Floor Statements

Mr. President, let me say to my friend, the majority leader, this is a good example of bipartisanship. I think we have come up with a proposal and achieved a goal that both sides wanted to achieve, which is to get a doctor fix for at least a 6-month period of time. Also, it is paid for. So we have done it without adding to the deficit, and I think that is something both sides can feel good about.

Madam President, Democrats continue to argue among themselves about how much they want to add to the deficit. Yesterday, they unveiled their latest proposal, which would add another $50 billion. And they are calling this an accomplishment--an accomplishment they reached not by making any tough choices but by shortening the length of time they would pay for programs they know they will end up extending anyway. Only in Washington would people boast about saving money they fully intend to spend down the road. And only in Washington would people raid a trust fund intended to pay for oilspill cleanup to cover completely unrelated spending in the middle of an oilspill. Let me say that again: Only in Washington would people raid a trust fund intended to pay for oilspill cleanup to cover completely unrelated spending in the middle of an oilspill.

So Democrats can continue to play these games or they can join Republicans in voting for the Thune amendment later today. The Thune amendment would actually do the thing Americans want us to do right now; that is, lower the deficit and create real opportunities for job growth.

Senators will have a simple choice today: They can either vote to reduce the deficit or they can lock arms with the Democratic leadership and dig an even deeper hole of debt, when most Americans think $13 trillion is far too much already. If you are even remotely attuned to what Americans are asking us, this would be an easy choice. Our colleagues across the aisle have come down to the Senate floor over and over to claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility. Well, today they can prove it. Americans want us to show we are serious about lowering the debt. Senators will have that opportunity later today.

So I ask my colleagues on both sides to join with me today and vote in favor of the Thune amendment.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I will have to object simply because we haven't read it yet. We are going to take a look at it. Quite possibly, after figuring out what it is, we might not object, but for the moment I object.

Mr. President, I appreciate that explanation. As the chairman of the committee knows, we still need to see the actual amendment, and we will take a look at it.

Cloture Motion

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, we just got this a few moments ago. We are going to take a look at it. I think we are all hoping we can come up with a way to do the so-called doc fix and in a paid-for fashion, but for today I object.

Mr. President, we are still working together, on a bipartisan basis, to try to figure out how to go forward. For the moment, I object.

Mr. President, this issue is currently covered through the end of this calendar year. This matter doesn't have the urgency at the moment that some of the others arguably do. We still have 6 months to address this issue. Therefore, for the moment, I object.

Mr. President, the majority leader is entirely correct that there is support on both sides for the step he recommends we take. Senator Isakson has been the leader on this issue on our side. However, incredibly, CBO has decided this costs money, which nobody can quite understand. So there is still a disagreement over how to pay for it. There is an agreement on the result, but there is a disagreement on how to pay for it, since CBO has decreed that it will cost the government money.

We are going to have to continue to work on this and, therefore, for the moment I object.

Mr. President, with respect to some of the previous consents, Americans are frustrated with the amount of spending and borrowing we are doing here. We have an opportunity to show the American people that we can be fully responsible and cut spending elsewhere. Earlier today, we voted for a bill that would have cut the deficit by almost $70 billion. Let's not wave on through legislation that is going to worsen the deficit and dig an even deeper hole than we are currently in.

Americans want us to show that we are serious about lowering the debt. Therefore, I have a consent to extend all of these expired provisions, including unemployment insurance and the doc fix. I will propose that now.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 411, S. 3421; further, that the bill be read the third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Before the Chair rules, for clarity, this is a paid-for 30-day extension of the extenders bill, which includes unemployment insurance, the doc fix, COBRA, flood insurance, and the extension of the small business loan guarantee program, and the 2009 Federal poverty guidelines.

With stimulus money.

Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to an honored Kentuckian, Mr. Harry Morgan Hoe. A graduate of the Kentucky Military Institute, Harry's leadership skill and valor were on full display at the age of 19, when he joined the 4th Infantry Division and stormed the beaches of Normandy. For his service, he was awarded both the Silver and Bronze Stars, among other medals. Upon returning to civilian life, Harry earned a degree in business and more importantly, at least to Harry, met his wife Mary while at college. The couple returned to Middlesboro after graduation and Harry joined in the family business--a foundry. He would go on to serve his community as chairman of the Clear Creek Baptist Bible College and his work with the Cumberland Gap National Park board, the Mountain Laurel Festival board, as well as several other service organizations.

