Floor Statements

Mr. President, on April 11 of this year President Obama nominated Sylvia Burwell to be the new Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services--HHS--a position that was vacated that same day by former Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Article II, Section 3, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution grants the President, as the chief executive, plenary power to nominate members of his cabinet. But that same clause reserves the power of appointment--that is, the power to accept or reject the nominee-- exclusively to the Senate.

The Constitution explains this unique division of power as follows: the President ``shall nominate, and''--this is important--``by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States.''

Far from a perfunctory practice, the responsibility to review the fitness of presidential nominees is one of the essential mechanisms in our Constitution's system of checks and balances.

And for the Members of this body who took an oath to ``support and defend'' the Constitution, this is one of the most solemn duties incumbent upon those occupying the office of United States Senator.

I urge my fellow Senators to demand that prior to confirmation Ms. Burwell provide concrete, specific, and forthright answers--in writing--to the questions that have been asked of her by Members of this body.

I refuse to sit idly by and witness the same Washington charade in which stated commitments to transparency are more important than actual demonstrations of candor.

If we do not insist that Ms. Burwell's appointment be contingent upon the transparency of her confirmation process, we will have established a dangerous precedent for the future of this body.

Let's not forget: much of the authority that resides in HHS ultimately derives from the delegation of authority from Congress. And whenever Congress delegates power to the executive branch, we do so based on the premise that we retain the power of oversight.

Therefore, we cannot, in good faith, hand over the reins of one of the most important executive departments at a time when questions remain unanswered and information is still undisclosed. Doing so would undermine the institutional prerogatives of the Senate.

When we only partially carry out our constitutional duties to check and balance the other branches, we alone are to blame for the continued accumulation of power in the executive, where unelected bureaucrats are not always as wise or as impartial as their proponents claim them to be.

The unprecedented accumulation of power in the executive today is a demonstrable fact. But it remains an open question whether we in Congress care enough to do anything about it.

At this point, there is good reason for pessimism--if the kind of acquiescence demonstrated in this confirmation process is any indication.

But I remain optimistic, because I know that the American people still get it. Outside the beltway, Americans still instinctively understand the universal truth articulated by James Madison, the father of the Constitution, over 200 years ago--that ``The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.''

This is precisely the type of accumulated power possessed by executive departments such as HHS.

This power cannot be curtailed or dispersed overnight. But it will continue to expand inexorably toward tyranny unless Members of Congress--exercising our powers as officers of a separate and coequal branch of government--don't push back.

We can begin by subjecting this nomination to the close scrutiny it deserves.

The first thing we must recognize is that this is not the average presidential nomination. We are not talking about the next secretary of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Quite the opposite: Ms. Burwell has been nominated to preside over one of the largest and most important departments in the Federal Government. No matter who the nominee, this is a job that should be filled with caution and circumspection.

By way of illustration, the HHS Secretary oversees an annual operating budget of about $1 trillion--that is nearly 25 percent of all Federal spending--as well as 11 separate operating divisions, including the very important Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services--CMS--and the Food and Drug Administration--FDA.

Moreover, the next HHS Secretary is going to assume the helm of an executive leviathan in the midst of implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Obamacare is not only the most complex--and controversial--law in recent memory, but it delegates an unprecedented amount of authority to the HHS Secretary.

Often this delegation comes in the form of sweeping, open-ended grants of

power that give the Secretary discretion to shape and reshape the law. Like an unending series of blank checks to the bureaucracy, Obamacare contains 700 instances of the ultimate carte blanche--``The Secretary shall . . .''--to give the Secretary wide latitude to ``develop standards,'' ``award grants,'' ``establish committees,'' ``make adjustments,'' etc.

This kind of massive delegation of authority is justified--especially by those who see it as a convenient way to avoid the difficulties of lawmaking--on the theory that Congress will retain and exercise some degree of oversight.

And it is true that both chambers of Congress have the ability to hold hearings in which we subpoena executive officials to testify and answer questions about laws, rules, and regulations under their jurisdiction. But as we have seen over the past few years with the implementation of Obamacare, this power is significantly impeded if those executive officials refuse to answer our questions.

These facts raise the central question that ought to guide the Senate's consideration of Ms. Burwell's nomination--namely, how will Ms. Burwell exercise the expansive authority delegated to HHS vis-aa- vis the powers and responsibilities of Congress?

Much of the job of the next HHS Secretary will be to facilitate Congressional oversight of the Department, especially in its implementation of Obamacare. Therefore, the Senate's decision should be contingent upon Ms. Burwell's record of engaging with Congress.

Sadly, Ms. Burwell's tenure as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, as well as her performance in the Senate committee confirmation hearings, gives me concern that she will continue in the pattern of obfuscation and evasion established by outgoing Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

I therefore respectfully submit that we should proceed cautiously in consideration of this nominee. More cautiously, indeed, than we have up to this point.

For over the past 6 weeks, since the President nominated Ms. Burwell, many in this body have neglected our end of the constitutional division of power--preferring to act as if Ms. Burwell's appointment was a fait accompli.

This state of affairs is troubling--and not simply because questions remain unanswered, and information undisclosed, about Obamacare. The problem is more fundamental than any one law.

The Senate's reluctance to protest against the equivocation and distortion seen in this confirmation process undermines the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances upon which our constitutional order depends.

Respecting and upholding these principles of our Constitution is not a matter of adhering to some arcane formality or following some outdated tradition of the 18th century.

At issue here is whether or not this institution still believes in the reason our Constitution divides power in the first place. Do we still believe, as Madison said, that ``power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it''?

If we do, then we must employ the tools at our disposal to assert our institutional prerogatives. Doing so will demonstrate to the other branches that the power of government is not simply up for grabs.

Here again Madison's insights are instructive: in the famous Federalist 51, he says, ``the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. [. . .] Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.''

But if we disagree with Madison about the encroaching nature of power . . . if we are undisturbed by the great accumulation of power in the executive branch, which predates and will outlive Obama's presidency . . . if we prefer to elevate policy preference and party allegiance over love of liberty and the constitutional rights of Congress . . . then we must not be surprised when--not if--our government takes on the character and the spirit of tyranny.

Let me be clear: the kind of tyranny that threatens us is not of the Saddam Hussein or Bashar al-Assad variety. The tyrannies of Saddam's Iraq and, today, Assad's Syria are barbarous, murderous dictatorships that extinguish every semblance of freedom and maintain their power through violence and brutality.

What I am talking about is the kind of soft despotism that arises when power is consolidated under the auspices of a paternal, benevolent government.

At the end of his study of democracy in 19th-century America, Alexis de Tocqueville explained how this kind of tyranny could emerge within a democratic republic such as ours. Standing as a kind of warning for us today, Tocqueville envisioned ``an immense and tutelary power'' that ``extends its arms over society as a whole,'' covering it ``with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd.'' It does not ``break wills,'' he said, ``but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces one to act''--even Tocqueville didn't foresee the individual mandate--``but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born.''

This is certainly a dark image. But we cannot forget that Tocqueville was bullish about America. He believed that American democracy had the right attributes needed to avoid descending to these depths.

Chief among these attributes were our constitutional structures that divided power and, more importantly, the spiritedness, courage, and love of freedom that animated the American people and transformed the mere ``parchment barriers'' of the Constitution into true limits on governmental power.

It is precisely this spirit of freedom that the Senate must recover if we are going to fulfill our constitutional obligations in this confirmation process. Once we recognize the need to assert and defend our interests as a separate and coequal branch of the government, we will begin to focus on what is really at stake in our consideration of this nominee.

The main issue here is not Ms. Burwell's character or credentials-- both of which are first-rate--but whether or not her appointment will improve or further deteriorate the legislature's oversight over the executive departments to which Congress has delegated vast amounts of authority.

The question is not whether Ms. Burwell deserves to be HHS Secretary, but whether the HHS, under Ms. Burwell's management, will continue in the pattern of obstinate autonomy and limited cooperation established under her predecessor.

If the answer is no, we cannot possibly vote to confirm this nominee.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the theft of valuable metal is a serious crime, one that can damage valuable infrastructure--sometimes government infrastructure--and it can cause serious harm to businesses and to the owners of the infrastructure at issue. For this reason, many States, including my own State of Utah, have enacted measures that deter such criminal activity and punish harshly those who engage in this type of criminal activity. These measures are generally appropriate, but where the Federal Government enacts legislation creating criminal penalties, we as lawmakers must be careful to respect the Constitution's enumerated powers and the constitutionally ordained structure of federalism.

