Floor Statements

Mr. President, today marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of this Nation's finest leaders. Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809 destined for greatness but with humble beginnings. It is remarkable and inspiring to study the life of Abraham Lincoln. Today is a fitting time to reflect on some of the lessons we can continue to learn from him, especially in light of the challenges we are facing today.

President Lincoln's rise to leadership was full of trials and setbacks, most of which would have deterred a lesser man but not Abraham Lincoln. Throughout his lifetime, he was the picture of incomparable character, willing to put his ego aside for the greater good, committed to freedom for the generations, and a true believer that he was not superior to anyone.

These traits may seem like words that are easy to put together, but to live your life by them is truly exemplary. It is especially remarkable in the face of adversity. It is said that trials don't build character, they simply reveal it. Well, President Lincoln served in the highest office of our country at one of the most tumultuous times in our history. His character was revealed time and time again. Americans are still proud of his leadership and his vision.

During Lincoln's Presidency, our Nation faced the gravest of challenges. We were at war amongst ourselves, and the consequences of our leadership would go down in history. Either America would cease to exist, or we would survive, heal, and one day be stronger than ever. Abraham Lincoln made it possible for us to be here today as the United States of America.

Today, we face many overwhelming challenges. They are significant, but they are not as dire as the Civil War. We can work together to get out of this economic downturn.

In 1862, Lincoln declared:

The bottom is out of the tub.

It sort of feels that way today. All you have to do is talk to people to realize the numbness that is permeating our country. Those who have lost jobs or homes are facing a painful reality. Most Americans are not sure what to do. If you are thinking about buying a home or a car, you think many times about it because of the uncertainty of our economy today. We have to do something here that will boost the confidence of Americans. They have to become consumers again if we want to get this economy going. That means dealing with the underlying housing crisis that set off the bottom falling out of this ``tub.''

The other issue we have to remember is that the money we spend today will have to be paid for by our children and our grandchildren. So each dollar that goes into this stimulus bill needs to be spent efficiently, and it needs to be far reaching. Each dollar needs to go toward creating jobs and stimulating growth. That way, we can recover from this deepening recession and continue to grow.

Unfortunately, this so-called stimulus bill is not even close to ideal legislation. It will bury us in debt, reduce our creditworthiness as a nation, and only minimally stimulate the economy. It just doesn't speak to the opportunity Abraham Lincoln knew was possible in this country.

He once said:

There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us.

Twenty-five years ago, I was a hired laborer.

Americans have a unique gift in this country. That gift is opportunity--the opportunity to grow, change course, and improve one's circumstances.

One of the great freedoms we have in America is the freedom to fail. Abraham Lincoln knew a lot about that freedom. He failed many times, but he also knew about the gift of opportunity, and he took advantage of it. We have seen the resilience and ingenuity of the American people throughout history. Our job is to do what we can to let that promise grow and not get in the way.

I believe the stimulus bill we will vote on soon could have been vastly improved if it had been written from the beginning with Republicans and Democrats as part of the process. That is a lesson we should take from President Lincoln. The political process can be messy and petty. We should put our egos aside, as Lincoln did when he brought his greatest rivals into his Cabinet. We should focus on the end goal being the good of our country, not groups to whom each of us is beholden.

We should understand there are no guarantees when it comes to the future of our country. We always have to work to protect what has been defended for more than 200 years. Lincoln reminded us that ``it is not merely for today, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children's children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all of our lives.'' If we ignore the consequences of our actions today, then we take for granted what is to come for the future of our great country.

President Lincoln was a visionary. On this special day, we cannot lose sight of the tremendous lessons of his lifetime. It is never too late for us to join together as Americans to create a better and a stronger future.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask to speak as if in morning business and have the time counted against our side.

Mr. President, I wish to speak briefly. I know my friend from Oklahoma is going to come back and speak, but I wish to make a couple comments. I know there has been a deal reached on the stimulus bill. I wish to make a couple comments about that.

We have not received the bill. There are rumors going around about this, that, and the other. One of the details that seems to be coming out is that the housing portion of the stimulus bill has been cut down dramatically.

I had an alternative to the stimulus bill that focused on housing, to a great degree, and also targeted some tax cuts to families and small businesses to create jobs. The reason we focused a great deal of it on the housing problem was because the housing problem is the cancer that has dragged the rest of the economy down. It has spread throughout the rest of the economy.

As any person in the medical field understands that if you just treat the symptoms and not the underlying cause, the patient gets sicker and sicker. Unfortunately, the President is talking about fixing housing but certainly not at this point.

It is regrettable that we didn't take a big portion of the money that is being spent in this stimulus bill and actually fix housing. It is very disturbing because we are going to spend $800 billion and who knows how much more in order to fix the housing problem. We are running up debt after debt on our children. This is their credit card we are running up, and they are going to have to pay higher taxes into the future.

Once we get the bill, we are going to have to take a close look over the next day or two and go through it. It is very disappointing, it appears, that this stimulus bill is going to do very little, if anything, to fix the housing problem in the United States. My home State of Nevada leads the country in foreclosures. We understand what other States are starting to go through or just recently have been going through, and how severely it affects the economy. It is unfortunate that the stimulus bill that is supposed to fix the economy is not addressing the No. 1 problem we have in the United States.

Mr. President, it seems as though reason and common sense are once again being tossed aside. I am referring to the recent remarks by President Obama when he singled out one of the most premiere cities in the world, Las Vegas.

When it comes to convenience and affordability, very few, if any, places in the world can compare to Las Vegas. It is home to more than 140,000 hotel rooms, millions of feet of meeting space, and a central geographic location that makes it easy for employees from around the country to come to meet.

It is no wonder so many businesses decide to have their conventions in Las Vegas. It is more than convenience, though. Las Vegas offers a value that is unique. For instance, the average hotel room today in Las Vegas is $119 a night. That is why I find it disturbing that Las Vegas is being singled out.

It is more than that. Take Goldman Sachs as one example. First, it goes without saying that all companies that are receiving TARP funds must be responsible and not waste precious taxpayer dollars. Because of recent criticism, Goldman Sachs announced that it was moving a 3-day conference from Las Vegas to San Francisco. To do this though, they had to pay a $600,000 cancellation fee, re-route flights, and re-book the same trip in another city, which is even more expensive than Las Vegas.

I ask, is that common sense? Let me repeat this. They had to pay more than a half million dollars in cancellation fees, re-route flights, and re-book the same trip in another, more expensive city. For what? So that Goldman can promote a false sense that it was spending the taxpayers' money more wisely. This is ridiculous. This is what the American people are sick of.

Is San Francisco a more affordable city than Las Vegas? Actually, it is much more expensive. I will shoot this straight. What Goldman Sachs did was purely a phony public relations gimmick, but it is not fooling anyone. The conference they booked in Las Vegas is still taking place. Now it is just much more expensive. This makes no sense at all. So let's cut to the chase.

Wherever these meetings take place, business takes place. Let me give you an example. The Consumer Electronics Show, known as CES: This is an annual business meeting in Las Vegas. CES attendees come to Las Vegas from over 140 countries around the world. They can conduct a year's worth of business

in one location, minimizing travel and saving energy in the process.

During the Consumer Electrons Show, approximately 1.7 million meetings are conducted. Transactions are ordered, commerce is buzzing, and the entrepreneurial spirit of business flourishes. This is economic activity that extends beyond whichever city serves as the host.

It benefits all of us when an opportunity for business growth and productivity takes place. So let's not lose sight of this fact, especially now. Business meetings are an important tool. Let's make sure we do not leave common sense off the agenda.

I yield myself 5 minutes from the time of Senator Chambliss.

Madam President, the President last week talked about the need for speed. He equated spending with stimulus. He even said: That is the point, spending is stimulus.

If you are going to spend a trillion dollars, you better spend it right. Ask the country of Japan, during the 1990s, when they had six different stimulus bills. Stimulus was not equal to spending in their country because they spent the money incorrectly. They had many examples of bridges to nowhere and roads to nowhere. It isn't just a question of spending money and spending it fast; it is a question of how you spend it. You better spend it correctly.

One of the huge problems we have in this bill is that it does very little for housing. When the bill first came out, it did almost nothing for housing. There has been a little bit of change to it since then, and that is good.

I brought forward a proposal earlier that I believed--and many believed--would have done a great deal to solve the housing problem.

We all know it is the housing problem that has dragged the rest of the economy down. It is the housing sector that has effected the rest of the economy. During the early part of this decade, housing was booming, and it actually helped the rest of the economy. But it was a false bubble, and all bubbles burst, whether it was the dot.com bubble, this housing bubble or any of the bubbles from the past. They always burst.

This bubble, by the way, was caused by the Government, and that is why we as the Government have a responsibility to fix it. But the speed with which this bill is coming forward--a trillion-plus dollars--means we are going to make some major mistakes. You cannot do it this quickly and do it right.

The President has just put together a new economic team, including some very talented people as his economic advisers. I suggest we start over. I suggest we combine the administrations economic team with Democrats from the House and Senate in order to come up with the best ideas and put forward a bill that will actually fix the economy. When we put together a bill such as this one, a bill so complex and so large and it is done behind closed doors with one party, you are going to have problems. That is why you have seen so much objection to this bill from our side of the aisle.

In the House of Representatives, this bill was jammed through. It was $819 billion. Not a single Republican voted for it, and 11 Democrats voted against this bill. The only thing bipartisan in the House version of this bill was the opposition. Now we come over to the Senate, and Republicans are excluded from the process of writing this bill. It has been an open process on amendments, but almost all of the amendments have been rejected.

We should sit down and start over so we get this economic package right the first time. As I have said before, you do not get do-overs when you are talking about a trillion dollars. The budget deficit going into this year was slated to be $1.2 trillion. We are talking about over $800 billion in this bill. The Senate bill is actually more than the House bill. I think the Senate bill is $827 billion. When you count interest, it is actually $1.2 trillion.

So, Madam President, when you start adding up this debt we are passing on to our children--and, as the President has said, in the next 4 or 5 years, we are looking at annual budget deficits of over $1 trillion--this is going to lead to higher taxes, it is going to lead to severe inflation. As we are running up this debt, we have to sell Treasury bills to be able to pay for the debt. If other countries in the world decide they are not going to buy our Treasury bills, this country's economy will completely collapse. It will be worse than the Great Depression.

