Floor Statements

I thank my colleague from North Dakota for his work on this important bill. We held a field hearing in my State of Arizona on an early version of this bill. There we heard from tribal leaders about violence in their communities. In 2009, the Bureau of Indian Affairs reported that in my home State of Arizona the San Carlos Apache Tribe endured a violent crime rate that is more than six times the national average and the White Mountain Apache Tribe suffered a violent crime rate more than four times the national average. On the southern border, the Tohono O'odham Nation needs assistance in addressing the onslaught of Mexican drug and human traffickers that exploit the sprawling reservation, which is the size of the State of Connecticut.

I would like to address changes made to section 201 of the Tribal Law and Order Act that concern Public Law No. 83-280, commonly known as Public Law. 280. This law was enacted on August 15, 1953. Public Law 280 removed the Federal Government's special Indian country law enforcement jurisdiction over almost all Indian lands in the States of Alaska, upon statehood, California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, and Wisconsin, and permitted these States to exercise criminal jurisdiction over those lands. The act specifically provides that these states ``shall have jurisdiction over offenses committed by or against Indians in the areas of Indian country . . . to the same extent that such State . . . has jurisdiction over offenses committed elsewhere within the State . . . and the criminal laws of such State . . . shall have the same force and effect within such Indian country as they have elsewhere within the State.''

Public Law 280 has been a mixed bag for both tribes and States. The States that are subject to Public Law 280 possess authority and responsibility to investigate and prosecute crimes committed on reservations, but, because of subsequent court decisions that sharply limited the extent of Public Law 280's grant of civil jurisdiction to affected states, these states have almost no ability to raise revenue on Public Law 280 lands. And to the extent that tribal governments retained concurrent jurisdiction over crimes committed by Indians on these lands, such authority is currently limited, as my colleague from North Dakota states, to no more than 1 year for any one offense. Thus, residents of reservations subject to Public Law 280 have to rely principally on sometimes underfunded local and state law enforcement authorities to prosecute reservation crimes.

Section 201 of the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 allows the Federal Government to reassume criminal jurisdiction on Public Law 280 lands when the affected Indian tribe requests the U.S. Attorney General do so. If the Attorney General concurs, the United States will reassume jurisdiction to prosecute violations of the General and Major Crimes Acts, sections 1152 and 1153 of title 18, that occur on the requesting tribe's reservation.

The bill makes clear that, once the United States reassumes jurisdiction pursuant to this provision, criminal authority on the affected reservation will be concurrent among the Federal and State governments and, ``where applicable,'' tribal governments.

Mr. President, I would like to ask the sponsor of the bill to make clear that nothing in the Tribal Law and Order Act retracts jurisdiction from the State governments, and nothing in the act will grant criminal jurisdiction in Indian country to an Indian tribe that does not currently have criminal jurisdiction over such land.

Mr. President, I concur with the interpretation of this provision expressed by my colleague from North Dakota.

Madam President, I will not take 2 minutes.

First let me say that I associate myself fully with the remarks of my colleague, the senior Senator from Maine.

Her analysis and criticism of the so-called S corp provision and retroactive tax provisions should be heeded by all of us.

I thank my colleague from Maine for her indefatigable work on this bill and her leadership to reduce its costs and fix its bad policy. She has spent countless hours working in a bipartisan way to develop an approach that will extend unemployment benefits, ensure physicians are paid properly for caring for Medicare patients, and reduce the fiscal impact of the bill. It is certainly through no fault of her own that the product before us remains unsupportable. No one has fought harder to support the small businesses that create jobs in America than Senator Snowe.

We need to extend the tax provisions in this bill and achieve its other objectives. Like my colleague, I hope we can reach the right result, one that responds to our constituents' pleas that we stop spending and taxing and focus on job creation and economic growth.

The other side has offered several versions of the so-called tax extenders legislation. Unfortunately, each version has had at least two things in common with the previous versions--an increase in taxes and spending that leads to increased deficits. The provisions raising taxes are permanent changes even though they are being used to offset short- term tax cuts. I would like to focus on one of these tax increases that will be particularly harmful to many of our Nation's small businesses, which are incorporated as S corporations.

