Floor Statements

I ask the Senator to modify his request to allow me to bring up my amendment No. 2755 and allow me 10 minutes to speak.

I will speak afterwards.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and amendment No. 2577 be called up for immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, one of the best ways we can help millions of American children access quality health coverage is to lower the cost of insurance for their families. Two-thirds of the uninsured have income at or below 200 percent of the Federal poverty level, and they cite a lack of affordability as a top reason for why they do not have coverage.

Our Tax Code already discriminates against Americans whose employers do not offer health benefits. I applaud a number of my colleagues, Senator Wyden, Senator Burr, and many others, who have talked on the floor extensively about how we can equalize the Tax Code and make health insurance available to everyone.

Another driver of rising health insurance prices is excessive State regulation. These State mandates raise the cost of insurance, which, in turn, increases the number of Americans who are priced out of the health insurance market.

Current law traps Americans by only allowing them to buy health insurance in the State where they live. This is not fair, and it makes very little sense in a time when we are trying to lower the cost of health insurance. My amendment, which we call the Health Care Choice Act, will help millions of American children by allowing their parents to shop for health insurance the same way they shop for many other products: online, by mail, over the phone or in consultation with an insurance agent in their hometown.

This amendment will empower consumers by giving them the ability to purchase an affordable health insurance policy with a full range of options. This amendment would reform the individual health insurance market by allowing individuals and families who reside in one State to buy a more affordable health insurance plan that is offered and licensed in another State. That is an important point.

We are not talking about insurance that is not licensed. Every State has regulatory processes, and insurance products would have to be sold under one of those regulatory regimes in one of our 50 States. Health insurance plans would be able to sell their policies to individuals and families in every State, as other companies do in the sale of a wide variety of goods and services in other sectors of our economy.

Under this amendment, consumers would no longer be limited to picking only those policies that meet their States' regulations and mandated benefits. Instead, they could examine the wide array of insurance policies qualified in States across the country.

Consumers could finally choose the policy that best suited their needs and

their budget without being tripped up by State boundaries. This approach would provide more choices and more freedom to all Americans. If they want to purchase a basic, low-cost policy without hundreds of benefit mandates that they do not need, they will be allowed to do it.

Likewise, those Americans who are interested in a particular benefit would be allowed to do that as well. The Health Care Choice amendment will help the uninsured find affordable health insurance while also providing every American with better insurance choices. This amendment harnesses the power of the marketplace to allow Americans to tailor their insurance choices to their individual needs. That is something we should all be able to support.

According to the Heritage Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank, this amendment will broaden and intensify competition across health care plans and medical providers, encourage a serious review of existing health care regulations in every State, and expand the choice of millions of Americans of more affordable health insurance policies.

Yes, I will yield.

You can't. Your State limits you. The way we have this set up federally, there is really no national market for health insurance.

I wish I knew. I think many years ago we didn't have a good regulatory structure for insurance. It was provided to the States. But clearly health insurance is an interstate commerce issue.

People move all over the place. Companies have offices all over the place. For us to continue to limit the purchase of health insurance to the State one lives in makes no sense.

I appreciate the question. I appreciate the support of the Senator.

In New Jersey, the average cost for a single person to buy health insurance is over $4,000 a year. Right across the river in Pennsylvania, the average is less than $1,500 a year. This amendment will give consumers the option of buying the health insurance that meets their needs and is right for them, even if it is right across the border. This amendment will result in significant cost savings.

A recent study found that consumers would save an estimated 77 percent in New Jersey, 22 percent in Washington, 21 percent in Oregon, and 16 percent in Maryland, if those States eliminated some of their mandates.

There will also be cost savings from cutting redtape because insurance plans won't have to go through 50 different certification processes.

By mandating benefits, State legislators have swelled the number of Americans without health insurance, making each health policy's coverage very different. They have added things such as acupuncture and marriage therapists and in vitro fertilization, things that may be important to some people but not to everyone. They should not be mandated to everyone.

Finally, this amendment is widely supported by Americans across the political spectrum. A poll conducted by Zogby International in September of 2004 found that 72 percent of respondents support allowing an individual in one State to buy health insurance from another State, if the insurance is State regulated and approved, as it would be under this amendment. The poll showed that only 12 percent of Democrats opposed it.

People understand intuitively that it doesn't matter. As the Senator from Mississippi just said, it doesn't make sense that we limit people to buying health insurance in only one State.

I encourage my colleagues to support the amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Are there particular States that you think the regulations are unacceptable for the people who live there?

My amendment does not change any of the State regulations. States continue to control their own regulations. It would allow the residents of the State, if they did not feel that the mandates were appropriate for their family needs, to look at another State for a policy where it was also regulated.

I believe we have had a second on a rollcall vote.

Parliamentary inquiry: I believe we had a second on the rollcall vote.

Mr. President, I object.

Mr. President, I object.

Mr. President, as I have talked about this amendment today, I have been surprised that several colleagues were not aware that Americans are not allowed to buy health insurance, except in the State where they live. Americans can buy anything from all over our country. Yet they are limited to where they can buy health insurance.

One way we can lower the cost of health insurance and create more choices for all Americans is to allow each and every American the opportunity to buy a health insurance policy in any State where those policies are certified. Some will say this is a race to the bottom. But I ask those critics, which State does not have the regulations that you approve of? Every State legislature has a set of regulations they have approved. So these products would be safe, but they create more choice.

I encourage my colleagues to support this amendment that would allow Americans to buy health insurance all over the country, to help create a national market and make health insurance more affordable for every American.

Will the Senator yield?

We don't change any of the State regulations. We only allow the people not to be regulated anymore. They get to buy insurance wherever they want to buy it. But regulations in the States don't change.

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

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for helping to start a very important national discussion about how we get every American insured. We can see in Washington, as we expand government health care, as we continue to expand unfunded liabilities into the future, and we add administrative costs, we are not covering people who need to be covered still.

When we look at our Tax Code and realize that there has been a lot of inequity there, that we are helping some buy health insurance but only if they work for the right employer, we need to look at being fair with our Tax Code and developing a policy that will help every American have a health policy they can own and afford and keep. We will be talking a lot more about health care later.

