Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise to speak about the amendment that has been introduced by the Senator from Texas, Mr. Cornyn. I think it is amendment No. 634. I will take only a few minutes, as I know my colleague from Indiana is waiting, but I do wish to speak to it, if I may.

The Senator from Texas has introduced an amendment that takes an unprecedented step in the Senate; that is, the step of actually requiring the President, by mandate--with respect to one weapon system in one singular amendment--to sell a specific weapon to another country. Specifically, the Senator wants to take the unprecedented step of requiring the President of the United States to sell 66 new F-16 fighter aircraft to Taiwan.

The amendment mandates the sale of these new aircraft, despite the fact that just yesterday the President and the administration notified Congress of their intention to provide Taiwan with nearly six billion dollars' worth of items in defense goods and services, on top of money they have already provided to Taiwan--including upgrades to Taiwan's current fleet of 145 F-16s.

I will stand by my record of 26-plus years of voting for the appropriate defense relationship with respect to Taiwan and China. We have always respected the Taiwan Relations Act, and I think we have consistently stood by Taiwan and kept faith with that act. Without a doubt, the growing military disparity between China and other countries in the region, as well as China and Taiwan, is something we need to be thinking about and taking into account as we contemplate the long-term future of all those relationships in that region. But that said, I am opposed to this specific amendment. I believe Senator Baucus, who has already spoken in opposition to it, and others, I believe, are opposed to it for two appropriate reasons: one, the substance of the amendment itself--and I will speak to that--but also, plain and simply, this is not the right vehicle to address this issue.

Everybody understands that consideration of TAA is part of a very complicated approach to what Senator Thune just commented on--a much- too-long-awaited dealing with several trade agreements a lot of us want to pass and we think we should pass. Passage of this TAA proposal-- without these other issues being added to it, which would put it in jeopardy--is critical to being able to help American workers as well as to lining up those three pending trade agreements which will create jobs in the United States and which will also enhance our security. So if we were to pass the Cornyn amendment--which we know the administration strongly opposes--that would imperil this very carefully crafted jobs package we are now considering.

On that basis alone, I would urge colleagues to vote against this amendment. But I believe there are powerful, substantive reasons for why this amendment shouldn't pass just on its own. Mandating the sale of one particular weapon is not the way for the United States to respond or to deal with or manage the complex national security challenge of that region and the complexity of the relationship with Taiwan.

I would remind colleagues that the $6 billion in new arms sales, of various kinds--including a major upgrade package to all the 145 F-16s-- is an enormous, important package which Taiwan wants and needs and which Taiwan believes will bring it up to par with respect to those systems and the need to be able to defend itself.

I think we have to remember that ever since President Nixon opened the door to China nearly 40 years ago, the United States has worked very carefully to promote peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. The Taiwan Relations Act has long governed our policy toward Taiwan because we don't have a formal diplomatic relationship or a formal treaty.

With respect to arms sales, let me share with my colleagues what the TRA says. It shall be the policy of the United States ``to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character'' and ``to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion'' which would jeopardize the security of the people of Taiwan. Finally, the TRA obligates the United States to provide such defense goods and services to Taiwan as are ``necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.''

The Obama administration and the committees of jurisdiction in the Senate and House, with respect to it, take the provisions of that act very seriously. The administration has carefully analyzed, as have we, the military balance across the Taiwan Strait, and we have consulted closely with the Government of Taiwan as to how to best meet Taiwan's defensive needs.

On Wednesday, the administration formally notified Congress of its intent to send a very substantial retrofit package that would upgrade the current fleet. As I mentioned, there are 145 F-16s that Taiwan has today and that Taiwan relies on today for its current defense needs. These upgrades include state-of-the-art avionics and weaponry-- including Actively Electronically Scanned Array Radars, targeting systems, the AIM-9X air-to-air missiles, and precision-guided munitions. So I don't believe there is any question but that the United States is now, and will continue to be, in full compliance with the requirements of the TRA.

But this package also makes clear that support for Taiwan is not a partisan issue. The Bush administration, in its 8 years--two full terms--notified Congress of the sale of roughly $15 billion total in arms sales to Taiwan. With the announcement of this sale of the additional items Taiwan needs, the administration--the Obama administration--in less than 3 years has approved the sale of over $12 billion in arms to Taiwan. So we have $15 billion

over 8 years from the Bush administration and $12 billion over 3 years from the Obama administration.

Moreover, the administration's $5.8 billion retrofit and training proposal provides the necessary parts, equipment, training, and logistical support for a cost-effective upgrade of Taiwan's current status; most importantly, it elevates Taiwan's current fleet of F-16s to a level of capability consistent with the most advanced export variants of this aircraft.

Let us understand where we are--what the state of play is. Taiwan has an urgent defense need today. They have 145 aircraft we have already sold them. We are prepared to provide them an upgrade that brings those aircraft up to the total state of the art of the most advanced export variants we are allowed to export to another country, and it will prevent these 145 aircraft from becoming obsolete. This is the most sensible, cost-effective, effective way to provide an upgrade and to provide Taiwan with the capacity it needs.

To the degree people are thinking jobs in the United States of America and what about selling, a lot of us have never believed we ought to use defense sales or weapons sales to create jobs. There are a lot more effective ways of creating jobs. But to whatever degree anybody wants to measure this by that standard, the $5.8 billion sale announced yesterday will be welcome news to the workers of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Pratt & Whitney, and many other defense firms.

Again, I emphasize that is not the rationale for the sale, and none of us should resort to those kinds of sales for the purpose of jobs. But if that is going to be a measurement or a consideration in anybody's mind, make no mistake, the $6 billion the President has proposed will have its own impact.

Finally, let me point out to colleagues, and I think it is an important consideration, nothing in the proposed upgrade package will preclude the United States from providing new F-16s as we go down the road, as they may be necessary, as a judgment is made about them or any other similar platform to Taiwan in the future. The administration has taken pains to make clear to Congress and to Taiwan the approval of this sale does not and will not prejudice any future decision on new aircraft.

Yesterday, President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan said the upgrades to Taiwan's existing F-16A/B jets are aimed at maintaining the country's self-defense capabilities while pursuing peaceful development across the Taiwan Strait.

The President of Taiwan said of the upgrade package:

We have to develop peaceful ties with Mainland China. But

we haven't for one second let our guard down when it comes to

Taiwan's security.

I don't believe the Taiwanese believe they are letting their guard down. I don't think they believe we are not meeting their needs. Obviously, Congress has an important role to play in determining how to meet those needs, but I don't think we should, in the wake of the evidence here, make an independent judgment outside of what is already happening. We certainly shouldn't blindly defer to the Executive on Taiwan arm sales. But I think to compel the Executive to make a specific arms sale to a specific country measured against the steps already taken and the steps being taken would be an unprecedented intervention by the Senate under circumstances where there just has not been made the kind of compelling, urgent argument that that is the only way to proceed. So I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment when the time comes for us to vote on it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I think all of us agree with the intent and the direction the Senator from Texas wants to go here with respect to our friendship and our support of Taiwan. In the 26 years I have been here, I have never not supported doing what is necessary to live up to the Taiwan Relations Act. But the Senator is reaching way beyond what we have ever done in the Senate, which is to compel a single weapons systems sale by the President with respect to a complex relationship such as China-Taiwan and the entire presence of the United States in the areas of the straits and in that region. We have never done that.

Moreover, the President of Taiwan has said it is entirely adequate. He feels they will have the defensive capacity necessary under the TRA in

order to be able to defend themselves at the current level with the upgrade we are providing.

Let me point out that under President Bush, over 8 years, we provided $12 billion to Taiwan--over 8 years. In 3 years of the Obama administration, he has provided about $12 billion--3 years. So there was $15 billion by Bush over 8 years, $12 billion by Obama over 3 years.

The upgrade that is being provided--$6 billion worth of upgrade, sales of weapons--includes state-of-the-art avionics and weaponry, including the Active Electronically Scanned Array Radars, targeting systems, Aim-9X air-to-air missiles, and precision-guided munitions. Those airplanes, those 145 F-16s, will have state-of-the-art capacity at the highest level of any F-16 that we are allowed to sell to any country in the world.

Moreover, the administration has made it absolutely clear that this does not preclude the sale of F-16s maybe in the next months, maybe in the next year, but that ought to be done by any administration, Republican or Democratic, in an orderly way as a matter of good arms policy and as a matter of good foreign policy. In addition to that, the administration is unalterably opposed to this.

So here we are working hard under a fairly careful script to get TAA out of here so we can move to three trade agreements that a lot of us want to move and pass, which means jobs for America. They have been long overdue. We pass this amendment, we lose that opportunity. It is that simple.

So these are all tradeoffs, but this is a tradeoff measured against the lack of any need for urgency as a matter of defense policy and foreign policy to do this. So I say to my colleagues, why, for the first time, without that showing of urgency and need, particularly given the President of Taiwan's own statements, are we going to for the first time compel a President to do something he does not think he wants to do in the context of the relationship with both China and Taiwan?

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Let me say, very quickly, that the sale of weapons measured against the policy decisions in a set of relationships that are critical to the balance of power and the threat and danger and so forth has never been translated into a jobs program. If you want it to be--$6 billion spent on these upgrades--Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and a host of companies will benefit from that $6 billion and may benefit from the sale of weapons down the road.

This is a policy issue. The policy question is whether the President of Taiwan can speak for Taiwan as the Senator from Texas speaks for Taiwan. It is whether we are going to be adequately meeting the needs of the TRA and the foreign policy priorities of an administration that, it seems to me, given the statements of the President of Taiwan, not only don't violate it but sustain the relationship of the TRA.

I have proudly voted in support of Taiwan for the entire time I have been here, 26 years. I believe I am voting for them today, even as I oppose this amendment but support the administration's $6 billion program for upgrade and those 145 F-16s--and maybe we will sell them some others.

