Floor Statements

Mr. President, I am always happy to yield a little more time to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. President, I want to start off today--I did not plan on saying this; I am here to talk about small businesses and how to incentivize job creation and job preservation--but before I do that, I want to take a moment of personal privilege to talk about the Navy SEALs.

I am a retired Navy captain. I spent about 23 years of my life as a naval flight officer. Before that, I was a midshipman, a Navy ROTC midshipman out of Ohio State. We would do our summer tours as midshipmen being trained to be junior naval officers. One of our tours was down at Little Creek, where we learned a little bit about storming the beaches of Virginia and we learned how to become marines, or pretended we were. We also, later on, I guess as a lieutenant JG at Coronado, before we went over to Southeast Asia, had a chance to see-- in both places, both the Little Creek Naval Station and over at the Coronado, North Island Naval Station--the Navy SEALs train. I remember talking with some of my compadres who were going through training with us, saying: We would not want to mess with those guys--and for good reason.

They have made us proud. They have taken on an incredibly difficult task and I think handled themselves splendidly, and I want to start off today saying how proud we are of them.

I am not quite as proud, however, when it comes to one of our responsibilities; that is, the responsibility to provide and nurture a climate for job creation and job preservation. I talk a lot with small business folks, and I talk in my work with people who run pretty big businesses. One of the things I have heard again and again-- not just this year but last year and the year before--large businesses are making a fair amount of money these days and a lot of them are sitting on a pile of cash. When you ask them, why are you sitting on a pile of cash and not hiring people, what we hear from a lot of them-- particularly large businesses--is businesses like certainty and predictability. In too many areas--areas we actually have something to do with--there is not the kind of predictability and certainty those businesses need.

For example, are we going to get serious about reducing our deficit? I hope so. I think the Deficit Commission, led by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, gives us a pretty good roadmap to take $4 trillion out of the deficit over the next 10 years. I hope in the end we will use that as a roadmap, not to use it with precision but to use it as a roadmap. But that is a big uncertainty.

The Tax Code. What about our Tax Code? We are running sort of a 2- year extension of the previous Tax Code, but that will end at the end of next year. What are we going to do about it? There is a lot of uncertainty there.

We have worked long and hard to try to pass health care legislation that is designed not just to extend coverage to people who do not have it but also designed to get us to better health care outcomes, to achieve better health care outcomes for less money, or at least better health care outcomes for the same amount of money.

We have the prospect of the Federal courts, with a number of litigations that are underway around the country, either at the circuit court of appeals level or maybe someday at the Supreme Court level, taking apart pieces of the health care bill. We need some certainty there, and we need the courts to act on it. I am not a lawyer, but some of my friends are, and some of them, who are a lot smarter than I am on these things, suggest that as far as they are concerned, this meets constitutional muster. We need an answer and we need to get on with it. To the extent we need to change the health care legislation to fix it and make it better, let's do that. But there is a lot in the legislation that enables us to get better health care results for less money. We need to do more of what works.

There is a lot of uncertainty with respect to transportation policy, on the series of extensions of the transportation programs for this country.

The way it works, if you will, Mr. President: Looking at my podium here, we will say right here is the transportation trust fund, and right here in the middle is the general fund for our country, our Treasury, and over here on the other side is sources of capital from the rest of the world. We do not have enough money in our transportation trust fund over here to build transportation projects. We end up borrowing from the general fund right here, moving funds over to the transportation trust fund. Unfortunately, we do not have enough money in the trust fund to run the general government, so we go overseas and borrow money from everybody we can to replenish the general fund, in order to put money in the transportation trust fund. It is crazy, and it is one of the reasons why we have a big budget deficit. We have uncertainty. The transportation system in this country has been awarded a grade ``D'' as in ``dealt,'' actually a grade ``D'' as in ``decaying'' because that is what is going on in our transportation system. I think things worth having are worth paying for. We need to get on with it. That is a source of uncertainty.

The last one is energy policy. As we see runups in energy prices--the price of fuel at the pump--people are wondering, What are we going to do about it? Part of what we tried to do is say, we want more energy efficient cars, trucks, and vans to be built in this country. We changed the CAFE legislation to raise the fuel efficiency standards for cars, trucks, and vans. So now, by 2016, the overall average has to be 36 miles per gallon--a huge increase from where it has been since 1975.

That is being ramped up, and that will help. But beyond that, we do not have, really, the kind of energy policy we need. That is another uncertainty.

So those are five reasons why large businesses, especially, sit on a pile of cash and are not hiring. One of our obligations is to address those uncertainties. My hope is we will do it. We actually got off to a pretty good start this year in a couple ways. No. 1, we passed the FAA reauthorization, the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization. In doing so, we agreed on a revenue package--agreed to by the industry--to be able to modernize the air traffic control system--that is great--to be able to put some extra money toward airport construction--that is good as well--as part of our infrastructure system.

We passed in the Senate patent reform legislation. If the Presiding Officer from Montana were--and he is a very clever fellow, but if he invents or

thinks he has invented a product or technology, and he goes, under current law, to the patent office and files for a patent, I can come along, even if I had nothing to do with that technology or that product, and say I had that idea first and draw him into a lawsuit and maybe make it difficult for him to actually get his patent.

We changed that in this patent reform legislation. If he is the first one to file, then he is the first one to file, and a patent troll like me would not be able to get in the way and create mischief and simply maybe ultimately get bought out. So the idea of changing that is very encouraging.

We have a deficit reduction agreement for this fiscal year, which took about $40 billion or so out of our spending, and that is encouraging.

We have actually another piece of encouraging legislation that I think passed by unanimous consent in the last Congress on small businesses and how to help small businesses do more innovative research and how to help them ease their ability to do technology transfer. I think it passed by unanimous consent last year.

And now, so far this year, we have been working on this legislation off and on since March, since the early part of March, and we have a whole lot of amendments that have been offered to the bill. One of them is from myself and Senator Vitter, Senator Coburn, and Senator McCaskill, Senator Begich, and a bunch of other people. It is not related to small business but it is certainly related to the deficit. What it does is--as the President mentioned in his State of the Union Address, we have thousands, maybe tens of thousands of pieces of surplus property the Federal Government owns that we are not using. We pay money to keep them secure. We pay money for their utilities, for their upkeep. We are not using them. We ought to sell them. We cannot give them away to State and local governments, homeless groups. We ought to sell them, at least get them off our books. That is going to be offered as an amendment to this small business bill. My hope is my colleagues will support it. Senator Landrieu, who chairs the Small Business Committee, and Senator Snowe, who is the ranking Republican member--previously the chair--have worked on the underlying bill for something like 6 years--6 years. It passed, again I will say, I am pretty sure, last year, by unanimous consent. We need to get it done. My hope is that those of us who have amendments, especially those that are not controversial, will have an opportunity to offer our amendments to this bill, and then we need to move on.