Mr. President, I wanted to talk about a couple of amendments that I have to the Homeland Security appropriations bill today. First, I would like to bring up the matter of security itself and how it affects our ports. Certainly, it is unfortunate that we have to be here once again to talk about threats to our homeland, but that is the reality we face today.

The amendment I am talking about now has been filed. It is amendment No. 2481. It will help us address some of the vulnerabilities and help secure the American people. This amendment, No. 2481, which I will bring up later today, prohibits the Department of Homeland Security from using any funds to remove items from the list of offenses that disqualifies individuals from receiving a transportation worker identification credential--what we call the TWIC card.

Mr. President, we can spend all the money in the world screening cargo and hiring security personnel, but if someone working in our seaports looks the other way when something dangerous enters our country, all of our spending and all of our work is for nothing. Serious felons are prime targets for those trying to smuggle a nuclear device or a chemical weapon into our country, and we must close that security gap.

My colleagues will no doubt recall that I have tried to address this issue two times in the past year, and both times my amendments received overwhelming support. Yet we have not yet seen a sufficient result from the effort to secure the American people's safety.

Last fall, the Senate accepted an amendment I offered to the SAFE Port Act to close this dangerous loophole by codifying the Department of Homeland Security's rules banning serious felons from gaining access to the secure areas of our Nation's ports. In effect, it would have prevented these felons from obtaining this TWIC card. It was a commonsense amendment, and I suspect that is why it was included in the Senate's bill, without any objection from any Senator here. Let me repeat. It was included in the SAFE Port Act without objection.

I also suspect that is why no Senator has come forward to this day to take credit for gutting the amendment when they went behind closed doors in a conference with the House. The amendment that left this body was a codification of disqualifying felonies, developed after an exhaustive process by the Department of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Departments of Justice and Transportation.

The offenses listed are very similar to those that have worked well to protect our airports and hazardous materials shipments for years.

Unfortunately, the provision that came back to this body after the conference committee was a list of offenses so short and rare that the TWIC restrictions offered by the so-called SAFE Port bill are essentially meaningless. The conference committee chose not to ban murderers, rapists, arsonists, smugglers, kidnappers, and hostage- takers from accessing the most secure areas of our Nation's ports. In short, they chose to override the expressed will of the Senate and make America less secure.

I trusted that Senators chosen to sit in conference with the House would act to protect items included by the Senate; especially those items with unanimous or near-unanimous consent in

this body that are critical to our homeland security.

But that trust was betrayed last fall, anonymously, behind closed doors.

It is not only those backroom deals that bring me here to offer this amendment today, but also the episode witnessed out in the open, on the Senate floor, during consideration of the 9/11 Commission bill in February of this year.

At that time, I again offered an amendment to codify the Department of Homeland Security's final rule on TWIC disqualifying offenses. But this time, I requested a rollcall vote, since the conferees clearly gave no regard to the unanimous voice of the Senate last fall.

This should have been another noncontroversial passage. However, knowing they would be forced to actually go on record this time around, a separate side-by-side amendment preferred by Democrats and, no doubt, their allies in the labor unions, was introduced. Its language was less restrictive, allowing the current or future DHS Secretary to modify--in other words, remove--disqualifying offenses on the list. It passed 58- 37.

My amendment was voted on immediately after, and passed 94-2. An article in the Roll Call newspaper from July 9 recounted the episode:

In February, 13 Democrats and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-

Vt.) voted against an amendment offered by Senator Jim DeMint

(R-S.C.) to prevent people convicted of terrorism or other

felonies from getting access to secure areas of American

seaports. But before the vote was over, they all switched to

``yea.''

What happened was Democrat leadership made it clear to their caucus that their version, allowing removal of felonies from the list, would replace my language in conference. My Democrat colleagues switched to supporting my version because they knew it was irrelevant; that it would be ``taken care of'' behind closed doors, just like last time. Again, the final vote in favor of my amendment was 94-2.

And it is not just the Senate that overwhelmingly supports my language. The House of Representatives, just last week, voted 354-66 to instruct conferees to include my language in the conference report.

The conference report for the 9/11 Commission bill is beginning to circulate, and I understand that the conference committee has now denied the will of the Senate and the House, by including language allowing the removal of serious felonies from the list of TWIC interim disqualifying offenses.

The language has been watered down to reopen loopholes allowing smugglers, arsonists, kidnappers, rapists, extortionists, and people convicted of bribery, money laundering, and hostage taking to obtain access to secure areas in our ports.

We have a chance now on this appropriations bill to ensure that whatever is done to weaken these provisions on the 9/11 Commission bill, that it will not have the effect of weakening our port security this year. We must not allow our constituents to be betrayed again by deals made in secret.

That is why I am offering this amendment. Again, it prohibits the Department of Homeland Security from using any funds we are appropriating in this Act to remove items from the list of offenses disqualifying individuals from receiving transportation worker identification credentials, also known as TWIC cards. I will ask my colleagues later in the day to support this amendment, and hopefully we will have a vote on it.

Mr. President, how much time is remaining on the minority side?

I would also like to address my amendment No. 2482.

This amendment would prevent the Government from shutting down when regular appropriations bills are not enacted. It would do so by automatically triggering a continuing resolution that funds agencies at current levels for up to 1 year. The amendment would begin automatic funding on the first day of a lapse in appropriations and it would end on the day the regular appropriations bill becomes law or the last day of the fiscal year, whichever comes first.

This would eliminate the must-pass nature associated with regular appropriations bills which often pressures lawmakers into accepting spending bills with objectionable spending.

The Democratic leader said at the beginning of the year that he would get all of the appropriations bills done before the end of the fiscal year, but there are only 2 months left and we have not completed a single bill. This means we are going to eventually be faced with having to pass a bad bill or alowing parts of the Government to shut down. I certainly don't support that and I know my colleagues do not either. This amendment will prevent that kind of train wreck from ever happening.

The President supports this amendment as I believe any President would because it prevents their administration from being shut down. His fiscal year 2008 budget says:

In the 22 out of the past 25 years in which Congress has

not finished appropriation bills by the October 1st deadline,

it has funded the Government through ``continuing

resolutions'' (CRs), which provide temporary funding

authority for Government activities, usually at current

levels, until the final appropriations bills are signed into

law.

