Floor Statements

Mr. President, today I recognize Alexander Nelson, an intern in my Rapid City, SD, office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several weeks.

Alex is a graduate of Fergus Falls Senior High School in Fergus Falls, MN. Currently he is attending the University of Arizona, where he is majoring in business economics. He is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of his internship experience.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Alex for all of the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Mr. President, today I recognize Samuel Strommen, an intern in my Rapid City, SD, office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several weeks.

Sam is a graduate of Stevens High School in Rapid City, SD. Currently he is attending the University of Arizona, where he is majoring in political science. He is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of his internship experience.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Sam for all of the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Mr. President, today I recognize Andrew Jonathan Timm, an intern in my Washington, DC, office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several weeks.

Andrew is a graduate of Watertown High School in Watertown, SD. Currently he is attending the University of Minnesota, where he is majoring in political science and economics. He is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of his internship experience.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Andrew for all of the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Mr. President, today I recognize Danielle Marie Anderson, an intern in my Washington, DC, office, for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several weeks.

Danielle is a graduate of Plankinton High School in Plankinton, SD. Currently she is attending South Dakota State University, where she is majoring in business economics. She is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of her internship experience.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Danielle for all of the fine work she has done and wish her continued success in the years to come.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Madam President, I think the American people are beginning to react in a negative way to what they perceive to be happening in Washington, DC, today with regard to the debate about health care, the debate about new energy taxes in the form of a cap-and-trade program. Of course, we know there are a lot of questions about whether there was any value in the trillion dollar stimulus bill that passed earlier this year, which was supposed to keep unemployment below 8 percent, and now in many States it is well into the double digits and continues to go north from there.

They have seen a lot of government spending with the stimulus, a takeover of many industries, whether it is auto manufacturing, financial services, or insurance companies in this country. They have seen the cap-and-trade bill, which passed the House of Representatives, which they know--there are debates about how much, but they know it will increase what they pay for energy in this country. And now we are having this discussion about the government taking over one-sixth of the American economy in the form of health care.

I think what we are starting to see is that the American people, as they engage in these issues, are becoming increasingly concerned about the level of government expansion and intervention in the marketplace, and the amount of new taxation and new borrowing and spending that is going on in Washington, DC, at a time when the American people are being, by virtue of the fact that they have to live within a balanced budget, required to make hard choices in their daily lives. They see a disconnect between what they are experiencing in their family lives and what is happening in Washington, DC, where there continues to be this pattern of new taxes, spending and borrowing.

Logic would dictate, I think, when you are in a recession, you should not raise taxes. The worst thing to do in a recession is raise taxes and actually crush any economic recovery that might occur because, as we all know, what helps create jobs is small business. If small businesses are faced with higher taxes, they have less to invest in new equipment and in hiring new employees.

The other thing I think logic dictates is that when you are running trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, you should not be piling more debt upon future generations. It seems as if everything we are talking about these days is an expansion of government in Washington, at greater additional costs to the American people, either in the form of higher taxes or increased borrowing from future generations, neither of which is something I think most Americans would acknowledge we ought to be doing when you have an economy in a recession and trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.

The current health care debate is a good example of something about which people have reservations and concerns, because they see the attempt by the Federal Government to take over one-sixth of the American economy, to essentially nationalize it--whatever you want to call it. In any

event, it will mean greater government intervention and greater government involvement and an expansion of government in Washington, DC. I think they are starting to react in a negative way against that, and more and more members in Congress, in the House and Senate, are hearing that.

I think that is why it is becoming increasingly difficult now to move in the quick way in which the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate wanted to in order to enact some form of health care reform before the August break.

The way I view this issue is that we ought to look at starting over. Clearly, what has been proposed and rolled out so far is not working. It is not working in terms of winning the minds of the American people, in terms, in Washington, DC, of putting together what ought to be a bipartisan solution to probably one of the biggest challenges and crises facing the American people and our economy.

So far, we have seen a bill being debated at the committee level in the House of Representatives, and perhaps scheduled for the floor--if not this week, when we get back--and we have seen action by the HELP Committee in the Senate on a bill that, by CBO's estimate, is about a trillion dollars in new costs. Somehow, it will have to be paid for.

It seems as if we ought to push the reset button and figure out, OK, how can we do this in a way that achieves savings to the American people and the health care costs in this country, as opposed to actually adding new costs by increasing government spending in Washington, DC, expanding the size of government, and putting the government in the way of--I guess intervening in that fundamental relationship between physicians and patients.

There are a number of things that are, in my view, wrong with the current plan, the plan that passed the HELP Committee in the Senate, as well as the one currently being considered in the House of Representatives. The first fundamental test it flunks is that it doesn't do anything to reduce costs. To me, reform ought to be finding efficiencies, streamlining, looking at ways of doing things in a less costly way to achieve savings. We know that is not the case with the bill that passed the HELP Committee in the Senate, and we know the House of Representatives, in their bill, according to the most recent Congressional Budget Office estimates, also does nothing to find savings or achieve any sort of savings as a result of all these changes being proposed. So it flunks the first fundamental test of reform; that is, it does nothing to reduce costs.

Secondly, it does cut payments, reimbursements, under Medicare to providers, whether it is hospitals, whether it is the cost of pharmaceuticals. All of these things in this country that add to the overall cost of health care are obviously going to take a nick in this. We don't want to see the health care currently provided under Medicare to American senior citizens somehow be hurt by the fact that they are trying to find money to pay for this whole new expansion of government health care in this country. So you have the issue of cuts to reimbursements currently under Medicare, which very likely would impact the delivery of care, the quality of care for America's seniors.

The third thing, and another big problem, is that it adds new Medicaid costs to our States. States currently are participants. Medicaid is a shared program between the Federal and State governments, and there is talk about a significant expansion, the size of the Medicaid Program, which obviously costs the Federal taxpayers a lot more money. But it also passes on an incredible new and costly mandate to State governments. Many States are figuring that out and are starting to react to it.

My State of South Dakota is a good case in point. Our State legislature, Governor, and people who looked at this have concluded it would cost South Dakota an additional $45 million a year in Medicaid costs, which may not sound like a lot of money in Washington, DC, but in a State such as South Dakota, where there is a requirement to balance the budget every year, that represents a lot of money. Obviously, it will have to be paid for somehow. When you get to the larger States, the numbers increase in multiples.

You are talking about new taxes on States, in addition to the new taxes being talked about in Washington, DC, to pay for all this. You have new Federal and State taxes, again, at a time when already many State governments and budgets are strapped and they are trying to figure out how to balance their budgets currently.

Another reason why the current plan is such a big problem, and why we need to start over and hit the reset button, is because you are going to have a lot of people who are going to lose employer-provided insurance. Most of the studies conclude--and the House bill is a good example--that about 83 million people would lose their private health insurance under the bill that is under consideration in the House of Representatives. There are other studies that have been done. This was a Congressional Budget Office estimate. Other studies suggest that the number of people who could lose insurance on some of these plans under consideration in Congress could be in the 120 million range.

If you consider that we have 177 million people today who get their insurance through their employer, that is a significant number of people who are going to lose their privately provided health insurance and be pushed into a government plan.

That brings me to the next point of why the current health care plan being debated is the wrong direction in which to head and creates problems; that is, you are going to have more people going into the government-run plan--literally millions of people, the ones who are going to lose their insurance in the private marketplace. They are going to be pushed into a government-run plan. Obviously, there are a lot of people who would like to see that. I don't happen to be one of them. We ought to preserve what is best about the market and competition we have and allow people to have more choices. We don't want to, by default, shove more and more people into a government-run plan, when there are opportunities out there available to them today where they can get their health care coverage and insurance in the private marketplace. That is a much better model and has worked very well for a long time.

That isn't to say there are not things we can do better. I don't know of any Senator on either side of the aisle who doesn't acknowledge that there are things we need to do to reform health care in this country, to get costs under control, provide access to more people. But certainly taking away private coverage and pushing people into a government-run plan is not a reform of the health care system that makes sense to me or, I argue, most Americans, especially when it will cost trillions of dollars to do it.

As I said, I think most people look at reform as something that would actually reduce or somehow eliminate costs or create greater efficiencies and savings in the health care system in this country. You have a lot of people who will lose private insurance, and millions of Americans would be pushed into a government-run program.

As I said before, another big problem with this idea is that for employers, during a recession, it imposes new taxes and fines, both of which would be very costly, and both of which would deprive them of the opportunity, as the economy hopefully starts to recover, to hire new people, create new jobs, which is what small businesses do best. They are the economic engine of this country. We are talking about imposing new taxes and fines on them, at great cost, and so that takes away a lot of the resources, as they generate revenue that they can be able to devote or allocate toward capital investment or hiring more people. They are going to be paying fines and taxes to the Federal Government to underwrite this new expansion of government in Washington, DC.

Logic would dictate, and history would suggest, that the worst thing you can do in the middle of an economic recession is to raise taxes on the job creators in the economy. Raising taxes on small businesses is a bad idea. In fact, the House bill that is under consideration, with the surcharges and increased taxes, would actually increase marginal income tax rates from the top rate today of about 35 percent to about 37 percent. Think about that. The size of the increase in marginal income tax rates that would occur in

State and Federal marginal tax rates, under the plan under consideration in the House of Representatives, and how that would impact the economy, would be the largest tax increase we have seen since the end of World War II.

Frankly, if you think about most Americans and most small businesses, when you start paying half, or 50 cents out of every dollar, in taxes, you are getting to a point where it is going to be very difficult for these businesses which might say: Why should I continue to try to create jobs and provide health care coverage for my employees, when the government takes more and more of the profits I make in this business? I think that is the risk we run with the job creators, the small businesses, which are the economic engine and create as many as two- thirds to three-quarters of all of the jobs in our economy, in a recession. When you put new taxes and fines on them, you are layering them and burdening them with more costs that will make it very difficult for them to lead us out of the recession and start to expand the economy and create jobs. Intuitively it makes no sense for us to head in this direction.