It is interesting, if you look at small businesses, an inordinate number of scientists actually work for small businesses. Something like, I want to say, 40 percent of America's scientists and engineers actually are employed by small businesses. We have some studies that show the small business innovation and research programs actually are responsible for something like 25 percent of our Nation's crucial innovations over the past decade and account for, again, something like 40 percent of America's patents.

For us to be successful in the 21st century, we need to, as the President likes to say, outeducate, outinnovate, and outcompete the rest of the world. Part of what we need to do is make sure we are creating a world class workforce, we are producing a world class infrastructure, and, finally, we are making sure we are making research and development investments that will lead to products that can be commercialized, ideas that can be commercialized, turned into products we can be making here in this country and selling around the world.

I think if we can somehow figure out how to resolve our differences so the people who want to offer amendments to this bill, especially noncontroversial ones, maybe they can be successful, and let's save the controversial stuff for another day. We may disagree on 20 percent. That is Senator Enzi's 80 percent/20 percent rule. Let's agree to the 80 percent and put it in the bill. The 20 percent that we don't agree on, let's work on that and save it and have additional hearings and deal with that later.

In the meantime, why don't we pass this bill. Why don't we make it easier for small businesses to get R&D money, to be able to do technology transfers. In some cases where that is noncontroversial, why don't we make that happen. If we do that, we can show the American people we can work together and get stuff done, and we will actually help small businesses get stuff done. We will help them make money and hire more people and, in the end, some of those people and businesses will pay more taxes, which will bring down the deficit. That is a pretty good outcome. It is worth pursuing.

I commend Senator Landrieu and Senator Snowe for working on this legislation for 6 years. We need to put that good work to the vote and move on.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first, I say a special thanks to Senator Corker, not just for what he said about the issues we are facing on the path forward but the nice words he said about his friend from Delaware. It is a pleasure to serve with him. I thank him for introducing the concept of tele-townhall meetings. We do that a lot in Delaware. I learned that from him.

The President has been likening the squabble going on here to a family squabble between a husband and wife. He said what husbands and wives usually do is figure out their differences, find middle ground, compromise, and work them out.

One of the things I love to do when I go up and down my State is to talk with people who have been married a long time--I am sure this happens to the Presiding Officer--50 years, 60 years, 70 years. I like to ask them what is the key to being married 50, 60, 70 years. I get some funny answers and some great answers as well. I am sure the Presiding Officer does too.

One of my favorite answers is a couple said to me: Two Cs.

I said: What is that?

They said: Communicate and compromise.

There is a little theme going on here with a former Governor of Virginia, Senator Warner, a former mayor of Chattanooga, Senator Corker, and a former Governor of Delaware. I want to continue with that theme.

I go home at night to Delaware. I take the train home, and I come back the next morning. This morning, I was walking on the platform to catch my train. One person said to me: You all are acting like a State legislature in the Senate.

I said: No, that is not the way we act in Dover, DE. When I was Governor, we had a Democratic senate, as we have here, we had a Republican house, as we have here, and we had a Democratic Governor for those 8 years. Yet we managed to work out our differences, to communicate and compromise and to be able to balance our budget 8 years in a row, cutting taxes 7 out of those 8 years, adding tens of thousands of jobs, which was no mean feat in our State, and to get ourselves a triple A credit rating for the first time in the history of our State. That is what you can do when you communicate and compromise in good faith.

At the end of these negotiations--I think largely taken in good faith. I have a lot of respect certainly for our own leaders and a healthy respect for the Speaker of the House, with whom I served briefly. I think he is an honorable person and a guy who tries to do what is right.

The President said--and I heard this from pretty good sources--the President said to the Speaker of the House: We will take your number. We will agree on the spending cuts. We may think it is a little too much focus on domestic discretionary spending, not enough on defense, not anything on entitlements, nothing on the revenue side. It is not a balanced package, but we will take your number. This ended up not so much a discussion over how we are going to further reduce spending in this fiscal year. The discussion is over things I think we addressed already in this body this week on whether the Environmental Protection Agency should be allowed to comply with the Clean Air Act, as ordered by the Supreme Court, to reduce pollution or are we going to tie their hands with some kind of a special rider on what should be a continuing resolution to fund the government?

We have had four bites out of the apple this week. None of the amendments to tie the hands of EPA and their ability to enforce the Clean Air Act has been adopted. What we are now trying to do with our friends in the other body is somehow put in the legislation as a rider language that would fly in the face of what we already decided here.

A second point. As a former Governor, I was active in the National Governors Association. One issue I worked hard on with George Voinovich from Ohio when he was Governor was legislation that said we do not like Federal mandates. States do not like Federal mandates that say you have to spend money on something or you cannot spend money on something or you have to raise revenues this way or raise them in that way. We did not like that.

Congress actually passed and President Clinton signed legislation on unfunded mandates. We do not do it nearly as much as we used to. One of the riders is to tell the District of Columbia what they can and cannot do with their money--not with Federal money but what they can and cannot do with their money. In my mind it is a violation of the unfunded mandate law, certainly in spirit if not in truth.

One of the issues we appear to be divided on is whether Federal money should be used for family planning. I think we all agree we should work toward having fewer abortions. I think almost everybody agrees we would like to have fewer abortions. One way to make sure we have more abortions is to reduce the money set aside for family planning. It is counterintuitive. If you want fewer abortions, cut funding for family planning. That makes no sense to me. I hope we will walk away from making that bad decision.

Again, I go back to the comments of our friends from Virginia and Tennessee who preceded me. This is a speed bump ahead of us. We are talking about how to come up with $4 billion, $5 billion, $6 billion in savings for the rest of this fiscal year. How about when we are looking for $4 trillion of savings over the next 10 years? That is the tough negotiation. It all has to be on the table. It cannot just be discretionary spending on the domestic side. We can eliminate it entirely, but we will still have a big budget deficit. Defense has to be on the table. Last year, there were $402 billion in cost overruns on major weapons systems. That is up $42 billion from 10 years ago. Defense and entitlements have to be on the table. Revenues have to be on the table.

We have been given a roadmap--not a perfect roadmap, but a roadmap-- by the deficit commission, chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson.

The last thing I want to say is, coming down on the train today, I read the business section of the New York Times. There is actually some pretty

interesting stuff in there. One of the things they reported on was the retail numbers for last month. Most analysts thought they would be down, but they are up.