I have heard concerns expressed regarding people who steal valuable metal and cross State lines to sell stolen metal. While I would support Federal legislation addressed to such truly interstate, unavoidably national circumstances, I cannot support legislation that more broadly regulates intrastate conduct.

Because this bill exceeds Congress's power under the commerce clause and imposes a Federal regulatory scheme in an area of the law the Constitution properly reserves to the States, I must object to the Senate passing it by unanimous consent.

Mr. President, this fall, seven remarkable Utahns will enter three of our prestigious military academies, and I would like to take this opportunity to officially congratulate them and to recognize their individual achievements.

Dexter Chayton Clark will be attending the U.S. Naval Academy. A graduate of Brighton High School, Dexter has maintained a 4.0 GPA, he is an AP Scholar with Honor, a member of the National Honor Society, a National Academic League Champion, a gifted swimmer, and an Eagle Scout.

Jillian Lemay Combs will be attending the U.S. Air Force Academy. She graduated from the Waterford School with academic high honors; she is an accomplished violist and a member of the National Charities League with over 400 hours of service. She was the captain of Waterford's debate team as well as the swimming, diving, and water polo teams, and she is a Girl Scout Gold Award recipient.

Amy Noelle Johnston will be attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. A graduate from Brighton High School and a member of the National Honor Society, Amy was captain of the Brighton lacrosse and tennis teams. She served her community with the Red Cross and also performed volunteer service on the Northern Cheyenne and Coeur d'Alene Reservations.

Carson Eugene Nuttall will be returning to study at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Carson displayed commitment to his faith by resigning from West Point to serve a full-time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 2 years in Chile. He has been recognized consistently as a natural leader and one who is committed to honor and service.

Zerek Douglas Olson will be attending the U.S. Naval Academy. A graduate from Layton High School and a JROTC Captain, Zerek was captain of his football, wrestling, and track & field teams. He is a member of the National Honor Society, attended Boy's State, and served our veterans at the VA hospital and VA homes in Utah.

Seth Lawrence White will be attending the U.S. Naval Academy. A graduate of Sky View High School, Seth served as one of its student body officers, the captain of both the debate team and the football team, and a Dwight D. Eisenhower People to People European Representative. Seth also helped in organizing the Don't Drive Stupid program to discourage drunk and distracted driving.

Keven Shin Yeh will be attending the U.S. Naval Academy. Keven graduated from Brighton High School with a 4.0 GPA. He is a member of the Governor's Honors Academy and the captain of both Brighton's cross country and track & field teams. He has given over 100 hours of dedicated service to our veterans at the VA hospital in Salt Lake City.

It appears that the future of our military is in good hands. I challenge these praiseworthy appointees to continue the tradition of honor, sacrifice, and courage that has been so exceptionally demonstrated by so many throughout the great history of our military. I should like to close with a quote from Lincoln, which I hope we will all remember as we strive to do what is right for our country. Of the brave soldiers who were then fighting to preserve the Union, he wrote:

Honor to the Soldier, and Sailor everywhere, who bravely

bears his country's cause. Honor also to the citizen who

cares for his brother in the field, and serves, as he best

can, the same cause--honor to him, only less than to him, who

braves, for the common good, the storms of heaven and the

storms of battle.

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Coburn, who is not here today, I object.

My understanding is that Senator Coburn's objection is based on the lack of a pay-for in this proposal. There is, however, an amendment that has been introduced by Senator Vitter that addresses this concern and fills this gap.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Veterans' Affairs Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 3521, and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I also ask unanimous consent that the Vitter amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to, that the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Yes.

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

Mr. President, the American economy is the envy of the world, primarily because it is still seen as a place where anyone-- regardless of who you are or where you come from--can work hard, play by the rules, and succeed. That belief is predicated on the notion that America has a thriving, competitive, and free enterprise economy in which the best ideas and hardest workers win the day, while those who are less successful always have a fair chance to try again.

The free enterprise system is not perfect, by any means, but it is fair. Unfortunately today, Americans increasingly believe our system is rigged. In President Obama's America, they have good reason. From the stimulus to Cash for Clunkers, from the bailouts to cap-and-trade, from Dodd-Frank to ObamaCare, every namebrand initiative of the President's term of office has distorted public policy to privilege well-connected insiders and elites at the expense of taxpayers and consumers.

The Export-Import Bank is another taxpayer-funded example of distorted public policy that further erodes Americans' confidence in our markets and our system. In short, the Ex-Im Bank exists to dole out taxpayer-backed loan guarantees to help American exporters. Most of the benefits go to large corporations that are perfectly capable of securing private financing anywhere in the world. That is to say, Congress allows Ex-Im Bank to risk taxpayer money unnecessarily to subsidize well-connected private companies.

This kind of public policy privilege, best described as crony capitalism, is a threat to the free market and to its moral underpinnings. Crony capitalism corrupts the free market by rewarding political connections over competitive excellence. It subverts the rule of law by codifying inequality. It undermines social solidarity by pitting citizens against one another, twisting cooperative communities into rival special interests.

That is why in Obama's crony economy, we are seeing record corporate profits but stagnant middle-class wages and an anemic, jobless recovery. Cronyism has promoted and exacerbated inequality. It has isolated the poor and it has squeezed America's middle class.

There are three principal reasons why we should start making this discussion part of the public debate and why we should start doing it right now: First, we should do this to fix the economy. Nearly all of our Nation's net job creation comes from firms that have existed for 5 years or less. But cronyist policies tilt the playing field against those very firms, and make it next to impossible for those companies to succeed, to grow, and to create new jobs that we so badly need, and that the American people so significantly deserve. Leveling the playing field creates competition in both directions. It allows smaller, younger firms to compete, and it forces larger, older firms to do the same. That dynamic competition is what creates new jobs. It is what creates new economic growth. It is what gives rise to new opportunities up and down the economy on every step on the economic ladder.

Second, this is a matter of basic justice. The American people have a fundamental right to equal opportunity under the law, and it is the job of the government to protect equal opportunity. If the very people who work hard and play by the rules are forced by government to bail out, prop up, and subsidize elite insiders who do not, then the land of opportunity, well, is not.

Third, as those who most support free enterprise and equal opportunity, Republicans must bear the burden of reform. We believe in the power of free markets and a voluntary civil society to expand, lift people out of poverty, and support a secure and prosperous middle class. So it is our responsibility to follow through on our own convictions and close our own branch of the beltway favor bank. It starts with conservatives having an agenda to reform government and to end cronyism. Fortunately, some of us have already started working on it.

These proposals focus on protecting the American people from the economic harm that comes from the collusion of big government, big business, and big special interests.

For example, we have policy reforms that force Congress to periodically reevaluate expensive regulations; level the playing field for all energy producers; open our higher education system to new students, teachers, and competition; give Americans the right to choose whether to join a union; cut out the bureaucrats who waste critical infrastructure funding; and, yes, eliminate taxpayer subsidies to organizations such as the Ex-Im Bank.

This agenda will create jobs, grow the economy, increase opportunities by allowing small businesses and forcing big businesses to compete on a level playing field where success depends on customer service and not on political connections. A conservative agenda to get right on cronyism will be good for jobs, for the economy, and above all it will be the right thing to do.

Eventually, later this year, the reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank will be before the Senate, and I hope my colleagues will keep these points in mind. But before us today is the nomination of Wanda Felton to be First Vice President of the Export-Import Bank. This is a position she already holds, but it is being renominated so that she can continue holding that position.

Ms. Felton, significantly, sat on the board of the Ex-Im Bank, and she did so at a time when the Ex-Im Bank declined to take several recommendations from its own inspector general to lower its risks, which, in turn, put taxpayers at greater risk.

The Ex-Im Bank has also continued to make claims about the importance of Ex-Im on job creation without necessary caveats or references to the bank's methodology--claims the GAO has heavily criticized.

I cannot support putting someone back into this position after that person largely ignored these recommendations by government watchdogs.

For all the reasons I have mentioned, I respectfully and strongly ask my colleagues to oppose the renomination of Wanda Felton to be the First Vice President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.

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

Mr. President, I thank my colleague, the Senator from South Dakota, for his leadership in this area. I agree with his comments and support those statements, along with the other actions taken by my colleagues from New Hampshire, Kentucky, and Nebraska, in addition to others.

