Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise for a moment to join my colleagues in paying tribute to the late Ronald Reagan, President of the United States--a great conservative leader of our country and an inspiration to many, many Americans.

I want to dedicate my remarks to a lady named Kathie Miller. Kathie works for me here in Washington. She has loved Ronald Reagan since the day he came on the scene and can probably quote him verbatim much better than I can. He had a meaningful impact on her life, and so I dedicate these remarks to her today.

My speech will be about two events I happened to attend where Ronald Reagan was speaking and the impact of those events not only on me but on everybody else who was there, and actually on the future of our country. One took place in 1975, when he was beginning his pursuit of the nomination for the Presidency of the United States. Gerald Ford was still President at that time and Ronald Reagan was running for the nomination for a full term.

Ronald Reagan came to Cobb County, GA. Cobb County, GA, is where I live. It is a very Republican county right now, but in 1975 it was not a very Republican county. In fact, there was only one elected official in the entire county who was a Republican, out of literally 100 or more who were Democratic officials.

Ronald Reagan came to the civic center in Cobb County, and an unanticipated thing happened, not by plan, certainly, not by the generation of politicians, but a crowd so large came to hear him that the fire marshals shut the building down. This is a very good-sized, 4,000-seat auditorium. People came to hear a positive message about America.

I was fortunate enough, because I had been in politics a little bit, to be able to get in that room and listen to his speech. In 1975, for America, it was not the most prosperous of times. In fact, a lot of the things we have been suffering through these last couple of years we went through in 1974 and 1975. We had a difficult housing market, higher interest rates, higher unemployment, and things of that nature.

So this former actor came to Cobb County and he lit a fire under everybody, and not necessarily about him but about ourselves. He uplifted people who needed uplifting and he did it with a message of a belief in ourselves, a belief in our country, pride in America, and defense through strength. Those messages were so clearly Ronald Reagan. It inspired me. And it inspired me so much that I hoped he would get that nomination and be elected President of the United States. But he failed. He did not get the nomination. Ultimately, Gerald Ford got it, not

Ronald Reagan. But Ronald Reagan didn't go home and pout. He did not stop participating. He didn't drop out. He set his sights on the 1980 Republican nomination for President of the United States, and history reflects that he achieved it. He won it, and it was 8 great years for our country, 8 great years with a man who could inspire and who could lead.

I have oftentimes said that two of the truly great Presidents we have had--John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan--had something in common. They were from different parties, but they could stand before a group of people and make a speech about a subject they didn't agree with and, by the time they finished, they got a standing ovation. So, first, they were great communicators. Second, they were committed to a safe and prosperous America. They were hawks on defense. They confronted our enemies straight up, as Kennedy did with Khrushchev and President Reagan did. Third, and most important, they reduced taxes and brought prosperity to the economy of the United States.

The second occasion I met Ronald Reagan was an interesting one. It was in the Omni Coliseum in Atlanta, where professional basketball was played at the time. The coliseum seats 16,000 people. I was then the minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives and was elected to be the MC of a program that featured Senator Mack Mattingly, running for reelection from Georgia, but the keynote speaker was Ronald Reagan. In fact, he flew from Washington to Atlanta to make that speech and then went to Reykjavik, Iceland where he confronted Gorbachev and Brezhnev and the Russians and he stood for peace through strength, and a strong buildup of forces in America so we could be a strong country that could defend ourselves, not a weak country subservient to anybody else.

In that auditorium of 16,000 people, he stood up before them and did the same thing he did in the auditorium in 1975. He inspired them to believe in their country, inspired them to believe in what was right, and inspired them to believe in peace through strength. And when he left, everybody was uplifted.

I think when Ronald Reagan left the Presidency in 1988, we would all agree our country was uplifted. It was a period of prosperity and a period of strength, and it was a renaissance of the American spirit. That is the test of true leadership. So I am honored and privileged to join many of my colleagues on the floor today to pay tribute to the memory and the commitment of Ronald Reagan, President of the United States.

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

Mr. President, first of all, I commend the Senator from Kentucky, Mr. Paul, for his remarks and particularly his reference to the Constitution. When I read the decision of Judge Vinson in Florida, it read a lot like the Congressional Record of December 23 of last year when we were on the floor right before Christmas Eve debating whether to pass the Affordable Care Act. Judge Vinson was clear and precise both on his ruling on the commerce clause as well as recognizing the necessary and proper clause nor the general welfare clause can substantiate requiring people to make the decisions that the health care bill requires.

I am going to vote for the amendment by Senator McConnell to repeal the Affordable Care Act. I wish to repeat the reasons I stated a year and a half ago on the floor of the Senate as to why I believe that. First of all, it has little or nothing to do with affordable care, in my judgment, and we have seen in the 13 months since its passage and the 9 months since its signing increase after increase in costs, both in terms of insurance premiums as well as the application of the law to the practice of medicine. So it is not about affordable care; it is about care going up in its costs.

Secondly, if you look at the way in which the bill ostensibly claimed it paid for itself, it shot big holes in America's health care future, taking $500 billion out of Medicare to begin with, reducing the reimbursement almost in its entirety for home health care which, in a State such as Georgia with many rural people, is the primary way in which health care is delivered to them, and the assessment of taxes, whether it be on hearing aids and medical devices or the 3.8-percent surtax placed on earned income for those people making more than $200,000 or families making $250,000.