Finally, I think the last problem--and, as I said, there are many with the current health care proposals--is we will have to start dealing with the lines and the rationing that so often occurs when we see a system such as they have in Europe or the Canadian system. Some here actually believe that is the best way to do this. They believe in a single-payer system. They believe we ought to nationalize our health care system in this country. Inevitably, what we will end up with is people ending up in lines. We will have government making decisions about what procedures will be covered, what the reimbursement will be for this procedure, that procedure. It is a disaster and a train wreck in the making, and it is a direction I don't think we ought to go.

These are all issues that I think point to the need for us to hit that reset button and to sit down and actually figure out what can we agree upon that will be a bipartisan solution to the challenge of increasing costs and a lack of access for millions of Americans.

That being said, we have a large number of proposals out there which, I submit, we ought to be able to debate. As the HELP Committee and the Finance Committee go through their deliberations, there are many things that have bipartisan support in the Congress for which we could get big majorities and which would address the fundamental issues of access to health care and cost of health care but none of which are being considered because right now the only plan out there is the one that has been written by the Democratic leadership, which consists of this government plan or this government takeover of the health care system.

We believe the principles in this debate ought to continue to maintain: People ought to be able to keep their health care; it ought to be health care they can afford; it ought to provide choices; and it ought to be patient centered.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, amendment No. 1618 is a very simple amendment. It is tailored to allow individuals to protect themselves while at the same time protecting States rights.

My amendment would allow an individual to carry a concealed firearm across State lines if they either have a valid permit or if, under their State of residence, they are legally entitled to do so.

My amendment does not create a national concealed carry permit system or standard. My amendment does not allow individuals to conceal and carry within States that do not allow their own citizens to do so. My amendment does not allow citizens to circumvent their home State's concealed carry permit laws.

If an individual is currently prohibited from possessing a firearm under Federal law, my amendment would continue to prohibit them from doing so. When an individual with a valid conceal and carry permit from their home State travels to another State that also allows their citizens to conceal and carry, the visitor must comply with the restrictions of the State they are in.

This carefully tailored amendment will ensure that a State's border is not a limit to an individual's fundamental right and will allow law- abiding individuals to travel, without complication, throughout the 48 States that currently permit some form of conceal and carry.

Law-abiding individuals have the right to self-defense, especially because the Supreme Court has consistently found that police have no constitutional obligation to protect individuals from other individuals.

The Seventh Circuit explained this most simply in their 1982 Bowers v. DeVito decision where they said:

[T]here is no Constitutional right to be protected by the

state against being murdered by criminals or madmen.

Responsible gun ownership by law-abiding individuals, however, provides a constitutional means by which individuals may do so, and responsible conceal and carry holders have repeatedly proven they are effective in protecting themselves and those around them.

Reliable, empirical research shows that States with concealed carry laws enjoy significantly lower crime and violent crime rates than those States that do not.

For example, for every year a State has a concealed carry law, the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent, and robberies by over 2 percent.

Additionally, research shows that ``minorities and women tend to be the ones with the most to gain from being allowed to protect themselves.''

The benefits of conceal and carry extend to more than just the individuals who actually carry the firearms. Since criminals are unable to tell who is and who is not carrying a firearm just by looking at a potential victim, they are less likely to commit a crime when they fear they may come in direct contact with an individual who is armed.

This deterrent is so strong that a Department of Justice study found that 40 percent of felons had not committed crimes because they feared the prospective victims were armed. Additionally, research shows that when unrestricted conceal and carry laws are passed, not only does it benefit those who are armed, but it also benefits others around them such as children. In addition to the empirical evidence, there are anecdotal stories as well.

A truckdriver from Onida, SD--a long-haul trucker--10 years ago, on a trip to Atlanta, stopped at a truck stop in Georgia. He shared this story recently. It is a more dated story. But a strange man suddenly jumped on the hood of his truck, showed a gun, and started demanding all the cash this truckdriver had. Working on instinct, he pulled out the firearm he always kept in his cab and showed the gun to the perpetrator, who jumped off the hood and ran away as soon as he saw it.

That story, while one that may not make it into the crime statistics or the newspapers, is the type of story that demonstrates how my amendment will help individuals--law-abiding individuals, who travel from State to State either for work or for pleasure.

So it is very straightforward. The amendment, as I said, simply allows those who have concealed carry permits in their State of residence to be able to carry firearms across State lines, respectful of the laws that pertain in each of the individual States.

So it is not, as some have suggested, a preemption of State laws. There are a couple States where their individuals are precluded from having concealed carry, and in those States this amendment would not apply. Obviously, we are, as I said before, very respectful of States rights and State laws that have been enacted with regard to this particular issue.

But I might say, too, in my State of South Dakota, we have a national reciprocity understanding, national reciprocity concealed carry understanding, with all the other States in the country. So of the other 47 States where concealed carry is allowed, any of the residents of those States who have concealed carry permits can carry in the State of South Dakota. There are 10 other States that also fit into that category.

I believe if we check the records and look at the data, it is pretty clear the States that have enacted national concealed carry reciprocity agreements have not seen, as has been suggested by opponents of this amendment, any increase in crime rates.

I believe this is something that is consistent with the constitutional right that citizens in this country have to keep and bear firearms. We have, as I said, 48 States currently today that have some form of concealed carry law that allows their individuals in their States, residents of their States, to carry. This simply extends that constitutional right across State lines, recognizing that the right to defend oneself and the right to exercise that basic second amendment constitutional right does not end at State borders or State lines.

So, Mr. President, I hope my colleagues in the Senate will adopt this amendment. I think it is a commonsense approach to allowing more people across this country to have the opportunity to protect themselves when they are threatened. As I said before, the statistics bear out the fact that when that is the case, when people have that opportunity--States that have enacted concealed carry laws have seen actually crime rates, particularly violent crime rates, go down.

Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, let me, if I might, point out some of the statistics, and I will also add in response to the comments of my colleague from Illinois that the amendment was not applied to the District of Columbia.

With respect to the issue of federalism, I think it is important to note that back in 2003, there were 70 cosponsors in the Senate for a piece of legislation that allowed retired law enforcement and current law enforcement officers to carry across State lines--obviously an infringement on this notion of federalism that the Senator from Illinois has raised.

I also would point out that we do know the impact. The Senator from Illinois said we don't know what the impact of this is going to be. Any suggestion about what impacts could occur are very hypothetical. What we do know is that there are a number of States that have already enacted national concealed carry reciprocity agreements. In those States, we also know what the impacts have been. The impacts have been that clearly there has been less crime rather than more.

Studies have shown that there is more defensive gun use by victims than there are crimes committed with firearms in this country. In fact, researchers have estimated that there are as many as 2.5 million defensive uses of firearms in the United States each year, though a lot of those go unreported because no shots are ever fired. There are lots of examples, and I have a list of them here I could go through anecdotally too. These are those that have been recorded by the press where actually the defensive use by a firearm, someone with a concealed carry permit, has actually helped prevent crimes. There are countless examples of those that have been documented and reported by the press, not to mention, as I said, the estimated 2.5 million defensive uses of firearms in the United States each year.

There are estimated to be about 5 million concealed carry permit holders in the United States today. Assuming that every instance reported by gun control groups of improper firearm use by individuals with a concealed carry permit is true--something that can be debated, but assuming that it is true--over an entire year, for over 142,857 permit holders, there would be one--one--improper use of a firearm.

Put another way, concealed carry permit holders would be 15 times less--15 times less--likely than the rest of the public to commit murder.

There are some States--and some large States, frankly--that have issued concealed carry permits, and probably one of the largest States is the State of Florida. They have had a concealed carry permit law in effect in the State of Florida going back to 1987. Yet if you look at the 1.57 million concealed carry permits that people have in the State of Florida, there have only been 167 of those revoked. That is less than one-tenth of 1 percent.

As of 2008, Utah, which allows both residents and nonresidents to acquire concealed carry permits, had 134,398 active concealed handgun permits. Over the past year they have had 12 revocations or .009 percent because of some type of violent crime, but none of those crimes, incidentally, involved the use of a gun. During the 1990s and through the decade of 2000 so far, independent researchers have found 11 cases where a permit holder committed murder with a gun.

I would simply point out to my colleagues that the points that are being made by the Senator from Illinois are largely speculative. If you go back to 1991, the number of privately owned guns has risen by about 90 million to an all-time high. Over that same timeframe, the Nation's murder rate has decreased 46 percent to a 43-year low, and the total violent crime rate has decreased 41 percent to a 35-year low. This at a time--as I said, since 1991, the number of privately owned guns has increased by about 90 million to an all-time high. Also, as I said before, the number of permits that are issued across the country is about 5 million nationally. My State of South Dakota has about 47,000, but it is a small percentage of the overall number of Americans who actually could access or could get a concealed carry permit who do it. Most of them have a reason for doing it. Most of them are going to be

people such as truckdrivers who are going across State lines such as the example I mentioned. There are lots of people who travel.

For example, as another case in point, I have two daughters who are in college. My oldest one will graduate next year. Currently she is in the safe confines of a college campus, but she attends college several States away from our State of South Dakota. When she is out of college next year, I fully expect--and we have discussed this--that she may get a concealed carry permit in the State in which she resides, to have a firearm in order to protect herself, because I think a lot of single women in this country do, particularly those who live in large cities and she would be living in a large city. When she comes home to South Dakota she, of course, traverses several States and during the course of that, she crosses two States where it would be illegal to have a firearm in her possession in her car to protect her as she travels those vast distances across several States.

There are lots of examples I think of people--law-abiding citizens-- who, for purposes of self-defense, simply want the opportunity to, in a legal way, transport that firearm and they have concealed carry permits. They have gone through their State's background check--and by the way, all but three States that issue concealed carry permits require background checks, so it is the same thing you would go through in order to buy a firearm.

So the suggestion that all of these people are going to be able to get firearms: The Federal law prevents some of the very examples the Senator from Illinois mentioned from having access to firearms in the first place. Of course, the background checks, with the exception of those three States--as a practical matter those three States, which are New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Delaware, also go through the background checks. They don't have it as a requirement to get a conceal and carry permit. But background checks are going to be conducted. You are going to find out if there is criminal behavior in the background, mental illness, all of those things which under Federal law would prevent that person from possessing a firearm in the first place.

I reserve the balance of my time. The Senator from Louisiana is here and I assume the Presiding Officer will recognize the other side.

Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Louisiana such time as he may consume.

