Floor Statements

Madam President, I thank my colleague from Hawaii, with whom I have had the great pleasure of serving in this body, for withholding that request.

I come to the Senate floor today to address the Omnibus appropriations bill, as well as to address one of the major needs of a major industry in our State.

I would ask my colleagues to think about this for a second: If there was a business in the United States they knew about that contributed annually around $150 billion to the U.S. economy; employed 1.2 million people, mostly in the manufacturing sector of the economy; is a major export driver with 40 percent of their production--40 percent of this $150 billion going to overseas sales, contributing to the economy, contributing as a multiplier, and a significant multiplier--to the economy, I think most people would say: What is the business and how do we support it? How do we move it on forward in these tough economic times, if the business is having a great deal of difficulty? The one major thing they are asking from the Government now is not to badmouth them, not to talk them down. It is to be positive about this business instead of being down. So of all the businesses we have coming to us asking for money, for support and grants and these sorts of things, we have one that is a major industry, an exporter, and a major manufacturer. They want us not to badmouth them anymore. We should be able to comply with that request, and we ought to.

I am talking about the general aviation industry, which is this $150 billion industry, flying 1.2 million people, primarily in the manufacturing sector. It is a major exporter that is growing but is having enormous difficulty in this economic and global climate because so much export was going overseas. Federal officials are making fun and saying people should not fly on these business aircraft; they should not use these things. They are making it a matter of derision.

The industry is simply asking us not to do that; help us out, don't talk us down, don't hurt us. The industry is appreciative of the bonus depreciation that was put in the stimulus package, and I am also appreciative of that. I hope it can help. It doesn't help when the President and others say people are disappearing on private jets and flying around the country.

I think it is helpful to present a few facts on the actual situation and say who actually uses business aircraft and where they go. Eighty- six percent of the passengers on business aircraft are not company senior officials but instead are mostly midlevel employees, including salespeople, engineers, and other technical specialists. These companies have operations in a number of different places. They can't get into convenient commercial airports, and they use business aircraft to get these people back and forth between various sites very efficiently.

A lot of my colleagues don't realize there are some 5,000 airports nationwide, but only 500 are served by commercial airlines. So 10 percent are served by commercial airlines and the other 90 percent are not. How do you get in and out of all the other 90 percent, other than by using business aircraft--whether it is propeller or jet? They are what ends up connecting a lot of people on a rapid basis throughout the country. That is important for people to realize. Without the use of a lot of business aircraft, you are going to have much more inefficiency in companies, a lot more difficulty getting people from point A to B.

In a lot of cases, you have emergency situations where you have business aircraft moving people who are very sick from one place to get them to a critical hospital; it gives them access. Behind all this and the numbers I am talking about, you have a bunch of people working for these companies.

I will show you some pictures of people in my State. I am proud of the work they do in business aircraft. This is King Air by Beechcraft. The assembly line is back here. I have been in these factories a number of times. It is an interesting and cool business. It is one a lot of places around the world are trying to steal from the United States. The Japanese, the Brazilians, and certainly the Chinese are trying to take this manufacturing business from the United States. We are the center of business aviation and of the construction of these planes for the world. As you might guess, it is a high-wage, high-skill manufacturing field. It is a great business. Consequently, you have a number of other competitors trying to break into this field at the same time our Government is talking down this business in the United States. The workers in my State who are making these great quality aircraft are saying: Just don't talk bad about us.

I have some other pictures I wish to show you of other people in this business. I want individuals to be able to see this. Behind every discussion, you have the people who make the aircraft. Most people who see this aircraft probably say there is probably somebody well-to-do inside. But more likely it is an engineer, a salesperson or a technician. These are the people building it. This is a Hawker 4000. It is a great aircraft that came out. I will show another aircraft. These are made in Wichita, with a lot of suppliers from the entire region and the country that are going into making these aircraft. These are some of the volunteers, the employees working here, volunteering in the community and this is from the Christmas season and this is soccer. Here are some of their products. I will show another one as well, so people can get an idea of who all is involved in this picture. This is the rollout of an aircraft, a Cessna. This is the celebration of the rollout of the first Sovereign jet. You can see in the picture the people involved in this.

I hope my colleagues will take note that when they use a cheap shot to say we should not have these guys using business aircraft, 90 percent of your airports would not be accessible if people were not using these. These are experts getting to various operations. The corporations would be far less efficient, and they would lose the connection for people to be able to make it to medical services that are critical in some places in the country. There is a lot of good this business does, and it is a business dominated by the United States. We need to support it, not hurt it.

Finally, on an amendment I hope comes up on a separate issue in the omnibus bill, there is a sunsetting of the DC scholarship program. I raise the point to my colleagues that this has been a very successful program, with a strong support base from the people who are using it and a desire to continue to use it. I think we ought to continue it rather than sunset this particular program.

In the omnibus bill, the opportunity scholarship program is sunsetted unless there is reauthorization that takes place. Hopefully, that will occur this year, and reauthorization will occur.

Listen to who is participating in this program, and if it is sunsetted, who cannot continue to participate. The average annual income of the people participating was around $22,800, far below the eligibility level for this program, which is 185 percent of the Federal poverty level or $39,000. The actual number is $22,736, and that is the average annual income of the people participating. Just over 1,700 students are participating in the program. They are trying to get into schools that are better for their kids because the DC Public Schools have not served them well.

The DC Public Schools' per pupil expenditure is the highest in the country at $15,000. The DC class size is one of the lowest in the country; it is a 14-to-1 student to teacher ratio. Yet reading scores continue to languish near or at the bottom of national assessment in the Nation. Recent data shows that 69 percent of fourth graders in the DC public schools are reading below basic levels. DC students ranked last in the Nation in both SAT and ACT scores. Forty-two percent of DC students drop out of school compared to 31 percent nationwide.

People fudge with figures and say it doesn't mean this or that, but what you have are 1,700-plus students who have opted to use a scholarship to get into a private school that they are very happy with, that they are performing well in, and that the parents are happy with, rather than the DC Public School System that, by and large, is not serving students well, and the longer you stay in that system, the poorer you are doing.

Most representatives, Congressmen and Senators, who have children and grandchildren in DC don't send their children to public schools. As a matter of fact, I don't know if anybody in this body does. Yet we consign people who don't have the income ability to get out of the DC public system into a school system that has failed students. A number of efforts are being made to change this system. I applaud the efforts by the mayor's office and the superintendent of schools, Michelle Rhee. But if you are in the system, these changes are taking time to make and you don't have time when you are going through the first, second, third, and fourth grades. Each year you are losing ground.

Here is a group of students who have found a way to get into a better situation. We should not take that away. It is wrong for us to take that away. I know they believe it is wrong to take that away. I urge my colleagues to not let this program be sunsetted but to reestablish it. I would like to see it expanded so more students could take advantage of it as well.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I appreciate the debate on several key

amendments. I also want to recognize my colleague from California and her strong support--indeed, key position--on the voucher program, the DC scholarship program that she has been one of the primary architects of and wants to get measurables on it. It is in the subcommittee on appropriations on which I serve, and she has been a key person on that. It is my hope we can work that out, whether it is going to be at a later time for reauthorization or if we can pass it here today. It is a key program, and I want to recognize what my colleague has done on that historically. That is what I come to the floor to talk about, as well as a couple of other things that are coming up but particularly the DC scholarship program. It is an amendment. We have it appropriated in the appropriations bill, but it is required for reauthorization. It needs to be reauthorized. My hope is that the majority leader will say, yes, we will bring this up for reauthorization and give us floor time to do that. I understand the manager of this bill has said he would bring it up in his committee and do a markup in committee.

