Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today on behalf of myself and my wife Kathy to thank the people of New Hampshire for giving us the great honor and privilege to represent them.

This is an extraordinary body, the Senate. It is filled with wonderful people. I look around this room and I see a lot of them, friends, people I have had the chance to do work with. I admire them immensely. I thank them for their friendship. And when people ask me about leaving the Senate, what is the thing I am going to miss the most, I always say, it is the people, the people of the Senate, because they are special, dedicated to making this country a better place, dedicated to doing their jobs well, dedicated to serving America.

So I thank you for the great honor and privilege that you have given Kathy and me to allow us to serve and participate in this body with yourselves and your spouses. I want to thank everybody else who has been so helpful throughout our career, the folks here at the dias, the staff, people in the cloakroom, throughout this building. I mean, there are so many people who make this Senate work, people working in the furniture room, and people working in the hallways, our staffs, obviously.

This is a special place filled with people who are committed to making the Senate work. I thank them for allowing Kathy and me to be part of that. But I want to take a point of personal privilege here and especially thank my wife Kathy who is here today. You are not allowed to acknowledge people, I know that, but I am going to violate the rules. My wife is sitting right up there. Kathy.

We have been married 37 years, and for 32 of those years we have held elective office; 9 major campaigns, innumerable campaigns such as those for other people that we have participated in. Through this whole intensity--and we all know, who have participated in this process, the intensity of the elective process in this Nation--there has been a rock and a solid force in our family. She has raised three extraordinary children, Molly, Sarah and Joshua, who have been exceptional in

their own right and have done exceptional things, even though they are still young by our standards. Some of them think they are aging a little bit, but they are still young.

Their value system and their belief in this Nation and their willingness to give of themselves to other people is a direct expression of the values Kathy has given them; sometimes a little overcompetitive on occasion, but that has been one of her strengths also. We have been through some hard times and some good times, and always she has been there to basically be our lighthouse. So I express my love and thanks to her.

Bismarck, at the beginning of the 20th century said--first I should say, Kathy told me I should not walk back and forth like this. I have been doing it for 18 years. And she says it makes people sick who are watching it on TV. Like the famous time she called up, and we were having a colloquy, and there were a bunch of us talking this way, and I am talking to, I think, Johnny Isakson. She calls the floor staff and says: Go out and tell him to turn around and face the cameras.

Bismarck, at the turn of the 20th century--of course, Bismarck was one of the true great forces in Europe throughout the late 1800s and into the 1900s--said that: The defining fact of the 19th century was that England and the United States spoke the same language.

What I think he meant was that the defining fact of the 19th century was that England and the United States had a value system which believed in the individual, in liberty, democracy, and markets. It was a value system that grew out of the Scottish Enlightenment, people such as John Locke, Hutcheson, Adam Smith.

In the 20th century, if you look at it, it was a test of that value system against the other value systems which had come up over the years, mostly totalitarianism. There was a test of democracy against fascism, a test of democracy against totalitarian socialism. And we won. We won that test.

The second big challenge of the 20th century was a test of how you would create prosperity for people, a test of markets versus communism, of markets versus, again, totalitarian socialism. And by the end of the 20th century, there was no longer an issue, no longer an issue. The American philosophy of government had come to dominate the world-- democracy, individual liberty, and markets. The whole world was moving in that direction. Now we are 10 years into the next century, and we are challenged again, challenged again. This time the challenge is different: Substantive, significant. Maybe not at the same level that the Soviet Union represented a challenge, because they had the capacity to destroy us, maybe not even at the same level of fights against Japan, fascist Japan and fascist Germany. But the challenges are huge and they will determine our future as a country.

They basically, in my opinion, break into two primary areas: The first is, of course, the threat of a terrorist group using a weapon of mass destruction against us. We must acknowledge that 9/11 fundamentally changed our culture, changed our personality as a nation, and caused us to realize our vulnerability. That threat of terrorism is driven by a fanatical belief in a religious philosophy. We should not deny that. We should acknowledge that. Because in order to defeat that threat we have to understand that.

The second major thrust that I see as our concern as we go forward is clearly of our own making. It is a positive making, but it is still an issue for us, and that is we have a nation which has always been extraordinarily prosperous, where one generation has always passed on to the next generation a better, more prosperous, and more secure country. Yet today we are on the cusp of not being able to do that again, because we have this population, of which I am a member, called the baby boom generation, which is taking our retired population from 35 million to 70 million people. As a result, we and the rest of the world, and in Japan for that matter, because of this demographic shift, find ourselves confronted with governments which are struggling to figure out how they are going to pay for what our entitlement society is. The way I have sort of phrased it is that when a populist government, a government that moves by election of the people--when a populist government meets a massive demographic shift in an entitlement society, you get unsustainable debt. That is something we confront right now and need to stand up to.

Those two streams are our biggest concerns, or at least my biggest concerns as I leave the Senate: How do we defend ourselves against a fanatical movement, which has an asymmetry base, which wants to do us harm,--they are not a nation state, we cannot find them easily--but wants to do us harm and will do us harm if they have the capacity, and will do it with a weapon of mass destruction? And, secondly, how do we deal with this shift in our society--this is driving the populist movement, which is making our structure of government unaffordable in many ways?

America's greatness and our ability to address the issues such as this comes from our people and from our Constitution. It is that Constitution which embraces, basically, the liberties that allow our people to create prosperity and give this Nation its strength.

Our freedom and prosperity is absolutely resilient. There is no question about that. But government can either be an enabler of that freedom and that resilience or it can be a stifler of it. Whether we are going to succeed, I believe, is whether we continue to assert the core values which allow us to govern well, and they all basically arise from our Constitution.

I have the good fortune to sit at the Webster desk. Daniel Webster was a Senator from Massachusetts. New Hampshire, in an act of appropriate stealthiness, had the desk designated to the senior Senator from New Hampshire by statute in the 1970s. It is a great honor to have the right to sit at this desk. Webster and Clay kept this Nation together at a time when had it been torn apart. It would no longer have existed, because we were not capable. We had no Lincoln, and we had no strength of the North to survive.

Webster, in his speech on the Compromise of 1850, said:

I mean to stand upon the Constitution. I need no other

platform. I know but one country. No man can suffer too much.

No man can fall too soon if he suffers on or if he fails in

defense of the liberties of the Constitution of our country.

At the center of our constitutional form of government, which was designed by Madison and Randolph, which was built on the concept that there should never be an overly powerful branch of the government, at the center of this government is the Senate. It is the cauldron of liberty for our Nation.

Why is that? Because it is the place where issues are aired, people are heard, amendments are made, and no one gets to shut down the minority until a supermajority decides to do so. The rights of the minority are the source of the power of our government. They are the source of the power of our Constitution. They are the source of the power of our liberty.

This is the center, this institution is the center of the rights of the minority. I have been in the minority. I have been in the majority. It is almost irrelevant from the standpoint of the importance of the role of the Senate, because it is the Senate that gives voice to all Americans, that does not allow us to shut out any American or any thought process in America that is legitimate and which can come to the floor of the Senate and make its case.

I have often wondered, what would this government be like if there were no Senate? Well, it would be a parliamentary government, for all intents and purposes, lurching to the left, lurching to the right, and as a result, in many ways, undermining individual rights, but, more importantly, having no continuity of purpose or force.

We play politics in this city and in this country between the 40 yard lines, for all intents and purposes. We are not a government that ever moves too radically left or radically right. That is the way it should be. That is the way it should be. In this institution, compromise is required. To govern you must reach agreement. We are 300 million people obviously of a diverse view. If we are going to govern 300 million people, we must listen to those who have legitimate views on both sides of the aisle.

