyer less than 1 year ago. While Ms. Kagan has a very extensive background in the law, both academically and politically, I do not believe she has mastered the craft of judging.

I have serious concerns that Ms. Kagan will have a very hard time separating her personal views from the legal interpretation of the Constitution. While Ms. Kagan was dean of Harvard Law School, she banned military recruiters from the Harvard campus during a time of war because she believed the don't ask, don't tell law, developed by the Clinton administration in which she served--she called it a ``moral outrage'' of the ``first order.''

She worked for Bill Clinton in his administration. She argued that the Solomon amendment, which Congress passed, despite its plain text and plain congressional intent behind it, allowed law schools to bar access to military recruiters. Ms. Kagan herself wrote an e-mail to the Harvard community that in barring recruiters, she was acting in the hope that the Federal Government would choose not to enforce the law of the land. I find it very troubling that a nominee to the Supreme Court would change school policy and disregard Federal law during a time of war because of her own personal beliefs. Fortunately, not a single Supreme Court Justice agreed with her position and noted that her interpretation was rather clearly not what Congress had in mind.

As associate White House counsel to President Bill Clinton, Ms. Kagan played a critical role in the debate over partial birth abortions and did everything she could to halt legislation going through Congress to ban that horrible procedure. She worked with the medical groups supporting the practice, rewriting their scientific conclusions to better reflect her preference on partial-birth abortion. The Supreme Court relied on this language in their decision to overturn a Nebraska law banning this procedure. It appalls me that someone with no medical background would try to alter scientific conclusions to defend such a monstrosity of a procedure.

In one memo, she advised President Clinton to support a Democratic alternative in order to ``sustain [his] credibility on [the issue] and prevent Congress from overriding [his] veto.'' This is concerning behavior from someone who now wishes to serve on the highest Court in the land. If she was willing to rewrite scientific conclusions, who is to say how far she would go with rewriting the Constitution?

I also have serious concerns about Ms. Kagan's hostility to second amendment rights. While she was clerking for the Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Ms. Kagan was asked to consider a case similar to the 2008 Heller case, in which the Court struck down the DC gun ban and found that the second amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms. In examining this earlier case, Sandidge v. U.S., she wrote that:

Mr. Sandidge's sole argument is that the District of

Columbia's firearm statute violates his constitutional right

to ``keep and bear arms.'' I am not sympathetic.

Those were her words.

It is not the job of the Supreme Court or any other court of the land, for that matter, to be sympathetic. That belongs best in legislatures which can reflect the wishes of the people who voted for the Members of those bodies.

Recently, supporters of individual rights and liberties won an important victory when the Supreme Court ruled in the McDonald case that the second amendment was a fundamental right that is binding to all the States. I fear her appointment to the Supreme Court could undo the progress from the Heller and McDonald decisions that recognize Americans have the right to defend themselves. Throughout her confirmation hearings, Ms. Kagan repeatedly stated she would accept the Heller and McDonald decisions as settled law. In her confirmation hearings, Justice Sotomayor also appeared to accept the second amendment rights. Specifically, Justice Sotomayor said she understood `` . . . the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized in Heller.'' However, in her first year on the Court, she joined the dissenting opinion in McDonald saying:

I can find nothing in the Second Amendment's text, history,

or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it

as ``fundamental'' insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping

and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes.

Finally, I was not satisfied with Ms. Kagan's responses regarding the commerce clause and the limits of power of the Federal Government. Right now, we have the government taking over each sector of our economy, from banking, as the majority leader and minority leader spoke about, and the auto bailouts, which they both spoke about, to an unprecedented takeover of our health care system. In her testimony, Ms. Kagan left no doubt that she sees virtually no limit on congressional power. This is extremely frightening to me, to say the very least.

The Framers of the Constitution made it very clear what the role of the Court should be. Anyone appointed to the Supreme Court must be willing to evaluate laws as they are written under the plain meaning of the Constitution. A Justice should not be appointed in order to achieve specific results in any case. We have no judicial record of Ms. Kagan's to look at to see how she would rule in any of these such cases. We only have a record as an academic and a political adviser to look at as her qualifications to be a Supreme Court Justice. While Ms. Kagan has a very impressive background, I do not have faith that she would fully respect the roles of the judiciary and the legislative branch.

I am very sorry to say for just the second time while serving in the Senate that I will have to oppose a nomination to the Supreme Court, and I am not happy to do so. However, it is the constitutional role of the Senate to provide confirmation for this position and my duty as a Senator to be a part of this process. On viewing the record of Solicitor General Kagan, I do not find her to be a suitable candidate for a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and will vote against her whenever the Senate considers her nomination.

I thank the President, yield the floor, and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today I want to speak on the loss of the great statesman, orator, and author, Senator Robert Byrd. Senator Byrd served the State of West Virginia and this great Nation in the Senate for over 50 years. It has been an honor to serve and craft legislation with Senator Byrd to protect and promote the values of our two States, which share a common border and economy. He represented his State well.

