Floor Statements

Mr. President, I have asked my staff to see if they can find some charts--maybe the kind of charts prepared by our friend, Senator Conrad.

Let's look at this first chart. One of the charts I asked to see if they can find is a chart that deals with what has happened in this decade under current law with respect to the amount of an estate that is excluded from the estate tax so we can see what it looks like over time and what the rates look like over time.

As I recall, the amount that could be excluded from the estate tax in 2001 was about $1.35 million. It went up to $2 million, $3 million, and this year it is about $4 million combined, two people in a family, husband and wife, and then I believe in 2009 there is $3.5 million excluded for each spouse, for a total of $7 million for a family in which there are two people. The amount of the tax, going back to 2001, I believe was about 55 percent. Over time it has been decreasing, so that in 2009 the amount of the estate that will be excluded from the tax is $7 million, and I believe the rate is 45 percent. The next year, in 2010, there is no estate tax, and then in 2011 we go back to where it was in 2001, which is again about a little less than $1.5 million, and the rate would be 55 percent.

People like to have some certainty in their lives so they can do planning for a whole lot of activities. Certainly businesses like to have certainty so they can do planning. That is especially true when folks are trying to develop business plans or estate plans. When we look at a tax that goes from an exclusion of $7 million at a rate of 45 percent to the next year having no tax, and the year after that we will be back where we were in 2001, that certainly doesn't provide the kind of certainty under which businesses or families like to operate.

My hope is that during the course of this debate or this year, we can come up with some certainty. There are folks who would like to see the estate tax go away altogether. When I was Governor of Delaware, we actually eliminated the inheritance tax. We cut taxes 7 out of 8 years. Can you believe that, Mr. President? We reduced taxes 7 out of 8 years. We also balanced the budget 8 years in a row.

The concern in getting rid of the estate tax altogether is we didn't balance the budget last year or the year before that, and we are not going to balance the budget this year or for as far as the eye can see. In fact, the way to come closest to reducing the deficit, as the administration would have us believe, to cut it in half, is to assume we are not going to spend any more money in Iraq the next year and the year after and we are not going to spend any more money in Afghanistan or do anything to fix the alternative minimum tax, which is likely to cost us some money--in fact, a whole lot of money. If we ignore all those items, we can pretend the deficit will be cut in half, but I don't think we can in good faith ignore them.

Let me see what else we have in charts that might be worth looking at. This chart gives us some idea of the percentage of the estates that are going to be taxed in 2009. Again, this is if we consider a $7 million exclusion with a rate of about 45 percent. It says that in 2009, only 0.2 percent of estates will be subject to that tax. If we exclude everything up to $7 million, that doesn't leave very many estates. That is 2 estates out of 1,000 which would have to pay anything at all. And even in 2009, the rate would be down from 55 to 45 percent. This chart shows a pie. That is a pretty small sliver out of that pie. Actually, it would probably be a lot slimmer than that if we really wanted to show it in proportion.

Let's take a look at one more. This chart shows how many estates were being taxed in 2000--roughly 50,000. When we go up to the $7 million exclusion for a husband and wife, the number of taxable estates is down to about 7,000.

I wish we had another chart that actually showed what the value of the estate tax is in revenues to the Treasury. I don't know if we have a chart showing that information. If we can take a look, that would be good.

Some folks like to call the estate tax the death tax. That is actually pretty clever. But I always think of it as the estate tax.

I think of something I call the birth tax. It is a tax that every child born in the country this year inherits upon their birth because it is the amount of our debt that accrues to them and, frankly, to the rest of us. The amount of money we owe as individuals as a personal obligation--again, take the total amount of our debt divided by the total number of people, and we are talking about tens of thousands of dollars. In fact, if we look not just at the money that is accumulated debt but if we look at that more on an accrual

basis, we are looking at a birth tax that is not $20,000 or $30,000 per person but maybe 10 times that amount of money.

This is the cost of the estate tax repeal. We generally only look ahead 5 years. We have been raising the amount of estates that are excluded and lowering the tax rate for the last couple of years-- actually, the last 5 years--and the amount of money lost to the Treasury is actually pretty small.

Starting right about 2010, it jumps rather considerably, and it looks like it is $60 billion a year starting in 2012, and it just climbs to 2021 and almost $100 billion a year. This wouldn't concern me if we had a balanced budget. This wouldn't concern me if we had a reasonable prospect for a balanced budget. This concerns me because we don't have a balanced budget and we don't have any prospect for a balanced budget going forward. For us to go willy-nilly into eliminating the estate tax altogether is just imprudent--woefully imprudent.

Should we do nothing? Should we just let the clock continue to tick, so we get to 2009 with a rate of 45 percent and $7 million excluded from the estate tax, and then in 2010 it all goes away, no estate tax, and then in 2011 it comes back to where it was 10 years earlier? Does that make sense? I don't think that makes much sense, either. Rather than simply criticize those who make the estate go away, we ought to find a middle ground, a third way, and the third way says: What can we do that is fair and reasonable to farm businesses, families, and so forth, and at the same time will not make the budget deficit look like this or this much worse going forward?

The approach I like is we go back to where we will be in 2009 if we don't change the law. There are several of us who are going to introduce legislation to do this. I am not sure who will be in the lead. I will be one of the cosponsors. It says: Let's think about providing continuity and certainty. Let's acknowledge the fact that moneys should be excluded from the estate tax. And what is a reasonable level? Right now, we are at $4 million for a family, and in 2009 it will be at $7 million. We are going to suggest we exclude not just in 2009 but in 2010 and 2011 at least $7 million.

I believe we should index that amount going forward, just stay at $7 million for the next 10, 20, 30 years, but it will go up every year in conjunction with some deflator, the CPI or something such as that, and say the rate that is going to be effective in 2009 on the money in excess of the $7 million that can be excluded is 45 percent and lock it in at 45 percent for a while. So not only in 2009 will the amount excluded be $7 million, but in 2010 we will exclude $7 million, maybe with a CPI adjustment, and in 2011, $7 million, again adjusting according to inflation, but the rate would stay the same at 45 percent.

I wish I had a chart that actually shows how that would affect this accumulation of debt, our deficit. It would reduce by about 70 percent the amount of red ink. It wouldn't eliminate it entirely, but we wouldn't be looking at numbers of close to $100 billion a year in 2021. We might be looking at $30 billion. We wouldn't be looking at $50 billion a year in lost revenues to the Treasury; we would be looking at something more like $15 billion.

If people don't think we should have the estate tax where it was in 2001, that is not going to make them too happy because it is still a fair amount of loss to the Treasury, but it is not this huge loss to the Treasury. As long as we are running these huge deficits with little prospects of things getting better anytime soon, we need to find a middle ground, something more fiscally responsible and something responsive to what has been expressed to me by our farm families and small businesspeople.

We are going to have a chance to vote on a cloture motion on the motion to proceed tomorrow. I understand those who want to eliminate the estate tax entirely would like to prevail tomorrow and they would like to go forward. I don't know if the cloture motion on the motion to proceed tomorrow is going to pass. If it doesn't pass, rather than throwing up our arms and saying that is it for another year or two, I hope we will actually take a closer look at what some of us are going to be introducing either today or tomorrow which says that $7 million is a reasonable amount of money to exclude from the estate tax, which is lower than the current rate on estates, 45 percent for everything above $7 million is not an unreasonable level, and see if we can't work toward that goal.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to set aside a few moments today to reflect on the life of Marine Cpl Cory L. Palmer. Cory epitomized the best of our country's brave men and women who have fought to free Iraq and to secure a new democracy in the Middle East. He exhibited unwavering courage, selfless devotion to his country, and above all else, honor. In the way he lived his life--and how we remember him--Cory reminds each of us how good we can be.

Cory was born to Charles and Danna Palmer on May 10, 1984. He was the youngest of three sons. After graduating from Seaford High School in 2002, Cory studied computer engineering at West Virginia University for one semester and then decided to join the Marine Corps. Friends, family, and school officials recalled Cory Palmer as courageous yet humble, fun-loving and adventurous, an all-around good person. He viewed the Marine Corps as an opportunity to gain life experience and as a way to serve his country.

Cory was proud to be a member of the Marine Corps 2nd Recon Battalion, A Company, 1st Platoon. After his initial recruit training at Parris Island, Cory underwent marine combat training at Camp Geiger, located in North Carolina. He excelled in all of his military training and graduated from sniper school, advanced sniper school, jump school, combatant dive school and special survival training school. For his dutiful service, Cory had been awarded the Good Conduct Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, the Global War on Terror Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, the Iraqi Campaign Medal, and the Combat Action Medal.

Cory was on his second deployment in Iraq. His death was caused by injuries sustained when the humvee he was riding in was hit by an explosive device near Fallujah.

Cory was a remarkable and well-respected young soldier. His friends and family remember him as a kind-hearted and mischievous young man who loved the outdoors. Cory was an avid sportsman and explorer who had planned on going hiking and fishing with his two older brothers, Thad and Kyle, upon his return. Cory also had a softer side that he wasn't afraid to show. He served as a mentor and role model to his friends and even took the time to hand-make gifts for his family.

As a youngster, Cory came to the Governor's Fall Festival in Dover that I hosted as Governor and ran with many of us in the 5-kilometer race that kicked off the festival every year.

When I visited Cory's family in their Seaford home a little more than a week ago, they shared with me a photo of Cory running in one of those races a decade before his tragic death.

I rise today to commemorate Cory, to celebrate his life, and to offer his family our support and our deepest sympathy on their tragic loss.