I too had an amendment I wanted to present in connection with this legislation. I too offered that up and identified reasons why this is both relevant and germane to the legislation at hand. Unfortunately, the majority leader saw fit to block this, to object to it, to refuse altogether to allow the U.S. Senate--which is supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative legislative body--to consider these or any of the other amendments that were presented along with them.

We are not asking for passage by unanimous consent. We recognize some people might not share our views. We recognize there might be a diversity of opinion within the body. We nevertheless believe, as U.S. Senators, we are entitled to have these amendments considered because they are relevant, because they are germane. We also think they should be considered because they would benefit the American people.

This is the sort of thing we are supposed to do. It is what we do. What we are supposed to be doing as Senators is to be offering amendments and voting on amendments to make legislation we consider better. You see, the amendment process can make a bad bill good or at least better, and that is exactly why we have an obligation to consider amendments.

It is important to point out here that one of the reasons why I ran this amendment in the first place has to do with the fact that one of the struggles facing working families today is the constant struggle moms and dads feel as they try to juggle the work-life balance. Parents today need to juggle work, home, kids, community, and other obligations they face.

For many families, especially families with young children, the most precious commodity parents have is time. But today Federal labor laws severely, and I believe unfairly, restrict the way moms and dads and everyone else can use their time. That is because many of those laws were written decades ago--decades ago--before the Internet existed; decades ago, when a number of demographic factors were aligned much differently than they are today, when a number of social trends operated much differently in our economy than they do today. Because of these laws--these same Buddy Holly-era, Elvis-era laws--because of these same antiquated laws that need to be updated, an hourly employee who works overtime is not allowed to take comp time, not allowed to take flextime. Even if she prefers it, her boss cannot even offer it without violating Federal law.

Today, if a working mom or a working dad stays late at the office on Monday or Tuesday, and instead of receiving extra pay wants to get compensated by leaving early on Friday and spend the afternoon with the kids, that kind of arrangement could well be violating Federal law. That sounds unfair, especially to parents, and it is unfair, especially to parents and their children and everyone else.

It also seems like the kind of arrangement that should not be prohibited by Federal law but ought to be perfectly acceptable. But how do we know that for sure? Well, we know that for sure because Congress gave a special exemption from that very law--the law I just described a moment ago--that is available only for government employees. This is unacceptable. The same work-life options that have been made available by Congress itself to government employees should be available to the citizens they serve.

In May of last year, the House of Representatives responded to this deficit in existing Federal law by passing the Working Families Flexibility Act, sponsored by Representative Martha Roby of Alabama, to equalize the comp time rules, existing within a government employment context, for all workers. Last fall, I introduced companion legislation in the Senate proposing to do exactly the same thing.

Now, today, I would like to offer an amendment that is modeled on this same legislation to end this flextime discrimination, this comp time discrimination against private sector workers. You talk to any working mom or any working dad and they will tell you they need more time.

Now, Mr. President, as you well know, we cannot legislate another hour in the day. If we could, I am sure it would have been done by now, and, frankly, I am a little surprised someone has not tried it. But we know mathematically it will not work. It would not do any good. But what we can do is to help working people so they can better balance the demands they face--the demands of family and work and community and every other demand they face. We can ease some of this pressure by removing an unnecessary, outdated, and manifestly unfair Federal restriction on utilizing comp time in the private sector.

There are real problems in this world. There are bad things that can be and must be prohibited by Federal law. But the fact that working parents would prefer, quite understandably, to spend more time with their families is not one of those things that needs to be prohibited, nor is it one of those things that we should allow to continue to be prohibited, especially when it is prohibited in a patently unfair discriminatory fashion--one that inures to the

benefit of government employees, inures unfairly to the detriment of everyone else.

Congress needs to stop punishing America's moms and dads for wanting the same fair treatment that government employees are able to receive through comp time and flextime programs. The United States of America deserves to have amendments like this one, and other amendments, that would make our laws less intrusive, less oppressive, less unfair, that would lead to the development of a more fair, just economy, and a more fair, just system of laws.

We are never going to be able to get there if we are not even allowed to debate and discuss and vote on it, consider, much less pass, amendments. It is time to restore the Senate to what it was always intended to be, which is the world's greatest deliberative legislative body. That cannot happen when amendments like this one are categorically blocked from consideration. We must end this. We must do better. We can and we must and we will.

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

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

Madam President, this week the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce will honor my friend, the former Governor of Utah, Michael Leavitt, with our Giant In Our City Award. I would like to take this opportunity to honor my fellow Utahn, whose example as a public servant is instructive for all those who wish to make a difference.

Mike Leavitt, who is a native of Cedar City, was the 14th Governor of the great State of Utah. He was handily elected to three terms as Governor, a feat that only one other Utahn has ever accomplished. In 2003, during his third term, he was nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. After just over 1 year at the EPA, Governor Leavitt was nominated and confirmed as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, where he served through the end of the Bush administration. He is the coauthor and author of several books, and he has most recently served on Mitt Romney's campaign as the head of Governor Romney's transition team.

These accomplishments alone are enough to warrant praise and admiration for Governor Leavitt, but I would like to underscore the way in which he served in these positions to explain the virtues of leadership and service. It has been said those who lead best lead by example, and Mike Leavitt is one of those best leaders. He has continuously focused on efficiency, relationships, professionalism, and improvement. These qualities are not only cultivated in Mike Leavitt personally, but they are also fostered in all those with whom he works.

Governor Leavitt's efforts to make government work for the people--as government always should work--stands as one of his greatest accomplishments. Such accomplishments often require innovation and entrepreneurship, which Mike Leavitt learned prior to his governorship as the president and CEO of the Leavitt Group. An example of this innovation is the emergence of a new kind of education in the mid- 1990s. When many in the education sector were skeptical of the possibility of online learning, Governor Leavitt proposed a new idea for a competency-based online university. He worked to gain the support of other Governors, and after many months of preparation, Western Governors University was established. This institution was part of Governor Leavitt's mission to expand access to and reduce the cost of higher education. Today WGU is recognized as one of the most innovative and affordable universities in the country.

Governor Leavitt encouraged his fellow Utahns to avoid focusing on what is wrong with America, a lesson we as Senators would do well to follow. He reminded Utahns to focus on what is right with America, as he believes wholeheartedly in the greatness of our Nation. He once said: ``In the history of mankind, there has never been a nation as admired, as willing and as capable of inspiring and fulfilling hope.'' The dignified competence of that statement is needed in these Halls and needed around the world today.

Utah was an example of such dignified confidence in 2002 when the State hosted the Winter Olympics. Governor Leavitt's precision in preparing the State for the games produced a tremendous success not only for Utah but also for our country. Working on the issues that are constitutionally reserved to the States and to the people, Governor Leavitt oversaw the expansion of Utah's transportation network and managed facilities and lands with great care. He

sought out skilled leaders to help in this grand effort, and thousands upon thousands of Utahns volunteered countless hours to make the 2002 Olympics one of the most successful Olympic Games in history.

Multiple volumes of the Congressional Record could be filled with examples of service and leadership exemplified by this great Utahn, especially from his years leading the EPA and HHS. However, in the interest of brevity, I will simply say that this country needs more citizens like Mike Leavitt. We need men and women who are able to focus on the details and simultaneously think on a macro scale. We need leaders who believe in our founding principles and who make important decisions with those very same principles in mind. We need leaders who will make government more efficient, more responsive, more deliberate, and more meaningful. Such meaningfulness may often require less from the Federal Government. When action is required from us in this body, let prudence, love for country, love for our fellow beings and dedication to principles, displayed so admirably by Governor Mike Leavitt, be our guide.

Thank you, Madam President. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this month, the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce will honor Raymond John Noorda, posthumously, with the 2014 ``Pillar of the Valley'' Award. I would like to take a moment to recognize the achievements of this great Utahn.

Raymond Noorda, or ``Ray,'' as everyone knew him, was born in Ogden, UT in 1924 to Dutch immigrants, Bertus and Alida Noorda. Like nearly all Americans who grew up during the Depression, Ray learned the virtue of hard work early on, and he never stopped working throughout his life. The Deseret News reports that during his youth, Ray worked ``in a candy shop, setting pins in a bowling alley, as a loading clerk at a train station, picking cherries, selling magazines, and even herding sheep.''