Following my election to the Senate, Senator Byrd offered me valuable advice and direction on the operations and rules of the U.S. Senate. Upon learning of his passing, my wife Mary and I were deeply saddened by the news.

Starting from humble beginnings, Senator Byrd was a great example of the virtue of hard work and determination. After losing his mother during the influenza epidemic of 1918, Senator Byrd was sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the coal-mining region of southern West Virginia. With a combination of his strong work ethic and quest for knowledge, Senator Byrd graduated as valedictorian of his high school class. Despite his stellar academic achievements, Senator Byrd was unable to attend college following his high school commencement due to financial constraints.

At the age of 19, Senator Byrd married his high school sweetheart and lifetime soulmate Erma Ora James. In an effort to support his growing family, Senator Byrd took jobs, which included working as a gas station attendant and butcher, to put his family first.

After serving in the West Virginia House of Delegates and Senate, Senator Byrd was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and began serving in 1953. Unable to stop his quest for knowledge, Senator Byrd began attending night classes at the American University's Washington College of Law where he received his degree a decade later.

Senator Byrd's love for this country and the Senate itself could be seen in many ways such as the copy of the U.S. Constitution tucked away in his jacket pocket and his vast knowledge of the rules of the Senate. As he said to many of us, ``he who knows the rules will rule.''

He believed, as I do, in the power of the Senate. He understood that the Senate should not be beholden to the executive branch, but must remain separate and equal to provide the necessary checks. As he stated, ``We must never, ever, tear down the only wall--the necessary fence--this Nation has against the excesses of the Executive Branch and the resultant haste and tyranny of the majority.''

Even in his frustration of the current political climate and through his remaining days, Senator Byrd continued to fight for the protection of the rules of the Senate and the rights of the minority, because as he wrote, ``I know what it is to be Majority Leader, and wake up on a Wednesday morning in November, and find yourself a Minority Leader.''

I extend my thoughts and prayers to his surviving children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. During this time of difficulty, there is strength in knowing Senator Byrd has once again been reunited with his sweetheart and the son he missed dearly.

Madam President, I have come to the floor to speak about the conference report on the financial regulation bill the Senate has just passed. I think it was a huge mistake. I voted against the bill, and now I wish to take some time to explain why.

The short explanation is the bill does not address the causes of the financial crisis and instead it sows the seed of the next financial crisis while adding unnecessary strains on our already struggling economy. I am going to spend the next little while giving the longer explanation.

As I have said many times in the Banking Committee and on the floor of the Senate, I want to pass a strong financial reform bill that reins in the excesses of our large financial companies and the Federal Reserve. No one has been a stronger voice against the financial industry enablers at the Fed than I have. I have fought every bailout brought to the Congress as well as the bailouts that the Federal Reserve and both the Bush and Obama administration put in place without the approval of Congress. I very much wanted to pass a bill that ends bailouts and reins in the reckless activities of our financial system. Unfortunately, like the bill passed by the Senate earlier this year, the conference report before the Senate today did not end bailouts. In fact, it does the opposite and makes them permanent.

This bill will also lead to future financial disasters because it ignores the root causes of the crisis. It fails to put the necessary handcuffs on the key parts of the financial system and will result in even greater concentration of the financial system in a very few large firms.

The largest single contributing factor in the current financial crisis and most other financial crises in the past is flawed Federal Reserve monetary policy. Starting in the late 1990s, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan used easy money to prop up the financial firms, manipulate the stock market, and micromanage the economy. That easy money inflated the tech stocks and the dot.com bubble. After that bubble burst, as well as following the September 11 terrorist attacks, he again loosened monetary policy which began to inflate the largest asset bubble in history. While the bubble was the most visible in housing, it was a debt bubble that spread across all households, corporate, and government borrowing.

In about 2004, the housing bubble started to become unstable, but lending standards were relaxed and the rise of subprime and other nontraditional mortgages enabled the bubble to keep growing for another couple of years. Eventually, the housing bubble became unsustainable and popped. The corporate debt bubble largely did the same, and we are now seeing government debt become unsustainable around the world, including here in the United States of America.

Despite the Fed's history of causing financial crises and its clear role in the current crisis, this bill does nothing to rein in the Fed. Chairman Dodd's original draft bill presented to the Banking Committee last year took some positive steps to get the Fed back on track by removing the Fed as a regulator. But unfortunately, that did not make it into the final bill. Nothing in this bill will stop the next bubble or collapse if the Fed continues with its easy money policies. Cheap money will always distort prices and lead to dangerous behavior. No amount of regulation can contain it.

