Floor Statements

Mr. President, I wish today to recognize the noble efforts of

both the Sones family and the Dover Air Force Base community for their support of Karina Sones in her battle against cancer. Karina was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia when she was 4 years old. Although the doctors thought they had beaten the cancer after a round of chemotherapy in 2004, she unfortunately relapsed in 2006. I wish to commemorate the sterling efforts of her two younger brothers, her parents, and the men and women of Dover Air Force Base for encouraging and supporting Karina through this difficult time. Thankfully, she is now on the path to recovery.

When Karina relapsed, her parents were informed that a bone marrow transplant was her only option. Despite there being approximately 20 million bone marrow donations on record, there were no matches on the National Marrow Donor database for Karina. Her parents, however, remained optimistic that a solution would be found. In what can only be described as good fortune, Karina was lucky enough to be the recipient of an anonymous donation of umbilical cord stem cells that allowed her to have a second chance at life. Karina bravely endured radiation and 50 days of isolation before she could receive the transplant. Afterwards, the whole family had to work together to prevent her from getting sick. Although, Karina still suffers from graft-vs-host disease which has caused her skin to be inflamed, she remains brave and upbeat. She insists that she would like to go to Disneyland with her mother and be Cinderella.

Her two younger brothers, Braydin, age 10, and Torin, age 7, admirably refuse to be helpless as their sister battles leukemia. Karina's struggle inspired them to want to help other kids with cancer and to further support research, so they began collecting golf balls that had landed in their backyard and selling them on to golfers. Their goal was to collect $500, and they have already exceeded that amount. They will donate all the money to the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children where Karina still receives treatment.

This story is a true example of the Air Force, the Dover community, and the Sones family all coming together to unite against a common adversary. The city of Dover and the Dover Air Force Base are known for their tight-knit relationship which is certainly demonstrated by the Dover community having won the Abeliene trophy twice--the trophy designated for the base with the most supportive community--and this story only provides further evidence for that statement.

I believe that it is a mark of Karina's character and impressive bravery that she has persevered through all of her medical setbacks. To this day, Karina refuses to rest and is working on spreading awareness about becoming a bone marrow donor because she wants other children to have the same chance at life that she had. Most children, after spending so much time in hospitals, would wish to stay away from them, but Karina is not most children. She wants to become a cardiologist when she grows up.

Karina's brave story is one that we do not hear often. I wish to honor not just her courage but also the bravery and perseverance of her brothers and her parents and to wish them continued blessings in the future. I also want to emphasize the good work and support that Dover Air Force Base has offered the Sones family during such a trying and difficult time.

I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside in order to call up amendment No. 2456.

Mr. President, I would like to take the next several minutes to speak about an amendment that Senators Merkley and Klobuchar and I have to the Interior and Environment appropriations bill. With this amendment, we are asking the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a comprehensive study on something called black carbon emissions. This is very similar to a bipartisan bill I worked on with Senators Inhofe, Boxer, and Kerry that actually passed the Senate EPW Committee. Taking steps to reduce black carbon emissions is a win/win situation. We can lessen the threat of global warming, and at the same time we can improve global public health.

Black carbon emissions, sometimes called soot, are the dark particles emitted when fossil fuels, biomass, and biofuels are burned. In the United States we see mainly black carbon from old, dirty diesel engines. Internationally, black carbon comes from old cook stoves, inefficient industrial processes, and also dirty diesel engines. Black carbon contributes to serious global respiratory and cardiovascular health problems and even to death. Scientists also believe black carbon emissions contribute to global warming. In fact, it is estimated to be the second largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide. However, there is still a lot we don't know about black carbon.

Our amendment asks EPA to do several things: One, to identify global black carbon sources and cost-effective reduction technologies; two, to identify the public health, economic, and climate impacts of black carbon; three, to identify opportunities for current and possible international funding for mitigation; and four, to identify opportunities for future research and development.

We ask the EPA to use funds already allocated to them from their operations budget to fund this study.

Here in the United States we have made great progress in reducing black carbon by regulating the new diesel engines and through a voluntary national diesel retrofit program. We still have over 11 million old diesel engines without proper emission control technology. There is good news and bad news about diesel engines. One is they last a long time. That is the good news. The bad news is they last a long time.

Black carbon remains a problem worldwide. This amendment will enable us to build on the progress we

have already made and to use our resources wisely to reduce black carbon emissions at home and abroad.

I thank the managers of the bill for their interest in working with us on this amendment.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, when you take the train up the Northeast corridor and the train stops in Wilmington, DE, you are in the middle of what was, 60 years ago, a vibrant shipbuilding area. We built ships to help win World War II. When the war was over, what had been a vibrant shipbuilding industry turned into an industrial wasteland.

Fifteen years ago we began transforming it, and today it is river walks, it is places for people to live, work, recreate, we have parks-- it is a beautiful place, an urban wildlife refuge. We are going to build a children's science museum there as well. It costs $11 million. We raised the money from our local sources.

In this bill is the HUD funding, $190,000, to help us complete the package. It is a small amount of money for a great payoff for a lot of kids, tens of thousands of kids who will visit that science museum, who will be excited about science and, hopefully, will go on to have careers as scientists, inventors, and engineers. I ask you to help me defeat this amendment.

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to give actually a little bit of a history lesson, to look back and also look forward. I ask my colleagues to join me in looking back some 300-and-almost-75 years. Roughly at that time the first Swedes and Finns sailed to America on a couple of boats, one of which was called the Kalmar Nyckel.

The first Swedes and Finns came to shore--actually, they came up the Delaware Bay, up into the Delaware River, and they took a left turn at an uncharted river and decided to name it after the child Queen of Sweden, naming the river the ``Christina River.'' They landed their boats at a place which we now call The Rocks and decided to name that area the ``Colony of New Sweden.'' The first Swedes, the first Finns in America came ashore in what is now really Wilmington, DE. For the first year, they never called it Wilmington, they called it the Colony of New Sweden.

They came by ships, and for about the next 300 years, a lot of ships were built along the banks of the Christina River, especially during the period from 1945 to 1946 during the heart of World War II. Among the ships that were built there were destroyer escorts, troop landing ships, and a variety of other ships that helped to win the war, helped to win World War II.

When World War II was at its most robust, fullest form, we had 10,000 people who worked on the banks of the Christina River building those ships. A few years after the war ended, what had been a vibrant shipbuilding area along the Christina River dried up, the activity went away. The war was won, and what had been a vibrant shipbuilding area became, over time, a decaying industrial wasteland with relatively little new activity.

In the 1960s, I-95 was built up the northeast corridor of our country, the mid-Atlantic part of our country, and it literally cut Wilmington, DE, in half. Off to the right, to the east of I-95, was the Christina River, and add to that the northeast corridor, the Amtrak main lines between Washington and Boston. The main line of Amtrak also sat between I-95 and the Christina River and served to make it difficult for people even to access the river, almost hard for them to even know it was there.

I became Governor in 1993, and toward the end of that year, I was visited by a former Governor, Russ Peterson, and by a former president of the University of Delaware.

They said: We have been thinking of an idea. We have actually been working under the direction of a joint resolution signed by former Governor Mike Castle to think about what the potential could be for development along the Christina River and the Brandywine Creek not far away. We haven't finished our job. We have had a good start on it, but we need more time. We are about to run out of time under the joint resolution. We wonder if we can have a little more time to think it through.

I said: Hey, look, I am up to my eyeballs in alligators. I have been Governor for less than a year. You guys take as much time as you need.

They went away, and I wasn't sure I would ever see them again or talk to them again. As it turns out, in about 6 months they came back, and they said: Do you remember our coming in and talking to you?

I said: Yes, I remember that.

They said: We have gone back and done more work on a vision, if you will, of what the Christina River, this industrial wasteland along either side of the river, of what it could be, and we would like to share that with you today.

I said: Have at it.

By that time, I had been Governor about a year and a half, things were settling down, and I was ready to listen. They had these big architect renderings of a riverfront that certainly looked nothing like the Christina River, didn't look at all like an industrial wasteland. There was a river

that was pristine, with parks, walking paths, boats out on the river, museums, restaurants, places for people to live, places for people to work, theaters, museums. And I never will forget--I looked at them. I was blown away by the vision.

I said to former Governor Peterson: Who is going to make all of this happen?

He looked me right in the eye and he said: You are.

I said: Why me?

He said: Well, because you are the Governor.

I said: Well, I love this vision, and let's see if we can't help to realize it.

I think that conversation was in 1994. Anybody who today takes the train up the northeast corridor and stops at the Wilmington train station would say we have made a lot of progress. The place is cleaned up. We actually have walking paths along the river. We have parks. We have beautiful places where people live and condominiums and apartments as well as other homes. We have restaurants and we have museums. We have hope--that is what I am here to talk about today--for a children's science museum along the riverfront. But it is a vision that has been realized. A lot of people come there to eat at restaurants along the riverfront. And the river itself is being cleaned up, the water quality is being cleaned up, and the environmental hazards, and so forth, the waste that was left there has been for the most part cleaned up.