He was an outstanding baseball player, and he was asked to join a professional team right out of high school. However, his mother had other plans for young Ray, and he subsequently enrolled in classes at Weber State College. During World War II, Ray put school on hold and served in the Navy as an electronics technician, working on radar systems. At the conclusion of his military service, he returned to his studies, transferring from Weber to the University of Utah, where he earned a degree in engineering. Ray married his sweetheart Tye shortly after graduating from college, and they were together for 56 years, until Ray's passing in 2006.

After his graduation from college, Ray worked for General Electric for 21 years, where he was known as an innovator and entrepreneur. He eventually left the company and led a number of businesses to success in the following years. In the early 1980s, Ray became the leader of a struggling Utah company called Novell Data Systems, which would shortly thereafter become Novell.

Ray worked to put together a team of engineers, dubbed ``SuperSet.'' The team eventually invented powerful networking software, which opened the doors to modern networking. For this and other contributions, Ray has been called the ``Father of Network Computing.'' This development set Novell on a path to success and pushed the company far ahead of their early competitors in computer networking throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s.

Of Novell's success under Ray's leadership, The Independent reported, ``Novell's NetWare product was to become the de facto standard networking software from the late 1980s through to the mid-1990s. Noorda oversaw the growth of the company from 17 to 12,000 staff, whilst still maintaining a community spirit for his employees, whom he treated with immense respect and who, in turn, affectionately referred to him as Uncle Ray.'''

Ray was a visionary and humble leader, who believed that cooperation with competitors would help grow the emerging computer networking industry. Thus, he led his company with a term he coined--``co- opetition''--and Novell was a leader in cooperative advancements in the computing industry. One of Novell's Vice Presidents once said of Ray, ``What he preaches is what you always wanted to hear from your father-- love, sharing--and he uses those words.'' When Ray spoke to employees, he was rarely, if ever, without a joke, and he was always positive and encouraging.

Ray's success in business was a testament to his personal character and virtues. He loved children, and enjoyed serving in his church. His philanthropy knew no bounds, and his family continues that legacy in Utah and throughout the country each day. Ray was a titan of business, and his life is a shining example for not only business leaders, but also Americans in general. I join with the Utah Valley Chamber in honoring his wife Tye and his family, and I thank them for their support of such a great man. I pray that we will honor the life of Ray Noorda by doing the best we can in our individual capacities, and by helping those around us achieve greatness, success, and happiness throughout life.

Mr. President, this month, the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce will honor Elder Dallin H. Oaks, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with the 2014 ``Pillar of the Valley'' Award. I would like to take a moment to recognize the achievements of

this great man who is dear to my heart.

Elder Oaks was born in Provo, UT in 1932. He spent his youth in Utah Valley and Vernal, and he started working from a very young age to support his two younger siblings and widowed mother. Elder Oaks remembers that his mother was ``an extraordinary mother,'' who gave him ``a great deal of responsibility and freedom'' and ``encouraged [him] to have a job.'' He graduated from Brigham Young High School in 1950, where he was the senior class president and played on the football team. He also became a licensed first-class radiotelephone operator in his teenage years.

Elder Oaks was a member of the National Guard from 1949 to 1954. During this period, he met his wife June Dixon, and they were married in 1952. They raised six beautiful children together. After more than 45 years of marriage, June, stricken with cancer, passed from this mortal existence. Elder Oaks' extraordinary faith and trust in God's plan during this time of trial was an example for all of us who have lost a loved one to cancer.

Elder Oaks has worked tirelessly to lift those around him and to achieve greatness throughout his life. After graduating from Brigham Young University, BYU, with a bachelor's degree in accounting, Oaks went on to law school at the University of Chicago. His hard work at Chicago led him to the tremendous opportunity of clerking at the Supreme Court for Chief Justice Warren. He subsequently returned to Chicago to go into private practice, and eventually joined the faculty at the University of Chicago.

It was during this time that my parents moved to Chicago so that my father could earn his law degree at the University of Chicago. Elder Oaks and June kindly welcomed them, and they became lifelong friends. While in Chicago, Elder Oaks also had the opportunity to serve as assistant state's attorney for Cook County, a position in which he excelled.

After years of extraordinary work and service in Chicago, the Oaks family was called home to Utah Valley, as Elder Oaks was appointed president of BYU in 1971. He was a brilliant leader, who inspired the students to learn as much as possible and to be advocates for virtue and goodness throughout the world. He also set a high bar for his successors, one of whom was my father, who praised Elder Oaks as a man of great humility and wisdom.

After 9 years as president, he was nominated and confirmed as a justice of the Utah Supreme Court. Before and during his service as a justice, Elder Oaks was on multiple short lists for nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States. He served with distinction on the Utah Supreme Court from 1980 to 1984, when he resigned to answer a call to serve in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Placing his faith above worldly success, Elder Oaks has travelled the world, bearing testimony of Jesus Christ and strengthening the faith of millions. He has been an ardent defender of religious liberty, and continually works to bring members of all faiths together to accomplish good.

Elder Oaks has been an inspiration to millions of individuals all over the world. I congratulate him and his wife Kristen on their many wonderful accomplishments over the last 14 years together. Elder Oaks is not only an example of a genius legal mind to which all jurists, including myself, aspire, but also a tireless advocate for truth, virtue, freedom, and goodness throughout the world. I am proud to say that I know such an individual, and I believe that our world would be a much better place if more men strived to emulate his virtues.

Mr. President, this particular bill has not been examined in committee--not in the Senate, not even in the House. It was rushed to the floor of the House without amendment, and it is rushed to the floor here without amendment. This is not how the legislative process is supposed to work--especially not here in the Senate.

My opponents may say we already had our chance to impact this policy, but what we have before us now is a different bill--a bill which we have never seen before. This bill is not a conference report. It takes zero cues from the Senate bill. Not a single representative of the American people has been given the opportunity to offer even a single amendment to this legislation.

All I have been asking for is a vote on an amendment which eliminates certain insurance rebates for second homes. My amendment would not change homeowners' flood insurance policies or even reduce the new taxpayer subsidy we are going to give them. It simply removes a retroactive reimbursement for second homes. Essentially we ask that working families around the country, including taxpayers in my State, not have to cut an additional check to the owners of coastal vacation houses. I know of no one who objects to my provision on policy grounds. Let me repeat that. I don't know of anyone, not one person who has raised a policy objection to

the amendment I have offered. It is an objective improvement to the underlying policy and this is what the Senate is supposed to do. Yet the supporters of the bill have been blocking any amendments that may garner bipartisan support to hold together a deal that has been negotiated in a backroom, written in secret by only a few Members, perhaps with the influence of a few people who may be interested in that. These ``masters of the universe'' as my friend Senator Sessions has sometimes referred to them, are shutting the American people out of the process.

I asked for 10 minutes and a vote on a single unobjectionable germane amendment to a bill the public has never before seen, but it seems this may be a bridge too far for the ``masters of the universe,'' as my friend from Alabama likes to call them.

So in an effort hopefully to change one of the more offensive policies in the bill, one that provides a refund of premiums paid under the law to homeowners of second vacation homes from a program that is already $24 billion in the hole, I agree to a vote on my amendment as a stand-alone bill. I have assurances from the House majority leader that he will work to get the policy considered in the House and I take him at his word.

I urge my colleagues to support my bill to protect the American people from being asked to fund--to refund premiums paid under current law to owners of second homes and vacation homes.

Madam President, I am pleased to have the nomination of Judge Carolyn McHugh before the Senate today. Throughout her life Judge McHugh has demonstrated a commitment to the highest standards of academic excellence, professional distinction, and public service.

Judge McHugh graduated magna cum laude from the University of Utah, where she later earned her jurist doctorate, graduating Order of the Coif and serving as the editor on the Utah Law Review.

After excelling in law school, Judge McHugh clerked for the Honorable Bruce Jenkins of the District of Utah. She then spent more than 20 years in private practice, where she excelled, focusing on complex commercial litigation.

Throughout her career in private practice, Judge McHugh has demonstrated a strong commitment to pro bono work. She has been awarded several honors for her work to advance women in the legal profession. In 1996 the Utah State Bar recognized her with a Distinguished Committee Award from the Needs of Children Committee.

It was nearly 10 years ago when I first met Judge McHugh when I was working for then-Governor Jon Huntsman. During his first year as Governor, it was time for him to appoint someone to the Utah Court of Appeals. At that point the nominating commissions began their work, and shortly after their work concluded, the Governor's staff started interviewing various applicants, various people who had been considered by the nominating commission. It soon became apparent that there was a real standout in this very impressive group of candidates for this court of appeals position, and Judge McHugh's name rose to the top of the list.