If Congress does not pass a CR or the President does not

sign it, the Federal Government must shut down. Important

Government functions should not be held hostage simply

because of an impasse over temporary funding bills. There

should be a back-up plan to avoid the threat of a Government

shutdown, although the expectation is that appropriations

bills still would pass on time as the law requires. Under the

Administration's proposal, if an appropriations bill is not

signed by October 1 of the new fiscal year, funding would be

automatically provided at the lower of the President's Budget

or the prior year's level.

My amendment would create a safety net that would avoid crisis situations that often pressure lawmakers into supporting spending bills they would not otherwise support. This is a commonsense proposal and I encourage my colleagues to support it.

Reserving the right to object, will the Senator modify her request to allow me 2 minutes before we go to the vote?

Mr. President, in fairness, as I have seen Republican amendments taken down with rule XVI, I raise a point of order that the pending amendment constitutes legislation on an appropriations bill and violates rule XVI.

I object.

I appeal the ruling of the Chair and ask for the yeas and nays.

Will the Senator yield?

I thank the leader. We were rushed, and I didn't have a chance to explain what I was trying to do. As I was listening to the debate of the last couple of days, I have seen rule XVI used against Lindsey Graham's bill. I have seen other Republican bills, such as David Vitter's, taken down because it violated rule XVI, legislating on an appropriations bill. Yet when I heard Senator Dorgan's amendment, I realized there was a double standard. We were being inconsistent. It was OK to legislate on a Democratic bill but not a Republican bill. My intent was to make a point, to raise a point of order that Senator Dorgan's amendment does violate rule XVI. But when the Chair ruled, I appealed the ruling of the Chair, which the Parliamentarian said she did not hear. But what I wanted to vote on was the ruling of the Chair to establish are we going to use rule XVI against Republicans but not Democrats; are we going or are we not going to have a fair debate?

Obviously, our preference would be not to be legislating on appropriations bills, but if we are going to do it for some, we should do it for all.

In this case, I say to the leader, my hope had been to vote on an appeal of the ruling of the Chair, which I had asked for, but was not recognized apparently, before we went into a quorum call.

I had asked for the yeas and nays on appealing the ruling of the Chair because that was my intent, to question whether we should be legislating on appropriations bills. That was more of a vote on rule XVI than it was the Dorgan amendment. That is what I was here for, to ask for a vote on appealing the ruling of the Chair,

which was my language: ``I appeal the ruling of the Chair and ask for the yeas and nays.''

Mr. President, in the interest of comity, I will agree, but may I bring up two amendments that have already been filed while I am here?

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2481.

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

Mr. President, I had an opportunity this morning to speak briefly about this amendment, and in the interest of time I will be brief again.

This amendment is about the security of our ports. Two times within the last year this body passed a bill that would prohibit access to convicted felons of secure areas of our ports. We passed it once in the SAFE Port Act, and that amendment was diluted when it came back. Also, we will find in the 9/11 Commission bill that will come back--we had passed it and put it in as part of that bill--it has been once again diluted.

This needs to be a serious consideration. We can spend billions and billions of dollars on screening and all kinds of equipment, but if one person in our ports turns away from something being shipped in and does not do the proper inspection and lets something in, we could be in a lot of trouble as a country.

So this amendment simply does not allow the Secretary to use funds to eliminate any of the felonies listed in the amendment. Please keep in mind, this list of felonies is one that has been adopted by the Homeland Security agency. It is very similar to the lists we use in our airports, which have protected us for a number of years.

It is very important we recognize that people who have been susceptible to criminal activity can be susceptible again. This is not that we do not want to give people a second chance, but second chances should not be at the expense of the security of this country.

So this amendment would disallow the use of funds to water down and eliminate any of the felonies listed in the Department of Homeland Security's list of those who are denied access to what we call the TWIC cards, which are the transportation worker identification cards.

So with that, Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I would like the yeas and nays.

I have asked for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, over the last year this body has taken a strong bipartisan stand to make our ports more secure. After the Department of Homeland Security established regulations to bar felons from the secure areas of our ports, the Senate passed an amendment by 94 votes to codify that regulation into law.

These regulations are very similar to the ones we use at our airports. Unfortunately, our strong stand on the Senate floor was diluted in conference with the House.

My amendment would prohibit the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security from using any funds appropriated in this bill from being used to delete or modify any of the lists of felonies in the regulation.

I would encourage all of my colleagues to be consistent and vote again yes for this bill.

Am I correct in that I have another minute to do the same thing again?

I can summarize. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank the Senator for demanding order.

This is a very important amendment. There is no need to spend billions of dollars keeping our ports secure if we are going to allow serious felons to work there. We all know that. We voted already, 94 to 2, for this exact same provision, only in an appropriations bill. In order not to attract rule XVI, this is just to prohibit the use of funds in eliminating or deleting or changing any of the list of felonies for 1 year.

I encourage my colleagues to vote yes.

Mr. President, I know we are all tired and we have agreed to cut this short. But this 9/11 Commission bill is very important and a part of it that we have talked about tonight and actually for the last year is port security. All of us agreed once again tonight that we should not allow convicted, serious felons to have access to secure areas of our ports. Unfortunately this amendment tonight was on an appropriations bill, and it restricted the use of funds for 1 year. We have passed another time as part of the Safe Ports Act--94 to 2--to do this same thing: to take the Department of Homeland Security regulations they passed after careful study and codify it into law. But the 9/11 conference bill has come back to us and, once again, gutted that provision.

The reason it has been gutted is this: Once we pass this conference report the way it is, and it allows the Secretary to waive, to change, or to leave certain felonies that are listed, then it opens the whole regulatory process to lawsuit and challenge on a continuous basis.

We have voted in the open tonight to stop that from happening, to stop convicted felons from working in secure areas of our ports. My motion tonight is very simple. It is to recommit this bill to committee to restore the amendment in the exact words that we have passed on the floor and to avoid the watering down and the gutting of a very important port security measure.

The Senate has voted 93 to 1 tonight. The House voted last week on the same measure 354 to 66.

