Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that no points of order be in order to the Lee amendment or H.R. 152, prior to a vote on passage of the bill.

Mr. President, we are now entering a postfiscal cliff phase of budget negotiations, and a troubling but familiar refrain is already beginning to echo through this Chamber which goes something like this: In order to fix our deficit, we must cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits. This is wrong. This is flatout wrong and it is factually wrong.

A recent Providence Journal editorial touched on the dangers of that misguided approach. The editorial read: We need a better run Medicare and Medicaid, not one that covers fewer people. Quality can be improved and costs contained without throwing people off the rolls and into the streets and back into the free care of emergency rooms mandated for the uninsured and into expensive private insurance. In the end, we all pay in some way, in quality of life and in money, for the gaps we tolerate in our health care system.

Attacking Medicare and Medicaid is consistent with a particular political ideology--it has been part of that political ideology for decades now--but it is not consistent with the facts. It ignores the fact that our health care spending problem is systemwide, not just in Federal programs. It ignores the fact that we operate in this country a wildly inefficient health care system. It is not just Medicare.

For example, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, in reference to the defense budgets: We are being eaten alive by health care.

New data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows our national health care spending increased to $2.7 trillion in 2011, which is about 18 percent of America's gross domestic product. This is more than three times what it was in 1992, and it is about 100 times what it was back in 1960. The Presiding Officer, the new Senator from Virginia, and I were probably around in 1960. So in our lifetime it has gone up 100 times.

At this rate, by 2020, $1 out of every $5 in this country will go toward health care. This is a rocketing pace of increase.

In 1979, the year after I graduated from college, $221 billion; 1987, $519 billion; 1992, $857 billion; and now $2.7 trillion. Anybody looking at that graph of our exploding national health care costs who can think that Medicare is the problem simply does not have a grasp of the facts.

Let's compare U.S. spending to other developed countries. This is us, ``pre'' the last report when we were still at 17.6 percent of GDP. The next least efficient developed country is the Netherlands at 12 percent of GDP in 2010. Germany and France were at 11.6 percent of GDP.

This margin right here is the margin by which we are more inefficient than the least efficient of our industrialized competitors--$800 billion a year. We could save $800 billion a year on our national health care system just by becoming as efficient as the least efficient of our national competitors.

For all of this extra spending, the extra $800 billion a year, one might expect that we would have paid for and earned longer and healthier lives, but that is not the case. Our National Institute of Medicine recently compared the United States to 17 peer countries. We were worst for prevalence of diabetes among adults among those 17 countries, worst for obesity across all age groups of those 17 countries, and had the worst infant mortality of all 17 countries. We suffer higher death rates and worse outcomes for conditions such as heart disease and chronic lung disease.

This chart from that National Institute of Medicine report shows all these dots of the other countries grouped around cost--expenditure per capita--and life expectancy. That is the United States of America, the dot with the red circle around it. We are an outlier, below virtually all of these countries

except Poland and Turkey and Hungary, below them all on life expectancy. They are all above 78 and we are just below it, and we are wildly out of the grouping on cost. We are at way higher cost than the grouping of all of our industrialized competitors. We are wild outliers in a very bad direction of high cost and poor outcomes. This is a stark and unsettling disparity of us from virtually all the other nations. It is not to our benefit.

The real issue is the fact that we have to deal with the cost and the performance of our health care system. Another fact that I know the Presiding Officer is well aware of is how hard this is on American families. From 2000 to 2009 the average family premium for health insurance more than doubled from around $6,500 to more than $13,000. I can assure you the average family income did not double during that same period, unless maybe you were an average family on Wall Street.

Health care costs are a leading cause of family bankruptcy in this country. Thankfully, the Affordable Care Act will help millions of uninsured Americans purchase health coverage. But we should add, in addition to the kneejerk reaction to target Medicare and Medicaid being out of step with these facts, it will also hurt these families more without grappling with the real health care system cost problem.

Again, going after Medicare is wrong. It is a misdiagnosis of the problem, and, of course, when you miss the diagnosis you prescribe the wrong cure.

Medicare is actually one of the most efficient parts of our inefficient health care system. From 2007 to 2011, for the same set of health benefits, the annual growth rate in health spending per Medicare enrollee was 2.8 percent; for private plans, 5.6 percent, twice as much, a 100-percent higher cost than for Medicare.

The Congressional Budget Office has found that for every dollar we spend on Medicare, 98 cents of it goes through to people in the form of health care, actual health care. Spend $1, get 98 cents' worth of health care. For Medicare Advantage that the private insurance sector runs that operates under similar rules and treats the same population as Medicare, every $1 delivers only 89 cents in health care, with the rest spent on administrative cost and CEO salaries and marketing. So not only is Medicare not the problem, it is actually one of the best ways we have for delivering health care through this wildly inefficient outlier of a health care system.

I am not alone in saying that a correct diagnosis of the problem will lead us to health care system reform, not Medicare benefit cuts. Gail Wilensky, the former CMS Administrator under President George H.W. Bush, said in 2011:

If we don't redesign what we are doing, we can't just cut

unit reimbursement and think we are somehow getting a better

system.

A lot of my colleagues give great credence to the private sector. In the private sector, one of the leaders in health care is George Halvorson, who recently stepped down as chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente, one of the biggest and best health care companies in the country. Here is what he said:

There are people right now who want to cut benefits and

ration care and have that be the avenue to cost reduction in

this country and that's wrong. It's so wrong, it's almost

criminal. It's an inept way of thinking about health care.

So from Republican administrators to private sector leaders, the message is the same: We have to solve this as a system problem.

Let me give a couple of examples of how we might want to go about doing this. As one example of the significant savings to be found in our health care system, a Washington Post columnist recently wrote:

Few people realize that Medicare spends wildly different

amounts per senior depending on where the senior happens to

live. . . . Medicare spends 2.5 times more per senior in

Miami than in Minneapolis.

I repeat, 2\1/2\ times more per senior in Miami than in Minneapolis--

Yet there is no difference in quality or health outcomes

associated with this extra spending. In other words, Medicare

redistributes billions from regions where doctors practice

cost effectively to regions where the local Medical

Industrial Complex pads its income with excess services and

procedures.

Our colleague, Senator Franken, often says: If we could just deliver health care the way we do in Minnesota, we could solve our problem. And this column and this information bears it out. If they are not getting better health care in Miami, then why do we tolerate letting Miami absorb 2.5 times the cost per senior than they are able to provide it for in Minneapolis? We should be driving Miami toward Minneapolis, where we know they can do it in Minneapolis. Make that the model and force the change.