In addition to its flawed monetary policy, the Federal Reserve failed as a regulator leading up to the crisis. The Fed was responsible for regulating most of the large financial holding companies, but instead of regulating them, it was a cheerleader for them. The Fed, along with other regulators, allowed those firms to grow even larger and take unwise risks. And in what may be the Fed's greatest regulatory failure, Chairman Greenspan refused to do the job Congress gave him and the Fed in 1994--1994--the job to regulate mortgages. Instead of taking action that could have prevented at least part of the housing bubble inflated by subprime and nontraditional mortgages, Chairman Greenspan encouraged homebuyers to get those kinds of mortgages. He and Chairman Bernanke, along with many others at the Fed, sang the praises of those mortgages as financial innovation that reduced risk.

How well did the Fed approach to regulation work, I ask my colleagues? Well, in 2008, most, if not all, of the largest firms regulated by the Fed would have failed had they not been bailed out through TARP or by the Fed on its own. That seems like a pretty

open-and-shut case for me for removing all regulatory responsibility from the Fed and giving it to someone who will use it. But that is not what this bill does. Instead of real regulatory reform, the bill concentrates regulation of the largest financial firms at the Federal Reserve, despite the Fed's long history of failed regulation.

As I mentioned earlier, the original draft of this bill removed bank and consumer protection regulations from the Fed and all the other regulators and created a single new banking regulator. That is a better approach. But it was dropped before the bill ever got out of the Banking Committee, and now the Fed gets more power for both jobs. Except for possibly Chairman Dodd, no one has criticized the Fed more than me for its failure to use its consumer protection powers to regulate mortgages. Chairman Greenspan did nothing for 12 years after Congress gave him the power. Chairman Bernanke took another 2 years to act after he replaced Chairman Greenspan. Clearly, the Fed did not take consumer protection seriously and it deserves to lose that job.

I support strengthening consumer protection in the financial system, but I cannot understand keeping that job inside the same Fed that ignored it for decades. Next to reining in the Fed, the most important goal of this bill should be to end bailouts and the idea of too big to fail. Instead, the bill makes too big to fail a permanent feature of our financial system and will increase the size of the largest financial firms. As I said earlier, the bill concentrates regulation of the largest financial institutions at the Federal Reserve. The Fed failed as a regulator leading up to the crisis and should not be the regulator of any banks. But now Fed regulation will be a sign that a firm is too big to fail.

On top of the new Fed's seal of approval for the largest banks, this bill creates a new stability council that will designate other nonbank firms for Federal regulation and, thus, too big to fail. Fed regulation of the largest banks is not the only way this bill makes too big to fail and bailouts permanent. The largest bank holding companies and other financial firms will now be subject to a new resolution process. Any resolution process is by definition a bailout because the whole point is to allow some creditors to get paid more than they would in a bankruptcy court. The regulator will have the power to pick winners and losers by paying some creditors off on better terms than other creditors.

Even if the financial company is closed down at the end of the process, the fact that the creditors are protected against the losses they would normally take will undermine market discipline and encourage more risky behavior. That will lead to more Bear Stearns, Lehmans, and AIGs, not less.

The resolution process is not the only way this bill keeps bailouts alive. The bill does not shut off the Federal Reserve's bailout powers. While some limits are placed on the Fed, the bill still lets it create bailout programs to buy up assets and pump money into struggling firms through ``broad-based'' programs. That will put taxpayers directly at risk and make Fed bailouts a permanent part of the financial system.

Instead of putting all these bailout powers into law, we should be putting failing companies into bankruptcy. Bankruptcy provides certainty and fairness, and protects taxpayers. Under bankruptcy, similar creditors are treated the same, which prevents the government from picking winners and losers in bailouts. Shareholders and creditors also know up front what losses they are facing and will exercise caution when dealing with financial companies. Some of us tried to replace the bailout provisions with a revised bankruptcy section for financial companies, but, unfortunately, we were not successful.

Since the bill does not take away government protection for financial companies and send those that fail through bankruptcy, it should at least make them small enough to fail. Decades of combination have allowed a handful of banks to dominate the financial landscape. The four largest financial companies have assets totaling over 50 percent of our annual gross domestic product, and the six largest have assets of more than 60 percent. The four largest banks control approximately one-third of all deposits in the country. This concentration has come about because creditors would rather deal with firms seen as too big to fail, knowing that the government will protect them from losses. I would rather take away the taxpayer protection for creditors of large firms and let the market determine their size. But if that is not going to happen we should place hard limits on the size of financial companies and limit the activities of banks with insured deposits. Any financial companies that are over those size limits must be forced to shrink. This will lead to a more competitive banking sector, reduce the influence of the largest firms, and prevent a handful of them from holding our economy and government hostage ever again. Like most of the other real reform ideas that were proposed while previous versions of this bill were in the Banking Committee or on the Senate floor, meaningful limits on the size of banks were left out.

