Floor Statements

Madam President, I have an amendment at the desk, and I ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam President, tonight I am pleased to be joined by Senators Coburn, Graham, and Hutchison to offer an amendment that will serve as an alternative to the 5-year budget offered by the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and the 10-year budget offered by the President. Except for defense and veterans affairs, our proposal would cap discretionary funding, reduce our Nation's deficit and debt more than the proposals offered either by the Senate Budget Committee or the President.

This 10-year budget alternative would cap discretionary funding at baseline levels, plus inflation, except for defense and veterans. Defense is increased by $190 billion above baseline over 5 years. Veterans is increased by $25 billion above baseline over 5 years,

and other discretionary spending, $62 billion less than the Senate budget proposal over 5 years, $229 billion less than the President's proposal over 5 years, and $759 billion less than the President's proposal over 10 years. Mandatory spending is $373 billion less than the Budget Committee proposal over 5 years, $922 billion less than the President's proposal over 5 years, and $3.2 trillion less than the President's proposal over 10 years.

The deficit would be at $484 billion in 2014, the Conrad budget, the Senate Budget Committee budget deficit would be $508 billion, the President's would be $749 billion. It would be $448 billion by the year 2019, compared with the President's $1.189 trillion deficit over 10 years, and the Senate Budget Committee proposal is a 5-year budget.

This results in a cumulative deficit reduction of $369 billion more than the Senate budget proposal, $977 billion more in reductions than the President's proposal, and $3.44 trillion--the deficit would be reduced--than the President's budget.

The national debt would be $767 billion less than the Budget Committee over 5 years, $2 trillion less than the President's budget over 5 years, and $3.5 trillion less than the President's over 10 years. In other words, why, why are we offering this alternative? It is simple. Our current national debt is $10.7 trillion. I know when we throw these numbers around, like $10.7 trillion, people's eyes glaze over.

But we are talking about numbers that are unprecedented in the history of this country. The projected deficit for 2009 is $1.7 trillion. The total cost of the stimulus bill enacted last month is $1.18 trillion. We gave the TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, $700 billion. Everyone expects the administration will request up to an additional $75 billion more.

President Obama recently signed an Omnibus appropriations bill totaling $410 billion. The Federal Reserve recently pumped another $1.2 trillion into our markets, and the President's budget request totals $3.6 trillion.

Earlier this week the administration laid out a plan that will provide even more taxpayer dollars to the domestic automakers. The measure offered by the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee increases spending by $225 billion over current levels and raises at least $361 billion in taxes and borrows $1.1 trillion more than what we expect to borrow under current law.

The President's budget doubles the public debt in 5 years and nearly triples it in 10 years. As a consequence, beginning in 2019, the Government will spend more on interest than on the defense of our Nation: $806 billion we will be spending on interest, $720 billion on defense. That is eight times more than we will spend on education, eight times more than we will spend on transportation.

The budget proposals offered by the President and by the Senate Budget Committee put us on an unsustainable fiscal path, and we will pass on to future generations unprecedented levels of debt that they will never be able to afford.

As I said on the floor of the Senate earlier this week, the President's budget numbers are staggering. On average, his budget adds $1 trillion to the debt every year for the next 10 years and contains $1.4 trillion in tax increases. It reinstates the death tax, and it discourages investment by raising taxes on capital gains and dividends. It would create more debt than under every President from George Washington to George W. Bush combined. As others have already warned, the Nation would be bankrupt. This is not just generational theft, it is multigenerational theft.

That we are on a dangerous path is not just my opinion, in fact, it has been acknowledged by the President's Director of the Office of Management and Budget. In a recent interview, Peter Orszag was asked to respond to this statement:

What deficit hawks are really saying is that the number is

so huge that it is literally going to swarm over us and

destroy us if we do not start dealing with it today.

Mr. Orszag replied:

There is no question that we are on an unsustainable fiscal

course, and we need to change course.

The Federal budget must address the most pressing issues facing our Nation, and among these priorities are keeping Americans safe and our Nation secure and all of the other issues with which we are familiar.

The budget must also ensure that taxpayers' dollars are managed in the most fiscally responsible manner by targeting resources to priorities, spending no more than needed, and holding their Government accountable to the taxpayer. This is exactly what our alternative will do. Our plan meets America's needs by spending less and reducing the debt faster than the Democrats' proposals. It caps discretionary spending, except for defense and veterans, at baseline, and increases defense spending by $190 billion. I would point out we are still in two wars.

It also increases veterans spending by $25 billion over 5 years. It reduces the deficit to $484 billion by 2014, compared to the Budget Committee's $508 billion and the President's $749 billion. It keeps taxes low, and it shaves, by 2014, $767 billion more off the national debt than Chairman Conrad's 5-year budget and nearly $3.5 trillion more than the President's 10-year budget.

Today, the ranking member of the House Budget Committee unveiled the Republican alternative to the House budget resolution. In an op-ed about his plan in today's Wall Street Journal, Representative Paul Ryan wrote:

House Republicans will offer an alternative plan. This too

is no ordinary budget. As the opposition party, we believe

this moment must be met by offering the American people a

different way forward--one based on our belief that America

is an exceptional nation, and we want to keep it that way.

Our budget applies our country's enduring first principles to

the problems of our day. Rather than attempting to equalize

the results of people's lives and micromanaging their

affairs, we seek to preserve our system of protecting our

natural rights and equalizing opportunity for all.

I agree with Congressman Ryan's assessment, and that is why we are here tonight. My friends on the other side of the aisle have become fond of criticizing Republicans for just saying no and offering no alternatives or specifics.

Well, we offered an alternative on the stimulus package. We offered an alternative on the omnibus bill. And we will continue, as members of the loyal opposition, to propose alternatives, complete with specifics and reflecting our philosophy as fundamentally fiscal responsible. I hope this will put an end once and for all to that argument.

Our proposal budgets for 10 years. It achieves lower deficits than the Democratic plan in every year. By 2019, it yields nearly half the deficit proposed by the President. In doing so, we control Government debt so that under our plan, debt held by the public is $3.5 trillion less during the budget period. It gives priority to national defense and veterans health care. It addresses our critical energy goals. It takes steps to ensure health and retirement security by making these problems fiscally sustainable while preserving existing Medicare benefits for those beneficiaries age 55 and older. It does not raise taxes and extends the 2001 and 2003 tax laws. The nearly identical proposals of the House and Senate Republicans share the same goals of attaining health and retirement security, controlling our Nation's debt, putting our economy on a path of growth, and preserving the American legacy of leaving the next generation better off.

We obviously are living in perilous economic times, but we will emerge from this period with strong job growth, rising incomes, restored confidence, and the ability to meet our obligation of passing on to the next generation the opportunity to make their lives safer, more prosperous, and more enriching than our own. We are dealing with a financial crisis, a housing crisis, and a consumer-led recession. Why then does the President's budget envision borrowing trillions of dollars for new initiatives without spending discipline or offsets? Addressing our most important and immediate problems should be our urgent priority. For two centuries, Americans have worked hard so their children could have better lives and greater opportunity. Are we going to reverse that order and force our children to work hard to pay off our debts because we didn't have the courage to make tough economic choices now? That is what this alternative is about--tough but realistic decisions designed to secure the future prosperity of our country. We were

promised change, and that is what our proposal offers.

In the op-ed I mentioned earlier, Congressman Ryan also wrote that ``America is not the greatest nation on earth by chance. We earned this greatness by rewarding individual achievement, by advancing and protecting natural rights, and by embracing freedom. We (Republicans) intend to continue this uniquely American tradition.'' The Congressman is exactly right. We have an opportunity to put our Nation back on sound fiscal footing. Let us seize that opportunity. Let us propose, reason, debate and exhaust every means to invest in the future of this country according to our faith in free people and free markets, a faith that has produced more good for more people than ever imagined by our Forefathers. Let us not exploit this crisis for political gain. Let us do what every preceding generation has managed to do--bequeath subsequent American generations a land of unlimited opportunities.

We can, and must do better, I urge my colleagues to support this alternative proposal.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record other provisions in this proposal.

We, as the loyal opposition, are required to offer an alternative to the President's budget and that passed by the Senate Budget Committee on a party-line vote. These are tough decisions that have to be made. We must continue to fund defense and take care of our veterans. But we are also going to have to reform entitlement programs, and we all know that. There is no expert or ordinary citizen in America who doesn't agree that we have to reform Medicare, Social Security, and other mandatory spending programs which are consuming a larger part of our budget. We need a bipartisan commission that has the BRAC imperatives, that they meet and we come up with a solution to the burgeoning fiscal problems posed by entitlement programs and other mandatory spending programs.

I was in the other body in 1983, when Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill sat down together across the table and negotiated and saved Social Security for decades. That is what we need to do again. After this budget debate is over, why don't we sit down, the President, Republicans, and Democrats, together, and try and solve our Nation's problems. Americans voted for change. Americans want change. That change is to address these compelling and terrible issues that affect this Nation and our future in a bipartisan fashion. It is pretty clear what is going to pass tomorrow night sometime, but wouldn't it be time for us to sit down together and chart a path for the Nation's future in an environment committed to fiscal responsibility on both sides of the aisle and ensuring our children's future?

We will be discussing this more for a short period of time before the vote tomorrow.

I yield the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce a resolution to pardon posthumously the world's first African-American heavyweight champion, John Arthur ``Jack'' Johnson. This resolution expresses the sense of the Senate that the President should exercise his constitutional authority to pardon Jack Johnson posthumously.

For my colleagues who may not be familiar with the plight of Jack Johnson, he is considered by many to be the most dominant athlete in boxing history. Arthur John Johnson was born March 31, 1878, in Galveston, TX, to parents who were former slaves. At an early age he realized his talent for the sweet science. In order to make a living, Johnson traveled across the country fighting anyone willing to face him. But he was denied repeatedly on purely racial grounds a chance to fight for the world heavyweight title. For too long, African-American fighters were not seen as legitimate contenders for the championship. Fortunately, after years of perseverance, Johnson was finally granted an opportunity in 1908 to fight the then-reigning title holder, Tommy Burns. Johnson handily defeated Burns to become the first African- American heavyweight champion.

Mr. Johnson's success in the ring, and sometimes indulgent lifestyle outside of it, fostered resentment among many and raised concerns that his continued dominance in the ring would somehow disrupt what was then perceived by many as a ``racial order.'' So as history tells us, a search for a Caucasian boxer who could defeat Johnson began a recruitment effort that was dubbed the search for the ``Great White Hope.'' That hope arrived in the person of former champion, Jim Jeffries, who returned from retirement to fight Johnson in 1910. But when Johnson defeated Jeffries, race riots broke out as many sought to avenge the loss.

Following the defeat of the ``Great White Hope,'' the Federal Government launched an investigation into the legality of Johnson's relationships with Caucasian women. The Mann Act, which was enacted in 1910, outlawed the transport of Caucasian women across State lines for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for ``any other immoral purpose.'' Using the ``any other immoral purpose'' clause as a pretext, Federal law enforcement officials set out to ``get'' Johnson. On October 18, 1912, he was arrested for transporting his Caucasian girlfriend across State lines in violation of the act. However, the charges were dropped when the Caucasian, whose mother had originally tipped off Federal officials, refused to cooperate with authorities. She later married Johnson.

Yet Federal authorities persisted in their persecution of Johnson, persuading a former Caucasian girlfriend of Johnson's to testify that he had transported her across State lines. Her testimony resulted in Johnson's conviction in 1913, when he was sentenced to 1 year and a day in Federal prison. During Johnson's appeal, one prosecutor admitted that ``Mr. Johnson was perhaps persecuted as an individual, but that it was his misfortune to be the foremost example of the evil in permitting the intermarriage of whites and blacks.''

After the trial, Johnson fled the country to Canada, and then traveled to various European and South American countries, before losing his heavyweight championship title in Cuba in 1915. He returned to the United States in 1920, surrendered to federal authorities, and served nearly a year in Federal prison. Despite this obvious and clear injustice, Johnson refused to turn his back on the country that betrayed him. Mr. Johnson died in an automobile accident in 1946.

The Jack Johnson case is an ignominious stain on our Nation's history. Rectifying this injustice is long overdue. Again, this resolution calls on the President to pardon Mr. Johnson posthumously. It recognizes the unjustness of what transpired, and sheds light on the achievements of an athlete who was forced into the shadows of bigotry and prejudice. Johnson was a flawed individual who was certainly controversial. But he was also a historic American figure, whose life and accomplishments played an instrumental role in our Nation's progress toward true equality under the law. And he deserved much better than a racially motivated conviction, which denied him of his liberty, and served to diminish his athletic, cultural, and historic significance.

Yesterday was the 131st anniversary of Jack Johnson's birth and we should take this opportunity to allow future generations to grasp fully what Jack Johnson accomplished against great odds and appreciate his contributions to society unencumbered by the taint of his criminal conviction. We know that we cannot possibly right the wrong that was done to Jack Johnson, but we can take this small step toward acknowledging his mistreatment and removing the cloud that casts a shadow on his legacy. I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

Mr. President, I thank my friend from North Dakota, and I thank him for his hard work under very difficult circumstances.

Obviously, the debate begins on the budget resolution for fiscal year 2010. Like the President's plan, the measure offered amounts, in all candor, to generational theft. It increases spending by $225 billion over current levels, raises at least $361 billion in taxes, and borrows $1.1 trillion more than what we expect to borrow under current law.

But unlike the President's plan, the resolution budgets for 5 years. Now, I would like to say, in deference to my friend from North Dakota and members of the Budget Committee, I am aware that in previous years a 5-year budget process has been generally the way to do business. There are years where we have used 10 years. The President's budget was 10 years. In these difficult times, given the circumstances under which we are laboring, I think we do a disservice to not do a 10-year budget. So budgeting for only a 5-year period in many respects hides the costly expansion of Government that is sure to take place after 2014.

As we go through this debate--and I notice the Senator from North Dakota has many charts--I will be bringing forward some charts that show the dramatic expansion in cost for a whole variety of reasons, including demographics and more and more baby boomers retiring, which, as the President's chief budget person, Mr. Orszag, has stated, is ``not sustainable.''

The Senate owes it to the American taxpayer, in my view, to produce a 10-year budget that shows the unsustainable fiscal path we are on and the terrible burden we are passing on to future generations because of the explosive debt it produces.

