Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask that the pending amendment be set aside to call up amendment No. 1738.

I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, the CBO just announced this morning that February was the largest deficit month in this country. We have run $690 billion worth of deficits through the first 4\1/2\ months of this fiscal year. We will have a $1.6 trillion deficit.

This amendment the Senate has voted on before passed with 64 votes the last time it was voted on. It is a very simple, straightforward amendment.

Before I get into the details of this amendment--we need a highway bill. Everybody agrees with that. This is the Senate, and the right to offer amendments has been secured, finally, after 2 weeks of negotiation.

Where are we as a country? I think it is interesting to look back from fiscal years 2011 to 2001. In 2001 the total bill for the Federal Government was $1.86 trillion. It is now almost $3.61 trillion. In 2001 we had a surplus. Now we have a $1.3 trillion to $1.6 trillion deficit coming into this year. I think the American people would like to see us do something about that. Yet, at every turn, on every occasion, we have not risen to the challenge of creating an environment where jobs can flourish. One of the reasons is the Federal Government is squeezing the jobs out of the economy by taking such a large segment of them.

This amendment is very straightforward and very simple. The GAO, through two reports now--one released just this last month and a second in a series of three which will become annual--has told Congress where the problems are. The problems are in continuing to do the same thing in multiple programs and multiple agencies. They have outlined billions, hundreds of billions--I can calculate at least $100 billion worth of duplication that they have outlined and said we didn't do anything about it last year when they gave us the first report. Now they are giving us another report that has probably another $30 billion or $40 billion worth of savings for the American people because of duplication.

So this amendment asks--it is very straightforward--it asks OMB to look at the GAO reports and give recommendations to us on what they would recommend that allows the executive branch to participate in terms of $10 billion worth of savings this year on duplication.

Why is that possible? Here is why it is possible. And this is just a small sample of what GAO has told us. We have 209 different programs spending $4 billion through eight different agencies to encourage science, technology, engineering, and math education in the United States. Can anybody in this body defend the fact that we have 209 different programs? No. Nobody will even stand and defend it.

So we ought to be able to--there is nothing wrong with us wanting to encourage that, incentivize that, help create that, because we know that is for a higher powered workforce in the future. But 209 programs? Why wouldn't we streamline it?

We have 200 separate crime prevention programs. As a matter of fact, the GAO said you have enough duplication just in the Department of Justice programs--they spent $30 billion over the last 9\1/2\ years-- that if you would eliminate that duplication, you would find billions to save.

How do you get rid of a $1.6 trillion deficit? The way you get rid of it is a million here, a billion there, $10 billion here, $15 billion there, a billion here. What this amendment would do is save us $10 billion this year through smart government. It does not question the motivation. It does not even question whether it is our authority. But it says: Let's do this.

The Senate voted 64 to 36 when this was brought up in April of last year--the same amendment. They thought it was a good idea. The reason they voted for it was because it was fresh on their minds, what the GAO had told us.

Let's take some others.

The Surface Transportation Program. Here we have the highway bill. They did, thankfully, eliminate a few programs. We still are going to have 100 programs involved in surface transportation even when this highway bill is completed. We did not do what we needed to do. We can do better and we can save money. Even if the same amount of money gets out to the American public, the administrative cost will shrink dramatically.

Private sector green buildings. We have 94 separate programs, 16 different agencies to incentivize green buildings, and not one of them has ever been tested to see if it has an effect, whether it is positive, whether it is efficient, whether it is effective--not one. Never. Why would we have 94 separate programs for green buildings?

We have 88 different economic development programs. Why? Nobody can answer the question ``Why?'' As a matter of fact, 2 months ago, I offered an amendment on this floor that asked of us to have the CRS tell us before we pass a new bill whether we are adding another duplicative program. Because that was a rule change, it required 67 votes, and 40 of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said: We do not want to know whether we are creating another duplicative program, so it only got 60 votes. It required 67 and, therefore, we are not doing it.

