Floor Statements

Madam President, how much time remains?

Madam President, I, too, wish to rise and talk some about the President's statement of last Friday but from maybe a different approach than one might imagine.

The President said he thought the private sector was doing just fine. I was driving in the car when I heard the statement, and the statement took me back because I feared the President might not actually know how the private sector truly was doing.

Twelve weeks ago, I spent a week on the road doing townhalls, knocking on doors, visiting with Georgians. I come to the floor to provide some information to the President that maybe the private sector isn't doing that well, and maybe there is something we can do about it--this administration and this Senate--because right now we are doing nothing and America is languishing because of problems, some of which are our making.

The private sector, by definition, is everybody other than the government sector; at least that is my definition. Let me talk about everybody other than the government sector for a minute and why they are not doing very well. Let me talk about the homebuilder I met in Valdosta, GA, who talked to me about the fact that he had just sold a home he built. I said that is great; house sales are getting better. He said, the only problem is I could not get an appraisal for what it cost me to build the house, so I am selling it, but I am selling it at a loss. Part of that is because of the regulation and oppression that is on appraisers right now because of a fear of appraisal fraud.

Or the tomato farmer I talked to from Bainbridge, GA. He talked about the indignation he had when the Labor Department promulgated a rule-- they did not end up passing it--that would have said you have to be 18 years or older to work on a farm, even if it was your family farm--an overreach of the Department of Labor that, fortunately, they pulled back, but the type of overreach that causes people to retrench, not build and expand and move their business forward.

Or the 81-year-old community banker I talked to yesterday on the phone, from Calhoun, GA, who had a significant amount of his savings invested in stock in the community bank he had been a part of so much of his life, which is now under a cease-and-desist letter from the FDIC and is being managed under what is called a cease-and-desist order, which means the FDIC is basically running the bank, or limiting its parameters. The bank is slowly but surely dissipating its capital base until it gets to 2 percent and then the Feds will come in and close the bank and transfer its assets to a bigger bank and give them an 80- percent loss share guarantee, and the bigger bank will foreclose on the property and move forward.

In fact, what was intended by Dodd-Frank to reduce too big to fail and empower banks has done the opposite; the bigger banks have gotten bigger, the smaller banks have become fewer, and American banking and capital investment is less.

Or the hospital I visited in Thomasville, GA, which just finished its completion, the Archibald Center--a great center. They were talking about the difficulties they were having with employees and the fear they had that the NLRB mini-union ruling on Specialty Health Care was actually going to become the law of the land through regulation, where micro units within a facility could actually unionize, where just nurses in the emergency room, or in the ICU, could unionize, and everybody else would not. Can you imagine a hospital, department store, or a manufacturer with a union in the shoe department, a union in the nursing department, a union in the lumber department, a union on the loading dock, micro unions throughout the organization? You could not function; you couldn't cross-train, you couldn't manage. You would weight the playing field between management and labor in favor of labor and to the detriment of the investor who made the investment.

I could go on and on. It is those visits that I have talked about, the people in those cities I have talked to in Georgia, people in the private sector--they are not doing well. And it is for fear of overregulation and of uncertainty. If we can do anything to empower our economy in the short run in America, we can call time out and say enough is enough.

As I told a member of the administration 2 weeks ago, the administration, I think, wants to eliminate risk. Our job is not to eliminate; it is to mitigate risk. If you eliminate risk, you take the power of investments in the private sector, entrepreneurship, and capital risk, you take it out the window. You can't eliminate risk, but you can mitigate risk. So let's get back to mitigating risk, making sure we have a safe workplace, but where capital investment can be made. Let's make sure we mitigate risk in banking, but not so much that we choke out the small family banker. Let's make sure that agricultural workers are safe, but that the son of a farmer can work on his father's own farm. Let's make sure we are not overreaching so far that we are making the private sector's plight worse than it is today.

My message to the Senate and to the President of the United States is that the private sector is not just fine. Though it may not all be of the government's making, part of it is. We are making it worse. We are trying to run a country based on the three-legged stool of legislative, judicial, and the executive branch, on a two-legged stool of regulation through the executive branch and judicial regulation through the judicial branch--cutting out the legislative branch. Do you know what happens to two-legged stools? They fall over. The private sector is falling over, and it is, in part or in whole, because of us.

I hope the President understands that there is a private sector that pays the taxes and makes America work--a private sector that is hurting--and we can help the private sector. Let's put our nose and shoulder to the grindstone, and let's move forward in these months leading up to the election and change some of the overregulation and empower the private sector, not accept that we think it is doing just fine.

