Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise in support of this amendment. This amendment would strike the underlying bill and would replace it with an affirmation that we are not exempt from insider trading and that each Senator would sign a statement each year affirming they did not participate in insider trading.

I think this is the way to go. I think the American people want to be sure we are not exempt. I think this is a good way to do it without creating a bureaucracy and a nightmare that may well have many unintended consequences.

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

Mr. President, this amendment would say that those in the executive branch who decide loans and grants, if they have a self- interest in the company or if their family has a self-interest in the company, they should not be making decisions awarding grants and awarding loans. I think the idea that you should not make money off of government is an important one, but it is not just Congress that this should apply to; this should apply to the executive branch. We should not have hundreds of millions of dollars in loans--even billions of dollars in loans--dispensed by people who used to work for that company or whose family still works for the company.

I yield my time.

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

Madam President, I think the issue has already been addressed by previous amendments. I thank the chairman and the minority ranking member for their addressing this problem.

I ask unanimous consent that the amendment, as modified, be withdrawn.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise today in defense of the Constitution. I rise today to condemn the President for making appointments that are unconstitutional and illegal. Recently the President appointed members to the National Labor Relations Board and to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. He did so by saying we were in recess.

This is news to us because those of us in the Senate maintain that we were never in recess. The President has usurped a power never previously taken by a President and has decided unilaterally that he gets to decide when we are in recess. These appointments are illegal and unconstitutional, and I am surprised--I am surprised--that no member of the majority party has stood to tell the President so.

I am not surprised that the President has engaged in unconstitutional behavior. His health care law is brazenly unconstitutional. His war with Libya was unconstitutional. He got no congressional authority. So, for a man who once gave lip service to the Constitution, the President now has become a President who is prone to lawlessness and prone to unconstitutional behavior.

Our Founders clearly intended that the President have the ability and the power to appoint advisers, but they also separated that power and gave power to the Senate to advise and consent on these high-ranking officers in government. The President has gone an end-around on this and has done something that breaks with historical precedent. It goes against the notion of checks and balances.

In fact, the notion that underlies the whole idea of recess appointments is mostly a historic relic. Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 67 that the power was included so the Senate did not have to remain in session year round to deal with nominations. This was also done at a time when Congress would go out of session for months at a time for members to return to their farms and their businesses. Now Congress meets nearly year round.

So, in other words, recess appointments should only happen rarely, in extreme occurrences, if at all. There also should be agreement that we are in recess, and there is no disagreement that we were in recess.

There is a lot of talk about bipartisan cooperation on the other side of the aisle, but I am disappointed that not one Senator has stood to tell the President this sets a terrible precedent; that this is a usurpation of power that is bad for the country and bad for the idea of checks and balances. I am disappointed that not one Senator from the other side of the aisle has stood to oppose this President on this unconstitutional power grab. This is an opportunity for us to stand together in defense of the Constitution.

I state now, unequivocally, if a Republican President tries to usurp his power, if a Republican President tries to define a recess and appoint people illegally, I will stand on the Senate floor and oppose him. This is not about being a Republican or a Democrat, it is about having respect for the Constitution. These lawless, illegal, and unconstitutional appointments fly in the face of the respect for our Constitution. This is an issue of separation of powers, of constitutional authority, and of Senate prerogative. It is sad that not one member of the opposition party will stand for the Constitution, will stand to the President.

Make no mistake, this is a huge breach of precedent. If the President is allowed to determine when we are in recess, nothing prevents him from making recess appointments this evening at 8 o'clock or on the weekends. If this precedent is allowed to stand, nothing stops the President from appointing a Supreme Court Justice tonight at 8 o'clock. Is that the kind of lawlessness we want in our country? Are we going to completely abandon the advise-and-consent role of the Constitution and of the Senate?

I ask today, is there not one Senator from across the aisle who will stand against this unconstitutional power grab? Is there not one Senator from across the aisle who will say to the President that these illegal appointments set a terrible precedent; that these appointments will encourage lawlessness; that these appointments eviscerate the advise-and-consent clause of the Constitution? I ask my colleagues from across the aisle: Where is your concern for the checks and balances? Where is your concern for the Constitution?

I am greatly saddened by this action, and I hope the President will reverse course. I hope the majority party in

the Senate will stand for the Constitution. But I am greatly disappointed in where we are in this debate.

I yield back my time.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendments Nos. 1484, 1485, and 1487 en bloc.

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

These amendments are recognizing what the authors of this bill have been discussing: that people should not profit off of their involvement in government; they should not profit off of special relationships; they should not profit off of special knowledge they gain in the function of serving the people.

Currently, there are some large donors who have been giving to this administration who have profited enormously and disproportionately. This will allow this bill to apply to the administration, and I do not believe people who are multimillionaires and billionaires should use the apparatus of government, as was used in the loans that were given to Solyndra, by someone who is profiting off of their relationship and ties to the President, profiting off of people who used to work for these companies who are now employed in the administration and using these connections to get taxpayer money to go to private individuals. This is wrong and this should stop.

I think this bill is a great vehicle for discussing how people in government are abusing their roles in government to make more money at the expense of the taxpayer. I think it should end.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 1490.

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

This amendment will address some of the situations that are concerning the American people. I think the ability to serve in the Senate is a great honor. The ability to serve in the House of Representatives is a great honor. But I am somewhat sickened and somewhat saddened by people who use their office, who leave office and become lobbyists, who leave office and call themselves historians but basically leave office and peddle the friendships they have found here and the relationships to make money. I think it is hard to prevent people from being lobbyists. But I think if people choose to leave the Senate and leave the House of Representatives and become lobbyists, they should give up something. These people are making millions of dollars lobbying Congress. I think maybe they should give up their pension. Maybe they should give up the health benefits that are subsidized by the taxpayer.

If someone is going to use their position as an ex-Senator or as an ex-Congressman to enrich themselves, maybe they should have to give up some of those perks they accumulated while in office. So this amendment would say that if you go out and become a lobbyist, you have to give up your pension and you have to give up your health benefits and you need to pay for them yourself. I think this is the least we can ask.

I think we have a great deal of coverage now talking about people who are either lobbyists or not or whether they are historians. The bottom line is we have a lot of people peddling their friendship and their influence for monetary gain, and I do not think the taxpayers should be subsidizing that.

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

Mr. President, I rise today in support of the balanced budget amendment. In fact, it is beyond me to imagine how anybody in this body could oppose a balanced budget amendment. I ran my election last year primarily on this fact--that government spending was out of control and the debt was consuming our country and that we needed new and more serious rules to bring the budget under control.