I have worked for this program for some period of time. I have worked with the students and parents in this program. They love it. They appreciate the chance to succeed in a failed school system. The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program has received applications from over 7,000 low-income students, has served over 2,600 of these children. We have far more applicants than we do slots. When these students entered the program, they had average math and reading test scores in the bottom third of all test takers. Recent evaluation by the U.S. Department of Education--this goes back to last year--affirms academic gains among scholarship students less than 2 years after receiving a scholarship. Last year, after less than 1 year in the program, two subgroups of students, representing 83 percent of participating students, showed positive results in math, and both years showed overwhelming parental satisfaction. Parents like it. Students are doing better. It is working.

I certainly wish to salute Mayor Fenty and DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee for making education reform and support for this program something important in the District. They made this a high priority.

Certainly, we have to get the schools functioning in the District of Columbia. This is a piece of it that is working for 1,700 students. We need it reauthorized to be able to continue to move it forward. It would be heartless for us not to do it.

I recognize a number of people have a problem with it on this bill. I understand that. If there is a chance we can get an agreement that the reauthorization would take place later, that would be a wise route to go, and then follow through regular order. But this one is working and is working well. It is being well received by parents and students. It has an odd sort of support base where it has both left and right. It has a lot of people in a low-income situation supporting it. It is one of those pieces of legislation that have a broad base of support ideologically and practically. People want to see it moving forward and have it succeed as an overall program. I am very hopeful this Congress can do that.

Two other quick points. One is coming up on the fairness doctrine that will be considered. The fairness doctrine, to educate my colleagues--I am sure everybody is familiar with it--was promulgated by the FCC in 1949 to ensure that contrasting viewpoints would be presented on radio and television.

In 1985, the FCC began the process of repealing the doctrine after concluding that it actually resulted in broadcasters limiting coverage of controversial issues of public importance.

Now we are hearing from some voices saying this doctrine should be put back in place. I urge colleagues to not do that. This isn't the way for us to get a good discussion going in the public marketplace. Indeed, the results in the past, and I believe today, would be that the doctrine would actually result in less, not more, broadcasting of important issues to the public. Airing controversial issues would subject broadcasters to regulatory burdens and potentially severe liabilities. They simply would say: We will not put anything on.

Just think about the changing landscape in broadcast radio and television that has taken place since 1949. These numbers are startling. In 1949, there were 51 television stations in the country and 2,500 radio stations. Maybe a lot of people wish we would go back to that era of less media, but we will not. In 1958, there were 1,200 television stations and 9,800 radio stations. Today, there are 1,800 television stations and 14,000 radio stations. There is simply no scarcity to justify content mandates such as the fairness doctrine that would be a regulatory nightmare for radio and television stations. Plus, we have all the new media, social networking, and individual citizen access to information on the Internet that does not warrant this being put back into place.

Finally, to comment on the second amendment rights, the Supreme Court, in a historic ruling, has found that second amendment rights apply to the individual, and that applies to individuals across the country, that applies to individuals in the District of Columbia. I think those should be continued and guaranteed and supported by this body as well. I think it would be appropriate for us to support that and support that in this legislation.

Madam President, in conclusion, I would like to have printed in the Record two editorials in agreement from two publications that frequently do not agree. One is from the Wall Street Journal and the other is from the Washington Post. Both are in support of the DC voucher program, saying it works--it works for kids, it works for parents--and is something that should be continued. I have never had printed in the Record before editorials from those two publications at the same time agreeing on the same topic, particularly in education. I think what it says is that this one is working and should be continued.

So I ask unanimous consent that the editorials be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this is the largest spending bill ever to be voted on. It will probably be passed by this body. It has been done in the most rushed fashion that we have ever done a spending bill. It is the least bipartisan ever. Not a single Republican in the House voted for this bill; nine Democrats voted against it.

Unfortunately, in conference, the bad parts of the bill got bigger and the good parts got smaller. We are left with a spending bill of gigantic proportions and a stimulus package that is small, by any measure.

I will point out a few historical numbers. We have had stimulus packages in the past, and we have needed them. We need one now. We have never, in the history of the Republic, had a stimulus package over the size of 1\1/2\ percent of GDP. That is the biggest we have ever done in the history of the Republic. This stimulus spending bill is 5.5 percent of the GDP of the entire country. It is huge--more than three times larger than any we have ever done.

To give perspective, we did a stimulus package in 2008 in the amount of $152 billion. This is $800 billion. In 2001, it was $38 billion. That seems small by today's standards. This one is 5\1/2\ percent of GDP. If you look at the actual tax cuts, there are things in the tax cuts I think are good. There are other things in spending I think are good, but they should not be in a stimulus bill. They should go through the regular order in a spending package.

We will have the omnibus spending bill after the break. That will be hundreds of billions of dollars, and people can measure that. But the tax cut piece of this bill that is probably going to be stimulative-- and I would support as being stimulative--is a total of $76 billion, which is 9.6 percent of the bill. Many of the tax cuts in the bill are actually spending through the Tax Code or an AMT fix that will not be stimulative, which most people regarded as that will be fixed and they are not going to alter economic activity based on that. You are left with $76 billion in tax cuts that would be stimulative. As I said, there are things in there I like. I congratulate the majority on some of those tax cuts that are in it--the issue on first-time home buyers. We have done that in Washington, DC. It was helpful in stimulating the housing market here. I think it will stimulate the market across the country. Wind energy is in here that will help our Plains States--the Senator from South Dakota, myself, and many others. This will help in wind energy, a key growth area for us. I am supportive of that. I think that is important. We got a piece in here about deductibility of State taxes on purchases of new automobiles in 2009. That will have a stimulative effect. I think it will be small. There is bonus depreciation for a big industry in my State, aircraft, that will have a stimulative effect. It will be positive. All of those I support and I applaud the majority side for that.

The sum total of those altogether is less than 10 percent of the whole package. Instead, we are left with this gargantuan spending bill that is 5\1/2\ percent of the economy, which we cannot afford. It will not be stimulative. It will a be highly speculative Government bubble that we are creating.

At the end of the day, the last and biggest number in this whole bill is a number of $12 trillion. That is in the bill and that is what we are growing, what we are setting the debt limit of the country at in this bill. We are raising it to $12 trillion. That is in the bill. The reason we are raising that debt limit to $12 trillion--you guessed it-- it is headed that way. We are getting closer with this bill.

We have come to a very big speculative bubble on housing and consumer credit and a number of other things as well. This speculative bubble led to a lot of housing being built, cars being purchased, and all was fine. But then the bubble burst. Now we are trying to substitute that with a Government speculative bubble. We are going to spend all this Government money and in a speculative, highly leveraged nature, because 100 percent of this is borrowed. That is somehow going to stimulate the economy. It is going to leave that big, massive hole in it.

I am deeply concerned about what this is going to do both in the present and in the near-term future. I hope we can do better. There is a great possibility that we can do better. I think we should.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to join my colleagues and discuss the spending package that will be back in front of us--the $800 billion but, with interest, probably $1.2 trillion, which will be in the package, and it will all be borrowed--every cent of it. We don't have that money presently. So we are going to be borrowing it to do this.

A couple of things strike me. One, we learned last fall--and there is an old saying that is true in government and certainly with individuals as well, which is ``haste makes waste.'' I grew up with that saying. People say, look, if you hurry at this and you don't get it right, you are going to have to do it again. We saw that last fall with TARP. We put in $750 billion because they said we have to do it now and we have to do it fast. But at the end of the day, that haste made waste. The Treasury Department went pillar to post, saying we are going to do this or we are going to do that, and they ended up spending the money. Now we are looking at TARP II and the banks still need help. I have a lot of people back home saying: What happened to the first hundreds of billions of dollars you gave the banks? Haste makes waste. We saw it then.