So as I leave this Chamber, I want to say this, simply: It has been a huge

honor to have the chance to serve here. It is something that is the highlight of our career, Kathy's and mine. We move on with reservations, we hopefully move on to something equally interesting, but it will never have the same status as being in the Senate.

This, to me, is the ultimate job when it comes to the governance of America. I simply ask you who stay here--and I know this will be done-- continue to carry the torch. Understand that it is the Senate that is the center of the liberty that leads to the prosperity our people expect. It is the Senate that is the center of our Constitution.

Thank you very much.

(Applause, Senators rising.)

Mr. President, I rise to speak briefly about S. 510, the

Mr. President, this is not the proper way to address this issue, to add $19 billion to our deficit. That has to be paid too by our children and by small businesses being affected by this 1099 proposal. Let's do this the right way. Let's do it the way the Senator from Nebraska has suggested--pay for it. It should be corrected that way, not by adding $19 billion to our debt.

Would the Senator yield on that point?

Because I think the Senator has addressed a core issue of constitutional government. When the Founding Fathers got together in Philadelphia and created this extraordinary Nation called America, and built the Constitution upon which we were based, and upon which we govern, was it not their intent to create the Senate as a body different from the House of Representatives?

We understand in the House of Representatives amendments are not allowed if the Speaker does not want them. It is an autocracy over there. We know that. But was not it the intention of the Founding Fathers, as the Senator has pointed out, to give the American people a chance, through their Senators, to amend complex legislation? And has that not always been the tradition since the founding of our Nation? Did Washington not explain this rather accurately when he said, The Senate is the saucer into which the hot coffee is poured? The House boils the coffee, they get all charged up about an issue, they pass it without amendments, often without any debate. It comes over here, and the American people get to hear a little more subtlely about the issue, a little more discussion about the issue. Specifically, they get to amend it and address the issue.

I know the Senator from Arizona is here. Maybe he will be able to tell us--I am sure he will--how many times we have had a bill as big as the Defense authorization bill on the floor, which is spending $700 billion, and not had a chance to amend it. But was that not the purpose of the Founding Fathers, to make the Senate the place where there was debate and discussion and amendment? Has that not been basically cut off by the majority leader and the majority party's attitude that they do not want to take tough votes?

I will be with you; I just will not physically be here.

Those are very generous and kind comments coming from a Senator who is of huge stature not only

in the Senate but in the country. I do hope to make some comments on that. It won't take me an hour because the answer is simple: Stop spending. That is pretty much the bottom line.

The point of the Senator from Tennessee and the Senator from Arizona on the issue of shutting down the amendment process is as critical to us getting better governance as anything. We can't have good governance if we don't have discussion and different ideas brought forward. Yet we are not allowed to do that any longer because the majority leader says: We will not allow any additional amendment or any discussion.

On budgetary issues, on the spending issue, independent of the Defense bill, I think one of the reasons we haven't done a budget this year is because the other side knows that if they bring the budget to the floor, they cannot shut down amendments. Amendments have to be allowed. Under the rules, we have to be able to amend the budget resolution. I don't think they want to do that. They couldn't fill the tree on the budget.

As a practical matter, this attempt to foreclose debate on core issues of public policy, such as the defense issue and spending, by shutting down the floor through filling the tree is undermining not only the Senate and its role but the whole constitutional process and the right of the people to be heard.

Absolutely. More than that, it begs the question as to why is the majority party governing. If they are not willing to govern, what are they collecting their paychecks for? Governing means putting together a budget and deciding how to spend the money. They are not willing to do that.

Absolutely.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee, who is not only a former Governor but also a former Secretary of Education. The Senator has framed the question adequately and very accurately, and that is this: Why should the Federal Government be saying to the States: We are going to give you some money, but we are going to attach to this money a whole lot of strings? And the basic strings are these: Unless you spend a heck of a lot more money, you are not going to get this money.

It does appear that it is focused on a special interest group, does it not, the teachers unions? It appears this is more or less a commitment to take care of this constituency out there at the expense, ironically, of a lot of people who are employed in those States.

We use the term ``multinational corporation'' around here as if that is some sort of evil empire. I have a few multinational corporations in New Hampshire--I suspect the Senator does in Tennessee--and they employ people. If you raise their taxes by $10 billion, they are going to employ a lot less or they are going to send them overseas. We used to hear around here constantly about outsourcing--outsourcing jobs. This bill is a job outsourcer.

Mr. President, I want to get back to the essence of what the Senator from Tennessee is saying. It goes to this point.

People look at this and say: Oh, my goodness, there is a whole bunch of money coming to this State. What is it coming for and who it is paying? This money does not grow on trees and gets picked up in the morning by trucks that drive by and drop it off. This money is taken from somebody else to be used for this purpose. When you go to the essence of what this bill is about, it is to pay off education unions. That is what this is about. Let's not be coy about what is happening around here. The education unions were the single biggest interest group represented at the Democratic National Convention. I think 26 percent of the delegates at the Democratic National Convention were teachers, members of teachers unions. They probably were not teachers; they probably were administrators.

What is happening here? A lot of States are trying to reorganize their budgets because they are in hard times. Most States are not able to print money--none are--the way the Federal Government does. So they actually have to be fiscally disciplined.

What they are saying to all the different categories within their States is: We are going to adjust here. They are actually going through a very aggressive--I know it is happening in New Hampshire, I know it is happening in Tennessee, and I suspect it is happening in most States--they are going through a very aggressive process of ordering priorities and making tough decisions so they can get their house in order relative to such things as the cost of education. But that has upset the teachers unions.

Now we get a bill on the floor of the Senate to basically put the States in a position where they will have to maintain the teachers union status relative to employees and actually add to it at the expense of the employers in those States and the people who go to work in those States, at the expense of the companies that are deemed ``multinationals.''

In New Hampshire, we have a lot of companies that are multinational. We are quite proud of that. We are proud of the fact we are an export- oriented State, that a lot of our major employers--in fact, I suspect our top five major employers are all deemed multinationals. They are not going to be able to hire as many people in New Hampshire because of the fact that they are going to get hit with this huge tax bill, the purpose of which is not actually to improve the situation--the States are working on that--the purpose of which is to take care of a constituency group that happens to have a significant amount of influence. It is called a special interest, unless it happens to be a liberal group and then they are called concerned citizens or something. But in this case it is a special interest group, and this bill is nothing more than a payoff to a special interest group at the expense of another group who happens to employ people and have workers in New Hampshire.

If the Senator will yield for a question, is the Senator saying the Federal Government is going to say: If you want this money, you can't improve the program?

The Senator's point is very important because 41 cents of every dollar we are sending back to the States--and as the Senator says, the majority of State money is now Federal money that we are sending down, as the Senator outlined--is borrowed from China or from the Middle East. Our people are going to have to pay all this back. We don't have that money to be sending to the States.

In this bill, at least there is an attempt to pay for it. But the way they pay for it is by penalizing job creators and forcing people to outsource jobs which, again, comes back to harm us for no purpose that seems to be practical other than to have the Federal Government step in and try to control the manner in which these various programs are run in the States and to reward constituencies who happen to be very supportive of the other party.

Is the Senator from Washington ready? May I go forward on a point of order?

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

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

I thought I put us into a quorum call.

Mr. President, at this time I intend to make a point of order. Actually, there are two points of order pending against this bill dealing with the budget. The budget is violated. It is not my budget--I didn't vote for the budget. The Democratic budget is violated two times by this bill.

I am not going to make both because it would be redundant to have a vote on both. It wouldn't be redundant, actually. There are two different points of order, and they are both fairly significant. So I will just make one because I do think we should be on record.

If this Congress is going to pass a budget, which it did in the last session--it has not done one in this session; it should--we should maintain the discipline of that budget. That is why we did the budget. And it is not my budget; it is your budget. So I am just suggesting that you follow your budget, if you are Members of the Democratic Party.