What the 9/11 Commission bill does is allow the Secretary to eliminate or change listed felonies, allowing TWIC cards, these secure area cards, to possibly be given to those who have been convicted of smuggling, arson, kidnapping, rape, extortion, bribery, money laundering, hostage taking, unlawful use of a firearm, drug dealing, immigration violations, assault with intent to kill, robbery, fraudulent entry to a seaport or racketeering.

These are serious crimes. Although there is often talk of giving people a second chance, that second chance should not come at the expense of the security of our Nation.

Mr. President, I send this motion to the desk, which they have, and ask for its consideration.

Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to recommit this bill. It is something that can be done quickly without delaying the final passage of this conference report, but it restores a very important provision we all voted on. I hope we can all support this motion to recommit.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.

I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, I am offering a very simple amendment today which I hope will get overwhelming bipartisan support. My amendment simply instructs the Government Accountability Office to complete a study regarding the employment of postsecondary education graduates.

As my colleagues know, we live in a global economy that is creating intense competitive pressure on our workforce. It is more important than ever that our Nation's students, employers, and policymakers have access to good information about the effectiveness of our higher education system as it relates to employment and job placement.

One of my favorite books, one I know many of my colleagues have read, is ``The World Is Flat'' by Thomas Friedman. According to Friedman, the convergence of advanced technology, the removal of economic and political obstructions, and the rapid introduction of millions of young professionals into the global economy have dramatically flattened the economic playing field. Friedman believes these changes are creating opportunities for people to tap their full potential, boost their prosperity, and live out their dreams. He believes that Americans with the knowledge, skills, and adaptability to compete in this newly flattened world can look forward to a bright future, while those without these skills will be left behind.

If our higher education system is going to equip our students with the skills they need to compete, we need to have good information on graduate job performance so other students can pick the best schools and the most promising degrees.

My amendment would instruct the GAO to study the feasibility of collecting information on the employment of students who complete a postsecondary education program. It would also instruct the GAO to provide Congress with recommendations on several important questions, including whether the current State programs that bring education and employment functions together can be replicated in other States; whether there is a value to collecting additional information about the employment of postsecondary graduates; the most promising ways of obtaining and disseminating this information; if a Web site is used, whether the Web site should be run by a Government agency or contracted out to an independent organization; whether a voluntary information system would work, both from the graduates' and employers' perspective; how the information could be used in practical ways; whether the requests for such information are duplicative of information already being collected or whether the National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey could be amended to collect such information. These are all important issues we must consider as we seek to expand information on the employment experiences of our Nation's college graduates.

Before I conclude, I wish to explain how powerful this information could be in making our Nation more competitive in the global economy. If students could see how graduates from specific schools and with specific degrees have performed in the workplace, they could make better choices of alternative colleges and universities. If employers could see how graduates of specific schools and with specific degrees performed, they could make better hiring decisions. If colleges and universities could see exactly how they are performing in equipping students for the workplace, they could make adjustments to better compete with other higher education institutions. Finally, if lawmakers could see exactly how our education system is performing, it would help us all make better policy decisions in this important area.

I thank the Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Enzi, for his interest in this issue and for the assistance he and his staff have provided me. I look forward to working with him and the Senator from Massachusetts to find ways to increase the availability of information we have that connects higher education and employment.

I yield the floor.

Yes. A voice vote will be fine.

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, as our Nation's college graduates head out into the workforce, many of them will be faced with the question of whether they should join a union. Some will get to make that decision by secret ballot, while others will not.

My amendment is very simple. It guarantees that every American worker will get a secret ballot election when deciding whether to join a union. This is especially important because there are some in this body who want to take this right away and conduct union elections by card check. This approach would open workers to harassment, intimidation, and other forms of union pressure. We need safeguards to allow employees to freely choose without intimidation and coercion from union bosses.

Recent polls have shown that 87 percent of American people agree that every worker should have the right to a secret ballot election. I urge my colleagues to protect workers' rights and vote for this amendment.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry, please: Will the Chair confirm how many votes are required on a motion to waive the Budget Act?

How many is that?

I thank the Chair for confirming that the rules require 60 votes on this matter, and I understand that controversial matters require 60 votes in the Senate.

I move to waive the applicable provisions of the Congressional Budget Act with respect to my amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2362.

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

Mr. President, I may have an amendment that we can actually all agree on tonight.

As many of my colleagues know, the infant adoption tax credit is a powerful tool that is making it possible for thousands of American families to open their homes to children in need. I know everyone here agrees with me that there is nothing more important than for a child to have someone to call a mom and a dad. There is nothing more important to the success of education than a good family.

Unfortunately, the current adoption tax credit is scheduled to sunset in 2010. If we don't make this tax relief permanent, adoption taxes will go up and many American families will not be able to afford the expenses associated with adoption, which are now between $10,000 and $25,000. I wish to thank all the people in this Chamber who have done so much for the cause of adoption, especially Senator Landrieu, Senator Craig, and Senator Bunning, whose amendment we are actually bringing up today.

Mr. President, I urge all my colleagues to vote for this amendment.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator for her comments as well. We all know adoption is an important issue. I wish the situation were such in the Senate that we could bring this up at a different time. As we look forward to between now and the rest of this year and, frankly, through 2008, it is going to be very difficult to get this amendment up. We know the process of getting back to the Finance Committee and then back as part of this bill will not bring this bill down. I encourage my colleagues to look at the greater good, the issue here. There is no reason we can't create some predictability with the adoption tax credit so we can continue to grow the number of adoptions in this country.

For that reason, I raise a point of order that the pending second- degree amendment is not germane.

Madam President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive the applicable portion of the Budget Act, and ask for the yeas and nays on amendment No. 2362.

Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the Broadcast Freedom Act, which I offered along with my friends from Minnesota and South Dakota, Senators Coleman and Thune. Some would say that the fairness doctrine is the perfect example of a regulation whose time has past. Others would say it is a regulation that was never necessary to begin with. In any event, it is certainly not a regulation that we need today. I think it is worth a brief recap of history of American mass media to show how utterly silly this doctrine would be if reinstated in today's environment.