This graph uses data from the Dartmouth Atlas Project to illustrate this point. Not only is there significant variation in health care cost and quality--each of these dots is a State, and they are rated on overall quality and spending per beneficiary. As we can see, they spread out from very high cost and very poor quality States, such as Louisiana, to very low cost and very high quality States, such as New Hampshire. But if we draw a statistical line through this array of dots, here is the line we get. It shows the reverse correlation: The more you spend the worse your care.

A second example, and it is consistent with this, is how poorly our health care system performs on basic measures of quality and safety and prevention. For example, according to the news magazine ``The Week,'' avoidable infections passed on due to poor hospital hygiene kill as many people in the United States--about 103,000 people killed every year--as are killed by AIDS, breast cancer, and auto accidents combined. We are killing more people in this country through hospital- acquired infection than through AIDS, breast cancer, and auto accidents combined. These deaths are tragic to those families, but they are tragic in another sense because they are preventable.

As we have shown, in Rhode Island, when hospital staff follow a checklist of basic instructions--washing hands with soap, cleaning the patient's skin with antiseptic, placing sterile drapes widely over the patient--rates of infection plummet and the costs of treating those infections disappear. The costs of treating the 100,000 Americans who die every year from those hospital-acquired infections are huge, and they would disappear if we do not have the infections in the first place and the cost of treating the hundreds of thousands who get those infections and do not die, who are not among the 103,000 who die but nevertheless have to be treated, those costs also disappear. It is a pretty big number. We don't know exactly what it is, but the Center for Disease Prevention reported that from 2001 to 2009, there were State and Federal efforts to improve these efforts to prevent hospital- acquired infections, and that contributed to a 58-percent decrease in the number of central line bloodstream infections among intensive care unit patients. That, in turn, represents up to 27,000 saved and approximately $1.8 billion in cost savings to our health care system. Let's do more of that before we go after Medicare benefits.

A third example is managing and preventing chronic disease. Compare the United States to France on the treatment of lung disease and you will find that although France has more smokers and therefore higher rates of lung disease than the United States, levels of severity and fatality are three times lower in France. France spends eight times less on treatment per person than we do.

Compare the United States to Britain on diabetes. You will find that Britain spent only half of what we spend per person on diabetes, but it is five times more productive in managing diabetes than we are.

Dr. Daniel Vasella, who is the chairman of Novartis, explains that ``in America, no one has incentives to make quality and cost-effective outcomes the goal.''

France and Britain give their health care providers incentives to focus on early detection and cost-effective treatment that make wellness the goal, not treatment. To paraphrase George Washington University Professor Thomas J. Schoenbaum: ``Make virtue profitable and everyone's a saint.''

Saving money by reforming how we deliver health care is not just possible, it is happening. A 2008 report from the Dartmough Atlas Project predicted that ``using the Mayo Clinic as a benchmark, the nation could reduce health care spending by as much as 30 percent for acute and chronic illnesses.'' A benchmark based on Intermountain Healthcare, which is a great

provider based in Utah, predicts a reduction of more than 40 percent. So we are doing it; it is happening. We just need to spread it more widely. During a 2011 Senate HELP hearing that I chaired, Greg Poulsen of Intermountain Healthcare said:

Intermountain and other organizations have shown that

improving quality is compatible with lowering costs and,

indeed, high-quality care is generally less expensive than

substandard care.

Take a look at what various experts estimate as the potential annual savings that could be found in our health care system. The President's Council of Economic Advisers says that we could annually save $700 billion a year. The National Institute of Medicine recently reported that we could save $750 billion a year. The New England Healthcare Institute has estimated that a savings of $850 billion a year is possible, and the Lewin Group--a private group that focuses extensively on health care and does research and analysis--together with George Bush's Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, have come up with an estimate of $1 trillion a year. We don't know what the exact number is. These are estimates, but for sure there is a huge potential for savings in our health care system.

These savings flow through to our Federal budget. The Federal Government does 40 percent of America's health care spending. If the estimate by the Council of Economic Advisers is correct, the national health care expenditure is $2.7 trillion, Federal health care spending is $1.1 trillion. After we do the math, it is 40 percent.

Of the four estimates, let's take the most conservative one. Let's take the Council of Economic Advisers' estimate of $700 billion--the lowest of the four--and multiply it by 40 percent. The Federal share would be $280 billion per year for the Federal Government. It would be $280 billion per year just by getting those kinds of savings.

Let's say we cannot get the $700 billion, that it is too hard to lift; we tried and cannot get there. Let's say we can only get half of those estimated savings. That is $350 billion times 40 percent. We could set a target of $140 billion of savings in the Federal budget in health care having assumed a 50-percent failure rate in getting there from the lowest of the four major estimates. That is pretty conservative to start from the lowest of the four major estimates, assume a 50-percent failure rate, and there we are, we still get $140 billion a year we could target as savings coming back into the Federal budget and the Federal health care system.

Let's say we set the target at $350 billion, the halfway target, and we failed at meeting even that target. Let's say we failed again by half, which is not close. That is a huge miss. Let's say the best we could do is to get $175 billion of the $700 billion in savings, which was the most conservative of those four estimates. If we multiply that by 40 percent, guess what. That is $70 billion a year.

What do we do when we get into budget discussions? We multiply by 10 because it is a 10-year budget estimate. If we are going to take that $70 billion and move into a budget discussion, it becomes $700 billion. So this is real money.

Let me add that most recently the Commonwealth Fund released a report that outlines a set of distinct policies that would accelerate health care delivery system reform and slow health spending by $2 trillion over 10 years. So that is not just $700 billion but $2 trillion over 10 years, from 2014 to 2023.

How do we get there? Well, many of the tools necessary to drive down costs and improve the quality of patient care are already in the law. The Affordable Care Act, the famous ObamaCare, included 45 provisions which have virtually never been discussed on this Senate floor--because they were not controversial--that were dedicated to redesigning how health care is delivered. These delivery system reforms cover five priority areas: payment reform, making sure that people are paid to keep us well and not wait until we get sick and have to treat us more; primary and preventive care, making sure we are taking care of chronic patients, less specialists, more care upfront; measuring and reporting quality so we are not dealing with the hospital-acquired infections so much; administrative simplification because for doctors it is a bear to try to keep up with the insurance companies that try to continue to deny them payment; and health information technology so we have an electronic health record that loads with data and is sensible and state of the art.

