Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in morning business for 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise to speak a little bit about one of the major issues which we are about to take up here in the Senate and which has been discussed at considerable length throughout this country, and especially here in Washington, over the past 2 years as we have dealt with the financial crisis, and that is the issue of fiscal reform and financial reform.

The country went through a traumatic experience of inordinate proportions.

We were on the verge in the fall of 2008 of having our entire financial industry implode, and not only the big financial systems in New York City and around the country, but Main Street America was clearly at risk and had the potential to suffer massive damage.

That cataclysmic event didn't occur because we as a Congress and the administrations of President Bush and of President Obama took some very bold and aggressive action in the way of coming in and stabilizing the financial industry of this country. As a result, we did not have the type of events that were predicted.

Some had said if the financial institutions had been allowed to unravel, we would have been into another Depression-like period. One former Secretary of the Treasury projected that unemployment could have gone as high as 25 percent. Obviously, we have been through a difficult time. The recession has caused great harm. Americans have been under tremendous financial stress. But the damage that might have occurred has been muted to some degree by the actions we took. Now we are at least getting the TARP money back with interest from the banking industry. We are not getting it back from the automobile industry or AIG, but from the banking industry we are getting it back with interest, and we are going to actually make money for the American taxpayer, the stockholders in these various entities we had to support.

The question remains, how do we avoid this type of event occurring again. That involves a lot of different actions that should be taken, because the causes of this event were multiple. One of the causes was clearly that the Federal Reserve kept interest rates too low for too long and made money too readily available. Another cause was the Congress's own decision throughout the 1990s and the early part of this decade to basically promote--and in some instances force--lending for the purpose of buying homes, when the people buying the homes didn't have the wherewithal to support the obligation they were undertaking. The homes in many instances didn't have the value at which they were assessed. There was an assumption of appreciation that would occur that never occurred.

A third cause was plain, old-fashioned, horrible, and sometimes illegal underwriting, where people were essentially putting out loans in a totally inappropriate manner. Then those loans were being securitized. I have described it as an inverted pyramid, where possibly the person who was giving the loan was just interested in the servicing fees of making the loan, in the origination fees of making the loan, not in the actual obligations of the loan, and then the loan ending up being securitized out in the market. You had all sorts of counterparty liability and multiple structure built on top of this one loan that basically didn't have either the asset value or the capacity of the individual to pay it back. That was the systemic event that was a function of bad underwriting.

So what can we do to correct this? Well, one thing we can do, obviously, is reform our financial structure in this country. It clearly wasn't up to the regulatory needs that were necessary, and there was clearly a lot of activity occurring in the financial markets that was wrong and inappropriate. There is this huge discussion going on now, bills have made their way through the House, and there has been a proposal from the administration--in outline form at least--and there is one from Senator Dodd and specifics that have been brought forward in the Banking Committee. There is going to be a major attempt to reorganize our financial institutions.

I think that as we go down this path we have to be thoughtful and constructive. There is this fervor of populism sweeping across our Nation on this issue. The fires have been fanned by the White House and a lot of other people in a very inappropriate way. Populism isn't a good way to try to address something as complex as this type of issue. It is sort of like a beach ball bouncing down the beach that is caught up in the wind. That is the way this financial reform effort seems to be going forward. There is not a lot of thought behind it--just a lot of energy and talk, with ideas that may be politically attractive but in the end will probably do more harm than good.

Our goal should be three things: One, we should reform the systems. We need to put into place, to the fullest extent we can, changes in the way we regulate the financial structure so we avoid a future systemic event. It is pretty hard to project what the next systemic event will be, but we know what the last one was and we should be able to correct those problems. We can anticipate to some degree what the next events may be, and we should try to do that.

Second, we should recognize that we are in a competitive world, and that what we do in the United States to structure our financial system is going to determine whether the United States remains competitive with other nations that have sophisticated financial systems. It is very important that in doing this we not push offshore American jobs and American capital, because it becomes too onerous to manage capital and create jobs in the United States in the financial sector. We, in fact, should have as one of our goals--the first goal being addressing the system's risk--the desire to make America the best place in the world and the soundest place in the world to create capital and credit, so that the engine that drives our economy--remember, our economy is driven not by the government. I know the President says the more you grow government, the more prosperity you get, and he is certainly trying to prove it, but that is not what drives our economy. What drives our economy is entrepreneurs, people willing to take risks, the initiatives by Americans to create jobs. You cannot do that unless you have credit, and you cannot do it unless you can get capital.

One of the great geniuses of our system, which has made us more competitive than the rest of the world, is that we have always been a place where capital and credit have been readily available to responsible people and risk-takers. We need to keep that atmosphere. When we are finished with this process, we should have a regulatory regime that addresses the issue of systemic risk and at the same time says to the world: bring your capital here; this is the best place to make a loan and underwrite entrepreneurial spirit.

Third--and this is tied to the second--we need to remember this is about Main Street, about making sure that on Main Street in America people have the wherewithal to take that risk, and to get that job, and to buy that house, but that they have it in a context of a sound banking system, one that is a supportive and strong one, and a sound financial system--not one that has been forced to retract as a result of excessive regulations being put on it here in Washington.

If we approach this in a thoughtful way, a pragmatic and constructive way, rather than this populist fervor, where we say everybody on Wall Street is evil, and everybody in banking is evil, and everybody who makes loans is evil--which seems to be the philosophy or theme around here--if we take a more constructive and thoughtful way, we will actually end up with a much stronger and better nation. Often these periods of populist fervor--and we have had a lot of them--Huey Long, William Jennings Bryan--the list is long. Those folks usually end up cutting off their nose to spite their face. These ideas sound good and have a nice jingoistic ring to them, but in the end it undermines the ability to do the basic purpose, which is to make America more prosperous and create more opportunity for Americans and create more jobs.

This is not an issue that needs to be partisan. We have a lot of big, complex questions here to address. With the exception of one, as far as I can tell, none of them has any partisan flavor to them of any significance. First, of course, is what do you do about ``too big to fail.'' First, it should not exist. There should be no business in this country that is too big to fail. Basically, any company, any business that makes bad decisions should not have some implied guarantee that it is going to be bailed out by the Federal Government or the American taxpayer. If you make a bad decision and put your financial house at risk, your stockholders should pay the price; your secured bondholders should pay the price,

not the American taxpayers. I think there is agreement on that.

On our side of the aisle we have some good ideas on how you end ``too big to fail.'' As a practical matter, they are better ideas than have been put out by anybody else so far. But they are not partisan ideas. They are just good, sound policies as to how you accomplish this. It could be done. The best ideas have been put forward in a bipartisan way, by Senator Warner from Virginia and Senator Corker from Tennessee. That is the first issue. We should be able to reach a comprehensive agreement on that.

Second, of course, is how do you manage risk and structure our regulatory regime so they can see that risk coming and take action. I think there is consensus on both sides of the aisle. Basically, you set up some sort of risk council, where you bring key regulators in and make sure there is communication, you try to end the stovepipes, and you try to cross-fertilize the information, and you don't allow arbitraging regulators so people don't go out and hire the cheapest or weakest regulator. There is not much difference of opinion on that. We can reach agreement on that.

Third, of course--which is huge here--is the question of derivatives, which are very complex. There is no simple answer to this question, on this issue, when you look at the detailed language. What is the purpose of derivatives? It is to basically give the market liquidity, to make sure you have the ability to put out the credit, to make sure that when some business in America needs to protect itself from a downside risk it sees coming at it, it has the capacity to buy that type of protection in the market, that type of insurance. They are extremely important instruments for the purpose of basically being the insurance and the oil that makes the American machinery of entrepreneurship and job creation work. Big companies and smaller companies need them, but especially big companies need these instruments. They need to have them readily available in a way and in a form that makes them usable.

I have been working with Senator Reed from Rhode Island for a number of months on almost all the technical issues of how to make the derivatives market stronger, better, and more sound, basically get more liquidity and transparency. On almost all issues we have a pretty good agreement and sense of where we can go. If we continue to work on it, hopefully, we can reach a complete agreement. We do have an issue on the question of mandated exchange treatment of derivatives, which I think can be resolved--I hope. It is not a partisan question. It is a question of how you do it best. That is the approach we should take.

Last is the issue of regulatory structure. Who should regulate what? That is a question of how best you line up the regulators to make sure there isn't regulatory arbitrage where people try to shop for the best regulator. I strongly believe the Fed needs to be a major player in the regulatory structure. The Fed has shown itself to have the depth and professionalism and the resources to regulate effectively. I hope we would end up with a structure that would recognize that fact. I think there is general agreement on structure that can be reached here. Again, I think we can reach an understanding.

The issue where we have significant differences is consumer protection and how you deal with that. On our side, most of the folks strongly believe you cannot separate consumer protection from safety and soundness. The regulators who have the responsibility for safety and soundness should have the responsibility for consumer protection, and it should be at the same level so there is no question that the consumer receives the same type of attention and support that the regulators put into trying to make sure the banks the consumers get their loans from are safe and sound. When you separate the two and set up a freestanding, autonomous consumer agency, you create significant issues on safety and soundness. The purpose is to make our financial system stronger, not weaker. A separate independent consumer agency with potentially a political agenda or social justice agenda, which has nothing to do with safety or soundness, could easily undermine safety and soundness of the banking industry, especially the community banks-- remember, these are the folks on Main Street--essentially creating an atmosphere where loans have to be made to people not based on safety and soundness but based on a social or political agenda of whoever runs the consumer agency that is independent and autonomous. It makes no sense. But, again, this is an issue that can be resolved.

