Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise in strong support of S. Res. 65, a resolution which sends Israel, Iran, and the region a clear message: We stand with our friends in Israel as they face the looming threat of a nuclear-capable Iran.

I thank Senators Graham and Menendez for submitting this critical resolution, which comes as we face a dangerous crossroads in the Middle East.

Iran's quest for a nuclear weapons capability is moving closer and closer to fruition. Talks with Iran have yet to achieve the progress necessary to restrain Iran's nuclear ambitions and to compel Iran to comply with the standards and norms expected of members of the world community. And while sanctions are having a significant impact on Iran's economy, they have not yet caused Iran's leaders to alter their course.

Just yesterday, Iran's leaders again showed their uncompromising and hard-line stance by excluding viable opposition candidates from their upcoming Presidential election.

There has been a special bond of friendship and cooperation between the U.S. and the State of Israel for over 60 years, which continues to retain broad bipartisan support. We should continue to support and expand the close military, intelligence, and security cooperation between our two countries.

In this context, S. Res. 65 makes three vital points.

First, it reiterates that it is U.S. policy to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapons capability.

Second, it calls for the full implementation of United States and international sanctions on Iran and urges the President to continue and strengthen enforcement of sanctions legislation, including closing loopholes that allow the regime to skirt sanctions.

And third, it makes clear the U.S. should stand in support of Israel in case Israel is compelled to take military action in self-defense, in accordance with U.S. law and Congress's constitutional responsibility to authorize the use of force.

Now is not the time for America to project any ambiguity concerning Iran's nuclear program.

While we hope that sanctions will ultimately prove successful in persuading the regime to halt its nuclear ambitions, we must at the same time make clear to Tehran that we will stand with Israel. Any other message will simply encourage the mullahs to believe that Iran can pursue its nuclear ambitions with impunity--and may facilitate precisely the sort of crisis that we all hope to avoid.

I urge my colleagues to stand with Israel by voting in favor of S. Res. 65.

Reserving the right to object, I believe I was listed in the queue a bit earlier than that, but I only have a 3- or 4-minute statement. I do not mind trading off, but I, similar to others, was told the time was right after the vote that I would be recognized.

I thank the Senator. But reserving the right to object, is that before or after the remarks of the Senator from Oklahoma?

I thank the Senator.

Madam President, I appreciate the courtesy of the Senator from Oklahoma, recognizing that he has other accommodations he has to deal with. I ask unanimous consent I be granted up to 4 minutes to speak after the Senator from Oklahoma completes his comments.

I thank the Senator from Oklahoma and wish him good travels.

I rise briefly today to point out one more time some of the ramifications of the policy I have repeatedly called stupidity on steroids, which is our sequestration policy. Word came out earlier this week from the Department of Defense that the Secretary, to meet his sequestration numbers, is going to have to furlough teachers in Department of Defense schools for 5 days and education support personnel for 11 days.

Many of us on the floor of the Senate stand and praise our men and women who serve in the military, who defend our freedoms. I cannot think of anything that is more of an antithesis to those words we say, that we would praise their service, if we say: Yes, you go off and defend our Nation in Iraq and Afghanistan; meanwhile, your families and your children cannot go to school.

What makes this particularly difficult to stomach at this point is just today, Blue Star Families--one of our Nation's best veterans organizations, veterans support group organizations--came out and said in a list of priorities for military families, No. 1, the impact of deployments, repeated deployments on military families and particularly children; and, No. 2, military children education.

In my State and many other States, military families, particularly on base, have a military DOD school. Those schools provide a valuable service to those military families oftentimes who have their parents deployed. In my mind, how can we stand on the floor of this Senate and commend those men and women who serve and at the same

time say we support that service: We want to support you at home, but not enough to not have your kids have to miss 5 days of school because their teachers are furloughed or providers of other support services for educational personnel are furloughed for 11 days.

I am going to write Secretary Hagel, and I ask that all of my colleagues join with me in this matter in urging that the furloughs of these educators who educate the children of our military families be exempted from the process of sequestration.

While it begs the large question that the Nation confronts a $16 trillion debt, I think most of us in this Chamber know that the only way we are going to get to a solution is if those of us on this side of the aisle find a way to make smart and sensible reforms to our entitlement programs. Our colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle are going to have to work with us to find ways to generate additional revenues; otherwise, we are going to keep coming back to the kinds of cuts we have seen in sequestration and in domestic discretionary.

We are on a current path that would take domestic discretionary spending from 16 percent of our Federal spending down to 4 percent. As a business investor, I would never invest in a business that spent less than 5 percent of its resources on its workforce and infrastructure.

So today I rise on the issue of making sure we actually honor those military families of whom we speak so often and make sure their kids get to go to school next year and don't have to lose valuable educational time because their teachers are furloughed. I hope my colleagues will join me on the letter to Secretary Hagel.

With that, I yield the floor, and I thank the Senator from Texas for his courtesy.

Mr. President, I want to, first of all, commend the Senator from Utah for his comments. We all know the Senator from Utah, like myself, has a real interest in making sure our government is more efficient and more effective in its operations, and know, as well, that the Senator from Utah has not always been necessarily supportive of health care reform, the Affordable Care Act. But I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Utah about Marilyn Tavenner.

I have known Marilyn Tavenner for 25 years. I think while we may disagree about the effectiveness of the Affordable Care Act, we do know one thing: We want CMS to be the most efficient, effective organization possible. I commend the Senator from Utah for his strong endorsement of Marilyn Tavenner. I think he spoke eloquently about her background. I am going to try to add a few comments, but I did not want to let him get away without my thanking him for his comments.

I rise today to join this bipartisan show of support for the President's nominee to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Marilyn Tavenner. She comes to the floor this afternoon on a fairly unusual circumstance, considering some of the nominees we are considering. She came actually with a unanimous voice vote from the Senate Finance Committee. She is supported by a number of health care organizations, including the American Hospital Association, the SEIU, the American Nurses Association, just to name a few.

As I mentioned already, I have known Marilyn Tavenner for 25 years. She is the real deal. She will be a phenomenal choice to continue to lead CMS. Marilyn grew up in a small town in southside Virginia and worked her way through school. She began her health care career not as a hospital administrator or an executive, but she began on the front lines as an emergency room nurse.

Then through her ability, and her ability to relate to people and care, she rose to become CEO of a hospital and then a senior executive of a leading health care company. I know as Governor I called upon Marilyn on a repeated basis on health care issues that affected Virginia. Marilyn has always been committed to people and public service. She took that private sector knowledge and experience into the public sector even before her tenure with this administration when she joined my good friend, the junior Senator from Virginia Tim Kaine when he became Governor and served with his administration as the Virginia Secretary of Health.

Today, Marilyn has already served at the highest levels of CMS, where she has shown her ability to manage and operate one of the largest and most complex agencies in our whole government. By spending most of her career in the private sector, she knows the impact that regulations and rules have on the real world and understands the importance of not just achieving a policy goal but ensuring that it works in practice.

