Floor Statements

Mr. President, I am proud to stand here today on International Women's Day, the 8th day of March, 2012, to pay tribute to women around the world but also to acknowledge that women around the world, on Monday, March 12, will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Girl Scouts of America, founded in Savannah, GA, a beautiful town, by a wonderful Georgia lady, Juliette Gordon Low. Girl Scouts around the world will be celebrating the founding of that great organization, which has had a positive effect on women around the world.

Each of us right now is well aware of the Girl Scouts because of boxes like this box the Acting President pro tempore gave me permission to display, which is what is left of a box of Thin Mints. The Girl Scouts sell boxes of cookies this time of year to raise money for their operations around the world. I eat far too many of them. They are good. They are good for me, they are good for America, and they are good for the Girl Scouts and the fundraising they do.

The Girl Scouts is an organization of leadership, developing women for the future. While only 17 percent of this body are women, almost all of them were Girl Scouts. Almost all women of business were Girl Scouts. And almost all women who were in Girl Scouts pay tribute to the Girl Scouts of America and the contribution they have made to their lives. There are 3.2 million active Girl Scouts in America today, and there are 50 million Girl Scout alumni in America. That has a tremendous impact on all that is right about America.

The Girl Scouts have been pacesetters. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a native of my city of Atlanta and a native of our State that Juliette Low was from, cited the Girl Scouts of America as ``a force for desegregation'' during the troubled times of the 1950s and 1960s. The Girl Scouts were at the forefront of integration and leadership for youth.

The Girl Scouts of America also pledge themselves and they make a promise, which I would like to read.

On my honor, I will try:

To serve God and my country,

To help people at all times,

And to live by the Girl Scout law.

Which reads:

I will do my best to be

honest and fair,

friendly and helpful,

considerate and caring,

courageous and strong, and

responsible for what I say and do,

and to respect myself and others,

respect authority,

use resources wisely,

make the world a better place, and

be a sister to every Girl Scout.

That is not a motto just for the Girl Scouts but one that would serve us all well in this body.

So on this International Women's Day on March 8, I would like to acknowledge that on Monday, when we are not here, around the world women will celebrate the founding of the Girl Scouts of America, and the 3.2 million Girl Scouts in America today will be building for the future the Acting President pro tempore and I work for today in this body, the U.S. Senate.

I yield back the remainder of my time and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes in morning business.

Mr. President, I am glad to be able to come to the floor. I wish to talk about a subject that was talked about to me a lot during the Presidents Day break back in Georgia. I spent most of that week traveling in my State, going to townhall meetings, listening to Georgians from Savannah, GA, to Murray County, GA, and everywhere in between. It was absolutely easy to tell what the No. 1 issue for the average American or the average Georgia family is; that is, what the price of gasoline is doing to their budget.

Gasoline prices continue to escalate. In fact, I have a Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck that I use from time to time and I had to fill it last weekend. It cost $78 to fill it, and it wasn't totally empty. That is a big pricetag to fill a pickup truck. When I think of every carpenter or farmer or landscaper or student taking their goods back to school to their dormitory room and how much they have to pay for gasoline to deliver those goods and services or that furniture, I realize how harmful current gas prices are and I fear how high they are going to go.

We need a comprehensive energy policy in the United States of America. I was listening to the distinguished majority whip speak before me. He made an interesting comment about the Keystone Pipeline. He said, even if we approve the Keystone Pipeline, it would not do anything for gas prices today. He is right because we have to build the pipeline. But if we had approved it 2 years ago and it was operating, we would have 700,000 barrels of petroleum more a day coming into the United States. So to say that just because it would not be ready today doesn't help gas prices is not keeping our eye on the ball.

What we have to recognize is, in the absence of a comprehensive policy, in the absence of foresight, in the absence of putting all the general items on the table that generate energy, we are putting off the day in which the United States of America is energy independent. Because we are not energy independent, then what goes on in Iran, in the Strait of Hormuz, and in Venezuela affects the speculation on gasoline and petroleum which affects the prices of gasoline in the United States.