It is appropriate to start over, but by starting over it doesn't mean we delay dealing with the problems Americans face with their health care. It may mean we, in fact, accelerate it beyond what this bill would have done if it is carried out to its entirety.

When we had the meeting at the Blair House a year and a half ago in the middle of the health care debate, when the President and the Democratic leadership sat down across the table from the Republican leadership and for 4 hours engaged in a discourse over the differences in the two ideas, it became quite clear what the majority wanted

to do. They wanted to change the paradigm and put the government in charge of health care in America.

That is why every provision in the bill, from the fines for not buying insurance to the provisions of reimbursement, drives government to be the decisionmaker and the controller, just as the distinguished Senator from Kentucky talked about the price of health care today. The price of health care begins and ends with the assessment of reimbursement made in Washington, DC.

So, No. 1, we do need to change the paradigm and get back to a capitalistic-type system and a competitive system. For example, repealing the barrier on interstate sales of health insurance and having a national marketplace. Allow affiliated groups or similar groups to join together and compete across State lines as a larger risk pool like independent contractors, like the profession I came from, real estate agents, who are not employees, who don't have the benefits of ERISA coverage but bound together could compete with IBM or any other company in buying insurance as a group with a large enough risk pool to reduce the cost of their premiums and raise their coverage.

It is very important to realize that the real solution to health care, both in terms of its costs as well as a healthy America in the future, is the way we practice wellness and disease management. Those are the types of programs we can then begin to incentivize now to raise them in their practice and lowering in the outyears the cost of health care and begin to get our arms around what is right now a spiraling contributor to the deficit and to the debt.

But most importantly of all, the fact that over 70 waivers have been issued by Health and Human Services already is proof the bill is flawed, and it is proof its continuation up until its beginning in 2014 is going to be nothing more than making other exceptions for other groups for trying to make a bill that is designed to fail work. It won't happen. It should be repealed.

I commend the leader on his amendment, and I will vote for it this afternoon.

I yield the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, today I honor in the Record the 50th anniversary of the Center for Family Resources in Marietta, GA.

In 1960, three community leaders--Fred Bentley, Sr., Howard Ector, and Harry Holliday--envisioned a better way to combine six existing emergency assistance organizations in the county under one roof to be more effective and efficient. After working with the United Way for funding, they founded the Cobb County Emergency Aid Association, Inc.--

Madam President, I rise briefly to address a few remarks made by the senior Senator from Iowa and to compliment my colleague from Tennessee. But first, regarding all of these talks about our Founding Fathers and our Constitution, if our Founding Fathers had not intended for supermajorities to determine certain acts of this Congress, why would two-thirds of us have to vote to pass a constitutional amendment and three-fourths of the States have to vote to ratify one? I think that showed the intent. If our Founding Fathers had not intended for minority representation to exist, I wouldn't have two Senators like California; everybody would have a proportionate number of Senators. Finally and most importantly, with regard to the notion that we are the only democracy in the world to have a rule where majority rules, the fact is, that may be true. We are also the richest, safest, most prosperous democracy in the world, and that has a lot to do with the way we govern ourselves. So I wanted to make those three points.

I wish to congratulate Senators Wyden, McCaskill, and Grassley on what I think is a very appropriate amendment to make sure we have total transparency in our process of holds in the Senate. I think that is right, and I think that is exactly what the American people would express.

Lastly, I wish to thank the Senator from Tennessee and the Senator from New York. In the last few weeks, they have done a lot of good work--yeoman's work, as a matter of fact--to make sure this Senate doesn't rush to judgment and make a mistake that would not be in the interests of the institution or the American people. The Senate in the end is all about Senators putting their shoulders to the grindstone and making things work, and I think in this case the Senator from Tennessee has done exactly that, and I wish to compliment him on his work.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Oregon. This is very important work, and we are in our late hour. Sometimes we do our best in the late hour.

The unintended consequence of the Dodd-Frank legislation with regard to IOLTA is it not being extended and we are going to literally have thousands of escrow accounts held by law firms and attorneys, real estate transactions, dispute resolution transactions, and beneficial programs that will have to be spread among many more banks because the insurance level, which is now limited, drops to $250,000. It would force the transfer of escrow account money out of any number of banks. At a time when capital is critical in small community banks, the unintended consequence might have been to take them below tier one capital requirements and put them in a stress situation.

I commend the distinguished Senator from Oregon for his work on this legislation. I thank the Senator from Louisiana, Mr. Vitter, for his consent for us to bring this forward. I give wholehearted support to the unanimous consent request.

I yield back to the Senator.

Madam President, I commend the Senator from Oregon and thank him for his help on this important issue for people all over the United States, not just in Oregon and Georgia but around the country. This is a great effort, and I commend him on it.

Madam President, I wish to take an additional minute, if I might--the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee is on the floor--to say, in addition to my statement I made 2 days ago in a speech on the floor with regard to the START treaty, that I wish to thank the chairman and the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee for the accommodating process from day one in April until today, where the treaty will ultimately pass on the floor of the Senate.

Legislation is about improving ideas and making sure the interest of the

American people and the United States of America is protected. Through the work of Senators Lugar and Kerry, we have been able to craft amendments to the resolution of ratification on the START treaty that ensure missile defense and modernization--the two contentious points on this legislation which came from the committee--are not only taken care of, but they are buttoned down and they are clear. And I thank the chairman and the ranking member for their willingness to do so.