While I could certainly go on about the character of Harry Hoe, let me conclude by saying that Harry Hoe's impact in Middlesboro, Kentucky, should be a model by which we all pattern our approach to leadership-- built on humility and grace.

Mr. President, the Middlesboro Daily News recently published a profile story on Mr. Harry Hoe. I ask unanimous consent that the full article be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, last night the President provided more detail on his administration's efforts to stop the oilspill in the gulf. If implemented successfully, some of what he said was encouraging. However, I wish the President would have used this opportunity to focus entirely on stopping the spill and to cleaning it up instead of using this crisis as an opportunity to push for a new national energy tax.

The immediate issue here is a broken pipe that has been spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil a day into the ocean for more than 8 weeks. The fact that the White House wants to use this crisis as an excuse to push more of its legislative agenda on the American people--with the same kinds of arguments it used to push health care-- is really nothing short of startling.

During the health care debate, Americans were told we couldn't afford to put off the administration's vision of government-driven reform. Health care costs were rising so quickly, the President said, that inaction was not an option. We heard the same thing last night. It is a recurring theme out of this White House.

In the middle of a jobs crisis, Americans were told they needed to spend nearly $1 trillion on longstanding Democratic priorities that Democrats called a stimulus bill. They passed it, and we lost another 3 million jobs.

Out-of-control health care costs are pricing people out of the market and threatening to bankrupt government, so they passed a massive government-driven health care bill that promises to send health care costs even higher than they already are.

Our financial crisis was caused in large part by recklessness at government-sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and their solution to that crisis was to pass a massive government intrusion into Main Street without even addressing Fannie or Freddie.

Now, in the midst of the worst environmental catastrophe in American history, they are talking about a new national energy task to achieve their ideological goal of passing global warming legislation. Americans are pleading with the administration to fix the immediate problem in the gulf and the White House wants to give us a new national energy tax instead.

Every time we face a crisis, it seems this administration takes us on another ideological tour of the far left's to-do list, when all the American people want from it are some straightforward, practical solutions.

So the White House may view the oilspill as an opportunity to push its agenda here in Washington, but Americans are more concerned about what it plans to do to solve the crisis down in the gulf. Americans have had enough of this crisis rhetoric coming out of this White House. They want real answers to real problems. And it doesn't get more real than the problem in the gulf.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, the President will speak to the American people from the Oval Office tonight about a crisis in the gulf that is now in its ninth week. If early reports are accurate, the President will use his remarks not as an occasion to unite the Nation in a common effort to solve the immediate problem but to make his case for a new national energy tax commonly known as cap and trade. If true, this means the President plans to use this justifiable public outrage over an explosion that killed 11 people and the oilspill that followed as a tool for pushing a divisive new climate change policy even as hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil continue to spill into the gulf each day.

Most Americans are baffled by all this. The crisis, as they see it, is a broken pipe at the bottom of the ocean, miles-long oil slicks, and threatened coastlines. The first thing they want to know is what the administration plans to do to plug the leak, clean up the oil, and mitigate the spill's effects on the livelihoods of those affected. Yet day after day, as the oil continues to flow, what we hear from the administration is how tough they plan to be with BP and now, apparently, how important it is that we institute a new tax which will raise energy costs for every single American but which will do absolutely nothing to plug the leak. Never has a mission statement fit an administration as perfectly as Rahm Emanuel's ``never allow a crisis to go to waste.'' Climate change policy is important, but first things first.

Americans are saying two things at the moment: Stop this spill and clean it up. So with all due respect to the White House, the wetlands of the bayou, the beaches of the coast, and our waters in the gulf are far more important than the status of the Democrats' legislative agenda here in Washington. Americans want us to stop the oilspill first, and until this leak is plugged, they are not in any mood to hand over even more power in the form of a new national energy tax to a government that, so far at least, hasn't lived up to their expectations in its response to this crisis.

