Floor Statements

Madam President, reserving the right to object--and I will not object--will the time be equally divided between now and 2 o'clock?

Madam President, I have no objection.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up DeMint amendment No. 573.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to add as cosponsors to my amendment Senators Vitter, Inhofe, Wicker, Bond, Bennett, Enzi, Barrasso, Brownback, and Alexander.

Thank you, Madam President.

This has been a good debate, not just about DC voting rights but constitutional rights in our country, and if we are going to go by our own opinions and good intentions or are we going to follow the Constitution. Clearly, a lot of us wish to give fair representation to everyone who lives in the District of Columbia. But our oath of office is not to our good intentions, it is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution is very clear that Congressmen and Senators are allocated only to States. The District of Columbia was set up as a neutral entity, certainly where people will live and work associated with the business of the Federal Government, but there is nothing in the Constitution that would give a Congressman or Senators to this Federal District of Columbia. So we are talking about a constitutional issue.

We have had other constitutional issues, such as the Bill of Rights guarantee to bear arms, and there will be an amendment to that effect with the bill. I wish to bring up another constitutional issue, which is the right of free speech and the freedom of the press.

A number of Members of Congress have been talking about the annoyance of having radio talk show hosts talk about what we are doing here. I do not blame the other side for being annoyed when a radio talk show host actually describes what is in a bill, since we have gotten in the habit of not actually reading them ourselves. When we have radio talk show hosts all around the country going through page by page, contradicting what is actually being said here, I can understand that people wish to muzzle those radio talk show hosts. That could be the opinion of some of those in Congress today, but it happens to go against the Constitution when we try to decide what people can say and what they believe.

There is actually a doctrine that was mentioned by the Senator from Kansas

called the fairness doctrine that is one of those political doublespeak titles that is radio censorship that actually tries to control what radio talk show hosts could say. That doctrine was dispensed with by Reagan, and since then we have thousands of radio talk shows with wide varieties of opinion. But many are starting to talk about bringing back this radio censorship idea to try to force radio stations to present alternative opinions every time a radio talk show host presents an opinion of their own.

What this would do is create a dysfunctional situation where no radio station could afford to have a talk show host express an opinion of any kind if they had to go out and find someone to express the opposite opinion and in the meantime face lawsuit after lawsuit from the ACLU and others. Because whose opinion is going to determine what is fair, what is balanced, what is diverse? But the whole implication here is that the Federal Government and the Federal Communications Commission are somehow going to decide for us what is fair and what is balanced and what is diverse.

The amendment I am offering today, which we call the Broadcaster Freedom Act, would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from reestablishing any part of what is called the ``fairness doctrine'' into their regulatory structure today.

Plain and simple, most people here have said they do not want it to come back. President Obama said last week he is against the fairness doctrine. So who could oppose us making it a law that some bureaucrat over at the Federal Communications Commission could not write into regulations all or parts of this censorship of radio talk shows across the country?

It is a pretty simple amendment, but I have a feeling it is getting ready to sound lot more complicated when the other side starts presenting what is in it. We have found in this body that the facts, the truths, sometimes do not make a lot of difference. But anyone who votes against my amendment, the Broadcaster Freedom Act, is voting against the Constitution. They are voting against the freedom of the press. They are voting against the freedom of speech in this country.

The one hope we have to turn this Government around, to stop this spending, and the intervention in all areas of our life, is a free press that can tell people the truth about what is going on. More and more, we have the radio talk show hosts and the bloggers and some cable news that every day are telling Americans more about what we are doing, and Americans are getting more informed, they are getting more engaged and increasingly more outraged about what we are doing.

I encourage my colleagues to support my amendment and to vote against this side by side that is being presented by the Democratic majority. What we are seeing in this side by side is the real intention of the Democratic majority as far as dealing with this fairness doctrine. They are going to propose that we as a Congress direct the Federal Communications Commission--that we are going to say: ``shall take actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership.''

Now, they are not just saying radio here. This is ``communication.'' This includes the Web, the Internet, the blogs, blogisphere, television, newspapers. This language would direct the Federal Communications Commission to take action to enforce diversity in communication. This is Soviet-style language that you are going to get some rosy picture of in a minute. But it is so open and so vague that about every communication outlet in this country is going to be faced with accusations that their ownership is not diverse.

What does ``diverse'' mean? Does it mean ``white and black''? What they are after is what they believe, what their opinions are. If this were applied to our offices here in the Senate, we could not say anything, I could not express my opinion today without being obligated by law to go find somebody to say something completely opposite of what I am saying. This is not freedom. Anyone who votes for this alternative is voting to repress the freedom of speech in this country, the freedom of media.

The second part of what they have after ``promote diversity in communication media''--all media; only the lawyers and the bureaucrats are going to tell us what that means--is ``to ensure that broadcast station licenses are used in the public interest.'' That is already a law, and that is good, and television and radio stations that use the public airwaves all over the country are held accountable by current law to do things in the public interest, and many of them are very good at that, and it is very helpful in our communities.

But I will ask my colleagues not to let this distraction confuse them about the real intention. If we pass the broadcaster freedom amendment today, we are going to close the front door to taking away the freedom of speech in this country. But this alternative opens the backdoor to what the Democratic majority is after; that is, to muzzle this annoyance of people on the radio who are telling the truth about what is going on in this Congress.

If they can go out and threaten a station that they are not diverse in their ownership, and some judge or some bureaucrat is going to decide whether they are diverse--and who knows what that means--we are going to create such risk and such liability and such intimidation that this will not even look like America in a few years.

This is dangerous material that is being offered on the other side. I will encourage my colleagues to remember our oath of office. It has nothing to do with enforcing our opinions or some judge's opinion on some radio station out there that is trying to give its opinion to the American people. We are dangerously close to the enslavement of socialism in this country with the expansion of Government on every front.

This is intolerable. Do not let the pretty language you are getting ready to hear confuse you because this is against everything we swear an oath to in this Congress. I encourage my colleagues to vote against the Durbin amendment, vote for the Broadcaster Freedom Act, and I would appreciate their support.

Thank you, Madam President, and I reserve the remainder of my time.

Madam President, I always enjoy a good debate with the Senator from Illinois. He is certainly good at what he does and, in this case, that is confusing facts. The good news for us and all Americans is, this afternoon, on radio talk shows all across the country, they can find out what is in both of these amendments and what it really means. They are not going to hear it here today. There have been a lot of distortions but interesting admissions.

Certainly, the Senator from Illinois made it very clear that he should be a part of determining what is fair and balanced and how we should determine

what is both sides. He mentioned there are 14,000 radio stations. What he does with his amendment is he orders ``shall take action to encourage and promote diversity and communication media ownership.'' He wants our FCC to monitor 14,000 radio stations to decide if their ownership is diverse. He said it doesn't apply to the Internet, but we do regulate the Internet. We regulate everything in America, folks-- everything that a Federal dollar touches.

Believe me, this language is not just about radio stations; it is about doing the impossible, and that is to centrally manage the ownership of radio and other communications in this country. It goes back to his original opinion that, yes, he believes there should be fair and balanced perspective presented in the media. But what he believes--and what many on his side believe--is that fairness should be determined by those of us in Government rather than the listeners and viewers who tune into that radio or the TV station or go to that Web site.

It is not for us to determine what is fair and balanced. His distortion about my amendment and what it does is exactly wrong. We do not address or change in any way the requirements of radio stations to act in the public interest. The nonsense about children's programming and indecency has nothing to do with this. It is another section in the law. I don't affect that in any way.

What this is about is, saying to your face, America, that they are not for reinstating the censorship of radio, while at the same time introducing an amendment that would allow us to go in and make our judgment, our opinion, about what is diverse ownership of a radio station.

Let me read again what this provision in my amendment addresses. He says it takes away the public interest clause. It has nothing to do with that. But it prohibits this backdoor approach to getting back to the principles of the fairness doctrine by saying broadcasters do not have to meet programming quotas and guidelines. In other words, we can't decide how many opinions they have to offer and what the guidelines for those opinions are. It is not for us to say. They have to fulfill their public interest obligations. We don't change that. But this clause would keep the good Senator from Illinois and those on his side who want to censor radio from allowing the FCC to go in and set some kind of quotas on how often, how they need to state their opinions, and the guidelines for that. It creates a license for us to go in and determine what opinions, how many opinions, and basically it is the fairness doctrine through the back door.

I will restate that this Broadcasters Freedom Act protects the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It does nothing to dislodge or change the requirement that public stations--radio or whatever communications--meet the current law requirements to act in the public good. But it does keep us, as a government, from setting quotas and guidelines of what opinions can be expressed and how often they can be expressed.

Yes.

The Senator is right. We have legal opinions on that, and it doesn't overrule any existing commission regulations. We asked the broadcasters' legal counsel, and this is intended to narrow this fairness doctrine backdoor approach of controlling what people say by establishing quotas and guidelines about how that is done. I thank the Senator for that question.

We have probably talked enough about this subject. I reserve the remainder of my time. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time during the quorum call be equally divided.

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

Mr. President, if I could have my colleagues' attention for just a moment, I think this should be an easy vote for all of us. President Obama has expressed his opposition to the fairness doctrine. Senator Durbin has expressed his opposition to the fairness doctrine. This amendment, the Broadcasters Freedom Act, prohibits the Federal Communications Commission from implementing all or part of the fairness doctrine, which has been repealed.

I wish to clear up one misunderstanding that has been stated on the other side. This amendment does not affect the public interest requirements of broadcast radio. It does not change children's programming or opposition to indecency. What it does is, it prohibits quotas and guidelines on programming, which is another way to prohibit the implementation of the fairness doctrine.

While the fairness doctrine is a direct and obvious method to burden and chill broadcaster speech, there are also several indirect ways that are not as well-known, but no less available to proponents of limiting the freedom of our national media.

Last year's FCC Localism Notice of Proposed Rulemaking--MB Docket No. 04-233, released January 24, 2008, ``Localism Notice''--contained a number of ``tentative conclusions'' that, if adopted, would result in greater regulation of broadcaster speech.

First, the FCC proposed to reintroduce license renewal processing ``guidelines'' that would measure specific categories of speech aired by broadcasters.