I want to let everyone who is listening and those who will read the reports of this debate know that this has been a 7-month process, not a 9-day process, and it has been a detailed process. It has been the work of the will of the people of the United States of America, and the U.S. Senate has worked its will. When it is ratified today, it will be a step forward in the future for my children and grandchildren.

During my campaign when I ran for reelection this year, I made the following statement: The rest of my life is about doing everything I can do to see to it that the lives of my children and grandchildren are safer, more secure, and as affluent as my life has been because of my parents and grandparents. Today, in this ratification, we are ensuring that we will be strong in our strength, we will trust but we will verify. We will make sure we can fight, if necessary, but we will also make sure we are accountable. And most important of all, with regard to the biggest threats we face--terrorism and loose nuclear materials falling into the hands of a rogue nation--we will be a safer country because of this, and I thank the chairman and ranking member because of it.

I thank the chairman for his time, and I yield back.

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

Mr. President, on the 8th day of November of this year, I, along with Senator Hagan from North Carolina and Senator Landrieu from Louisiana, sent a letter to Secretary Donovan, Chairman Bernanke, Acting Director DeMarco, Chairman Sheila Blair, Chairman Schapiro, and Acting Comptroller Walsh, asking them to look closely at the 941(b) requirements of the Dodd-Frank bill relating to risk retention and to urge them to complete their work on carrying out the intent of that legislation through the amendment that the three of us cosponsored to create the exemption for risk retention requirements by the definition of a qualified mortgage.

I rise today, on one of the final days in this Congress, to raise the importance of this issue because of the current fragile condition of the U.S. housing economy and, most importantly, to underscore what a handful of Senators in this body did last summer in the financial reform bill to begin to improve and strengthen the eroding lending standards that got us into this position in the first place.

I ran a business for 22 years in residential housing in Atlanta. During that time, the average default rate, or delinquent rate, was about 3 percent on mortgages. The foreclosure rate was less than 1\1/ 2\. Things have changed dramatically in the last few years because of sloppy underwriting, no credit, and no documentation. We have seen some unbelievable new numbers. To give you some perspective, according to FDIC, in the third quarter of 2010, total mortgage delinquencies across the country were about 10 percent of the market, or 1 in 10. In Georgia, that number exceeded 12. In the 100-percent government- guaranteed FHA market, the delinquency rate is just above 13 percent and, sadly, in Georgia, in the third quarter that rose above 20 percent--1 in every 5.

We have mounting problems with growing housing inventory--problems that are only made worse with excessive fees currently charged by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, frankly, keeping many from being able to refinance into a more affordable mortgage, therefore, becoming delinquent and being foreclosed on.

I am extremely proud of the bipartisan provision that Senator Hagan, Senator Landrieu, and myself added to the financial reform bill. Earlier this year, I began working with Senators Landrieu and Hagan to develop the concept of a qualified residential mortgage, QRM or, as I call it, a ``new gold standard'' for residential mortgages, which ultimately was included in the credit risk retention title of 941(b) in the financial reform bill. While risk retention can serve as a strong deterrent to excessive risk taken by lenders, it also imposes the potential of a constriction of credit in the mortgage market.

I want to make this point clear. The risk retention provision of the Dodd-Frank bill would require an originator of a mortgage to retain 5 percent of that mortgage as risk retention. As we all know, tier one capital requirements by the banking system is only 8 percent for the solid footing for the entire bank, and we were going to add another 5 to it just because they make mortgages. What is going to happen is that very few mortgages will be made, and those that will be made will be only the most pristine ones, not necessarily the ones that meet the needs of middle America.

Likewise, our standard makes sure venturesome lending practice can never become qualified residential mortgages. We specifically delineate in the amendment that things such as balloon mortgages, no-doc loans, drive-by appraisals, and interest-only loans, loans with huge prepayment penalties, and negative amortization mortgages would never be considered a qualified mortgage. Against those loans, you

should require risk retention and additional security on the part of the lenders.

But in terms of mainstream America, we need to go back to the good old days of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, where if you got a residential mortgage, you had to get a letter from your boss saying that you had a job, your bank had to certify that you had the money in the bank account to pay the downpayment, your credit report had to be a good one saying you could pay your mortgage, the appraiser had to use legitimate information to appraise the house, and the underwriters had to match your debt against your income to ensure that they weren't at too high a risk. That is why in those wonderful days we only had 1.5 percent in foreclosures and less than 3 percent in defaults.

But the easy underwriting that started in 2006, and then accelerated, caused us lots of problems. That is what we are here to try to stop today. I am optimistic that our amendment will be the first step to correct the lending practices of the past and will set on a better path in the future.

In the law, we instructed the regulators to use specific criteria in conjunction with loan performance data to define the contours of the quality residential mortgage exemption. As we said in our November 8 letter to the regulators responsible for writing these rules:

It was our clear legislative intent that, underwriting and

product features that data indicate a lower risk of default

must be considered. Prior to sponsoring the Amendment, we

were provided with analyses of loan level data that

demonstrated that loans that satisfy the elements set out in

our Amendment default less frequently and cure more often

than riskier loans. We understand that each of your agencies

have been provided with this analysis, updated to reflect

loan performance in 2010. In particular this analysis

demonstrates that historically tested standards, including

full documentation of borrower income and assets, reasonable

total debt-to-income ratios and restrictions on riskier loan

features, such as negative amortization and balloon payments,

significantly reduce the risk of default. In addition, for

loans with lower down payments that have combined loan-to-

value ratios greater than 80 percent, the protections

provided by mortgage insurance result in lower losses for

lenders and investors and fewer foreclosures for borrowers

than similar loans that lack insurance. The mortgage

insurance provision ensures that the qualified residential

mortgage exemption can serve those consumers that cannot

afford a 20 percent down payment while putting substantial

private capital at risk to drive underwriting discipline.