Mr. President, a couple quick observations, if I may. First, I need to correct for the record the State of South Dakota has reciprocity agreements with 27 States. It does not have national reciprocity, which I think gets at the very point I am making; that is, anybody who has a concealed carry permit in one State is so confused by this patchwork of laws we have that they cannot determine which State is legal and which State is not legal. That is a very serious problem for people such as truckdrivers, such as individuals who want to protect themselves when they travel across the country.

In terms of the arguments made to individuals who have access to firearms, the 1968 Gun Control Act prohibits individuals from even possessing a firearm if the individual is under indictment or convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year, is an unlawful user or addict of a controlled substance, has been adjudicated to be mentally ill or committed involuntarily to a mental institution, is subject to a court order restraining him or her from domestic violence or has been convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor.

My amendment does nothing to change Federal law. But if individuals are not allowed to possess a firearm, they certainly are not going to be able to conceal and carry one.

I might add, with regard to the issue taking multiple guns in a sack and transporting them, there are Federal laws that prevent trafficking in firearms already. We do nothing to address

that issue. What we simply do is allow those law-abiding citizens who have concealed carry permits in their home States and choose to defend themselves when they travel around the country to do that.

Florida is a case in point. Florida is a big State that has had concealed carry permits for over 20 years and has agreements with multiple States. There is no evidence whatsoever in the State of Florida that there has been any suggestion of increasing crime.

Rather, I suggest the opposite would be true. I say to my colleague from New York that if someone who has a concealed carry permit travels to the State of New York, and I will say anybody who has a concealed carry permit from the State of South Dakota goes to New York and is in Central Park, Central Park would be a much safer place.

I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from South Carolina.

I yielded time to the Senator from South Carolina. I will be happy to yield for a question later on the time of the Senator from New York.

I object, Mr. President. The Senator from South Carolina has been yielded time.

Mr. President, I yield up to 15 minutes to the Senator from Virginia.

Mr. President, I do not want to get into the weeds here, but the Senator mentioned Michael Iheme. He did not have a carry permit. One of the other gentleman whom he mentioned, Willie Donaldson, evidently the court recognized that the person had acted in self- defense and he did not do any jail time for it.

The broader point is, criminals commit crimes, that is what they do. Criminals kill people. This is not directed at criminals, this is directed at law-abiding citizens who want to protect themselves. The statistics I mentioned earlier make it very clear. If you want to look at the studies, there is a lot more defensive gun use by victims than there are crimes committed with firearms. It is further estimated that there are as many as 2.5 million defensive uses of firearms in the United States each year. Again, many of those go unreported.

But I think you have to come back to the point that of the 5 million people in this country who are concealed carry permit holders, if you assumed that every instance of reported crime by gun control groups, of improper firearm use by individuals with concealed carry permits, if every one of those is true, something that can be debated, but let's assume it is true, over an entire year for every 142,857 permit holders, there would be one improper use of a firearm.

To put that another way, concealed carry permit holders would be 15 times less likely than the rest of the general public to commit murder. The point I am making is criminals commit crimes. That is what they do. They are criminals. Criminals kill people. What we are trying to do here is to allow law-abiding people to protect themselves from criminals when they travel across State lines, striking the right balance between Federal, the Constitution, which protects an individual's second amendment right, and State laws. We are not preempting State laws. Illinois and Wisconsin preclude or prevent anybody from owning a concealed carry permit or having a concealed carry permit in their States. So this amendment does not even apply to them. Nobody can carry a concealed weapon in either of those States. It recognizes the rights of States and all of the State laws that apply. Most States have place and time restrictions. In my State of South Dakota you cannot carry in a place that serves alcohol, you cannot carry in schools, you cannot carry in courthouses.

So to suggest that somebody is going to transport a whole bunch of guns, which would be a violation of Federal laws because there are laws against trafficking, into an area of a State, public school, or someplace like that, are wild exaggerations and scare tactics that are not based on any evidence. The data we have that suggest the contrary.

I yield such time to the Senator from Wyoming as he may consume.

I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Oklahoma.

How much time remains on the other side?

Mr. President, how much time is left on our side?

Mr. President, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. President, the Senator from California has made some comments, and actually both Senators from California talked about the issue of assault weapons. Of course, assault weapons--as my colleague from Oklahoma pointed out, it is very difficult to conceal an assault weapon. It is not something you are going to be running around--it is not a concealed weapon. Obviously, when you get into the State of California, those weapons are illegal.

I think it is fair to point out again that any State can impose restrictions on the people who come into their State with a concealed carry permit from another State. So State laws still trump when it comes to the place where guns can be carried.

To this issue of multiple guns being brought into a State, States can also say the permit only applies to one gun. Obviously, that is an issue on which a State can rule. Secondly, the issue of multiple guns I would think would fall under the rubric of trafficking, which is a Federal offense. It is illegal. For people who have committed crimes, that is illegal under Federal laws. They cannot get guns in the first place--or at least they are not supposed to get guns. It is a Federal crime if they do. People who have a history of mental illness--all these issues are addressed in Federal law, which provides a floor against all these types of things that are being suggested.

Much of what has been suggested here really is scare tactics, it is fear mongering. There is no basis on which to make many of the arguments. It is totally speculative that somehow this amendment is going to lead to all kinds of people, thugs and gangsters, getting guns and then transporting them someplace else in the country.

I will tell you, I do not think there are too many criminals--by the way, criminals commit the crimes. The Senator from New Jersey talked about the thousands who are killed by guns every year. Most of them are killed by criminals. There may have been an exception or two where somebody had a concealed carry permit, but relative to the general population, it is minuscule.

If you think about the number of crimes that are committed every year by criminals, what we ought to be doing is focusing on criminals, the people who commit crimes. Criminals are not going to go down to the courthouse in Sioux Falls, SD, and say: I want to get a concealed carry permit, or anywhere in this country, for that matter, because almost every State, with three exceptions, by law does a background check. So in order to own a gun or possess a gun, you have to go through a background check. So to get a concealed carry permit, you also have to go through a background check. I do not think most criminals are going to be going down and saying: I want to get a background check so I can get a gun so I can haul it and commit a crime in some other State. That is ludicrous. Think about the logic of that. For anybody who has a criminal record, obviously, the background check is going to reveal that. They are not going to be able to either acquire a gun or get a concealed carry permit, which means they are going to do what they usually do; that is, get those firearms illegally and commit crimes and felonies because that is what criminals do.

I want to mention some of those who have endorsed this amendment. The NRA has endorsed this amendment. Gun Owners of America--I have a letter from them endorsing this amendment. Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has endorsed this amendment. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, which, as I pointed out, represents a lot of the truckdrivers across the country, endorses this. This is a real issue for them because they are traveling across State lines in interstate travel on a regular basis. This is something they have advocated for a long time. The Passenger-Cargo Security Group, which, of course, represents a lot of those who fly cargo in this country, has endorsed it. GOProud has endorsed this amendment. And the Pink Pistols group has endorsed this amendment. So there are a number of groups, organizations out there that have endorsed this amendment that believe, as I do, it represents a commonsense approach that balances the constitutional right people in this country have to keep and bear arms--the second amendment right. It is in the Bill of Rights. All the other amendments in the Bill of Rights apply across State lines, and it seems to me, at least, this one should too, subject to restrictions that are imposed by the individual States. This does not preempt any of those.

States have different restrictions that apply and restrict the place and the manner in which firearms may be transported into their States. So what we are simply trying to do is clarify this patchwork of different regulations and laws and requirements that different States have all over the country, so people, law-abiding citizens--not the criminals who are being referred to who commit the crimes in this country--so law-abiding individuals who want to defend themselves against those very criminals have the opportunity to do so by being able to possess a firearm if they have a concealed carry permit.

As I said, every State is a little different as to how you go about getting one of those permits, but every State has its own requirements, and all of the States, with a couple exceptions, have background checks as a part of that.

Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, let me point out what I pointed out earlier. This amendment does not apply to the District of Columbia. But I also want to come back to a basic point; that is, how did we get here today? Why are we here? Well, we are here, supposedly, to be talking about the Defense authorization bill. But last week the Democratic leadership decided to put a hate crimes amendment on the floor as the first amendment to the Defense authorization bill--unrelated, nongermane to the underlying Defense authorization bill.

The hate crimes bill, it could be argued, preempts a lot of State laws because a lot of States have their own laws with regard to hate crimes. But we decided here--the Democratic leadership did--that it was more important to talk about hate crimes legislation than it was to talk about defense-related amendments.

Well, my view was, they are going to offer a hate crimes amendment on the floor of the Senate. What better way to prevent hate crimes than to allow the potential victims of hate crimes to defend themselves against those very hate crimes? So I was going to offer this amendment, this concealed carry amendment, as a second-degree amendment to the hate crimes amendment that was put on the floor last week by the Democrats. The leader filled the tree, preventing us from doing that. So we worked it out to have this debate and to talk about this amendment today. But it ties in very closely to the hate crimes amendment, the legislation we have had on the floor of the Senate for the last week when we should have been talking about Defense authorization issues.

But that being said, I will come back to my basic fundamental point. This is a commonsense amendment that strikes a balance between the constitutional right the people in this country enjoy under the second amendment to keep and bear arms--and which has been supported by the Supreme Court, I might add--and the rights of States under federalism to restrict that according to their own wishes and laws. And every State does that differently. This amendment does not preempt those.

The States of Wisconsin and Illinois prevent concealed carry permit holders, and so there is not anybody in this country who is going to be able to travel through Illinois or Wisconsin and carry a gun because they just do not allow it. So it respects the rights of the individual States. But it does allow law-abiding citizens in this country to exercise their constitutional right under the second amendment, and that right should not end at State lines. State borders should not be a barrier to an individual's right to defend themselves.

I believe the studies are very clear. As I have said earlier--they are all speculating about all the crimes that are going to be committed--people, concealed carry permit holders, if you look at the data, are 15 times less likely than the rest of the public to commit murder. Criminals commit crimes, not law-abiding citizens, not people who go down to their courthouse to get a concealed carry permit so they can defend themselves against the very criminals who routinely break the laws and possess firearms illegally so they can commit crimes.