As we all know, passing a law like the ACA is a complicated process, particularly a law like this that has generated as much controversy. That means the role of the Administrator of CMS to be evenhanded, fact- based, effective, and efficient in implementing the dramatic transformation of the health care market that the ACA is going to provide will require a first class Administrator, somebody who understands how to get things done and somebody who is well-respected by both sides of the aisle. Marilyn Tavenner clearly fits that bill.

She is held in extraordinarily high esteem. We, again, heard the ranking member on the Finance Committee already speak in her support. She received unanimous support from the Finance Committee, but she is also held in extraordinarily high esteem by her peers. In fact, in February all of the previous living Senate-confirmed Administrators of the CMS--Democrats, Republicans, Independents, all of them who have run the agency in the past--sent a letter urging her confirmation,

noting that it was ``hard to imagine a candidate more worthy of bipartisan support.''

I look forward to voting with what I hope will be an overwhelming majority of my colleagues to confirm Marilyn for this very important role a little bit later this afternoon. I know I am about to give up my time and yield to the great new Senator from Massachusetts. I know she is going to be speaking about another nominee, someone with whom I have had the opportunity to visit a couple of times, for a role that may be almost as controversial as being head of CMS, being Administrator of

Madam President, I rise to make a few brief remarks. I will leave most of those remarks until after I make another request for unanimous consent. I think I know where this unanimous consent request is headed. I am disappointed. I think we are on, I believe, day 51 at this point as to the request that many of us have made in this Chamber to go back to regular order. Part of that regular order is after a budget has passed for budget conferees to be appointed so we can resolve what I believe is the most important issue facing our Nation, the question of our debt and deficit, so we can try to take the actions needed to get this economy jump-started again. I will reserve most of my time for the remarks afterward.

In the meantime, let me make this request:

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to consideration of Calendar No. 33, H. Con. Res. 25; that the amendment which is at the desk, the text of S. Con. Res. 8, the budget resolution passed by the Senate, be inserted in lieu thereof; that H. Con. Res. 25, as amended, be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, the Senate insist on its amendment, request a conference with the House on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses, and the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees on the part of the Senate, all with no intervening action or debate.

Reserving the right to object, simply as someone who has spent an awful lot of time on this issue, both sides need to be willing to comprise. We need to deal with both the revenue side of this challenge as well as the entitlement reforms that are needed to make sure we can get our close-to-$17-trillion debt back under control. Recognizing the Senator's request would take part of the opportunity to reach that common ground off the table, I object.

Madam President, I simply want to again take a moment here, 52 days after we spent until 5 o'clock in the morning debating a budget--the budget that had over 100 amendments offered, a budget that had amendments from both sides offered and rejected but also accepted. Amendments from both sides were accepted into this budget. It passed with a majority.

I know there are some of my colleagues on the other side who say we should go into the next step of this debate with certain things taken off the table. I do not understand how we are ever going to get to the point which every economist from left to right has all agreed upon, that we have to put this issue of lurching from one budget crisis to another behind us.

The fact is there is an awful lot of consensus about what we need to do. Starting back with the Simpson-Bowles report, then followed up by the Gang of Six and the Domenici-Rivlin report, everyone agrees we need to do at least $4 trillion over the next 10 years. We don't have to solve the whole problem, we just have to take a good step forward.

The remarkable thing is even lurching from crisis to crisis we are over half the way there. Depending on how you want to count, we have done between $2.2 and $2.5 trillion of deficit reduction. That means we need about $2 trillion more to be done for us to again not only provide the boost to the American economy, not only to no longer make Congress the object of more than late-night jokes about our inability to get things done, not only to be able to ensure we have driven our debt-to- GDP ratio back down, headed in the right direction, but, perhaps most important, demonstrate to the American people that when we have an issue of this importance we can actually find that common ground.

To do that is going to require, candidly, everyone in this body and our friends down the hall in the House to be willing to give a little bit. That means we are going to have to find ways to generate additional revenues. I believe, for one--I know sometimes many on my side disagree with me--we are going to have to find ways to reform our entitlement programs so the promise of Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid, some of the best initiatives ever put forward, are going to be here 30 years from now.

But if we are going to reach that kind of compromise, it means the regular order has to proceed. It means we have to have these two very different budgets, one passed by the House, one passed by the Senate, resolved through the regular order of a conference committee. If we do not do this--if we do not do this--my fear is we are going to continue to do the kind of actions we have been on over the last number of months where we continue to cut back on that relatively small piece of Federal spending which is discretionary spending.

We are already seeing, in States such as Massachusetts and Minnesota and Virginia, the effects of sequestration where we have put forward a policy that was viewed by everyone when it was originally thought up as so stupid, so beyond the pale, that no rational group of folks would ever allow it to come to pass. We are now 3 or 4 months into allowing that to come to pass. While we have taken action on certain items such as relieving the challenge of our air traffic controllers, we have not taken action on making sure the funds have been replaced for the 70,000 to 80,000-plus kids who have lost their Head Start funding. We have not taken action to ensure the NIH cancer grants that are being cut, where we have done multigrant years--where the preceding years of research are now going to be flushed because we cannot do the final year of the grant, we cannot take action on that.

We have not taken action on the fact that now, as announced by the Secretary of Defense, while we have made some progress, where no longer are there 22 days of furloughs, we are now seeing 11 days of furloughs to our defense civilian employees. This is at a time that makes enormous challenges to their budgets but beyond that to the readiness of the men and women who defend our Nation.

We can continue this path on sequestration, frankly, retarding our ability to keep our military ready, holding back our ability to have the kind of economic recovery we would all like to see or we can allow the regular order, a regular order that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle called for, for the last couple of years, for us in this Senate to pass the budget.

We passed that budget. Now we need to take the next step in the process and appoint conferees and let us try to find that common ground between the House and Senate budget so we can address this issue of debt and deficit, so we can demonstrate to the American people that we can do our most basic responsibility, which is to make sure we pay our bills and operate the basic functions of government, and that we can do our job to restore the faith that this institution can work in a way the Founders set up.

Unfortunately, we are not going to take that step today because now, for the fifty-second day in a row, our Republican colleagues have objected to the next step in regular order. I am greatly disappointed, but I know I and other colleagues will come down on a regular basis and continue to make this request. My hope is that at some point in the not too distant future we can let the process continue, and we can get to the hard work of resolving the differences of the House and Senate so we can put this issue of lurching from budget crisis to budget crisis in the rearview mirror.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to make a few remarks and to make a motion. Everyone in this body knows one of the issues, the issue I believe is most holding back our economic recovery and most holding back our ability to sort through so many issues our country faces, is the issue of our debt and deficit. We are like $17 trillion in debt. The debt goes up over $4 billion every night when we go to sleep. This problem is structural in nature. Time alone will not solve this issue.

In the last 4 years, my time in the Senate, there has been no issue on which I have spent more time, spent more effort trying to reach out. I understand many of my colleagues actually try to avoid me in the hallways now because they fear they are going to get a Mark Warner harangue on the debt and deficit.