Staff Sergeant Curtis Haines

Mr. President, I will have to object to that. I agree to 1 more minute.

Mr. President.

Mr. President, my friend from Alabama has just called for the Senate to vote and the House to vote, two-thirds majorities to vote to send to the States the question of whether or not our U.S. Constitution should be amended with respect to marriage being only between a man and a woman. Actually, in my State and in 45 other States around the country, we have had the opportunity to debate this issue, to consider this issue, and to pass laws with respect to marriage as between a man and a woman.

Personally, I believe that it is. As Governor of Delaware, a number of years ago I signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act in my State that says marriage is something that occurs between a man and a woman. Not only did I sign that law, but I supported the Federal law which was enacted here, signed by former President Clinton, which said States like my own and those other 45 States, to the extent that we define marriage as being between a man and a woman, our State law, respective State laws, cannot be violated by the actions of some other State.

I will give an example. If we have a same-sex couple in Delaware who decide to go to another country or another place where same-sex marriages are allowed, and then that same-sex couple comes back to Delaware and claims they are married, they are not married in my State. It is not a marriage that we recognize. In fact, for the over 200 years that we have been around as a country, States such as Delaware or California or Georgia or Alabama or Kansas have set the rules for marriage. We don't say to the Federal Government: You determine who can get married, at what age people can get married, or what kind of waiting period there has to be, or can first cousins marry or second cousins; we don't say what the rules of the road are with respect to divorce, with respect to alimony, with respect to child support. For over 200 years we have left those issues to the States.

Today we have said very clearly in my own State, marriage is between a man and a woman, a view that is reflected in almost all of the other States in this country.

If we get to the point where our ability to maintain that position in my State or in the other 45 States that have adopted similar laws, where those laws are threatened or basically rendered ineffective, then I think the idea of visiting a constitutional amendment is something we may want to do. But I

don't know that it is needed. I am not convinced that it is needed for us to amend the Constitution to do something that I believe we already have done by changing our own State laws, and those State laws are protected by a Federal law.

We have not amended the Constitution a whole lot of times. We have amended the Constitution 17 times; since 1791, 17 times. I am 59 years old. We have amended the Constitution just six times in my own lifetime. We have amended the Constitution for good and valid reasons. We have amended the Constitution to protect our freedom of speech, to protect our ability to worship God as we see fit. We have amended the Constitution to ensure that we have the right to bear arms, to ensure the right of a trial by a jury of our peers. Other constitutional amendments have been to protect us from unlawful searches of our homes and have guaranteed our rights to assemble in Washington and in Dover and across this country to present our grievances to those who serve us. Constitutional amendments have abolished slavery. They have provided women the right to vote. They have provided 18-year-old young men and women with the right to vote, and they have limited our Presidents to serving only two terms. They decided through a constitutional amendment that if we don't have a Vice President for some reason, how one would be selected. All of those are important, and some would say urgent, pressing needs that have been addressed and have been put into our Constitution.

I am not convinced given the actions of my own State and 45 other States, the actions of the Congress and former President Clinton signing the Defense of Marriage Act, that we need to enshrine in the Constitution today what we have already enshrined in State laws and Federal laws with respect to the fact that marriage is between a man and a woman.

I do know what some would say: that this is election year politics. We do this every 2 years, and it happens sort of coincidentally like 5 months, 4 months before an election, and it is through the efforts of one party or the other to try to energize their base.

I don't know if that is part of this. I do know this: There are plenty of other important issues that we need to be addressing.

We have a war in Iraq where the going is tough. We are losing people, including some young men from my own State just last month, and we are suffering tragic and sad losses of life. We have a situation in Afghanistan which is not going as well as some of us would like and had hoped for. We are a nation today where almost 60 percent of our energy depends on foreign sources, a lot of it controlled by people who don't like us very much. And we aren't convinced that when we take our money to fill up our tanks with gas that they will not use our money to hurt us.

Our dependence on foreign oil continues to grow, not abate. The cost of health care is killing us in terms of our ability to compete. As a nation, we spend more money--companies such as General Motors--on health care than is spent on all capital investments around the world. We have people who are sick and dying from asbestos poisoning, and they are not getting and their families are not getting the money they deserve. Meanwhile, other folks who have been exposed to asbestos but don't have asbestosis and have never had it, will never have it, they get money. We live on a planet where the air is becoming warmer, and we are threatened by more hurricanes, tougher and stronger hurricanes and typhoons and cyclones as we have ever seen in recent years.

We have a Tax Code where literally, last year, $290 billion was owed in taxes. We know who owes it, and we know how much they owe, but it wasn't collected. Federal agencies made over $50 billion of improper payments last year, most of those overpayments. We have government- sponsored enterprises such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that don't have the kind of regulation they need. We have data breaches where the Veterans' Administration is literally turning over to unscrupulous people data for 25 million, 26 million of our veterans. We have a passenger rail system in this country which is, compared to the rest of the world, just sad, and we aren't doing anything about it. We have legislation that passed 93 to 6 last year to reauthorize and improve passenger rail service and nothing has happened to it. Nothing has happened to it. We have a postal system that literally is a relic of the 1970s trying to operate in the 21st century. We have plenty to do. We have 45 legislative days ahead of us to do all of that, and we are spending 3 of those legislative days on this.

I know there is a need that some Republicans feel to bring up this issue again, and I respect the fact that you are in the majority; it is your right. I understand later this month we will deal with some other contentious issues. I have had the opportunity to meet with the Republican leadership. Some of us have had the opportunity to meet with the Republican leaders. We are self-described centrists. I call us the flaming moderates. But we have sort of reached out to the Republican leadership to say there is a whole list of things that we need to focus on: deficit reduction, budget deficit reduction, trade deficit reduction, energy independence, you name it. There is a whole long list of what we ought to be doing, and we should be focusing on that agenda, not just on this.

That is not to say marriage isn't important; it is hugely important. It is the basic building block of our society. We know families are in trouble and hurting in a lot of ways. One of the things I would like to see us do and put a lot more emphasis on is ratcheting down unwed mothers and teen pregnancies. We ought to do a heck of a lot more in childhood education to reduce the likelihood that young women will bring children into the world and that young guys are going to impregnate them. We need to do a whole lot more in that regard. That is the kind of agenda that we need to be working on and looking to across the aisle.

That having been said, I have used my time. I will close with this: In my view, marriage is between a man and a woman. In Delaware's view, marriage is something that is between a man and a woman. We passed a law that says that. We are not the only State that did that. Forty-five other States did the same thing. We have a Federal Government, this body, the House of Representatives, and the former President who signed a Federal law that said what we have done in Delaware and 45 other States is good and is not going to be overridden. It is not going to be just pushed aside. Until that happens, I am convinced that the proper thing for us to do is to uphold marriage, to honor marriage, and to continue to work as we have in our States to pass good State laws affecting marriage, affecting the raising of our children, but not necessarily to ask the Federal Government to do that because until I am convinced and until most of us are convinced that, frankly, we need Federal intervention, then I think let's stick with what has worked for us for over 200 years, and that is allowing the States to do this.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to follow up on the comments of my friend from Missouri as he leaves the Chamber and just to acknowledge and to second his comments. He said we are indebted to those who work so hard to try to piece together this compromise legislation, and I agree. We will attack a lot of difficult issues this year--we already have--and I think few of them are more difficult than the one that we have been working with this week, last week, last month, and we will probably be dealing with in the months to come to try to hammer out a final bill to send to the President for his consideration.

Let me just make a couple of observations. First of all, let me say I am

told that last week some 10,000 people came across our borders illegally. We understand that roughly 10,000 will come across our borders illegally this week. Roughly another 10,000 will enter this country illegally next week. Some people have suggested amnesty is the answer. I don't believe that it is.

We have heard it said on this floor today, and I will say it again tonight, simply providing amnesty sends the wrong signal to a lot of folks. It sends the wrong signal to people who live south of our country who, if they come in illegally, eventually we will let stay. It also sends the wrong signal, in my view, to people who are waiting--in some cases for years--to become legal residents or citizens of this country and who, even though they have been trying to play by the rules, we let other folks come in ahead of them who have not played by the rules. I think that is wrong.

What I think we need to do is to take an approach similar to that which we are taking here as we debate this legislation and amend this legislation and, I hope, improve on this legislation. We need a policy that is tough. We need an immigration policy that is smart. We need an immigration policy that is comprehensive.

I agree with many of my colleagues, including my friend from Missouri who has just spoken. I believe it begins with tougher borders, tougher border security. We have seen an increase in the number of Border Patrol who man our borders along the border of the United States and Mexico. I am told we have seen between 1995 and 2005 a doubling of the number of Border Patrol who patrol that area. Meanwhile, between 2001 and this year, we have seen a drop by almost a third of the folks who are apprehended coming into this country illegally. That makes no sense.

I think in terms of being on the border, we may need more Border Patrol. We are certainly voting for more Border Patrol, and I think that is the right step. But it is also important that the folks to whom we assign these responsibilities do a better job of tightening the borders and apprehending those who attempt to come through illegally.

The President proposed--and we have signed off on it--the deployment of National Guard troops along our border to work in conjunction with Border Patrol. I support that. As an old commander in chief of the Delaware National Guard for 8 years, I believe the National Guard can play a constructive role here.

One idea that I think makes sense is sort of a synergistic approach. We have a number of Air National Guard units around the country that have for their aircraft that they work with, they have pilotless drones. And I could see using several squadrons of those pilotless drones along our border to supplement the Border Patrol, to make them more effective, to put into the air these aircraft that can detect the movement of individuals, of vehicles moving toward our border. They are effective in the daytime and at night with infrared technology. I think that is a smart use of our National Guard and provides the kind of synergy that I think we ought to be looking for in deploying along our border for maybe a 12-month period.