Republicans are happy to have an energy debate. Like most Americans, we support an all-of-the-above agenda that seeks to produce more American energy and use less. But while American livelihoods are in immediate danger and we watch oil gush into our waters and wash up on our beaches, now is not the time to push ideology; it is the time to fix the problem.

But if the White House insists on using this event as an opportunity to push the same kind of government-driven agenda that got us the health care bill, then they will need to answer some questions. Since the outset of this crisis, they have clearly been more focused on identifying a scapegoat than in taking charge. But questions persist about the administration's response. Here are just a few:

First, the administration acknowledges that it took BP at its word early on about its ability to respond to a crisis such as this. The question is, Why? Why? Why did the Minerals Management Service under this administration accept BP's word that it was prepared to deal with a worst-case spill such as the one we are now experiencing in the gulf?

Second, why were the inspections MMS performed on the Deepwater Horizon, and presumably on other rigs as well, unable to detect the problems that eventually became so apparent? What changes need to be made to make these inspections effective?

Third, the law requires the President to ensure the effective cleanup of an oilspill when it occurs. Specifically, it requires the President to have a national contingency plan in place, and that plan is supposed to provide for sufficient personnel and equipment to clean up a spill. Clearly, the administration's National Contingency Plan was not up to the task. Why not? Did it rely too much on the oil companies to perform the cleanup?

Also, why, as has been widely reported, has the administration been slow to accept offers of assistance from countries that have offered skimming vessels and other technologies to help clean up the spill? Since the cleanup is clearly not going as planned, shouldn't we be accepting legitimate offers of assistance wherever we can get them?

The first priority, as I have said, is plugging the leak. Then we must turn our attention to questions such as these and to a thorough investigation of what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon and how we can prevent anything like it from ever, ever happening again. That will be a monumental, months-long job, as there were so many failures at so many levels. Once that process begins, perhaps the administration can work to unite the country in the aftermath of this crisis in a way that, frankly, it has failed to do up to now.

Legislation to respond to this oilspill should be an opportunity for genuine bipartisan cooperation of the kind the President so frequently says he wants and of the kind that has been sorely needed and sorely lacking in the midst of this calamity.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, last October, the Senate had an opportunity to call attention to one of our colleagues who so rarely calls attention to himself when Senator Daniel Inouye became the third longest-serving Senator in U.S. history. This past Friday, Senator Inouye reached an even loftier milestone when he surpassed Strom Thurmond to become the second-longest serving Senator in history. So we honor him for this remarkable feat of longevity.

Senator Inouye's dedication to the people of Hawaii is legendary, and so is his story. He was only 17 when he heard the sirens over Honolulu and saw the gray planes overhead. But he was old enough to know that life would never be the same.

Sure enough, a few years later, he would be lying in a hospital bed at Percy Jones Army hospital recovering from wounds sustained in a grenade attack in the mountains of northern Italy. It was there that he first met his future colleague, Bob Dole, who evidently mentioned that after the war he planned to go to Congress.

As it turned out, Senator Inouye beat him by a few years, and he has survived him here in the Senate by many more.

For his heroic actions in World War II, Senator Inouye received our Nation's most prestigious award for military valor, and he has earned the admiration of all Americans. Dan Inouye became a member of one of the most decorated U.S. military units in American history and one of its longest-serving, and finest, Senators. So, Senator, thank you for your service, and congratulations on another remarkable achievement.

(Applause, Senators rising.)

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, first, I would like to note a couple important anniversaries today. It was on this day in 1775 that the Continental Army was established and George Washington appointed to lead it. So June 14 has gone down in history not only as the beginning of America's defeat of the British Army but also as the birth of the greatest Army the world has ever known. The largest and oldest branch of the U.S. military, the Army is older than the United States itself. Its first leader became our first President. It continues to make Americans proud, and we are grateful on this day and every day for the men and women of the U.S. Army.