The guidelines would pressure broadcasters to air Commission-specified amounts of programming in Commission-defined program categories. Although the Localism Notice does not specify which categories broadcasters would be measured by, political programming, public affairs programming, and local news are mentioned as possible types of programming to be regulated. Broadcasters that do not meet the thresholds to the Commission's satisfaction would risk losing their license to broadcast.

While ostensibly the renewal processing guidelines are meant to increase the total amount of local programming, the adjective ``local'' is ill-defined in this proceeding. It could be expanded to include an almost limitless array of speech and could shift with the political winds.

My amendment, DeMint No. 573, would not eliminate the FCC's power to develop license renewal processing guidelines completely, but only its authority to develop processing guidelines that mimic its past authority under the fairness doctrine, hence the language which limits it to quotas or guidelines for issues of public importance.

The second way in which the Commission has proposed to indirectly regulate broadcaster speech is by return of ascertainment requirements, which would mandate that every broadcaster develop and meet with an ``advisory board'' made up of community groups and local officials that would ``inform the stations' programming decisions.'' This proposal would make broadcasters very vulnerable to pressure or even harassment by groups that do not approve of their programming.

A similar ascertainment requirement was eliminated in the early 1980s after the Commission determined that the rule did more to create bureaucratic burdens than it did to improve broadcasting.

Like the processing guidelines, the ascertainment requirement could become a factor for broadcasters at license renewal. Groups that feel a local broadcaster did not listen to their suggestions through the advisory board--suggestions to, for example, air more programming that addresses whatever social or political issue is of concern to these groups--could challenge the broadcasters' license and argue that the broadcaster ignored the ``needs and interests'' of their local community. Talk radio would be particularly vulnerable to this type of harassment, as would religious broadcasters.

Again, my amendment, DeMint No. 573, would not eliminate the Commission's authority to mandate ascertainment completely, but only its authority to mandate that broadcasters seek out opposing viewpoints on ``issues of public importance.''

I encourage all of my colleagues to support this amendment.

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

Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Illinois, and I think it helps to set up some of my comments as well. We are talking about a bill on DC voting rights that has a lot to do with our Constitution. I have an amendment to that that also has a lot to do with our Constitution; that is, the right of free speech and the right of freedom of the press, what we will call the Broadcasters Freedom Act.

The interesting point about the talk of my previous colleague is, he was talking about the urge to be mayor here in the Senate. It is interesting, after we just passed this massive stimulus bill, where we were telling not only mayors but every Governor in the country what they had to do and how they need to spend their money, to control everything from education to health care.

We cannot resist the urge to be Governors and mayors and, in fact, we cannot resist the urge to substitute our opinions of what should happen to our whole constitutional form of Government. It is interesting to hear about the guns amendment and the opinions there. I respect the Senator's opinion about the gun laws, what they should be.

But the fact is, that what we do here is not about our opinion, it is about our oath of office, of protecting and defending the Constitution. The Constitution does not give me a right to decide who is going to bear arms. I mean it is a basic constitutional right.

It does not give us the right to use our own opinions and good intentions

on every piece of legislation. One of the reasons as a country we are so much in debt--and this is attributed to both parties--is we have moved away from any constitutional mooring of limited Government to the point now where it is whoever's opinion can prevail is what passes.

An appeal to the Constitution is almost irrelevant. There is no way you can interpret the Constitution to say the Federal District of Columbia is going to have Congressmen and Senators. Now, I respect an opinion of anyone who says it should not be that way, that people who pay taxes should have Congressmen and Senators. But the fact is, our oath of office is to defend the Constitution, not to employ our own opinions, to do what we think is right, to get money for our States.

That is a pretty simple judgment to make in this case, if we can count, if we can look at the language of the Constitution and see something so obvious. Now, sure, we do not like it, we do not like the way it has turned out. There are 600,000 people living here and a lot of people with very good intentions say they should have the same rights as States. But that is our opinion, it is not the Constitution.

What worries me about a lot of our rights that are given in the Constitution, particularly our Bill of Rights, not only the right to bear arms, which people's opinion is being substituted for the Constitution, but the same thing has happened with the right of free speech, the freedom of the press in our country, which has been so instrumental to maintaining freedom and the ability of the American people to be vigilant over their Government, finding out what is going on here.

Back in 1949, the Federal Government implemented what was called the fairness doctrine over concerns that with the relatively few number of radio stations across the country, a diversity of opinion would not be heard.

Substituting our own good opinion for that of the Constitution, there are some in Washington who decided we needed to referee what was said on radio.

If one political opinion was expressed, the fairness doctrine required that they have an opposite opinion also expressed. The whole idea was to create a diversity of points of view. The fact is, as with many things we do here, it had exactly the opposite effect of what was intended. It put a chilling effect on political speech because what radio station would want to deal with the liability of expressing an opinion if someone else was going to come in and say they had to have somebody else express a different opinion? It violates the right of free speech and, in the process, actually puts a chilling effect on the development of political points of view in radio.

In 1987, it had become obvious what this was doing. Thousands of radio stations were developing all over the country. The Reagan administration overturned this so-called fairness doctrine, which was really a radio censorship act. With that act gone, we have seen the development of radio talk shows all over the country. One can tune in anywhere and get all kinds of diversity of opinion.

Frankly, it has become very annoying to a lot of Congressmen and Senators. There is nothing worse than going home and trying to tell people one thing, and they actually find out that is not the truth. Increasingly, that has been happening with bills we are passing, when folks back home find out through talk radio those guys didn't even read that bill. The front cover of that bill says it is not amnesty, but the bill says it is. The President says there are no earmarks, but open it up and there are thousands of earmarks in the bill. The President says he is expanding our energy supplies, but then look and see that they actually have a drilling moratorium that we didn't know about.

Talk radio has become very annoying to politicians who don't want Americans to know the truth. So increasingly a number of people in Congress are looking back to that fairness doctrine and thinking we need to bring it back. We need to censor radio talk shows. We need to create that liability, that risk. Every time someone freely expresses an opinion, that station needs to know that they are liable to make sure another opinion is expressed.

Who is going to decide what should be expressed? The Governors and the Mayor in Washington? In fact, what we are finding out is so many people on the other side can't resist the urge to be Founding Fathers. They want to change the Constitution and change what it means and ignore it. But freedom of speech is so important. The fact is, people in this Senate who swore an oath to the Constitution are actually advocating bringing back radio censorship and certainly will eventually apply it to the blogosphere and the Web. They will not stop with radio talk shows. We need to act to make sure this oppression, this tyranny is not reimposed on the American people.

It is not just important to protect what radio talk show hosts can say. What we are really trying to protect is what millions of Americans are free to listen to: different opinions, facts, information about where to find more complete information about what is going on. The primary reason more and more Americans are standing up and are outraged about what is going on here is because they are finally finding out the truth about what we are doing, how much money we are spending, how much we are borrowing, the porkbarrel earmarks we are sending all over the country, basically changing the mission of the Federal Government from one that stands for the national interest and constitutional government to one that is essentially trying to run local governments and State governments and to rearrange the Constitution.

The Federal Communications Commission could actually reimplement this radio censorship idea without Congress. That is why my amendment I will offer tomorrow, the Broadcasters Freedom Act, will prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from bringing back any part of the radio censorship they called at one time the fairness doctrine.

Some here will say it is not germane to this debate on DC voting rights. But DC voting rights are about the Constitution and whether we will follow it. If we don't respect the Constitution on one issue, why should we respect it on another? The fact that people at the FCC and here in Congress are talking about bringing it back means it is germane to this discussion. It is germane to everything we do here, the right to freedom of speech. The freedom of the press is so foundational to our form of government, our way of life, it is germane to everything we do here.

This amendment is so important to what we do because if we can't get the American people informed and engaged and activated and get them to stand and express their outrage, this Government, this Congress, is going to continue to violate the Constitution at every turn; to substitute their opinion, whether it be the first amendment or second amendment, any time their opinion is different from the Constitution. Their belief and the prevailing belief here in Congress is, if you can pass something, then it is legal. It doesn't matter if it violates the Constitution. What will matter is if the American people know what we are doing. They are going to stand up. They will e-mail. They will call. They will express their outrage to these people who are taking our constitutional rights every day. They are going to hear from the people back home, and they will back down or they will be brought home at the next election.

That is why radio freedom, freedom of the press, talk radio, bloggers, cable TV, all these alternative media that are going around, the New York Times and the other liberal press, and taking the truth and the facts to the American people is something we have to protect with our lives in Congress. The broadcasters freedom amendment that will be offered tomorrow is critically important to what we do.

I urge all of my colleagues, don't buy these lame arguments that it is not germane to this constitutional debate. Don't buy the argument that it is not relevant because no one is bringing it up. We have seen what people can sneak into bills that we don't get a chance to read. We need to make it a law that the FCC or this Congress cannot implement any aspect of the fairness doctrine. That is what this amendment is about.

I urge colleagues to take the Constitution seriously, take this amendment seriously. Vote for it and show

the American people that we will stand for their constitutional rights.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this is a bittersweet day for a lot of us, I know a lot of Americans. A lot of Americans have called in expressing their opinions, sent thousands of e-mails and letters. If my colleagues' offices are anything like mine, mine have been 80 to 90 percent against this bill.

Folks are saying: Slow down. Let's see what is in it. We know about unintended consequences. Let's not spend all this money unless we know what we are doing. Folks have expressed concern that we seem, as politicians for the last 2 years, to have been talking down the economy--holding press conferences in the very worst areas of our country and saying this is what is happening everywhere, and every day saying it is going to get worse, it is going to get worse. What businessman would expand his business, or what businesswoman would go out and invest her life savings to start a new business if what they were hearing from Washington every day is: It is terrible; it is going to get worse. I am afraid we have done our part in creating a bad economy.

Clearly, there is a difference in philosophy, and I have to respect what the President and the Democratic majority have said: They won the election, they get to do it their way now. But I think some of us believe--and if you look at history, there are a lot of facts behind us--that when the economy slows down and there is a need to get more money in the economy, the fastest and quickest way to do it is to stop taking so much out in taxes. Some say on the other side: Well, tax cuts are an old idea. But tax cuts are related to individual freedom, people making their own decisions about how money is invested; leaving profits in the hands of thousands of small businesses so they can use that money to hire people and grow their businesses. Because that is where all the jobs are created.

Government doesn't create jobs. It may hire someone, but they have to take that money to pay that person from the private sector, from businesses that are actually creating the wealth.