There have been good ideas put forward by Senator Shelby. At one time, we almost had an understanding between Senator Shelby and Senator Reid on this issue. So this is no reason, in my opinion, to stop the progress on getting a bipartisan, comprehensive bill. The only thing that stands between us getting a bipartisan, comprehensive bill, stopping that progress, is this political issue; the fact that the administration has two paths it can take. It can take the path where we reach a comprehensive, thoughtful, constructive bill that basically does what we need to do in the area of protecting the financial structure of this country from systemic risk and make sure we have the most competitive financial markets in the world and protect Main Street and make Main Street viable, allow people to get loans on Main Street, it can pursue a bill such as that or it can pursue a political bill, carrying the banner of populism forward on the theory that somehow they win points by doing that.

They may win short-term political points. I don't think they do, actually. But in the long term, the effect that will have on our capacity to produce credit in this country for Americans who need credit in order to do things such as buy houses, send their kids to colleges, or basically just start a business and create jobs, it will be dramatically chilling, to be kind.

We will see a lot of the institutions which compete in this Nation having to go overseas. We will see a lot of companies that need to use derivatives in order to make their products salable and make sure they are not hit with unexpected cost increases or events which are out of their control unable to buy those instruments or obtain those instruments in the United States, so they will have to go overseas. We will see credit markets where consumers will end up paying higher interest rates because they are basically paying for people who are not paying back their loans at a much higher rate, so the good performers end up paying for the bad performers, which inevitably ends up costing the good performers much more in the way of their credit.

These are the results of a populist tact, and they are not good results, in my opinion. They are not constructive. They are so unnecessary because we really have within our grasp the capacity to reach an agreement, pretty much across the board, on all the major issues that affect the question of financial stability and to try to address what happened in late 2008 in a constructive way.

I am hopeful that will be the course that is taken, that we do have a consensus approach rather than a confrontational approach, and that we do have an approach which understands that our first obligation is not to get votes, not to win a political fight, not to have a jingoistic saying that resonates at election time but, rather, to make America stronger, more economically sound, more vibrant, and a place where when one wants to create a job, one has the capacity to get the credit to do it. That should be our goal. I hope we will pursue this regulatory reform effort in that manner.

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

Madam President, I wish to take a moment to thank my staff who helped make this bill go as smoothly as it could have gone.

Usually people start with the chief of staff and go down the list. But I would like to single out my health policy director, Elizabeth Wroe, for her extraordinary commitment of energy and time on these issues starting over 1 year ago.

Of course I have a whole team on my Budget Committee staff who have been working on issues related to this reconciliation bill for nearly as long.

A special thank you goes to staff director Cheri Reidy who has been assisted by her colleagues: Jim Hearn, Allison Parent, Gordon Gray, Matt Giroux, Jeff Gonzalez, Greg D'Angelo, Roger Mahan, Nicole Foltz, Giovanni Gutierrez, Dan Kowalski, Betsy Holahan, Dave Myers, Winnie Chang, Adam Hechavarria, Mike Lofgren, Kim Proctor, Greg McNeill, Jim Carter and Andrea Wuebker.

Madam President, the Senator from Nevada is going to be recognized to offer an amendment at this time. I note that after the Senator from Nevada, the plan is to go to Senator Coburn, Senator Sessions, Senator Cornyn, Senator Grassley, Senator Brownback, Senator Vitter and Senator DeMint, and then maybe Senator Coburn again and then maybe Senator Ensign again.

Madam President, I understand we will now be having 10- minute votes. Is that correct?

I ask unanimous consent that all additional votes on this bill be 10 minutes.

Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote and to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, if the Senator will allow me to make a quick statement just for the edification of our colleagues.

This is our last amendment, I believe and hope--genuinely

hope. After this amendment is completed, I understand there will be a colloquy between the ranking member of the Finance Committee and the chairman of the Budget Committee. Then we will proceed to raising points of order relative to the bill.

Then we will proceed to final passage at 2 o'clock. That is the general outline of where we are.

I join the chairman of the Finance Committee in thanking so many people who participated in the process. I especially thank the staff on the dais and staff in the cloakroom who were here so late last night and do such an exceptionally professional job; otherwise, we could not move this type of legislation in a coherent way.

Obviously, I thank the chairman and I thank his staff and I thank the chairman of the Budget Committee and his staff because really there has to be cooperation across the aisle to handle something this complicated and do it in a reasonably efficient way, by Senate standards, which we did.

I especially, of course, thank the people on our side who played such a large role, our leadership but especially my staff on the Budget Committee--Cheri Reidy, who runs the committee, who does such an exceptional job; Jim Hearn, her partner; and Allison Parent. I will submit for the Record, as the Senator from Montana has, other members of our committee staff who have done such an exceptional job. But it seems you have to be named ``Liz'' around here to really understand health care because I have Liz Wroe on my staff, who really did such an extraordinary job for us here.

Again, I thank everyone who was so cooperative. There were an awful lot of amendments, and we could not have been successful without cooperation on both sides of the aisle.

Yes, I will.

Mr. President, let me acknowledge the majority leader also because he has been under tremendous stress. We all know that, with what has happened relative to Landra and his daughter. We appreciate the fact that he has been so professional and worked so hard while confronted with this extraordinarily difficult situation. We obviously wish everyone in his family well.

Mr. President, at this time I will make two points of order. I submit for the Record a statement of those points of order.

The following provision of the pending bill, H.R. 4872, the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act, on page 118 at line 15 through 25 does not produce changes in outlay or revenues and thus is extraneous. Therefore, I raise a point of order under section 313(b)(1)(A) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. President, the following provision of the pending bill, H.R. 4872, the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act, on page 120, lines 3 through 5, does not produce changes in outlays or revenues and is extraneous. Therefore, I raise a point of order under section 313(b)(1)(A) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

I thank the Chair.

I am recognized, correct?

I ask unanimous consent at this time to withdraw the amendment of the Senator from--on behalf of the Senator from Tennessee, I ask to withdraw his amendment.

Mr. President, at this time I yield such time as he may take off the bill to Senator Alexander to discuss his amendment, which he is not offering at this time, while retaining the right to the floor.

Without losing my right to the floor.

Well, I would like to ask the Senator from Tennessee a question on the substance of his proposal.

Because I do think it is an important proposal. As I understand it, what the Senator is saying is that they put this baggage on the train, which is the nationalization of all student loans in this country, the government is going to take them all over, which will be the fourth major nationalization event this administration has undertaken.

First, they nationalized the auto industry. Now, they are in the process of quasi-nationalizing the health care industry. Now they are going to nationalize the educational industry. If the House final reform bill passes, they will essentially be nationalizing the financial industry--or having the capacity to--because they can break up any company, whether they are healthy or not, under the Kanjorski amendment.

So my question is: They threw this proposal on the train, nationalizing the student loan industry, in order to use student loan money to finance the health care bill because this bill would have violated the budget rules if it did not have the student loan money basically paying for it?

If I can ask a further question of the Senator. If they did not have that $8.7 billion of student loan money being used to finance the health care bill, this reconciliation bill would fall; would it not? Because it would not meet the budget instructions of having $1 billion of savings.

The Senator had a further question about whether the floor could be yielded. We are in the process of seeking a unanimous consent agreement.

I appreciate the Senator from Tennessee's courtesy. At this time, we are ready to go forward with a unanimous consent request.

Reserving the right to object, I would simply note that the next amendment on our side would be offered by Senator Hatch.

Mr. President, I would ask further unanimous consent----

As I understand what the Senator is asking, is that the voting order be in the order they were offered.

May I make a point? Mr. President, I spoke inappropriately. I believe the Senator from Tennessee will want to submit his amendment back for the Record. He had withdrawn it. Can we do that?

I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be the Senator from Tennessee's amendment.

Why don't we do that on every amendment we offer so we do not have to do that.

How much time does the majority have on their half hour?

Mr. President, a couple comments need to be responded to because they are so patently inconsistent with the facts that they should be clearly rejected. It is almost as if somebody spent too much time at the movie ``Alice in Wonderland.'' The idea that by their own score, when you cut Medicare by $521 billion--$\1/2\ trillion cut out of Medicare by their own score, which is inaccurate, of course, because it doesn't count the full 10 years--if you count the full 10 years, it is $1 trillion taken out of Medicare--the idea that seniors are not going to be affected by that type of a cut is absurd on its face.

The claim is, we don't affect senior benefits. That is nice. That is like telling somebody they can have a car, but there is no engine in it. I mean, the simple fact is, when you cut the providers of seniors by as much as this bill cuts them, clearly it is going to be harder for a senior citizen to see a provider, a doctor, a hospital group. Or when you reduce the spending on Medicare Advantage, which is an insurance program that many seniors appreciate--CBO scores the reduction as being so large that over 11 million seniors will be thrown off that system-- that affects seniors.

If they genuinely believe their language, ``we don't do anything about Medicare; we don't do anything about seniors,'' even though the score says they cut Medicare by $500 billion, their own score, and the CBO has said over 11 million people will be knocked off of Medicare Advantage--if they believe that, if they believe their language, then they have to vote for my amendment. They have to vote for my amendment which makes it clear that we protect Medicare.