I end with this, the front page of the USA Today. Average family wealth net worth in the United States has declined 39.4 percent, back to the level of 1992, which simply means the private sector has lost 20 years of accumulation, equity, and investment in the economy of the last 3 years. That is unacceptable. It is why we have the depression we have in this country. We need to get our shoulder to the grindstone, make it work, and let the private sector be just fine again because of an empowerment of the private sector, entrepreneurship, and capital investment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Taylor Ibrahim, an intern in Senator Paul's office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the day.

Mr. President, today the Senate confirmed Executive Calendar No. 607, Andrew David Hurwitz, of Arizona, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit on a voice vote. I request that the Record reflect my opposition to the nominee and that I would have voted ``nay.''

Objection to Further Proceedings on the Nomination of Andrew Hurwitz

Mr. President, today I wish to commemorate the bicentennial of the beginning of the War of 1812, on June 18, 2012, in the Record.

President James Madison signed a declaration of war against Great Britain on June 18, 1812. The sacrifices by those soldiers, citizens, and their families who fought in the War of 1812 further defended the liberties previously won in the American Revolution. These sacrifices include heroic efforts by Dolley Madison to save some of our national treasures from destruction during the burning of the White House by the British on August 24, 1814. The conflict and bravery shown during this conflict would inspire Francis Scott Key to write a poem describing the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor, and this would later become our country's national anthem, known as the ``Star Spangled Banner.''

The War of 1812 further solidified the independence of the United States from Great Britain, and the Treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24, 1814, to end the War of 1812. Many Georgia residents can trace their lineages back to these patriotic early settlers.

Descendants of the veterans of the War of 1812 chartered the Georgia State Society within the General Society of the United States Daughters of 1812 on June 18, 1901, to promote a general awareness of the history of the War of 1812 among the citizens of Georgia and the Nation. As we observe the bicentennial of the War of 1812, I urge all citizens to become more knowledgeable of the role the War of 1812 played in the history of our great Nation and the State of Georgia.

Madam President, as a member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, I rise for a brief speech. But I want to begin that speech by thanking Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member Enzi, and the entire staff of the HELP Committee, and my staff--Francie Pastor-- who have helped so much on this legislation which is so important to the American people. There is a chance where we have a bipartisan effort in the Senate to do something constructive and meaningful, and I commend both Senators on their work.

There are component parts of this legislation I want to illuminate for a few seconds because I had a lot to do with them, and they are very important. One deals with third-party logistics providers. As the Chair is aware, and as the Senate is aware, we have a placeholder in the managers' amendment for a third-party provider and logistical providers with track and trace.

Track and trace is the mechanism of tracking the drug from its origin and tracing it all through the system to the individual using the drug to ensure we have safety and security. But there are third-party logistics carriers who deliver an awful lot of content in the United States, such as FedEx and UPS, that operate in all 50 States, and we ought to have a 50-State seamless standard in terms of third-party delivery rather than 50 individual States all having regulatory authority.

So my first message today is to the conferees, that when the conference committee is ultimately reporting, it should take this placeholder on these third-party logistics providers and make sure in the track-and-trace legislation we provide a seamless national policy for the delivery of pharmaceuticals. That is very important to our country and very important to the pharmaceutical industry, but mostly it is very important to those who consume those pharmaceuticals.

Secondly, there is another provision called the Medical Gas Safety Act, which was included in this legislation, and I am very grateful the managers of the legislation agreed to put it in the bill because it is equally important for the people of this country. I want to make sure one thing is underlined. Medical gases are critically important to sustain life, gases such as oxygen. A gas such as nitrous oxide, which is sometimes called laughing gas by some, is sometimes used to sedate individuals. I want to make sure as we go through this process we have a system under which medical gases--that have stood the test of time-- remain available through medical use and that brandnew medical products that have never been through the testing of time go through an appropriate FDA review, which is what the original act--the Medical Gas Safety Act--included and which we want to be included in this legislation.

Madam President, I also wish to further speak for a moment about an important section of this legislation--the Medical Gas Safety Act. I want to thank the Chairman and the Ranking Member, and Senator Blumenthal, for working with me to include this in the bill. The Medical Gas Safety Act has a number of important benefits for patients, health care providers, FDA and medical gas providers, it will ensure a continued supply of quality medical gases that patients can depend on, and it will provide regulatory certainty for FDA and providers.

The intent of the Medical Gas Safety Act is to create a process for those medical gases and medical gas mixtures that have a history of safe and effective use to become approved drugs. This will ensure that medical gases that have a long history of use, like oxygen, become approved drugs. The legislation provides FDA with the authority to ensure that any mixture of medical gases be ``medically appropriate.'' Congress urges FDA to work with industry to develop a guidance over the next year to better define the term ``medically appropriate'' so that those mixtures that have been on the market for a long period of time can continue to be available to the patients that need them.

I think we have a finished product that everyone can support--it is a matter of fine tuning at this point, which can be accomplished through FDA guidance. We need to have a system under which medical gases that have stood the test of time remain available for medical use; and brand new medical

gas products that have never been tested go through an appropriate FDA review--which is what the original bill envisioned.