Mr. President, just a few days ago I received a special gift from a consummate mariner, Rich Wilson of Marblehead, MA, the skipper of the Great American III. The gift was a U.S. Yacht Ensign, the red, white and blue flag used to identify American licensed yachts since 1848. What made this particular Ensign so special is that Rich flew it aboard the Great American III on December 10, 2008, in the solo, nonstop, around-the-world sailing race known as the Vendee Globe.

Rich flew the Ensign on his 31st day at sea from France, just as he was entering the Indian Ocean bound for Cape Horn. Ninety days later, Rich and the 60-foot Great American III completed their 28,000-mile global trek from France to France, ninth among the 11 finishers of a race that began with 30 boats. Rich was the only American entry, the oldest skipper in the fleet at 58 years of age, and only the second American ever to finish the Vendee Globe in its six quadrennial runnings.

The Vendee Globe is widely regarded as the Mount Everest of the seas. But, in fact, it is even a greater challenge than climbing Mount Everest. Consider the fact that while 3,000 people have climbed Mount Everest, Rich was only the 46th person ever to sail alone around the world nonstop. Consider, too, the fact that some 500 astronauts have flown in space, and that further underscores just how rare and special Rich's accomplishment in the Vendee Globe truly is.

The Vendee Globe is like no other event on this earth. It is a grueling contest largely unsullied by hype and commerce, a competition of men and women against each other but mostly against the ceaselessly moving sea, sometimes playful, sometimes terrifying, an immense power inspiring admiration, caution and, above all, respect.

But in the hands of Rich Wilson, the Vendee Globe also became a learning experience for students and newspaper readers throughout the world. As with his earlier long-distance ocean voyages, Rich shared his Vendee Globe experience through the online company he founded, www.sitesalive.com, a nonprofit that has produced 75 live, interactive, full-semester programs linking K-12 classrooms to adventures and expeditions worldwide. During the 2008-2009 Vendee Globe, sitesalive.com shared Rich's 15-part weekly series, written at sea from the Great American, with 250,000 students and 7 million readers.

Rich's goal was to excite students and engage students by connecting

them to a live ocean expedition. As Rich explains it the reasoning behind sitesalive.com: ``Excite a kid with dolphins, flying fish, and gales at sea, or with snakes, bugs, and bats in the rainforest, and they will pay attention, not knowing what will happen next. Then the science, geography, and math flow freely.''

Anyone who enjoyed high seas adventure novels like Moby-Dick and Treasure Island or anyone who marveled at National Geographic expeditions or the adventures of Jacques Cousteau on the Calypso can understand how Rich is making the world come alive for students. And anyone who has sailed, even within sight of the shore, or who has run a marathon or has hiked a mountain range can appreciate the skill, conditioning, and discipline it took for Rich to complete Vendee Globe.

I thank Rich for the Ensign, the memento from his great adventure, and I congratulate him, not only for completing his great voyage but also for sharing it online with millions of people around the world. And as he considers whether to enter the Vendee Globe again in 2012, I urge him to once again climb aboard the Great American III and set sail.

Madam President, I yield myself such time as I use.

Let me, first of all, thank the Senator from Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, for his comments and particularly for the recommendations that he is going to make to the supercommittee, to each of us. I think all of us in the Senate know Senator Levin is one of the most creative and thoughtful Senators. I am confident that the suggestions he makes are going to be important ones that are going to be worthy of consideration.

I know also, because it is something I began to focus on back in the 1980s, this issue of offshore havens is absolutely staggering. I look forward to this. I know the Senator has led the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on that. They have done outstanding work. I am confident that a lot of that work can be certainly put on the table, and it ought to be seriously considered. My hope is we can do something about it.

Madam President, one of the amendments we will vote on shortly is an amendment by Senator Rand Paul with respect to cutting-- or an offset, if you will--of $6.9 billion from the State Department and USAID in order to fund FEMA disaster relief programs.

First of all, a number of colleagues have come to the Senate floor over the last couple of days and talked about the principle that has governed our efforts to provide disaster assistance through all of the years of this institution. We do not know how to plan on the amounts. We do not hold people accountable to other programs because of acts of God, natural disasters that arise suddenly, and the Nation has always been rich enough and responsible enough to guarantee that we provide assistance to communities that have been hard hit by a flood, by a tornado, ravaged by fires--by some natural disaster.

I think the notion that suddenly we are going to start offsetting at a time when we are engaged in a very delicate balance of offsets with respect to the regular budgeting process is to try to put in place an inappropriate principle at an inappropriate time.

That argument has been made considerably. I want to talk for a minute about the merits of this particular proposal on its face. Let me make as clear as I can that this amendment would be absolutely devastating to our foreign aid and development programs. It would decimate agencies that have already taken huge funding cuts in fiscal year 2011, and it would completely undermine core national security priorities and humanitarian commitments.

Senator Paul argues that foreign aid is ``welfare we give to other nations, many of which are rich nations.'' I disagree with both parts of that sentence, and I disagree profoundly with the notion that foreign aid is somehow welfare.

Foreign aid is an investment in our national security; it is not a gift to other countries. It is a very small investment that provides an enormous return in so many different ways in terms of advancing the interests of our country, of our citizens. Because of foreign aid in many parts of the world we have relationships, and we have programs, we have initiatives, joint ventures that make Americans safer every single day. We need to put politics aside and focus on concrete facts.

I know the easiest thing in the world is to walk into a big townhall meeting and say we ought to be building in--whatever the community you are in--before we send money somewhere else, and everybody cheers. There is an instant reaction--easy applause, easy politics, but not smart politics in terms of the interests of our country.

The fact is all of our foreign aid programs, all of our foreign policy initiatives, all in the State Department, everything we do in USAID, all the things we do from sending a diplomat to Baghdad or Pakistan or Afghanistan, every effort we make to help reverse the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, all of the things our State Department engages in make up barely 1 percent of the annual budget.

So often when we go out to those townhalls that are ready to applaud the idea of just giving the money here, we ask people: How much do you think we give in foreign aid? And people say: Oh, my God, it is 50 percent of our budget or 10 percent or 5 percent. It is none of those. It is barely 1 percent.

We spend about $700 billion on our military. By contrast, the international affairs budget in its entirety is less than one-tenth of the Pentagon's. A former Secretary of Defense, Bob Gates, pointed out, I think only a year or so ago, that if we took the entire Foreign Service roster we could barely crew one aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy.

I understand we face a budget crisis in our own country. Obviously, I understand that. We are working hard to address this issue in the new committee that has been formed by the Congress. But if we cut these funds now, I guarantee my colleagues we will pay a much stiffer price later for increased threats to our national security, for loss of opportunity, for loss of business, for graver crises, all of which will come as a result of America pulling back.

I remind Senators our foreign policy and development programs have already been cut to the bone. The final fiscal year 2011 spending agreement cut $6.5 billion from the international affairs budget. That is a 10-percent cut. How many agencies took a 10-percent cut? It happens to also be a 15-percent cut from the President's request.

At a time that we are fighting a war in Afghanistan, when we are managing turmoil in the Middle East, when we are trying to guarantee that in Egypt, which we have encouraged to have an uprising, which we have celebrated for its reach for democracy and for freedom, at a time when it is trying to do it, are we going to pull the rug out from under them and say: Go ahead Muslim brotherhood, its pickings are all for you?

It doesn't make any sense at a time when we are coping with unprecedented famine in the Horn of Africa, millions of people starving to death, a global tragedy that challenges the morality of our Nation-- it would be unbelievably extreme and irresponsible to take the approach that Senator Paul's amendment takes. It would jeopardize our national security in several important ways. Let me just name a few specifically.

First of all, it would threaten the State Department and USAID's ability to serve as a critical partner to the military in postconflict situations. For instance, in Afghanistan we are working hand in hand, State Department and Defense Department, in order to be able to transition to the Afghan forces. This would put those troops at risk, put that effort at risk. I think it would raise serious questions about the viability of what we are trying to accomplish.

We are at a critical juncture in those efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan. Cutting our aid to those countries will impact our military operations. For all of those Senators who want to get out of Afghanistan faster, we pull the aid out from underneath it, and we may be getting out in a way we do not want to, or we will make it longer before we get out in the way that we do want to.

I suggest respectfully Senator Paul said he would ``much rather send . . . professors around the world than . . . our soldiers.'' I don't know an American who would not rather do that. We all hope that can happen as soon as possible. But we cannot just ordain it by saying: Here it is, here is what we are doing, and change the situations on the ground. The wish does not become the father to the fact in those situations.

As we have seen in recent days with the attack on our embassy in Kabul, there is a lot of work to be done in Afghanistan before our college deans can

take over from our district support teams.

This cut would set back progress in creating markets for U.S. goods and services. Here we are struggling to create jobs in the United States. One of the best opportunities for jobs is export--export to the new, emerging middle classes of India, Brazil, Korea, Mexico, China, other places. We want to sell them those products. But if all of a sudden we are pulling back our ability to marshal opportunities in those markets, if we reduce the ability of the U.S. businesses to get those opportunities, we diminish our own efforts to strengthen our economy.

We don't just face a budget deficit crisis, we also face a jobs deficit. In the face of global competition, our growth in our exports is directly tied to our ability to create new American markets. Money we spend helping to stabilize emerging economies has an amazing impact on our own economy, and that has been proven for all the years, certainly, since the end of World War II.

The Paul amendment would also lead to a $1 billion cut in our battle against global AIDS. PEPFAR, the President's program on which George Bush--President George Bush, Republican--worked with us on the Foreign Relations Committee, a program Senator Helms and Senator Frist and I and others originally developed, a program that currently supports 3.5 million people on lifesaving HIV/AIDS treatment, a reduction this size to 2011 funds would mean that around 1 million people would be thrown off of those treatments, dramatically reducing the numbers of lives saved through this program.