Incidentally, 2 years to the day after the establishment of the Army, the Second Continental Congress officially established the flag under which our military has fought ever since. The resolution in Congress said that 13 stripes would represent the 13 States, and that 13 stars would represent the Union in the form of a new constellation. President Wilson officially established this day as Flag Day in 1916. Ever since, Americans everywhere have honored this great symbol of freedom every year on Flag Day, June 14. We honor those who have fought for it, and we are proud of all that the flag of the United States of America represents here and wherever it flies around the globe.

On another topic, the Obama administration announced new regulations today that will give Americans a better sense of how the health care bill will affect them. These new regulations outline the various ways in which existing health plans will be forced to change under the new law. According to the Obama administration report we saw on all this today, these regulations could result in nearly 7 out of 10 workers-- and 80 percent of workers at small businesses--seeing changes in their plans. In other words, under the new health care bill, more than half of those who get insurance through their jobs may be forced to change their plans whether they want to or not.

This is not only bad news for the vast majority of Americans who like the plans they have. It also flatly contradicts the President's repeated promises to the contrary. A year ago this month, the President said the following on national television: ``. . . Government is not going to make you change plans under health reform''

The implication here was that businesses might change your plans, but government won't. Today's regulations show that this isn't true. The government is about to change the plans most Americans have. Here's one more promise the administration has broken on health care and one more warning Republicans issued on this bill that's been vindicated.

Now onto the business on the floor. Since Democrats continue to argue among themselves about the extenders bill, I will be asking consent at the end of my remarks to pass a 30-day extension of the recently expired provisions in the bill that will give doctors and those looking for work the assurances they need to plan ahead. And rather than doing it in a way that simply adds to the deficit, this proposal would actually reduce the debt by $2.5 billion. Moreover, later today Senator Thune will offer an amendment that would provide for a long-term extension of these programs, plus the tax provisions which expired at the end of last year, without adding a dime to the deficit.

In fact, the Thune amendment would enable us to lower the deficit by $55 billion by enacting the kinds of spending cuts Americans are demanding of lawmakers in Washington.

Many of these cuts have been proposed previously by Senator Coburn and received bipartisan support on the supplemental spending bill. We need to show the American people we are making serious efforts to cut spending. The Thune amendment gives us an opportunity to do just that today. I hope our Democrat friends join us in that effort.

As I indicated and mentioned to the majority leader when we were in private discussion a while ago, I will now propound the consent agreement to which I referred in my remarks.

unanimous-consent request--S. 3421

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 411, S. 3421; further, that the bill be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; before the chair rules, for clarity, this is a paid for 30-day extension of the extenders bill, which includes unemployment insurance, doc fix, COBRA, flood insurance, and the extension of the small business loan guarantee program and the 2009 Federal poverty guidelines.

Mr. President, I believe most of the pay-fors are. I would say to my friend, having consulted with staff, it is some stimulus money but largely what we believe to be noncontroversial pay- fors.

Madam President, later today, the Senate will vote on an issue of vital importance to every American family and business, and that is whether the Environmental Protection Agency should be allowed to impose a backdoor national energy tax on the American people.

This vote is needed because of the administration's insistence on advancing its goals by any means possible, in this case by going around the legislative branch and imposing this massive, job-killing tax on Americans through an unaccountable Federal agency.

Ironically, just last year, President Obama and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson took the position that on an issue of this magnitude, which touches every corner of our economy, Congress, not the EPA, should determine how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But now that it is clear Congress will not pass this new national energy tax this year, the administration has shifted course and is now trying to get done through the backdoor what they have not been able to get through the front door.

Like the cap-and-trade legislation they would replace, these EPA regulations would raise the price of everything from electricity to gasoline to fertilizer to food on our supermarket shelves. That is why groups representing farmers, builders, manufacturers, small business owners, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are so strongly opposed to these EPA regulations and so supportive of the Murkowski resolution to stop them.

These groups know these backdoor moves by EPA will deal a devastating blow to an economy already in rough shape. And so does the President. He said himself that his plan would cause electricity prices for consumers to ``necessarily skyrocket.'' The President himself said this plan would cause prices for consumers to ``necessarily skyrocket.''