Then there was some other comment made that somebody was going to vote against our amendments, not because they don't make sense but because they are dilatory. This is from a leadership on the other side of the aisle that produced the largest piece of social engineering in our history: 2,500 pages, $2.6 trillion of spending, $1 trillion of cuts in Medicare when fully implemented. They produced that bill in a closed room behind a secret door somewhere on that side of the Capitol, never open to the public, brought it to the floor of the Senate on a Saturday afternoon, filled up the tree, wouldn't allow any amendments, and within 3 days forced us to vote on it on Christmas Eve. Then they took it over to the House, where they rewrote this trailer bill, again, in a secret room, behind a closed door, and brought that bill to the floor and didn't allow anybody to amend that. But amendments are dilatory.

Why have an opposition party? Maybe we should just go with the Cuban system. That seems to be the attitude of the other side of the aisle. The American people are an unfortunate inconvenience. The fact that they have elected a Republican membership to this Senate and to the House, they are an unfortunate inconvenience that should be ignored and not allowed to participate in the process.

When they come up with ideas such as protecting the Medicare system or such as taking out the sweetheart deals or such as suggesting that the President and his people and the staff of the majority leader should be under the laws we are about to pass or suggest that we should live by the terms of the rhetoric which is, if your premiums go up, you won't be impacted by this bill, or that says that there won't be any taxes on people under $200,000 of income, amendments which just fulfill the statements of the other side of the aisle on issues--they are going to keep the bill clean, they are not going to tax people under $200,000 of incomes, people's premiums won't go up, Medicare won't be affected, and everybody will be subject to this new law of the land, including the President of the United States and his people and the staff of the majority leader--when we offer amendments like that, they are dilatory. They are an inconvenience. They

should not be allowed. They should not be voted on, not because they don't make sense but get rid of them; they are the opposition.

They are the American people speaking through their elected representatives and they ought to have a voice and they ought to be voted on and they ought to be given a vote based on the substance of the amendments, not on the fact that the other side of the aisle doesn't like opposition.

It is so arrogant, this attitude which pervades Washington now that says: The American people, we know better than you do how to live your lives. Why do you get in our way? We in Washington know how you should live. Just stand back. Let us make your decisions as to what you should do with your life, especially relative to health care. We will do a much better job. Certainly, don't countenance any opposition. Don't countenance any dissent, and, certainly, don't hold us to our word, for example, when we say people with incomes under $200,000 won't be taxed or when we say premiums won't go up or when we say everybody will be covered by the bill or when we say Medicare recipients won't be impacted. Don't make us hold to those words by voting on amendments because those amendments are dilatory.

The arrogance is palpable and inexcusable.

Now we will hear from the Senator from Oklahoma who has another amendment that I am sure the other side will say is dilatory and inappropriate, even though it makes a heck of a lot of sense to me.

I yield the floor.

Amendment No. 3556

Reserving the right to object, that would be a half hour off, so

we should have the half hour after that because you got the first half hour.

Mr. President, the Senator from Maine is about to take the floor.

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

Mr. President, I believe the Senator from Tennessee is here and ready to speak.

No. If the Senator is not ready to speak, I will speak.

The Senator from Tennessee is going to offer an amendment in a second, and I will follow him with an amendment. I wish to highlight what my amendment will do as we are waiting.

One of the extraordinary shell games that is played under this bill in the ``Alice in Wonderland'' claim that this bill is paid for is the fact that the doctors will receive a $285 billion cut in their reimbursements if this bill goes forward in its present form. We all know that is not going to happen. So at some point there is going to have to be a doctors fix, which means $285 billion not accounted for in this bill will have to be spent over the next 10 years. Of course, if they had included this in the bill--this fact that doctors are being underreimbursed and that we are going to correct this; this is called the doctor fix, and we do it every year on an annual basis--if they had included it in the bill, as they should have because this is, after all, called health care reform, then the bill would have been in deficit even under the gamesmanship played by the Democratic Party on this bill.

Remember, the way they got a surplus in this bill in the first 10 years was they took 10 years of spending cuts, 10 years of revenues, and matched them against 6 years--6 years--of programmatic expenditures. So they were able to get a surplus, and CBO has to score what is given to them. If you are given phony ideas, you have to score them. In any event, what CBO was not asked to score as part of this health care, because there was no attempt to correct it, and even though it is the essence of health care, is how do you correct the reimbursed doctors.

So after the Senator from Tennessee proceeds, and I think he may be ready to proceed at this time, I am going to offer an amendment for a doctors fix so that this bill will address that issue which is, obviously, one of the core issues on the question of health care reform around here.

So I will reserve now on that issue and turn to the Senator from Tennessee who I see is ready to proceed.

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

The States don't have the elasticity the Federal Government has, which we will not have much longer, by the way, as a result of passing this bill specifically because our debt is growing so fast that it is going to be very hard for us 5 or 6 years from now to be able to sell our debt at a reasonable price, in my opinion, and we are going to find that maybe some people don't even want to buy our debt.

There was a very significant event this week when it was determined that the debt issued by Warren Buffett was going out at a lower cost than the debt issued by the United States of America. That is the first time that anybody can remember something like that, and that is a very clear statement by the markets that they are getting very worried about how much deficit and debt this government is running up.

Now we pass this bill which adds $2.6 trillion to the spending of the U.S. Government and alleges it is paid for, but we know it is not going to be, and creates new entitlement programs which we know would not be fully funded. Even if it were paid for, it takes resources which should be used to reduce the debt, especially in the area of making Medicare more solvent, and uses them to expand new programs.

This event, as I have described it, is an astroid of debt headed at our country. The simple fact is, it is going to have an effect. The effect will be that we will have more difficulty selling our debt, the deficits and debt we pass on to our children will be extraordinary, and their ability to have a higher standard of living will be reduced as a result of that.

But the point, of course, is this bill, on top of all of the other egregious things it does in the area of fiscal policy--of running up debt and creating a massive government that we can't afford, being intrusive in everybody's health care delivery system, undermining the ability of small businesses to offer insurance, raising premiums, raising taxes on people not only earning more than $200,000 but earning less than $200,000, replete with special deals--on top of all of that, this bill, as Senator Corker said, puts pressure on the States and local communities.

It asks them to spend money which they did not want to spend and which is not reimbursed. That is not fair. It is called unfunded mandates. It is inappropriate. We actually have a law around here that this bill basically runs over that says we will not do that.

As I said earlier, another thing this bill does, which I find extraordinary, is it does not address one of the elephants in the room relative to the cost of health care in this country, which is the fact that we are not adequately reimbursing our doctors; that our doctors are going to receive a $285 billion cut over the next 10 years, a $65 billion cut over the next 3 years unless we correct that. This is from basically a freeze level of reimbursement.

Every year we adjust that payment so doctors do get their money they deserve or at least some portion of it in that we do not keep up with inflation. But this bill, which is supposed to be a comprehensive resolution of health care, leaves the doctors out in the cold. It means every year they are going to have to come hat in hand, one more time, asking for something they should not have to ask for, which is a fair reimbursement for their services.

We will every year, hopefully, address it. But it is not right that we have a bill that does not even account for that.

Why was it not put in? It was not put in because if it had been put in, this bill could not meet the budgetary rules that give it the special protection that allows it to come to the floor of the Senate, and it would have been in deficit, at least over the first 10 years, by $100 billion, even using the gamesmanship scoring the other side of the aisle has used relative to the big bill.

This is not fair to the doctors. The doctors deserve better than this. We should correct this right now as part of this process. This trailer bill has the title ``fix-it bill'' on it. One thing we should definitely fix is the fact the doctors are getting shortchanged. So let's fix it. That is what my amendment does.

My amendment says: OK, this bill alleges it generates a surplus. Let's use part of that surplus to make the doctors whole for the next 3 years. It is a paid-for amendment. I cannot imagine anybody would want to oppose this amendment. After all, after we complete this bill-- immediately after we complete this bill--we are going to do, I believe it is a 1-month extension to try to correct the doctor problem. How inconsistent, how fundamentally hypocritical is it for us to pass a major health care reform bill, and then in the next breath--literally the next breath--within the next 24 hours, this body will take up a bill to give a 1-month extension to the doctors fix. I think it is 1 month. That is not right. Let's do it now. Let's do it in this bill. Let's do the doctors fix. I have come up with a proposal that will take care of the doctors in a fair and forthright manner for 3 years.

That is my amendment. I am not sure if it is at the desk or whether I have to send it to the desk.

I send my amendment to the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, let me summarize it again. We know the doctors are being shortchanged. They deserve fair treatment. It is pretty obvious that if we are going to do a health care reform bill, the proper place to correct the doctor issue of reimbursement is in that bill, not the next day in a short-term extension.

This is a forthright and fully paid-for attempt--and if it is passed it will occur--to reimburse the doctors at a fair rate for the next 3 years and correct what is known as the SGR problem relative to doctor reimbursement.

I cannot understand why we would not want to do something such as this.

I see the Senator from North Carolina. I will be happy to yield to him for any thoughts he may have on this amendment or the Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we be able to participate in a colloquy on our side of the aisle.