So with that point, I would make a point of order that section 404(a) of the 2010 budget resolution makes it out of order to consider legislation that increases the deficit by more than $10 billion in the Senate for any fiscal year covered by the most recently agreed to congressional budget resolution, S. Con. Res. 13.

The pending amendment would increase the short-term deficit in excess of $10 billion in the following year: 2011. Therefore, I raise a point of order under section 404(a) of S. Con. Res. 13 against the pending amendment.

I would note that this exceeds the budget resolution by, I believe, about $10 billion. That is how much it is out of kilter relative to what we said we would spend.

Mr. President, I made a point of order dealing with the budget and the fact that this bill violates the budget, so I find myself once again rising with enthusiasm to defend the Democratic budget because that is what this bill violates. It is the Democratic budget that is violated in this bill. It increases the deficit in 2011 by $22 billion. That is not small change anywhere in this country. So $22 billion is what the budget deficit increase is next year as a result of this bill. That is why it violates the Democratic budget.

I congratulate my colleagues on the other side of the aisle for putting in place this point of order. I presume they would want to defend their own budget and defend this point of order because they do not want to run up the deficit by $22 billion in 2011.

Mr. President, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. President, a parliamentary inquiry is in order, isn't it?

Did not the point of order lie? Is not the bill in violation of the Budget Act?

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the accomplishment of a truly remarkable American family. This summer, the Strong family celebrates their 50th family reunion here in Washington, DC, the site of their first annual reunion. Although the rich history of the Strong family has been centered in the Mid-Atlantic States, I am proud that one of their daughters, Cindy Strong Woolfolk, has been a dedicated member of my staff, and served the people of New Hampshire for more than 11 years. In recognition of Cindy and her extraordinary family, Kathy and I offer our congratulations on this momentous occasion.

In the summer of 1960, Addie Cora Strong Dixon had a vision to honor and remember the life and legacy of her family by convening the first of many annual reunions. That first year's motto, ``Strong bond of love and support'', which so aptly describes Addie's love for her family, would also characterize the subsequent reunions held throughout the country and attended widely by members of her family. This year's motto for the Golden Anniversary Reunion, ``Celebrating Generations of a STRONG Legacy,'' serves as reminder to the next generations of Strong children to continue this important tradition and carry on the legacy of their family.

Throughout the years, the Strong annual reunion has become a major event not only for family members, but also for various notables who helped to shape our country's history including Federal, State and local politicians. One such notable, Rosa Parks, attended the 1993 family reunion in Detroit. I am also told that Addie's famous pineapple upside down cakes and the family's North Carolina-style BBQ are some of the best in the country.

On behalf of Kathy and myself, we extend our congratulations to Cindy Strong Woolfolk and her family. For those in the U.S. Senate family who have had the pleasure of getting to know Cindy and experience her laughter and warm personality, you have gained a sense of how special the Strong family is through her.

We applaud the Strong family for reaching this significant milestone and wish them strength and longevity for many more years to come.

Madam President, I rise to make a point of order that the Senator from Connecticut alluded to. We have rules around here we have set up to discipline ourselves on spending. Unfortunately, we consistently ignore and waive them. That is one of the reasons we have a $13 trillion debt. That is one of the reasons we will have a $1.4 trillion deficit this year alone. This bill violates those rules. This bill violates one of the sections of those rules which says that in any 10-year period, we shall not have more than a $5 billion effect on the deficit in a negative way; that we need to otherwise pay for what we are doing. Therefore, this bill does violate the Budget Act.

If we are going to have any fiscal discipline around here--and we hear a lot of people talking about that--we should be living by the rules we have to assert fiscal discipline. Therefore, I make a point of order that the pending bill violates section 311(b) of S. Con. Res. 70 of the 110th Congress.

I understand the vote will occur somewhere around 2 o'clock.

Madam President, let me begin by thanking the Senator from Connecticut and congratulating him. He has been pretty effective in his last year in the Senate. He got a lot of stuff moving and a lot of stuff through. And I have not agreed with all of it, by the way. Most importantly, he has done it in a fair and balanced way, always with a sense of humor and an openness and willingness to listen to those with whom he may not agree entirely and allow us to participate at the table in discussions about the problems at the very beginning of the process in a very substantial way. So I thank him for his courtesy and for the way he runs the committee and the way he ran the HELP Committee when he succeeded to that leadership on the unfortunate passing of Senator Kennedy. It has been a pleasure to serve with him on this bill and on some very significant issues as we tried to work through them.

I have reservations about this bill--they are more than reservations. I, obviously, believe the bill doesn't get us to where we need to go. When we started on this effort, our purpose was, in the beginning, twofold: First, we wanted to make sure we could do everything we could to build into the system of regulatory atmosphere and the marketplace the brakes and the ability to avoid another systemic meltdown of the type we had in late 2008, which was a traumatic event.

Nobody should underestimate how significant the events of late 2008 were. If action had not been taken under the TARP proposal, and under the leadership of President Bush, Secretary Paulson, and then President Obama and Secretary Geithner, this country would have gone into a much more severe economic situation--probably a depression. Secretary Paulson once estimated the unemployment rate would have gone to 25 percent. The simple fact is the entire banking system would have probably imploded--most likely imploded--and certainly Main Street America would have been put in dire straits.

But action was taken. It was difficult action. We are still hearing about the ramifications of it, but it was the right action, and it has led to a stabilization of the financial industry. But we never want to have to see that happen again. We never want to have to go through that type of trauma again as a nation, where our entire financial community is teetering. So the purpose of this bill should be to put in place a series of initiatives which will hopefully mute that type of potential for another event of a systemic meltdown.

The second purpose of this bill--and it is an equally important purpose--is that we not do something that harms one of the unique strengths and characteristics of our Nation, where if you are an entrepreneur and have an idea and are willing to take a risk and try to create jobs, you can get credit and capital reasonably easily compared to the rest of the world. That has been the engine of the economic prosperity of our Nation--the availability of credit and capital, reasonably priced and reasonably available to entrepreneurs in our Nation.

Those should have been our two goals. If we match this bill to those goals, does it meet the test of meeting those goals? Unfortunately, I don't think it does. There are some very positive things in the bill. The resolution authority is a good product in this bill, and it will, in my opinion--though I know there is a lot of discussion about this-- pretty much bring an end to the concept of too big to fail.

If an institution gets overleveraged to a point where it is no longer sustainable, and it is a systemic risk institution, it is going to be collapsed. The stockholders will be wiped out, the unsecured bond holders will be wiped out, and the institution will be resolved under this bill.

That is positive because we do not want to send to the markets a signal that the American taxpayer is going to stand behind institutions which are simply large. That perverts capital in the markets, and it perverts flow of economic activity in the markets when people think there is that sort of guarantee standing behind certain institutions in this country. And I think progress is made in this bill on the issue of resolution.

But, unfortunately, in a number of other areas, the opportunity to do something constructive was not accomplished. In fact, in my opinion, there will be results from this bill which will cause us to see a negative effect from this bill. The most negative effects I think will occur from this bill lie in two areas. First, in the area of the formation of credit.

It is very obvious that under this bill there is going to be a very significant contraction of credit in this country as we head into the next year, 2 years, maybe even 3 years. We are in a tough fiscal time right now. It is still very difficult on Main Street America to get credit. The economy is slow. We should not be passing a bill which is going to significantly dampen down credit, but it will. This bill will. It will for three reasons:

First, the derivatives language in this bill is not well thought out. It just isn't. Most people don't understand what derivatives are, but let's describe them as the grease that gets credit going in this country and everywhere. It is basically insurance products that allow people to do business and make sure they can insure over the risks that they have in a business. This bill creates a new regime for how we handle derivatives in this country.