At a time of nearly 10-percent unemployment, these new regulations would kill U.S. jobs. According to one estimate, the House cap-and- trade bill would kill more than 2 million U.S. jobs and put American businesses at a disadvantage to their competitors overseas.

Closer to home, these regulations would be especially devastating for States such as Kentucky and other Midwestern coal States. EPA regulations resulting in dramatic energy price increases would jeopardize the livelihoods of the 17,000 miners in our State and an additional 51,000 jobs that depend on coal production and the low cost of electricity that Kentuckians enjoy. That is why in the last few days alone, my office has received more than 1,000 letters, e-mails, and phone calls from Kentuckians opposed to this effort from EPA.

A lot of Kentuckians work hard to ensure that our State has the lowest industrial electricity rate in the Nation, and that is something we are proud of at home.

This bill would lead to a dramatic increase in these electricity rates, punishing businesses both large and small.

But the job losses would not stop there. As I indicated, this backdoor energy tax would be felt on farms as well, where increased energy and fertilizer prices would drive up costs for farmers and livestock producers who do not have the ability to pass on these increases. This would be an especially painful blow to them, and that is why the Farm Bureau and many other farm groups oppose what the EPA is trying to do.

There are many different views in this body on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Some favor the Kerry-

Lieberman cap-and-trade bill, a significant portion of which, by the way, has been pushed by the oil company BP. Many Members on this side of the aisle have proposals they support as well.

One thing we should be able to agree on is that the worst possible outcome is for the unelected bureaucrats at the EPA to unilaterally impose these job-killing regulations. That is why it is my hope that later this afternoon we will vote to stop this blatant power grab by the administration and EPA and pass Senator Murkowski's legislation to stop this backdoor national energy tax dead in its tracks.

This effort by the EPA would be devastating for jobs and an economy that needs them desperately. It is bad for the economy and bad for representative democracy. It should be stopped.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, will the majority leader yield before changing the subject?

Mr. President, I say to my friend from Nevada, I was there. I had a chance to see Strasburg. As remarkable as the 14 strikeouts my friend referred to is the fact he did not walk anybody. What a remarkable athlete. We can only hope and pray that his arm holds up and that he has the kind of career everyone is anticipating. There was literally electricity in the air. It was an exciting event. It was great to be there.

Mr. President, if I may add one point, the majority leader mentioned that Bryce Harper was drafted by the Nationals on Monday. I look forward to him being the next Nevada contribution to the Washington area, right after my friend the majority leader.

Mr. President, I will say that what one can conclude from this is that next year, when the Senate is not in session in the evening, both the Democratic and Republican leaders will be at the Nats games.

Mr. President, our Nation faces many urgent crises at the moment. Americans are looking for solutions. They are not getting any from Washington. Whether it is the housing crisis or the financial crisis, the debt crisis or the crisis in the gulf, what they are getting is a White House and a Democratic majority in Congress that seems more intent on pursuing a government-driven political agenda than finding commonsense solutions to the problems about which all of us are concerned.

Americans are exasperated by all this, but they should not be surprised because if there is one motto that defines this administration, it is the one delivered by the White House Chief of Staff in a revealing moment just after the President's election. I am referring, of course, to what Rahm Emanuel famously referred to as ``Rule 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste.'' It is a fitting slogan for an administration which saw a crisis at some of America's great automaking firms as an opportunity for the government to extend its reach into industrial policy, which saw the panic on Wall Street as an opportunity for government to extend its reach further into Main Street, which saw out-of-control costs in health care as an opportunity to extend government's reach further into health care decisions of every American, and which is now talking about using a nightmarish environmental calamity in the gulf as a prime opportunity to extend government's reach even further into Americans' lives through a new, job-killing national energy tax that would hit every single household and business, small or large, in our country.

Think about it. For more than 50 straight days, an underwater geyser of oil, now roughly the size of Vermont, has been polluting the gulf. This is the kind of crisis that in the past would have united the Nation in a focused effort to solve the problem. Yet day after day, as this toxic oil continues to flow, what we get from the administration is some new twist on the blame game or some ham-handed effort to appear in control of the situation.