This is a reasonable, commonsense balance which I believe strikes the right balance between the constitutional second amendment right citizens in this country enjoy and the States' ability to restrict that right. And any concealed carry permit holder who has a concealed carry permit in their State of residence who travels to another State has to abide by and is subject to the laws that are enacted by that individual State.

So, Mr. President, I hope my colleagues will vote for what is a commonsense amendment that allows people across this country who are law-abiding citizens to defend themselves from the very criminals who break those laws and try to commit these crimes.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, today I recognize Ola Mildred ``Millie'' Rexroat and the six other women from South Dakota who served honorably during World War II as members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, WASPs.

More than 1,000 women answered the call and served as pilots during World War II. Because WASPs records were classified and archived for over 30 years, WASPs have been left out of much of the documented history of World War II.

On July 1, 2009, legislation was signed into law that honors the service of these women with the Congressional Gold Medal, which is given in honor of outstanding service to the United States and is one of the nation's highest civilian awards. This Congressional Gold Medal finally gives these women the honor they deserve.

Between 1942 and 1944, the 1,102 women of WASP were trained in Texas, and then went on to fly noncombat domestic military missions so all their male counterparts could be deployed to combat. WASPs were required to complete the same primary, basic, and advanced training courses as male Army Air Corps pilots, and many went on to specialized flight training. By the conclusion of the war, WASPs logged 60 million miles of flying in every kind of military aircraft.

Following the war, the WASPs were disbanded and the women pilots paid their own way home without pomp or circumstance. Even during the war, the families of the 38 women who died in the line of duty were responsible for the costs to transport their bodies and arrange burials. It was not until 1977 that the WASPs were granted veterans' status.

Ms. Rexroat is the last surviving member of the WASPs living in South Dakota, and she is believed to be the only female Native American to serve as a member of the WASPs in World War II.

Ms. Rexroat spent part of her childhood living with her grandmother at Vetal, SD. She graduated from St. Mary's Indian High School for Girls in Springfield, SD. After college, she graduated from WASPs training in the ``1944-7'' class on September 8, 1944, at Sweetwater, TX. She then spent 4 months towing targets for students behind a T6 plane at Eagle Pass Army Airfield, TX.

Ms. Rexroat is 91 years old and still lives independently in Edgemont, SD. Her vivid memories of her service are inspiring, and I am proud to have cosponsored the bill to provide these women the Congressional Gold Medal and recognize their service here on the floor of the Senate today.

While five of the other women are no longer with us, I would like to posthumously recognize the other women who joined from South Dakota: Helen (Anderson) Severson of Summit, SD, who was killed in service during a flight training accident in 1943; Marjorie (Redding) Christiansen of Mystic, SD; Loes (Monk) MacKenzie of Salem, SD; Laurine Nielsen of Deadwood, SD; and Maxine (Nolt) Wright DeHaven of Sioux Falls, SD. I would also like to recognize Violet (Thurn) Cowden formerly of Bowdle, SD.

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

Madam President, the business pending before the Senate is the amendment I have offered to the Defense authorization bill. I think it is close to nearing an agreement with both sides about a process for proceeding to have debate on this amendment and then perhaps, hopefully, a vote sometime as early as Wednesday of this week.

I think it is important to note for the record--because many have already or some at least have come down already and spoken on this amendment--that I had hoped to offer this amendment as a second-degree amendment to the hate crimes amendment that has been on the floor now for the past week. The Defense authorization bill was brought up early last week. Immediately, this hate crimes amendment was offered. It is a nongermane amendment. It is not relevant, obviously, to the underlying content of the bill.

The Defense bill sets priorities for our national security interests for the coming year. Yet the Democratic leadership chose to make the hate crimes amendment the first amendment to be debated and voted upon. When they did that, it had been my intention to offer as a second- degree amendment the concealed carry amendment, which is now the pending amendment before the Senate. It makes sense in a lot of ways, to me, to do that simply because one of the best ways to help prevent hate crimes against potential victims of hate crimes is to allow them to defend themselves. The concealed carry permit is something most States across the country have. What my amendment simply does is it allows those who have concealed carry permits in their own States to be able to move across State lines to other States that also allow concealed carry permits. Obviously, they also have to respect the laws of those individual States if there are restrictions on the exercise of that right.

I think it is important in the debate over hate crimes to point out that the victims of those crimes ought to have at their disposal as many ways of defending themselves as is possible. Frankly, there are lots of organizations that have come out in support of this amendment for that reason, because they believe if you want to prevent those types of violent crimes, those types of hate crimes from being committed in this country, one way to do that is to allow individuals who are the potential victims of those types of crimes to be able to have a concealed carry permit in order to deter a crime from being committed.

It is also important to point out that there are a number of arguments that have been raised against this amendment which just, frankly, are not true.

First of all, my amendment does not create a national concealed carry permit system or standard. My amendment does not allow individuals to conceal and carry within States that do not allow their own citizens to do so. My amendment does not allow citizens to circumvent their home State's concealed carry permit laws. If an individual is currently prohibited from possessing a firearm under Federal law, my amendment would continue to prohibit them from doing so. When an individual with a valid concealed carry permit from their home State travels to a State that allows their citizens to conceal and carry, the visitor must comply with the restrictions of the State they are in.

It has been suggested that somehow this preempts State laws. That is not the case. The restrictions an individual State imposes upon concealed carry laws that have been enacted by that State must be followed by any individual who has a concealed carry permit in their own State. In other words, the individual who travels to that State will be required to live under the laws that are on the books in that State.

But it does get at an issue which I think many have raised regarding people who travel across State lines all the time--truckdrivers, for instance, who on any given day take a cargo load from one State across several States in this country and want to be able to protect themselves as they do so. In many cases, they stay overnight in truckstops or pull over for a nap somewhere. Being able to possess a firearm that would enable them to have some level of self-protection and to deter crimes from being committed makes a lot of sense.

So the amendment is very straightforward and very simple. It is simply tailored to allow individuals to protect themselves while at the same time respecting States rights. So individual States can continue to enact restrictions on that, and every State has those. They may be place restrictions, and I think most States--I know my State of South Dakota has restrictions regarding courthouses, schools, and those sorts of places where there are restrictions against concealed carry. Many States have those types of laws which would apply to anyone who has a concealed carry permit in their own State of residence and moves into another State that also has a concealed carry permit law. So they would have to live under the laws of those States. So I want to make very clear what the amendment does and doesn't do.

I have heard it said here that somehow this is going to be used to circumvent or to preempt State laws. That certainly is not the case. But it does get at the heart of what is a constitutional right in this country. The second amendment of the Constitution allows people to keep and bear arms. That is a constitutional right, and it should not be infringed upon. Like I said before, an individual State can enact statutes that impose restrictions on that. That is something most States have, and every State treats the situation a little differently. But an individual should be able to exercise their second amendment constitutional right and be able to travel through individual States as long as they live by the laws of those States.

So that is essentially what the amendment does. It is very simple, very straightforward, and not particularly complicated, as I said. It certainly doesn't do many of the things that have been proposed here on the floor that it does. So I thought it was important to set the record straight.

Obviously, we will have a debate about this in the next couple of days. I think we will probably have a debate on the defense amendment here first, and then we will get to this particular issue. But I hope my colleagues, as they listen to that debate, will do their best to ferret out and to differentiate facts from myth and facts from fiction because there are a lot of statements that are being made that are not consistent with the facts, and the facts on this are very clear.

So I look forward to having the opportunity to make that case and to have this issue debated. As I said before, I had hoped to be able to offer this as a second-degree amendment to the hate crimes amendment because I think it fits very nicely there. As I said before, it ties in to the overall theme of protecting potential victims from hate crimes by allowing them to have a deterrent. Obviously, a concealed carry permit acts as a deterrent and has been proven over time, both in terms of the data you look at as well as a lot of anecdotal examples, to have the desired effect, which is to prevent many of these crimes from occurring in the first place.

Because the Democratic leadership filled the tree--in other words, precluded or prevented my offering a second-degree amendment to the hate crimes amendment--we are now offering it as a first-degree amendment and understand completely the importance of moving the Defense bill forward. So I think, on Wednesday, after we have had a certain amount of time to debate, we will bring it to a vote, and I hope my colleagues would support this. I think it is an amendment that has broad bipartisan support. I already have 22 or 23 cosponsors on this amendment from both sides of the aisle, and I hope that number grows because it is common sense. It has been very effective in many States across the country.

We want to use as many tools as we can to deter crime, particularly violent crimes that are committed against individuals in this country. It seems to me it makes sense in having a concealed carry permit law that allows an individual who has a valid concealed carry permit in their individual State of residence an opportunity to move freely across this country and to have that constitutional right protected.

With that, Madam President, I yield the balance of my time and look forward in the next day or two, as this issue is debated further, to having a discussion with my colleagues here in the Senate in hopes that we can get this amendment enacted on this bill. So I hope my colleagues will vote for it when the time comes.

Mr. President, the Senator from Kansas made some excellent points about rural America and rural hospitals, and, as always, he did it in a most effective way. It should not be lost on anyone in this Chamber or around the country, when we talk about health care reform, these decisions we make in Washington have real impacts in the real world. They impact people in different parts of the country differently.

The Senator from Kansas was very clear about the hospitals he represents. I represent hospitals in rural areas. These are not hospitals out there cutting a fat hog. These are hospitals trying to provide service, trying to deliver health care in areas that make it challenging because of geography. Sometimes they don't have the most up-to-date, modern equipment, but they are out there providing critical health care services to people. I associate myself with the comments of the Senator from Kansas.

Anybody who cares about the impact of some of these proposals on hospitals in rural areas such as Kansas and South Dakota should be concerned about the CBO discussion that occurred this morning in front of the Budget Committee. It made it very clear that not only is this going to cost $1 trillion, probably minimum, in the near term, but in the long term, the costs for the health care reform plan currently moving through the Congress explode. When we get into the outyears, it will be even more expensive.

It will mean bigger and bigger reductions and cuts from providers, as the Senator from Kansas so eloquently pointed out, in rural areas that are already struggling to make ends meet and keep their hospital doors open.

This report we got today from the Congressional Budget Office is really pretty stunning, in the context of the debate we are having over health care reform.