I also know the only way we are going to get this issue resolved is if both sides are willing to meet each other in the middle. This is a problem that cannot be solved by continuing to cut back on discretionary spending. It will require, yes, more revenues, and it will require entitlement reform. Those are issues where, unfortunately, in many ways our parties have not found agreement.

We have all agreed as well at least that, while we do not have to solve this problem overnight, we need at least $4 trillion in debt reduction over the next 10 years. The good thing is, while we have been lurching from budget crisis to budget crisis, we have gotten halfway to our goal. The good news as well is that this year both the Senate and the House adopted budget resolutions. As I said on the floor in March, I believe the Senate budget was a solid first chapter toward producing a balanced fiscal plan for our country. My vote for the Senate budget-- and it was not a budget on which I would agree with every component part--was a vote for progress, a vote for regular order, regular order that so many of my distinguished colleagues who served here much longer than I say is the glue that holds this institution together.

It has now been 46 days since the Senate passed its budget. Unfortunately, there are certain colleagues on the other side of the aisle who seem to block our ability to go to conference. In a few minutes--just 2 minutes--I will ask my colleagues to agree to authorize the Chair to name a conference to the Budget Committee. Unfortunately, I expect that request to be objected to. I find that extremely disappointing. I can only speak at this point for folks from Virginia, but no single other issue is as overriding, as I travel across Virginia and I imagine for most of my colleagues as they travel across their States. At the end of the day, Americans, Virginians, want us to work together and get this issue solved.

We have seen, over the last 2\1/2\ years, as we have lurched from manufactured budget crisis to budget crisis, the effects on the stock market, on job creation, and our overall recovery. We have a chance to put this behind us. We need to find the kind of common ground between the House budget proposal and the Senate budget proposal on which so many have called upon us to work.

Again, I am going to make this motion in a moment. I want to add one last point. I appreciate some of the calls we have had from colleagues on the Republican side over the last couple of years for the Senate to pass a budget. I believed we needed to pass that budget. Mr. President, 46 days ago, after 100 amendments and a session that went until 5 o'clock in the morning, we passed such a document. I think it is time now that we allow the Senate to announce its conferees to meet with the House, to get a budget

resolved for the United States of America so we have a framework to make sure we get this issue of debt and deficit behind us; that we allow the economy to recover in a way that it needs.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to consideration of Calendar No. 33, H. Con. Res. 25; that the amendment which is at the desk, the text of S. Con. Res. 8, the budget resolution passed by the Senate, be inserted in lieu thereof, and H. Con. Res. 25, as amended, be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that the Senate insist on its amendment, request a conference with the House on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses; and the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees on the part of the Senate, all with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, while it is not unexpected, I am disappointed. The nub of this issue, as commentators from left to right, Democrat and Republican, pointed out, is if we are going to avoid the path we are on, the path of sequestration, which was set up to be literally the worst possible option--which right now is seeing cuts made in the most unsophisticated, unplanned, and inefficient way possible, plans that, if we continue on the path we are on, would so dramatically cut back this country's investments in education, infrastructure, research and development, that I don't believe, as a former business person, that America will be able to compete with the kind of economic growth we need to maintain our economy.

If we are going to avoid those kinds of Draconian cuts, if we are going to have a rational business plan for our country, I think most of us, or at least an overwhelming majority of the Senate, would recognize we have to generate both some additional revenues and--while there may be some on my side who disagree--we have to find ways to reform entitlement programs to make sure Medicare and Social Security are going to be there 30 years from now.

The only way to get that done is to take the House product, which focuses particularly on entitlement reform, combine it with the Senate product that makes reasonable increases in revenues and starts us on a path on changes in some of our entitlement programs but also puts in place a more reasonable and balanced approach on cuts. The only way we are going to get to that finish line, particularly for those who have advocated for regular order, is to have a conference.

It is with great distress that we heard opposition raised to regular order, an appeal for regular order, an appeal that was made consistently for the past 2\1/2\ years. I don't understand why my colleagues on the other side will not take yes for an answer. They asked for us to pass a budget. We passed that budget. I think it is a good first step in the process and I hope in the coming days there will be a change of heart, that the regular order will be allowed to proceed, conferees will be named for both the House and Senate, and that we can reach agreement on this issue that I think is important, not only to the future of our economy but quite honestly now has taken on the metaphor for whether institutions can actually function in the 21st century.

I see my good friend, the Senator from Virginia, who may want to add some comments to this discussion.

Madam President, I first of all thank my friend, the Senator from Connecticut, for his comments today and for his leadership on this issue which is of such enormous importance.

I have been a long-time supporter of the second amendment, but like so many other Americans after Newtown, the status quo just didn't cut it. The Senator and so many others have continued to come down and raise the issue. At least we ought to make sure we have a system in place in this country to prevent criminals and those with serious mental impairment from purchasing firearms. I think it is the most reasonable of all proposals. I thank the Senator for not letting us on the Senate floor forget that tragedy and that issue. I have a sense, and I am sure it is the same in Connecticut and it probably is the same in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the American people haven't forgotten. There is not a day that goes by when I don't have somebody coming up and saying, you have got to bring that back up.

I again thank the Senator for his good work. I think those of us who want to put in place appropriate, reasonable restrictions that the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners support will have another day in this hall.

The Budget

Madam President, I note a lot of my colleagues have also been down today talking about the budget, an issue some would say I have been a little bit obsessed about in the 4 years I have been here.

I want to come and talk about that tomorrow, but at least tangentially I want to raise that same issue in my comments today.

Tribute To Federal Employees

Timothy Gribben, Christine Heflin, Michelle Silver

Madam President, this week we celebrate Public Service Recognition Week to honor public servants at all levels of government for their admirable patriotism and contributions to our country. We talk about budgets sometimes and we forget that a lot of the resources we pay in taxes that go to budgets actually hire Americans who go to work every day trying to make our country a safer place to live and a better place to live. Quite honestly, the vast majority of folks who work in public service go about doing it with very little recognition for the work they do.

Since 2010, when I had the opportunity as a freshman Senator to preside more often than I would have liked to, I used to see then- Senator Ted Kaufman, who would come down to the floor almost every week and talk about a Federal employee. When Ted, who had served as staff director to Joe Biden for close to 30 years, left the Senate, I inherited that responsibility from him. While I have not been quite as conscientious as Senator Kaufman, I have tried to make certain to come down on a regular basis and call out Federal employees who deserve recognition, including even certain Federal employees who work in the Senate.

Today I want to take a moment to recognize three Federal employees who particularly are relevant to the debate we are having about budgets because one of the issues we all have to recognize is we have to find ways to make our Federal dollars go further. So I want to recognize three Federal employees who happen to be Virginians, who are working to make our government use data better to improve accountability and transparency. These are individuals whom, as chair of the Budget Committee's Government Performance Task Force, I have followed in some of their actions.