During discussions I had with her and with my colleagues, as well as with Governor Huntsman, I found her to possess a keenly insightful legal mind, and I found her to be someone who really understands the role of judges--the necessarily limited role--and the

crucial function of the judge in our system. She has served with great distinction on the Utah Court of Appeals during those intervening years.

For that reason I am confident, based on the knowledge she has acquired, the skills she has developed and honed over the years, and the commitment to public service she has displayed up to this point in her career, Judge McHugh will, in fact, excel as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. I strongly urge my colleagues to support her confirmation.

Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. President, we are better than this. This farm bill is a monument to every dysfunction Washington indulges in to defend our policies and twist our economy to benefit itself at the expense of the American people.

The top-line talking point among defenders of this bill is ``compromise.'' The farm bill, we are told, may be imperfect, but it is a compromise we can all live with. They said negotiators from both Houses and both political parties came together and hammered out a deal. They said: This is just how you have to act to get things done in Washington.

There is, of course, some truth to this, but it is more of a half truth. There absolutely is compromise in this thousand-page $1 trillion mess. But it is not a compromise between House Republicans and Senate Democrats. No, it is collusion between both parties against the American people. It benefits special interests at the expense of national interest.

This bill does not demonstrate how to do things in Washington but instead demonstrates how to do things for Washington. The final product before us is not just a legislative vehicle, it is a legislative getaway car.

And what did they get away with? Well, the farm bill is really two bills--one that spends about $200 billion to subsidize the agricultural industry and another that spends $750 billion on the public assistance program previously known as food stamps. The farm bill is, thus, a beltway marriage of convenience between welfare and corporate welfare, ensuring the passage of both while preventing reform in either. Instead, Congress broke out the neck bolts and sutures and put Frankenstein's monster back together.

This was the year the farm bill was supposed to be different. This was supposed to be the year when we would finally split the bill into its logical component pieces and would subject them both to overdue scrutiny and reform.

This was the year we might have strengthened the Food Stamp Program with work and other requirements for able-bodied adults, to help transition beneficiaries into full-time jobs. This was the year we might have added an asset test, to make sure wealthy Americans with large personal bank accounts were no longer eligible for food stamps. But those reforms aren't there. Those reforms aren't here--not in this bill.

Under this legislation, the Food Stamp Program is not really reformed, it is just expanded. Once again, the give and take of compromise in Congress boils down to the American people give and Washington takes. Yet, if anything, the other side of this bill is even worse. Not only did the conference committee fail to reform programs subsidizing agricultural businesses, the conference committee removed many of the few improvements the House and Senate tried to include in the first place.

For instance, the original Senate bill, for all its faults, included a novel provision to limit farm subsidies to actual farms, actual farmers. The Senate bill was also going to phase out crop insurance subsidies for wealthy Americans with an annual income of more than $750,000; farmers who made three-quarters of a million dollars a year, after all, should not need taxpayer assistance to keep their farms afloat.

The House bill included a transparency reform requiring Members of Congress to disclose any subsidies they personally receive under the crop insurance programs. Yet all of the above reforms mysteriously disappeared from the final legislation now before us.

It is not as though the farm bill was a paragon of accountability and fairness to begin with. Agricultural policy follows a troubling trend in Washington, using raw political power to twist public policy against the American people to profit political and corporate insiders.

For instance, under this legislation, the Federal Government will continue to force taxpayers to subsidize sugar companies, both in the law and in the grocery store. The bill maintains the so-called ``dairy cliff,'' keeping dairy policy temporary. This will create an artificial crisis the next time we take up the farm bill, which will once again undermine thoughtful debate and reform.

Perhaps of all the shiny ornaments hung on this special-interest Christmas tree, the shiniest may be the actual croniest handout to the Christmas tree industry itself. Under this farm bill, small independent Christmas tree farmers will now be required to pay a special tax to a government-created organization controlled by larger corporate producers, like some medieval tribute to feudal lords. These costs will, of course, be passed on to working families. So every December, Washington will, in effect, rob the Cratchits to pay Mr. Scrooge and his lobbyists in Washington.

Yet, even all this is squeaky-clean legislating compared to this farm bill's most offensive feature--its bullying, disenfranchising shakedown of the American West. Most Americans who live east of the Mississippi have no idea that most of the land west of the great river is owned by the Federal Government. I don't mean national parks, protected wilderness, national monuments, and the like. We have a lot of those and we love them. But that is a fraction of a fraction of the land I am talking about. I am just talking about garden-variety land--the kind that is privately owned in every neighborhood and community across the country. More than 50 percent of all of the land west of the Mississippi River is controlled by a Federal bureaucracy and it cannot be developed: no homes, no businesses, no communities or community centers, no farms or farmers markets, no hospitals or colleges or schools, no Little League fields, no playgrounds, nothing.

In my own State, it is 63 percent of the land. In Daggett County, it is 81 percent. In Wayne County, it is 85 percent. In Garfield County, it is 90 percent. Ninety percent of the land in Garfield County isn't theirs. In communities such as these, financing local government is a huge challenge. There, as in the East, local government is funded primarily by property taxes. But in counties and towns where the Federal Government owns 70, 80, or even 90 percent of the land, there simply isn't enough private property to tax to fund basic local services: another sheriff's deputy to police their streets, another truck or ambulance to save their lives and protect their property from fires, another teacher to educate their children.

To compensate local governments for the tax revenue Washington unfairly denies them, Congress created--as only Congress could--the PILT program. PILT stands for Payment in Lieu of Taxes.

Under PILT, Congress sends a few cents on the dollar out West every year to make up for lost property taxes. There is no guaranteed amount. Washington just sends what Washington feels like sending.

Local governments across the Western United States, and especially in counties such as Garfield, Daggett, and Wayne County, UT, completely depend on Congress making good on this promise. Given this situation, there are three possible courses of congressional action:

First, Congress could do the right thing and transfer the land to the States that want it.

Second, Congress could compromise and fully compensate western communities for the growth and opportunity current law denies them.

But in this bill it is neither. Congress instead chooses option three: lording its power over western communities to extort political concessions from them, like some two-bit protection racket. ``That's a nice fire department you got there,'' Congress effectively says to many western communities. ``Nice school your kids have. It would be a shame if anything should happen to it.''

These States and communities are looking for nothing more than certainty and equality under the law. Yet Congress treats these not as rights to be protected but as vulnerabilities to be shamelessly exploited.

For weeks I have been on the phone with county commissioners who feel they have no choice but to support a policy they know doesn't work. This bill takes away their ability to plan and budget with certainty and forces them to come back to Congress, hat in hand, every year. County commissioners know this is no way to run a community.

I share their frustration, and I applaud their commitment to their neighbors and their communities. I am convinced that in the long run, the best way to protect these communities is to find a real permanent solution--one that gives them the certainty and the equality under the law they deserve.

My vote against the farm bill will be a vote to rescue Utahns from second-class citizenship and local communities in my State from permanent dependence on the whims of faraway politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, DC.

For all the talk we hear in this Chamber about inequality, we nonetheless seem oblivious to its causes. This bill--and thousands of other bills, laws, and regulations like it--are themselves the root cause of our shortage of opportunity in America today. The end result of this legislation will be to disenfranchise and extort the American people to benefit special interests, to enrich the well-connected at the expense of the disconnected.

The true cost of that transaction--just another forced deposit and withdrawal from Washington's dysfunctional favored bank--is a lot more than $956 billion. The true cost of this kind of unequal cronyist policymaking is the trust of the American people in the legitimacy of our political institutions, in the fairness of our economy, and in the good faith of their countrymen.

Our constitutional republic, our free enterprise economy, and our voluntary civil society depend absolutely on the equality of all Americans under the law, the equality of all citizen opportunity to pursue happiness in their own communities, according to their own values, each on a level playing field with everyone else. This legislation dangerously subverts that principle and mocks any patriot who still holds it dear.

All Americans may be equal but--as George Orwell might put it if he were here today--under the farm bill some Americans are simply more equal than others.

I will not be a part of it, and I encourage my colleagues to recognize

that there is another way, there is a better way, a new approach that remembers what--and whom--we are supposed to really stand for.