Currently, limited partners pay payroll and other employment taxes on payments received for the services that they provide. Partners in small businesses organized as S corporations pay employment taxes on their compensation even if the earnings are not distributed. The Baucus substitute filed last night would essentially require partners providing ``professional services'' to pay payroll taxes on their investment income as well.

The intent of the provision is to prevent cases of abuse as when former Senator John Edwards used the organization of an S corporation to avoid paying the 2.9 percent Medicare tax he owed as a lawyer on his wages. Edwards earned $26.9 million during the late 1990s while only reporting $360,000 in salary.

However, the IRS has the ability to go after firms and individuals who do not pay themselves a reasonable wage using the reasonable compensation test. The service has already successfully litigated cases where compensation was considered less than reasonable. A few examples are Radtke v. US, 712 F.Supp. 143 (7th Cir., 1990) and Spicer Accounting v. US, 918 F.2d 90 (9th Cir., 1990).

Furthermore, Congress just gave the IRS another anti-abuse tool when it codified the economic substance doctrine as part of the healthcare bill. Consequently, if the structure of the business is designed solely with the intent of avoiding the Medicare payroll tax, it would lack economic substance and the IRS could disallow it.

Not only does the IRS already have the ability to go after those who try to avoid paying taxes through S corporation revenue abuse, but the provision as it is currently drafted will create uncertainty, cause additional compliance problems and unfairly hit those it is not intended to impact.

One problem with the current proposal is that it will be very difficult to trace the hours of work for certain shareholders and link it back to the firm's revenues. Lawyers and CPAs can track their hours because that is how their businesses operate, but other service professionals such as engineers and architects do not.

As such, this will be especially burdensome for a number of the covered businesses at a time when we are counting on these same small businesses to generate jobs.

The provision also does not define what amount of participation in professional services activities determines if one must pay the new tax. The House version says ``substantially all.'' The Senate version seems to suggest that even very limited participation in any of the activities listed under the new definition of professional services would be subjected to the tax. Is that the intention?

Finally, the family attribution rules would appear to hit inactive family members who are solely shareholders and do not actively participate in the day-to-day operations of the business by subjecting their investment income to payroll taxes.

The bottom line is that this provision unnecessarily treats the income of 4 million small businesses organized as S corps all as wages, which undermines the entire rationale for having flow-through entities: to avoid the double taxation of entrepreneur's income. How are small businesses suppose to grow and hire more workers to get us out of this recession if we keep creating impediments to expanding investment opportunities?

The most galling aspect of this debate is that if the extenders bill passes with this roughly $10 billion tax increase on small business, the next tax bill we expect to consider is a bill to help small businesses with just $5 billion in tax relief. So the net effect of these two bills would amount to a $5 billion tax increase on small business. I just don't understand the logic. Of course, the real logic is simple: Supporters of the bill need more offsets to pay for the increased spending. I support the efforts of the senior Senator from Maine to strike this tax on small businesses, and I commend her for leading the effort to solve this problem.

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski) would have voted ``nay.''

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

Mr. President, the stories we heard were human tragedies, and statistics don't tell the story adequately. Let me cite a few of the statistics and then ask my colleague to recount some of the heartrending stories that we heard from families in the area. When we talk about that, he can point to the extreme southeast corner of the State of Arizona, where we were, primarily, on Saturday, and where most of these folks live on ranches--places that used to be very safe. Today, these folks do not feel they can sleep at night or move around without carrying weapons. They need to travel in pairs. This is the area in which an extraordinarily difficult tragedy occurred when a long-time resident of the area was slain, it is believed by one of the drug cartels or other smugglers who frequent the area.

The human tragedy is the real heart of this, but let me cite some statistics, because when the Secretary of Homeland Security says we are secure as we have ever been, I think these statistics would at least belie part of that claim.

About 50 percent of all illegal immigrants enter through Arizona. In fact, they enter through essentially the eastern one-third of that particular map. The number of illegal immigrants living in Arizona increased over the last decade about twice, up to over 600,000 people. It is estimated that about 12 percent of Arizona's workers are illegal immigrants. According to the Maricopa County Attorney's office, about 12 percent of the county's population and about 22 percent of felony crimes committed are committed by illegal immigrants.