These Affordable Care Act delivery system reforms span our health care system and engage all stakeholders in the effort--for example, patients, physicians, hospitals, State governments, and the Federal Government--which is good because working together is the right way to achieve these reforms.

There is even evidence that the Affordable Care Act is already working to slow the growth of health care spending. In a Washington Post op-ed this summer, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius wrote:

In the decade before the law passed, national health

expenditures increased about 7 percent a year. But in the

past two years, those increases have dropped to less than 4

percent per year.

At the top of this graph, it is actually starting to tip down a little bit, thanks to that. Dropping it to less than 4 percent per year has saved Americans more than $220 billion.

Peter Orszag, the former Director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the same thing in a recent Providence Journal editorial. He said----

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. President, I know the distinguished Senator from Alabama is waiting and I will wrap up.

Peter Orszag wrote in the Providence Journal:

In January 2009, [CMS] projected that expenditures would

reach 19.8 percent of gross domestic product in 2017. This

year, the projection for 2017 is down to 18.4 percent of GDP.

That difference amounts to a whopping $280 billion. In other

words, relative to the projections issued three years

earlier, today's forecasts suggest health savings of $3,500

per family of four by 2017.

I did this report for the Senate HELP Committee last year on the Affordable Care Act delivery system reform provisions. Anybody who is watching and wants a copy, contact my office; we will mail or e-mail it to you.

In the report we found that the administration has made fairly considerable progress on the 45 delivery system reform provisions in the law, but much more can and must be done. Specifically, the report calls upon the Obama administration to set a cost savings target for health care delivery system reform. A cost savings target will focus and guide and spur the administration's efforts in a manner that vague intentions to bend the health care cost curve will not. It would also provide a measurable goal by which we can evaluate the progress of the Affordable Care Act.

In a report I mentioned earlier, the Commonwealth Fund has reported that ``the establishment of targets . . . can serve both as a metric to guide policy development and as an incentive for all involved parties to act to make them effective.''

One of the best examples of a clear target was President Kennedy declaring that within 10 years the U.S. Government would put a man safely on the Moon and bring him home. That message and the mission that was outlined were clear. The result was a mobilization of private and public resources to achieve that purpose because the goal was clear and specific.

This administration has a similar opportunity, particularly now at the height of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act: Set a serious cost savings target for our Nation's health care system--none of this spongy bending the health care cost curve stuff--and put the full force of American innovation and ingenuity into achieving that target. That approach has a triple benefit: protecting Medicare and Medicaid benefits that don't need to be cut if we are doing this right; second, improving patient outcomes, making people healthier; and third, dialing back health care spending by potentially hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. The alternatives to that will harm seniors and those least able to afford adequate health care.

I conclude by urging the administration to set a real cost savings target with a number and a date, and then let's get to work to give the American families the health care system they deserve. Instead of waste and inefficiency and being a disgraceful outlier from all the rest of the world on quality and cost, let's make for America the health care system that is the envy of the world. That should be our goal and that could be our destiny.

I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

I express my appreciation to the distinguished Senator from Alabama for his patience during my remarks.

Mr. President, I very much appreciate the remarks of my friend, the Senator from Alaska. This is truly a bipartisan concern. There are Senators on both sides who feel very aggrieved by what took place, Senators from Alaska and Maine, on the two sides of the country, and a great number of us.

The sheet that rests on the front table during the votes to make sure people coming in know what the current measure is describes the last vote as passage of H.R. 152, the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013--not the Hurricane Sandy Relief Appropriations Act of 2013 but the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act.

We have had a disaster. We didn't make this up. This wasn't something that was snuck into the bill or we tried to do an earmark on.

The Governors of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Connecticut--six Governors petitioned the government for a fisheries disaster declaration, and they received one. The Secretary of Commerce declared the New England Multispecies Groundfish Fishery disaster. The Senator from Alaska described it as a drought.

It is like a drought. What has happened in our waters is that they have warmed. They have had some chemical changes. Fisheries have moved northward, and some of them have moved clean out of the U.S. continental waters. The result is that Georges Bank cod, Yellowtail flounder, Gulf of Maine cod and haddock have all had to face Draconian catch reductions to try to keep those species alive.

We have a fishing tradition that goes back even longer than Alaska's, I will guess. Certainly, we started fishing back in the 17th century, the 1600s, in Rhode Island. It is a long tradition. But the changes we are wreaking on this planet are moving the fish around. They are creating these localized disasters for our fishermen who have worked hard all their lives, who have invested their life savings into expensive boats they have to take care of, the maintenance and the repair, and they risk their health and their lives and their limbs out at sea in all kinds of weather in order to bring in the catch to us. When the catch isn't there, it is a disaster.

This is what the Governors have asked for, all six of them. That is what the U.S. Government, through the Secretary of Commerce, declared. Why on Earth the fisheries disaster that affects our fishermen doesn't matter--$150 million; it was not a big piece in a $60 billion bill. Yet we were left out. We were completely left out.

I will continue to fight to get this done. I think there has been a wrong committed in this body, and I intend to make sure it gets righted. I will work hard with the Senator from Alaska. I see the Senator from New Hampshire, who is equally affected by this, on the Senate floor. It makes no sense to let people in the House of Representatives pick and choose among disasters in a bill and strip out disasters that have been declared by the U.S. Government and the Governors of six States.

Do they know better? I don't think so. But they took it out. For whatever reason, we weren't able to get it in back here. I have had strong conversations with some of the lead supporters of the Sandy bill and the States that most benefit, with the chairman of the committee and the floor manager of the bill and with colleagues from nearby States. This is not over, but I am extremely upset that we would pass something called a Disaster Relief Appropriations Act and leave out of it the disaster that has befallen fisheries up and down the east coast, from Maine down through New Hampshire, through Massachusetts, through Rhode Island, through Connecticut and New York. That is a pretty wide- scale disaster.

For the men and the women who go out and put their boats and themselves at risk for this catch when it is not there, you bet it is a disaster. It is just as much of a disaster as a farmer who looks out at parched fields and can't grow what he needs to grow. We are not there for them, not when it is fishermen, for some reason. We are not there for them. We have done it over and over. Since 1994 Federal fishery failures have been declared on 29 different occasions, and nearly $827 million has been appropriated for relief. But not now. For some reason, not now.

I yield now for the Senator from New Hampshire, who I know feels strongly about this issue. The Senator from Massachusetts was speaking with me earlier. She feels very strongly about this, and we need to get this set right. This is a day for celebration in some quarters but not in all.