We have to get this right. We cannot get it right with outlandish spending. We need to shrink the size of the package and target spending so it is effective, so it is actually not building bridges to nowhere but rather bridges that are needed, roads that are needed and mass transit that is actually needed.

This bill includes money for electric golf carts.

Madam President, let's start over and get this thing right.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we have an important bill in front of us. We all know that. The reason is because our economy is struggling. A lot of people have talked about the jobs that have been lost, the unemployment rate rising, and people losing their homes, and the fear of losing their homes and jobs.

No State has been more severely affected in this last 12 months than my own home State of Nevada. We lead the country in foreclosures. Our unemployment rate is over 9 percent now. Many people thought that Nevada was almost recession proof, because we had been in an unprecedented economic expansion. We led the Nation for 15, 16 straight years in not only job creation on a percentage basis, but also population growth. It was kind of an economic miracle in our State. Our housing prices were skyrocketing for the last decade. When that bubble burst, we were one of the four States that was affected most severely.

There were a lot of causes, we all know, to the reason that the prices went up so rapidly. A big part of that, I argue strongly, is Government intervention. We, as the Government, said let's increase the percentage of home ownership in the United States. Through the Community Reinvestment Act, we said: Banks, a certain percent of your money will have to go to subprime loans. And, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we want you to get into this subprime market. Then what happened, to exacerbate the situation, was Wall Street got involved in all of this and made it all worse. We took out the person who was loaning the money and severed the direct relationship between the lender and the borrower. These mortgages were sold overseas and around the world. There was no accountability, and we saw a huge runup. While the runup was going on, everybody was happy. Jobs were being created in the housing market. It was helping the economy throughout the early part of the decade. Everybody was happy, and a lot of wealth was being created in their homes. We didn't put in a strong regulator back in 2004, when people recognized that Fannie and Freddie would cause a major problem in our housing market. We didn't put a strong regulator in then. It was blocked on party lines in the Banking Committee in the Senate. Republicans tried to pass a bill and it was blocked by Senate Democrats. Having that strong regulator in over Fannie and Freddie could have stopped this whole thing from happening. We all know--and all economists agree, and there is no doubt about this.

Unfortunately, that cancer that was the housing crisis has now spread to the rest of the economy and our financial markets.

The question now is not only what caused it, but what do we do about it. How do we actually bring ourselves out of this particular problem?

I am going to spend a couple of minutes talking about history. I think it is important we learn from history. Not all of the things we can learn from history are a perfect model, but they give us a lot of guidance. We have a couple

of examples. Obviously, the Great Depression in our own country is a great place to go back and look at what happened. We can look at what led us into the Great Depression and what things worked to get us out of the Great Depression and what didn't.

First of all, during the 1920s--they called it the Roaring Twenties. Why did they call it the Roaring Twenties? It is because the economy grew. Unemployment was almost nonexistent in the United States because President Coolidge at the time recognized that low tax rates encouraged the private sector to invest, and this would be a good thing. People got very excited. Jobs were created. Everybody was doing great. But the stock market became overvalued. It was a kind of frenzy, similar to today's housing crisis or the dot-com bubble during the 1990s. Just like the dot-com bubble that burst during the 1990s, the stock market burst in 1929. That was a correction. That was a correction in the stock market. That was not the start of the Great Depression. What led to the Great Depression then were the policies implemented by a Republican President by the name of Hoover. What did he do? He increased taxes, tremendously increased Government spending, especially on infrastructure projects, and, worst of all, instituted what are known as the Smoot-Hawley laws, which were protectionist laws. It stopped trade around the world. Unemployment rates over the next couple of years kept going up and up, eventually up to as high as 25 percent in this country, way higher than they are today.

Then we had the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He saw that the answer to this was to have massive Government spending. So he put into place what we all know now as the New Deal. People argue today that the reason the Great Depression continued on was because Roosevelt would spend money and back off, spend money and back off, spend money and back off. They didn't feel as though they did enough spending at the time, nor did they keep the spending going.

Going into 1937, there were some other mistakes. Once again, taxes were raised. There was a depression within a depression in 1937.

We have to ask ourselves this fundamental question: Even if you believe the New Deal was helpful, do we really want to take 5, 7, 10 years to get out of the economic problems we have today? The New Deal never brought us out of the Depression. Never did. The only thing that brought us out of the Depression was World War II.

By the way, World War II was not the answer to our economic problems. There were severe sacrifices made by Americans all across the country. Everybody was working on the war effort. But there were tremendous sacrifices that were made--rationing of food, rationing of gasoline, rationing of any kind of consumer product that we take for granted today. And the economy was very tough after World War II. As a matter of fact, the stock market in the United States never recovered. After that crash in 1929, it never recovered until the mid-1950s. Do any of us here want to wait 25 years for our stock market to recover and to start back up the path beyond what it was just a year ago?

I want to discuss not only parts of the stimulus bill but also what we have done in the last several years.

First, this chart shows the percentage of Federal debt that is held by the public as a percentage of GDP--this is the most accurate way to measure the debt, as a percentage of our economy.

The early 2000s started growing, started growing, but then in the last several years debt went up dramatically. The deficits and the addition to the debt were going up much faster than this chart looks, but not as a percentage of our economy because our economy was growing very fast.

People have argued that the money was spent on tax cuts. The evidence is very clear on this point. The tax rate cuts, just like under Ronald Reagan and just like under John F. Kennedy and just like under Calvin Coolidge, actually led to more tax revenues because they stimulated economic investment, they stimulated people to work harder, to invest and create jobs, and therefore we ended up with more tax revenue. The problem with this last decade under President Bush is that we spent too much money.

By the way, who is responsible for this spending? Has anybody read the Constitution? Congress holds the purse strings. The President cannot spend the money that we do not authorize him to spend. In this body and the other body across the Capitol, we spent too much money. There were only about 20 of us who kept voting no on these massive spending bills. There were about 20 Republicans. The rest of the Republicans and Democrats sent the last President bill after bill that added to Government spending that added to the size of our Government.

This chart shows total Government spending as a percentage of GDP. We can see when President Bush took over it kept rising, kept rising, kept rising. Now we can see what is going to happen with spending as a percentage of GDP. This is not sustainable.

The spending bill that is before us today is part of the reason for that line. We understand that Secretary Geithner is going to bring us at least another $500 billion, the third round of TARP. We still have to pass an omnibus spending bill.

The next chart shows some of these items. We have to pass an omnibus bill. There is going to be a war supplemental bill that is going to be passed this year. Some people are saying this is just the first stimulus bill we are going to pass because the arguments I have heard coming from the economists who believe that Government spending is the answer just believe that during the Depression, there was not enough Government spending, so we have to do a massive amount of it.

We are talking $350 billion for the first part of the TARP, and $39 billion was just added with the Children's Health Insurance Program. By the way, this number, $39 billion, is way low because they are saying this program is going to stop in a couple years. We know that is not going to happen. The truer cost is well over $100 billion. The second round of TARP is another $350 billion. This stimulus package, when we count interest that has to be paid over the next 10 years, is $1.2 trillion. The omnibus bill is estimated around $400 billion; $70 billion for a war supplemental; TARP III is estimated at $550 billion.

When do we stop? When are we going to be responsible to future generations? Do you know what this all adds up to? Higher taxes. It is impossible not to have higher taxes in the future, and in the very near future.

The President came out and said that in the next several years, we are going to have over $1 trillion deficits for the next 4 or 5 years. That is not sustainable. Right now, the only reason we have not had a complete economic collapse is because other countries around the world--they are called sovereign wealth funds--have been buying our Treasury bills. It is smart for them to do that because if they don't, their economy collapses too. What happens if political pressure mounts? What happens if all these countries say: We are not sure U.S. Treasurys are good to buy anymore. They are a little too risky now. If that happens, our economy goes off a cliff and there is no way to save it. So we have to be concerned about the amount of spending that is in this bill. It has to be responsible.

I believe in infrastructure spending if it is done and it is done right. But what we shouldn't do is just spend money for the sake of spending money.

The President said the other night that spending equals stimulus. That was basically what he was saying. Not all spending is stimulus. Certain spending is good stimulus, but not all spending is stimulus.

We also have to be careful about the size of the spending because we cannot just keep printing money like this. Not only will we have to have higher taxes in the future, but it causes inflation. It is a basic economic principle. It is just like a family who lives beyond their means or a business that lives beyond its means or a State government. At a certain point, living beyond your means catches up with you. So we are going to hurt--and according to the CBO, they said there will be some short-term stimulus in this bill, we all know, there will be stimulus, but the long-term problems we are creating with this stimulus package can be very severe.

Let me point out a couple of things. First, before I point out a couple things in this spending bill, I want to talk about Japan for just a little bit.

Japan, during the 1990s, had severe economic problems. They said: We are going to pass stimulus bills. As a matter of fact, during the nineties, I think they passed six stimulus bills, if I am correct.

This is Japan on this chart. These blue bars are government spending as, once again, a percentage of their economy. In the late eighties, nineties, it kept going up, up, and up. This red line is unemployment in Japan. As they kept spending, if government spending was the answer, we would see a reduction in unemployment, wouldn't we? That isn't what happened in Japan. As a matter of fact, the 1990s in Japan is called the lost decade. They had bad monetary policy, and there was bad monetary policy during the Depression as well.

Hopefully, we are not doing that today. But it isn't just Government spending that is going to get us out of this mess we are in today.

This compromise plan before us--first of all, nobody has seen it. It is not available yet. I think the only copy is at the desk because it was not in a form you could copy it. None of us have seen this bill. None of our staff have on either side of this aisle. Nobody has seen this complete substitute before us today. It is a $1.2 trillion bill when we add in the interest.

If you assume the optimistic projections of 4 million jobs, this is about $300,000 per job that is either created or saved. It used to be just created, now it is created or saved--$300,000 per job. If the low end of the projections are correct--you always have a high end and low end; I was being optimistic--at the low end, about 1.3 million jobs, the price tag per job is over $600,000. Don't you think we can do better than between $300,000 and $600,000 per job? Common sense, don't we think we can spend the money and create more jobs for that much money?