I am aware these agencies are actively engaged and meeting. I recently received a response from the regulators assuring me that they will be implementing our QRM legislation ``in a manner consistent with the language and purposes of that section.'' It is my hope that these regulators will follow the intent of the legislation, by ensuring a broad spectrum of qualified borrowers will fit under the umbrella of protection under the qualified residential mortgage safety and soundness provisions.

I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues on the other side in the new Congress to help to continue to improve our system of housing finance. It is with great anticipation that we await the administration's plans to do with Freddie and Fannie.

I have my own ideas, which I have expressed on this floor. I look forward to working with Chairman Tim Johnson and Ranking Member Shelby in the months ahead.

The crisis we have experienced in large foreclosures and defaults, the declines in housing values, and a protracted housing recession, will only be cured in time when we return to a strong and vibrant lending market, where qualified loans and borrowers come together to fuel the housing market once again. Until that happens, I fear that the recession and the recovery we are in will be protracted and will be slow, and the American dream will still be out of reach of too many Americans.

I yield the floor.

May I inquire if there is a scheduled recess at 12:30?

Madam President, I was on the floor last night and addressed my significant concerns with the omnibus and the dual-track process we are on right now. That statement has been made. I come this morning to address the START treaty, the New START treaty. I voted for it to come out of the Foreign Relations Committee to the floor. I want to go through my reasons for having done so. I wanted to talk about what the New START treaty is, not what it is not.

First, I want to pay tribute to Dick Lugar. He has been a bastion of strength on nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation issues for years. I thank Senator Kerry for the time he gave us to go through hour after hour after hour of hearings and hour after hour after hour of secure briefing in the bowels of the new Visitor Center, where we read the summary of the notes of negotiations on the treaty, where we read the threat initiative and the estimate of the terrorism threat initiative and all the classified documentation about which we cannot speak on this floor. These things are critical to our consideration as we debate this treaty.

I wish to talk about two Senators, one a Democrat and one a Republican. With all due respect to the chairman, it is not he. It is a Democrat by the same of Sam Nunn from Georgia, who chaired the Armed Services Committee, who, along with Senator Lugar, put together Nunn- Lugar and the cooperative threat initiative. I sought out Senator Nunn and Senator Lugar in my deliberations during the committee debate and my consideration of what I would do in terms of that committee vote and later a vote on the floor. I wish to make a couple notes about the success of the Nunn-Lugar initiative. Nunn-Lugar is a commitment to see to it that nuclear materials are secure. It is a commitment to see to it that loose nukes around the world don't fall in the hands of those who would kill my grandchildren, your grandchildren or all of us in the United States. I don't think it has been mentioned, but as a result of the Nunn-Lugar initiative, since 1991, since its formation, they have reduced the number of loose nukes in the world by 7,599.

Belarus, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan no longer have nuclear arsenals. Through that comprehensive threat initiative, they have destroyed the weapons, and they have turned weapons of mass destruction into plowshares that are powering powerplants. The nuclear threat initiative does not mean we get out of the business of having a nuclear arsenal. It means we get in the business of security for the nukes that are there and establish goals toward nonproliferation which to all of us is critically important.

My history as far as this goes back to the 1950s. It goes back to Ms. Hamberger's first grade class, when I remember getting under the school desk once a week to practice what we would do if a nuclear attack hit the United States. My history with this goes back to October of 1962 when, as a freshman at the University of Georgia, I stood in fear with all my colleagues and watched what was happening in Cuba, watched the blockade, watched the strength of John Kennedy, who faced the Russians down and ultimately prevented what would have been a nuclear strike against the United States and ultimately our strike against them in Cuba as well as in Russia.

Then I remember the night in October of 1986, when I had the honor to introduce Ronald Reagan in Atlanta the night before he flew to Iceland to begin negotiations on nuclear treaties at that time. In one speech made today, it has been referenced that Reagan rejected what Gorbachev offered at Reykjavik. That is correct. Reagan rejected not doing research and development and building a nuclear arsenal. But what he did insist on was verification of what both countries were doing so we could never have a situation of not having transparency, not having intelligence, and not knowing what the right and left hand were doing. It was out of that rejection and at his insistence that the beginning of the negotiations for the START treaty began. They were ultimately signed in 1991, under the administration of George H.W. Bush.

Until December 5 of last year, that START treaty had been in place. For those years, the United States had transparency. It had verification. It had cooperative communication back and forth between the two countries that controlled 90 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world. My history with this goes all the way back to climbing under a school desk, to introducing President Ronald Reagan, to 1 year serving on the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate.

My decision to support the treaty coming out of the committee were based on four principles. The first is inspections. It has been said the inspections have been reduced. What has not been said is the number of sites to inspect have also been greatly reduced. The number of inspections correspond with what is necessary to inspect the Russian arsenal and know whether they are complying with the treaty. Inspections are very important. We learned on 9/11 what happens when we don't have human intelligence on the ground where we need it. What happens is we get surprised. What happened to us on 9/11 is almost 3,000 citizens died at the hands of a heinous attack by radical terrorists because we didn't have as good intelligence as we needed to have. That is why I don't want to turn my back on the opportunity to have human intelligence on the ground in the Russian Federation verifying that they are complying with a mutual pact we have made with them and, correspondingly, the transparency they have to inspect our nuclear arsenal in the United States.