The Senator from North Dakota, the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee, just mentioned a proposal for a commission for reform of Social Security and Medicare, and I agree with him. But I would also argue that on the issue of Social Security we could all sit down in a matter of hours and address the issue of Social Security. We know the factors that are involved. We know what the costs are.

We know the fixes that basically are necessary. And it would have to be done in the spirit of compromise, as Tip O'Neill and former President Reagan did way back in 1983, the last time there was any significant reform to Social Security. Medicare and Medicaid and health care is obviously a much more complicated issue.

In an op-ed entitled ``Hiding a Mountain Of Debt'' from yesterday's Washington Post, David Broder, who, in my view, is perhaps the most respected columnist in America in many ways, and certainly the most experienced, wrote:

[T]he Democratic Congress is about to perform a cover-up on

the most serious threat to America's economic future. . . .

The Congressional Budget Office sketched the dimensions of

the problem on March 20, and Congress reacted with shock. The

CBO said that over the next 10 years, current policies would

add a staggering $9.3 trillion to the national debt--one-

third more than President Obama had estimated by using much

more optimistic assumptions about future economic growth. . .

.

The ever-growing national debt will require ever-larger

annual interest payments, with much of that money going

overseas to China, Japan and other countries that have been

buying our bonds.

Reacting to this scary prospect, the House and Senate

budget committees took the paring knife to some of Obama's

spending proposals and tax cuts last week. But many of the

proposed savings look more like bookkeeping gimmicks than

realistic cutbacks. . . .

But the main device the Democratic budgeteers employed was

simply to shrink the budget ``window'' from 10 years to five.

Instantly, $5 trillion in debt disappeared from view, along

with the worry that long after the recession is past, the

structural deficit would continue to blight the future of

young working families.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the David Broder column that appeared in the Washington Post yesterday printed in the Record.

What does the President's budget do? It doubles the public debt in 5 years and nearly triples it in 10 years. As a consequence, beginning in 2019, the Government will spend more on interest than on the defense of our Nation. That is $806 billion on interest, $720 billion on defense. That is eight times more than we will spend on education and eight times more than we will spend on transportation. The budget proposals offered by the President and the Senate Democrats put us on an unsustainable fiscal path and will pass on to future generations an unprecedented level of debt they will never be able to afford.

We should not take lightly the significant impact our mounting debt has on our future financial stability and security. Currently, China owns nearly $2 trillion of our debt, and because of the global economic downturn, the Chinese are now focused on pumping their money into their own economy. I believe one of my colleagues said it best when he warned: ``The only thing worse than China holding so much of our debt, is China declining to finance any more of our debt.''

Buying our national debt is no longer a very attractive investment for the Chinese and, given the explosion of debt currently envisioned in the President's budget, an even less inviting one in the future. We see evidence of this approaching predicament brought on by their well- founded concerns about the dollar's declining value and in China's recent suggestion that the world should consider a new international currency to replace the dollar.

Here are some cold, hard facts: Our current national debt is $10.7 trillion. The projected deficit for 2009 is $1.7 trillion. The total cost of the stimulus bill enacted last month is over $1.1 trillion. We gave the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP, $700 billion, but everyone expects the administration will request up to an additional $750 billion or more. President Obama recently signed an Omnibus appropriations bill totaling $410 billion. The Federal Reserve recently pumped another $1.2 trillion into our markets, and the President has submitted a budget request of $3.6 trillion.

Just today, we have decided we will keep General Motors and Chrysler alive, when General Motors and Chrysler should go to a prepackaged bankruptcy. They could enter bankruptcy, change the parameters on which they are doing business, and emerge as more competitive and efficient automobile manufacturing corporations that could compete with automobile manufacturing here in the United States, only they are not located in Michigan, they are located in other States. So instead of sending General Motors and Chrysler into the prepackaged bankruptcy they deserve, we now have taken the unprecedented step of firing the CEO of General Motors--a remarkable move by the Federal Government, I think unprecedented in the history of this country. What does the signal send to other corporations and financial institutions about whether the Federal Government will decide to fire them as well?

But the fundamental issue here is, who is too big to fail? Who is too big to fail in America? And what do I tell the businessperson in Phoenix, AZ, who is

about to have to close their doors because they do not have the financing and they have not been bailed out? Who is too big to fail and who is too small to survive? That is why we have seen an outpouring and outrage over the bonuses paid to executives of financial institutions that they neither deserve nor warrant.

The President's budget numbers are simply staggering. On average, he adds $1 trillion to the debt every year for the next 10 years. He produces deficits totaling $9.2 trillion over this period, taking spending from 20 percent of GDP up to 25 percent of GDP. The deficit for fiscal year 2009 will be more than three times the previous record of the biggest deficit. The President's budget also contains $1.4 trillion in tax increases. It resurrects the death tax and, even at this critical time, discourages investment in our economy by raising the top rate on capital gains and dividends by one-third.

If the CBO-projected deficits in the budget's outyears prove close to accurate, by 2019 Americans would owe a debt that is over 80 percent of our gross domestic product--the highest level since 1948--and double our debt's current share of gross domestic product. It would create more debt than under every President from George Washington to George W. Bush combined. As others have already warned, the Nation would be bankrupt, and the America our children and grandchildren inherit would be, for the first time in history, a land of limited opportunities.

Beyond the serious ramifications of the budget numbers, we also need to be concerned about the very real fight we face over reconciliation. The House has included reconciliation instructions for both health care and education. The administration has been clear that it wants climate change added to the reconciliation measures.

I recently read where the administration is considering declaring greenhouse gases a health risk. Just 2 weeks ago, the EPA delivered documents to the White House stating findings that global warming threatens both public health and welfare. If this declaration is made, none of us should be surprised to see changes to environmental law used as an opening to fund universal health care.

I fully recognize that Republicans have in the past engaged in using reconciliation to further the party's agenda. It was wrong then. I wish it had not been done. And I hope and I wish it would not be done now. But the groundwork has been laid. I think this would be a grave mistake. We should be working on the most pressing issues in a bipartisan, thoughtful manner.

We are in the midst of a severe recession. The U.S. Labor Department announced that employers cut another 651,000 jobs in February, raising the unemployment rate to 8.1 percent, the highest since 1983. These statistics are dire and argue for Government's intervention to stimulate the economy. However, it would be an appalling dereliction of duty to use the crisis caused by the global credit crunch, as some members of the administration have suggested, to excuse profligate spending that would not hasten economic growth and that puts the United States on an accelerated path to bankruptcy.

I believe the President's budget has fallen prey to the siren song of short-term expediency. It is bad economics. The antiquated U.S. Code has driven an increasing number of businesses--especially small, dynamic startup ventures--to file their taxes as individuals. Nearly one-half of Americans work in businesses with fewer than 50 employees, and we should focus on keeping those jobs and creating more of them. While the administration argues that a minuscule number of businesses are affected by its proposed tax increases, a majority of small business income will be hit by them. Jobs are where the money is, and increasing taxes on jobs endangers the recovery.

It is a misguided policy toward fairness. Rising inequality is a 30- year process with its roots in skills and education--not tax policy.

Lastly, insulating 95 percent of voters from the consequences of their electoral decisions is dangerous for a democracy. It is also misleading. Does anyone really believe we can expand all nondefense spending to a record share of GDP, reform the health care system that is one-sixth of the economy, reinvent the energy portfolio that powers our lives, and drive next-generation broadband to every home, while cutting taxes for 95 percent of Americans? It doesn't add up, it won't add up, and it won't last.

I fully recognize tough choices need to be made in order to get our country back on course. It is like the old saying, ``Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die.'' Except in Washington, it would be, everyone wants fiscal prosperity, but no one wants to force the belt tightening.

For two centuries, Americans have worked hard so their children could have better lives and greater opportunity. Do we really want to reverse that order by having our children work hard so we don't have to make hard economic choices now?

The Federal budget must address the most pressing issues facing our Nation. Among those priorities are keeping Americans safe and the Nation secure, enhancing economic growth and raising standards of living, reducing the burden of debt for the next generation, reforming our health care system, and shifting to a cleaner, more secure energy portfolio. The budget must also ensure that taxpayers' dollars are managed in the most fiscally responsible manner by targeting resources to priorities, spending no more than needed, eliminating waste and special interest projects, and holding the Government accountable to the taxpayer.

We are obviously living in perilous economic times, but with resolute action and clarity of vision, we can emerge from this period with strong job growth, rising incomes, restored confidence, and the ability to meet our patriotic obligation of passing to the next generation the opportunity to make their lives safer, more prosperous, and more enriching than our own. We are in a financial crisis, a housing crisis, and a consumer-led recession. Why, then, does the President's budget envision borrowing trillions of dollars for new initiatives in education and health care, energy, the environment, transportation, and technology without any spending discipline or offsets?

Of course, those programs sound appealing, but whether you support or oppose those long-term goals, addressing our most important and immediate problems should be our urgent priority. We have not devoted resources to the right problems. We have left our principles behind as we deliver check after Treasury check, and we will not be able to continue down this road.

I hope again that we, on both sides of the aisle, can sit down together for a change and work out a bipartisan agreement. I believe with the right kind of preparation and the right kind of work, we could have come up with a budget proposal that took into consideration the concerns of those of us on this side of the aisle. As with the stimulus package, as with the omnibus bill, as with SCHIP, and with other issues that have come before this body, there has not been what the American people want so badly for us to do, and that is to sit down and work together and come up with a common recipe for the common challenges we face that affect all Americans, whether they be Republican or Democrat.

Again, I regret that this budget, after our usual national--well, I won't go into it, but the budget vote-arama, that this budget will go down, will be passed largely on party lines. I regret that. We will have time in the future, as we are facing other issues such as health care reform, issues of climate change and others--energy independence-- that we should be able to sit down together. So far we haven't. I wish we had.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Does the Senator really believe that reconciliation will not be part of the final budget resolution?

Mr. President, would the Senator yield for another question?

I am sure one of the things my distinguished colleague is referring to is that after 10 years, whatever the reconciliation would then expire. But I also would again question whether the Senator is aware that it is accepted as common knowledge that there will be reconciliation in this budget resolution when it is finally passed, whether it contains health care reform, education reform, and/or climate change.

I do acknowledge, again, before my friend answers, that Republicans began this, and it was the wrong thing to do. It was the wrong thing to do. Sometimes you reap what you sow. So I fully acknowledge that.

However, I think to address an issue as serious as health care reform in America, to put it on a budget resolution would be a very serious breach of the customary way the Senate addresses these issues. I thank the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee for his hard work on this issue for many years.

Madam President, I come to the floor to discuss for a few minutes with my colleague from South Carolina the issue of climate change.

We all know the budget will be forthcoming. We already understand there will be some $650 billion included in the budget for general revenues that would go as revenues from climate--here it is: $646 billion over 8 years. According to some aides to the administration, it could be as much as $2 trillion. Remarkable.

What we have done is we have gone from an attempt to address the issue of climate change through cap and trade to just generating $680 billion or $2 trillion without a trace of bipartisanship, without any consultation, without discussions. What we have done on the issue of climate change, by basically funneling $680-some billion, is we have destroyed any chance of bipartisanship, and the administration is proposing a plan which will have a crippling effect in a bad economy on, particularly, parts of the country and lower income residents in the South and Midwest.

First of all, if we are going to do cap and trade, we should have generous allowances for people who are now operating under certain greenhouse gas emission conditions.

Second of all, any money, any revenues that are gained through cap and trade clearly should not go to just ``general revenues.'' Any funding

should go directly to the development of technologies which will then reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That has to be a fundamental principle. So the administration, in this budget, is basically using it as just a revenue raiser.

By the way, the entire budget contains no references to nuclear power, except striking funds for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, for which the utilities--passing it on to the ratepayers-- have paid somewhere between $8 billion and $13 billion for Yucca Mountain to be used as a spent nuclear fuel repository. So it is remarkable.

The Secretary of Energy told me in a hearing in the Energy Committee: Yucca Mountain is finished. I said: What about reprocessing? Can't do that either.

So here you have nuclear powerplants--there are 120 of them operating in the United States of America today--and we cannot reprocess and we cannot store. So what do we do? We either keep them in pools or ``solidification'' outside of nuclear powerplants all over America-- clearly, a threat to the Nation's security.

Let me say to my colleagues, I am proud of my record on climate change. I have been all over the world, and I have seen climate change. I know it is real, and I will be glad to continue this debate with my colleagues and people who do not agree with that. I believe climate change is real.

I believe with what we did in addressing acid rain, which was through a cap-and-trade kind of dynamic, we were able to largely eliminate the problem of acid rain in America. So it has been done before, and we can do it again, admittedly on a much smaller scale.

In the Antarctic, in Alaska and even in the rain forests of Brazil and here in the United States, we are feeling the effect of climate change. So here we are, with a chance to work together in a bipartisan fashion on the issue, and what does the administration do? They send over a budget which earmarks $600-and-some billion--$646 billion--which would then go to general revenues, with no consultation or discussions on the issue. I am proud to have worked with Senator Lieberman in years past on trying to address the issue of climate change.

Of course, there is no mention of nuclear power. I do not wish to spend my time on the floor, too much, on nuclear power. But according to the Department of Energy--and depending on whom you talk to--solar will contribute something like 5, 10, at most, 15 percent of our renewable energy needs between now and 2050. Wind, tide, all those others may contribute another 10, 15, 20 percent.

There is a vast, gaping hole in our demand for renewable energy, and nuclear power and hydro can fill those. This administration has turned its back completely on nuclear power. So what do we tell the ratepayers and the utilities that have been paying billions of dollars? As I mentioned, somewhere between $8 billion and $13 billion they have invested in Yucca Mountain. And now we are canceling it? Well, maybe they ought to get their money back since it was Government action that made Yucca Mountain no longer a viable option.

We need to debate this issue. We need to address it separately. We certainly do not need to address the issue of climate change and how we are going to remedy it through the budget process.

By the way, the Obama administration plans to use revenues as a slush fund to meet budgetary shortfalls, as I mentioned. Only $120 billion of the $650 billion in new revenues would go to climate policy spending, $15 billion a year out of the $650 billion would go for clean energy technologies. There is no detail in the budget as to what this includes or excludes--except for closing Yucca Mountain.