There is no reason for us to rush to get this wrong on the stimulus package. Yes, we need a stimulus package. My State needs a stimulus package. This country needs it. We need a stimulus package, not a spending bill. If we slow down a little bit--I think we should refer this back to the Committees on Finance and the Appropriations and put a requirement on it that every dollar spent must yield at least $1.50 in economic activity over and above what is spent.

We should make it a stimulus bill, not a spending bill. We have not done that. We are hastily putting this forward. I believe, tragically, we will be wastefully putting it out. There will be a number of programs that can use the funds, I have no doubt about that. But if the target is to get this economy off its knees and moving forward, we have to hit that target and not a multiple set of targets, and not a set of spending targets that are not stimulative in nature.

There is another saying that President Reagan was fond of using, and it was that there is nothing so permanent as a temporary Government program. That was his experience and it has been mine as well. Once something gets started, it is hard to stop, because it gets a constituency built up around it, and people build up their expectations and infrastructure around it. When you go to eliminate it once it has started, it is like, wait a minute, now this has a multiplier impact on a broader cross-section of individuals. That is why there is nothing so permanent as a temporary Government program.

I think that is probably why some people are looking at starting things under the guise of stimulus that are, in actuality, starting new Federal spending programs with the hope that infrastructure builds up around it and in future years, when it goes to be cut, people will say you cannot do this because it will have this multiplier impact. That is the history of the Federal Government and its growth.

According to a CBO analysis, if most of the new spending programs enacted under the proposed stimulus were to become long-term spending programs--and that is our history and what we have seen in the past-- the cost of the

stimulus package would rise to $2.5 trillion over the next decade, and $3.3 trillion if you include interest payments on that debt. We are borrowing every cent. You are looking at long-term spending in the $3.3 trillion category. If you do and you look at a rough outline of this, you are going to move the Federal Government from about 20 percent of the economy, which it has been, up to 25 and possibly 30 percent of the economy. At what time do you come to the tipping point? And that is before you add in the baby boomers retiring and the increased costs in Medicare, and when that baby boomer generation is retired and using the Government programs instead of paying into them. You will get to a tipping point where people cannot afford the tax structure that is needed underneath that. That is not wise for us to do.

In this stimulus bill, we will take the Federal debt in private hands relative to our gross domestic product from below 40 percent of GDP to move it well over 60 percent of GDP. So that will be like saying I have a job and I make $100,000 a year, and I borrowed $40,000 that I am paying on, and now I am going to jump it to $60,000. You are looking at that in this soft economy and saying, is that a smart thing to do? Most people would say, no, that is not the right thing to do. You want to try to stimulate things, not harm them.

Finally is this thought: I don't believe that hastily constructed bills such as this one being sold as stimulative is a plan to help our economy weather this recession. It strikes me as a highly leveraged, speculative bet on larger Government and massive long-term spending as a cure to our economic woes. We have seen what the aftermath of highly leveraged speculative bets can bring. That is what we have gotten into in the first place, where you have had highly speculative leveraged events taking place in the housing market and expanding into credit card use, into automobile loans. A number of homes were bought with 100 or 110 percent borrowing, and they thought the appreciation would pay for that. Those were completely leveraged events. That doesn't bring economic prosperity; it brings bubbles. I don't think you are even going to see that with this one. You are going to see long-term costs. We are going to see speculative debt with the Government using our children as leverage. Is that the way we want to go?

Clearly, the people in my State believe no, and they believe we need a stimulus package, and that we need to work together on a bipartisan package. We should take it through the regular order, through the Appropriations Committee and the Finance Committee, and hold hearings on it, look at what actually works, set a criteria on this. When we had this very rapid, hastily put together TARP legislation--and everybody is mad about that now--we didn't hold hearings on it. We did it quickly and in closed sessions. Out pops the package, and now we are back at it. I think we will be back at this one also if we don't do what we need to do. But only our ammo box will be empty. We are not going to have anything in it, because haste makes waste. We rush out there trying to get it done and we don't work the process and work together on it. We are not going to hit the target and that will be sad for the American public.

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

I agree with my colleagues, Mr. Chairman, that the bill the Senator has brought before us addresses many impending needs. This

matter we are discussing not only addresses a critical matter of national security by creating the capability to develop enough medical countermeasures to treat the U.S. population in the event of a terrorist attack, but it would expand domestic jobs and domestic infrastructure in the biotechnology industry. Like Senator Specter addressed previously, this bill does not identify specific funding for these needs.

I conclude that the best way of addressing these threats is for partnerships between the academic, industry and government sectors. Academically affiliated, privately operated National Centers of Excellence for Flexible Manufacturing of Medical Counter Measures are the answer to developing, sustaining, and integrating our country's biodefense portfolio under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.

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

Mr. President, I wish to make a few comments based upon the hearing we had this morning----

Sorry?

Yield for what?

Yes, I will be happy to.

Mr. President, I believe I have the floor.

Mr. President, as I was stating----

Probably less than 10 minutes.

Mr. President, as I was mentioning, we had a hearing in the Joint Economic Committee this morning on Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers for this past month of January. They are not good, obviously. There are nearly 600,000 job losses taking place. What has happened up until about 3 months ago--the crisis was centered in housing, primarily, as everybody knows. Then it spread out to the rest of the economy. Then we have seen that spread out, make more impact, now getting to unemployment rates that have been rising substantially during those past 3 months.

Obviously, the economy is ailing. Everybody knows that. American families are suffering. But there are two things I want to bring out from this study that I think are a little bit different, and I hope my colleagues are watching these particular items.

There are two sectors in the economy that are still producing jobs. It is in health care, and it is in education. Obviously, we wish they were producing more jobs in those sectors, but the point of the matter they were making and saying is that these two sectors are doing well without stimulus. They are continuing to move on forward.

It would be my hope that as people move forward on this process in the stimulus bill, we would say: Let's target in and focus on the areas that are not creating jobs, that have lost a huge number of jobs, and target much more of our effort there rather than in areas such as health care and education that have continued to produce jobs.

The auto industry--Senator Mikulski and I had an amendment that was adopted that, if this gets to conference, I would hope would be maintained in conference, of taking interest on a new car purchase in 2009 and allowing that interest to be tax deductible. That would be something that would stimulate a sector of the economy that is obviously in great trouble. And while we have limited resources, we need to target it to areas that have difficulty and not areas that are doing relatively well compared to the rest of the economy and do not need stimulus, areas that are performing and look as if they are going to be able to continue to perform. So with the limited resources we have, we have to target and get into those areas that actually need to be stimulated and stimulate the economy in those zones.

I was just reading an article on the front page of the New York Times today. They were talking about Japan's lost decade that a number of people have cited with pretty extensive writing: infrastructure projects that did not produce yield, and then they were left with 10 years of pretty radical Government spending and not much to show for it; and only with global economic activity picking up did the Japanese economy pick up out of that, and then they were left with this towering debt.

Point No. 1 on this issue is that for those sectors performing relatively well--although not great--let's take those stimulus dollars and focus them into areas that are not performing, like in the auto industry or in housing, which is where this started. I think that is a great point we need to do.

The second point on this--we just put out a paper on this on the Republican side of the Joint Economic Committee--is that we need a stimulus, and we need it to be a stimulus, and we need to have some criteria of stimulus. A number of people have studied this and looked at past experiences in this country and other places, and I would simply ask my colleagues, let's make sure to put all of those proposals through a stimulus grid and ask, does it actually produce stimulus, does it actually create jobs, and not have a multiple set of targets taking place of, well, OK, we want to do this in the energy field, we want to do this in the environment field, we want to do this in other fields. All of these are fine objectives, but right now the economy is in this crisis situation, and that is what we have to have as a laser focus.