What we are supposed to stand for is deliberation--open debate and transparent amendments on this floor, in this Chamber. These programs should not be coupled to shield them from scrutiny and protect them from reform. If we need food stamps to fight poverty and farm subsidies to maintain our food supply, let those programs stand on their own merits or not at all.

Furthermore, the land out West is not going anywhere. This should be an opportunity for us to bring our people together, not turn our regions against each other and turn the right to local government into a dangerous political football.

It is time to have a serious debate about a permanent solution to federally-owned lands which can improve economic opportunity and mobility while reducing the national debt and deficit. All the evidence in this farm bill to the contrary, I believe we are capable of finding such a solution.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I stand before this body today to talk about the omnibus spending package the Senate will be considering over the next few days. I have some concerns related to this omnibus spending package that relate to a program called PILT. It is an acronym with which most Americans and probably even most Members of Congress are not familiar. It stands for payment in lieu of taxes.

The program was developed to help those States, including my home State of Utah, in which the vast majority of the land is owned by the Federal Government. Beside me is a map of the United States. In red we can see all of the land that is owned by the Federal Government. As we can see by looking at the map, most of the land west of the Rocky Mountains--more than 50 percent, in fact--is owned by the Federal Government. Very little of the land east of the Rocky Mountains is, by contrast, owned by the Federal Government.

Being from a public land State presents some interesting, very significant, very substantial challenges. Among those challenges is the fact that the Federal Government has deemed this land, has legislated this land as being beyond the ability, beyond the authority of States and their political subdivisions--including counties and local taxing jurisdictions--beyond the ability of the States and their subdivisions to tax. So we can't collect property tax revenue from any of that land. As a result, a lot of our communities in public land States are impoverished--at least impoverished relative to what they might otherwise face. They are impoverished relative to what their ability would be to collect revenue through property taxes in public land States.

For that reason, this PILT Program was created to try to offset--at least to some degree--the heavy cost, the disproportionate burden that is placed on the shoulders of public land States and communities.

So each year Congress funds this program, and that program then partially offsets the lack of property tax revenue flowing through these public land States and communities.

Here is the problem I wish to focus on today: The omnibus spending package we are considering this week contains no funding for PILT--no funding whatsoever. This is potentially devastating to public land States, including Utah, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and many other States, especially those throughout the West. The problem is that America's public land States and counties can't wait any longer. This program must be funded, and it must be funded in this bill.

Here is a letter from a commissioner in Piute County, UT. This commissioner states:

PILT not being funded in 2014 will have a devastating

impact on all counties in the West, but it is particularly

devastating to a county the size of Piute. With 74 percent of

Piute County under Federal control, $225,000 of our $1

million budget--almost one-fourth--comes in the form of PILT

payments from the Federal Government. Without this funding,

we will be in the midst of one of the biggest disasters to

hit Piute County in years.

We have been scraping and scraping to try to figure out how

to fund a fourth deputy sheriff in our county and thought we

had it figured out until this $225,000 evaporated from our

county's revenue.

At the present time it is virtually impossible to staff all

of the police, search and rescue, and emergency services we

need. With this cut, it will be impossible.

The Piute County commissioner continues:

We will be forced to abandon services, including all

services on public lands. It will be sad to have our public

lands left without police, search and rescue, and emergency

services. I think it is critical to understand that the loss

of PILT funding cuts clear to the bone and will be

devastating to counties such as Piute.

Now, some argue--some insist when faced with arguments such as these--that this is all OK and we can just wait to make PILT funding available, that we will make it available through another legislative vehicle we will supposedly pass later this year. In fact, some of these same people maintain that we will make it better, we will make it automatic, we will make it mandatory spending when we actually do this later this year.

It is true that between 2008 and 2013 PILT was funded through a mandatory spending mechanism. That has now expired. But it is important to remember that there is nothing mutually exclusive about these ideas; no reason why we can't go ahead and fund PILT now with discretionary spending and then adopt something later to restore the mandatory nature of funding for PILT. We can fund PILT now in this bill, and then we can make it mandatory later. We can and we should. This would give States and counties the certainty they need, the certainty they have been waiting for, the certainty that will allow them, finally, to plan their budgets.

Remember, for many of these counties, such as Piute County, UT, PILT is a substantial portion of their annual revenue stream. It is about one-fourth of the money that Piute County, UT, has to spend every single year.

Importantly, I offered an amendment to last year's budget that would build a deficit-neutral reserve fund to make sure PILT continued to be fully funded. That amendment passed. Unfortunately, the fact that it passed has apparently not been enough to make sure it continued to be funded.

Now we have a major funding bill before us. This spending bill occupies no fewer than 1,582 pages. It spends in excess of $1.1 trillion. Yet PILT still isn't funded.

It is important to point out that even if we do the right thing and even if we fully fund PILT in this program this year, the PILT Program is itself still not adequate. It is still in need of reform. PILT payments are quite insufficient.

PILT was intended to soften the economic impact associated with the Federal Government owning so much of the land in the United States. In the case of Piute County, it is about three-fourths of the land. It is about two-thirds of the land throughout the State of Utah. In some counties in Utah, it is well in excess of 90, sometimes 95 percent of the land in a county. PILT was designed to soften that economic impact. But, regrettably, the Federal Government gives States, through the PILT Program, what amounts to in many instances only pennies on the dollar of what the taxing jurisdictions would receive if they were to tax that land, if they were to collect taxes--even if they were to collect those taxes at the lowest property tax rate, let's say the Greenbelt rate in many counties. We must correct that imbalance.

In the coming days I plan to introduce legislation to begin the process of doing precisely that. After all, it makes no sense to have a program that some would argue is deceptively entitled ``Payment In Lieu of Taxes'' if, in fact, the payment in lieu of taxes doesn't even closely approximate the value that counties would receive if they were actually allowed to tax that land and collect that revenue as taxes.

If an American citizen, a U.S. taxpayer, for example, decided to adopt his or her own PILT Program and on April 15 of each year just sent a check to the IRS saying: These are not my taxes, but this is my payment in lieu of taxes; I am just paying what I feel like paying, that would cause problems. The taxpayer in question would probably end up in prison. In any event, it wouldn't end well for the taxpayer. Yet we have allowed the Federal Government to get away with this over and over, often to the detriment of vulnerable communities, of poor communities, of communities that rely on the Federal Government's unsteady stream of revenue--a stream of revenue that, insufficient as it is already, is now being threatened altogether.

In a sense the problem we face with the Federal Government owning all this land is not new. It is a problem that has been around for a long time. In many respects it was a problem envisioned by some of the Founding Fathers. In fact, we can go all the way back to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and see that it was on the minds of some of the Founding Fathers.

On September 5, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention they were discussing the public land-related authorities in the Constitution, including the authority that has now been included in what is often referred to as the enclave clause--article I, section 8, clause 17.

One of the delegates to the Federal Convention of 1787, Elbridge Gerry, the delegate from Massachusetts, stood before the Convention and made an astute observation. Mr. Gerry said as follows. He expressed concerns that ``this power''--that is, the power of Congress over Federal public lands--``might be made use of to enslave any particular State by buying up its territory, and that the strongholds proposed would be a means of awing the State into an undue obedience to the General Government.''

Then, as now, wise observations often came from the State of Massachusetts. Then, as now, we have a grave risk associated with the fact that when the Federal Government owns this much land, the Federal Government has this much power. It was on the minds of the delegates to the Convention of 1787 that one of the things they needed to protect against was the concentration of too much power in the hands of a few, especially the concentration of too much power within the Federal Government. Each of them had a mission to protect the sovereignty of their respective States. And they understood that if Congress had too much power to simply buy up too much land in any one State-- disproportionately in some States--the Federal Government would have too much influence within that State.

I would ask you, when you look at this map I have in the Chamber, does that look equitable? Does that look like an equitable distribution of Federal land ownership? We have to keep in mind that, just as there are benefits associated with some of our public lands, there are also burdens attached to those benefits. When you look at those burdens, it is difficult to say anything other than that they are disproportionately allocated into a certain region of the United States. They are overwhelmingly located within the Rocky Mountains and areas west of the Rocky Mountains.

So to the extent these benefits benefit everyone in the United States, then the burdens ought to be shared by everyone in the United States as well. Yet they are not. PILT, again, is woefully inadequate as it is. But now Congress is trying to withdraw funding for PILT. Even though some may say: Well, we will fund it later this year, we have no guarantee of that, and we should be funding it right now.