The CBO Director, Doug Elmendorf, was asked pointblank by Senator Conrad whether the cost curve is bent under the health care reform legislation currently being considered. Elmendorf says no. Then he goes on to say:

The way I would put it is that the curve is being raised.

As has been pointed out by President Obama before, he said:

And I've said very clearly: If any bill arrives from

Congress that is not controlling costs, that's not a bill I

can support.

That was the President's own criteria for health care reform. That only means, based upon the report we got from CBO this morning, that the administration is going to have a very difficult time embracing the health care plan moving through the Senate that sees costs not coming down, not bending the cost curve in a downward direction but, rather, bending it upward so we will see a spike in health care costs.

Mr. Elmendorf, when he answered that request, to put it in fuller context, was asked: So the cost curve, in your judgment, is being bent, but it is being bent in the wrong way; is that correct? His answer is a long quote, but I want to get it into the Record because it puts into context the very issue he raises with regard to health care reform and its costs and when we will see the true effect. Here is what he said:

The way I would put it is that the curve is being raised .

. . As we wrote in our letter to you and Senator Gregg, the

creation of new subsidies for health insurance, which is a

critical part of expanding health insurance coverage, in our

judgment, would by itself increase the federal responsibility

for health care that raises federal spending on health care,

raises the amount of activity that is growing at this

unsustainable rate, and to offset that there would have to be

very substantial reductions in other parts of the federal

commitment to health care, either on the tax revenue side

through changes in the tax exclusion, or on the spending side

through reforms in Medicare and Medicaid. Certainly reforms

of that sort that are included in some of the packages, and

we are still analyzing the reforms in the House package, the

legislation was only released as you know about two days ago,

but the changes that we have looked at so far do not

represent the sort of fundamental change, the order of

magnitude that would be necessary to offset the direct

increase in federal health costs from the insurance coverage

proposals.

What I conclude from having read that and having heard what he said this morning is that he is very skeptical that there is anything about the health care plan that is pending in the Senate or the one that passed the House last week that is going to, in the long term, reduce cost.

A fundamental principle behind health care reform ought to include efficiency, streamlining, finding savings. When most Americans think of reform, they don't think of adding costs or making things more expensive, they think: How does this reform actually achieve savings by making us more efficient and streamlining operations and coming up with new and innovative ways of doing things so that we can do things less expensively?

That, to me, would be the essence of reform. That is not what is being talked about here, obviously. Not only do the reforms that have been proposed, the House version, which has been reported out of the committee, or at least is being deliberated on in committee over there but hasn't been reported already but will be on the House floor in the very near future, a House Democrat aide--this is a news report--said the total bill would add up to about $1.5 trillion over 10 years. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private calculations. You might have a hard time getting used to the concept, but it is $1.5 trillion in the House-passed version. We know the Senate-passed version will be a minimum of $1 trillion. There are many independent analyses and estimates that have been done that suggest that it could be north of $2 trillion and perhaps well north of $2 trillion when a lot of these changes actually go fully into effect after the transitional period is over. So we are talking about trillions of dollars at a minimum in the near term, perhaps multiples of that, trillions of dollars in the long term.

That doesn't meet any sort of criteria or definition of reform. To me, reform ought to be: Let's find some savings. Let's see what we can do to achieve some efficiency.

As I have suggested, we spend already about $2.5 trillion annually on health care. That represents about 17 percent of our gross domestic product. That is on its way to 20 percent. Very soon, $1 in $5 in our entire economy will be spent on health care. I argue that it is not that we are not spending enough money on health care. It is that we are not spending wisely and well. We are not spending smart. We need to spend smarter when it comes to health care. We need to put more of an emphasis on wellness and prevention. We need to do things that would allow individuals and small businesses to join larger groups, to get the benefit of group purchasing power so they can start buying in volume, driving down cost to create more competition in the marketplace where individuals can buy insurance across State lines. We need to address the growing cost of defensive medicine that is a direct result of lawsuit abuse. There are a lot of remedies that we think make sense in terms of bending the cost curve down and actually doing something to reform health care, to gain efficiencies, and to get costs on a more reasonable and affordable level.

It is pretty clear from the CBO report this morning in front of the Budget Committee that the current proposal--the House proposal and now the Senate proposal reported out of the HELP Committee yesterday--does nothing of the sort. There is no way it can be argued that these are reforms. It is certainly not reform that leads to savings in the long term. They will bend the cost curve upward. We will see increased costs. We will see costs spike in the outyears. That came across unequivocally in the report that was made by CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf this morning in front of the Budget Committee.

Where does that leave us? I argue that it certainly ought to sound a note of caution to people in Washington, DC, that perhaps this is something we ought to take our time with. Clearly, what has been proposed so far is going to increase costs significantly. It is going to lead to the takeover of the health care system by the Federal Government, which I think most Americans would take issue with. If you don't believe that, again, there are lots of great independent studies out there.

One of the criteria the President put forward in a health care bill he would sign had to do with, if you have insurance today that you like, you can keep it. That is not true under this bill, either, because these independent analyses that have been done have also pointed out that there were going to be about 6 in 10 Americans or about 118 million total Americans who will be driven into the government-run program because the private health insurance marketplace, when it has to compete with the government, will not be able to do so because the government, due to its very size, is going to drive a lot of the private insurance coverage out of the marketplace.

A lot of small businesses that currently offer insurance to their employees are going to say: I am not going to do this anymore. It costs too much. And they are going to shift everybody into this big government-run program, which not only, I guess, do I have issue with the whole notion that we would hand the keys to one-sixth of our entire economy to the Federal Government, but I think, more importantly than that, it gets to the very basic issue that most Americans instinctively agree with, and that is they ought to have freedom, they ought to have the choice to choose their health care provider, and they ought to make decisions in consultation with their physicians about what is the best procedure to use.

The problem with the approach the Democrats on the HELP Committee have taken--and, incidentally, when it passed yesterday, it was on a partisan-line vote. All the amendments that were offered by Republicans to try to change it or make it better or improve

it or at least have some of their policy ideas incorporated were shot down on a party-line vote.

But it seems to me, at least, that if we are going to do something about health care, we should not hand the entire health care system in this country to the Federal Government and have them imposing themselves and them making the decisions that historically have been made by individuals, by consumers, by patients, and their health care providers. That is a fundamental principle of our American tradition; that is, that we believe in freedom.

The European model and the Canadian model on health care, which is often used and touted, is a different one. But that is not the American way. That has never been the American way. The American way is freedom; it is choice; it is individual responsibility, all of which should be emphasized in any health care reforms we pass; I might add again, all of which ought to lead not to higher costs but to lower costs in our health care system.

For the record, as well, there are a number of organizations that have looked very closely at the House bill and are now analyzing the Senate HELP Committee-passed bill and have concluded it is a bad idea. It is not just a bad idea for the taxpayers who are going to be stuck with the higher taxes or the increased borrowing from future generations to finance it, it is not just a bad idea because it puts the government in the way and fundamentally interjects it into the relationship between patients and their health care providers but also because it would kill jobs in our economy.

We have an economy that is very fragile, that is struggling. We have unemployment at 9.5 percent. Perhaps it is going to double-digit levels for the first time in a long time in our country.

So you have the Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, and the Business Roundtable that have sent a letter. This letter came out, I think, yesterday. It was in response to the House health care reform legislation. But it objects to a number of provisions in the bill.

Specifically, the letter warns that the pay-or-play provision could end up killing many jobs. The new Federal health board ``would have significant power but be highly unaccountable to the American people.'' Then it goes on to say that cost shifting created by the government-run plan ``would significantly increase costs for every American who purchases private insurance.''

So the major organizations that represent the job creators in this country--the Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Business Roundtable; a number of other organizations, I would add to that, I think are issuing similar type statements and letters--have concluded it would kill jobs, it would reduce the accountability we would have with the American people, and, finally, it would significantly increase costs to Americans who have to purchase insurance.

So I guess the bottom line in all this is, there is sort of a big rush to get this done. The theory is, we have to get this done before the August recess. The House is supposed to have this bill marked up next week and on the floor, perhaps, the following week. And the Senate is trying to figure out a way to wedge this into all the things we have to do. We have the Defense authorization bill on the floor this week and next. We have the Sotomayor nomination that will have to come before the Senate at some point before the August break. But there is somehow this belief around here that we have to jam through this health care bill because if we do not seize the moment and do it now, we are not going to get it done.

Well, I would argue we ought to get it done right rather than do it fast and do it in haste. The Hippocratic Oath for physicians is: ``Do no harm.'' That ought to be the oath we, as Members of Congress, take with regard to this health care debate. From everything I have seen and read from the experts, from the professionals, from the Congressional Budget Office, who have analyzed the health care bills--both the one that is going to be debated in the House and the Senate committee- passed version--all the analysis that has been done suggests it would do great harm, great harm to the taxpayers who are going to be footing that $1 trillion or $2 trillion bill; great harm to the economy, where it will cost us jobs; and great harm, I believe as well, to the American consumer, the health care consumer, who is going to have to pay the cost of this in the form of higher premiums and who will also deal with what could be rationed health care; that is, fewer choices, fewer options because the government is going to be deciding which procedures are covered and which are not.

So we need to take our time. We need to do this right. There are lots of things, as I mentioned earlier, that I think actually do reform the health care system in the country, do lower costs, and make it more affordable to more Americans, and those ought to be what we focus on.

But as was reported this morning by the CBO, a program that will bend the cost curve upward--not just from the trillion dollars we all know it is going to cost in the near term but perhaps trillions of dollars in the long term--is a bad direction to go for health care in this country, it is a bad direction to go for our economy, and it is a bad direction to go for the American taxpayer.

I yield the floor.

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

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

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

Mr. President, the amendment that I bring to the Senate this evening is very simple. It ties into the debate that was just held about hate crimes legislation. One of the ways you can obviously prevent crimes from happening is to make sure that people are able to defend themselves against violent crimes. My amendment would do just that.

My amendment is simple. It allows individuals the right to carry a lawfully concealed firearm across State lines, while at the same time respecting the laws of the host State.

This amendment is similar to my bipartisan stand-alone bill S. 845, which currently has 22 cosponsors.

The second amendment provides, and the Supreme Court held in Heller last summer, that law-abiding Americans have a fundamental right to possess firearms in order to defend themselves and their families.