So we are going to ignore the brains, we are going to ignore the knowledge, and we are going to continue to produce and create duplicate programs.

Teacher quality. This is one of my favorites. We have 82 separate teacher training programs run by the Federal Government, not for Federal teachers, for State teachers.

Eighty-two separate programs, and not one of them has been tested to see if it is effective or efficient, whether it has value, whether we actually get anything out of it, whether there is some teacher improvement coming out of it--and that is run from seven different agencies.

First of all, why would you have any teacher programs other than at the Department of Education? Yet we have 82. Nobody can tell me why. Nobody will stand on the floor and defend the fact that we have 82. Because they realize it is the height of stupidity. It is stupid to do multiple programs in multiple directions and waste the overhead. We are not talking about not sending money.

We have 47 job training programs. We are in the midst of releasing a report on all the job training programs as to

how they affect Oklahoma, and I will tell you it is not a pretty picture.

There is so much waste, so much ineffectiveness through those 47 different job training programs. We are spending $19 billion of Americans' money every year and we are not getting a billion dollars' worth of benefit out of it. But nobody wants to do the hard work, nobody wants to stand and defend those 47 job training programs, but nobody wants to eliminate them either.

We have a real problem. This is a first step, a first amendment, where we can make this bill--by the way, we are having trouble paying for the highway bill. We are going to pay for it--2 years' worth of highway spending--with 10 years' worth of reductions. This amendment alone, if we pass it, will pay for the highway bill differential between the trust fund and what the EPW Committee says we ought to be spending on highways--this amendment alone.

So when somebody comes down and says they are not going to vote for us to eliminate duplication, you have to ask why. Why is it we would not want to eliminate duplication? Why is it we would not want to become efficient and effective in terms of how we spend not our money but our children's money? Because 40 cents--38 cents this year--of every $1 we spend we are tacking on to a decreased standard of living for our children in everything we do.

So tell me why somebody would not want to get rid of some of the duplication, would not want to do the commonsense thing that every one of the rest of us in our own personal lives does, all our State governments do, all our personal businesses and all our public companies are doing: doing more with less every year? The easiest way to do that is to consolidate and eliminate duplication.

So when you see the vote today, if it does not get 60 votes, what should the American people learn from that? Here is what they should learn: It is not about gridlock. It is not about partisanship. It is about incompetence and a lack of thoughtful consideration for the people who will follow us. This is easy stuff to do. We have hard stuff we have to do in our country. We are going to be making tons of hard decisions over the next 2 or 3 years. Everyone in this body knows it. They will keep kicking the can down the road, hoping they do not have to be involved with the very tough decisions we are going to have to make. This is the easy one. This is easy.

I would ask my colleagues to consider this. If you voted for it in April of 2011, I would appreciate your vote again. If you do not vote for it, I would ask you to reconsider why you are here. Are you here to perpetuate waste? Are you here to perpetuate incompetence? Are you here to protect some constituency's little small program that does not work yet wastes your children's future? This is an easy amendment to vote for.

Mr. President, this amendment is very similar to an amendment we voted on in the small business bill which passed 64 to 30- something--I can't remember the exact number. It is very straightforward. We ask the OMB to look at the two most recent GAO reports, combine $10 billion worth of savings, and send back to us a recommendation so that we can, in fact, accomplish that purpose.

The GAO is showing us exactly where we need to go in terms of saving money. We are involving the executive branch in that. They also have other plans they are working on and on which I am trying to work with the administration.

If you want to pick up the difference between what we really need to do for infrastructure in this country, the best way to do it is to support this amendment and go for another $10 billion in infrastructure.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I submit the following notice in writing: In accordance with Rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby give

notice in writing that it is my intention to offer an amendment to the Standing Rules of the Senate, by proposing Amendment No. 1737 to S. 1813.