We have heard about the pork in this bill, and Senator Coburn had an amendment yesterday--I am glad it was adopted--that would take out some of the pork in this bill. The unfortunate thing is, what they did was they asked for a wish list of Governors and mayors across the country. These kinds of items could still be allowed: $6.1 million for corporate jet hangars in Fayetteville, AR; $8 million for citywide bicycle facilities in Miami, FL; $15 million for pedestrian ways in St. Louis, MO; $47 million for new bike paths throughout the country.

I cycle. I like bike paths. I love to see them out there. I ride my bike almost every weekend--not this weekend because we are stuck in DC. But I love to cycle. This is not a time to build these kinds of things. If we are going to invest in infrastructure, invest in infrastructure that actually makes the economy more efficient, such as roads that are needed.

By the way, in Japan, when I put up that chart before, a lot of that spending they did ended up being bridges and roads to nowhere. If you do not target this money correctly--and the only way to do that is to take our time. When we rush through bills, we are going to see bridges to nowhere, we are going to see bicycle paths that people feel good about riding, but it is not going to help the economy. We need to take our time. If we rush through this bill, I believe we are going to have some very serious regrets in the years to come. We are going to have inflation. We are going to have to have higher taxes, and in the long run, we are going to do a huge amount of damage to our economy.

Let's get together. Let's sit down, not as Republicans and Democrats but as Americans. That is the way the process should have been done in the first place. I have told the folks on the other side that if they want a bipartisan bill, they need to start in a bipartisan fashion. The President said he wanted a bipartisan process. You don't bring a Democratic bill from the House of Representatives, jam it through here, send it over to the House with no Republican input in either the House or the Senate, and then just allow amendments to happen but not at the crafting of the bill.

I believe this stimulus package could have been put together with Republicans and Democrats and probably had 80 votes in the Senate because neither side has all the right ideas. Neither side does. Our side doesn't have all the right ideas; their side doesn't have all the right ideas. So to put the best ideas together, we should have sat down together, taken our time, and gotten this thing right.

Mr. President, $1 trillion is not something where you can afford to blow it all. If you don't get $1 trillion right, you have made a massive mistake that you may not be able to recover from. That is why we need to slow down and do what is right for this country.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, through the Chair, I ask the chairman of the Finance Committee if I would be allowed to ask unanimous consent, not for a time agreement, but for an agreement on the order of speakers on our side, going back and forth with the majority, so that they would have an idea of the order.

Mr. President, without a doubt, the collapse of the housing market is at the root of the economic crisis we are facing in our country. Every single American is being affected by this.

A few short years ago in Nevada, housing prices were through the roof. If you were in the market for a home, you had to act quickly and you had to plan on being in a bidding war. For a while, it seemed there were more realtors and mortgage brokers than blackjack dealers in Las Vegas.

The housing storm blew through many communities in our country at high force, and the aftermath has been brutal. If you do not live in an area with a lot of foreclosures, let me describe the situation. You drive home from work to find one home--or maybe several homes--in your neighborhood with a dead lawn. That is the first sign. Then the ``For Sale, Bank Owned'' sign pops up on the lawn. But the most painful part is when you find out how much the foreclosed home down the street from yours is going for. It is part of the reason consumer confidence is at such an all-time low. When you find out that the biggest investment you personally have, the property that gives you leverage in this economy, is worth less than what you bought it for, it creates a sense of panic.

Much worse off are the people who have lost jobs, have been unable to pay their mortgages, and soon found themselves losing their homes. Nevada leads the Nation in foreclosure rates, so these stories are reality for too many of my constituents and too many other families across the United States.

If we don't figure out a way to get this housing market back on track, nothing we do in the name of economic stimulus will matter. It has to be our number one priority. If we can fix the problem--and the problem is housing--then we have a chance to fix our economy.

To do that, we absolutely must increase home sales and decrease foreclosures. It sounds like an impossible task in light of the current economic climate, but if we do not succeed, our economy will continue to crumble under the weight of the failed housing market. We really do not have a choice.

I have a plan that will jump-start the housing market and breathe life back into our economy. It is very simple. A lower mortgage rate will provide more than 40 million households in the United States who are creditworthy or who have a Fannie Mae- or Freddie Mac-backed loan with what amounts to a $400-a-month tax cut for the next 30 years.

Here is how it works. American homeowners would be able to refinance their current mortgages or finance the purchase of a home for somewhere between 4 and 4.5 percent. Homeowners who hear about this proposal immediately begin to do the math. You can literally see their eyes light up as they realize how this will benefit them. Imagine saving $400 per month on a

fixed-rate, 30-year mortgage. This will save $150,000 over the total term of their mortgage. That $400 a month will make a huge difference in the budgets of most families.

By the way, think of the stimulus effect. If you send a one-time check of $500 to somebody, they will be unsure whether that is going to be there in the future. Remember, we did this last year and found out what happened: people spent only 12 cents out of every dollar. It did not help the economy that much. It just added to the deficit. Instead, people saved the money because they saw tougher economic times ahead. They paid down some of their credit card debt, but they didn't go out there and spend it in the economy to generate economic activity. So just think of what a family could do with the kind of savings my amendment would provide. That is almost $5,000 per year that you could count on for the next 30 years. You could build that into your budget and you could increase your economic activity with that.

Now, banks would issue these Government-backed lower fixed-rate mortgages on primary residences, and they would be available between now and the end of 2010. This new lower rate would be based on the historic spread between the rates of the 10-year Treasury bill and the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. We have limited the cost of the program to $300 billion. But the economists who have looked at this think the cost will be dramatically less. If you multiply this out across the country, it is over $6 trillion in savings for the American people over the next 30 years. So the Government invests $300 billion, and Americans save, over the next 30 years, $6 trillion. That is a pretty good return on our investment, I would say.

It is also time to expand the current tax credit for first-time home buyers. We need to encourage every potential creditworthy homebuyer to jump into the market. We should expand the existing credit to cover all homebuyers and cover all properties, not just vacant or foreclosed properties. That is why I strongly supported Senator Isakson's proposal to increase the credit to $15,000. Well, since our proposal is a substitute, we have actually incorporated the Isakson proposal for up to $15,000 for those who will buy a home. They will be able to claim that against their taxes either in one year or take 50 percent each year for the next 2 years.

We need to have people staying in their homes. The onslaught of foreclosed properties in Nevada and across the country is a significant hurdle to economic recovery. They bring down property values and drag down consumer confidence.

Privately securitized mortgages are at the core of the problem. These are mortgages that were originated without a guarantee from one of the government-sponsored enterprises. They account for more than 50 percent of the foreclosure starts despite accounting for only about 15 percent of all the outstanding mortgages. So my bill, the Fix Housing First Act, includes temporary incentives for privately held, securitized mortgages to be modified. That would allow homeowners facing foreclosure to pay lower monthly payments and to stay in their homes. It also provides temporary legal protection for those who do loan workouts in good faith. These two steps eliminate the economic and legal barriers that are currently preventing many homeowners from modifying their loans. This will have a huge impact on families who may be slightly underwater on their loans but who are anxious to stay in their homes.

Unfortunately, more than 860,000 properties were repossessed last year alone. That means that nearly 1 million families lost their homes. It was easy for a while to blame irresponsible homeowners for taking out risky loans and gaming the system, but the cancer caused by the housing crisis has spread to every aspect of our economy--the financial markets, employment, the auto industry, retailers, State budgets, and local budgets. The list goes on and on.

If we want to heal our economy, we have to start first with housing. My proposal--by the way, I call it ``my'' proposal just because I happen to be the lead author. Many people have worked to put this proposal together. Our proposal will fix housing. It is the most comprehensive of any of the pieces of legislation out here. It is the most comprehensive piece of legislation to fix the housing crisis in the United States. But along with addressing the housing market, we also need to do properly targeted tax relief for families and small businesses.

The underlying bill has some good proposals in it. They are, unfortunately, a small part of the package. But we have incorporated some of those good ideas into our amendment. If there is a good idea out there, let's do it in a bipartisan fashion. That is the way we should have done this bill in the first place. That is what the President called on us to do. Unfortunately, the Democrats in the House of Representatives decided to cut Republicans out of the process, and the Democrats in the Senate decided to cut Republicans out when we were crafting this bill. It is unfortunate, but that is what happened. It is not too late, though. We can sit down and take good Republican ideas and take good Democratic ideas and help the American people out of this terrible economic morass we are in.

I believe American taxpayers deserve a break. American families, especially working-class families, need a tax break. So what we have done in our bill is taken the two lowest marginal rates and we have cut them. The 10-percent bracket would be cut to 5 percent, and the 15- percent bracket would be cut to 10 percent. The average combined benefit of these cuts for middle-class families would be about $3,200 per year for each of the next 2 years.

As I mentioned before, we also need to give small business a major boost. Small business creates 80 percent of the jobs. We need to encourage small businesses. It is not Government that grows us out of every recession, it is small business. That is why this engine of our economy needs some fuel.

Extending bonus depreciation, eliminating capital gains taxes for startups and certain small businesses, and investing in broadband access are all measures that will spur job creation and help get this country back on its feet.

Finally, the Fix Housing First Act eliminates the laundry list of wasteful spending items in the current stimulus bill. There is also a large list of spending items that some of us may support. Many are new spending programs. But at a time when our country is facing a fiscal as well as a financial crisis, if we are going to have new programs, we ought to eliminate old, wasteful programs. The underlying bill does none of that.

Mr. President, Americans are hurting right now. So many have lost their jobs, lost their homes, and they need help. They need us. We have a role to play here. We need to put confidence back into consumers across America so they can start getting back involved in the economy. They understand that a $1.2 trillion spending bill is not the answer. That is why we are seeing support of this bill go down in the polls each day.

By the way, the bill is not getting smaller. Each day we vote on amendments, it gets larger and larger and the interest on the bill gets larger too.

So I challenge my colleagues, if you do not like the approach we have taken, let us sit down and do it right. Consider the TARP funds that were spent. We were told if we didn't do it that week, the whole economy was going to collapse. When we rush things through, we make mistakes. And we have seen the mistakes with the TARP fund. You see the headlines all the time: $20 billion in bonuses for executives who took money from TARP. And there are all kinds of newspaper stories here and there about the abuses committed with TARP funds. Let's not make the same mistake by rushing through this bill. There is an artificial deadline that has been set on this bill--and that is exactly what it is. Should we act quickly? Yes. But doing something wrong quickly does not make it right. Yet that is what some people seem to be saying.