Nuclear is not mentioned in the entire budget. Most of the remainder of the revenues generated from the present cap-and-trade proposal as sent over and part of the budget will be used to pay for the Making Work Pay tax credit. I would add that the administration argues that the Making Work Pay tax credit will offset the increase in utility bills caused by their cap-and-trade policy. However, the credit is phased out for taxpayers earning between $75,000 and $95,000 a year for individuals and $150,000 to $190,000 for married couples.

So the administration is insisting on 100 percent auction which, obviously, would be an incredible detriment to a very serious approach. Our economy is suffering. At times such as these, it is particularly important we provide for transition assistance that will not result in higher energy costs. Again, I wish to point out 100 percent auction will harm heavy manufacturers, the very ones who need the help the most: automobiles, concrete, et cetera, and the lower income residents of the South and Midwest.

Every reasonable cap-and-trade bill in the past has been a blend of auction and allocations--except for this one. The hybrid approach allows heavy manufacturers and coal-fired utilities time to meet emissions targets without needing to exponentially raise energy costs for consumers.

So the administration has sent us a budget with not a single mention of nuclear power and Yucca Mountain no longer an option. No Yucca Mountain means no waste confidence and, certainly, no new licensing, no spent fuel recycling. Secretary Chu is insinuating the French and Japanese, who have been recycling for decades, are ``reckless.''

So what we need to do is take up separately the issue of climate change legislation. It would have a gradual implementation schedule. It would allow for the economy to adapt while we meet our environmental goals. The policy must aggressively promote nonemitting green energy technologies, such as nuclear power, hydro, and others. We should pursue a hybrid approach of auctioning a portion of credits while reserving a large portion of the credits that we could allocate to those who need the most help, complying with the emission reductions. Revenues should be used to promote new technologies, help low-income people with the increased costs of electricity, and pay down the debt-- not expand the Federal Government.

So it is with some regret I come to the floor to discuss this important issue with a total lack of bipartisanship on the part of the administration and, again, express my willingness--in fact, my deep desire--to sit down and try to address, in a bipartisan fashion, this compelling issue, which is endangering the future of this planet and certainly our children's and grandchildren's future, and that is the issue of climate change.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

The President nominated Elena Kagan, currently dean of Harvard Law School, for Solicitor-General of the United States. While I do not share many of Dean Kagan's views, I especially disagree with Dean Kagan on the constitutionality of the Solomon amendment.

In 2005, Dean Kagan and 53 other law school faculty members filed an amicus brief to declare the Solomon amendment unconstitutional. The Solomon amendment, named for former Congressman Jerry Solomon, alloys military recruiters to meet with students on college campuses and allows the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, ROTC, to train on college campuses. The Supreme Court found Dean Kagan's arguments to be unpersuasive and declared the Solomon Amendment to be constitutional. I believe the Supreme Court was absolutely correct in its decision.

It is my hope that as Solicitor General, Dean Kagan will not allow her personal viewpoint on this important issue to prohibit the implementation of the Solomon amendment and that our military recruiters continue to recruit the best and brightest at our Nation's colleges to serve in our military.

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

Mr. President, as you noted, we will consider the nomination of Mr. Ron Kirk as the next U.S. Trade Representative.

With some reluctance, I will vote to confirm Mr. Kirk's nomination. I think it is pretty obvious Mr. Kirk has been less than forthcoming on a number of trade issues that affect this country, and some of the positions he has articulated are very dangerous for this Nation's future. I have come to this floor on numerous occasions and argued against the provisions that have

been signed into law in omnibus bills recently, one of them ``Buy American,'' the other, of course, the latest being the barring of Mexican trucks into the United States of America.

The signal that sends to the world is that the United States is on a path of protectionism. That shows at least a majority of Members of this body have ignored the lessons of history. That lesson, obviously, we learned in the Great Depression, when isolationism and protectionism turned our economy from a deep recession to the worst depression of modern times. That is what protectionism and isolationism does.

So we now have a predictable result of killing the program which would allow, in keeping with the North American Free Trade Agreement, a solemn treaty signed by then-President Clinton, that Mexican trucks would be allowed into the United States.

Before I go much further, though, I wished to comment on the issue that is consuming the American people and the Congress today; that is, the AIG bonuses paid to executives. The simple lesson is, if we had not bailed out AIG, we would not be worried about the bonuses. I spoke out against the bailout of AIG at the time when it was first proposed when AIG was in trouble.

I, along with every other American, share anger and obvious displeasure that these bonuses were given to executives who obviously did not deserve them. But we should not have bailed out AIG. We should have let them fail and reorganize.

I would also like to point out that another area of the bailout that Americans should be equally disturbed about is the $20 billion that went to foreign banks. American taxpayers are paying now $20 billion to bail out foreign banks. Have we not enough trouble here at home and enough areas of the country that need Government assistance than to send $20 billion to foreign banks?

There is an obvious need for increased transparency, increased oversight, and far more careful stewardship of American tax dollars. The numbers we are talking about are, indeed, staggering. I would point out, again, we are committing generational theft by these kinds of expenditures of American taxpayers' dollars and mortgaging our children and grandchildren's future.

The direction of our trade policy has hardly been more important in recent years, given the enormous economic challenges we are facing today, with unemployment rising, consumer confidence dropping, and our growth rate stagnating, at best.

American exports. American exports have been one of the few bright spots in a terrible economic situation. Until last quarter, the export sector of our economy grew at a faster rate than other sectors during the past several years. In the face of this fact, and mindful of history lessons, Congress and the administration should be working to break down remaining barriers to trade.

However, we are doing the opposite. Since the beginning of this year, Congress and the administration have taken several steps designed to choke off access to the U.S. market which invites retaliation from our foreign trading partners.

American business and workers will suffer as the result of these ill- considered moves. Last month, as I mentioned, Congress adopted and the President signed into law--again, one of the consequences of these omnibus bills that are thousands of pages, that nobody knows what is included, they are designed to be a ``stimulus'' or ``spending bill,'' and we stuff policy provisions in them, which people may not know about for weeks or even months.

We find out that these are egregious in the case of ``Buy American'' and in the case of the American trucks. Both of them send a signal to the world that America is going down the path of protectionism.

The results, as far as Mexico is concerned, are unfortunate, very unfortunate, but predictable. The reaction of our friends and allies throughout the world to the ``Buy American'' provisions is predictable. They are angry and they are upset. I cannot say I blame them.

Now, the ``Buy American'' provision required funds appropriated in that bill--this is a policy change, remember, adopted in a ``stimulus package,'' that we purchase only American-made steel, iron, and manufactured goods.

As we debated this provision, many of our closest partners expressed great concerns about the implications of this course of action. The Canadian Ambassador to the United States wrote:

If Buy America becomes part of the stimulus legislation,

the United States will lose the moral authority to pressure

others not to introduce protectionist policies. A rush of

protectionist actions could create a downward spiral like the

world experienced in the 1930's.

When then-Candidate Obama said he would ``unilaterally renegotiate'' the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Canadian response was: Yes, and if you do that, then we will sell our oil to China. Then, later, Candidate Obama changed his position to saying: Well, that wasn't exactly what he meant. Then, President Obama said: Now we are in favor of free trade. But yet President Obama did not veto either one of these bills, which sends a signal to the world that the United States has embarked on a protectionist path. He should have vetoed those bills, especially the one on Mexican trucks.

A European Commission spokesman noted:

We are particularly concerned about the signal that these

measures could send to the world at a time when all countries

are facing difficulty. Where America leads, many others tend

to follow.

Others lent their own voices to those cautioning against a terribly ill-timed protectionist act.

While some Senators may have taken comfort in last-minute language added to require that implementation of the ``Buy American'' provisions be consistent with our international obligations, I worry very much about the effect this and other steps will have on the global trading system. For decades the United States has led global efforts toward free and open trade and investment. We abandon this leadership at our peril.

The ``Buy American'' provision was not the only step in the protectionist direction. There have been other protectionist measures, and we are already seeing the fallout from such unwise decisions. Mr. Kirk agreed during his confirmation hearing:

[I]f the United States raises barriers in our own market,

other countries are more likely to raise barriers against our

products.

We have that evidence already. On Monday, the Mexican Government announced it will increase tariffs on 90 American agricultural and manufactured goods in direct retaliation for our recent decision to ban Mexican trucks from traveling beyond commercial zones. Although the Mexican Government is yet to specify the 90 different goods, it has announced that its decision would affect $2.4 billion worth of exports from 40 States. The Mexican Ambassador had an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning.

I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record, along with an editorial from this morning from the Arizona Republic.

The Mexican Ambassador says, in part of his article:

The U.S. Congress, which has now killed a modest and highly

successful U.S.-Mexico trucking demonstration program, has

sadly left my government no choice but to impose

countermeasures after years of restraint and goodwill.

Then and now, this was never about the safety of American

roads or drivers; it was and has been about protectionism,

pure and simple.

He is right. It is also a testimony to the influence of the Teamsters Union. Elections have consequences.

He goes on to say:

It is worth noting that this takes place shortly after

Mexico announced it would unilaterally reduce its industrial

tariffs from an average of 10.4% in 2008 to 4.3% by 2013, and

that it has underscored its commitment, along with its other

G-20 partners, to push back on protectionist pressures.

What has been particularly frustrating in this long and uphill battle has been the fact that the Congress continues to move the goalposts.

Importantly, he concludes:

Mexico is the U.S.'s second largest buyer of exports. It

remains a steadfast supporter of free and fair trade, and

will continue to work actively and responsibly during the

coming weeks and months with Congress and the administration

to find a solution that will allow safe Mexican trucks onto

U.S. roads under Nafta rules.

Again, NAFTA was signed by President Clinton 14 years ago. Part of that agreement was that Mexican trucks would be allowed into the United States. Study after study has concluded that Mexican trucks operate as safely as U.S. trucks do.

Today, on goods America buys coming from Mexico, the truck, after crossing the border, if it is Mexican, has to stop. The goods are offloaded onto another truck, moved to another truck that is American- owned and loaded onboard that truck. Meanwhile, there are CO2 emissions and the cost and expenses of the delay are passed on to the American consumer.

I repeat, Mexico is the third largest trading partner of the United States, behind Canada and China, and the United States ranks first among Mexico's trading partners. United States trade with Mexico totaled $368 billion in 2008. We have close and growing ties between our two Governments. Right now there is an existential threat to our southern neighbor from drug cartels. The violence on the border is at unprecedented levels. Acts of cruelty and murder are taking place beyond belief. People are being beheaded. There is the assassination of police chiefs and others. The corruption is very high. Why should we care? One reason we should care is because of violence spilling over from the Mexican border into ours.

The other reason is, there is between, according to estimates, $10 and $13 billion worth of revenue in receipts from the sale of drugs in the United States. It is the United States that is creating the market that is creating the drug cartels and violence on the border that has ensued. The Mexican Government is trying--maybe for the first time in as serious a way as they are now--to bring under control these cartels. The corruption reaches to the highest level. The violence is incredibly high. We need to do what we can to help the Mexican Government bring these cartels under control and try to eradicate them because they do pose an existential threat. We cannot afford to have a government that is full of corruption and controlled by drug cartels on our southern border, not to mention the impact it has on illegal immigration.

What did we do? We took steps in violation of our obligations under the North America Free Trade Agreement that will have precisely the opposite effect and have prompted retaliation that will only serve to harm American workers, consumers, and our Nation's relationship with Mexico.

During these difficult economic times for many American businesses, the ability to sell products on the world market is essential to our economic recovery. The Financial Times wrote in an editorial published yesterday:

The retaliatory duties are a legitimate response to a U.S.

violation of a trade deal . . . but this does not bode well

for bilateral relations just under two months into the Obama

administration.

It goes on:

We hope cooler heads prevail and prevent any deterioration

of the bilateral relationship. Both nations have too much at

stake--and trade as well as security issues.

I could not agree more.

The Arizona Republic published an editorial that reads:

With the economy in tatters, it's no time to mince words:

The United States is in the wrong. Under NAFTA, we agreed to

give Mexican trucks access beginning in 1995, increasing

efficiency and lowering costs for consumers.

The editorial continues:

Around the world, countries are considering trade barriers

that could have disastrous consequences for the world

economy.

The United States must put the brakes on trade restrictions,

not fuel them.

I am aware there is a sizable block of public opinion that believes we should close our borders to everybody and everything, that somehow Mexican trucks are unacceptable, that legal immigration is something we ought to do away with. I understand all those arguments. But I also urge those who say that trade with Mexico is not important to understand the facts: They are our third largest trading partner; we have a trade surplus; it is important to have our relationship good as we help them battle the drug cartels; and, most importantly, protectionism and high tariffs led to the Great Depression.

Congress passed NAFTA in 1993 and President Clinton signed it into law in 1994, which mandated the opening of our southern border to Mexican trucking operations to allow the free flow of goods and services between the two countries. Last year, language was slipped into a fiscal year 2008 spending bill that sought to strip funding for a pilot program with Mexico that would allow a limited number of Mexican trucks to enter the United States. Now the administration says it will try to create ``a new trucking project that will meet the legitimate concerns'' of Congress. I don't understand how the administration can create a new trucking project to comply with NAFTA, when Congress explicitly barred any money from being spent toward such activities. The President should not seek to create a new project to circumvent the terms of the legislative language. Rather, he should have vetoed it in the first place.

The administration's eliminating the Mexican cross-border trucking program will harm millions of American consumers who could benefit from lower prices on many goods manufactured in Mexico and then distributed in the United States.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, refusing entry into our country of Mexican trucks carrying Mexican-made goods adds $400 million to the price of Mexican imports which is, of course, passed on to the American consumer. Mr. Kirk has made some statements broadly supportive of international trade, but he has also made comments suggesting protectionism might not be so bad after all. During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Kirk stated:

Not all Americans are winning from [trade] and our trading

partners are not always playing by the rules.

He suggested the administration may abandon the free-trade agreement we have concluded with South Korea, one projected to increase the United States GDP by $10 to $12 billion. He said the pact ``simply isn't fair.'' He emphasized he does not have ``deal fever'' when it comes to trade agreements. Again, it is up in the air as to what the fate of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement would be, sending a clear signal that we would be punishing the Colombian Government for their assistance in trying to combat drug cartels.