Our goal should have been to make derivatives more transparent and sounder. That could have been done easily by making sure most derivatives were on over-the-counter exchanges--went through clearinghouses I mean, and had adequate margins behind them, adequate liquidity behind them, and were reported immediately to the credit reporting agencies as to what they were doing. It didn't involve a lot of complications, just changing the rules of the road. Instead of doing that, we have changed the entire process. In changing the entire process, we are basically going to contract significantly the availability of these products to basically fund and to be the engine or the grease or the lubricant for the ability of a lot of American businesses to do business.

End users in this country who use derivatives are going to find it very hard to have an exemption. They are basically going to have to put up capital, put up margin--something they do not do today on commercial derivative products--and that is going to cause them to contract their business. They will have to contract their business or they are going to have to go overseas. Believe me, there is a vibrant market in derivatives overseas. They will go to London, and this business will end up offshore.

Then we have this push to put everything on an exchange. Well, there are a lot of derivatives that obviously should go through clearinghouses but are too customized to go on exchanges, and we are going to end up inevitably with a contraction in the derivatives market as a result.

Then we have the swap desk initiative, which was simply a punitive exercise, in my opinion. It is going to accomplish virtually nothing in the area of making the system sounder or more stable. But what it will do is move a large section of derivative activity--especially the CDS markets--offshore. They will go offshore because they will not be done here any longer. Banks and financial houses which historically have written these instruments are not going to put up the capital to write them because they don't get a return that makes it worth it to them.

I guarantee we are going to see a massive contraction in a number of derivatives markets as a result of this swap desk initiative, which was more a political initiative than a substantive initiative, and which is counterproductive. It is a ``cut off your nose to spite your face'' initiative, and it will move overseas a lot of the products we do here and make it harder for Americans to be competitive--especially for financial services industries to be competitive--in the United States. So that will cause a contraction and a fairly big one.

The estimates are that the contraction may be as high as $\3/4\ trillion. That is a lot of credit taken out of the system. On top of that, there is the issue of the new capital rules in this bill.

It isn't constructive for the Congress to set arbitrary capital rules. That should be left to the regulators. But this bill pretty much does that. As a result, a lot of the regional banks, the middle-sized banks--the larger banks would not be affected too much--will find they are under tremendous pressure as their tier I capital has to be restructured relative to trust preferred stock.

This is not a good idea because, as a practical matter, we will again cause a contraction in the market of capital--of credit. As banks grow their capital, they will have to contract credit. When a bank has to get money back in order to build its capital position up, it doesn't go to its bad loans because the bad loans aren't performing. It goes to its good loans, and it doesn't lend to them. Or it says: We are going to draw down your line of credit, because that is where they can get capital. That is what will happen, and we will see capital contract there.

On top of that, we have the Volcker rule. The concept is a very good idea. We should never have banks using insured deposits to do their proprietary activity. But straightening out what this Volcker rule means will take a while. It may be a year or two before anybody can sort out what it means and before the regulations come down that define it. So there will be a period of uncertainty, and that uncertainty means less credit available.

Of course, this is another situation where the international banks are the winners and the domestic banks are the losers because the international banks will be able to go and do the same business--the proprietary trade--in London, if they are based in London or in Singapore, if they are based in Singapore or Tokyo, if they are based in Tokyo. But the American banks they compete with aren't going to be able to do it. So that makes no sense at all.

But as a practical matter, that is what this bill does. So we will end up again with a tentativeness in the markets as to what they are supposed to be doing and what they can do in the area relative to the Volcker rule, and this will end up creating further credit contractions.

So my guess is, when we add it all together, this bill will lead to a credit contraction of probably $1 trillion or more in our economy. What does that translate into? It translates into fewer jobs and less economic activity. It didn't have to happen this way. This could have been done in a way that would have been clearer, where the clarity would have been greater, and where we would not have had to take arbitrary action which was more political than substantive to address what problems in the industry did exist and should have been addressed.

Another area of concern, of course, is this consumer agency. Consumer protection is critical. We all agree to that. What we proposed on our side of the aisle was that we link consumer protection and safety and soundness at the same level of responsibility and the same level of authority within the entire bank regulatory system so that the prudential regulator--whether it is the Fed or the Office of the Comptroller--when they go out to regulate a bank and check on it for safety and soundness--or the FDIC--they, at the same time, have the same standard of importance placed on making sure that the consumer is being protected in the way that bank deals with the consumers. That is the way it should be done. The two should be linked because the regulator that regulates the bank for safety and soundness is the logical regulator to regulate the bank to make sure it is complying with consumers' needs.

But this bill sets up this brandnew agency, which it calls consumer protection, but it will not be at all, in my opinion. It will be the agency for political correctness or correcting political justice or issues of political justice that somebody is concerned about. It is totally independent of everybody else. It doesn't answer to anyone except on a very limited and narrow way to the systemic risk council. It is a single person with an $850 million unoversighted revenue stream with no appropriations. Basically, the person just gets the money and can go off and do whatever they want. There is no relationship between this person and the prudential regulator. So what we will have is an individual who may get on a cause of social justice and say that XYZ group isn't getting enough loans, and they go out to the banks and say: You have to send XYZ group more loans.

We might have the bank regulator over here saying to the local banks, the regional banks: You can't lend to XYZ group because we know they are not going to pay you back or they will not pay you back at a rate that is reasonable. So we are going to have this inherent conflict.

Now, what will be the result of that? The banks will probably have to lend to the XYZ group, which means the people borrowing from that bank who pay their loans back will have to pay more because the bank will have to make up for the loss of revenues. As a result, the cost of credit will go up, especially for individuals who are responsible and paying down their debts and paying for their credit--paying back their loans. We are going to end up with layers and layers of conflicting regulation which will cost the banking community money--a significant amount of unnecessary money.

Who pays for that? Well, the consumer pays for it. Clearly, that gets passed through. This is one of those Rube Goldberg ideas that can only come out of a government entity. They used to say: You know, the government produces a camel when it is supposed to be producing a horse.

There is just a disconnect between the reality of what we are supposed to be doing in the area of producing effective regulation relative to protecting consumers and what this bill ends up finally doing.

I would not be here to oversee it or participate in it. In fact, nobody gets to oversee it, by the way. This consumer protection agency is not responsible to the Banking Committee of the Senate or the Banking Committee of the House. It is not responsible to the Fed. This person is a true czar.

The term ``czar'' is thrown around here a lot, but this person is a true czar in the area of consumer activity. I suspect we will see that this agency becomes a very controversial agency, with a very political social justice type agenda, not an agenda which is aimed at primarily protecting consumers.

So that is a big problem with this bill, and there are a lot of other issues with this bill. At the margin, the issue of how we restructure the regulatory regimes is of some concern, the whole question of how stockholders' rights in this bill--and probably not relevant to the banking issue so much--could have been improved on. The bill overall could have been a much better product. But the primary concern I have goes back to this issue of what was the original purpose--to protect systemic risk in the outyears and make sure we continue to have a strong and vibrant credit market for Americans who want to take risks and create jobs.

Two major issues were totally ignored in the bill which would address that question: What drove the event of this meltdown? What caused this financial downturn? It was the real estate market and the way it was being lent into. Two things were the basic engines of that problem, that were government controlled. There were a lot of things which caused it, but the two things which the government controlled were, No. 1, underwriting standards. Basically we divorced underwriting standards from the issue of whether a person got a loan, so loans were being made on assets which could not cover the cost of the loan. It was presumed the asset was going to appreciate, a home was always going to appreciate in these communities and therefore they could loan at 100 percent of the value of the home or 105 percent of the value and still have a safe loan. That was a foolish assumption, to say the least.