I am not one of these ``burn gas right and left, drill as much as you can, fossil fuels are fine.'' I know we have problems with carbon. I drive a hybrid vehicle, not because I am trying to drive a point but because it makes sense. Anytime you can reduce carbon, that makes sense. But you cannot eliminate it. You cannot eliminate it. What we have to do is we have to put all sources of energy on the table. And one of those is to continue to explore for gasoline and petroleum in the domestic United States of America--off the Gulf of Mexico, off of our coastline, in our national lands that we own where we know we have shale oil and where we also know we have natural gas.

That exploration ought to be replete throughout the country, so we are expanding our supply and reducing our dependence on foreign imports. The best way to lower the price of gasoline in the future for Georgians and for Americans is for the Congress of the United States and the President of the United States to have a comprehensive energy policy that embraces all forms of energy.

To the credit of the President, he approved not too long ago the loan guarantees on reactors 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle. They will be the first nuclear reactors built in the United States of America since Three Mile Island. Nuclear energy is a safe, reliable, carbon-free--carbon-free-- generation of energy. Every time we can expand our nuclear capability we are lessening the pressure on domestic and foreign oil to be burned.

We know in the Haynesville shale and the Marcellus shale, which has been discovered in Pennsylvania and Louisiana and Texas, that we have gone from having a finite supply of natural gas to an infinite supply. Yet, because there is some contest over whether hydraulic fracturing is good or not good, we are not exploring that gasoline as we should or that natural gas as we should. We should be exploring it as much as possible, because it is a cleaner burning fuel than liquid petroleum and gasoline. We ought to be doing renewable energy wherever it makes sense. But we have seen renewable energy has its limits. We spent $6 billion a year subsidizing ethanol in hopes that it would have reduced foreign imports, but it has not. It has had its own problems with two- cycle engines. But ethanol has a place. It is scalable on the farm in some cases. That is a good source of energy.

Solar is a good source of energy where it works. But it only works as a supplement. It is not a primary supply or source. And wind, great. But it is only great in the Midwest and down toward the Southwest. But we ought to be using and encouraging it.

What we ought to be doing is encouraging all forms of exploration, all forms of generation, and all of them domestically in the United States of America. That will bring down gas prices.

The distinguished majority whip was right: It will not bring it down today, because we have put off having an energy policy. But once we finally develop an energy policy, and we stick to it, and we explore all forms of renewable energy and all forms of fossil fuel and all forms of coal, and we enhance nuclear, then we will have a plethora of energy and we will have a lower price and less competition with foreign oil and foreign petroleum, which is where the United States of America needs to be.

Right now, we all realize what is going on in the Middle East is the root cause of most of the increase in the cost of oil, because of speculation. Every time we can improve our position and be free of those influences is better for the United States of America and, most importantly, it is better for the average citizens we all represent.

My message from the people I represent in Georgia, the ones I talked to all during the Presidents Day recess and that week is: Do everything you can to expand your supply of energy wherever you can find it. Take us out of a dependence on foreign imports and get us independent of foreign oil; that will bring down the price of oil. As a byproduct, that will be in the best national security interests of the people of the United States of America.

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

I thank Senator Alexander for giving me a moment on the floor.

It is ironic that when I received the call last week asking if I would participate in this colloquy, I was traveling my State doing townhall meetings. I was near Ooltewah, TN, on Thursday night, north of Dalton, GA, and Murray County. We had a townhall meeting, and this fellow in the back of the room raised his hand when it came time for questions.

He said: Mr. Isakson, I have got a question for you. I said: What is that? He said: Last night, my wife and I amended our budget that we established in December for this year because some things have not gone so well, and we had to recast how we are spending our money so we wouldn't go any further in debt than we already are. Why can't you all do the same thing? ``You all,'' talking about us.

A few days earlier in Dublin, GA, a great, prosperous town in south Georgia, a similar question was asked by a Chamber of Commerce director who couldn't understand why the Federal Government and the Congress of the United States could not wrap their arms around fiscal responsibility, have a budget, and have appropriations acts that come to the floor, are debated, are amended, and the spending of the United States of America's government is spent like the households of the United States of America have to spend their money.