Along with not solving too big to fail, this bill does not address the housing finance problems that were at the center of the crisis--and still with us today. First, there is nothing in this bill that will stop unsafe mortgage underwriting practices such as zero downpayment and interest-only mortgages. There is a lot of talk of making financial companies have skin in the game, but when it comes to mortgages, the skin in the game that matters is the borrower's. Second, the bill ignores the role of government housing policy and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have received more bailout money than anyone else. The bill does not put an end to the government-sponsored enterprises' taxpayer guarantees and subsidies or stop the taxpayers from having to foot the bill for their irresponsible actions over the past decade. Over 96 percent of all mortgages written in the first quarter were backed by some type of government guarantee. Until we resolve the future of the these entities, the private mortgage market will not return and the risk to the taxpayers will continue to increase.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my statement, this bill is going to have real consequences for the economy at a time when the recovery is looking more like a second dip of the recession. Combined with the tax increases that will take effect at the end of this year, I am afraid we may not see real recovery until 2012 or later. One way this bill is going to affect the economy is by the increased consumer protection regulation that will reduce the availability of credit from banks and other firms that had nothing to do with the financial crisis.

Another way was highlighted in a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday on the impact of the derivatives regulation in the bill on farmers. I have been as critical as anyone of the lack of regulation of derivatives--which was again largely thanks to Alan Greenspan--and I think we need more transparency and oversight in that market, especially for credit default swaps and related products. But the bill goes too far in its impact on ordinary end users who are using derivatives to hedge commodity costs or interest rate and currency risks. The Wall Street casino needs to be shut down, but the bill should not prevent legitimate derivative customers from buying responsible protection.

I have many other concerns about this bill that I have discussed in the past on the floor and in the Banking Committee. The bill returned by the conference committee will not solve the problems in our financial system. It is regulation without reform. I had hoped we could work together in a bipartisan way to craft a bill that ends too big to fail forever, but this is a highly partisan bill that will accomplish little. And one of the chief authors of the bill, Chairman Dodd, admits that even he does not know how the bill will work and won't until after it is in place.

In the end, the bill gives so much discretion to the Fed that the best description of the new regulations is they are whatever the Fed says they are. Or to borrow the title of David Wessel's recent book, it can be described as ``in Fed we trust''. We saw how well that worked out the last time. I cannot understand why anyone expects it will work out better this time.

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

The Senator can speak all he likes.

Mr. President, I rise to speak in morning business on my amendment to the extenders package, Bunning amendment No. 4380.

First, let me explain why this amendment is needed. When the Senate passed the first version of the extenders package in March, the bill extended all parts of the alternative fuel credit that expired at the end of last year. This included the coal-to-liquids portion of the alternative fuel credit.

I was pleased to hear President Obama mention coal to liquids as an important part of our energy strategy in his State of the Union Address earlier this year. That is why I am surprised to see coal to liquids deliberately excluded from the extenders package, first in the Reid substitute and again in the Baucus substitute.

Let me be clear: The bill doesn't just omit or remain silent on the coal-to-liquids credit. This bill specifically says that the coal-to- liquids credit expired on December 31, 2009, and isn't renewed. That is in the bill.

My colleagues probably know that I have many problems with the underlying bill. It adds tens of billions to our national debt and it contains job-killing tax increases. Options to pay fully for this bill by cutting spending have been offered and rejected, so our children and my grandchildren will foot the bill. But I thought that one element both parties could agree on is that expired tax provisions that taxpayers count on--and have been extended routinely in the past-- should be extended.

My amendment is simple: It ensures that the coal-to-liquids portion of the alternative fuel credit will be extended until the end of the year, just like the other expiring parts of the alternative fuel credits included in this bill. The Senate already voted to extend all parts of the alternative fuel credit when it passed the extenders package last March.

Many difficult innovative fuels qualify for the alternative fuel credit, but coal to liquids is the only one that specifically requires reduced emissions. The reduction was originally 50 percent but was raised to 75 percent last year as a bipartisan agreement. I do not understand why the extenders package fails to extend the only part of the alternative fuel credit that called for reduced emissions.

My colleagues who are deficit hawks will be glad to know that this amendment will not add one dime to the deficit. This is because no coal-to-liquids projects will come on line in 2010, so no tax credit will be received. However, if the credit is allowed to remain expired and is not renewed, this will have a very damaging effect on investments in this extremely promising technology.

My amendment is also bipartisan. I am grateful to Senators Rockefeller, Byrd, and Enzi, who are cosponsors. I know that the Senator from Montana, who is the manager of the extenders

package and the chairman of the Finance Committee, is familiar with the coal to liquids because of its potential benefit to his home State.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from the Billings Gazette entitled ``Crow Coal-To-Liquids Plant Could Be Boon for Montana,'' at the conclusion of my remarks.

The article describes the efforts of the Crow Nation to build a coal-to-liquids plant on a reservation in Montana in one of the poorest counties in the entire Nation. The project will be designed with carbon capture and storage. The Crow Nation hopes to begin producing the fuel 6 years from now, but losing the benefit of the alternative fuel credit would be a serious setback. The tribe is already hearing about investors who are now reluctant to invest in the project because of the uncertainty around coal to liquids.