The second point I wish to make that caused me to come to the conclusion it was the right thing to do to support the treaty in committee was the verification process. I have heard some people say this verification process is not as good as the old verification process. I am not going to get into that argument, but this verification process is a heck of a lot better than no verification process at all, which is exactly what we have today.

Since December 5 of last year, we haven't had the human intelligence. We couldn't verify. Verification is critically important because with verification comes communication. With communication comes understanding, and from that understanding and communication comes intelligence. While our inspections are to make sure the quantity of the nuclear arsenal and the warheads and the delivery systems are within compliance, it also gives us interaction to learn what others may know about nuclear weapons around the world that are not covered by this treaty.

That brings me to one other point. It has been said by some that bilateral treaties are no longer useful in terms of nuclear power; we need multilateral treaties. I have to ask this question: If we reject the one bilateral treaty over nuclear power, how will we ever get to a multilateral treaty? We will not do it. I think it is important to have a bilateral treaty between the two countries that controls 90 percent of the weapons so we see to it, as other countries gain nuclear power, we can bring

them into a regimen that requires transparency and accountability too. You will never be able to do that if you reject it between yourself and the Russian Federation.

Now, the third thing I want to talk about for a second--I mentioned Senator Nunn before. He served as Armed Services chairman, and so did John Warner, who is a distinguish retired Republican Member of this Senate. They released a joint statement not too long ago and raised a point I had not thought of. If you will beg my doing this, I will read on the floor of the Senate one of the points they made that was supportive of this treaty. I quote from Senator Nunn and Senator Warner:

. . . Washington and Moscow should expand use of existing

Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers--which we--

Meaning Warner and Nunn--

and other members of Congress--

Meaning Dick Lugar--

established with President Ronald Reagan to further reduce

nuclear threats.

For example, to improve both nations' early warning

capabilities, the centers could exchange data on global

missile launchers. Other nations could be integrated into

this system. It could provide the basis for a joint

initiative involving Russia, the United States and the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization on a missile defense

architecture for Europe that would help address other key

issues, like tactical nuclear weapons vulnerable to theft by

terrorists. Indeed, when the centers were proposed, they were

envisioned to help prevent catastrophic nuclear terrorism.

These initiatives can go forward with a New START Treaty.

I thought that observation was very telling and looking prospectively into the future about, again, having the two nations--the Russian Federation and the United States--bring in other people, such as NATO, to be a part of a treaty and a missile defense system that is agreeable with all parties. The absence of negotiation, the absence of transparency, the absence of cooperation ensures that cannot happen.

My fourth point is this: The thing I fear the most as a citizen, the thing I fear the most as a Senator, and the thing I fear the most, quite frankly, as the father of three and grandfather of nine is a nuclear fissionable material getting into the hands of a radical terrorist. That is the fear that all of us dread.

It is critical, when we look at what the Nunn-Lugar initiative has done in the destruction of loose nukes--7,599--what the original START treaty, the foundation it gave us, to begin to reduce nuclear weapon proliferation without reducing our ability to defend ourselves and to launch strikes that are necessary to protect the people of the United States of America.

But I worry about one of the radical terrorists getting hold of one of these materials, and I fear in the absence of transparency, verification, and inspection, we run the risk, unwittingly, of playing into their hands and making that type of a material more and more available.

What is known as the Lugar Doctrine is very important to understand at this stage of the debate. In doing my research on the treaty, and the work that Dick Lugar and others have done on nonproliferation, I came upon what is known as the Lugar Doctrine. I would like to read it because it answers the question I just raised about a loose nuke getting into the hands of a rogue terrorist:

Every nation that has weapons and materials of mass

destruction must account for what it has, spend its own money

or obtain international technical and financial resources to

safely secure what it has, and pledge that no other nation,

cell, or cause will be allowed access or use.

That is as clearly and as succinctly as you can state the future fear that all of us have for this country and what might happen with nuclear weapons.

So in closing my remarks, I went through interviews with Sam Nunn, listened to the chairman and the ranking member, listened to the testimony, Ms. Gottemoeller, and all the others, read the documentation, which everybody else can read in the secure briefing room, and I came to the conclusion that verification is better than no verification at all; that inspections and transparency are what prohibit things like what happened on 9/11 from ever happening again, and that you can never expect multilateral negotiations with other countries that have some degree of nuclear power if the two greatest powers refuse to sit down and negotiate and extend the understanding they have had since 1991.

Only through setting the example, without giving in or capitulating a thing, do we hopefully give hope to the future that my grandchildren and yours can live in a world that will not be free of nukes but will be secure; that loose nukes are not in the hands of bad people; and we have transparency and accountability while still having the capability to defend ourselves and execute the security of the people of the United States of America.

It is for those reasons I supported the New START treaty in the committee, and I submit it for the consideration of the Members of the Senate.

I yield back my time.

Mr. President, I commend the Senator from California on her remarks. As a member of Foreign Relations, I voted to bring the treaty to the floor. However, there is another pressing matter I wish to discuss this evening.

The Senate now has before it the START treaty, but on a parallel track we have before us the question of financing the government through the end of the fiscal year next year. There are three alternatives available to us. One of them is a continuing resolution through the end of next year. One of them is a continuing resolution that is modified with an Omnibus appropriations that is put on top of it which I understand is the plan. There is a third option which is the short-term CR. It is that question I rise to address for a few moments.