Mr. President, I wish to ask the Senator from Oklahoma, who is obviously a physician and has an indepth knowledge of this issue, I heard the other side of the aisle say: There are no cuts to the benefits of people on Medicare. If you reduce doctor payments under Medicare 21 percent, don't you think that is going to affect what they receive? Technically, there will be no cut because they will still have the right to see a doctor. Is it not going to be hard to see a doctor because doctors will stop seeing them?

I thought we were told insurance rates were not going to go up.

I assume that is not just going to be people with incomes over $200,000.

Isn't it equally likely that a large number of small employers will get frustrated with the rate increases they are getting in order to support people on Medicaid that they will simply drop that and push their membership, their employees over into this new exchange?

We have basically a multiplier effect----

In the area of costs being driven up as a result of this new policy of adding a huge number of people to an uninsured system that cannot afford it right now, Medicaid. The costs are going to multiply on people in the private sector. The effect will be higher premiums, less opportunity for your employer to give you insurance and, in the end, a higher tax rate for you, Americans who are just working Americans, not people with high incomes.

Then they do not even take care of the doctors. They cut the doctors 21 percent on top of all this.

That is the goal, isn't it?

The Senator is absolutely right. Isn't it true one of the ultimate cost shifts is to claim that the health care bill is fiscally responsible when it ignores the fact that the doctors are being cut by 21 percent and does not even attempt to address that huge problem which represents $65 billion over 3 years?

So I guess I would get on to the next question because it is pretty obvious we have to correct this problem with the physicians. In fact, as I understand it, the next bill immediately that we will consider will correct it for 30 days. Why wouldn't we correct it right now for 3 years, get that 3-year consistency in the system so physicians can have some confidence in their reimbursement rates, fully paid for? What possible, conceivable reason would there be not to vote for this type of amendment?

Well, I think the Senator is absolutely right, but I would also suggest that maybe there is another reason they haven't paid for it in this bill or put the correction in this bill, which is that if they did that, the bill would fall because it would be out of compliance with the budget because it is a $285 billion cost over 10 years. Therefore, aren't they sort of trying to pull the wool over somebody's eyes here? Aren't they trying to act as if this bill that we know exists for our doctors, that we are never going to pay for it? We are not going to pay; we are just going to act as if it doesn't exist? We know as soon as this bill is over, we will have to do something about it, at least for the next 30 days.

I see the Senator from Arizona has arrived.

The Senator is absolutely correct, and that does call into question the representation that this bill is not a tax increase on Americans that we need 16,000 new IRS agents to enforce it.

Well, you are going to need one IRS person for everybody in America who doesn't have insurance, I guess, or however the ratio works out. Everybody has to buy insurance under this bill, and your local IRS agent is going to show up at your door to tell you that you better do it or else you will have to answer to the IRS.

We know there are no new taxes in this bill because that has been represented to us a number of times.

I thank the Senator from Arizona, who has been one of the most cogent and thoughtful speakers on the issue of what this bill really does. He has hit the nail on the head time and time again with his points. They are all absolutely accurate.

Has the Senator completed his statement?

No, it is not deficit neutral if you actually score the number of years of income against the number of years of expenditures or you include the doctors fix. Either one would throw this into a deficit-negative situation.

That is right.

That is correct. And it is a bit of a scam, as you say.

I am going to have to reserve the remainder of our time here for a moment, but I understand the Senator from North Carolina wants to bring up an amendment.

Amendment No. 3652

What is the time situation?

Let me make two quick points. The only way CBO gets to the conclusions they reach, and they had to get to those conclusions, is because of the facts put before them. One of those facts, they have to presume Medicare is going to be cut $500 billion in the first years before full implementation, $1 trillion in the second 10 years during full implementation, and $3 trillion during the first 20 years of full implementation--$3 trillion.

All that money is going to be taken out of Medicare and moved over to start new programs, new entitlements to benefit people who are not senior citizens and who, for the most part, have never paid into Medicare. That is a serious problem.

You can score that positively if you wish, but first off I do not think it will happen. I think what will end up happening is, it will get put on our children's backs as debt. But second, if it does happen, it is wrong because Medicare has to be fixed and you are taking the money that should be used to fix it, if you believe in these types of cuts in Medicare, and you are spending them on a new entitlement.

On your time you may ask a question, including my answer, which may take 24 minutes.

I certainly don't question their professionalism. They are an extraordinarily good organization with a wonderful leader who is fair and unbiased. I don't question their conclusions because what they have to score is a fact pattern that was given them and

the fact pattern given them by this bill is, on its face, not believable relative to what is going to happen in the outyears, even though they have to score it as believable. It is a fantasy.

I simply ask the time of the Senator from Arizona come off ours and the time of the Senator from Montana for his answer come off his.

I simply note the Senator from Montana made the case for my amendment rather eloquently because my amendment does address the doctors fix and it is paid for. Therefore, I certainly hope the Senator might consider voting for it.

At this point, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Georgia.

Mr. President, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the Senator from Louisiana.

Amendment No. 3553

What is the time situation?

And the majority?

I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Tennessee.

I would yield for 30 seconds to the Senator from Kansas to put in order a couple of amendments.

I yield to Senator McCain such time as he may use.

Mr. President, I just want to thank the Senator from Arizona for his excellent summation of where this issue lies and its impact on the American people. I hope that statement will be read across this country because it was a reflection of the concerns which are legitimate and which are being expressed by vast amounts of Americans. It is not unusual it should be expressed by the Senator from Arizona because he is so much a personality of this Nation and a force within our political process.

I would reserve the remainder of my time.

How much time do we have on our side?

Mr. President, a lot has been talked about here. A lot has been discussed. I don't want to get in an expansive discussion of the issue of the underlying bill. It has been fully aired. But this concept to vote down every amendment, that you have to do that in order to save this bill, seems to reject the concept of a constitutional process.

Think about this for a moment. The whole series of amendments here are being offered to fulfill the statements made by the President of the United States. For example, Senator McCain has offered an amendment to take out the sweetheart deals. The President said the sweetheart deals would be taken out. Senator Barrasso has offered an amendment which says that if premiums go up, certain parts of this bill will not go into force. The President said premiums will not go up on working Americans. Senator Crapo has offered an amendment which says that if there are taxes on people earning less than $200,000, those taxes won't go into force. That is what the President promised. I have offered an amendment which says that if there are Medicare cuts in this bill, the cuts should go to Medicare and make Medicare more solvent--a promise also made from the other side of the aisle.

All of these are amendments which are substantive and the purpose of which is to put forward the policies which the other side of the aisle represented they were going to have in their original bill. This is called the fix-it bill. Well, we are suggesting you fix it so it meets the conditions set out by the President and by the Democratic leadership. Yet now we hear that every amendment should be voted down. Why? Because the idea of sending the bill back to the House is anathema to the Democratic Party. Did I miss something? Isn't the House of Representatives controlled by the Democratic Party with a supermajority? You mean they couldn't survive the idea of knocking out the sweetheart deals, sending it back to the House, and coming back here? That is going to somehow fundamentally undermine this bill? That argument is absurd on its face. It is absurd on its face.

I think the only answer is that the other side of the aisle has decided to proceed on this bill in a most arrogant process. From the beginning of the core of this bill being put together in a hidden room behind a hidden room behind a hidden door of the majority leader's office suite, brought to this floor on a Saturday afternoon, the tree was filled and we were told we had to vote on it on Christmas Eve. No amendments were allowed. Then it was taken over to the House, and the Speaker worked out the deals in the back rooms of her offices behind hidden doors without any public input, without C-SPAN there, as was represented it would be. And what happened? It passed the House without any amendments being allowed.

Now, for the first time, we have a chance to offer amendments, and the position on the other side of the aisle is no amendments allowed even if they are good amendments.

So, I guess, obviously, they consider their promises to be an inconvenience. Obviously, they presume the Republican Party is an inconvenience. The Democratic process is an inconvenience. It also appears, considering the opposition to this out in America, that the American people are an inconvenience and that amendments which make sense aren't going to be allowed to be passed because they don't want to send it back to the House of Representatives. It makes no sense to me, and I don't think it is going to make much sense to the American people.

This bill is fundamentally flawed. It needs to be repealed and it needs to be replaced. We have suggested a whole series of amendments which will significantly improve this bill, and I hope some will be supported by the other side of the aisle since they are the policies of the other side of the aisle.

Mr. President, point of order. Is there time remaining on the bill?

Mr. President, this amendment fulfills the obligation to our senior citizens. This bill reduces on its face $520 billion in Medicare by cutting Medicare beneficiaries through reducing providers and by eliminating or significantly reducing the Medicare Advantage Program. That number actually, when fully implemented, is $1 trillion over the first 10 years. That is $1 trillion of reductions in Medicare.

That money is then taken and used to create new entitlements for people who are not seniors and who have, for the most part, not paid into the Medicare trust fund. That is wrong. Medicare is in serious trouble. We should use the Medicare savings in this bill for the purposes of making Medicare more solvent.

That is exactly what this amendment does. It keeps Medicare savings in the Medicare trust fund and uses them to make Medicare more solvent.

Mr. President, this amendment addresses what is a core problem we have with our health care system, which is the fact that every year we cut our doctors' pay--those doctors who deliver Medicare services. This year, it will be cut 21 percent. This amendment restores that pay so that those cuts don't occur for a period of 3 years. This is known as the doctors fix.