We have tried in the past. This body passed Gramm-Rudman-Hollings with bipartisan support in the 1990s and immediately began to evade it. This body passed pay as you go and then proceeded to disobey their own rules 700 times. And we wonder why 9 percent of the people approve of Congress? It is because we cannot even obey our own rules.

So we need new rules. We need a balanced budget amendment that would be an amendment to the Constitution because we do not adhere to the rules we pass. This body is literally out of control.

Now, the other side says: Trust us. Trust us. We can balance the budget. The other side hasn't passed a budget this year or last year-- not just a balanced budget, the other side can't pass any budget. So I think we need new and stronger rules to force us to do

what is right, do what every American family has to do; that is, balance their family budget. A nation is no different. A nation has a printing press and can run deficits for longer, but there are ramifications.

The enormous debt we are accumulating as a country--we are borrowing $40,000 every second. During the time of my 5-minute speech, we will have borrowed millions of dollars. So there are ramifications. We have to pay for our debt in some way. We can either tax people or we can borrow--we are at the limits of both--or we can simply print the money. But as we print money to pay for our debt, we destroy the value of the existing currency. So those who have savings, those who are on fixed incomes--senior citizens, the working class--those who use every penny of their paycheck to pay for their needs are being robbed on a daily basis by inflation. Inflation is the end result of debt.

If we look at the approval of Congress being 9 percent, and we contrast that with how much of the public is for a balanced budget, 75 percent of the public--Republicans, Democrats, and Independents--would vote in favor of a balanced budget amendment. Yet this body is out of touch because we can't get anybody from the other side even to talk to us about a balanced budget amendment. We worked for months to see what it would take to make one acceptable to the other side, and we got nowhere.

We need to balance our budget because the debt is a threat to our country. This is not just me saying this. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve has said our debt is unsustainable. Admiral Mullen, part of this administration, has said our debt is the greatest threat to our national security. Erskine Bowles, who led the deficit commission and has been known as a Democrat, said we are approaching the most predictable crisis in our history, and it will be a debt crisis.

All throughout Europe there is a debt crisis: Italy is having trouble paying its debt; Greece is underwater; Portugal, Spain, and Ireland are all tenuously holding on and trying to pay their debts. That European crisis, that destruction of the Euro, is coming this way. Our debt now equals our economy.

Senator Hatch mentioned we have a $15 trillion debt and a $15 trillion economy. Many economists say when our debt approaches 100 percent of GDP--where ours is now--we are losing 1 million jobs a year. So this is having a drain on the here and now. It is not just that this debt is being passed on to our kids and grandkids. The debt is affecting jobs.

When I talk to college kids, I say: The chance of you getting a job depends on what we do with the debt. If we continue to finance our spending through debt, you will not have a job. You will have less likelihood of getting a job.

Now, some say it would be too hard to balance the budget. It is just too far out of whack. We can't do it. It is pretty bad. We are borrowing 40 cents on every dollar. If we look at the spending, borrowing 40 cents on every dollar is remarkable. When we look at our budget, the revenue coming in is being consumed by entitlements and interest. Everything else we spend--national defense, roads, everything else--the rest of the 40 percent of the budget is being borrowed. It is out of control.

Can you imagine any business or any family in this country borrowing 40 percent every year, year after year after year? It can't be done. There are ramifications and a day of reckoning is coming.

Some say: How could we ever balance our budget? I will tell you how. If we cut 1 percent of spending--this is called the penny plan--cut one penny out of every dollar in Federal spending for 6 years and freeze spending for 2 years, the budget will balance in 8 years. If we were to pass a balanced budget amendment and send it to the States, there is a 5-year window in the amendment, plus it takes a couple of years to pass, so it would be about 8 years.

So we could balance the budget in 8 years simply by cutting one penny out of every dollar. One might ask: How could that be, when they are cutting trillions of dollars and not balancing the budget? The reason is, when they talk about cutting spending around here, they are always talking about cutting proposed increases in spending. They are never talking about real cuts in spending. What I am talking about is a real cut.

We spend $3.8 trillion in our budget this year. One percent is $28 billion. Next year, we would spend $3.8 trillion minus $38 billion. A real cut of 1 percent each year for 6 years balances our budget in 8 years. It could happen, but it is going to take some resolve.

People need to understand the alternative. The alternative, if we do nothing, is that our debt is going to consume us as a nation. We have been warning about this for some time. Senator Hatch has been active. The last time we voted on this was in 1997. Fourteen years later we have had a significant revolution at the polls, and people are anxious to say: Do something, protect us from this mountain of debt. Yet there is still great resistance in this body.

I would say people in this body who vote against the balanced budget amendment do so at their own peril and do it against the will of the people. If they think it is so important to continue to accumulate debt, and that debt is fine, they should vote against this amendment. But they are thumbing their nose at the people. They are thumbing their nose at the American people who are very worried about our Republic and very worried about this debt.

So, Mr. President, I rise today in support of the balanced budget amendment and encourage my colleagues to give serious thought to voting for this amendment.

I think Congress has failed. We have not passed a budget in 2 years, much less a balanced budget. We cannot even pass a budget under the normal procedures, and we are showing no signs of being able to balance our own budget.

They say the American public, when we ask them are they for a balanced budget, 70 to 75 percent of the people are for it-- Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. Congress currently has about a 10-percent approval rating. My thought is maybe our approval rating is so low because we are not listening to what the people want. The people want us to balance our budget. They want us to do the responsible thing. But they also do not want to say: Oh, Social Security, we are going to put that off to the side. They want the Social Security fund to be sound too.

What are we doing right now? We are reducing the funding to Social Security. We are doing exactly the things we should not be doing. So it is important, as my colleague said, that the balanced budget amendment include all spending, and we need to balance our budget.

The big driving force here is the entitlements. If we look at the revenue coming into the government, it is all being spent on entitlements and interest. Forty percent of every dollar is borrowed, but that means we have to borrow all the money for national defense, for our roads, all the rest of government. Forty percent of every dollar, $40,000 a second, is being borrowed. Why don't we come to an agreement?

I have been asking many people on the other side that, and they say we will not fix entitlements until we have a $1 trillion tax increase. If that is the starting point, we are never going to fix entitlements because many of us think raising taxes is a mistake, in the middle of a recession, and we think more money left in the private sector would be better spent for jobs.

We have the balanced budget debate as part of this debate on how to reduce spending on the entitlement programs because they consume 60 percent of the budget. But there is this unwillingness up here. I think people would like us to find solutions. When I go home to my State, it doesn't matter whether they are a Republican or Democrat or Independent; they want us to fix the entitlement programs. They don't want it to be dependent on increasing taxes on everyone also.