I once again thank the chairman and ranking member for all of the hard work they have done to move this entire bill forward in such a bipartisan manner. The way the Committee has approached this important legislation has resulted in a good bill that deserves everyone's support. I also want to express my appreciation for the inclusion of the Medical Gas Safety Act in this bill. Senator Blumenthal deserves credit for the work he has done in this area.

Madam President, I applaud my colleagues, Senators Bennet and Burr, for their efforts to enhance the safety of America's pharmaceutical supply chain. While we are fortunate in America not to have a widespread problem with counterfeit drugs, the potential that they could pose a serious health risk to consumers is significant.

Supply chain compliance and safety is currently a patchwork of inconsistent State requirements and licensing which potentially jeopardizes the safety and welfare of millions of Americans. Unless a uniform Federal policy covering all pharmaceutical supply chain stakeholders is enacted, the United States will fail to provide the best tools needed for regulators and law enforcement to do a more effective job. Additionally, the U.S. would be missing an opportunity to leverage technology that will provide superior, cost effective consumer protection.

Third Party Logistics Providers, or 3PLs, are playing a growing and important role in making sure medicines reach their destination safely and securely. The term ``third party logistics provider'' refers to an entity that provides or coordinates warehousing, distribution, or other services on behalf of a manufacturer, wholesaler, or dispenser, but does not buy, sell, or direct the sales of those products.

Currently, Federal law does not recognize the role of a 3PL. Only one State even offers a license for 3PLs. Other States require a 3PL to apply for a wholesale distributor license, even though 3PLs do not buy or sell drugs. The varying patchwork of inconsistent State requirements makes law enforcement more difficult and there is added cost without a safety benefit.

Failure to include and define 3PLs in Federal language is simply wrong. Recognizing the role of 3PLs is a strong first step towards the development of uniform Federal standards for a 3PL license. Ensuring that all entities are properly licensed within the pharmaceutical supply chain not only makes sense, but it is one of the most effective deterrents to dangerous counterfeit drugs entering the supply chain.

I thank my colleagues Senators Bennet and Burr, and their staff, for their leadership to enhance supply chain safety by working with all industry stakeholders. I also express my gratitude to Ranking Member Enzi, Chairman Harkin and Senate leadership for their support.

Through a constructive conference process, I am confident we can enhance supply chain safety in a reasonable and cost effective manner. By properly defining 3PLs, and ensuring that properly licensed entities handle our medicines, we can help to ensure they safely and securely reach patients in need. My constituents in Georgia expect nothing less.

Once again, Madam President, I commend the chairman and ranking member on their service and their fine work on the FDA bill.

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

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

Mr. President, I apologize for keeping the Presiding Officer and the rest of the staff here a little later than they might want, but I have an important message that will be brief.

I introduced legislation not too long ago called the Representation Fairness Restoration Act, S. 1843. It was a reaction to the NLRB's decision in the specialty health care case, where a group of nurses within specialty health care asked for permission to unionize and organize within that unit. The NLRB granted that, and that became the first microunion that has ever existed in the United States of America.

Today it is my understanding that the NLRB has approved the following: the second floor designer shoes department and the fifth floor contemporary shoes department at Bergdorf Goodman in New York-- the two combined have 45 employees out of 370. They have granted them the right to organize.

This is a gigantic leap that differs from 75 years of settled labor law. Microunions within any retail establishment, medical establishment, or any other type of business prevents cross-training, causes discord, and is a way to upset an organization that otherwise is not upset.

Labor law in this country has been settled for a long time. Last year 70 percent of all the union calls in the United States of America passed on their vote. There is not a problem with unions being able to organize. But there is a huge problem if we continue to tear down the firewalls that have had the playing field level.

Just recently the courts have twice thrown out rulings of the National Labor Relations Board--one on ambush elections where they tried to reduce the average period of time from 58 days

to 10, which is totally unrealistic, and, even more importantly, on the posting rule where the employers were asked to post proorganization posters within the break rooms in their companies. Both times the courts threw them out and said the NLRB has reached too far.

It is my hope the same thing would happen here again. But in the meantime, I want to encourage the Senate to allow us to bring S. 1843 to the floor and have this debate. In the free enterprise system, in the tedious economy we have today in this country, the last thing we need is to begin changing labor law and pitting organized labor against management in an adversarial type of way.

This example at Bergdorf Goodman today is an example of the National Labor Relations Board doing in regulation what we ought to be doing in legislation on the floor of the Senate. My biggest concern is that now it seems as if the administration's leadership in every Department has determined if we can circumvent the legislative body and through regulation do what we cannot do on the floor, we will forget about the House, we will forget about the Senate, and it will be the executive and judicial branches that run the United States of America. That is not good for our country, and that is wrong.