I have seen too many times around here where we get a multiple set of targets and we do not hit any of them very well. We have one target: We have to get the economy going again. We have one job, and we probably have one bullet the size we are talking about with this one. We can only hit one target with this, and we need to hit that target.

In looking at these tax multipliers, President Obama's Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers has done studies on this and found that the tax multiplier from tax cuts is nearly 3 to 1--every $1 of tax cuts producing $3 of GDP activity. I have other papers--and I am going to submit those for the Record--showing the efforts for stimulus packages that are focused on Government spending have as low a yield as $0.33 per $1 of economic activity spent on them. We cannot at all afford to have that low of a yield on a Government spending package. We have this from studies from Robert Hall of Stanford and Susan Woodward, the chair of Sand Hill Econometrics, and a Harvard study by Robert Barro, showing a multiplier of 0.8 in some of the Government spending.

My point in saying all this is I think there is a stimulus package to be had out there that has 75, 80 votes for it from the Senate. I think we have to slow up and get that package that gets that number of votes and have one criteria for it: Does it stimulate the economy? And if it does not have a multiplier of at least 1.5--I think it should be 2, but if it does not have a multiplier of at least 1.5, we should not be doing it because what if we are 6 months down the road and this spreads into another sector or we have more banking problems, and you need resources again, and you have already piled up this level of debt, and you are going to add more to it, and you do not have another bullet in the chamber to be able to do it?

A simple taking of a couple more weeks to get this hit on the target--it is far more important that we hit the target, that we have 2 or 3 more weeks to target in on it. We have good models, and there is good will to do this. The pleas from these hearings we had this morning on the unemployment rate say we have to hit the targets and the sectors that need it, not the targets and the sectors that do not need it as much as in some of these manufacturing pieces and some of the construction pieces that are there.

Our economy is ailing, American families are suffering. They are looking to us to help get the economy moving again without dooming future generations to decades of economic stagnation and decreased opportunity. Just like the patient who counts on his doctor to prescribe the right medication when he is ill, the American people are counting on us to deliver the right medicine--medicine that will help the economy recover.

I am concerned that we are on the verge of prescribing the wrong medicine for the economy. The medicine we are on the verge of prescribing--a permanent and significant increase in the size of government--may well leave our economy buried under a mountain of debt with no appreciable impact on improving the long-term health of our economy and little actual short-term ``stimulus.''

Time and again during this debate, Members of this body have taken to this floor to proclaim that tax cuts don't stimulate the economy and create jobs. We have been told that spending is more effective at stimulating

economic growth than reducing tax burdens as though that were settled economic fact.

However, the multipliers cited are more the result of how the macro models are constructed than they are from any statistical analysis of the data. These models are built upon the assumption that spending by the Government is more effective in stimulating the economy than tax relief to individuals and their families. When you construct an economic model with assumptions that ensure large multiplier effects from Government spending--guess what--you get large effects from Government spending: multiplier in, by assumption, multiplier out.

But the consumer doesn't necessarily march to the tune of an ``omniscient government,'' and might save some of the money instead of spending it all. Well, if we think that an American family might save half of any relief we give them, why not double the amount we give them and get the type of multiplier effects we want. Let the American people, and not the Government, choose. I have a basic problem with the basic notion that the Government is a better allocator of resources than American families. Yet, we hear these multipliers bandied about as though they represented settled economic fact.

That simply is not the case. In fact, there is a good deal of recent economic research that analyzes data as opposed to building models on Keynesian assumptions.

I want to briefly cite a couple of examples of that research-- research that looks at historical data and experience, not results produced by theoretical models of the economy.

First, and some of my colleagues have alluded to this, Christina Romer, President Obama's Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors and her husband, David Romer of the University of California at Berkeley, found a tax multiplier of about three--a dollar of tax cut raises the gross domestic product, GDP, by about three dollars.

In a recent paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Andrew Mountford of the University of London and Harald Uhlig of the University of Chicago, evaluated the effectiveness of three policy options. Let me quote from their findings:

We find that deficit-financed tax cuts work best among

these three scenarios to improve GDP, with a maximal . . .

multiplier of five dollars of total additional GDP per each

dollar of the total cut in government revenue five years

after the shock.

They found a maximal multiplier of 5.33 after 14 quarters for a deficit-financed tax cut. What did they find the maximum result of deficit-financed Government spending was? Mr. President, 0.65-- after one quarter.

Robert Hall of Stanford and Susan Woodward, the chair of Sand Hill Econometrics, find a general Government spending multiplier of about one. Robert Barro of Harvard recently noted in the Wall Street Journal that his research showed a 0.8 multiplier for war-time spending. When he attempted to estimate directly the multiplier associated with peacetime Government spending, he got a number insignificantly different from zero.

While the other side is fond of criticizing the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, they often forget that they produced revenues that were greater than estimated by CBO before they were passed. There is no question that private investment and the jobs market improved dramatically and quickly after the passage of the 2003 tax cuts. Capital repatriated to this country from abroad skyrocketed when we had a 1-year reduction in the tax on earnings brought back to this country from abroad.

I want to impress upon my colleagues that these multipliers that are cited to support broad increases in spending are not supported by much solid academic research. They are supported by models whose assumptions largely drive the result.

Now I want to turn briefly to one aspect of this spending bill that needs some emphasis. The proponents talk about creating jobs. This bill spends large amounts of money on worthwhile programs such as education and healthcare. This morning, the BLS reported that payroll employment in the education and health services sectors increased by 54,000 during January 2009. Payroll employment in those sectors has registered positive growth for 52 consecutive months. During that period, payroll employment in those sectors has increased by 2,164,000. Over the past year, payroll employment in the education and health services sectors has increased by 530,000.

It is not the education and health services sectors that need stimulus to create jobs; it is already creating them. We should be targeting sectors that have suffered severe declines, like the motor vehicle and parts subsector where employment has declined by more than 20% in just the past year and 40% since January 2001. We should be looking at data to target incentives for enterprise to create jobs that are permanent and part of private-sector activity, not Government.

We need to also be careful to avoid reinflating the bubble. The construction sector lost 111,000 jobs in January and has seen 935,000 jobs lost over 19 consecutive months of decline. Yet even with that decline, construction-sector jobs are within 1 percent of January 2001 prehousing-bubble levels. We need to make sure that we aren't simply creating temporary Government funded jobs that will vanish and leave American families in the same situation they find themselves in today.

Lastly, I want to again address this concern over the fact that consumers might save tax reductions or equivalently pay down debt. This bill takes the approach that consumers won't do the right thing and rush out and spend the money. What is wrong with a family making the decision to improve its balance sheet rather than recklessly spend what they might not be able to afford? The household and nonprofit sectors lost $7 trillion in net worth between the third quarter of 2007 and the third quarter of 2008. We have poured hundreds of billions into helping banks improve their balance sheets, but when a taxpayer chooses to do what he believes is best for his family, somehow we manage to criticize that.

Rushing to pass a bill because of the fear that support is slowly but surely fading under the face of pressure from the American people is a foolhardy exercise. We should act with due speed, but not haste. Let's take this bill down, send it back to committee, and focus on creating a bill that will stimulate the economy and does not use the current crisis to shoehorn permanent expansions of Government programs into a stimulus bill under the guise of stimulus.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to speak in favor of the Mikulski-Brownback amendment in the limited amount of time we have.

There has been a lot of criticism on the overall bill from my side of the aisle. A lot of it is merited. I really do think this has been put together far too hurriedly, and it would be much better to follow the business of having committee hearings. In the Appropriations Committee, we had no hearings on this bill, and now we are moving forward with a $1 trillion bill. I don't think that makes much sense. I don't think it is wise. I don't think, looking at the economic problems we are looking at that could extend over a period of time, that it is wise to spend $1 trillion without having really thought about it.