In the last year, I spoke before my State legislature to a joint session of the House and Senate, and there was overwhelming support for a balanced budget amendment. I think there is actually a movement out there to do it if we do not do it. There is so much feeling among the public that this enormous debt is hurting us.

When I go home and talk to people, I say: Look, the people the debt hurts the worst are those on fixed incomes, senior citizens, and those in the working class. Those are the people who are being hurt by this debt because it causes rising prices. As we print the new money, those people are hurt every time they go buy gas at the pump, every time they go to the grocery store. The rising prices are hurting senior citizens and the working class. The only way we are going to fix it is to have rules that must be obeyed.

The problem is, in the past we have had rules--as the Senator mentioned, Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, pay as you go. I think pay as you go, which was passed in the late 1990s, was broken 700 times. There doesn't seem to be the spine or will power here to say no. Everybody wants something from government, but they do not realize that by getting things from government we do not pay for has ramifications.

Admiral Mullens said last year that the biggest threat to our national security right now is our debt. Erskine Bowles, head of the Debt Commission, said the most predictable crisis in our history is going to be a debt crisis.

For those on the other side who will oppose a balanced budget, they will need to explain to the American people when chaotic situations come and we are having trouble paying for those things that come from government, when the value of the money is destroyed and when prices are rising dramatically, they will have to explain to the American people why they thought it was not necessary to balance the budget.

I have seen no willpower to attack entitlements. There are simple ways. We could gradually raise the age of the entitlement eligibility and means test the benefits. We could fix Social Security tomorrow. We could fix Medicare tomorrow. But the other side is unwilling to talk about entitlement reform unless--they believe they are owed some obligation of raising taxes by $1 trillion. That would be a disaster for the economy, and it is beyond me why the other side will not say let's fix Social Security.

What would it take to fix Social Security? What would it take to fix Medicare? I think we could fix all of these problems, but I do not think the dialog is there. I have been trying to ask questions to the other side for months now, and we are not getting anywhere.

I think because so much of government spending is considered to be mandatory, so it just keeps enlarging and expanding. Also, because people have great big hearts and they want to help everyone, but they do not realize the ramifications of accumulating such a massive debt. As we accumulate this debt there are ramifications. There are higher prices and the threat of an economic collapse.

Greece is going under. Italy is behind them. Portugal, Spain--they are struggling under this burden of debt. They say when a country's debt equals its economy, when it is about 100 percent of its gross domestic product, it is losing 1 million jobs a year.

Our debt is stealing American jobs, it is making us weaker as a country, making us vulnerable, making our national security vulnerable. But we have to do something. There is no evidence in this body we can even pass a budget, much less a balanced budget.

I think everything about this body shows a failure to be fiscally responsible and we need stronger rules.

People maintain that they are for jobs, for getting the economy growing again. If we were to pass a balanced budget amendment and send it to the States this year, it would create more jobs and create a better psychology than we have had in this country in decades. I think we would see a rise in the stock market like we have never seen before if we said to Wall Street and said to investors worldwide: We are going to balance our budget; we are not going to spend more than we take in.

I think we would see an economic recovery begin as we have never seen in this country. I think we would see millions of jobs created. That is why we have to do this. That is what the American people want.

What amazes me about this debate is we are going to have this debate and have this vote and the vast majority of the other side said they will not vote for a balanced budget amendment.

I say take that home. Tell your people at home that you are opposed to balancing the budget, and let's run on that. Let's see who wins the elections in the future because our country's future depends on balancing our budget

and controlling the debt. I hope we do not wake up when it is too late.

I object. I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, warned:

The means of defense against foreign danger historically

have become instruments of tyranny at home.

Abraham Lincoln had similar thoughts saying:

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we

falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we

destroyed ourselves.

During war there has always been a struggle to preserve constitutional liberties. During the Civil War, the right of habeas corpus was suspended. Newspapers were closed down. Fortunately, these rights were restored after the war. The discussion now to suspend certain rights of due process is especially worrisome given that we are engaged in a war that appears to have no end. Rights given up now cannot be expected to return.

So we do well to contemplate the diminishment of due process knowing that these rights we give up now may never be restored. My well- intentioned colleagues' admonitions in defending provisions of this Defense bill say we should give up certain rights: the right to due process. Their legislation would arm the military with the authority to detain indefinitely, without due process or trial, people suspected of association with terrorism. These would include American citizens apprehended on American soil.

I want to repeat that. We are talking about people who are merely suspected of terrorism or suspected of committing a crime and have been judged by no court. We are talking about American citizens who could be taken from the United States and sent to a camp at Guantanamo Bay and held indefinitely.

This should be alarming to everyone watching this proceeding today because it puts every single American citizen at risk. There is one thing and one thing only that is protecting American citizens, and that is our Constitution, the checks we put on government power. Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on State power in the name of fighting terrorism, well, then, the terrorists have won.

Detaining citizens without a court trial is not American. In fact, this alarming arbitrary power is reminiscent of what Egypt did with its permanent emergency law. This permanent emergency law allowed them to detain their own citizens without a court trial. Egyptians became so alarmed at that last spring that they overthrew their government.

Recently, Justice Scalia affirmed this idea in his dissent in the Hamdi case saying:

Where the government accuses a citizen of waging war

against it, our constitutional tradition has been to

prosecute him in Federal court for treason or another crime.

Scalia concluded by saying:

The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo Saxon system

of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite

imprisonment at the will of the Executive.

Justice Scalia was, as he often does, following the wisdom of our Founding Fathers. As Franklin wisely warned:

These who give up their liberty for security may wind up

with neither.

Really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us? The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly misnamed PATRIOT Act, is that our pre-9/11 police powers were insufficient to stop terrorism. This is simply not borne out by the facts. Congress long ago made it a crime to provide or conspire to provide material assistance to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations.

Material assistance includes virtually anything of value: legal, political advice, education, books, newspapers, lodging, or otherwise. The Supreme Court sustained the constitutionality of this sweeping prohibition. We have laws on the books that can prosecute terrorists before they commit acts of terrorism. Al-Qaida adherents may be detained, prosecuted, and convicted for conspiring to violate the material assistance prohibition. In fact, we have already done this.

Jose Padilla, for instance, was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison for conspiring to provide material assistance to al-Qaida. The criminal law does require and can prevent crimes from occurring before they do occur. Indeed, conspiracy laws and prosecutions in civilian courts have been routinely invoked after 9/11 to thwart embryonic international terrorism. In fact, in the Bush administration, Michael Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division and later Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, testified shortly after 9/11. He underscored:

The history of this government in prosecuting terrorists in

domestic courts has been one of unmitigated success, and one

in which the judges have done a superb job of managing the

courtroom and not compromising our concerns about security

and our concerns about classified information.

