Floor Statements

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Alexander, and the Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, for this discussion they have had where I think they cleared up a lot of the confusion there might be over the bill. They have presented excellent reasons why we need to get this bill done, and why we need to get it done now--so we can continue to grow businesses in our States instead of growing businesses outside of our States.

There are a number of things people have mentioned. One of the big ones I want to talk about is the small seller exemption. I know Senator Wyden from Oregon has suggested a compromise for the whole bill which was to create the nontax States to be a haven for all Internet sales, and that won't work. Our purpose is not to move all of the business online out of our own States but to keep it there.

But there is a compromise in this bill. It is called the small seller exemption, and that is where people who are starting in business don't have to collect the tax when they are out of State. With in-State sales, a lot of them will have retail sales in their State as well as hopefully some online sales. On what they sell in their bricks-and- mortar store, they collect sales tax from everybody who buys from them. There is no exemption. But the compromise we made for the online sales was until a retailer hits the $1 million mark in a year--and we would love for them to hit the $1 million mark and have that kind of business. But until they do, they are protected in that they don't have to collect the tax. We give them a break over the in-State retailers. Of course, the ones who are in State who are selling out of State have that same online break. But that is why we have a small seller exemption, to continue to grow small businesses that are using the Internet. We want the Internet to grow and are not discriminating against the Internet. And as has been mentioned, there will be no tax on the use of the Internet. That is not a part of this bill.

This is a tax on what people buy on the Internet, because States already anticipate that the sales tax they have in place is going to be paid on every purchase. When that money comes back, part usually goes to the State, part goes to the county, part goes to the towns. That is to provide for their schools, fire protection, for all of the services people who live in the communities are used to. I can tell you that in Wyoming that makes up at least 30 percent of everybody's budget. I know in one town it is 70 percent of their budget.

So if you start eliminating the sales tax by getting products from out of State, you are wiping out services in the local communities. Those local communities are where the Main Street retailers, the shopping center retailers--the brick-and-mortar retailers--are the ones paying property tax. They are hiring local people, and they are also participating in the community in a number of ways. School yearbooks probably wouldn't exist without the participation of the local merchants.

We want to continue to encourage the local merchants, and so we came up with the small seller exemption of $1 million. You don't start collecting the tax and you don't need to get the free software to be able to collect the tax until you hit the $1 million mark in a year, and then that would go into effect.

We looked into a number of different levels. Our older bill had \1/2\ million in the Senate bill and the House had $1 million in their bill. I said, Let's give a little more flexibility. Let's go with the $1 million. So that is how we wound up with $1 million.

I will comment more on this later, but I see my fellow Senator is here who would probably like to make a comment.

I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

I thank the Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, for his interest and participation in this issue, his ability to explain it, and for the way he has brought a lot of people along in helping out with this bill. He has been a great replacement, and we have made more progress than we ever have in the other 14 years of working on the bill. So I thank him for that and for his ability to explain things so clearly.

I also want to thank Senator Lamar Alexander who helped us change this bill in the last year from about an 80-page bill to an 11-page bill and made it States rights. As Senator Durbin so eloquently explained, this takes action by the States. This is just to clear up the Quill case that made it a little confusing about whether they could charge a tax and then challenged Congress to fix the problem.

The solution Senator Alexander came up with condensed the bill considerably and made it a lot easier. But it made it a States rights issue so that the States have to take some action.

I thank Senator Heitkamp as well. She is brandnew to the bill but has more years of experience than anybody because she was a part of the Quill case when it came up. She was representing North Dakota in that case, and that is the other side of the case. She can explain the intricacies of that and the challenge we were given, and the number of reasons why it didn't happen earlier.

One of the reasons is that 20 years ago the Internet was in its infancy and nobody knew what its capabilities were going to be. Most people didn't even know it was out there. That has changed over quite a period of time to where it is now one of the handy tools everybody uses. We have come to recognize there are apps that are available that will answer any question and sources of information that will provide us with what we need to know on virtually any subject. I think that has probably put some encyclopedias out of business, but it has made information more readily available, and it has made products available that people didn't have the availability of before. But it is creating a bit of a dilemma that marketplace fairness straightens out.

Today we are scheduled to vote on the motion to proceed to the bill at 5:30, and I do strongly encourage my colleagues to vote yes. Let me explain why.

As Senator Durbin said, I have been working on this sales tax fairness issue since joining the Senate in 1997, and I may have a unique perspective on the dozens of proposals that have been introduced. For instance, I have worked sales tax from a number of different aspects. I worked the sales tax issue when I was in the Wyoming Legislature. I know when our legislators were considering sales tax they didn't intend to discriminate against the people in the communities, those who hire the people in the communities and pay the property tax to the communities and participate in all of the community events. They definitely didn't anticipate they were going to be the source where people could come in and feel and touch and try on the product and then check the bar code with their cell phone--one of the advances made possible now through Internet use--and then find out if there is a lower price, which is usually based on no sales tax.

I am pleased some businesses across the Nation have said that isn't fair and have decided to voluntarily do the sales tax. And there is no problem with them doing that.

I have also been a retailer, so I know that feeling. My wife and I had a shoe store, so I know the feeling, again, the Senator from Illinois described, of people coming in, trying it on, feeling it, making sure it is the right size and then checking to see where else it is available. It is discouraging when the sales tax is the difference. So as a former small business owner, I believe it is important to level that playing field for all retailers--the in-store, the catalogue, and the online--so an outdated rule for sales tax collection doesn't adversely impact particularly small businesses and Main Street retailers.

I know a lot of year books would never be published if it wasn't for the support of some of the local businesses. Thousands of these local businesses are forced to do business at a competitive disadvantage because they have to collect a sales tax or a use tax and remote sellers don't. In some States that can mean a 5- to 10-percent price disadvantage. We should not be subsidizing some taxpayers at the expense of others. All businesses and their retail sales should be treated equally.

As a former mayor, I know sales taxes go to State and local governments to bring in needed revenue for maintaining schools, fixing our roads, supporting law enforcement, fire protection, those first responders we are always so conscious of, particularly today and through this last week. If Congress fails to authorize States to collect tax on remote sales, and electronic commerce continues to grow, we are implicitly blessing a situation where States will be forced to raise other taxes, such as income and property taxes, to offset the growing loss of sales tax revenue. Do we want that to happen? I don't think so. We need to promote economic growth, not stifle it.

As the Supreme Court identified in the Quill v. North Dakota decision in 1992, the Quill decision challenged Congress to come up with a better system, a way of making it fair. The local brick-and-mortar retailers collect sales taxes, while many online and catalog retailers are exempt from collecting the same tax as a result of that case, and that was based on whether they

had a nexus. The nexus has changed dramatically since that time. That used to be where you would go and actually pick up something, but now it is where you can order something and that can be even moved around the country virtually at will. So we designated some States as not having to do it. Web sites could be set up in that State for people to sell through from anywhere.

So the taxes need to be collected. It needs to be fair, and right now it is not only fundamentally unfair to Main Street retailers, but it is costing States and localities billions in lost revenue. The Supreme Court invited Congress to address this issue, and we stalled. We know that early on the Internet was new, but now everything is done on the Internet. So now is the time for Congress to act.

Many Americans don't realize that when they buy something online or order something from the catalog of a business outside their own State, they still owe the sales tax. I know from being a legislator that was part of what we put in place. There is a form in Wyoming that you can fill out and pay your tax. It is pretty hard to keep track of, particularly on smaller items, but it ought to be easier on big items. And I do know there are about three people who comply with that.

For over a decade Congress has been debating how to best allow States to collect sales tax from the online retailers in a way that puts Main Street businesses on a level playing field with the online retailers. So on February 14, 2013, the bicameral--House and Senate--and bipartisan--Republicans and Democrats--put together the Marketplace Fairness Act that was introduced to close that 20-year loophole that distorts the American marketplace by picking winners and losers, by subsidizing some businesses at the expense of other businesses and subsidizing some taxpayers at the expense of other taxpayers. All businesses in retail sales and all consumers and their purchases should be treated equally.

The bill also empowers States to make the decision themselves. This is not Congress saying what has to be done or whether they collect them. If they choose to collect already existing sales taxes on all online purchases regardless of whether the sale was online or in-store, States will be able to if this bill passes. If they want to keep things the way they are, that is the State's choice. That is why this bill is the States rights bill.

The Marketplace Fairness Act does not tax Internet use, it does not tax Internet services, and it does not raise taxes. It gives States the right to collect what is owed by the purchasing individuals. Some argue that the bill is a disguise to create taxes. It is not. Consumers are already supposed to pay taxes and use taxes in most States for purchases made over the phone, by mail, or by way of the Internet.

Mr. President, in a couple of minutes we are going to have a moment of silence for the tragic events that happened. I yield the floor for the time to be able to do that.

Mr. President, I wish to thank the leader for that moment of silence. I hope everybody in America will keep the people of Boston--particularly those who were injured or lost family members and those who saw the pain and the tragedy--in their prayers. I hope we would keep all the people across America who witnessed that on television or saw the replays of it on television in our prayers, and I hope the recovery will bring Americans together, as happened on 9/11.

To return to the discussion on marketplace fairness, I mentioned that most consumers are aware they are supposed to pay the tax on purchases that the retailer does not choose to collect at the time of the purchase, so I would like to provide some highlights of what the Marketplace Fairness Act actually accomplishes.

The bill gives the States the right to decide to collect or not collect taxes that are already owed. The legislation would simplify and streamline the country's more than 9,000 diverse State tax jurisdictions and provide 2 options by which States could begin collecting sales taxes from online and catalog purchases.

The bill also carves out small businesses so that they won't be adversely affected by the new law by exempting businesses with less than $1 million in online or out-of-State sales from the collection requirements until they have had a year in which they have had more than $1 million worth of sales. This small business exemption will protect small merchants and give new businesses time to get started. As has been mentioned, when they meet that level, then they have to be provided with a program that will do the calculations for them, provide for submitting the revenues, and also hold them harmless for any errors there might be in the program.

So don't let the critics get away with saying this type of simplification can't be done. The different tax rates and jurisdictions are no problem for today's software programs. When you order something online, you have to put in your ZIP Code. The ZIP Code will tell what the tax is from whatever jurisdiction.

As a former mayor and State legislator, I strongly favor allowing States the authority to require sales and use tax collection from retailers on all sales for each State that chooses to do so. We need to implement a plan that will allow States to collect revenue using mechanisms already approved by their local leaders. We need to allow States the ability to collect the sales taxes they already require.

If enacted, it would provide approximately $23 billion in fiscal relief for States for which Congress does not have to find an offset. This will give States less of an excuse to come knocking at the Federal door for handouts and will reduce the problem of federally attached strings.

A lot of people don't realize that the Federal Government is out of money, and that is shown by what was done through the sequester because the Federal Government usually pays property tax to States and localities that have Federal property. That amount has never been equal to what other people would be paying in their property taxes, but it has been a show of good faith that they recognize that with the government there, there is a loss of revenue and that the Federal Government should do something. So there is a tax level they have been paying. It hasn't gone up much and it hasn't gone down much until this year. Then, as part of the sequester, they decided they would hold 5.3 percent from all the States and all the local governments. That is called payment in lieu of taxes, and that is one way the States and the counties have lost money and a way they are going to have to make up for it if that continues. But there is also the possibility that the revenue they take in from this can reduce something like property taxes.