I was at an auto dealership this past weekend in Milford, DE, talking about car sales. They are not flat. They are up. It was not just that dealership but throughout my State and the Nation. Two years ago, 9 million trucks and vans; last year, up to 11 million; next year, 13 million. Credit is available again and things are moving in the right direction.

Every Thursday, as the Presiding Officer knows, we have a number from the Department of Labor. It is new unemployment filings, how many people have filed a new claim for unemployment. We get it every Thursday. If we go back to the end of 2008, I think the top number in 1 week was 660,000 filings, people filing for unemployment, new claims at the end of 2008. Yesterday, for last week, we are down to 380,000 to 390,000. We saw jobs numbers created, new jobs for March, 220,000 private-sector jobs being created. We are going the right way.

Finally, the economic recovery is beginning and we need to strengthen it. One of the best ways to undermine it--one of the worst things we can do--is to add uncertainty, add unpredictability. I am not sure who said this. Maybe it was John Ensign who said this before. One of the things businesses need and want, that markets need and want is certainty and predictability.

One of the reasons big companies are sitting on the sidelines--a bunch of them still are--and not hiring people, even though they are sitting on cash--is unpredictability. What are we going to do with the budget, not just short-term runup, but for the 10-year plan, the $3 trillion, $4 trillion, $5 trillion in savings? What is the Supreme Court going to do with health care? Are they going to throw it out or fix it and make it even better? What are we going to do about energy policy? What are we going to do about tax policy? What are we going to do about transportation policy? All those are uncertainties.

We can begin to resolve the budgetary uncertainty by agreeing on a reasonable spending reduction plan for the balance of this fiscal year and go to work on the much tougher problem, and that is how to take $4 trillion out of our debt in the years to come.

Last thing I want to say is that a couple of us have been working on this in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. What we are beginning to do is to use our committee's jurisdiction to look into every nook and cranny of this government to ask this question: How do we get better results for less money? How do we get better results in domestic spending, how do we get better results in defense spending, and how do we get better results for less money in entitlement programs? And frankly, with the tax expenditures as well. How do we get better results?

I call it getting rid of a culture of spendthrift and replacing it with a culture of thrift. Above and beyond all the other stuff we are doing, we need to do that as well. Because everything I do, I know I can do better. I think the same is true of all of us. Everything we do, we can do better, and the same is true of Federal programs. The question we have to ask as we look to every one, as we look in every nook and cranny of the Federal Government, is to ask this question: Can we get better results for less money or at least better results for the same amount of money or not much more money? For a lot of them, the answer is: Yes, we can. For us, the challenge is to do that.

With that being said, I yield back my time. I see my friend from Nevada is here, and I am sure he is anxious to agree with everything I have said, and I welcome that.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the pending Landrieu second-degree amendment No. 244 and the Johanns amendment No. 161.

Madam President and colleagues, the question is simple: Can we protect our environment and grow our economy? And the answer is yes.

Forty years ago, naysayers claimed the Clean Air Act, signed into law by then-President Richard Nixon, was too costly and would doom our economy. They were wrong. We heard the same doom-and-gloom predictions in 1990 when President George Herbert Walker Bush led the effort to strengthen the Clean Air Act. They were wrong again. Since 1970, the efforts of the Clean Air Act have outweighed the cost 30 to 1, and the GDP has grown by more than 200 percent. The Clean Air Act has saved hundreds of thousands of lives, trillions in health care costs, and grown our economy. Now the naysayers warn that reducing carbon pollution will doom our economy. Ronald Reagan might say: Well, there they go again. But history and science say they are wrong.

If we don't take action, here is what it will mean: higher health care costs in America, destroyed coastlines, and an ever-growing dependence on foreign oil. That is not a recipe for economic success; it is a recipe for failure.

Let's keep America on the right course--one that saves lives and grows our economy. Please join me in voting against the McConnell amendment.

I thank my colleagues.

Mr. President, I wish to say to the Senator from Massachusetts, I saw no smirks on the face of this Presiding Officer.

He is a breath of fresh air and so is the Senator.

I wish to follow up. I was not planning on doing this. I wish to talk a little bit about clean air and the responsibilities the Environmental Protection Agency has to meet the Clean Air Act. I wish to follow up on a point or two Senator Brown has mentioned.

He talked about the deficit. I go back a little over 2 years ago, when then-Senator Barack Obama stood right over there and gave his farewell address to the Senate. It was a good time. A bunch of us were here to hear what the next President of the United States had to say.

When it was over, he went down to where all the pages were sitting. Senator Obama went down and shook hands with the pages. He walked up this aisle to walk out. I walked over to him--as he was speaking, I had written down six points I thought he should focus on to reduce the deficit during the time he is President. He looked at my list and said: I can't read your writing, Tom. I said: I will send you an e-mail.

By the end of the day, I sent him an e-mail amplifying on the six points I mentioned. Among the points I suggested is, we have a lot of improper payments in this government. We are overpaying billions of dollars, mistakes, and we need to do something about it.

I told him we have a lot of fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. We need to, once we identify the fraud, have private sector contractors recover the money, get it back for the Treasury.

I told him we have a problem with surplus property. There is a lot of property. We own thousands of pieces of property and land we do not use. We should sell it and stop paying utilities and security for that property.

I said: We have cost system overruns for major weapons systems, and we need to do something about that. I said that in 2000, a major weapons system cost about $42 billion. By 2005, a major weapons system cost about $200 billion. By 2007, it was like $295 billion. I said: We have to do something about major weapons systems cost overruns. That should be on your to-do list, if I can be so bold.

I mentioned taxes. There is a lot of money owed by companies to the Treasury not being collected. The IRS thinks it is over $300 billion a year.

That is a pretty good bucket list for a new President-elect. I urged him, when he put together his administration, to focus on those points.

Everything I just mentioned, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has been working on. Federal financial management--everything I just mentioned we have been working on, not every day but every week. We have been working on this list.

Last month, we had a top official from the Department of Health and Human Services before our committee. Their responsibilities include overseeing Medicare and Medicaid. It turns out that improper payments, honest mistakes made in Medicare, were about $45 billion last year--$45 billion. Overall in the government, not counting the Department of Defense, it is $125 billion. This is not fraud. These are mistakes, accounting errors--$125 billion. About half of it was Medicare. The administration testified before our committee about 1 month ago and said with regard to the improper payments for Medicare, which last year were $50 billion: We promise to cut that in half from $50 billion to $25 billion--a huge reduction.