Probably in another month or so, less than a month or so, we are going to open a 250-acre wildlife refuge named after former Governor Peterson, built in partnership with the DuPont Company and the Nature Education Center. People will come and just enjoy, literally on the outskirts of the city, a large, urban wildlife refuge with walking paths and see what might have been some 100 years ago or 50 years ago in that place.

About 10 years ago, when I was nearing the end of my time as Governor, my second term, a group of citizens in our State came to see me, and they said they were exited about the riverfront and what was happening there.

They said: You know, Delaware does not have a children's museum.

I think every other State does. We do not. In fact, it turns out there are about 250 children's museums across the country.

They said: We are interested in having a children's museum to go with all of the other attractions on the riverfront.

We talked about it for some time, and I said: I like the idea. I like the concept. But to tell you the truth, I would be a lot more interested in it if it were a children's science museum.

At the time, I was trying to figure out, how do we get kids motivated, excited about science, how do we get them excited about careers in science? It is all well and good, the State is big in tourism, big in financial services, we have had a great history with the chemical industry, shipbuilding at one time. But in our Nation and in my State, we need more scientists, we need more engineers, we need more people who have facility in mathematics and who are going to go out and become inventors, create things, things of value that will help us, among other things, create jobs in the 21st century. Whether it is in clean energy or conservation or wind, solar, new ways to create nuclear power, we need people with those credentials too.

It starts very young. We have adopted, in my State, rigorous academic standards for math and science, English and social studies, with a real focus on the math and science. We say: This is what we expect you to know and learn and be able to do. And we are going to measure students' progress on that. Most every State has done that. As I said earlier, most every other State has decided it is going to have its own children's museum.

I told the folks who presented their idea to me about a decade ago: If you want me to be involved, if you want me to be as excited as you are, I want to change the focus not just to be a children's museum in Delaware, I want it to be a children's museum that focuses on science. I want young kids in the target audience of 6 to 12 to come here and leave here excited about wanting to be astronauts or wanting to be environmentalists or wanting to create new ways to harness the energy of the Sun or the wind or to find ways to deal with spent fuel rods from nuclear powerplants. That is where my interest is.

Over time, the focus of this concept, this idea of the children's museum, has turned to focus on science, and to date I am told we have raised over $11 million for the project. We actually have picked out the building. I think they have a lease or a sort of a contract on a large structure right at the bend of the Christina River there in Wilmington, which is where Kahunaville used to be. Kahunaville sort of conveys the idea of a good time, and for many years, people went there and had a really good time. It was a great nightclub with some big acts over the years. Bob Dylan performed there and Hall and Oats, all kinds of people over the years. It is no longer a nightclub; it is an empty building, and it is a large empty building that actually lends itself to being, we think, a terrific site for a science museum for the kids of Delaware.

So far to date we have raised, as I said, over $11 million. To date, the Federal Government has provided about $250,000. So out of over $11 million, less than 3 percent has come from the Federal Government.

I have asked for an appropriation, a directed appropriation, of about another $198,000, and I appreciate very much the support of the Appropriations Committee to include that amount. If it is included in what we have already appropriated, it would be about $450,000 out of a budget of roughly $11.5 million--roughly 4 percent of the total project. A lot of the money is going to come from the private sector, a fair amount from local sources, State and local sources, as well.

I will give you a flavor of the kinds of exhibits we are going to have there. I will mention the names of some of the sponsors. The DuPont Company has been great, and it is a wonderful environmental company. It has agreed to help sponsor over the next couple of years an exhibit that focuses on environmental issues, I think largely focusing on estuaries. We have a big estuary in the Delaware Bay and not far away in the Chesapeake Bay. This will really excite our kids about the water and preserving the quality of our water and improving the quality of our water. AstraZeneca is going to help us create an exhibit on the human body, something interactive that the kids can really get into and enjoy and learn from. One of our larger banks, JPMorgan Chase, is going to help us with a project to focus on financial literacy. If there is anything that would help us all, young and old, that is, I think the events of the last year or two have pointed this out. We will have exhibits that focus on clean energy, whether it is wind, solar. We will have ways to use wind and solar, to show and demonstrate how we rely on those. We will have an exhibit that will focus on conservation, smart grid, to show how we can be better consumers, smarter consumers. We will have some focus on, among other things, nuclear energy and show how we actually create electricity from nuclear power. Those are some of the dynamics.

Our vision is, that when the kids leave the children's science museum on the banks of the Christina River, they will be juiced, they will be excited, and they will want to come back. But just as importantly, when they go back to class the next day or the next week, they will be thinking about their math assignments and even their science assignments a little bit differently and trying to provide a connection: How is what I am learning in my classroom relevant to what is going on in our world? How is it relevant to what I might be doing as a life work later on when I am finished with school and go out into the world?

We need more scientists, we need more engineers. I know we need both of those. We need people who have a lot of expertise in math. We need people who are going to invent things to help us make this a better world. And for what I think is a fairly modest investment on behalf of the Federal Government--about 4 percent of a much bigger project--I think this is a very good investment, and not just for kids in Delaware but for the kids who are going to graduate from the schools and go on and do things in their life to help all of us in Delaware and across the country and maybe even around the world.

Those are some of the reasons I have asked for this appropriation. I am

grateful to the Congress for supporting this a year ago. When we asked for about $250,000, it was included. With this money, if we are successful in gaining this appropriation, we will be able to go forward and hopefully actually open the Delaware children's science museum in the spring of next year, which would be a very good thing, not just for us in Delaware, not just for those who visit Delaware, but I think, on a broader scale, for a lot of folks in our country.

I see I have been joined by the former Governor of Virginia, in whose State I visited a number of those children's museums, those science museums. I remember taking our boys, when they were between the ages of 6 and 12, to a couple of them around the country. Just remember, we have one who is a mechanical engineer, at a 4-year college up in Boston, and his little brother--now a very big brother--he is really good in math and a bunch of other things as well, and I think maybe a little bit of that came from those visits all those years ago.

Mr. President, today I wish to speak about a member of our country's greatest generation, the generation of my parents who selflessly served our Nation during a time of great turmoil in the world. This generation made countless contributions to our society and continues to give unselfishly today. I offer my warmest wishes to one of them--Mr. J. Thomas Calhoon, of Hilliard, OH--on his 84th birthday, on this Friday, the eighth anniversary of the attacks of September 11. I want to thank him for the many sacrifices he has made and continues to make for our great country.

Born on September 11, 1925, in Wellsville, OH, Tom Calhoon was raised in East Liverpool, OH, and graduated from Grandview High School, class of 1943.

On December 15, 1943, Tom enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. While serving in Japan during World War II, Corporal Calhoon sustained extensive combat injuries in Okinawa in June of 1945, including the loss of his right leg and a bullet in his left arm that remains there today. He spent over 2 years in hospitals throughout the United States, including Philadelphia Hospital, where he met his wife, Sarah Mae Shoemaker, who was a volunteer.

He survived his injuries, and on August 29, 1947, Tom and Sarah were married and went on to have four sons, Thomas, Samuel, Donald, and Robert, and a daughter, Sarah. All five are children any parent would be proud of. Today, the Calhoon family has expanded to include seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren due later this fall.

During his time in the Marines, Cpl Tom Calhoon received two Purple Hearts and was a rifleman and an expert with the bayonet. After being discharged, he enrolled, in the fall of 1948, at the Ohio State University, of which he and all five of his children are alumni. It was at the Ohio State University that I first met two of his sons, one of whom is a close friend to this day.

Corporal Calhoon worked in public relations and advertising for 50 years in Columbus, OH. In addition to this full-time career, he spent countless hours of his time volunteering. As a member of the Lions Club, he received three national awards, including a Life Membership from the International Association of Lions Clubs Award in 1998 for 50 years of Outstanding Dedicated Service. He also served as president of the Tri-Village Lions, former director of the Franklin County Agriculture Society, is a life member of the Northwest Franklin County Historical Society, and a former director of Pilot Dogs, Inc.

An avid hunter and fisherman, Tom enjoys reading and watching war movies, which I hope he is getting to do on his birthday. Best wishes to you and your family, Tom, for many more.

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

Mr. President, I rise in support of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court. Those of us who are privileged to serve in the Senate cast literally thousands of votes during our years here. We take many votes that crucial and important. But a handful of them are far more meaningful than others. These votes have historic consequences, ones which will resonate for years--in some cases, for decades--to come. This is one of those votes.

This is my third opportunity to vote on a Supreme Court nominee. On the previous two occasions, we faced different circumstances in which I had to decide whether to vote for or against candidates who were nominated by a President not of my party, nominees who may not have shared my political beliefs or my judicial philosophy. Similar to my colleagues, I take seriously our constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent to determine whether a President's nominees truly merit a lifetime appointment.