Because the Senator from Montana has a reputation for fighting to keep jobs in his home State, I hope he will support the Crow Nation's request to extend the coal-to- liquids credit in the extenders package.

Failing to extend the credit has the potential to destroy thousands of jobs that are planned in an extremely poor county in Montana.

This is not something that can wait for a yet-to-be determined energy bill. Almost all of the alternative fuel credit is already contained in the extenders package.

It makes no sense to specifically exclude parts of the alternative fuel credit in this bill, with the promise that it will be looked at later. It will only become more difficult, the longer the credit is expired.

It will only make extending coal-to-liquids that much harder if it is delayed to a bill that has not been written yet and will probably be filled with controversial items.

I am certain the Senator from Montana understands the political reality that the extenders package is the last best opportunity to extend a provision that is very important to his home State.

I hope the Senator from Montana will support the Bunning-Rockefeller- Byrd-Enzi amendment and include it in any new substitute he introduces to the extenders package.

Coal-to-liquids is an important part of our national energy strategy. President Obama has recognized this in his State of the Union Address.

We will never end our dependence on foreign oil until we develop alternative sources of fuel.

Coal is abundant and it is here in America. It is not owned and used as leverage against us by hostile nations.

American coal can be used in a way that both reduces emissions and fuels our energy needs.

It would be a tragic mistake to turn our backs on coal-to-liquids when it is a crucial part of America's strategy to end our dependence on foreign oil.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Exhibit 1

[From the Billings Gazette, Aug. 10, 2008]

Crow Coal-to-Liquids Plant Could Be Boon for Montana

(By Matthew Brown)

Crow Agency, MT.--A $7 billion coal-to-liquids plant

proposed for southeastern Montana's Crow reservation promises

an economic boon for the region, but must first overcome

economic and political hurdles that have kept any such plant

from being built in the United States.

The Many Stars plant--a partnership between the tribe and

Australian-American Energy Co.--would convert the

reservation's sizable coal reserves into 50,000 barrels a day

of diesel and other fuels.

State officials said Friday it represents the most valuable

economic development project in Montana history.

``We're talking about one of the most technologically

advanced, sophisticated energy projects on the planet,'' Gov.

Brian Schweitzer said at a news conference detailing the

project.

Covering the plant's $7 billion price tag will be a

challenge in the current economic slowdown. And environmental

groups have pledged to step in to oppose the plant if it does

not include measures to capture greenhouse gases.

Yet Australian-American Energy Chairman Allan Blood said he

was 90 percent certain the Crow project would be completed.

``In my country we have a record of people who have visions

and dreams and make them happen,'' Blood said.

Over the next several years, the company plans to sink $100

million into preliminary engineering and environmental work,

with a goal of starting construction on the plant by 2012. It

could begin producing fuel by 2016.

For Crow leaders, the project offers an opportunity to lift

the tribe out of poverty. Up to 4,000 people would be

employed during its construction. And up to 900 permanent

jobs would be created with the plant and a new mine on the

reservation that would supply the coal.

``Our kids will have something to look forward to,'' said

tribal Chairman Carl Venne. ``Not the six or seven or eight

dollars an hour they are making now just to get by. You're

looking at $70,000, $80,000--even $100,000-a-year jobs.''

But representatives of several environmental groups said

they remained wary. An agreement between the tribe and

Australian-American Energy calls for the Crow to commit up to

50,000 acre-feet of water annually to the project. One acre-

foot is equal to nearly 326,000 gallons.

That prospect is raising flags for southeastern Montana's

ranching community, which is worried the project could

deplete precious water supplies.

Also, while the tribe and company have pledged to capture

95 percent of the plant's emissions of carbon dioxide--a main

contributor to global warming--environmentalists said living

up to that promise could be difficult.

Without capturing those emissions and storing the gas

underground, coal-based liquid fuels can churn out

significantly more greenhouse gases than conventional

petroleum, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

``(Coal-to-liquids) developers have been saying we'll do

something about carbon, but they've been unwilling to put it

into their permits. It's been a lot of empty promises,'' said

Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club's national campaign

against coal plants.

Officials with Australian-American Energy said the Crow

plant would be built on the assumption that Congress, in the

next few years, will pass legislation compelling companies to

capture carbon dioxide. Such laws do not yet exist.

Working in the project's favor are high oil prices and the

idea of replacing imported oil with homegrown fuels derived

from coal. Despite a recent slide, crude prices closed above

$115 a barrel on Friday.

Still, industry officials said the economic downturn has

reduced investors' willingness to sink cash into large

projects such as the Many Stars plant. Meanwhile, costs have

soared due to rising global demand for construction materials

and skilled labor.