Eric Holder, our Attorney General, reports that in Medicare, he thinks the annual fraud numbers could be as much as $60 billion. Last year, the Attorney General recovered about $4 billion in fraud. The good news is that is more than we have ever recovered in any other year since keeping records. The bad news is there is $56 billion more cash on the table we need to get.

We also put in the affordable health care law a number of tools for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General to reduce improper payments, reduce fraud, and get the money that has been misallocated and fraudulently taken. Those are a couple things.

It is not as if no one is doing nothing. Some of us are doing a whole lot. One of the things we are trying to do in our subcommittee--and Senator Brown is the ranking Republican on that subcommittee. We have Rob Portman, Claire McCaskill, and Tom Coburn--people who do care about spending and trying to make sure we spend the taxpayers' money more effectively.

What we are trying to do is replace what I call a culture of spendthrift with a culture of thrift, to look at every program, whether it is domestic programs, defense programs, entitlement programs, tax expenditures, tax loopholes, tax credits, to make sure we are getting the best bang for our bucks and, where we are not, to do something to fix it. We are actively involved in that and actually getting some results. We obviously need to do a whole lot more. I was not planning on speaking to this issue, but I wanted to mention that.

Second, I wish to follow up on the comments of our Democratic whip, Senator Durbin, who authored legislation called the interchange amendment. He talked about it before Senator Brown did.

There have been times in my life as Governor and a former naval flight officer and in the Senate when I did things that had unintended consequences. I had the best intentions, but there were unintended consequences to what I did. In my view, flowing from the interchange amendment we adopted and adopted in conference are unintended circumstances. The intent was good, which was to try to make sure that more of the money from the fee that is collected from swiping our debit cards went to the

consumer, not to the banks and not to the merchants. There is reason to believe consumers may not benefit from this at all. There was an effort to try to protect credit unions and smaller banks in the interchange amendment. As it turns out, the people who have been lobbying the loudest and pressing the most are the credit unions and small banks, community banks, saying there are unintended consequences.

My hope is we can slow the process down, hit the pause button for 1 year and figure out what the unintended consequences are and see if we cannot let cooler heads prevail and avoid unintended consequences and do something that actually may be good for consumers.

Mr. President, what I came to the floor to talk about-- and I would like to do that now--deals with clean air, it deals with jobs, it deals with the responsibilities the EPA has with respect to clean air and to make sure that as they execute their responsibility, they are mindful of jobs.

A lot of people think we cannot have cleaner air without destroying jobs. As it turns out, we can have both. We can have cleaner air. We have had it for years. We adopted the Clean Air Act in 1970, with major amendments to it in 1990. We literally created millions of jobs from that act to reduce the emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, and other forms of pollution that, in many cases, have killed people--hundreds of thousands of people--over the years. We not only save lives, we improve health in the country. We put a lot of people to work coming up with new technologies that reduce harmful emissions. We have a lot of people working in this country to reduce emissions from our cars, trucks and vans and doing it in a way that gives us better gas mileage.

When I filled up my car with gas over the weekend, it was about three and a half bucks per gallon. As the Presiding Officer knows, we are going to start building by the end of next year in our old GM plant new cars, Fisker, cars that drive about 80 miles per gallon. They are beautiful. Chevrolet is selling the Volt and will sell more in the years to come. They are making huge improvements in mileage. We are getting this greater improvement in mileage and reducing our dependence on foreign oil, cleaning up the air, and putting a lot of people to work. This is one of the deals where we can have our cake and eat it too.

I just came from a Bible study group. There were very nice comments, Mr. President, about you yesterday at the Prayer Breakfast. Before that I did a telephone townhall. Initially, I learned this from Bob Corker, a Republican Senator from Tennessee, who shared this idea with me a couple years ago. You get a big conference call with people in your State. We had 5,600 people on the call. We spent about an hour together. They raised all kinds of issues.

One of the ladies on the call asked me: Why are we letting EPA tell companies what they can do with respect to their emissions? We are going to destroy jobs. As it turns out, the premise is not correct. It is not that the EPA wants to do this; it is their job. The EPA is being told by the U.S. Supreme Court that under the Clean Air Act, if the EPA can show through good science that there is harm to our health or to the welfare of the people by virtue of our pollution, EPA has no other choice but to regulate it if we will not pass laws to do that.

We have not passed laws. Some people say: Why don't we put a tax on carbon, on things we burn and that have carbon in them to make it more expensive and maybe people will use less of it. We are not going to put a tax on carbon around here. I don't know that too many people have the political courage to do that.

We argued about what President George Herbert Walker Bush did to reduce acid rain, reducing dramatically through market systems sulfur dioxide. We met our reduction targets in one-half the time at one-fifth the cost. People do not talk about acid rain anymore. There is an effort to take that approach and apply it to carbon dioxide. There are not the votes here to do that either.

EPA has basically little choice when the Supreme Court interprets the Clean Air Act. They have to do something. We have not done our part, so the job of EPA is to pass commonsense regulations which will be mindful of their impact on jobs. As it turns out, we are going to create a lot more jobs by virtue of cleaning up our air than we are going to lose in terms of employment opportunities.

The last point I wish to say, if I may, is the Presiding Officer and I live in Delaware, the first State to ratify the Constitution. We are enormously proud of our State, as our colleagues are of their States. In Delaware, we do not have mountains. One does not find the Blue Ridge Mountains or the Rockies there. We are a pretty flat, low-lying State, just north of Maryland, just south of Pennsylvania, and just west of New Jersey.

I joke with people. I say the highest point of land in Delaware is a bridge, and that is not much of an exaggeration. We are a low-lying State. Something is happening in our lovely little State. We do not have a lot of land. We are starting to see the sea level rise. It is not just on the Delaware beaches and shores, it is happening up and down the East Coast, in the gulf, and over on the West Coast as well.

We have great beaches--Rehobeth, Bethany, Dewey, and others. We used to replenish our beaches maybe every 5 or 6 years. The waves come in, storms--nor'easters, maybe an occasional hurricane. We have to replenish our beaches. We have to do it more frequently now, not because of storms but because the sea level is actually starting to rise.

As the Presiding Officer knows, just north of Rehobeth Beach--a great little beach town--just north of Rehobeth Beach, about 10 miles, is a beautiful natural wildlife refuge called Prime Hook. It is right on the Delaware Bay. Prime Hook has a number of beautiful freshwater wetlands and marshes. It is a great place for people to hike, watch birds, and do all sorts of activities. It is a real national treasure. We are starting to see saltwater intruding and taking over what had previously been freshwater marshes and wetlands.