So I commend Senator Alexander and Senator Pryor for bringing this to the floor, and I want to commend our leaders for making affirmative statements about the desire to bring the 12 appropriations bills to the floor of the Senate, debate them, let us amend them, and let us bring them together.

If you think about it, in the last 3 years we have had a situation where we either had continuing resolutions or omnibus appropriations. During a difficult period of time where we have had deficits of $1.3 trillion to $1.5 trillion, we haven't taken the time to debate how we are spending our money, where we are spending our money, and doing it in the context of what we call on the floor regular order. In fact, it is not hard to understand why only 11 percent of the American people view the Congress as favorable, because they can't understand our inability to do what they have to do themselves. The IRS doesn't take excuses on April 15 if you are not ready. You have got to be ready. If you are a business and you file as an LLC or a sub S corporation, on the 15th of January, the 15th of April, the 15th of June, and the 15th of September, you file a quarterly tax return; and if you don't, you are held accountable.

We are now going into our fourth year, and it looks as though for the first time in the last 3 years we are going to have debate on the floor of how we spend the American people's money. I commend Senator Alexander and Senator Pryor, and I thank our leadership for making the statement of the desire to do so. I have already seen Senator Inouye and I have already seen Senator Cochran working diligently in the basic appropriations subcommittees to see to it that those bills come to the floor. I think it is time we do our business just as the American people do their business, and I commend Senator Alexander and Senator Pryor for calling for this colloquy tonight.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator for the opportunity.

I commend Senator Risch for his remarks. I want to make a little addition to those remarks in a second. But specifically, in answer to Senator Johanns' question, the only thing you can do with this budget is start over.

Senator Risch has very importantly recognized the 10-year fiasco we look at every year by pushing savings out into years 8, 9, and 10, when this President will not be here and another Congress will be here.

In talking about compromise, one of the things Senator Shaheen from New Hampshire and I have pushed for 2 years is a process 40 States operate under, including the Senator's, if I am not mistaken, I say to Mr. Johanns, and that is a biennial budget process. So instead of talking about 10 years, you are talking about 2 years. Instead of talking about appropriating every year, you appropriate in 1 year for 2 years, and in the second year--which happens to be the election year, or the even unnumbered year--your total obligation is to look for savings, efficiencies, and the fine functioning of the government.

We do not ever do in this Congress what our families do and our children do every year at home. We do not ever sit around our kitchen table, reprioritize our expenditures based on our needs, and find out how to live within our means. The American people do not get the luxury of printing

money. Japan does not come in and buy notes to fund their money. They have to figure out how they themselves can manage their budget in such a way as to live within the income they have and not go into big debt. The United States of America ought to do the same.

One of the things Senator Risch hit on that I want to hammer on for a second--because there is a big part of our problem that is solvable; and it is solvable if good people would be willing to talk about it rather than politic about it--is known as entitlements.

Entitlements are Social Security, welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, retirement disabilities, et cetera. But two of them are not entitlements. Two of them are obligations of the United States of America. That is not an entitlement. That is something somebody has paid for. America's people pay 6.2 percent of their payroll normally-- except for the recent holiday we have had--to go into a Social Security trust fund to pay them a benefit. They pay 1.35 percent of their income every month--from day one, since 1968--to pay for Medicare. Those are not entitlements they are entitled to. Those are obligations we have committed them to from moneys they have paid.

This document we are looking at in this budget does not portend a single change in benefits or in obligations for Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, which simply means the day they go broke comes that much faster. We are defaulting on the obligation we have to the American people. Whereas, if we sat down honestly, put those programs on the table, looked at the outyears, when my grandchildren and children may be beneficiaries, and modify the obligation, pushing out the eligibility, we can save the obligation we owe the American people for Social Security and Medicare. But if we do not do it, it will be gone. That is something they paid for that we took out of the trust fund and used for something else--not the least of which was the $500 billion the President took out of the trust fund for Medicare to help pay for the affordable health care bill, which has not even gone into effect yet.

I think it is time we ask of ourselves what the American people have to ask of themselves: Sit around our kitchen table, decide what our priorities are, live within our means, and budget for the future. Do not budget for failure. This is budgeting for failure.