We can prosecute terrorists in our courts, and have done so. It is the wonderful thing about our country, that even with the most despicable criminal, murderer, rapist, or terrorist our court systems do work. We can have constitutional liberty and prosecute terrorists. There is no evidence that the criminal justice procedures have frustrated intelligence collection about international terrorism.

Suspected terrorist have repeatedly waived both the right to an attorney and the right to silence. Additionally, Miranda warnings are not required at all when the purpose of the interrogation is public safety. The authors of this bill errantly maintain that the bill would not enlarge the universe of detainees, people held indefinitely. I believe this is simply not the case.

The current authorization for the use of military force confines the universe to persons implicated in 9/11 or who harbored those who were. This new detainee provision will expand the universe to include any person said to be part of or substantially supportive of al-Qaida or the Taliban. But, remember, this is not someone who has been concluded at trial to be part of al-Qaida. This is someone who is suspected.

If someone is a suspect in our country they are usually accorded due process. They go to court. They are not automatically guilty. They are accused of a crime. But now we are saying

someone accused of a crime can be taken from American soil. An American citizen accused of a crime, a suspect of a crime, could be taken to Guantanamo Bay. These terms are dangerously vague.

More than a decade after 9/11 the military has been unable to define the earmarks of membership in or affiliation to either al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations. It is an accusation and sometimes difficult to prove.

Some say to prevent another 9/11 attack we must fight terrorism with a war mentality and not treat potential attackers as criminals. For combatants captured on the battlefield, I agree. But these are people captured or detained in America, American citizens. Mr. President, 9/11 did not succeed because we granted terrorists due process. In fact, 9/ 11 did not succeed because al-Qaida was so formidable but because of human error. The Defense Department withheld intelligence from the FBI. No warrants were denied. The warrants were not even requested. The FBI failed to act on repeated pleas from its field agents who were in possession of a laptop that may well have had information that may well have prevented 9/11. But no judge ever turned down a warrant.

Our criminal system did not fail. No one ever asked for a warrant to look at Moussaoui's computer in August, a month before 9/11. These are not failures of our law. These are not failures of our Constitution. These are not reasons we should scrap our Constitution and simply send people accused of terrorism to Guantanamo Bay--American citizens. These are failures of imperfect men and women in bloated bureaucracies. No amount of liberty sacrificed at the altar of the state will ever change that.

A full accounting of our human failures by the 9/11 Commission has proven that enhanced cooperation between law enforcement and the intelligence community, not military action or not giving up our liberty at home, is the key to thwarting international terrorism. We should not have to sacrifice our liberty to be safe.

We cannot allow the rules to change to fit the whims of those in power. The rules, the binding chains of the Constitution, were written so it did not matter who was in power. In fact, they were written to protect us and our rights from those who hold power with good intentions. We are not governed by saints or angels. Occasionally, we will elect people, and there have been times in history when those who come into power are not angels. That is why we have laws and rules that restrain what the government can do. That is why we have laws that protect us and say we are innocent until proven guilty. That is why we have laws that say we should have a trial before a judge and a jury of our peers before we are sent off to some prison indefinitely.

Finally, the detainee provisions of the Defense authorization bill do another grave harm to freedom. They imply perpetual war for the first time in the history of the United States. No benchmarks are established that would ever terminate the conflict with al-Qaida, the Taliban, or other foreign terrorist organizations. In fact, this bill explicitly says that no part of this bill is to imply any restriction on the authorization of force.

When will the wars ever end? When will these provisions end? No congressional view is allowed or imagined. No victory is defined. No peace is possible if victory is made impossible by definition. To disavow the idea that the exclusive congressional power to declare war somehow allows the President to continue war forever, at whim, I will offer an amendment to this bill that will deauthorize the war in Iraq. We are bringing the troops home in January. Is there any reason why we should have an open-ended commitment to war in Iraq when the war is ending?

If we need to go to war in Iraq again, we should debate on it and vote on it. It is an important enough matter that we should not have an open-ended commitment to the war in Iraq. The use of military force must begin in Congress. Our Founding Fathers separated those powers and said Congress has the power to declare war, and it is a precious and important power. We should not give that up to the President. We should not allow the President to unilaterally engage in war.

Congress should not be ignored or be an afterthought in these matters and must reclaim its constitutional duties. These are important points of fact. Know good and well that someday there could be a government in power that is shipping its citizens off for disagreements. There are laws on the books now that characterize who might be a terrorist: someone missing fingers on their hands is a suspect according to the Department of Justice, someone who has guns, someone who has ammunition that is weatherproofed, someone who has more than 7 days of food in their house can be considered a potential terrorist.

If someone is suspected by these activities, do we want the government to have the ability to send them to Guantanamo Bay for indefinite detention? A suspect? We are not talking about someone who has been tried and found guilty; we are talking about someone suspected of activities. But some of the things that make us suspicious of terrorism are having more than 7 days' worth of food, missing fingers on their hand, having weatherproofed ammunition, having several guns at their house. Is that enough? Are we willing to sacrifice our freedom for liberty?

I would argue that we should strike these detainee provisions from this bill because we are giving up our liberty. We are giving up the constitutional right to have due process before we are sent to a prison. This is very important. I think this is a constitutional liberty we should not look at and blithely sign away to the Executive power or to the military.

So I would call for support of the amendment that will strike the provisions on keeping detainees indefinitely, particularly the fact that we can now, for the first time, send American citizens to prisons abroad. I think that is a grave danger to our constitutional liberty. I advise a vote to strike those provisions from the bill.

I yield the floor.

With regard to releasing prisoners, I am not asking that we release them. I think there probably have been some mistakes with people who have been let go. What I am asking only is for due process, and we released some of those people without any kind of process and a flawed process. So we did make a mistake.

Due process does not mean, and believing in the process does not mean necessarily that we would release these people. Due process often convicts. Jose Padilla was given 17 years in prison with due process. So I do not think it necessarily follows that I am arguing for releasing prisoners. I am simply arguing that people, particularly American citizens in the United States, not be sent to a foreign prison without due process.

My question would be, under the provisions, would it be possible that an American citizen then could be declared an enemy combatant and sent to Guantanamo Bay and detained indefinitely?

Mr. President, I rise in support of bringing the Iraq war to a formal end. President Obama has ordered troops home by January 1. We should rejoice at the conclusion of the war. No matter whether one favored the Iraq war or not, there is a glimmer of hope for democracy to now exist in the Middle East in Iraq.

War is a hellish business and never to be desired. As the famous POW and war hero John McCain once said: ``War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.''