For many years I have worked with all the interested parties to find a mutually agreeable legislative package to introduce and ultimately enact into public law. This year Senators Durbin, Alexander, Heitkamp, and I worked together with 25 of our bipartisan Senate colleagues to produce a bill that assists sellers and State and local governments to simplify taxes and use collection and administration. We are working with our House supporters--Representatives Steve Womack, Jackie Speier, Peter Welch, and John Conyers--and have found common ground on this important issue to move forward with a bipartisan, bicameral bill in this Congress. I wish to publicly commend all of my Senate and House colleagues in taking a leadership role and working on this important issue.

The Marketplace Fairness Act is about States rights, and it is about fairness on the budget bill. We had a vote on this, and I was very pleased that 75 of the 100 Senators voted in favor of making the marketplace fair. So I strongly encourage my colleagues to vote for the motion to proceed on S. 743, the Marketplace Fairness Act, tonight at 5:30 when we have that vote. I

am hoping we will be able to duplicate what we did before and support the goals of States rights and a level playing field for all businesses.

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

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

Madam President, I want to speak today about the series of votes that are going to be taking place this afternoon on gun rights. I wanted to start off by telling a little story and explain why there are some difficulties with some of those amendments that are here.

I had a person in Cheyenne come to me and say: I advertised a gun I wanted to sell. The guy was from southern Colorado, so he had to drive about 300 miles. But he was former FBI and had a concealed carry permit. He was willing to drive up to Cheyenne and wanted to do it the right way--both of them wanted to do it the right way.

The person from Colorado was willing to pay the fee for doing a gun check. The person in Cheyenne arranged for a federally licensed dealer to do that. So they met at the gun store with the gun. Of course, credentials as a former FBI agent is probably good enough to get through a gun check. Concealed carry permit, there is reciprocity in Wyoming for that. They did not think there would be any problem. They looked at it and put it into the system and got word back that he would know in 5 days. Well, it is a long trip to get a gun. The person had a gun that was just like it. He was convinced of the credentials, so they went to his house and finished the transaction. The fellow from Colorado went home. The fellow from Cheyenne went down to retrieve his other gun. He found out that it is now in the Federal system. So he can have a background check done on himself to get his own gun back.

So there are difficulties with the gun check. They are not immediate. There is not a computer that immediately says: This person is not in there so go ahead and sell them a gun. It can be a 5-day process, which, for a 3-day gun show can be a bit of a problem, or even a shorter one than that.

I want to talk a little more broadly about gun rights because the Senate will be voting on proposals today that affect rights not created by the law but, rather, were created by the Constitution that last a lot longer than anything we do in this body. Wyoming is a State of gun owners. A large number of Wyoming residents grow up learning to respect and lawfully use firearms.

As a matter of fact, many schools and youth organizations build hunter safety and gun safety into their curriculums so that young people become familiar with the responsibilities of gun ownership at an early age. Therefore, it should be no surprise that a majority of Wyoming residents have called on me to oppose any legislation that puts additional restrictions on the freedoms they enjoy and use daily.

I have been saying for some time that the bill before the Senate does not focus on the problem. There is no doubt that we need to do more to curb the senseless acts of violence which continue to occur in this country.

One of the things we need is parents to be more careful and more repetitive at telling their kids it is not right to kill people, it is not even right to bully them, and it is definitely not right for them to kill themselves. Until we can get that message across to our kids, I hope that we do not rely on a few votes by this body to make everybody feel

comfortable that all of the problems are taken care of. They will not be.

The Senate should focus on making sure current laws are enforced; they are not. Finally, our Nation and its communities should be doing more to foster the idea that life has to be respected. However, the problem with several of the proposals we will vote on today is that they add to programs with track records of failure.

Additionally, I oppose limiting the rights of gun owners to transfer their firearms to their neighbor or loan hunting rifles to their family members. The underlying bill the Senate is debating would restrict that right in many areas and would only make gun ownership more burdensome on lawful citizens.

My colleagues in other States may not realize this, but in Wyoming guns are not used just for self-defense and recreation. They are a tool. Ask the rancher who uses a rifle to defend his livestock from predation or the outfitter who uses a gun to protect clients in the back country.

Firearms do have everyday uses in Wyoming. Sometimes it is necessary to transfer or loan a gun to a nephew, a niece, or an employee. But under what is being considered, that right may be severely infringed. I do not condone acts of gun violence. I am a father and a grandfather and will do everything I can to keep guns out of the wrong hands. However, I am not willing to infringe on the constitutional right of lawful gun owners when the laws already designed to protect us are being unenforced.

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

Mr. President, today I wish to share a startling fact with the American public. For the first time since the President has been required to submit a budget--since 1922, 91 years ago--the President failed to provide a budget proposal before the Senate passed one. This year the President's budget proposal was submitted to Congress 65 days late. And even with that extra time to find solutions that would jumpstart the economy, the budget proposed by the President continues the policies that have led to anemic economic growth and stagnant job creation--more taxes, more spending, more government.

The last time we voted on the President's budget, it received zero votes. Let me repeat that--zero votes. Not even the members of his own party supported his budget. Since the President's budget is arriving after we have already taken up a budget here in the Senate, I doubt that we will vote on this proposal. But I don't think it's a stretch to say that a vote on this budget might obtain the same result.

We have already heard cries from members of his own party that he is included proposals they don't like for example, a provision called ``chained CPI'' that changes the inflation measurement for many Federal programs, such as Social Security, and for certain provisions of the tax code. The President's budget estimates that this provision will reduce the deficit by nearly $230 billion over 10 years. And a budget such as the President's that raises taxes by nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years--and that is in addition to the $600 billion in tax increases that went into effect earlier this year certainly will not win over any members on my side of the aisle. While there are some provisions in this budget I might support, the budget taken as a whole is a far cry from what we need to get the country on the right fiscal path.

The President and his party like to talk about a so-called ``balanced approach.'' But there is nothing balanced about a budget proposal that raises taxes by nearly $1 trillion and can't even balance. That is right the President's budget does not balance in any of the next 10 years. What we really need is a budget that gets us to balance and puts us on a path to start paying down our country's $16 trillion debt. We have to start paying down the debt.

The President's budget proposal would increase taxes as a percent of the Nation's total output, or GDP, each year over the next 10 years, resulting in revenues as a percent of GDP at 20 percent in fiscal year 2023. The average rate over the past 40 years has been approximately 18 percent of GDP. The U.S. has balanced the budget 12 times since World War II. The average revenue for those 12 years was 18 percent of GDP. These numbers tell the story--our problem is not that we tax too little but that we spend too much. I have introduced a bill called the Penny Plan that cuts spending by one percent for each of the next three years, and balances the budget in 2016. Our Nation owes over $16 trillion and no one is talking about reducing it. We have to get to balance--the sooner the better--and start paying down the debt.

I am very disappointed, but not surprised, that the President yet again has not taken the opportunity to fully address the drivers of our growing deficits and debt spending programs such as Medicare and Social Security. The President won his re-election last year. The time for campaigning is over; it is time to start governing and make the tough choices to save these programs for current and future beneficiaries.

I said this during the debate on the majority's budget resolution a few weeks ago, and it is worth repeating now we need to grow the economy, not the government. One of the ways we can grow the economy is by reforming our outdated tax code. We have to lower tax rates and broaden the tax base and make the tax code simpler and fairer for all taxpayers. I was happy to see the President's budget call for revenue- neutral business tax reform. But then I read the fine print and realized the President was calling for lowering the corporate tax rate only and by paying for it by increasing taxes on U.S. multinational companies and oil and gas companies. I agree we need to lower the corporate tax rate. We also need to fix our outdated international tax system so we don't hamper our U.S. multinational companies from competing globally. And I have an international tax reform bill that addresses those issues. But in addition to lowering the corporate tax rate, we have to ensure we address the taxes paid by so-called ``flow- through'' businesses these are the partnerships, S-corporations, and limited liability companies. Just fixing the corporate side doesn't help the millions of businesses structured as flow-through entities. I appreciate the President wanting to do revenue-neutral corporate tax reform. But that only addresses part of the problem.

I generally don't like to do things ``comprehensively.'' We should do legislation in smaller parts so people can understand what is in them and can vote for and against the things they support and don't support. But given the interaction between the individual and corporate side of the tax code, we really need to look at them together and make sure changes we make in one area don't make things worse in another area.

So now we have finally seen the President's budget proposal. And while there are a few good things in it, I am sorry to tell my constituents back in Wyoming and the American public that the President has yet again failed to

seize the opportunity to move the country's economy forward. It is more taxes, more spending, more government. That is not the recipe for growing the economy. I hope that over the coming months the President and his party will work with me and the Members on my side of the aisle to fix our tax code, both individual and corporate, and reform our spending on programs such as Medicare and Social Security. The American people deserve nothing less.

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

Mr. President, I allot myself 5 minutes of the time allotted to Senator Cornyn.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the spending decisions that are crippling the long-term budget outlook and the futures of our children and grandchildren.

I am one of two accountants serving in the Senate, so the purpose of the budget resolution makes a lot of sense to me. It is like an accounting ledger--a blueprint that lays out spending priorities for the country for the next fiscal year. Back in my accounting days, I made sure that the ledger balanced. I would look carefully line by line at what was being spent and where it was being spent. If the ledger didn't balance, I looked at what could be trimmed from the overall budget. To do that, I would sit down and prioritize what was needed to make the business work, and what could be cut with the least impact on the business or its customers. I would also look at where the business might be duplicating some of its efforts and what could be cut there.

But that is not what we are doing in this exercise. We are not taking a serious look at spending and making the necessary and tough choices about what we can afford.

We aren't even able to vote on spending items that both sides agree are duplicative or wasteful, as we saw during the weeklong exercise with the continuing resolution that passed yesterday.

What we should be doing is asking every agency to prioritize what it does from the best to the worst, and then we would be able to compare that list to the wasteful and duplicative items that have been identified, including some by my colleagues, such as Senator Coburn. He has been tireless in his effort to identify these spending items and bring them to the attention not only of his fellow Senators but the American people. Then we should cut what the Federal Government isn't doing well.

We can also use the principle behind my One Percent Spending Reduction Act--also known as the penny plan. This is a bill that has a simple and direct plan to achieve the spending cuts necessary to balance the budget. It would accomplish the task by cutting a single penny from every dollar the government spends every year for 3 years and end with a balanced budget after those 3 years. Taking this approach, each agency and program within that agency could determine its priorities and decide where to cut 1 percent of its budget. Guaranteed, if given the choice, agencies and programs--I hope--would cut the least important, the least likely to affect staff and overall operations. In other words, they would cut what they could do without, and every business and every agency has those things.

The problem is that every program has a constituency. Every program has folks who are telling me or my colleagues: Yes, we understand the need to cut spending, but my program is an integral part. So don't cut me, cut someone else.

At this point we have to step to the plate and say that there are no easy choices left. If we all feel a little bit of pain now, we can avoid the pain we will face if we continue to kick the can down the road when it comes to our long-term budget outlook. We have to get serious about providing a blueprint for future spending that provides a path to a balanced budget. We need a blueprint that funds the government and necessary programs but takes an honest look at where taxpayer dollars are going and makes changes to spend less and spend more wisely.

Some of my colleagues across the aisle have talked about providing for future generations in the budget resolution. With this budget we are providing for future generations--we are providing them with less prosperity and fewer opportunities by refusing to make some hard decisions and saddling them with unpaid trillions of dollars in bills.