In 1949, the year the fairness doctrine was created, there were 51 television stations in the United States. In 1985, when the doctrine was repealed by the FCC, there were 1,200. Today, there are nearly 1,800 television stations. The radio industry tells a similar story. In 1949, there were about 2,500 radio stations in the United States. In 1985, the number had grown to 9,800. Today, there are almost 14,000. There was significant growth of these numbers between 1985 and today. We need to understand why it is happening.

You see, it was in 1985 that the FCC said the following when it repealed the fairness doctrine:

We believe that the interest of the public and viewpoint

diversity is fully served by the multiplicity of voices in

the marketplace today.

That was when we had far fewer radio and television stations. That statement was made over 20 years ago. The number of voices in the market was plentiful then. In the last two decades, those numbers have grown even larger--by 50 percent in television and over 40 percent in radio.

Keep in mind, too, that there was no Internet in 1985, and there was no satellite radio offering hundreds of channels nationwide. There was no digital television or radio allowing for multicasting. There were not even wireless phones, much less ones that could go on line and even carry video. Of course, nobody had yet heard of the podcast, blogging, or YouTube. All of this has now changed. It is easy to see that if the fairness doctrine was unnecessary in 1985 because of the multiplicity of voices, it is downright laughable today.

I also wish to speak to the fact that this doctrine, if reinstated, would have the opposite effect that its opponents tell us they seek. They say they want both sides of important issues presented with equal time. Well, what happens if nobody is available or willing to offer an opposing viewpoint? The answer, clearly, is that the discussion will not take place at all. And all the bureaucracy that is required to keep track of what someone said and what has to be responded to would cause most of these stations not to deal with important issues at all.

Commercial radio and television are businesses. They are on the air only as long as someone is willing to pay for advertising. Advertising is only attractive when someone is watching or listening. People watch or listen to things they find worth their time. If a radio or television station is prevented from airing programming on public issues or is forced to carry programming that may not suit their audience, they will have a very difficult time retaining listeners, advertisers, and ultimately their businesses. It is not in the public interest for the Government to force content on or prevent content from reaching the American people. The FCC recognized that in 1985, and we should all recognize it today.

Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to support the Broadcast Freedom Act, which prevents the FCC, now or in the future, from reinstating the arcane and damaging so-called fairness doctrine.

Mr. President, I would like to speak now about the ongoing efforts in the Senate to block the earmark transparency rules.

It has now been 180 days since they were unanimously adopted by the Senate. Yet they still have not been formally enacted. Even worse, the majority wants to take them behind closed doors, where a conference committee can kill them in secret. They tried to kill these reforms on the Senate floor but failed. Now they are falling back to their plan B, which is to gut them in conference.

That is not how we should write a bill about openness, honesty, and transparency. I hope my friends on the other side will change their minds. These are Senate rules I am talking about, and there is no reason why we need to negotiate with the House. The House already has their earmark transparency rules. My friends on the other side should stop blocking earmark reform and stop trying to change these rules in secret so we can move on.

Americans have seen the ethical problems associated with earmarks. They have watched what happened to Duke Cunningham, and they have seen a number of Members of Congress forfeit their seats on appropriations committees due to conflicts of interest. Americans understand that lobbying and ethics reform will not be complete--in fact, it would be meaningless--if we don't do something to shine the light on earmarks. Let me repeat this because I think it is very important. Americans do understand that ethics reform is not complete without meaningful earmark reform.

Many of the reforms in the ethics bill address what people outside of Congress can do, but earmark reform addresses what we here in Congress can do. That is the difference. Americans want, more than anything else, Congress to be restrained and open about what we do. They want us to reform the way we spend their money and shut down the secret congressional favor factory. Nothing would do more to restore America's faith in their Government than enacting reforms that ensure their elected officials are not going to use their ability to spend Federal dollars to enrich their friends and supporters.

Mr. President, I wish to draw the Senate's attention to an article that ran this morning in The Hill newspaper about earmarks--earmarks that have not been properly disclosed. The majority likes to say they are complying with the rules, but that doesn't appear to be the case. This story says:

As a proposal to require full disclosure of all Senate

earmarks languishes, Senators have not claimed responsibility

for at least $7.5 billion worth of projects approved by the

Appropriations Committee, according to an analysis by a

budget watchdog group.

Obviously, the piecemeal approach being used by the Democrats is not working. We cannot allow appropriators and other committees to police themselves. They are not doing it now, and they never will. We need a single enforcement rule for the whole Senate that doesn't keep loopholes for secret earmarking. Let me repeat: $7.5 billion in earmarks already this year are undisclosed. This is business as usual in the Senate.

I wish to point out that the Defense authorization bill we are debating now violates the rules. It discloses the earmark sponsors, but the committee failed to post on the Internet the letters from these sponsors certifying that they do not have a financial interest in the earmark they have requested.

Before I conclude, I want to update the Senate on some progress we are making on earmark reform.

First, we have added several cosponsors to S. Res. 123, which is the earmark disclosure rule. They are Senators Ensign, Enzi, Martinez, Coburn, McCaskill, and Cornyn. I thank them for their support. Some of these Senators request earmarks, while others do not. But they all support earmark disclosure, and they all support this rule as it is written right now.

We have also added a couple cosponsors to S. Res. 260, the rule that would stop the adding of earmarks in secret conference committees. They are Senators Allard and Cornyn. I thank them for their support. A select few Members of Congress and their staffs should not be adding hidden earmarks to bills in the middle of the night when no one has the opportunity to review them and debate their merits. That is very bad practice, and it must end.

There was also an important editorial last Tuesday in the Roll Call newspaper that supports our efforts to protect earmark reform. I will read a couple of excerpts:

Senate Democratic leaders are resisting [Senator DeMint's]

move and are insisting on going to conference on the ethics

bill, although they have yet to explain why already agreed-

upon earmark rules can't be adopted immediately.

We don't oppose earmarks in principle. . . . But as events

last year amply demonstrated, earmarks can be a source of

rotten corruption. Full disclosure is crucial, and the Senate

ought to institute it forthwith.

We think that on the merits Senate leaders should accede to

DeMint so disclosure of spending requests is not delayed

until President Bush signs an ethics reform measure that

still has not even gone to a House-Senate conference.