Mr. President, amendment No. 1574 modifying the Congressional authorization for the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project, SHEP, is clearly supported in the Constitution. Article I of the Constitution grants Congress the power to authorize and appropriate funds and Article I, Section 8, specifically grants Congress the power ``To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with Indian Tribes.'' The power of Congress to fund the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project is unquestionably granted by the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has also expressly stated that ``Commerce with foreign nations means commerce between citizens of the United States and citizens or subjects of foreign governments. It means trade, and it means intercourse. It means commercial intercourse between nations, and parts of nations, in all its branches. It includes navigation, as the principal means by which foreign intercourse is affected.''

The power to regulate, authorize, and appropriate funding for the ports comes from the authority to regulate navigation, arising from the Commerce Clause. The Savannah Harbor Expansion Project, and by extension all harbor deepening projects, involves the general welfare of the United States. The Port of Savannah is a turnstile for cargo that impacts the United States as a whole. Congress is permitted to contribute to the project because it would improve the ability of the United States to receive larger ships entering through the Panama Canal. The Project will make national trade more competitive, while greatly impacting the State and the region. Trades, and its relations (ports), are fundamental extensions of the congressional power to regulate commerce. The Savannah Harbor Expansion Project is a permissible exercise of Congress's authority to regulate commerce and contributes to the general welfare of the United States. The constitutional ability of Congress to provide funding for the program is unquestionable.

The Port of Savannah is the second largest container port on the East

Coast and the fourth largest in the country. The Georgia Department of Economic Development recently announced that Georgia exported more than $28.7 billion in goods last year, a 20.8 percent increase from 2009 and our imports experienced a 27 percent increase last year compared to 2009. That's well over the overall national increase of 22.6 percent. Exports accounted for more than 54 percent of the 2.8 million containers Georgia Ports moved last year. Savannah handles more than 17 percent of all container cargo on the East Coast and is an essential element for the creation of new jobs, and the preservation of existing jobs, in America. The Panama Canal Authority has undertaken a 7 year $5.25 billion project to widen the canal to double its capacity by allowing larger ships to transit it. After this expansion, the Panama Canal will be able to handle vessels of cargo capacity up to 13,000 twenty-foot equivalent units or TEUs, which is the measure of cargo capacity often used to describe the capacity of a container ship. As a result of the canal's expansion and widening, shipping vessels are modernizing their fleet and purchasing a much larger class of vessel. These ``Post Panamax'' and ``New Panamax'' fleets will be comprised of vessels much larger than anything on the ocean today.

In order to accommodate these vessels, improvements must be made to our Nation's existing infrastructure. The Georgia Ports Authority and the State of Georgia are undertaking a project to deepen the port's channel from 42 feet to 48 feet in order to accommodate this larger class of vessels. Doing so will protect existing jobs at the port while also creating new jobs as these larger vessels call in the Port of Savannah. It is critically important that we expand not only Savannah Harbor but all harbors to ensure they continue to act as gateways for business to not only Georgia and the Southeast United States, but the entire Nation.

Mr. President, I rise for a moment to echo, first of all, the words of the distinguished Senator from Kansas. He was right on target in every point he made. But I also rise to pay tribute to the chairman, Senator Rockefeller, and ranking member Kay Bailey Hutchison, Mr. Ray LaHood, and Chairman Mica in the House, all of whom did an outstanding job bringing this together.

I was thinking in the airplane coming up here--it was an appropriate place to think about it; we are all on airplanes quite a lot--I was thinking about the many bills I have been involved in here in my 13, almost 14 years in the Congress of the United States. I don't know if I ever remember a conference committee that was so far apart and so divided that finally came together in the best interests of the American people than this one. I want to pay tribute to Majority Leader Harry Reid, who played an instrumental role in finding common ground and coming to agreement. Speaker Boehner in the House of Representatives did the same. This was a team effort. The National Mediation Board decisions that were made in the final agreements were good and they were fair. As Senator Roberts has said, the treatment of general aviation and commercial aviation is fair and equitable. We now have a 4-year plan for the next generation. Everything that happened, happened for the best and it happened because of good leadership on the part of Chairman Rockefeller and Congressman Mica and Speaker Boehner, the Speaker of the House, and Senator Reid. I thank all for the work they did, and I am very proud to have been a part of the solution that led to the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Busiest in the world.