We are a country that has prided ourselves on our willingness to live our values. The Judeo-Christian ethic is one of charity and one of concern for the poor, the downtrodden, the sick, and so forth. It is hard for me to understand how we can take an ethic of our private lives that everybody talks about so pronouncedly around here and look at the fact that there are some folks in America who tithe 10 percent of their income, or others who give a fixed percentage of their income in order to help the world, and here we are, as a matter of national policy, going to put 1 million people at risk from a program we are currently saving lives on? I don't understand that kind of value system.

It would derail our efforts to forestall famine in the Horn of Africa, and that would trigger long-lasting suffering and destabilize the neighboring countries such as Yemen, Kenya, and Somalia. In Somalia alone approximately 3.2 million people are in need of immediate lifesaving assistance, a half million children are acutely malnourished, and more than 29,000 children under the age of 5 have tragically died.

This planet knows how to feed people. Rich countries have an obligation to try to do that. Our obligation is de minimis. We should not come in here installing a new principle all of a sudden, for the first time ever, saying we have to offset money to pay for emergency assistance to our communities at the expense of young kids who are starving in another part of the world.

I hope my colleagues will recognize this amendment is not the right way to approach this. It would have a negligible impact on our budget deficit, and its real impact on our security would be enormous.

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

Madam President, regarding the parliamentary situation, how much time remains for Senator Cantwell?

It is my understanding that Senator Cantwell wants to preserve a component of that, so I would, on behalf of Senator Cantwell, yield myself 5 minutes at this time.

Madam President, I appreciate the comments of our friend from Alabama, Senator Sessions, regarding his amendment to strike section 37 of the patent reform bill, but I disagree with him on substantive terms, and I ask our colleagues to look carefully at the substance of this amendment and the importance of this amendment with respect to precedent not for one company from Massachusetts or for one entity but for companies all over the country and for the application of patent law as it ought to be applied.

The only thing section 37 does--the only thing--is it codifies what a Federal district court has already said and implements what the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is already doing. There is no breaking of new ground here. This is codifying a Federal district court, codifying what the Patent Office has done, and, in fact, codifying common sense. It is putting into effect what is the right decision with respect to how we treat patents in our country.

Section 37 is, in fact, a very important clarification of a currently confusing deadline for filing patent term extension applications under the Hatch-Waxman Act. Frankly, this is a clarification, I would say to the Senator from Alabama, that benefits everybody in the country. In fact, this is a clarification which has already been put into effect for other types of patents that were once upon a time treated with the same anomaly. They rectified that. They haven't rectified it with respect to this particular section of patent law.

So all we are doing is conforming to appropriate law, conforming to the standards the Patent Office applies, and conforming for all companies in the country, for any company that might be affected similarly. If this were a bailout for a single firm or a pharmaceutical company, as some have tried to suggest it might be, why in the world did a similar provision previously get reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 14 to 2? How in the world could this provision have then passed the House of Representatives as it did? And why would many House Republicans have supported it as they did? The answer is very simple: Because it is the right thing to do under the law and under the common sense of how we want patents treated in the filing process.

The law as currently written, frankly, was being wrongly applied by the Patent and Trademark Office. And you don't have to take my word for that; that is what a Federal court has said on more than one occasion. Each time, the court has ruled that it was the Patent and Trademark Office, not an individual firm called WilmerHale or Medicines Company-- not those two--that made a mistake.

Let me make that very clear so the record is as clear as it can be. The current law as it is written says that ``to obtain an extension of the term of a patent under this section, the owner of record of the patent or its agent shall submit an application to the Director. . . . Such an application may be only submitted within the sixty-day period beginning on the date the product received permission'' under the appropriate provision of law.

Now, the FDA reasonably interprets this language to mean that if something is received after the close of business on a given business day, it is deemed to be received the next business day. Under this interpretation, the filing by the Medicines Company was indisputably timely.

So my colleagues should not come to the floor and take away from entities that are trying to compete and be in the marketplace over some technicality: the suggestion that because something was filed electronically on a particular given day at 5 o'clock in the afternoon when people had gone home--they weren't open--that somehow they deem that not to have been appropriately filed.

But rather than accept that commonsense interpretation, the Patent and Trademark Office told the Medicines Company it was late. They just decided that. They said: You are late, despite the fact that interpretation contradicted the same-business-day rule the FDA uses when interpreting the very same statute. So as a result, the issue went to court, and guess what. The court told the PTO it was wrong. A Federal judge found that the Patent Office and FDA had been applying inconsistent interpretations of the exact same statutory language in the Hatch-Waxman Act. The FDA uses one interpretation that has the effect of extending its own internal deadlines, but the PTO insisted on using a different interpretation. The result was a ``heads I win, tails you lose.''

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 additional minute.

For companies investing in innovative medicines, the court found that the PTO failed to provide any plausible explanation for this inconsistent approach. It further found that the PTO's interpretation had the effect of depriving applicants of a portion of their time for filing an application.

After considering all the relevant factors, the court adopted the FDA's interpretation. So the court told the PTO that they were wrong and it was they, and not the Medicines Company, who made a mistake.

So this is not an earmark. It isn't, as Senator Sessions contends, a single-company bailout. It is a codification of a court ruling. It is a clarification. It is common sense. It puts a sensible court decision into legislative language, and it is legislative language that applies to all companies across the country equally. It doesn't single out any particular company but amends the patent law for the benefit of all applicants.

I ask my colleagues to oppose the Sessions amendment on the merits. More importantly, we need to move forward with this important bill on which Chairman Leahy and Senator Grassley have worked so hard. Passing the Sessions amendment would stop that. It would require a House-Senate conference on the bill, and it would at best seriously delay and at worst make it impossible to exact patent reform during this Congress. So

this is, on the merits, for all companies. This is common sense. This is current law. This is current practice. So I ask my colleagues accordingly to vote appropriately.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at 4 p.m. the Senate proceed to the votes in relation to the amendments and passage of H.R. 1249, the America Invents Act, with all other provisions of the previous order remaining in effect; that the final 10 minutes of debate be equally divided between the chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee or their designees, with the chairman controlling the final 5 minutes; further, that there be 4 minutes equally divided between proponents and opponents prior to each vote.

Madam President, I reserve the remainder of Senator Cantwell's time.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 595

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

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

Mr. President, it is my pleasure but also a sad moment for members of the Foreign Relations Committee to take this time to celebrate the service of and also to salute the retirement of one of the Senate's great staffers: Ed Levine.

Ed is retiring this week after a remarkable 35 years of service to the Senate--a lot longer than most Senators get to serve and that most staff up here have the courage to hang in there and serve.

In his decades of service, Ed has provided wise and perceptive counsel to two committees, to many Members, and most recently to the Foreign Relations Committee. His deep knowledge of foreign policy and his remarkable sense of this institution are truly going to be missed and I mean missed enormously.

He grew up and he went to school here in Washington, DC, before he headed off to Berkeley and then later to Yale. When he was a young man here in this community, he used to ride the streetcar down to Georgia Avenue, where he would watch the Senators play at Griffith Stadium. For those who are too young to remember, there actually was a baseball team called the Senators once upon a time. He did not watch folks here playing at Griffith Stadium. But when the Washington Senators left for good to become the Texas Rangers, I have to reckon that Ed just decided that the U.S. Senators were the only game left in town, and he has been here ever since.

He first came to the Senate in 1976. He joined the Select Committee on Intelligence back then--literally right after it was established. It was a historic moment. Those who remember their history of the 1970s remember that was a time of great consternation about the covert activities of the CIA. The activities and the oversight of the CIA became a major national issue and concern. So it was a historic moment when the Senate was reasserting its constitutional responsibility to provide oversight.

Ed spent the next 20 years overseeing some of the Nation's most sensitive programs and some of its most closely guarded secrets. He was trusted with some of the most secret information of our country because he never had anything but the interests of our country and the security of the Nation foremost in his mind.

I think that is also borne out in the fact that through the course of his career, he worked for Members of both sides of the aisle while he was on the Intelligence Committee. He served on that committee as the personal representative of Republican Senator Clifford Case and then Republican Senator David Durenberger, and then later for Democratic Senators Howard Metzenbaum and Chuck Robb. His work for the Intelligence Committee exemplified a standard of public service that puts the fulfillment of the Senate's constitutional duties above any other partisan concerns.

For him, there never was a party issue, Republican or Democrat, or an ideological issue, liberal or conservative. It was: What are the best interests of the United States of America and how do we protect its security? He has applied that very same approach to his work on the Foreign Relations Committee, where I have had the privilege of watching him work over the course of the 26 years I have been here.

He worked mostly previously for now-Vice President Biden. A few days ago, we held a business meeting at the Foreign Relations Committee, and it was characteristic of Ed's diligence in representing the interests of country above party that Senator Lugar, the ranking member of the committee, and who has served with him for a long time, took time to acknowledge his service and to note how constructively he had worked with the Republican counterparts on the committee over these many years.

We saw that in large measure last year when we considered the New START treaty, in which Ed played an integral role. You know, I might mention to colleagues, when Vice President Biden was Senator Biden and chairman of the committee, he coined a nickname for Ed. He called him ``Fast Eddie.'' And the irony of that for all of us who know him is that Ed does not do ``fast.'' He is one of the most careful and deliberate thinkers on our staff, and that is one of the things people valued in him the most. It was never a hip shot. It was always based on thinking, research, experience, and knowledge.

His knowledge of arms control, I may say, is encyclopedic. During the New START debate, we had a war room set up one floor below this in the Foreign Relations Committee room, with dozens of experts from the various departments of our government, and stacks of briefing books, and instant computer linkage to the State Department, to the Defense Department, Intelligence, and so forth, but often when we had a question, all we had to do was turn to Ed and he would know the answer from right up here in his head, from his experience.

That is not surprising, given how many treaties Ed has helped this body to consider during his career. He worked on the INF Treaty, on the START I treaty, on the START II treaty, on the Chemical Weapons Convention, on the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

I went up to him a moment ago. I saw he was wearing a tie with a sword being beaten into plowshares, and he reminded me that came from the mutual and balanced force reduction treaty, which he said was the only thing they could agree on, but he is proudly wearing it today.