In each of those two earlier cases, I considered my decision carefully and deliberately. In one of those cases, that of now-Chief Justice John Roberts, I chose to support the President's selection. In the other, I did not. Reasonable people can disagree about the nominee before us this week. I certainly respect the views of my friends on the other side of the aisle who may ultimately vote against Judge Sotomayor's confirmation. But, first, I wish to explain why I am supporting Judge Sotomayor and, second, I want to encourage my Republican colleagues to support her nomination as well.

In 2005, I voted to confirm Judge John Roberts' nomination to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. I admitted it was a close call, at least it was for me. Ultimately, I chose to take what I described at that time as a ``leap of faith.''

Chief Justice Roberts holds political and legal opinions that are not consistent totally with mine in a number of respects. I knew he would sometimes deliver decisions I might not fully agree with. But after carefully considering his testimony, meeting with him at some length, and personally talking to a number of his colleagues--colleagues who knew him well and colleagues who had worked closely with him in the past--I concluded that John Roberts would prove to be a worthy successor to retiring Chief Justice Rehnquist, and I think he has.

In short, by supporting John Roberts' nomination, I voted my hopes, not my fears. Just as I voted my hopes instead of my fears in the case of then-Judge, now-Chief Justice Roberts, I hope many of our friends and colleagues on the other side of the aisle will see their way clear to doing the same in this instance.

Before coming to the Senate, I served as Governor of Delaware. As Governor, I nominated dozens of--actually scores of--men and women to serve as judges in our State courts. The qualities I sought in the judicial nominees whom I submitted to the Delaware State Senate included unimpeachable integrity, a thorough understanding of the law, a keen intellect, a willingness to listen to both sides of a case, sound judicial temperament and judgment, and a strong work ethic.

These are qualities that still guide me as I decide how to vote on judicial nominees in the Senate. In applying each of those standards to Judge Sotomayor during the course of my examination of her record, it is clear to me she meets or exceeds all of them.

First, consider her experience. Judge Sotomayor has a compelling life story--a story that confirms her work ethic and informs her judicial temperament. In June of this year, I had the pleasure of meeting personally with Judge Sotomayor. We spoke at length about her experience, her service, and her life. We talked about our respective childhoods, our respective educational opportunities, and our careers. It was a revealing conversation, and her responses were forthright. They were insightful. And they were sincere.

The nominee before us truly highlights the diversity of the country in which we live. We know her story by now. Sonia Sotomayor grew up in a south Bronx housing project. Her parents were both immigrants from Puerto Rico. Her father had limited education and did not speak English.

Her mom worked 6 days a week to support her family and instilled in her daughter the importance of a quality education. Judge Sotomayor excelled in school and went on to attend Princeton University on a scholarship. She later went on to Yale Law School, where she served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

I have met many people in my life who have built themselves up from nothing. Unfortunately, I have found that a number of them--maybe many of them--seem to have forgotten where they came from. But it is clear to me that Sonia Sotomayor has not forgotten. When we met, she told me she was ``still Sonia from the projects.'' Despite all her success, she still has not forgotten her roots. Let me say, I find that enormously refreshing and encouraging.

After law school, Sonia Sotomayor served as an assistant district attorney in New York. During her 5 years in that position, she tried dozens of major criminal cases and became known, in the words of Robert Morgenthau--who was then, and still remains, the district attorney in Manhattan--as a ``fearless and effective prosecutor.''

Starting in 1984, Sonia Sotomayor spent 8 years in private practice. As a civil and international corporate litigator, she gained considerable experience in the private sector, handling cases involving everything from real estate to contract law, from intellectual property to banking.

Then, in 1992, with bipartisan support, Sonia Sotomayor began her service to this country in the Federal judiciary. She was nominated to serve as a Federal district judge, not by a Democrat but by a Republican, President George Herbert Walker Bush, and was unanimously-- unanimously--confirmed by this Senate.

Six years later, when Democratic President Bill Clinton nominated her to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, she received the support of 25 of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. Their vote of confidence in Judge Sotomayor then has since been confirmed by her reputation for moderation and impartiality.

The Second Circuit is considered by many to have one of the most demanding caseloads in our Nation. Judge Sotomayor participated in over 3,000 decisions and has written more than 230 opinions for the majority. During her time on the bench, she examined difficult issues of constitutional law, complex business disputes, and high-profile criminal cases.

Judge Sotomayor brings more Federal judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any Justice confirmed in the last 100 years.

As a Federal judge for nearly two decades, Sonia Sotomayor has demonstrated a clear commitment to unbiased, impartial justice and to the rule of law. Unlike some nominees for the Federal bench, with Judge Sotomayor, we can see a long paper trail of her legal rulings.

Her record reveals that she consistently takes each case on its own merits--regardless of the ideological outcome--and narrowly applies the law to the particular facts. She may even be more of a strict constructionist, when it comes to applying the law, than many of the Justices my friends on the other side of the aisle admire the most. Quite frankly, she is a model of judicial restraint.

As a circuit court judge, Sonia Sotomayor is known as a moderate who agrees with her more conservative colleagues far more than she disagrees with them. One of those colleagues on the Second Circuit, Richard C. Wesley, himself an appointee of George W. Bush, had this to say about her:

Sonia is an outstanding colleague with a keen legal mind.

She brings a wealth of knowledge and hard work to all her

endeavors on our court. It is both a pleasure and an honor to

serve with her.

Another Second Circuit colleague, Judge Roger Miner, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, described Judge Sotomayor as an ``excellent choice,'' saying:

I don't think I'd go as far as to classify her in one camp

or another. I think she just deserves the classification of

outstanding judge.

And the Second Circuit's current chief judge, Dennis Jacobs, appointed by the first President Bush, said:

Sonia Sotomayor is a well-loved colleague on our court.

Everybody from every point of view knows that she is fair and

decent in all her dealings. The fact is, she is truly a

superior human being.

The strength of Judge Sotomayor's record and reputation is perhaps why, to some extent, many critics have focused almost exclusively on one or two legal rulings, and on a line from a speech she gave years ago. But I do not find much to agree with in these criticisms. But even if I did, it does not seem fair to me that she should be judged on those few items alone. These few quibbles need to be put in the context of her lifetime of work.

Of all people--of all people--we in the Senate should understand this. As Senators, whether we have served here for 12 years or 24 years or for 50 years, such as Robert Byrd has done, we will vote thousands of times. As many of us know from personal experience, it is easy to take one vote or one decision or one line from one of our speeches completely out of context and make us appear to be someone we are not or to stand for something that is entirely alien to our beliefs and values. It has happened to me. I suspect it has happened to most, if not all, of our colleagues. I might add, I believe that is what has happened to the nominee before us today.

As a result, I believe it is incumbent upon us to examine carefully a nominee's overall record, much as I hope the people of Delaware will consider my overall record when they cast their votes every 6 years.

If nothing else, Judge Sotomayor's extensive record demonstrates she sticks to the law. Perhaps that is why, in part, the American Bar Association has given this judge, this nominee, its top rating of ``well qualified'' in assessing her record and in evaluating her judicial temperament.

For all these reasons--and more--I invite my conservative colleagues on the other side of the aisle to take a leap of faith, as I did a few years ago with John Roberts--as I did 4 years ago--and join me in casting their vote in favor of Judge Sotomayor's nomination to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

With that, I say thank you to the Presiding Officer and yield the floor. Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I have never missed a vote on a nomination for a Supreme Court Justice in my time in the Senate. Today, I will vote to support the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. I submitted questions to Judge Sotomayor on matters of great importance to the preservation of congressional power: the constitutional grant of the purse strings to the Congress; the role and responsibility of the legislative branch to conduct oversight and investigation; and the deliberate restraints on the executive branch created by the Constitution's separation of powers. I found her answers thoughtful, her intellect keen, and that Judge Sotomayor possessed the requisite reverence--and patience--for the process outlined in article II, section 2 of the Constitution.

I watched the hearings intently; I studied Judge Sotomayor's words. What struck me about the Judiciary Committee's hearings was the dearth of inquiry into her judicial record. Indeed, her record is certainly substantial; the most substantial record I have seen in some time. But, instead of delving into her many opinions, or questioning her on Supreme Court jurisprudence, Judge Sotomayor was asked the same few questions over and over, needlessly.

The tendency to grandstand is hardly a partisan thing. The Senate's ability to question a nominee is a precious gift from our Founding Fathers--a check on the Judiciary and on the Executive. While the President may nominate, the advice and consent of the Senate is required for confirmation. But, in this particular instance, partisan trifles took the place of constitutional probing. Statements were taken out of context, while volumes of Judge Sotomayor's judicial record went unquestioned, and likely unread. Unfortunately, by not probing, the Senate shirks its responsibilities.

Judge Sotomayor's story is similar to my own story. Much like my own journey from the southern coalfields of Raleigh County to the U.S. Senate, Judge Sotomayor overcame tremendous adversity through determination and hard work.

Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed by the Senate. That is a good thing. I hope that we as a body will reflect on the nomination and confirmation processes as envisioned in the Constitution, and ask ourselves whether we can do a better job in living up to the spirit of the law in the future.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Joseph Lewis, of Senator Harkin's staff, and Timothy Snider, of the Office of Congressional Accessibility Services, be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's session.