``You have the optimum oil scenario playing out with prices

skyrocketing, but you have the bottom dropping out of Wall

Street,'' said Corey Henry with the Coal-to-Liquids

Coalition, a group funded by the mining industry. ``It's been

tough sledding to try to get the money to build these

plants.''

About a dozen coal-to-liquids plants are on the drawing

boards in the United States. Only two such plants exist

worldwide; both are in South Africa.

The biggest hurdle in the United States will be getting the

first few plants built, Henry said. Once those are

operational, he predicted investors would be more willing to

fund similar plants.

Blood said he was not concerned, noting he initiated one

coal-to-liquids project in Australia that was later sold for

$5 billion. In June, he announced a second project in

Australia, a $2 billion plant to convert coal into liquid

fertilizer.

``You hear about the problems in the capital markets, but

what people don't hear is there are dozens and dozens of

projects, hundreds of projects, being funded,'' Blood said.

Most of them.

Mr. President, I rise today to strongly support the senior Senator from Alaska's resolution of disapproval over the Environmental Protection Agency's regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. The EPA has completely overstepped its bounds with this action and I am proud to support Senator Murkowski's effort to undo this harmful regulation.

A colleague of mine, currently serving here in the Senate, once remarked that: ``Overburdensome and unnecessary Federal regulations can choke the life out of small businesses by imposing costly and often ineffectual remedies to problems that may not exist.''

This statement was made by the majority leader and I could not agree more with it, especially when staring such a problem in the face as we have here with EPA's draconian new rules. The majority leader's statement was made in 1996 shortly after passage of the Congressional Review Act. This important tool, designed to rein in out of control Federal bureaucracies, is the same tool that we are using today in this disapproval resolution currently being debated.

Make no mistake--the Congressional Review Act was designed to take on this exact sort of executive overreach. The Obama administration's EPA is making a huge power grab by twisting the principles of the landmark Clean Air Act and declaring greenhouse gas emissions a danger to public health and welfare. Now, I will not use this time today to debate the science of greenhouse gas effects on climate change, nor the effects of climate change on the planet. However, greenhouse gases are found naturally in abundance in our atmosphere. In fact, the most famous greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is emitted whenever we exhale. The purpose of the Clean Air Act was to reduce substances toxic to humans, not substances that are not directly harmful to us.

Because the Clean Air Act was not designed for this kind of regulation, the actions EPA has taken will not work and will have a devastating effect on the economy and business in the United States. Carbon dioxide will be considered a ``regulated air pollutant'' under these regulations, thus requiring EPA to massively increase the number of entities it will regulate. In fact, the number of permits for new or modified construction will soar from 280 to 41,000. The additional Title V permits, which are required to begin these operations, will explode from 14,700 to 6.1 million applications. This would seem to me to be a regulatory burden on an agency that cannot possibly be met without a massive infusion of taxpayer dollars.

Thus, we know that an enormous amount of new entities will come under the regulation of the Clean Air Act. Who will be newly roped into this government regulation? Essentially anyone, such as office buildings, apartment complexes, large retail stores, small businesses, farms, hospitals, power plants, and schools. It is difficult to fathom just how massively intrusive this Federal expansion will be.

This action by EPA also represents a rule by fiat of government bureaucrats. The Clean Air Act as written makes no mention of addressing global warming. To change this, the elected representatives of the people, Congress, should be the ones making the decision, not unelected bureaucrats in Washington. When Congress considers legislation, the people who elected them expect that they will consider all the effects of what is being debated. The EPA does not have this consideration, which is obvious by the way they have completely disregarded any and all of the economic consequences of their actions. Congress does, though, and has to weigh the effects of policies upon those that they will be implemented on. Elected officials need to be responsive to legislation such as this that will prevent the strengthening and recovery of the American economy. For instance, Congress can factor in the extremely poor timing of this as our economy is trying to drag itself out of recession. However, proponents of this regulation in the Obama administration know it will not pass Congress, so they are trying to do it by bureaucratic fiat instead of letting the elected representatives of the people work out a reasonable compromise to the problem.

It is for these reasons that I strongly support the Murkowski resolution of disapproval over EPA's actions. I hope the majority leader remembers what he said almost 15 years ago about the burdens of unnecessary regulation and the use of these sorts of resolutions. I hope our other colleagues heed his advice, as I intend to, and vote to support this resolution.

Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak about financial reform and the bill the Senate is considering right now. I have made no secret of my desire to pass a strong financial reform bill and rein in excesses of our largest financial companies. No Senator in the Banking Committee or in this Chamber has been a stronger voice against the financial industry enablers at the Fed than I have been. I have fought every bailout that has come through this Congress as well as the bailouts that the Federal Reserve and both the Bush and Obama administrations put in place without the approval of the Congress. I wish to pass a bill that ends bailouts and puts strong restrictions on reckless activities in our financial sector. Unfortunately, the bill before the Senate not only fails to end bailouts, it does the opposite and makes them permanent. This bill will also lead to future financial disasters because it ignores the root causes of the crisis and thus fails to put the necessary handcuffs on key parts of the financial system.