Studies have shown that there is more defensive gun use by victims than there are crimes committed with firearms.

As such, I believe that a State's border should not be a limit on this fundamental right and that law-abiding individuals should be guaranteed their second amendment rights without complication as they travel throughout the 48 States that currently permit some form of conceal and carry.

While some States with concealed carry laws grant reciprocity to permit-holders from other select States, my amendment would eliminate the confusing patchwork of laws that currently exists.

This amendment would allow an individual to carry a concealed firearm across State lines if they either have a valid permit or if, under their State of residence, they are legally entitled to do so.

After entering another State, an individual must respect the laws of the host State as they apply to conceal and carry permit holders, including the specific types of locations in which firearms may not be carried.

Reliable, empirical research shows that States with concealed carry laws enjoy significantly lower violent crimes rates than those States that do not.

For example, for every year a State has a concealed carry law, the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent, and robberies by over 2 percent.

Additionally, research shows that ``minorities and women tend to be the ones with the most to gain from being allowed to protect themselves.''

The benefits of conceal and carry extend to more than just the individuals that actually carry the firearms.

Since criminals are unable to tell who is and who is not carrying a firearm just by looking at a potential victim, they are less likely to commit crimes when they fear that they may come in direct contact with an individual who is armed.

This deterrent is so strong that a Department of Justice study found that 40 percent of felons had not committed crimes because they feared the prospective victim was armed.

Additionally, research shows that when unrestrictive conceal and carry laws are passed, it not only benefits those who are armed, but also others like children.

My amendment, in comparison to others being debated in the Senate, would actually empower individuals to protect themselves before they become victims of a crime, instead of just punishing the perpetrators afterwards.

A great example of this occurred earlier this month. Stephen Fleischman is a 62-year-old jewelry salesman from Mobile, AL, who often travels for business.

On his recent business trip to Memphis a group of four men, two of whom were armed, confronted him in a parking lot and tried to take his merchandise.

Instead of becoming a victim, Mr. Fleischman, who was legally concealing his firearm, was able to pull his weapon and protect himself and his merchandise from the four attackers.

Who knows what would have happened to Mr. Fleischman or his jewelry if he was traveling in South Carolina or any of the other 27 States with which Alabama does not have reciprocity agreements.

My amendment would alleviate this problem, and I hope when we return next week and we have an opportunity to debate this amendment and to vote upon it, my colleagues will support it because I believe it is an important tool for safety, for self-defense, and it is consistent with our tradition in this country of respect of second amendment rights, allowing American citizens the opportunity and the right to defend and protect themselves.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today I recognize Cecil Harris. The following statement was read at the dedication of a highway named in his honor on May 25, 2009. I ask that the statement be printed in the Record.

The statement follows.

Cecil Harris Highway Dedication Ceremony, Cresbard, South Dakota, May

25, 2009

Thank you for the invitation to attend the recognition

celebration for Captain Cecil E. Harris to honor his

achievement as a World War II fighter pilot. While I regret I

am unable to be with you to recognize Captain Harris at this

important event, I want to extend my greetings and best

wishes to all of you in attendance. I applaud those

individuals, many of whom are here today, whose hard work and

dedication have made this event possible.

It is especially fitting that you are celebrating this

event on Memorial Day. We should pause to remember what

Memorial Day is all about: honoring those who have defended

our freedom and especially those who have paid the ultimate

price. Captain Harris is certainly worthy of this

celebration. As an educator by profession, his willingness to

serve others was apparent at a young age. He answered the

call to service while enrolled at Northern State Teachers

College in March 1941. Twenty-seven years later, Captain

Harris retired as one of the most decorated heroes of the

United States Navy. During his World War II service, he was

the second highest scoring Navy ace in the Pacific Theater

with 24 victories.

Captain Harris serves as a shining example of South

Dakota's proud legacy of military service that extends from

our state's earliest days to our current conflicts around the

globe. South Dakotans of every background have always

answered the call to defend America from those who seek to

destroy the freedom that we cherish. I doubt there are many

South Dakotans who do not have a family member or friend who

has worn our nation's uniform. Upon reflection, we quickly

realize that without the liberty that these men and women

have defended through the years, our nation would not be what

it is today, nor would citizens enjoy the freedoms that we

sometimes take for granted.

My father, Harold Thune, served in the same squadron as

Cecil Harris in World War II, and was Cecil's assistant

flight officer. I recently had the opportunity to interview

my father about his World War II experience for the Veterans

History Project, an oral history archive held at the Library

of Congress, and my father spoke very highly of Cecil. In

fact, the advice Cecil gave my father helped him avoid being

shot down. Cecil Harris was responsible for training my

father's squadron, and my father describes Cecil as

unqualifiedly the best pilot he had ever seen, and that he

had never seen a pilot fly a plane like he did.

The tragic reality is that our nation loses hundreds of

veterans every day. Memorial Day gives us an opportunity to

reflect on the sacrifices of our veterans from every

conflict, and it is fitting that we do so. Our veterans

deserve to be remembered and celebrated, and these programs

help do just that.

Again, I wish you all the very best as you gather to

celebrate in Cresbard. My thoughts are with you all.

Mr. President, today I recognize Emily Susanna Tschetter, an intern in my Washington, DC, office, for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several weeks.

Emily is a graduate of Brookings High School in Brookings, SD. Currently she is attending South Dakota State University, where she is majoring in biology. She is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of her internship experience.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Emily for all of the fine work she has done and wish her continued success in the years to come.

Mr. President, today I recognize White, SD. The town of White will celebrate the 125th anniversary of its founding this year.

Located in Brookings County, White was founded as an agricultural town in 1884. Now, 125 years later, the town still relies on agriculture, but has also expanded into a destination for hunting, fishing, and outdoor adventures. White continues to be an excellent example of what makes South Dakota such a great place to live and do business. The town will celebrate this milestone during their annual ``Pioneer Days'' July 17 through 19 with a number of activities for residents and visitors to enjoy.

I would like to offer my congratulations to White on its 125th anniversary.

Mr. President, this week we work on the Defense authorization bill. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, that is something in which I have a keen interest. Many of the discussions you heard already and we will hear throughout the course of the week will deal fundamentally with our Nation's national security interests, making sure we continue to fund our troops at the appropriate level; making sure, in terms of pay and benefits, recruiting and retaining the finest men and women in uniform in the world, that they have the very best of technology to use when it comes to doing their jobs. You already heard a discussion about some of those various technologies, platforms--the F-22s and F-35s. I am very interested in the next generation of bombers and the importance of having long-range strike capability so we are able to continue to penetrate some of the more sophisticated air defense systems that are being developed by our adversaries and potential adversaries around the world. It is a great debate to have. It is one we have annually. I look forward to engaging in some of the discussions on these very important and critical national security issues.

I wish to speak this evening to some of the things going on on the domestic front. I always believe if we do not get national security right, the rest is conversation, which is why this Defense authorization bill is so important. But when we do get past the Defense authorization bill, I think we have a couple of big, epic battles that are going to be waged in the Senate coming up perhaps this month; if not, I suggest certainly in the fall. One deals with a bill that passed the House a little over a week ago now, the cap-and-trade legislation. The other deals with the issue of health care reform, which is one- sixth of America's economy. We are

talking about an enormous amount of money that is spent in this country every single year on health care.

There is legislation that is moving through the House, and there are discussions in the Senate. The markup has been going on several days now in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Senate to report out a health care reform bill that at some point will come to the floor of the Senate and be debated. But these are huge issues of consequence for the American people.

I think the American people need to be engaged. What struck me about the debate that was held in the House of Representatives a couple of weeks ago--which, incidentally, the cap-and-trade legislation passed in the House of Representatives by a 219-to-212 margin. It was hurried through. It was done very quickly. It was a 1,200-some page bill. There was a 309-page amendment that was offered on the floor. I submit that very few, if any, Members of the House of Representatives had an opportunity to read the entire bill, let alone the amendment that was offered to it. It moved very quickly. And this has dramatic consequences for the American economy.

When you start talking about a cap-and-trade bill that will impose essentially what is a tax on carbon that supposedly is directed at polluters but ultimately is going to be paid by consumers in this country, it is very clear that this is going to drive up the cost of energy in this country, whether that is electricity, whether that is fuels, whether that is natural gas, home heating oil. All those things the American people use every single day in their daily lives, they are going to see the costs go up. You can talk about how much, and we have lots of varying estimates about what it would cost. The CBO recently came out with an estimate--and this was highly touted by proponents of the legislation--that it was only going to cost each household $175 a year. CBO also said that in the year 2020, the average cost on a per- household basis would be considerably higher than that; that it would be $890 per household in 2020, with the top quintile paying an average of $1,380.

After some generous assumptions about the enormous government-run wealth redistribution scheme that would be conducted via auction and the free allowances, the CBO came back to this number of $175 per household on average, with the middle quintile facing the highest net cost of $340. However, the figure is only the budgetary cost per household, not a comprehensive economic analysis, and moreover it examines only 1 year of the program, a year that CBO optimistically assumes is relatively low cost and after the expensive transition years. As a result, CBO's estimate really only captures some of the cost of cap and trade, as the report acknowledges. But even at that, the CBO average estimate gross cost by 2020 is $890 additional per household per year in energy costs and with the top quintile paying an average of $1,380.

What is interesting about that is that study did not take into consideration different regions of the country or different demographic groups, different sectors of the economy, different income brackets. All of those are issues that have not been contemplated fully to date and what some of these impacts would make.

I suggest there are going to be significant regional disparities because there are going to be certain areas of the country that are going to pay much more in additional power costs than other parts of the country. I think the transition is going to be particularly difficult for those areas of the country that are employed in industry, such as coal, or living in areas that produce coal or rely heavily on coal-fired power for their electricity generation, and the costs are going to be borne much more significantly by those areas of the country. So the regional differences are going to be especially dramatic when it comes to the electricity sector of the economy. I suggest places such as my home area of South Dakota and the upper Midwest are going to disproportionately pay way more of this burden than are other parts of the country.