We have talked about so much data in this very short debate. People have talked about the Great Depression. It is pretty clear that we tried getting out of the Great Depression for about 10 years by spending and adding new government programs, and it didn't work. In the 1960s, though, the economy grew after President Kennedy cut taxes. Our economy sagged again during the big spending days of Lyndon Johnson. In the 1970s, we tried to get out of a recession, or grow our economy, with heavy spending and new government programs and huge deficits and ended up in recession again. The 1980s were the boom years, when Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and others around the world realized that freedom does work. Free markets do create prosperity.

We have seen countries, such as the Soviet Union, change from their old centralized government approach to some free market principles and grow

out of a lot of their problems. We have talked about Japan during this debate. They had a lost decade. They kept their taxes the highest in the world and they tried to spend their way out of a recession. It didn't work. They lost a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of opportunity.

There is a big difference in philosophy that we should debate. But why the rush? I think the consternation I hear from the American people now more than anything else is, if this is the biggest spending bill in history, why are we trying to rush it through? Why does it have to be on the President's desk Monday morning? Why are we going to vote on a bill that not one of us have finished reading at this point? We just have had it today in any kind of searchable format on the Internet. Yet we are going to vote on it before we leave today. It seems we are afraid there might be some good news coming out of the economy in different sectors and the panic could subside long enough that maybe Congress doesn't feel we have to do something, even if we do not know what it is.

It seems we are rushing such an incredible spending bill. I talked to one of my sons last night and said: You might get $400, spread out in $17 increments. The bad news is you will probably end up owing $10,000 or more because of this one bill. He didn't seem to think it was that good a deal.

I know the other side won and that makes it bittersweet, in a way, because I feel like a lot of us have been standing for what the American people are calling and telling us about. We know if we let the people who are earning it and hiring people keep the money, we would stimulate our economy.

There are other things we can do, other than tax cuts as well. As to energy, at a time when we know that by opening our own energy reserves, drilling for our own oil and natural gas, we could stop the flow of American dollars overseas and create lots of jobs here, this very week this new administration delayed the planning of opening our own reserves by another 6 months. What are we waiting for, gas prices to go up to $3 or $4? Why delay something that could help the economy?

If we only allowed States to take the money we are already spending for education and allow students to take that to any school of their choice, it would attract literally billions of dollars--probably hundreds of billions of dollars of private sector investment in education to create all kinds of new choices for students that might actually prepare them to compete in the global economy. But what we are doing is more Government spending with the old Government model, and it is not going to create new jobs.

Even in health care, there is something in this bill that will help subsidize people's health care with COBRA when they lose their jobs. But we will not allow that same subsidy to apply if the same person wants to apply a less expensive policy of their own choosing that they can keep more than just a few months. We will support something that is Government, but we will not help people live free and make their own choices. Certainly, it is bittersweet.

But the news is not all bad today. I think the American people have resigned themselves to the fact that they are going to lose this battle, but they have gotten more informed and more engaged and outraged. I think they have seen if they call, if they e-mail, if they stand and express their opinions, they have a chance to turn around this move by our Government toward a more socialistic style of economy and culture to one that is more like the freedom Americans have always known and loved.

Freedom is not an ideology; it works. When we let people take advantage of opportunities and direct their own spending and start their own businesses, that creates jobs. We cannot do that artificially, by taking money from one person and giving it to another, which we are doing a trillion times in the bill we are talking about.

I think Americans are watching what is going on today. They are going to wonder why we voted on a bill that is not even on our desk, that we have not read yet, that they have not been able to search--as the President promised during his campaign, that he would not sign any bill unless it had been on the Internet for at least 5 days so the American people could know what we are doing here. We promised in these Chambers that we would not bring a bill to the floor unless it was on the Internet for people to see before we voted on it. We are breaking all those promises with this bill today.

The American people may have lost this one, but they have raised their voices and they have seen what is going on a little bit better than they have seen it before. I think they are going to win the final battle against this big Government approach to every problem that comes up, against this idea that every time there is a problem out across America, that we throw up our hands and say we have to do something, even if it is wrong, even if we had not read it, even if it is $1 trillion; we have to do something so the people back home will think we are doing something. Wasting this kind of money and putting this kind of debt burden on the next generation is inexcusable and intolerable and the American people are starting to figure it out.

They may lose this vote today, but the American people will win that final battle for freedom when they continue the fight they have started this week.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to speak on my amendment that protects religious freedom on college campuses. I start by asking unanimous consent to add Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky as cosponsors of amendment No. 189.

Mr. President, for 2 or 3 weeks now, we have been told time and time again by colleagues and the President that we need to move our country forward, set aside our differences, our ideology, remember what unites us, and come together. But the people who are writing our legislation today have not gotten that same message. I will talk about it in just a moment.

This morning, I had the pleasure of sitting with a number of my House and Senate colleagues, along with about 3,000 other people from all over the world, people of faith, and heard President Barack Obama address the National Prayer Breakfast. The President said many great things, but one of them was this:

The particular faith that motivates each of us can promote

a greater good for all of us . . . I don't expect divisions

to disappear overnight . . . but I do believe that if we can

talk to one another openly and honestly, then perhaps all

rifts will start to mend and new partnerships will begin to

emerge.

We heard President Obama, as well as the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, Tony Blair, say faith gave us tools to solve problems that could not be solved without faith. This is a beautiful message, and I think we all know it is true.

Then we come here and find a provision in this massive spending bill that would make sure that students could never talk openly and honestly about their faith. The fact is, any university or college that takes any of the money in this bill to renovate an auditorium, a dorm, or student center could not hold a National Prayer Breakfast there any longer because of what is written in this bill.

This bill provides funds to modernize, renovate, repair facilities on college and university campuses, both private and public. But there is a phrase in there, a couple of lines that says the facilities that accept these funds cannot be ``used for sectarian instruction, religious worship, or a school or department of divinity; or in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission.''

Keep in mind that a prayer has been called by our courts to be religious worship. What this means is students cannot meet together in their dorms, if that dorm has been repaired with this Federal money, and have a prayer group or a Bible study. They cannot get together in their student centers. They cannot have a commencement service where a speaker talks about their personal faith.

What this means to universities is legal risk, threats of lawsuits from the ACLU if they allow any religious activity on a campus that has taken any of this money. It is not just the particular facilities. This money can be used for electrical wiring, plumbing, and sewer systems that affect every building on campus.

This language has been written by very smart lawyers to do what they try to do, and that is intimidate the free speech of traditional freedom-loving Americans. My amendment would just simply strike this language and affect no other parts of the bill.

The National Prayer Breakfast could not be held in a building renovated with funds from this bill. The Campus Crusade, a fellowship of Christian athletes, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, Catholic and Jewish student groups who are meeting on campuses all over the country today could no longer meet in buildings that use funds from the bill we are talking about today. Classes on world religions or religious history, academic studies of religious texts could be banned by facilities that are renovated by this bill.

What about a group of teachers or professors who want to start a meeting with a prayer? What about chaplains on campus? What about private Bible study in a student's dorm room? What about a campus that wants to bring a Billy Graham or Rick Warren to speak? Would they be barred from campus? Would the college be sued by the ACLU? What if one of us, a Member of Congress, went to speak at a college graduation and shared a little bit about the faith in our life, would that college be sued?

The people who wrote this bill want to create risk and liability and put a chilling effect on religious freedom in our country. The most important thing for us to consider is what is this nonsense doing in this bill in the first place? The courts have decided this issue. Religious groups have the same freedom as nonreligious groups. This has nothing to do with the economy and even less to do with stimulus.

Keep in mind, this bill did not write itself. Someone around here thinks it is a good idea to discriminate against people of faith, to deny them educational opportunities and access to public facilities. Someone is so hostile to religion that they are willing to stand in the schoolhouse door, like the infamous George Wallace, to deny people of faith from entering any campus building renovated by this bill.

This cannot stand. It is in hard times that our society most needs faith. It provides the light that no darkness can overcome. This provision is an attempt to extinguish that light from college campuses, from the lives of our youth.

In the words of the President today:

Faith . . . can promote a greater good for all of us. Our

varied beliefs can bring us together to . . . rebuild what is

broken [and] to lift those who have fallen on hard times.

Our culture cannot survive without faith, and our Nation cannot survive without freedom. This provision is an assault against both. It is un-American, and it is unconstitutional, intolerant, and it is intolerable. It must be struck from the underlying bill.

I urge my colleagues to support my very simple amendment, a few lines that just strike this provision that has already been decided by the courts that has no place in this bill. I urge my colleagues to support it.

I reserve the remainder of my time. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

I yield all of it then.

Mr. President, are we considering the DeMint amendment?

Mr. President, I encourage all my colleagues to listen for a moment. This is a very simple amendment that strikes some language that should not be in this massive spending bill. It is language that discriminates against religious freedom on college campuses.

Right now in the bill, any college campus that uses these funds to renovate a student center, a dorm, an auditorium, cannot allow prayer, any religious activity, or worship. This is not language that should be in this bill. This is an issue that has been decided by the courts.

Arbitrary language is going to create doubt and risk and liability which will put a chilling effect on religious freedom on campuses.

The only thing most of us need to know is that the ACLU opposes this amendment. Any freedom-loving American should know they should vote for this amendment if it is opposed by the ACLU.

Will the Senator yield?

May I correct a mischaracterization?

Thank you, Mr. President.

I would like to speak for a few moments on a couple of amendments. But before I do, I ask unanimous consent that following my talk that Senator Saxby Chambliss be allowed to speak.

I revise my request, Mr. President, to fit that request.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Amendment No. 168

Mr. President, I would like to speak for a few minutes about Amendment No. 168. It is the DeMint amendment we are calling the American Option to the spending plan that has been proposed by the majority. This is a complete substitute for the spending plan. We call it the American Option because it helps to develop a free market American economy by leaving money in the hands of people and businesses rather than taking it and then having the Government direct where the money goes. So it basically puts our faith in the American people, in our free market economic system, instead of political decisions here in Washington.

Americans are very concerned about the direction of our country. In fact, I have never seen people more anxious about where we are. They are worried about the economy but even more worried about the reckless spending and Government intrusion into our culture and into our free markets.