I know some people are uncomfortable with the notion of building a fence along any portion of our border with Mexico. I have traveled to Israel and seen a fence being built throughout that country, the intention of which is to protect the Israelis from terrorists. And I know some people are offended by the construction of that fence. Personally, I am not. I am not offended by the notion of a fence along portions of our border with Mexico. I don't know that it makes sense, dollars and cents, to construct a fence along the entire 2,000-mile border of the United States and Mexico. But there may be stretches, several hundreds of miles, maybe 300, 400 miles where a fence is cost effective, or where a fence can complement and enhance the ability of our Border Patrol, the ability of our Guard units to provide the kind of balance and deterrence that we need.

With respect to technology, technology can be a great help to us. Unmanned aircraft is just one example. Also, simply better identification that would be awarded to people when they come here legally, whether it is as a guest worker or on a more permanent working basis, to provide them with identification that is, as best we can make it, tamper-proof.

I am reminded every time I go through the security checkpoints at airports, waiting to get through the checkpoints to get on a plane, I see people, usually crew members, who simply go to the front of the line. They go through quickly, and in many cases they have their own identification. Maybe they have biometrics. It may involve fingerprints, eyes, retinal scans. They can get through quickly.

I read recently, I think it was in Business Week, of that kind of identification that may become available commercially to folks who are willing to put out $100 or so, maybe less than that, in order to get identification that is pretty much tamper-proof, that would really say that whoever possesses this identification is indeed the person they profess to be. That is the kind of technology I think we need.

We need more detention beds. The idea that somebody shows up from Mexico, and we simply take them back to Mexico, that is fine. But if they happen to be from Guatemala or Honduras or Peru or Chile, we simply take them to a detention center. We have beds, we put them in that detention center to await an arraignment hearing. If we don't have beds, we say: Come back in a week or a month or two or three. We release them on their own recognizance, and we shouldn't be surprised that a lot of times they don't come back. I don't think we should expect them to come back.

We need more detention beds, and rather than simply turning people loose, knowing that they are unlikely to show up, we ought to be--we ought to be--smarter than that. Part of the solution is more detention beds.

Another aspect of a comprehensive law is to better enforce, to rigorously enforce the laws that we have on the books and to strengthen them with respect to employers who knowingly hire folks who are here illegally. If you look at the number of prosecutions over the last half dozen or so years, it is pitiful in terms of the employers we know are doing something illegal, that they are not doing the right work in making sure that the folks who are working for them are here lawfully. The employers aren't doing it, and, frankly, we haven't been doing much about it. We need to be tougher on that. This bill calls for that. But the best laws, the toughest penalties on the books are no better than the enforcement. In fact, we need much better enforcement.

The President has been a big advocate of a guest worker program. I think he was calling for 400,000 guest workers this year, next year, the year after that. I think we have significantly scaled back the scope of that guest worker program. I think it is acceptable that it be a small portion of a comprehensive bill, but not as the President earlier suggested as really the centerpiece.

Let me say a word or two about the 10 million or 12 million people who are here illegally, what to do with them. I know we have some who say just send them all back, line them up, put them on a bus or an airplane and send them back where they came from. I don't understand how practical that is. I understand the sentiment some feel in wanting to do that. What we are suggesting in this bill is we take an approach for people who have been here illegally, violated our laws, done so repeatedly, either committed a felony or multiple misdemeanors--that is it. They don't have a chance to stay here, no chance to be on a probationary period for 6 years or six decades and work their way toward citizenship. That is how it should be.

On the other hand, folks who have been here for 5 years or more, they worked, essentially they abided by the laws as a citizen here, they paid taxes--if those people are willing to serve an additional probationary period for 6 years or more, continue to work, continue to pay taxes, stay out of trouble with the law, to learn English, to pay a substantial fine--and frankly the size of that fine continues to grow; we grew it further tonight to be somewhere in excess of $3,000--folks who are willing to abide by the conditions of that kind of probation and do so religiously, year after year for half a dozen years or more, they have a chance to work their way toward citizenship.

Similarly, for those who have been here from 2 to 5 years, they would have a chance if they are willing to go back

and come into this country through a couple of dozen entry points along the border, to get valid identification so we know who they are and we know they are here, that they, too, after a period of time would have a chance to enter the same kind of 6-year probationary period, abide by the law, pay taxes, work, pay a fine, learn English--those kinds of things. If they do those things, they, too, would have a chance to work toward citizenship.

For people who have been here less than 2 years or people who violated our laws, violated our laws repeatedly, they are out of luck. They will go back to where they came from, and ultimately, if they have not been lawbreakers, they would have a chance to reapply. I don't think their chances of getting back here any time soon would be good.

The last thing, I say it is not in this bill and I think it is unfortunate that it is not--they talked about it in our caucus, and there has been some serious discussion about whether we ought to raise the minimum wage in our country. We raised the minimum wage when I was Governor. I think 20 or so States have done so, ahead of the Nation. It has been 20 years or more since we raised it. To the extent we actually pay people a better wage in this country, we encourage more Americans to do these jobs which allegedly Americans will not do, which only foreigners are willing to do. Unfortunately, that increase in the minimum wage is not going to be part of this bill. I think that is probably a mistake, but it is what it is.

In closing, at least with respect to immigration tonight, I again want to say it is not good when 10,000 people are coming across our borders last week, this week, next week. Amnesty is not the answer. I believe the answer is legislation that is tough, that is smart, that is comprehensive, that begins with a heavy focus on making our borders more secure, enforcing the laws that are supposed to be in effect with respect to employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, trying to make sure the identification folks bring to this country to demonstrate to employers--that we better ensure it is tamper-proof and we use technology to do that sort of thing.

There are a couple of outcomes that could come out of our work here. We are going to take up this bill tomorrow with some final amendments, and we will vote on whether to pass it and to go to conference with the House, which has a somewhat different bill, as we know. It is not a comprehensive bill but a bill not without some virtue.

I think we will have a chance to pass this bill tomorrow and go to conference. There are some people saying today in our own cloakroom there is no way we are ever going to get a compromise out of a conference with the House. We may pass this bill, but that will be pretty much the end of it. They may be right. I hope they are wrong.

Maybe among the outcomes here, maybe the worst would be to pass a bad bill and send the President a bad bill he might sign. That would be a mistake.

Almost as great a mistake as that would be, I believe, would be to do nothing and to leave here this year having not addressed our problems and to know that people are going to continue to stream into this country illegally. In most cases, they are just folks who want to come to work. In some cases, they are people who are criminals. Maybe in some cases, they are people who would come here as terrorists. That is just unacceptable.

I am, frankly, proud of the Senate and the work we have done. I think in a way the center has sort of come together and held. The center has held with respect to this bill and sort of rejecting extreme views on either side. I find that encouraging.

I don't have to say complimentary things about the President. I think in this case, in this instance, he has shown leadership and willingness to use some of that political capital he earned back in 2004 and I think to put it to pretty good use.

I would like to change gears, if I could. I would like to talk about a place in southern Delaware, a place called Seaford. Most people in this Chamber--my guess is most people around the world--have never heard about Seaford, DE, but almost everybody in this country and around the world has heard about a product called nylon. The first nylon plant in the world was built in Seaford, DE, by the DuPont Company, I think roughly 60 years or so ago. It is a plant that is still in operation, though run by a different firm today. There are still close to 1,000 people who work there. So Seaford is really known in our State, and to the extent they are known around the country, as the home of the first nylon plant ever built in the world.

Seaford is a small town. I don't know exactly how many people live there now, but it is less than 10,000 people--maybe 5,000 or so. There is a lot of pride there, about their heritage with DuPont and a number of other reasons as well. It is in the southwestern part of our State, Sussex County. A number of people in Seaford have gone on to serve in the Armed Forces of our country. This month, two of our young Seaford natives who had gone on to serve in Iraq have given their lives, have lost their lives. A young man named Cory Palmer, earlier in his life, maybe 10 years ago, came up to the Governor's house. I was hosting the Governors Fall Festival. We kicked off the Governors Fall Festival every year with a 5-kilometer race. I remember Cory and other members of his family running in that race with the rest of us.

Earlier this month, Cory was in a humvee in Fallujah, with his teammates and the humvee exploded. It hit an IED, a big one, and Cory and his team, I think now maybe all six of them, at least five, have lost their lives.

I had the privilege of visiting with Cory Palmer's parents about 12 days ago. As I sat there in the living room of that home with Cory's mom and dad, with his grandparents, siblings, I talked about another young man, a fellow who came to my attention--gosh, 6 years ago.

I got a phone call from Bill Bradley, Senator Bill Bradley, who was running for President. Bill Bradley called me to talk about a couple of guys who had worked in his Presidential campaign. He said: I am pulling out of the Presidential campaign. I have several people in my Presidential campaign whom you ought to talk to as you consider your run for the Senate.

One of the names he shared with me that day was that of Sean Barney. Sean Barney came to work for us and ended up being my research director in our campaign for 2001. One of the smartest people I have ever met, he was also one of the hardest working people I have ever met. Sean worked as a research director in our campaign. In the campaign, he came early, he worked late. He didn't just do it once in a while, he did it every day and every night. I think one of the reasons we were successful in that campaign was because of his hard work and sort of never-say-die attitude.