My colleague has talked frequently about the fact that Phoenix, AZ, our hometown, is the second largest kidnapping capital of the world, and the largest in the United States--second in the world only to Mexico City.

We can go on and on about the statistics. We have the highest rate of property crime among the 50 States in the last year for which the FBI reported the statistics in 2008. Our sheriffs and other law enforcement tell us that between 15 and 20 percent of the individuals apprehended at the border have criminal records or are wanted for crimes in the United States.

Phoenix is a primary originating city, where drugs are brought from the border and held in Phoenix and then transported to other cities. We lead the Nation in marijuana seizures--50 percent. Heroin is increasingly found in Arizona, and on and on and on.

The statistics don't lie, of course. But the real tragedy is the human tragedy--the fear that people have; people who are fourth or fifth generation ranch families in the area; people in town, who are increasingly the subject of break-ins and property crimes and the like.

But none of this even begins to talk about what happens when the people who are smuggled into the country, are held in drop houses-- generally in the Phoenix area--for transport either west to Los Angeles or anywhere east in the country. They are essentially victimized by the very people who smuggle them in and who demand ransom from their families in Mexico, El Salvador, or Guatemala, or wherever they might have come from. And until they pay that ransom, they are brutalized and assaulted and become victims of crime themselves. And, of course, they rarely report that crime.

So the human tragedy here is the real story. But it is important for us to at least cite the statistics and show our colleagues the signs that the U.S. Government itself feels constrained to post in order to warn people to stay out of an area which encompasses probably about 20 percent of the State of Arizona.

Mr. President, when Senator McCain and I asked the acting head of the Border Patrol in the area where we were on Saturday, what do you need, he basically said, ``More of everything.'' He talked about the need for 800 more Border Patrol agents. He talked about the need for more surveillance--something Senator McCain has talked about a lot, surveillance to cover a very big area where you are probably never going to have enough personnel even if we bring in National Guard troops. He welcomed the National Guard troops to the area. He said we are going to have to have consequences for people crossing. I talked to him about Operation Streamline. In the Yuma sector of the border, which is on the western part of the Arizona border, the Yuma sector is very close to being operationally clear of illegal immigration issues because they have enough agents, they have enough fencing. By the way, he talked about the need to repair and replace a lot of the fencing in his sector. But they also have a policy that, instead of catch and release, where the people are simply put on a bus and sent back to Mexico, they actually are prosecuted and have to spend at least 2 weeks in jail.

That is a huge deterrent. Because if you are a criminal, obviously you don't want to be caught and go to jail, and if you are here to work and send money back to your family, you are obviously not doing that if you spend time in jail. He said there have to be consequences. We believe the expenditure of somewhere between $1 billion and $3 billion over the next couple of years could provide adequate resources--this is our 10-point plan--adequate personnel, the fencing that is required, the surveillance, the technology, and also the extra prosecutors, courtroom, and detention spaces that would be necessary to provide the deterrent or the consequences, as he put it. There is no doubt the border can be secured. What we need is the will to do it.

Mr. President, might I inquire how much time remains on our side?

That is the time remaining on our side.

Mr. President, what I wish to do is take about 3 more minutes and then my colleague can close.

As he said, if you need a different kind of reason to want to secure the border, then look at what is happening to our environment. I know the Presiding Officer--and his father before him--is keen on protecting the great national treasures of our country, our environment. Coming from adjoining States, we share a lot of the same kind of country. The area in the extreme southwestern part of his State and the extreme southeastern part of our State is known for some of the best birding in the world. The part of northern Mexico that borders our States provides a sanctuary for birds that are not found anywhere else in the world. This fire my colleague mentioned is burning right up to the creek which is one of the watersheds that represents the prime area for these birds to exist. Their habitat will be destroyed if we continue to have fires set by illegal immigrants in the area that destroy the habitat.

If you look at the environment of the area from the air, you see that there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of paths that are worn in parts of the desert that are basically off limits to American citizens and even to our law enforcement officials, but the smugglers use these trails and they deposit their trash. Everybody knows that once you have cut the desert, it takes hundreds--hundreds--of years for that desert to respond. That is just one reason.