What all of this adds up to is that Ed spent a great chunk of his life doing his best to help the Senate protect our Nation from the most dangerous weapons that ever existed. He did it with such professionalism, even, I might add, when faced with personal loss, as when his father died last year right during the consideration of the treaty, but it did not stop Ed from doing his duty.

All of his Senate service is a real testament to his character. That he earned the respect from the Members he served and the staff he worked with is a testament to his great skill and knowledge. And that he has done so for so many years is a testament to his sense of public citizenship and his love of country.

So, Ed, we thank you, all the Members of the Senate, for your service. We will miss you in the Senate. I wish you personally the best in all of your future endeavors.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I thank the Senator, and I appreciate it.

I ask the Senator this: As ironic as it may be that on occasion people in the past have indeed voted against the debt limit--both Republicans and Democrats alike--is it not true that in those situations, those votes did not hold the Nation hostage, did not come at a moment of enormous economic fragility, as we are in today, and did not run the risk of default because it was going to pass overwhelmingly every time? Is that not true?

If the Senator will yield, I appreciate what the Senator is saying. First of all, everybody understands the danger of the rating agencies right now. The problem is, we have to reach across the aisle and negotiate.

We have to come to an agreement. Right now, there is not a lot of negotiating going on.

I ask the Senator if he doesn't agree that there is an enormous difference between the--a moment ago, the Senator said ``if he had gotten his way.'' The whole point is that everybody knew he wasn't about to get his way. That was a truly symbolic vote. Today, however, is it not true that we are on the brink of a default, and the absence of negotiation or of a settlement presents us with a far more serious consequence to the unwillingness to raise the debt ceiling today?

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, it may surprise the Senator--I hope not, and I don't think so--but it might surprise people listening to us to hear from this side of the aisle that a lot of us have enormous respect for what the Senator has been talking about and fighting for and what he has achieved. I might add he is one of those courageous Senators who has come together in the last months working as part of the so-called Gang of 6 to try to bridge the gap and see if we cannot find a way forward.

As I listen to him, there is an enormous amount of common sense in the questions he is asking. These are questions all of us need to join in. We need to join into them in a process that allows us to be able to work in a balanced way on the grand bargain, as you call it, the big fix. I ask the Senator, because I think a lot of Americans listening to the debate--and I have been listening on the floor and listening some back in the office--people have to be saying these guys have been talking

past each other because we hear things over there that sound reasonable and we hear things on this side that sound reasonable. But people are asking: What is hanging up this process? Why is the entire country being held hostage?

I ask my colleague if he would help us kind of bear down on what we need to do. I ask him if it is not fair and accurate to say that the so-called Gang of 6--a terrible name--maybe we can call them G6 or something--but they came together with an understanding that we needed balance in the approach to satisfy both sides and build a critical mass. That balance requires cuts. We have to put the big items--big ticket items on the table, and that means fixing Social Security, reforming it for the long-term; Medicare and Medicaid, which are unsustainable on their current paths; defense, where we have to find a handle on some of the procurement and expenditures. The Senator has joined in this. We have to close some tax loopholes and have tax reform and find some level of revenue at an appropriate ratio that allows us to fix this. That is where the problem has been. There is a group of folks in the House who have insisted no revenue at all.

I ask the Senator, isn't it fair to say the Gang of 6 came up with a more balanced approach in which, I believe, the Senate could find a ground of compromise--what Senator Reid has proposed, I believe, has cuts that the Republicans have supported--maybe not quite enough yet and maybe we can negotiate that.

(Mr. DURBIN assumed the Chair.)

Will the Senator further yield?

Will the Senator yield for a moment?

Mr. President, I ask the Senator, again--I am trying to help us get out of this predicament where we have a couple days before the United States defaults. Everything the Senator has said is worthy of inquiry. Isn't it true that if we could get--part of the Reid proposal and the Boehner proposal proposes a joint committee that will be structured somewhat like a Base Closing Commission, which will require the Senate and the House to vote in an expeditious fashion on these kinds of proposals, whatever the joint committee proposes, and if the joint committee doesn't succeed in proposing something, hopefully, either the Gang of 6 or the Simpson-Bowles commission will.

Isn't the key to resolving this crisis and not defaulting our ability to be able to come together on a sufficient trigger or some sufficient mechanism that guarantees we are actually going to deal with this in a similar fashion to what the Senator is raising?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized to complete my comments.

Is there a time limit?

I ask to be informed when I have 5 minutes remaining.

Mr. President, when Harry Truman served in the seat Senator McCaskill of Missouri holds today, he used to sit back over there, in back of the row where a lot of the newer Senators sit. He, from that vantage point, would often watch the great debates on the New Deal. He listened long into the night. He used to frequently write home to his wife Bess.

One late night after a long debate, he wrote about his experience of sitting in the Senate--this was early on--and of the awe he felt sitting in this institution and looking across at his colleagues, I assume imagining the ghosts of Calhoun and Clay and other great Senators.

He wrote to his wife, and he said: I sit here in the Senate looking at this institution and at my colleagues and I pinch myself and I say, ``How the hell did I get here?''

A number of months later, it was very late at night, and he was again sitting there, and he wrote to his wife, again watching the debate and looking across at his colleagues, and he wrote to her and said, ``I ask myself, how the hell did they get here?''

Anyway, I suspect at this moment in America a lot of Americans are looking at the Senate, at the Congress, and they are asking a similar question, wondering whether we get it.

I have enormous respect for this institution. I still believe in the phrase ``the world's greatest deliberative body,'' which has, unfortunately, become a punch line in these days, but when we are bipartisan and serious is still a true description, still possible when we rise to the moment. I have seen the Senate over the course of 26 years in those moments, as have other colleagues here. I have seen it with Ted Kennedy and Bob Dole and so many others. I have seen what can be accomplished here.

Regrettably, today, our allies and our enemies abroad and our friends here at home--the American citizen--are watching with either alarm or, in the case of our enemies, delight as they question America's leadership. Some abroad have even suggested this is a sign, a moment of American decline. So even without default, believe me, just the absence of decision and the presence of partisan chaos--they are running up a huge cost for this country.

The other day, I received a letter from 20 mayors from Massachusetts. The letter states:

The time to compromise and resolve this issue is now.

They complained that their communities were under the microscope from Moody's because we had not gotten our acts together here in Washington. Their letter was honest and eloquent. And, frankly, it should not be so difficult for their warnings and their example to be heeded in the Congress.

The mayors' call for compromise, frankly, should not be so difficult. The call for compromise by the American people ought to be listened to and acted on and in very short order.

I have served in the majority and I have served in the minority since I have been here. I have served with Republican Presidents, Democratic Presidents, in both situations, when we are in the minority and in the majority. I have cast tough votes in times of divided government, under Republican and Democratic Presidents, from Reagan to Obama, and I have never seen the governing process so broken because one faction of one side has made compromise--the essence of democracy and the bedrock of our governing system--not just a dirty word but, in their view, a form of treason.

The warnings of mayors were echoed yesterday by the leaders of our financial industry. Yesterday, CEOs of major financial institutions wrote:

Our economic recovery remains very fragile. A default on

our Nation's obligations, or a downgrade--

Just a downgrade--

of America's credit rating, would have an enormous impact on

Americans and on investor confidence--raising interest rates

for everyone who borrows, undermining the value of the

Dollar, and affecting stock and bond markets--and, therefore,

dramatically worsening our Nation's already difficult

economic circumstances.

Those are their words. Notwithstanding that, we continue to see our own well-being at risk.

This is one of those times where it is not cliche and it is not hyperbole to say that the whole world is watching, because the whole world has something at stake in what we do or do not do. For the world, there are serious consequences in that. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I have heard from officials all over the world and global business leaders, and the message is always the same. They are watching in amazement, in puzzlement, and horror at what is going on in Washington. Our friends and allies, whose economic fortunes and economies are linked to our own, doubt us, and they are worrying about the impact of our dysfunction on their economies. Our economic rivals--believe me, our economic rivals--are laughing all the way to the bank. At a time of global economic uncertainty, we should absolutely not be adding to that uncertainty by failing to resolve our debt crisis. The International Monetary Fund is warning that actions still need to be taken to stave off contagion from Europe's sovereign debt crisis.

It is not insignificant that while Harry Reid has been busy trying to find Republicans to join Democrats in a bipartisan solution, Speaker Boehner was exclusively negotiating to end the civil war between the responsible and the unreasonable within the Republican Party. The Speaker negotiated with Republicans to make a bad bill worse.

I think the distinction between what has happened in the House and the Senate is a very important one in terms of where Americans are going to find a resolution to this challenge. Here in the Senate, we have been working day and night, talking with Democratic and Republican colleagues across the aisle in order to find a way forward. And for most of us--or at least many of us; certainly, a sufficient number to be able to pass a solution--for them, there are not any preconditions. Everything is on the table. But we are still facing the obstinate, ideological rigidity from House Republicans--House Republicans--who have threatened to take our Nation into default and downgrade the Nation's credit rating and do even more harm to a fragile economy simply to get their way.

So what is it that divides us right now? I think a lot of Americans listening to the debate probably have a serious question about: What is the difference between these folks? What is it that divides them?

Well, the Boehner plan, which was sent over here, had three fundamental problems in it that Democrats were unwilling to support.

First, it would force huge cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid because of the structure and manner of the cuts they were demanding.

Second, it included a constitutional amendment provision which required that the constitutional amendment actually be passed within 6 months before the next debt limit could be raised. Because there is no certainty that would happen or could happen, it set up an automatic default. So the Boehner plan was setting up the U.S. Government to go right through this exercise again and have an automatic default.

Third, there was a timeframe in the Boehner amendment that required us to go back and visit this in February of next year, which would have meant the minute we come back in September, the entire Congress would have been consumed with the very same thing we have been doing now, which would not give certainty to the marketplace.