If we look at the Delaware River from the Delaware Bay, north up the Delaware Bay, it becomes the Delaware River and we head up to Pennsylvania and into New York. As we go farther and farther up the Delaware River, in recent years, we find that instead of turning from saltwater to brackish to freshwater, that line moves farther north.

Something is going on. Maybe people do not want to recognize or acknowledge that, but something is going on. We are seeing strange kinds of tornadoes, frequency of tornadoes, thunderstorms in the middle of winter. Out of the 10 hottest years on record, 9 of them have occurred in the last decade. Something is going on here. EPA is trying to figure out if there is some way we can gradually reduce the emission of greenhouse gases into our air and do so consistent with a strong economy and creating jobs, not destroying. I think we can do both. We have to be smart to figure that out and have a partnership with the executive branch, businesses and the legislative branch and be consistent with what the Supreme Court has ordered EPA to do.

One last, quick point. We spend more money for health care than Japan, by far. We spend more money on health care than any other nation on Earth, by far. In Japan, they spend half as much as we do for health care and get better results, everything from higher life expectancy to lower infant mortality. They cover everybody. Think about that: They spend half as much, better results, and they cover everybody. How can they be that smart and how can we be that dumb?

One way we can spend less money on health care is to, frankly, have cleaner air. We cannot only save billions of dollars--we have already made great progress--but we can save tens maybe hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs by continuing to clean our air, to make it cleaner.

With that, I am happy to conclude. It is a joy to be here and see you, Mr. President, presiding in this Chamber and with all these young people to recount one of my favorite stories about Barack Obama and the six points I gave to him 2\1/2\ years ago to reduce the deficit. We are actually starting to do that, knowing we need to do a whole lot more.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 5 minutes.

Mr. President, I used to be a Governor. I sometimes say I used to be somebody. As Governor, you had to propose budgets, you had to balance budgets, and you had to work with the legislature. I followed Mike Castle, and he followed Pete DuPont. We focused very hard on fiscal responsibility. During the 8 years I was Governor, we had eight balanced budgets in a row. For 7 years, we cut taxes. A couple of years, we actually paid down some debt. We ended up with a triple-A credit rating for the first time in the history of the State of Delaware. So I

feel as though I know something about this issue. So do a number of my colleagues.

We are having a lot of debate, as we should, over what our spending plans are going to be in this continuing resolution to fund the government for another 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 months. That is well and good and important. We need to get started and demonstrate that we are able to reduce this deficit and reduce our debt. We need to keep in mind that while what we do in the next 6 months is important, what is really important is what we do in the next 6 years and beyond that.

We had a commission put together that a bunch of us supported. We created the deficit reduction commission, chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. They gave us a pretty good roadmap of how to get to a more fiscally responsible place in the next few years, cutting some $4 trillion out of the budget deficit. What they said is that pretty much everything needs to be on the table--domestic spending, defense spending, entitlement programs, tax expenditures, tax credits, tax deductions, tax rates. They have suggested a proposal that cuts the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years, about two-thirds of that on the spending side and maybe one-third or so on the revenue side. I think it is a pretty good approach, and I commend the 18 members of the commission who endorsed that approach.

One of my core values is, everything I do, I know I can do better. I think the same is true of all my colleagues. Frankly, the same is true of Federal programs. What we need to do is to replace what a lot of people think we have in Washington--a culture of spendthrift--and we need to replace it with a culture of thrift. We need to look in every nook and cranny of the Federal Government and all programs and say: Can we get better results for less money or can we get a better result by at least not spending more money? Partnering with the General Accountability Office, GAO, OMB, with all the inspectors general, with nonprofit groups such as Citizens Against Government Waste, what can we do to get better results for less money? That is part of what we need to do long term. We still will have tough decisions, but at the end of the day, we need to save some money, carve out some money. If we have to spend an extra dollar or two, where should we invest that money?

There is a guy named John Chambers, whom the Presiding Officer knows, and some of us met with him earlier today. He is CEO of Cisco, a big technology company. He likes to say that there are two things we need to do if we are to be successful as a nation, with a 21st-century economy: No. 1, invest in people so we have the most productive workforce, smart workers, whether postdocs or people with high school degrees--productive workforce; No. 2, invest in our infrastructure.

Last year, the transportation infrastructure in this country got a D as in ``delta''--not good--a D as in ``dumb.'' That is where our infrastructure is in this country. We need to invest in our infrastructure, not just roads, highways, bridges, rails, and ports, but broadband, water, wastewater--broadly defined infrastructure.

The third thing we need to do is invest in research and development so we can continue to be an innovation economy. The President said that if we are going to be successful in the 21st century, we need to outeducate, outinnovate, outcompete the rest of the world.

We need to invest in our workforce, our very young kids and folks who are off to college and postsecondary training.

We also need to invest in our infrastructure, not just roads, highways, bridges, and rails, but infrastructure described broadly.

Finally, we need to invest in R&D so we can invest and outcompete the best of the world.

At the end of the day, we have to create what I call a nurturing environment for job creation, for job preservation. We need a nurturing environment. Part of that is our obligation working with the private sector and others, States and local governments across the country.

Right now, our debt as a percentage of GDP has climbed to 65 percent, I am told. Sixty-five percent--our debt as a percentage of GDP. The last time it was that high was at the end of World War II. It is the only time it has been that high--65 percent. Other countries getting into that kind of territory are Greece and Ireland. That is not smart. They found out the hard way. We need to learn from them, and this is the time to do it. It requires all of us to stand and do what we know we need to do, to share in the sacrifice, with everything on the table. Let's use the deficit commission as a good role model. Let's ask the executive branch to provide the leadership they need to provide.

I think my time has expired, Mr. President. I note the presence of the Senator from Kentucky so he can take the floor as my time has expired.

Mr. President. today I recognize the Honorable Nancy Wilson Cook of Kenton, DE. A legislator, stateswoman, sister, mother, grandmother and friend, I have known Nancy for many years and on many levels. I am very proud to be honoring her today.

Born in Philadelphia, Nancy grew up in New Castle County and attended public school in the Colonial School District, graduating from William Penn High School. Nancy also attended the University of Delaware before marrying her beloved husband, the Honorable Allen J. Cook, and starting their family.

Always curious about the political process, Nancy got her first taste of the political world when she worked as an attache to the late State Senator Calvin McCullough. For the next 20 years Nancy worked in Legislative Hall, in the Capital City of Dover, taking in the democratic process. Following the passing of her husband, Nancy was elected to the 15th District Senate seat held by Allen, during a special election.