For those of us who have a responsibility to the men and women who have fished the waters off of our States, this is not an acceptable result.

I yield the floor.

As I heard the compilation from the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire, it was a pretty small percentage of the bill, and I was going through the math in my head. If it was a $60 billion bill, with a $150 million appropriation that would have supported the disaster for the fishermen, I think that is 0.25 percent of the total of the bill--one-quarter of 1 percent. Yet somebody over on the House side had to target that and take it out and leave the fishermen high and dry while the rest all went through?

I think it is really important that we as a group stand for the fishermen and try to force some recognition in this body that the disaster they are facing is a real one.

Yes.

The engine repair people, the net repair people, the folks who process the fish that are caught, the folks who sell fuel to the fishermen, the people who do maintenance on the boats--there is an entire economic ecosystem that is knocked down when the fishermen can't bring the catch home. Yes, the Senator is absolutely correct.

I think Alaska may actually have more coastline than Rhode Island.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a fellow in my office, Mr. Derek Griffing, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. President, I will yield the floor for my distinguished friend from Florida, Senator Nelson, with the understanding that I will be recognized at the conclusion of his remarks.

The Senator from Florida is welcome. It was one of my great pleasures to sit next to him on the Intelligence Committee for these many years. To tell a brief story, whenever Senator Nelson said, Well, I am just a country lawyer from Florida, everybody on the committee perked up, because they had learned from experience that one of the more withering and devastating cross-examinations of a witness was about to ensue. It is always my pleasure to extend courtesy to the Senator from Florida.

I am here once again to talk about climate change. Alarms are ringing, including the voices of the overwhelming majority of scientists, and indeed the voices of the overwhelming majority of Americans. But here in Congress, it is still time for us to wake up.

Climate change is not a problem that will go away; human activity is driving global change. Climate change is not a problem that can wait; we see its effects all around us. But climate change is a problem that can be solved.

We can and we must leave a healthy environment and clean energy sources to our children and grandchildren. The missing piece is Congress. Congress is sleepwalking through history. It is time to wake up.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has confirmed that 2012 was the hottest year in the contiguous United States on record, ever. This one wasn't a close call; it did not come down to the wire; 2012 was a full degree Fahrenheit higher than the previous record year--a full degree Fahrenheit higher than the previous record year. To put that into context, 1 degree may not sound like a lot, but when you average it across an entire year, it is a huge shift. The previous warmest U.S. year on record, 1998, was 4.2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the coldest year on record, 1917. If you take the warmest year on record--1998 until now--and you take the coldest year on record--1917-- the entire span between them is only 4.2 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a jump of a full degree in Fahrenheit in just 1 year. By the way, 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit over 2011 is a seriously big change.

We are just starting to heat up. The most optimistic estimate for the end of the century is a 2-degrees-Fahrenheit increase. That is the most optimistic estimate. More likely scenarios--ones that assume continued current levels of greenhouse gas emissions--project for the continental United States an increase of between 4 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Worldwide, last year was the 36th year in a row with an annual global temperature above the 20th-century average--36 straight years above average. In fact, the 12 years of this century, of the 21st century, 2000 to 2012, every single one of them is in the

top 14 warmest global averages on record. Mr. President, 12 for 12, they are in the top 14 warmest global average years on record. Since 1970, global average temperatures have increased more than one-quarter of a degree Fahrenheit every decade.

As the vast majority of climate scientists have confirmed, natural climate forces alone simply do not explain this global temperature trend, nor do they explain regional temperature trends. They do not explain the land surface temperature trends. They do not explain the ocean surface temperature trends. Only models that include the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide emissions explain these trends. When I use the word ``explain,'' I use it in its scientific sense--i.e., establish a significantly, statistically meaningful correlation between the two.

The United States does a regular national climate assessment. The assessment is based on scientific, peer-reviewed research and technical reports from top scientists at Federal agencies such as NOAA and NASA, the Departments of Agriculture and Energy, and the U.S. Geological Survey. Now, bear in mind that NASA scientists have just put a rover on to the surface of the planet Mars. These aren't people who get things very badly wrong.

The recent draft assessment paints a clear picture of what is happening in America right now. It says:

U.S. average temperature has increased by about 1.5 degrees

Fahrenheit since 1895; more than 80 percent of this increase

has occurred since 1980. The most recent decade was the

nation's hottest on record.

The National Climate Assessment is also required by law to project what is to come. The draft assessment says:

U.S. temperatures will continue to rise, with the next few

decades projected to see another 2 degrees Fahrenheit to 4

degrees Fahrenheit of warming in most areas. The amount of

warming by the end of the century is projected to correspond

closely to the cumulative global emissions of greenhouse

gases up to that time: roughly . . . 5 degrees Fahrenheit to

10 degrees Fahrenheit . . . assuming continued increases in

emissions.

I represent the Ocean State, Rhode Island. I see that the new senior Senator from Hawaii is presiding, and certainly he represents an ocean State too, so let's talk about oceans.

Atmospheric warming brings sea level rise, and as global sea levels rise, storms, waves, and tides wash ever higher against the coast, putting our coastal infrastructure at greater and greater risk of storm surges, flooding, and erosion. Five million Americans live within 4 feet of the high-tide line--it is not just us in Rhode Island, it is not just your folks in Hawaii--and it has real human consequences. Hurricane Sandy, I hope, reminded us of that.

Already, sea level rise is up about 8 inches over the past century. These changes are very evident to Rhode Islanders. We have been monitoring the ocean for centuries. Just outside Narragansett Bay, the crew of the Brenton Reef Lightship took nearly 22,000 ocean temperature measurements between 1878 and 1942. We have been at this a while. Alarmingly, the modern temperature record from points around Narragansett Bay shows that since the 1960s, the annual temperature in Narragansett Bay has increased about 4 degrees Fahrenheit. This has real-life effect--crushing our winter flounder fishery, for instance. Long-term data from the tide gauges in Newport, RI, show an increase in average sea level of nearly 10 inches since 1930. The rate of sea level rise at Newport is accelerating too. In southern Rhode Island, local erosion rates doubled from 1990 to 2006. Some of our freshwater wetlands near the coast are already transitioning to salt marsh.

Oceans warm and expand. Snow, glaciers, and icecaps melt into the sea. And the sea level is projected to rise between 1 and 4 feet by the end of this century.