Second, we didn't look at whether the person could pay the loans back when these loans were made at zero interest for a year or 2 years. But then they reset, these loans reset at a fairly reasonable or sometimes very unreasonable interest rate and nobody looked at whether the person could pay them back.

These loans were being made not for the purposes of actually recovering the

loans. That was not the reason these loans were being made. These subprime loans were being made because there were fees on the loans and the people making the loans were getting the fees. There was a whole cottage industry of people down in Miami who had just gotten out of prison who figured this out while they were in prison and they developed an entire cottage industry of former prisoners who had been released, legally, and actually went back into the loan business and were making these loans and getting the fees.

Then what aggravated it--first what aggravated it was the underwriting standards, but then it was that these loans got securitized. They got picked up by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, with the understanding--it was implicit but it was obvious, as we found out-- that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would essentially insure these loans. So if you bought one of these securitized loans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be standing behind it even though the loans were not viable.

This bill ignores both those issues. It has very marginal language on the issue of underwriting. It doesn't get us back to standards which would basically protect us from overly aggressive underwriting.

People say Canada did not have a problem, Australia didn't have a problem. Why didn't they have a problem? They didn't have a problem because they required people who were borrowing to put money down and they required that people who were borrowing actually be able to pay the money back. It seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to require, but this bill ignores it.

Second, this bill does nothing about Fannie or Freddie--nothing. Talk about ignoring the elephant in the room, this is the whole herd of elephants in the room. The American taxpayer today is on the hook for something like $500 billion to $1 trillion. The estimates vary. Some people say it is even higher than that--the American taxpayer, for bad loans, securitized by Fannie and Freddie. This bill says nothing. It is as if this problem doesn't exist. It is as if this problem doesn't exist. Not only was it one of the primary drivers of the financial meltdown but it is one of the biggest problems we have going forward. The administration says we will do it next year. Well, if you do a financial reform bill without Fannie and Freddie, you essentially are not doing a financial reform bill at all. I apply the same to the issue of underwriting.

In my opinion, this bill has some pluses. I know this was worked very hard and I admire the efforts of the Senator from Connecticut and actually the chairman in the House, Congressman Frank from Massachusetts. But the negatives of this bill unfortunately are too significant to ignore, especially in the area of the short-term credit contraction that is going to occur, the poorly structured derivatives language, the Consumer Protection Agency--which I think is going to end up being counterproductive to consumers--and the failure to take up the Freddie and Fannie issue, and the failure to do stronger underwriting standards.

For that reason, I remain opposed to this bill. I understand it is going to pass. I hope some of my concerns do not come to fruition because, if they do, unfortunately this economy is going to be slowed and our Nation will be less viable economically. But I am afraid they will come to fruition.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise to continue the discussion which was raised by the Senator from Tennessee relative to the letter which has been signed by all the Republican members of the Appropriations Committee. This is a unique event, in my experience. I have had the great honor and privilege of serving on this committee now for 14 years, and I have never participated in this type of an undertaking, which is basically the Appropriations Committee Republicans, at least, stepping up and doing the responsible thing in the area of trying to control the fiscal policy of this country when the Budget Committee has left the field.

The Budget Committee didn't leave the field arbitrarily; it is just that the other side of the aisle decided they did not want to do a budget for some reason. Actually, I know the reason. The reason we are not doing a budget of the country as we are supposed to do is that the budget shows we are in dire straits. We are going to have a $1.4 to $1.6 trillion deficit this year. It looks as if next year we are going to have a deficit in the range of $1.4 trillion. And for the next 10 years, every year under the Obama budget and under the spending plans of the Democratic leadership of this Congress, we are talking an average of $1 trillion a year of deficits. That adds up to a doubling of the debt in 5 years and a tripling of the debt in 10 years. The American people understand that we cannot do this, we cannot continue that type of profligate spending, that type of out-of-control spending.

But, unfortunately, the other party, which now controls with significant majorities both the House and the Senate, is unwilling to step up and produce a budget which brings those numbers down, which makes us more responsible in the area of spending and reduces the debt burden on our children. So the Republican members of the Appropriations Committee have said: Enough. We want to stop this out-of-control spending. We want to have a spending proposal in place that makes sense. And we picked a number that is very reasonable. It is essentially a freeze at last year's levels. It is a number which has been supported, interestingly enough, on this floor when it was offered as the Senator Sessions-Senator McCaskill amendment on four different occasions, by a majority of the Senate, with all of the Republican Members of the Senate voting for this type of essential freeze and with a number--I think between 16 and 18--of Democratic Senators voting for this. That is because there is a full understanding, at least on our side of the aisle and by some Members on the other side of the aisle who did vote for this, that we have to do something about controlling spending around here.

This letter essentially says that before we start marking up any bills in the Appropriations Committee, we have to have an understanding as to how much we are going to spend. Is that an unusual idea? Is it a terribly radical idea, that we should reach a number, an overall agreement on an overall number as to what we are going to spend around here before we start producing spending bills? No, it is not. It is exactly what the budget is supposed to do. But we do not have a budget for the reason I mentioned earlier--people do not want to talk about how big the deficit is around here because they are afraid the American people have already figured this out and will just get more outraged about it.

What we are doing and what we are suggesting in this letter and what we are saying in this letter is that we as Republican members of the Appropriations Committee expect there to be a budget for the Appropriations Committee even though there was not one passed here, with the top-line number being essentially the number in the Sessions- McCaskill, what amounts to a freeze proposal--freezing at 2010 levels, essentially--and that we will test every committee appropriations bill that comes forward on the basis of that number, and we hope our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, those on the Appropriations Committee and those who are not on the Appropriations Committee, will join us in this effort because it is a sincere effort and a reasonable effort since it was already voted on here with all of our side voting for it and a majority of the Senate voting for it. It is a reasonable number to set forward as the goal.

Yes, it does mean a significant reduction. We have to be forthright about this, and this is what we need to do, quite honestly. It does mean a significant reduction from what the President requested. It means a significant reduction from what the Senate Budget

Committee passed in committee, which budget was never brought to the floor of the Senate because they did not want to shine lights even on that budget. There is no question it is a reduction and a fairly significant reduction from those numbers. But it is a reasonable number and it is an important number because it says we are willing to be disciplined about our spending around here and that is what we are going to have to do. We are going to have to make these types of tough choices. This is an effort by the Republican members of the Appropriations Committee to make clear that we are willing to make those types of difficult choices.

Yes, I would accept a question from the Senator from Tennessee.

I think the Senator from Tennessee is absolutely right. How can we run a country and a government of a country if we are not willing to decide on how much we are going to spend and then stick to it? The reason we are so out of control around here in spending is because every week for the last 8 to 10 weeks we have seen a new bill brought to the floor of the Senate which has added to the debt and the deficit of this country.

Interestingly enough, 8 weeks ago we passed a bill on this floor, with great fanfare from the other side of the aisle, called pay-go.

That bill said all the bills that came to the floor of the Senate were going to be subject to a test, which essentially said that before you spent any money, you paid for what you are spending.

Since we passed that bill, over $200 billion--billion--has been proposed or passed by the Senate which violated the very rule we allegedly passed to try to discipline the Senate. So it is very clear that unless you set out some hard parameters, unless you set out some very specific spending limits--and that is what the letter from the Appropriations Republicans does--you are not going to get any discipline around here. We will just bring bill after bill out of committee and we will spend money we do not have.

Where does it all go? Well, it all goes to our children as debt, and we have to borrow it from the Chinese or we have to borrow it from somebody else. Then we have to pay the interest on that. That interest does not do us any good as a nation.

In fact, under the President's own projections, his own budget, the interest on the Federal debt will exceed any other item of spending in the Federal budget on the discretionary side within 7 years. We will spend more on interest, because we are adding all of this deficit and debt, than we spend on national defense. What a waste of money that is. So unless we get some discipline around here on the spending side, this deficit is going to grow, the debt is going to grow.