Mr. President, the blogging community is watching what we are doing here. Countless bloggers, including The Corner on National Review Online, Instapundit.com, MichelleMalkin.com, the Sunlight Foundation, Porkbusters.com, RedState.com, and many others, have weighed in on the need for the Senate to implement these earmark transparency rules now. I thank them for paying attention to this debate and working to hold us all accountable.

Finally, we have received letters of support from several important taxpayer watchdog groups, including Americans for Prosperity and Citizens Against Government Waste. These groups know how important earmark reform is, and they believe it should be implemented immediately.

These rules need to be adopted immediately. They should not be allowed to go to conference with the House where they can be changed at will. They need to be enacted now before a single appropriations bill comes to the Senate floor.

It has been 180 days since they were unanimously adopted by the Senate. I have asked consent to enact these rules four times, but the other side has blocked them each and every time. Today needs to be the day that this obstruction stops. Today needs to be the day we end the earmark business as usual in the Senate.

With that, I will now propound a unanimous-consent request that would enact the earmark transparency rules and request that we go to conference with the House on the total ethics bill.

I ask unanimous consent that the Rules Committee be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 123 and S. Res. 260, the earmark disclosure resolutions, all en bloc; that the resolutions be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

I further ask that the Senate then proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 2316, the House-passed ethics and lobbying reform bill; that all after the enacting clause be stricken and the text of S. 1, as passed by the Senate, be inserted in lieu thereof; that the bill be read the third time, passed, and the Senate insist on its amendment, request a conference with the House, and the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees at a ratio of 4 to 3.

Mr. President, obviously, I am very disappointed that we continue to obstruct ethics reform and earmark reform.

With that, I yield the floor.

On behalf of the Senator from Oklahoma, I object.

Mr. President, you would never know it from our debate the last couple of weeks, but we are here to talk about the Defense authorization bill, this rather large bill that is at all of our desks. Much broader than just any particular conversation about Iraq, or any particular battle, this is to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2008, for military activities and the Department of Defense, for military construction, for defense activities and the Department of Energy, to proscribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and other purposes.

One of the most important bills that we debate and pass, this includes money for aircraft, missiles, weapons systems, vehicles, all of the things we need to protect and secure our country--a very important bill.

I appreciate that the minority a number of times this evening has said: We need to go ahead and vote, particularly on the amendment in front of us, the Levin amendment. And while the normal procedure is to get agreements between the sides on when we vote, the minority filed cloture on this bill. There is really no need to delay the cloture vote any further.

Thank you. Bad habits die hard. Thank you for correcting me.

But we do need to move ahead with the cloture vote. There is no need for the theatrics through the evening on this. And since the majority has filed for a cloture vote, I ask unanimous

consent that the cloture vote for the pending Levin amendment occur at 8:30 this evening.

I ask unanimous consent that the cloture vote on the pending Levin amendment occur at 8:30 this evening.

Mr. President, it is clear that the cloture motion as has been filed by the majority is clearly not what they want to happen this evening. So it does seem to be that this is all about a political circus to keep us here all night for some political theater to try to embarrass the President and in the process demoralize our troops and embolden our enemies.

Instead of talking about substantive amendments to the Defense authorization bill, what I hear the majority speaking of is message amendments, to try to message their political theater.

The fact is, this is about winning elections. The majority has given many quotes to the media. One senior Democratic aide on Fox News, when asked about staying up all night, said: Is this a publicity stunt? Yes.

Senator Reid was quoted as saying at a press conference: I don't know if we will get 60 votes, but I tell you one thing, there are 21 Republicans up for reelection this time.

Senator Reid was quoted in the Washington Post as: We are going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war. Senator Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding.

So while the majority is putting us through political theater in hopes of picking up Senate seats in 2008, our National Intelligence Estimate, which just came out, is very clear in their key judgment. It says: We judge that the U.S. homeland will face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next 3 years.

The main threat comes from Islamic terrorist groups themselves, especially al-Qaida driven by their undiminished intent to attack the homeland and a continued effort by these terrorists groups to adopt and improve their capabilities.

The report is clear that we have a broad threat, a global threat. It is not just about Iraq. The whole Defense authorization is very important. We should not be sidelining the discussion of important issues of national defense and security with political theater this evening.

But it is important, as some of my colleagues have done, to kind of review what we have been through the last few months. Certainly, all of us are concerned about the progress in Iraq, the safety of our troops. We all want to finish our job with honor, with victory, to bring our troops home.

We have had a lot of debate this year. But recently when the President submitted his war spending bill, emergency supplemental bill, to fund our troops, we had a lot of debate. My Democratic colleagues had a lot of different ideas. The President vetoed one version. After that, we came to an agreement. The Democrats would force the President to agree that after we sent General Petraeus there--and that was a unanimous thing, to send General Petraeus to Baghdad to secure the area, we sent thousands of new troops. The Democrats agreed on that funding, but they requested that we have a report from General Petraeus in the middle of September to find out what progress we were making. We all agreed to that. But after we all agreed and had the signing at the White House, that is now not good enough for my Democratic colleagues.

As we heard one political strategist say about the Democrats, any day they are not talking about Iraq is a bad day. They want to make political hay out of this difficult situation that our country faces.

We have a new plan almost every day of how we are going to withdraw and retreat, a strategy du jour in the Senate. We will be talking about a lot of those new strategies as we go through the evening.

But as has already been mentioned by some of my Republican colleagues who talk a lot with the troops who come home, almost without exception they believe in our mission, and they believe they can win. What we are asking tonight of the majority is to let them win. Let Petraeus do what we sent him to do. Give him the time that we gave him--until September--to demonstrate that we can secure Baghdad, at least reasonably, in a way that the Government can function and the economy can rebound and the country can begin to establish itself as a free and independent democracy.

What we are seeing again is what we have seen over the past years. My Democratic colleagues, while well intended, are very often weak on defense and national security on almost every measure fighting for security. We would not even give our homeland security the same tools to fight terrorists as we give our law enforcement to fight drug dealers. Certainly, terrorists are as much a threat to us.