First, I want to recognize Timothy Gribben. Tim is the Director of Performance Management at the Small Business Administration, and in this role he developed SBA's quarterly performance review process that is now considered a best practice among other agencies. Because of Tim's commitment to transparent and accessible performance metrics--I know that doesn't get everybody's eyes shiny, but performance metrics is something I am pretty interested in--the American public can now more clearly track the support provided to small businesses from SBA to see where our tax dollars are headed.

Tim has been recognized by the White House's Performance Improvement Council and the American Association of Government Accountants for his leadership.

Next, I want to recognize Christine Heflin. Christine is the Director of Performance Excellence at the Department of Commerce and has established the Performance Excellence Council to bring together performance leaders from across the Department to exchange best practices. Because of Christine's expertise, she is sought by other agencies for advice, and she leads performance management 101 training across the Department to educate staff on the benefits of data-driven decisionmaking, the use of analytics, and performance improvement techniques.

Finally, I would like to recognize Michelle Silver. Michelle served as the program manager for the Bank Act IT Modernization Program. Under her leadership, the program was able to successfully modernize the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's IT infrastructure. This significantly improved the ability of law enforcement, regulatory, and intelligence agencies to access and analyze financial data to detect and prevent financial crimes. It is important to note that Michelle's management ensured the modernization program was delivered on time and within budget. Because of people like Michelle and many other hard- working Federal employees at the Department of Treasury, our country's financial system is at least safer now than it was before from emerging threats.

I know performance metrics, data analysis, and IT improvements aren't necessarily the subject of debates every day on the floor of the Senate, but regardless of how we get our country's balance sheet back in order, I believe that will require both additional revenue and entitlement reforms so we don't keep coming back to the small portion of our budget which is discretionary programs. Even with all of that, we still need to make sure we use those dollars in the most effective and efficient process possible.

I hope my colleagues will join me in honoring Mr. Gribben, Ms. Heflin, and Ms. Silver, as well as all government employees at all levels around the country for their commitment to public service. Again, I remind all of my colleagues that as we debate budgets and we debate the future of our country, there are literally millions of folks at all levels of public service who go to work every day to make our country safer, to make our country more efficient, and to provide services for those who are in need.

A few minutes earlier today I was with seven DEA agents who had just received the Congressional Badge of Bravery. They had been recently deployed to Afghanistan. These are all people who represent the commitments we fight for on the floor of the Senate.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I am pleased to honor the Fredericksburg Big Band for their significant contribution to culture and charitable organizations in central Virginia.

In March of 1966 the Fredericksburg Big Band was formed when a group of musicians gathered at the old American Legion Hall in Fredericksburg and began a revival of 1930s and 1940s big band music. They initially began playing simply because they enjoyed the music. Later that year the band was asked to play for the King George Fall Festival and began making public appearances. Soon after, they had the idea of playing for charities because these civic-minded musicians wanted to make a difference for people in their communities. The mission of the band soon became to provide music at charity events throughout the central Virginia area. The band continues that tradition to this day.

Since the inception of the band in March of 1966, it has performed at many charity events in the central Virginia area and helped local organizations to collectively raise well over $2 million. Of notable mention are two long standing events: The Fredericksburg Big Band has performed a September concert sponsored by the Salvation Army Women's Auxillary since 1988 and Fredericksburg Parks and Recreation has sponsored the Fredericksburg Big Band March concert at the University of Mary Washington since 1987 as a means for the band to give back to the community.

The Big Band consists of local business and music professionals who donate their time to the group's mission, including past directors Philip Heim, DuVal Hicks, Richard Phillips, Joseph Ulman, and current director Stephen Sanford, who has been a member of the band since 1975. The current members of the band are: Stephen Sanford, director; Ron Pronk, Karen Blake, Jeremy Cooper, Terry Rooker, and John Robie on saxophone; Paul Rawlins, Stephen Sanford, Earl Sam, and Jim Breakiron on trombone; Marc Weigel, Kevin Shipe, James Canty, and Dave Greenfield on trumpet; Kathryn Hichborn on keyboard; Frankie Blackburn on guitar; Michael Rinckey on string bass; Dave Fosdick and Ray Homoroc on drums; and Mary Jo Prouty as vocalist. Current substitutes include Luke Grey on string bass, Gary Carper on trombone and Mike Sanders on trumpet.

Despite the many changes in the Fredericksburg Big Band membership over the past 47 years, their mission of supporting charitable organizations and their dedication to keeping the sound of the big band alive remains strong. I ask the U.S. Senate to join me in congratulating the Fredericksburg Big Band on their civic-minded, philanthropic success and dedication to the arts.

Madam President, I rise today to congratulate my friend Russ Ramsey as he completes his successful tenure as the chairman of the Board of the George Washington University. After 15 years on the board of trustees--six as chairman--uss will step down this June. Over the last few years he has overseen the remarkable growth and success of GW and worked to focus the institution on opportunities in Virginia, throughout the region, and around the globe.

He has presided over a renewal in GW's commitment to their Virginia Science and Technology Campus. That campus now totals more than 100 acres and includes 17 research laboratories in areas such as high- performance computing, renewable energy, and computational biology. Perhaps most importantly, it is the home to GW's new School of Nursing--the first of GW's 10 schools to be located in the Commonwealth. Chairman Ramsey has overseen the creation of a Virginia committee of the board of trustees, the development and acquisition of new buildings on the VSTC, innovative partnerships with institutions like the Textile Museum, and the redevelopment of Barcroft Field in collaboration with Arlington County.

Beyond GW's efforts in Virginia, Chairman Ramsey has worked to elevate GW to the status of a world-class institution leading the search for GW's 16th president, Dr. Steven Knapp, overseeing a remarkable growth in fundraising, and guiding GW to make new investments in scientific research, technology transfer and entrepreneurship.

Russ Ramsey is himself a successful entrepreneur, having built multibillion-dollar businesses primarily in the fields of investment banking and money management. He is most widely known as cofounder of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group. In 2001, he founded Ramsey Asset Management, a long/short equity hedge fund based in McLean, VA, where he is chairman, CEO, and CIO today.

He attended the George Washington University School of Business on a baseball scholarship and earned his bachelor of business administration in 1981. He is a native Washingtonian and lives with his wife Norma and their four children in Northern Virginia. Through the W. Russell and Norma G. Ramsey Foundation, they are actively committed to philanthropic causes dedicated to at-risk families through education and health programs. The Ramseys are founding investors of Venture Philanthropy Partners, which has invested nearly $80 million in nonprofits in the greater Washington area over the last 10 years.

Please join me in congratulating my friend Russ Ramsey for all of his contributions to the George Washington University, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the greater Washington region.

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

Mr. President, I rise in support of the legislation that is on the floor, the Marketplace Fairness Act. I rise as someone who has spent 20 years in the technology business helping to fund and develop online businesses, understanding the importance they play to our economy, and applaud the enormous growth of Internet-based businesses.