It should have been in the bill to begin with. The reason it wasn't in the bill was because the other side wanted to not put it in the bill because of its cost, because it scores at $280 billion over 10 years. The other side didn't want to absorb that score because it would have thrown the entire bill out of whack relative to the budget.

We have come up with a way to address this doctor problem that pays for it for 3 years. Let's do it. Let's take care of these doctors who are delivering these services so they can continue to deliver services to Medicare recipients.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: This amendment pays for the doctors fix for 3 years, does it not?

I withdraw the inquiry.

Pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and section 4(G)(3) of the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010, I move to waive all applicable sections of those acts and applicable budget resolutions for purposes of my amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, just so people know, on our side the order we are going to proceed on is that the next amendment will be by the Senator from Idaho, followed by the Senator from Texas, followed by the Senator from Louisiana, then the Senator from South Carolina, and then the Senator from Oklahoma. That is the next group of five amendments.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Republican time be extended to 10:10 a.m.

Madam President, I rise with some of my colleagues today to discuss one of the issues that is going to have a huge impact on how this health care issue is resolved or not resolved; that is, the question of what reconciliation is and what it implies relative to the legislative process.

``Reconciliation'' is an arcane term. It is a term that is tied to and created by the Budget Act under which we function in the Congress. It is ironic that the use of reconciliation would become the central effort in buying votes in the House of Representatives in order to pass the big, the giant health care bill, known as the Senate health care bill--which bill, as we all know, expands the size of government by $2.3 trillion and, in fact, we understand now there is a new score from CBO which is going to raise that number even further when it is accurately reflected.

It takes the government and puts it into basically the business of delivering health care in this country in a way that is extraordinarily intrusive and will cost a lot of people who are on private insurance-- the insurance they have--which they probably feel fairly comfortable with although it may be very expensive--and it still leaves 23 million Americans uninsured while claiming to do a better job of insuring Americans and improving our health care system when, in fact, what it does

is create massive debt that will be passed on to our children which they cannot and will not be able to afford, explodes the size of government and, in my opinion, will lead to a diminution of quality of care in this country.

The way this big bill, which I outlined in the thumbnail process, is going to be passed in the House of Representatives is to have a trailer bill called a reconciliation bill, which is an art form developed around here relative to the budget process which is supposed to be used for very specific efforts, certainly not for the purpose of buying votes from the liberal constituencies in the House or to pass a bigger bill. But that bill needs to be discussed as to what its implications are.

A number of us have come to the floor of the Senate today to try to explain what the reconciliation bill is and how it has historically been used but what the implications are relative to some of the things in the bigger Senate bill, in the giant bill, the giant spending bill; what the implications of the reconciliation changes in the reconciliation trailer bill will be on the bigger Senate bill, and what the representations that are being made are and whether they are accurate.

Specifically, let's take one issue, and that is what is known as the Cadillac tax. The tax on Cadillac policies, which is the appropriate way to describe this, is a proposal which was in the Senate bill to basically eliminate the deductibility for health insurance policies that exceeded a certain level of cost--$27,000, I believe, is the number. To the extent an insurance policy paid for by an employer exceeds that number in cost, the excess in amount--let's say it costs $32,000 a year for an employer to have an insurance policy for you. That sounds like a lot of money, but actually there are a number that cost that much, especially of union programs. To the extent the difference between the $27,000 and the $30,000 is paid for by your employer, that will no longer be deductible by the employer as an expense. It is done in a more complex way, but that is basically the way it works out.

The effect of that is fairly significant on what is known as the Social Security trust fund because it actually creates a situation where there will be more taxable wages, which will mean that the Social Security trust fund will be getting more tax revenue.

This brings into play the question of whether you can even bring forward language of this type which affects the Social Security trust fund through the taxing of Cadillac policies in a reconciliation bill. I think this needs to be discussed because of a very important issue as to whether the House Members are being told correctly how this will be dealt with in the Senate.

I know my colleague wants to speak to the issue.

It appears that the House Democratic membership is, first, afraid to vote on the bill. They are actually going to ``deem'' this, it appears, versus vote on it, which is an incredible act of political cowardice, in my opinion.

Secondly, they definitely do not want to go to conference. They do not want to do what the traditional process around here calls for. When you have two different bills--a Senate bill and a House bill--we take them to conference and discuss those bills and come out with a final bill. Why don't they want to do that? Because they know they cannot pass the final bill in the Senate. To get around that, they developed this policy of reconciliation as a trailer bill so they will send back the reconciliation bill to be voted on here--not on the big bill, a $2.5 trillion bill. Thus, not only will they avoid a vote in the House on the big bill, they will avoid having to go to conference, and they will have basically bypassed the constitutional process in this manner.

In order to buy votes, as I understand it, in the House-- and this is basically a vote-buying exercise--the reconciliation bill, in order to buy votes, they are going to put changes to the Senate bill in the reconciliation bill, and then send the reconciliation bill back here to be voted on, on the theory that it only takes 51 votes to pass it.

The only problem with that approach is that a reconciliation bill is part of the budget process and has very strict limitations on what can be in it. So much of what they are talking about putting in the reconciliation bill may well be knocked out in the Senate.

For example, the Senator from Texas mentioned the Cadillac tax. If in any way the Cadillac policy tax language impacts Social Security, it will be subject to a point of order. In fact, it will be subject to two points of order in the Senate, and it will take 60 votes to overwhelm that point of order. Therefore, since 41 members of the Republican Party have signed a letter saying we are going to sustain the rules of the Senate, we are going to stand by the laws that govern the Senate, the procedures here, that language will be knocked out.

What is being represented to House Democrats as a way to get their vote, to vote for the big bill which is to change the language relative to the Cadillac policy tax in the smaller bill, the reconciliation bill, that probably will not survive the process and will probably be knocked out on a procedural move, a procedural challenge on the Senate floor because it is inconsistent with the Senate rules.

The Senator from Texas understands the rules very well. A 310(g) challenge--to put it in understandable language--is a challenge that says it affects Social Security. The language affects Social Security. If the Cadillac policy tax impacts the Social Security trust fund, which, in my opinion, it does, and the Parliamentarian rules that it does, then the entire bill will fall.

Well, there are two points of order available. One is the Byrd point of order. If that were not waived, that section would go out of the bill. So people interested in that section, who used that section as the reason they were justifying voting for the bigger bill, that section would not survive. So they would have been sold a bill of goods.

The second point of order would take down the whole bill, and it would lose its reconciliation protections, which would mean the bill would require 60 votes to pass here. I can absolutely guarantee you it could not get 60 votes to pass. So you could presume the entire reconciliation bill would be dead. Again, people who are relying on the reconciliation bill in the House of Representatives--House Members on the Democratic side who are being told we will fix it in reconciliation--may well be being sold a bill of goods, if it is determined that some of this reconciliation language affects Social Security because it is very likely the entire bill will go down in the Senate because it will violate our Senate rules.

Essentially, what I am saying is--and the Senator from Texas has certainly put it in context--the only reason they could possibly be using this vehicle, this reconciliation vehicle, this extraordinary process is because they are using it to get people to vote for the bigger bill that they do not like, and they are claiming that bigger bill will be improved by this reconciliation vehicle. Yet it is pretty obvious that the reconciliation vehicle, when it comes over here, is going to be punched through and through with holes because it will violate the rules of the Senate on issues such as this.

That would be like a ``the check is in the mail'' type promise. I would not take it with a serious grain of salt.

The concept where you would take the most important piece of legislation dealing with domestic policy in this country in the last 50 years and not vote on it is an affront to the purpose of a constitutional democracy. We are sent to the Senate to vote on a lot of issues and a lot of them not quite as significant as this one. But if you have the most significant issue you are going to possibly ever have before you, certainly in my career, you would expect that you would want to vote because you would want to express yourself.

I mean, why did you run for this job? Why did you want to serve your constituents if you were not willing to stand on something of this importance?

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this isn't so much a jobs bill as it is a debt bill. It has debt, debt, and debt.

I voted against the budget which passed the House of Representatives. I voted against it because it had $1 trillion worth of deficit every year for as far as the eye can see. It basically put our country on a path of unsustainability, where the national debt will double in 5 years and triple in 10 years; where every one of these young men and women sitting before us who are pages, by the time they graduate from college, will have $133,000 in Federal debt on their heads they will have to pay off as they go to work. I voted against it because it was profligate, because it wasn't disciplined, and because it was excessive.

However, it appears it wasn't excessive enough for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. This will be the third week in a row the leadership of the Democratic Party in this body has brought a bill to this floor that violates their own budget and spends more than their own budget called for. A budget which this year will run $1.6 trillion of deficit isn't running a big enough deficit, according to the other side of the aisle. They have to run up the deficit with this bill by another $3 billion of authorized money, above their own budget. That is on top of last week, when they spent $30 billion this year and $100 billion over 5 years in excess of their own budget.

When is it going to stop? When is it going to stop? When are we going to stop spending money around here as if there is no tomorrow? Because pretty soon there will be no tomorrow for our children as we add this debt to their backs and make it impossible for them to have the standard of living we have had.

Yesterday, Moody's said that although today the AAA rating of this country is not at risk, it may be down the road if we continue to spend money we don't have at the rate we are spending it. That is not a sign of optimism for the future; that is a sign our Nation is in trouble, and it is in trouble because of us.