I urge us to do what is right for the American people, and let us join together as Americans and figure out what we need to do. Let us take good ideas from both sides and let us help fix the American economy.

I yield the floor.

Will the chairman of the Finance Committee mind if I go second so I can answer any of the charges that may come out?

I would rather the chairman of the Finance Committee go first.

Mr. President, that is absolutely incorrect. The mortgage interest we target is between 4 and 4.5 percent. Right now in the market, it would be between 4 and 4.5 percent. We capped the program at $300 billion. It is impossible to do what the Senator from New York said because we put a cap on it. It could cost no more than that. The Treasury cannot authorize any more than that.

Regarding the second untruth he just spoke--this amendment is not just for millionaires. These are for homes that are not above the conforming loan limit, so it is no home over $729,000. Only homes under that would qualify for it.

We have over 600 organizations that build homes in this country-- plumbers, cabinetmakers, homebuilders, and everything else--that support this amendment. This amendment will get the housing industry going in the country.

And it is not just about lowering interest rates--another untruth said by the Senator from New York. We also do foreclosure mitigation because we help modify loans for those homes that are underwater right now. There are tax credits for businesses to get the economy going. We fix housing first, and then we get the economy going.

I urge a ``yea'' vote on this amendment.

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

The case has been made that we need to fix housing first because it is the underlying cancer that is affecting our economy, and that cancer is spreading to other parts of the economy. If we don't fix the underlying problem, it will not matter what we do with the rest of the spending bill. The spending bill will not help the economy. It is going to continue to get worse and worse. If home values continue to go down, no amount of money will help. We will have to have three or four TARP funds, trillions of dollars, and it is not going to help because we have not fixed the underlying problem.

Several of us got together. I happen to be the lead author on the bill, but this is really a compilation of many minds trying to fix housing. We have incorporated one of the ideas from Senator Isakson. I will let him describe that.

One of the hallmarks of the bill is we try to fix housing in the bill. We eliminate the wasteful spending, and we have some targeted tax credits for families and small businesses to create jobs. We try to take care of the whole package, and we do it in a fiscally responsible way, so the total cost will be under $500 billion. It is not the $1.1 trillion the other side of the aisle has put forward. Such spending would put a tremendous burden on future generations.

What we have said is that we are going to allow anybody who has at least a 5-percent equity in their home, or if they already have a Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac-backed loan, would be able to refinance at about 4 to 4.2 percent interest. The average American family who refinances will save over $400 a month. That is not a one-time saving, that is a saving through a 30-year fixed loan. That is like a permanent tax cut.

All of the economists have told us that one-time tax rebates give a little bit of stimulus, but they cost more in the long run. Permanent tax relief is really what stimulates the economy. If a family only receives a one-time check, all they are going to do is pay down debt or save the money. But if they know they have over $400 per month, that is something they can count on. They can budget that. They can start spending that money. That will actually help stimulate the economy.

The economists who have done the studies are Glenn Hubbard and Christopher Mayer. They said this proposal will stabilize housing prices next year because they expect housing prices to go down by about 12 percent. If you lower interest rates on the average of about 1 percent, that historically has meant housing prices will rise about 7 to 8 percent. If we can get them down about a point and a half, they figure, instead of going down by 12 percent, housing prices next year will stabilize. We all know that if you do not stabilize housing prices in the United States, the economy is going to continue to go down.

I see the Presiding Officer from Colorado. Colorado is one of those States that is having pretty severe housing problems now. These housing problems started in my State, Nevada, and in Arizona, Florida, and California. They have spread to the rest of the country, so we need to fix this problem.

We have also put a limit on it. This is not for the rich. This is for loans of $750,000 or less. That is going to take

care of about 40 million Americans. That is what this takes care of, 40 million people refinancing their homes--40 million households, not Americans--40 million households getting on average of over $400 a month. Put the numbers to that. That is a huge amount of money.

That is correct, this is a 30-year fixed. This is not an adjustable rate mortgage where there are catches and in a couple of years it is going to go up again and I am going to have to worry about that. This is a 30-year fixed mortgage that can be very significant to the average family's budget.

We believe this is going to be one of the big fixes. You combine this with the other proposals, such as Senator Isakson's proposal, and the other things Senator McCain and Senator Martinez have come in with, with mitigation for those who are underwater--ours does some for houses that are underwater if they are backed by Fannie and Freddie right now. But all of the proposals together--I believe we can do exactly what we say needs to be done, and that is fix housing first.

But our proposal also takes out all of the spending in the bill that does not create jobs. We still have tax incentives in there for families and small businesses to create jobs, but we take out all of the $200 billion in new entitlement spending, all of the other 34 new programs that are created. There are some worthy programs in there that most of us would support. At this time, we should not be spending money on new programs, especially without eliminating other programs.

We believe this is fiscally responsible. It is going to help the economy. It is going to help the housing problem. I appreciate your leadership, Senator Alexander, for bringing this colloquy together so we can talk about the underlying problem.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, while we are waiting, may I lay down my amendment?

I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside. I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, a couple of comments on the McCain proposal that several people are putting together. I have looked at it. I still need to study it a little more. But on the surface, it is a responsible, balanced proposal. That group needs to be congratulated for putting such a proposal together.

I rise because the most deliberative body in the world is facing a moment of great challenge but also great possibility. We should all feel the grave responsibility weighing on each of us as we debate this bill. If we pass legislation that truly stimulates the economy, it could carry this Nation to new levels of growth and prosperity. Unfortunately, if we pass a bloated spending bill with little chance of jump-starting the economy, we could delay this country's financial recovery for many years to come.

While there isn't a crystal ball to show us what path will bring us to the ultimate goal, we are not without some guidance. Winston Churchill once said: Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We have several examples from which to learn. We will heed those lessons if we absolutely want to raise this Nation from the economic quicksand that is swallowing it up more and more each day.

The Great Depression is a chapter of history that fewer and fewer Americans can recall firsthand. Maybe that is why the circumstances are so widely misunderstood today. It has been said that today's economic crisis is the result of a perfect storm. Well, the Great Depression was many perfect storms.

Herbert Hoover, a Republican, did not sit on the side lines, as many people believe, when Black Thursday and Black Tuesday struck in 1929. He was actually a big government interventionist. Working with Congress, he raised taxes. He enacted protectionist laws by raising U.S. tariffs. Senator McCain referred to these as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. He pushed all levels of government to invest in infrastructure and expand public works projects.

When Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1932, he created great momentum by earning the confidence of the American people. But his New Deal sent this Nation into an even deeper economic depression. In the late 1930s, there was a ``Depression within the Depression.'' The stock market did not return to 1929 levels for 25 years.

While World War II pulled us out of the Great Depression, there were still tremendous sacrifices being made by all Americans. Some have argued that the spending of the New Deal was not aggressive enough. I couldn't disagree more. On some levels, we are still paying for the projects that began with the New Deal.

The single biggest failure of the response to the Great Depression is that the private sector was not encouraged to grow this country out of its financial crisis. In fact, by injecting so much money into the Government programs, FDR created a competitor to the private sector. This was a match between David, the private sector, and Goliath, the Government monster. This time, unfortunately, Goliath won. We know that the policies of the New Deal

actually prolonged the Nation's financial hardships. After all, the depression lasted 10 years. Do we want to be in this kind of an economic recession for 10 years?

More recently, we have learned from Japan's failed efforts to spend its way out of a recession. Japan passed stimulus bills for 10 straight years during the 1990s. They wasted money on unnecessary projects while letting insolvent banks be supported with Government money. Does that sound familiar? What did that get them? Unmanageable, debilitating debt, and a decade of rising unemployment.

We cannot afford to ignore the lessons of history. The responsibility facing us during this crisis cannot be overstated. We are bound by the Constitution that empowers us to collect taxes, borrow money, regulate commerce, and provide for the general welfare. We, however, are also bound by the responsibility to future generations of Americans. To burden our children and grandchildren with the kind of debt we are talking about today should give each of us reason to pause and consider the ramifications.

There is no doubt that the crisis facing the financial markets, the housing sector, and families will require extraordinary measures. There is perhaps no better illustration of the grave challenges facing the Nation than that of the State of Nevada. At one time, people thought we were recession proof. When Americans buckle down on spending, a vacation to Las Vegas is no longer in the cards. Jobs are lost, homes are foreclosed, and it becomes harder to ignore the half-finished construction projects across southern Nevada.

Here in the Senate, we are among the few Americans with at least some level of job security--that is, of course, until the next election. Most Americans are living day to day, waiting to hear what new massive layoff will be announced and if it will hit them or someone in their family. It is a terrible feeling to have that much uncertainty in your life.

The calls and e-mails I have received from constituents are heartbreaking. These are good citizens who have worked hard, saved well, and contributed to their communities. They now find themselves in a place of desperation.

Mrs. Louise Cutler has lived in Clark County, NV, for more than 17 years. Her husband and two grown children who have degrees are unemployed. Louise lost her job with a mortgage company more than a year ago. She is back at work now making about $20,000 less than before. She has student loans to pay, has lost $120,000 dollars in the value of her home, and she wants to know how we are going to help her.

My constituents--all of our constituents--are looking to us for leadership and solutions.

I believe we need to stimulate our economy immediately. Government has a role to play here. The question is, How do we leverage our resources-paid for on the backs of struggling taxpayers--as efficiently as possible in order to stabilize our economy and grow it in the future?

I believe we need to start with the root of the problem. My training in veterinary medicine taught me that you don't use a Band-Aid to treat a massive puncture wound. Ignoring that problem to treat superficial injuries does not help the patient survive. The economy is very much our collective patient. It would ensure greater catastrophe to put a Band-Aid on an initial wound that started this downward spiral--and that is the housing crisis. Unfortunately, the housing market is barely addressed in this so-called stimulus bill. Most Americans would say it is the first thing we need to heal. If we make mortgages more manageable, people can stay in their homes and our economy can begin to rebuild.