This vote is more than symbolism. This vote is about the separation of powers. It is about whether Congress should have the power to declare war. The Constitution vested that power in Congress, and it was very important. Our Founding Fathers did not want all the power to gravitate to the Executive. They feared very much a King, and so they limited the power of the Executive.

When Franklin walked out of the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked him: What have you brought us? Was it going to be a republic, a democracy, a monarchy?

He said: A republic, if you can keep it.

In order to keep a republic, we have to have checks and balances. But we have to obey the rule of law.

Madison wrote:

The Constitution supposes, what the History of all

Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of

power most interested in war, and most prone to it. The

Constitution has, therefore, with studied care, vested the

[power] to declare war in [Congress].

When we authorize the war in Iraq, we give the President the power to go to war, and the Constitution gives the power to the President to execute the war. All the infinite decisions that are made in war--most of them are made by the executive branch. But the power to declare war is Congress's. This division was given to make there be a division of powers, a separation of powers, to allow there to be a reluctance to go to war.

We have this vote now to try to reclaim the authority.

If we do not reclaim the authority to declare war or to authorize war, it will mean our kids or our grandkids or our great-grandkids could be sent to a war in Iraq with no debate, with no vote of Congress. We have been at war for nearly 10 years in Iraq. We are coming home. And we should rejoice at the war's end. But we need to reclaim that authority. If we leave an open-ended authority out there that says to the President--or any President; not this particular President, it could be any President--if we leave that authority out there, we basically abdicate our duty, we abdicate the role of Congress. There are supposed to be checks and balances between Congress and the President.

So what I am asking is that Congress today reclaim the authority to declare war and at the same time we celebrate that this is an end to something that no one should desire.

As Senator McCain has pointed out, as many have pointed out, Dwight Eisenhower pointed out the same thing: If you want to know the hellish of war, talk to someone who has been to war.

But that is why this power is too important to be given to one person and to be left in the hands of one person--a President of either party.

So the vote today will be about reclaiming that authority, reclaiming the authority of Congress to declare war. I would recommend that we have a vote and that the vote today be in favor of deauthorizing the war in Iraq.

It is not just I who have pointed this out. The first President of the United States wrote:

The Constitution vests the power of declaring war in

Congress; therefore, no offensive expedition of importance

can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated

upon the subject and authorized such a measure.

This has been recognized by Presidents from the beginning of the history

of our country. The problem is that if we do not give it up, that power is left out there, and it is a power lost to Congress.

Frank Chodorov wrote:

All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the

authority acquired by the states hangs on; political power

never abdicates.

This is a time to reclaim that power. It is an important constitutional question. I hope those Senators will consider this seriously and consider a vote to reclaim the authority to declare war.

I reserve the reminder of my time and temporarily yield the floor.

It disappoints me that President Obama opposes a formal end to the Iraq war, but it doesn't surprise me. As a candidate, he was outspoken against the war and for ending the war: He will be bringing the troops home. But this vote in this debate is not necessarily just about bringing the troops home. This is a debate over power. The executive branch wants to keep the unlimited power to commit troops to war. This is about who holds the power.

The Founding Fathers intended that Congress should hold the power. This vote is about whether we will continue to abdicate that power and give up that power to the Executive. That allows for no checks and balances. We need to have checks and balances. It is what our Founding Fathers intended.

With regard to defending ourselves, there is authorization for the President to always defend the Nation using force. There is authorization for every embassy around the world to defend the embassy. That is why we have soldiers there. We have agreements with the host country that the host military is supposed to support the embassy. If that fails, we have our own soldiers. We have these agreements around the world. There is nothing that says we cannot use force. This says we are reclaiming the power to declare war, and we will not have another war with hundreds of thousands of troops without a debate. Should not the public and Congress debate it before we commit troops to war?

This war is coming to a close. I suggest that we should be proud of it. I hope people will support this amendment.

I yield to the Senator from Oregon.

Mr. President, is it appropriate to call for the yeas and nays at this point?

I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

I will yield back my time.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Yes.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up my amendment No. 1064.

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

Mr. President, this amendment will call for a formal end to the war in Iraq. Our Founding Fathers intended the power to commit the Nation to war be lodged in Congress, and that is what the Constitution says. The power to declare war is one of the most important powers given to Congress, and it should remain in Congress.

James Madison wrote at the beginning in the Federalist Papers that ``[t]he Constitution supposes what history demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch most prone to war . . . therefore the Constitution has with studied care vested that power [to declare war] in the Legislature.''

We are calling for a formal end to the war in Iraq as the troops come home, as the President has planned by January 1. This will reclaim the power to declare war that is vested in Congress. It allows for checks and balances and is an important milestone and an important retaining of power for Congress. So I will ask very careful deliberation of a formal end to the war in Iraq by supporting this amendment.

At this time, I would like to yield the floor to Senator Merkley.

Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of clean air, clean water, electricity, and jobs. I think we can have a clean environment and jobs, but not if we let this administration continue to pass job- killing regulations. These new regulations will cost over $2 billion, and over the course of a decade or more may well exceed $100 billion. We add these new regulations to over $2 trillion worth of regulations already on the books. The President is adding $10 billion worth of regulations every month, and we wonder--we have 14 million people out of work, 2 million new people out of work since this President took office. Yet we continue to add regulation upon regulation.

So far this year President Obama has added $80 billion worth of new regulations. If this President is serious about job creation, he needs to cease and desist from adding new job-killing regulations. The vote today has nothing to do with repealing the Clean Air Act. I am sure we will hear hysterics on the other side. We will hear from environmental extremists. But this has nothing to do with repealing the Clean Air Act. We have rules in place to control emissions from our utility plants. We are not arguing against that. In fact, we are arguing for continuing the same rules that have been in place for some time.

Over the decades our environment has become cleaner and cleaner. Emissions have gone down with each successive decade. We are simply asking that the clean air regulations already on the books stay in place and that we do not make the regulations so onerous that we put utility plants out of business so we have an inability to supply electricity to this country.

Over 50 percent of our electricity comes from coal-fired plants. If we shut down the coal-fired plants or if we bankrupt them--as the President explicitly said in his campaign, that would be the desire of his policies--if that should occur, be prepared for brownouts in our big cities, be prepared for days when there will not be electricity, but also be prepared for rising unemployment as these job-killing regulations put a stranglehold on the economy.

The question is, Can we have clean air and jobs? Absolutely. But to have clean air and jobs we must have balance. We are at the point of becoming so overzealous and of overreaching to such a great extent that we are killing jobs. We are killing industry. We are going backwards in time.