Mr. President, I rise to express my concerns about amendment No. 1483 to the STOCK Act. While we all oppose public corruption and recognize the need for tough laws in this area, I believe this amendment may blur the line between innocent behavior and criminal public corruption offenses. This amendment expands the Federal criminal gratuities statute to cover the gift of anything of value, over $1,000, that is given to a public official simply because of their status as a public official. A unanimous Supreme Court in United States v. Sun-Diamond Growers of California interpreted the honest services law to require the government to actually prove a link between the thing of value given and the specific act. The Court said the thing of value must be given ``for or because

of'' an official act. I am concerned that expanding the crime to include items given merely on the basis of the public official's status goes too far and criminalizes some legitimate conduct.

However, my primary concern with this amendment is the section that gives the Federal Government the authority to interpret, prosecute, and enforce State and local laws. I believe this provision violates the basic principles of federalism embodied in our Constitution. Amendment No. 1483 expands the definition of ``scheme or artifice to defraud'' in Federal criminal law to include the ``undisclosed self-dealing'' of an ``officer, employee, or elected or appointed representative, or person acting for or on behalf of the United States, a State, or a subdivision of a State, or any department, agency or branch of government.'' The amendment defines ``undisclosed self-dealing'' as an official act that furthers or benefits a financial interest of the official or certain family members and associates of the official. Undisclosed self-dealing also occurs when the official knowingly falsifies, conceals, or covers up material information that is required to be disclosed by any Federal, State, or local statute, rule, regulation, or charter or the knowing failure to disclose material information in a manner that is required by a Federal, State, or local statute, rule, regulation, or charter. Thus, this provision makes it a Federal crime for a State or local official to fail to comply with a State or local law, including the mere filing requirements of State or locality. This provision gives the Federal Government the power to enforce State and local laws.

I do not believe our Founders intended for Federal prosecutors to be able to bring Federal criminal cases against State or local officials based on that official allegedly breaking or failing to comply with a State or local law, and the Founders did not intend for Federal judges and Federal courts to be interpreting the State or local laws, expect in limited circumstances. Corruption of State and local officials is a serious problem, but it is not the Federal Government's problem to solve. For these other reasons, I oppose this amendment in its current form.

This is a simple, bipartisan amendment, and we have voted on an identical amendment before, 63 yeas, 33 nays. My colleague, the Senator from Colorado, has been gracious enough to support this amendment. This is straightforward. We just need to know what we are doing when we do it. It requires the CRS to show us if we have duplicated anything before a bill comes before the Senate.

I yield to my colleague from Colorado.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 30 seconds.

I have the greatest respect for my chairman on homeland security. I love him dearly.

GAO has already told us we are not doing our job. The first study of the Federal Government showed $100 billion worth of duplication. The second

study is coming. CRS will have this easy because GAO will have already shown them where all the duplication is.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, as my colleagues are no doubt aware, I stand in opposition to this bill, not because I think we should have insider trading. As a physician I am trained to fix the real problem and you are treating the symptoms. Several months ago, CBS did a series and showed some questionable, not necessarily insider trading, stock transactions, which, given the low level of confidence by the American public in this institution, have raised the question: What about insider trading?

I honestly believe everyone in our body is never going to use insider trading to advantage themselves over the best interests of our country. But the real problem is the confidence in the Congress to do what is in the best long-term interest of the country. The reason the confidence is not there doesn't have anything to do with insider trading as we would normally think about it. It has to do with insider trading that we do not normally think about, as to how we sell a vote to get something else on the next vote, how we trade a position, how we saw positions were bought and sold on the health care bill. Whether it be the Cornhusker Kickback or the Florida Gator-aid, whatever it was, the fact is the American people saw behavior of Members of Congress doing things that were politically expedient rather than what is in the long- term best interest of our country. That is the real insider trading scandal we ought to be addressing.

How do we do that? The way we address that is bring to the floor bills that actually address the problems our country is having today. Every second of every day this year our Government will spend $121,000. We will borrow $52,000 a second every day. We are not addressing any of that in the Senate. We did not all last year and we are not this year. The real problem in front of our country is America does not see a Congress that is willing to address the real issues and make the hard choices.