A lot of this data, a lot of this information has yet to make it out into the hands of the American people. When the American people find out what is actually happening here in Washington with this cap-and- trade proposal, they get very exercised about it, as I think most Members of Congress found out during the Fourth of July holidays. They went out and traveled across their respective States. They heard, I suspect, what I did--that people are very upset about the notion that we are going to see energy costs go up significantly and they are going to be paying the bill. They have not, I don't think, determined at this point that there is any benefit they are going to derive from it.

The argument is going to be made by proponents of the legislation that this is going to be a good thing because we are going to see significant reductions in CO2 emissions and therefore that is good for the global climate. Frankly, as we heard last week at the G-8 meeting, there are other countries around the world that do not have a real concern about doing anything quickly, and they have no intention of following the lead of the United States in that regard. As a consequence, we are not going to see anywhere close to the reductions that have been promised. So we have what is pretty clearly a minimal environmental benefit as a result of a gargantuan cost increase--tax, if you will--on the American economy in the form of higher energy costs.

I submit that the cap-and-trade legislation is going to have a profound impact on the economy, and it is something that should not be hurried through. I hope the Senate, if and when it comes to the floor-- frankly, I hope it doesn't because I don't think right now this is an issue that ought to be occupying the time of the Senate when we are trying to get the economy growing again. We are talking about with this cap-and-trade legislation actually putting a new tax on the American economy at a time when we ought to be trying to get small businesses invested again, reducing the overall tax and regulatory burden they face, and trying to create jobs and expand the economy, rather than putting a new crushing mandate, top-down, heavy-handed bureaucratic mandate, cap-and-trade program on top of an economy that is already struggling and, as we saw last week, unemployment rates now topping 9.5 percent, perhaps going higher before it is all said and done.

What is interesting to me is there does not seem to be any debate that this is going to raise energy costs. When people get into this argument, it is not a question of if, it is a question of how much.

There are even some on the House side--Representative John Dingell, for many years the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House of Representatives, said:

Cap and trade is a tax and it's a great big one.

Representative Charlie Rangel said:

Whether you call it a tax, every one agrees that it is

going to increase the cost to the consumer.

I could go on and on. Secretary Geithner. The President himself, when he talked about this particular idea, indicated that costs would necessarily skyrocket. So there is no question but this is going to increase costs to the American consumer. At a time when we can least afford it and at a time when we are trying to get our economy on a pathway of recovery, we ought to be lessening the burden on Americans, not increasing it.

There is a better way. If we look at some of the alternatives that are out there, to me it makes more sense if you can incentivize a certain type of investment as opposed to trying to mandate some regulatory regime. That is a much better way of doing business.

If we want to do something legislatively when it comes to lowering the cost of energy in this country, we ought to focus on reducing emissions by lowering the cost of renewables, by aggressively investing in research and supporting an increased role for types of power that have not been used in this country. We are way underutilizing nuclear power. France gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. In the United States, we are about 20 percent. We can do better than that. There is no reason the United States cannot be a leader when it comes to clean green energy. One of the things we need to do is build more nuclear plants. That is one of the items on our agenda that we would like to see as part of an energy bill.

I also think there are things we can do in investing in non-carbon- emitting types of technology. I come from a part of the country where we have vast amounts of wind. Some people argue South Dakota is the Saudi Arabia of wind. If we can figure out a way to harness that wind energy, I think we are going to see an increase in economic activity in the upper Midwest. South Dakota would be a great place for that. I hope we can see more investment in wind. We need to make sure we are providing the necessary and appropriate incentives and policy incentives for investment in wind energy.

Solar is something, obviously, where we have a lot of room to grow. Conservation, carbon storage, infusion--all kinds of technologies that are carbon-free sources of energy. But I believe the way we get more of those is to incentivize investments in those areas. It seems to me that would be a much preferable outcome and, frankly, one in which we could get our global partners a lot more interested in and participating in. In fact, it has been suggested--Bjorn Lomborg suggested countries around the world devote a portion of their GDP to these types of non- carbon-emitting energy technologies in research and investing in those so that the burdens are shared equally. I would suggest every country might do it a little differently.

If I were going to put a plan together like that for South Dakota, I would make it very wind heavy. Other parts of the country might make it nuclear heavy. There are clean green renewable sources of energy available in this country, but trying to impose a heavy tax that will be paid by the American consumer ultimately, to me, seems like a wrongheaded approach, especially at a time when the economy is struggling.

I think that sort of segues into the other big issue, the big epic battles we are going to face in the Congress, and that is what to do to reform our health care system so that we can make the cost more affordable for American families and consumers. I don't think anybody argues that we don't need to reform our health care system; that there aren't things we can do better, more efficiently, more cost effectively.

I certainly would not for a minute suggest--as some have suggested about Republicans--that Republicans in the Senate don't want to do anything. We all believe we need to do something. We all believe there is much that can be done that will help improve coverage and lower costs for people in this country. But it can be done in a way that doesn't turn everything over--the keys of the health care system--to the Federal Government.

Much of what we are seeing right now in terms of the plans that are moving through the Congress is that the House of Representatives will pass a bill, perhaps first, which will come over to the Senate. What is being debated--at least at the committee level in the Senate--consists of what they call a public plan option which, in effect, is a government plan. It is a--I would characterize it--government takeover of the health care system in this country because when the government goes into competition with the private sector, I think it will be very difficult for the private sector to compete.

There are many, obviously, already competing plans out there. In fact, George Will noted there are 1,300 entities offering health care plans in this country. Another one isn't going to change that. But the larger problem we have when the Federal Government gets into competition with private business is that the Federal Government becomes not a competitor but a predator. I think the government plan is not going to compete with the private market, but rather it will destroy the private market. A lot of studies bear that out.

If you look at the independent estimates--and in fact the Lewin Group studied this very carefully--they suggest that nearly 6 out of 10 Americans with private coverage, or about 118 million Americans, would lose their current health care coverage and be forced into a government-run health care plan. In fact, John Shields of the Lewin Group said:

If we created this public plan which is priced so much

lower than private insurance, that will draw a lot of people

in. Then you will wake up one morning and say: Wow, there is

only one payer.

Essentially, what would happen, Mr. President, in my view, is we would see the private companies that are offering insurance, or small businesses that are offering coverage to their employees who would say: I can't compete with the Federal Government. I am just going to have all my employees move over into the government-run program. So that essentially, by default, we would see this government takeover of our health care system, and the government plan would become the plan in the country. Eventually, over time, I would argue, it would evolve into a single-payer system.

We are talking about one-sixth of the American economy. Certainly there are shortcomings in our current way of doing things. When we spend 17 percent or one-sixth of our entire GDP on health care, the assumption is that we are not spending enough money on health care. It is probably that we are not spending it wisely enough or not spending it smarter. We have lots of ideas about how to spend smarter that don't involve putting another $1 trillion or $2 trillion in tax burden on Americans in order to pay for this new system or, perhaps even worse yet, borrowing it from future generations, which is what we have been doing routinely around here for the past several months to fund many of these new initiatives. But those are both bad solutions.

A $1 trillion tax or upwards of that, depending on which estimate we look at, up to $2 trillion in additional cost for the plan that is being proposed by Democrats in the House and the Senate--we have to finance it somehow. It is going to be paid for. It is either going to be paid for in the form of higher taxes on the American economy or borrowing from future generations, neither of which, in my view, is an option we ought to pursue.

On the other hand, we ought to look at how we can make the current system--the 17 percent of our economy or the $2.5 trillion we spend annually on health care--more efficient and more effective. How can we emphasize wellness? How can we emphasize prevention? How can we allow individuals and small businesses to join larger groups to get the benefit of group purchasing power and buying in volume? How can we create competition by allowing people to buy across State lines? How do we get the cost of defensive medicine down by reforming our medical malpractice laws so the doctors aren't in fear of being sued or in fear of liability, overutilizing and therefore practicing defensive medicine, which has been suggested by the Health and Human Services Department in a study they did in 2003.

If we put it in today's dollars, it suggests we could save about $180 billion a year in health care costs by doing something about medical malpractice reform.

So these are all things that we are for. We have lots of ideas about how to improve health care in this country or improve at least the delivery of health care and drive down the cost of health care but do it in a way that doesn't impede upon that important relationship between a physician and a patient; in a way that prevents the government from imposing itself into that situation and the government then making a decision about which procedures are going to be covered, how much is going to be paid for each procedure, and essentially becoming the decider when it comes to health care in this country.

We think the decisions that are made with respect to people's health care ought to be made by patients, by providers, and not having the government dictating and getting in the way of that basic fundamental relationship.

The CBO has said about the Kennedy-Dodd bill, which is the only one we know of right now that is moving its way through the committee process and that is currently being marked up, the government plan was not projected to have premiums lower than those charged by private insurance plans. But how, then, is the government going to offer any benefit?

The government plan is going to be, in my view, redundant to what is already out there unless it comes in and tries to undercut private insurance,

which would put private insurance options out of business and force, as I said before, many small businesses offering coverage to push those employees into the government-run program.

So, Mr. President, these are both, just as I said before, in terms of size, scope, scale, and magnitude, enormous issues in terms of our domestic economy, and we shouldn't be hurrying these issues through. There is some suggestion that the health care bill, as it comes over from the House, might be returned to the floor of the Senate, put on the floor under rule XIV, and an attempt made to get it passed before the August recess. That is not the way to conduct the business of the Senate. That is not the way to deal with one-sixth of the American economy. It is not the way, certainly, to deal with something as complex as the American health care system.

To allow the government takeover of that system, it seems to me, is something most Americans, if they were aware was happening, would not be for. I think the survey numbers bear that out. I think, as is true with cap and trade, the more the American people are engaged in this debate, the more they hear about it, the more objections they are going to have to the government takeover of health care in this country.

So these are both issues which need to be done thoughtfully and carefully and, frankly, they shouldn't be rushed out of here. We shouldn't be trying to pass health care out of the Senate before the August break. We shouldn't be talking about doing cap and trade-- although I think that is now being pushed back into the fall.

These both have huge impacts on America's economy and get at the heart of the issue of how we are going to retain and create new jobs and expand our economy. These are very consequential issues and shouldn't be rushed. So I hope the Senate will take its time. I hope it will allow for full debate and that we will have an opportunity to put some of our ideas out there, some of the alternatives we think, in fact, would improve health care in this country and make it more affordable for more Americans.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I would like to join some of my colleagues today who have spoken previously in reflecting upon the service of our colleague, Norm Coleman. As we all know, the election process in Minnesota has come to a conclusion. We have welcomed his successor to the U.S. Senate. But I also want to just make some remarks about Senator Coleman's service in the Senate and sort of my recollections of that.