I have three children and four grandchildren who live in Wyoming. Many of my colleagues have children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. It is because of them and families across the country that we have to make tough choices on our spending priorities, and we have to make them now. This budget resolution doesn't do that. Instead, it is another missed opportunity, another ledger that just doesn't balance.

Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous consent that the time be equally divided.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 656 and ask for its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I appreciate the compliments from the two people who are from States that don't have the sales tax. We are not on the bill. This is an amendment to find out if a majority of the Senate is in favor of making sure we go through with some legislation that will actually solve the problem that is over 20 years old.

This is a problem the Supreme Court decided on and said Congress was the one that needed to fix it. They didn't say States should fix it, they said Congress should fix it. What we have been trying to do is fix it.

I had a complicated bill before called the streamlined sales tax bill. It took care of a lot of the problems we are talking about, such as multijurisdictions, and allows for one check to be dispensed to one location and then distributed to those who are participating.

Senator Alexander had a better idea, and that is the one which is in the bill that is before us, and that is one which makes it States rights. It is where States can decide what they are going to do and how they are going to do it provided they follow a certain number of rules. This is not as definitive as that bill yet because that bill would have to pass through this body as well.

I can assure everyone that no person in a State that doesn't have a sales tax now would have to pay a sales tax. If there is a business selling into a State that does have a sales tax, yes, they would have to collect that sales tax and forward it to that State. If there are complexities or conflicts with that, those can be worked out as the legislation goes through too.

Nobody mentioned that there is a $1 million exemption in the bill. So when we talk about small businesses, if they have less than $1 million in sales, they don't have to do this. Once they reach $1 million in sales, they have to do it the next year so it doesn't become a problem that starts in the middle of the year.

It also requires that the States provide the information and the programs for them to do this. So it is a States rights issue, and that is what the Supreme Court suggested when they suggested we needed to fix this.

If Senators talk to their small businesses, they will find that they want it fixed because there is not fair competition anymore. People will come into a store--I was in the shoe business--and try on shoes. They get all the help they need, find out what they want, and then just order it over the Internet. I think it is kind of interesting when they say: Well, I got free shipping. When someone goes into a store and tries on shoes, they can get it that day. There is not even a day's delay; express shipping is not even needed.

I hope we are able to work on the bill and actually complete a bill and take care of the difference that is taking money away from States. They are not asking the Federal Government for a single dollar. They are not asking for the Federal Government to enforce this. They are asking for the right to have their States rights.

I yield the floor, and I will keep the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I thought my colleagues from New Hampshire and Montana might share with us a little bit about the amendments they are proposing, but in light of them not doing that, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Illinois.

We have heard a lot of complaints from primarily the non- sales-tax States about the amendment we have proposed, but we haven't heard about the amendments they have proposed. I thought they would use part of their time to make the case for what they were proposing. I am still expecting them to do that, and when they do that, then we ought to have some time for rebuttal. That is why we have saved some of our time. So I yield the floor.

I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Tennessee and then my final minute to the Senator from Illinois.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

I move to lay the motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 597

I have an inquiry. I would like to make a unanimous consent request that we be able to use our electronic devices while we are sitting at our desks on the floor so that we might get any communication that we need from our staff, and also so we can be productive.

Madam President, I rise with Senators Durbin, Alexander, and others to discuss an amendment I am filing to the fiscal year 2014 budget resolution. The amendment establishes the deficit-neutral reserve fund that allows States to enforce State and local use tax laws and to collect taxes already owed under State law on remote sales.

The amendment captures the bipartisan, bicameral--the House and Senate--policy my colleagues and I are pursuing in S. 336, the Marketplace Fairness Act. I did hear my colleague from Utah mention he would like that to go through regular order. This does not preclude regular order. This would not be a final determination for the bill, but it would give us some kind of indication of the strength behind this idea.

As a former small business owner, I believe it is important to level the playing field for all retailers--in-store, catalogue, and online-- so an outdated rule for sales tax collection does not adversely impact small businesses and Main Street retailers. The Supreme Court case earlier encouraged Congress to solve this problem. Thousands of local businesses are forced to do business at a competitive disadvantage because they have to collect sales tax and use tax and remote sellers do not, which in some States can mean a 5- to 10-percent price advantage. We should not be subsidizing some taxpayers at the expense of others.

Sales taxes go directly to State and local governments--that would be counties and cities and towns--which bring in needed revenue for maintaining our schools, fixing our roads, and supporting local law enforcement. If Congress fails to authorize States to collect tax on remote sales and electronic commerce continues to grow, we are implicitly blessing a situation where States can be forced to raise other taxes, such as income or property taxes, to offset the growing loss of sales tax revenue. Do you want that to happen? I sure don't.

Now is the time for Congress to act. Many Americans do not realize when they buy something online, order something from a catalogue from a business outside their own State, they still owe State sales taxes. It is just very difficult to comply with that. For over a decade, Congress has been debating how best to allow States to collect sales taxes from online retailers in a way that puts Main Street businesses on a level playing field with online retailers.

On February 14, 2013, the bicameral, bipartisan Marketplace Fairness Act was introduced to close the 20-year loophole that distorts the American marketplace by picking winners and losers, by subsidizing some businesses at the expense of other businesses, and subsidizing taxpayers at the expense of other taxpayers. All businesses and their retail sales and all consumers and their purchases should be treated equally.

The bill also empowers States to make the decision themselves. If they choose to collect already existing sales taxes on all purchases, regardless of whether the sale was online or in-store, they can, but it takes their action. If they want to keep things the way they are, it is the State's choice.

The Marketplace Fairness Act does not tax Internet use, it does not tax Internet services, and it does not raise taxes. It gives States the right to collect what is owed by the purchasing individual.

I wish to provide some highlights of what the Marketplace Fairness Act accomplishes. The bill gives States the right to decide to collect or not to collect taxes that are already owed. The legislation would simplify and streamline the country's more than 9,000 diverse sales tax jurisdictions and provide two options by which States could begin collecting sales taxes from online and catalogue purchases. The bill also carves out small businesses so they are not adversely affected by the new law by exempting businesses with less than $1 million in online or out-of-State sales from collection requirements. This small business exemption will protect small merchants and give new businesses time to get started.

Do not let the critics get away with saying this kind of simplification cannot be done. The different tax rates and jurisdictions are no problem for today's software programs. As a former mayor and State legislator, I strongly favor allowing States the authority to require sales and use tax collection from retailers on all sales if the State chooses to do so. We need to implement a plan that will allow States to generate revenue using mechanisms already approved by their local leaders. We need to allow States the ability to collect the sales taxes they already require. If enacted, it would provide approximately $23 billion in fiscal relief for the States for which Congress does not have to find an offset. This would give States less of an excuse to come knocking on the Federal door for handouts and will reduce the problem of federally attached strings.

The Marketplace Fairness Act is about States rights and it is about fairness. I strongly encourage my colleagues to vote for the Enzi- Durbin amendment to support the goals of States rights and a level playing field for all businesses.

I yield the floor and I reserve the remainder of my time.

Madam President, I just want to thank the Senator from Ohio for his usual very clear way of explaining things. I know that comes from the tremendous background he has had, not just in the House but actually putting together a White House budget before. I guess the Senator has had access to these different sources of information before and knows how they could work if we could get access to them.

It is hard for me to believe that somebody would not want more information. They can analyze themselves whether they think it is useful. But more information is always better. So I thank the Senator for bringing that amendment here, and his other amendment as well. But as to that one, it is just incredible to me that anybody could oppose it.

So I thank the Senator for the thought he put into it and for the great presentation he did.

I wish to thank the Senator from Alabama for all the work he has done on the budget. He worked on a budget for 2 years previous to this which never materialized. I am so pleased he and his staff are working on a budget.

I understand his disappointment. I am an accountant, and I hope Senator Johnson, who is the other accountant in the Senate, will have an opportunity to come to the floor and talk about some of the numbers because there seems to be some discrepancies in the numbers. He has tried to pin those down by asking questions of the staff and, as a result, has come up with some demonstrations that show where the budget we are currently talking about goes.

I wanted to just briefly share an article I ran across today. It is called ``Mr. Penny vs. a dragon: Hey kids, it's the national debt!''

How are kids across America going to understand the debt? We are having a lot of problems understanding it in this body. Washington's budget squabbles and financial fights are enough to tangle up anyone's head, so one can only imagine how it might confuse children. So enter Mr. Penny and the Dragon of Domeville. Let's see, that would be the dome? Yes.

This children's book by Lucile McConnell seeks to raise awareness of fiscal irresponsibility and the national debt for those who are just out of diapers. The book's hero, Mr. Penny, is introduced as ``quite an individual and not a follower,'' and begins:

Once upon a penny, in the Land of Us''--

That would be U.S.--

in the little town of Meville, lived a little penny. In

fact, a whole lot of little pennies were scattered all over

the Land of Us, but our story is about one particular penny:

Mr. Penny. He was a singular fellow, quite an individual and

not a follower of the crowd.

The antagonist, a dragon--a black dragon--if this had been a western story, it would be the guy with the

black hat--a dragon designed to represent a bloated Federal Government that will not stop growing and loves to eat currency.

In fact, he developed a taste for charred bills . . .

dollar bills. Within no time, the dragon had devoured $15

trillion--

You can tell the book is a little old, otherwise it would be $16.6 trillion, which is where we are now--

and was always looking around for more to consume.

Eventually, Mr. Penny scores a one-on-one with the dragon and does his level best to convince the dragon just how reckless Federal waste can be.

I don't think you know what effect you are having on the

whole land of Us by eating the money that we send to

Domeville. . . . Our schools are closing; our youngsters

can't go to college; our oldsters can't get medical help; our

businesses are failing because there is no money for loans;

our roads and bridges are falling down; our towns and

industries are not safe; our citizens do not have jobs; and

we are running out of money.

On the book's Web site, McConnell describes herself as ``a tax/ commercial transactions attorney'' practicing in Washington and New York and says--and this is very important--all funds from the book--all funds from the book--will go toward paying down the national debt.

In an author's note in the book, McConnell writes:

Our beloved Country is in trouble . . . big trouble. This

is the kind of trouble that cannot be solved unless we all

pitch in and come to the aid of our country immediately.

She adds:

My hope is that after reading this book, young people are

energized about the possibility of what we can accomplish

together through cooperation and teamwork.

So, Madam President, I had an amendment in the committee that would have taken care of some of those charred bills and converted them to metal coins--dollar coins. If we were to do that, it would probably save about $1 billion. That maybe doesn't sound like much around here, but $1 billion would be a good start and would put a little punctuation in this book.

We are getting to the point where if we don't do something, we will not have money to spend. If interest rates go up--and if people lose confidence in our economy, the interest rates will go up--the only thing we will be able to pay is interest. Doesn't that sound like somebody who has used their credit card too much and can't afford to pay the credit card down? Of course, we are not even worried about paying the credit card down. We are not even talking about doing that. We are not even talking about balancing the budget at this point, and we need to do that or maybe we need to pass out copies of ``Mr. Penny and the Dragon of Domeville.''

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to share with the American public exactly what they are getting with the majority's budget for the coming year. I will be blunt. It is not good news. In fact, after 4 years of not bringing up a budget for consideration by the Senate, what the majority has offered is a severe disappointment. We have to grow the economy, not the government. But, unfortunately, the majority's budget focuses on growing the government--more taxing, more spending, more government.