Hard choices are coming. We will make those choices ultimately. Some of us will not be here. But the longer we delay in making those very difficult choices--such as saving Medicare, such as saving Social Security, such as reforming the Tax Code to stimulate economic activity and create job opportunities for Americans--that is what they want us doing.

The other thing I will mention is I was one of two people who voted against the last ethics law. I ask my colleagues, did we improve the Senate with the last ethics law? Will we improve the quality of representation with this law? I do not think so. I think what we are doing is playing a political game to say we are all guilty, now we have to prove that we are not. That is not what our system of law is built on. Our system of law is built on the fact innocent until we are proven guilty. The assumption that the Senate is undertaking now is that some of our colleagues are doing insider trading on the stock market. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real insider trading is the horse-trading that goes on in this body that is not always in the best interest of the country. This legislation is not about to earn back the trust of the American people.

The SEC and the Ethics Committee already have the power to investigate inside trading abuses. Yearly we fill out a report saying: Let's deem every trade we have made. If it is true what the chairman of the committee said that what the SEC would like to do is have it more refined so they can have better access, then that ought to be the bill we bring forward. We ought to bring forward a bill that says: No. 1, we are under the laws of the SEC, section 10b, and we are. We don't hear that said anywhere, but we are. If our intent is to bring forward a bill to fix the potential for insider trading, then that is what we ought to be doing. But the assumption we are guilty first and have to prove we are not by making a notification every 30 days of any trade that somebody makes for us--we may not have even been involved, but we have a fiduciary that we asked to trade for us, and then we are going to have to make that representation.

Has anybody asked the question: What happens if you do have inside information, have no involvement whatsoever in a trade because you put it in a trust account for yourself, but it is still being traded and they happen to coordinate at the same time? Are you guilty of insider trading or are you going to spend $50,000 to $100,000 proving that you are not guilty?

This is a fine institution. It can be better, but it is best when it fixes the real problems, not the symptoms of the problems.

Amendment No. 1473 to amendment No. 1470

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be

set aside and that amendment No. 1473 be called up.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read.

This is a bipartisan amendment. This amendment is sponsored by Senator McCain, Senator McCaskill, Senator Udall from Colorado, Senator Burr, and Senator Paul, as well as myself.

This is a straightforward amendment. We have asked for this multiple times but have not gotten it. What this amendment says is, every bill that comes before Congress and to be considered by the Senate should determine whether it is duplicating something that is already happening in the Federal Government. It is common sense, and all we are saying is to have an analysis by the CRS, Congressional Research Service, to determine if the bill creates a new Federal program, office, or initiative that would duplicate or overlap any existing Federal program, Federal office, or initiative with a similar mission, similar purpose, similar goal or activities along with a listing of all the overlapping duplicative Federal programs or offices or initiatives or initiative.

Now, why is that important? Last February the GAO brought to us the first third of the Federal Government and outlined to us $200 billion worth of spending on duplicate programs. They gave it to us. It was held as a great thing. Now we know we have all of these areas: 82 teacher-training programs, 47 job-training programs, 56 financial literacy programs, and on and on. They brought that to us, and we all said that was good. The problem is we didn't do anything about it. If we want to restore confidence in the Congress, do something about the problems that have been identified already.

This is a good government policy that says before we act on a new bill that we actually will know what we are doing, and we will have checked with CRS, and they will tell us if we are duplicating again something that is already happening now.

One of the other amendments we should pass is to have every agency give us their list of programs every year. Do you realize there is only one agency in the Federal Government, one department, that actually knows all their programs? There is only one. It is the Department of Education. They are the only ones we can go to and find a list of all of their programs. The rest of them don't know it. There is no catalog. They have no idea.

So before we pass a new piece of legislation, we ought to at least have the help of the Congressional Research Service, and we ought to pass good legislation that doesn't duplicate. It may be a well- intentioned piece of legislation, but because we, as a Congress, have failed in our oversight responsibility, we don't know that it is duplicative when we bring it to the floor and pass it in the Senate.