A role model of integrity and service, Nancy served not only as a State senator, but as a leader within the Democratic caucus. Nancy served as chairwoman and vice-chairwoman of the prestigious Joint Finance Committee, and is the longest-serving Joint Finance Committee cochair in Delaware history. As the first Democratic woman to be elected to the Delaware State Senate, Nancy held other leadership roles during her tenure including serving as senate majority whip, chairwoman of the Senate Highways and Transportation Committee, and chairwoman of the Joint Capital Bond Bill Committee. She also served as a member of the Senate Committees on Agriculture; Adult & Juvenile Corrections; Children, Youth & Families; Insurance & Elections; and, Revenue & Taxation.

An icon in the Delaware General Assembly, Nancy's legislative accomplishments are vast. During my terms as both Delaware's treasurer and Governor, Nancy and I worked closely together on many financial issues facing the State of Delaware. Known for her immense knowledge of and experience with Delaware financial matters, I valued her input on many major decisions.

Throughout my 8 years as Delaware's Governor, Nancy's leadership helped my administration pursue a commonsense agenda that led to eight balanced budgets, tax cuts in 7 of those 8 years, and major increases in employment allowing Delaware to achieve a AAA bond rating for the first time in its history. Nancy has been a strong ally for me on many occasions including creating Delaware's 21st Century Fund, the unprecedented State long-term infrastructure investment fund. In 1996, she was a very strong supporter of the purchase of the Port of Wilmington, which began the port's rejuvenation into one of the world's top ports.

Another of her many noteworthy accomplishments was in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the enacting of the constitutional amendments and related legislation to establish Delaware's balanced budget amendment-- creating the State's ``Rainy Day Fund'' and a formula for reducing bond indebtedness. Nancy was also very active with the Legislative Council leading the way for the conversion and renovation of both Legislative Hall and the Tatnall Building allowing for better public access to the General Assembly and the Governor. She has also been a strong supporter of the Wilmington Riverfront, serving on the board of directors of the Riverfront Development Corporation, as well as information technology, historical and cultural affairs and the Delaware Heritage Commission's Delaware Oral History Project.

Nancy leaves a legacy of commitment to public service for her family and the rest of us to follow. I join her friends and family, son Tommy, his wife Beth and their daughter Morgan; stepson Allen, his wife Judy and their children Allen III, Dale, and Shawn and their wives and children in congratulating Nancy for her dedication and service.

On behalf of all Delawareans, I applaud Nancy W. Cook for her outstanding commitment to the State of Delaware and extend to her my very best wishes for every success in the future.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I am joined by my colleague, Senator Voinovich, in support of the passage of the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act of 2010, DERA. The folks of Ohio and Delaware sent us to Washington to find ideas that will work, ideas we can all agree on to make our country even better. An idea that works is the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act or DERA.

The DERA program is one of the best actions our government has taken to improve air quality and help States and localities meet air quality standards. First authorized in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, DERA has provided funding for the modernization of our Nation's old diesel fleet in the United States through voluntary national and State-level grant and loan programs. Since its enactment in 2005, DERA has provided significant public health benefits, improved our national energy security, and helped create jobs. Currently, DERA helps clean up more than 14,000 diesel-powered vehicles and equipment across the country, which has reduced emissions while employing thousands of workers who manufacture, sell or repair diesel vehicles and their components in each State.

The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that there are still millions of older diesel engines now in use and need to be replaced or retrofitted. To meet this need, the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act of 2010 authorizes the continuation of this successful program for 2012 through 2016. It also slightly modifies the program to improve its effectiveness and administration. Despite the significant benefits and need for DERA, the legislation set the authorization levels for 2012 through 2016 at half the levels of that for 2007 through 2011. The authorizing levels were reduced to be more in line with what has been normally appropriated for the program. The cut in authorization levels in no way reflects the need for the program and in no way should be interpreted as an indication that funding levels should be decreased.

Senator Voinovich and I would like to thank the President and our colleagues for their support of DERA. We are proud that this commonsense approach to creating jobs and cleaning up our Nation's air will become law.

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

Mr. President, about an hour or so ago, our colleagues voted on whether we should proceed to final debate and eventually to an up-or-down vote on whether to ratify the New START treaty. I think it is safe to say most Democrats, most Republicans--even those two Independents who hang out with us--have pretty much decided on what they want to do on that final vote. I think there is a handful of Senators, maybe a half dozen or so, who are still undecided and trying to make up their minds. I just want to say I respect that. It is a serious matter, very serious matter, and there are strong arguments to be made on either side of this issue.

For those who have already made up their minds, they are probably not all that interested in what I have to say. But for the handful of our colleagues who have not decided how they believe we should proceed, how they ultimately want to vote, I want to take a few minutes and talk to them.

I want to boil this down into four questions that I have focused on as I have looked at this issue, looked at the treaty, looked at its ramifications. I want to start out by mentioning what I think the four maybe critical questions are that we should be asking ourselves.

The first question is, does this treaty make us safer? I believe it does. I think absolutely it makes us safer.

The second question is, can we afford not to ratify this treaty? I believe the answer is no; we cannot afford not to ratify this treaty. We need to.

The third question is, Can we go on to build a robust missile defense system, should we need to, if we ratify this treaty? I believe the answer is yes; we can do that if we need to.

The fourth and final question I want us to ponder is, Is ratification of the New START treaty the last word on this issue? Quite frankly, the answer is no, not at all. In fact, ratification of this treaty would just be another step, an important step, in what has been a decades- long journey. What I would like to do, if I could, is to take these questions just one question at a time.

The first question is, Does this treaty make us safer?

One of the greatest threats, and some would say the greatest threat, to our country and to its people today is the chance that terrorists might somehow acquire a nuclear weapon and detonate it inside this country. I ask my colleagues, are we doing all that we need to do to stop this from happening?

Sure, we can try to hunt down all the terrorists before they strike. In fact, we are doing that now. But we will never know where every terrorist is hiding, and I doubt we will ever have the manpower necessary to hunt them down if we did know where they were and try to stop them.

Here is what we do know, however. We know where most of the nuclear weapons on this planet are today. The majority of them are either in Russia or they are in the United States. I would like to think we do a good job of securing our nuclear weapons facilities in the United States. But Russia, as most of us know, is another story. There is a reason terrorists target Russian nuclear facilities.

While Russian security has improved recently, there are still holes, some would say gaping holes, in the physical facilities of some Russian facilities, holes that leave openings for terrorists to gain access to these weapons. That is one of the reasons we need to ratify this treaty. It limits the number of warheads that Russia can hold. Fewer Russian warheads translate into fewer chances that those weapons, those warheads, will fall into the wrong hands.