But I also rise in support of this legislation, because in addition to being a technology investor, I also was a Governor and know the importance that sales tax plays in funding so many critical State and local functions. Unfortunately, under the current circumstances, we have an uneven playing field because local small businesses, oftentimes bricks and mortar, follow the law and collect sales taxes from customers who make purchases in their stores while, on the other hand, many large online businesses that may be located or domiciled in some other State do not collect the same sales taxes. I think on this floor already we have heard repeated stories of some online retailers that even encourage people to go to the brick-and-mortar store to look, go out and price a product and then go back and go online and purchase that product. Not only does that discriminate against the brick-and- mortar store, but from a public policy standpoint, if these sales taxes are not collected, it creates an unlevel playing field between the online vendor and the brick-and-mortar store.

This legislation will help level the playing field. It is about fairness. It is about having a level playing field for all types of retail outlets. Let me make clear, all it simply does is require every business to collect and remit an already legal sales tax that has been put in place at a State or local level.

Because of this unequal playing field, because of current circumstances, because there has been a failure amongst many of our online vendors to collect these sales taxes, this creates a direct and immediate impact on State and local governments. As a former Governor, I can tell you the inability of States and localities to gather uncollected revenues undermines dramatically their ability to invest in K-12 education, police and fire prevention, funding for roads and bridges, public safety, environmental causes. You name it, all the basic core services that State and local governments perform, so many of them are directly funded in a major way by local or State sales taxes.

I would also like to mention how important this bill is to the Commonwealth of Virginia. Most recently in the Commonwealth, Virginia's leadership, with a Republican Governor and a bipartisan legislature, finally enacted legislation to make significant investments in our outdated and overstressed transportation network. Many of the folks work on the Hill or those of my colleagues who happen to live in Virginia know that traffic in Northern Virginia is at an almost debilitating point. We have finally in Virginia passed a funding source to try to address the transportation needs of Virginia.

Part of this solution, though, anticipates revenue from this legislation. So if we are going to be able to solve the transportation crisis that confronts not just Northern Virginia but all of Virginia, Virginia has to have the ability to collect all of its sale tax revenue. This is a large amount. The current uncollected amount of sales tax revenue in Virginia is estimated to be $422 million over the past year.

That number is going to continue to increase as more and more vendors go

online. Nationally, the amount is a staggering $23 billion. Again, as I mentioned earlier, at a time when our States and municipalities are struggling to maintain essential core services or government, I think it is irresponsible of us at the Congressional level to, in effect, interfere or not allow these States and localities to collect sales taxes that they have put in place, that are collected from vendors that are in their communities but not certain vendors who operate online.

I would like to take a moment also to address a couple of the concerns I have heard from my community in Virginia. I say there are ways to improve this bill. I am grateful the Northern Virginia technology community is generally supportive of this legislation. They have raised some concerns, concerns I would like to address.

First, there is discussion about the small seller exemption. The current legislation says that those small sellers online that have less than $1 million in sales will be exempted from this regulation. It is important that a startup business gets going online, that we do not put undue bureaucratic and other restrictions in place. There have been some suggestions that that $1 million small seller exemption is too small. I think perhaps looking at a slightly higher number may make some sense.

But there have been some who suggested we would take this number all the way up to $15 million. I have to tell you, I believe taking the small seller exemption up to $15 million per year in revenues would dramatically undermine this legislation and dramatically cut back the $422 million Virginia has left on the table and the $23 billion that is estimated to be left nationally.

So, yes, we can look at something a little larger than $1 million but to go up to $15 million would be much too high.

Second, I think there have been reasonable questions about how to make sure, where we are going to create an audit trail, and where we are going to allow those vendors to remit back, not to the literally hundreds of jurisdictions that collect these kind of taxes but to be able to simply remit to a single point of contact.

I think the legislation moves forward in this direction. I again would look at other opportunities. On the issues of remittance, the legislation does put in place a requirement that every State would have a single point of remittance, which I think strikes the right kind of balance needed to not create an undue burden.

On the question of audits, I think there is more work that can be done. I believe there is an analogy here to the telecommunications industry I used to be part of. In the early days of the cell phone industry, there were clearinghouses that were allowed to, in effect, be the settlement agencies between a variety of competing cell phone systems when we were charged roaming charges. I think we can look to some examples in that industry and others to make sure that in a look- back basis, there is an ability to have a single point of audit so those vendors, particularly small vendors, make sure they get a fair shake.

Finally, I think we need to make sure that, particularly for these smaller vendors, we do all we can to make it easy for them to comply with the law. I am pleased this legislation requires States to make available, at no cost to retailers, common software that will basically calculate the State and local sales tax requirements for any of these online vendors, as well as kind of build in some of the administrative services. I think this is an important step to make sure we continue to allow the entrepreneurial spirit to grow online as well as in the local community.

Again, I think it is terribly important to remember that all we are doing in this legislation is making sure there is a process in place to collect sales taxes that are already due.

Two final comments before I yield the floor. During the course of this debate, some opponents of the Marketplace Fairness Act have made statements about what this bill might possibly do that I do not think are reflected in the legislation.

Among those claims, there is a claim that this bill is the first step toward a State or local transaction tax on the purchase of stocks or derivative contracts. I have reviewed this legislation closely. There is nothing in this legislation that would make it be the first step on a slippery slope toward a transaction tax. There is nothing in this bill that would prohibit that kind of tax. States already have that ability. This legislation will do nothing to take a step toward that. So I think that claim being made by some is not accurate and does not reflect the legislation.

Finally, this legislation comes about because at the beginning of the development of online sales, there was a belief, perhaps accurate at that moment in time, that this growing industry of online retailers needed an extra little benefit, an extra little head start, an ability to have this industry not be squashed at its outset. I think history has shown, as we have seen the growth of retail sales online go up dramatically, faster than the growth of retail sales in bricks and mortar, that whatever needed boost the online industry might have needed at some point, that they now have become an extraordinarily important and successful part of our economy.

I commend all those and many other companies I had the ability to help fund when I was in the private sector. I welcome their success. Online businesses continue to be one of the areas for most entrepreneurial activity. I commend those efforts. But I do believe, in 2013, we do not need to perpetuate what has become at this point an unlevel playing field.