Our trading partners, including Canada and Mexico, don't seem interested in strengthening agreements that have served them and us well for years. Rather, they would like to see the United States fulfill its own trade obligations and look for further ways to open markets to the free flow of commerce. The free flow of commerce has been a founding principle of U.S. economic policy for many decades and a key factor in our rise to prosperity and greatness. It is for this reason I hope Mr. Kirk and his colleagues in the administration will reconsider their stance and help build, not damage, the consensus behind free trade. After all, we have seen a terribly destructive pattern unfold before.

In 1930, as the United States and the world were entering what would be known in history as the Great Depression, two men, Mr. Smoot and Mr. Hawley, led the effort to enact protectionist legislation in the face of economic crisis. Their bill, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, raised duties on thousands of imported goods in a futile attempt to keep jobs at home. In the face of this legislation, 1,028 economists issued a statement to President Herbert Hoover, wherein they wrote:

America is now facing the problem of unemployment.

The proponents of higher tariffs would claim that an

increase in rates will give work to the idle. This is not

true. We cannot increase employment by restricting trade.

Mr. Smoot, Mr. Hawley, and their colleagues paid no attention to this wise admonishment, and the Congress went ahead with protectionist legislation. In doing so, they sparked an international trade war as countries around the world retaliated, raising their own duties and restricting trade, and they helped turn a severe recession into the greatest depression in modern history.

I do not intend to oppose the President's nominee for U.S. Trade Representative. I remain very concerned about the direction of our trade policies at a time of economic peril. I urge my colleagues and the administration to heed the lessons of economics and heed the lessons of history.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I know the hour is a bit advanced, so I will not take much time. I think it is pretty clear what the outcome of this vote will be, so I will not take a lot more time of this body. I have spent a lot of time on the Senate floor in the last week or so talking about this legislation before us.

I think there are a couple things that need to be mentioned again. Somehow it seems to be accepted around here that earmarks are a standard practice and that they have been going on forever, and it is somehow the purview of the Appropriations Committee to do these earmarks, which Americans have become pretty familiar with, I am happy to say, in the last week or so.

That is not so. It is not so. In 1991, there was a total of 537 earmarks for the entire appropriations process. This evil has grown, and it has grown, and it has grown--to the point where we now have close to 9,000 earmarks. All we are asking is to authorize. We have talked a lot about the individual earmarks. But the fact is, they are not authorized. I heard one of my colleagues today, on this side of the aisle, say: Well, the authorizing committees are too busy. Really? Really? So all we are asking is to go back to what this body had done and the Congress had done for a couple hundred years; that is, authorize the projects.

So what has happened? It has grown and grown and grown. Today, a former staffer on the Appropriations Committee pled guilty in Federal court. What did it have to do with? It had to do with earmarks, and we have former Members of Congress now residing in Federal prison because of this gateway drug, as my colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Coburn, calls it.

So last November the American people, as I am keenly aware, voted for change. They voted for change, and somehow we are saying: This is last year's business--only this is funding this year's operations.

So we will vote to pass this bill, and the message is, my friends and colleagues, that it is business as usual in Washington, while unemployment is 8.1 percent and employers have to cut another 651,000 jobs.

So if the President were serious about his pledge for change, he would veto this bill. He will not. Now, he will say we are going to outline a process of dealing with this problem in a different way. I quote from Mr. Gibbs:

. . . and that the rules of the road going forward for those

many appropriations bills that will go through Congress and

come to his desk will be done differently.

Well, the first chance we get to show people change is business as usual in the Senate and the House. It is very unfortunate. It is very unfortunate. We should not be astonished at the low approval ratings we have here when Americans see the expenditure of their hard-earned tax dollars in the projects we have talked about in the past without scrutiny, without authorization, and certainly not in a fashion the American people want their tax dollars spent. So we will invoke cloture and we will move forward. The bill will go to the President's desk, he will sign it, and the signal to the American people is: You voted for change, but you are not getting any change today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have come to the floor today to discuss my pending amendment which would prohibit funds to be spent on thousands of earmarks that are listed in the statement of managers but are not included in the bill text.

Most Americans would say: Why don't you have what you want to spend in the bill itself? So far, obviously, the answer has been that this has just grown and grown over the years, as earmarks have grown over the years. And let me just also point out, there is an attempt to say: Look, we have always done this. This has always been the case. So we are just doing what we have always done. You know, the fact is, Mr. President, we haven't always done this. The fact is this porkbarrel and earmark spending has grown and grown and grown and grown over the years.

One of the people I admired most when I served in the other body was a Congressman from Tennessee, Congressman Natcher, who would not allow a single earmark in his appropriations bills, not a single one. He was proud of that, and he continued to get reelected.

I did a little research. It is a little hard to get the information, but up until the 1960s or the 1970s there was no such thing as earmarks. There was no such thing. Citizens Against Government Waste have tracked the growth of earmarks, and in 1991, according to that organization, there were 546 earmarks--546 earmarks in 1991. In this bill, we have nearly 9,000.

Now, that is how evil grows. That is what happens when this kind of activity continues to be allowed. There were 546 earmarks. In 2008, there were 11,610 earmarks. That is an increase of 337 percent in 17 years. The numbers for fiscal 2009: with the three bills already enacted, there were nearly 3,000, and this is another 9,000.

I don't enjoy bringing this up all the time, but the fact is, there is another article this morning in RollCall with the headline ``Abramoff Case Keeps On Going.'' Quoting from the article, it says:

Disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff may one day see an

end to the scandal that he largely created--at least in his

scheduled release from prison in 2011--but the complex

criminal investigation spurred by his activities shows no

sign of winding down any time soon.

It talks about former Senate aides who are either under indictment or in prison or, according to this article, going to be indicted. But that is what happens when you are able to put in an earmark without anybody knowing about it, without any scrutiny, without any oversight, but directly related to the influence of the individual Member or staff member.

You can't make up these stories. You can't make them up. We have various staff members who became lobbyists, and obviously, as we know, we have former Members of Congress now residing in Federal prison. So I come to my opposition to these earmarks because it makes good people do bad things. A colleague from the other body, who was a great American hero, ended up making a list of the appropriations that he would get and the money that he would get in return, and now he resides in Federal prison.

May I also say we continue to hear that the President will do something about this. Last week Mr. Gibbs said we will see and hear the President outline a process of dealing with this problem in a different way and that the rules of the road going forward for those many appropriations bills that will go through Congress and come to his desk will be done differently. There is an easy way of doing that, Mr. President. Just authorize them. Just send these requests through the authorizing committees and have them authorized and you will never see the Senator from Arizona on the Senate floor again complaining about earmarks because then they will have done what we did for most of this Nation's history, and that is to authorize projects and then have the appropriators fund the projects. It is the way that the Congress should do business and the way we have gotten away from in recent years.

So I say to the President, if you really want to see something different, veto this bill. Just simply veto this bill and say: I am sending it back to you. Authorize those earmarks, don't put them in, all 9,000 of them.

I don't know if they are good or bad projects. I continuously see Members come to the floor on both sides of the aisle saying: This is a good project. This is a good project.

As you know, Mr. President, we are twittering over the top 10 every day--the top 10--and the responses we get are from local authorities to Members of Congress saying: This is a good, worthwhile project. Fine, get it authorized. Get it authorized and you will not hear a word of criticism from me.

Here we are, unemployment at 8.1 percent in February, the highest since late 1983--when we didn't do earmarks, 25 years ago--and employers having cut another 65,000 jobs. The Labor Department also reported that job losses in December were the biggest monthly decline in jobs since October 1949. So we are going to spend $1.7 million for pig odor research--that has been bandied

about a lot--and $6.6 million for termite research, $1.9 million for the Pleasure Beach Water Taxi Service Project in Connecticut, $951,000 for Sustainable Las Vegas. And the list goes on and on. I have talked about many of them.

The message is this: As we are in the most dire economic times since the Great Depression, in the view of many experts we are going to continue business here as usual with 9,000 earmarks for things which certainly do not have a priority for the American people at this time. So if the President really wants to change Washington, as soon as this bill reaches his desk he should veto it and send it back and say: Clean it up. Clean it up. Then let's fix the system, which is obviously badly broken.

I would remind my colleagues that back in January of 2007 we passed a pretty tough reform bill through the Senate, and then 7 months later, I believe it was, we then finally passed a much watered-down effort to bring in the porkbarrel earmark spending under control.

In the last week or so, the Senator from Wisconsin and I have introduced legislation which we call a line-item veto, which is more understandable but, frankly, is really an enhanced rescission. The President would issue a rescission and then the Congress would have to vote in order for it to take place.

There is another aspect of this, because I see my colleague from Alabama is here: policy changes. Policy changes have been enacted in an appropriations bill. Appropriations, as is the title, is funding for the Government. So what have we done? We have made changes in health care in both the stimulus package and in the omnibus bill; welfare changes, a number of changes that have been made in Government policy. There are several provisions that would weaken U.S. sanctions against the Castro regime in Cuba. That is a legitimate subject of debate. Why should it be put in an appropriations bill? The DC school vouchers, why should the vouchers for the District of Columbia schools, which provide financial assistance to 1,800 students in the District of Columbia who want to attend private elementary and secondary schools, why should that policy be changed under this bill?

NAFTA and trucking--you can argue whether we should allow Mexican trucks into the United States of America or not. It was part of the North American Free Trade Agreement many years ago. You could have that debate. But how can you rationalize a process that puts it into what is supposed to be an appropriations bill without debate or anything else?

We need to end this earmarking practice. We don't have the votes probably. I can count fairly well, not as well as some, but I can count fairly well. But I can tell you that this week's debate has aroused a lot of Americans. We have heard from them. We have heard from them. They voted for change. They voted for change, and they are not getting change. They are getting business as usual. They are getting 9,000 porkbarrel earmark projects that have not received scrutiny nor authorization nor what they deserve if we are going to spend nearly $8 billion of the taxpayers' money.

I would also like to respond to what one of my colleagues said-- little porky projects. Another one said: Well, that is the way business is done. I would argue that it is time to do business differently.

An article appeared in the Chicago Tribune today entitled ``Some Odor.'' The article said:

The bill may still pass this week and if it does, President

Barack Obama is likely to sign it. But maybe, with the

benefit of a few more days to digest how much this thing

smacks of Washington business as usual, Democrats in Congress

and the White House will feel some pangs of responsibility.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this morning's Chicago Tribune article entitled ``Some Odor,'' along with the Washington Post editorial this morning entitled ``Truck Stop.''

The Washington Post article I just referred to states:

When the U.S. economy needs all the help it can get, this

legislation perpetuates inefficiency and invites Mexican

retaliation against U.S. exports. To a world looking for

signs that Democratic rule in Washington would not mean

revived protectionism, this can only be a disappointment.

So I object to this legislation on grounds that there are fundamental policy changes which should be debated and be the subject of separate legislation. I also object to the 9,000 earmarks that are in this legislation, which sends the message to the American people that we are doing business as usual.

I am encouraged to continue to hear the news that the President will issue rescissions. He will say we are not going to do business like this anymore. Well, the best way that the President can send the message is, after we pass this legislation, to veto it and send it back and ask for clean legislation.

I urge my colleagues to vote for my amendment, which separates this 1,844 pages, which was supposed to be originally just a statement of the managers but is now full of thousands of earmark projects, and at least not have those have the force of law.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 593, which is at the desk, and I ask unanimous consent for its consideration, understanding that under a previous unanimous consent agreement the vote on the amendment will be on Monday.

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

Mr. President, this amendment is very simple and straightforward. It would prohibit funds to be spent on the thousands of earmarks that are listed in the statement of managers but that are not included in the bill text.

We have seen a remarkable evolution over the past number of years here in the Senate and House as to how we do business, and I think there is no greater example of it than what we are considering and have, fortunately, not passed. This is the legislation. In itself, it is 1,122 pages. You can thumb through it anywhere, and you will find moneys to be spent on various projects, none of which--or very few of which have ever been authorized or examined by the committees that have jurisdiction. That in itself is interesting.

This is a funding mechanism to keep the Government in business. It also happens to be an 8-percent increase in spending over last year. It also happens that the majority, the Democrats on the majority side last year, chose not to pass these appropriations bills because they knew, or expected, that they would have a larger majority in the Senate and House and they would be able to increase spending, which is exactly what happened--an 8-percent increase.

Here on the other side of my desk is ``statement of managers.'' That statement of managers is 1,844 pages. Guess what it is filled with. The same earmarks and porkbarrel projects that are in the bill itself. The statement of managers used to basically just be a statement of the managers of the bill saying this is a bill that is being put forward and the reasons for it, the rationale for it. It used to be just a few pages. Now it is 1,844 pages. Remarkable. And guess what it is filled with. It contains part of the 9,000 earmarked porkbarrel projects in this bill, none of which have been authorized--or very few have been authorized, let me put it that way. I am sure there are some funds in here that have been authorized. But the earmarks in it are exactly that: they are unauthorized projects.

What does that mean to the average citizen? They hear about earmarks and pork, but they do not really understand what it means. Well, the way the Congress is supposed to work is, there are two parts to legislating. One is to review legislative proposals--both policy and funding by committees--and they say: OK, we will authorize this project, we will authorize $1.7 million for a honey bee factory in Weslaco, TX. I don't particularly think that is necessary, but at least it is authorized. And then it is supposed to go to the appropriating committee, and they figure out how much money there is and then they appropriate the money. That system is completely broken. It is completely short-circuited. Now we have bills this size, statements of managers this size, and no one has ever seen or heard of many of these projects until it appears on the Members' desks. The system is completely broken.

So when I hear my colleagues stand up and defend these ``porkbarrel projects,'' when they defend $300,000 for the Montana World Trade Center, which may be necessary, why didn't they ask for it to be authorized because of the need and then compete with all other projects that are necessary and that Members of the Senate and the House believe are necessary for their districts or States?

Mr. President, 20 or 25 years ago, I can tell my colleagues, an earmark was an unusual event. It was an unusual occurrence. But the evil grew and grew and grew. Like any other evil, it grew and grew and grew, so that now we are presented with legislation such as this, with 9,000 of them. And I can guarantee you that none of my colleagues fully read this bill or the statement of managers. Now, some people say: Well, it is not very much. It is not very much. Well, our estimates are that it is about $8 billion. Now, $8 billion to the average citizen is a fairly good sum of money.

Another egregious pattern of behavior which has crept into this is that there are policy changes that are put in, again fundamental changes in policy written in, which, of course, the Senate does not then have an opportunity to debate. One example is to do away with the voucher system in the Washington, DC, school system. Another one has been noted this morning

in the Washington Post, called ``Truck Stop.''