One proposal I have--a guaranteed 4-percent, 30-year fixed rate mortgage for Americans would go a long way to ease pressure on family budgets. On average, more than 40 million creditworthy homeowners would save more than $400 per month. That makes a huge difference to most families, and it would target the problem of oversupply in the housing market, something we cannot ignore. This is like a permanent tax cut which economists believe is the best stimulus for our economy, not just a 1-year tax rebate.

Another proposal that goes a long way to fixing the housing situation is one from Senator Isakson. It expands the current homeowner tax credit to $15,000 and covers all property and all home buyers, not just first-time home buyers. This would give a big boost to housing markets across the country.

So what else works? Limited spending that makes our economy more efficient as well as tax relief that provides businesses and companies the additional capital to retain and hire more employees. This will help to increase their output and compete into the future. That spending and tax relief needs to happen soon--not next year or two years down the road. American families cannot wait that long.

I think we all must be prepared to make a sizable investment in order to ensure a swift and successful recovery. Unfortunately, the bill before us does not do that. Instead, it spends money on programs that cannot and will not aid that recovery. While Pell grants, Head Start, and the National Endowment for the Arts may be worthwhile projects in their own right, putting billions of dollars into them will not stimulate the economy. I have fought for Head Start for years, but I do not think it should be considered immediate stimulus.

The bill before us simply does not qualify as an economic stimulus bill, and there is nothing immediate about it either. It is a laundry list of spending priorities with a token of tax relief. We need a true economic stimulus bill that efficiently spends money on projects that will make our highways and infrastructure better equipped as a conduit for business. We need meaningful tax relief that will spawn a new generation of growth and success in the private sector.

Instead, half of the so-called tax portion of this bill is just creative spending dressed up as tax relief. It gives tax relief to people who do not even pay income taxes. How are we relieving their tax burden if they do not have one?

In actuality, only $21 billion of this trillion-plus dollar spending bill goes to small businesses, the engine of our economy. That equals less than three percent of this monstrous bill. This is supposed to be an economic stimulus bill to create jobs and drive growth, but less than three percent is dedicated to tax relief for small businesses which is where 80 percent of the jobs in the United States are created. How do we expect to stimulate the economy that way? That goes to show you how little input Republicans actually had in this process. I hope that will change.

President Obama came to the Hill last week with a message of bipartisan cooperation. I have reached out to my Democratic colleagues on several tax relief measures that they agree would give a much needed boost to our economy. I hope these proposals have the opportunity to be voted on by all of my Senate colleagues so together we can witness an economic revival.

The first is a plan that I am very familiar with. I worked with Senator Barbara Boxer to get it enacted into law several years ago. We called it the Invest in the USA Act, and it lived up to its name. It brought $360 billion back into the United States in 2005 and helped to retain or create more than 2 million jobs. It also produced more than $34 billion in various tax revenues. History has proven that reducing the tax rate U.S. businesses pay to return money they made overseas provides a tremendous return. One great example comes from California- based Oracle. They used repatriated earnings to defeat a German company in acquiring a U.S.-based retail software firm. This purchase allowed Oracle to keep those jobs and intellectual property in the United States. Oracle has since grown its facilities in Georgia and Minnesota by several hundred jobs.

Right now I am working with Senator Barbara Boxer to add an updated version of this legislation to the stimulus package. Right now, the foreign subsidiaries of many U.S. companies are faring well overseas. Competitive tax structures make it beneficial for those companies to keep their money overseas. If they wanted to return the money to the United States, the companies would have to pay up to a 35-percent tax rate. That is not much of an incentive to bring income earned overseas back to the United States.

The proposal Senator Boxer and I have put forward gives businesses the

temporary relief they need. Instead of paying a 35-percent tax, they will only pay a 5.25 percent tax if they bring the money back in the next 12 months. These funds must be used for capital investment, job creation and training, research and development, or U.S. debt reduction. Some economists predict that this time around, the legislation would inject as much as $565 billion back into the United States economy.

This legislation is critical in order to get this country going again. It puts capital back into U.S. banks which can then loan that money to people and get the economy going again. Another proposal that I introduced--and I thank the chairman of the Finance Committee for working with us on a compromise--deals with the cancellation of indebtedness. My proposal would allow businesses to buy back their debt in 2009 or 2010 without high tax consequences. It would help firms deleverage and also give financial firms that hold debt more liquidity. Here is how my bill works. Under current law, if a company purchases its own debt at a discount, it is required to pay income tax on the amount of the discount. If a business owes $1 million but negotiates a discounted amount to its lender--say $750,000 so that it does not default--it would have to pay taxes on the $250,000 difference.

Well, a lot of companies are strapped for cash and have a large amount of debt. They cannot afford to pay taxes on the difference. Instead of paying that tax, we are going to delay that for 5 years. They would then have an additional 5 years to be able to pay the taxes. This is going to help small and large businesses across the United States. I believe this proposal is going to help improve the debt situation of many companies in the United States. I thank the chairman of the Finance Committee and Senator Conrad for working on this proposal.

So let me conclude. If we pass this $1.3 trillion spending bill, which is what it started at, we are going to have trillion-dollar debts over the next several years. This does not include another $500 billion in TARP funds that Secretary Geithner may be asking for.

We still have an omnibus spending bill to come before us. We still have military supplemental bills. Unfortunately, they are not just military bills. Everything else gets Christmas-treed on top of it. We are talking trillions and trillions of dollars.

I am looking at our Senate pages; the next generation to lead our country. Don't we care about them? Don't we have a moral responsibility not to pass huge tax burdens on to them? Current calculations are, with the debt we are running up, plus Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, they are going to have to pay close to a 90-percent tax rate if things are not changed. I do not think that is fair to them. Here we just pass debts on. I believe as a generation we are morally corrupt because we take whatever we want.

President Roosevelt talked about ``the forgotten man.'' What he was talking about was this person who was forgotten during the depression. Unfortunately, we may be now dealing with a forgotten generation; a generation who does not have a voice in the Senate. We need to stand up and say, ``We cannot pass this kind of debt burden on to them.'' ``We cannot pass the kind of high taxes on to those who are going to be required to pay this debt.''

So, Mr. President, we need to act responsibly. We cannot put, as this bill does, $200 billion into new entitlement programs. We cannot raise the baseline as this bill will end up doing. We know programs do not stop around here, so we need to act in a much more responsibly manner than this bill does.

Yes, we want to act quickly, but there is a false deadline that has been put on this bill. There is still time. As we saw with TARP funds, when we do things too quickly around here, we make major mistakes. The false deadlines we put on this bill, I believe, are going to lead us down the wrong road. So let's slow down. We do not get any trial runs on this one. This bill is too big. Let's make sure we do this right. Let's join, not as Republicans and Democrats, but as Americans to get this right.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER: The Senator from Montana.

Mr. President, first of all, I wish to congratulate and thank my colleague from California, Senator Boxer. A few years ago, we worked on an amendment together. Not a lot of people knew about it. The first time it was voted on in the Finance Committee, most of the Republicans in the Finance Committee voted against it. I remember talking to Senator Nickles at the time. He was leading the charge with the Republicans against the amendment, frankly, because a lot of people did not understand it.

It does not sound right that someone who invested overseas can bring the money back for less than what they pay in the United States. But the problem is that companies, if they have to pay a 35-percent tax on the money to bring it back, as Senator Boxer and I recognized it is common sense, they are not going to bring the money back.

The chart Senator Boxer had clearly showed that. Very small amounts each year of the profits that companies made overseas actually came back into the United States, until we passed what we called, at the time, the Invest in the USA Act.

The outside economists got it. They understood it. They projected-- Allen Sinai, who was the economist at the time, did the studies. He predicted between $300 and $400 billion would come back to the United States and it would actually produce tax revenues, it would produce jobs.

Guess what happened, $360 billion came back to the United States. The Congressional Budget Office, Joint Tax, they said only about $135 billion would come back, and it would lose revenue to the Federal Government.

Well, a minimum of $16 to $20 billion was paid in taxes on the money that was repatriated, so it only increases revenues to the Federal Government. It did not hurt the deficit; it actually helped the deficit. The economists have studied the indirect and the direct revenue effects of the jobs that were saved and the jobs that were created. The estimates are closer to $34 billion of additional revenue, tax revenue to the Federal Government from the last repatriation.

So the Invest in the USA Act, which Senator Boxer and I worked on in a bipartisan fashion, passed 75 to 25 in the Senate. It turned out to be a great success. So we are trying to put a new version of this on this bill. To our amazement, the outside economists again are predicting that $565 billion this time is going to come back to the United States.

There is about $800 billion sitting overseas. The companies are not bringing it back. It creates jobs overseas. That helps the banks that are overseas with their capital. They are not bringing it back because they have to pay up to a 35-percent corporate tax rate.

We want to bring foreign earnings back one time. If they bring the money back in the next 12 months, we charge them a 5.25-percent tax. Well, is not 5.25 percent on $565 billion better than 35 percent of zero?

This is common sense. That is going to help the deficit. We have to get real about this and put some commonsense thinking into this.

I commend to my colleagues two studies: One is by Allen Sinai and the other by Robert Shapiro and Aparna Mathur. By the way, Robert Shapiro, former Clinton adviser, liberal economist; Allen Sinai, by any stretch of the imagination, at best a moderate economist. These are not rightwing radical economists. These are not neoclassical economists who are talking about this.

I ask unanimous consent to have their conclusions printed in the Record.

What their studies are showing today, as they showed before we acted in 2004, is that money is going to come back. The Treasury actually

will be helped. Jobs will be created in the United States. And a side benefit is $565 billion comes into the banks in the United States to help capitalize the banks. What are we all talking about here? That our banks don't have enough capital. This, without a cost to the taxpayer, brings capital back.

But in the wisdom of Joint Tax, they actually say that this bill is going to cost money, that it is going to decrease revenues to the Federal Government, where all the evidence by outside economists as well as all the evidence by history shows otherwise. Look at this. Every year money being repatriated to the United States, pretty consistent down here, below $50 billion was brought back in each year. Guess what. We passed the Invest in USA Act in 2004. Repatriation shot up to $360 billion. Look what happened the next year. It went right back down, and it has been down since.

I will.

I was aware of the new numbers coming out of Joint Tax. But the outside economists say this will probably mean $45 billion in direct revenues, not including revenues produced when you actually have people in jobs and people paying taxes who are earning the money in those jobs. We have some great examples of what businesses did with that.