During our last break, I had an opportunity to travel around Wyoming. I did about 2,000 miles, and I did a bunch of listening sessions. That is where I just take notes while people tell me what is on their mind. They are not going to be pleased with this budget. In fact, they think the best way to grow jobs is to cut government. And they were very adamant on making sure the sequester happened, which would be the first real cut in government we have had in forever. They recognize that what we usually call a cut is when an agency asks for a billion dollars, and they only get a half a billion dollars in new money. They call that a half billion dollar cut. It is not a cut, it is an increase of half a billion dollars. But around here that would be a

cut. So we do not really do cuts. Sometimes we slow the growth of government, but we do not do cuts.

They actually want to see some action to cut, to balance the budget, and eventually to pay down the debt. They recognize that if interest rates go up, $16 trillion is going to be tough to pay the interest on, let alone pay back any principal, let alone do any other function of government.

So this is a budget that looks out over the next 10 years. It provides for significant tax increases, upwards of $1.5 trillion. But it also provides for significant spending increases. It is not as though we are increasing the revenue so that we could decrease the deficit and eventually decrease the debt. It is so we can add to spending--$162 billion next year alone. It provides for spending increases of 62 percent from today's budget levels.

Any savings are being claimed after the first year--after the first year. We never get to the second year, so the savings never make it-- never pan out. It reminds me of a sign I saw on a restaurant. It said: Free drinks tomorrow. Of course, if you came in tomorrow, they said: No, no. Read the sign. It says: Free drinks tomorrow. That is the way we budget around here. We are always promising these things, but the real things do not happen.

Our problem is not that we tax too little but that we spend too much. A budget should serve as the blueprint to get the revenues and the spending aligned. Individuals have budgets. That is what they do. They see how much revenue they have coming in, and they see how much they can spend. They do not see how much they can spend and then see what the revenue is going to be. You cannot live in that kind of a world, but we do here.

Unfortunately, the majority's budget fails miserably in that respect. In fact, it does not balance the budget in any year over the next 10 years. The budget that was offered by the House Republicans, on the other hand, balances the budget in 2023. And, of course, the other side of the aisle talks about what a terrible budget that is. But they got it to balance. They have even introduced and passed budgets in the House for the last several years, and that takes a lot of courage when you know all that is going to happen over in this body is for it to get shot down by the majority. But those budgets have gotten some votes in favor of them.

The President has presented some budgets. The last 2 years, he has not gotten a single vote for his budget. I mean, he was not able to talk a single Democrat into voting for his budget--not one--let alone a Republican.

So the budget that was offered by the House Republicans balances in 2023. I have introduced a bill. It is called the Penny Plan. That cuts spending by 1 percent from every dollar for each of the next 3 years. If we could do that--true cuts--1 percent for each of the next 3 years, the budget would balance in 2016. I really think that is where we need to be--not 2023--2016. And, hopefully, we would not stop the cuts of 1 cent for every dollar. Families across America are having to cut more than that.

When I present this in Wyoming and other places, they say: Well, my wife just got laid off. We had to do a 20-percent cut, so why can't the Federal Government do a 1-penny-out-of-every-dollar cut? That would balance it by 2016. If we kept it going a little more, we would actually be paying down the debt--not just reducing the deficit but paying down the debt.

Our Nation owes $16 trillion, and no one is talking about reducing it. We have to get to balance--the sooner the better--and start paying down the debt. And do not get confused by the language the majority will use. They will say that their budget takes a ``balanced approach.'' But it does not balance. There is a big difference. ``Balanced approach'' to them means ``fair'' tax increases. I am not sure what that means, but that is what they mean by ``balance.'' And it is tax and spend, it is increasing deficits, and increasing debt as far as the eye can see. This is not the plan America needs to get its fiscal house in order. Next year alone, the majority wants to increase spending by nearly $162 billion, and the deficit next year is anticipated to be $152 billion above current projections. Over the next 10 years, deficits are expected to total $5.2 trillion. If we adopt the majority's budget, that is $5.2 trillion in addition to the $16 trillion we already owe. That is not balancing the budget. That is not a balanced approach.

None of this spending is associated with any kind of reforms to the drivers of our out-of-control deficits and debt that will bankrupt-- bankrupt--Social Security and Medicare. The majority's budget provides no path to save Social Security and Medicare. They are hoping the Republicans will do that and take all the flak that is involved for it. Well, if we do it soon enough, there is not as much flak as if we do it later.

It has been a shame that we have been years without a budget, and when the majority finally gets around to doing it they do not even address the biggest driver.

Earlier this evening, the majority leader commented that we can learn from the bipartisanship shown by Senators Mikulski and Shelby on their work on the bill that will fund the government for the rest of the year. I think it was a massive opportunity and expenditure of effort that they did. But what I want to point out is that they had the opportunity to work things out together--together. That is bipartisan. That means sitting down together and figuring out what both sides think are the priorities, and seeing if there is not some way to put those into a single budget. I know it has not been done in years, but it is something I imagine America dreams about. I wish the majority would have provided that same opportunity in the Budget Committee. Maybe then the majority would have brought a bipartisan budget to the Senate floor. This does not have to be a shooting match. It can be a realization of a way to match spending with the revenues we have.

I was disheartened last week when I finally received the majority's budget to see that it simply continues the mantra of ``tax and spend.'' We cannot tax the American people every time Congress screws up, every time we overspend. And there are a lot of ways we do overspend.

One of the favorite things around here is to propose a grand new idea, and since that grand new idea would have a huge pricetag on it, we reduce it by saying: We will just make it a demonstration project. We will just do it in five States to start with, with a very minimal budget, and that will prove the value of this project. And practically every one shows they are a valuable project.

Well, at that point the local governments or the States are supposed to take them over and sell it to the rest of the country so that everybody winds up with this tremendous project. That is not what happens. They come back the next year and they say: This worked phenomenally, so we need to expand it to all 50 States because everybody deserves a great program such as this.

Well, we increased it from 5 to 50, so we increased it tenfold, at least. And chances are pretty good that some of those projects are done in small States. So when you put them into big States, they are an even bigger blowup of the budget. That is the way we bust the budget around here--just one of many ways.

Rather than looking for waste and abuse and duplication in government spending--and we know there is some--the majority simply decided to ask the hard-working American public to send in more of their hard-earned dollars to Washington to pay for more spending. These tax increases the majority calls for will hit the middle class. They say it will not hit the middle class. But we did some of the rich, and I noticed, in the alternative minimum tax--that is a great phrase. That sounds like everybody ought to be paying tax, and that is kind of an American principle, but it is not something that happens around here. Over 50 percent of the people do not pay any tax now. But we had this alternative minimum tax so that the rich would pay more. Well, inflation changed it so that 34 million Americans are being hit by that in the middle class. Consequently, we changed it. That is what we do when we try and mess around with classes of people.

To my constituents back home in Wyoming and fellow citizens across the country, let me be clear: It is your money, not the government's money. That is what they were telling me as I traveled around Wyoming for 2,000 miles and did my listening sessions.

They say it is our money. As legislators, we have to do a better job of taking care of the funds they provide us and ensuring that it is spent wisely.

The majority thinks it knows best how to spend the money the American people work hard to make. The budget they have offered seeks more than $1 trillion--let me repeat that: more than $1 trillion--in new taxes over the next 10 years. And debt will still grow by $7 trillion. That would be $23 trillion. That is a lot to pay interest on. Take and figure that out, if you can, with all those zeros that are out there, how much money that amounts to--at some moderate rate, say, 5 percent, because that is what it is anticipated to grow to in that same amount of time. And I think it could go well higher than that. Because if the rest of the world that is loaning us 40 percent of our money decides we are not the best place to put that money, the interest rates will have to go up dramatically in order to encourage the kind of money to keep borrowing $23 trillion--or $16 trillion; that is, if we can balance the budget quickly. In fact, the majority wants to set up a fast-track legislative process to get $975 billion from you as quickly as possible.

Now, we had the discussion earlier about taxes. We thought we had worked the tax problem for everybody and preserved people's taxes for 99 percent of the people. We thought there were going to be some spending cuts coming. Somebody sent me this little chart that I have to share.

This says ``Republican'' on it: OK. I will raise taxes if you promise to cut spending.

Well, Lucy says: It is a deal.

But we have been watching this cartoon for years and years. We know what happens. When we go to pick up the spending cuts, the football suddenly gets lifted out of the way and we end up on our back, the American public winds up on its back. Those are not the kinds of spending cuts we are looking for. We are looking for some real spending cuts, not just a decrease in the growth but some real spending cuts. There is a way to do those.

Wyoming has been faced with probably an 8-percent reduction in its income. How did they handle it? The Governor saw that coming, got a hold of every department and program and said: I need a plan from you for how you would cut 2 percent, how you would cut 4 percent, how you would cut 6 percent, and how you would cut 8 percent. When he got the four plans from every department, he took a look at them to see if they were cutting the worst first--you know, reducing the pain as much as possible. It worked that way. There was hardly a whimper and hardly anything noticeable to the customer; that is, the people who live in Wyoming. That is good management, not an e-mail that goes out that says: Make the cut as painful as possible. That is the sequester we are going through now. That should never happen in any kind of a managed business or a managed government. I guess that would be saying it is not a managed government.

When we took up the budget in committee last week, I offered an amendment to strike the language that provided for the fast-track tax increase process. My amendment was meant to ensure that the tax reform would be conducted in a bipartisan manner, to generate a more efficient, fairer, and simpler Tax Code and spur economic growth rather than raise revenues through legislation that can be passed with a simple majority here in the Senate.

A simple-majority vote would ensure that the minority party's views would receive little, if any, consideration. We would have no input. Debate time and the number of amendments that could be offered to improve the legislation would also be limited. We need to have an open process where all Members can have their voices heard. We simply need to stop dealmaking and start legislating.

We have had the system around here for a while where we work from contrived crises that have very specific dates at which the sky falls and the United States is demolished. Of course, that does generate a lot of publicity and all the media and everything leading up to that crunch. A group goes off and makes a deal. We find out about that deal in the last hour. Our choice at that point is take it or leave it. Well, if the sky is going to fall and America is going to be destroyed, what is the choice?

That is not the way to do it. We have to quit dealmaking and start legislating. The way you legislate is to have the chairman and the ranking member and other interested people on the committee who have a very specific interest in an issue sit down together and see if they cannot work out a basic package. It only has to be a basic package. It does not have to be a comprehensive package. This basic package would then go to committee. That is where the people can turn in amendments and improve it from their viewpoint.

The reason we have so many people in the Senate and in the House is so that we can see as many unintended consequences as possible. But if it does not go through committee, we have turned those people off. We have said: Your views do not count; your amendments do not count. Consequently, we do not end up with a good piece of legislation coming out of committee. If you get it out of committee in good shape, you can get it to the floor in good shape. If you get it to the floor in good shape, you can take additional amendments and improve it maybe more. That has been my experience with this. Yes, there have to be some tough votes with that. That is what we do. That is what we get paid for-- legislating, voting.

We have spent the last week working on a continuing resolution. We got to vote three times. There were only requests for 11 more votes. We did not get to vote on those until tonight. So they had it arranged in a very fast process. Some of the people did not actually get their say.

We have to stop dealmaking and start legislating, particularly on big and important issues such as tax reform. We have to get back to a regular process so all Members can give input and improve the legislation.

Senator Gregg and Senator Wyden worked on income taxes for a long time. Then Senator Coats and Senator Wyden worked on income taxes for a long time. Now I am working with Senator Wyden and Senator Coats on income taxes. I think we can come up with something that will work. We can do both the individual and the corporate tax rates at the same time because they are very interrelated. We would not have that big of a tax code if it were not for all of the interrelationships. It is time that we made it simpler and fairer. It can be done, but it is not going to be done on a partisan basis in a very short period of time and get it right. So we have to get back to that regular process so all Members can give input and improve the legislation.