There is a lot of talk around here about what is the systemic risk to this economy. The systemic risk is this Congress, which continues to spend money it doesn't have, send the bill on to our kids at a rate they can't afford to pay off. As a result, their lifestyle will actually have to be reduced, their quality of life, their standard of living will go down because they will be paying for all this debt we are putting on their backs today.

What is even worse is this Congress isn't even willing to live by the PROFLIGATE--and I hope capital letters will be put in the Record on that because it should be all spelled out in capital letters--by the PROFLIGATE budget which passed the House, which projected trillions of dollars of deficits for as far as the eye could see and doubled the debt in 5 years and tripled it in 10 years. That wasn't enough. No. We have to come to the floor again this week, after last week, after the week before, with another bill that breaks their own budget.

So all I am asking for is that the other side of the aisle be willing to at least live by its own budget. Last week I asked that they be willing to live by their own pay-go rules. That didn't pass, and $100 billion was spent that wasn't paid for. So this week I am making a point of order that simply says: Live by your own budget. You passed a budget; at least live by that. Can't you live within a $1.6 trillion deficit? Do you have to add another $3 trillion of authorized dollars to this deficit this year? Gosh, I hope not. So I am making a point of order and asking that we live by the budget that was passed by the Democratic Congress.

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

Parliamentary inquiry. I have made a motion that says the

budget point of order stands under section 311, which point of order specifically lies because of the fact that the bill before us spends more in authority and outlay than the Budget Act passed by this Congress allows. Is that not correct? Is that motion not well taken?

Which means that, Mr. President, more money is being spent than is allowed to be spent under our budget rules; is that not correct?

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I rise today on behalf of myself and my wife Kathy to pay tribute to Officer Greg Kendall of Rye, NH, who retired on January 1, 2010, after 50 years of service as an educator and law enforcement officer. It is important for us to take a moment to recognize and honor Officer Kendall's long career as a dedicated public servant. Citizens like Greg Kendall ensure that our communities remain great places to live, work, and raise a family. The outstanding community service demonstrated by him is what inspires people to leave behind a better society than they found, and contribute to the betterment of their local community.

Greg, whom Rye Police Chief Kevin Walsh describes as ``irreplaceable,'' is both well known and highly respected throughout New Hampshire's Seacoast community, where he has served on the Rye police force and as an educator in the Rye and Seabrook school districts. Starting out on summer beach patrol in 1960 as a full-time officer, Greg continued to serve as a police officer on weekends while also beginning his career in education as a full-time sixth grade teacher at Rye Junior High School. Upon finishing graduate studies at the University of New Hampshire and the University of Maine, he became the principal at Rye Junior High School, where he continued to guide and shape the education and character of a generation of young students over the next 16 years. Following that, Greg taught in Seabrook for an additional 13 years, all while serving nights and weekends as a special officer in Rye. Since 2001, Greg has also been animal control officer, performing his duties with the same compassion, calm demeanor, and professionalism that he always brought to his shifts on patrol or lessons in the classroom.

On a personal note, I had the pleasure of serving with Greg when, in the summer of 1968, I worked as a special officer on the Rye Police Force. The town of Rye, the people of the region and the State of New Hampshire are all better off for Greg's wisdom, skills, and experience. He is a friend and someone whose sense of humor, expertise and dedication I have always admired. Kathy and I join Greg's friends and neighbors in Rye in honoring him as an officer of the law, an educator of youth, and a motivator for us all. Thank you, Greg Kendall. We wish you the best in all your future endeavors; may they be as rewarding as those of the last 50 years.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 10 minutes.

Without my losing the floor, does the Senator wish to speak after I speak?

Madam President, I rise to discuss the issue of fiscal policies, which we talk a little bit about around here but on which we are not focusing, in my opinion, with the intensity we should, and the fact we are now seeing in Europe the meltdown of a major nation-state's financial situation, Greece. Greece has become a precursor for many other industrialized nations in this world which are finding themselves grossly overextended in the amount of debt they put on their books. As a result, in the situation of Greece, they are incapable of repaying their national debt, or what is known as their sovereign debt.

Fortunately, the European Community has rallied around and has tried to stabilize the situation. But the fact that the situation may be being stabilized should not allow us to take much solace because this is not a unique problem to Greece.

As we look at the debt levels of a large number of nations in the industrialized West, especially, many of them are in serious trouble. Many are grossly overextended. We have seen, obviously, pressures on Ireland, Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Italy, and, of course, Greece is so overextended that it was about to default potentially.

What does this mean for us as a nation? Unfortunately, we are on the same track. People talk in terms of default and overextension and too much debt and their eyes sort of glaze over.

What does that mean? Essentially, it means we as a nation see a fundamental drop in our standard of living. If our debt gets to a certain point, we basically as a nation, in order to pay for that debt, have to reduce the standard of living of our people.

What is that point? There is general consensus that a public debt; that is, debt owned by other countries and by the people of the nation who is running it up, a public debt that amounts to about 35 percent or 40 percent of your gross domestic product--what you are producing as a nation--is a very good status. But as that moves up by running deficits--and, remember, we are running a $1.6 trillion deficit this year, and under the President's budget we will be running over $1 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years--as that debt goes up-- which means you are basically borrowing money and borrowing it from Americans, but mostly now from other countries, especially the Chinese and Saudi Arabia--it starts to cross certain thresholds. The next most significant threshold is to have a debt-to-public-production ratio of about 60 percent. That gets serious.

In fact, that is such a high debt-to-public-production ratio that in Europe you can't even join the European Union if you have a debt situation that big. Well, unfortunately, later this year, because of all the debt we have put on the books in the last 3 years, we are going to pass the 60-percent threshold as a nation. Then you start moving into waters which are more than uncharted and choppy, they are dangerous. You start to move into the waters that Greece finds itself in. Because when your public debt gets up around 70, 80, 90 percent of your gross domestic product, you have trouble paying it back without doing some very horrible things to your people--things such as massive inflation or massive tax increases, both of which cost Americans jobs and reduces their savings and their ability to live a better lifestyle.

Under the President's budget, as proposed, and under the scenario which is clearly in front of us--it is like a railroad track that is almost impossible to get off unless we do something very significant-- we hit 80 percent within 6 years, or approximately 80 percent. So we are basically where Greece is 6, 7, 8 years from now, and the implications for us as a society are catastrophic.

What are we doing about this? Not a lot. In fact, we are aggravating it every day. Just yesterday, we passed another bill, or the day before, that spent $100 billion--$100 billion that wasn't paid for. It went to the debt. Last week, we passed another bill that alleged to spend $10 billion, but buried in it were some parliamentary games which actually meant it spent another $100 billion that wasn't paid for in highway funds.

So $200 billion in 2 weeks. And the week before that, we did another bill that spent $15 billion unpaid for. Not only are we not addressing this problem, but we are fundamentally aggravating the problem. Now the House has this Senate health care bill over there. What are the fiscal implications of that? It grows the Federal Government by $2.5 trillion--$2.5 trillion.

It is claimed the bill is paid for. But how is it paid for? It alleges it is going to reduce Medicare spending by $500 billion. But rather than using that money to make Medicare more solvent, it takes that money and creates two new entitlements--or expands one and creates another one. We know from our history that entitlements are never fully paid for. Then it takes money from a fund, which is supposed to be an insurance fund, and it spends that money--long-term care insurance. So that when those insurance IOUs come up to be paid, there isn't going to be any money to pay them. It is called the CLASS Act. It is a classic game of pyramid accounting. In fact, if you did it in the private sector you would go to jail.

So that is the course we are on--a massive expansion in our debt, leading us to a situation where our capacity to pay that debt will be virtually impossible to accomplish without huge negative implications for the standard of living of our children and our grandchildren, and even our generation, quite honestly. It is going to arrive pretty soon. In fact, today, there was a CNBC question put out: Should you continue to invest in American debt in light of what we are headed toward? How do you avoid the impending meltdown?

As people start to sense this coming at us, the cost of selling our debt is going to become extraordinarily expensive, because people will have to price in either massive inflation or an economic cost through reduction in productivity due to massive taxes, which will reduce our capacity to repay this debt in any sort of reasonable way. This is a serious problem, and yet we do not seem to be willing to face up to it.

There is something else we need to focus on. Not only is it the sovereign nations of the world that have this debt problem, it is our States. Think about this for a moment. California's debt problem is so severe they are represented as being close to potential default. What is the implication of that for us as a country if one of our States were to default on their debt? The domino effect would be extraordinary. Do we have enough gas in our tanks, so to say, to come in and resolve this from the Federal level? I doubt it. We have used up most of our running room. If we go into a fiscal cardiac arrest, which is approximately what we are going to do--it is exactly what we are going to do, a fiscal cardiac arrest--4 or 5 years from now, and we reach for the defibrillators, there isn't going to be any power. There won't be any power to activate them because we have used up all our resources already. We have spent it. We can't borrow any more, and we certainly don't want to inflate our way out of it. It will be severe, and the arrest may become terminal for certain parts of our economy and certain people's lifestyles--basically, regular Americans living on Main Street. So the issue is out there and it is pretty clear.

Greece is a precursor, California is an example, and our own profligate attitude here in the Congress about it is not helping the problem at all. You don't have to listen to me on this. Mohamed El- Erian, who is a senior member of a group known as PIMCO, the largest bond dealer in the world and one of the leading authorities on debt and the purchase and selling of debt in the world, wrote a very thoughtful article, and this article hits the nail on the head about the threat we confront as a nation for our failure to face up to this debt situation now and allowing it to erode and continue to grow.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article I just referred to.