I got elected, came to the Senate, and I asked Sean if he would join us on my Senate staff and he said that he would be pleased to do that. He came to work in January of 2001, one of the first people we hired. He came on board as a senior legislative aide.

I will not soon forget the day he came into my office and said to me, after 9/11, that he felt the need to do something more to serve our country. He knew that I had served in the Navy. He said he had always respected the service that I had to my country during the Vietnam war and later on in the Cold War. He said he felt the need to do that kind of thing as well.

Sean was then in his mid- to late 20s. I said: Sean, you served your country already. You do a great job of serving Delaware, you serve your country, you do it right here in the Senate, and we are lucky that you do. Why don't you just stay here with us and continue the service you perform and perform so well?

Just like in the campaign where he came early, worked late, in the Senate he was just the same. He had a whole range of issues, from tax policy, budget policy, Social Security, Medicare--he didn't take the easy issues, he took the tough issues. He came early, worked late. He had a great sense of humor,

was a great person to boost the morale of the office, just a terrific team player, a guy we felt lucky to have on our team.

As it turned out, on the Friday that I was sitting in the living room there in Seaford, DE, talking with Cory Palmer's parents about the loss of his life shortly after he left Fallujah in a Medevac, I told them about Sean Barney who had gone in the Marine Corps. Sean Barney decided he was going to be a marine. Despite my encouragement to the contrary, to stay with us and serve here in the Senate, he elected to go on to active duty. Here is a guy, a college graduate. He could have gone to Quantico, gone through OCS. He didn't. He decided he was going to enlist and not take the easier route--not that there is an easy route in the Marine Corps, but he said he wanted to go to Paris Island basic training. He finished there with distinction, headed on to finish, after that, his advanced training. After having spent a little less than a year on active duty, he came back to Washington--with shorter hair but with a good spirit--and rejoined my staff. He picked up on the issues he worked on before, and he worked just as hard, came early, worked late, good humor, a great member of our team.

Late last year, he got word that he was going to be activated. I had really had a premonition that this was happening. When he had gone through his basic training and finished that and his unit was overseas--units were based up in New Jersey, the Marine unit--they were overseas, but he was not sent there to join them. They came back, and he continued to train with them in the United States. He had not been activated himself. He learned he was going to be activated late last year and be on active duty, I think this year.

He went through training here in this country and a month or two ago headed over to Iraq. He went to Fallujah. As I was sitting again in Seaford, with the Palmer family, trying to provide some comfort to them, about 12 days ago, I told them about Sean Barney.

Little did I know that just hours before I went to their home, Sean Barney was shot. He was shot in Fallujah, on the streets of Fallujah. He was shot by a sniper, and the bullet struck him in the neck, just missed his Adam's apple. It severed the carotid artery, apparently nipped the jugular vein, barely missed his spine. Sean ran about half a block, got behind some building or debris, and by a miracle, apparently a humvee that was not too far away was called in by one of Sean's buddies. I think it had a corpsman, Navy corpsman on board, maybe even a doc. They got to Sean and Sean was still conscious. The last thing he remembered was hearing the corpsman say: Let's get the tourniquet out and use it. Sean was thinking, with a wound in the neck, where are they going to put the tourniquet? That is Sean, a good sense of humor, maybe in this case gallows humor.

Within 12 minutes, they had Sean in the humvee and into the hospital in Fallujah. They applied first aid en route, got him to Fallujah. There was a doctor there, if I can find his name here, a fellow whose name is Captain Donovan. Captain Donovan, who just happened to be starting a 30-day rotation at Camp Fallujah Hospital, was able to stop the bleeding and put the carotid artery back together again. The fact that Sean is alive today--and he is alive today, he is in Bethesda tonight--is a miracle.

I know a lot of us prayed earnestly for Sean, for his life. He has been spared and returned to be here with his wife Daisy and his parents. He is going to be checking out of Bethesda later this week, we hope, and go on to Philadelphia where his wife is going through a residency in her medical training. She becomes a doctor, too.

That is a happy ending. While he has some problems with his shoulder in terms of ability to use that shoulder now, he is going to get great care and hopefully rehab and maybe someday will be able to regain his full capacity.

There is another young man from Seaford, though, subsequent to the time I visited with the Palmers, who we learned had been shot and killed in Ramadi.

Earlier today, a young man, Rick James, 20 years old, also a marine, was buried in Seaford. And 12 days ago, Cpl Cory Palmer was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Last night, I was back at Seaford visiting the family of Marine Cpl Rick James, trying to comfort them in the funeral home as they got ready to say goodbye to their son, their grandson, their brother, their cousin, and their friend.

It has been a tough month in Delaware. We are a little State. We have had a number of people--maybe a dozen or so--who have lost their lives prior to this month in Iraq and Afghanistan. We lost three last month, which is tough for a little place.

There is another young man whose family doesn't live in Delaware but he grew up in our State, Steven Snowberger, who went to William Penn High School. I was at his high school in New Castle, DE, last week. At the age of 16, he moved on to complete his education elsewhere and to join the Army. He died at the age of 18, about a week ago. We just said goodbye to Steven this past week.

Those are three causes for great sorrow in our State, the loss of three young men, the oldest being 22 years of age.

I must say that I am encouraged to talk to the families and see how proud they are of their young men, their sons, their grandsons, their brothers, their cousins, their friends.

I have never seen a town that small, Seaford--or, frankly, a larger town--sort of welling up, really with pride, as they have these last couple of weeks, supporting those who have lost their lives and their families as well. It was extraordinary.

One of our colleagues, John McCain, was invited to go to Delaware last weekend by my colleague, Mike Castle, to do a campaign event over on the coast. Senator McCain was good enough, at the urging of Congressman Castle, to swing through Seaford, DE, and stop to make an appearance there and say wonderful, supportive words about our young men--heroes. All of us in Delaware are grateful to him for doing that.

While we mourn the loss of our marines and our Army PFC, we are just grateful that later this week another marine part of our family in the Senate, Sean Barney, is alive. I think he is going to be OK. I do not know that he will ever come back and work with us in the Senate family. He has been accepted to law school at Stanford, and my guess is he will probably--when he recovers enough and is ready to go onto the next part of his life and separate from the Marines--head for points west and pick up his life and his wife.

To those in Seaford, and the Snowberger family down in North Carolina today who lost their son, Steven, our hearts go out to you. To the extent we can be helpful, you know we are there for you, like the whole State is.

To our friend, Sean, we are just glad that miracles still happen and that one of them involved you.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Mary Campbell Center in serving people with disabilities in Delaware. Since opening in 1976, the Mary Campbell Center has touched the lives of literally thousands of people.

The center is located in Wilmington, DE, on 10 beautiful acres of land. The grounds were originally a farm owned by Amos and Mary Talley Campbell, whose daughter Evelyn had Down's syndrome. After his wife died, Amos Campbell donated their land so that a special long-term-care facility for Evelyn and other people with disabilities could be built. And that is how it came to be called the Mary Campbell Center.

The center was founded by a group of loving individuals--Marjorie M. Anderson, Richard P. DiSabatino, Sr., Barbara Z. Holmes, David W. Holmes, William H. Kelley, Joseph J. Picciotti, Jr., Marcia V. Raniere, Charles E. Welch, and Charma L. Welch. Each of these founders and their families has given unselfishly to make the Mary Campbell Center the success that it is today.

Since 1976, there have been many Mary Campbell Center milestones. The center has grown from having a handful of residents to 65 residents. They benefit from around-the-clock health care, case management, counseling, education, assistive technology, recreation, physician services, physical therapy, occupational therapy, massage therapy, speech and language therapy, hydrotherapy, exercise, nutritional services, and transportation. Local families have come to depend on the Mary Campbell Center for respite care. Residents and members of the community are also benefiting from the center's unique educational program. Furthermore, over 200 children and youths with special needs and their siblings participate in various programs and summer camp experiences. And the most recent venture, the day program, is expanding to serve even more families.

Physically, the Mary Campbell Center has gone from a compact building to a comfortable state-of-the-art and fully accessible facility with an indoor swimming pool, a learning center with the latest technologies, a greenhouse, and an adaptive playground. There is even an accessible nature trail that is an especially popular retreat during spring and summer. Today, more than ever, assistive technology is helping so many reach new goals and communicate with family and friends all over the world. Community involvement is at an alltime high. Over 300 volunteers give their time and talent to make a difference there. As the Mary Campbell Center enters its third decade, it continues to grow. Another expansion to the building is about to get underway. The center is doubling the size of their community room, the All-Star Room, and constructing a basement. This will provide additional usable space.

I had the privilege of visiting the Mary Campbell Center earlier this year. I was able to see first hand the difference the center makes in people's lives. I rise today to thank the Mary Campbell Center community for all that they do in Delaware, and I wish them a very happy 30th anniversary.

Mr. President. I rise today to recognize Representative Evelyn K. ``Tina'' Fallon upon her retirement from Delaware's House of Representatives after more than 28 years of dedicated public service. Known to friends and colleagues alike as ``Tina,'' she is a woman with a kind heart, diverse interests and great abilities. Tina embodies the best of Delaware.

Born in Dudley, NC, on September 16, 1917, Tina has experienced firsthand the many changes that Delaware has undergone over the years and this level of experience will be difficult, if not impossible, to replace.

A longtime resident of Seaford, DE, Tina holds a bachelor of arts degree from Meredith College, located in Raleigh, NC, and a master's degree in education from the University of Delaware. She married her husband, James D. Fallon, Jr., in 1938, and they had four children together. After James' passing in 1982, Tina continued to raise their sons, George, James, William and Howard.