Meanwhile, in Congress, we are getting much the same thing. The deficit extenders bill that is now on the floor was supposed to be about giving job creators some assurance that the tax benefits they currently are receiving and on which they depend to retain workers will be there the next time they have to make a major business-related decision. Yet Democrats are using this bill as another opportunity to extend government's reach. Desperate for funds to bail out programs, they are raiding a trust fund--get this--created to pay for just the kind of cleanup we now need in the gulf. They are quintupling the tax that oil companies pay into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund that was created in the wake of the Exxon Valdez fix, and instead of using this money to clean up the oil that is spewing in the gulf, they are raiding the trust fund to pay for new unrelated spending.

Dipping into the oilspill trust fund in order to pay for something else--in other words, they are using the crisis in the gulf not only as a cover for even more government spending but as a major source of funding for it. This is really an outrage, and it should give every American a window into the Democratic approach to spending, as well as the lack of seriousness about the debt. Frankly, they just cannot restrain themselves. That is the only possible excuse for raiding this trust fund for unrelated government spending.

At the same time, as Americans wonder when this gusher will ever be plugged, we hear word that the administration and my good friend, the majority leader, want to piggyback their controversial new national energy tax--also known as cap and trade--to an oilspill response bill that could and should be an opportunity for true bipartisan cooperation. So again we see the administration using a crisis--in this case the disaster in the gulf--as an opportunity to muscle through Congress another deeply unpopular bill that has profound implications for small businesses and struggling households.

Look, if the health care debate taught us anything--anything at all-- it is that Americans want these kinds of massive bills to be debated out in the open, not rushed past them on a holiday or tucked into a must-pass bill aimed at alleviating the kind of suffering we are seeing in the gulf. The problem for Democrats is that debating the Democratic cap-and-trade bill

might not fit neatly into the White House messaging plan since it has been widely reported that a major part--a major part--of the Kerry- Lieberman bill was essentially written by BP.

Let me say that again: A major part of the Kerry-Lieberman bill was written by BP. This is clearly an inconvenient fact. An administration that seems to spend most of its time coming up with ways to show how angry it is with BP is pushing a proposal that BP actually helped to write. I can't understand, and I don't think the American people will understand, why the majority believes it makes sense to respond to the BP oilspill by imposing a gas tax increase on the American people that was advocated by BP.

I think the American people want us to work together to address the disaster in the gulf, not exploit it--not exploit it--for partisan political purposes. The oilspill trust fund ought to be used to clean up oilspills. The oilspill trust fund ought to be used to clean up oilspills. This is one crisis Americans will not let Democrats exploit for their policy purposes.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, amid all the various crises Americans face at the moment, one of the most exasperating has to be the increasingly high cost of health care. The American people do not understand how an administration that devoted more than a year talking about health care could end up with a bill that actually raises the cost of care instead of lowering it.

Seniors are particularly upset about this legislation, and that is why the White House is staging an event today aimed at convincing them they are actually getting a good deal. But seniors are right to be skeptical. They were told this law would strengthen Medicare, when, in fact, it takes $\1/2\ trillion out of Medicare to fund a new government program. They were also told that if they liked their plan, they could keep it. Yet now we hear that millions of seniors will lose their Medicare Advantage benefits they already have and like as a result of the Democratic health care bill.

The centerpiece of today's event is a $250 rebate check the administration will pass out to the fraction--fraction--of seniors who qualify for it. I am sure anyone who gets these checks is happy to take that extra cash, especially in the current economy. What the administration, however, will not mention at today's event is that for every senior who gets a check, more than three other seniors will see an increase in their prescription drug insurance premiums. In other words, behind every $250 check is more than three seniors who will be paying more as a result of this bill. The reason for this is that the health care bill Democrats forced on Americans earlier this year requires higher government-mandated minimum standards for everyone. Those who opted for anything below that minimum will now see their premiums go up, and the number of seniors in this category far, far outnumbers those getting a check. The administration can tout the check it is giving out to some seniors, but by failing to mention those seniors for whom it is causing rates to go up, it is hiding the whole truth.