So I am going to call on the Senate and ask our leadership to let us bring this bill to the floor, to let us debate it and see if we want to change 75 settled years of labor law and unbalance the playing field between management and labor. I do not think we do.

I am sorry to rush to the floor after just hearing this information, but I think it is so important we nip it in the bud; that we let the playing field remain balanced, and we not turn over the operation of settled labor law to an NLRB that, quite frankly, seems to have run amok as far as I am concerned.

Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to speak and yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I thank the Senator from Nebraska for the question and for his service. As a former Governor of the State of Nebraska, he knows full well the responsibility we have in terms of budgets. But I will tell you what the impact of no budget for 3 years is, no discipline for 3 years. The result of no discipline for 3 years is we spend $10.4 trillion without a budget.

I do not know how good you are with your memory, I do not know how good I am with mine, but if I do not have a budget or a guidepost to go by, and I am spending $10.4 trillion, I am making big mistakes. I am making big mistakes not with my money but with the money of the people of the United States of America.

Last night I did a telephone townhall back to Georgia. At one time we had a little over 3,200 callers on the line. Question after question, with a very simple question: How can you guys operate without a budget? Why can't you get a budget? Why can't you bring a budget to the floor.

The fact is it is because our budget requirements cast out 10 years of planning for taxes, 10 years of planning for expenditures, 10 years of planning for the government. A lot of people just do not want us to know what their plans are for the next 10 years.

But every American family in this county has had to sit around their kitchen table, reprioritize their expenditures, and budget what income they have because of difficult economic times. The government should ask of itself only what it forces upon all of its people.

I have a suggestion to consider, a suggestion that 20 of our 50 States practice. Forty percent of our State governments now have a biennial budget. It is a proposal that has been before this body for years. I am proud to be the cosponsor with Senator Jeanne Shaheen from New Hampshire. It is a budget process and a discipline that ends this no budget and also memorializes the most important thing we need to do and the least thing we do in this body; that is, oversight.

The biennial budget proposes we would do our budgeting in odd- numbered years and our appropriating in odd-numbered years and do it for a 2-year period rather than a 1-year period. Then, in the even- numbered year--an election year--we would do oversight of spending. We do not ever do any oversight.

The best oversight person in the Senate sits to my right. His name is Tom Coburn. He is going to be the closing act in this colloquy. He is going to show some pictures that cast a lot more than 1,000 words about the duplication of expenditures in this government, primarily because we have no oversight and we have no discipline. We go back at appropriations year after year after year but never look at justifying what we spent in the year before.

So to the Senator from Nebraska, I say to the people of Georgia and the people of the United States, I want to expect of myself and our government at least what is mandated upon you. I want us to begin to be accountable for our spending and hold accountable those who spend that money. I want us to do our appropriations in a balanced way, in a disciplined way, and never again go 1,000 days without a budget, never again have $10.4 trillion of spending without a budget, never again look the American people in the eye and say: I, as your government, am not willing to do what you must do.

It is absolutely time we stop the redundancy, start prioritizing, and start conducting oversight. When we do that, America will be better off, our fiscal policy will be better off, our debt and deficit will come down, and we will return to those days all of us yearn for, with better prosperity and absolute accountability.

I thank the Senator from Nebraska for giving me the opportunity to expound on the biennial budget.

Mr. President, I haven't been able to hear all the speeches, but I commend Senator Enzi on his detailed and eloquent explanation on how we arrived where we are today.

I wish to add a history lesson of my own to tell you my journey in terms of where we are. As a student in college in the 1960s, in business management, I learned a lot about the Industrial Revolution, the labor revolution, the development of labor unions and labor/ management practices as they developed from the 1920s until the 1960s and now up until today.

It is absolutely correct that the playing field was unlevel in the 1920s and

1930s. It is absolutely true that we had poor working conditions, safety risks were high, and wage-an-hour issues were debated. There was a place and an appropriate nature for us to level the playing field so management and labor could go together, head-to-head, and negotiate and arbitrate and have binding agreements upon themselves to protect the safety of workers and also improve the environment of the workers in the United States.

For 75 years those laws served us well. All of a sudden, it seems there is a perfect storm. From every corner, the NLRB seems to be making proposals to try to tilt the playing field away from fairness and equity and it is not right.

Last year, 70 percent of the elections for unionization in the United States of America were successful. There is not a problem in terms of people being able to organize and negotiate collectively. The problem is that the regulatory bodies are attempting to circumvent the legislative branch of government and to rule and regulate what they cannot pass on the floor of the Senate.

When Mr. Becker was appointed to the NLRB last year by the President, over the objection of the Senate and during the recess--it was an example of where the President used a recess appointment to go around the lack of approval, and advice and consent of the Senate.