Before winning her first campaign when she was 61 years old, an age when many public servants are ready to retire, Tina worked for more than 25 years as an educator teaching math and science at Seaford High School. This experience has allowed her to speak with authority about Delaware's education system and the many issues that affect Delaware's young people.

Often recognized as the oldest member of the State legislature, Tina brought a wealth of knowledge to Delaware's House of Representatives along with energy and enthusiasm that belied her age. Her life experience gave her an understanding of faith and family values that transcended party slogans and struck an authentic chord in her constituents and everyone who had the pleasure of calling her their friend.

Representative Fallon quickly became known as one of Delaware's most approachable and hardestworking public officials. Her keen intellect and commonsense approach to problem-solving helped her serve her constituents and make Delaware a better place for us all.

Tina also served as a mentor for incoming members of Delaware's House of Representatives. Her positive attitude and boundless energy set a high standard for her colleagues to follow. A firm believer in acknowledging the hard work and accomplishments of her constituents, Tina was often seen visiting homes and businesses throughout the 39 district while delivering House tributes to those who deserved them.

During my time as Governor, I had the honor of naming Representative Fallon as the ``Travel and Tourism Person of the Year'' in 1998 for her outstanding work to promote and develop Delaware's tourism industry. Delaware's economic health and many small businesses are better off because of her efforts to promote the first State's historical and natural attractions. Also in 1998, she was honored by the National Republican Legislators Association as a ``1998 Legislator of the Year.'' She was one of only 10 people across the Nation to receive this honor.

As a member of the influential Joint Finance Committee, Representative Fallon helped shape Delaware's multibillion dollar annual operating budget. Her ability to work with members of both parties made her an invaluable participant in figuring out how best to fund the current and future needs of Delaware. Tina also chairs the House Tourism Committee and is a member of five other committees as well.

Following her retirement, Tina plans to spend time with her children and grandchildren. After such a distinguished career serving the people of Delaware, I am certain that many will agree with me when I say that her retirement is well deserved. I thank Tina for her friendship, applaud her service, and wish her and her family only the very best in all that lies ahead for them.

I believe under a unanimous consent agreement the Senator from North Dakota is to be recognized next, and as soon as he is prepared to take control of the floor, I will be happy to yield to him. But until then, if I could have a moment or two, I would appreciate it.

I appreciate the Senator from North Carolina giving me a minute or two.

Mr. President, earlier this year I had an opportunity to vote on a tax bill. The tax legislation I voted for, not once but twice, provided for renewing--extending the investment tax credit. We needed to do that. It expired. It called for extending for a 2-year period of time the fix to the alternative minimum tax. We needed to do that. It has expired. It called for renewing and extending the college tuition deduction.

We need to do that. It has expired. We paid for doing all of those things in ways that would not make the budget deficit grow larger.

Today, as we take up this legislation and consider its passage, it includes nothing about relief for those people who are now paying the alternative minimum tax who should not be; there is nothing to extend the research and development tax credit, and we should be; and, frankly, it doesn't do anything about restoring the college tuition deduction, and we ought to be doing that as well.

What we do is go down the road a couple of years and say that the 15 percent tax on capital gains and on dividend income, we are going to extend it for 2 years beyond December 31, 2008. Yet we are not addressing the stuff that needs to be addressed, the tax provisions that need to be addressed right now.

What makes today's proposal all the more galling is, in order to pay for this tax bill we use a gimmick. I thought I had seen everything. I have never seen anything quite as cynical as this, where we actually pay for a tax cut with a tax cut. Some of us have heard the old saying, ``no pain, no gain.'' Around here, in this Congress, and, frankly, with this administration, instead of our slogan being ``no pain, no gain,'' it really ought to be ``short-term gain and long-term pain'' because what we are doing is stealing revenues beyond the year 2015 in order to pay for a tax cut that will largely help people who honestly don't need a huge tax cut.

I don't know that this makes a whole lot of sense. It doesn't pass what I call the commonsense test back in Delaware. ``Short-term gain, long-term pain'' is not as catchy, I suppose, as ``no pain, no gain,'' but I tell you that is what the watchword of the day is around here. It is wrong. We ought not to do it. I will be voting against this tax bill as a result.

I thank the Senator from North Dakota for sharing this time. I yield.

Mr. President, while he is still on the floor, I say to my colleague from Wyoming, I think from all of us, I thank him for taking an earlier position on the health plan bill that passed the House. In my view, and I think in the view of lot of us, it was badly flawed. Thanks for the Senator's efforts over an extended period of time, along with our colleague, Senator Nelson of Nebraska, to take that product and make it better, and for your willingness to work I think in conjunction with Senator Snowe to improve on it further, to be responsive to the concerns that a lot of us are raising, I wanted to go on the record.

As I said yesterday--and I will say it in front of my colleague--I find that he and Senator Nelson of Nebraska are two of the most thoughtful Members we have in the Senate. It is a pleasure working with you.

One of the disappointments that I find around here is sometimes even when we appear to agree on things, it is hard to get anything done. In this case, there appears to be pretty good agreement that if we could somehow find a way to harness market forces, we could bring down health care costs for small business and their employees and find a way to pool the purchasing power of those small businesses and our employees could maybe bring down health care costs and get a better selection of options from which to choose.

There has been a fair amount of discussion today and the days leading up to this debate over mandated coverage that certain States offer. I will give an example of one State in our experience with respect to mandates.

Before I came here, in my last job I was Governor of Delaware for 8 years. Roughly 10 or 12 years ago we learned, to our alarm and dismay, that Delaware had the highest rate of cancer mortality in the country. We also learned at the same time that while we had the highest rate of cancer mortality in the country, we did not have

the highest rate of cancer incidence. In fact, we were at number 20 or so.

We looked at those numbers and sort of scratched our head about them to figure out why we were No. 1 in cancer mortality--which is the last place you want to be--and number 20 or so with respect to the incidence of cancer.

We pulled in some people a lot smarter than me to look over those results and asked: What is going on here? Why the high cancer mortality number, particularly in light of the fact that cancer incidence is more like the middle of the pack?

After assessing the situation for a while, they said: We conclude-- and we are fairly sure of this--the problem is, in your State, in Delaware, you do not do a very good job of early detection and treatment of cancer. If you want to bring down your cancer mortality number to be closer to your cancer incidence number, you have to do a better job of early detection and treatment.

We took that charge seriously. We went to work in three areas: The first of those, Delaware at the time, was one of the higher ranking States in terms of incidence of smoking, tobacco usage. We said one of the things we want to do is reduce the use of tobacco products. We decided to start with young people to reduce the likelihood young people will start smoking and continue to smoke. We made it more difficult for them to have access to tobacco products. We also reduced the opportunities for people to smoke indoors, an effort that continued under my successor.

The second thing we did was, with respect to expanding the opportunity for people to find a health care home by expanding opportunities for people to participate in Medicaid and the SCHIP Program for young children, partnership between the State of Delaware and the Federal Government as other States participated, too.

The third thing we decided to do was to say maybe we ought to have health insurance plans in our State offer as part of their package screening for certain kinds of cancer. For example, mammography screening for breast cancer, colorectal screening, cervical cancer screening, and a couple of others. We did all those things roughly 10 years or so ago. Every year we have had an opportunity to find out how we are doing with respect to cancer mortality and cancer incidence.

I have a chart. Delaware is small, so rather than use 1 year's numbers we look at 5 years. We have a 5-year rolling average. We went back to 1989 to 1993, when Delaware was No. 1 in cancer mortality. In the next 5-year period, 1990 to 1994, we were No. 1. In 1992 to 1996 we were No. 1, and so on. During the 1990s and into the decade we start out No. 1. We were the first State to ratify the constitution and our State slogan, which is ``We are the first State.'' We like to think it is good to be first. This is one thing we do not want to be first in.

The State that was No. 1 in cancer mortality for too many years started to drop by 1997 when we fell down to No. 2, and we continued to drop so that by the year 2000 we were down to No. 5.

I am happy to report standing before the Senate today that in the most recent numbers which I think run up through 2003, we dropped out of the top 5. We might still be in the top 10, but we know we are not in the top 5, and certainly not No. 1. We are heading in the right direction. I will not be happy until we are No. 50.

I would like my colleagues to consider that all of our States are different. Delaware is different. Wyoming is different from Oklahoma. We all have different priorities. We had a real problem in Delaware. We still have a significant concern with respect to cancer mortality. We developed a good game plan and we implemented that game plan. And lo and behold, it is working. It is actually working. We want to make sure it continues to work.

Reducing cancer mortality is like the Navy guys changing the course of an aircraft carrier, turning an aircraft carrier. The same is true as we try to reduce cancer mortality. It is a slow process. It is not an easy process. It takes time. If you stick with it, you can turn aircraft carriers. You also can bring down cancer mortality numbers.

How does this relate to the debate today? It relates because an earlier version of the association health plan legislation passed by the House any number of times does not let us do in Delaware what has proven to be successful in reducing cancer mortality. Even with the efforts of Senator Enzi and Senator Nelson, as this bill came to the floor, it did not let us continue in Delaware requiring the screenings for mammography, screenings in colorectal, prostate, and cervical cancer. It does not help us do those things.

With the amendment that may be offered or suggested by Senator Snowe, we can do some of this stuff, not all of it but we can do some of it. Particularly the breast cancer screenings would be allowed to continue, maybe one of the others.

The reason I bring this up, I want to keep in mind that States are different. What we have focused on in Delaware is what works--what works to reduce unemployment, what works to improve student outcomes, what works to get people off of welfare roles, what works in a variety of things. This is a multipronged approach that worked in reducing cancer mortality.