It is time for us to act. It is time to, first, stop spending. That

is the bottom line. It is like a diet. The only way you can lose some weight is to actually stop eating the wrong way. We have to stop spending, and then we have to come up with some pretty aggressive ideas addressing the very systemic problems we have as a country relative to the growth of our debt, so that if we do them now it will have less negative impact on people than if we have to do them in a crisis situation.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, why do we keep doing this? Why do we keep passing debt on to our children? Why do we keep running program after program out here that is shrouded in sweetness and light but not paid for?

We just passed a pay-go point of order 4 weeks ago to great fanfare, great breast-beating about how fiscally responsible we were going to be. Yet time after time since we passed that pay-go point of order, amendments have been brought to the floor which violate it. This is another one. This amendment costs $2 billion which is not paid for.

Summer jobs may be good. I am sure they are. But why do we want to put the debt for those summer jobs onto the children of the people who are having the summer jobs?

If this is a priority--and it is--let's pay for it. Let's take the money out of some other account. But let's not add to the debt, and let's not once again violate the pay-go rules which this Senate has so loudly proclaimed is the manner in which we will discipline ourselves fiscally. It is a $2 billion item. If we can't stand by pay-go for $2 billion, we are making a farce out of it.

As a result of this violation of pay-go, I raise a point of order against the amendment pursuant to section 201(a) of S. Res. 21, the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2008.

Mr. President, is this a pay-go point of order violation?

I object.

Mr. President, I object.

Madam President, I understand the Senator from Illinois is planning to speak. I wish to speak after he completes his remarks. I ask unanimous consent he be recognized and then I be recognized.

The Senator is speaking after me?

Madam President, I rise to go over, for the sake of the record and also for those people who may be listening and may be reading this dialog, where we stand relative to the health care debate. I think it is important for people to understand what has happened. There has been a lot of talk about a lot of different things, with reconciliation, the term ``reconciliation'' taking a front row seat.

What is happening here essentially is this. The House of Representatives is going to have to make a decision whether they want to pass the bill that passed here in the Senate. Remember, the bill that passed here in the Senate was a bill that was produced and delivered to the Senate on a Saturday afternoon, for all intents and purposes--the core of the bill, the managers' amendment. No amendments were allowed after that Saturday afternoon and a final vote was taken 3 days later on Christmas Eve.

It was a bill that expanded the size of the government by $2.5 trillion, when fully implemented. It was a bill that reduced Medicare by $1 trillion when fully implemented and was scored at $500 billion in the first 10-year tranche, by $1 trillion when fully implemented, and took those savings from Medicare, from Medicare recipients, and used them to fund a brandnew entitlement which had nothing to do with Medicare, it didn't involve the people who receive Medicare, and to extend dramatically an already existing entitlement called Medicaid.

It was a bill that basically said to small employers we are going to make it so darned expensive for you to keep the insurance you presently give to your employees that a lot of you are going to decide to throw up your hands, stop insuring your employees and send your employees down the street to something called an exchange. It was a bill that basically set up a structure

which would manage, in a very micromanaged way, the delivery of health care in this country from a top-down situation so essentially it put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor and you and your hospital.

It was a bill which was going to create so much new spending and grow the Government so much that we would now have, after this bill is fully implemented, the largest government, as a percentage of our gross national product, we have ever had at any time when we have not been engaged in a world war. Think about that. That bill takes the size of our government and grows it from its historic level, which is about 20 percent of GDP, up to around 25, 26, 27 percent of GDP when it is fully implemented. Most of that, although allegedly paid for--those paid-fors will never come to fruition because we know this Congress doesn't have the courage to stand up and raise taxes at those levels or cut spending at those levels. So most of that, in my opinion--and granted, this wasn't CBO's score because they had to take the statements as though Congress would do something such as cut Medicare by $1 trillion--most of those pay-fors would not come to fruition and therefore this would fall on the deficit and become debt our children would have to pay off.

In addition, it did nothing, absolutely nothing, about reducing the cost of health care in this country. In fact--again according to CBO-- the cost of health care went straight up under this bill. A lot of Americans, also under this bill, would still not be insured because the estimate was 24 million, I believe, would still have no insurance, even after we had spent $2.5 trillion.

So this bill, in my opinion, was and is and remains a disaster from a fiscal standpoint, because it will so massively expand the size of the Federal Government and throw those costs onto our children's backs in the form of debt; and from a health care standpoint, because it will undermine, in my opinion, the delivery of health care. But more important, it doesn't do anything substantively to bend the outyear health care costs.

So now this bill, this giant bill on health care, this asteroid headed toward Earth, is sitting in the House of Representatives. They do not have the votes to pass it. Why? Because the American people have spoken. They spoke when they elected Scott Brown in Massachusetts, they have spoken in polls across the country, and they have spoken in town meetings. They have spoken in letters to Senators and e-mails to Senators and House Members.

They are upset. They know this is bad policy. They know we cannot afford it, and they know we should not do it. So there are a lot of House Members who are a little queasy about voting for this bill. So what does the administration come up with and the House leadership, Speaker Pelosi? They have come up with this sidecar to this huge bill, and this sidecar is called reconciliation. It is a littler bill.

What is the purpose of this bill? The purpose of this bill is to go around to the different constituencies in the House, the different liberal constituencies in the House, ask them what they need to get their vote for the big bill, and then put it in this little bill. It is a purchasing process. It is a going-out-and-buying-votes process done behind closed doors, as this bill was.

This bill was designed in a back room. The big bill was designed in a back room. This is a back room, behind the back room, behind a hidden door, where they are negotiating with all of these folks: What do I need to do to get you to vote for this big bill, which nobody wants?

Someone says: Well, you have to spend more money, so they put in something that spends more money, or you have to raise taxes on somebody, so they put in a tax increase, or you have to change the benefit structure, so they change the benefit structure. They put all of these little changes, which are fairly significant but are nothing compared to the bigger bill, in this smaller bill called reconciliation.

Why did they choose that bill called reconciliation to do this--or why will they? Because under the Senate rules anything that comes across the floor of the Senate requires 60 votes to pass. It is called the filibuster. That is the way the Senate was structured.

The Senate was structured to be the place where bills which rushed through the House because they do not have rules that limit--they do have a lot of rules that limit debate and allow people to pass bills quickly, but they do not have any rule called the filibuster which allows people to slow things down.

Bills can rush through the House, and they come over here. Sometimes they are pretty bad ideas, and the Founding Fathers realized when they structured this government they wanted checks and balances. They do not want things being rushed through. They had seen the parliamentary system. They knew it did not work.

So they set up the Senate as the place, as George Washington described it, where you take the hot coffee out of the cup and you pour it into the saucer and you let it cool a little bit and make people look at it and make sure it is done correctly. So that is why we have the 60-vote situation over here to require that things that pass the Senate get thoughtful consideration.

Unfortunately, it was totally ignored--the 60 votes were not because 60 votes were used to override thoughtful consideration. But when the big bill was passed, it was done in a way that basically limited the ability of the Senate to debate it and to amend it.

But now they know they cannot go through that route again because they know there is no longer 60 votes on the other side of the aisle with the election of Senator Brown, who was elected, in large part, because of people's outrage over what happened when they basically tried to jam the Senate, or did jam the Senate procedure, and did not allow amendments, did not allow a debate on the biggest piece of social policy and fiscal legislation in history--in my experience, in the history of my experience in the Congress, the big bill.

When they jammed us, jammed that thing through here on Christmas Eve, the American people got outraged. Senator Brown made that point. As a result, people agreed with him in Massachusetts, and they elected him. So there are no longer 60 votes on that side of the aisle. They cannot use that railroad approach. So they decided to go back to an arcane Senate procedure called reconciliation and use that approach.

Under reconciliation, which is a Senate process, that is the only bill around here, the budget and reconciliation, that has the right to pass with 51 votes and a time limit on debate, and basically a time limit on debatable amendments, although not on amendments generally.

So this reconciliation is a hybrid vehicle in the Senate. And what is it? Well, reconciliation was structured so that when a budget passed the Senate, there would be a way for the Budget Committee to say to the committees that were supposed to adjust spending or adjust taxes in a way to meet the budget that they had to do it. So if your budget was coming out $10, $20, or $30 billion over where it was supposed to be, the reconciliation structure would say: Change the law to bring it back to where it is supposed to be.

It has been used around here on numerous occasions. I think 19 times reconciliation has been used since the Budget Act instituted reconciliation in 1976. But it has always been used for the purposes of adjusting issues which either, A, were bipartisan, or, B, were pretty much purely issues of adjusting numbers, numbers on the tax side, numbers on the spending side.

So of the 19 times that reconciliation has been used, every time except two times, reconciliation has been a bipartisan bill. Twice it was not bipartisan. Twice it was run through here on a partisan vote: once on the tax increases that President Clinton passed, and once on a reconciliation bill dealing with adjusting spending. I believe it was in 1985; otherwise, there has always been a bipartisan vote for the bill. So 89 percent of the time it has been bipartisan. It has always been, when it has been partisan, used for the purpose of making these numbers adjustments, not for the purpose of creating massive new policy that affects every American in very personal ways in the way they deal with their doctors and their hospitals and their health care treatment.