That has been the story all along about this bill--a lot of promises that could not be kept. That is why the story now is not the bill itself but the administration's broken promises. Americans never wanted this bill. They never wanted it in the first place. And they are reminded every day why they opposed it.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, first, I welcome everyone back. I hope they had a good break.

As a nation, our focus continues to be on the disaster in the gulf. This is a national tragedy, the full dimensions of which we still do not know. But one thing is clear: The top priority at this point, as it should have been from the start, is to stop the leak. Americans are far less interested in how tough the administration plans to be after the leak is fixed than they are in fixing it. People want action more than they want accusations. There will be plenty of time to assess blame and to tighten regulations after the crisis is met. But weeks of blame has done absolutely nothing to plug the leak. Let's focus on the crisis at hand.

As we work to stem the crisis in the gulf, Congress cannot continue to ignore another pressing crisis--an exploding Federal debt that threatens our very way of life.

This week, the Senate will debate the deficit extenders bill the House passed just before the recess. Just for a little context, let's remind ourselves what this bill is. The original purpose of this bill was to give America's job creators an assurance that the longstanding tax benefits they are counting on to retain workers will not be pulled out from under them. But because Democrats cannot seem to resist any opportunity to use a must-pass bill such as this as a vehicle for more deficit spending, they have piled tens of billions of dollars in unrelated spending and debt on top of it, all at a moment when the national debt has now reached $13 trillion for the first time in history. This is fiscal recklessness, plain and simple.

The time has come for hard choices. Americans see what is happening in Europe, and they are begging us to bring the debt under control, to cut it down before we face a similar fate here. Instead, Democrats in Washington just

keep piling on as if they are oblivious to the consequences.

Some Democrats in the House started to rebel last week, and some Democrats in the Senate have indicated they will ask for amendments on this bill as well. They are demanding that party leaders make an effort to at least acknowledge that this debt crisis exists. But Americans want more than lipservice.

Here is what the protests of squeamish Democrats in the House achieved: A bill that was supposed to increase the debt by $175 billion will now only increase the debt by $54 billion. In other words, instead of agreeing that the debt is out of control, Democrats played politics--they spent as much money as they could on this bill without losing the votes needed to pass it.

Even in the face of public outrage, Democrats are showing that either they just do not get it on this issue of debt or they just simply do not care. But it is even worse than that because not only are Democrats clearly unserious about this issue, they are not giving the American people the whole picture. They did not lower the price tag on this bill by making tough choices; they just shortened the timetable on the programs it funds by openly promising to add that spending back later. They do not plan to spend any less; they just plan to spend it all by putting it in separate bills, which is a little bit like arguing that you have less debt because you put it on different credit cards.

Clearly, Democrats do not see a $13 trillion national debt for the emergency it is. So let's remind ourselves where we stand so there is no confusion about the gravity of the situation. As I stand here this afternoon, every man, woman, and child in America would have to cough up more than $42,000 to pay down our debt. That is $42,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. And that is just the current debt. Remember, it took two centuries--two centuries--to accumulate a $10 trillion debt. In the first 500 days of this administration, Democrats added $2.4 trillion to the debt and plan to add another $1 trillion this year. Americans are as worried as I have ever seen them about the course we are on, and they have a simple message for Congress: Stop spending money we do not have.

One more thing. If all the domestic crises of the past few years have taught us anything, it is that more government is not a solution in itself. Yet this administration has approached virtually every crisis it has faced with more government as the primary solution.

Right now, among other challenges, we have a debt crisis, a jobs crisis, a housing crisis, a financial crisis, and an oilspill to which the American people clearly do not believe government is effectively responding. One can understand the American people's skepticism when they are told that simply adding more government is the solution to government's previous failures. They are being told that adding more government is the solution to government's previous failures.

Now is not the time to propose more government as a solution to these crises. It is time to rethink the model to start focusing on accountability and on results. And a good place to start is the debt. Americans expect action on this issue, and they expect it right now. Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress do not seem to be listening on this issue any more than they did on health care or the stimulus or financial regulatory reform or, for that matter, anything else.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I say to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, yes. The thought was that we would have another rollcall on the second nominee and a voice vote on the third.