So it was not politics that prevented us from proceeding forward on the Boehner plan. It was the substance of that plan.

The Reid plan, which we are debating right now, which is on the floor, is a plan that because of the Republican insistence on no revenues has no revenues. Many people on our side of the aisle object to that. But we have accepted that is the price we need to pay as a matter of our compromise in order to get out of this crisis. So we have compromised on revenues.

It has cuts. All the cuts are cuts the Republicans have already voted for that, again, many of our folks do not like. But they have compromised, our folks, and they have provided the cuts that the Republicans asked for. Because it has a timeframe that goes until after next year, that means we will provide certainty to the marketplace and avoid a downgrade of our credit. The Boehner plan would guarantee a downgrade of our credit. So these are enormous differences.

Finally, the Reid plan provides a tight process, a plan that we know is familiar around here. Like the way we deal with military bases, we require votes. The votes have to take place, and we would be required within a very short number of months to deal with America's long-term debt and budget crisis, and people would have an ability to put their cuts on the table.

But we would also, we hope, have an opportunity to have revenues. That is the big sticking point here in the Senate. We need to know that if there is a trigger that is used in an automatic way in which money is going to be held back, that money has to be held back in a fair and balanced way. You do not just cut, you also have to have the possibility of revenue. Because if you do not have the possibility of revenue, then the side that only wants to cut can wait for nothing to happen and the cuts take place automatically. There is no threat to them. There is no leverage for them to come to agreement on the other things.

That is reasonableness, I believe. I think what we are looking for here is

reasonable. It is fair, and it is balanced. The House strategy has been essentially not to negotiate, not to negotiate.

We also know there are a lot of misstatements out here. Senator Reid corrected one a moment ago about a deal. In addition to that, we keep hearing people say that there is no plan, that the President does not have a plan, that nothing has been reduced to writing.

Well, as Senator Moynihan used to say here: Anybody is entitled to their own opinion, but they are not entitled to their own facts. The fact is, the President put a detailed plan for $4.7 trillion of cuts over 10 years with reductions in defense, and Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, all on the table to find savings in those programs.

It is incredible to me to keep hearing people say there is no plan when there has been plan after plan. Chairman of the Budget Committee Conrad has been warning us for years about this. He sought to get a bipartisan deficit commission created by the Senate. It could not happen because the Republicans blocked it. So what happened? President Obama appointed one of his own. It reported back. We still have not dealt with that.

Because the votes aren't there to support a simple increase in the debt limit, we've bent over backwards to find a compromise that links the debt limit to commitments on significant deficit reductions.

Back in February, the President offered a budget that included more than $1 trillion in deficit reduction. When Republicans said his budget didn't contain enough cuts, he came out with a new proposal two months later which provided a comprehensive, balanced deficit reduction framework to cut spending, bring down our debt and increase confidence in our nation's fiscal strength. This framework would have reduced the deficit by $4 trillion in 12 years or less and reductions would have been phased in over time to protect and strengthen our economic recovery and the recovering labor market. It contained a balanced approach to bringing down our deficit, with three dollars of spending cuts and interest savings for every one dollar from tax reform that contributes to deficit reduction. It called for $770 billion in non- security discretionary spending cuts, $400 billion security spending cuts, $489 billion in Medicare and Medicaid savings, $360 billion in other mandatory savings, and $1 trillion from tax reform. How could I repeat this proposal if it hadn't been written down?

After that was rejected, in his negotiations with the Speaker, the President put an unprecedented $ 4.7 trillion dollars of deficit reduction on the table, including painful cuts to programs millions of working Americans depend on, even cuts we Democrats hate as a matter of principle--and the President offered them along with closing wasteful corporate tax loopholes in order to achieve ``shared sacrifice.'' I believe it would have had significant support in the Senate--instead, House Republicans rejected it and walked away from the process.

The so-called ``Gang of Six'' in the Senate worked for months to strike a compromise that was balanced as well--it too could have won significant backing here in the Senate and was applauded by Senators as ideologically and philosophically different as me and the conservative senator from Oklahoma, Tom Coburn. For House Republicans, this too was unacceptable, because they believe there is not a single new revenue or tax savings that can be supported in the entire 72,000 page U.S. Tax Code.

Recognizing both the stakes for our country, the danger to the economy, and House Republican intransigence, Majority Leader Harry Reid has now offered approximately $2.2 trillion in deficit reduction without additional revenue, composed of cuts Republicans had previously supported. That too was rejected. The leader's proposal would give our economy the certainty it needs to create jobs today, not 6 months from now and it provides a certain process for Congress to do its work for the next 4 months.

Time and time again, I hear those absolutists criticizing the President and majority leader's handling of the situation. They ask what our plan is? Well, take your pick--we have offered compromise after compromise and every time they have said no.

No, the House Republicans would rather spend their time negotiating with themselves and criticizing other proposals than negotiating with Democrats or trying to show that they are willing to compromise.

Here in the Senate, Senator McConnell offered a reasonable compromise that would get us past this hurdle. He proposed a path forward in good faith as way to provide stability for our economy and not have this saga continue. What did House Republicans do? They walked away from even a Republican proposal to ensure our nation didn't default and our economy wasn't hurt.

So what do House Republicans want? They want legislation called the Cut, Cap and Balance Act. It is so extreme that even Paul Ryan's draconian budget wouldn't fit into its limits.

A week ago today, the Senate defeated the bad version--cut, cap and balance. This vote made it extremely clear that cut, cap and balance did not have a path forward, but repeatedly House Republicans push for it even though it has already failed in the Senate and the President threatened to veto it.

So when the talk of the ``grand bargain'' failed, what did the House Republicans do? They further entrench themselves in an extremist position and turn to a new way of passing cut, cap and balance. Have they tried to find a way forward to reaching a real compromise? No, they continue to negotiate among themselves.

And their current refusal to negotiate across party lines flies in the face of the very Republican principles they have espoused.

Why do we oppose the Boehner plan? Because the experts have said that Boehner's plan could trigger many of the consequences as default itself--including a surge in interest rates that will hurt every American with a mortgage, a student loan, a car loan, or a credit card--because it would make passage of a balanced budget amendment a condition for increasing the debt ceiling in 6 months. In other words-- automatic default if they don't get their way. Since there is not two- thirds support in the House and Senate for this amendment, it guarantees default.

Bruce Bartlett, a former economic adviser to President Reagan said:

This is quite possibly the stupidest Constitutional

amendment that I think I have ever seen. It looks like it was

drafted by a couple of interns on the back of a napkin.

Mr. President, that is President Reagan's adviser.

Just the other day, my friend and colleague Senator McCain stated that thinking a balanced budget amendment can pass--``is worse than foolish.'' He went to say:

That is not fair to the American people to hold out and say

we will not agree to raising the debt limit until we pass a

balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. It is unfair.

It is bizarrro.

We can't do this. We can't keep going down this road. This stalemate cannot stand. It is time to for us reach across the aisle. Senator Reid's plan tries to do that. It doesn't touch the Republican holy grail of revenues. Not a dime. And 100 percent of the spending cuts in Senator Reid's deficit reduction plan were supported by Republicans. They were included in proposals from Speaker Boehner's plan, House Majority Leader Cantor, and House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan. Just last night, Senator Reid amended his plan to include Senator McConnell's provision to give the President the authority to increase the debt limit in steps. This gives Members of Congress the chance to register disapproval for increases in the debt limit. This is yet another compromise by the Democrats.

So I think there has been a great effort by Democrats to make changes to deal with the Republican objections. I would ask, what is the single Republican concession? What is it they have given as a matter of compromise? Nobody can tell you that because there has not been one. In fairness, in the Gang of 6, a great group of Republicans joined with Democrats, and they did make a concession, and they took political risks. They went out and said: Yes, there have to be cuts, but there also have to be revenues. I applaud those Republicans who joined in that effort. That is what we need to find here now. That is the way we are going to make the difference here.

It is the place to start a compromise but it takes two sides to compromise. And it takes both Houses of Congress to pass a bill. It shouldn't be this difficult for Congress to do its most fundamental job under the Constitution and preserve the credit rating and reputation of the most powerful nation on Earth.

And it doesn't take an amendment to the Constitution for us to balance the budget either. It takes the courage of our convictions. We have been here before. In the 1990s, our economy was faltering because deficits and debt were freezing capital. We had to send a signal to the market that we were capable of being fiscally responsible. We did just that and as result we saw the longest economic expansion in history, created over 22 million jobs, and generated unprecedented wealth in America, with every income bracket rising. But we did it by making tough choices. We cast tough votes and some Senators even lost their seats but they committed the country to a path of discipline that helped unleash the productive potential of the American people. Working with Republicans, we came up with a budget framework that put our Nation on track to be debt free by 2012 for the first time since Andrew Jackson's administration. It didn't take a constitutional amendment--it took courage.

Mr. President, we can do that again--if we get real. If we get serious. There is a bipartisan consensus just waiting to lift our country and our future if Senators are willing to sit down and forge it and make it real. If we are willing to stop talking past each other, to stop substituting sound bites for substance. If we are willing finally to pull ourselves out of ideological cement that has been mixed over in the House.

I believe we can compromise. I think the only place to resolve this crisis is in compromise.

I believe I have additional time, but I wanted to know where I am with time. I will wrap up very shortly.

As we know, it takes both Houses to pass a bill. It should not be this difficult for Congress to do its most fundamental job under the Constitution. It does not take an amendment to the Constitution to balance the budget. How could I say that? Because in the 1990s, we balanced the budget. We created 23 million new jobs. We raised the income of everybody in America. And the fact is we did what was necessary to put us on a track to pay down the debt of our country by 2012. We sent a signal to the marketplace.