This particular legislation we are talking about is similar to the specialty health care decision. The specialty health care decision allowed unions to create micro unions within the same working body, where there could be a plethora of unions in one store, all to fracture and fragment the ability of a business to cross-train and compete effectively. It is an attack on the free enterprise system and circumvents what our Founding Fathers intended us to do.

We have a legislative branch with the House and Senate; an executive branch with the President, the Vice President, the Cabinet and his appointees; and we have a court system. The President makes initiatives that go through the legislature. The legislative body takes initiatives and passes laws. Ultimately, the courts are the arbiters if either one or both ever challenges the ruling of one or the executive order of another. That is the way it should be. But right now we have a two- legged stool in America. Instead of legislative, executive, and judicial branches, we have a judicial and executive branch trying to run the country. We all know what happens to a two-legged stool. It falls over.

I talked with some businesspeople this morning who talked about the uncertainty of doing business in America. It didn't all have to do with ambush elections or specialty health care movements or special posters to promote unionization in the workplace, but they were part of it. The regulations that come from the administration through the Department of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board, the National Mediation Board, and a plethora of other organizations, are making it difficult for America to do business in a time where it is essential that we do business.

When the stimulus passed 18 to 24 months ago--maybe 30 now--it was designed to bring unemployment down to 6 percent. Unemployment remains above 8 percent, and one of the reasons it does is that the deployment of capital by businesses is not taking place because of the uncertainty of the workplace and what lies ahead, whether it is health care, whether it is ambush elections, card check, or whatever it might be.

So I come to the floor to commend the Senator from Wyoming for taking an initiative that is available to the Senate to bring a resolution of disapproval forward for a resolution of an executive branch body that circumvents the legislature itself. I hope he is successful in sending the message that it is time for us to take American politics and American justice and American legislation back to what our Founding Fathers intended.

Let's stop trying to take a playing field--one that has been level for 75 years, where we have had the greatest labor-management relations in the history of any country in the world--and tear it up or put us into a situation where we are adversaries, as we were 75 years ago. Let's stop the ambush election. Let's stop the arbitrary posting. Let's stop the specialized unionization. Let's stop all of this and return to the laws that have worked for three-quarters of a century. Three- quarters of a century is a great test of time. There is no reason now, through appointments to a regulatory body, to change the history of the Senate and the history of the court system.

I will end by quoting a President of the United States--a Democratic President of the United States--who, on April 21, 1959, was U.S. Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In his campaign for the Presidency, he declared that elections should have at least 30 days between their call and the vote so employees can be fully informed on their choices from both sides of the issue. If it was right for John F. Kennedy on April 21, 1959, it is right for the Senate today, on April 24, 2012.

I commend the Senator from Wyoming on his presentation, his intensity, and his ability to bring this issue before the American people and to the floor of the Senate.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate as in morning business.

Mr. President, I rise to speak to the Senate, but in a broader sense to the American people and, in particular, to the young people of America. An Internet posting went viral a few weeks ago, by a group called Invisible Children about Joseph Koni in Uganda, the Central African Republic, Congo, and the South Sudan.

As a member of the Africa Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee and one who travels to Africa quite frequently, I have just returned from a trip to meet, in part, with our special forces and U.S. advisers who have been deployed in those countries to help assist in the search for Joseph Koni.

I wish to share with the Senate the information about what America is doing, what Joseph Koni has done, and how important our commitment is to Central Africa and to see to it that this evil man is brought to justice. Joseph Koni is under indictment by the International Criminal Court today, but for 26 years he has roamed Central Africa with his Lord's Resistance Army, killing, raping, and maiming the African people. By some estimates, Joseph Koni has abducted 66,000 children into his army and young women as sex slaves. He has displaced over 2 million Africans into camps, and they have had to be displaced because their villages were destroyed and their families disrupted. He has killed untold tens of thousands of people. He is by any stretch of the imagination an evil person. Invisible Children's posting, which went viral on the Internet, has caught the attention of America's youth, because they see the damage that has been done to the youth of Africa, and they want to know what America is doing.

I am proud to include in my remarks what America is doing, and has been doing even before the posting went viral on the Internet and most people didn't know who Joseph Koni was. Our President deployed 100 special advisers to the Central African Republic, in the Sudan and Uganda, about 2 months before this posting went viral. I met with them in a private, secured briefing, a lot of which I cannot talk about but a lot of which I can.

Because of U.S. technology, U.S. resources, and the commitment of these individuals, we are assisting to a much higher level in the intelligence that we are gaining on Joseph Koni. A lot of people think Koni is in Uganda. He isn't there and hasn't been there for 5 or 6 years. He is somewhere near the Central African Republic, where it is extremely easy to hide. We thought Vietnam had jungles. You haven't seen foliage until you've seen the Central African Republic, the Sudan, and the Congo. There is no electricity, no roads, no paths, and no listening devices. Intelligence is all human intelligence. We are fortunate to have great intelligence operatives over there and great resources there, and we are gaining more and more information.