Mr. President, I wish to return to the underlying bill. Senator Voinovich and I have offered an amendment, and I think it is No. 1841. I am not going to call up the amendment now, but I wish to talk a little bit about it.

As the chairman and our colleagues know, we receive in this country probably 20 percent of the electricity that we consume from nuclear powerplants. All those nuclear powerplants were built several decades ago. We have about 104 in all. A number of them are 40 years old. They were licensed for 40 years and the utilities that own those powerplants have to come back to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and ask for an extension, if you will, on the life of a license. They are asking for 20-year extensions.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has many jobs and one of those is to make sure the 104 nuclear powerplants that are in operation are operating safely every day. I like to say if it isn't perfect, make it better, to create a culture of safety and to make sure we don't have mistakes and errors that can cause great havoc.

In addition to that, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is charged with--these nuclear powerplants are approaching the end of their license, their 40-year license, and so they apply for extensions. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has to go through with the utilities that own the plant the relicensure process. Add on to that, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has now, I think, 18 applications to build 28 new nuclear powerplants in this country in the decades to come. Add to that, there are a number of new designs for nuclear powerplants that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has to say grace over, to evaluate, to wrap their brains around and to understand how they would work and whether they would work safely for 40, 60 years. In short, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a lot on its operate plate, which is a good thing.

Nuclear power provides, among other things, electricity for 20 percent of our Nation's households and businesses and so forth, but it also provides electricity that is carbon free. The emissions from nuclear powerplants do not include carbon dioxide, do not include sulfur dioxide, do not include nitrogen dioxide, which bothers our breathing apparatus; does not include mercury which leads to brain damage in unborn children. Nuclear powerplants don't put any of that into the air. They don't contribute to the problems of global warming.

In order to make sure they are doing their job and the folks at nuclear plants and utilities are doing what they need to do to provide safe nuclear power, the NRC has had to hire extra people. They have hired, I think, in the last year or two or three, about 1,000 extra people. They have them spread out at different locations. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is interested in trying to consolidate as many of those people as they can for management purposes. I think it makes a lot of sense. Senator George Voinovich of Ohio, who has helped me at one time or another, and I have helped him, to lead the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety--we believe it makes sense for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to collocate many of their employees going forward.

We want to make sure, and we seek to do it with the language in amendment No. 1841, that the NRC can use the language within the bill and for employee costs and other expenses to be able to get this collocation process underway and provide additional spaces if they are needed for an additional 1,000 employees. So my hope is our colleagues will adopt this amendment.

I would also say the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does a competition with, I think, every other Federal agency. It is a competition we don't hear a lot about, but the competition is for the recognition of best federal agency to work for, best for employees, best for their families, and for the last two or three years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been selected as the very best place for Federal employees to work. They do important work. They work hard. But they also work in an environment where the employees feel it is good for their life--not only their professional life but also their families too. They have asked for this help from us and Senator Voinovich and I are pleased to lend our support and we hope our colleagues will join us in supporting amendment No. 1841.

With that being said, I note the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I commend the leaders of the committee. I also commend Senator Chambliss and Senator Dodd for their Herculean efforts here to try to stave off the closure of the line. I try to put myself in the shoes of others when I take a position on an issue. What I say comes from the heart and not because of a lack of respect for the efforts they have shown in support of their constituents.

We have just come out of 8 years where we have seen our national debt double. We have incurred as much new debt for our country over the last 8 years as we did in the previous 208 years. We are looking, this year, at a 1-year deficit higher than any in the history of our country. It is believed to be well over $1 trillion.

If you go back to 2001 and look at the cost overruns for major weapons systems, in 2001 it was about $45 billion. Last year, that number had grown to almost $300 billion. We say to our folks who are running the Pentagon, the Department of Defense: Tell us which weapons systems you need and those you do not. And Secretary Gates has said very clearly, as Gordon England did as well, his deputy, and the last President and this President: We do not need more F-22s. We have F-15s. We have F-16s. We have F-18s. Before too many more years, we will have about 2,500 F-35s.

My hope is we will be smart enough--if people are displaced, if the F-22 is

not continued in production--my hope is we will be smart enough, since Lockheed has a role in building the F-35, some of the folks--hands that can build an F-22 can certainly help build F-35s. I would hope that would be the case.

The last thing I would ask everyone to keep in mind--as an old naval flight officer, I used to think about and I still think about how much it costs to fly an aircraft for an hour. It is anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 for the F-22. It is just too much money.

Thanks very much.

Mr. President, thank you very much. I thank the floor manager on the majority side for this unanimous consent which allows me to proceed now under morning business.

I wish to say a word or two about the Defense authorization bill which is before us, and then I want to pivot. I will talk about the health of our Nation's defense, but also about the health care of our people.

Let me start off by extending my thanks to the leaders of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Levin and Senator McCain, and their staffs for the good work they have done. I wish to thank Senator Reed of Rhode Island for his contributions as well. Standing here on the floor, I am looking at Senator Reed, a graduate of the

Military Academy at West Point, and right across the aisle, at Senator McCain, a graduate of the Naval Academy. It is great to have that kind of experience here in the Senate. They are sitting on opposite sides of the aisle, coming from schools that are sometimes thought to be rivals, but they are able to work together when we need them to.

I wish to express my thanks to the President and to the Secretary of Defense Bob Gates. We have learned that in the last 7 years, cost overruns from major weapons systems in this country grew from about $45 million in 2001 to last year almost $300 billion, a growth over 7 years in cost overruns for major weapons systems in 2001 of $45 million and last year almost $300 billion. What we need is for the administration as well as the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs to say to the folks on the Armed Services Committee, but also to say to us in the Senate and in the House: These are the weapons systems we need, these are the threats we believe we face as a nation, and to give us some sense of priorities of the weapons systems we should support and fund, the troop levels we need and, frankly, the weapons systems we don't need and the troop levels we don't need.

I was privileged to follow on the heels of the Presiding Officer, Senator Kaufman, about a month and a half ago to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He and Senator Reed, I think, led that CODEL and shared with us our needs in that part of the world. We need a military strategy and we also need a civilian strategy in Afghanistan, and I think this administration has given us a good two-pronged approach. We have good new leadership there on the military side. Basically, though, they said our job here is counterinsurgency. We need more troops, more trainers to train the Afghans and to train the military side, and then the civilian side. We also need mobility in terms of a lot of additional helicopters, about 150 new helicopters or additional ones coming in to provide the mobility to move our men and women all over the southern part of Afghanistan, and to meet the Taliban threat.

The kind of weapon we don't use there or don't need there, I will be very blunt, is the F-22 which we discussed and debated here for the last several days, a fighter aircraft that has been around for a dozen or so years. We are still building more of them, but they have never flown a flight mission in Iraq and never flown a flight mission in Afghanistan either. The F-22 is limited in what it can do. It basically is a fighter, air-to-air combat. The Afghans, the Taliban, don't have fighter aircraft. In Iraq, the folks we are fighting there don't have aircraft. Meanwhile, we have F-15s, F-16s, F-18s. We are going to build 2,500 F-35s, for less than half the price of the F-22, which not only do dog fights but can also do ground-to-air support and a variety of different functions that the F-22 cannot for a lot less money. The administration, I think wisely, said as hard as it is sometimes to stop the production line on aircraft, in this case the F-22, in terms of what is cost effective, we need to refocus on the F-35 and on counterinsurgency, preparing for those kinds of challenges we face. We voted to do that, a 58-to-40 vote. I was very pleased with the vote and I commend everyone who voted as they did, and, frankly, the people who took the opposite view. There were some tough issues to deal with, I know particularly from folks in whose States the aircraft are being produced and systems for those aircraft are being produced. I know it is difficult to accept. But I am encouraged by that vote.

My hope is we will pay heed to some of the priorities sent to us by the Secretary of Defense, which are designed to make sure we spend money on weapons systems that we are likely to need in the 21st century--certainly in the next decade or two or three--and I think with today's vote, we are on a better path to do that.

Health Care Reform

Sort of pivoting, if I can, after having said a word about the health of our Nation's defense, let me talk about the health of the people in our country. Some of my colleagues are probably getting tired of hearing me say this, but when talking about health care, I mention four things: No. 1, we spend more money for health care than any other nation on Earth. No. 2, we don't get better results. No. 3, we have 14,000 people in this country today losing their health care. No. 4, some 47 million Americans today don't have health insurance, don't have health care. We have to do better than this. We have to do better than this. I believe we can.

There has been a big focus, as there should be, on extending health care coverage to 47 million folks who don't have it, and we need to address that, obviously. Having said that, the other concern we need to address is reining in the growth of health care costs. We are getting clobbered as a nation in terms of being able to compete with the rest of the world where we pay so much more money for health care than any other nation, and employers pay, and we are getting clobbered as a Federal Government with the cost of Medicare and Medicaid, and State governments trying to bear their share of the cost of Medicaid. They see enormous pressures on their State budgets.