Some of my Democratic colleagues have even said this is a bumper sticker campaign, not a real war. I think we have to begin this whole process by recognizing, as our national intelligence estimate tells us time and again, this is a real threat, a continuing threat, one that we need to be prepared for in many ways, and we need to develop more of a consensus in the Senate of how we are going to fight it.

Our troops do believe in what they are doing. They believe it is a right cause, and they believe they can win. We need to let them win. We shouldn't continue to talk through the night and talk day after day about ``we have lost'' or ``we can't win'' or ``we shouldn't be there'' or ``we are not making progress,'' when those who are there doing the fighting are telling us quite a different story.

Mr. President, I wish to address at least one amendment to the Defense authorization bill that I think is an example of what we need to be doing to make our military more efficient. There are a lot of things we do as a Congress that force our military to do things maybe for political reasons that don't help us militarily. One is related to aircraft retirement.

I have an amendment that I hope we can get to, amendment No. 2302, that is related to aircraft retirement. Some call it flyable storage. I was amazed to find out that Congress has required the Air Force to maintain in flying condition permanently grounded aircraft at the cost of millions of dollars a year. Many of these older aircraft, because of structural integrity, safety concerns, will never fly again. Yet we require them to be maintained in operational status for that last flight to the junkyard.

Between 2000 and 2007, retirement restrictions cost the Air Force $893 million, and almost $143 million has gone to modify aircraft the Air Force would like to retire. This year, the Air Force will spend $8.1 million to maintain the aircraft in flyable storage, $8.1 million to maintain aircraft that will never be used again. This will happen year after year.

There has been some political pressure to keep this because some maintenance happens in different States where various Senators and Congressmen want that to continue.

My amendment will just give the Air Force the flexibility to retire aircraft that needs to be retired. Most Americans would think that is just basic common sense, and I hope we can agree on that in the Senate.

I hope we can get back to the debate on this Defense authorization bill. I am very sorry that the majority will not let us move to the cloture vote on the Levin amendment, which is pending. But if we need to talk through the night, we will continue to talk through the night.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for 15 minutes in morning business.

Mr. President, I modify my request that I have 15 minutes and my colleague have 15 minutes as well.

Thank you, Mr. President. I thank my colleague for yielding.

Mr. President, I first thank my colleague from Oklahoma for bringing to the floor this important issue of free speech in America, and the bill that would help to keep the FCC from imposing gag rules on talk radio and other media. But that is not the purpose of my trip to the floor today.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the ongoing effort in the Senate to block earmark reform. It has now been 175 days--over 6 months--since we passed our earmark transparency rules. Yet they still have not been enacted.

As my colleagues know, we passed two important earmark transparency rules back in January that, first, require public disclosure of earmarks and, second, prohibit Congress from adding secret earmarks behind closed doors in conference committees where they cannot be openly debated or voted on. Both of these rules were unanimously supported by the Senate. But now--over 6 months later--Democrats are insisting that we change or drop these rules behind closed doors.

I asked the majority leader before July 4 if we could agree to protect these earmark reforms in conference, but he said no. I am not asking for an ironclad agreement. He said they would change in conference. I asked him what changes he wanted to make to these important earmark rules that had passed unanimously, but so far we do not have a response.

In fact, in CongressDailyAM, they put it quite clearly when they said:

[Democrats] could not guarantee that DeMint's earmark

language would survive negotiations with the House.

I would only correct one thing about that quote. This was actually Nancy Pelosi's language, modified slightly by Senator Durbin, and voted on unanimously in the Senate. They are hardly my earmark requirements.

Well, there you have it. After stalling and blocking the enactment of these important ethics reforms for over 6 months, and after coming up with every excuse in the book to put them off, the Democrat leadership is now beginning to admit they plan to kill earmark reform.

It is now day 175 of business as usual in the Senate, and the party that said it would clean up the culture of corruption in Washington is already embracing it.

The majority leader and the majority whip made several statements on this issue on the Senate floor the other night, and I want to address them.

First, the majority leader said that my efforts to protect earmark reform were a ``ploy,'' a ``diversion,'' and a ``smokescreen'' to stop the ethics bill.

This accusation is completely false, and these two Senators are probably the only two people in America who believe it. I voted for the lobbying and ethics bill, and I even supported going to conference. In fact, I came to the floor on Monday and asked for consent to adopt the earmark transparency rules and to go to conference with the House on the ethics bill. But the other side objected because they only want to move forward on the ethics bill if they can gut the earmark reforms in secret.

The truth is, the only thing stopping the lobbying and ethics bill from moving forward is the Democratic leadership and their desire to kill meaningful earmark reform behind closed doors. They may want to hide their opposition to transparency by accusing me of having a secret plan to kill the bill, but Americans know the truth. They know folks in Congress love earmarks and will do anything to keep this process secret and easy for Members to designate money to their pet projects. It is clear, the only thing stopping this bill is obstruction to earmark reform.

Next, the majority leader said it was a ``fantasy'' for anyone to think they would kill earmark reform behind closed doors. Again, I am not sure how these things can be said with a straight face. Several Senators on the other side, including the majority leader himself, have publicly said they intend to change these rules behind closed doors, but they won't say how they are going to change them. If this is all a fantasy, then why won't they tell us what they plan to do with these reforms? This is supposed to be a bill about transparency, but the other side wants to rewrite it in secret.

But setting aside for a moment the fact that they have publicly admitted they plan to change these rules, we need to realize it is earmark reform we are talking about here. The culture of earmarking runs very deep in this town, and it is no fantasy that there are many in this body on both sides of the aisle who want to preserve that culture.

Next, the majority leader said Democrats are already complying with the rule and therefore we should trust them. The truth is the earmark disclosure the Democrats have given us is spotty at best. In fact, the Congressional Research Service says only 4 committees out of 18 have implemented even an informal disclosure rule. Even worse, it says these four informal rules cannot be enforced on the floor of the Senate.

The Defense bill we are debating right now is a perfect example. The committee put out a partial list of the earmark sponsors, but it has failed to make public the letters from these earmark sponsors certifying that they have no financial interest in the projects they have requested. This is a recipe for more Duke Cunninghams. It is a recipe for corruption.

Congressional Quarterly put it quite clearly when it stated:

The earmarks--listed in the defense bill for the first time

ever--would not have been

published at all had most Democrats on the Senate Armed

Services Committee gotten their way.