I believe the Marketplace Fairness Act will correct that unfairness, correct this unlevel playing field. I was pleased to see the overwhelming bipartisan majority that voted to invoke cloture. I hope this week we will be able to finish considering this bill, get it passed, and get it sent over to the House.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 23, 2013, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 23, 2013, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Semi- Annual Report to Congress.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 23, 2013, at 10 a.m., in room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 23, 2013, at 2:30 p.m. in room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 23, 2013, at 10 a.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The

Antwone Fisher Story as a Case Study for Child Welfare.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet, during the session of the Senate, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Successful Primary Care Programs: Creating the Workforce We Need'' on April 23, 2013, at 10 a.m., in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on April 23, 2013, at 9:30 a.m., in room SH-216 of the Hart Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, S. 744.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on April 23, 2013, at 4 p.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Drone Wars: The Constitutional and Counterterrorim Implications of Targeted Killing.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 23, 2013, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 23, 2013, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Science and Space of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to hold a meeting during the session of the Senate on April 23, 2013, at 2:30 p.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

The Committee will hold a hearing entitled, ``Challenges and Opportunities for Human Space Exploration.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and the Coast Guard of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to hold a meeting during the session of the Senate on April 23, 2013, at 10 a.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

The Committee will hold a hearing entitled, ``Oversight of the President's Fiscal Year 2014 Budget Requests for Coast Guard and

Mr. President, let me first say I also am on the floor because today is April 16, the sixth anniversary of the horrible shootings at the campus of Virginia Tech. I think every Virginian and every American--I can say Virginians at least--remember when we first received those news reports of the violence perpetrated by Seung-Hui Cho.

I say to my colleague and friend, the Senator from Virginia, in the 33 years we have known each other I have valued his friendship and appreciate his intellect, grace, and knowledge. There was never a moment I was prouder of then-Governor Tim Kaine than those moments after the tragedy.

I don't know if in his comments he noted he had been on a trade mission in Asia when these incidents happened. He barely had landed when he turned around--he and his wife Anne--boarded a plane and came back with virtually no rest. As a Governor you bear these responsibilities in remarkable ways when Virginians are hurt, and in those days he spoke for all of us.

The words he said at the Virginia Tech campus in the ceremony afterward brought together the community and brought together our Commonwealth. In many ways he spoke for our whole Nation, as he has so eloquently spoken this morning. I thank him for what he did as a Virginian in those days afterward and thank him for the eloquent comments he made this morning.

In the aftermath of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, under the leadership of Governor Kaine, Virginia acted. We were within the legislature able to close the legal loophole which allowed Cho, who had been adjudicated mentally unsound, we closed the loophole so he could no longer--or someone who had been adjudicated in such a way--be able to purchase firearms. In the aftermath of the tragedy, then-Governor Kaine appointed a nationally respected commission of experts to recognize what happened and recognize ways we might make all our colleges and universities safer.

This leads me to some of my comments this morning. We are about to take on a debate around how we keep America and Americans safer in a way that also respects our constitutional amendment of the right to keep and bear arms.

An underlying amendment of the bill we are about to debate has at least one part of the legislation which is relatively noncontroversial, a piece of legislation I have been working on for some time. I know Senator Kaine has supported this as well. The issue is to look at campus safety. It has been one of the top priorities of those victims of the Virginia Tech massacre.

Those families who have spoken with me repeatedly, and with Senator Kaine as well, said let's at least make sure, if a tragic event takes place on a college campus somewhere in America, there are ways we can learn from these tragedies.

So the CAMPUS Safety Act, which is embedded in this legislation, will bring together research and resources on campus safety to strengthen training and improve collaboration. Today, campus public safety officers are the only first responders who don't have access to Federal support to assist in sharing the best practices, relevant research, and training opportunities.

The CAMPUS Safety Act, which received bipartisan support in the committee markup, seeks to address this by consolidating scattered Federal efforts into a national center for campus public safety housed within the Department of Justice. This Center would not only provide a one-stop repository of relevant research but also examples of best practices. It would have an ability to issue grants to colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations to strengthen efforts to help make our campus community safer.

This kind of planning and training will help prevent future violence on our campuses and will help improve responses in the event of another horrific outbreak of violence on our campus or other university. I am pleased our bipartisan CAMPUS Safety Act is included in the discussions we are having in this body in the coming days and weeks.

I wish to take a moment to speak about a specific aspect of this debate which will, I imagine, be coming up for a vote in the next few days. I stand before my colleagues to say a few words in support of the Manchin-Toomey amendment we will most likely vote on this week. Both Senators Manchin and Toomey have shown courage in working together on what Senator Kaine said is a difficult issue. I support the bipartisan compromise on background checks they proposed.

Their amendment will strengthen our background check system, close the gun show loophole, and prohibit the commercial sale of guns to those who are seriously mentally ill or have a criminal record. Let me also say their amendment also contains appropriate exemptions so responsible gun owners will still be allowed to make direct transactions between family and friends to ensure a father or grandfather could pass that shotgun along to their son or daughter.

Our shared goal is to ensure we keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people while respecting the basic constitutional right to bear arms. I have been disappointed by some who said somehow this amendment will infringe upon this right. I couldn't disagree more. This has been a common refrain on both sides of the aisle since we started this conversation in December after the tragic events in Newtown.

If we are serious about achieving this goal, the Manchin-Toomey amendment achieves a thoughtful, effective, and balanced approach to achieving our background check system. It strengthens the instant check system of all States to put their information into the NICS, the National Instant Background Check System. One of the outgrowths we saw after the horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech was so many States, while they may have collected this information, didn't even put it into the national database.

One other amendment Senator Toomey put forward would establish a national commission on mass violence to study all the causes of mass violence in our country, including school safety, mental health, issues about firearms, and also issues around some of the images all of us and our children are exposed to in television and film.

This amendment, combined with provisions to prevent gun trafficking and our proposal to improve campus safety, represents a reasonable path forward. In our efforts to reduce violence--as Senator Kaine has so eloquently stated--we are trying to ensure we don't have to create the kinds of heroes which took place 6 years ago on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Let me also add, as I am sure all my colleagues will express, our hearts go out to the families of the victims of the most recent tragedy which took place in Boston. I think I can relate, as a former resident of Boston--and I know Senator Kaine, former Governor Kaine, then-law student Tim Kaine--he and I first met at a law school in Boston-- remembering Patriots' Day in Boston, when even if you were not going to run in the marathon, the kind of joy that swept through Boston on Patriots' Day. We all know Boston will be back. We all saw those images yesterday of the horrific tragedy.

I talked to a friend whose wife had literally finished the race 4 minutes before the bombing took place. If she had finished 4 minutes later, he or his daughter or his wife might have been one of the victims of that tragedy. I know, as a father, I called my daughters last night to try to enforce how much I love them, how valuable life is, and how at any moment, whether in a classroom in Virginia Tech or running the Boston Marathon, life can be snuffed out.

I agree with Senator Kaine that in the coming days and weeks, as we have this debate, we are not going to be asked to make acts of courage; we are simply going to be asked to do our job. I believe the Manchin- Toomey amendment and the CAMPUS Safety Act are part of our role and responsibility in doing our job, and I hope we will be able to act on that matter.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to recognize that today, April 16, 2013, is National Healthcare Decisions Day.

National Healthcare Decisions Day exists to inspire, educate and empower the public and providers about the importance of advance care planning. It began as a local, grassroots effort 7 years ago in the Commonwealth of Virginia, started by a Virginia Attorney, and it became an annual event in 2008.