We can do this again if we get real, if we get serious. I believe there is a bipartisan consensus here in the Senate waiting to lift our country and our future, if Senators are willing to sit down and forge it and make it real, if we stop talking past each other. The world's most deliberative body could become that again. But the reason it is not viewed as that today is not that the institution itself has failed; it is not that it cannot be deliberative. It is because the people in it have not yet decided to live in the tradition of those predecessors who earned the reputation for this institution. It is because, unlike the years when I first came here in the 1980s, some have decided to use this institution for a 24/7 365-days-a-year campaign, to make everything that happens here the prisoner of ideology and politics rather than the instrument of debate and decision.

I think it would do us good to remember that until recent history, this institution has been the birthplace of compromise and delivered some of the great legislative achievements that have reshaped our Nation out of compromise, bipartisan compromises here in the Senate-- the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1969, the creation of Medicare in 1965, Social Security reforms of 1983.

We all know that during the Constitutional Convention, Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut developed a bicameral legislative structure that broke a deadlock, and it created--it is in the Constitution. It is why we have a Senate and a House today: compromise.

Everyone who remembers the history books remembers the Compromise of 1850 drafted by Henry Clay that diffused a 4-year confrontation between the slave States of the South and the free States of the North. Even in our most difficult moments, we have been able to find a way to compromise.

In the end, it is people who define this place. It is we Senators. And in my conversations with colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I am convinced there are plenty of people here who are prepared to reach across the aisle and prove that the United States and the U.S. Senate can live up to this moment. I believe that in the next 48 hours the Senate will prove our ability to live up to our constitutional and our personal responsibility.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan.) The Senator from Iowa.

Mr. President, today too many families are at risk of losing the child care assistance that helps maintain their financial stability and ensure the well-being of their children. That is why I am introducing the Children First Act to address the growing unmet need for affordable and safe child care.

Until now, most states were able to maintain their child care assistance programs through the recession due to the additional $2 billion in Federal Child Care and Development Block Grant, CCDBG, funding for 2009 and 2010 from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, ARRA.

However, with only a portion of these ARRA funds being continued, and with persistent state budget gaps, many states are forced to scale back child care assistance for families. Some states' waiting lists for subsidized child care are beginning to rise and a few states have stopped or plan to stop providing child care assistance to families who are not receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, TANF, together.

Cuts and restrictions in the availability of child care assistance make it harder for parents to afford child care and have forced some parents to leave their jobs and turn to welfare programs for support. Children lose access to the stable, good-quality child care that encourages their learning and development and prepares them for school success. And child care programs can find difficulty filling their classrooms, leading them to lay off staff or close their doors entirely. That is wrong and we can do better.

Child care consumes a large portion of family budgets, and can cost up to $18,773 annually for full-time care depending on where the family lives, the type of care, and the age of the child. Child care prices are higher than other household expenses and typically exceed the average amount families spend on food. In 39 States and the District of Columbia, the average annual price for child care for an infant in a child care center was higher than even a year's tuition at some 4-year public colleges.

Without assistance, many low-income families can find it impossible to secure child care. For example, in 2007, the median monthly income of families receiving child care assistance was just $16,680 a year. Nearly half, 49 percent, of families receiving child care assistance live below the poverty line and 86 percent of these families were single parent households. In these challenging economic times, it is especially important to help low and moderate-income families with their child care costs.

The Children First Act which I am introducing today will help address the growing unmet need for affordable and safe child care. It will help--States meet the significant demand for child care assistance by increasing funding for mandatory child care by $500 million for fiscal year 2012, $700 million in 2013, and $750 million in 2014 thru 2021, resulting in an increase of $3.45 billion over 5 years and $7.2 billion over 10 years.

This increase is necessary because only about one in six children eligible for Federal child care assistance receives help and there have been no increases in mandatory' child care funding since 2007. This increased funding will be used to provide approximately 212,000 additional children access to safe and affordable child care as compared to current funding levels.

The Children First Act would exclude child care from the definition of TANF assistance so that unemployed families who receive child care assistance will not have it count towards the 5-year time limit for Federal TANF assistance. The legislation would also ensure that the minimum child care health and safety standards required for providers receiving Child Care Development Block Grant, CCDBG, funding also apply to providers who receive funding through TANF. In Massachusetts, all licensed providers are required to the same health and safety standards regardless of subsidy type received.

This legislation would increase the availability of child care for parents who are required to work. States are currently prohibited from withholding or reducing assistance to a single parent with children under 6 who does not meet work requirements for reasons related to the unavailability or unsuitability of appropriate, affordable child care arrangements. The Children First Act would prevent States from withholding or reducing cash assistance to parents of a child with children under age thirteen.

Enactment of this legislation is incredibly important for my home State of Massachusetts which currently has approximately 24,000 children on a waitlist for child care subsidies. The high cost of child care is the most significant issue facing families currently on the waitlist in Massachusetts. Massachusetts families pay more on average than families in all other states for child care, with the average price of full time care in center based settings totaling $18,773 for an infant and $13,158 for a preschooler. This legislation will help lower the waitlist and help our children become more productive citizens.

I would like to thank a number of organizations who have been integral to the development of the Children First Act and who have endorsed it today, including the including the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, AFSCME, the Children's Defense Fund, CLASP, the National Women's Law Center, and the Service Employees International Union, SEIU.

These reforms would significantly increase access to stable and affordable child care to low-income families and would make our Nation's children more prepared for school and success later in life. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate to pass this legislation.

Mr. President, today too many families are at risk of losing the child care assistance that helps maintain their financial stability and ensure the well-being of their children. That is why I am introducing the Children First Act to address the growing unmet need for affordable and safe child care.

Until now, most states were able to maintain their child care assistance programs through the recession due to the additional $2 billion in Federal Child Care and Development Block Grant, CCDBG, funding for 2009 and 2010 from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, ARRA.

However, with only a portion of these ARRA funds being continued, and with persistent state budget gaps, many states are forced to scale back child care assistance for families. Some states' waiting lists for subsidized child care are beginning to rise and a few states have stopped or plan to stop providing child care assistance to families who are not receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, TANF, together.

Cuts and restrictions in the availability of child care assistance make it harder for parents to afford child care and have forced some parents to leave their jobs and turn to welfare programs for support. Children lose access to the stable, good-quality child care that encourages their learning and development and prepares them for school success. And child care programs can find difficulty filling their classrooms, leading them to lay off staff or close their doors entirely. That is wrong and we can do better.

Child care consumes a large portion of family budgets, and can cost up to $18,773 annually for full-time care depending on where the family lives, the type of care, and the age of the child. Child care prices are higher than other household expenses and typically exceed the average amount families spend on food. In 39 States and the District of Columbia, the average annual price for child care for an infant in a child care center was higher than even a year's tuition at some 4-year public colleges.

Without assistance, many low-income families can find it impossible to secure child care. For example, in 2007, the median monthly income of families receiving child care assistance was just $16,680 a year. Nearly half, 49 percent, of families receiving child care assistance live below the poverty line and 86 percent of these families were single parent households. In these challenging economic times, it is especially important to help low and moderate-income families with their child care costs.

The Children First Act which I am introducing today will help address the growing unmet need for affordable and safe child care. It will help--States meet the significant demand for child care assistance by increasing funding for mandatory child care by $500 million for fiscal year 2012, $700 million in 2013, and $750 million in 2014 thru 2021, resulting in an increase of $3.45 billion over 5 years and $7.2 billion over 10 years.

This increase is necessary because only about one in six children eligible for Federal child care assistance receives help and there have been no increases in mandatory' child care funding since 2007. This increased funding will be used to provide approximately 212,000 additional children access to safe and affordable child care as compared to current funding levels.

The Children First Act would exclude child care from the definition of TANF assistance so that unemployed families who receive child care assistance will not have it count towards the 5-year time limit for Federal TANF assistance. The legislation would also ensure that the minimum child care health and safety standards required for providers receiving Child Care Development Block Grant, CCDBG, funding also apply to providers who receive funding through TANF. In Massachusetts, all licensed providers are required to the same health and safety standards regardless of subsidy type received.

This legislation would increase the availability of child care for parents who are required to work. States are currently prohibited from withholding or reducing assistance to a single parent with children under 6 who does not meet work requirements for reasons related to the unavailability or unsuitability of appropriate, affordable child care arrangements. The Children First Act would prevent States from withholding or reducing cash assistance to parents of a child with children under age thirteen.

Enactment of this legislation is incredibly important for my home State of Massachusetts which currently has approximately 24,000 children on a waitlist for child care subsidies. The high cost of child care is the most significant issue facing families currently on the waitlist in Massachusetts. Massachusetts families pay more on average than families in all other states for child care, with the average price of full time care in center based settings totaling $18,773 for an infant and $13,158 for a preschooler. This legislation will help lower the waitlist and help our children become more productive citizens.

I would like to thank a number of organizations who have been integral to the development of the Children First Act and who have endorsed it today, including the including the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, AFSCME, the Children's Defense Fund, CLASP, the National Women's Law Center, and the Service Employees International Union, SEIU.

These reforms would significantly increase access to stable and affordable child care to low-income families and would make our Nation's children more prepared for school and success later in life. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate to pass this legislation.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent I be permitted to proceed as in morning business for about 15 minutes.

Madam President, this is a dangerous time for our country. What amazes me, for the time I have been here and privileged to serve the citizens of Massachusetts for 27 years now, is that never have I seen a moment where the consequences of inaction can have as potentially damaging an effect on our country as the consequences may if we are downgraded in our debt--just downgraded, not even defaulting--yet some of our colleagues in the Congress, particularly on the other side of the aisle in the House, are, despite all the evidence, all of the judgments made by knowledgeable people--by economists, by business people, by outside observers, about the danger and inadequacy of what they are proposing--despite that, they are insisting, not as a matter of common sense or as a matter of logical economic policy but insisting as a matter of politics and ideology on holding the entire economy of our country hostage and be damned with the risks.