Let me talk more about the Enzi-Nelson preliminarily with respect to the Lincoln-Durbin proposal. They actually share some things in common, as I said earlier. They both say: Health care costs are a major problem in this country. They are a problem for little businesses; they are a problem for big businesses.

As we watch my generation aging and look to the future, when the boomers are in full retirement--and I might add, the generation of the Presiding Officer is in full retirement--we will see Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security which today account for roughly 8 percent of gross domestic production, by the time our generation is in full retirement, 25 or 30 years, I am told that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security may well consume something like 16 percent of gross domestic production. The amount of spending for those three programs alone is roughly equal to 16 percent of our gross domestic production as a country.

If you look back over the history of our country, in the last 50 years or so we spend as a percentage of gross domestic product something like 18 or 19 percent of gross domestic production to run the whole Government. If we are looking at 25 years or 30 years down the line where we are spending 16 percent of gross domestic production just to run three programs, with nothing for the environment, nothing for housing, nothing for defense, nothing for homeland security, nothing for education, that is a scary prospect.

So the concerns we have about finding a way to constrain the growth of health care costs are not just a concern of small or large business but a great concern for those in the public sector who worry about how to continue to fund and offer benefits through Medicare and Medicaid.

Senator Enzi took a few minutes to talk about the Durbin-Lincoln proposal. The proposals are similar in a couple of respects: One, they say rising health care costs are a major concern. They are a concern not just for government, for big business, but a concern to small businesses.

Wouldn't it be great if we could find a way to somehow combine the purchasing power of a lot of small employers across the country and their employees, much as we do for Federal employees? All Federal employees do not work for one employer. We work for hundreds of agencies. The Senate is an agency. The House is an agency. We have the courts around here that are separate courts and agencies.

Throughout the country we are, in a way, sort of like small businesses. We talk about being three branches of Government, but we actually are, in a sense, small employers. There are big employers among us, bigger agencies, such as Defense, but there are a lot of small agencies that are much like a small employer.

What we have done to be able to constrain the growth of health care costs for Federal employees is to find a way, working with the Office of Personnel Management, to pool our purchasing power, to get a whole lot of health insurance products available to be offered to us, to give us the opportunity to shop among them and figure out what works for each of us best, what we can afford, the kind of benefits we are looking for, and then we can pick

and choose. We end up with a great cross section of product to choose from. Given the kind of purchasing power we have, we are able to constrain the cost of coverage. We have to pay something, I think it is about 25 percent of the cost of our coverage. But it is, frankly, a lot lower premium than otherwise it would be if we did not have the purchasing power pool.

When you add active Federal employees and Federal retirees, you add in all the families, we are talking about a lot of people, maybe as many as 6, 7, 8 million people, and it gives us a chance to have a real impact on what is available in terms of coverage and how much that coverage is going to cost.

Senator Enzi raised a question about the cost of the Lincoln-Durbin plan. The Lincoln-Durbin plan is different from where it was initially introduced, as I understood it. There is a tax break in their plan from which the cost arises.

He mentioned the cost over 10 years as much as $50 or $60 billion. It is a tax cut for smaller businesses that offer coverage for their employees. The reason there is a cost associated with the Durbin- Lincoln plan is because of that tax cut. Ironically, some of my colleagues have suggested that is one of the few times they recall our Republican friends being opposed to a tax cut. I know there are tax cuts they are opposed to, but that is the reason there is this cost. It is considerable.

In the conversation we had earlier this afternoon, I was sharing with my friend, Senator Enzi, it involves Senator Lincoln, myself, Senator Salazar of Colorado, and a number of folks from the business community who were gathered around just to have a good discussion about the problems we face in trying to look for some common ground.

I said to Senator Enzi when I came to the Senate a bit ago, we had a side bar conversation while another colleague was speaking. It is too bad that conversation we had with the business community in Senator Lincoln's conference, too bad we did not have that 12 months ago or 12 weeks ago. He shared with me a conversation that occurred maybe 9 months or so ago that involved him and some of my colleagues on this subject.

Senator Enzi is good, as are Senators Durbin and Lincoln, in reaching out to the other side and trying to find common ground. We need to find common ground. I remain convinced I am one of the people who, like Senator Enzi, sees the glass half full even when it is almost dry. As to this issue today, I think the glass is at least half full.

I cannot help but think, given the good will on both sides, that if guys like me and gals like Senator Lincoln and guys like Senators Nelson and Enzi and Durbin put it in their minds, we could find a way to further reduce the differences between our respective proposals.

I do not know what is going to happen when we vote. I guess we are going to vote on cloture tomorrow, I am told. I am not sure what is going to happen. I don't know if the debate will basically continue or, because of that, sort of end for now. If it does, I hope the discussion actually will begin in earnest, and discussion, certainly, with the principals on both sides who have interests in this issue, and that out of that discussion we come to a more satisfactory resolution.

One of the problems we have on our side--and I think Senator Enzi has heard this before--is sometimes, even when we pass what we think is a pretty good bill in the Senate, and we go to conference with a much different bill from our friends in the House, when the conference is created between the House and the Senate, we, as Democrats, are not always full participants in those conferences, and what comes out at the end of the day does not look a whole lot like what we passed in the Senate, or at least not enough. That is going to be a concern. And I just need to say that.

But having said that, we will cast our votes tomorrow and see what happens with respect to them. But I would say to my friend Senator Enzi, my hope is that if we do not come to resolution and this is an issue that continues to be outstanding. It is too important just to let it die. I hope we will have an opportunity--whether it is tomorrow or next week or the weeks after that--to find a common ground and get something done.

Mr. President, I brought these charts. We might as well use them. Actually, I think for a guy from Delaware they are actually pretty interesting. I do not know what these numbers look like in Wyoming. But when you look at the leading causes of death in my State--this chart goes back to about, oh, Lord, a dozen years or so. In the early part of the 1990s, about 32 percent of the folks who died in our State died from heart disease, about 26 percent died from cancer, 6 percent died from strokes, 4 percent died from chronic lower respiratory disease, 4 percent died from accidents, and 3 percent died from diabetes, and 25 percent died from ``all others.''

Keep in mind, in the early 1990s, cancer was right around 26 percent, heart disease was 32 percent.

Let's see what it looked like a decade later. Heart disease was at 32 percent, now it is down to 29 percent; and cancer, which was at 26 percent, is now down to 24 percent. The rest are pretty much the same, although ``all other'' is gaining. In fact, ``all other'' is in first place now, whatever ``all other'' is.

We are real pleased to see the drop in the number of cancer deaths. Does that sound like a lot over a 10-year period of time, to drop from 26 percent down to 24 percent? It is not. But as I said earlier, it is a little bit like changing that aircraft carrier. The numbers have dropped. We are convinced we are doing something right, and we want to continue what seems to be working.

I have a couple of other charts, and then I will close. This is a chart that goes back to the beginning of the 1980s--1980 to 1984--and up to 2002. The red numbers are the cancer mortality rates for the country, and the numbers above are cancer mortality rates for Delaware, starting in the early 1980s and going to the early part of this decade.

As you can see, the gap by around 1990--the early 1990s--the gap right here, was pretty large, back here, but it is even larger here. That is when we started doing something different, changing up our game plan in Delaware. And we are still above the national average here, but it is about half of what it was a decade or so ago. So we are convinced we are on the right path.

One more chart. My staff thinks this is not a very good chart, and maybe it is not. I kind of like it. Let's see if I can get it straight. We look here at the percentage of the reduction in cancers. It dropped between the early 1990s and the early part of this decade. The mortality rate of all cancers in Delaware went down by about 13 percent--a drop in all cancers.

The cancer mortality rate in the United States during the same period went down about 7 or 8 percent. The drop in the lung cancer mortality rate in Delaware, over the last decade, was, again, by about 13 percent. In the country, it went down by about 5 percent, in this same period of time. Colorectal deaths went down in our State by over 15 percent over that 10-year period of time, and down about 12 percent in the country. Breast cancer deaths in Delaware went down, in the last decade or so, by about almost 20 percent. In the country, it went down by about 12 or 13 percent.

And for guys like us--Senator Enzi and my colleague, the Presiding Officer--this is a real attention getter. For prostate cancer, the mortality rate in our State, in the last decade, went down by almost 50 percent, in Delaware, as compared to the rest of the country, which was about half that, roughly 25 percent.

I think that is a pretty good chart, and I am glad it was made up for us to look at.

The point I want to make is, actually sometimes we have these mandates, along with other things I mentioned earlier, and some positive things do happen in our respective States.

We are pleased with the progress we have made, and we have a long way to go in Delaware. We want to make sure we have the tools to be able to continue in that vein.

I have said my piece. I look forward to seeing how the smoke clears and what things will look like after tomorrow. We will just take it from there.

I yield back my time. Thank you, Mr. President.

Will the Senator yield?

Mr. President, how much time is left on our side during this period of debate?

How much longer does the Senator expect to speak?

I thank my colleague for yielding. I ask if she would stay on the floor.

I commend Senator Lincoln for actually coming up with this idea. It is an idea for which she and Senator Durbin share credit. When you think of some of our options, the options basically are do nothing, maintain the status quo, continue to make the cost of insurance very steep and rising for small businesses or to adopt the proposal of our colleagues, Senator Enzi and Senator Nelson, whom I believe are two of the most thoughtful Members of the Senate. They have worked hard to try to make a not very good idea--the original association health plan--a better idea. But between doing nothing and the modified HP legislation from Senators Enzi and Nelson is a third way. The third way has already been outlined here by Senator Lincoln.