It now is recognized across all 50 States as an annual imitative to provide clear, concise and consistent information on health care decision making to the public and providers. This year over 100 national organizations, including groups like the AARP, Volunteers of America, government groups like the Veterans Health Administration, providers like the hospital company HCA, American College of Nursing, and American Academy of Nursing, along with faith-based groups like B'nai B'rith International have all pledged to participate today to spread the word on the value of conversations about our goals and values and preferences about medical treatment.

I know how important this is, not just from my time serving both as a Governor and as a Senator, but also through the eyes of a loved one who struggled with these issues. My mother suffered from Alzheimer's disease for 10 years, and for 9 of those years, she could not speak. My father, sister and I found grappling with the challenges of caring for her difficult. The difficulty was greater because, when she was first diagnosed, my family did not take the opportunity to talk in a frank and fully informed way with her and her health care providers about the full array of health care options available or about what her priorities would be during the final years of her life.

It is so frustrating that some have labeled advance care planning as efforts to take away choice from patients. This is ignorant and is disrespectful to those struggling will illness and caregiving. In fact, what we are trying to do is the opposite, give patients and their families the ability to make decisions when they can and provide enough support and information so that they can make informed choices based upon their own values and goals.

It is not easy, this is a subject that most people do their best to avoid: who will decide how we will live when we are unable to make our own decisions. But it is critical.

Most of us, more than 80 percent, will be unable to make decisions about what medical treatments we will receive for some period in our lives. The lucky will regain decision-making ability, but most of us will lose it for good.

Family or friends are then asked to step in. Sometimes they are asked to make routine decisions, like using antibiotics to treat an infection. Sometimes it is more significant. Would a hip replacement improve quality of life when you are physically pretty healthy, but substantially impaired by Alzheimer's or another dementia? Or would it cause more harm than good?

Often proxies are forced to choose between terrible options. Should they consent to an amputation of a gangrenous leg of a loved one who can no longer get out of bed, communicate, or recognize family for the remote chance that doing so will slow, but not cure, the progression of vascular disease?

State laws and Supreme Court decisions direct proxies to make the decision that a now-incapacitated loved one would have made.

But research says this often does not work. It might not work, for example, because a widow never told her adult children what she would want.

Maybe she assumed that her children knew.

Maybe she feared that they would disagree with her preferences.

Whatever the reason, those who make decisions for her do so blind- folded with their hands tied behind their backs.

Too often, proxies are left with guilt, anxiety, and depression.

But some are at peace because they know what the person wants. They know because they talk about how decisions should be made and who should make them. They talk about when a decision best honors the person by pulling back on treatments designed to treat the disease and instead forge ahead with aggressive symptom control. They talk about when a hospital bed at home is the right choice over tubes and needles and monitors in the ICU, or vice versa.

After talking, they write it down in an advance directive.

Each of us has an obligation to our families and friends to think about what we want, to talk to them about what we want, and to document our choices.

In the last two sessions of Congress, I have introduced a bill to help patients, providers, and caregivers get the support and education they need. Among other things, it will make advance directives more accessible, and it will make it easier for providers to follow them. I am planning on introducing a bill, the Senior Navigation and Planning Act, in the coming weeks.

However, today, I urge you all, on this National Decisions Day, to discuss your preferences and goals with your family and friends. Fill out an advance directive. Think of it as a gift.

Mr. President, I wish to just take one moment before I yield time to the Senator from Delaware.

(Disturbance in the Visitors' Galleries.)

I commend my friend, the Senator from Oklahoma, who has made this a passion. I would acknowledge this is a challenge that transfers between administrations.

When I was Governor of Virginia, under the previous administration, we

tried to consolidate workforce training programs. We still had those 47 programs and were not able at the State level to consolidate into a more meaningful approach.

I recall when I first came to this body, I thought let's at least find the low-hanging fruit, and we found those programs that both the Bush administration and the Obama administration had agreed were duplicative and unnecessary--16 programs, $1 billion; but a billion here and a billion there and you are talking about real money.

I am happy to report 11 of those 16 programs have been eliminated. But the fact that there are those that both administrations agreed upon that have not been eliminated means there is more work to be done. I would simply point out to my friend from Oklahoma there has been legislation that he and the ranking member, the Senator from Delaware, who has also worked hard on these issues, supported 2 years back called the GPRMA bill, the Government Performance Results Modernization Act. In that bill for the first time ever, starting this year, there is a requirement that each agency of the Federal Government identify not only those programs that are the most successful, but those programs that are the least successful.

So regardless of which administration, Republican or Democratic, there will at least be some--beyond just OMB putting forward information that says where the actual agencies themselves think they are not getting good value for the dollar.

I know the answer to this because we have talked about this in the past. We do not have a complete list of all of the various programs.

I turn now to my good friend, the Senator from Delaware. This has been an extraordinary passion of his. I know as chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, along with the ranking member from Oklahoma, this will be an area of great interest and focus.

With that, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Delaware.

Mr. President, let me thank the Chair for her good work and putting this budget together, which I believe is the first step as we try to resolve this issue.

The Senator from Washington has mentioned this has become my passion in this body. I absolutely believe getting our debt and deficit under control, getting the country's balance sheet right has almost become a proxy for whether our democratic institutions such as Congress may actually work in the 21st century. This debate we are going through is an important step in that direction.

We are about to proceed to the section of debate where a host of amendments will be put up, debated, and decided. It is my hope sometime later tonight or early tomorrow morning we will be able to conclude this process and move on to the next steps.

As I listen to my colleagues, particularly from the other side, I do wish to make three quick, brief points because there are actually a lot of agreements between us. I think we all realize that in addition to trying to get our tax policies and spending policies right--I agree with the Senator from Oklahoma--there are areas of duplication which could be improved upon.

I would point out one amendment this Budget Committee put together in a bipartisan fashion--the majority and minority were working together-- was looking at the area of workforce training programs for further consolidation. We are able, not just in workforce training but across government, to find better ways to combine our programs and obtain more effective use of our tax dollars. I look forward to working with Members on both sides of the aisle to do that.

I would also say while we have this problem about how we are going to raise our revenues and how we are going to spend, an important component of all of this is how we grow our economy. One of the challenges I find--and the proposal mostly from the House, which appears to be the proposal endorsed by many of our colleagues on the other side--I am not sure their budget proposal puts forth a growth agenda.

At the end of the day, countries, just as private companies--and I spent 20 years in business, longer than I have in public life--need a business plan. Any good business plan invests in three things: people, plant and equipment, and an investment plan to stay ahead of the competition. Companies do the same thing; namely, invest in education, infrastructure, and R&D.

Unfortunately, the proposal which has been put out by the other side of the House would cut our government's investment in domestic discretionary spending from what is already at a very meager rate, closer to the Eisenhower administration rates. We currently spend about 16 cents on every Federal tax dollar on all of our domestic discretionary budgets combined. Over a period of time their plan would take that 16 cents to less than 5 cents.