Deniers should look to the assessments of our defense and intelligence agencies. Diego Garcia, a small island south of India, is the home to a logistics hub for U.S. and British forces in the Middle East and to Air Force Satellite Control Network equipment. The average elevation of Diego Garcia is approximately 4 feet. This installation is threatened by inundation from slow, steady, sea level rise, set aside storms. Norfolk naval air station and naval base on the southern end of the Chesapeake Bay is the Navy's largest supply center and home to the U.S. Atlantic fleet. Eglin Air Force Base on Florida's gulf coast is the largest Air Force base in the world. Both bases are threatened by rising seas.

The oceans are rising because they are getting warmer. Water expands as it warms. Warmer seas also threaten multibillion-dollar maritime industries here in our country, industries such as fishing, tourism, and energy. When water is too warm, it stresses fish, coral, and other sea life. As I said, the winter flounder catch in Rhode Island has been crushed by warming water. When water is too warm, it can't be used for cooling powerplants. That is what caused last summer's shutdown of Unit 2 at the Millstone powerplant in Connecticut. The temperature of the water in Long Island Sound climbed to over 75 degrees Fahrenheit--too warm to cool a nuclear reactor.

Carbon dioxide, of course, doesn't just warm the atmosphere and warm the oceans, carbon dioxide also gets absorbed into the oceans, and the oceans become more acidic. Carbon pollution by humans has caused a nearly 30 percent increase in the acidity of the ocean, and this ocean acidification is certainly caused by human activity.

As the draft National Climate Assessment explains, ocean acidification harms species such as oysters, coral, and even the plankton--like the humble pteropod I have spoken about before on this floor--that comprise the base of the ocean food chain, a food chain to which humankind is inextricably linked.

For my ocean State, carbon pollution presents a triple whammy from the sea: higher seas, warming seas, and more acidic seas. But the draft National Climate Assessment shows that you don't have to be an ocean State to be at risk. In the far North, Alaska is threatened by the loss of permafrost. Most of the permafrost in Alaska is tens of thousands of years old. It is a natural wonder whose loss threatens structures, such as buildings and roads, as well as plants and wildlife that over many centuries have adapted to that frozen tundra environment. In the Midwest, the draft assessment warns of ``the occurrence of extreme events such as heat waves, droughts, and floods. In the long term, combined stresses associated with climate change are expected to decrease agricultural productivity, especially without significant advances in genetic and agronomic technology.''

The dangers of carbon pollution are bearing down on us all. In the face of the clear warning of this national assessment, there are some who counsel surrender. The oil industry-backed Institute for Energy Research says this:

If the worst-case scenarios are correct, then even very

strong action by the Federal, State, and local governments in

the United States will do very little to alter the global

climate.

The polluters deny the ability of the United States to lead. Well, they are wrong. They are wrong. They are very wrong. With our vast economy, with our ingenuity, and with the trust the rest of the world has put on our experiment in democracy, we can lead. We can lead the world toward a cleaner future. To do any less would be, as President Obama said in his inaugural address, to betray our children and future generations. I will not countenance that betrayal, and neither will most Americans. A recent poll conducted by Yale University and George Mason University found that a large majority of Americans--77 percent-- say climate change should be a priority for President Obama and for all of us here in Congress. Yet, for the last 2 years, opponents and skeptics, polluters and lobbyists, special interests and their paid-for front organizations have blocked Congress from acting to reduce carbon pollution and reduce the threat of climate change.

Today, a very distinguished Member of the House of Representatives who has worked on environmental issues for 38 years in this building, Representative Henry Waxman, and I announced the formation of a bicameral House and Senate climate change task force to fight back. We welcome all Members of Congress, regardless of political party, who recognize the urgency of what is happening to our world all around us and who feel a duty to our descendents. We intend to focus sufficient attention on what is happening in the world

around us to at last--at long last--reduce the carbon pollution that is causing it.

It is time to wake up. Carbon pollution from fossil fuels is threatening our future. Unless we take serious action to scale back the pollution, the consequences may well be dire. Congress is sleepwalking through history. It is time to hear the alarms, roll up our sleeves, and do what needs to be done. It is time to wake up.

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

Mr. President, today I wish to recognize the service of Rhode Island's State CSM John McDonough. Command Sergeant Major McDonough is retiring after over 35 years serving the Rhode Island National Guard with honor and distinction, and I am proud to acknowledge his remarkable career today.

Command Sergeant Major McDonough first enlisted in the Rhode Island Army National Guard in 1976, and graduated with honors from basic combat and advanced individual training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. He was then assigned as an artilleryman in Battery A, 1st Battalion, 103rd Field Artillery. He quickly became an invaluable member of the Guard's field artillery team and went on to serve in a variety of positions, including cannon crewman, assistant gunner, gunner, howitzer section chief, gunnery sergeant, intelligence sergeant, first sergeant, and operations sergeant major.

Over the years, Command Sergeant Major McDonough received numerous awards commending his superior service, and he was eventually selected to be the State command sergeant major, the highest noncommissioned rank in the Rhode Island National Guard. In this role, Command Sergeant Major McDonough represented all enlisted soldiers in command, and served as the principal enlisted adviser to the adjutant general. His commitment to enforcing standards fairly and improving the quality of life for his fellow enlisted Guardsmen made him a celebrated and valued member of the Rhode Island National Guard community.

I thank Command Sergeant Major McDonough for his dedication to the Guard and to his comrades, a dedication he continues to demonstrate even in retirement. The command sergeant major has taken on a new endeavor to improve the lives of veterans as the director of Supportive Services for Operation Stand Down, an organization that works to combat homelessness among veterans and provide services to help struggling veterans get back on their feet.

Throughout his career in the Rhode Island National Guard, and with his continued service today, Command Sergeant Major McDonough has been an inspiration, advocate and role model for his fellow Guardsmen. I am proud to honor his life's work, and I again thank him for his outstanding commitment to serving our country and our military.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet, during the session of the Senate, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Assessing the State of America's Mental Health System'' on January 24, 2013, at 10 a.m., in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on January 24, 2013, at 10 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on January 24, 2013, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an Army fellow in Senator Cornyn's office, MAJ Malcolm Warbrick, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this legislative session.

I also ask unanimous consent that two fellows in my

office, Mr. Todd Bianco and Mr. Benjamin Cady, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.

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

Mr. President, we all know in the Senate and in the House of Representatives about the low grades Congress receives in public opinion polling. Everybody knows what the public reports: Congress is partisan. Congress is divided. Congress is dysfunctional.