Obviously, all of us come here motivated to do different things. We all have reasons we want to be in public service, things we want to accomplish. Senator Coleman, obviously, came from the State of Minnesota, having been in an executive position where he served as mayor of St. Paul. He accomplished some wonderful things for the State, not the least of which was bringing hockey to Minnesota. That is something that any of us from that region of the country know was greatly appreciated by the citizens of his city and his State.

Norm and I came to the Senate under different circumstances. I recall having traveled around the country with Senator Coleman as we were campaigning together in 2002 trying to come to the Senate and having that opportunity to get to know him. When you travel with somebody on an ongoing basis, you get to know them not on a superficial basis--the way many of us here get to know people, sort of on a thin level--but you get a chance to really get a glimpse into the soul of people when you are in certain circumstances, when you are in tough campaigns. Certainly, Norm was no stranger to tough campaigns.

As it turned out, that 2002 election Norm was elected to the Senate. I lost my election in 2002 and didn't come here until a couple of years later. But during the course of the campaigns, and then having served with Norm Coleman--representing a neighbor State in South Dakota--we shared a lot of common interests. Whether it was agriculture or renewable energy or the economy in our States and trying to create jobs in the upper Midwest of this country, Norm Coleman was somebody who, more than anything else, cared about results.

There are so many instances here where we get drawn into debates in the Senate and the partisan lines get drawn and a lot of ideology comes into play. Obviously, that is part of the process as well. But the bottom line was that Norm Coleman cared about getting things done for the people of Minnesota. I think that was the kind of can-do attitude he brought to his job as mayor and to all the other areas of public service in which he was engaged during the course of his career in public life.

But coming to the Senate, I am sure, had to have been frustrating because this is a place where sometimes it is very difficult to see the result and the outcome of your efforts. Norm was someone who was focused. He was intent upon getting things done, getting things accomplished, and I think during his service here he did some great things for the people of Minnesota and for the people of this country.

If he were here, I think he would tell you that in coming to the Senate--and I would tell you the same thing--he can now look back on some of the things he was involved in getting done, such as being involved in the big debates over the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Sam Alito--these were big debates in which we were all involved in seeing good people put on the Supreme Court of this country. We worked in areas that were specific to our States--again, agriculture, renewable energy, putting energy policies in place that I think will drive America's future in terms of trying to lessen our dependence upon foreign sources of energy and, obviously, trying to bring more economic opportunity to this country by promoting the energy sources we have right here, particularly in places such as the Midwest where we can produce biofuels and wind and all those sorts of things.

Those are the kinds of issues Norm Coleman was committed to because he understood the profound impact they had on the citizens of his State of Minnesota. I also think sometimes around here people tend to--as we all do because we all are elected to represent constituencies-- sometimes feel pressured to make votes that might be more political. But I have seen Norm Coleman time and again come in here and make votes--sometimes tough votes--that he thought were the right ones for the future of this country. That, too, is a quality that sometimes is lacking and can be rare in public life.

So I just wanted to express my appreciation for having had the opportunity to serve with Norm Coleman in the Senate. He is someone who I think was a tremendous reflection upon the State of Minnesota, the people of his State; someone who was intent upon doing the right thing for the future of this country; and, frankly, someone who, in my view, brought an authenticity and a genuineness to this body and to this world of politics in Washington, DC, which sometimes is lacking in those qualities. He was sincere, he was genuine, and you knew exactly where he was coming from. With Norm Coleman, what you saw was what you got.

I was pleased to have had the opportunity not only to serve with him in the Senate and to call him a colleague, but more importantly than that to call he and Laurie and their family friends because that is something that is also rare in Washington, DC. Sometimes the Senate can be a lonely place, and when you develop a friendship of the type and depth that I have with Norm Coleman, I find that to be very rare around here and something I will treasure and remember for some time to come.

I also know Norm Coleman will continue in whatever he chooses to do next to serve the people of Minnesota and the people of his country because for him it wasn't about the position or the title, it was about the difference he made, and he is making, and I know he will continue to do great things for this country. Whatever he chooses to do next, it will be with an eye toward how he can make a difference and contribute in a positive way to furthering and improving the quality of life for the people of the State and the people of this country.

If he were here today, Madam President, I think he would probably also enter into some of the great debates that we are having. Norm Coleman was someone who cared about fiscal responsibility, he cared about future generations, and he cared about making sure we secured a better and brighter future for those who will come after us. I think he would be very troubled by many of the things we see happening in the country, and certainly things we see happening with legislation that is moving in the Senate.

As we look at the big debates, whether it is dealing with the issue of the reform of health care in this country--which is one-sixth of the American economy--or whether it deals with the new national energy tax, recently passed in the House of Representatives--which is going to impose a crushing burden on all families across this country and families in Minnesota and families in South Dakota--those are issues where I think we need to be careful. We need to be thoughtful and we need to scrutinize them as they come through the Congress.

We saw the House move very quickly the week before last on a 1,200- page bill that imposes a brandnew national energy tax on the American people. We can all debate about how much that tax is going to be, but one thing we know is that everybody in this country is going to pay higher energy taxes. Whether that is electricity, whether that is fuels, whether it is natural gas, or whether that is home heating oil, every American consumer--every American family, every American small business--is going to see their energy costs go up because of the legislation that was passed in the House last week, and if it is successful in passing in the Senate.

It is my hope we can put the brakes on that because it is not fair to the American people. At a time when many of them are losing their jobs, at a time when many of them are struggling to make ends meet, we should not be imposing a brandnew, top-down, bureaucratic, heavy-handed mandate that will have a crushing effect and crushing impact on the economy of this country and increase the bills and the taxes that American consumers are going to pay.

So I hope we will bring some reason to this debate; that the Senate will not act in the hasty way the House of Representatives did in throwing a 1,200-page bill on the floor, and then adopting a 309-page amendment in a minimum amount of time. We all know people didn't have an opportunity to read that bill. This is something that is a major consequence to this country and to our economy and we ought to do it with great regard for the American people and we should make sure they are engaged.

In travelling around my own State last week, I can tell you that at all the public events I attended it was loud and clear, people were unanimously opposed to this cap-and-trade--national energy tax--bill that is currently moving through the Congress.

I have described that and other things that are happening here. Whether it is the government ownership of the automobile industry or the financial system--banks--or insurance companies, that is a trend we don't want to see continued on a long-term basis. That is why I have introduced legislation called the Government Ownership Exit Plan, which would require the government to divest itself and to wind down its interest in these private companies in the next year. It gives an additional year, if necessary, if the Treasury determines that it is in the best interest of the taxpayers to do that. But we should put an end date out there so we don't continue with this indefinite, long-term permanent ownership of the American economy by the Federal Government.

That, Madam President, is not consistent with the American way of doing things. It is not consistent with free enterprise and free markets and the freedoms we enjoy in this country and which have served as the foundation and made this American economy the strongest in the world. We need to get the Federal Government out of that type of ownership so it is not controlling the day-to-day decisions made by these businesses and creating all the inherent conflicts of interest that come with government ownership of a private economy.

So I hope we will move away from that ownership and that we will not use that as the precursor to a takeover of one-sixth of the American economy by having the government take over the American health care system. We all know we have issues with our health care system in this country--that we need to get costs under control, that we need to reform our system and make it more affordable to more people in this country. But the one thing we don't need is to have the government take over the American health care system--one-sixth of our entire economy. The cost for that, Madam President, we know, will be at least--at a minimum--$1 trillion. Some of the estimates go up to $2.5 trillion as the cost to have the government take over the American health care system.

These are the big debates that are before the Senate, Madam President, whether it is the cap-and-trade energy tax, whether it is the government takeover of our health care system, whether it is government ownership of auto manufacturers and insurance companies and banks, these are things I think make most Americans very uncomfortable. I believe it is the role of the Senate to put the brakes on things and make sure we are looking long and hard at what we are doing.

Frankly, my view is this is the wrong direction, the wrong path to pursue for this country. But at a minimum, we need to make sure as this legislation moves through here it is not hastily done, that it is not hurried, that it isn't rushed or jammed through here because somebody has a political agenda they want to get accomplished, and they want to do it without allowing the American people to hear about it or have the opportunity to read the fine print.

I think when the American people start reading the fine print, as they have with the cap-and-trade legislation, they will act in a very vigorous way and resist the notion of having the government take over one-sixth of the American economy by taking over the American health care system.

So, yes, we can do things better. We can all improve upon the health care system we have today in terms of affordability. But the one thing I don't think the American people want to see is the Federal Government imposing itself in the middle of decisions that ought to be made by doctors and patients, by physicians and hospitals and consumers of health care--not by the Federal Government or that which is being talked about in the Congress and in the Senate.

I hope we will be able to put the brakes on, to slow this process down so the American people can engage in this debate in a way that will allow their voices to be heard and make sure that politicians in Washington aren't going down a pathway that could lead toward rationed care, that could lead to fewer choices, that could lead to bigger bills for the American taxpayers, and that could lead to more borrowing for future generations and depriving them and robbing them of a better and brighter future because we have handed them a crushing burden of debt.

When you look at trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see and the notion of the government taking over health care and the notion of a new energy tax that will drive up the costs of energy for every American, I think these are policies that put the future of the American people in great peril. They need to be engaged in it, and we need to make sure we are not rushing these things through the Senate.

I am going to do everything I can to make sure there is a full and fair debate and that we don't go down the path that allows the government to take over one-sixth of the American economy and allows the government to make decisions that ought to rightfully be made by doctors and patients

and we don't allow a new national energy tax to be imposed on the American people. These things are all going to cost average Americans and families enormous amounts of money at a time when they are trying to keep their jobs and trying to make ends meet and trying to balance their own budgets at home.

The American government--their government--ought to be doing what it can to balance its own budget and not spending like drunken sailors and borrowing from future generations in a way that will put the future of many Americans--many American families--at risk.

Madam President, I yield the floor and the remainder of my time.