But let me quote Dr. Tyson, who was the chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. She recently wrote a report that said $565 billion would be repatriated. The money would be brought back to the United States. She believes it could raise $28 billion in investment in renewable energy projects alone, health care initiatives, and broadband deployment.

We have bipartisan economists saying this is going to work. The only people who don't seem to think this is going to work are the people somehow inside the walls here in Washington, DC who don't seem to get that if you have to pay a 35-percent tax, it is better to keep the money overseas.

One of the great American companies is Microsoft. Do you know that Microsoft has no exports from the United States. They have a lot of them from Ireland. Guess why. Ireland has a 12.5-percent corporate tax rate. If they pay that and they want to bring the profit back to the United States, they have to pay a lot of money, up to a 35-percent tax rate. So guess what they do. They keep the money in Ireland. They produce products in Ireland, and they export those products from Ireland instead of bringing the money back to the United States and creating jobs where they can have exports from the United States. From a commonsense perspective, it makes no sense to me to oppose this piece of legislation that will help capitalize our banks. It will help improve the capital structure of our businesses, because the money, as Senator Boxer so eloquently discussed, can only be used to hire and train workers. It can only be used for research and development, for capital improvements, for acquisition of businesses that may be distressed. That is certainly what Oracle did. Oracle bought two companies. They outbid a German company that was going to take 2,000 jobs outside the United States. Oracle buys them, keeps them in the United States, and then over the next few years increases employment at both places. Dell built a plant where they hired 1,800 workers. Those are good things to do with the money and more companies will do exactly this.

We look forward to the debate. I think it makes common sense. I thank my colleague from California, Senator Boxer, who has done great work this time as she did last time. I appreciate working with her.

Mr. President, first of all, there is not fungibility this time. Senator Boxer and I worked very closely to make sure there were very tight uses of the money, and there is going to be IRS audits afterward to make sure they use the money exactly how the bill specifies.

The other thing is the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee was trying to point out the companies repatriated money and then laid off workers, and he was trying to point out that was somehow a causative effect. It had nothing to do with it. Ford repatriated $1 billion almost and laid off 30,000 to 40,000 employees. OK. Ford had a lot of other problems. These companies had a lot of other problems.

Hewlett-Packard had huge problems going on, and the repatriation made it a lot better, so they ended up in a short period of time laying off some people, but in the long run they ended up increasing American employment over the next several years because they were in a better financial position. That is the way our companies are today. You could take a lot of other companies during that same period of time that did not repatriate a dollar and laid off people. So what did repatriation have to do with anything?

Now, the chairman of the Finance Committee brought up that it is a question of fairness, that U.S. companies doing business overseas would only have to pay at a 5.25-percent tax rate on the money they made overseas, while companies in the United States pay a 35-percent corporate tax rate. Well, I will join you right now in lowering the corporate tax rate in the United States. I will join you hand in hand to lower it. By the way, if you lower it, you do not have to do the repatriation amendment. As a matter of fact, they tell us that at somewhere between a 20-percent and 25-percent corporate tax rate, you do not have to do repatriation because then money can flow where money would be used most efficiently, and a lot of this money would come back on its own to the United States. The problem is, the way the tax structure is set up today, it encourages companies in the United States that have invested overseas to keep the money there because it is too prohibitive to bring the money back to the United States.

So I ask the rhetorical question, once again: Is 5.25 percent of $560 billion better than 35 percent of zero or 35 percent of a small number? That is really what we are dealing with here. So whether it is CRS, whether it is Joint Tax, they just do not seem to get it. The outside economists get it. They understand it. That is why their studies show 2 million jobs will be created this time, maybe more than that. Actually, Shapiro actually says it will be about 2.6 million jobs created or saved with this amendment. So I think the facts are clearly on our side on this issue. Whether it is a fairness issue or whatever, the bottom line is we want to help the United States of America.

The last point I will make is, if you did nothing with this money-- absolutely zero--if we required nothing except for the money to come back to the United States and come in to our banks, wouldn't that be a good thing right now? Common sense: Our banks need capital. We need liquidity in the United States. Let's try to follow this simple formula: In order to have employees, you must first have employers. OK. Are you with me so far? In order to have employers, you have to have capital.

Mr. President, $560 billion in capital leads to a lot of employees. That is capitalism, folks. You need capital to have employees. It is a simple formula. Let's get this right.

I yield the floor.

Will my friend yield for a question?

The opponents of this measure are saying the Joint Tax seems to be the experts we should trust. Is my friend from California aware, I wonder, that in 2004 when we were doing this debate, the Joint Tax Committee estimated this measure would decrease revenue by $3 billion? But is my friend from California aware this actually produced to the Federal Government a net of $16 billion in tax revenue? We were not hurting the Government revenue but helping it? I further ask, through the Chair, is my friend from California aware that the Joint Tax Committee, last year, scored this same measure at $18 billion? This year, they scored it $29 billion. Was last year's estimate right, or was this year's right? They were so wrong in 2004 when, by the way, the outside economists were right. The inside economists were wrong. Was my friend from California aware of those facts?

Mr. President, I ask my friend from California this question. It was brought up earlier that the money is going to come back anyway. The Senator from California has a chart in front of her. I ask her if she could explain the chart and that the money wasn't coming back until we lowered the tax rate. And then it went right back up after we lowered the tax rate.

Will my friend yield for a question?

A big deal has been made of which economists we can trust. I ask my friend from California, when Joint Tax scored this last time, not only were they wrong on revenue estimates, but they estimated that about $100 billion or so would come back to the United States. The outside economists estimated between $300 billion and $400 billion would come back to the United States. According to CRS this time, according to the study the chairman of the Finance Committee quoted, $360 billion came back and $312 billion was used according to the measures we put in the bill. Was she aware that the Joint Tax Committee was that far off on their estimates, not only on revenues produced but on how much money could come back?

Mr. President, I wish to make a couple points. Once again, I wish to get back to some common sense. Is it better for the money to be overseas, or is it better for the money to be in the United States? If it is overseas, it creates jobs. If it is in the United States, it can create jobs in the United States. That is the bottom line.

On the chart my friend from California showed earlier, the money was not coming back to the United States in any significant amounts until we passed the 2004 ``Invest in the USA Act.'' And then the next year, $360 billion came back to the United States. After that, it went back down as far as the money coming back into the United States.

By common sense, we have to know that the money is not going to come back to the United States. By doing this, we are not encouraging companies to go overseas. Quite frankly--and I said to my friend, the chairman of the Finance Committee--if he wants to lower the corporate tax rate, I would join him right now. As a matter of fact, I may be offering an amendment to do that because I believe that our corporate tax rate, being the second highest in the industrialized world, is too high, and it encourages other companies to go overseas. But we cannot do that. We do not have enough bipartisan support to do that.

Here we have a bipartisan measure. Very few things happen on this bill in a bipartisan way. This is truly bipartisan. The four sponsors of this amendment--two Democrats, two Republicans--are working together. The last time this bill passed the Senate was a 75-to-25 bipartisan vote. That should show us right now a lot of people looked at this and said it was a good idea, and a lot of people are looking at this again. It is a good idea because it makes common sense to bring money back into the United States to create jobs in the United States.

I will just say, if Joint Tax was wrong a few years ago, they are probably wrong again. As a matter of fact, I cannot even believe the last year they scored a repatriation bill with a larger scope at around $15.9 billion. This year they are scoring a more narrowly tailored version at almost $29 billion. In one year, they are that far off, and they were totally wrong back in 2004.

The outside economists are saying this is going to save or create over 2 million jobs. Isn't that what we are about, trying to create and save jobs in this bill? This particular amendment, even if it did cost the money Joint Tax is saying, creates more jobs for the dollar than anything else in this entire stimulus package.

We ought to adopt this amendment. It is common sense, and we ought to put common sense to work when we are trying to save the U.S economy.

I reserve the remainder of our time.

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

Mr. President, first of all, to set the record straight, Senators Bingaman and Kerry both voted no the last time.

Several other things. The Senator from North Dakota said he would like all Americans to pay a 5-percent income tax, such as in this bill. Well, that means that he would raise taxes on 40 million Americans who pay no income tax today. Let's get the facts clear. Last time, $360 billion came back into the country and created about 2 million jobs. This time, more money is going to come back. Almost double, about $565 billion the estimates are, is going to come back this time. We have to ask ourselves this commonsense question.

The opponents would argue the money came back last time and no jobs were created. From a commonsense perspective, if the companies did not do anything that they said they were going to do last time, if money is in the United States--you need capital to create jobs. Right now we have a banking system that does not have capital. Capital markets are shut down. Guess what? Jobs are not being created because there is no capital to invest to create jobs.

If $360 billion came back last time and $565 billion is going to come back this time, doesn't anybody with any kind of common sense know jobs are going to be created with that? We have to get real. Put your thinking caps on. I don't care what Joint Tax says. I don't care what the CRS says. Put your commonsense thinking cap on, and we are going to have a good piece of legislation if we adopt this amendment.

I encourage all of us to vote in a bipartisan fashion for this bipartisan amendment. I yield the floor and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, what is the regular order?

Amendment No. 178

Is it subject to a point of order? I believe it is, and I make a budget point of order.

I raise a point of order on this amendment.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the possible bailout of the Big 3 automobile manufacturers. General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford have come before this Congress asking for tens of billions of dollars from the taxpayers. This bailout, however, raises a number of questions that concern me greatly.

The economy of the United States is rooted in free-market principles. These principles, coupled with our Nation's entrepreneurial spirit, helped America become the richest and most innovative country in the world. Even though our economy is struggling right now, we cannot abandon those principles.

American automobile company executives have made many poor decisions over the past few decades. Those decisions combined with a poor economy, have put them in a desperate situation, particularly General Motors. It seems to me that this is exactly why we have Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Now, when I say bankruptcy, I am not talking about liquidation. That is Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Chapter 11 bankruptcy provides struggling companies with the opportunity to restructure responsibly so that they can transform into efficient and profitable firms. Chapter 11 exists to protect both the employees and the company itself by giving them a chance to get things right. The Big 3 should not view Chapter 11 as some sort of death sentence. Instead, they should see it as the best opportunity to put themselves on the same competitive footing with companies such as Toyota and BMW. Venerable companies in America such as Macy's and Continental Airlines have filed for Chapter 11 and have emerged as stronger, more viable companies. So why should the Big 3 be treated any differently?