Be that as it may, the amendment I am talking about and supporting with Senator Mikulski from Maryland is one of the sort of targeted pieces of the legislation that I believe really could deliver lead on the target, and that is why I am cosponsoring this amendment.

It would seem that one of the key things that has been emblematic of this recession we are in is the lack of purchasing of durable goods; i.e., things such as cars have just fallen off precipitously, and therefore the jobs supporting that industry have fallen off precipitously. Here is the situation, what we are seeing.

This very simple amendment would make interest payments on car loans and sales excise taxes on cars tax deductible for new cars purchased this year. So you make that interest payment tax deductible, the excise taxes tax deductible, just this year. On an average car selling for $25,000, this provision would save the purchaser about $1,500. That is the proverbial lead on the target, talking to the consumer and saying: If you are in the market for a car, you ought to do it this year because you have a one-time benefit of $1,500, which is significant, which is going to help you. We think this is an amendment which will actually end up moving car sales, helping that industry, helping the automobile manufacturers and the whole industry of dealerships move us forward.

This is the sort of spending we need to see taking place because the lack of economic activity is profound and widespread. We have seen it particularly in the auto industry, and the auto industry is spread out amongst a number of States. My State has a major GM plant and suppliers in it as well. They are not selling any cars. You can't operate a place very long that way.

This is a very targeted, time-specific provision. The provisions we have talked about need to be temporary, targeted, and really hit the measures, and this one does all of that.

I wish to also point out that in this amendment--I know some people on the Finance Committee are looking at it and saying this is not something, perhaps, that we have supported or put forward. I would ask people in this body to just look around at their own States and the car sales and the businesses they have and the auto plants they have and see if this is something that can really help those auto plants move forward and get some sales.

So I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

I reserve the remainder of the time for my colleague who has put forward this amendment if she desires to speak any further for it while we have that time.

I yield the floor.

I welcome my colleague from New Mexico, Senator Udall, a great name in U.S. politics. I am sure he will do a great job in this body, and I appreciate his comments talking about green expansion and what we can do to create jobs and opportunities. We certainly need to do that, and I welcome him.

I rise to speak on the stimulus bill in front of us. Our economy is certainly in great difficulty. The American people are suffering. Look at the numbers. They don't tell what is in people's hearts or what is happening to their pocketbooks, but it does paint a bleak picture. Real gross domestic product declined 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter this past year. Consumer spending, which is nearly 70 percent of the economy, was down 3.5 percent. We had weak consumer spending, weak exports, weak investment. That translates into a bad job market. I don't think anybody questions but that we are in difficult economic times.

For the past 12 months, the economy has lost nearly 2.6 million payroll jobs. From Friday's forecast, the estimates ahead are looking at another 500,000-plus jobs lost during the month of January. Ouch. That is bad. It is hard. It is difficult. The economy is in very difficult shape, and people are suffering.

I wish to see President Obama succeed in helping to move the economy forward. I wish to see Congress be a constructive part of the process. I believe we can do both. If we could slow down a little bit and work together, we could come up with an economic stimulus package that could get 80 votes out of this body. Unfortunately, the bill in front of us is neither prudent nor responsible. I don't think it is going to get us out of the hole we are in. It just digs the hole deeper. There is an old saying that if you are in a hole, stop digging. Unfortunately, the bill we are considering resembles too much the one that passed the House of Representatives, ignores that advice, and supplies bigger shovels to dig the hole deeper and faster. That is not the way we should go.

My hope and prayer for this week is that we will work as a body; if we can't work as a body and work together to fashion something on a bipartisan basis that actually stimulates the economy, that we simply send this back to the committee to start over again. I am on the Appropriations Committee. We got the bill on our side 24 hours ahead of voting on it in committee. The committee held no hearings on this bill whatsoever. We voted within 1 hour 40 minutes to appropriate and spend $350 billion, basically creating another fiscal year between 2009 and 2010 and then pouring a wad of money into a number of different segments without rhyme or reason for how it would stimulate the economy. That is what gets everybody so upset about this bill. It is spending a lot of money, and it is not going to stimulate the economy.

This notion about what we want to do is just get a lot of money out the door or maybe use a crisis to spend money in places that people wanted to do for some time may be more of what is at stake. The White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, stated:

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean

by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you

could not do before.

Unfortunately, what I think is in this package is too much of that idea, that we have a crisis, let's use this crisis to put a lot of money into different places that we wanted to all along to get it out the door and get it passed. You can do it that way, but that doesn't stimulate the economy. That stimulates the Government and Government spending and expands the Government to the point that some economists are looking at the Federal Government becoming 30 percent of the economy, where normally we run at about 20 percent of the economy. You are looking at doing that on a permanent basis. We cannot afford that. We particularly cannot afford that, given the first wave of the baby boomers who retire in large measure by 2012. Three years from now, you start hitting that big pool of retirees getting Medicare and Social Security instead of paying into it. At the same time, you have ratcheted up your size of Government under this crisis mode to the point that you could get a mammoth sized Federal Government that cannot be sustained on the backs of taxpayers, under the idea of you don't want to waste a good crisis, you want to use it to spend in areas that you wish you could have all along.

What these packages deliver, unfortunately, is an increasing amount of debt and a plethora of big Government spending increases masquerading as a fiscal stimulus. It is a grab bag of different spending programs with the hope that it would somehow chase the recession away. Instead, it adds to the debt. This bill will cost American taxpayers close to $900 billion. That is on top of an already projected deficit of $1.2 trillion.

It is also interesting that when President Clinton came into office, he put forward an economic stimulus package that was defeated as being too big and too costly and that one was priced at $16 billion. We are looking at $900 billion. That was $16 billion. It was too much and too expensive. It added to the debt too much at a time that we had a difficult economy as well.

Here, it appears, billions of dollars are being spent on all kinds of programs that should be addressed in the normal appropriations process. We have a process, and we can use that, but now we are putting in money, and people have heard this litany: $400 million for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, $6 billion for clean water revolving funds, $6 billion to convert Federal buildings to ``green buildings,'' $1 billion for the 2010 census, $400 million to replace the Social Security Administration's National Computer Center. Now, all this may be fine--$600 million for new vehicles for the Government, $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts--all of it may be fine, but that is not a stimulus package. That is a spending package. That is an appropriations bill that should go through in the normal process.

Economists and members of the President's economic team have stressed the need for funds to be targeted, timely, and temporary. However, over $250 billion of the spending in this bill is for income-transfer payments that will put the Federal Government on the hook for long-term spending as far as the eye can see--and just when the baby boomers start to retire in 2012 in large numbers. That is not wise.

We will also hear some rhetoric about how spending is a more effective means of stimulating the economy than tax reductions. I do not agree with that. I do not believe that. I do not think economic theory nor the practice of what we have seen in the past supports it.

Research by the President's own Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors suggests $3 of economic activity per $1 reduction in taxes. The economy needs some gas in the tank, not sugar. We should focus on creating an environment and incentives for businesses and individuals to invest and create real jobs, not illusory jobs created by a big Government handout that will not be permanent in a competitive global economy and will load too much burden on future generations by debt and taxes. We should provide real and permanent tax reduction accompanied by truly timely, targeted, and temporary spending. I could support an expansion for roads and bridges because we need the roads and bridges. That is not what is in this grab bag.

I would like to list another example of a tax cut that we could do that could put as much and would probably put as much as $545 billion into the U.S. economy--$545 billion. This is from an article written by Alan Sinai last week. It is something we have done in the past, where we have lowered the taxes on repatriation of foreign-earned dollars. The last time we did that, we reduced the corporate tax rate of 5.25 percent for 1 year. We brought back into the United States nearly $360 billion of money.