Over lunch today, I said to my colleagues in our caucus meeting that wouldn't it be great if somehow we could have our cake and eat it too. I said that with a piece of chocolate cake staring me right in the face. But as it turned out, there are delivery systems, if you will, of health care in this country where they are not necessarily having their cake and eating it too, but where they are able to provide better health care, better outcomes, at a lower price. Think about that: better health care, better outcomes, better quality of health care at a lower price.

The names are beginning to become familiar to us. Some are already familiar: Mayo in Minnesota, and now they have an operation down in Florida too to see if that model will work in Florida, and it has; Kaiser Permanente in northern California, an outfit called Intermountain Health--all of these are nonprofits--Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, OH, an outfit called Geisinger in Hershey, PA; there is what is called a health care cooperative in the State of Washington, I believe it is around Puget Sound, called Puget Sound Cooperative where they have been able to emulate this interesting result of better quality outcomes, better health care, lower prices.

What we need to do is to attempt not only to extend health care coverage to folks who don't have it--47 million--but to rein in the growth of health care costs. The idea that health care costs grow at 2 or 3 or 4 percent over the consumer price index, to continue to do that is going to cripple us economically and competitively as a nation. It is going to cripple our ability to rein in our large and growing deficits.

In the last 8 years in this Nation we ran up as much new debt as we did in the first 208 years of our Nation's history. Think about that: In the last 8 years, we ran up as much new debt in this country as we did in our first 208 years as a nation. This year we are on track to have the biggest single-year deficit we have ever had. We are also in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and we are trying to stimulate the economy and get it moving. I am encouraged that it is starting to move, but that is a huge deficit, coming on the heels of, frankly, 8 years where we spent like drunken sailors, and I know how drunken sailors spend. It is not a pretty sight, and this is, frankly, not a pretty sight either.

We need to go to school on the Mayos, the Geisingers, the Cleveland Clinics, the Kaiser Permanentes, the Puget Sounds, the Intermountain Healths, and see what we can learn from them. What is their secret? How are they able to do this, better outcomes, less price?

As it turns out, there are a number of things they do in common. I wish to mention a few of them today. Among the things they do, they have literally brought on to their staff the doctors at Cleveland Clinic, for example, who provide health care. They are on staff at the Cleveland Clinic. The same is true at Mayo and these other nonprofits.

I saw an interesting special on CNN a couple of weekends ago. They were interviewing a number of people who worked at the Cleveland Clinic. They interviewed a fellow who is a doctor, a cardiologist, as I recall. He used to be in private practice. He said, in the old days when I was on my own in private practice or group practice, I got paid, compensated, for the number of hearts I operated on. If somebody came to me

and they had a heart problem and it could be addressed by diet or exercise or medicine, he said, usually I didn't prescribe those things. I didn't get paid for doing that. If they needed to have a heart operation and we could address their problem with an operation, he said, I got paid for that. As a result, I was more inclined to operate on people's hearts than to use some approaches that were arguably more cost effective. He went on to say, now I work for the Cleveland Clinic. I am a staff doc here. I don't have to operate on people's hearts to be compensated. I can provide good advice, help people with their diet problems, their exercise problems, their weight problems. I can help people better understand what their opportunities are with medicine. I still get paid. Bingo.

So a light went off for me. Some of us are hearing quite a bit the need to get away from these fee-for-service deals where we basically incentivize doctors, hospitals, and nurses to ask for and order more visits, more procedures, more MRIs, more lab tests, for imaging, more x-rays, because they get paid for it, because they know that by doing more of everything, they reduce the likelihood that they are going to be sued. That sort of gets us in this conundrum where we overuse health care. If we are going to have real success in drawing down the costs of health care, part of it will be addressing the issue of fee for service, get away from that practice, and get away from the overutilization of the health care we have.

Let me mention some of the things they are doing at these five or six entities I mentioned, these nonprofits. Among the things they do is coordinate care. I use my mom as an example. My mom is now deceased. She lived in Florida for roughly the last 30 or so years of her life. She had dementia; she had congestive heart failure; she had arthritis. She had five doctors. The last years of her life that she was down there, my sister and I would go down to visit my mom about every other month or so. We would take turns, and we would go with our mom to visit her doctors. These five doctors my mom had never talked to each other. In fact, I don't think they knew that the other doctors existed. They were all in the aggregate prescribing something like 15 different kinds of prescription medicines. We kept them at her home in what looked like my dad's old fishing tackle box. It was compartmentalized with medicines to take before breakfast, during breakfast, after breakfast; before lunch, during lunch, and throughout the day. Some of those medicines my mom was prescribed, she didn't need to take. Somebody needed to know what she was taking and say, You shouldn't be taking these two medicines in combination; they are hurting you. We didn't have good coordination of care of my mom.

One of the things these nonprofits do is coordinate the care that is provided to my mom or anybody's mom or dad. Another thing that would have been very helpful for my mom or other people in that situation is to have electronic health records. If my mom had an electronic health record such as we have in the VA and like we are developing in Delaware and some other States, when my mom went from doctor's office to doctor's office they would know in each office who else she was seeing and the medicines she was being prescribed, the lab tests and everything. They would have it right there for her when she came for her regular visit.

We have a great ability to harness information technology or electronic health care records, which are a big part of that. Our nonprofits I have talked about--the half dozen or so--have that in common. On wellness and prevention, we know it is not just from nonprofits but out in California is Safeway, and these people have supermarkets all over America and several hundred thousand employees. Their health care costs from 2004 to 2008 have been level and flat. They have incentivized employees to do the right thing for themselves, in terms of holding down their weight, helping them get off tobacco, to fight obesity and lethargy, to get off the sofa, and to eat what is right; and there are antismoking campaigns and all kinds of stuff. So we have a good model there to perform.

It is not just the nonprofits but a lot of employers are starting to get into this as well.

There are another one or two points I will mention on the nonprofits. On chronic disease management, such as heart disease and diabetes, I am told that about 80 percent of the cost of these chronic diseases can be controlled by four factors: diet, exercise, overweight/obesity, and smoking. Those four factors control about 80 percent of the cost of our expenditures on chronic care. If we work with those four items, we will help reduce the costs and provide better outcomes for people. We will also hold down our costs. There are a couple lessons from the nonprofits and others. Part of it is pharmacy--making sure people who need pharmaceutical medicines, small and large molecules, are taking those, and somebody is checking to make sure they are taking what they need.

Focusing on primary care, many of those people coming out of medical schools want to be specialists. They are not interested in being primary care doctors. We need more primary care doctors. We need to change the incentives to get more primary care doctors, which is what we need. Another idea is for us to pool insurance costs. As my colleagues know, we have the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan. We have an insurance pool where we pool all the Federal employees and their dependents and the retirees and their dependents into one large pool to purchase health insurance. They get it at a not cheap price but a pretty good price. One of the reasons why is, when you have a lot of people in the purchasing pool, you get a good variety and much better costs. If you think about the administrative costs for health insurance, as a percentage of premiums, I am told, in the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program, it is about 10 percent. When it comes to people buying individual policies and small businesses, their administrative costs as a percentage of premiums are about 30 percent. So the idea of creating large purchasing pools makes a whole lot of sense.

I will close here. The idea that we would pass health care legislation and stop extending coverage for people who don't have it-- if that is all we do, we have failed the American people. We have to do at least two things. One is extend coverage but also make sure the coverage we extend provides better coverage, better quality outcomes and better health care and that we do so at a price that is diminished and does not continue to expand by several times the rate of inflation. We can do that going forward. That is what we need to do.

My friends have been generous in allowing me to proceed. I see several Senators are anxious to get back into the debate.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I was going to talk about aircraft and aircraft procurement, and I will do that. But before I do that, I feel compelled to respond to the comments of our colleague from Arizona with respect to health care.

It turns out, literally, as we gather here on the Senate floor today, negotiations are underway between Democrats and Republicans, led by Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, to try to find common ground with respect to health care.

In a day and age when we spend more money on health care than any other nation on Earth, we do not get better results. I think we have 14,000 people who are likely to lose their health care in our country today--in a country where we have 47 million folks who do not have health care coverage. We can do better than that. There is a strong bipartisan effort, led by two very good people--Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus--to find common ground.

As it turns out, I like to use the words of a friend of mine, Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming, who talks a lot about the 80-20 rule and why he and Senator Kennedy have gotten so much accomplished--legislation coming out of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. It is because they agree on 80 percent of the stuff, disagree on 20 percent of the stuff, and they focus on the 80 percent on which they agree.

I think the same could be said about the legislation that is being negotiated today, again, in a bipartisan way. The President has said he wants a bipartisan bill. Our leaders on the Finance Committee want a bipartisan bill. I want a bipartisan bill. I think in order for us to actually get something good, something done that improves the quality of health care that is provided in this country, that slows the growth of health care costs, and bends that cost curve down, and makes it possible for us to extend coverage to a lot of people who do not have it, it is enhanced by having bipartisan legislation.