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

On behalf of the minority side, I yield back the remainder of our time.

Mr. President, I was unavoidably detained during rollcall vote No. 3 on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 2038.

Had I been present I would have voted ``yea'' for rollcall vote No. 3 and I ask that the Record reflect that.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

I would further ask to be recognized as if in morning business.

We are back. Tonight, I understand, the Presiding Officer and I will be sitting together at the State of the Union event, which I am pleased to do. It is always a historic and seminal moment in our legislative process when the President of the United States talks about and lays out his plans for the future.

From watching this morning on television and from reading some of the accounts of what is thought will be said tonight--I don't know what is going to be said yet--one of the overriding themes is going to be that of fairness. I think that is an important point for us to focus on in a second, particularly with regard to our spending, our debt, and our deficit, about what is fair to the American people.

Last night--and I brought some notes--I did a telephone townhall meeting back to Georgia. We had thousands of people listening in on the call. I was able to take 17 questions in the course of an hour and one of the questions was from Fred in Barnesville, GA. Fred is a small businessperson. He asked this question: Senator, you were a small businessman; I am a small businessman. We had to operate within a budget. Why is it the U.S. Government doesn't have a budget? I think today is the 1,000th day we have been operating without a budget.

That was a fair question. So if we want to talk about fairness for a minute, my contribution to fairness is going to be: What is fair to the American people, the American businessman, the American employer, the American employee? Let's think about it for a second.

A budget is a guide by which we try to live under. It is an appropriation of our priorities for the future based on what we think we will need to accomplish our goals. But if we are without a budget, then we have the tendency to do what America has done over the last 3 years; that is, exponentially increase its debt and its deficit. What that has done is put a pall on the recovery and a pall on the economy.

I would suggest the fairest thing we can do in the Congress and the fairest thing the administration can do is to see to it that we have a budget submitted, that it come to the floor of the House and Senate, that it be adopted, and then, more important, that we change our pace around here and live within that budget.

I have some suggestions as to how we do that, but first and foremost I urge the White House to submit a budget this year. I understand, from this morning's announcements, it will be delayed until February 13. That is fine with me. But the quicker we get it to us, the better we are. Then, let the Budget Committees of the House and Senate act, and let us end up with a framework--not just for 1 year but, as the Presiding Officer knows, for 10 years--because we forecast out those budgets and those complications of those budgets for 10 years.

But we have a broken system. We also have a broken will to do what is most important for the American people when it comes to spending their money. I wish to suggest how we change our habits and become a fairer legislative body and a fairer governing body for the American people.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen and I introduced a bill 1 year ago called the biennial budget. It amends the Budget Control Act of the United States of America and changes the way we do business. It portends that, in the future, instead of appropriating and budgeting for 1 year, we will do it in 2-year cycles, and we will always do our appropriating and our budgeting in the odd-numbered years so, in the even-numbered year of reelection, we are doing oversight and fiscal responsibility.

I think everybody in this room will admit we make an effort at oversight, to a certain extent, but practically speaking not near the oversight the American people have to do.

It is ironic that our country, our people, our families, our retirees, our business folks, our employees the last 4 years of the recession have sat around their kitchen table lots of times. They reprioritized what they could afford and what they couldn't. They reallocated their resources to take care of their family and their children and they have been frugal and they have been conservative because they have to. They can't deficit spend. They can't borrow themselves into oblivion. They can't print the money and they can't write the checks. Don't you think the government of the people who are having to do that ought to have to at least live under the same set of circumstances?

We need for this room to become a big kitchen table, big enough for 100 people of good will to sit down together. We need a White House that will submit a budget we can then argue about and set the priorities of this country and try and put a governor on what we are spending, try and put some type of accountability for where we are going, try and forecast into the future what it is the American people can expect of all of us.