Here is another reason to ratify this treaty: Since the original START treaty expired at the end of 2009, the United States has been denied the ability to track and to verify the status of Russian nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Russian cooperation on verifying and monitoring warheads under the original START treaty helped lay the groundwork under the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction program in the 1990s. This program worked and still works to secure and dismantle Russian nuclear weapons, to keep them from falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue regimes.

New START will restore our verification and tracking capabilities that we lost last year with the expiration of the original START treaty. This, in turn, will encourage Russia to continue and to participate in the Nunn-Lugar program. In short, Americans will be safer if the treaty before us is ratified.

That leads me to the second question, Can we afford not to ratify this treaty? I believe the answer is no; no, we cannot. Let me say why.

My colleagues opposing this treaty have pointed out what they believe to be flaws in it. Some of them say the United States should have held out for a better deal. Others say the United States should have increased the number of allowed inspections or increased the number of delivery systems allowed under the treaty. They say the job of the Senate is not to simply ratify treaties but to debate and to amend them.

Let me just say, if this were a seriously flawed treaty, I would agree or if this were a flawed treaty I would agree. But it is not. The fact that so far all the amendments offered to this treaty have failed, mostly by large majorities, bears witness to that fact. Sure, we could amend the treaty language to maximize the U.S. position. We could send our diplomats back to the negotiating table with the Russians with a whole new set of terms the Russians will find unacceptable and ultimately nonnegotiable. When the Russians then walk away from the talks and the prospects of securing a new treaty die, we will ask ourselves, was it worth it to oppose ratification? Was it worth it?

When a Russian nuclear weapon goes missing and we are left in the dark because U.S.-Russian cooperation on tracking and dismantling warheads died with the treaty, we will ask ourselves, was it worth it to oppose ratification?

I believe the answer is no. Every living former Secretary of State from Kissinger to Baker to Rice shares that opinion.

Several former Secretaries of Defense, including Secretaries Schlesinger, Carlucci, Perry, and Cohen, all believe we ought to ratify this treaty in order to make our country--our country--safer. I might add, our top intelligence people agree with them.

This unlikely bipartisan coalition has come to this conclusion because they are certain that failure to ratify New START leaves our country less safe and more at risk to terror. We ignore the collective wisdom and advice of these leaders, past and present, at our peril. They have no axe to grind. They are calling it like they see it. I hope we will search our hearts--every one of us--and our minds this week and come to the same conclusion they have.

Question No. 3 was: Can we build a robust missile defense system if we ratify this treaty? That is an important question. The answer is too. And the answer is, yes, we absolutely can. There is simply nothing in this treaty that limits the United States from building the kind of missile defense system we might want and that we might need.

You do not have to take my word for it. Last month the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ADM Mike Mullen, bluntly stated, ``There is nothing in the treaty that prohibits us from developing any kind of missile defense.''

Let me say his words again. ``There is nothing in the treaty that prohibits us from developing any kind of missile defense.'' Those are not my words. Those are his words. Nothing, nothing in the treaty prohibits us from doing that.

Just last week Secretary Gates said that the treaty ``in no way limits anything we want or have in mind on missile defense.'' Let me repeat that as well. He said, ``The treaty in no way limits anything we want or have in mind on missile defense.'' In no way.

Simply put, this treaty gives us both what we want and what we need. It reduces the number of nuclear warheads Russia can possess, and it does so without constraining U.S. missile defense and deployment.

Some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, who have made up their minds that they will oppose ratification, dispute the statements of

both Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen. Clearly, that is their right to do so. These opponents to the treaty argue that this treaty would, in fact, create limitations on our ability to build and deploy a missile defense system. With all due respect to them, I do not believe that is true. And, more importantly, neither do our top military and intelligence leaders, upon whom our Nation depends. They do not believe it is true either. In supporting this argument, some of the treaty's critics point to a provision which states we cannot convert nuclear missile launchers into missile defense launchers. We have all heard Senators Kerry and Lugar respond to this assertion. We do not want to make these conversions. We do not want to make these conversions. Why? Because it is not cost effective. It is cheaper to build new silos rather than convert the old launchers. This is not a limitation on missile defense. It is common sense. It is cost effective. And it is certainly not a reason to vote against this important treaty.

Question No. 4 again. Question No. 4 was: Is ratification of New START the last word on this issue? And the answer is, not at all. This is not the last word. In fact, ratification is another step, albeit an important one, in a decades-long journey. Ratification reflects a vision shared by Presidents Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, George Herbert Walker Bush, and George W. Bush, as well as the people of our country, and the people of the Russian Federation.

Realizing that vision is vitally important both to Russians and to Americans, our two nations must join to lead the global community on the issue of nuclear disarmament. If we do not, no one else will.

The next step in realizing that vision requires us to ratify this New START treaty that is before us this week. Once we have done so, we should turn to redoubling our efforts to work with Russia, with China, and our allies to pressure Iran and North Korea to give up not their nuclear energy programs but their nuclear weapons programs. And as we do that, we should continue working toward future agreements with the Russian Federation on reducing tactical nuclear weapons.

Fortunately, in the resolution of ratification that contains the New START treaty language, there are instructions added by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that order--that order--the Obama administration to pursue agreements on the limits of tactical nuclear weapons with Russia as well. Two weeks ago, Secretaries Clinton and Gates said they would pursue such an agreement with the Russian Federation in the coming years. However, we cannot continue down that path without first ratifying New START. And we must.

Let me conclude today by asking my undecided colleagues, however many there are out there, one final question. Here it is: How often do we see in this body nearly every major national security official from just about every Presidential administration of the last four decades come together to support one initiative like this? How often? The answer is, not very often, at least not on my watch.

As a captain in the Navy, as my State's Congressman, and Senator, as Governor of Delaware, and commander in chief for a while of our State's National Guard, I learned a long time ago that the best way to make tough decisions, to make the right decision, is to gather together the best and brightest minds that we can, people with different perspectives, urge them to try to find common ground, and then provide their recommendations to me.

In the case of this treaty, many of the best and brightest national security minds our Nation has ever seen, names such as Kissinger, Powell, Schlesinger, Baker, Hadley, Scowcraft, Shultz, Rice, Nunn, Warner, Lugar, Kerry, Clinton, Bush, and Gates, agree that we should ratify New START and ratify it now.

I urge my colleagues who are still undecided on this critical issue to join me, to join us, in moving our Nation forward by voting to ratify this treaty.

Before I yield the floor, I want to take a moment to salute Senator Lugar. I thank you and thank your staff for the terrific leadership you have provided for years on these issues, along with Sam Nunn, all of those years ago, and with John Kerry and others today.