I saw a most interesting figure. I think the Senator from Tennessee has seen it too. Since President Obama has been President, for every second since he has become President, $56,000 has been added to the debt of the United States--$56,000. That is the mean income of Americans today. So every second he has been in office he has wiped out the income of some American who is working, because that income is all going to have to be spent to pay off that debt.

Granted, not all that debt was his fault. But interestingly enough, as we go further into his administration, a large amount of it is his decisions and the decisions of this Congress, such as the $200 billion in debt that we have been adding or about to add that violates pay-go.

This week we are going to take up another supplemental bill. Does the Senator know how much deficit and debt that bill will add if it is passed in the form the administration and the Democratic leadership have asked, just this week? I think it is somewhere in the vicinity of $20 billion to $30 billion of new deficit and debt.

Triple it. The Senator was off by 100 percent but close. In the next 5 years, the President will double the national debt under the deficits which he is projecting under his budget. And in the next 10 years he will triple the national debt. As you say, if you take all of the Presidents from George Washington through George W. Bush, put all of the debt they have added on the books of the United States through all of those administrations, cumulatively, add every one together, President Obama will have added more debt than all of the prior Presidents added, the first 43 Presidents of this country, in the first 4\1/2\ years of his administration.

I thank the Senator from Tennessee for his point. That is absolutely valid. This is a bipartisan proposal for all intents and purposes. It has been voted on. I think it got 57 votes once. I think that was the most it got; maybe it got 58. There are only 41 Republicans, so clearly it had a large number of Democratic votes from the other side of the aisle, because the number is reasonable.

``Freeze'' is a reasonable number on the nondefense discretionary side, at a time when we are running deficits that are over $1.4 trillion. You have got to start somewhere. You know, all great journeys begin with a step. So this is the place we should start, right here, by freezing nondefense discretionary spending. We, as Republican appropriators, have said we are willing to do it. I certainly think the Senator from Tennessee is absolutely right; this is an attempt to reach across the aisle and bring in a bipartisan coalition to accomplish this, using a number which has already received significant bipartisan support.

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

Madam President, today I would like to recognize and thank a dedicated civil servant, Martin Leonard Skutnik. Lenny, as he is known, recently retired after working for 30 years for the Congressional Budget Office. He started at CBO in 1980 handling the mail and messenger duties--before the advent of the internet, email, and blackberries--and later worked to help print and produce CBO reports and provide IT support. Lenny worked behind the scenes, tirelessly for three decades, to help provide Congress with the information it needed. Lenny was a model civil servant, and for that he deserves our respect and praise.

Lenny was also a model citizen, and whether he thought so or not, a hero. In January 1982, Lenny witnessed a horrible event when an Air Florida plane crashed into the Potomac River near the 14th Street bridge. Without so much as a thought about his own safety, Lenny jumped into the river, which was full of chunks of floating ice, and saved the life of one of the crash victims. He was honored later that month by President Reagan during his State of the Union Address, and this began the inspirational tradition of Presidents honoring ordinary people who have done extraordinary things.

Through it all, Lenny shied away from the spotlight and continued to report to work, putting 100 percent effort into his work each day. He worked hard, remained humble, and never sought to exploit his fame. His character exemplifies the best of the American spirit, and for that he deserves our admiration. I wish to thank Lenny for his hard work and for his heroism--may he enjoy a healthy and well-deserved retirement.

Mr. President, first, all of us express our deepest concern for what the Senator from Florida, the people of Florida, and those along the gulf coast are going through. It is an unconscionable situation going on down there. I think the Senator has correctly indicted the failure of the people responsible to bring the resources that are available on site in order to try to address at least the skimming of as much of the oil as possible. I appreciate his doing this on a daily basis until we can get something done. This is critical, obviously.

I want to speak today, however, about an issue that is equally threatening to our Nation--although not as ominous, in many ways--and that is our debt and the continued spending by this Congress in a way that ignores the fact that we are on the path to passing on to our children a nation which they will not be able to afford as a result of the massive debt which is being put on their backs.

We heard today from a number of Senators from the other side of the

aisle how we have to pass this extender bill. There is some irony in this, in that they are claiming that it is necessary in order to address what are significant stresses on Americans who find themselves confronted with this economic slowdown. What they do not address, of course, is the fact that in passing this bill in the way they have structured it, they are going to put even greater stress on the next generation of Americans by creating even more debt for them to pay off.

There are some legitimate ideas and programs in this extenders bill, but they should be paid for. They should all be paid for. They shouldn't simply be put on the credit card and passed on to the next generation. These are issues which address costs of today--unemployment insurance, the tax extenders. They are issues which affect today's spending and they should be paid for with today's dollars. We shouldn't borrow from the next generation in order to pay for this problem--the problems and the issues which this bill tries to address.

Yet that is the proposal that comes to us. Three times now they have brought these extender programs forward. Once they were going to add $79 billion--$79 billion--to the deficit, and it failed on a point of order brought by myself on the issue of budget fiscal responsibility. Then they brought forward a proposal to spend $50 billion that was not paid for, and again it failed. Now we are going to get a third proposal today, and I suspect it will also be a deficit proposal where we add to the debt and pass the bill on to our kids for something we want to do today that is politically attractive.

But this is just a small tip of the iceberg for what has been happening around here. Since we passed pay-go legislation and we heard all these grandiose statements by the President and by the Democratic leadership of the Senate and the House that they were going to use pay- go to discipline spending around here so we would not be passing these bills on to our kids, since we passed that bill--now almost 2 months ago--we have spent or put in the pipeline to spend $200 billion--$200 billion of new spending that violates the pay-go rules, that adds to the debt of this country.

But that, again, is only a small tip of the iceberg. When we look at what is happening to the Federal debt, this is the line. This is where Federal debt is going as a percentage of gross national product. Historically, our Federal debts have been about 35 percent of gross national product. But since the Obama administration came into office and this Democratic Congress took control of fiscal policy in this country, that debt has gone right through the ceiling, and there is no stop to it. It is going up and up, to the point now where total debt as a percentage of GDP has passed the tipping point.

What is the tipping point? That is what Greece found. That is what Iceland found. That is what, regrettably, maybe Spain may be finding. It is when you get so much debt on the books that people stop believing you can really pay it back in an effective and efficient way. People in the world who are supposed to lend us this money--regrettably, it is other countries now: Saudi Arabia, China, Russia--they start asking themselves: Can they really pay that debt back? Shouldn't I charge a lot more to lend them money because I am not too sure they can pay the debt back? That tipping point is 60 percent of GDP. When your debt to the gross national product exceeds 60 percent of GDP, it is generally accepted in the world community that you passed the tipping point. When it gets up to around 90 percent of GDP, you are in junk bond status. You are on your way to bankruptcy. You are on your way to becoming Greece. We have an advantage over Greece. We can do something called monetizing our debt. But we still have the same problem.

We passed 60 percent this year. Why are we doing that? Because we are spending a lot of money we don't have on the extender program and on the other $200 billion of spending that has come to this floor on pay- go, on the stimulus package, on the health care bill. The health care bill expanded the size of this government by $2.5 trillion. All of that is an expense which grows the government at a rate we cannot afford.

Under the President's own budget as he sent it up here--and where is the budget, by the way? Did I miss something? Isn't the Congress of the United States supposed to do a budget? Isn't that what we are supposed to do as a responsible steward of our financial house and of the American taxpayers' dollars? Where is the budget? Under the desk here? Maybe it is down where that paper was that just fell. Nobody can find it. Why is that? Because the other side of the aisle does not want to show the American people what the deficits are, how much spending they are planning to do that they do not plan to pay for--not only in this year but for the next 10 years.