The primary goal of this bill should be to end bailouts and the idea of too big to fail. Instead, the bill makes too big to fail a permanent feature of our financial system. It concentrates regulations of the largest financial institutions at the Federal Reserve and removes only small banks from Fed supervision. The Feds failed as a regulator leading up to the crisis and should not be the regulator of any banks, but now Federal regulation will be a sign that a firm is too big to fail. On top of the new Fed seal of approval for our largest financial companies, this bill creates a new stability council that will designate other firms for the Fed to regulate and, thus, too big to fail.

Federal regulation of the largest financial firms is not the only way this bill makes too big to fail and bailouts permanent. The largest bank holding companies and other financial firms will now be subject to a new resolution process. Any resolution process is, by definition, a bailout because the whole point is to allow some creditors to get paid more than they would in bankruptcy. Even if the financial company is closed down at the end of the process, the fact that the creditors are protected against the losses they would normally take will undermine market discipline and encourage more risky behavior. That will lead to more Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIGs, not less.

The bailouts in this bill come with a cost beyond the moral hazard created by protecting creditors. Despite claims that the financial industry will pay for the bailouts, payments into the bailout fund are tax deductible, which means taxpayers are directly subsidizing the bailouts.

The bailout fund is not the only way this bill keeps taxpayers on the hook for future bailouts. First, the bill does not shut off the Federal Reserve's bailout powers. While some limits are placed on the Fed, the bill still lets it create bailout programs to buy up assets and pump money into struggling firms through ``broad-based'' programs. Second, the bill creates an unlimited new debt guarantee program at the FDIC that can be used to prop up firms instead of closing them down. Both of these bailout powers put taxpayers directly at risk and make bailouts a permanent part of the financial system.

Instead of putting all these bailout powers into law, we should be putting failing companies into bankruptcy. Bankruptcy provides certainty and fairness, and protects taxpayers. Under bankruptcy, similar creditors are treated the same, which.prevents the government from picking winners and losers in bailouts. Shareholders and creditors also know up front what losses they are facing and will exercise caution when dealing with financial companies. Later this week I will join several other Senators in offering an amendment that will update our bankruptcy laws to deal with modern financial firms and permanently end bailouts.

If this bill is not going to take away government protection for financial companies and send those that fail through bankruptcy, then it should make them small enough to fail. Decades of combination have allowed a handful of banks to dominate the financial landscape. The four largest financial companies have assets totaling over 50 percent of our annual gross domestic product, and the six largest have assets of more than 60 percent. The four largest banks control approximately one-third of all deposits in the country. This concentration has come about because creditors would rather deal with firms seen as too big to fail, knowing that the government will protect them from losses. I would rather take away the taxpayer protection for creditors of large firms and let the market determine their size. But if that is not going to happen we should place hard limits on the size of financial companies and limit the activities of banks with insured deposits. Any financial companies that are over those size limits must be forced to shrink. This will lead to a more competitive banking sector, reduce the influence of the largest firms, and prevent a handful of them from holding our economy and government hostage ever again.

Along with not solving too big to fail, this bill does not address the housing finance problems that were at the center of the crisis. First, there is nothing in this bill that will stop unsafe mortgage underwriting practices such as zero downpayment and interest-only mortgages. There is a lot of talk of making financial companies have skin in the game, but when it comes to mortgages, the skin in the game that matters is the borrower's. Second, the bill ignores the role of government housing policy and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have received more bailout money than anyone else. The bill does not put an end to the GSE's taxpayer guarantees and subsidies or stop the taxpayers from having to foot the bill for their irresponsible actions over the past decade. On Friday the Wall Street Journal reported that over 96 percent of all mortgages written in the first quarter were backed by some type of government guarantee. Until we resolve the future of the GSEs, the private mortgage market will not return and the risk to the taxpayers will continue to increase.

This bill also does nothing to address the biggest single factor in the current financial crisis and most other crises in the past-- flawed Federal Reserve monetary policy. Nothing in this bill will stop the next bubble or collapse if the

Fed continues with its easy money policies. Cheap money will always distort prices and lead to dangerous behavior; no amount of regulation can contain it.

As I mentioned earlier, the bill concentrates regulation of the largest financial firms at the Federal Reserve, despite the Fed's long history of failed regulation. Leading up to the crisis the Fed already favored the interests of the large banks, and by only removing its supervision of small banks the Fed will become even more of a cheerleader for Wall Street. In an earlier version of this bill, bank and consumer protection regulation were removed from the Fed and placed in a new bank regulator. Unfortunately, that was undone in the current version and the Fed gets more power for both jobs.

No one has criticized the Fed more than I have, for its failure to use its consumer protection powers to regulate mortgages. But I just cannot understand keeping consumer protection inside the same Fed that ignored that job for decades. This bill takes a dangerous approach to consumer protection by separating it from the safety and soundness of financial companies. It also goes even further by letting the Fed reach into businesses that had nothing to do with the financial crisis.