I spent 20 years investing in business. I would never invest in a business which spent less than 5 percent of its revenues on its workforce, its plant and equipment, staying ahead of the competition. No country can stay competitive against emerging nations such as China, India, and Brazil. And Europe, facing financial crises, is trying to reset itself as well. Any of those nations are spending a larger percentage of their Federal revenues or their national revenues on training the workforce, building their roads, airports, broadband, and ports. They are trying to do research and development, which creates the intellectual capital which will drive our economy in the 21st century. Every other nation in the world with which we compete has a much more aggressive business plan than the business plan that would have been put forward by the House. Unfortunately, it would be put forward by many of our colleagues on the other side if they were allowed to cut domestic discretionary spending at the levels they propose.

We have often heard a lot of discussion on this floor about revenues. I don't think anyone on either side wants to be taxed more than is necessary.

The other side says we have a spending problem but refuses to look at the other side of the balance sheet. As a business guy, I find that troubling. I agree there are a number of areas where we need to cut back spending.

Look at revenues on a historic basis, look at revenues on the basis of when America had the fastest growth rate in recent time. During the 1990s, with President Clinton, our Nation added jobs at a record level. Our Nation made innovative grants, innovation and discovery of great new intellectual property at an unprecedented level. In the 1980s America was considered to have seen our best days. We came roaring back in the 1990s.

I didn't hear many complaints about our Tax Code in the 1990s during those periods of enormous growth because of those investments and because of that growth early in the beginning of this century. Around 2003, I think this body, and both parties, were part of it and made a mistake on assuming that the roaring good times were going to last forever. We cut $4.5 trillion over a 10-year period out of the revenue side.

Anybody who runs a business knows you must look at spending and you must look at revenues. We took $4.5 trillion out of our revenue stream at the very same time we doubled defense spending and increased spending on homeland security. We went to war twice entirely on the credit card. We provided new benefits for our seniors with prescription drugs, and seniors were going through the normal aging process. Many of those spending initiatives, again, were supported by both sides. But when the music stopped, we realized we had a structural budget deficit that now accounts for $16.5 trillion in debt and it goes up by $3 billion a night. While we have to take steps to rein in spending, we also have to realize not to grow government but, just to pay our bills, we have to put some of those revenues back into the revenue stream if we are ever going to get to some level of balance.

Well, what does this side of aisle propose? Have they said, You know, we need to go willy-nilly and go out and dramatically increase taxes even beyond what was proposed in the 1990s? No. Do the folks in this budget on the Democratic side say we at least ought to put 70 cents of that $4.5 trillion back into the revenue stream? No. Do we say we ought to put half of the revenues back into the revenue stream that we took out? Again, the answer is no. This budget, combined with what we did on New Year's Eve, puts approximately $1.575 trillion over a 10-year period back into the revenue stream--literally only one-third of the revenues that were taken out under the so-called Bush tax cuts back into the revenue stream.

Yet to hear what folks on the other side say, it sounds as though this is apocalyptic. Well, I have to tell you, as somebody, again, who will match my business credentials against anybody in this body, you have to look at both sides of the balance sheet. We have to find ways to rein in spending but we also, finally, have to find ways to make sure we have a revenue stream to allow us to meet our obligations.

A final point I wish to make--because I know my colleague, my good friend from Oklahoma, wants to rise to speak as well--is that I believe very strongly we have to get a handle on our entitlement programs. Medicare and Social Security are the two most successful programs our government and, for that matter, probably any government around the world, has ever implemented and we need to make sure the promise of Medicare and Social Security is going to be here for our kids and our grandkids.

Around some of those programs some of the basic math has changed. When I was a young person, there were 16 people working for every 1 person who was on Medicare and Social Security. Today, it is 3. In 15 years, it will only be 2. So we do have to make changes. And this budget starts us down that path--$275 billion in entitlement changes, on top of $700 billion in entitlement changes that were part of the Affordable Care Act.

If we are going to make comparisons, apples to apples--and this gets a little bit technical, and I will again try to be very brief--I have not heard a lot of my colleagues acknowledge this. When this debate around debt and deficit really picked up steam--it started back in 2010 with a lot of very good bipartisan work done by the Simpson-Bowles Commission that pointed out we were on an unsustainable path and if we didn't take action we would send our Nation over a fiscal cliff. In the Simpson-Bowles report, they pointed out we needed to make substantial changes, for example, in Medicare and Medicaid. Well, they had some proposed changes that would have amounted to roughly over $400 billion in savings over a 10-year period.

What is remarkable, and is not mentioned, is that because--whether it is recession or the Affordable Care Act--the rate of increase of our health care programs and our entitlement programs over the last 3 years has dropped dramatically, and independent of the $275 billion of entitlement savings in this budget, based upon the assumptions that were made in 2010, based upon the Center for Budget Priorities, in 2020, because of the declining rate of increase of cost, we will have an additional $500 billion in health care savings that are already built into this proposal.

I ask unanimous consent for an additional 30 seconds, and I will finish.

I would simply say that I want to commend this debate we are having and commend Members on both sides of the aisle. As I said at the outset, no budget is going to be perfect for every Member, but this is a credible, important first step in this process, and one of which I think we can all be proud. I look forward to finishing this debate and moving on to the next stage to make sure we put this question of our Nation's balance sheet in order and then move on to the other important issues our country faces.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in the spirit of what our leader said about us trying to move along, I think while we may have a variety of views, we all know we are $16.5 trillion in debt--a debt that goes up by $3 billion every night. The last thing we should do is dig this hole any deeper.

This amendment is paired actually with an amendment that will be offered by the Senator from South Dakota, Mr. Thune. The Thune amendment would repeal the estate tax without the ability to offset with additional revenue.

I believe the estate tax is actually a meaningful part of our Tax Code. We put in place appropriate exemptions: $5 million a person, $10 million a couple. That means the estate tax right now only applies to about 3,800 people a year. Yet, if we were to repeal the estate tax without any offset, that would add $600 billion to our debt.

We have spent a lot of time over these last number of months talking about the dramatic cuts in defense from sequester--$550 billion.

Mr. President, I urge my colleagues, if we want to repeal the estate tax and pay for it, to vote for the Warner amendment No. 693.

Mr. President, I believe we need a balanced approach. The notion that we can continue to take away revenue sources is not a responsible way to address this budget.

I urge my colleagues to support amendment No. 693.

Mr. President, there are strong feelings of opinion in this body about the estate tax. I personally believe the current estate tax--with a very generous $5 million-per-person exemption, and $10 million per family; an estate tax that only applies to 3,800 families per year--is a fair part of our Tax Code. Others may disagree.

But in our previous amendment, Warner amendment No. 693, we said if you are going to replace the estate tax, you have to pay for it. The unfortunate thing about the Senator's amendment is it says if you repeal the estate tax, you cannot use revenues to replace that. It will only have to be replaced with additional cuts.

The problem we have at this point--$16.5 trillion in debt--is because we have not recognized to get a budget balanced you have to look at both sides of the balance sheet, revenue and spending. You cannot just keep taking revenue away on every item. So I would urge my colleagues to oppose the Thune amendment.