Unfortunately, my amendment was defeated. Every Member of the majority voted against it. But I will try here again on the Senate floor. Senator Grassley, who was a former chairman of the Finance Committee, and I have come together. We will offer an amendment to get rid of the fast-track process and provide for progrowth, revenue- neutral tax reform for corporate, business, and individual taxes.

I have a few other amendments I plan on filing as well to improve this budget. One would provide for a phase-in or transition for any changes to the Tax Code so that people and businesses can plan accordingly and we do not inadvertently put companies out of business or add people to the unemployment rolls.

Another amendment would require that each Federal agency identify and prioritize its programs, its projects, its activities so that they can cut the worst first, as I mentioned in the Wyoming example. That way we get what is the least harmful and least painful. There would be spending reductions. We might even get into duplication between agencies.

Senator Coburn and I did a little study of the health, education, labor, and pension programs. We found there was $9 billion--$9 billion of duplication. You cannot get rid of all of that, but you ought to be able to get rid of half of it. Well, Senator Coburn got so enthused by it that he went and took a look at the rest of government. He found $900 billion a year in duplication. Now, how is that possible? Well, my jurisdiction was rather limited, but what I have jurisdiction over is duplicated in almost every way. Almost every department, agency, and program has

something to do with financial literacy. Based on our budget process, I would say that is probably failing. Maybe we ought to get rid of all duplication.

I will also file an amendment that would provide for protecting and restoring monies in dedicated funds, such as the trust funds, so we will not steal money from other areas to make up for shortfalls, as the majority did with the abandoned mine land money for 10 years that was owed to Wyoming but instead was used to pay for a 2-year highway bill.

Finally, I will file an amendment reflecting the goals of the Marketplace Fairness Act so that we put all businesses, whether brick- and-mortar, online, or catalog, on a level playing field with respect to the collection of sales and use taxes.

The majority's budget would severely harm my home State of Wyoming. The more than $1 trillion in tax increases would mean losses in personal income, household disposable income, and job opportunities. Over the next 10 years, the tax increases would cut personal income in Wyoming over $4 billion. You have to remember, we are a small State. We finally got past the half-million mark in people. So $4 billion is a lot. It would cut household disposable income on an average of $26,000 per household. There would be an average of nearly 1,900 job losses. You have to remember, we only have half a million people. These tax increases clearly are not the recipe for fixing our ailing economy and certainly not the answer for the hard-working folks back home in Wyoming.

When you start with one party doing the drafting--and those who wrote the budget hold the majority on the Budget Committee--you can expect the bill to be one-sided. If you keep on doing what you have been doing, you can expect to get the same result. Unfortunately, I believe that is what we will see this week as we debate the budget on the Senate floor.

The majority kept us in the dark on the last budget until last Wednesday evening. We had to present our opening statements in the Budget Committee before we even saw the budget the majority would offer.

Now, I do have to say in the defense of the majority that is the way it has been for several years, both when the Republicans were in charge and when Democrats were in charge. That does not mean it is right. If you want a good budget, you have to share the information, and share it before people have to comment if you really want good comments.

Then we had to turn around and start voting on the amendments the next morning in the Budget Committee. We were not part of that process. It was on a partisan line.

I was particularly disheartened by one amendment that failed on a party-line vote that was offered by Senator Portman from Ohio. His amendment was simply asking the Congressional Budget Office to provide additional information with the cost estimates it provides on legislation affecting revenues. That is right--he was just asking for additional information. Every Member of the majority voted against it. How could a request for additional information be so partisan? We can and must do better for our constituents and our country.

Several weeks from now, we may see the President's budget proposal. Of course, he will be late to the game since the House and Senate will have already acted on the budget. That would be the first time in over 90 years that would be the case. By the way, his budget was due nearly 2 months ago. I anticipate it will include many of the same things we have here in the Senate majority's budget--more taxes, more spending, more government.

As we are learning all too well with the majority's drive to repeal the recent spending cuts called sequestration, taxes generally go on forever, but spending cuts seldom make it through the year. We were promised spending cuts, but the football is about to be jerked out. We have to grow the economy, not the government. Unfortunately, the majority's budget has it backward: It grows the government at the expense of the economy.

I look forward to the debate on this budget and filing amendments to improve it both for my constituents in Wyoming and my fellow citizens across the country. I know the debate around here has delayed the beginning of the budget process so that we are going to be under a crunch. Perhaps it will go into the weekend and give us an opportunity to do all of the amendments rather than just trying to fatigue us on Friday.

I yield the floor.

The Wyoming people absolutely think there should be a balanced budget. They do not think it ought to take 10 years to get there. They know how they have to operate. These are just hard-working, ordinary people with big hearts and an interest in jobs and their families. They are not seeing jobs happening. They are not seeing the economy improving. They are seeing taxes rising and people just talking about raising taxes. That is not where they expect us to go. All of them can suggest someplace within their realm of work that there ought to be a change.

Most of them say the best way to improve the economy, the best way to do jobs is just to get the government out of our way. These are people sitting on a tractor, even working in government during the day, thinking of ways their job could be reinvented to maybe be a little bit better. That is how governments can improve. They come up with some commonsense suggestions. I haul it back here, but commonsense doesn't go very far around here. I will keep hauling it, continue talking to people and continue to see what their expectations are, and hopefully we can meet those expectations. It doesn't take an accountant to know we are overspending.

They are saying there should be quite a changeover back here until we have people who understand that you are not supposed to spend more than you take in. The answer is not charging them more in taxes every time we can't meet that expectation. They already think there are enough programs out here. Sometimes I have to agree with them.

When I started as the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions--HELP--Committee, within my jurisdiction was preschool programs. There were 119 preschool programs. We spent more on preschool than we did on K-12. Senator Kennedy and I were able to get those down to 69 programs. People wonder why we can't get it below 69

programs. Most of them aren't handled by the departments we work with. They are handled by Agriculture, Commerce, and other agencies. We don't get to dabble in those. There are ways we can eliminate duplication and save a little money, but we are not looking for that.

Absolutely. It looks like a tremendous manual. We have a thing called the Government Performance and Results Act, which is where every agency is supposed to list what they do and how we will know they completed it. At the end of the year, they are supposed to evaluate themselves to see if they did what they said they were going to do. Most of them don't report, and those that usually do fail, and that is a lot of what is in that report. The agency is saying: No, we didn't do what we are supposed to do.

One of the things that happen with the programs is they usually get named after some Senator and he is very protective of his particular program. This is one of the things that make it very difficult to eliminate programs. Yes, if the duplication is eliminated, you may put the emphasis on the programs that are really working and that should succeed. That should make a bigger difference to everybody.

That is probably the only way it can be done, is to have the President suggest this is leadership, this is management, this is what the White House is supposed to be in charge of and could do.

I also know that even if the President talks about eliminating a program, there will be the 10 good examples from across the United States that actually work that will come in and flood us with comments about how that program cannot be eliminated. This is why I have the penny plan--one cent of every dollar across the board. Then you don't run into that problem. As I said, that would balance in 3 years, not 10 years.

Yes. These are the latest figures. After the sequestration and after the fiscal cliff, it came down to that. Before that, it would have taken us 5 years.

I thank the ranking member for the tremendous job he has done and the hours he and his staff have put into reviewing these things. This is not an easy thing to follow. The book we have is an actual manual. The bill we receive to work from is just a bunch of numbers. It is hard to put that all together, and I thank the Senator for the information he has provided.

Madam President, we are busy patting ourselves on the back for avoiding the fiscal cliff. I don't know how much congratulations we ought to have for that.

Yesterday, I was buying some groceries, and the guy at the checkout stand had no idea who I was and shouldn't have. He said: What is going on, on Capitol Hill? What are those people doing? We ought to fire everybody in Congress. They can't get their work done. We have to get our work done. They don't have to get their work done.

He made a good point. I am telling you, it is down to the level of grocery store checkout people--and I suspect different levels than that, different occupations than that. Americans, because they are kind of tuned in to the news media, which is kind of an information media or an entertainment media, built this fiscal cliff so it appeared to be Niagara Falls with money running over it. It is more of a gradual slope. But we have to stop the downward slope we are on. It is important we do that. And this is a body that can do that. Congress can do that.

We conduct a war of words around here--of this protecting the ``rich''--and it sticks. You know, I don't know of anybody who is trying to protect the rich. The problem comes with the definition of ``rich,'' and that is a hard one to explain. Any attempt that looks like that, and we go back to the sticky word of ``rich,'' whom nobody is trying to protect.

I used to be in business. I used to be one of those small businessmen, and I knew that at the end of the year, the business would show a profit. Now, unfortunately, we couldn't take the money out of the business if we were going to continue to grow the business, if we were going to bring on more people. It also meant we needed to have more product, and that meant we had to have more investment in the business. So the money we could have taken out that showed as ``profit'' actually went back into the business.

We kept saying: How can we have so little money when we make so much money?

Well, that is the position a lot of the small business men and women are in around this country. They are having to put all their money back into their businesses. And I understand when people say don't protect the rich--those making $250,000 or $400,000 or $450,000, whatever the amount comes out to be--but the person working in that business, probably making $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, or $60,000, says: If all I am making is that amount and they are making $250,000, we really ought to tax them. You know, it is a fairness issue. But when it gets down to the point of what they actually get to take out, what their take-home is, it is a lot different. They look really good on paper, they look rich on paper, but the money they get to take out is significantly less than that, and that is where the divide came in when trying to solve this problem. Now, could it have been solved? Yes, it could have been solved.

What we need to do around this institution is to start legislating and stop deal-making. We are a legislative body. You can't have 100 people involved in a deal, and consequently we don't. We have the group of 2, as in the case of this one, or a group of 4 or 6 or 9 or maybe as many as 12 getting together and putting together some kind of comprehensive package to put before this body, and those who aren't in the group are really kind of insulted by it. They do not make a big deal out of it because that has become the tradition, but that is not how it is supposed to work.

I have been there. I have gotten to legislate. It is one of the privileges of this country. The main person with whom I legislated was Senator Kennedy. Senator Kennedy was considered one of the most liberal people in the Senate, and I have always been considered one of the most conservative people in the Senate, but we were able to work together to get 38 bills out of committee and through this body, and the worst vote we ever got was 15 votes against. How did we do that? Well, we didn't try to solve the world's problems all in one bill. We took an issue at a time, and we found the common ground. We found what we could agree on, and that was usually about 80 percent of the whole issue. That is pretty good.

We worked on issues that had been around here 10 or 12 or 15 years without passing, having come to the floor numerous times, and mainly what we did was we would sit down with the stakeholders, who were intensely interested in the bill, who had been lobbying on that bill for years and years, and we would say to them: This is what we can get. This is what we have to leave out.

It wasn't compromise. Compromise is when you give up half of what you believe in, I give up half of what I believe in, and we wind up with something that neither of us believes in. But common ground happens. There is common ground on every one of these issues, and that is what we have to find--the common ground.

So we would meet with these stakeholders, and they would say: No, you are leaving out the most important part of this whole bill. This is what we really want.

If it was Senator Kennedy's constituency, he would have to make the comment, and if it was mine, I would have to make the comment: How long have you been working on this?

They would say: We have been working on this for 10 years.