One recent survey that got a lot of media attention reported that Congress is less popular than a root canal. Across the country, people are fed up with Congress. Indeed, Members of Congress are fed up with Congress.

Americans want a Congress that can take on the tough challenges of today. But another recent poll by USA Today and Gallup showed that 77 percent of Americans feel ``the way politics works in Washington these days is causing serious harm to the United States.''

Americans think Congress has a problem. Indeed, Americans think Congress is a problem. Well, if we want to fix a problem, we ought to be specific about it. A doctor wouldn't try to fix a patient without a precise understanding of the patient's problem. An engineer wouldn't try to fix a system without a precise understanding of the system's problem. A mechanic wouldn't try to fix your car without a precise understanding of your car's problem. So if we are going to fix what is wrong with Congress, we better have a precise understanding of what Congress' problem is.

Let's start with the Senate. We do have our share of dysfunction in the Senate, I will confess. Undoubtedly, the filibuster is being abused. Certainly, nominees awaiting confirmation are unjustifiably delayed. Indeed, they are held hostage. So everything is not all roses in the Senate.

But we did pass a highway bill, a bipartisan highway bill, that passed the Senate with 74 votes. We did pass a farm bill, a bipartisan farm bill. Although I did not support that particular measure, it was a bipartisan measure that passed the Senate with 64 votes.

We passed the Hurricane Sandy emergency relief bill, also in bipartisan fashion, with 62 votes. We had open debate, we had discussions, we had amendments, and we passed legislation.

Particularly, we passed, by a powerful bipartisan vote of 89 to 8, a bill that avoided tax increases for 99 percent of Americans and extended emergency unemployment benefits for another year and protected us from the fiscal cliff. When it comes to legislating, the Senate actually has a pretty strong bipartisan record.

How did those Senate bills do on the House side? Well, the House couldn't pass its own highway bill. Congress has been doing highway bills since the Eisenhower years. This isn't rocket science. The House couldn't do one. The best the House of Representatives could do was to pass a short-term extension that allowed some of their Members to get to conference on the Senate bill, but they took no bill into conference because they couldn't pass one. Even then, they delayed the conference negotiations, putting thousands of jobs in jeopardy before they finally came around and passed an amended version of the Senate bipartisan highway bill. So their record on the highway bill is nothing to be proud of.

The House also couldn't pass a farm bill. Farm bills are pretty ordinary legislative business too. We do them all the time, but the House has passed no farm bill. We passed a strong bipartisan Senate farm bill. They can't even agree to call up the bipartisan Senate farm bill and pass it. With 80 percent of the agricultural land of the country in drought, there is no farm bill. It is trapped in the sinkhole of the House.

The House almost couldn't pass a disaster bill. If you go back to Hurricane Katrina, when Katrina hit back in 2005, the House of Representatives then had emergency aid on its way to the 850,000 damaged or destroyed homes of the gulf coast in 11 days. In 11 days aid was on its way. This time, with this House of Representatives, the House balked at the bipartisan Senate disaster bill and, finally, it took them 78 days after the landfall of Hurricane Sandy to send help to the half million homes and businesses damaged or destroyed by that storm.

The condemnation of the House of Republicans was bipartisan. The Republican Governor of New Jersey blamed, and I quote, ``the toxic internal politics,'' the toxic internal politics, of the House Republicans for this fiasco. ``This,'' he said, and I will quote again, ``is why the American people hate Congress.''

Is there a problem over in the House? You bet there is, to the point where one departing House Republican Member compared the Speaker of the House to the manager of an asylum and the Speaker's House Republican colleagues to the asylum inmates. That is pretty strong criticism from within the Republican Party.

The reason I give this speech is to try to be precise about what the problem is that has driven Congress's approval into the cellar, and what exactly is that problem? Well, I think the House votes on the so- called fiscal cliff bill and on the emergency Hurricane Sandy aid illustrate what the problem is. Those bills passed the House for one reason and one reason only: The Speaker of the House of Representatives waived what is called the Hastert rule.

What is the Hastert rule? The Hastert rule is probably the most significant contributor to dysfunction in Washington right now. It is not even really a rule, it is a policy, a political policy of Republican Speakers. It began under former Republican Speaker Hastert, hence its common name as the Hastert rule. The rule is that the Speaker will bring no bill to the floor of the House of Representatives without a majority of his own party supporting the bill. It doesn't matter about a majority of Congress; Democratic votes don't count. It is only when the Speaker has a majority of Republican votes supporting it that the Speaker will allow legislation to come to the floor.

It has actually gotten a little bit harder under Speaker Boehner, who has said, I don't feel comfortable scheduling any controversial legislation unless I know we have the votes on our side first, which sounds like he is saying he has to be able to produce a majority of the House out of just the Republican caucus before bringing a bill. But whether it is the original Hastert rule requiring a majority of the majority before they will even bring a bill to the floor or what appears to be the Boehner rule, that they have to have the votes on ``our side first,'' it is a rule of obstruction.

There are somewhere between 50 and 60 Members of the House Republican tea party caucus and a whole bunch more House Republicans who are scared of the tea party and scared of what might happen to them if they get a tea party primary challenger. So getting a majority of his party together for anything reasonable is a challenge for Speaker Boehner.

House Republicans could not get a majority of their conference to support a highway bill. So the Hastert rule kicked in and there was no House highway bill, none--they couldn't do one at all because they couldn't get it through their conference under the Hastert rule. That is why there was no highway bill.

The House Republicans could not get a majority of their conference to support a farm bill, so under the Hastert rule there is no House farm bill. The Speaker won't bring up the stalled bipartisan Senate farm bill, because under the Hastert rule he can't get a majority of his party to support even the bipartisan Senate farm bill.

We were headed for the exact same result on the fiscal cliff--we were headed for the exact same result on the fiscal cliff. Speaker Boehner could not get his party to support protecting America from the fiscal cliff. So, with literally minutes left to spare, and with the House Republican Conference ready, willing, and about to pitch the country off the fiscal cliff, Speaker Boehner did what? He ignored the Hastert rule. He ignored the Hastert rule, and he let the fiscal cliff bill come to the floor of the House without having the votes on ``our side first,'' to use the Speaker's language. Two-thirds of House Republicans actually voted to roll America off the fiscal cliff. Here is the vote count. Republican ``yes'' votes on the fiscal cliff legislation were only 85. Republican ``no'' votes on the fiscal cliff legislation were 151. He wasn't even close to making the Hastert rule.