Our economy is in trouble. That is obvious. The national unemployment rate is now over 7 percent and climbing. Stock markets have plunged, jeopardizing the retirement security of millions of seniors. Nearly a million homes were repossessed last year, and in the last week, thousands of Americans have lost their jobs at some of our Nation's strongest companies, including Home Depot, Microsoft, Caterpillar, and Boeing. In the midst of these difficult and uncertain times, Americans understandably voted for change. Frustrated with runaway spending, Wall Street bailouts, and soaring energy prices, they voted for President Obama who, as a candidate, promised to lower taxes, cut spending, increase domestic energy, and create millions of new jobs.

I like President Obama very much. We were elected to the Senate together, and we have worked together on several common goals. I truly believe he wants to do what is best for our country, but our economy needs more than slogans and empty promises.

As I have said before, I believe the stimulus bill that is being championed by President Obama and the Democratic majority is the worst piece of economic legislation Congress has considered in 100 years. Not since the passage in 1909 of the 16th amendment which cleared the way for Federal income tax has the United States seriously entertained a policy so comprehensively hostile to economic freedom, nor so arrogantly indifferent to economic reality. The bill, if it were a country, would have the 15th largest economy in the world--right in between Australia and Mexico and greater than the gross domestic product of Saudi Arabia and Iran put together. The American people will be forced to borrow 100 percent of the unprecedented $1.2 trillion pricetag when you include interest. The stimulus bill will cost well over $1 billion for every page it is printed on and $400,000 for every job it hopes to create or save.

Proponents argue that we are facing a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis and only an immediate and overwhelming stimulus bill can ignite the economy, create jobs, and spur growth. That may very well be true, but the spending bill before us today is just that: a spending bill, not an economic stimulus bill. The Democratic bill takes money--it actually borrows money--and decides where it should go. It does virtually nothing to stimulate the economy while it wastes billions of taxpayer dollars. It is a hodgepodge of long-supported pet projects that should be considered in the normal budget process but not an economic stimulus bill. Using the troubled economy as their motive, Democrats have opened the floodgates for all sorts of outrageous wasteful spending.

Here are just a few of the examples from the Senate substitute: $400 million for researching sexually transmitted diseases. They are telling us now that they took that out, but then we find they left the money in there, which could be used for the same purposes once we pass the bill. There is $200 million for bike and pedestrian trails and off-road vehicle routes; $200 million to force the military to buy electric cars; $34 million to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters; $75 million for a program to

end smoking, which, if successful, will bankrupt the children's health program Democrats just passed last week.

Of the more than $800 billion in the bill that is being sold as infrastructure investment, only $30 billion will actually go to build highways, about $40 billion for upgrades in our telecommunications and electricity infrastructure, and about $20 billion in business tax cuts. These are the only three components of the bill that might arguably stimulate the economy and create jobs and, even then, only temporarily. Altogether, only 11 percent of this so-called ``American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009'' will have anything to do with either recovery or reinvestment. And rest assured, the elevated spending levels in this bill will never recede.

The tax side of the bill is not much better. We can think of it this way: If nearly every Democrat in Congress supports a tax cut, it is probably not a tax cut. Indeed, the text of the Democratic plan reveals that $212 billion of smoke-and-mirror gimmicks--temporary cuts and rebates exactly like those that failed to stimulate the economy last year. Half of the tax changes in this bill are for people who don't even pay taxes, and all of them are temporary, which will undermine their impact. This bill is not an economic stimulus bill at all, but really a political stimulus--a stimulus to grow Government in Washington.

Any doubters of the bare-knuckled partisanship at the heart of the Democrats' trillion-dollar catastrophe will do well to ask a simple question: Who benefits from this legislation? Who, indeed? Alternative energy companies, public employee unions, teachers unions, university faculty and administrators, welfare recipients, ACORN-style community organizers, politicians who spend the money, Federal bureaucrats who allocate it, and the limousine liberal lawyers and lobbyists who will influence every dime behind the scenes. In other words, this bill is a massive transfer of wealth not from the rich to the poor, but from middle-class families and small businesses to favored Democratic constituencies who are not the poor and middle class we promised to help.

This bill is not a stimulus; it is a mugging. It is a fraud. Conservatives who fear proponents of this bill want to inch our economy closer to a European style of socialism are kidding themselves. The proponents of this bill want to strap a big rocket on the back of our economy and launch it all the way to Brussels. This massive spending bill is fatally flawed. It will not rescue our economy; it will strangle it.

That is why this bill must be stopped dead in its tracks. It cannot be fixed by tweaking it here or tweaking it there. It must be scrapped entirely so the leadership in Congress will be forced to consider real alternatives.

Fortunately, there is another way, a better way, a way that will actually stimulate the economy, spur investment, and create jobs, a way that will permanently and immediately save billions of dollars in the private sector and in the hands of Americans who buy goods, provide services, start businesses, and hire employees. We call it the American Option because it relies on the American people to generate jobs and growth, not the Federal Government.

The plan I am offering is not new or clever. It is only 11 pages long. It comes with no bells or whistles, no smoke and mirrors, but it will work, and it is based on proven American principles of freedom, equality, and opportunity.

The plan--developed by scholars J.D. Foster and William Beach at the Heritage Foundation--is the best anyone has proposed since the recession first took hold. The idea is simple. First, make the temporary tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 that are currently set to expire in 2011 permanent. Make our current rates permanent. This would create the certainty for citizens and businesses they need to plan their spending and to grow their businesses. The short-term, temporary tax relief of the sort envisioned by the Democratic plan does not stimulate economic growth; it is temporary and it creates economic uncertainty. It is the difference between a $1,000 gift one month, which you might put away or use to pay off some credit card, and a $1,000-a-month raise which might get you thinking about buying a house, a new car, or taking a summer vacation or starting a new business. To encourage people to take risks and create new jobs, we must make tax relief for families and small businesses permanent. Recessions are caused by uncertainty that keeps investors on the sidelines. Permanent low taxes allow for plans and decisions to be made with an eye toward the future.

With the 2011 tax bomb diffused, part 2 of our plan will cut income tax rates across the board. The top marginal rate--the one paid by most of the small businesses that create new jobs--will fall from 35 percent to 25 percent. It simplifies the code to include only two other brackets: 15 and 10. These marginal rate reductions would be permanent and give the private sector maximum predictability as it decides how to best spend its recovered income. This is a matter of fairness. No American family should be forced to pay the Federal Government more than 25 percent of the fruits of their labor.

Just as we cut taxes for families and small businesses, we need to cut them for corporations as well, from 35 to 25 percent, and we shouldn't be afraid to say so. Our corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world, driving investment and jobs overseas. Lowering this key rate will unlock trillions of dollars to be invested in America instead of abroad. Rather than giving large companies loopholes and targeted tax benefits which only encourage them to spend money on lobbyists who secure such goodies, Congress should get out of the business of picking winners and losers in the market and simply cut everyone's taxes and let's let the best companies win. This plan will make businesses compete for consumers, not Congressmen and Senators.

To further simplify and improve the code, our plan would also permanently repeal the alternative minimum tax, permanently maintain the capital gains and dividend taxes at 15 percent, permanently kill the death tax for estates under $5 million, and cut the tax rate to 15 percent; permanently extend the $1,000-per-child tax credit, permanently repeal the marriage penalty, and permanently limit itemized deductions to home mortgage interest and charitable contributions.

The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis' widely respected economic forecasting model projects this plan would result in nearly 500,000 more jobs this year, almost 3 million new jobs by 2011, 7.5 million new jobs by 2013, and a total of nearly 18 million jobs over the next decade. That is an average of nearly 2 million jobs every year. Instead of taking $1 trillion out of the economy so politicians can spread it around to special interests, the American Option will keep a trillion more dollars in the hands of American families and businesses. Instead of growing Government where waste and corruption run rampant, we grow the private sector where innovation flourishes. Instead of giving the power and control of our economy to politicians and bureaucrats, we give Americans and small businesses the freedom to spend and invest their own money. The positive effects of letting more money stay in the private economy immediately and permanently will quickly become apparent.

Beyond the job creation, I know we are all also interested in seeing our housing and real estate markets, as well as the automobile sector, emerge from the doldrums. Within 5 years, the American Option would produce $175 billion in residential investment and $362 billion in nonresidential investment. That is more than a half trillion dollars left to private citizens with the motivation to care for their families, invest in a new business, or expand their current productive activities.

The auto industry will also experience a dramatic increase in sales activity. Between 2009 and 2011, total sales of new cars and light trucks would rise $24.5 billion more than they would otherwise. Again, allowing private citizens and businesses to use their own capital instead of sending it off to Washington benefits all sectors of the economy.

The evidence in support of this legislation is not theoretical but historical, unlike the Keynesian arguments behind the Democratic spending and debt plan. In 1964 John F. Kennedy's tax reductions led to 9 million private sector jobs in 5 years. Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax cuts led to 7 million in the same

timeframe. Five years on, the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts led to the creation of 4 million and 6 million jobs, respectively. Every time the United States has cut marginal tax rates, millions of jobs have been created--jobs that lifted the unemployment into the workplace, the working poor into the middle class, and the middle class into long-term economic security.

Similar stories can be told of Great Britain's rescue under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. More recently, Israel's economic reforms under their Finance Minister changed their whole economic platform.

President Obama's own chief economist has shown that tax cuts do truly stimulate economic activity to the tune of $3 of increased output for every dollar of tax relief.

On the other hand, the world's greatest experiments in spending our way out of a recession have three textbook examples. The first is Franklin Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression. The New Deal began in 1933 with unemployment around 25 percent and effectively ended with the establishments of F.D.R.'s ``war economy'' in 1940 with unemployment still hovering around 20 percent. The second example is from the 1970s when huge deficits in the United States neither spurred economic growth nor curtailed inflation. The third example is Japan, their so-called Lost Decade, in which the Japanese Government tried in vain for 10 years to spend its way out of a national real estate and investment collapse.

Every discredited idea from these three monuments to economic mismanagement can be found in the fine print of the Democrats' $1 trillion socialist experiment we are considering this week: massive spending, skyrocketing deficits, inevitable tax increases, and the disastrous unintended consequences of hurried and arbitrary meddling in our economy.

Finally, there is another issue I want to address. I have recently heard some of my colleagues say that this recession is the fault of the free market, that President Obama has inherited the problems of a conservative ideology.

Mr. President, the charge is flatly, demonstrably false. In fact, it is incredible that anyone would say it.

Let me be clear: conservatism has nothing to apologize for.

It was not conservatism that foisted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac onto the national credit market.