I commend our forces also in what they have done in an amnesty program. They dropped leaflets in villages that are known to house some of Koni's workers and cronies. They drop leaflets that offer amnesty for anybody who leaves Koni, comes back to their village, and gives information to our forces, the Ugandan Army, and the African Union Army as to where Joseph Koni might be. We are getting closer all the time. We are not there yet, but thanks to the assistance of our foreign- deployed individuals, the commitment of our country, the commitment of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, and the new country of South Sudan, we are going to close that noose and stay until the job is finished, because Joseph Koni needs to be brought to justice. He is an evil man who has killed and raped far too many people and maimed far too many people, and Africa is too good a friend of the United States for us not to offer the necessary assistance.

My message to the American people and our youth is we are doing our job. Joseph Koni hasn't been caught, but we are in pursuit. I commend Senator Kerry, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee; Senator Coons, chairman of the Africa Subcommittee; and Senator Lugar and myself have joined together to support legislation that will be introduced in the Senate to include Joseph Koni, or information leading to the arrest and conviction of Joseph Koni, in our rewards program that we offer mostly now for terrorist capture. That will be an incentive for more information to be brought forward so that the noose will grow tighter.

It is time for Joseph Koni to be brought to justice, and the United States is making every effort to assist in that process in Central Africa.

My other reason for going to Central Africa is equally important. I was accompanied by members of CARE. CARE is a tremendous nongovernmental organization that delivers humanitarian aid, assistance, education, knowledge, and technical assistance to countries around the world and, in particular, in the nation of Africa. It was the second time I traveled with CARE; the first time was 10 years ago to Ethiopia, where I saw CARE's outreach in terms of basic education and improvement and enhancement of educating young Muslim women.

On this trip, I got to see what they are doing firsthand in the city of Gulu on the border with the Congo and Northern Uganda--an area that 5 or 6 years ago, because of Joseph Koni, had been destroyed, people were displaced, everybody was in hunger, and there was a lot of violence. It is now a beautiful village. Granted, it is not a village such as you and I might know, Mr. President--thatched huts with thatched roofs, mud huts with thatched roofs, small enclaves of African citizens eking out an existence in a very difficult part of the world.

Because of what they are doing in their project, known as the village savings and loan, they are bringing about microeconomics in Africa, and they are empowering women. The village savings and loan program is a very simple program that teaches basic economics and capitalism to these villages. Groups form together, they are given a strongbox, literally like the ones that used to be on the stagecoach in the old ``Lone Ranger'' days. In that box, each of the women will make contributions of the money that they have into the strongbox, and they get a passbook savings account just like the occupant of the chair and I used to get when we were in elementary school a long time ago. Then they make loans out of that money they save to other people in the village to start businesses, whether it is making beads, using the shea tree to make shea butter, or doing boutique cloth, or whatever it may be. As those industries develop, those cottage industries develop, the money they make goes back into the savings and loan to be reinvested in other plans.

We met a young lady who was making beads, and I bought about 12 strands. My wife and grandkids love them. She makes beads for a German distributor in Europe. It is unbelievable what you can see being developed because of what CARE is doing. They are empowering African women and families and are bringing about the principles of economics that you and I enjoy and appreciate, and they are uplifting people who need that with empowerment, so they can be sufficient on their own, so they can rise up economically and educationally.

I also visited with the CDC folks delivering PEPFAR and health care and better awareness and better testing to identify those with AIDS, to get our retrovirals distributed to those mothers who are pregnant, so their babies

can be born without AIDS and live a happy life. One of our great challenges now in Africa--it used to be that the challenge was what we did with all the children who died because they were born to a mother with AIDS. Now we see what we can do to keep them through their life because they live a normal and happy life. And their mother, although infected with AIDS, because of the U.S. technology and retrovirals, and the CDC is providing them with a lifetime of drugs and an opportunity to live as normal and productive a life as possible.

It was great to go with CARE and to see U.S. tax dollars deployed and helping uplift the nation, uplift the people, help solve the greatest scourge on the continent, which is AIDS and its spread, and help people to be able to reinvest in themselves. CARE is a great nongovernmental entity that happens to be housed in Georgia, which is helping all over the continent of Africa, and they are empowering women and African citizens, and they are making their plight in life better, and they are reducing the amount of Federal assistance we will provide in the years to come because they will be more productive, which is the payback you want to see from foreign assistance dollars when they are invested.

As far as Joseph Koni is concerned, America knows he is a bad man, that he is indicted by the International Criminal Court, and America is making the investment of intelligence and manpower to assist the Central African Republic, Uganda, the Congo, and the South Sudan to pursue him until he is captured. He needs to be brought to justice for the evil and terror he has contributed to the continent of Africa.