That fiscal cliff bill passed the House 257 to 167 because the Democrats came out and voted for it, 172 to 16; 172 Democratic ``yes'' votes, 16 Democratic ``no'' votes. Two-thirds of the ``yes'' votes that put the fiscal cliff bill across and saved America from a 100-percent tax increase and protected our economy from the fiscal cliff--two- thirds of those votes came from Democrats. If the Speaker had enforced the Hastert rule, we would be over the fiscal cliff today.

What happened on Sandy? After nearly 3 months of stalling, while my State, while the Presiding Officer's State of New York, while the States of New York and New Jersey, struck by Sandy, were waiting urgently for the relief that we got to the coast within 11 days, they stalled and they stalled because they could not get a majority of the Republican caucus to support Federal relief for our hurricane-ravaged States. Under the Hastert rule, they

couldn't get that bill to the floor. So Speaker Boehner once again decided to forgo the Hastert rule. That is how they got the Sandy emergency aid bill passed. Look again at the votes. Republican ``yes'' votes for the disaster bill, 49; Republican ``no'' votes for that bill, 179. That bill was dead on arrival under the Hastert rule. The Republican caucus couldn't support it, wouldn't support it, and we would be without any help now if they had followed the Hastert rule.

On the Democratic side, what was the vote on the Hurricane Sandy bill--192 ``yes'' votes to 1 ``no'' vote. The final count was 241 ayes, 180 nays. The bill passed, but about three-quarters of the support came from Democratic votes.

If the Speaker had imposed the Hastert rule, not only would we be off the fiscal cliff, but we would have failed at providing disaster relief for Hurricane Sandy. The only reason these critical pieces of legislation avoided the fate of the highway bill and of the farm bill is that the Speaker didn't follow the Hastert rule. He couldn't follow the Hastert rule because he wouldn't have been able to pass legislation. If his tea party caucus had forced America off the fiscal cliff, he knew there would have been hell to pay, so he waived the Hastert rule.

Now, of course, House Republicans are all in a fuss about having waived the Hastert rule. One tea party lawmaker admitted that the New Year's Day tax vote left a lot of his fellow Republicans with a very bad taste in their mouth. So it is probably back to Hastert rule business as usual on the House side, with death by tea party to any major bipartisan Senate legislation.

The tea party over on the House side wanted to vote for extreme things, such as voting to repeal or defund ObamaCare over 30 times-- over 30 times--or voting to turn Medicare into a voucher program. If it is extreme enough, then they will vote for it. But those are actions which are not supported by the American people, and they can't pass the Senate.

For the regular business of government, for the regular business of passing Senate bipartisan legislation, the tea party-Hastert rule combination is deadly.

So back to where I began. If you are concerned about dysfunction in Congress, if you are wondering why we are less popular than a root canal, if you are wondering why 77 percent of Americans look at Congress and think we are actually doing more harm than good, and if you want an explanation of the dysfunction, take a look at the Hastert rule. If you look at this problem the way a doctor would look at a patient, the way an engineer would look at a system, the way a car mechanic would look at an automobile, and you look for what is broken, be specific; it is the application by the Speaker of the Hastert rule that prevents strong, bipartisan Senate legislation from going forward. When something moves, it is because the Hastert rule has been waived.

So if you want to see what is wrong, that quest takes you straight to the House of Representatives, and there it leads you straight to the House Republican conference, and there it leads you to that toxic combination of the tea party and the Hastert rule.

When you understand the problem, the cure is obvious: The House should ditch the Hastert rule. Call things up for a vote. Let everybody's vote count. Don't refuse to proceed unless only your own party will let you. It is the obvious and only solution. The fiscal cliff bill and the Sandy bill and the votes on those bills prove it.

With those tea party extremists dominating the House Republican conference and ready to pitch the country over the fiscal cliff and leave hurricane victims high and dry, the Speaker had to ditch the Hastert rule. The only way the House can do bipartisan business on major issues is to ditch the Hastert rule.

As we saw, the Senate has its problems, but we are actually doing OK, just as our legislative record shows. Over and over, we pass real, significant, bipartisan legislation after a real process on the floor of argument and amendment. As the House's legislative record shows, the problem is over there. More precisely, the problem is within the House Republican conference. Still more precisely, again, the problem is that toxic combination of the tea party and the Hastert rule.

If we want Congress to function effectively, if we want to succeed at doing the work of the American people, such as the fiscal cliff bill and the hurricane relief bill, and if we don't want to see more important legislation, such as highway bills and farm bills, fail in the House, unable to pass in the House, blocked in the House, the solution for the problem is clear: We have to ditch the Hastert rule and let the House as a body work its will, just as the American people elected it to do.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the period for morning business be extended until 6:30 p.m. today and that all provisions of the previous order remain in effect.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jacqueline Emanuel, who is a fellow in Senator Mark Udall's office, be granted floor privileges for the Senate's sessions of the 113th Congress for the remainder of the month of January 2013.

Would the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, I have a question for the distinguished Senator from Alabama, for whom I have very high regard. He has been my ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, and he is my ranking member on the Budget Committee, and we share the experience of having served as U.S. attorneys. I have great admiration for him.

I heard him say something that brought me to the floor, and that is that it has been the practice of the majority leader to seek to pick and choose amendments the minority may offer. My question to the distinguished Senator from Alabama is, does that not overstate the case? Can he identify a time when the majority leader has ever said to the minority party: You can bring up an amendment, but it has to be this one.

The reason I ask that question is because my understanding is that the effort to control the amendment process by the majority leader has been limited to two things: No. 1, the number of amendments, which makes a lot of sense when we consider that the very small bill to raise the minimum wage that Senator Kennedy offered when I first got here--I was sitting where Senator Cardin from Maryland is now presiding watching this debate take place on the floor, and they got to over 100 amendments on a one- or two-page bill. The Senate could never get to the bill if Members had to spend the rest of the session going through all these amendments. So to limit the number of amendments seems reasonable.

The other restriction that I think sometimes the majority seeks to impose is that the amendments be germane. I know when I was working with a number of colleagues of the distinguished Senator from Alabama on trying to form a bipartisan solution to the cyber compromise, every time the Republicans and the Democrats got together, we would start our discussion with the same back-and-forth, and that would be the Republicans saying----

Please do. The Senator from Alabama has heard my questions.

Mr. President, let me thank the Senator from Alabama for his comments today. I think they are helpful in moving us forward, and I hope very much that we can find a way to go forward without having to use the constitutional doctrine that at the beginning of each Congress the Senate has an opportunity to adjust its rules with 51 votes. I think that is constitutional doctrine at this point.