It was not conservatism that that shook-down the Nation's banking system with the Community Reinvestment Act.

It was not conservatism that asked for, lied about, and then wasted $350 billion for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Nor did conservatism sign on to the second tranche of the TARP funds now in the hands of our esteemed new Treasury Secretary.

It was not conservatism that used taxpayer funds to bail out the perpetrators of the Wall Street meltdown.

It wasn't conservatism that led our financial industry to make these reckless loans, and it certainly wasn't conservatism that made that industry ask for the taxpayers to foot the bill for their idiocy.

It wasn't conservatism that bailed out an auto industry bankrupted by its inability to manage costs and strangled by the tentacles of unionism.

Every problem now plaguing our economy can be directly traced to some Government policy that was passed over the vehement objections and warnings of principled conservatives.

The same scenario is playing out with this spending bill, but the result is not preordained.

The Democrat plan will fail, it will hurt our economy, it will kill jobs, it will lengthen and deepen the recession, and it will delay any hope of recovery.

But it is not enough to merely stop this, the wrong bill--we must pass the right one.

It is not simply a viable alternative--it is the American option to rescue our economy from an inexorable slide toward European social- democracy.

With a troubled economy, mounting national debt, and an entitlement crisis ready to explode, conservatives must offer bold and proven solutions to secure America's future.

We cannot simply derail the ``liberal express''; we must show our fellow countrymen a better path.

There is nothing wrong with our economy that a free people cannot solve. All we need is the freedom to take back from Washington control of our economic destiny.

The policy approach I have outlined can work, and if implemented, will work. How do I know?

Because liberating people to pursue their own happiness and fortune is the only thing that ever does.

I thank the Chair, and yield the floor.

Madam President, how long do I have?

Madam President, what this bill does is probably one of the most important things we need to do in this economic debate, and it is stop the planned tax increases that are going to happen in 2011 for every American.

The large score that is being thrown around here assumes we are going to let those taxes go up, but we are not. This is a misrepresentation of the cost of this bill. This bill stops the current tax increases that are planned in 2011, keeps the current tax rate the same. The only change it makes is it lowers the top marginal rate from 35 to 25 percent for businesses, for investors, and for individual Americans.

We call it the American option because it leaves money in the hands of the American people and businesses, rather than bringing it to Washington and distributing it our way.

I encourage everyone to stop the planned tax increases with the American option.

Madam President, I move to waive the applicable portion of the budget.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up DeMint amendment No. 85.

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

Madam President, in deference to my colleague from Oklahoma, I won't speak on the amendment at this point, but I will briefly state its purpose.

The purpose of this amendment is to help American taxpayers pay for their children's health care to the same degree we are forcing them to help pay for the health care of noncitizen children in this underlying bill. Specifically, it would provide all eligible American families with an above-the-line Federal income tax deduction for each child comparable to the average Federal share of the benefit provided to any noncitizen child under the SCHIP legislation.

I will speak more about the bill following Senator Coburn's introduction of his amendment, but for now I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I would like to make some comments about DeMint amendment No. 85. This is an amendment that I believe is very important to American families, taxpayers. Here in Washington, there seems to always be enough money to help those who cannot take care of themselves. Most of the time, that is a good thing because we certainly want to have those safety nets for those families, particularly families who need health care for their children. The difficulty is that those families who are working and are struggling and are being independent often have to pay the price for that.

I have personal family experience that drives this whole issue home. As we consider the expansion of the children's health bill to expand it to folks with higher incomes, I realize that affects my own family.

My oldest son is married with a child, expecting another. He is back in graduate school, doing some part-time work, struggling to make ends meet and pay for his own health insurance. As they expect their second child, with that high-deductible policy, they are paying for most of their health care themselves.

As he heard about the debate on this issue as well as some of the other bailout issues, he mentioned to me--he said: Dad, it is hard in my situation to make enough money to pay for our own health care. I want to be independent, but I realize the tax dollars I do pay are paying for the benefits of others who are often making more than I am.

He has friends in school who are on welfare and food stamps and Medicaid, taking everything they can from the Government. But most Americans, most middle-class Americans and even those who fall below middle class, are struggling today to make ends meet on their own and not be dependent on the Government. The amendment I have introduced tries to achieve some level of fairness to those American taxpayers who are working and trying to make ends meet.

My son could qualify for SCHIP, this children's health program. Certainly while he is in school he is below 200 percent of poverty. But right now he pays for his own health care. We even charge him taxes on the amount he has to spend for his own health care. Then his regular taxes have to go to help all his friends who are living off the Government dole.

If we are going to help families with children, we ought to be fair about it. This bill we are considering expands the children's health plan. The current law in America certainly covers American citizens, but the Federal money is not allowed to be used for noncitizens. That is basically part of our immigration deal. When folks come here and they are sponsored, the agreement is that for 5 years they take care of themselves and they are not a burden on the American taxpayer.

But the bill we are debating today changes that law. It gives benefits, health care, to noncitizens at the expense of middle-class working Americans. I do not want to take that away. That is not what this bill is about, my amendment. I am not changing anything this bill already offers.

But what this amendment does is it gives every American family with children, qualifying children under the children's health plan we are debating, an above-the-line deduction of up to $1,500. And what it is, it gives American citizens the same benefit we are giving non- Americans, noncitizens, in this underlying bill.

We do not ask the Government to pay for their health care. We say, as a matter of fairness, we are not going to make them pay income taxes on what they have to spend on health care for their children. That is what this is about, a deduction for the cost of health care for children.

We phase this out as income goes up. If a family qualifies for the AMT, they cannot get this deduction. So this is about middle-class Americans, people who are actually out there today trying to make it on their own without Government help, paying for their own health care. We are not going to charge them taxes on the cost of their health care with this amendment.

Specifically, the DeMint amendment, a taxpayer fairness amendment, would allow American families, citizens and legal immigrant families, the ability to receive a tax deduction of up to $1,500 for each child to cover health care-related costs.

This deduction, per child, is comparable to the average Federal share of the benefit provided to any child under this SCHIP bill, the underlying child health care bill. But no family who is already claiming SCHIP or Medicaid or any Federal health plan would be able to use this deduction.

This deduction is for Americans with that spirit of independence who, regardless of how little they are making, want to pay their own way. And let's not penalize them for it. Let's not tax what they have to pay for health care and then give it free to someone else. Let's not make them pay taxes to help pay for someone else's health care and still leave them out in the cold.

This is a matter of basic fairness. I encourage my colleagues, Republican and Democrat, if the whole point of this legislation is to help struggling families with children make sure they have health care for their children, let's be fair to American citizens and at least give them an equal benefit that we are giving to noncitizens. Let's not make middle-class working Americans pay for health care for noncitizens while we are basically taxing the struggling American worker who is trying to pay for it on their own.

I think a vote on this amendment will be coming up relatively shortly. Again, I encourage all of my colleagues to vote for the DeMint taxpayer fairness amendment.

I reserve the remainder of my time, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I would like to make a few comments about my amendment, No. 85. Senator Baucus commented about it after I brought it up. There are a few matters I would like to clear up.

The Senator mentioned this is not a tax bill, his children's health bill. Yet it is a tax bill. There is a large tax increase on cigarettes to pay for this bill, so it is very much dealing with taxes.

He also said this is not the place to deal with families with children who have insurance through their employers or may be paying for their own insurance. This is a time to deal with Americans with children who cannot pay for health care. The underlying bill itself increases the criteria all the way up to twice the poverty level or more. It is dealing with many families with substantial incomes. It is giving benefits to some families who are not paying for their own insurance at the expense of those who are struggling to pay for their own health insurance.

My amendment is very appropriate to the underlying bill. It is about children's health care, and it is about being fair to American citizens. The bill we are considering today gives generous benefits to children who are not citizens of the United States. They are here and my amendment does not change those benefits. But we should be fair and give equal benefits to American families, workers, taxpayers, who are paying for their own insurance.

My colleague, Senator Baucus, mentioned many of these families are getting insurance through their employers. But just about all of them, if not all of them, have to pay a part of that expense themselves, which is very difficult. They cannot deduct that money.

We need to make sure this bill is fair. My amendment makes the bill fair to every family with children. It gives them an above-the-line deduction for up to $1,500 of their expenses, and that is up to the amount we give to noncitizens in this children's health bill.

This is fair to Americans, and it is time we start being fair to Americans. We cannot take money continuously from the middle class to do our good deeds all over the country and then leave middle-class Americans emptyhanded. If they are going to work and struggle to pay for their own health insurance, the very least we can do is not tax the money they spend to pay for their own health care. Why do we penalize people who are trying to live themselves without government money? Most Americans are doing everything they can to get by without government support. Let's stop penalizing them. Let's stop asking them to pay for all of our good deeds and good intentions.

This is a simple amendment that gives a deduction for people who are paying for their own health insurance, a deduction that is equal to what we are giving to noncitizens in this underlying bill.

Again, I encourage my colleagues to think twice, think about Americans, our own middle-class workers. Give them a fair shot. Vote for this amendment.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and I call up amendments Nos. 42, 43, and 44, and ask for their immediate consideration.

Thank you, Mr. President. I do not intend to speak on them, so we would not use any time. I think it is important we have amendments pending so our colleagues will have ample time to review them.

I would ask the Senator to reconsider. Again, I am not going to speak on them. I only want them pending so we can distribute them and people can begin to see what is in them.

Yes.

I appreciate the benevolence, and I would hope the Senator would agree that all of these amendments at some point can be made pending in the debate.

But I will call up only amendment No. 43 right now.

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

Thank you, Mr. President.

Obviously, I am disappointed in the process. It is important we let our colleagues know what amendments will be offered so we can begin to discuss them; and many times we have the opportunity to work these things out, improve them before debate. Unfortunately, many times in the past we have seen where the majority pushes the bringing up of these amendments to the very end and then says we do not have time to debate them. I hope that will not occur this time.

I have three good amendments. The one I just brought up I will not speak on at this point but will mention the subject of that amendment. It is a cost-sharing arrangement with the States that for all recipients of SCHIP over 200 percent of poverty the States are required to ask for some small cost-sharing with people who use this insurance. It is important that we look at this as a program that, hopefully, will move people from a Government-sponsored plan to eventually a private plan, with our goal being every American is eventually insured with a policy they can own and afford and keep.