Forty-three days ago, I ran for reelection to the Senate. For 2 years, I traveled the State of Georgia campaigning for my reelection. Throughout that campaign, there were three guiding issues on which I focused. One was tax policy. At a time of economic recession and high unemployment, the worst thing for us to do is to raise taxes of the American people and, in particular, small business, which hires the majority of the people. That is No. 1.

No. 2, I campaigned on the fact that we didn't have a revenue problem nearly as much as we had a spending problem; that we needed to ask of ourselves, as Senators, what every American family has had to ask of themselves at home. They have sat around the kitchen table, looked at what their income was, looked at what it now is, looked at priorities and reprioritized. Times have been tough, and they have been difficult. They did that because they had to.

They don't have the luxury of credit and borrowing as our government has, which takes me to the third point I ran on in the campaign; that is, that unsustainable debt will make this democracy an unsustainable country.

One of the things I understand a little bit about from having been in the real estate business is leverage. Leverage is a powerful thing to be able to do things, but too much can destroy even the best of people or the best of ideas. We are rapidly approaching a time where we owe entirely too much money.

I love to tell the story about a lesson I learned in good politics. I know the Presiding Officer has had the same kind of lessons he has learned.

I was in Albany, GA, making a speech in November of 2009. I kept talking about 1 trillion this and 1 trillion that. This farmer at the back of the room said: Senator, I only graduated from Dougherty County High School. I don't understand how much 1 trillion is. Can you explain.

I oohed and aahed and I babbled. I finally said: Well, it is a lot. I couldn't think of a way to quantify 1 trillion.

I got home that night. My wife took one look at me and said: What in the world is wrong with you?

I said: I got stumped today.

She said: What was the question?

I said: The question was, How much is 1 trillion?

She said: What did you say?

I said: I said it is a lot.

She said: That was a bad answer.

I said: I know that, but I just couldn't think of anything.

She knows better than I a lot of times. She said: Why don't you just figure out how many years have to go by for 1 trillion seconds to pass.

I said: That is a terrific idea.

So I pulled my calculator out and multiplied 60 seconds times 60 minutes to get the number of seconds in an hour.

I multiplied that 24 times for the number of seconds in 1 day. I multiplied that times 365 for the number of seconds in 1 year. Do you know how many years have to go by for 1 trillion seconds to pass? It is 31,709 years. I put an asterisk by that because I didn't count leap years and every fourth year has an extra day. I know that will throw the number off a little bit.

We owe $13 trillion of those dollars, not just $1 trillion. It is an astronomical amount of money. It is an amount we must quantify and begin to lower over time in two ways. One is expanding the prosperity of the American people, because as their prosperity goes up, revenues come back to the government. First and most important, we have to get our arms around spending. I am deeply opposed to putting an Omnibus appropriations bill on the CR that is coming to the Senate and passing 12 appropriations bills in a short-time debate without the transparency we need.

I am not a Johnny-come-lately to this particular position. In the House of Representatives, when President Bush brought an omnibus budget to the House, I voted against it. I voted against it last fall on a number of occasions when we had Omnibus appropriations bills matched up coming to the

Senate floor under President Obama. It is a bad way to do business. By rolling all those things together, you don't have the scrutiny, the oversight or the understanding of where the money is going, and the tendency to push spending beyond your limits actually becomes a reality. I am one who subscribes to the fact that we have to change the way we do business. We have to make hard decisions. We have to execute some tough love. We have to have some shared sacrifice, and we to have do it quickly.

Time has run out on the American Government and our American budget process without substantial reform, which is why it would be a tragic mistake for us sometime this week or this weekend to pass an Omnibus appropriations bill.

There is an underlying reason why I don't support that, and it is because I think a short-term CR makes a lot more sense. A short-term CR will put the Senate in the position of debating the rest of next year's spending or this fiscal year's spending under the cloud of the debt ceiling which is going to confront us in April or May or maybe as soon as the middle of March. If we pass a CR or an omnibus that goes beyond that date to the end of next year, September 30, we have no leverage to address the subject of raising the debt ceiling. It is time we stopped borrowing to spend more money we do not have.

I come at a time when I know the pending business is the START treaty, which I will address on another occasion, but to point out why I am so deeply disappointed that we are rushing to judgment on an Omnibus appropriations spending bill at a time when the American people want us focusing on spending, on the deficit, and on improving the way we do business.

I will vote against an Omnibus appropriations bill. I will vote against cloture on the bill. I will support a short-term CR. That is the best way for us to set up an occasion next year where we address our priorities in the right order and at the right time.

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

I object.

I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for up to 7 minutes.

Mr. President, I rose yesterday afternoon when we opened the vote and voted in favor of going to a final vote today on the tax package before us. Like many have expressed in this body, there are things I like and things I dislike about it, but I come to the floor today to talk about the things I like about it and to make a particular point with regard to scoring.

First, I want to point out that 41 days ago the people of the United States went to the polls and voted. In the State of Georgia they voted for me. I ran a campaign on the basis that we do not have a tax problem; we have a spending problem. I ran a campaign based on the American people wanting us in Washington to do what they have had to do in the last 3 years: sit down at the kitchen table, reprioritize, and spend within their means. We must do that.

I commend what Senator Conrad from North Dakota said, and I commend the courage of the others who voted for the deficit reduction commission report because it is the kind of shared sacrifice and tough love that all of us need next year to rein in spending in this country and get our balance back. But in the immediate future, in the next 3\1/ 2\ weeks, America's taxes are going up at a time of protracted recession and high unemployment. That doesn't make any sense.