So when tonight the President talks about fairness, I hope one of his quotes will be: It is only fair to expect me, the President, to submit a budget to the Congress, and it is only fair for me, the President, to expect the Congress to act on that budget--because, after all, everything else flows from that. In the absence of budget responsibility, budget restrictions, budget projections, and a calculus for the future, we are spending without any governor or guide. It is akin to trying to drive from here to Alaska without a roadmap. I couldn't get there. I would probably have a wreck. I would probably run off the road because we don't know where we are going and we don't know how we are getting there.

Unfortunately, of all the institutions in America, there is only one that doesn't know where it is going and how it is getting there, and that happens to be the government of the United States of America.

So my message, this day of the State of the Union and this statement of fairness, let's be fair to the American people. Let's ask of ourselves what they are having to ask of themselves because of high deficits and high debt. Those living on fixed incomes are seeing interest rates of 0.25 percent--almost negligible. Markets have been flat in terms of investment. Real estate values are down 33 percent nationwide. I saw last night in Tampa, where the Presidential debate was, it is 52 percent. The worst it got post-1929 was 31 percent.

We have the most significant, serious financial crisis in the history of the United States of America, and it is impacting our families and our people.

So let's ask of ourselves, let's ask of our President what every American family has had to ask of itself--sit around our kitchen table and budget and prioritize. I would submit Senator Shaheen and I have a roadmap that works for process. It says do it in 2-year cycles, so we are committed to spending in 1 year and we are committed to savings, efficiency, accountability, and repealing out-of-date programs the other year.

Wouldn't it be a great change in the body of politics for you and for I to be

campaigning in even-numbered years, talking about what we are looking to save and cut, rather than what we are going to do to bring home the bacon?

I think the day of bacon coming home reckoning is here, and it is time for the next bacon to be brought home to be a sound budget and fiscal policy for the people of the United States of America.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that immediately following my remarks, the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Brown, be recognized.

Mr. President, this morning it was announced that the former officers of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are going to be prosecuted, or cases have been filed, for their misrepresentation of the liabilities that both of those institutions posed to the American Congress and American taxpayers.

Last year when we passed the Dodd-Frank amendment on mortgages and on risk retention, we exempted Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae from the liability that every other company in the country had to go through. We find ourselves today in a place where Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have cost the American taxpayer at least $171 billion. That number is rising because of the exemption from Dodd-Frank; Freddie and Fannie, other than FHA, are the only act in town.

A week ago I introduced a piece of legislation to deal with this issue. It is a piece of legislation that will terminate Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and create a bridge, or a transition, from where we are to a privatized mortgage securitization and guarantee program.

I want to briefly address how that takes place because in the end it will pay back the American taxpayer. It will put Freddie and Fannie out of business, and we will have a robust mortgage market available to the American people as the housing market begins to recover in this country.

First of all, the legislation creates a new entity called the Mortgage Finance Agency. It is an agency with directors that are appointed by the President with advice-and-consent approval by the Senate. Its directors are members of the government that deal with financial institutions and financial regulations. It will have advisory groups for people affiliated with housing, and it will be established with the following goals: Within a year it will be up and running so it can be a guarantor of quality residential mortgages--and I underline QRM, quality residential mortgages.

The mortgage disaster America has today was a failure of underwriting. We didn't make good loans. We made high-risk loans because they had high coupon paper and securitized it on Wall Street. People made a lot of money, but America lost and today our economy suffers because of it.

The new mortgage finance agency would be able to guarantee and wrap high-quality residential mortgages. In those wraps and in those guarantees they would receive a fee which would go into a catastrophic fund to back up the risk on those mortgages.

In addition to that, the QRM requirements would make it essential that no loan was made 95 percent loan-to-value. Any loan above 70 percent would have private mortgage insurance on the amount up to 95 percent, and within 36 months the agency would be required to have supplemental insurance coverage to take the risk down to 50 cents on the dollar.

It would be required by the fifth year to have a game plan established and a plan of liquidating the asset and privatizing the guarantee to the private sector. That is a very important process because it is the bridge to the end of Freddie and Fannie and the taxpayer guaranteeing of residential mortgages. We would have a situation with a downpayment of 5 percent, private mortgage insurance of 25 percent, and supplemental insurance of 20 percent, and the risk to the government would be 50 cents on the dollar.