Obviously the human tragedy is the one that is of most concern. If my colleagues would hear this one plaintive cry, we were told on numerous occasions on Saturday: Please, go back to Washington and tell your colleagues what it is like. Tell them how we are

suffering. Tell them what we have to go through just to live here. Can't our Government at least provide basic protection from crime? These are members of the family of Robert Krantz, who was brutally gunned down, and fellow ranchers in the area and other citizens who live in the small communities there. They believe their government has abandoned them. They look right into our eyes and say: What are you going to do about it?

The best we can do is to tell you the fear they have, the suffering they have gone through, the difficulty they have continuing to live in an area, as I said, in which some of their families have lived for four and five generations, to pass that message on to my colleagues and say: OK, if it is the environment you care about, there is a reason to be there; if it is crime, there is a huge reason to be there; if it is the cost to the Federal and State government, we need to get hold of this problem. But if you just care about the people who are there, we have an obligation as their representatives to assure their protection, and that is the message we are coming to the floor today to convey to our colleagues. Please listen, if not to us, to our constituents, and remember we all work for all of the people of the United States of America. We are all Senators. So every one of us here has an obligation to the folks--yes, in your State but also to the folks in our State--to at least provide them the basic protection and give them a sense that they do not live in a Third World country between the United States and Mexico; that they are American citizens deserving of the protection of the U.S. Government.

Mr. President, I want to speak briefly today about some broken promises related to the health care bill, specifically, President Obama's promise that if Americans liked their current coverage, they would be able to keep it.

Remember that promise. Last June, the President promised on national television that:

Government is not going to make you change plans under

health reform.

In his September address to Congress, he reassured Americans:

If you have health insurance through your job, nothing in

our plan requires you to change what you have.

Well, those two statements are true as far as they go. The law does not require. The problem is, everything written into the law will, nevertheless, result in that happening.

What we are seeing is new developments every week that prove that what we had said would happen will, in fact, happen. Many Americans are not going to be able to keep the coverage they have, even though they like it. That includes many who have employer-based coverage in addition to many seniors who rely on private Medicare plans known as Medicare Advantage.

So how does this happen? First, with regard to the 170 million Americans who have employer-based coverage, regulations are being written right now by the administration, specifically by the Labor and Health and Human Services Departments and the IRS that will have a direct impact on people not being able to keep their plans. These regulations deal with existing plans called ``grandfathered plans.'' Grandfathered status was supposed to allow employers to continue offering their current plans even if they did not meet all of the government's new cost-increasing mandates and requirements, such as minimum standards for what a plan must offer. That was the whole point of grandfathering.

It was also intended to protect Americans enrolled in their plans from ``rate shock'' or significant premium increases as a result of the new government mandates. But according to the administration's own report, new regulations could mean that two-thirds of all workers at small businesses would have to relinquish their grandfathered status, exposing them to these new mandates and requirements.

The worst-case scenario, according to the report, is that a whopping 80 percent of small firms' plans would lose their grandfathered status. By 2013, the report concludes, more than half of all workers' plans, 51 percent, will be subject to new Federal requirements. So much for the idea that if you like your plan you get to keep it.

These requirements drive up the cost of insurance, impede an employer's ability to adjust to rising health care costs, and ultimately provide an incentive to employers to drop their coverage altogether and instead pay a fine or, to put it another way, it creates a disincentive to keeping your coverage and an incentive to dropping their coverage and forcing them to buy the coverage through the so- called exchange.

The individual mandate provision in the bill would then require these workers whose coverage has been dropped to purchase the government- approved insurance from the new government-dictated exchange, replete with the highest costs, more mandates, and so on.

Of the new regulations, James Gelfand, who is health policy director

at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said:

These rules are extremely strict. Almost no plan is going

to be able to maintain grandfathered status.

So what has happened? The President said: If you like your plan, you get to keep it. We will grandfather it in.

Now the rules and regulations are being written in such a way that virtually none of the plans will be grandfathered so that the employers all have an incentive to send their employees to the new health exchange and therefore to drop the coverage they currently have and like.