When we signed a free-trade agreement with Mexico--I believe it was 14 years ago--part of the deal was that Mexican trucks, provided they met all the safety standards and all the requirements, would be able to come into the United States, with reciprocal access to each other's markets. Thanks to the influence of the unions and others, there is an amendment in this bill that basically kills that. Now, you can take either side of that issue. Maybe there are a lot of Americans saying-- even though these Mexican trucks are inspected, even though they meet the safety standards, even though we promised in the North American Free Trade Agreement that they would have access to our markets--maybe we shouldn't do that. But should we be doing it in an appropriations bill, in a bill this thick, in a statement of managers this thick? Should we be making policy changes in here?

By the way, I will talk a little more about this later on, but the Mexican Government is in an existential threat with the drug cartels in Mexico. Phoenix, AZ, has now become the kidnapping capital of America. There is violence on the south side of our border which is spilling over onto our side of the border. The President of Mexico, President Calderon, has staked everything on taking on the drug cartels, and the corruption he is fighting is at the highest levels of Government. So what have we done in this appropriations bill? We have just sent a signal to the Mexicans that we are not going to keep our agreements with them. We are not going to stand by our solemn pledges to them. And, by the way, we are going to do it in an obscure provision in one of these either 1,122 pages or 1,844 pages.

So I hope the American people and our colleagues understand what it is that is so badly broken here. They say: How in the world do we--when unemployment today is at 8.1 percent and people can't afford their health insurance premiums, are losing their jobs, are being moved out of their homes--afford $951,000 for Sustainable Las Vegas; how do we afford $819,000 for catfish genetics research in Alabama?

You will note that there are always locations associated with these earmarks. I had a discussion with a Member of Congress about one of the provisions having to do with tattoo removal--tattoo removal--because it helps when combating gangs. Maybe tattoo removal needs to be funded, but, of course, this earmark was directed to a specific geographic part of the country. So while the American people are suffering under the worst recession since the Great Depression, we here in Congress not only are doing business as usual, we are wasting taxpayer money at an incredible rate, and these 9,000 earmark projects are part of that.

By the way, there are also 13 projects in this bill, which total approximately $9 million, that were the result of the efforts of an outfit called PMA. PMA is a lobbying group, the head of which was a former staff member in the U.S. Congress, and PMA has been raided and shut down by the FBI. They are under active investigation for corruption, and they were ``listed'' as those responsible for these 13 projects. We can't even take those out. We can't even take those out.

It is really remarkable. On Thursday, the media reported that in discussions with Majority Leader Reid, Speaker Pelosi took the position that if a single amendment to this omnibus bill was made by the Senate, she would refuse to resubmit the bill as amended to the House but would, instead, put the rest of the Federal Government under a continuing resolution for the remainder of the year.

I think we should be on a continuing resolution as we have been and examine each one of these appropriations bills individually, debate them, and decide what various appropriations should be and how they should be funded and what the priorities are.

By the way, we also have proved that we can pass another continuing resolution because we just did. The insistence that not a single change could be made or it would shut down the Government and jeopardize even the most essential Government services was high drama at its best, used to sway Members to oppose even the most commonsense proposals, such as insisting contracting be fair and subject to open competition and restricting funding that was achieved through a lobbyist organization.

By the way, it is my understanding that last year this same organization, PMA, which has shut its doors, was raided by the FBI. The home of the head of it was raided by the FBI, and last year they got $300 million worth of earmarks in an appropriations bill.

What I am saying is, this system has become a corrupt practice. That is why we have former Members of Congress now residing in Federal prison. That is why we have continuing indictments of people who were involved in the Abramoff scandal, which all had to do with obtaining these earmarks in appropriations bills which were not authorized and nobody knew anything about. We even had a situation last year where a couple of items were put into an appropriations bill after the President signed it--after the President signed the bill. They were inserted. Investigation of that is still going on.

It seems to be the Speaker's position that the Senate should have no voice in a $410 billion appropriations bill that funds every agency in the Federal Government other than Defense, Homeland Security, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. I have been deeply disappointed by many things this new Congress and this new administration have begun. After all the campaign promises of changing the culture of Washington, bringing hope for a new era, bridging differences between people, parties, and ideology, what we have actually seen and what has been delivered to the American people is far different: first, in the $1.2 trillion stimulus bill and now in this massive $410 billion appropriations bill, which would, in a normal year, be the largest appropriations bill the Congress would pass. There has been no serious effort at bipartisanship. There is no serious effort to hear opposing views, to have an honest debate, to balance carefully the policy implications of our actions. We should engage in serious debate and vote on amendments without the false threat of a shutdown of the Federal Government or an out-of-the-hand rejection of all amendments.

The President has said, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget has said, this bill is last year's business. This bill is to fund the functions of Government this year--not last year, this year. To say somehow that this is ``last year's business'' because we are voting on funding for the operations of Government for this year is disingenuous at best.

I have talked to Members on both sides. I have talked to people who said: Yes, we need to do something about this earmarking, and we would like to sit down and do something about it. We would like to reduce it. That is like saying you would like to reduce any other evil. You want to eliminate it.

There is a simple way, I say to my friends who say they are unhappy with the way this explosion of earmarking and porkbarrel spending is taking place. There is one simple solution: Authorize it. Send it through the authorizing committees. Then, if I have a problem with the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, WY, for which I am going to spend $190,000 of our taxpayers' dollars, then fine. I may not like it, but at least we will have gone through a process of scrutiny, of proposal, of authorization, and the Buffalo Bill Historical Center would be in competition with other proposals for other historical centers throughout the country if they are needed.

Maybe we need to improve blueberry production and efficiency in Georgia. It is $209,000 to improve blueberry production and efficiency--in Georgia. Maybe not in Maine, maybe not other places where blueberries are grown, but in Georgia.

We want to spend $400,000 for copper wire theft prevention efforts. I would like to prevent copper wire theft as well, but maybe it should happen across the country. And I am sure the Alaska PTA needs $238,000, but so do PTAs all over this country. Why should we earmark $238,000 for the Alaska PTA? The list goes on and on.

As some of my colleagues may know, I have begun to twitter. We have been tweeting for the last week with ``Top Ten Earmarks,'' every day. We could go on for days and days. I would like to mention some of them. We began last Friday.

No. 10 was $1.7 million for a honeybee factory in Weslaco County, TX; $300,000 for the Montana World Trade Center; $870,000 for wolf breeding facilities in North Carolina and Washington; No. 7 was $332,000 for the design and construction of a school sidewalk in Franklin, TX; No. 6 is $1 million for Mormon cricket control in Utah; No. 5 was $650,000 for . . . management in North Carolina and Mississippi; No. 4, $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York; No. 3 was $6.6 million for termite research in New Orleans; No. 2 was $2 million for the promotion of astronomy in Hawaii; and No. 1, on our first day, was $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa.

Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune had an editorial entitled ``Whoa.'' It goes on to say:

The Obama administration and Democratic leaders of the

House and Senate are blowing the lid off of spending

restraint. But they're finally meeting some resistance within

their own party.

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), in an essay published Wednesday in

The Wall Street Journal, ripped a spending bill passed by the

House last week as ``a sprawling $410 billion compilation of

nine spending measures that lacks the slightest hint of

austerity from the federal government or the recipients of

its largesse.''

He said he will vote against it, and he urged President

Barack Obama to veto it if it passes the Senate. We second

that motion.

Politico.com reported Tuesday that 15 senators--14

Democrats and one independent--met behind closed doors this

week to share concerns over the cost and reach of Obama's

proposed $3.55 trillion budget for 2010.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry

Reid and the Obama team are pushing a gaudy expansion of

deficit spending.

A $787 billion ``stimulus'' package. A $410 billion

spending bill. A $3.55 trillion budget.

Their reasoning: we need to do this in response to the

economic crisis. But it's sure sounding like business as

usual in Washington. When in doubt, spend. When not in doubt

. . . spend.

The $410 billion bill hikes discretionary spending by 8

percent and includes at least 8,570 earmarks worth $7.7

billion. ``Such increases might be appropriate for a nation

flush with cash or unconcerned with fiscal prudence, but

America is neither,'' wrote Bayh. ``Families and businesses

are tightening their belts to make ends meet--and Washington

should too.''

The Obama folks have tried to dismiss this huge spending

bill as a little cleanup work. ``Last year's business,'' said

Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Last year's business? No, this is the nation's business

right now. We're going to borrow this money right now and

carry the debt for decades.

The administration says Obama will sign this bill.

Hopefully, enough Democrats like Evan Bayh will join

Republicans in the Senate to put the brakes on this. Let

everyone catch their breath and rethink this spending spree.

Right now, Democratic leaders look like they're getting dizzy

from all the dollars they think they have to throw around.

What we should be doing is not passing this legislation now. Go back to the drawing board. Go through the appropriations bills and authorize them as necessary and figure out how much we need to spend rather than have a bill that is like this and like this, which nobody has read.

Also, if the Congress goes ahead and passes this bill, then the President should veto it. The President should abide by the commitment he made in the campaign, the debate in Oxford, MS. The President of the United States, then-candidate Senator Obama, stated it clearly. He said: I will go line by line through these bills, and I will veto the ones and scrub the ones that are not necessary.

The President, then-Senator Obama, made a commitment to the American people. He can keep that commitment by vetoing this pork-laden bill.

The list goes on and on of these projects. I mentioned the 13 projects of PMA.

I want to return to something that is very disturbing, and that is the provision concerning free trade with Mexico. I would again like to quote from the Washington Post editorial today that says ``Truck Stop,'' entitled ``Congress Flashes a Yellow Light on Free Trade With Mexico.''

President Obama seems to have resolved, for now, an

incipient dispute with Canada over ``Buy American'' rules in

the stimulus package. The law would have hurt Canadian steel

exports to the United States, but, at the White House's

insistence, Congress appended language that blunted the worst

protectionist consequences. Now, however, Congress has turned

on Mexico, the United States' other partner in the North

American Free Trade Agreement. A $410 billion omnibus

spending bill contains a provision that would pretty much

kill any chance that long-haul freight trucks from Mexico

could operate in the United States, as had been promised

under NAFTA.

Economically, giving U.S. and Mexican trucks reciprocal

access to each other's markets makes a lot of sense.

Currently, Mexican rigs can drive in only a small zone on the

U.S. side of the border, where they must offload their goods

onto U.S. trucks. The process wastes time, money and fuel,

harming the U.S. environment and raising the cost of Mexican

goods to U.S. consumers. Yet access for Mexican trucks has

been bitterly resisted by U.S. interests, most notably the

Teamsters union--which claims that poorly regulated trucks

from south of the border would be a menace on U.S. highways.

In an effort to disprove that, the Bush administration

promoted a pilot project under which Mexican trucks, screened

by U.S. personnel, could operate freely within the United

States. The Mexican trucks compiled a safety record

comparable to that of American rigs. Mexican participation

was limited, however, because of the political uncertainty.

And safety was always a smokescreen for the Teamsters' real

concern--economic turf--anyway. Now the Democratic majority

on the Hill has slipped into the omnibus bill a provision

killing the program. The provision seems certain to survive,

given that the president supported such a measure when he was

a senator; his transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, backed

it as a member of the House.

When the U.S. economy needs all the help it can get, this

legislation perpetuates inefficiency and invites Mexican

retaliation against U.S. exports. To a world looking for

signs that Democratic rule in Washington would not mean

revived protectionism, this can only be a disappointment.

So you not only have these earmarks that are in the thousands, you not only have companies that are under FBI raids and shut down by the Government, adding porkbarrel projects, but you also have policy provisions in the bill which can damage relations with a country we need good relations with, given the fact that the drugs we are creating a demand for flow through their country.

As I mentioned earlier, the Mexican Government, under the courageous leadership of President Calderon, is in an existential struggling with the drug cartels. He needs to win. He needs to win for a variety of reasons, including the direct effect the flow of drugs from Colombia and other places, through Mexico into the United States, has and the damage it does to our young people and others who are using drugs.

This amendment, as I stated, simply says that all these provisions, which are in 1,884 pages, some thousands of earmarks that are in the ``statement of managers,'' not be prohibited from being spent because they are not included in the bill here. It is a pretty straightforward amendment. I hope my colleagues will approve it.

Finally, I would like to say again, if the President of the United States wants to fulfill his promise to the people of this country if this bill is passed, he will veto the bill and he will send it back and tell us to clean it up. These are tough times in America. These are tough times. We cannot afford to do business as usual in the Senate and the House of Representatives. It is time the President led, veto this bill, if we pass it, and let's get down to the business of saving the taxpayers' dollars, rather than the profligate spending spree we have been on for so long which has mortgaged our children's futures and has committed generational theft.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I return to the floor to talk about this bill before us which includes 9,000 earmarks and a 1,844-page statement of managers that accompanies this 1,122 page bill. When the Congress establishes its funding priorities, it should do so decisively without cause for subjective interpretation or reference to material outside the bill passed by Congress and signed by the President. These funding priorities should have the binding force of law, subject only to the President's veto power.

Yet here we are with a statement of managers that totals 1,844 pages, including 775 pages identifying over 9,000 Members' earmark requests that are expected to be funded, although most of them are not contained in the bill text. Because they are conveniently not listed in the bill text, Members who question the merits of specific earmarks are unable to offer an amendment to specifically strike them.

They are wasteful. They should not be funded. I ask unanimous consent that the list be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, examples of earmarks on this list include $870,000 for wolf-breeding facilities in North Carolina and Washington--not anyplace else but North Carolina and Washington State; $1,427,250 for genetic improvements of switchgrass; $100,000 for the central Nebraska World Trade Center; $819,000 for catfish genetics research in Alabama; $250,000 to enhance research on ice seal populations; $47,500 to remodel and expand a playground in Ottawa, IL; $285,000 for the Discovery Center of Idaho in Boise; $632,000 for the Hungry Horse Project; $380,000 for a recreation and fairground area in Alaska; $190,000 to build a living science museum in New Orleans, LA; $7,100,000 for the conservation and recovery of endangered Hawaiian sea turtle populations; $900,000 for fish management; $381,000 for jazz at Lincoln Center, New York; $238,000 for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for curriculum development; $95,000 for Hawaii Public Radio; $143,000 for the Dayton Society of Natural History in Dayton, OH; $193,000 for the Guam Public Library; $143,000 for the Historic Jazz Foundation in Kansas City, MO; and $950,000 for a convention center in Myrtle Beach, SC.