I know these companies would say they are somehow unique and that bankruptcy simply will not work for them. I am not so sure about that. The Big 3 worry that today's financial environment would prevent them from securing debtor-in-possession financing from the private sector. They would need such funding to keep operating through a bankruptcy proceeding. This is where the government can step in. This would ensure that automakers have the funds to complete the Chapter 11 process.

The Big 3 also worry that few consumers would buy a car from a company that might not be around in a few years to stand by the car's warranty. Again, the government could step in and guarantee the warranties. After all, what is a better backup of a warranty than the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government? And if the government took these steps, wouldn't that give the Big 3 a good chance to successfully reorganize through Chapter 11 bankruptcy?

The Big 3 have testified before Congress that they would require about $34 billion to avoid liquidation. They would need this help over the next year or two. Many independent analysts, however, believe that number may triple that. Frankly, I am more inclined to believe the independent estimates are closer to reality. After all, the Big 3 have time and again proven unable to adequately plan for the future. Why should we believe their projections now? With the deficit reaching $1 trillion or more next year, why aren't we having a debate over the true cost of such a bailout? We should be worried about the U.S. taxpayer.

In this legislation, there has been talk about creating a ``car czar'' to oversee any restructuring that would accompany a bailout. This czar, however, would not have nearly the same sort of powers a bankruptcy court judge would have under Chapter 11. Injecting a government bureaucrat into the process is not a serious solution. If you have been around Washington long enough, you know it is more like a serious problem. Wouldn't it be better to have an expert such as a bankruptcy court judge oversee the process?

Not only would a bankruptcy judge have more tools than a car czar, but the judge would not be influenced by the political process. A bailout would invite all sorts of meddling from lawmakers to have the companies carry out their own pet policies. We should not be using this bailout as a vehicle to implement domestic social policy.

Not to mention that creditors or stakeholders will just lobby Congress to make the sort of concessions that would be required of them under the bankruptcy. We see this sort of lobbying right now with the TARP program. Everyone is trying to tweak the program to benefit their own narrow self-interest. Why would we expect the auto unions or suppliers or dealers to behave any differently? I worry that politicizing the restructuring of the Big 3 would jeopardize any chances of success they may have.

All this talk of government-directed restructuring also raises bigger picture questions. Why does Congress think we can succeed where so many businessmen have already failed? What sort of experience in the car- making business does this Congress have? Last I checked, none of my colleagues have a background in running a car company. And this car czar seems doomed to failure too. One government bureaucrat to oversee the reorganization of three massive companies? What track record can we point to that makes us think this will work?

This strikes me as a questionable intervention by the government into the private sector. We have the government thinking it can run these businesses better than they can. Heck, we cannot even run the government. We also have the government choosing which individual companies deserve help and which do not. This is not what the Government should be doing. Government should not be picking winners or losers in the private sector. For the long-term health of the country's entrepreneurial-based economy, this could be a dangerous precedent.

One of the companies asking for a bailout is Chrysler, which is owned by an investment fund known as Cerberus. Some reports indicate Cerberus may have significant asset holdings, into the billions of dollars. But it appears Cerberus has done nothing to infuse any emergency cash into Chrysler to save it. Why should the government bail out Chrysler, when its own parent company seems unwilling to offer any help?

If we bail out the car companies, what does that mean for other struggling industries? The automakers are not the only ones suffering today in this bad economy. Would we have to bail out every large company in every major industry? Tourism is one of America's biggest industries and has a high employment multiplier, much like the auto industry. Hotel rooms are going empty as consumers cut back on travel. Many state economies, such as in my own State of Nevada, are hurting because of the downturn in consumer travel. Should the hotels receive a bailout? How about the newspaper industry? We know their businesses are hurting too. The Tribune Company filed for Chapter 11. Should we be bailing them out as well? Where do we draw the line? Can we even draw a line once we have given the Big 3 a bailout?

The proposed automaker bailout is indicative of a big-government approach to dealing with our economy. We are in the midst of a recession, yet we have come back for a late session of Congress to talk about saving just three companies. Why aren't we considering pro-growth policies to help the larger economy? We should be considering long- term, pro-growth tax cuts rather than searching for ways to spend more of the taxpayers' money. For instance, lowering the corporate tax rate would put more money back into the hands of companies all across America. This would help companies stay afloat and to avoid cutting jobs during these difficult times. Instead, the Democrats are looking to spend money on bloated, uncompetitive automakers.

As we debate whether to loan billions of dollars to the automakers, I urge my colleagues to consider all the important questions I have raised today. This issue is not as simple as answering ``how many jobs might be lost?'' or ``how much it will cost the government?'' We must also consider questions such as ``what is the Government's proper role during this economic downturn?'' ``What could be the unintended consequences of our actions?'' ``Are we setting a dangerous precedent for needless political intervention?'' ``How might this affect our ballooning deficit?'' ``Are we taking the best course of action for the long-term health of the U.S. Government?''

We would do America a disservice by approving any bailout package for the Big 3 before finding at least some consensus on these questions. Furthermore, I believe we must look more closely at Chapter 11 as a viable option for the automakers. Chapter 11 reorganization for any of the Big 3 is far from ideal, but we do not live in an ideal world nor during ideal times. We should not dismiss one of the most powerful tools available to us so readily.

I hope my colleagues will think long and hard about the issues I have raised today before making any decisions about the possible bailout. If this bailout package that is before us today fails, we can rewrite the bill and do it in a way that is better for the U.S. auto manufacturing industry. American taxpayers deserve nothing less.

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

I want to join my distinguished colleague from Massachusetts and express my hope that legislation can be passed early next year to fix the out-dated tax treatment of employer-provided cell phones. The bill he and I have introduced has broad bipartisan support with over 60 cosponsors. Similar legislation has already passed the House. And both Treasury and the IRS are supportive of the fix. Thus, Senator Kerry and I would like to ask the distinguished chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee, for their help in passing this legislation early next year.

Mr. Presdient, President Ronald Reagan once said,''Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.''

There can be no question that Senator Wayne Allard's time in public office will be remembered by these words both here in this Chamber and in his State of Colorado. Wayne will end his career in the U.S. Senate because of a self-imposed term limit. He has never once wavered in his belief that legislators are citizens first and lawmakers second.

As one of only two veterinarians in the Senate, I know the void the Senate will feel. Leaving a veterinary practice to fight for what is right in the U.S. Senate isn't exactly the norm. Wayne and I each made this choice and we have stood shoulder to shoulder in legislating for the humane treatment of animals. The legislation we put forth against animal fighting has become law and has helped law enforcement put away individuals who abuse animals. I am sad to see that our small, very small, veterinary caucus will leave with Wayne.

Wayne's commitment to country and freedom is unshakeable, but his dedication to fiscal conservatism has made him a hero for taxpayers across the country, especially in his State of Colorado. Throughout his time here, he has fought to pay down the debt by eliminating programs, staying true to the belief that government should steer clear of a wasteful spending black hole.

His efforts on the Appropriations Committee have been committed to steering our country toward fiscal responsibility, and his voice will be missed.

I hope this Chamber remembers the role Wayne played in fighting against a bloated Federal Government and giving States the rights they deserve to manage their own affairs. Let's not let his voice for government responsibility fall on deaf ears. The burden of the taxpayer rests on our shoulders, and that is even more so now with Wayne's departure.

Wayne has been a voice and a crusader for Colorado, preferring the scenery there to that of Washington. He has worked hard to ensure that his constituents are as familiar with his face as they are with his name. Colorado has greatly benefitted from his leadership, as has this country.

It is with sadness, that I lose my friend here. But I know the impact he has had on this body, his State, and our country. I wish him great success in his future endeavors. I know he will continue to be an advocate for life, liberty, and freedom.

We will continue to fight for the ideals Wayne came to this body hoping to achieve, that ``Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.''

Mr. President, I rise today to honor a Nevada couple who have spent their lives contributing to the community, committing to their family, and serving as an example to us all.

Lloyd and LaPrele George have shared more than 50 years together. During that half century, Lloyd served as a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, graduated from Brigham Young University, and earned his juris doctorate from the University of California at Berkley. Since 1974 and an appointment to the Federal Bankruptcy Court, he has been known fondly in Nevada as Judge George. He was appointed as a U.S. district court judge in 1984, served 5 years as the chief U.S. district judge, and assumed senior judge status in 1997.

I am reminded of Judge George every time I go to my southern Nevada office, as the newest Federal building in Las Vegas proudly bears his name. Judge George is a fixture in the Nevada legal community, but his reputation extends beyond the walls of his courthouse and beyond the borders of the United States. He has lectured on legal topics nationally and internationally and often serves as an ambassador, showing foreign dignitaries around the courthouse and introducing them to southern Nevada.

While his name may be known by jurists around the world, his own world has always revolved around his wife LaPrele, their 4 children, and 13 grandchildren. In November, Opportunity Village, one of the most respected local organizations in Las Vegas, will honor the George Family with the ``Order of the Village.'' The Georges will be recognized for their tireless advocacy on behalf of people with intellectual disabilities.

Lloyd and LaPrele's oldest son Doug sparked their involvement in the special needs community. At a time when it was expected that children with intellectual disabilities would be sent to institutions, the Georges instead embraced their son and became champions for those with intellectual disabilities and an inspiration for their families. They were involved in the early days of the Clark County Association of Retarded Children, even cosigning the mortgage on the group's first building. Over time, it evolved into Opportunity Village, Nevada's largest private, not-for-profit community rehabilitation program. Serving more than 3,000 people a year, Opportunity Village offers Nevadans, like Doug George, a chance to earn a paycheck and feel a sense of independence.

The Georges have shined the light of their service on southern Nevada for many years. We have been blessed by their heartfelt involvement and loving leadership. Judge George and LaPrele, thank you for your commitment to your family and to our community. There is hope and opportunity for many Nevadans because of you. May God continue to bless you and your family.

Mr. President, I rise today to address an issue of critical importance to the security of our Nation and the world. I want to talk about the future of Iran's nuclear capabilities and what it means for the United States.