I would say: How much of it have you gotten?

Then they would say: Well, nothing.

I would say: Here is what we can get for you.

And I would outline it again, and I would say: Isn't that better than nothing?

The light would come on, and they would say: Oh, that would be good progress.

Then they would quit pushing against us, and they would get together with us.

It is amazing sometimes that the advocates for a bill are really sometimes the ones who are stopping the bill from happening, and it is over the issues--that 10 percent on each side, which amounts to 20 percent--that we are not going to get resolved. There are some basic values on both sides, and they are important to both sides and they are both right, but they are not common ground.

But this is where we have to go. We have to get to common ground again, and the way we do that is by legislating. We put out a bill that is 80 percent of the whole issue, not 100 percent of the whole issue because that is comprehensive. We need to put out the 80 percent both sides agree on and then allow amendments on it. That is something we haven't been doing around here for a long time.

First of all, a bill needs to go to committee. The committee is where the people intensely interested in that particular bill preside and work and exert their efforts. That is where they want to concentrate.

When a bill comes to committee, you can have maybe 200 or 300 amendments in committee, and the chairman and the ranking member--that is the name we give to the person with the most seniority in the minority--can sit down together and sort through these amendments. Out of the 200, there are probably 100 that nobody in their right mind would really offer. Out of the remaining ones, you will find there are people on both sides who have very similar ideas on how to solve that problem, so you get those people to sit down together and take a look at all the amendments that are similar to that one and see if they can't come up with a single amendment that will solve that part of the problem. And you know what. They do. Now, it might not be 100 percent of what they want. It is probably, again, only 80 percent of what they want. But it is something on which they can all agree.

Here is the really magnificent part that helps a bill get through committee: They can all say: It was my idea. They can all go to the media and put out the release that says they solved this particular problem, and that helps a lot around here.

So committee work is extremely important, but when a bill comes out of committee, it is not perfect. When Senator Kennedy and I were working the bills, we not only recognized they weren't perfect, but we were able to talk to those Members whose problems we weren't able to solve by the time the amendment process came up in committee, and we promised to work with them until the bill got to the floor and not to take the bill to the floor until we had a solution to that problem or the right for them to offer an amendment. That helped a lot to get the bill out of committee.

Once a bill comes out of committee in a bipartisan way--meaning people from both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats and Independents, support the bill--then there is a chance of bringing it to the floor and actually getting some time to debate. And the debate part is important. That is kind of where we bring America along. There is coverage during the committee process, but that is a little harder to follow. The debate here on the floor is where we bring America along on whatever ideas we have, and so the debate here is very important.

Over time, there has been this process where the leaders have invented some things that actually concentrate the power in the hands of the leaders rather than the body as a whole, and that is the filibuster process, and that filibuster process can be manufactured.

I have to tell a couple of stories. One bill I worked on around here had a solution for health care. I called it small business health plans. The idea behind the bill was that small businesses could get together through their association or any way they wanted to, across State lines, even nationwide, to form a buying group big enough to take on the biggest of the insurance companies. Think about that--the power to take on the biggest of the insurance companies. Yes, there was some opposition to that--call it the insurance companies. But many of them worked with us and began to understand how they could participate in the process and then went along with it.

One of the biggest insurance companies in the Nation had some ads out of Massachusetts opposing the bill, and eventually that helped to keep the bill from ever happening. But the biggest thing that kept the bill from happening--Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for another 10 minutes or the right to allow the Senator from California to speak and then have it come back to me.

Yes, just a couple more minutes.

So on this small business health plan, when it came to the floor, I had the unfortunate experience of having Senator Frist setting a filibuster and filling the tree. ``Filling the tree'' means nobody can make another amendment to the bill. But here is the catch: After this came out of committee, we got the people together who had a problem with the bill, and we had one amendment that would have solved those problems. With the tree filled, that one amendment couldn't come up. That one amendment couldn't happen.

So what happened? We talked about the bill and how it lacked this particular part. I kept explaining how we had an amendment that would take care of that. Everybody in the Chamber knew that amendment was not going to happen, and consequently, on a process vote, it was killed with just over 40 votes. That is what happened with the filibuster. Had that amendment been possible, we would have had one of the things in place for health care--just one, but it would have solved a lot of things for a lot of businesses, and that is where a lot of people work in this country, and that is where jobs are.

So that is how we can do this job of legislating.

My second story would be--and this one is much shorter--about the year Senator Harkin and I brought an FDA

bill to the floor. When it got to the floor, we explained to the leader that there were going to be 14 amendments--8 of them would be brought up and would fail, and the other 6 would be withdrawn. A week later we finally got to start on the amendments for that bill. There was worry that there would be some extraneous ones thrown in. We already had agreement, I guess you could say, from the most conservative and most liberal from each of our sides that they would not bring up the peripheral amendments, and they didn't. So a week later, when we finally got to start to vote--and we could have done that the same day, although we finished up in a day and a half--we had eight amendments that got defeated and six amendments that were withdrawn. So we wound up exactly where we knew we were going to be, and the bill passed here 96 to 1.

That is how the committee process can work, and that is how not having a filibuster can work, and that is what we need to get back to. We need to be legislating, not deal-making. And I will talk later about some of the deal-making, and we have seen that with the cliff process.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to join the Senator from California in the hope that the House will pass the bill that was sent over from the Senate last night. It was a tremendous amount of effort that was put into it by a number of people over a number of days and weeks, and I think it is the best answer that we could come up with at this point in time.

I particularly want to thank Leader McConnell and Vice President Biden for working numerous hours; starting, again, yesterday morning at 6:45 and winding up with something late last night, more than 12 hours later, over the last two issues, as I understand it. And, yes, I am glad that AMT was fixed. I would remind everybody that AMT is the last effort we had to tax the rich, and it backfired to where it now taxes everybody or almost everybody. So it desperately needed a fix. Now we are talking about taxing the rich again, and I hope we can come up with some collective ways that will be certain for the people who are rich and that it will last over time instead of just for a few short years.

In my area of the world, the biggest thing in that bill was the estate tax. People who own land in Wyoming that they bought maybe at $40 an acre now have land that is worth $2,000 an acre or more, and they haven't figured out how to pay the taxes on these few acres they were able to scrape together over a period of time if the amount of the exemption went down to $1 million, and that is where we were headed. At $1 million, they would have to sell off part of the ranch or part of the farm in order to pay the taxes when somebody died. All the time that land is making a profit people are paying taxes on it. Then when they die, they would have to pay taxes on something they would like to keep and continue in operation.

So the estate tax piece of that was a very important part for a lot of America, and not just the ones where people are land rich and dollar poor.

Of course, I keep wondering what would have happened if a month ago a basic bill would have been put on the floor--perhaps the President's proposal--and both sides had been able to do amendments to it, even multiple amendments on the same topic, like the Department of Defense bill. We did 119 amendments in a day and a half or 2 days. What if that had happened on this bill? Would we have been able to come up with a package that would, I suspect, be very similar to what we passed last night but done it with everybody participating, everybody understanding, the American public thinking that Congress is actually getting something done? That would be a huge relief. I think we could have done that with an open amendment process, limiting it probably to relevant amendments.

There are a lot of different things people would like to bring up because they don't know any other way they are going to get votes, but I keep reminding my colleagues that when you bring up one of those irrelevant amendments, it might make it into the bill, but it will be pulled out in conference committee. You still did not win anything. I guess you could make a big press release about how you got that into the bill to begin with, but it is not in the bill.

I want to talk today about the questions I hear from Americans who say: Why can't politicians in Washington get along? Why is there this gridlock?

Those are questions folks outside the beltway have been asking, but, like may questions, the answer is involved. For many, including President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Reid, it is easy and strategic to oversimplify the answer. They have identified GOP Senators as the culprits and the filibuster as the instrument. But as one of those GOP Senators, let me give you my side of the story.

What I think people are missing and what some of the majority wants you to miss is why a filibuster happens. You do not hear this from the majority leader, but for the last few years many filibusters in the Senate have been designed and instigated by him; they have not been through the committee process.

Here is how it works. He has a bill that is popular with his party and whose title really sounds great. He knows many of those on our side, the minority, would actually agree with many parts of the bill, but we would want votes on the items that could potentially be politically embarrassing. In order to avoid these votes, he skips the committee of jurisdiction and brings the bill directly to the Senate floor. Then he uses an arcane Senate parliamentary procedure--he files for cloture and fills the amendment tree. That means he prevents amendments on the Senate floor, and often because he believes they might be embarrassing for Members on his side.

Our majority leader is no slouch; he picks bills with great titles that on the surface anyone could support--anyone. Remember, most of these have not been to committee. Who could possibly be against students or veterans or seniors or women? The problem for the minority is that within these great-sounding bills is usually something that deep down, philosophically in our bones, many just cannot accept. An example would be tying a woman's health care to a mandatory public funding of abortions or adding gun control to an otherwise acceptable crime bill. These

are poison pills that the majority knows the minority won't swallow. Best of all politically for the majority, the minority gets blamed for filibustering and the majority leadership looks like the hero fighting hard for the cause. That is how a filibuster can be initiated by the majority leader to make the minority look like obstructionists.

If the majority party brings up a bill containing a poison pill, even though the bill has a great title, they should not expect the other party to swallow the poison pill without using every delay tactic possible. In fact, they don't expect the minority to go along, and they use it to their full political advantage.

Those of us on this side in the minority have been seeing bill after bill that did not even go through committee, with great titles, containing poison pills, come to the floor directly. We were not assured even of a vote to try to take the pill out even though the majority had sufficient votes to ensure the poison pill would stay in. That is the meaning of majority--enough votes to always win. If you can always win, why stop the vote? So stopping the right to vote should and has resulted in a filibuster.

The big, dirty, not-so-secret secret is that a filibuster can be controlled by the majority leader. If the leader agrees to allow an open amendment process, permission to proceed would be a formality, and work could start immediately. That is what happened with the Department of Defense authorization we just finished. It was a fresh breeze through what the majority has turned into a stale Senate. We worked through more than 100 amendments in short order. But if no agreement to an open amendment process is agreed to before starting the bill, the minority has to believe their amendments will be blocked.

The majority can vote down any proposal it does not like and with a motion to table can do it quickly. Let me say that again. With a motion to table, they can do it quickly, they can actually limit debate. That is why the minority has been filibustering on motions to proceed and also why the majority leader wants to end that process. Delaying action on motions to proceed is our best chance to ensure an open amendment process. We can slow the bill down to try to get that agreement. The majority still does not have to agree, and if they have 60 votes, they can move ahead. If they do not have 60 votes, it has to be at least a little bit bipartisan--just a little bit.

The real point gets lost in all this; that is, to be effective, Congress has 535 people looking at every proposal--lots of viewpoints, lots of experience. If all the decisions are going to be made by the majority leader, how does every American's elected leader get to represent his or her constituents? The people back home who put their faith in their Senators expect to be represented by their Senators, not a party or a majority leader who does not know them as their own Senators do.

The majority leader has used the filibuster count to effectively falsely claim obstruction by Republicans. Remember, you can manufacture a filibuster. Now he wants to weaken the filibuster further. That may happen the day after tomorrow. That is damaging America's faith in Congress. That is damaging what the Senator from California said was one of the basic principles of this body. There are already filibuster rules. If used, they would make those objecting spend time on the floor explaining themselves, actually talking. That already exists, and in a very limited way, each Senator has the right to 1 hour of debate during a filibuster--1 hour. They can have other people cede their hours to them, but it is still a very limited amount. At any point, if there is not somebody on the floor to take more of that hour, the Presiding Officer can end that part of the filibuster. So there are already ways to shorten the delay involved, but they are not being used.