This frankly validates concerns that we voiced throughout the debate, that despite the President's claims, his health care bill will force Americans to accept unwanted health care coverage changes and that, in fact, therefore it amounts to a government takeover of health care.

I mentioned American seniors. This is the second area in which they will not get to keep their plans even though they like them. The White House recently sent out a promotional mailer to seniors, saying:

Your guaranteed Medicare benefits won't change--whether you

get them through original Medicare or a Medicare Advantage

plan. Instead, you will see new benefits and cost savings.

Wrong. Seniors are normally skeptical about such a claim, given the President's bill is funded by $\1/2\ trillion in Medicare cuts. Republicans brought this up repeatedly during the health care debate. Democrats assured seniors not to worry, that if they liked their plan they could keep it. They were promised the law would strengthen Medicare. Yet now we are seeing and hearing from the experts that millions of seniors too will lose their Medicare Advantage benefits.

In fact, the White House's claims to the contrary are flatly contradicted by the administration's own expert, Richard Foster. He is the CMS Actuary, and he says:

The new provisions [in the health care law] will generally

reduce [Medicare Advantage] rebates to plans and thereby

result in less generous benefits packages.

That is the administration's own actuary telling us that seniors who have Medicare Advantage will not get to keep what they have. Here is how a Wall Street Journal op-ed summed up the expert's conclusions:

In an April memo, Richard Foster estimated that the $206

billion hole in Advantage will reduce benefits, cause

insurers to withdraw from the program, and reduce overall

enrollment by half. Doug Elmendorf and his team at the

Congressional Budget Office came to the same conclusion, as

did every other honest expert.

In conclusion, we have a number of experts, not partisans, on the record saying that seniors who use Medicare Advantage will see their benefits eliminated and their coverage changed.

The administration is trying to soften the blow by sending some seniors a $250 rebate check. I am sure people are happy to get the check. But it is not much of a gain for those seniors who face skyrocketing premiums and may not have access to the same Medicare Advantage plans they now enjoy.

These developments are consistent with a pattern. It is a pattern ever since the bill was passed and signed into law by the President of broken promises. Americans never liked or wanted this bill, and they are continually reminded why they opposed it in the first place. The fact is, it turns out they will not get to keep what they have even if they like it. That is just one of the reasons why a strong majority of Americans want to see it repealed.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett), the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Bond), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Gregg), the Senator from Texas (Mrs. Hutchison), the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Thune), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Madam President, first let me thank Senator Baucus for yielding time that he has for me to speak. I appreciate that very much.

I want to support the Thune amendment. The Thune amendment is a responsible approach both to the things we need to do but also that need to be offset in ways that do not add to our deficit or raise taxes. It includes all of the major priorities that have been accepted by both sides here--by the Democratic Party's version of the extender bill as well as the things Republicans wish to do--but it is fully paid for. It cuts wasteful spending and doesn't raise a dime in taxes.

The underlying proposal that the chairman of the committee has presented to us would increase spending by $126 billion. It includes over $70 billion in new taxes. That, by the way, is a net tax increase of $48 billion. It increases the deficit by $79 billion over the next 10 years.

That is the approach that we think is wrong. That is why Senator Thune has proposed an alternative that we will be voting on here in about 25 minutes, that I think takes the correct approach. It cuts taxes by $26 billion by extending current law. It cuts spending by over $100 billion. It actually reduces the deficit by $55 billion, all according to the Congressional Budget Office, which of course is nonpartisan.

I want to add a point about the notion of offsetting spending increases or so-called paying for those increases. There are a couple of things that are done in the Baucus substitute that I think need to be pointed out because they are not an appropriate way to offset the costs of spending under the bill.

In one of them, we take the oilspill trust fund that is supposed to contain money in it to take care of oilspills when the company's money--for example, British Petroleum's money--runs out and have the Government assist in cleaning up an oilspill when that fund is supposed to exist for that purpose, to clean up the oilspill. Today this is a tax--it is 8 cents per barrel--for the companies to pay into that fund. Under the Baucus substitute that would be raised to 49 cents per barrel. It may well be that we need to raise the tax on the oil companies for the trust fund to pay for oilspills but that is what it should be raised for, to pay for the oilspills, not to pay for something totally unrelated in this legislation. Because if we do that then when it comes time to tap the trust fund to pay for the oilspill, the money has already been spent on things other than what we raised the money for in the first place. So that is not an appropriate way to pay for part of this legislation.