The President at least had the integrity--I guess under law he had to do it--to send up a budget. His own budget projects a $1.4 trillion deficit this year. That is 4 times larger--3.5 times larger than the biggest budget under the Bush administration--biggest budget deficit. It is the largest budget deficit in our history, $1.4 trillion. But that is not the end of it. For the next 10 years, the President's budget projects a $1 trillion deficit on average every year for the next 10 years. The practical effect of the President's own budget is that the debt of this country doubles in 5 years and triples in 10 years. These are staggering numbers. These are numbers that lead to bankruptcy of our Nation from the standpoint of fiscal policy. You don't have to look too far to see what these types of numbers mean. Just look at what is happening in Greece and other countries that have grossly overextended their debt. Doubling the debt in 5 years, tripling it in 10 years is an unacceptable action.

The numbers are so big, it is hard to put them in context. But to try to put them in some sort of context, if you take all the debt rung up by Presidents since the beginning of this country starting with George Washington through George W. Bush, that is $5.8 trillion. That is all the debt of all the Presidents who came before President Obama and this Democratic Congress. Under the budget sent up by the President, the debt that will be added will be three times that, almost three times that. The amount run up over all these 232 years we have been a nation--in 10 years, we will be adding more debt than occurred in the first 232 years by a factor of almost 2\1/2\--over 2\1/2\.

It is incredible. Yet nobody around here says anything or does anything about it on the other side of the aisle. What we hear from the other side of the aisle: Let's bring out another bill. Let's game the entitlements. Let's game the pay-go rules one more time, as the extender bill does--or tries to do--and let's spend some more money we don't have and add it to the deficit and the debt. Bill after bill is brought to this floor to do that--spend money we don't have and add it to the debt.

What does it mean in real terms? Children born at the beginning of President Obama's administration and this Democratic Congress, this liberal Congress--it should not even be called a democratic Congress because it is so liberal--had an $85,000 debt on their backs--think of that--when they were born. However, as of today they have a $114,000 debt on their backs. That means kids born just 4 years ago--not even 4 years ago; 1\1/2\ years ago--have had added to their burden--and they are going to have to bear this burden. This is not theoretical. This debt is owed. It is owed to China. It is owed to Russia. It is owed to Saudi Arabia. This debt has to be paid back by these people, our children. Just in the last 1\1/2\ years, it has gone up by almost $30,000. By the end of this Presidency, should the President be reelected--or even a little bit past that--by the end of the budget projected by this President, that debt on these children will be $196,000. That is what they will have to pay. How are they supposed to buy a home, buy a car, send their kids to college if they have to pay off this debt, which they will have to do through the tax burden? It is inexcusable what we are doing.

Then you have to couple it with the larger picture. Is anything being done to improve this situation? Here are the President's own numbers. Historically, taxes have been about 18 percent of GDP. You will hear a lot of people on the other side of the aisle say we just need to raise taxes more. Under the President's own budget, they are projecting that taxes are going to go up rather dramatically, to almost 20 percent of GDP. What they don't tell you

is that spending has historically been about 20 percent of GDP. If we had the tax revenues they are projecting, we wouldn't have hardly a deficit at all. We would be in pretty good shape.

But that is not what is happening here. As a result of the President's programs--note here how this line goes up sharply during the depression. It is estimated to come back down because of the stimulus being taken out of the spending stream--a very badly flawed decision, by the way, to pass the stimulus in the form it was passed-- but then it goes straight back up. If we were to extend this line, it is way up here. What is that caused by? That is caused by the health care bill, $2.5 trillion of new spending, and by the aging of the population. There is no attempt to take this line and bring it down where it should be going, so we close that figure.

No, this area in here is a structural deficit that has been grossly-- not structural. It is a created deficit that has been grossly aggravated by the policies of this administration and is being aggravated by the policies of this Congress, as we have seen more and more bills brought forward which are unpaid for and end up adding to this red line going up. It is not a tax issue. It is not a revenue issue. The President's own budget--these are the President's own budget numbers--shows that it is not a revenue issue. Revenues, they project, will be very robust and will be well above the historic highs fairly soon.

Why would they do this? Why would people be doing this to our Nation, running us into bankruptcy like this, putting this burden on the next generation that is so extraordinary? I think there is a philosophy here. The philosophy is pretty simple: This administration is very committed to moving the American model. They want to take us down the road of a European-style social welfare state democracy where you actually have cradle-to-grave coverage of all sorts of social concerns and you have an ever-expanding, dramatically expanding public sector. The President is very honest about this. He said that the way you create prosperity is to grow the government. I don't think anybody ever believed he would grow it quite this much, but he was honest about it, at least. But the implications of it are that because of the fact that we do not have the capacity to pay for this government, we are driving ourselves right into a ditch as a nation. We are putting ourselves into a totally unstable situation which will inevitably lead to some sort of fiscal crisis which will be cataclysmic for our country and will lead to a lower standard of living. That is what this inevitably leads to--a lower standard of living, not a higher standard of living for the next generation.

The European model is not a good model for us to pursue. It simply is not. Look at what is happening in Europe--anemic growth, lack of creativity in the area of economic growth, very little productivity, and basically countries wallowing in a debt structure they cannot get out from under because they are not willing to make the tough decisions. Are we going to take that path also? It appears that way. Under this administration, in this Congress, that appears to be the choice. But it is the wrong choice.

There are ways to address this. To begin with, we could stop spending--very simple. Stop spending money we don't have. Stop bringing bills to the floor that have high deficits attached to them.

We need to address the entitlement programs and recognize that they are, in their present structure, not affordable.

We need to address our tax laws, which are not structured in order to create an incentive for productivity and capital formation but are instead replete with special benefits to special interest groups. We can reduce the rates on all Americans, and especially we can reduce the rates on the productive side of the ledger, on our corporate rates which are now the second highest in the world, and still generate significantly more revenues if we do a total tax reform along the lines of what Senator Wyden and I have actually proposed.

We need to change our energy policy. We have to stop shipping all this money overseas and buying energy. We need American production of energy. We need more nuclear; we need more natural gas; we obviously need more conservation; we need better cars--hybrids, electric; and sure, we need renewables, but renewables are not going to solve the problem. It is in production of American energy that we need to solve the problem, primarily, and in conservation.

Most important, we need to abandon this idea that we should follow the European model because it stifles productivity, entrepreneurship, risk taking. We need a model that says to the American people: Be creative. That has been at the essence of what has made us strong as a nation.

It has always been one of our unique advantages over the rest of the world--willing to take a risk, willing to make an investment, willing to go out and push the envelope. As a result, they have created jobs in the most prosperous Nation in the history of the world. But that is all at risk now because we decided to depart on this path of massive deficit and debt in order to recreate the European form of government: a social welfare state, which is, first, not sustainable, and, secondly, is not a model for prosperity.

It is time to change, and let's begin the change right here right now by rejecting any extender bill that comes to this floor that is not fully paid for.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I appreciate the chairman's request. I wish to speak for 5 minutes in support of the Thune amendment.

Madam President, I rise to congratulate the Senator from South Dakota for his amendment. This is a responsible way to approach this issue.

The amendment to the bill that is before us, offered by the Democratic leadership, adds $50 billion to the deficit; that is $50 billion to the debt. That is $50 billion our kids have to pay so we can spend money today on politically attractive things. On top of that, the bill, as proposed, has some onerous tax policy in it which will significantly contract economic activity in this country by taxing people at ordinary income for activity which has historically been taxed at a capital gains rate, thus forcing people to be less incentivized to go out there and be productive and create jobs. It is poor tax policy.