That is money that is earned by companies such as Hill's pet food in Topeka, KS, which has pet food plants in Europe and Asia. They make money there, but they cannot bring it home because they are subject to this 5.25 corporate tax rate. So they leave it there. But for a 1-year time period, you could take that down to 1 percent, or a low number, and they will say: I am going to bring it home. Then it puts gas in the tank and not sugar in the

tank. That is a tax cut that will help us. This is capital our economy needs and needs badly. I cannot see a single rational reason why we would not take action to encourage American companies to bring capital home.

Let me close by saying there are a number of worthwhile spending programs that need to be addressed but not under the guise of fiscal stimulus. We do need to address infrastructure issues, and I could support a substantial amount of infrastructure spending, but the lag time on these is difficult and it is long. On the other hand, there is defense spending that could take place even now and the pipeline is not as long and, importantly, that is money we are already scheduled to spend. It simply would be advancing the timetable, not expanding the amount.

My point is, as I started off, if we would spend a little more time here and in committee and work together, we could get 80 votes for this bill. If this bill is forced through this week and we end up with the size of Government of 30 percent of GDP, then this will be mostly on a partisan-line vote. That is not the way we should start. It is not the way we should go.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Florida for raising this issue. This has come up recently as President Obama has changed the Mexico City policy so that the United States can fund abortions and groups that promote abortions overseas. This, of course, was not the policy of the United States in the last administration for the last 8 years. It was prior to that in the Clinton administration. And prior to that in the Reagan and Bush years, it was not the policy. This has been going back and forth for some time.

I think it is pretty clear as far as the U.S. public that they do not like the idea of us funding abortions overseas. Some people may tolerate it here at home and say, OK, that is something I will just live with, but they do not like the idea of our taxpayers' dollars going to fund abortions overseas. And at a time when we are staring at $10 trillion in debt going to $12 trillion, with a stimulus package of lots of different items, including some that do not seem particularly stimulative, this does not make any sense to people. Then you go overseas, and to a lot of places, it does not make any sense, either, as Senator Martinez mentioned, that in Latin American countries, African countries that are very strongly pro-life, in many cases, we are supporting policies or groups or institutions that are promoting abortion.

What is going on with the United States? I thought you guys stood for life and for the dignity of the individual, and then the United States is funding this? This has been back and forth, a long seesaw battle, within our overall discussion here. I simply point out that this does not help us in foreign policy. This certainly does not help the budget deficit or the debt. This certainly does not stimulate the economy. There is no major policy reason to do this.

Some people will argue that we should be supporting this policy and that this is something we ought to do to help people overseas. I think most people overseas would much rather have us put this money in AIDS prevention work, in malaria work, in working on neglected diseases that affect so many people overseas that have a broad basis of support in the United States and there, rather than this policy, which is such a controversial, negative policy that is being promoted and pushed and seen that way in so many places around the world. This does not help us out at all.

Then we look at some countries such as China where situations arise of forced abortions and forced sterilizations continuing to come out in the media. We have family planning support there, in places where forced abortions and forced sterilizations still take place. Our money is associated with some of these efforts in different places around the world. People do not like that policy. No matter how pro-choice they are, they do not want us associated with that, and they do not see any reason for us to be involved in it.

One can look at different things where one is on the choice or life spectrum. I am pro-life. I am strongly pro-life. I believe life has dignity from the very beginning to the very end and that it should be protected. Then we add this into the mix, using U.S. taxpayers' dollars, dollars that we approve here, dollars from all the United States to promote something that a whole bunch of people in the United States completely disagree with on a whole variety of grounds.

I ask my colleagues to back up for a second and say: Aren't there better places for us to put this money if we are looking to do something that is life-affirming and helping people who are in difficulty? There are much better places we can certainly agree on, and I listed several of those on which we could agree and we could work together in this supposedly postpartisan period we are in, that we could work together on these issues. I pushed a number of them, and I can tell you for sure we have a need on neglected diseases in Third World countries and that a little bit of interest and focus on our part yields a whole bunch of saved lives. People dealing with malaria has been a big one. But we need to go on to diseases such as elephantiasis, sleeping sickness--there is a series of them that would build up a lot of good will by the United States overseas, that would increase our standing in places around the world, that there would be no controversy whatsoever associated with but instead would be wholeheartedly embraced both here and overseas.

For these reasons, I do not think it is wise for us to reengage with groups that promote abortion overseas. I ask my colleagues not to do that but to support the Martinez amendment and say to themselves: Let's not do this. Let's do this better, let's do this together. Let's support the Martinez amendment.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, today is a sad day. We had a wonderful inauguration a couple of days ago, phenomenal crowd, a great celebration, and a peaceful transfer of power took place. It was amazing. I was there on the front steps of the Capitol watching it, participating in it, excited about the first African-American President of the United States; an amazing thing to take place within one generation of Martin Luther King's marches and what he did in this country. My State has been a big part of all of those things and what has taken place. Today is a sad day, though. Today, 36 years ago, the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade banned all impediments to having an abortion in the United States and said abortion is a constitutional right that the individual carries in the United States and that it cannot be infringed upon, cannot be limited. It did later limit some of that and gave a few places where the State could act to limit--most recently partial-birth abortions, where the Supreme Court has recently ruled that the State can limit partial-birth abortions. And there were a few minor areas in the Roe decision, but overall it made a constitutional right to abortion. That was 36 years ago.

The reason I say it is a sad day is there have been roughly--and nobody knows for sure--40 million children who are not here today because of that decision. It ratcheted up, escalated up substantially the number of abortions in the United States that took place after that. It moved forward to the point that most estimates are that one in four pregnancies in the United States will end in an abortion and a child dying. And it even gets worse from that point. When you look at children with special needs, such as Down syndrome children, the number is somewhere between 80 to 90 percent do not make it here, as I have stated on this floor previously, as they are aborted and they are killed because of their genetic type. They get a test, the amniocentesis test, which says they have an extra chromosome, and generally because of that extra chromosome they are aborted and they are killed, even though the fact is, if they would get here on the ground, life and the prospects for a Down syndrome child now have never been better. Life expectancy, quality of life issues, if that is your measure, have never been better than they are now. Plus, the families who have a Down syndrome child look at those children as the centerpiece of the family, an amazing person. Yet somewhere between 80 to 90 percent of these amazing people never make it here, and that is because of what happened 36 years ago this day in the Supreme Court of the United States.

That is why there will be hundreds of thousands, primarily young people, marching today in Washington, DC. They will get no mention. There will be very little press, if any, outside of some of the religious press that will be there. But outside of that, they will get virtually no coverage. There will be hundreds of thousands of young people here marching and asking for a change and something different, something that I hope President Barack Obama would embrace. He was empowered on the legs of young people and young enthusiastic minds looking for change, looking for something different. That same young generation is the most pro-life demographic in our country today. That age group that is below the age of 25 is the most pro life. They are looking for something different. They are looking for a sanctity of life. They are looking for us to protect all innocent human life. They are looking for us to work to make all human life better, whether that is a child in the womb or a child in Darfur. Whether it is somebody in prison or somebody in poverty, they want that person's life to be better.

That is a beautiful pro-life statement. It is one that we need to see mirrored. It is one we need to see acted upon. It is one we need to see happen, rather than the repealing of things such as Mexico City language which says we can now use taxpayer dollars to fund groups overseas that work and support and fund abortion. Yet apparently that is what the Obama administration is going to do, it is going to repeal Mexico City language and say that taxpayer dollars can now be used for these purposes that most Americans disagree with. That is not the change people are looking for. Those are chains to the past. Those are things that bind us to a culture that doesn't affirm life, that doesn't see it as sacred and beautiful in all its places and dignity in every human life no matter who it is. Those are ones that say quality of life is your measure, as to whether you should be the recipient of such a gift of life.