But the Democratic leadership wants us to trust them anyway. They want us to trust the people writing the earmarks to follow the rules without any accountability. It won't work, and the Defense bill is a perfect example.

It is also important to note that the Democrats have done nothing to address the practice of adding secret earmarks in closed door conference committees. As my colleagues know, one of our earmark transparency rules prohibits this awful practice. The Democrats in the House have been trying to get away with adding their earmarks in secret without any oversight, and now Senate Democrats are blocking a rule to stop it on our side.

Everyone knows the game around here. Everyone knows if you want a questionable earmark, you wait until the bill gets to conference and then you slip it in where it cannot be seen, where it cannot be debated, and where it cannot be stopped. Nothing has been done to stop this practice. The majority leader may believe Democrats have been transparent enough, but it is clear they have not. That is why we need a rule that will hold us all accountable.

Next, the majority leader said I am preventing the Congress from ``restoring the faith'' of the American people in their Government. Congress will never restore faith with the American people until it addresses earmarks. As long as Members of Congress can direct Federal tax dollars to the special interest of their choosing with little or no accountability, we will see more bribes, more indictments, more prison sentences, and more Duke Cunninghams. Ethics reform is not complete without earmark reform. Americans know what I am talking about. That is why we need to get this right.

Next, Senator Durbin said if I would only look at the bills, I would see the Democrats have fully complied with the proposed rules. The truth is if Senator Durbin would look at the earmark disclosure rule-- which he wrote--he would know it requires Senators to certify they have no conflict of interest in the earmark, and that these certifications will be made public on the committee Web site. If he would do some checking and go to the Armed Services Committee Web site, he would see there are no letters there for all the earmarks that were added to the Defense authorization bill we are currently debating. That is one example of how the majority is skirting the rules and it is one example of why they don't want a formal rule that would stop them from pulling these tricks.

But setting aside their failures to be fully transparent, if Senator Durbin believes they are in full compliance with the earmark rules, then why is he so opposed to enacting them? What is he afraid of? If they are already complying with these rules, why not formalize them so they can be actually enforced?

The truth is they are not fully complying with the rules and they have no plan to. They have been earmarking at will for years and they don't want anything that would make them more open or transparent.

The majority leader also said my desire to protect earmark reform is a ``guise'' to kill the ethics bill. Again, this is completely false. For me, this is about reforming the way we spend American tax dollars. That is my motive. I am one who believes that the culture of earmarks is what drives the culture of corruption, and I know many others agree. The only ``guise'' here is the guise the Democrats are putting up to hide their opposition to earmark reform. They keep saying they want to go to conference on the ethics bill, but they refuse to tell us what they plan to do with the earmark reform once they get there. Instead, they say ``trust us.''

Democrats keep saying they want an ethics bill, but the truth is they don't want earmark reform. They have called it a ``petty issue'' and a ``trifle.'' It is all a guise. We all know what this debate is about-- it is about earmarks and whether we are going to have business as usual in the Senate.

The other side wants us to change the way people outside of Congress behave--such as the lobbyists who bring their issues to us--but they completely oppose changing anything on earmarks, because this limits their own ability and it forces them to be accountable. That is the real guise here.

The majority leader appears to be so opposed to meaningful earmark reform that he is willing to cancel the August break in order to pressure me to allow them to gut these reforms in secret. From my perspective, cancelling the August break to debate earmark reform would not be a bad thing. We need to debate this, because there are many here in the Senate who still don't get it. They still don't understand that Americans are sick and tired of business as usual in Washington.

The majority leader also said the other night that he may try to force this down our throats, as he tried to force the immigration bill down our throats by filing a number of cloture motions. The other side says what I am doing to force them to protect earmark reform has never been done before and would set a bad precedent. They actually think people will believe that nobody has ever objected to going to conference, that no one has ever objected to sending a bill to a back room where it can be changed at will.

What I am doing is exactly what Senator Reid did for years when he was in the minority. According to the Congressional Research Service, the Senator who has blocked the most attempts to go to conference over the past three Congresses is Senator Harry Reid. On several occasions he has demanded specific guarantees or concessions in exchange for allowing a bill to go to conference.

Senator Reid knew then what he seems to have forgotten now: that a conference committee is not an entitlement. A bill is not entitled to go to conference where it can be changed behind closed doors. It is a luxury the majority leadership has used, but he is not entitled to it. There are a number of ways we can reconcile the differences between the two bills. The Senator from Nevada knew this before, but now that he is the majority leader, he seems to have forgotten.

All of this can be easily solved in a bipartisan way. All my friends on the other side need to do is accept these rules which were unanimously supported by the Senate back in January. And if for some reason they believe these rules need technical changes, then they should tell us what they are going to do to change them so we can work it out in the open instead of behind closed doors.

I hope my friends on the other side will change their minds. These are Senate rules that I am talking about, and there is no reason why we need to be negotiating with the House on them. All my friends on the other side have to do is stop blocking earmark reform and stop trying to change the rules in secret, and we can move on.

Americans have seen the ethical problems associated with earmarks. They have watched what happened to Duke Cunningham and they have seen a number of Members of Congress forfeit their seats on appropriations committees due to conflicts of interest. Americans understand that lobbying and ethics reform will not be complete if we don't do anything to shine the light on the process.

Mr. President, could I ask how much time I have remaining?

I am more long-winded than I thought here.

Let me conclude, although we will need to continue this debate.

My goal is to get the lobby and ethics reform bill to conference. But a key part of that bill has always been earmark reform. The House has passed earmark reform as a House rule. We have passed the rule on the Senate side, but we have not adopted it. There is no reason to send a Senate rule that governs how we do business to a conference with the House. I wish to see this body accept this as a rule that has been unanimously voted on so we can move on to conference with lobby and ethics reform.

I am not holding up ethics reform or lobbying reform; I am asking this body to do what we have already voted on, and that is to accept the rule that we will be transparent about earmarks and how we spend American tax dollars.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, before I begin my statement, I commend Senator Wyden on his vision for health care and his passion for helping to equalize our Tax Code in a way that would help every American buy private health insurance.