As an interesting side note, in response to Elbridge Gerry's concern on September 5, 1787, the Founding Fathers put a qualifying clause into article I, section 8, clause 17. They said that Congress's plenary legislative jurisdiction over Federal public land lying within a sovereign State's boundaries would exist and could be exercised only if that land--the land in question--was acquired by the consent of the host State's legislature.

Some have suggested that this may well mean that when the Federal Government owns land, when it acquires land within a sovereign State's territorial boundaries, that it owns that land just as any other proprietor would own it; that is, subject to the authority of the State and its political subdivisions to tax and regulate that land, unless or until such time as the host State's legislative body parts with that bundle of sovereign rights relative to that land. In other words, the State retains its taxing power over that land unless or until it voluntarily relinquishes it, gives it up, hands it over to the Federal Government. Yet, in nearly all instances where you see red on this map, that has not occurred.

Many of these States have been content with the fact that they have been receiving PILT funds, however inadequate those PILT funds may be. But now even those are going away. Even if there is a promise that they might be restored later--later this year--they are still inadequate, and we still do not have the promise that is going to occur now. There is still a lot of uncertainty in a lot of parts of the country--in places such as Piute County, UT, and elsewhere within my State and elsewhere within the western United States.

In order to protect against this kind of concern, the kind of concern that the delegate from Massachusetts described on September 5, 1787, Congress adopted a practice, when admitting new States into the Union, of incorporating language into the enabling act for each new State, describing what would happen to public land within the new State's boundaries after statehood. They adopted this practice and this language that would be used each time a new State was admitted into the Union.

That language was included in Utah's statehood enabling legislation-- legislation that was adopted about 18 months before Utah finally came into the Union in January of 1896.

Section 9 of Utah's enabling legislation says that public land located within the State, lying within the State of Utah, ``shall be sold by the United States subsequent to the admission of said State into the Union. . . . '' Adding to that, section 9 of Utah's enabling legislation said that 5 percent of the proceeds from the sale of that land would be given to the State and would be held in a trust fund by that State for the benefit of the State's public education system.

So, as I mentioned, Utah was not the first State to have that kind of language in its enabling legislation. Many of the States that were admitted into the Union much earlier than Utah had similar language in their enabling acts. Missouri had such language. North Dakota had such language. We could name State after State after State that had such language.

When you look at Missouri, when you look at North Dakota, and when you look at most of the other States that had language such as that in their enabling acts, you see very little Federal

public land. You see because Congress and the Federal Government honored the promises made to those States. Congress followed through with that commitment. Congress did what it was supposed to do. It sold that land subsequent to statehood. Holding on perhaps to a few parcels here and there that it deemed necessary for one reason or another, it made good on that promise. Those States benefited. The Federal Treasury benefited. The American people benefited.

It is important to remember that what we are talking about here--when you see all this red on the map, representing Federal land ownership-- is not about national parks. National parks represent a very tiny percentage of Federal land ownership. We are not talking about national monuments, which also represents a very tiny percentage of Federal land ownership. What we are talking about in the context of the PILT program are lands that are managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, an agency that is considered obscure, almost unheard of throughout most of the United States, but an agency that operates with a particularly dominant force in States such as mine, where you see a lot of red on the map.

I remember the first time I showed this map to my children, my daughter Eliza, who was about 8 years old at the time, was just barely old enough to understand what I was explaining to her. I told her that the red indicated ownership of land by our national government. And 8- year-old Eliza looked at that portion of the map that represented our State, and she said: Look, dad, they own Utah. I said: You're right, Eliza, they own Utah. They certainly own the overwhelming majority of it.

Some of us have not forgotten this promise made in the statehood enabling acts of most of the States admitted into the Union, and yet Congress seems to be determined to overlook it. I am determined not to let that happen. Some of my friends back in Utah are likewise determined not to let that happen.

A good friend of mine, Representative Ken Ivory, who serves in the Utah State legislature, has done an amazing job educating people throughout Utah and, in fact, across America on this very subject, on what happened with these statehood enabling acts, and why it is that States in the western United States got left behind when it came to promises made long ago by the Federal Government. I commend Representative Ivory for his work on this issue and pledge to continue working with him on this important project.

You see, this is about much more than land. This is about the ability of local communities not only to thrive, but to survive. This is about communities where it is very difficult for people to get jobs. It is very difficult for people, in some instances, even to access their own property, even to access their own farms because it is impossible to get anywhere without crossing Federal public land and in some instances Federal land managers will block access to the only roads they can use to access their own property. This has to stop.

In the meantime, it is vitally important that we focus on the issues at hand, that we focus, at a bare minimum, on promises that the Federal Government has extended in lieu of the other promises. That is not to say we are going to forget about the promises made in the statehood enabling acts. We are not. But, for the moment, my attention remains focused on making sure we fund the PILT Program. It has to be funded. In fact, it has to be funded even more than it has been in the past. It ought to reflect at least a rough equivalent of the amount of money the taxing jurisdiction could collect if it were taxing that land at its lowest rate. And, at a bare minimum, even below that, we have to make sure the program continues to exist. We have to make sure the program is funded at least at its current levels. This is not asking much. But it is necessary that we do this.

The broken PILT Program is, one could argue, just another example of government applying significant and unnecessary weight to the shoulders of hard-working Americans, many of whom are struggling just to get by, many of whom are barely able to keep food on the table for their families, others of whom are able to provide for the day-to-day needs of their families but they are worried about what happens next. They find that whenever they find a little bit of additional income, no sooner have they earned it than they find it has been swallowed up-- swallowed up by increasing taxes, swallowed up by higher prices for goods and for services, and they do not know how to get out of this rut in which they find themselves somewhat trapped. These are the kinds of people who suffer the most as a result of the Federal Government's failed policies relative to its Federal public land.

We have to remember that lifting these weights is not only within the government's power, it is the affirmative obligation of government to lift those weights. In an 1861 address to Congress, President Abraham Lincoln said the ``leading object'' of American government was ``to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life.''

Current PILT policy imposes government waste that makes it more difficult for communities to provide important services such as schools, police, and fire departments. It hampers the ability of States to budget, plan, and provide for infrastructure improvements, make needed reforms to their tax systems, and attract new businesses and new jobs.

This policy--and the Federal land management policies that accompany the PILT policy more generously--is broken, and it is imposing a heavy burden on our communities, particularly in rural areas where the Federal Government owns much, most or in some cases nearly all of the land and where needs are at their very greatest.

The program is already broken. The program is already causing millions and millions of Americans to suffer. The program is already severely impeding economic opportunity for Americans, deepening the existing crisis of opportunity that we have in this country, which manifests itself on three different levels: immobility among the poor, insecurity among the middle class, and cronyist privilege at the top.

If you live in one of these States, it might be great if you are one of those people who owns one of the few parcels of land that is not owned by the Federal Government. It is not so great if you live in one of the areas where the Federal Government owns basically everything, where you can do very little anywhere around you without permission from the Federal Government, where your local government is barely able to survive because it lacks a property tax base, and the Federal Government fails to adequately fund PILT and threatens--in this circumstance--to withdraw funding from PILT altogether.

I respectfully implore all of my colleagues to consider the inequities inherent in this map, the inequities inherent in the PILT Program, and, for present purposes, to remember we need to fund PILT.

It has to be reformed, absolutely, and we have to examine our Federal land ownership and management policies more broadly. Today we need to focus on making sure PILT is funded.

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

Mr. President, I thank my colleagues from Rhode Island and Iowa for their cooperation in establishing the speaking order this evening. I would like to speak for a moment about the vote we just cast. We just confirmed Judge Wilkins to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. I voted against this judge. In doing that, I joined my Republican colleagues for one simple reason. Several years ago, when President George W. Bush was in the White House, he nominated an eminently qualified lawyer named Peter Keisler who had bipartisan support.

He was not a partisan hack; he was a true craftsman in the law. He was someone whom no one had any ideological opposition to, but he was blocked by the Senate Democrats at that time for the simple fact, based on the simple reason, that according to the Senate Democrats the DC Circuit's caseload was not sufficiently robust to justify the filling of this position.