I will not go further into that at this time. But I felt compelled to say I have not given up hope. My hope is that the efforts that are underway as I speak will bear fruit and maybe provide a roadmap to a plan we can agree to here in the Senate and in the House to build on the good work the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee has already done here in the Senate, and to enable us to find common ground with the House and, hopefully, with the Obama administration.

Having said that--I know this might be a good segue--we are spending a ton of money on health care in this country. If you look at the size of our budget deficits, if you look at how much we spend in the country for health care--I am told it is about one-sixth of GDP--that is not sustainable. Medicare is likely to run out of money in about 7 years from now. That is not acceptable. We end up, meanwhile, not getting necessarily better results, and a lot of other countries are spending substantially less.

We have great models for health care delivery in this country. I will mention a few of them that are showing the way to provide better outcomes at less money. They include the Mayo in Minnesota and in Florida; an outfit called Geisinger in Hershey, PA; Intermountain Health in Utah, Kaiser Permanente in northern California; a cooperative called Puget Sound in Washington State; Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, OH. There are a number of them. For the most part, they are nonprofits or cooperatives that have shown it is possible to provide better care, better outcomes, for less money than what we are getting in this fee- for-service operation that we now call a health care delivery system.

We can do better. My hope is we will keep working at it and not give up and that we will continue to try to work across the aisle until we come up with a product we can bring to the floor and negotiate, debate it on the floor, and then go to conference with the House.

In terms of things that we spend a lot of money on--not just health care--we spend a lot of money on the defense of our country. That is a major priority for our Nation. If we go back to 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, we went for a long time without balancing our budgets. In fact, it was not until, I think, fiscal year 1999, under the Clinton administration, that we actually balanced our budget for the first time, I think, since 1968. It was roughly 30 years, three decades that we went without balancing the budget. I think we did it again in 2000, and then when we had the handover from President Clinton to President Bush, we left the new President with a budget that was, I believe, balanced once more.

We sort of went from that point in time, kind of a high-water mark in terms of fiscal responsibility, and over the last 8 years we turned around and we went in the opposite direction. We ended up running up more new debt in the last 8 years than we ran up in our first 208 years as a nation. I will say that again. We ran up more new debt in the last 8 years than we did in the first 208 as a nation. The debt for the new fiscal year, as we go through this worst recession since the Great Depression and trying to fight two wars, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, the meltdown in revenues, very high health care costs; we are looking at a budget deficit which, I am told for this year, may have already exceeded $1 trillion, which is the highest on record.

I chair a subcommittee of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee in the Senate. One of our responsibilities is to help, along with our colleagues, to scrub spending. One of the things we do is we look for spending that doesn't make much sense or where there is waste, fraud or abuse. I might say, in response to my friend, Senator McCain's comments on waste in the Medicare system, one of the encouraging things in the last 3 years is we have gone out and done what we call postaudit cost recoveries in three States for Medicare. In California, Texas, and Florida, we have actually gone out to see where money has been wastefully spent and to see if we can recover that money. The first year we discovered almost nothing, the second year we found a little bit, and last year we found $700 million. In just three States we did that, and now we are going to be doing the same kind of thing in 47 States, hopefully recovering a lot more money for the Medicare system and maybe taking our lessons learned from recovering moneys misspent, inappropriately spent for Medicare, and do the same kind of thing for Medicaid, and that will put a lot of money back into the Treasury.

My subcommittee focuses on, among other things, wasteful spending, and one of the things we have looked at is cost overruns for major new weapons systems. With the help of the Government Accountability Office, we went back to, I think it was 2001, and we looked for cost overruns for major new weapons systems. In 2001, I think it was about $45 billion. We have seen it ramp up from about $45 billion in cost overruns for major new weapons systems, GAO tells us by last year, or maybe it was 2007 or 2008, this number had grown to almost $300 billion--from $245 billion in 2001 over the next 6 or 7 years to almost $300 billion in cost overruns.

Unacceptable. I think we have finally leveled off the increase. Not only is that kind of trend unacceptable, but the level of that enormous cost overrun in weapons systems is unacceptable as well.

In a day and age when our Nation is awash in red ink and in a day and age when we are involved in wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan, it is critically important that we spend every dollar--defense dollar and, frankly, nondefense dollars--as wisely as we can, to get the most out of that money, whether it is health care to make sure that the dollars we are investing there are spent cost-effectively or whether it is for defense to make sure that the money we are spending there is spent cost-effectively.

Senator McCain is a Vietnam veteran, and he is a real hero, for me. But we have people who have served here--I think one or two might have been around in World War II. Senator Inouye won the Medal of Honor during World War II. We have had people who served in the Korean war, the Vietnam war, and other times of peace, as well as in times of war.

I spent about 23 years, 5 Active, 18 years Ready Reserve as a naval flight officer and much of that as a mission commander of a Navy P-3 aircraft built by Lockheed. We used the P-3 for years for ocean surveillance, tracking submarines during the Cold War so we would know where they were, and whenever we went up, we would know where to go find them and destroy them if we had to. The strategy was called mutually assured destruction. We, fortunately, never had to do that. We used them in the Vietnam war for a lot of coastal surveillance; low- level flights off the coast of Vietnam and Cambodia. The P-3 was introduced into the fleet in 1960s, and it was introduced as a-- formerly used as a commercial airplane, a four-engine turboprop. We had problems with the P-3's wings. We used to say we were afraid they would fall off. I don't know if it was quite that bad, but we had real problems with the P-3s performing reliably as a naval aircraft and bouncing around the skies in all kinds of weather. A lot of work had to be done on the P-3 wing and, within a couple of years, we finally figured out the problem.

They are still flying. We are still using them in Iraq--not to track submarines but all kinds of missions. We have used them for electronic surveillance over the years and we have used them for drug interdiction and now they are doing some special work over in Iraq and that part of the world. It is an airplane which started badly as a military aircraft, but it got a lot better.

You can find the C-5As built in the 1960s, C-5Bs in the 1970s and 1980s--rough startup, rough rampup on the aircraft. We had problems with the aircraft, and we are now overhauling the C-5Bs. We call them C-5Ms. And they are flying 85 percent mission capable. So that is very encouraging. It took a long while to work out the wrinkles, but I think we have now, and we are going to have a plane we will be able to fly for another 30, 40 years, getting a lot of good use out of it, meeting our military needs around the world.

The F-22 has been around for a number of years--not as long as the P- 3, not as long as the C-5, but it has been around for quite a few years. We have, I think, close to maybe 200 of them that either have been built or we are planning to build.

One of the things I find troubling--and I stand in support of the amendment offered by Senators Levin and McCain and ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor of the legislation.

Built, I think, largely by Lockheed, and a lot of the contractual work is being done in maybe close to 40, 45 States. But Lockheed does some great work. This particular aircraft, I am troubled by a number of things, as are the sponsors of the legislation. It is not just that they are troubled, and it is not just that I am troubled, but some other folks are troubled too. Let me see if we have a list of some of the people who are calling and maybe suggesting that the F-22s we have ordered are enough.

Among the people who say, in this case, 187 F-22s, fighter aircraft-- not an aircraft that is used for a lot--a plane mainly built and designed to use for dogfights with aircraft from other nations in an earlier day; the Soviets or maybe the Chinese or some other country. But among the leaders of our country, they are saying, maybe 187 is enough. Not maybe but saying 187 is enough. Two Presidents, former President George Bush and our current President Barack Obama, they have said that not just in giving speeches, but they have actually said that with the budgets they submit to us, and in this case President Obama's first budget and the last budget, or maybe several budgets from President Bush.

Who else has said 187 is enough? Well, Secretaries of Defense; not only the current Secretary of Defense, who is Bob Gates, but the previous Secretary of Defense, who was also Bob Gates, and I think his predecessor as well said 187 should do us.

We have had three Chairs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who have said 187 F-22s is enough; we think that should do it.

We have had the current members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who have said 187 is plenty when it comes to F-22 fighter aircraft.

Finally, two of the most respected Members of the Senate, Senators McCain and Levin, as leaders of this committee, have said: Well, this is enough. Given our other demands and our other aircraft we have available to meet this need, 187 F-22s is plenty.

Let me take a look at the next chart, if we could, and see what we have. One of the reasons why all the folks I mentioned have said 187 F- 22s is enough, we think of some of the other aircraft we used, fixed wing as well as nonfixed wing aircraft; the F-15 fighter, a number of hours flown in Iraq and Afghanistan--these are rough numbers but about 40,000 flight hours. We have a couple UAVs here, unmanned aerial vehicles, one called the ScanEagle, the other is called the Predator. The Predator is better known. But so far the ScanEagle has flown in Iraq and Afghanistan about 150 flight hours. The Predator has flown about a half million flight hours in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of our helicopters, I think the H-60, generally we think of as the Black Hawk, but Black Hawks have flown 900,000 flight hours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Down here at the bottom, the number of flight hours, as far as we can tell, flown in Iraq and Afghanistan, I am pretty sure this is correct: Zero for the F-22. That is a stark number, a stark contrast.