So the Senator from South Dakota has come up with a proposal, which is the way we should be governing now, which is to pay today for the things we want to spend on today. We are facing a $1.4 trillion deficit--$1.4 trillion--this year. Next year, we are facing an equally large deficit. Under the President's budget and the budget of the Democratic leadership, we are talking a $1 trillion deficit for as far as the eye can see. The debt of this country is going to double in 5 years under the President's and the Democratic budget--double. It is going to triple in 10 years. A child born at the beginning of the Obama administration arrived in our Nation with an $89,000 debt--$89,000. By the time my colleagues on the other side of the aisle get finished, should the President be reelected, under the terms of his budget that child is going to have a $200,000 debt to pay. Why? Because we keep getting bills like this: $50 billion here, $100 billion here, $25 billion here; money being spent without being paid for and, therefore, being added to the deficit

and to the debt. It is totally wrong. It is unfair. It is unfair that one generation should do this to another generation, and it is certainly not responsible government.

We had a big debate in this Chamber about 2 months ago now about how responsible the other side of the aisle was going to be on spending. They called it pay-go. It should have been called fraud-go because as a very practical matter, that is what it has become. This bill games the pay-go rules of the Democratic leadership to the tune of $50 billion by declaring it an emergency on items that are not emergencies, that we know exist and that have been spent on now for quite a while. Since that bill was passed, that pay-go bill, which allegedly was going to require this Congress to pay for all the money it was going to spend, the other side of the aisle has brought forward, or is in the process of bringing forward, $200 billion of spending which is not paid for-- $200 billion in spending which will be added to the deficit and to the debt. That is totally irresponsible.

So the Senator from South Dakota has it right, as he so often does. He has said: Let's do this responsibly. If we are going to spend this money, if we are going to put forward these extenders, if we are going to spend this money on these different social initiatives, let's pay for them because they benefit us today and we shouldn't pass the bill for them on to our children tomorrow, next year, and 10 years from now. This is responsible budgeting.

I congratulate the Senator from South Dakota, and I look forward with enthusiasm to finally voting for a bill around here that is paid for, which is what we should be doing every day instead of spending money we don't have and passing those bills on to our kids.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this bill, as it comes forward, spends more money than we budgeted for and, as a result, it violates the budget. We are trying to get some fiscal discipline around here. This would be one of the places we should start.

So I raise a point of order that the pending amendment offered by the Senator from Montana would cause the aggregate level of budget authority and outlays for fiscal year 2010, as set out in the most recently agreed to concurrent resolution on the budget, S. Con. Res. 13, to be exceeded. Therefore, I raise a point of order under section 311(a)(2) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. President, today I wish to honor a resident of the Granite State who was respected by his friends and family for his devotion to service, his devotion to country, and his devotion to his fellow citizens. Kathy and I wish to express our deepest sympathies to those who knew COL John Kelley Springer. Our thoughts and prayers are with those that are mourning this loss.

John Kelley Springer passed on February 4, 2010, at the age of 78, and today, in Rollins Chapel at Dartmouth College, his friends and family will gather to conduct a memorial service in his honor. I hope that memories of John and his efforts to advance the health and safety of this Nation can provide comfort during this difficult time.

A resident of Sunapee, New Hampshire, John was the President of the Dartmouth Class of 1953. Upon graduation, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps, serving 5 years on Active Duty as a jet and helicopter pilot, and many more in the Marine Corps Reserve before retiring with the rank of colonel.

John was also a longtime contributor in the health care field. Serving in various capacities--from hospital administrator to chief executive--John left his indelible mark throughout New England. For his outstanding community involvement, John was presented with the Award of Honor from the American Hospital Association and the Tree of Life Award from the Jewish National Fund. And as if these contributions to country and community weren't already enough, John was also a diligent philanthropist and genuinely goodhearted person, dedicating time and energy to various church boards and committees, and making everyone he encountered feel appreciated.

John Kelley Springer is survived by his beloved wife Jane; his daughters Kelley, Dana, Susan, and Nellie; his brother Wilbur; his sister Elizabeth; and 10 grandchildren. May his memory and devotion live on in each of them.

Mr. President, first, I congratulate the Republican leader for a superb statement on where we stand relative to the bill on regulatory reform. It is truly a bill that is misnamed. This bill should be called ``The Expansion of Government for the Purposes of Making Us More Like Europe Act.''

As a very practical matter, the bill does almost nothing about the core issues that have created the issue of financial stability in this country. It does nothing in the area of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which is the real estate issue. It does virtually nothing in the area of making sure we have a workable systemic risk situation and structure so we can address the issue of systemic risk. Instead of addressing it in a constructive way, which would actually put some vitality and usefulness in to regulate the derivatives market, it actually steps back and creates a derivatives regulation that all the major regulators, whom we respect, have said simply will not work.

I wish to talk about that. I didn't think there was anything you could do that would make this regulatory proposal on derivatives worse. But now we see an amendment from the chairman of the committee, which I am sure is well intentioned, but it makes it worse. The way the derivatives language of the bill has evolved is it gets worse and worse, in an almost incomprehensible and irrational way, which is rather surreal. It is almost as if we were at the Mad Hatter's tea party the way this derivatives language is evolving.

We now have in the bill itself proposed language which the chairman of the FDIC, the Federal Reserve staff, Chairman Volcker, and the OCC have all said will not work. In fact, not only did they say it will not work, they have said it will have a negative impact on the stability of the derivatives market. It will cause the market to move overseas and make America less competitive. It will cause a contraction in credit in this country, and it will hurt consumers and users of derivatives across this Nation.

Those are the words--paraphrased to some degree but essentially accurate--of the major players who actually discipline and look at this market, in defining the bill as it is presently before us. Now, in some sort of bizarre attempt--as if the Mad Hatter had arrived--to correct this issue, we see an amendment from the chairman of the committee suggesting that we should put into place an even more convoluted system, tied to uncertainty of no decision occurring for 2 years. The proposal says we will have the stability council, which is made up of, I think, nine different regulators, take a look at what is in the language of the bill now, relative to taking swap desks out of financial institutions and determine whether that language makes sense. Well, it doesn't. We know that already because a group of regulators has already said it doesn't make sense. So we are going to wait for 2 years to determine it doesn't make sense, when we already know it doesn't. Then they are going to make that recommendation to the Congress, so the Congress gets to legislate to correct what we already know is an error in the bill.

Then, to make this an even more Byzantine exercise in regulatory absurdity, the Secretary of the Treasury has the right to overrule the Congress or maybe act independently of the Congress and take action pursuant to whatever the stability council decided.

On top of this convoluted exercise in chaos, the proposal actually undermines the Lincoln proposal, which is in the bill, and makes it even less workable, by saying the swap desk cannot even be retained by affiliates but must be totally separated, which inevitably leads to swap desks that do not have capital adequacy or stability or the necessary strength to defend the derivatives action which they are making markets in. So you weaken and significantly reduce the stability of the market, making it more risky and, at the same time, the estimate is, you would contract credit in this country by close to $\3/4\ trillion less credit.

What that means is John and Mary Jones, who are working on Main Street America producing something they are selling to a company that is maybe a little larger, and then they are selling that product overseas, are probably not going to be able to get the credit they need to produce the product, so they will have to contract the size of their business, and we will reduce the number of jobs in this country or certainly the rate of job creation.

This country's great and unique advantage is that we are the best place in the world for an entrepreneur and risk-taker--somebody who is willing to go out there and do something to create jobs--to get capital and credit at a reasonable price and in a reasonably efficient way. This bill fundamentally undermines that unique advantage that we have in this language, and this language compounds that event, undermining that unique situation. It is, as I said, similar to participating in the Mad Hatter's tea party to watch the way this bill has evolved on the issue of derivatives regulation. The product--I guess the Queen of Hearts would be proud of it, but I can tell you the effect on the American people, on commerce, and on Main Street will be extraordinarily negative should we pass it.

I yield the floor.