In the great recession values fell 31 percent. In this recession they have fallen 33 percent. So the government's coverage would be 17 percent in addition to the liability that exists today. It is a very good place to have the government and to build an entity that brings us back to a mortgage market in the United States of America that is viable and that works.

I don't like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and I don't like what happened, but it has happened. I know everybody wants to terminate them, and I do too. But we have a difficult housing market in America that will only come back when this robust capital is flowing into the mortgage markets, and that will only take place when we get ourselves out of the current dilemma and on a path toward privatization.

The American private sector is a tremendous entity. It has proven in many ways they can find a solution to most all problems we have, but we have to create a bridge to that privatization. We have to create an entity that works, an entity that is self-sustaining, and change some of the principles of lending back to the way it used to be in this country so that when people borrow money on their houses, they really have a job, and it is verified, and their credit score indicates they can make the payments they are going to be required to make; that their credit history is a good history, and the house appraises and the underwriting is sound. Most importantly of all, the borrower has skin in the game, and there is insurance on the mortgage above 70 percent and supplemental insurance down to 50 percent. When we do that, we have qualified residential mortgages, an entity that in the beginning can secure those and can guarantee those and can, at the end of 10 years, have an institution that can be privatized.

Here is the real kicker. Upon privatization, the money that is made by the government on the sale of the entity goes to pay back the taxpayer for the $171 billion or more they lost, and any excess money, which more than likely there would be, goes to reduce the national debt.

So I hope everyone in this body will look at the Mortgage Finance Agency proposal I introduced last week. When we come back next year, instead of griping about the problems we have had, let's start looking to the solutions that will take us back to the America we love economically and the housing market that is absolutely critical to our country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I see the distinguished majority whip on the floor. I would like to propound a UC, and if he disagrees, please tell me. I would like to be recognized for 5 minutes, followed by Senator Shaheen from New Hampshire for 5 minutes, followed by Senator Enzi for 5 minutes.

With no objection from me.

Mr. President, I appreciate the time.

I first thank Senator Hatch from Utah for 16 continuous years of work on the balanced budget amendment. It was his fight in 1995 that brought that amendment to the floor within one vote of passing in the Senate, and it is his fight today to bring it back for another vote.

I have listened to a substantial number of the speeches, and I come back to three points.

Facts are stubborn, and there are three facts: First, we are spending too much; second fact, we are promising too much to our people; and third fact, we are borrowing too much.

I ran a real estate company for 22 years. Real estate is all about borrowing and leverage, but you learn a lesson in real estate and you learn it very painfully. There is such a thing as good leverage and there is such a thing as too much leverage, and our country is at the breaking point on leverage.

We have a process problem in the Senate and the House. We can't deal with our financial fiscal affairs, our promises to our people or our borrowing, and it is time we change the paradigm.

I support a balanced budget amendment because if it is ratified by three-fourths of the States and becomes a part of the Constitution, it forces the Congress to just say no on spending when we are spending too much, it forces the Congress to look at entitlements and recognize that we can only promise that which we can afford, and it forces us to look at debt and recognize when we are in too much debt and we have become overleveraged.

I want to put in a plug for something Senator Shaheen and I have been working on for a long time, and it is a fundamental process change called a biennial budget where you appropriate in odd-numbered years for 2 years, not 1, and you spend that even-numbered year, the election year, overseeing your expenditures and your programs to find savings, to find waste, and to try to balance your budget. If we changed our process and forced ourselves to do something like that, we wouldn't be facing the catastrophic consequences we are today.

I thank the Senator from New Hampshire for being on the floor and recognize her for her leadership on the issue, also, as one from a State that does biennial budgeting, as do 20 of the 50 States in the United States of America.

I will tell you an interesting story about biennial budgeting. The nation of Israel got in financial difficulty 4 years ago. They were borrowing too much, they were spending too much, and they were going in debt too much. Israel asked around the world: What should we do to change our fundamental process? And they changed to a biennial budget. Two years later, their GDP was better, their deficit ratio was down, and GDP had gone up about 7.5 percent in 2 years, all because they got their fiscal house in order.