Finally, I want to mention the credit rating agency portion of the bill. Our goal should be to reduce investors' reliance on the agencies. Instead, the bill will give investors a false sense of security by setting new standards to get certified by the government. Also, allowing the rating agencies to be sued will discourage new agencies from entering the market and further concentrate power in the hands of the largest agencies that have performed the worst.

I have many other concerns about the bill that I will not mention on the floor today, but they are explained in detail in the minority views section of the committee report. As the bill stands today, it will not solve the problems in our financial system. It is regulation without reform. But I hope we can work together to get a bipartisan bill that will put an end to too big to fail forever.

Mr. President, I probably will not take the 15 minutes but somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes.

I rise in strong opposition to the nomination of Lael Brainard to be Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs.

I do not think it is unreasonable for the American people to expect nominees to important posts in the Treasury Department to have a clean record in the payment of their taxes. After all, Treasury is responsible for collecting taxes. Treasury nominees have a special responsibility to live up to the same high standards the Department demands from ordinary citizens. But the American people deserve much more than just someone with a clean tax record. They deserve a nominee who is honest, trustworthy, and straightforward.

The Finance Committee's bipartisan investigation of Ms. Brainard revealed she does not have a clean tax record. At worst, she refuses to be straightforward and honest about her tax records.

The Finance Committee looks into the tax record of every nominee who comes before the committee. A routine examination of Ms. Brainard's past few tax returns revealed many problems. When asked if she has paid all her taxes on time, she did not reveal several cases in which she had failed to pay her taxes on time.

When she was asked, on her nomination questionnaire, if she was current with all her taxes at the time she was nominated, she replied yes. But, in fact, that was not true. She was well overdue on paying county property taxes and DC employment insurance taxes at the time.

There were also several problems with the forms she was supposed to file to prove that her household employee was legally able to work in this country. On one form, there was a serious problem with a space that the household employee is required to sign. It appears Ms. Brainard filled in that space with her own signature, and she could not provide an explanation of why she did so.

On another form, dates appear to have been written over to change the year. She could provide no explanation of why this was done.

On two different forms, Ms. Brainard missed the deadline for completing the employer portion of the form. On another form, the employer portion was filled in 1 month before the employee portion, but the law requires the employee portion to be filled in first.

On yet another form, the employee certification section lists her husband's name, but the signature is hers.

On another form, the employee section is filled in, but the required employer certification section was left blank.

There was another problem of the home office deduction which she claimed in the past several years. She could not provide a clear and consistent reason for taking a home office deduction of one-sixth of her household expenses. She was unable to provide a credible reason for the size of the deduction. She reduced her home office deduction to one-twelfth of household expenses on her 2008 tax return. However, she did not reduce the deduction on her 2005, 2006 or 2007 tax return, all of which had the inflated deduction.

Some Senators might come to the conclusion that these tax problems alone should not disqualify the nominee. They may say that, at worst, this is simply a pattern of sloppiness. Do we want someone who is so sloppy in her tax responsibilities to be in charge of international affairs at the Treasury Department?

But this is not just a matter of sloppiness. This is a matter of total lack of candor with the Finance Committee and, by extension, with the Senate and, by extension, with the American people.

Ms. Brainard spent 9 months stonewalling the Finance Committee over all these tax issues. She gave evasive and incomplete answers to the staff of the committee. The level of evasiveness of this nominee appears to

be unprecedented. The committee had to submit 10 rounds of questions to clarify inconsistencies and incomplete answers Ms. Brainard had given. Several of those questions have been left unanswered.

The many tax problems of this nominee and the extreme difficulty the Finance Committee had in getting straight answers about these problems was outlined in a bipartisan memo Senator Grassley entered into the Congressional Record on December 23 of last year. If we cannot trust Ms. Brainard to be truthful and straightforward when she is a nominee, how can the American people trust her to be straightforward and honest when she is confirmed and serving in the Obama administration?

As Under Secretary for International Affairs, she would be involved in some highly sensitive issues, such as the determination of whether China is manipulating its currency.

Do we want someone with such an abysmal record on truthfulness serving in this high position in the Treasury Department representing our country?

This is not just a matter of taxes. It is a matter of trust. The American people deserve a person we can trust in this very important position. That person is not Lael Brainard. We cannot trust someone who gives evasive, inconsistent, and incomplete answers to routine questions. We cannot trust someone who spends 9 months refusing to come clean about her record. We cannot trust someone who refuses to be straightforward about her tax problems because she is so desperate to be confirmed.

Mr. President, someone with this record is a terrible choice to serve in the Treasury Department. I urge my fellow Senators and my colleagues to consider this record before they vote on this nomination. I urge a ``no'' vote on this nomination.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Yes, I will.