So this would work with the States to require a small cost-sharing arrangement with the beneficiaries who are 200 percent of poverty or more, and it would not be more than 5 percent of income, and States can charge as little as they would like. But the whole point is to begin to encourage personal responsibility and to let people know this is not a permanent giveaway but something they need to participate in.

I look forward to discussing this amendment in more detail along with my other amendments sometime in the future. But right now, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Thank you, Madam President.

I wish to take a few minutes to talk about an amendment I am offering as part of the children's health plan we will be voting on probably later this week.

I think it is important, as we talk about expanding the program, we do it responsibly and make sure we do everything we can to keep personal responsibility as part of the plan. All of us, Republicans and Democrats, look forward to the day when every American family has a health insurance plan they can afford and own and keep.

The children's health plan is, I see, maybe an interim step to that. It was started to help America's poorest children be insured. The plan we are discussing today, however, expands the children's health plan to children over 200 percent of poverty. One of the things we want to make sure does not happen is people who have private insurance and have taken responsibility for health insurance for their family are not encouraged to drop their private insurance and to join a government children's health plan.

There are ways we can do it, and some States already do this. This is by adding cost-sharing provisions for those who take advantage of the government children's health plan. That is what my amendment is about: making sure States that provide Government health coverage to families over 200 percent of poverty have some cost-sharing arrangement to send the signal that this is not a permanent subsidy from Government but a temporary bridge to help families who need some help getting health insurance for their children to get the help they need.

So let me talk a little bit about what is in there.

Again, the main goal of this amendment is to stop the people moving from private plans--that they are paying for and taking responsibility for--to a Government-sponsored plan so there is accountability, and that is what we want to make sure is in this system.

We need to remind our colleagues the children's health plan was created for America's poorest children. I wish a lot of our emphasis and debate was on: How can we get more children under 200 percent of poverty actually registered for the program? There are millions of children today who qualify for the current children's health plan who are not registered, either for what we call SCHIP or for Medicaid. Instead of

just taking those numbers up and expanding the people who can take advantage of the program, we should be trying to get those who are most needy registered for the program. Instead, I am afraid we are going to crowd out those folks, as we provide insurance for other families. In some States, under this plan, families making over $70,000 a year, with a family of four, can take advantage of Government health plans.

So what we are going to have is one person making $70,000 a year paying for their own private insurance and their neighbor making the same amount who has Government health care. There are ways we can discourage it. A number of States already require that the beneficiaries of this children's health plan pay a copay or a small part of the cost of the health insurance, and that is what this amendment does.

My amendment specifically would require that States that are offering the children's health plan to families above 200 percent of poverty have some minimum cost-sharing. We protect the beneficiaries by saying that no State can charge a user of the children's health plan more than 5 percent of their monthly income, and we don't have a minimum. So we expect most States to have a very minimum cost-sharing plan put in place.

What we are doing does not replace or change anything that States already have set up for cost-sharing. In fact, I think it will make it fairer for them. The way the system will work, unless we pass this amendment, is the people in States that are participating in the costs of this plan will help pay more for those States that don't have any cost-sharing. So it is not fair, if we have some States encouraging personal responsibility and cost-sharing, to put more of a burden on them to pay for States that might not do the same.

My belief is that every State would implement for families over 200 percent of poverty a cost-sharing arrangement. What this does is just lays out some basic parameters that give the States complete flexibility, whether it is a copay, whether it is a percent of the insurance, but not to exceed 5 percent of the income of any of the recipients.

I understand this is the next amendment to be voted on. I encourage all of my colleagues to do everything we can to stop any incentives that move people from private insurance to Government insurance, create some accountability and personal responsibility in this plan for the ones with higher incomes, and to save more of the dollars for those who are most needy in the plan.

Again, I encourage a vote, and I reserve the remainder of my time.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I understand I have 2\1/2\ minutes left; is that correct?

And the quorum call will be applied against that time; is that correct?

If the Senator would agree, I don't have much time left, and if I could reserve that time. If there is no opposition, obviously, I don't need to use any additional time.

I thank the Senator.

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

Mr. President, in the interest of time, I have filed three amendments. I know the majority leader wants to move this through, so I am going to call up one of them and not speak on it at this time during the discussion and debate of the Hutchison amendment. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up the DeMint amendment No. 31 and ask for its immediate consideration.

I just want to get it pending. I will not speak on it right now.

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

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I am afraid the Ledbetter bill is another example that the majority in the Senate doesn't understand the American economy or how businesses create jobs or how freedom works for all of us to create a better quality of life. Recessions are caused by uncertainty. This bill creates more uncertainty for the very businesses we need to create the jobs and to keep the jobs we have in our country today.

Why would we pass a bill, or even be talking about it, in the middle of a recession, that many have said is the worst we have ever seen in our lifetime? This bill will also create a lot of unintended consequences that will do the exact opposite of what it is intended to do.

I was in business for well over 20 years before I came to Congress. Once you create more liability for hiring a woman or know that liability is going to exist for years, employers are going to figure out a way to get around that. This is more likely to discourage the employment and the promotion of women because it creates an indefinite liability.

It seems that a lot of my colleagues have never been in business themselves. I remember being in the advertising business, and I was 1 of 15 account executives. I was about in the middle as far as salary. There were men and women who made less than I did. There were men and women who made more than I did. Some who made more than I did had less experience, but because of clients or some other factor--some other intangible--it made them worth more than I was, they were paid more. It was the same with those who made less. I was younger and in some cases less experienced than some of the men and women who made less, but I had demonstrated that I could help our company make a profit more than they had. The market was deciding our salaries. There is no way that anyone in this Senate or any government bureaucrat or Federal judge could come in and say that there was discrimination because I was paid less than someone who was making more money or the same with someone who was making less than I was.

For us to intervene and create a permanent liability is only going to create more uncertainty. This is not what we need to do with our businesses. So this whole bill should not even be considered now.

I have an amendment that gets at some of the issues that have been talked about with this bill, about fairness and about discrimination. One of the biggest forms of discrimination in this country today is when we force an American worker to join a union. My amendment is a right-to-work amendment. Right now in this country, we have a Federal law that forces American workers to join a union. States can pass a right-to-work law, as my State, South Carolina, has to protect their workers, but this has proved very difficult for many States with powerful union bosses and union lobbies. My amendment, which is a national right-to-work amendment, would restore the right of every American not to join a union. It would eliminate the Federal requirement that workers pay union dues.

We are getting ready to hear from some opponents of this amendment that will use some very convoluted logic to defend their position. The same people who support Federal labor laws, including wage requirements that supersede State laws, will argue that my amendment violates States rights. Removing a Federal mandate on States could only violate States rights in the minds of politicians who have lost touch with our constitutional moorings. My amendment is not about States rights. It is not about Federal rights. It is not about business rights. My amendment restores basic unalienable, individual rights.

No law--Federal or State--should force an American to join a union in order to get a job in this country. No law--State or Federal--should allow an American worker to be fired because he or she does not want to join a union. This is about individual rights. There should not be a Federal law that discriminates against workers who choose not to join a union. This is about fairness and about stopping basic discrimination that is sponsored by this Federal Government.

I urge my colleagues to vote for this right-to-work amendment. It is very consistent with the theme of this Ledbetter bill. It is more likely to eliminate discrimination than the Ledbetter bill itself. I urge my colleagues to support it. I will reserve the remainder of my time and ask for a vote.

The Ledbetter bill.

Right.

It is a discrimination and fairness bill, and my bill would change the National Labor Relations Act to remove a mandate on States.

Madam President, I think I mentioned some convoluted logic. I appreciate my colleague's civil discussion on this issue, but it is interesting to hear that removing a Federal

mandate on States somehow violates States rights.

My colleague from Tennessee described a situation they have in their State--the same situation in South Carolina--where you can have a nonunion shop. People can choose to be in unions or unionize an organization. Workers can decide whether they belong to a union. What that is called is freedom. Those are basic rights of Americans. What my amendment would do is restore that freedom for people who live in every State, not just in States where State legislators have been able to overcome union pressure and reestablish that freedom.

This is not about States rights, and this is not about the rights of the Federal Government. It is not about some Federal bureaucrats or what judges decide. Every American should have a right to decide whether they are going to join a union. For us to have a law at the Federal level imposed on people around the country that they have to join a union, they have to pay union dues, that employers have a right to fire them if they don't join a union--this is not good for individuals, but it is not good for our country.

A few weeks ago, we had a debate about the American auto industry. Just about every expert recognizes that forced unionization has essentially run them out of business. There is a reason companies are leaving the forced compulsory union States and moving to Tennessee and South Carolina. It is because there is more freedom there. That is what this amendment is about. It is removing a Federal mandate that imposes on the freedom of every American.

It is very relevant to the discussion today. We are talking about fairness. We are talking about discrimination. We are talking about wages. But when we force an American to join a union, take part of their wages and give it to a union, that is not freedom. I cannot imagine anyone here who thinks through this issue saying it does not have something to do with fairness and discrimination and what we are about as a country. We should have a right to unionize, we should have a right not to unionize, but we should not force an American to join a union and make their job contingent on it. This is much greater discrimination than we are dealing with in this Ledbetter bill, and it is very appropriate, if we are going to talk about fairness in eliminating discrimination, that we include this amendment that would restore a basic freedom to every American. That is what this amendment is about, is doing exactly what my colleague from Tennessee said they enjoy there. Why shouldn't they enjoy those same freedoms in Michigan and other States?

I encourage my colleagues to set aside old ways of thinking and partisan politics, payback to unions. This is not about us. It is not about States. It is about people. It is about basic American rights. No American should be forced to join a union.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Madam President, if I may continue, I will use the rest of my time. I want to make sure we are clear.

Again, my good friend from Tennessee has said that somehow this amendment is going to take away the rights of States to have a right- to-work law. This is a right-to-work law. Every State in the country would have a right to work, a right to choose to be union or not to be union. This is not to restrict a State in any way at all.

Right now, if a State wants to be right-to-work, it has to override Federal legislation. Most of us continuously talk about protecting secret ballots of workers. It is Federal legislation, it imposes a law on everyone, but it is protecting the rights of individuals because it is not about unions and it is not about the businesses for which they work. The Secret Ballot Protection Act would protect the individual and their rights. That is what this amendment is about. It is respecting the rights of individuals not to join a union. It does not take away any right from a State; it actually removes a Federal mandate on States.