I reject the notion that it is breaking the rules to take advantage of that constitutional moment. But the Senator makes a fair point that from a point of view of precedent--very different than breaking the rules, but from the point of view of precedent--it sets a new standard that we should be very cautious about going to.

I strongly support the Senator's recommendation that there needs to be a more vibrant amendment process. I believe the status of the discussion is regarding the filibuster on the motion to proceed, that if the majority leader is able to move to procedure without a filibuster, there will be amendments under that rule. I think that is an important qualification as we go forward.

I yield for a question.

Mr. President, may I reclaim the floor for one moment? I will yield the floor, not just for a question--I will yield the floor to the Senator from Alabama with the understanding that I will be recognized at the conclusion of the point he makes, so he does not have to frame it in the nature of a question.

I appreciate the point the Senator from Alabama is commenting on, and I think it is important that we recognize that is a floor or a minimum number of amendments and not a ceiling. I think the more we can allow Senators amendments, the better institution this will be.

That said, the calendar is unyielding. Days come and days go, Congresses end, work periods end. The majority leader and minority leader have the responsibility for trying to fit the work into those time periods. Clearly there is the prospect of vexatious amendments, either in nature or in number, whose purpose is to interfere with their ability to manage the floor in a sensible way for all of us. I think we do have to be prepared to defend against that, and I think number and germaneness are the usual touchstones.

The story I was telling, when the Senator from Alabama reclaimed his time, was of the cyber negotiations. When the Republicans and Democrats met together, the opening moment of virtually every discussion was the Republicans saying, when we get this bill to the floor, there will be amendments, correct? We were saying, absolutely, that is our understanding, we will stand by you having your amendments, but let us have them be germane, let us have them be relevant to cyber. That was always kind of a mutual agreement going forward until a Senator came to the floor and gave notice that they would insist on a repeal ObamaCare amendment on any cyber bill. That threw a pretty big spanner into the works of what I thought was moving toward a good bipartisan solution there.

I think we have real problems here in terms of the abuse of the filibuster. When the majority leader can say that Lyndon Johnson as majority leader faced 1 filibuster, and this majority leader has, I think he said, 291 times--391 times had to file cloture, that is a pretty big change.

When you see judges who have been cleared in the Judiciary Committee unanimously sitting on the Executive Calendar in what has become a hostage pool for purposes of trading--these are judges who are ready to go, and there may very well be a judicial emergency in their district; they have Republican and Democratic support, and they are held hostage to be used as trading pieces on either judges or other issues--I think that is a very poor way to go about doing business, particularly when you consider where that leaves an individual who has put their life on hold waiting to see if they will be confirmed, and all they are is a pawn in a chess game, even though everybody thinks that substantively they are qualified and should serve as judges.

You see situations in which we have a cloture fight and then, when we actually have the vote, the measure passes with 90-plus votes. Clearly, there was not a great dispute over that. That is cloture being used for obstruction and to, I believe, take those 30-hour blocks of cloture time and stack them up into a wall of obstruction.

I will say one final thing and then I will yield the floor. The good Senator from Alabama mentioned the budget process, and he is our ranking member on budget, so he knows this very well, but I have to dispute his description of the budget not passing and of why the majority leader said it would be foolish to have a budget.

The reason it would have been foolish to have a budget is because we had a budget. In the ordinary course, a budget is developed from the committee up. We start in the Budget Committee. We propose a budget. It then goes to the Senate floor. We have budget day, which is often irreverently called a vote-arama, where we vote and vote and vote on amendments, and we ultimately get a budget. A similar process happens in the House. The President then has a budget to work with and we go forward.

In this case, because the question of the Nation's budget is such a hot political issue, the budget was negotiated at the very top, between the President and the Speaker and the Senate leadership, and it was passed into law. We didn't pass a budget; we passed a bill. We passed a law, and the law set the budget. So when your budget is being set by law, yes, it is a little foolish to go through the process as if none of that had happened and try to build a budget from the ground up when it has already been established by law and when we wouldn't change it with our budget procedures. It has already been established by law, by negotiations at the highest level.

So I think that is why it was foolish. I think the budget process will continue to go forward in circumstances in which we are building a budget from the ground up, the way we do in the ordinary course, but I do think it was important to clarify that.

With that said, I yield the floor.

I believe the Senator has the floor, but I will stay and engage in a brief colloquy, if that is the Senator's desire.

Yes; that is absolutely true. It is hard to amend a judge.

That is also true. In fact, I believe there have been multiple filibusters of the various steps on the way to a conference committee, even after all amendments have been considered. So the Senator, I believe, is correct.

I think that is true, and nobody is more alert to this than the Senator from Oregon, but it is my belief there has been a little transformation in the nature of the filibuster. It always used to be the individual right of individual Senators to get up on their feet and to say their piece, to hold the floor for as long as they needed to and to speak themselves--to read the Bible, to read the Constitution, to read the phonebook--into exhaustion. They did so when they felt deeply about an issue, when they were deeply opposed to something on the floor.

Then cloture came along and it established a 30-hour block of time for debate. But, tellingly, it didn't require anyone to do any debating during those 30 hours. My belief is the minority party figured out if they filibustered everything, including very popular bills and amendments and judges that normally pass with huge majorities--up in the nineties--then each time the majority leader has to file cloture we end up with another 30-hour block of floor time that can't be used for anything productive. If that is done hundreds of times, that becomes thousands of hours of floor time, and it is very often why people who are watching us, expecting to see debates on the floor, see the tedious quorum call. They see our wonderful floor staff quietly reading the names of the Senators as the quorum call drones on and nothing is happening.

That puts immense pressure on the majority because they now have less and less and less time to work with because these 30-hour bites of time over and over again have been taken out of the year and it makes doing business very difficult.

That, I believe, has been the transformation. We have changed from being a Senate where an individual Senator has the right to get on his or her feet and oppose anything with a filibuster for as long as they can stand on their feet to a Senate where the minority filibusters everything, creating these 30-hour blocks of dead time

which puts great pressure on the body to try to get things done in the time that remains. That is my view of why we are where we are and why it is important to change the rules.

I will yield after saying I do think the Senator from Oregon and the Senator from New Mexico have done this body a great service by their leadership on pressing forward on rules changes. I think it is very clear that however this ends up turning out, the majority leader has 51 votes for a change to put the Senate back on a footing where it is behaving as a Senate again and we are not spending our time in the dead zone of endless quorum calls.

I yield the floor.