Too often here in Washington, we get caught up in the debate of the moment and fail to appreciate the larger picture. Too many are more concerned with petty blame games and not enough are concerned with the greater challenge of protecting Americans.

General Michael Hayden, the Director of Central Intelligence, has said that he believes Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. Others, including the President of the United States and the leaders of France and Great Britain agree.

I ask myself what would happen if the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran succeeded in acquiring a nuclear weapon. Among the possibilities, he could use that weapon. Iran could share it with terrorists or other rogue states. At a minimum, an Iranian nuke would prompt its neighbors in the Gulf, in Turkey, in Egypt and elsewhere to seek a similar ability in order to defend themselves against Iran's efforts to gain regional dominance.

The stakes could not be higher, and I am concerned that we are not meeting the challenge. To the contrary, I believe we are being tested, and we are failing.

Iran is the most active state sponsor of terrorism around the world. In addition to its long time support for groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran is now active in directing aggression against our troops in Iraq, sponsoring not only Shiite extremists but even Sunni terror groups. According to General Petraeus, ``...Iran has played [a fundamental role] in funding, training, arming, and directing the so- called Special Groups and generated renewed concern about Iran in the minds of many Iraqi leaders. Unchecked, the Special Groups pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq.''

In addition to its destabilizing sponsorship of violence across the Middle East, we also know that Iran is working on delivery vehicles for deadly weapons. The regime has continuously upgraded its missile capabilities, and now has delivery vehicles that can strike targets all over the Middle East and into Europe. Couple that knowledge with the evidence available that Iran has worked on fitting nuclear warheads onto these missiles, and we have even more practical reasons for concern.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stated emphatically that his Nation ``will not give up one iota of its nuclear rights.''

Where does this leave the United States, and the American people, in confronting this growing and multidimensional threat? Unfortunately, the answer appear, to be: confused.

The clearest evidence that we have yet to focus on the exact nature of the Iranian threat--an understanding that is imperative if we are going to succeed in countering it--is last year's National Intelligence Estimate on Iran.

Although leaders and intelligence agencies around the world believe that Iran is indeed pursuing nuclear weapons, the NIE drew confusing, misleading, and contradicting conclusions. In dramatic phrasing clearly designed to mislead, the NIE states that ``We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.'' In a footnote that got short shrift from both the press and the jubilant Iranian regime, the analysts explain that what they say `` `nuclear weapons program' we mean Iran's nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran's declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.'' In other words, the work referred to that had ``halted'' was in fact work that this Congress had heretofore not been able to confirm, and that we were uncertain existed. What continued, according to the NIE, was Iran's attempts to use its licit nuclear program to develop nuclear weapons capability. Which is exactly what we have been worrying about all along.

Since the NIE, the intelligence community has backed away from its original assessment. The Director of National Intelligence, Vice Admiral Mike McConnell said that Iran could ``probably'' produce the fissile material needed for a nuclear weapon by as early as 2010. He has also testified that he would ``change the way we described the nuclear program'' in the NIE.

Both Hayden and McConnell have also admitted that the NIE was so quickly declassified and poorly focused that it confused people. Unfortunately, the damage is done. The notion that Iran has suspended its nuclear program--however false that may be--has derailed our diplomatic push to a great extent and caused more confusion. Whatever the intentions behind this misleading assessment, we now know that Iran, with some of its international supporters, used the opportunity to derail the diplomatic process and move ahead with its uranium enrichment. Iran is now on the verge of producing enough highly enriched uranium for one to three nuclear weapons a year.

This is not good news. Diplomacy, and more serious sanctions, keep military action at bay. A lack of options is what forces nations to make military choices.

I raise these points not to criticize the administration, advocate for one action course of action over another, or argue about the results of the recent NIE. I raise these points because our Nation cannot afford confusion about the threat at hand. We have underestimated our adversaries in the past, and missed important developments even in friendly nations. Saddam Hussein developed nuclear weapons while receiving U.S. aid. India detonated a nuclear device before the U.S. had any advance warning. More recently, Syria procured a nuclear reactor as the United States negotiated in good faith with its suppliers in North Korea.

We need to get this right. A mistake, a botched timeline, a missed event, a faulty analysis--all or any of the above could result in the worst of all possible outcomes. It is for that reason, that I rise today to introduce the legislation to help us better assess the nuclear threat from Iran. This legislation will create an independent commission comprised of 12 private U.S. citizens with expertise in nuclear proliferation and experience on the question of Iran. They will be appointed by the Speaker of the House, the House Minority Leader, and the Senate Minority Leader. Together, they will lend their expertise on this critical issue.

There is a venerable history to such bipartisan commissions, including the 9/11 Commission, the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, and the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States. A commission can provide a set of fresh eyes to look without bias at the information at hand and make assessments upon which the American people and American policymakers can rely.

Perhaps there are some among my colleagues or in the bureaucracy of the executive branch who believe that they need no help, and that such a commission is not necessary. To them, I suggest a brief review of history. Let us rely on the best our Nation has to offer, and bring bipartisan, fresh expertise to the question of the Iranian threat.

I urge my colleagues to support me in this effort.

Mr. President, I rise today to address an issue of critical importance to the security of our Nation and the world. I want to talk about the future of Iran's nuclear capabilities and what it means for the United States.

Too often here in Washington, we get caught up in the debate of the moment and fail to appreciate the larger picture. Too many are more concerned with petty blame games and not enough are concerned with the greater challenge of protecting Americans.

General Michael Hayden, the Director of Central Intelligence, has said that he believes Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. Others, including the President of the United States and the leaders of France and Great Britain agree.

I ask myself what would happen if the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran succeeded in acquiring a nuclear weapon. Among the possibilities, he could use that weapon. Iran could share it with terrorists or other rogue states. At a minimum, an Iranian nuke would prompt its neighbors in the Gulf, in Turkey, in Egypt and elsewhere to seek a similar ability in order to defend themselves against Iran's efforts to gain regional dominance.

The stakes could not be higher, and I am concerned that we are not meeting the challenge. To the contrary, I believe we are being tested, and we are failing.

Iran is the most active state sponsor of terrorism around the world. In addition to its long time support for groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran is now active in directing aggression against our troops in Iraq, sponsoring not only Shiite extremists but even Sunni terror groups. According to General Petraeus, ``...Iran has played [a fundamental role] in funding, training, arming, and directing the so- called Special Groups and generated renewed concern about Iran in the minds of many Iraqi leaders. Unchecked, the Special Groups pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq.''

In addition to its destabilizing sponsorship of violence across the Middle East, we also know that Iran is working on delivery vehicles for deadly weapons. The regime has continuously upgraded its missile capabilities, and now has delivery vehicles that can strike targets all over the Middle East and into Europe. Couple that knowledge with the evidence available that Iran has worked on fitting nuclear warheads onto these missiles, and we have even more practical reasons for concern.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stated emphatically that his Nation ``will not give up one iota of its nuclear rights.''

Where does this leave the United States, and the American people, in confronting this growing and multidimensional threat? Unfortunately, the answer appear, to be: confused.

The clearest evidence that we have yet to focus on the exact nature of the Iranian threat--an understanding that is imperative if we are going to succeed in countering it--is last year's National Intelligence Estimate on Iran.

Although leaders and intelligence agencies around the world believe that Iran is indeed pursuing nuclear weapons, the NIE drew confusing, misleading, and contradicting conclusions. In dramatic phrasing clearly designed to mislead, the NIE states that ``We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.'' In a footnote that got short shrift from both the press and the jubilant Iranian regime, the analysts explain that what they say `` `nuclear weapons program' we mean Iran's nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran's declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.'' In other words, the work referred to that had ``halted'' was in fact work that this Congress had heretofore not been able to confirm, and that we were uncertain existed. What continued, according to the NIE, was Iran's attempts to use its licit nuclear program to develop nuclear weapons capability. Which is exactly what we have been worrying about all along.

Since the NIE, the intelligence community has backed away from its original assessment. The Director of National Intelligence, Vice Admiral Mike McConnell said that Iran could ``probably'' produce the fissile material needed for a nuclear weapon by as early as 2010. He has also testified that he would ``change the way we described the nuclear program'' in the NIE.

Both Hayden and McConnell have also admitted that the NIE was so quickly declassified and poorly focused that it confused people. Unfortunately, the damage is done. The notion that Iran has suspended its nuclear program--however false that may be--has derailed our diplomatic push to a great extent and caused more confusion. Whatever the intentions behind this misleading assessment, we now know that Iran, with some of its international supporters, used the opportunity to derail the diplomatic process and move ahead with its uranium enrichment. Iran is now on the verge of producing enough highly enriched uranium for one to three nuclear weapons a year.

This is not good news. Diplomacy, and more serious sanctions, keep military action at bay. A lack of options is what forces nations to make military choices.

I raise these points not to criticize the administration, advocate for one action course of action over another, or argue about the results of the recent NIE. I raise these points because our Nation cannot afford confusion about the threat at hand. We have underestimated our adversaries in the past, and missed important developments even in friendly nations. Saddam Hussein developed nuclear weapons while receiving U.S. aid. India detonated a nuclear device before the U.S. had any advance warning. More recently, Syria procured a nuclear reactor as the United States negotiated in good faith with its suppliers in North Korea.

We need to get this right. A mistake, a botched timeline, a missed event, a faulty analysis--all or any of the above could result in the worst of all possible outcomes. It is for that reason, that I rise today to introduce the legislation to help us better assess the nuclear threat from Iran. This legislation will create an independent commission comprised of 12 private U.S. citizens with expertise in nuclear proliferation and experience on the question of Iran. They will be appointed by the Speaker of the House, the House Minority Leader, and the Senate Minority Leader. Together, they will lend their expertise on this critical issue.

There is a venerable history to such bipartisan commissions, including the 9/11 Commission, the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, and the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States. A commission can provide a set of fresh eyes to look without bias at the information at hand and make assessments upon which the American people and American policymakers can rely.

Perhaps there are some among my colleagues or in the bureaucracy of the executive branch who believe that they need no help, and that such a commission is not necessary. To them, I suggest a brief review of history. Let us rely on the best our Nation has to offer, and bring bipartisan, fresh expertise to the question of the Iranian threat.

I urge my colleagues to support me in this effort.