I was proud to go and see America's investment of our best, our men and women in harm's way in Africa who are looking for him and providing the assistance necessary to bring him to justice.

With that said, I yield the floor.

I would note that it is never an inconvenience to be deferred by a beautiful lady, and again I take all the remarks made by the leader about Ms. Dove, and I would add one thing about the best and greatest institution in America, the U.S. Senate, and that is that a young mother of two has become an institution to herself. Laura, we appreciate all you have done.

Missile Defense

Madam President, I rise to talk about two specific subjects, one of them a very troubling comment picked up by a microphone that was not believed to be live, made by President Obama to President Medvedev of Russia. It is a troubling comment to me because I spent most of the previous year in the Senate as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee working on the New START treaty, which the Senate adopted with 71 favorable votes a year ago, a treaty that is a treaty on offensive missiles, not defensive missiles nor strategic missiles.

It is a treaty that began under Ronald Reagan, was ratified by George H.W. Bush shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was extended under George W. Bush and terminated a couple of years ago and needed to be renewed. It is a treaty that did three things. First of all, it reduced offensive weapons held by the Russians and the Americans; second, gave us unilateral access to Russia and the Russians unilateral access to us to trust but verify the warheads that existed; and third, new identification systems and holographs that made it almost impossible to hide or mimic nuclear warheads. It is a comprehensive treaty that is important to America, important to the free world, and, quite frankly, important to Russia.

I would like to quote from the Washington Post exactly what the President was picked up as having said when he was talking to Mr. Medvedev after their official conversation.

I quote from the Washington Post:

On all these issues, but particularly missile defense,

this, this can be solved--

I underline, nobody knows what ``this'' means--

but it's important for him to give me space.

President Medvedev said back:

Yeah, I understand.

Then the President said the following:

This is my last election. After my election, I [will] have

more flexibility.

That flexibility obviously refers back to ``this,'' which was in the first comment.

So as a continuing member of the Foreign Relations Committee, one who is proud of the work we did on the START treaty but one who understands particularly the commitments of the country, I think it important that the President clarify what ``this'' meant and how flexibility would be applied if he were reelected as President of the United States for this reason: In the President's letter to the Senate to endorse the New START treaty and ask for its ratification, he said the following: that he pledged in his message to the Senate on the New START treaty ``to continue development and deployment of all stages of the Phased Adaptive Approach to missile defense in Europe, including qualitative and quantitative improvements to such system.'' That is a unilateral statement.

I met with Vice President Joe Biden in his office outside this Chamber during the debate. Vice President Biden committed the administration in terms of continuing on missile defense. I met with Secretary of State Clinton. I met with Ellen Tauscher, who was one of the chief negotiators and chief operatives, a former Member of the House working for the State Department. There was never any wiggle room nor need for flexibility. The United States was committed to missile defense in Europe, we remain committed to this day, and it is important that the President reaffirm that and it not be in any way confused or blurred by the comments picked up by that microphone. It is too important to the country, it is too important to this body, and it is too important to me for us to be able to trust the words of each other, not to find out sometime later that they want flexibility to possibly move from those words. Nuclear defense clearly is very sensitive with the Russians, and I understand that. If there are negotiations on that, that ought to be in the open, not after we have time for flexibility. It ought to be forthright.

I also would like to add that there is another missile defense issue that looms out there that we have to pay attention to. Israel is surrounded by missiles with warheads to injure the people of that country and take the country down. A missile defense system for Israel would be equally as important as missile defense deployment would be for the Eastern European countries.

So missile defense was a vision of Ronald Reagan's, continued under every President of the United States since Ronald Reagan, and it is important that we remain committed to it. I believe it is particularly important to understand what the President said, particularly on missile defense, what ``this'' meant when he asked for flexibility, because there should be no wiggle room in our desire to protect and defend democracy not only in the United States but around the world.

Madam President real quickly, we talked all week about gas prices, and there has been a lot of demonization from both sides. I am a pretty simple guy. I was a businessman for 33 years, went and got a degree in college in business, studied economics in high school, and learned one principle of free enterprise and competition: prices are determined by supply and demand. If your supply goes down and your demand goes up, your prices go up. On the contrary, if the supply is plentiful and demand goes down, your prices go down. You can blame gas companies, presidents' salaries, anything you want to blame; the fact is, we are talking out of the side of our mouth--and particularly in the administration--when it comes to exploration for natural resources in the United States of America, and only can we become energy independent when we develop all of our resources. I support that. I drive a hybrid car. I am not just somebody who talks about it, I believe it is important. It reduces my consumption, it extends my miles per gallon, and it is better for the environment.