In 2003, when I was in the House, I didn't like the idea of putting a sunsetting on the Bush tax package because I feared exactly what is happening now--protracted uncertainty, 2-year renewals, American business not knowing what to do. While I will vote for this package today, I hope we will learn the lesson that 2-year incremental sunsets or things such as that are not good for the economy and not good for America. We, as Members of this Congress and this Senate, must deal with challenges when they confront us--not by arbitrarily setting times for sunsets and sunrises that make us make policy under duress and difficult circumstances.

But on the scoring issue I want to point out two things about the tax rates and about the estate tax. There are those who say by extending the existing tax rates we cut revenue that would have come in. Hypothetically, that is correct, but in reality that is not correct because, historically, from John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, Republicans and Democrats who were confronted with difficult economic times, when they changed tax policy and lessened the burden, they increased the revenue. So my forecast based on the next 2 years is we will see for the first time a clear example of dynamic scoring and hopefully change a little bit of CBO's mind on how they look on tax policy. I think we are going to see more employment, we are going to see more risk capital put out by business, and we are going to see a sense of certainty and a sense of optimism, which certainly our country needs.

As far as the estate tax--and I love very much the Senator from North Dakota, but I disagree vehemently on his explanation about the estate tax. Let me tell you the reality of the estate tax. I have dealt with it. I have dealt with it for 33 years as a real estate broker in the State of Georgia.

The assets of most American families are real estate, whether it is farmers and landowners or whether it is simply a homeowner. Other wealth in America is by people who have a small business. With the confiscatory tax rate of 55 percent, which is what it would be January 1, and an inordinately low deduction or unified credit of $1 million, most American landowners, most American business owners who had an estate worth anything over $1 million would have had to liquidate their estates to pay their taxes.

A little known fact about the IRS Code that a lot of people don't realize but we all suffer from is that when you die, you have 9 months to file your taxes and pay your taxes with the government. They have 3 years to say whether they will accept it. So in a 9-month period of time, a family at a point of bereavement, with some assets, find themselves at a rate of 55 percent. That is confiscatory, and it is not right. If they have to liquidate their property or sell their business that asset no longer produces income; therefore, income taxes go down.

I can demonstrate on a graph or chart or blackboard that an asset that has to be liquidated and paid at a tax rate of 55 percent one time does not, over 10 years, pay as much as would have been paid over the earned income that small business or land would have created. So the estate tax 2-year deal is a good deal, and it should be permanent. Five million dollars is a lot of money, but in the scheme of things for a small business, a family farm, a cooperative, it is not a lot of money. But it is the lifeblood of a lot of families. If we confiscate that business or confiscate that land because the tax rate forces a sale, then we are actually hurting ourselves in the long run, and we are hurting families in the long run.

Last, there is a spending component, and we are going to have to, next year, sit around the kitchen table of the Senate and deal with our spending because it is out of hand. But I do believe the tax policy we are extending for the next 2 years will bode well for our economy. I agree with Senator Conrad it will probably help increase productivity by about one-third, which will be good for our country. It will be good for our tax rates. If we can combine that with a fiscal policy that has shared sacrifice and tough love when it comes to spending, we can regenerate the American dream and the great American engine of entrepreneurship and return our country to the prosperity we all hope and desire it will have.

With those remarks, I yield the floor.

Madam President, on behalf of our leadership, I object.

Mr. President, first of all, let me congratulate you on your victory and welcome you to the Senate. I know you will be a great addition to the Senate. I have already enjoyed serving with you on the HELP Committee this morning.

Mr. President, I rise for just a few minutes to talk about three issues--jobs, the economy, and housing--that I think all of us around the country will recognize are the three biggest problems thwarting our recovery. There are some realistic solutions that are out there that I think we could all come together on if we would just take the time to realize that working on disagreement rather than finding agreement is not serving the Senate very well right now.

One of the reasons we have had a slow job recovery is because of the uncertainty American businesses and American wage earners have in what their tax rates are going to be.

I ran a company. It started out as a small company, and it became a pretty good-sized company. This was the time of year--every December-- when we had our managers' retreat, and we would plan what we would do the next year. We would do our budget, we would talk about new hires, new departments, and new ideas.

Right now, corporations and small businesses in this country that are sitting around their planning retreats and talking about next year do not know what their tax rates are going to be, they do not know what their regulatory environment is going to be. So they are doing what every business does: They are making conservative decisions. They are not risking capital. They are going to wait until their future tax lives and regulatory lives have some degree of certainty.

So one way to bring back jobs to America and bring them back quicker than anything else would be for this Senate and the House to come together and extend the existing tax rates for a predictable, foreseeable period of time so businesses know what the playing field is going to look like. The absence of certainty between now and the end of the year means that no one will make a decision to hire anybody until we first make a decision on what their taxes are going to be. If we decide they are going to go up, if we capitulate and let the current sunset take place, then American businesses, at a time of high unemployment and low productivity in terms of business activity, will see an increase in their tax rate and we will see a decrease in employment next year in the United States. I hope that doesn't happen. I hope we will find common ground and find a way to extend the existing tax rates.

Secondly, I wish to talk about housing for a second because it is an important part of jobs. I know there have been two speeches on the floor this week talking about some stimulus to bring the housing market back. One stimulus that will bring it back is to make taxes certain because if taxes become certain, people know what the taxes will cost them and they make important big-purchase decisions. When they have uncertainty in what their income or their net is going to be, they do not make big-ticket purchases, whether it is an automobile or a house.