It is a sad day. It is a tough day. I hope it is a day that doesn't go on as far as our having many future annual recognitions of the Roe v. Wade decision but, rather that in the future we will be a life- affirming place and that we will say, in a dignified culture every life at every place in every way is beautiful and it is unique and it is amazing and it is something that should be celebrated and it should not be killed. When we move to that, that will be real change. That is the sort of change that people can look at and say, that is what I want my country to be like.

You know, the sadness doesn't stop with the death of the children. We are now seeing more and more studies coming out about the impact on people who have abortions. In August this past year, 100 scientists, medical and mental health professionals, released a joint statement that abortion does indeed hurt women. The Supreme Court of the United States concluded some women do regret their abortions and can suffer severe depression and loss of

self-esteem. These professionals have officially confirmed these facts. They say the number of women adversely affected by abortions cannot be overlooked by the medical community.

In looking at this in our own family situation, every one of our children is incredibly precious. If I think of one of them not being there, it is one of those stunning sort of thoughts of despair, and yet to think of the 40 million who aren't here and of the stunning amount of despair there must be in a number of people's lives and hearts as they think, I made that decision fast, or I did that under a lot of pressure, or I didn't think I had another choice. But other choices did exist. People want to adopt, and people want to adopt Down syndrome children. As Ted Kennedy and I recognized, in my bill we got passed last year on prenatally and postnatally diagnosed diseases, which established a list of people who wanted to adopt Down syndrome children or children with special needs--some people look at a child in that situation and say, I can't handle that, and I understand. But there are people who believe they can handle it and they want to take a child and raise it.

So I hope as we look forward, we will work together and say, this is something that shouldn't be happening the way it is in the United States and we want to make it different. I hope we will recognize these young people who are marching out here now, who are hoping for change, and understand the change they want is quite valuable, it is beautiful, it is life affirming, and that ultimately it is going to happen.

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

Mr. President, I am rising to speak in favor of the disapproval resolution. I think we should disapprove the use of the TARP funds, and I will outline why to my colleagues and point out the reasons and give a little bit of history on this as well.

I think it is interesting the Treasury Department came here on Saturday, September 22, and said: We have to do this. We have to have $700 billion to save the financial institutions across the United States. We have to do it, and we have to do it now. There were zero hearings on the $700 billion. Now, normally, around here you would not spend $7 million, let alone $7 billion or $70 billion, without a hearing. We did $700 billion without a hearing, and in a rush and in a push and people saying: We have to do this now or we risk going into a Great Depression.

This bill passed. Now, my phone was ringing during that period of time. My guess is the Presiding Officer's phone was ringing during that period of time. Kansans were hot and mad and upset and strongly opposed. I think at one point in time we had 2,000 calls against and 40 for the bill. There was strong opposition. They do not like the idea of giving the money to the people who made the mistakes and did the wrongdoing in the first place, and it was our taxpayer money. Then, what is in the bill--the initial bill was a 30-page bill.

Now, it expanded some after that, but we did not have a hearing process. We did not have a review process. It was: We have to do this; we have to do this now, period. It went on through the Congress, and it passed. We had two tranches: the first $350 billion and a second $350 billion, which I argued at the time as well, the second $350 billion should require an affirmative vote of Congress. I mean, this is $350 billion we are talking about. Instead, all we could get was this disapproval process which the President can veto. Then it has to come back here for a two-thirds vote. So you, in essence, have to get two- thirds of the Congress to disapprove. Nonetheless, I think we should disapprove this proposal, this bill, this additional $350 billion in funding.

Now, if the initial proposal was OK, look, we have to have it, we have to have it now to support and to keep the financial institutions going and properly functioning in the country--that money has been spent and the financial institutions are operating. Certainly, there is a lot of distress, but they are operating and they are operating effectively.

So the idea that you have to do it and you have to do it now to maintain a fiscal financial system operating is no longer there. That is one reason.

The second one: We ought to spend some time thinking about this and whether we want to do this because this has ended up being a rather large slush fund. It has been moving from various targets. Initially it was said this was going to be used to buy troubled assets. Then that seemed like it was going to take too long, so it was put into stock, into financial institutions to strengthen their bottom line.

So there was no real target given, and it was moved and sloshed around. Even on auto bailout, at the end of the day, do we want that loose of a design model on $350 billion? I would have to argue then, as I do now, no. We don't want that loose of a situation.

Then there is the matter of oversight on this particular issue. We have an oversight panel that has reported that Treasury has ``failed to address a number of questions asked by the panel itself,'' our panel, the congressional panel, in its first report. I don't see enough transparency in the manner in which TARP is being executed, and I certainly don't see enough in terms of what contingency plans Treasury has in mind to use these additional funds to grant carte blanche spending of $350 billion that could range from troubled assets, stock in banks, an auto bailout. And if that is your initial model of where you can spend it, then where else could we spend the additional $350 billion? Is this on credit card bailouts, on student loans, on another industry? It looks as though we don't know.

Quoting from the oversight panel, they were saying that this money, as I mentioned earlier, has failed to address a number of the concerns that were previously raised. Indeed, if anything, I think it could be argued that the haphazard manner in which these funds were spent has increased the financial stress and has injected uncertainty into a financial system and an economy already gripped by fear. Almost the very uncertainty and the moving back and forth said to the broader economy and to the global community: We don't know what we need to do. It helped to spread fear rather than to calm the market situation.

We need to have a calm discussion about this $350 billion. It is very difficult for me to go back home and say to my constituents: We approved an additional $350 billion and we are not exactly sure where it is going to be spent, when they were flaming mad about this being approved in the first place.

While additional TARP funding is not necessarily $350 billion of Government spending, I am not convinced it represents a well planned and executed investment for taxpayers. Many will say this is an investment, not spending. I am not sure this has been well designed or thought through of what the investment is. Indeed, it seems as though it changes by the day. The Congressional Oversight Panel says it still does not know what banks are doing with TARP money already used. So here is our own oversight panel saying that we don't know for sure what the banks are doing with the TARP money they have already gotten, and we are going to approve another $350 billion.

Without transparency about funding already committed to TARP and with only vague notions about how additional TARP funding would be used, I cannot vote to allow additional TARP funds to be released. Without more transparency and information on plans with a potentially large taxpayer cost, I do not see the merits in allowing additional TARP funds to move forward.

Those are not simply my thoughts. If you pick up the phone in my office, if you travel across my State--and I would say across much of the country--that is the sentiment you are going to get, that this just is not well planned. It is a lot of money, and we ought to calm down and take more prudent approaches, take the simple steps of holding committee hearings, looking at what sorts of distressed industries may come up, looking in depth at where the TARP funding has already been spent and what it is doing, and get answers to those simple, direct, but very important questions before we launch into another $350 billion. I think if the people in this body would listen to their constituents back home, they would say: Absolutely, don't just approve this. Let's take more time now.

The financial institutions people, as far as the situation that was existing last fall, are saying: This is getting much better than what it was at that point. Let's take our time to do it right. I am not saying that there isn't stress in the system. There still is. But it isn't the situation it was last fall. Our constituents demand that more information be known.

I hope we can do that and take our time to get this right and get the oversight right and get the answers to simple, direct, but very important questions.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Madam President, I rise to speak today about a topic that is in the news, is important, and has to do with an area of Leavenworth, KS, very near the Presiding Officer's State, and in my home State, about the issue of the Guantanamo Bay detainees.