Using current rules would be much better than breaking the rules for the first time in order to change the rules. We have never done that. It has been threatened once before. It did not happen. I hope it does not happen during the time I am in the Senate. Breaking the rules to change the rules is not the way of the Senate for the history of the Senate.

I know there are amendments on which the majority does not want to have a recorded vote. That would put his Members on record. But that is the price for being in the majority. I think our side would like to be in the majority and have to take those kinds of votes. They are putting us on record without the poison bill being obvious in the vote. All we are voting on is a bill title. That is the way the people of America looked at it, and it worked very well in the last election.

Going all out to avoid votes is silencing the voices of millions of Americans and tearing down the institution of the Senate and eliminating transparency. The media usually demands transparency. This hides transparency.

The proposal to weaken the filibuster would only hasten the Senate's decline. It is like adding lemon to a recipe that is already too sour. We do not need a new recipe. We do not need to change the rule as the majority is proposing. We need to use the great system that has been in place for hundreds of years. Even now, we get glimpses of it working.

If the majority leader and those advocating for the weakening of the filibuster were in the minority, they would speak out against it. In fact, they did. In 2005, when he was in the minority, the GOP started talking about challenging the filibuster, and Senator Reid warned of grave consequences. I want to quote Senator Reid.

The time has come for those Senators of the majority to

decide where they stand, whether they will abide by the rules

of the Senate or break the rules for the first time in 217

years. . . . Will they support the checks and balances

established by the Founding Fathers?

That is a quote from the majority leader. He asked if the majority would ``silence the minority in the Senate and remove the last check we have in Washington against this abuse of power.'' That is a quote from leader Harry Reid. I hope he will follow his own advice and that that will not be a part of the problem right after we swear in the new Members this next week.

I hope the institution of the Senate will continue to be a Senate. I hope we will have more of a committee process where people can work out the things there are difficulties with and bring a more consolidated, more comprehensive, less compromising area between which neither of them believe that will get to the floor and then have an open amendment process on the floor, and I guarantee things will happen faster than they have been in the Senate. Holding up things a week or 2 weeks while we go through the whole filibuster process is a waste of our time. Amendments are not a waste of our time. I hope we get back to that system.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, at the end of each session of Congress, the Senate takes a moment to acknowledge and express our appreciation for the service of those retiring Members who will not be a part of the next Congress when we reconvene in January. We offer each of them our thanks for a job well done. Joe Lieberman is such an individual, and he has brought so much to our

work in the Senate over the years. We will miss him.

Ever since he arrived here in the Senate Joe has always seen our deliberations as not so much a matter of party so much as it has been about each issue taken individually. That is why we see him as such a thoughtful legislator. He examines every matter that comes before the Senate, taking stock of how it will impact his home State of Connecticut and the future of our Nation, and then he makes a decision on the best course of action for the Congress to take. His ability to sort through each issue focused more on policy than politics has helped him to work with Senators on both sides of the aisle--and bring something important to each discussion. That is why the people of Connecticut kept hiring him back on for another term. Simply put, they saw him in action in the Senate and visited with him when he would return to Connecticut and they liked what they saw.

I got to know Joe as we worked together during a trip to South Korea. The Kyoto Conference had concluded and South Korea was in the midst of a series of problems. The outlook was troublesome and action needed to be taken on a priority basis. The problems were magnified by the election that was going on and the monetary crisis that was being played out in the midst of all of that political campaigning and posturing.

In an effort to be of assistance, the International Monetary Fund had stepped in and was willing to provide the support that was needed in exchange for South Korea's willingness to take certain steps that they believed were essential if any additional elements of the crisis were to be avoided.

The International Monetary Fund asked us to meet with the candidates who were running in South Korea and make them aware of the importance of the current problem and the need to work with the International Monetary Fund toward the solution that had been proposed. It was not going to be enough for them to privately state that they were open to the idea. We needed them to go public with their support for the proposal so that all the candidates would be on the record as being on board with the plan. That would help to strengthen and stabilize the economy and put South Korea on a track toward a long term solution to their financial problems.

We were so ``effective'' with our assignment that, after meeting with us, each of the candidates took to the airwaves the next day to make it clear that if they were elected they would rewrite the whole deal.

As soon as they made it clear they were not interested in the proposal that had been made, the value of their currency began to sink like a rock. It hit the maximum loss for three days. That was enough to teach each candidate that they had no alternative but to move in the direction the International Monetary Fund had recommended.

As soon as that realization became clear, each of the candidates went back on the airwaves and said that they would comply with the International Monetary Fund's recommendations and pursue the policies that would place the nation on firmer ground. When there is only one viable alternative it makes taking a position on an issue like this a lot easier.

I learned a great deal about Joe on that trip--and from him, too. It was in every sense time well spent both for me and Joe--and for the government of South Korea as well. That experience has been with me ever since and I have never forgotten it.

Joe is completing his fourth term and through it all he has been a good representative of the people of Connecticut. He has been a part of many difficult and complex issues during those four terms. Each day, strengthened by his faith and guided by his strong sense of values and principles, he has taken on each challenge that has come before us and done some very important work for the Nation.

Thanks, Joe, for your willingness to serve. You have compiled a record during your years of service on the State and national level of which you can be very proud. As I thank you for your service, I also want to thank you for your friendship. I have enjoyed having the chance to come to know you and I hope you will continue to keep in touch with us in the months to come.

Mr. President, as the work of the Senate for the current session of Congress begins to wind down, it is good to take a moment to acknowledge and express our appreciation to our friends and colleagues who will be retiring when the final gavel brings to a close the 112th Session of Congress. One friend I know I will miss in the months to come is Kent Conrad.

Kent is a hard worker, a Senator who is fully focused on the needs of his home State and the work that needs to be done to address the issues of concern to his constituents. He is a Senator who will always be known as a serious and thoughtful legislator who has a good sense of how today's problems will affect tomorrow's bottom line if we don't act now to bring our economic policies under control.

Throughout his career, Kent has never been one to look for the most popular way of doing things. He was more concerned with finding the most productive way of doing things. He knows that what looks like a good idea in the short term doesn't always lead to producing the kind of long term results we must have if we are to strengthen our economy and put the Nation back to work. He has a great sense of what needs to be done now to ensure our children and grandchildren will have the same advantages that we had. That means never putting off until tomorrow what we ought to be doing today to ensure those issues are addressed. In fact, when Kent announced his decision to retire he made mention of that fact and how his time would be better spent working instead of campaigning.

Kent has been a part of the Senate for four terms--and I am on my third. Over the years I have enjoyed having a chance to come to know him and his wife. They are a very special couple and they are equally committed to each other and to the future of our Nation. Their shared determination to make this a better country for all of us has helped to make them a team that has left their mark on the Nation's capital.

I have had a chance to travel with them both and Diana and I have enjoyed the time we spent together. Kent has a tremendous sense of humor and he has a very interesting outlook on the world. He knows more about the legislation we take up on the Senate Floor than almost anyone else and his understanding of how our bills are written and the impact they will have on our future and our children's future make him someone you would want to be on your side when the battles begin to rage in Committee or on the Floor.

Kent is pretty easy to work with and I have enjoyed the opportunities we have had to tackle some pretty difficult issues together. That sense of humor of his has helped him out on a number of occasions when the going got tough. I know, because I have seen him in action as we worked together on several bills. I also co-chaired a Caucus with him.

As the Chairman of the Budget Committee, Kent has really revealed his leadership abilities. The Budget Committee provided him with a platform that made it possible for him to speak out on issues that were of great interest and concern to him. He has been a very effective Chairman and he has left a legacy of hard work and positive results that will provide all those who follow him with a good road map to follow that has already proven to be effective.

The main thing I think I will always remember about Kent, however, is the way he prepares for his presentations. I don't think there has ever been, nor will there ever be a Senator who is always so well prepared.

Kent and I both appreciate the power of a well designed chart or graph. If you really want me to understand how the policy or program you are offering will affect my home State of Wyoming and the Nation as a whole, show me the data in pictures not words. Kent makes a regular habit of doing that, and he does it better than just about anyone else.

I know that we will be hearing more from Kent in the months to come. I don't think he views his retirement as an opportunity to stop working, I think he sees it as a chance to take on something new, some great and challenging new adventure in his life. I don't know what he has planned, but I am looking forward to seeing him take it on day by day.

Kent has been a friend to so many of us over the years and I know he will be missed. We appreciate his service, we thank him for the way he handled the gavel in his Committee, but most of all we thank him for his friendship, for his love of the Senate and his determination to make the country a better place for us all--both current and future generations. Kent has been an effective Senator for his home State and in so many ways he has succeeded in helping to make North Dakota and our Nation a better place to live.

Richard Lugar

Mr. President, at the end of each Congress the Senate has a custom of taking a moment to express our appreciation to those members who will be returning home when the gavel brings the current session to a close. This tradition provides us with an opportunity to acknowledge each Senator's efforts and take note of the difference they have made both back home and here in Washington, DC.

One Senator I know I will miss in the months to come is Senator Richard Lugar. He has had a great influence on my service here in the Senate. During his six terms of service in the Senate, I know I'm not the only one who learned a great deal from him about how to be the kind of legislator that gets results.

I was fortunate to have had someone like Senator Lugar reach out to serve as a mentor to me. When I first arrived, my experience in the Wyoming State Legislature had taught me to enter the legislative battles slowly, taking the time to learn from the seasoned veterans how to be an effective advocate for my home State and the people back home. Senator Lugar proved to be a good choice for me to observe as I tried to pick up on his way of doing things on the floor and in his Committee.

I soon learned that Senator Lugar had a style all his own. His demeanor of being quiet and calm in his dealings with other members and the thoughtful presentations he made on the Senate floor made it clear that he always had a strategy in mind as we took up those issues that meant a great deal to him.

I shouldn't have been surprised he had such a good understanding of the right way to do things here. It's an indication of one of his great achievements--he's a fellow Eagle Scout. That great training he received in his younger days never left him. His years in the Boy Scouts prepared him for the challenges he had taken on over the years and it taught him the importance of teamwork--bipartisan teamwork--in taking on the issues that were of such great concern to the people of his State. His experience with the Scouts taught him a great deal about life and the importance of holding on to the principles and values that helped to make him a leader back home and here in the Senate.

Another aspect of our lives that we have in common is our service as

mayor. There are few jobs quite as difficult as that and I have a great deal of respect for anyone who takes on that challenge.

I served as mayor of Gillette, Wyoming during a difficult time in its history. Senator Lugar served as mayor of Indianapolis. He brought quite a few good proposals with him and that helped to make it possible for him to do some pretty remarkable things. One accomplishment that stands out was his consolidation of the city and the surrounding county. That helped to make the government work better for the people of the area. His proposals received a great deal of attention and that got his administration noticed. It soon led him to bring his unique brand of leadership to the National League of Cities, where he served as its president.

After such a string of successes, it was only natural that he then bring his vision for the future of our Nation to the United States Senate. For six terms he has been a strong voice for the people of his home State on a long list of issues that were of great concern to them. He has been a leader in both the areas of foreign affairs and agriculture. He has been a great friend of rural America as he has worked to ensure that the programs and policies that work so well in urban areas also benefit rural States and communities like those in his home State and mine. He has compiled a legacy during his service in the Senate that should make him very proud.