Sometimes we tend to order weapons systems, build weapons systems, maintain weapons systems to fight wars such as the last war we fought, not thinking so much about maybe the weapons systems we need for the current war or we will likely to need for a future war. One of the reasons why this administration, the last administration, why this President, this Secretary of Defense and previous ones have said we don't think we want to do any more F-22s is because they believe that, for awhile, we are going to be fighting wars such as unfortunately we fought in Iraq and especially Afghanistan. That is going to be more the modus operandi. We are going to be fighting counterinsurgencies, and what we need are weapons systems and men and women who are trained to fight in those wars. The F-22, frankly, does not lend itself to that kind of war.

I led a congressional delegation with four of my colleagues back at the end of May into Afghanistan and Pakistan, including our Presiding Officer. We learned a lot. It was wonderful, and we came home feeling very much encouraged about our strategy in Afghanistan, the men and women who are implementing that strategy, both on the military and the civilian side. One of the things we learned going into Pakistan is that, for years, the Pakistanis have been preparing to fight the next war not against the Taliban, not against al-Qaida, which happened in the northwestern province, but they have been preparing to fight the next war forever--I guess since 1947--against the Indians, against the country of India. They may have a weapons system to work just fine in that particular altercation if that were to occur. But their real threat, frankly, isn't as much India anymore; their real threat is the Taliban and the al-Qaida folks hanging out in those northwestern provinces on the border of Afghanistan. While India and Pakistan may have plenty of fighter aircraft, unfortunately, they don't have any helicopters. They need mobility and they need helicopters to be able to move their counterinsurgency forces. They don't have them. Frankly, we are sort of guilty in a way of the same thing with the F-22.

Let's see what we have on the next chart. I will come to this in a bit. One of the things we think about when we think of aircraft we use is, first of all, the missions we need the aircraft for and the kind of wars and threats we are likely to face. That helps us make that decision.

Occasionally, we look at how much it costs to fly an aircraft. We look at the dollars we spend to put an aircraft or helicopter into the air for an hour. I have seen a wide range of flight hour costs for the F-22--that it might be $22,000 per flight hour or as high as $40,000 or $42,000 per flight hour. I don't have that at my fingertips, the flight hour costs for other aircraft. But that is a lot of money for a flight hour for any aircraft, especially a fighter aircraft. Whether it is $19,000 or $20,000 or $40,000 an hour, that is a lot of money for the kind of job we are looking for the aircraft to do.

We also look at who are we preparing to fight or what threat we are preparing to counter. Some people say just in case the Chinese ever give us trouble, to take them on we need the F-22s, or we may need 200 more. At one time, General Corley said we needed about another 200. As it turns out, we have other aircraft to meet that kind of threat. I hope that is not going to ever materialize, because China is a major trading partner. I hope we don't ever get in a shooting war with them, nor with the Russians.

We have other fighter aircraft. We have the F-15, F-16, and the F-18. We are in the process of building another new fighter aircraft that will be a joint aircraft that will be able to do fights in the air and other things, including air-to-ground attacks, which the F-22 doesn't lend itself to do. I think we are going to build about 2,500 F-35s. It has broad support. We have built about 50 so far. The cost per aircraft for the F-35 is about $80 million. I think the cost for building a new F-22 is roughly $190 million. So the F-35 may be $80 million a copy, and the F-22, which doesn't have the capability or the viability of the F-35, costs about $190 million--over twice as much. That makes me pause, and I hope it makes some of my colleagues pause as well.

Last, everybody knows we are wrestling through a tough economic time in our country. We have lost a lot of jobs. We had a housing bubble and meltdown, a loss of jobs in banking and financial services, and a lot of manufacturing jobs. Chrysler and GM have gone into bankruptcy. They are coming out of that, and they have a new product line coming through the pipeline. The banks are stabilized and are lending money again, and some are starting to pay back to the government the money they borrowed.

I am bullish about where we are. It will take a while before jobs come back, but I think there are encouraging signs about our economy.

Having said that, a lot of people would like to have a job who don't have one. If we build another 190 or so F-22s, that would save some 25,000 manufacturing, good-paying jobs. We cannot just sniff at that. Those are real numbers, and it is important for us in the States where the jobs are. If we think about it, if we are talking about building another almost 200 F-22s, and they cost roughly $190 million a copy, and we are talking about saving 25,000 jobs, if we multiply $191 million by 194 aircraft, we come up with a total price of about $37 billion for building those extra 194 F-22 aircraft.

If the numbers are correct, that is about $37 billion. If we divide that by 25,000 jobs, that turns out to be almost $1.5 million per job. I nearly fell over when I saw that number--$1.5 million per job. We have passed a stimulus package, and the Presiding Officer and I voted for it. It was passed with bipartisan support, and I hope it will save a couple million jobs. Jobs make sense. But this is a lot of money for jobs.

You can look at what we say we are going to spend in the stimulus package, the recovery bill, per job. I am not quick enough to run the numbers, but these are expensive jobs.

I hope if we don't build another 200 F-22s, some of the folks who can build them at Lockheed Martin--hopefully, some of them will be able to build F-35s. They cost half as much to build, and they do more things. Hopefully, some of them will be bought by other countries. I am not aware that other countries have bought the F-22, but I think a lot would be interested in buying the F-35, given the variety of missions, the versatility, and the much lower cost.

There you have it, Mr. President. I don't know if I have made a compelling case, but I appreciate the chance to share this with my colleagues and anybody else who is interested at a time when we are wrestling with enormous budget deficits, after 8 years where we literally doubled our Nation's debt, and when we are expected to run up the highest budget deficit in the history of our country, at a time when we have major cost overruns and a new weapon system, and when we have had literally two administrations, two Presidents, two Secretaries of State, and all kinds of Joint Chiefs saying: You know, we have a bunch of these F-22s. We have enough. It is not that we are going to stop spending money on national defense. We are going to spend a fair amount of money in Afghanistan, and even though we are drawing down the troops in Iraq, we are going to continue spending money in that country as well. The war in Afghanistan is the right war, and we need to stay with it and crush the Taliban, help the Pakistanis crush al-Qaida, and stay with the folks in Afghanistan until they can help defend themselves and go on to a better economy and a better life. That is the important thing to do.

We don't need the F-22 to do that. To the folks who have spent a number of years, and a lot of our money building it, we say thank you. But I think we have enough. We have plenty of other challenges to face.

I appreciate this opportunity to speak.

As I look around the Chamber, obviously, nobody listened with baited breath to what I had to say. Hopefully, they are in their offices and are tuned into C-SPAN II.

With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, this is not about ACORN. ACORN is not going to be hired or out there recruiting folks to go door-to-door to do the

enumeration for the census. ACORN isn't going to be out there getting any money or grants. In fact, no Census Bureau partners are receiving money or grants, and ACORN is no exception. As the Census Bureau has reiterated, ACORN is actually one of thousands of organizations whose purpose in this whole matter is to try to encourage people to respond to the census. That is what they are about, trying to make sure people respond to the census.

Right here is a copy of the Constitution that lays out one of the few responsibilities we have as a Federal Government. It is actually spelled out in the Constitution and says we are expected to do this. Every 10 years, we are supposed to conduct the census. It says we are supposed to count everybody. We are supposed to count everybody. Just as a ship needs a good captain, a school needs a good principal, the country needs a good President, the Census Bureau needs a good Director.

We have been 7 months without a Census Bureau Director. The Census Bureau is supposed to turn a light switch on next April 1 and do the census. It is a big deal. Hundreds of thousands of people are involved, years of effort, in making sure we count everybody as closely or as nearly as we can and in a cost-effective way. It is a constitutional requirement.

Gary Locke, Governor of Washington, was nominated to be Secretary of Commerce, and the census falls within the Commerce Department. I ran into him the day after, I think, his name was put out for nominee from Commerce, and I said: I have three things I want you to think about: (1) the Census Bureau Director; (2) the Census Bureau Director; and (3) the Census Bureau Director. I told him: We don't have anybody, and if you have any names of folks you think would be good, let us have them.

Ironically, a week or so later, I held a subcommittee hearing focused on the census, getting ready for April of 2010--without a Bureau Director. We had before us that day folks who were involved in the census in 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000. At the end of the hearing, I said we need somebody really good to run this operation. Dr. Murdock had been the Census Bureau Director the previous year. He was only with us for a year, but I said we need somebody that good or even better. I said: By the close of this week, I want each of you to give me one or two names of who you think would be a terrific Director for the Census Bureau. Guess whose name I got back from almost every one of the witnesses. Robert Groves.

Dr. Groves, in my view, is an inspired choice for this position. His extensive expertise in statistics, social research and survey methodology, and the administration of large-scale surveys makes him ideally suited for this position. He served once as the Associate Director for the Census Bureau, I think about 10 years ago. Dr. Groves knows how it operates. He has been involved in the census. He knows what the employees need, and he will be able to successfully implement the census and other programs. Those experiences have prepared him extraordinarily well to lead the census at a time when rapid changes are occurring.