My simple point on this issue is, there is a very strong push--and I understand that push, and it is one that has been going on for some period of time--to close Guantanamo Bay. I would simply make the point we should not attempt to force-fit detainees where they do not belong and where it does not fit. I do not believe the new administration can look my constituents in the eye and say to them they are going to be safe with detainees at Fort Leavenworth as they are with military prisoners at Fort Leavenworth, and particularly not with what we are talking about from Guantanamo Bay.

I have invited President-elect Obama and his team to come to Leavenworth to look at this facility, to see if this is something that could fit and work. I do not believe it does at all. But I have invited them there to come and to look and to make their own assessment.

I further call on the incoming administration to conduct a thorough study--a thorough study--of all possible locations where detainees could be transferred. The study must seriously assess the legal and security requirements for detainees, as well as the impact on the areas surrounding a proposed detainee location.

In the end, I believe the detainees will probably need to go to one of three types of places: overseas, either in the custody of foreign nations or at U.S. military facilities abroad set up for these types of detainees we have at Guantanamo Bay or on military land or at facilities previously closed or scheduled to be closed under the BRAC process, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, or into a new facility specifically designed for these detainees.

The administration is projecting they are going to sign an order right off when coming into office that is going to close Guantanamo Bay. I am asking them, in looking at my State, in looking at the Disciplinary Barracks at Leavenworth, that they consider the nature of the facility, the nature of the detainee, and make a careful assessment as to whether this fits in this situation.

Let me describe for you a little bit the situation of the Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, KS. Fort Leavenworth is a small facility. It is roughly 8 miles by 8 miles. It is a primary mission facility for education in the military. It is the Command and General Staff College for the military, for the Army. They do an outstanding job of that. They do an outstanding job not only for the U.S. military--particularly for the Army--they have all branches of the services that come there to be trained, but they also have, at any one time, students from 90 different countries at this facility.

I recently spoke at a graduation exercise there with a number of students who were coming out of a program, and the President of Uganda was there because his son was graduating from this program. One of the key problems with relocating the detainees from Guantanamo Bay to Fort Leavenworth is that a number of Islamic countries will not send students now to Fort Leavenworth if detainees are being held there who they don't believe should be detained in the first place. Then you start to break these military-to-military ties that have been so important for us to be able to work in concert with--places such as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or the good work we have been able to do in some cases back and forth in Pakistan, although not nearly enough. We need to do a lot more--and better. But if you break that tie, where you are training these military officers side by side and then building relationships that work back and forth and then you start moving toward: Well, the Saudis aren't going to send anybody to the Command and General Staff College in the United States because detainees who they believe in their countries shouldn't be held are being held in the same facility that is an 8-square-mile facility. Then the Kuwaitis don't do it and the Pakistanis don't do it and you start breaking these types of ties.

The major purpose of Fort Leavenworth is education, not discipline. Then there is the problem with the nature of the Disciplinary Barracks itself. It is primarily a medium disciplinary facility at Fort Leavenworth, not maximum. We do not have the space to be able to contain all the detainees from Guantanamo Bay. We don't even have enough space to contain what would be referred to as the worst of the worst from the Guantanamo Bay facility at the Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. Plus, it is against the law to mix a U.S. military population, where we have had people from the U.S. military who have committed a crime and they are being held at the Disciplinary Barracks--you cannot mix that population under law with a population of foreign detainees. That is against the law. It is against conventions we have entered into. So there is that legal hurdle that is there as well.

Now let me further describe the facility. It has a major railroad that runs through it. It has a train coming through on a regular basis 10 to 15 times a day. The security concern that raises of moving detainees from Guantanamo Bay--very high visibility--to the middle of the country but a place where people could try to spring them, are they going to use the railroad track? Are they going to try to bomb or put bombs in the railroad coming through? It is a real problem. We don't have an exterior fence. We have the Missouri River, but that is fairly navigable to be able to move across for a terrorist population or somebody who is trying to get into the perimeter of the facility to make it through. So we are not set up that way. It is within a major urban area of Kansas City. Kansas City straddles both the Kansas and the Missouri side. Leavenworth is on the edge of that, on the northern edge of that Kansas City complex. So you are moving the detainees from Guantanamo Bay in a confined facility away from major urban areas and right into a major urban area in the United States. That doesn't make much sense. It is going to be very difficult to do. It is going to be impossible to do. And then to look my constituents in the eye and look the constituents of the Presiding Officer in the eye and say: You are going to be as safe as if you have military detainees.

We are used to handling the prison population at Leavenworth. We have a multiple set of facilities. We have a Federal penitentiary, we have a State penitentiary, we have a private penitentiary, and we have a military penitentiary. The community is very well adapted to be able to handle prison populations. It does it very well. But the community does not want this population because they say we are not set up to be able to handle this population. I think this is a community that does not say not in my back yard because they have been willing to take prisoners for some period of time. They are just saying they are not set up for this prison population in our back yard. We can't handle this.

For all these reasons, I would urge the administration--the incoming Obama administration--to take a very hard, serious scholarly view of what it is you can do with the Guantanamo Bay detainees. I would ask them to take a very serious look at the logistical problems of Leavenworth.

I know a number of the people who are involved at Fort Leavenworth are deeply concerned about the fact that they have a number of schoolchildren who are educated on the Fort Leavenworth military base, because at the Command and General Staff College, we get people assigned there for a year, 2 years, sometimes longer periods of time and families move there. We have schools we operate on the military base. We are deeply concerned about somebody coming in, wanting to make a statement and going into one of those schools and taking the children hostage.

I have seen situations where a number of people are put in harm's way for no good reason whatsoever, and seeing that this facility is not set up to be able to do this is one of them.

I have visited with people locally. I have a call scheduled with Secretary Gates. We have been putting this forward in legislative form in prior legislative sessions, and I will be in this legislative session as well to make this point. If it had been easy to close Guantanamo Bay previously, I am certain the current administration would have done it. It is a difficult task. But that doesn't mean that because it is a difficult task, then you do it fast. It means because it is a difficult task, you take your time and you do it right or you are going to create a lot more

problems down the road. This is one where I think the loss in this situation is far greater--far greater--than any gain we would get in closing the Guantanamo Bay facility, particularly in our relationship to Islamic countries.

I would plead with the new administration to look at this in a very serious and in a very clear and in a very analytical way, to make a wise decision that will stand for the future and not just create a huge set of problems for the future.

With that, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I commend Debra Brown Steinberg, an extraordinary woman who I have had the honor of working with for the last few years.

Debra has been a tireless fighter for the families of 9/11 victims. While continuing to work fulltime as a partner at the law firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, Debra spearheaded her firm's pro bono efforts to assist the families left behind.

The cases she handled were complicated, involving myriad issues. Many families faced social service, financial and immigration complications. Rather than addressing simply the legal aspects of each case, Debra worked to connect organizations, agencies, and policies to tackle cases in their entirety.

In May of 2002, New York State passed the September 11 Victims and Families Relief Act, large portions of which Debra helped draft. She also contributed to the Federal September 11th Family Humanitarian Relief and Patriotism Act, which was introduced by Senator Lautenberg in the 110th Congress.

Debra's outstanding work has already been recognized by numerous current and former Members of Congress, Presidential candidates, authors, activists, religious leaders, the New York State Bar Association, and many distinguished publications. She has received the Ellis Island Medal of Freedom and commendations from the New York City Fire Department and Chief of Police. No one, however, can better speak to Debra's service than the families themselves. In a thank-you note, a sister of one of the victims wrote:

[Debra] held us, offered her shoulder, and made us feel

that it is still worthwhile to continue this passage. Thank

God for this Angel.

For the last 7 years, Debra Steinberg has fought for justice for a group of people forgotten in the shadows of this terrible tragedy. She has given selflessly of her time and expertise to help those in need and is an example to others and a credit to our country. I am proud to call her my friend.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.