It was never conceived as a concept where the real legislation involving substantive issues of policies would be done. Tax rate adjustments have occurred under it. Absolutely. But when

you move tax rates from 39 to 35 percent, as the Bush tax cuts did, or tax capital gains from 20--I think they went from 25 percent to 15 percent--that is not a complex issue. That is just, you know, taxes are either going to go up or go down. It takes about 100 pages of actual legislative language. Everybody knows the issue. It is an up-or-down vote. Pretty clear.

In fact, in these instances, there were opposing positions presented, and in those issues, there was actually more than one--people of both parties voted for them. That is not like passing an entire rewrite of the health care system of America.

The health care system is 17 percent of our economy, one of the most complex issues we have to deal with. You pull a string over here, and a string 10,000 miles away is affected. It is just a matrix of exceptionally complicated interrelated issues with all sorts of policy language that is necessary.

So reconciliation was never conceived of, and its purpose was never to take on big policy like that. Big policy is supposed to be taken on the floor of the Senate in an open procedure where there is debate and there is amendments, and the amendments are debatable.

So reconciliation is certainly not the appropriate vehicle to use. But I think the point I am trying to make is that reconciliation is not the real game. I mean, after the House of Representatives--after they have gone around with this reconciliation bill and they bought up the votes they need and said to these people: Well, we will just fix that in reconciliation if you will just vote for the big bill--after that has happened and the big bill has passed, this $2.5 trillion monstrosity in spending and government dominance of the health care sector, after that is passed, the game is over. That is the law. I do not think there will be much incentive at all for the White House or my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to take up reconciliation. There certainly will not be any energy needed to pass it.

Because this big bill, which America basically rejects--every poll in America says it has a maximum of about 25 percent approval of that bill and somewhere around 60 to 70 percent disapproval, at different levels, ``strongly'' or ``fairly strongly''--that bill will have become law, and basically what we will have done, or what will have occurred, then, is we will have created a government program that is so large and so burdensome that it is very unlikely that this country will be able to pay for it. As we move into the outyears, our children are going to get these bills. In order to pay those bills, they are either going to have to have a massive event of inflation to pay for them or a massive tax increase. Either one of those events, of course, undermine the quality of life and the standard of living of the next generation.

In addition, of course, we are going to get a health care system which has become basically a ward of the government, for all intents and purposes, for the bureaucracy that is very dominant and that makes it very difficult for citizens to have the choices they need to develop a health care delivery system that is tailored to their needs.

A lot of small businesses will just simply give up on the idea of supplying health care. We also know, of course, that the health care prices will not come down but will continue to go up. So this is a really dangerous time. It is a time when the House of Representatives has to take a hard look at what actions it is going to take, obviously, and I am sure they will.

But they have to recognize that voting for that big bill and hoping that the Senate will bail them out with a little bill--well, I would take a second look at that. First, it will be hard to run a reconciliation bill across this floor and have it end up with the way it started out because of all of the points of order that will be available against it.

But, secondly, I am not sure there will be all that much energy to do it to begin with because once you pass the big bill, those who want to essentially dramatically expand our government, and in the end nationalize the health care system with a single-payer approach, will be well on their road to accomplishing those things.

There is not going to be a whole lot of energy to do much else. So I think it is important to understand that as much as reconciliation is an interesting and entertaining point of topic for discussion around here as to whether it is appropriate and whether--which I do not think it is under this type of scenario--and whether the reconciliation bill will actually survive the challenging on this floor from points of order, that is an interesting issue too.

That is not the question. The question is, is reconciliation even relevant once the big bill passes? I think it is probably not. So if I were a House Member depending on reconciliation, looking to that bill as the way that I am going to justify voting for this bigger bill, which is such a disaster, I would think twice.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I was going to inquire of the chairman if he had locked in a speaker after the vote.

What is the regular order?

Mr. President, this amendment would add billions of dollars to the deficit which would have to be paid for by our children. Of course, the reason the COLA is not being given this year is because the law says it should not be. Therefore, I raise a point of order that the Sanders amendment violates section 403(a) of the budget resolution.

Mr. President, I make a point of order that the amendment violates section 201 of S. Con. Res. 21 of the 110th Congress.

I ask unanimous consent that upon the completion of the remarks from the Senator from New York, I be recognized.

Yes.

Mr. President, I believe the first obligation of a government--or one of the obligations, especially of Congress--is to live by its own words and live by its own rules. With great fanfare a couple weeks ago, the Democratic leadership and its membership passed a pay-go piece of legislation which says that when you bring spending legislation to the floor, it should be paid for. There was great breast-beating on the other side of the aisle about how this would discipline the government and make us fiscally responsible.

Now we see, as the first piece of legislation to come forward since the pay-go resolution passed, a bill which violates that pay-go resolution. This bill spends $12 billion that is not paid for under the pay-go rules over the next 5 years. It is in violation of the concepts and the rules which were put forward by the other side as the way we would discipline spending.

I understand--and I think most of us understand--the issue of the economy is critical, getting people back to work is critical, but I don't think we get people back to work by loading more and more debt onto the next generation. Probably we create an atmosphere where folks who are willing to go out and invest and create jobs are a little reticent to do so because they don't know how all that debt the Federal Government is putting on the books will be paid for. I presume that is one of the reasons the pay-go legislation was brought forward a couple of weeks ago, to try to give some certainty to the markets and to the American people who were upset with all the deficit and debt, that we would discipline ourselves.

Now the first bill that comes forward violates the rules of the Senate by adding $12 billion of spending which is not paid for, which will be deficit spending, and which will be added to the debt. I am not sure how you vote for this bill when it violates that rule which you just voted for 2 weeks ago. It seems a bit of inconsistency that is hard even for a political institution to justify.

On top of that, this bill has massive gamesmanship in the outyears. It is a bill of $15 to $18 billion in spending, but actually, because of the games played in the highway accounts, it adds $140 billion of spending that is not paid for which will be added to the debt if this bill is passed. That is a hard number. That is a big number. That is a real number.

The simple fact is, this bill, in the classic gamesmanship we see from the highway committee, spends money we don't have and then claims we have the money. In the end, all that money has to be borrowed because there are no revenues to cover it.

If this bill is passed, there will be $140 billion in new debt put on our kids' backs as a result of this alleged small number. I forgot what the number is they claim is actually in the bill. How does that happen? This bit of gamesmanship ought to be explained because it keeps being undertaken by the highway committee in the most egregious way relative to proper fiscal management. In fact, if this were done in an accounting cycle that was subject to accounting rules, the people who claim this sort of sleight of hand would go to jail. It is that simple. They would go to jail because this is such a fraud on the American taxpayer.

What they are claiming is that the highway fund, on which they have committed to spend much more money than is coming in, and they knew they would spend more money than was coming in because they wanted to spend more money than was coming in, what they are claiming is that highway fund lent the general fund money 10 years ago and that money should have had interest paid on it. Of course, at the time, they actually waived the interest, assuming interest should have been paid on that. That interest has been recouped a couple of times now, allegedly, even if it were owed. But what they claim is that because the money is coming out of the general fund to fund the highway fund, they are calling that an offset so it won't score.

Unfortunately, under the present rules with which we budget around here, it doesn't score because it is built into the baseline. It adds up to $140 billion over the next 10 years, approximately, that is going to come out of the general fund to fund the highway fund because the people who run the highway fund don't have the courage to fund what they want to spend. So they are going to take it out of the general fund. Where does the general fund get its money? It borrows it from our children and grandchildren. It runs up debt. That is why, under any scenario, no matter what gamesmanship you play around here on naming this event, it turns out to be the same thing: debt added to our children's burden.

Our children already have a fair amount of debt coming at them as a result of this Congress's profligacy. Under the President's budget, the deficit will double in the next 5 years and triple in the next 10 years. We will add $11 trillion of new debt to the backs of our children over the next 10 years under the President's initiatives, every year for the next 10 years. We will average deficits of $1 trillion.

The American people intuitively understand that cannot continue; it can't keep up. We are on an unsustainable course. We are running this Nation into a ditch on the fiscal side of the ledger. We are putting this Nation into financial bankruptcy because of the fact that we are running up deficits and debt far beyond our capacity to repay. In fact, if you look at these deficits and debt just in the context of what other industrialized nations do--for example, the European Union--they don't allow their states to exceed deficits of 3 percent or a public debt to GDP ratio of 60 percent. The way this works out, we are going to run deficits of about 5 percent every year for the next 10 years, we will have a public debt situation of well over 60 percent next year, and we will get to 80 percent before the next 10 years are up. Those are numbers which lead to one conclusion--that we are in deep trouble. We are in deep, deep trouble. Yet we come here today with a bill which aggravates that situation relative to the pay-go rules by $12 billion and relative to the highway fund by $140 billion.

I will yield for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

What we have before us today is a bill which, first, violates the pay-go rules which we just passed a couple of weeks ago to the tune of $12 billion and, second, puts in place a glidepath, which should be called a nosedive, toward $140 billion of new debt being put on the backs of our children, with the alleged justification that it is offset when, in fact, the offset is superficial, Pyrrhic, and nonexistent.

We can not keep doing this. We cannot keep doing this to our children. We cannot keep coming out here and claiming we are being fiscally disciplined when we are doing just the opposite: spending money we don't have and passing the bill on to our kids.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with the Senator from Oklahoma for 2 minutes.