The second thing is, this is putting off the problem to the future in order to take care of a more immediate need. It has to do with the fact that we have to pay for physicians who take care of Medicare patients. This was a problem that should have been addressed in the health care legislation. It was not. As a result, all of the payment for physicians in Medicare was put off to be dealt with at a later time. Now is the later time except we do not want to do it now either, apparently.

The payment for Medicare has already expired. There is not enough money and has not been enough money for the last couple of weeks to pay doctors to take care of Medicare patients. We are simply holding their bills. But within the next few days we are going to have to pass something that allows payment of those doctor fees to take care of Medicare patients. The idea here was to try to get that to at least a 2- or 3-year period. The last version coming from the Democratic side was, I think, 18 months or so. The idea is to try to deal with that problem so we do not have to come back and keep dealing with it every couple of months or so.

As I understand the latest proposal, we are now only going to deal with that to November of this year. Clearly right after the election we are going to have to come back in a lame duck session. That will make certain we will have a lame duck session because we will have to act on this yet again. Why would we do it that way? It is not the responsible way to do it, obviously. It is to reduce the cost of the legislation here so we do not have to have as much in the way of offsets.

I appreciate the fact we are trying to reduce the size of the bill, but we are only fooling ourselves by reducing this particular element of the bill. We ought to be reducing other elements of this legislation rather than the physician payments because we know those bills are going to come due and we are simply putting off the inevitable.

The final point of criticism of the chairman's bill is the way it deals with something called S corps. These are generally small businesses run by an individual--a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant who has a couple of employees. We are trying to raise--not we, not we, the majority is trying to raise money by changing the tax treatment for these particular legal entities. In order to do what? To raise $11 billion.

I submit that rather than trying to find a way to raise $11 billion, and in this particular case it does not work, we ought to be reducing the cost of the legislation by $11 billion or finding offsets, such as Senator Thune has found in his legislation, that do not result in bad tax policy.

The net result is that, with all due respect to the chairman--again I thank him for yielding his time so that I could speak against his legislation--I do not think it is the right approach. I think we are going to have to go back and get this right or we are not going to be able to move forward or to proceed to the consideration of his proposal. I think a better approach is the Thune proposal.

As I said, we will have a chance to vote on that here in a minute and I hope my colleagues will support the Thune proposal as more fiscally prudent, as not adding to the deficit, not increasing taxes, and not making bad tax policy.

Again, I thank my colleague for yielding his time and suggest the absence of a quorum.

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) would have voted ``yea.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Bond), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

Mr. President, on June 14, Ephraim Sneh, a former Israeli Deputy Defense Minister, wrote a column in the Huffington Post, titled ``Tickling Sanctions for Iran From the UN--It's Now Up to Congress,'' explaining that the United Nations Security Council's recent sanctions on Iran are insufficient.

Dr. Sneh wrote that the Security Council's new sanctions are merely ``recommendations, not binding orders'' because they do not address the Iranian regime's greatest vulnerability, its oil and gas industry. He urges Congress to pass the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, which he believes is ``the last option left to promote peace, to free the Iranian people and to prevent war.''

I agree with Dr. Sneh. Further, I believe it is imperative, in view of the feckless action by the Security Council, and the timid actions by the administration on unilateral designations yesterday, that Congress act without further delay to pass this new legislation to impose crippling sanctions on Iran.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have Dr. Sneh's column printed in the Record.

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Florida (Mr. LeMieux) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Florida (Mr. LeMieux) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Florida (Mr. LeMieux) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Florida (Mr. LeMieux) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Florida (Mr. LeMieux) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

Mr. President, I might note to my colleague from New Mexico that there is a different point of view about this particular nominee. I would venture to say that since his hearing has not been scheduled yet, it may be a while before we are able to take up that nomination. In any event, there are many on our side of the aisle who have significant concerns about whether he should be put in charge of the CMS. But I appreciate the comments of my colleague, and I will turn to a different subject at this point.