The list goes on and on.

The fact is, this has been stated by members of the administration, including, incredibly, the President's Budget

Director as ``last year's business.'' This is this year's business. This is funding that will be provided this year. This is 1,122 pages of a bill accompanied by 1,844 pages of porkbarrel earmark projects. It is not last year's business; it is this year's business. If it is last year's business, then if it is passed by the Senate and the House, send it down to Crawford, TX, and have it signed by last year's President. It won't be. It will be signed by this year's President, when it should be vetoed by this year's President.

I wish to remind my colleagues, again, that over the course of the last campaign I talked about earmarks. I have been fighting against them for years, and I was severely critical of Republicans who were in charge and frittered away our responsibilities as fiscal conservatives and paid a very heavy price for it. The then candidate and now President of the United States also stated repeatedly his opposition to earmarks, and he had stopped asking for earmarks, even though his first 2 years he had many millions of dollars in earmarks.

The President should veto this bill and send it back to Congress and tell them to clean it up.

Last week, President Obama commented on the fiscal 2010 budget blueprint after the Democratic-controlled Congress passed a $1.2 trillion stimulus bill. He said he had inherited a $1 trillion budget deficit from the prior administration. Again, I say, the Republican Party lost its way in recent years because we gave in to higher Government spending and porkbarrel spending and it bred corruption. We have former Members of Congress residing in Federal prison. As a result, the Republican Party paid a price for it at the polls.

That said, I think we have to be honest about the bill that is before us. It is a massive bill, here for our consideration because the House Democratic leadership--specifically, the Speaker and House Appropriations Committee chairman--made a calculated decision last year. They were faced with a threat from President Bush to veto each of these combined appropriations bills that exceeded his budget request. As a result, they decided to put the Federal Government under a continuing resolution and wait for the outcome of the election in hopes that a new administration would be more willing to go along with the pork-laden projects that have been inserted into every aspect of this swollen, wasteful, egregious example of out-of-control spending. Their wish came true. Elections have consequences and this bill is one of them.

As I said earlier, a mere 6 months ago, Candidate Obama vowed he would not support earmarking business as usual when he said during the debate in Oxford, MS: ``We need earmark reform and when I am President, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.''

Let's start going line by line on this 1,122 pages. Let's start going line by line with this 1,844 pages. It is loaded with billions of dollars of unnecessary and wasteful spending. Sadly, based on recent comments by some of his top advisers, including the Chief of Staff and the Director of OMB, it doesn't sound as if he is willing to put his veto pen to use to back up his vow.

The majority party has presented us and the new President with an outrageous example of a massive spending bill of more than $410 billion that, I repeat, includes over 9,000 wasteful earmarks. This bill is one of the first examples, among what will be many, of whether this Congress and this new President are serious about fiscal responsibility. I am not encouraged by this bill, to say the least.

If we can't reform earmarking, the best thing to do is to provide the President with a line-item veto authority. Yesterday, Senator Feingold and I, along with Congressman Paul Ryan, introduced legislation to grant the President specific authority to rescind or cancel congressional earmarks, including earmark spending, tax breaks, and tariff benefits. Granting the President the authority to propose rescissions which then must be approved by the Congress could go a long way toward restoring credibility to a system ravaged by congressional waste and special interest pork.

Yesterday, there were comments made by some of the leaders of Congress who basically said that if the President tries to eliminate wasteful and porkbarrel spending, that they can't do it. We hear the majority leader of the Senate who said:

Since we have been a country we have had the obligation as

a Congress to direct spending . . .

Defending a new spending bill that is bursting with congressional earmarks.

We cannot let spending be done by a bunch of nameless,

faceless bureaucrats buried in this town someplace.

I am asking that we authorize these programs the way this Congress did business for many, many, many, many years--many years. We authorized programs. Then we appropriated. That is why we have the authorization committees we have today. Unfortunately, bills such as this completely bypass the authorizing committees and are put in quite often without any consideration, without any authorization, and are directly related to the influence of the Member of Congress. Somebody pays for all this. Somebody pays for all of it, and it is our kids and our grandkids. That is what is going on. The President of the United States should veto it.

I agree with the Senator from Indiana, Evan Bayh, who had an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal saying:

The Senate should reject this bill. If we do not, President

Obama should veto it.

I understand that Senator Evan Bayh's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal of March 4 was printed in the Record yesterday.

So what has happened here? What has happened here, as I have watched over the years, is the system got more and more out of control. Yes, we have made a little progress. Now it is easier to identify who put the earmark in and who the lobbying group was, but if there is any testimonial to the fact that we have made no progress in the effort to reform, it was the vote yesterday on an amendment offered by Senator Tom Coburn that said we would eliminate 13 earmarks, worth about $9 million, which were put in by a lobbying organization that is now shut down and under FBI investigation. Remarkable. Remarkable. We couldn't even take out porkbarrel projects that were inserted through the influence of a lobbying organization that has been raided and shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Remarkable. Remarkable.

So it is a fight worth having, my friends. I would imagine the Senate will vote and probably this legislation will pass, but it is a very bad signal to send to the American people, and it is a very bad precedent for this administration to begin its first 100 days with the President of the United States signing a bill that has 1,844 pages of pork on the one hand and 1,122 pages of pork on the other.

One of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle came to the floor yesterday and said Republicans were guilty as well as Democrats. I agree. I agree. I have always said there are three kinds of Members of Congress: The Democratic members, Republican members, and appropriators.

A number of my colleagues on this side of the aisle have voted consistently against eliminating these porkbarrel earmarks. So my prediction is, the American people will not stand for this much longer. The American people are beginning to figure out we are mortgaging their children's and their grandchildren's future. The American people are fed up with this kind of a system that breeds corruption. The American people, I don't think, will stand for it, and I think sooner rather than later, you are going to see a rejection of this kind of practice, which does such damage to our credibility, to our ability to serve, and the ability of us to take care of future generations of Americans, as well as this one.

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

Mr. President, I rise to briefly discuss the amendment that has been proposed by the Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Coburn, to prohibit funding for PMA-related earmarks.

A lot of Americans don't know who PMA is, Mr. President. In fact, I didn't until recently, but it is very interesting. The Coburn amendment, by the way, would strike 13 projects where funding is directed to clients of the PMA Group, a lobbying firm currently under Federal investigation for corruption.

Today, we have before us a massive omnibus spending bill totaling nearly $410 billion that contains over 9,000 earmarks. Perhaps even more troubling than the number of earmarks is to whom and how some of this funding is being directed. Contained within this legislation are 13 earmarks totaling over $10 million directed to clients of the PMA Group.

Mr. President, the PMA Group is a lobbying firm that was recently forced to close its doors after the home of its owner and offices were raided last November by the FBI for suspicious campaign donation practices. That investigation continues to this day.

Well known for its deep ties to Capitol Hill, the PMA Group has a long and lucrative history for securing earmarks for its clients, including approximately $300 million in the fiscal year 2008 Defense appropriations bills--none of them authorized, by the way--$300 million.

There have been many accusations against the PMA Group, including using straw donors to further spread

their wealth to curry favor with influential Members of Congress. A February 14, 2009, Washington Post article examined campaign contributions reportedly given by members of the PMA Group and found ``several people who were not registered lobbyists and did not work for the lobbying firm,'' including a 75-year-old California man who, despite being listed in financial disclosure documentation as a donor and PMA employee, had never even heard of the firm.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record that complete article.

An article from the Congressional Quarterly on February 19 noted another curious statistic from the PMA Group's financial disclosure forms. Somehow during the course of the last four election cycles, PMA's political action committee reported expenses of $18. Now, I have heard of businesses trying to cut overhead costs, but spending $18 over 8 years doesn't pass the smell test.

I don't use the word ``corruption'' lightly, Mr. President. I don't. But we have seen the abuses of the appropriations process before, and we obviously haven't learned. Whether it was Jack Abramoff bilking millions of dollars from numerous Indian tribes or Duke Cunningham steering high-value defense contracts to firms that curried his favor through bribes and extravagant trips around the world, we have a broken system that breeds this sort of behavior.

Let me remind you there are former Members of Congress and staff members who now reside in Federal prison. The allegations against the PMA Group are serious and troubling, and we in Congress should treat them as such. How in the world do we approve 13 earmarks that were obtained by a group that has been raided and shut down by the FBI? How do we tell the American people we did such a thing--$10 million and over $300 million in last year's Defense appropriations bill?

Mr. President, the American people, sooner or later, are going to hold us accountable. Why should we approve earmarks from an organization that is clearly in violation of numerous laws, including having the FBI raid them and shut them down? They have all said they are no longer in business anymore, and clearly there are people listed in campaign finance reports--and I will quote again from the Washington Post article:

. . . giving $30,000 to lawmakers and being part of the PMA

Group team are not Washington lobbyists at all. They live and

work in the Florida resort community of Amelia Island, where

PMA founder Magliocchetti has a beachfront condominium. Both

are listed as directors of PMA.

And the article goes on and on, Mr. President.

"John Pugliese had been a sommelier at the posh Ritz-

Carlton Hotel on the island,'' his family said. John C.

Walker is in charge of golf marketing at the neighboring

Amelia Island Golf Club, according to club personnel and its

Web site. They each donated identical amounts to the same

lawmakers, in 12 installments each, almost always on the same

date.

I will talk some more about this before this is over because the American people are beginning to figure it out. The American people are rising up in strenuous objection to this kind of process, with 9,000 porkbarrel earmark projects on them. Some of them are of value. Some are not. We do not know because it did not go through the authorization process these projects need to go through to be properly vetted and authorized by the authorizing committees.

We are not through with this bill, I am happy to say. I will be talking a lot

more about it, and the American people are talking a lot more about it. There have been some statements made that I am angry. I am angry, but I am not nearly as angry as the taxpayers are. I am not nearly as angry as the people who see that we are going to give $10 million in earmarks that were obtained by a company, a lobbying outfit, that has been raided and shut down by the FBI.

I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the Coburn amendment to remove at least the $10 million from this porkbarrel bill that was obtained through an organization of questionable credentials, questionable donors, and certainly--according to the FBI, having shut them down--being people who do not deserve to be able to have $10 million of the taxpayers' dollars.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, the Coburn amendment concerning the removal of line item appropriations from the bill that were sponsored by a group called PMA is pending before the Senate. I think it would be of interest to my colleagues to have some additional information about this organization.

I have mentioned before this organization's offices were raided in November in connection with an FBI investigation into its campaign contribution practices. According to multiple news accounts, the Associated Press reported Tuesday that the home of the founder of the PMA group, former House appropriations aide Paul Magliochetti, was also raided. Also, by doing some cursory research, we became aware that CQ reported last week that 104 Members of the House sponsored or cosponsored earmarks for clients of the PMA group in a single bill--the fiscal 2008 Defense appropriations bill. That set of lawmakers got $1.8 million in campaign contributions from the PMA group and its employees between 2001 and 2008. I also pointed out earlier today there was a Washington Post story as well as others reporting that there are campaign contributors who are listed as being contributors who have no knowledge, nor have ever been involved, in making campaign contributions.

I also noted that the payment for inserting the 14 appropriations-- the 14 projects--in this bill to PMA Group comes to a total of $2.185 million. That is not a bad business for 1 year, to get paid $2.185, nearly $2.2 million of the taxpayers money--for getting porkbarrel projects inserted in appropriations bills. It is another reason why we should take these projects out. Many of these projects have been going on for some time and have been receiving very large amounts of Federal dollars for a long period of time. Most of them are doing the business that could be done by the National Science Foundation or done by the Department of Defense in competitive bidding, and many other ways that funding for these various companies and projects could have been implemented. Instead, they were inserted in an appropriations bill without authorization, without hearings, and without scrutiny. It is a very large amount of money--over $10 million which is being appropriated--and I am sure the payment to that lobbying group comes out of the money they are able to secure through this process.

So a cursory examination of the 14 projects identified revealed over $2 million paid to PMA as a fee for their services of a lobbying group that secured the earmarks. I think it is another reason why the Coburn amendment should be adopted. If the Coburn amendment is not adopted, then clearly, it is not only business as usual in Washington, but it indicates without a doubt that even if the FBI raids your headquarters, even if the home of the head of the lobbying group is raided by the FBI, your projects will still be inserted into appropriations bills without authorization, without scrutiny, and without competition.

This is a very important vote that is coming up. It is only--when I say ``only''--$10 million, but this organization, PMA, has been able to secure hundreds of millions of dollars over the years for various entities. If we go ahead and do not remove these projects, then it is not only business as usual in Washington, it has hit a new low.

I wish to thank the Senator from Oklahoma for his courage. I am aware, as he is, that it is not the most popular thing to do, to come to the floor and try to eliminate these projects and help work to reform the system that is obviously badly broken.

I note the presence of the majority leader on the floor. I did note his quote today where he said that the amendment is ``a nice try, but there's no lobbying organization I know of that is earmarked.''

Well, they are identified in the bill as according to the legislation or rule we passed last year. It may be a nice try, but I want to assure the majority leader that as long as I am here, I will come to this floor and I will go to the American people and try to stop this terrible waste of their tax dollars at a time when Americans are experiencing the most difficult of times.

With that, I thank the Senator from Oklahoma again for his courage and his hard work.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am honored to once again be joining my friend, colleague, and partner in reform, Senator Feingold, in introducing the Congressional Accountability and Line-Item Veto Act. Additionally, I would like to thank Republican Paul Ryan from Wisconsin for introducing this legislation in the House of Representatives. I applaud my two colleagues from Wisconsin for their leadership on this important issue.

Our bill does a number of things. First, it provides the President with a constitutional line item veto authority. This legislation would ensure timely consideration of earmark rescission requests by the President, which must be submitted to Congress within 30 calendar days of signing a bill into law. It gives the House and Senate 12 legislative days to act after the President sends a rescission. It respects and preserves Congress's constitutional responsibilities, as it requires both the House and Senate to pass a rescission request before it can become law. This bill limits the number of rescission requests per bill to guard against gridlock in Congress due to multiple rescission proposals. Finally, it sunsets at the end of 2014 in order to review how the authority is working after the administration has had the opportunity to work with Congress to employ this tool to control spending and to determine if it should be renewed.