I appreciate all the time that was given to this discussion. I, again, urge my colleagues to support my amendment.

Madam President, a number of us--many Americans--are disappointed that the first act of this new Congress and this new President will be to add $350 billion more borrowing on the backs of our children and grandchildren. Madam President, $350 billion will be in addition to another $350 billion that we approved last year, as well as the nearly $1 trillion we are talking about in stimulus that will be coming up next year. This is not the change that many Americans had hoped for as we enter a new administration. Many of us are very disappointed in how the first round of troubled assets funds have been used.

It is clear that the intention of the incoming President and the new Democratic majority in Congress is to spend and borrow our way out of this recession. That doesn't work for families. It is not going to work for our country. More spending and borrowing and printing money may help Washington to grow and prosper, but it is certainly not going to help American families and businesses grow and prosper.

In this context that we are here today talking about this $350 billion in spending, with all respect to my colleague who just spoke, the easy thing to do is vote for more spending here in Washington. We find it is almost impossible to get people to vote for any cuts in spending. Yet, in spite of our calls for economic relief in an economic meltdown situation, Congress refuses to make any sacrifices on what we do here.

I am speaking to support this resolution of disapproval that has been offered by Senator Vitter, and I encourage all of my colleagues to take this responsible step to slow down this avalanche of spending and debt in our country.

Some are trying to make us feel a little better about this incredible amount of spending by saying: It is not real spending; the government is actually investing in debt of companies and intervening in companies and that we could get some of this money back. Frankly, it doesn't make me feel any better to know that this government is intervening in the private sector and every place it touches, it is going to bring new rules and regulations and make our economy less likely to operate as it should.

As we know, many who voted for this TARP bill last October now regret they did it. I didn't vote for it, but many who have, have issued press releases and spoken on this floor being very critical of how it was used and the fact that it hasn't worked. The promises that were made of how this money was going to be used were changed within a couple of weeks of the time the panic was issued here in Washington, and everyone was told they needed to vote for it or there would be worldwide economic calamity. Yet, almost before the ink was dry, they changed what they were going to do on the bill. I think for that reason, many do not trust this whole process of creating a slush fund for an administration, whether it be Republican or Democrat, to spend $700 billion.

We know what happened last fall. In October there was a crisis mentality. We were told we had to act immediately. Since then, in spite of all of the promises, the stock market has fallen nearly 25 percent and we are in the same credit problem situation that we had then. It is too much money to be throwing at the wall in hopes that it might work. I still hear at home that all of this money we put into the system has not worked its way into small business loans or loans for individuals, loans to buy cars, and we have no assurance at this point that an additional $350 billion will do that.

I would encourage all of my colleagues to look at where we are as a

Nation and the amount of debt we have. The amount of debt we have is now approaching a half a million dollars for every American family. It is very difficult to justify continuing to borrow money when all we are doing is treating the symptoms of the problem.

It is amazing to me that we are talking about throwing more money at a problem and we have yet to address the causes of the problem. We know the government made many mistakes with government-sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We have not corrected those problems in a way that will show any results. We know we require banks to make loans to people who can't afford to pay them back and we have not corrected those problems. If you talk to any businessman--and I have been a businessman most of my life--they are not looking for a short-term, knee-jerk solution; they need to have a predictable business environment in order to take risks and make investments and grow their business.

If we were looking at real solutions such as lowering our corporate tax rate, lowering capital gains that would encourage the nearly $11 trillion of private money that is now sitting on the sidelines--we are not talking about doing anything that is going to encourage this private money to get into the market, into the banking system that would create more liquidity. All we are doing is treating the symptoms, and there is no discussion of solving the problem.

I hope my colleagues will take the telephone calls and the e-mails they are getting from their constituents, as I am, seriously. Americans intuitively know that what we are doing here is wrong. Even if it worked for a few months, all of us know we have to pay it back, our children and our grandchildren for generations to come, with a lower standard of living, incredibly high taxes, and a devalued currency.

Madam President, I thank you for the opportunity to speak and I yield my time, as I again encourage my colleagues to vote for this resolution of disapproval, and let's figure out how to solve the real problem.

Mr. President, will you let me know when I am at 5 minutes?

The platform for the inauguration is almost complete. They are putting the finishing touches on it. I think America, with good reason, is excited with new hope, the idea of change. This is something we need in our country. We have obviously gotten bogged down in many areas. But I am afraid as I walked in the Senate Chamber today, I smelled the same stale air of good-ole'-boy, back-slapping, porkbarrel-lobbyist-driven politics.

We are here on a Sunday voting about something in the middle of a recession, very difficult economic times, many critical issues. But the majority has asked us to come back today to vote on a conglomeration of bills which no one has read. I know the chairman has said the committee has had it posted on the committee site for a few days, but as of Friday, if anyone in America wanted to go to the official Senate Web site or if the media wanted to find out what was in this bill, it was not available to them.

Most Members of the Senate--I suspect all except for maybe Tom Coburn and a few others--have not even read this bill. Last week, all of us came in here, and if we didn't take the oath of office ourselves, we listened to others take it many times. That oath didn't say that I was to be here to defend and protect what is right for South Carolina or get everything I could for Oklahoma or Utah or Alaska. It asks us to defend and protect the Constitution, which prescribes a very limited Government, very limited function for the Federal Government. All of our freedoms are dependent on that. Yet we are about the old business today of how can we put together a bill that will almost force a majority of the Senate to vote for it.

I know that different Members know a section of this bill, the part that is for their State, and that is good. We need to look out for our States. But we need to look out for our country. We have never been in a time in our country when we have had so much debt and so much spending and so much uncertainty. How can we come here today and say: I got what I want. Do you have what you want? Let's everybody get what they want, and let's ball it up and vote for a bill on which we have had hardly any debate, no amendments are allowed, 1,300 pages that no one has read, 160 bills put together that none of us knows what is in here, and Americans don't know what is in here. We have all been asked to miss church, leave our families, and come here and vote on this bill.

As we think about change in our country, I hope we can all think about how we can change this place because the Senate seems to be that last obstacle for everything we need to change, because we cannot continue to pass bills by putting together a little bit of what everybody wants and forgetting what is good for our country.

We have been doing this for years, and that is how this country has gotten into so much debt and put such pressure on our economy, taken so much money in taxes out of the private sector that the private sector no longer works.

As Senator Coburn has said, I know there are many provisions in this bill that represent years of work and will do a lot of good. But in these times, when people are out of work and we are looking around to how can we find the money we need to fix the problems, if we actually took the time to read what is in this bill, the majority of Americans, I can say this with confidence, would say this is not right. We should not have to pass all of these things that are not needed in order to get those things that are.

We know we don't need $5 million for botanical gardens in Hawaii and Florida. That may be a wonderful thing to do, but in these times, when we are asking Americans to sacrifice, when we are mortgaging the future of our children for what we are spending today, it doesn't make any sense to put that in a bill so we could get somebody's vote. We don't need $14 million for tropical research in Panama. Senator Coburn has mentioned other items. We don't need $12 million for the Orchid Museum in Maryland. These are all good things, but this bill is full of these things, and there is nobody who is going to be voting today who knows all the things that are in here.

If we continue to do business this way, the change we are hoping for, that we are going to be looking at a historical spectacle in a couple of weeks with the inauguration of a new President that I hope will represent a new generation of thought in America, I plead with my colleagues: I know this is going to sail through today. Everybody has come back to vote because there have been press releases on so many different items in this bill. But if we continue to go through this year where anyone who asks for an amendment or a few moments of debate is made a spectacle of, saying we are going to be here this weekend to vote if you don't give me unanimous consent to vote when I want to, you can't have an amendment, if my colleagues on my side continue to accept this situation, there is going to be no such thing as a Republican Party, and the country we love will continue to deteriorate.

I encourage my colleagues to think twice. You may have something that works for you in this bill, but this bill does not work for America.

Mr. President, I have friends and colleagues whom I respect deeply who are on all sides of this bailout issue. One of them just spoke. We all to want do what is right for America, and I believe those who have crafted this plan had pure and noble motives. They want this country to succeed. They want prosperity. I just do not believe that this bill gets the job done. In fact, in the long term, I am

convinced it will do more harm than good.

We are the Nation that has been called the bastion of freedom, and we are the Nation that has sacrificed blood and treasure to share that freedom with the world. We have fought communism, dictators, and tyranny. We have helped establish democracies and free-market economies across the globe. Because of America, millions of people are now electing their leaders, and millions have been taken out of poverty and enjoyed prosperity. Yet as the blood of our young men and women falls on foreign soil in the defense of freedom, our own Government appears to be leading our country into the pit of socialism.

We have seen this Government socialize our education system and make our schools among the worst in the world. We have seen this Government take over most of our health care system, making private insurance less and less affordable. We have seen this Government socialize our energy resources and bring our Nation to its knees by cutting the development of our own oil and natural gas supplies. And now we see this Congress yielding its constitutional obligations to a Federal bureaucracy, giving it the power to control virtually our entire financial system. Americans understand this and they are angry. They are our judge and our jury. They are watching what we are doing, and they will render their verdict based on our actions.

If we were honest with the American people and explained the failures that have led to this financial crisis, we might have the credibility to ask our citizens to allow us to borrow another $700 billion in their name to try to fix this problem. But we are not being honest. This problem was not created by our free enterprise system. It was created by us, the Congress and the Federal Government.

With good intentions, we made a mess of things. We wanted our economy to grow faster, so we allowed the Federal Reserve to create easy and cheap credit. But this allowed people to borrow and lend irresponsibly. We wanted to help the poor, so we forced banks to make loans to people who could not afford to pay them back. We wanted every American to own a home, so we created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to encourage and guarantee mortgages for more people who could not afford them. And all of these easy mortgages, many of which required no downpayment, inadvertently increased the prices of homes to unsustainable levels and created a massive oversupply of unsold homes. Now the value of homes has fallen, as has the value of the mortgages attached to them.

We allowed and even encouraged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to bundle up these risky subprime mortgages so they could be sold as securities to investors in America and all over the world. We guaranteed these institutions with the full faith and credit of the Government so their securities could be sold at above-market rates, allowing them to borrow huge amounts and fuel an explosion in subprime mortgage lending. We also allowed these mortgage giants to use their taxpayer-supported profits to spend over $200 million lobbying Congress to keep us quiet, even when we saw that our brainchild had become a financial Frankenstein.