Notwithstanding what that may mean--for 401(k)s, for families, what that may mean for investments that are on the brink because of the fragility of the economy, notwithstanding any of the advice of people who deal with money on a daily basis in terms of investments, these people, many of them who have never served in public life in their lives, never been part of a compromise but have come here with one ideological purpose--these people are putting the entire Nation at risk.

There are a lot of people here, particularly here in the Senate on the other side of the aisle, who know this is dangerous and who know the risks we are taking and who know there are better alternatives. But because of the politics of the situation they are being locked in, not allowed to stand up and exercise--or at least unwilling at this point to stand up and exercise their judgment and, frankly, their responsibility as sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America, to come here and do the business of our country.

The deadline for default may be just a week away but no one should have any illusion that what is happening right now today is already hurting the economy of our country. It is already hurting our country. This is embarrassing for the Nation. It is embarrassing for the United States of America to be having such a dysfunctional display for everybody in the world to see that we who run around the world promoting democracy are unable to make our own democracy work right here at home. The fact is, all you have to do is read today's article in the Boston Globe with the headline ``Uncertainty Has Massachusetts Firms Wary Of Hiring.''

That is what is happening right now. This is already having a negative impact. Maybe that is what some of the people on the other side of the aisle in the House want. Maybe they want the economy to come down so they can win politically and point to the President and say: Oh, it is his fault we don't have the jobs, even though they are weakening the economy with their obstinacy and with their ideological rigidity.

Today's article says:

Still cautious from the last recession, many business

owners worry that government leaders will be unable to reach

an agreement, while others are concerned about exactly the

opposite: that any agreement will invariably include spending

cuts and weaken an already lackluster recovery.

This is no way to provide economic stewardship. Most important, it is no way to run a government. There are countless institutions that rely on the United States, for us to go out and help other nations to be able to recover economically. I met yesterday with the Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Greece. Greece is taking enormous steps right now to try to bring its debt down and all of the euro zone has joined in that effort, and Italy and Spain are likewise at risk in their economies. But the IMF is a critical component of that recovery and the United States is a critical component of the IMF efforts and we have a significant amount of our capital at risk in the IMF. What happens there is important to what happens here, but this place is not behaving as though there is that interconnectedness. Let me tell you what I hear from a lot of smart people--smarter than I am--about the economics. I can listen to them, and I can tell they are deadly serious when they say we are playing with fire with respect to the Greek recovery and with respect to Italy and Spain and the rest of Europe. If they start to go down, then we have a cascade, and it begins to have a greater impact on the United States of America. That is what is at risk in this dangerous game of political chicken that is being played by people of such ideological rigidity that they are unwilling to even compromise.

I heard an interview yesterday with one Senator and a television commentator of one of the cable shows who asked him repeatedly: What are you willing to compromise on? In the end, it became clear he was not willing to

compromise on the fundamental notions of how we arrive at an agreement. We need to reach out across the aisle--both of us, Democrat, Republican--and come together on a deal, on a solution to a critical problem that challenges all of us where there is a solution staring us in the face. We need to do that before, as a result of the inability of people to make that compromise, before those who take that position of ideological rigidity do greater harm to our economy and to our country's reputation. We need to put an end to the time clocks that are running out how long it is before a default which sends an enormous message of uncertainty and incompetence, of dysfunctional politics on a daily basis. Every tick of that clock drums into people the inadequacy of what is happening here right now.

Back in 1983, President Ronald Reagan, whom many of the people who are taking this position of complete obstinacy revere--they ought to listen to what he said because President Reagan wrote:

The denigration of the full faith and credit of the United

States would have substantial effects on the domestic

financial markets and on the value of the dollar on the

exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a

result.

Now almost 30 years later some House Republicans have turned their back on the legacy of Ronald Reagan. Instead, they continue to play this cynical game of chicken with the President, with the Congress, with the American people, with our economy, with our reputation, with our future, by refusing to negotiate a clearly achievable, clearly definable compromise agreement that would extend the debt limit, something that happened 17 times under Ronald Reagan. What is their negotiating strategy? Don't negotiate. Do what we say no matter what the danger or how ill thought-out the consequences may be.

David Stockman, the former Office and Management Director under President Reagan, said the following about the House Republican budget:

I think the biggest problem is revenues. It is simply

unrealistic to say that raising revenue isn't part of the

solution. It is a measure of how far off the deep end

Republicans have gone with this religious catechism about

taxes.

In taking this extreme approach, the House Republicans have also made a dirty word out of a basic tenet of American democracy--compromise. Do they know nothing about history? Have they forgotten about the Missouri Compromise? Have they forgotten about countless great compromises that brought people together to pass some of the great efforts of our Nation with respect to the social structure of our country? The House Republican Party has taken this approach, even though they know and agree with what Ronald Reagan said 30 years ago, and they know it is true today.

Experts are telling us that even a short-term crisis could lead to a permanent downgrading or stain, if you will, on the Treasurys of our country. It could prove particularly damaging to the willingness of foreign investors to buy Treasury. If foreign investors start to shy away from Treasurys, then they will become much less liquid. As Lou Crandall, who is the chief economist at Wrightson ICAP, said:

You could never get that liquidity premium back if you

create a precedent. That's the thing that would be

irreparable. The end result of such a scenario: higher

interest rates in the United States.

I just met a few moments ago with a businessman who is engaged in major investments in this country and elsewhere, on an international basis, who reinforced to me the danger of what we are facing right now in just the downgrade. What he said to me is that nobody can tell us what the real impact of that downgrade is going to be. What happens to valuations all the way down the economic food chain? What happens to credit? What happens to the judgments about interest? What happens to the judgments about the auctions and the next market and so forth? Nobody knows. He can't tell me, and he does this for a living and has very successfully for a lifetime. That is what they are worried about.

There is a moment--nobody knows when exactly it is--there is a moment when as we get close enough and the dysfunctionality becomes the overwhelming, dominating feature of this effort, where someone is going to cut and say: OK, time to downgrade. Then what happens? What kind of downward spiral flows out of that? I don't know, but I know we should not be pushing it to the limit and taking that risk.

Why are people taking that risk? Why are people, despite all the commentary that says we ought to be reaching across the aisle, we ought to sit down the way we used to around here, why are they doing this? I will tell you why. They want only one way of approaching this solution--their way. They want to so dramatically cut Federal spending and cut entitlements without increasing revenues at all. No matter how successful people have been at the upper end of our economy, no matter how much money people have made, they say we can't even ask a billionaire for $100. We can't even ask a billionaire for $500. Nothing, nada, no. That is it. That is the reason they are willing to take the country to the brink. They know they do not have enough votes to even pass the budget they are screaming about still, but they are not running around trying to find the alternative. They are going to push it anyway, have a vote on it anyway, send a dramatic, stupid message of incompetence to the world and drag the United States of America down with it.

It is stunning what a group of extremists can do who are trying to get their unrealistic and impossible budget passed, which even a lot of Republicans know they are not going to vote for. The Boehner plan would require Draconian entitlement policy changes. To meet the $1.8 trillion in cuts over the decade without any increase in revenues, policymakers would be forced to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, and that is not a scare tactic. That is an absolute reality of what would have to happen if we proceed to do those cuts the way they are structuring them, and we would eviscerate the safety net for low-income children, for parents, for senior citizens, and for people with disabilities.

One of the worst and most disturbing components of this plan, the Boehner plan--it is incomprehensible to me--they want to do this whole thing all over again in 6 months. There is no economic reason we have to do it again in 6 months because they purposely left out the money that could come from reducing our engagement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is going to come. They purposely left that money out so it wouldn't show the amount of savings that could get us through next November. The reason they purposely left it out is so they can come back and do this same exercise again next February and make all the discussion in America about debt and deficit, when we are perfectly prepared to have a serious discussion not about raising the debt on it but about solving it, about doing it. We don't need a constitutional amendment to do our duty. We don't need a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. I know what I am talking about on that because I was here when we balanced the budget in the 1990s without a constitutional amendment. We balanced the budget five times since World War II, and we have done it each time without a constitutional amendment.

Let's not have this phony structured setup that is pure politics. I am sure they are raising a lot of money from their base on it every single day, but that is not what this ought to be about. This ought to be about solving the economic problems of our country. A short-term plan is not necessary and it is, most importantly, not wise. If we go through this exercise again in 6 months in the same way we have gone through it in the last few months, we are going to drive this economy right down and down.

Maybe that is what they want so they can then blame President Obama and turn around and blame the Democrats who are responsible in the Senate. There is no other rationale for wanting to come back and do this in 6 months, when we could do this with the joint committees that are in both the Boehner plan and in Senator Reid's plan. We have the ability to set up a structure, similar to the BRAC closing commissions, where we have to vote, where we are forced to do this on an accelerated basis, where we tie ourselves into a process that requires the Senate to do its duty and the Congress to do its duty. We can lock that in right now. We are not kicking anything

down the road if we do that and require us not to have a balanced budget amendment that goes out all across the country for States to have to ratify but, rather, do the job we were sent to do and do it in the next few months. That is what we could be doing. If we don't do that, then the downgrade that may take place somewhere in the next days could drive up interest rates, and that will have a negative drag on the economy to boot. A student with a student loan will feel that impact. Somebody with a car loan is going to feel that impact. Anybody with a credit card is going to feel that impact. People with mortgages will feel that impact. That will mean more money out of pocket to make up for the dereliction of duty of the Congress.

These are completely dangerous and uncharted waters we are sailing into. I think at a time when the global economy is facing enormous problems, any downgrade of our Nation's credit rating could have disastrous effects for our financial system in terms of those other countries which I have talked about, and I think it is an unacceptable risk. It should require us to find the compromise and find it now. I might add that the Boehner plan is not even supported on Wall Street.

Let me quote Christian Cooper, who is the head of the U.S. dollar derivatives trading in New York at Jefferies & Company. He said:

From the markets' point of view, a two-stage plan is a

nonstarter because we know it is amateur hour on Capitol Hill

and we don't want to be painted into this corner again.