Why do we need to grant the President a line-item veto authority? Currently the Senate is debating a pork-filled $410 billion, 2,967 page Omnibus appropriations bill to fund the Federal Government through the second half of the fiscal year. Not surprising, the measure is chock full of over 9,000 unnecessary and wasteful earmarks. We need serious reform and we need it now--this Omnibus appropriations bill is a perfect example of what is wrong with this system.

Here are some examples of the earmarks contained in the omnibus legislation:

$1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa; $2 million for the promotion of astronomy in Hawaii; $6.6 million for termite research in New Orleans; $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York; $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi; $1 million for mormon cricket control in Utah; $332,000 for the design and construction of a school sidewalk in Franklin, Texas; $870,000 for a wolf breeding facilities in North Carolina and Washington, $300,000 for the Montana World Trade Center; $1.7M ``for a honey bee factory'' in Weslaco, TX; $951,500 for Sustainable Las Vegas; $143,000 for Nevada Humanities to develop and expand an online encyclopedia; $475,000 to build a parking garage in Provo City, Utah; $200,000 for a tattoo removal violence outreach program in the LA area; $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Honolulu, Hawaii; $100,000 for the regional robotics training center in Union, SC; $1,427,250 for genetic improvements of switchgrass; $167,000 for the Autry National Center for the American West in Los Angeles, CA; $143,000 to teach art energy; $100,000 for the Central Nebraska World Trade Center; $951,500 for the Oregon Solar Highway; $819,000 for catfish genetics research in Alabama; $190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, WY; $209,000 to improve blueberry production and efficiency in GA; $400,000 for copper wire theft prevention efforts; $250,000 to enhance research on Ice Seal populations; $238,000 for the Alaska PTA; $150,000 for a rodeo museum in South Dakota; $47,500 to remodel and expand a playground in Ottawa, IL; $285,000 for the Discovery Center of Idaho in Boise, ID; $632,000 for the Hungry Horse Project; $380,000 for a recreation and fairground area in Kotzebue, AK; $118,750 for a building to house an aircraft display in Rantoul, IL; $380,000 to revitalize downtown Aliceville, AL; $380,000 for lighthouses in Maine; $190,000 to build a Living Science Museum in New Orleans, LA; $7,100,000 for the conservation and recovery of endangered Hawaiian sea turtle populations; $900,000 for fish management; $150,000 for lobster research; $381,000 for Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York; $1.9 million for the Pleasure Beach Water Taxi Service Project, CT; $238,000 for Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for curriculum development; $95,000 for Hawaii Public Radio; $95,000 for the state of New Mexico to find a dental school location; $143,000 for the Dayton Society of Natural History in Dayton, OH; $190,000 for the Guam Public Library; $143,000 for the Historic Jazz Foundation in Kansas City, MO; $3,806,000 for a Sun Grant Initiative in South Dakota; $59,000 for Dismal Swamp and Dismal Swamp Canal in Virginia; and $950,000 for a Convention Center in Myrtle Beach, SC;

This waste is outrageous, and the President should veto this omnibus spending bill. The process is clearly broken, and the American public deserves better.

We need to curtail earmarks, not just disclose them. Again, the examples I have just mentioned are earmarks that are among the over 9,000 contained in the omnibus legislation currently

being considered in the Senate--so it is clear that the lobbying and ethics reform bill that was enacted in August 2007 has done nothing to curb this process--even though it continues to be touted for its ``tough'' and ``historic'' earmark reform provisions.

Perhaps even more troubling than the number of earmarks is to whom and how some of this funding is being directed. Contained within the Omnibus appropriations legislation are 14 earmarks, totaling nearly $9.7 million, directed to clients of the PMA Group, a lobbying firm recently forced to close their doors after being raided last November by the FBI for suspicious campaign donation practices. That firm remains under investigation today. I have long spoken of a broken appropriations process, vulnerable to corruption and abuse, and the allegations against the PMA Group and some Members of Congress stand as a testament to the urgent need for reform. It is wholly inappropriate for Congress to allow these provisions to move forward while their principal sponsor is under Federal investigation. Together with my colleague from Oklahoma, Dr. Coburn, we offered an amendment to strip these earmarks from the omnibus. If our amendment fails we will effectively be giving our tacit approval to the abuses we have repeatedly declared our intention to eliminate.

Six months ago, in a debate in Oxford, MS, President Obama stated that ``We need earmark reform, and when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.'' I fully agree. All one needs to do is read the Omnibus appropriations bill pending before the Senate to know that we need serious, comprehensive earmark reform and we need to grant the President a constitutional line-item veto authority so that he can go line by line through these bloated, earmark filled appropriations bills and send rescission requests to Congress.

Our current economic situation and our vital national security concerns require that now, more than ever, we prioritize our Federal spending. But our appropriations bills do not always put our national priorities first. The process is broken and it needs to be fixed. We have entered the second year of a recession. Record numbers of homeowners face foreclosure. The national unemployment rate stands at 7.2%--the highest in 16 years--with over 1.9 million people having lost their jobs in the last 4 months of 2008. Additionally, we learned just Friday that the GDP sank 6.2 percent in the last quarter of 2008--far worse even than what was expected--with the economy contracting by the fastest pace in a quarter century.

Even when faced with these tremendous difficulties, Congress's appetite for pork seems bigger than ever. When are people going to wake up and truly grasp the seriousness of the economic situation confronting us? We cannot afford, literally, to continue to operate under the same Washington status quo.

Let's consider some cold, hard facts: current national debt: $10.7 trillion; 2009 projected deficit: $1.2 trillion; total cost of the economic stimulus enacted two weeks ago: $1.124 trillion; ($789 billion plus interest; TARP I and II: $700 billion; TARP III: $250 billion-$750 billion, or more; President's Budget Request for 2010: $3.6 trillion.

I was encouraged in January 2007 when the Senate passed, by a vote of 96 to 2, an ethics and lobbying reform package which contained real, meaningful earmark reforms. I thought that, at last, we would finally enact some effective reforms. Unfortunately, that victory was short lived. In August 2007, we were presented with a bill containing very watered down earmark provisions and doing far too little to rein in wasteful earmarks and porkbarrel spending. We can change that and enact reforms that will help to restore the faith and confidence of the American people in their elected representatives--and passing this bill should be the first step we take.

Again, the bill we are introducing today will ensure timely congressional consideration of earmark rescission requests by the President. This will enable the President to propose the removal of wasteful earmarks from legislation that arrives on his desk for signature and send these earmarks back to Congress for expedited votes on whether or not to rescind funding; give the House and Senate 12 legislative days after the President sends a rescission request to Congress to bring a rescission bill to consideration on the floor of the full House and Senate; respect and preserve Congress's constitutional responsibilities, as it requires both the House and Senate to pass a rescission request before it can become law. If either the House or Senate votes against a rescission by a simple majority, it is not enacted; require the President to submit earmark rescission requests to Congress within 30 calendar days of signing a bill into law; limit the number of rescission requests per bill, to guard against gridlock in Congress due to multiple rescission proposals. Under this legislation, the President can propose one rescission package per ordinary bill, or two rescission packages for omnibus legislation. Each rescission package may include multiple earmarks; sunset at the end of 2014, providing a President this tool to control spending over the portions of two different Presidential terms. The sunset provision would give Congress the ability to review this legislation and decide whether to renew it.

As my colleagues are well aware, for years I have been coming to the Senate floor to read list after list of the ridiculous items we have spent money on--hoping enough embarrassment might spur some change. And year after year I would offer amendment after amendment to strip porkbarrel projects from spending bills--usually only getting a handful of votes each time. Earmarks are like a cancer. Left unchecked, they have grown out of control. And just as cancer destroys tissue and vital organs, the corruption associated with the process of earmarking is destroying what is vital to our strength as a Nation, that is, the faith and trust of the American people in their elected representatives and in the institutions of their Government.

We must keep in mind that even strong line-item veto authority will not solve all of our fiscal problems. We also desperately need to reform our earmarking process and our lobbying practices--and we must remember that it is ultimately Congress's responsibility to control spending. However, granting the President the authority to propose rescissions that then must be approved by the Congress would go a long way toward restoring credibility to a system ravaged by congressional waste and special interest pork. I look forward to the Senate's consideration of this legislation. It is abundantly clear that the time has come for us to eliminate the corrupt, wasteful practice of earmarking.

In his final State of the Union Address, President Reagan stood for the last time before both Houses of Congress and asked for line-item veto authority for future Presidents. On that evening, the President had with him three pieces of legislation: an appropriations bill that was 1,053 pages long and weighed 14 pounds; a budget reconciliation bill that was 1,186 pages long and weighed 15 pounds; and a continuing resolution that was 1,057 pages long and weighed 14 pounds. President Reagan slammed down on the lectern the 43 pounds of paper and ink, which represented $1 trillion worth of spending. He did so to emphasize the magnitude of wasteful spending in the bills--spending that the President could not stop unless he was willing to veto each piece of legislation in its entirety. In the case of the continuing resolution, that would have meant that the Federal government would shut down.

More than 20 years later we are in exactly the same situation we were in when President Reagan said to Congress, ``Let's help ensure our future of prosperity by giving the President a tool that, though I will not get to use it, is one I know future Presidents of either party must have. Give the President the same authority that 43 Governors use in their States: the right to reach into massive appropriation bills, pare away the waste, and enforce budget discipline. Let's approve the line- item veto.''

The time has come to heed Ronald Reagan's call for line-item veto authority.

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

I thank you. It is entirely possible all the time may not be used.

As I discussed at length yesterday, this amendment would provide for a long-term continuing resolution to fund the Federal Government through the end of this fiscal year at the fiscal year 2008 level; in other words, the same level as last year.

Obviously, funds can be shifted around within agencies, and the allegations that somehow we cannot do business this year at the same level as last year, when American families are clearly not doing business this year as they did last year, I think are an example of being out of touch with the challenges the American people face.

I think it is important for us to look at what this amendment is trying to do, which is simply maintain the same level of funding as last year, in the context of what the American people are facing today. Unemployment in the previous speaker's State is now at 10 percent, home values continue to plummet, the stock market yesterday took another serious dive, as more and more of Americans' savings, 401(k)s are dramatically reduced, with massive job layoffs, in a very serious economic situation.

I want to state again, America will recover from this. It is tough. It may be long and hard. But America will recover because we are still the greatest nation in the world. But in the meantime, Americans are having to tighten their belts all across this great Nation of ours. They are having to reduce or eliminate spending they have wanted to engage in for a new car, for whatever they feel the necessities of their families are. They watch as their health insurance premiums continue to go up and that are less and less affordable for many families.

What we are asking here, obviously in this very simple 1-page resolution, is that we maintain the same funding level as last year. I will tell you, there are millions of American families who would like to stay on the same funding level as last year. So instead of that, we have a statement of managers, 1,844 pages, which no Member has read. We have the bill itself, 800, 700-some pages, whatever it is. And, obviously, we have dramatic increases, an 8-percent increase in spending over last year. We have been through many of these earmarks. We have put them out. We have twittered them. And we will continue with our top ten. We have many top ten lists for this bill. It will be passed. It will be passed. Then it will be on the President's desk, and the President will have a choice as to whether to accept all of these thousands and thousands of unnecessary, wasteful earmark projects, and business as usual in Washington, or take out his veto pen. By the way, in all spirit of candor, the last President should have taken out his veto pen and vetoed these bloated, pork-barrel, project-laden bills. He should have. He did not, and he lost the confidence of the American people because we were not careful stewards of the taxpayers' dollars.

So we went through a Presidential campaign, and we said we would stop business as usual here in Washington. The President stated very clearly at the debate in Oxford, MS, a mere 6 months ago:

We need earmark reform. And when I am President, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.

I want to give the President of the United States a line item veto. I want him to be able to go line by line and veto each unnecessary and wasteful spending project. I will be introducing, with my friend from Wisconsin, Senator Feingold, a line item veto again.

But right now, this bill deserves the President's veto. By vetoing this bill, the President could send a message to America and the world that for the enormous economic difficulties every American family is facing, we will show them that we will be, for a change, careful stewards of their tax dollars.

But there is no justification for, at these difficult times, $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa, $2 million for the promotion of astronomy in Hawaii, termite research, $1.9 million for the Pleasure Beach water taxi service project in Connecticut, $95,000 for the State of New Mexico to find a dental school location, $1.7 million for a honey bee factory, $951,500 for a sustainable Las Vegas, a parking garage in Provo City, UT, tattoo removal, $167,000 for the Autry National Center for the Indian American West in Los Angeles, a rodeo museum in South Dakota.

These things may be nice. They may be nice to have, a Buffalo Bill historical center in Cody, WY, but right now Americans cannot afford health insurance, they cannot keep their jobs. I am not only angry about it, my constituents are angry. And Americans are angry. It is being reflected in the polls of the lack of confidence in the future of this country because we continue business as usual here in our Nation's Capital.

I know I will not be elected ``Ms. Congeniality'' again this year in the Senate. For many years I have fought to try to eliminate a great deal of this. Sometimes I have succeeded; most times I have failed. The previous chairman of the committee used to call me the sheriff. But the fact is, there is no time more important than now for us to show the American people that we are willing to tighten our belts, that we are willing to stop this practice, which, yes, has corrupted people. That is why we have former Members of Congress now residing in Federal prison, and staffers under indictment. This process is wrong. It is wrong because we do not give it the scrutiny and the

examination and the authorizing it deserves before we appropriate the money.

That is why Americans are angry at the way we do business and our approval ratings continue to be very low. Our approval ratings are something that is somewhat ephemeral. But this practice has grown and grown and grown over the years that I have been a Member of Congress and the Senate. It has continued to grow, and it has continued to waste the American taxpayers' dollars. So I ask Americans, along with me, to ask the President to veto this bill and have him send one back that is truly reflective of the tough times America is in today, that we cannot afford any longer this wasteful spending practice, this spending on projects that appear in the middle of the night, and sometimes, as in one of last year's appropriations bills, they were projects added after the President signed the bill into law. No one knows where it came from. What kind of a process is that? What kind of a process is it that we have legislation that is this high, that no Member has read? The whole process has to be fixed.