All of our good intentions are now blowing up in our face, and we are asking the American people to bail us out. We must also plead guilty to other misguided policies that have made the situation even worse. Our foolish energy policies have created a huge financial burden on every American family and severely damaged our economy. By not opening our own energy supplies, we are now sending nearly $700 billion a year to other countries to buy oil. This has dried up capital at home and made us dependent on foreign countries for our credit.

We have also squandered and wasted hundreds of billions of hard- earned tax dollars on unnecessary and ineffective Federal programs and thousands of wasteful earmarks. Last week, we passed a bill with the highest rate of pork spending in history. While our talk of gloom and doom has heightened the financial panic here and around the world, and while we are asking Americans to bail us out, we are still spending money as if there is no tomorrow. Years of wasteful spending and bad policies have resulted in a huge national debt of nearly $10 trillion. Much of this debt is held by China and Saudi Arabia and other foreign countries that some now say are dictating our financial policies.

We know Americans are now the victim of our misguided good intentions, along with our free enterprise system that has been severely damaged and weakened. We know our bad policies have taken the accountability out of our markets by artificially insulating investors from normal risk. This has led to careless lending, careless investing, many bad decisions, and possible criminal activity on Wall Street. While many are blaming Americans and our free enterprise system for the crisis, we know the Government is the root cause of this crisis.

I believe this Congress should admit its guilt, prove we have learned from our mistakes, and correct the bad policies immediately that have caused these problems. We should insist the Federal Reserve end the easy money policy. We should repeal the laws that require our banks to make risky loans, and fix the accounting requirements that force banks to undervalue their assets. We should develop a plan to break up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and sell them to private investors who will run them as private companies.

We should reduce corporate and capital gains taxes to encourage capital formation and boost asset values. We should also repeal the section of Sarbanes-Oxley that has driven billions of dollars of capital overseas. And we should do even more to grow our economy and lessen our dependence on foreign countries. We should immediately pass a law that expedites the development of our oil and natural gas reserves to help relieve the burden of high prices and gas shortages for our families.

We should immediately adopt a freeze on nonsecurity discretionary spending and pass a moratorium on earmarks until we fix this wasteful and corrupting system. We should sacrifice our political pork as we ask taxpayers to sacrifice for our mistakes.

We have caused a terrible financial mess, and we must honestly tell the American people that whether we pass this huge bailout or not, there will likely be suffering and pain for our great country. But Americans and our free market economy are resilient. And with fewer misguided laws and less onerous regulations, we will get through this crisis, as Americans have many times before. But we must tell Americans the truth.

Congress says it was deregulation and capitalist greed that has run wild and undermined our financial system. Instead of reducing our role in the economy, we are trying to use this crisis to expand our power to control and manage the free enterprise system. We are here saying that our banks and mortgage companies have stopped lending money, that people can't get loans to buy cars, homes, or to run a business, and that our economy of the United States is on the verge of collapse.

We are telling people not to worry because we are going to rescue them with their own money. Congress is going to allow the Treasury Secretary to take $700 billion from taxpayers to buy bad loans and investments from anyone he chooses anywhere in the world. This, we say, will free up capital, get the credit markets working again, and put our economy back on track.

But this Congress refuses to change our Nation's monetary policy that created the cheap money and inflated the housing bubble. We refuse to change the accounting laws and regulations, even though they are making the problem worse. We refuse to lower capital gains and other taxes to attract capital and promote growth. We refuse to repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, even though it hasn't worked and it has cost our economy billions. And we refuse to expedite the development of America's energy resources, even though it would help every American and grow our economy.

None of these things are even on the table for discussion. We are telling the American people to hand over $700 billion or the world economy is going to collapse. This is why people are so upset. It is because Congress is being dishonest and arrogant. We are not being honest with them about how we got into this mess, and we are not

being honest with them about what we need to get out of it.

I strongly oppose this legislation. It takes our country in the wrong direction. It forces innocent taxpayers to bail out Government policies and Wall Street mistakes. It asks the American people to take a leap of faith and trust people who have consistently misled them.

I am deeply saddened by the tone of this debate. I am afraid many of the supporters of this bill have bullied people into supporting it, using fear. There may be good reason for fear, but I think most people will agree that some of the statements have been reckless and irresponsible. I hope I am wrong and this bill will truly solve the problem.

Let me say again that I know every one of my colleagues is doing what they believe is right for America. But based on what I know, I cannot in good conscience support it. I know the Senate is going to pass it tonight, and I can only hope the House will defeat it so we can pursue better alternatives.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to take a few minutes to honor Paul Weyrich, a dear friend, and a man who has spent the past 44 years fighting to protect the freedom and liberty enjoyed by Americans today. Throughout his adult life, Paul Weyrich has actively advocated for conservative policies based on our founding principles. From his days as a young college Republican and foot soldier in Barry Goldwater's 1964 Presidential campaign to his tireless efforts on and around Capitol Hill, Paul has been an instrumental force in the conservative movement of both yesterday and today. With courage and conviction, he has declared the importance of family values, religious freedom and limited government.

History will judge us not on our titles but on the lasting ideas we advance and institutions we create. I have the honor of chairing the Senate Steering Committee, which owes its creation in 1974 to an idea born in the mind of an enterprising staffer named Paul Weyrich. After helping to found the Senate Steering Committee, Paul went on to found the Heritage Foundation with Edwin J. Feulner in 1973. Paul also founded the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, CSFC, which later became the Free Congress Foundation. Paul now serves as chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation. And Paul's leadership, uniting religious conservatives of all faiths, has made the social

conservative movement one of the most effective movements in modern history.

Finally, I would also have to add that not only has Paul dedicated his life to serving the conservative movement, his wonderful family, and his Nation, but he has also dedicated his life to serving God as a leader in his church.

Senators and conservative leaders will come and go. Most of us will be barely remembered. But years from now when a new crop of conservatives is charged with advancing our cause, the sword they will wield will be the institutions left to them by previous generations. Many of them, from the numerous coalitions to the Steering Committee to the mighty Free Congress Foundation and the Heritage Foundation, owe their creation to Paul Weyrich.

I want to personally express my gratitude to Paul for his friendship and for all that he has done to move the conservative cause forward. Paul's hard work and dedication have inspired me and countless others in the fight to protect liberty and to secure America's future.

Mr. President, I do appreciate the leadership on this bill. I am particularly honored to serve with John Warner. He has been involved with so many great victories here, great leadership. He will certainly be missed.

I don't want to be the one to rain on the parade here because I certainly know there are some good improvements in this bill. Obviously, there is some disagreement whether this bill should go through. The Heritage Foundation calls it the biggest earmark in history. We do have to recognize that with this, on top of the over $20 billion in earmarks we passed last week, the American people have to be looking in on us and asking, What are they thinking?

If we adopt this cloture motion, we are setting up 30 hours of debate on what I am sure to many is an important bill, but this is in a time when we are talking about a financial crisis of proportions we have not seen since the Great Depression. We have instilled panic in the American people, and people are working around the clock to determine whether we should spend $700 billion to intrude into the private markets.

To take 30 hours during this time is to suggest to the American people it is business as usual here while we have a crisis and panic on the outside. I encourage my colleagues to let's put this off until later. Whether you support it or you don't, this is not the time to tell the American people one thing and to proceed as it it is business as usual. We should not be spending 30 hours of debate on an Amtrak bill, with the pork that has been added to it, at a time when we need to be addressing a crisis in America.

I thank the leadership for all their work on this bill.

I yield the floor.

(At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.) Mrs. BOXER Mr. President, due to the Jewish holidays, I am unable to attend the cloture vote today on the Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act.

However, I want to take this opportunity to express my support for this important piece of legislation that will have a significant impact on rail safety for my State of California and our Nation.

On September 12, a Union Pacific freight train collided head on with a Metrolink commuter train during rush hour in Chatsworth, CA. This tragedy claimed 25 lives, and injured 135 people, many of whom have sustained lifelong injuries.

This was a senseless tragedy that did not have to occur. Several safety measures could have been employed to help avert this tragedy, including the implementation of positive train control, PTC, systems on single tracks shared by commuter and freight rail.

The National Transportation Safety Board has called for the implementation of positive train control systems since the inception of its Most Wanted Transportation Safety Improvements list in 1990. In its most recent list, the NTSB states:

The board believes . . . positive train control is

particularly important in places where passenger trains and

freight trains both operate.

That is why I joined Senator Feinstein in introducing legislation after the accident that would require positive train control systems to be implemented by 2014 nationwide and in areas of high risk by 2012.

While I would have preferred that the Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act mandate positive train control in high risk areas by 2012, I am pleased this bill takes a step in the right direction by giving the Federal Railroad Administration, FRA, the authority to require the implementation of PTC sooner than 2015.

I also believe the Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act makes key advances to address other necessary safety improvements.

In addition to requiring the implementation of positive train control systems on rail lines used by passenger trains and trains carrying hazardous materials, the bill authorizes $250 million in grants for States and railroad carriers to aid in the deployment of PTC systems and other rail safety technology.

The legislation also revises work hours for train crews and signal employees by requiring an uninterrupted off-duty period of 10 hours between shifts, a total monthly cap of 276 hours for train crew work hours, and creates the first mandatory ``weekend'' for railroad employees by requiring consecutive days off.

The Senate has an opportunity to vote this week on the first comprehensive rail safety bill since 1994 and send a clear message to Americans that we have taken action to protect the public by making rail safety a priority.

In light of the recent rail tragedy in southern California, there is no excuse for failing to pass rail safety legislation.

This month, I hosted a Commerce Committee briefing on the rail accident. What became clear at this briefing was that the FRA has had a lax attitude toward rail safety oversight in recent years and that Congress must act now to assure the public's concerns and ensure the safety of commuter rail.

In the wake of the California rail tragedy, this is not the time to have a partisan debate over increased regulation of rail safety intended to protect passengers.

Commuter rail systems across the nation need resources and oversight by FRA to keep Americans safe.

As gas prices continue to rise and more and more families turn to public transit, we must take additional steps to ensure the safety of our commuters.

Our colleagues in the House have acted in support of this legislation. Now is the time for the Senate to act so that we can begin to take the steps necessary make our rail commuter and freight rail lines safer.

I look forward to continuing to work with my Senate colleagues on this important issue in the next Congress.

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