I am going to thank Senator Kerry for the terrific leadership and the great support he has gotten from his committee, from the staff, to get us to this point today.

I am encouraged that we may have the votes to finish our business and to conclude by ratifying this treaty tomorrow. I hope that handful of our colleagues who are out there who are still trying to figure out what is the right thing to do will maybe find some words in the wisdom I share today.

I yield the floor.

Before Senator Harkin leaves the floor, let me say I am so pleased that I was literally able to be here on the floor and hear you talk about our colleagues. What a wonderful thing to do, and to single out Democrats and Republicans and to reflect upon their service to their States and to our country. I had to mention that.

You mentioned Blanche Lincoln. A lot of people say I respect my colleague, I think highly of my colleague, but here in the Senate we love Blanche. We love Blanche and her family. She is such a joy to work with. Always up, even during the course of the tough year she has had. I remember her more than once saying what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And she has come through this with a smile and such grace, it is just remarkable. I loved working with her on the Finance Committee, especially on the health care bill that is designed to provide better outcomes for less money.

Bob Bennett

You mentioned Bob Bennett. He and I served on the Banking Committee for a number of years. In the end, he lost his seat I think because of his willingness to do what we were rewarded for in Delaware, and that is to reach across the aisle and find ways for Republicans and Democrats to do things together. We will certainly miss him.

Mr. President, in November 1948--that was 1 year after my birth--President Harry Truman issued a highly controversial Executive Order. It called for beginning the process to bring to an end the longstanding policy of racial segregation in the Armed Forces of our Nation.

Just a few years earlier, my father and three of my uncles had served on active duty for much of World War II. One of them--Bob Patton--was killed in a kamikaze attack on his aircraft carrier, the USS Suwannee in 1944. But all four of them--my dad and three uncles--were born and raised near the coal mining town of Beckley, WV, where my sister and I were born after the war.

Neither my father nor my uncles ever discussed with us the implication of President Truman's Executive Order. Having said that, I later learned that many of the people in my native State opposed it, as did many people in Danville, VA, the last capital of the Confederacy and the place where my sister and I would grow up.

The transition that followed President Truman's actions was not an easy one, but history would later show the steps he ordered 62 years ago this year were the right ones for our military and for our country.

Twenty years after Truman's historic action, I was commissioned an ensign in the Navy and headed for Pensacola, FL, to begin the training that would enable me to become a naval flight officer. I had just graduated from Ohio State University--the Ohio State University, I guess--which I attended on a Navy ROTC scholarship. My sister was not in our ROTC unit at Ohio State. In fact, there were no women in that unit, and to the best of my knowledge there were no women in any of our ROTC units across the country nor in our military service academies in America either.

A lot of people thought that was fine, and while there were women who served then in our Armed Forces, they were denied the opportunities that I and a lot of other men had that enabled us to advance in rank and to assume positions of ever greater responsibility. I went on to serve in Southeast Asia and retire as a Navy captain after 23 years of active and reserve duty. No women served with us in my active-duty squadron, but as the years passed that began to change. Young women gained admission into ROTC programs in colleges and universities across America and into our service academies as well. They became pilots, they flew airplanes, helicopters, served on ships, and someday, before too long, they will serve on some submarines as well.

Today, women are admirals and they are generals. While there is still resistance to the transition that continues to this day--and much of that is understandable--most of us who have lived through it would agree this change has helped to make our military and our Nation stronger.

Today, we face a different kind of transition--a challenging one, too--and that is whether to end the policy of don't ask, don't tell. Confronted with this question and how to answer it, I have sought the counsel of a number of people over the past year whose wisdom I value. Foremost among them has been our Secretary of Defense Bob Gates. He has graciously shared his thoughts on this difficult and contentious issue with me and with many of my colleagues, both in private and in public forums.

Today I stand in agreement with the Secretary and with ADM Mike Mullen, the Chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff. The time has come to repeal the law that requires young men and women to lie about who they are in order to serve their country.

Having said that, however, I also agree with them that this transition--like several of the others I have talked about--must be done in a way that eases the military into this change over time so that it does not adversely affect or undermine our military readiness, our ability to recruit, and our morale.

The proposal we approved an hour or so ago seeks to do exactly that. It will empower Secretary Gates and our other military leaders to carefully implement a repeal of don't ask, don't tell in the months ahead. Repeal is not something that is going to happen overnight. The Secretary and the Joint Chiefs are going to do this in a deliberate and responsible way, and it will take some time. Our military leaders have made it clear they want Congress to act now, though, to enable them to begin to implement this repeal of don't ask, don't tell in a thoughtful manner rather than to have the courts force them into it overnight.

I support that approach. I support the approach recommended by our military leaders. I stand behind Secretary Gates and our Nation's other military leaders as they prepare to lead our military and our Nation through this historic transition, rather than to allow the courts to do it for us in ways that we may some day live to regret.

Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of order for perhaps 2 minutes.

Mr. President, thank you very much.

Mr. President, George Voinovich and I served as Governors together for 6 years. He chaired the National Governors Association, and he was good enough to let me be his vice chairman. I got here and, lo and behold--in fact, for a while he chaired a national dropout prevention program called Jobs for America's Graduates. I was his vice chairman. I got here, and he chaired a subcommittee on the Environment and Public Works Committee, the Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety, and I got to be his vice chairman. So I am used to being his second banana. But I love the guy, and I have learned an enormous amount from him.

He is one of those people who really, every day, try to say: What is the right thing to do--not the easy thing to do, not the expedient thing to do, but what is the right thing to do? And he tries to do it. He is the kind of person where we go to the Bible study group that meets about every Thursday with the Chaplain and some of our colleagues, and we are always reminded by Barry Black that the Golden Rule is treat other people the way we want to be treated. It is the cliff notes of the New Testament, and George really personifies that. He treats everybody the way he would want to be treated.

He is a person who focuses on excellence in everything he has done-- as mayor, as Governor, and here in the U.S. Senate--and he is always looking for ways to do better what he does and calls on the rest of us to do the same.

Finally, this guy is tenacious. He does not give up. If he thinks he is right and he knows he is right, just get out of the way, and you know he is going to prevail.

He has wonderful folks on his staff who are here with him today, and we salute all of you. He knows how to pick--you are--good people and turn them loose and really to inspire them and us.

I do not think Janet is here today. Maybe she is watching on television. I hope so. But to her and their family, thanks very, very much for sharing with us an extraordinary human being.

We love you, George.

Mr. President, I yield back.