For the President's budget director to say: This is last year's business, we want to move on, and the President's Chief of Staff, who has said: Mr. Obama was not happy with the large number of earmarks in this bill but, ``The President had kept lawmakers from adding a single earmark to the $787 billion stimulus package, and a $32.8 billion State Children's Health Insurance Program,'' I find to be a very disingenuous statement on its face.

The President's pledge 6 months ago wasn't that he would claim to keep two bills earmark free and then let there be a feeding frenzy of pork barrel. His pledge was: ``We need earmark reform'' and, as President, he would do it.

I read today an article in the Chicago Tribune that Mr. Emanuel is tied to as many as 16 earmarks in this legislation, totaling $8.5 million, $900,000 for Chicago's Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, and the list goes on. When do we turn off the spigot? Haven't we learned anything from the calls and letters, meetings with our constituents who pour their hearts and souls out and share their fears about keeping their jobs and homes as they struggle to put food on their families' tables? Bills such as this jeopardize their future. One of my greatest fears about the President's budget is that at no point in his budget does there seem to be a balanced budget, nor is there any triggering mechanism, such as this side proposed in the stimulus bill, that once our economy recovers--and it will recover--we embark on reductions in spending. Right now we are laying a huge debt on our children and grandchildren which is not in keeping with our responsibilities.

I urge colleagues to vote for this amendment. I doubt it will be passed. I hope the American people understand what is at stake. I hope all Americans will urge the President to veto the bill when it gets to his desk, send it back, save billions of their tax dollars, and come back with a bill that Americans can say is truly reflective of the challenges we face.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we are looking right now at a $410 billion piece of legislation approved by the House last week, largely on party lines, that we are beginning to debate today. It is 1,123 pages. It is interesting that it is accompanied by a 1,844-page statement of managers. Put them together, and we have 2,967 pages of legislation. Not surprisingly, the measure has unnecessary and wasteful earmarks. So much for the promise of change. So much for the promise of change. This may be--in all the years I have been coming to this floor to complain about the earmark, porkbarrel corruption that this system has bred, this may be probably the worst--probably the worst.

I just went through a campaign where both candidates promised change in Washington; promised change from the wasteful, disgraceful, corrupting practice of earmark, porkbarrel spending. We have former Members of Congress residing in Federal prison. We have former congressional staffers under indictment and in prison. So what are we doing here? Not only is this business as usual, but this is an outrageous insult to the American people.

Today we find out that the unemployment rate in the great State of California just went over 10 percent. It just went over 10 percent. So what are we going to do? We are going to spend $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa. We are going to spend $2 million for the promotion of astronomy in Hawaii. Why do we need--I ask the Senator from Hawaii: Why do we need to spend $2 million to promote astronomy in Hawaii when unemployment is going up and the stock market is tanking? Do we really need to continue this wasteful process?

This includes $6.6 million for termite research in New Orleans; $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York. You will notice there is a State or a district or a town or a location associated with all of these projects. You will notice that because that is what it is: $1.7 million for a honey bee factory in Weslaco, TX. Forgive me if I mispronounced the name of the town in Texas.

So here we are. Here we are promising the American people hope and change, and what do we have? Business as usual. What does the administration say? What does the administration say? Mr. Peter Orzag-- an individual I don't know--brushed off questions during his appearance on ``This Week'' about whether the President would sign a spending bill that contains 9,000 earmarks--9,000 earmarks. Noting that during the campaign President Obama said he would work to limit earmarks and make them more transparent, his response was: This is last year's business. We want to just move on.

Last year's business? The President will sign this appropriations bill into law. It is the President's business. It is the business of the President of the United States. It is the business of the President of the United States to do what he said. When we were in debate seeking the support of the American people, he stated he would work to eliminate--eliminate--earmarks.

Last September, President Obama said during the debate in Oxford, MS:

We need earmark reform and when I am President, I will go

line-by-line to make sure we are not spending money unwisely.

That is the quote of the promise the President of the United States made to the American people in a debate with me in Oxford, MS.

So what is brought to the floor today? Nine thousand earmarks, billions and billions of dollars of unneeded and wasteful spending, and the President's budget person says: This is last year's business. We want to just move on. That is insulting to the American people.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel appeared on ``Face the Nation.'' According to the New York Times, Mr. Emanuel said:

Mr. Obama was not happy with the large number of earmarks

in this bill, but--

Mr. Emanuel said--

the President kept lawmakers from adding a single earmark

to this $287 billion stimulus package and a $32.8 billion

plan to the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

By the way, that statement is disingenuous on its face.

So I guess we are doing last year's business. Does that mean last year's President will sign this porkbarrel bill? I wish to freely acknowledge--I wish to freely acknowledge that Republicans were guilty of this as well. I have said time after time there are three kinds of Members of Congress: Republican Members, Democrat Members, and appropriators.

If it sounds as if I am angry, it is because I am. The American people today want the Congress to act in a fiscally responsible manner, and they don't want us to continue this corrupting practice.

My colleague from Oklahoma is here. He calls it a gateway drug--a gateway drug. I am not going to pick up this managers' package. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Have we had a single one of these projects authorized? Has any of them gone through the authorizing committee? Have any of these projects been examined for whether they are better or worse or more meritorious than others? No. They are in there because of the political clout and seniority of Members of Congress. That is what this is all about--political influence.

Maybe one could argue when this economy was good and we were in a surplus this kind of wasteful spending could be brushed aside; that it was somehow, in the view of some, acceptable. It is not now. It is not now. There are millions of Americans out of work, unemployment is climbing, and the stock market is tanking.

So what do we do in response to that, as every American family is having to tighten their belts, sitting around the kitchen table figuring out how they are either going to keep a job or get health insurance, keep their families together and stay in their homes? We are going to spend $333,000 for the design and construction of a school sidewalk in Franklin, TX. Now, maybe that Franklin, TX, school needs a sidewalk. Maybe other places need a sidewalk too.

We are going to spend $951,500 for a sustainable Las Vegas. What does that mean? What does sustainable Las Vegas mean?

We are going to spend $143,000 for Nevada Humanities to develop and expand an online encyclopedia.

Is there no place besides Nevada that they need to expand an online encyclopedia? There hasn't been a lot of coverage on the $200,000 for a tattoo removal violence outreach program in the L.A. area. Is that program also needed in other areas? Why did we pick out L.A.? There is $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Honolulu, HI. We have $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Honolulu, HI, when people are out of a job. There is $100,000 for the regional robotics training center in Union, SC. There is $238,000 for the Alaska PTA. There is $150,000 for a rodeo museum in South Dakota.

Americans are angry, Mr. President, and they are going to know a lot more about this bill before we have a final vote. They are going to know a lot more about it. Americans are going to be angry. Americans are angry now at what we have done. The approval rating of Congress is incredibly low. So we will be going through a lot of this.

By the way, there is an outfit called PMA. A lot of Americans haven't heard of PMA. It is a lobbying organization. Contained within this legislation are 14 earmarks that the managers of the bill put in, and these 14 earmarks total nearly $9.7 million. Guess to whom they are directed--clients of the PMA Group. The PMA Group, for the benefit of my colleagues, is a lobbying group, a firm recently forced to close its doors after being raided by the FBI for suspicious campaign donation practices. The firm is under investigation. So what did they do? They went out and got $9.7 million worth of your taxpayer dollars, totaling $9.7 million, after being raided by the FBI for suspicious campaign donation practices. They remain under investigation. Do you think maybe we could take that out?

I have long spoken about a broken appropriations process, vulnerable to

corruption and abuse, and the allegations against the PMA Group and some Members of Congress stand as a testament to the urgent need for reform. How could we allow these provisions to move forward while their principal sponsor is under Federal investigation? How do we do that?

Mr. President, we will be talking a lot more in the days ahead as we go through this legislation. I hope the American people will rise up and demand that what we need to do is just have a continuing resolution, continue with the spending levels that were part of the continuing resolution. If this is a ``change,'' then let's start implementing change.

If there is any testament to business as usual here in the Congress of the United States, it is this bill before us. Americans all over this country hope for change. They hope the corruption, earmarking, and porkbarrel practices will stop. What are we giving them? We are giving them a slap in the face, that is what we are giving them.

I know my colleague from Oklahoma is here. I will be glad to hear the explanation from my colleagues, the distinguished managers of the bill, as to why 14 earmark projects obtained by the PMA Group, which has been shut down and is under FBI investigation, why we need $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa, and why we have 1,100 pages of the managers' statement. A managers' statement is supposed to be a description of the bill. What has happened over the years is that we have stuck in more and more provisions in the managers' statement which then, according to the agencies of Government, have the force of law. So we get tens of billions of dollars of unnecessary and wasteful earmarks. So much for the promise of change.

I yield the floor.

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

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

Madam President, this amendment is very simple and straightforward. Instead of the bloated, earmark-filled $410 billion Omnibus appropriations bill and statement of managers totalling 2,967 pages that no Member could possibly have read given the sheer volume, this amendment would provide for a long-term CR to fund the Federal Government through the end of this fiscal year. It is a one-page amendment. It approaches fiscally responsible discipline in an expeditious way which is why just 2 years ago we agreed to nearly the exact same approach when we agreed by a vote of 81 to 15, on February 14, 2007, to revise the continuing appropriations resolution 2007.

I note no Member of the majority voted in opposition to that approach which, similar to the amendment I am proposing, funded nearly all the agencies of the Federal Government, except the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security which had been enacted as regular appropriations bills. The only difference today is the MILCON- VA funding was approved last year and is not part of this continuing resolution, that and the fact that the majority is in control of the House, Senate, and White House.

When are we going to grasp the seriousness of the economic situation confronting us? We learned Friday that the GDP sank 6.2 percent in the last

quarter of 2008, far worse than what was expected. With the economy contracting by the fastest pace in a quarter century, this needs to serve as a wakeup call. We cannot afford literally to continue under this same status quo.

Let's consider some cold, hard facts. The current national debt is $10.7 trillion. The 2009 projected deficit is $1.2 trillion. The total cost of the economic stimulus enacted 2 weeks ago is $1.24 trillion. That is $789 billion plus interest. TARP I and II, $700 billion; TARP III, $250 billion to $750 billion or more; the President's budget request for 2010, $3.6 trillion. And now here we are debating a pork- filled $410 billion Omnibus appropriations bill to fund the Federal Government through the second half of the fiscal year at a funding level that is nearly 10 percent greater than spending for the last fiscal year, which, according to the ranking minority of the House Appropriations Committee, represents the largest increase in annual discretionary spending since the Carter administration.

Combine the total costs of this omnibus with the Defense and Homeland Security and Military Construction bills passed last year, and spending for fiscal year 2009 will top $1 trillion.

Now let's consider the impact of the funding increases in this bill, combined with the billions of dollars provided to these agencies in the stimulus. According to a document prepared by the House Appropriations Committee minority, the combined cost of the omnibus and the recently passed stimulus bill results in the following increases in this year's spending in billions of dollars: Agriculture, the percent increase over last year is 45 percent. That is $26.1 billion. Commerce, State and Justice--this is with the stimulus and the bill before us, with its 1,100 pages of managers' statement--is a 41 percent increase. Energy and water, a 151 percent increase; financial services, 43 percent; Interior, 45 percent; Labor-HHS, 91 percent; legislative branch, 12 percent; State and foreign ops, 13 percent; Transportation, 139 percent--a total of an 80-percent increase over last year's spending.

We are committing generational theft because we are going to ask our kids and our grandkids to pay this bill.

While I wish to say it is time to put a halt to business as usual, I find myself thinking this level of funding defies that description. It is beyond anything I have ever witnessed and is extremely alarming. That is why we should adopt this long-term continuing resolution that will effectively freeze spending to last year's level and eliminate wasting an additional $7.7 billion on more than 9,000 wasteful earmarks.

Just as the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Byrd, said during the February 2007 debate on a continuing resolution, it is a fiscally disciplined resolution, and so is this one. During the week, there will be many discussions on the floor about the questionable funding contained in this omnibus spending bill. It is difficult even for me to grasp the level of unnecessary spending proposed in this bill. It may be the most egregious pork-barrel spending I have witnessed in all my years here.

Over the past few days, I have been listing a top 10 each day of some of the most stunning provisions. I have been twittering. Remarkably, it would take me almost 3 years to list every earmark--if I continued to list the top 10--until all the more than 9,000 were mentioned. I state this to put some perspective on the enormity of this level of earmarking.

I have been through some of them before, but they make you laugh and they make you cry: $190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, WY; $951,500 for the Oregon Solar Highway.

Some of these projects may be worthwhile. They may be projects we all need. If they are, they should go through the process of authorization and appropriation. They are not. They are inserted in an appropriations bill in a fashion that no Member of this body has read this managers' statement or this bill. That is what is wrong with it.

There will be arguments in favor of a certain earmark. There will be an argument for $6.6 million for termite research in New Orleans. Then why didn't it go through the proper authorizing committee and then have the funds appropriated? That is what is required by the procedures of the Senate, which have been violated more and more and more. And unfortunately, what happens when you commit any egregious breach, when you engage in activities that are unethical, they grow and they grow. And I say--and I say again--this is serious stuff. We have former Members of Congress and their staffs residing in Federal prison.

The Senator from North Dakota and I spent a couple of years investigating Mr. Abramoff, and we did so under the authorizing committee of the Indian Affairs Committee--what some view as an obscure committee--and we uncovered these egregious activities of ripping off Native Americans of millions of dollars; of the incestuous relationship between staffers and Members of Congress and this process. We confined our activities to Native Americans. There was much more evidence of wrongdoing. But because we were the Indian Affairs Committee, we kept our investigation to those.

I don't know how many people are now in prison, but I know recent indictments have come down. So this is not trivial stuff we are talking about. This is corruption. And when we do things such as this, then it encourages a practice.

I asked earlier in my comments how in the world could we appropriate items which had been lobbied for by a group called PMA, whose offices were raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation? How can we insert their earmarks into an appropriations bill? I don't get it.

My amendment is simple. It goes back to a continuing resolution and funds the activities of the Government at last year's levels, which obviously were sufficient last year. We need to do some belt tightening, I don't think there is any doubt about that. We are asking every American family to do that today. And every American family is having to do it today as we face an unprecedented economic distress which is affecting literally every family in America. It is a great and ongoing tragedy. It seems to me that we, as a Congress, can at least not increase the spending over last year's level as Americans have lost at least half of their savings in the stock market in the last year.

I hope we will approve this amendment, and I yield the floor.