I wish to ask my colleagues to think about it. I don't care whether it is a Democratic idea or Republican idea. It is actually an opportunity to take the best from what the Government, the public sector, can bring and to take maybe the best the private sector can bring.

One of the common values that are shared by the Enzi-Nelson legislation and the Lincoln-Durbin legislation is the notion that we have a lot of smaller employers, they have a lot of employees, and together is there some way we could pool their purchasing power? Maybe we could increase the number of health insurance options available to them and maybe we could bring down the cost of those options. They propose to do it in one particular way which, as Senator Lincoln pointed out, has a number of problems, one of which affects us negatively in Delaware.

We have had a very high rate of cancer mortality. Finally, we have brought it down over the last 10 years or so, in part by having mandatory cancer screening--mammography, for cervical cancer, prostate screening, for colorectal cancers--and that has helped to bring down our cancer mortality rate. From the top in the country, we have finally now dropped to the top five. We are moving in the right direction. I will talk about that tomorrow, and I will even bring some charts to rival the chart of my colleague, I hope.

But I suggest to my colleagues, think about this. We have all these disparate Federal agencies across the country. Collectively, we have a couple of million employees, family members, and retirees, and all we do through the Federal health benefit plan is we pool our collective purchasing power. It doesn't matter if you work for the VA or Homeland Security or some other Federal agency--EPA--basically we could come together and use our collective might to negotiate better rates and, frankly, better coverage than would otherwise be the case if we were just negotiating for ourselves. We do it all through the Office of Personnel Management.

What Senator Lincoln is suggesting is it works great for us, provides reasonably good coverage for Federal employees, including us as U.S. Senators. We have to pay our portion. It is not that we get it for free. We have to pay our share. But it works pretty darn well. She has come up with a way where we take that Government idea and transpose it and transfer it to the private sector. She would have the Office of Personnel Management effectively provide the service or play the role in the private sector that it currently plays in the public sector, to allow a lot of employees, whether you work for the local hardware store or restaurant or small manufacturer or technology company, to say: We would like our employees to be able to pull together from Arkansas, from Delaware, even from Minnesota, in order to get a chance to buy better insurance products, have more variety, and bring down our costs to our small business employees.

It has worked. It is proven. It is time tested, and I believe it is worth trying. The worst thing that I think could happen, coming out of this week, is for us to do nothing.

It is a big problem. It is a big problem for small employers, and it is a big problem for large employers. It is a big problem for America.

I think what would be the worst thing that could happen, and what would basically ensure that we do nothing is for our Republican friends to basically allow no amendments to the Enzi-Nelson legislation. I think that would be awful. That would be a huge mistake. It would pretty much basically ensure we end up not getting this bill done or some variation and not even having a chance for debate and vote on the Lincoln-Durbin legislation. We can do better than that.

Frankly, the Senate deserves a lot better than that.

I say to my colleague from Arkansas, who has been good enough to relinquish her time, I thank her on behalf of all us for pointing out a different course, a third way in this regard. I thank her.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield once again?

Mr. President, we do not often think of the Federal Government in the way we are trying to harness market forces and competition and put them to work. We try to hold down Federal outlays. That is what we do with respect to the Federal. It is literally what we do with respect to the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan. What we are trying to do, with respect to what the Senator has outlined, is harness market forces and competition and put them to work for small businesses as well.

Mr. President. I rise today to recognize the Beta Phi Chapter of Delta Tau Delta for their reinstatement to the Ohio State University's fraternity system and for the chapter's commitment to living lives of excellence that can serve as an example for us all.

Founded at Bethany College in 1858, Delta Tau Delta began as a response by the eight founding members to suspicions that the student- run Neotrophian Literary Society had been compromised and that the results of a student oratory contest had been manipulated. This injustice was not to be tolerated by the young founding members, as they were devoted to the idea of truth in all matters. Their response was to found the fraternal society of Delta Tau Delta, which continues to thrive on college campuses across America.

This devotion to the truth is only one of the hallmarks of Delta Tau Delta. The ideals of courage, faith and power complete the quartet of founding principles. These guiding lights have illuminated the lives of many extraordinary young men who have undertaken the commitment that is required to become an active member of this outstanding organization.

Those men have gone on to serve in positions of trust and great responsibility today as CEOs of companies like GM and General Mills, as Governor of New Mexico, as U.S. Representatives, and as U.S. Senators of South Dakota and Delaware.

The Beta Phi chapter at the Ohio State University was founded on November 19, 1894. More than 2,000 young men have forged their college memories there through their participation in this chapter. Located less than 200 yards from campus, the Delta Tau Delta house stood for much of the past century as a testament to character, honesty, and integrity. The reinstatement of the Beta Phi chapter represents a return to those values.

These bonds of brotherhood do not dissolve at graduation. They continue through time because the brothers of Delta Tau Delta commit themselves to a cause that is larger than a single individual or graduating class.

With chapters on more than 200 college campuses across America and approximately 6,000 active members and more than 145,000 alumni, Delta Tau Delta has had an immeasurable impact on the communities in which its members--past and present--live and serve. Volunteer service is vital to the improvement of any community. It is one of the primary requirements for becoming an active member of Delta Tau Delta. By partnering with the Adopt-A-School volunteer service organization, the men of the Beta Phi Chapter have lent their time and energy at every turn to mentor and tutor thousands of schoolchildren less fortunate than they.

The Delta Tau Delta experience also allows young men to gain experience that the average college student does not receive by providing members with opportunities for responsibility and leadership that are not easily found in the many traditional college settings. Whether mentoring school children or organizing a community blood drive, the men of Delta Tau Delta accept responsibility for more than themselves. They learn to give back to their communities and strive for excellence at every opportunity.

With this proud tradition in mind, the men of Delta Tau Delta's Beta Phi chapter are to be commended and applauded for their reinstatement to the Ohio State University community and for this chapter's return to the principles on which it was founded more than a century ago.

Mr. President. I rise to today in recognition of Retha Fisher upon her retirement. Retha has served as Westminster Presbyterian Church's director of social services for 29 years, and her leadership over that span of time has won her the respect and gratitude of our entire State. She has been, and remains, a trusted friend to many members of our congregation and of the community that we serve.

Retha was born in Fayetteville, NC, on April 18, 1936. She was the only child of Clara and Lester McLerin. Her early childhood ambition was to become a nurse, but she decided against it because she disliked the sight of blood. After many years of piano and voice lessons, she began her college career in Washington, DC, at Howard University where she majored in music. She later decided to follow her childhood desire to help her fellow man and changed her major to psychology and sociology with a minor in English. It was during this time that she made the decision to become a social worker.

After graduation and while looking for employment, Retha applied to what was then known as the State Department of Welfare, Child Welfare Division in Dover. During the interview process, she was asked if she would like to take advantage of a stipend to attend graduate school. While living in Wilmington, she attended the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Work and was placed in a position in Dover. Her placement was with Child Welfare Services, and she soon discovered that working with children was her true calling. Twelve years later, Retha accepted a position with the Wilmington Housing Authority as their coordinator of social services.

Throughout these many years doing her fine work, Retha maintained and nourished some other ``loves of her life.'' She met and married Arland Roland Fisher, whom everyone called Roland. Together they had one daughter, Whitney Gayle Fisher, who now practices personal injury and criminal law in Newark, NJ. After her daughter's birth, Retha left her position to with the Wilmington Housing Authority to devote her time as a full-time wife and mother.

In 1977, though, Retha was asked by Westminster Presbyterian Church if she would be interested in interviewing for a job there. It was with this wonderful opportunity that Retha found her true calling. She became the church's director of social services, and the people of Westminster and of Delaware have been truly blessed by this decision for almost three decades.

Retha's service has extended far beyond the church walls and well into the community. In 1993, she founded the Food Bank of Delaware, a nonprofit agency that helps feed hungry people throughout our State. The Food Bank of Delaware is the only facility in Delaware with the equipment, warehouse, and staff to collect donations for all sectors of the food industry and to safely and efficiently redistribute it to the people who need it most. Through 235 member agencies, the Food Bank of Delaware distributes over 10 million pounds of food annually.

In addition to the Food Bank of Delaware, Retha has also helped countless low-income individuals with financial assistance. She founded F.A.I.T.H. Center, which provides financial assistance to the poor. In 1992, she also chaired the Conectiv--now Delmarva Power--Consumer Council, which continues to meet with representatives of the utility and the State of Delaware to bring financial support to those who cannot afford to pay their utility bills.

In 1989, Retha met with 10 Westminster couples to explore the possibility of how they might help homeless families get off the street and into adequate housing. To that end, Retha founded the Samaritans. From case management to furniture to mentoring, the Samaritans stand ready to provide support for the year or so that a homeless family needs to become stabilized.

At Christmastime, Retha embodies the true spirit of the holidays. Each year, Retha organizes and oversees Westminster's yearly program to distribute Christmas food and gift baskets to nearly 200 clients of the social services agencies of greater Wilmington.

Retha has not only brought financial assistance through her work in these various programs, but she has served as a spiritual leader as well. She has been an ear to the lonely and a person to pray with through the hard times. She has given each of these people who have come to her dignity and hope.

Through Retha's tireless efforts, she has made a profound difference in the lives of thousands of Delawareans. Upon her retirement, she leaves behind a legacy of commitment to public service for future generations to follow. I thank her for the friendship that many of us are privileged to share with Retha and for the inspiration that she provides through a lifetime of caring. On behalf of all Delawareans, I congratulate her on a truly remarkable and distinguished career and extend to her my very best wishes for every success in the future. I wish her and her family only the very best in all that lies ahead.