All I am asking is, let's do a doublecheck, especially in the time of trillion-dollar deficits. We ought to do a doublecheck and make sure we are not duplicating something that is already happening.

That is important for a second reason: If we don't know we are duplicating something, that means we are not ``oversighting'' what is occurring right now, the program or the office or the initiative that is out there now, if we don't have knowledge of it. Rather than create a new program, it might give us the opportunity to fix one that was well-intentioned but is not working.

So this is a good government amendment that is bipartisan that says: Let's do this before we pass additional legislation. But let's know what we are doing. It is complete and it is thorough. It also will provide greater transparency for both us and taxpayers regarding the impact of the legislation we are passing.

Some may say: What if we have an emergency? This has a clause in it that says if it is an emergency, that requirement is waived. So if in the case of an emergency we need to do something, we will waive the requirement that we have to look at CRS to see if there are duplications. So it is a commonsense amendment. I would hope my colleagues will support it, and that we can, in fact, actually fix the real problems not the symptoms of the disease.

Amendment No. 1474 to amendment No. 1470

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the current amendment that is pending be set aside, and I call up amendment No. 1474.

Mr. President, this is another good government amendment. If we want to restore confidence, this is something we should do. It says before we vote on a bill, we are going to have at least 72 hours to read it. It is going to be available online with a CBO score so that when we cast a vote, we actually know what we are casting a vote on and we actually know how much it costs. It just says it has to be online for 72 hours.

In other words, we get the privilege of reading the bills we are voting on, and we also get the privilege of knowing the financial costs of the bill or at least an estimate of the financial cost and what that will entail. This transparency is designed to make the Senate better. If we want to build confidence with the American public, then the way we build confidence is to assure them that we knew exactly what we were doing when we cast a vote, not guessing at what the consequences and the details of that legislation are.

For many pieces of legislation right now, what we have seen in the last 2 or 3 years is there was no time given, no capability to study the legislation to make improvements, and many of the pieces of legislation came without the ability to modify it. If we cannot read the legislation, then we cannot amend it. What does that tell us about the legislative temperament and thoughtfulness of the Senate? We cannot read it, we don't have time to contemplate and consider it, and we cannot amend it even if we could. That doesn't have anything to do with the Senate as it was designed and has functioned for the last 170 years. It has everything to do with politics today rather than the best long-term interests of the country.

Amendments like this have gained a large amount of bipartisan support and have had the support in the past when we voted on it, although we have not acquired the 67 votes that have been necessary in the past to pass it. The cosponsor of this amendment is Senator McCain. He understands the importance of reading what we pass. All of our colleagues do. Why not put in the self-discipline that we have to rather than the political moment that says we have to vote on this whether we know anything about it or not?

During the health care debate, eight of my colleagues sent a letter to review the health care legislation. They ultimately voted for the health care legislation. Their request was to give them 72 hours to read the legislation. The legislative text and complete budget scores from the Congressional Budget Office of the health care legislation considered on the Senate floor should be made available on a Web site the public can access for at least 72 hours prior to the first vote to proceed to the legislation.

Why shouldn't the public be able to see what we are doing 72 hours before we do it? Just as important, why shouldn't we be able to know what we are doing before we vote so it is straightforward, commonsense, and transparent to the American public as well as to our colleagues in the Senate that now we have the time available to read a piece of legislation contemplated and hopefully have the opportunity to improve it. What is the goal? The best long-term outcome for the country.

Amendment No. 1476

Mr. President, I would ask that the pending amendment be set aside, and I call up amendment No. 1476.

Mr. President, this amendment would provide a complete substitute for the STOCK Act. It requires Members and staff to certify that they have not used inside information for private financial profit. In other words, they are going to make an affirmative statement under the law that they have not violated section 10b of the Securities and Exchange Act. All Members would be required to sign the following statement on an annual financial disclosure form: I hereby certify that the financial transactions reflected in this disclosure form were not made on the basis of material nonpublic information.