Since that time, not very many things have changed. Since that time, if anything, the DC Circuit's caseload per judge has remained about the same or some would argue has gone down a little, depending on which metric you use. One change is that we have now a Democratic President in the White House instead of a Republican President in the White House. Suddenly my friends across the aisle have forgotten about the caseload-based arguments they used a few years ago to keep Peter Keisler off the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

We have now confirmed, just in the last few weeks, three additional judges to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. This has happened against substantial Republican opposition that has been based on the very analysis I have just outlined. This has been facilitated by virtue of the fact that my distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from Nevada, joined by his Democratic colleagues, chose a few weeks ago to exercise what has been referred to as the nuclear option. They broke the rules of the Senate in order to change the rules of the Senate, and they did that so they could put more people on the bench, so they could put more people into top-level positions in this administration while more or less squelching the view of the minority party within the Senate.

This is unfortunate. The most unfortunate aspect of it is that it is part of a broader strategy that is not limited to the DC Circuit; in fact, it is not even limited to the Senate's confirmation process with respect to these judges or other judges. It extends much more broadly than that. It is part of the same effort that convinced the President of the United States, on January 4, 2012, to make four appointments, three to the National Labor Relations Board and one to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, pursuant to the President's recess appointment power.

Citing Article II, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution, the President claimed he had the power to appoint these individuals without going through the Senate advice-and-consent process because, as he asserted, the Senate was in recess. There was only one problem with this. The Senate was not in fact in recess. Under Article I, Section 5, Clause 2 of the Constitution, each Chamber of Congress, including the Senate, has the right to determine its own rules, its own procedures. According to the Senate's own rules and according to the Senate's own Journal, the Senate was in fact in session as of January 4, 2012, the moment these supposed recess appointments were made. This was a problem.

Fortunately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit--prior, I would add, to the confirmation of the three recent judges we have confirmed just in the last few weeks--concluded that this was a lawless act; that it was unconstitutional; that the President did not have the right to deem the Senate in recess when, according to the Senate's own rules, the Senate was in session. The Senate was not in recess.

That case today was reviewed by the Supreme Court of the United States. I had the privilege of sitting in the courtroom just across the street and watching those proceedings. I was pleased to see the checks and balances within our system were functioning--at least to the extent that we have our court system reviewing this act by the President of the United States. I think it is fortunate we have this kind of judicial system that can review it. Based on what I saw today and the quality of the arguments presented to the Court, I am hopeful the Court will reach the same conclusion. I am hopeful the Supreme Court will affirm the judgment entered by the DC Circuit.

In a broader sense it is sad, it is disappointing that it even had to get that far, and it is disappointing that the President of the United States was willing to engage in such a lawless act; that the President of the United States was willing openly to flout the plain text, history, tradition of the U.S. Constitution.

Ours is not a government of one. It was with good reason that the Founding Fathers split up the power, including the power to appoint people to high Federal office such that the President could nominate but the Senate got to confirm. By the President's approach, pursuant to which the President of the United States could himself deem the Senate in recess if he did not think the Senate was doing enough when it went into brief sessions, the President himself could substantially circumvent the advice-and-consent role the Founding Fathers and the Constitution wisely placed in the hands of the Senate.

The reason I said it is unfortunate it had to get to that level, it is unfortunate, first of all, the President felt it was OK, it was acceptable do this. He, of course, took an oath, not once but twice, to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

It is unfortunate, secondarily, that there was not more of an outcry from this body. Sure, there were a lot Republicans who joined me in calling this action lawless, because it was. It was sad that none of our colleagues from the other side of the aisle--at least not publicly--were willing to acknowledge the lawlessness of this act. Some acknowledged to me in private that it was problematic. Some acknowledged to me that there were some implications behind this that threatened the Senate as an institution. But I think we need to be more open, more faithful, more forceful, and less partisan about the way we defend the Constitution of the United States.

To me it would not matter--if this were a Republican President I would be arguing with equal strength on this issue. In the future when we have a Republican President, if any Republican President is lawless enough to try this, I will oppose it with everything within me. We ourselves take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. I think that involves doing more than simply leaving it to the courts to iron out the details.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this week marks the 125th anniversary of the first week of classes at Weber State University, and I would like to take a moment to officially recognize this valued Utah institution.

In the mid-1800s, pioneers from the Mormon Church, also know as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, settled an area 35 miles north of Salt Lake City, known as the Weber Valley. The surrounding area, including the Weber River, was earlier named in honor of John Henry Weber, a noted frontier trapper with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.

As our country continued westward expansion, it became necessary to create territorial governments. During this expansive period, Congress passed the Compromise of 1850, part of which created the Utah Territory. The territorial government oversaw general administrative matters, including the establishment of schools, during the latter half of the 19th century. The region experienced an increase in population, as Mormons and non-Mormons alike came to further settle the West. With the driving of the golden spike at nearby promontory summit in 1869, the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad brought tremendous economic growth to the Weber Valley.

As the Mormon settlers grew in numbers and cultivated the land, they also created institutions of learning for themselves and their children. In 1888, members of the Mormon Church were encouraged by their leaders to institute local boards of education to oversee the creation of schools that could teach the principles of religion in conjunction with the standard curriculum of the day.

In 1889, the regional group of Mormon congregations, known as the Weber Stake of Zion, started the Weber Stake Academy for the education of local students who had passed the sixth grade. The school was ``open to students of either sex, and of any religious denomination or nationality.'' The mission of the academy was ``to provide an education which includes moral culture, as well as mental and physical training.'' Courses were offered in theology, business, pedagogy and psychology, languages, English and literature, natural and physical science, mathematics, history, and political science.

The school grew in notoriety and enrollment over the following 20 years. In 1918, it was renamed ``Weber Normal College'' and subsequently ``Weber College,'' as the institution eventually dropped all preparatory and high school education to focus on college-level education. During the first few decades of the 20th century, the famed purple and white were chosen as school colors, and the wildcat was apparently adopted as the school mascot after a reporter dubbed the football players ``scrappy as a bunch of wildcats.''

As the 1920s closed, the Great Depression began to take shape and Weber College, like all other institutions at the time, did not foresee the financial calamity that would befall her. After a few years of struggle, the Weber College Board, in conjunction with the church's Board of Education, transferred the school to the State of Utah in 1933. The subsequent years were very difficult for faculty and students, but the junior college persevered and continued to mold good citizens.

The school carried along and grew in size as the Depression subsided. With the attack on Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into World War II, Weber College's faculty and students did all that they could to support the war efforts. Many students joined the armed forces, and the school helped in training naval cadets and radio operators for the military.

Because of the war, mostly women attended the school, and they ``had to hold things down until the fellows returned to campus,'' as one alumna recalled. In 1945, the school even held a dance called the ``Polygamist Prance,'' which was girl's choice. To make sure that all the girls could attend, the boys were to accept all requests for a date. Many boys showed up at the dance with 5 or 10 dates, and even though such a ration was unfair to the girls, the students had a great time.

Although it was a tremendously difficult time for the entire country, Weber College students, showing the spirit of America's greatest generation, exhibited principled leadership and courage through the storm of World War II. In all, 82 faculty and alumni did not return from Europe or the Pacific, and all were profoundly affected by the great and terrible conflict.

As the war came to a close, Weber prepared for the return of many soldiers who were anxious to go to college. Enrollment exploded from 465 students in 1945 to over 2,000 students in 1959, and 3,000 students in 1962. During this time of expansion, the Utah Legislature directed the State board of education to find a new place for the burgeoning school. The college was subsequently moved from downtown Ogden to Harrison Boulevard, where it currently resides today.

In 1959, the men's basketball team, an ever-formidable force, won the Junior College National Championship. In that same year, the Utah Legislature passed a bill allowing Weber College to become a 4-year senior college, and the first courses contributing to 4-year degrees were offered in 1962. The next year, Weber College became Weber State College, and the campus was greatly expanded during this time.

Weber continued to grow and progress as Weber State College over the subsequent 30 years, and in 1991 Weber State College was made Weber State University. The university now has more than 26,000 full- and part-time students and offers more than 250 undergraduate degrees and 11 graduate degrees. The athletic programs continue to be ranked among the best in their divisions, and the arts at Weber State continue to enrich the lives of many Utahns.

President Charles A. Wright now continues the tradition of excellence in leadership, which has been passed down for 125 years. Weber State boasts many notable alumni, and the institution continues to fulfill its mission to serve ``as an educational, cultural, and economic leader for the region.''

Although I normally bleed blue, I have set aside this week to bleed purple with my Wildcat friends and colleagues. I congratulate the countless students and faculty members who have worked hard to make Weber State University what it is today. May the next 125 years be as tremendous as the last, and may the ensign of truth and right continue to proudly wave o're ole Weber.