Before we add new regulations we must ask, Are the current regulations working? The answer is an unequivocal yes. Emissions from utility plants have been declining for decades. In fact, while coal- based power has nearly doubled in the last several decades, emissions have been reduced by 60 percent.

I need to repeat that because if we listen to the hysterics, we would think otherwise. We would think the Statue of Liberty will shortly be underwater and the polar bears are all drowning and that we are dying from pollution. It is absolutely and utterly untrue. All of the statistics--and these are statistics from the EPA--all of the statistics from government, from the EPA, show declining pollution. Everything about this argument shows that the environment has been improving for decades. In fact, John Stossel has done a program on this, and he asked fifth graders: Do you think the environment is cleaner now or 30 years ago? All of our schoolchildren have been brainwashed by these environmental hysterics who say, oh, it is a lot worse now. It is actually much better now.

Here are some statistics. We are talking about regulating two emissions that come from utility plants. The first is sulfur dioxide. We can see in the midst of the range, the average has been going down every decade. We have reduced sulfur dioxide just in the last 6 years by 45 percent under the current regulations.

If we look at the nitrous oxides, which are also regulated under this series of regulations, we can also see they have been in decline. The existing rules are working. Nitrous oxides, which can create ozone, are down 45 percent in the last 5 years. The existing rules are working. All we are arguing for is that we not become overzealous, that we not overreach, that the regulators and the regulations not become job- killing regulations. That is where we are headed.

This administration has proposed a series of radical changes to our environmental law. These are regulations that are being written by unelected bureaucrats in which we in Congress are not having a say. What I am asking for today is that Congress vote approval or disapproval of these radical, extremist regulations, these job-killing regulations that are coming down the pike.

If we look at jobs and look at what will happen to jobs, we will see that these regulations--simply this regulation alone--could cost as much as 50,000 jobs. Indirectly, the people who work for them who would be losing their jobs. As much as 250,000 indirect jobs could be lost.

We do need to ask the important question: Are the existing regulations working or do we need to make the regulations more strict? This is a balancing act. On the one hand we have our environment, which we all care about. No matter what the other side will say, Republicans do believe in clean air and clean water. But we also believe in jobs. It is a balancing act in our country and in all of our communities to try to have both jobs and a clean environment. But we have to look at the facts. We cannot become hysterical and say the other side is for pollution. That is the kind of stuff we are hearing.

We are all for clean air, we are all for clean water, and we are all--or we should all be for jobs. My concern is that the President has allowed radicals to take over the administration. He has allowed environmental extremists to take over policy. As a consequence, we are losing jobs.

It is important to note that people think they will plug their electric cars into the wall and that has nothing to do with coal. Fifty percent of our electricity comes from coal. Does that mean it is perfect? No. But we have to look at the emissions from coal-fired utilities. The emissions have been declining decade after decade.

While coal-fired power has nearly doubled in the last several decades--we are having to produce more electricity from coal in the last several decades--emissions have declined 60 percent. We are doing a good job with the current rules. Let's not kill off industry. Let's not kill off jobs. Let's not put our citizens at risk during the height of the summer and the height of a heat wave of not having electricity or during the height of cold waves in the winter of not having electricity to heat their homes.

The alarmists, such as Al Gore and others, would have us believe everything is worse and the world is on the edge of some sort of cataclysm. If we allow them to control our debate, if we do not talk reasonably and rationally about the facts, if we do not look at the statistics of what has been occurring to control emissions, we are not going to get anywhere. I am asking we base our discussion on rational facts and not on emissions.

To give an idea of where some of these extremists are coming from, there is one of them who is a prominent extremist in this debate. She has called for a planetary law, whatever that is. She wants a planetary law of one child per family because she is worried about the carbon footprint of the worst polluters in the whole world.

But who do we think the worst polluters in the world are? Humans, for breathing. She says we have far too many breathers on the planet and the way we reduce breathers on the planet is we will have one child per family mandated worldwide. We know how China does that.

I don't think we can let the debate get out of control. Today's debate is about overreach. I would like to give an example. Think about what cities looked like in 1900. We have a picture of Pittsburgh, where I was born, in 1905, and then a picture of Pittsburgh today. You may not be able to see the picture from the distance, but we can get an idea.

Throughout Pittsburgh it was smog and pollution. It was heavy. They say at noon on a day in Pittsburgh you could go out and your white shirt would become black. They say at noon in Pittsburgh the street lanterns were on because you could not see through the smog and the smoke.

Here is Pittsburgh today. We are not arguing for no rules. The rules we have in place have been working. What we are arguing is not to let the rules become so overzealous, so onerous, that we kill jobs and we kill industry.

We want a clean environment and jobs. We have to have a balanced approach, and we cannot let hysteria and environmental extremism take over our country. The West led the industrial revolution. Life expectancy has doubled since the discovery of electricity. Childhood infectious mortality has become one-hundredth of what it was before electricity. For all the advances of civilization, there are advantages and there are disadvantages. As we have advanced from an industrial society, there have been problems, but we have been ironing out those problems for 100 years now. We are doing a good job at that, and we should not allow the regulations to become so onerous that we begin to lose jobs.

One of the other things people argue about and one of the big health concerns they have with pollution is with regard to asthma. The interesting thing is, if we look at all the statistics on all the emissions from our powerplants, all these declining lines are emissions. Emissions have been going down decade upon decade. The incidence of asthma has been rising. If we were looking at this chart, we would say maybe emissions declining is inversely proportional to asthma. The other argument could be maybe they

are not related at all, but they definitely are not proportional. We are not seeing rising incidents of asthma because we are having increased pollution. We have decreased pollution and rising incidents of asthma. Either they are inversely proportional or not related at all.

This is an important point because what comes out of the hysteria of the environmental extremists is--we will hear people stand and say half a million people are going to die if this goes through. The Vice President recently said Republicans, because they didn't vote for his jobs plan, were for murder and rape. The ridiculousness of these statistics that are trotted out as truth should be spurned. We should think about things calmly and rationally and decide: Can we have clean air and jobs? When we hear these statistics, let's be very careful not to get carried away.

Joel Schwartz has written about asthma and the environment and pollution and he notes that: As air pollution declines, the asthma prevalence continues to rise. One possible conclusion is that air pollution is not a cause of asthma or not even related. Every pollutant we measure has been dropping for decades pretty much everywhere while asthma prevalence has been rising pretty much everywhere.

The other side will say, but the American Lung Association says pollution is making asthma worse. You know what. The EPA actually gave the American Lung Association $5 million, so I think their objectivity has been somewhat tainted.

If we look at asthma incidence and we say: Where is asthma the worst, interestingly, asthma is worse in the countries that have the lowest incidence of pollution and asthma is actually lowest in the countries that have the highest evidence of pollution.