But we have proven through the Solyndra and other cases that some of the alternative energy sources were either not perfected or frankly just don't work. So while we are developing ones that do, we should be robustly exploring in the gulf, in Alaska, in the Midwest, in the Northwest, and offshore, such as my State of Georgia, the resources we know exist to raise the supply of petroleum in the United States and lower the price to the American taxpayer.

All four sources of energy that are safe and reliable should be promoted. That includes nuclear energy. I am very proud and I am thankful to the President that he issued the loan guarantee on the first reactors licensed in this country since 1978. They are in Plant Vogtle in Augusta or Burke County, GA. But his Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted no on that final approval. He was outvoted 4 to 1, but he voted no. That sends a signal that we may talk on one hand about having robust development of all resources, but when it comes to playing our hand on the actual vote, we really don't do it. The same thing is true with the Keystone Pipeline. You can't just approve the pipeline to the south without connecting it to the north because if you do, you don't get the petroleum.

We can blame whomever we want to blame, but the fact is facts are stubborn, and supply and demand is what dictates price. We should robustly be exploring the natural resources of the United States for America to have less dependence on foreign oil and more dependence on our own oil where we know we have resources. We should pay attention to our environment and recognize that no country in the world has done a better job in the modern era since the industrial revolution of cleaning up its environment than the United States of America. No one looks after their environment harder than the United States of America. We owe it to our people to look equally hard at the cost of gasoline, the price of petroleum, and the robust exploration of our own natural resources here at home for less dependency overseas.

I yield the floor and defer to the Senator from Louisiana, who has a lot of offshore resources of his own.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Cate Cravath, Katie Hoppe, and Michael Finn, interns with the Budget Committee, be granted the privilege of the floor during the remainder of today's session.

Madam President, I consider it an honor and a privilege to rise for a moment to pay tribute to Senator Mikulski from the State of Maryland, And in so doing, I think it is only appropriate that I quote from a speech made on November 22 in 1922 by the first woman ever to serve in the Senate.

Rebecca Latimer Felton was the first woman Senator. She was appointed for 1 day. Governor Brown had run against Walter George for the Senate. Walter George won. And because of Ms. Felton's unending help to him in his race, he asked the Governor if he would appoint her for a day to his seat before he took it and was sworn in.

She came to Washington, DC, to serve for 1 day and she made one speech. In that speech she had a paragraph that to me exemplifies Barbara Mikulski. She said, ``Let me say, Mr. President, that when the women of the country come and sit with you, though there may be but very few in the next few years, I pledge you that you will get ability, you will get integrity of purpose, you will get exalted patriotism, and you will get unstinted usefulness.''

That was Rebecca Felton in 1922. Today, in March of 2012, we honor a Senator who has lived up to every one of those promises Ms. Felton made almost 100 years ago. I have had the privilege to serve on the HELP Committee with the Senator, worked very closely on the Alzheimer's legislation which she has been such a leader on, worked with her on many other projects, including one I am happy to remind her about, and that was the confirmation of Wendy Sherman a few months ago when together on the floor of the Senate, we worked together to see that she was appointed and named and confirmed Under Secretary of State for the United States of America, serving under Hillary Clinton.

On that night when we worked on getting that UC done, and it was not easy, I saw the tenacity, I saw the grace, I saw the patriotism, and I saw the integrity of Barbara Mikulski. It is an honor for me to rise today and commend her on a great individual achievement, not just for herself but for all of the women who have gone before her and all the women who will come later on, and to my five granddaughters and my daughter.

She has led the life in the Senate exemplary of the contributions that all women can make to our society. I commend her on her service, her compassion, her integrity, and all that she has done for the State of Maryland, the United States of America, and peace on this Earth.

Barbara, congratulations to you on a great achievement. It is an honor for me to be here.

Madam President, this past weekend, Georgia lost a great citizen. Furman Bisher died in Fayetteville, GA, on Sunday afternoon of a tragic heart attack. He was the premier sports writer in the United States of America, covered every Super Bowl, every Masters, was at every major heavyweight fight.

From the day he started on his Royal manual typewriter until the day he died, he typed on that same manual typewriter that was over 60 years old. He was a brilliant writer, a compassionate individual, a great friend, and someone I looked up to very much. He was a pacesetter. He actually got the only interview of Shoeless Joe Jackson ever done by a reporter. He did it because of his cunning ability to be in the right place at the right time, and that twinkle in his eye that always made you want to take to Furman Bisher.

So as on the floor of the Senate today I pay tribute to Furman and his life, to all of his accomplishments in terms of the writing of sports in our State and around the world. To his family and loved ones, I extend my sympathy on behalf of not just myself but all of the citizens of Georgia.

Mr. President, today I wish to honor in the Record the 120th anniversary of Horton's Books & Gifts in Carrollton,

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

Mr. President, I would also like to ask the permission of the Chair to display this box during my remarks.

Thank you, Mr. President.