Mr. President. I rise today in recognition of Anthony Felicia, Jr., upon his retirement as vice president of R&D and clinical administration for AstraZeneca. Tony's dedication and ability have won him the respect of friends and coworkers alike, along with the gratitude of many in the first State. He has been, and remains, a trusted friend of Delaware.

A native of Syracuse, NY, Tony was born on August 26, 1950, to Anthony and Maryann Felicia. He received his bachelor's degree from the State University of New York and completed his master's degree at Syracuse University.

Tony has been with AstraZeneca and the former Zeneca Pharmaceuticals and ICI for 28 years and has worked in operations, quality assurance, supply chain management, facilities and engineering, production operations, and international planning. Prior to Tony's employment with ICI in 1978, he worked for Bristol Laboratories in Syracuse, NY, from 1973 to 1977, where he held various quality assurance and production positions.

Throughout his career, Tony has provided strong leadership and served as a role model to many. One of the numerous highlights of his outstanding career was the pivotal role he played in helping to bring AstraZeneca's U.S. headquarters to Delaware during my time as Governor. I will always remember how Tony's main concern was making sure that the move was the right decision for his fellow employees and their families, as well as for shareholders. His hard work and down-to-earth personality made him a pleasure to work with during this critically important time. Both AstraZeneca and the first State are better off because of his efforts.

While his professional accomplishments are worthy of our admiration, it is within his personal life that Tony truly stands as an example to us all. Tony has volunteered a great deal of his time to support a number of nonprofit and business organizations within the Delaware community, including Easter Seals, Delaware Technology Park, and the American Heart Association. Tony is currently in his sixth year of service as the president of the board of trustees for the Delaware Museum of Natural History. He also served on the Newark City Council from 1992 to 1998.

His leisure interests include playing golf, helping his children, and enjoying the beauty of Delaware at his beach house in Bethany. Now that he has more free time, Tony plans to spend

more time with his parents in Syracuse, NY. He also is starting a corporate consulting company and will remain active within the Delaware business community.

Tony lives with his wife Susan in Hockessin, DE. They have five children, Brian, Carrie, Heather, Meghan, and Dylan.

Through his tireless efforts, Tony Felicia has made a positive difference in the lives of thousands of individuals and enhanced the quality of life for our State. Upon his retirement, he will leave behind a legacy of commitment to public service for both his children and for generations that will follow. I thank him for the friendship that we share, and I congratulate him on a truly remarkable and distinguished career. I wish him and his family only the very best in all that lies ahead for each of them.

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

Mr. President, what I want to do is to follow up today on the comments by Senator Feingold, who has been talking about pay-go as a tool to begin reducing our budget deficit. As I do that, though, I want to say there are a lot of things we can do to reduce our budget deficit.

First of all, the fact is, the budget deficit last year was over $300 billion; this one we expect to be over $400 billion. That is on a cash basis of accounting. David Walker, the Comptroller General of our country, tells us if we were to use an accrual basis of accounting, which we require by law our businesses, our corporations to use, our budget deficit for the current year would be over $700 billion. But we operate under a cash basis of accounting, so we are told it is going to be over $400 billion.

As we look forward, down the road, by monkeying with the rules, by making some misassumptions, we can pretend the deficit is going to get smaller over the next several years. We can pretend, for example, we are not going to be spending more money in Iraq or Afghanistan, and we can pretend we are not going to fix the alternative minimum tax. We can pretend a wide variety of things. But the truth is, as the baby boomers get ready to retire and we play this game of pretend, the budget deficit does not get any smaller.

I think we are on a road to ruin. With the notion of $400 billion budget deficits and $700 billion trade deficits for as far as the eye can see, as the baby boomers get ready to retire, I do not see a whole lot of likelihood things are going to get better unless we do things differently in our Nation's capital. I am tired of hearing people just blame the Senate or just blame the House or just blame the administration. We are all in this together. If we are going to get out of this mess, we are going to get out of it together.

Let me mention a couple things before I talk about pay-go that we ought to be doing. The Internal Revenue Service reported last month that the tax gap for calendar year 2005 was about $290 billion. What they mean by that is there was about $290 billion--this is the net number--$290 billion that was owed in taxes that were not collected by the Federal Government.

In a few minutes, I am leaving and going to a hearing of the Governmental Affairs Committee. We will be having a hearing on contractors, how we are doing with respect to making sure that contractors we retain to do work for the Department of Defense or for civilian agencies; that before we start paying them the money they are charging for the work they are doing, we are taking out of that payment the taxes they owe and have not paid. We are talking about literally billions--with a ``B''--billions of dollars that are going uncollected, going to contractors we retain.

The President has proposed in his own budget some things we can do differently, some additional moneys for the IRS, to enable them to collect taxes that are owed. For every extra $1 we provide to the IRS, they will probably collect $7 or $8 that is not being collected that is owed. Senator Bayh, from Indiana, has a proposal that would probably enable us to collect another $15 billion a year to cut the tax gap further. There are other ideas we need to consider.

But before we go raising taxes--and somewhere down the road we are going to have to--but before we raise taxes, we simply need to do a better job of collecting the taxes that are owed that are not being collected.

Let me also mention improper payments. We find, on the same committee I mentioned before, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs--one of the subcommittees that Senator Coburn and I serve on has been working on improper payments. What do I mean by an ``improper payment''? It is a payment the Federal agency makes that is wrong. It is either too much or too little. As it turns out, there are a lot more improper payments that are too much than too little. Overall, the net number for improper payments is close to $50 billion a year. That does not include all the agencies.

Another thing we can do a whole lot better on is with respect to oversight. I think there is something to be said for divided Government, where you do not have one party in charge of everything, whether it is Democrats or Republicans, because right now we do not do a very good job of oversight. The Democrats do not control the committees, do not control subcommittees. For the most part, we have not done the job we need to do on oversight of this Republican administration. I do not say that in a partisan way. It is the fact. If the shoe was on the other foot and the Democrats were running everything--the House, the Senate, and the White House--we might be guilty of the same kind of thing.

But there are moneys we are spending in the Department of Defense-- and some of it is in Iraq and some of it is in other places--that is shameful in the way we are misallocating it. And even when it is pointed out by whistleblowers, we still go ahead and pay the money. It is crazy. We are doing the same kind of thing with some of our domestic agencies as well. We have begun putting a spotlight on this kind of behavior in order to reduce it, and I think it is actually starting to have an effect, but we need to keep it up.

The President has proposed something called expedited recision powers. It is also called a line-item veto. It is another thing we are going to be probably debating here: whether it makes any sense to help reduce the budget deficit. We actually passed--in fact, I authored, when I was in the House of Representatives, gosh, almost 20 years ago, at least 15 years ago--expedited line-item veto power for the President. I called it a sort of 2-year test drive on line-item veto powers, to see if the President would abuse the power.

The Congress could override the line-item veto with a simple majority of either the House or the Senate. It was a power that would last for 2 years. If the President abused it, it would not be renewed. If the President did not abuse it and it was actually helpful, then it could be renewed beyond that 2 years. I think that is probably a better approach, if we are going to try something such as this, than what the President has suggested. I think his suggestion is wrought with the temptation for abuse by the executive branch.

That brings us to pay-go. Some of you have heard me quote Denis Healey, former chancellor of the Exchequer, many times--the ``theory of holes.'' What is the ``theory of holes''? The Senator from North Dakota has heard me say this more than a few times. He has probably used this line a time or two as well: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. We are in a hole. It is time to stop digging.

Whenever any of us come to the floor and we say we want to cut taxes, even though we know it is going to increase the deficit, we ought to have an offset for it. When any of us come to the floor and say we want to increase spending on our favorite program, however meritorious, we ought to come with an offset. We ought to come up with a way to have no effect on the budget deficit, which is already huge. And we can do it by either cutting spending somewhere else or we can do it with respect to raising some revenues somewhere else.

But these pages in front of me, I do not know how old you guys and gals are--probably 15, 16 years old--you are juniors in high school. Someday somebody is going to have to pay the debt. Someday these chickens are going to come home to roost. They probably are not going to come home on my generation. They are probably going to come home on your generation. You guys and gals are the same age as my own children. It is not fair. It is not fair to you.

We should simply decide to set aside some of the rancor that goes on around here, and with Democrats who have good ideas, and Republicans who have good ideas, and the White House that has some good ideas, take that collection of ideas, which includes, as far as I am concerned, looking at entitlement programs. I am never interested in savaging entitlement programs, but they should not be off limits either.

If some of them can be means tested, we should consider doing that. We are going to have to do some things we as Democrats don't want to do and some things Republicans and the White House don't want to do if we are going to make serious progress. We need to make serious progress because we have a serious problem. One way we can start is by adopting pay as you go. It had a great road test for many years. We ought to put it in place today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I came to the floor today to talk about our budget deficit and a couple things we ought to be doing to turn it around to begin reducing it. Before I do that, I want to extend my sympathy and the sympathy of the people of Delaware to Senator Inouye and his family on the death of Maggie Inouye yesterday.

For those who have lost loved ones recently, those who have lost parents, those who have lost spouses, they may have just the beginning of a feeling for the tough time that our colleague is going through. To those of us who were privileged to know his wife, she was a wonderful, vibrant, and valiant woman and a great partner for him right to the end.

So to Dan Inouye, our deepest sympathy. It was a privilege to know your wife.