As we look through these statistics, we need to be concerned about the costs of these new regulations. We need to be concerned about having balance between job creation and job-killing regulations. I am afraid what happened is we have opened the White House and this administration to environmental extremists, the kind of people who say: The polar bears are drowning. The whole thing on the polar bears drowning was based on the sighting of two polar bears on an iceberg and they all of a sudden maintain this. Once we start counting the polar bears, apparently they are not in decline.

So the statistics and hysteria over whether within 50 years the Statue of Liberty will be underwater, this is the kind of hysteria we don't want to drive policy. It is the kind of hysteria that when our brother-in-law is out of work and when 2 million new people are out of work since this administration came into power, we need to be concerned about regulatory overreach.

Another issue we are concerned about is what will happen with these new regulations with electricity rates. We have a map that shows across the United States what will happen. When we think about our electricity rates going up and the expense to this, think about who gets hit worse, the working class and senior citizens on fixed incomes. They are the ones who will suffer from rising electricity rates. It is the person who depends only on their Social Security check and has no other means of supporting themselves and is trying to pay for their electricity.

In some regions, electricity could go up almost 20 percent with this series of regulations this administration is proposing. This is throughout the country. It is more in some areas than others, but it will go up dramatically, and that is the danger of allowing these new regulations--what will happen to electric rates and will poor people in the winter or heat of the summer be able to afford their electricity? The cost of these regulations is real. The cost of these regulations will be passed on to the consumer and there are significant dangers of there being periods of times in large cities where there is not enough electricity to go around and the electrical grid is overwhelmed.

As we go forward and as we begin to hear some of the hysteria that will occur from the other side, be aware that what we are arguing for is not the elimination of regulations. We are arguing for continuing the existing regulations, with the two emissions we are talking about have declined significantly over decades. Sulfur dioxide has declined over 70 percent over the last three decades. Nitrous oxide has declined over 50 percent over the last several decades. So the question is, if we are doing an adequate job, if we are doing a good job, if emissions are going down, why would we want to impose new rules that will cause loss of jobs and will cause an increase in rate of electrical costs?

If one is cynical, one of the reasons might be because the President wants to reward some of his campaign contributors; for example, Solyndra. The owners of Solyndra, which makes solar panels--or did. They have now gone bankrupt after they ate up $500 million worth of our money. Perhaps this is more of a political argument that he doesn't like certain industry but he likes other industry. So he is willing to spend our money, $500 million worth, on one company.

Solyndra went bankrupt recently, and $500 million is still a considerable amount of money. I will put that in perspective. In Kentucky, we get over about $420 million to pave our roads annually out of the gas tax that we pay. There are 35 States that get about the same amount, somewhere under $500 million. Yet the President saw fit-- because he has been consumed with this environmental extremism--to give $500 million. That is more than 35 States get for their highway funds. He saw fit to take that money and give it to one political contributor because he has decided he wants more expensive electricity. He wants electricity that comes and is produced by people who have been his campaign contributors.

As we look at adding these new regulations, these need to be put in context. We need to look at and seriously think about whether we want our country to be taken over by environmental extremists, whether we want or care about can we have a clean environment and jobs. I think we can have both. I think we can have clean air, clean water, and jobs, but it will require a balanced approach. My fear is, if these regulations go forward, the balance will become imbalanced, that there will be job-killing regulations that cause electrical rates to go up and cause us to have significantly more economic problems than we are already in.

At this time, I call on my colleagues to consider supporting this resolution, which will be a disapproval of these new and onerous regulations, and I reserve the remainder of my time.

I yield the floor.

Senator, I would be happy to answer that question.

Mr. President, I rise in support of clean air, clean water, electricity, and jobs.

Interestingly, the other side hasn't read the EPA v. North Carolina opinion that says the regulations were not overturned. We are arguing for keeping in the current regulations. We are just arguing that we not be overzealous and that we not add $2 billion in new regulations on top of the current regulations.

We have $2 trillion worth of regulations heaped on our economy, 14 million people out of work--2 million new people out of work since this President came into power. We cannot allow this administration to continue with its job-killing regulations.

We can have a clean environment and we can have jobs. We are arguing for the existing regulations. We are arguing against placing additional burdens. We are arguing for the existing regulations. They don't seem to get it, so they make up all these numbers. All of their numbers are completely fictitious because they don't account for the current regulations that would still be in place if we don't increase these regulations.

This is about whether we can have a balanced approach in our society, whether we can have a clean environment and have jobs. What I am arguing for here is some reasonableness.

Madam President, I rise in support of clean air, clean water, electricity, and jobs. We need to, if we are going to maintain our economy, discontinue and not overreach with job-killing regulations. We are asking for the continuation of the existing regulations. This action would allow for the continuation of the existing regulations. If we look at EPA v. North Carolina, it says remand without vacating the order.

The other side claims we are for no regulations. We are asking for the continuation of the existing regulations on pollution. The rules are working, but if we keep increasing the burden, we are going to cause increased joblessness.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

There are emotions and there are facts. The facts are that emissions have been declining for six decades. The current rules are working. If you vote for increased regulations, you are voting to kill jobs.

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

Mr. President, I rise in support of the Republican jobs plan. I think it is very important that the American people know there are different visions about how we would create jobs in this country, whether the jobs should be created by the private sector or the jobs should be created by borrowing money from China, taxing us more, and then redistributing that money into government-created jobs.

There are different visions in this country about how we create jobs. The one thing we know is, we need millions of jobs--not tens of thousands of jobs but millions of jobs.

What I ask the President to do is to come in from the campaign trail and talk to us. I think he needs to be here, not raising money, not out fundraising for his campaign, not bashing Republicans on the campaign trail. He needs to be in Washington. He needs to be engaged with the committee, the supercommittee. He needs to be engaged with Republican counterparts.

I have told the President, personally, I will work with him. I will come from the Republican side of the aisle, and we can figure out areas in which we agree. There are many aspects of the Republican jobs plan that some Democrats have said they might support: Reducing the corporate income tax, lowering the rates, and eliminating loopholes.

The thing is, on the campaign trail, we are told Republicans are unwilling to eliminate loopholes for millionaires who don't pay taxes. The truth is, we are very willing. This has been offered in the supercommittee. It has been offered by our side. It is offered in the Republican jobs plan. We are willing to eliminate loopholes that make the Tax Code unfair, that allow either millionaires or corporations to pay no taxes. But we want to do it in the context of tax reform.

There are a couple things historically that government has done that has created jobs. In the 1960s, President Kennedy reduced the top rate from 90 to 70.