He went on to say:

There is significant risk of a downgrade with a deal that

ties further cuts to another vote only a few months down the

road given the significant resistance to do the right thing

now.

Frankly, I think that is logical. Every American can understand that. If a person has some money to invest and they are sitting there watching what is happening right now, and then they learn our way of dealing with it is going to be to have another vote in 6 months for the same reason--to lift the debt ceiling--when everybody knows we don't have to do that, would that person say, oh, that is a really good, clear climate for investment; let's go put our money into whatever it is out there because we know Congress is going to do the right thing? No. No way, I say to my colleagues. Everybody knows that.

The fact is, the President has said he is going to veto the Speaker's plan. Senators know he is going to veto it. We know it is a bad plan. We ought to stop discussing proposals that are going to go nowhere and get the job done on something that can bring everybody together.

In an effort to forge a bipartisan compromise, Senator Reid has reached way beyond what many Members of our caucus really wanted to do or think is the appropriate balance. But we are acting responsibly in order to try to get the job done. So we are willing to extend the debt ceiling through 2012 without revenues at this time, with the understanding that we will have the ability to come back to the floor with the process of a joint committee providing it is tied to a very clear schedule, with very clear requirements about no filibusters, with very clear requirements about amendments and voting.

Madam President, the spending cuts in Senator Reid's proposal are only those to which Republicans have previously agreed. So no revenues, cuts of $2-some trillion, we go through the year to give certainty to the marketplace, and we have cuts in there that the Republicans have already agreed to, and, again, a fixed period of time. I think that proposal gives our economy the certainty it needs in order to create jobs now, not 6 months from now and not maybe sometime next year.

Everybody understands how anemic America's job creation is now. The last the job market needs is this kind of brinkmanship, gamesmanship, and cynical effort to hold the entire economy of our country hostage when better proposals are actually on the table and in front of us which everybody can understand.

The majority leader's proposal includes the capacity for that joint committee to include recommendations and legislative language on tax reform. We all know we need tax reform. I believe the Senate and the House ought to do their jobs, both of us. Senator Reid's plan actually calls on the Senate to live up to its ultimate responsibility. The Speaker's plan has no such language--nothing that requires that kind of participation.

The deficit commission was chaired by former Republican Senator Alan Simpson. All of that work is being ignored right now. The so-called Gang of 6 did an outstanding job, in my judgment, of helping to put together a bipartisan plan which actually included revenue and I think 20-some Republican Senators were prepared to support a thoughtful, balanced plan that had both revenues as well as cuts. So we can find common ground. We need to find that common ground.

Over the last year, we have seen a number of bipartisan plans put forward on the debt limit. I think the effort of the Gang of 6 exemplified the best tradition of the Senate, where a group of Members reached across the aisle and worked with each other to tackle the tough issues. That is how we got a budget deal in 1990. That is how we got a budget deal in 1997. We have done this before, and we did it growing our economy--creating 23 million new jobs and creating a surplus of $5.6 trillion. Had we stayed on that course, we would next year be paying down the debt of our Nation completely for the first time since Andrew Jackson was President of the United States. Everybody here knows why we went off track. I don't mean to go through that again now, but I think we will not be able to resolve this current impasse until colleagues on both sides of the aisle--and especially in the House where there seems to be the greatest ideological resistance to common sense right now--decide to put aside their ideology and decide what is best for the United States of America.

We can't be responsible if we don't get serious first. Far too much is at stake for the Senate to do anything less than the Senate was intended to do at moments such as this. We are called the world's greatest deliberative body. There aren't many Americans who would look at us right now and give us that appropriate moniker. We have to earn it. I think in the next hours we can do that.

I thank the Chair, and I thank my colleagues for their forbearance.

Mr. President, for the Committee on Foreign Relations I report favorably the following nomination lists which were printed in the Record on the dates indicated, and ask unanimous consent, to save the expense of reprinting on the Executive Calendar that these nominations lie at the Secretary's desk for the information of Senators.

Mr. President, the Affordable Care Act helped to ensure that insurance companies spend a substantial portion of premium dollars on medical care and health care quality improvement, rather than on administrative costs and profits. However, due to remaining discrepancies not all Medicare beneficiaries are afforded the same protection under the law.

Medical loss ratios make the insurance marketplace more transparent and make it easier for consumers to purchase plans that provide better value for their money. Beginning this year, the medical loss ratio provision in the Affordable Care Act requires insurance policies sold in the individual and small group markets to spend 80 percent of premium dollars on medical care. Policies sold in the large group market are required to spend 85 percent of premium dollars on medical care. Insurance companies that fail to meet this standard are required to provide a rebate to their customers beginning in 2012.

The Affordable Care Act also required Medicare Advantage plans to spend 85 percent of premium dollars on medical care starting in 2014 or they would be required to refund the difference to the Federal Government.

Compared to most other insurance products, Medigap policies now have lower statutory minimums for the percentage of premium dollars that must be spent on medical care. Under current law, Medigap policies must meet a minimum medical loss ratio of 65 percent in the individual market and 75 percent in the group market.

In 1990, Congress first passed legislation standardizing Medigap policies and instituting minimum MLR standards in reaction to evidence of widespread sale of duplicative policies with high overhead. Today, more than 9 million Medicare beneficiaries purchase private supplemental Medigap policies to help cover cost sharing and deductibles in traditional Medicare.

The Medigap Medical Loss Ratio Improvement Act updates the MLR standards for Medigap insurers, increasing the percentages to levels put forth in health reform for other products. Specifically, it will raise the MLR from 65 percent to 80 percent in the individual market and from 75 percent to 85 percent in the group marketplace. To give insurers time to prepare for this change, it would not become effective until 2014.

This legislation is endorsed by organizations representing millions of senior citizens and consumers of all ages, including: AARP, AFSCME, Alliance of Retired Americans, Center for Medicare Advocacy, Community Catalyst, Families USA, Health Care for America Now, Medicare Rights Center, National Council on Aging, and the National Senior Citizens Law Center.

In endorsing the bill, AARP highlights that, ``AARP supports this change because it will provide greater transparency and accountability for expenditures made by health insurance issuers, and encourage them to become more efficient in their operations to help ensure that consumers receive fair value for their premium dollars.''

The reforms in this bill would ensure that Medigap enrollees receive the same value for their premium dollars that is afforded to every other American family. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate to pass this legislation.

Mr. President, the Affordable Care Act helped to ensure that insurance companies spend a substantial portion of premium dollars on medical care and health care quality improvement, rather than on administrative costs and profits. However, due to remaining discrepancies not all Medicare beneficiaries are afforded the same protection under the law.

Medical loss ratios make the insurance marketplace more transparent and make it easier for consumers to purchase plans that provide better value for their money. Beginning this year, the medical loss ratio provision in the Affordable Care Act requires insurance policies sold in the individual and small group markets to spend 80 percent of premium dollars on medical care. Policies sold in the large group market are required to spend 85 percent of premium dollars on medical care. Insurance companies that fail to meet this standard are required to provide a rebate to their customers beginning in 2012.

The Affordable Care Act also required Medicare Advantage plans to spend 85 percent of premium dollars on medical care starting in 2014 or they would be required to refund the difference to the Federal Government.

Compared to most other insurance products, Medigap policies now have lower statutory minimums for the percentage of premium dollars that must be spent on medical care. Under current law, Medigap policies must meet a minimum medical loss ratio of 65 percent in the individual market and 75 percent in the group market.

In 1990, Congress first passed legislation standardizing Medigap policies and instituting minimum MLR standards in reaction to evidence of widespread sale of duplicative policies with high overhead. Today, more than 9 million Medicare beneficiaries purchase private supplemental Medigap policies to help cover cost sharing and deductibles in traditional Medicare.

The Medigap Medical Loss Ratio Improvement Act updates the MLR standards for Medigap insurers, increasing the percentages to levels put forth in health reform for other products. Specifically, it will raise the MLR from 65 percent to 80 percent in the individual market and from 75 percent to 85 percent in the group marketplace. To give insurers time to prepare for this change, it would not become effective until 2014.

This legislation is endorsed by organizations representing millions of senior citizens and consumers of all ages, including: AARP, AFSCME, Alliance of Retired Americans, Center for Medicare Advocacy, Community Catalyst, Families USA, Health Care for America Now, Medicare Rights Center, National Council on Aging, and the National Senior Citizens Law Center.

In endorsing the bill, AARP highlights that, ``AARP supports this change because it will provide greater transparency and accountability for expenditures made by health insurance issuers, and encourage them to become more efficient in their operations to help ensure that consumers receive fair value for their premium dollars.''

The reforms in this bill would ensure that Medigap enrollees receive the same value for their premium dollars that is afforded to every other American family. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate to pass this legislation.

Mr. President, last December, in the middle of a New England blizzard, armed robbers descended on the Kohl's department store in Woburn, MA. They threatened the employees of the store and fled with money and jewelry. Officer John ``Jack'' Maguire, on duty that night, rushed to the scene in his cruiser. Responding to his fellow officer's call for assistance in a foot chase, Officer Maguire blocked the gunman's path with his cruiser and got out of his vehicle to confront the gunman. The two exchanged gunfire, which killed the gunman and left Officer Maguire mortally wounded. Officer Maguire's death marks the first officer killed in the line of duty in Woburn, MA, since the department was established back in 1847.

On behalf of the Maguire family, Woburn Mayor Scott Galvin, Woburn Chief of Police Richard Kelley, and the residents of Woburn, I am introducing legislation to rename the U.S. Post Office on Washington Street in Woburn the Officer John Maguire Post Office.

This post office is only a few hundred yards from the spot where Officer Maguire was killed. I believe it is a fitting honor to a public servant who gave his life protecting the city of Woburn. It is my hope that when people pass by the Post Office on Washington Street, they will be reminded of the sacrifices made by both Officer John ``Jack'' Maguire and his family.