But there are other problems in housing as well. We need to fundamentally return to a marketplace that has some degree of liquidity in it for acquisition and purchases. Right now, except for the FHA and an occasional lender in terms of a jumbo lender to a big-ticket client, there is basically no mortgage money in the United States for an American home buyer. Because of mark to market being applied by the

FDIC and the other cease-and-desist orders the banking institution and lenders are under, nobody is extending credit.

In my State of Georgia--in Atlanta, GA--in 2006 there were 63,000 housing permits. That was 2006, 4 years ago. This year, there were 5,300. That is a 90-percent reduction in new construction. Granted, we were in a hypereconomy in 2006 and, granted, overbuilding probably contributed to the decline of the economy later on, but a 90-percent reduction is unhealthy. If we continue to sustain that reduction, we will continue to sustain what is a difficult economic period now.

We need to be looking to the future. So my recommendations are, first, give us a platform of predictability by extending existing tax rates and not raising them in a rescession. That is No. 1. Secondly, recognize there is no liquidity in mortgage money in the United States.

The longer we wait to address the question of what happens after Freddie and after Fannie, the longer the housing market will suffer. So I propose a solution for that problem in terms of housing finance. I don't think there is any question that Freddie and Fannie have to be wound down. They are in a conservatorship now. They have already cost us billions of dollars, and they will cost us billions more, which is why I worked hard to get them under the financial reregulation bill so we could peel back the layers of the onion and figure out what went wrong, but this body decided not to do that.

But whatever happens, we have to create a new entity, and whatever happens, it will have to look, in some ways, like Freddie and Fannie but in other ways remarkably different. But there has to be a solution. The long-term solution can't be a government-sponsored entity or an implied government guarantee. That is what imploded in terms of Freddie and Fannie. And the taxpayers of America don't want you or me pledging their future full faith and credit behind a mortgage entity just to provide mortgage money. By the same token, they want us to be leaders, to find a way to get from where we are now, with no liquidity, to where we need to be, and that is with good liquidity.

Here is my suggestion: we create a new entity to replace Freddie and Fannie--an entity that ends up having a government-implied sponsorship or guarantee, but over a 10-year period of time, it declines 10 percent a year to zero. During that same 10-year period of time, on every mortgage loan made in the United States, a fee will be attached to it at closing--maybe it is 50 basis points or half a percent, whatever it might be--that goes into a sinking fund. That sinking fund is walled off, and it grows over 10 years. As it grows, the government guarantee declines--for example, a-100 percent guarantee in the first year of the fund, 90 percent in the second year, 80 in the third, going down to zero in 10 years. As that fund guarantee goes down, the fund builds up, so it becomes the backstop for another failure that may or may not happen in the future but one for which we have to plan.

This is not a new idea. There are not a lot of new ideas. In Great Britain, they have had Pool Re for years. That is the sinking fund they set up to handle catastrophic losses in terms of insurance. It has built up to be able to withstand the largest of catastrophic calls and has made their insurance system work very well.

We need to establish a way for the government to sponsor an entity that gets out of the guaranteeing business but gets into the building of liquidity business and becomes an entity that can supply mortgages in the United States because there is not one now and there will not be one in the future until we create an entity that gives a foundation for liquidity to come back to the housing market. So here we are, 30 days from the end of the year. We don't know what our taxes are going to be next year, and if we wanted to go buy a house, we wouldn't know where we would find the mortgage money.

This Senate can act and act quickly to make changes that see to it that jobs come back, and that is by extending the existing tax rates.

When we come back together next year, I look forward to working with my colleagues on the other side and my colleagues in the Senate to create a mortgage-sponsored entity that will work and begin to bring liquidity back to the housing market so that construction returns, jobs come back, and America recovers.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I join Senator Collins and many colleagues in paying tribute to the life and times of Senator Ted Stevens.

While today we will lay his body to rest, his legacy will never be laid to rest. There has never been a more impactful Senator for their State in this country than Senator Ted Stevens.

While I can tell countless stories, I wish to make two brief observations to show you the heart and soul of the effect and impact of Ted Stevens. One of my dear friends, the first Republican Senator from Georgia since Reconstruction, Mack Mattingly, from Brunswick, GA, told me not too long ago, after the passing of Senator Stevens, that when he first came to the Senate in 1981, Stevens was the first man to reach out to him, to help him, and to show him the way. I said: Mack, that is interesting, because when I was elected 6 years ago and I came to the Senate, the first man to offer a hand of leadership and help show me the way was Senator Ted Stevens.

Ted was a consummate Senator, a ferocious fighter for the State of Alaska, and a proud patriot of the United States of America. He may have been small in stature, but he was a giant in ability.

I always loved when we debated ANWR on the Senate floor--whether to drill. He wanted to drill. The people of Alaska wanted to drill. Every day that amendment was going to come up, you knew it because he had his Incredible Hulk tie on and was ready for the fight--not in an adversarial way or in a fistfight way but in a pride way, fighting for what was right for Alaska.

Today, we will lay Senator Stevens to rest in Arlington National Cemetery, but his legacy will live on as a consummate fighter for his State and a lover of this great country. As I have said in my stories about Senator Mattingly and myself, Ted was a mentor to those who came to the Senate to serve. May God bless the life, the times, and the family of Senator Ted Stevens.