He elevated the University of Michigan's survey research organization. I am an Ohio State undergraduate, and I am raising the flag and promoting a fellow from Michigan, so you know he has to be good for me to do that. I said to my colleagues on this floor that we are lucky to have somebody this good and willing at this late stage to lead us into doing a great job on the census. Numerous Federal and State agencies and policymakers have sought his expertise on survey design and response.

Dr. Groves has been accessible to Senators and our staffs throughout this process. Requests to meet with Dr. Groves were extended to every member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in the Senate. He also met with every Senator, as far as I know, who requested a meeting, regardless of committee assignment. Dr. Groves received two questions for the record after his hearing. They were answered within hours--not days or weeks--of the hearing's end. Every Senator who agreed to meet with Dr. Groves, Republican and Democrat alike, decided to support him.

Dr. Groves--or whoever will be our next Census Bureau Director, and I hope it will be he--will undoubtedly face a host of operational and management challenges as we move closer to the 2010 census. I am confident he is extraordinarily well equipped to understand the agency's inner workings, to lead his staff, and to be a national spokesman for the 2010 census and the agency's other equally ongoing survey programs.

Somewhere here, I have some questions that were asked of him at our hearing. Let's see if I can find one of them. I know this has been mentioned on the floor.

I see Senator Collins, who is the ranking Republican on the committee. I think it might have been Senator Collins who actually questioned Dr. Groves about sampling and whether we are going to just sample as opposed to actually counting people and making sure things are right. The Census Bureau has been very clear that it will not adjust the 2010 census counts. The plans and designs for the 2010 census have been in place for nearly a decade. The operations are already underway. The Bureau began to address canvassing this spring, which is finding out all of the addresses--not necessarily who lives there but the addresses--and try to automate that. The Secretary of Commerce reiterated that sampling is not included in the design for the 2010 census. It couldn't be even if we wanted it to be. At this late stage of the game, not only do we not want it to be, but it couldn't be.

As to what 2020 will bring or need, it is too early to tell. First, until we know how we are going to perform in 2010, what works best, and where we can improve, we cannot begin to dictate the design of the 2020 census; neither should we attempt to prescribe for the future in the Congress and in the scientific community that which we cannot, frankly, foresee.

How much time have I consumed?

I will reserve the remainder of my time. I thank the Chair.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

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

Madam President, I think we are going to vote in about 12 minutes or so, but I just wanted to reiterate a couple of things that have been said.

First of all, our Constitution doesn't talk about a lot of the things we do to run our government in this country, but one of the things it talks about at some length is the census. It says to do it every 10 years. We have tried to do that and do it well. It has gotten more difficult. We have a lot more people, and far flung. We have a lot more people to count next year than we did 10 years ago. People have concerns about privacy, and folks in this country speak a lot of different languages, just like they did when the first census was done.

We are going to use technology. We are not going to use the technology we ought to. We need a Director who understands that and is in a position to make sure the technology we do plan to use in 2010 we use well, and when 2020 rolls around, we will use it a whole lot more effectively.

It would be great to have a Census Director who was well schooled, well educated in doing the kind of work that is called on in conducting a census--counting large numbers of people. This fellow's credentials are superb. It would be great if we had someone who had actually worked at a high level in the census and demonstrated by his work his ability to run a large organization. He has done that, and at the University of Michigan he has headed up a very large organization of some of the smartest people in this country who work on these sorts of issues and has done so, from everyone we have heard, with great aplomb and great ability.

As I said earlier, at the hearing I conducted several months ago with some of our colleagues on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, we reached out to people who have run the census in the last 30 or 40 years. We asked some of these folks to tell us who they thought would be good, and virtually everyone who has been involved in the census in a high leadership position has said not only would we be lucky to get a fellow with Dr. Groves's reputation, his leadership and ability, but we would be lucky to have somebody with this kind of experience.

For me, and I know for my colleagues, an important issue is what is the character and the integrity of the person taking this position. I think it was Senator Collins who asked the question: If you believe political influence is being used in the conduct of the 2010 census, would you be willing to look into resigning as a form of protest against any kind of political involvement?

And he said: Not only would I be willing to resign, I will resign. I would use whatever ability I could to bring to light the kind of behavior that led to my resignation, to discredit that behavior, and make it clear that is what I think we should not do, and that, literally, that behavior caused me to resign as the Census Director.

I think it would be great if we had somebody who is interested in this job, willing to do the job, is well qualified, and who was willing to meet with anybody who wanted to meet with him whether they were on the committee of

jurisdiction--Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs--or not; whether they were a Democrat or not. To my knowledge, he has met with all of us who wanted to spend time with him.

The last thing I would say--and one of the things I found so refreshing--is that he is not a political guy. This is someone who is a scientist. He is a statistician. He is good at leading a large organization. He gets this stuff. He enjoys this stuff. How lucky we are to get someone who wants to take on this challenge for us in our Nation's history.

For these reasons and others that Senator Collins and I have mentioned, he deserves our support. I hope in 10 minutes or so, when we have the opportunity to vote, we will vote for him in very large, overwhelming numbers.

Madam President, how much time remains on our side?

Madam President, I reserve the remainder of my time, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, on behalf of Senator Boxer, I ask unanimous consent that Mara Boggs, an Army fellow with the office of Senator Boxer be granted the privilege of the floor during consideration of S. 1390, the defense authorization bill.

Mr. President, today I recognize Vince Nesci who, in a few months, will retire from Amtrak after 33 years as its chief mechanical officer. Vince has dedicated his adult life to improving passenger rail transportation in America, and I wish him the very best in retirement.

Railroaders are not employed; they serve, and Vince's retirement will culminate a lifetime of service to the railroad and country. He began his service in the Air Force as a flight engineer, flying on the remarkably durable C-130 Hercules transports. He performed aerial delivery missions of every kind--paratroop drops, low altitude equipment and cargo drops, and heavy equipment drops.

After leaving the Air Force, Vince went to work on the Penn Central Railroad in 1974. Since that day, he has never drawn a paycheck that wasn't issued by a railroad. He began in the traditional way, as a laborer in the mechanical department, working on the famous GG-1 class electric engines that Penn Central had inherited from its 1930s-era predecessor, the Pennsylvania Railroad. He qualified as an electrician and a machinist, putting his natural engineering aptitude to the task of learning the tics and tricks of 40-year-old locomotives with millions of miles on them.

His skill was rewarded, and he rose through the ranks. Promotion followed promotion, and he soon became a foreman and then a general foreman with Penn Central. When Amtrak took over its labor force from the freight railroads, Vince continued the unforgiving job of making sure that engines and cars would be ready to roll when the minute hand touched the top of the hour in Washington, Boston, or New York each day. He was there to work on each generation of new engines and to supervise the men and women who were working on them. He witnessed the end of the GG-1s and saw three new generations of locomotives emerge for Northeast Corridor service.

When the time came to rebuild the 20-year-old AEM-7 locomotives in 2001, Vince took on the job as the company's chief mechanical officer. This was a demanding job, and the shops accomplished it in large part because Vince was there to keep the process moving, to wade into a problem on the shop floor, and to figure out the answers to tough technical questions that manuals and instructions couldn't answer. He was no mere manager--he was that very traditional combination of expert practical mechanic, engineer, and operating man that railroad chief mechanical officers have always had to be. And through some of the toughest times Amtrak has ever faced, when money to keep the trains on the road was scarce, he kept things moving. He was famous on the railroad for his good humor, his skill, and his understanding of how locomotives worked. He was liked, but more importantly, he was respected, and his opinion carried weight in both the board room and on the shop floor.

Vince begins almost every day of his work with a smile. There is hardly ever a time that, when you talk to Vince, he does not greet your questions or begin his answers without a smile. When he talks about the cars and locomotives in his care, he speaks quickly because he is enthusiastic and wants you to feel the enthusiasm he has for the work he does. Whether the temperature is 100 degrees or 10 below zero, Vince always wears a short-sleeved white cotton shirt. If one asks him why he only wears a short-sleeved shirt, he will tell you without a moment's hesitation that when you wear short sleeves, you don't have to roll up your sleeves when you get to work.

People like Vince Nesci don't come along very often, and when they do, we should be thankful that we get to spend time with them and learn from them. The railroad is a better and safer place because of Vince, and the good news is that he has helped train a cadre of people who will be there after he leaves to carry on the work that needs to be done.

Now he has come to the end of his long career, and will soon depart into a well-earned retirement. His working life has encompassed the transformation of the Northeast Corridor, from a tentative experiment to a modern, high-speed intercity passenger rail system. Nobody has worked harder than Vince to build the railroad that may one day become a model for transportation in our country, and no one can take more justified pride in the safe, reliable, and frequent passenger rail service that travelers enjoy today than Vince Nesci.

I thank Vince for the warm friendship that we share, and I congratulate him on a truly remarkable and distinguished career. I wish him, his wife Donna, and their family the very best in all that lies ahead for each of them. As we say in the Navy on occasions like this, ``fair winds and a following sea.''