Unemployment was cut in half. In the 1980s, Reagan lowered the top rate from 70 to 50. Unemployment was cut in half. Reagan again lowered the top rate from 50 to 28, and unemployment was cut in half.

Interestingly, through all these rate cuts of the top taxpayers, as we cut the rates, tax revenue didn't go down. Tax revenue has stayed about 18 percent of GDP no matter what the rates are. But what lowering the top rates does is it spawns economic activity.

So I ask the President to come in from the campaign trail, to come in from his Canadian bus tour, and talk to us on the Hill--talk to us about ways we could create jobs again. We need millions of jobs. Fourteen million Americans are out of work. Two million Americans have lost their jobs since this President came into the White House.

They say the definition of ``insanity'' is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We need conversation on Capitol Hill between Republicans and Democrats, but we also need leadership from the White House. Continuing to bash us on the campaign trail is getting us nowhere as a country.

A couple things I have heard from the President as he has campaigned around the country: One, he said Republicans are too stupid to understand his plan, so he is going to break up his jobs plan and give it to us in pieces because we can't understand the whole thing.

In diplomacy, they sometimes talk about the stick and the carrot. I am sure feeling the stick from the President, but I am not seeing a carrot. What we need to have is conversation where we can bridge these differences and find some common ground.

We have a corporate income tax higher than anybody in the world. We keep heaping new regulations onto our businesses. We need to lower our corporate income tax. How can they compete? We worry about jobs going overseas?

I urge support of the Republican jobs plan.

I hope this is the beginning of a conversation with the other side and with the President. I told the President personally that I want to help with the problems we have in our country. We have 14 million people out of work, with 2 million additional people out of work since this administration began. So we are serious about our Republican jobs plan, and there can be some areas of some common interest.

There currently is a supercommittee talking about some of these tax reform ideas. Our side is putting forth a message, we are putting forth a plan, and we are willing to work with the other side. The problem is, it is my understanding the other side has walked away from the table. The other side is unwilling to talk or to engage with us. I have asked the President personally to come to Capitol Hill and talk to us. I have talked with the members of the supercommittee and have indicated we are willing to work with them.

We have some good ideas to create jobs, and some of these ideas the other side has already agreed to. Lowering the corporate income tax. There are Members of the other party who understand we need to be competitive with the rest of the world. So lowering the overall rates, simplifying the code, and getting rid of some of these loopholes. These are things the President talks about as he campaigns. But if he were serious, he would come and talk to us. Instead, what I have heard at his campaign stops is Republicans are too stupid to understand his plan so he is going to break it up. Well, that may get laughs at his campaign rallies, but it isn't getting anything done.

I think the American people need to know our jobs plan will create jobs, and we are willing to talk with the President and with the other side. I think we are willing to get things done, and I think we have important things in the bill that will do that.

Yes. Routinely, decade after decade, polls show anywhere from 75 or 80 percent or more support a balanced budget amendment. We need it, because we have shown ourselves to be fiscally irresponsible. Through the years, we have had Gramm-Rudman-Hollings and we have had all different types of restraints, but we disobey our own rules. We say, oh, it is an emergency. But then suddenly all the routine spending we do becomes emergencies, and the debt gets bigger and bigger.

Those in the debt commission say the most predictable crisis in our history is the coming debt crisis in this country. They are seeing it in Europe. We need to be serious in our country and fix these problems before we get to a crisis situation. That is what our Republican jobs plan does. It addresses it--a balanced budget amendment, tax reform, and a regulatory moratorium. We can't keep heaping on new regulations that put us at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world.

Those who say balancing the budget would be extreme, I think what is extreme is a $1.5 trillion deficit. We are en route now, at the rate we are spending money, to a decade within which the budget will be consumed by entitlements and interest. There will be nothing left for national defense or for anything else if we keep on the same spending pattern. So we do have to do something.

What we have shown so far is that fiscal restraint has been an utter failure up here. After Gramm-Rudman-Hollings we had pay as you go. That was broken 700 times in the first 5 years we were supposedly paying as

you go by simply saying it is an emergency. Every routine expenditure became an emergency and so we went around it. So that is a good context for the Republican jobs plan--that everything will be in the context of balancing our budget.

But then there are other important matters, such as tax reform. Historically, the one thing government can do to create jobs or to lessen unemployment is to lower the upper rate. Kennedy did it in the 1960s and unemployment was cut in half. Reagan lowered the top rate from 70 to 50 and unemployment was cut in half. Reagan lowered it again from 50 to 28 and unemployment was cut in half. And interestingly, as you cut the top rate, you didn't cut revenue. Revenue stayed at 18 percent of GDP through all the lowering of the top rate.

What lowering the top rate does is it unleashes economic growth. The other side has this vision they are going to hire people in government and somehow fix unemployment. You can hire hundreds of thousands of people and you don't put a dent in it. To cure unemployment, or lessen unemployment, you need to have millions of people hired, and that can only be done in the private sector. I think that is the difference in the vision between our side and their side. Our vision is unleashing the private sector, and theirs is to hire a few more people to dig ditches and fill them in. It is a different vision.

The line-item veto, interestingly, that the Senator proposed and got to the floor in the form of a bill separate from this has cosponsors from both parties. It does have bipartisan support. Many on the other side of the aisle see some of the waste. There is no reason why we couldn't begin to work together on some of this.

But, once again, I get back to if the President is going to go on the road and call us too stupid to understand and his jobs plan has to be broken up, that is not a good way to get to a consensus. The President needs to come to Capitol Hill and needs to talk with the other side and work on these ideas.

Do we need a line-item veto and do we need a balanced budget amendment? Do we need to do something different or just do the same? The problem with just doing the same is we haven't had a budget in 2 or 3 years around here. The appropriations bills are supposed to agree with the budget, but they can't because there is no budget. There is a rumor that the appropriations bill will go to the conference committee between the two Houses and they will actually airdrop in whole other appropriations bills.

Do we need more scrutiny? Do we need a balanced budget amendment? Do we need a line-item veto? Absolutely. Because what we are doing around here is not working and is adding up to trillions of dollars of annual deficits.

I think the overriding message--and I appreciate the comments from the Senator from Ohio--is that we have a jobs plan and we have our ideas. There is overlap in our ideas with some of the ideas from the other side.

The message is, we are willing to talk to the other side. We are willing to say these are some proposals, and let's try to find areas of agreement.

We think it is more important than a campaign right now. We think it is more important, the joblessness and the economy, that we try to do something about it. We are willing to come to the table. We are willing to bring our ideas, we are willing to have a debate with the other side, and we want to get solutions. We are not doing this just to be partisan. We want to figure out a way to make our economy better.