Now Senator Lugar will be returning to his beloved home State. Those are his roots and it represents the kind of experiences that helped to form him over the years. It was a life that made him what he is today-- strong, independent and committed to doing what is right.

Now that this chapter of Senator Lugar's life has come to a close, another will soon begin. That is just as it should be for we will miss his leadership on a long list of issues. I hope we continue to hear from him with his thoughtful ideas on the direction we need to follow to turn our economy around.

I know I join with our colleagues in thanking Senator Lugar for his service, for the leadership he has provided on more issues than I could ever list in this short reflection on his many years in the Senate, and most of all, for his friendship. That was a great gift that meant a great deal to us all.

Olympia Snowe

Mr. President, it has long been a Senate tradition to take a moment as the current session of Congress draws to a close to express our appreciation and acknowledge the many contributions each retiring Senator has made to our legislative deliberations both on the Floor and in committee. We will miss them when the gavel brings to a close the 112th Congress--especially senators like Olympia Snowe who have made an important difference during their service.

With Olympia's retirement Maine has lost a very powerful and effective legislator and our Nation's small business community has lost the support of a great champion. Throughout her service in the Senate Olympia has shown her great understanding of our economy and her commitment to keeping our small businesses strong and vibrant. She knows that our small businesses are truly the backbone of our economies--on the local, State and national level and everything we can do to keep them going strong will have the greatest impact on our efforts to keep our American dream alive and available to the people of our great Nation.

Olympia has very strong roots in Maine and she has an in depth understanding of the priorities of the people of her home State and what they expect her to work on here in Washington. That is why she has a well deserved reputation for being a thoughtful and careful legislator, one who looks closely at all the details of a bill before making her decision, based on its merits.

I don't think I've ever met a Senator who was a more avid reader than Olympia. Whenever the Senate takes up an issue, she is always looking for more materials to read that will help her develop creative and innovative solutions to our Nation's problems.

Then, when the matter comes up for our review in Committee or on the floor, she has at the ready several articles that will drive home and anchor the point she is making. No one is better at researching an issue than Olympia and then, when the matter is up for debate, making it clear what she believes to be the best way to tackle the problem. No matter the topic, it's always a plus to have her on your side.

In the years to come, I will always remember Olympia's dedication and firm resolve to get things done. As we worked together on several issues, it was clear she had a wealth of knowledge about how each provision of a bill would play out. She brought some very good ideas to the process and her input helped to make each bill better.

Olympia had always been known as a powerful and effective speaker. Someone with the ability to not only present her position with clarity and precision, but who could also persuade others to her point of view with her common sense approach to problem solving. Those skills and so many more helped her to make a difference throughout her home State of Maine during her career in public service. In the end, that is why she was so successful in the politics of her home State. The people of Maine know Olympia and they appreciate her efforts on their behalf. Over the years Olympia has compiled a record of success of which she can truly be proud.

I know I join with the people of Maine in telling Olympia how much we appreciate her willingness to serve. She could have followed so many different career paths, but she was determined to make Maine a better place for our children and our grandchildren. Thanks, too, for her friendship and her support on the issues on which we worked together. Olympia is an individual of great strength and firm convictions and will be missed in the months to come.

I don't know what the Senator has planned for the next great adventure in her life, but whatever it is I am certain we haven't heard the last from her. We will always be pleased to hear her thoughts about the issues we have before us here in the Senate.

Mr. President, I appreciate having this opportunity to join my colleagues in expressing not only my great sadness on the passing of Senator Inouye but my great appreciation of his lifetime of service to his beloved Hawaii and to our Nation. Danny Inouye lived a full and active life, and his great gifts enabled him to make a difference that will continue to be felt for a long time to come.

I had the honor of introducing Danny Inouye during one of our Prayer Breakfasts earlier this year. Even though I thought I knew him pretty well, as I read the interviews and personal reflections he had shared on his life, I realized more than before the importance of the role he had played over the years as he worked so very hard to make Hawaii all that it is today.

Danny learned at an early age all about the importance of observing the great values that served to help direct his life--love of country, love of family, service to all those who needed his help, and, equally important, service to God. Over the years those great principles helped to make him a leader in

every sense of the word as people looked to him for his leadership in difficult times of both war and peace.

Over the years, he was often asked about his experience during World War II and the impact it had on him. Danny would begin his reflections when he was a young man, still in high school and pursuing his dream of a career in medicine. As so often happens in our lives, his life was changed forever in a moment that began one morning as he was getting ready for church. He heard a report on his radio that Pearl Harbor was being attacked. Without hesitation, Danny headed over to the base to see what he could do to help those who had been injured. Danny had learned a great deal about first aid, and his skills were put to good use to help those who had been injured that day.

That was just the first part of Danny's story and his experience with the war effort of those years. In the days to come it would present him with one of the toughest challenges that anyone could have ever faced as he played an important role in the effort to protect our Nation and restore peace to the world.

As he would continue with his story, Danny's war experiences told a powerful and compelling story about what so many of our Nation's veterans have experienced in battle. That is why Danny will always be known as one of our great war heroes. Even with that standard, however, there was something special about him and the courage and bravery he showed on the battlefield. His efforts were so extraordinary they were recognized with a Medal of Honor, one of our Nation's highest awards. They place him on the roster of our most distinguished heroes, and they remind us all of the great sacrifices that he and so many of our veterans have made over the years to keep our Nation strong and free. Thanks to Danny and those with whom he served, we were able to emerge from that world war victorious and bring peace and freedom to those nations that had been overrun by an evil alliance led by a ruthless dictator in Germany.

That was just the start of Danny's life, but it had taken a heavy toll from him that would change it forever. With the loss of his arm, it was no longer possible for him to complete his dream of being a surgeon. Those who knew him and his great caring heart urged him to find another field in medicine to pursue. He decided to follow another path, and as we are told in the Bible, God had a hand in helping to direct his steps.

As soon as he could, Danny attended George Washington University, my alma mater, and earned his law degree. He then became a part of the effort that would lead Hawaii to statehood. Danny knew the result would bring great changes to his home State and increase the opportunities available to the people who lived there. Thanks in part to Danny, those efforts to achieve statehood were successful, and they resulted in the addition of Hawaii to the roster of our States--and placed another star on the American flag he loved so dearly.

Danny knew that statehood would not be the end, it would be just the beginning of the next great chapter in the history of Hawaii. Danny wanted to be a part of that effort, too, so he was encouraged to run to serve as Hawaii's first Representative in the House. He was successful, and his election to the Congress gave him an opportunity to take on another leadership role--crafting the future of his beloved home State. Once again, it brought out the best in him, as he dedicated himself to making Hawaii a better place for all those who called that special place their home.

It wasn't long before Danny then ran for and won his election to the U.S. Senate. It began a Senate career that was to enable him to make a difference in more ways than we will ever know. As he served here, he did more than observe history or participate in it--he helped to write it day by day, chapter by chapter.

Danny's career has been so active, so full, and so productive, it would be impossible to list all his achievements that make up his legacy of service both here in the Senate and back home in Hawaii. One thing will always stand out in my mind, however--Danny's great loyalty to all those with whom he served. In every sense Danny was a gentleman and a gentle man. He had a quiet and understated way of doing his work day by day. He was man of great kindness, and he shared that kindness with everyone he knew or worked with. His service as a Member of the Senate provided us with a great example of how we should all approach our duties and our work together, putting our country, our God, our family, and our home States first.

That is why Senators on both sides of the aisle have come to respect and appreciate him and his character so very much. I will long remember the great friendship and close working relationship he had with Ted Stevens. They shared such a strong bond that they often referred to each other as brothers. He had strong and supportive friendships with other Senators, too, and that is why we will all miss him so very much in the days and months to come.

I know I will never forget that Prayer Breakfast and all Danny had to share with us that day. He had a great and powerful faith in God and the special relationship they had built up over the years. It helped strengthen him on the battlefield. It helped to guide his efforts when he was called to serve the people of Hawaii. It gave him a source of inner strength that firmed his resolve as he worked to serve the people of our Nation.

By any and all standards, Danny Inouye lived a life we would all be proud of. He packed more into each day than some people experience in a lifetime. Although we had him with us for so many years, it still feels like he was taken from us all too soon.

Now we come together to say goodbye to our colleague--confident in the knowledge that he has made a difference in Hawaii and in Washington that will continue to have an impact for many years to come. It is often said but always bears repeating that one person can make a difference in the world that will equal their determination to do so. Danny is the proof of that, and his memory will continue to inspire all those who knew him or will read about him and his great love for the United States of America.

As a grandfather, I will also long remember that day just a few years ago when Danny became a grandfather, too--for the first time. It was a day he had long anticipated and looked forward to. It reminded me of how much it means to all grandfathers to hold the next generation of their family in their arms and to be reminded of the great circle of life and all that it means as the memories of the past give way to our hopes for the future. Now that grandchild will proudly carry the legacy Danny Inouye leaves behind to all those who knew and loved him. It is more than a record of great achievements, it is a challenge he leaves to all those who will follow him to dare to try to do even greater things than Danny Inouye has done.

God bless and be with you, Danny. Thanks for your service, but most especially thanks for your friendship. Our faith reminds us that we will be parted for only a short time and the day will come when we will see you again. Until that time, you will be greatly missed and you will never be forgotten. Diana and I will keep your family in our prayers. May God bless and be with them all.

Tributes to Departing Senators

Kent Conrad

Mr. President, each year on November 11, we come together as individuals and as a Nation to express our heartfelt gratitude to our veterans for the countless sacrifices they have made over the years on our behalf. Thanks to them, our Nation is strong and free, and our American way of life that we are so justifiably proud of continues to be protected and preserved. Although Veterans Day is over for this year, our appreciation for our veterans should never be over.

Specifically, I wish to honor our selfless men and women in the Armed Forces who have served and continue to serve in Operation Enduring Freedom. October 7th marked the 11th year the United States has been fighting the war in Afghanistan, and that is why the Senate recognized October 7th as Operation Enduring Freedom Veterans Day. Much has changed in the world and our lives in the last 11 years, but the United States remains committed to fighting for freedom in Afghanistan. More importantly--our brave military men and women have maintained their commitment to us. They fight to protect us, and to protect our freedoms. The war in Afghanistan is so physically far away; it can be easy to forget and get caught up in our daily lives. I ask every American to not forget our brave men and women are still overseas. I hope those courageous souls never fade from the hearts and minds of the people of the United States. In order to remember and honor the veterans' service in Afghanistan, the United States Senate recognized October 7th as Operation Enduring Freedom Veterans Day.

I want to thank Andrew Koenig, a Marine and native of Casper, WY, who reached out to my office with this idea of how to remind Americans of the war in Afghanistan we continue to fight. I thank him for his service and selfless dedication to all veterans and those currently serving.

Think of both October 7th and November 11th as a refresher of what it means to be an American. As you do, remember to take the first opportunity you have to thank a veteran for what we have received from their efforts. No one ever gets tired of being appreciated--especially our veterans.

The work our veterans began years ago continues today as our brave servicemen and women serve at outposts here in the United States and all over the world. Stationed far from family and friends, they have made a commitment to each one of us that they will do everything they possibly can to keep us safe and protected from harm.

Our country is recognized for its freedom and this is due to the men and women who serve in our outstanding military. They are patriotic, compassionate and courageous and set an example for us all to follow. In word and deed our veterans have shown their great love for our country. We are very grateful for their service. Thanks to our country's veterans, the world is a much better place. God bless you.