So while some will argue that you can't do a balanced budget because it won't work, some will say 18 percent is too much, some will say you just can't do this and you just can't do that, there is one thing we can't do anymore; that is, spend beyond our means, borrow beyond what is good for our children and grandchildren, and promise to our seniors and those in poverty that we can deliver more than we can deliver.

If we face the day of reckoning now and we reprioritize our entitlements, if we put our Tax Code on the table and reform it and we cut spending where we can, we can come up with a trifecta that will take this debate to ancient history, and we will begin getting the United States of America back in good fiscal soundness. That is what a balanced budget amendment starts, and I hope the end of it is that process and a biennial budget as well.

I thank the President for the time, and I yield to the Senator from New Hampshire.

I thank Senator Hoeven for the recognition, and I thank the leader for his remarks.

I just want to confirm what the leader just said by quoting from two recent articles. The first is from an article about Minister Oliver, who is Canada's Minister of Natural Resources, on his trip to Shanghai. Here is his quote:

My mission to China is clear. I have come to raise

awareness of the strength of Canada's natural resource

sectors--as both an outstanding source of quality products

and an attractive destination for investment.

Let me read one other quote that occurred shortly after that speech was made by the Canadian Minister of Natural Resources:

A unit of China Petrochemical Corp., [known as] Sinopec,

agreed to buy Daylight Energy Ltd., a Canadian oil and

natural-gas producer, for 2.2 billion Canadian dollars . .

.--China's second [purchase and second] foray into Canada's

oil patch in [the last year].

So to confirm what the leader has said, and to confirm what Senator Hoeven has acknowledged, this is not something we might fear happening later on. This is something happening now. If we default on the Keystone XL Pipeline now, we are giving a wide open year for the Chinese to come back to Canada, make those investments, tie down that oil, and encourage that pipeline to go--not to Houston, TX--but to Vancouver, Canada, and then on ships to China.

I ask unanimous consent that the full text of both of these articles be printed in the Record.

Just to thank the Senator for his leadership; the Senator's leadership on this issue has been outstanding.

I appreciate the opportunity to share a few moments with Senator Chambliss on the floor of the Senate to pay tribute to a great Georgian, Larry Munson.

Larry Munson was born in Minneapolis, and after the service he got a scholarship at a broadcasting school, and he got a job at the University of Wyoming. He worked his way to Tennessee, where he announced for the Vanderbilt basketball and football programs. Then, when the Braves moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta, he was brought in to be one of the announcers for Atlanta Braves baseball. Shortly after that, the voice of the Georgia Bulldogs retired and went to another job, and Larry Munson was asked to take over broadcasting at the University of Georgia. He was a Yankee, an outsider, not one whom many people thought much of when he started. Well, he became a legend in his time. He is a revered person in our State.

It is said that Southeastern Conference football is not a game, it is a religion. In that analogy, if it is a religion in the Southeastern Conference, Larry was the high priest. He was the man whom everybody looked to to make the call nobody else could. The greatest tribute I ever saw to Larry Munson was on SEC football on an afternoon, at 3:30, when, a couple of years ago, before he retired, the announcer for CBS television brought in Larry Munson's radio play by play and set themselves aside because he was that good. He brought the game to life. He brought a spirit to the game you just could not find.

He was a hometown boy. There was no question whom he worked for, no question who signed his ticket. He was always fair but always friendly to the Dogs. It was his spirit that brought the University of Georgia from the doldrums of the 1960s to the height of college football--the national championship in 1980, four SEC championships in the last 12 years, and, hopefully, an SEC championship this Saturday night.

Larry Munson passed away a few days before Thanksgiving in his beloved town and hometown of Athens, GA. Although he started in Minneapolis, MN, and went to Wyoming and later to Tennessee, he finally resided in Georgia, and he died in Georgia. He is esteemed in our State.

On this day, let me, on behalf of the people I represent in my State of all persuasions when it comes to college football, pay tribute to a man who gave every single measure of himself to make sure every person who listened to his voice saw a game, whether they were blind or could see, because he brought life to a game like nobody else could. He was a great Georgian and a great American. He will be missed.

I can promise you this: His view at Stanford Stadium today is far better than the view he used to have in the broadcast booth because he is high over the stadium, where he made his living and where he will always be remembered.

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