The STOCK Act does not create new restrictions for Congress against insider trading. We all know that. Those restrictions are there. There are no new restrictions. We don't change the restrictions at all. The SEC has stated that the Members of Congress and staff are already subject to insider trading laws. They just need some clarity with that. They also would like to have timeliness with that.

In fact, all Americans are subject to these laws, including the Senate, found primarily in section 10b. This provision restricts anyone who trades stocks from using material nonpublic information to profit financially, and Congress is no different from anybody else.

The STOCK Act was carefully written to carefully reaffirm that Congress is not exempted from these laws, and I believe the chairman stated that just a moment ago, which we would include in this. As such, the bill brings no new reforms to the table nor does it create any real expectation that behavior will change. It just requires paperwork filing. All Members and relevant staff should have to certify they are not trading on private information.

Each year every Member and certain high-salaried staff are required to disclose their financial holdings. Senate rule 37 also already prohibits any Senator or staff from conflicts of interest. That would be a conflict of interest. Specifically, rule 37 prohibits the receipt of compensation by virtue of influence improperly exerted from his position as a Member or officer or employee.

So we are covered doubly. We are already covered under rule 37, and we are covered under section 10b of the Securities and Exchange Act.

If, in fact, somebody fails to do this, then they will be liable under the False Statements Act in title 18, section 1001, which makes it a crime to lie to Congress. Section 1001 prohibits anyone from knowingly and willfully making any material false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement to the government. The punishment for violating the False Statements Act is a fine and a prison term up to 5 years. This does not mean that someone who makes a good-faith effort but mistakenly forgets something will face punishment. Yet any Member who knowingly signs that form in error will be liable for making a false statement on his or her finances, carrying large penalties.

I think efforts to reestablish trust in the Congress are important. I disagree with my colleagues that this is one that will make a difference. It won't. Nothing materially changes other than a paperwork requirement. Nothing materially changes other than having to report every 30 days instead of annually.

What is the real problem? The people of this country do not have confidence in Congress because Congress does not address the real issues of the country.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield?

Through the Chair, would the chairman accept that modification to my amendment, that we would, in fact, establish positively that Members of Congress are under rule 10b of the Securities and Exchange Commission? Would that give the Senator less heartburn?

Well, I have plenty of those. In fact, I will do better-- I will give you a Zantac.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment No. 1476 be modified with the change to the instruction line only. I am just doing some housekeeping on that.

I would make one other point, and I am not trying to put my chairman in the hot seat, but nobody in this Chamber can name somebody right now who is trading on inside information. I believe that is a true statement. Yet we are changing the law not because anybody has done something wrong but because we are struggling to try to get people to think we are doing things right. There is

nothing wrong with that as long as we are not going to entrap our colleagues.

The question I have is, if we can't name somebody and if there is not factual truth, what we are really putting the Senate on notice for is that, by the way, you are assumed to be trading on inside information now, and therefore we must do this to ensure that you are not. Well, I don't believe anybody in this body is doing that. And when we put our Members in that position by changing the law to, for example, 30 days-- if I have three stock tradings and I miss it by 1 day, what is the consequence of that filing and of this bill? What is going to be the penalty that comes out of the Ethics Committee for missing it 1 day or missing one of the three trades because you didn't know? We have lots of questions that are not answered.

I can tell my colleagues that many Members of this body have spent a lot of their personal money defending themselves on accusations that were absolutely untrue before the Ethics Committee, and that should be addressed and clarified in the body, the report language, of this bill.

I have no doubt this bill is going to pass in one form or another. I understand I am in the very slim minority of people who think it is unnecessary because I think the law already applies to us, and I also don't think we have a bunch of cheats working in the Senate. But would the Senator agree through the Chair that we ought to make clarification of everything we can so we know what the ultimate results are or are we going to leave that up to the lawyers on the Ethics Committee? What are we going to do with that? Are we going to determine what the penalties are for late filing or an accidental omission? What is going to be our direction to the Ethics Committee in this regard?

Mr. President, I have one more question for the chairman.

If, in fact, this is what we should do--and I think the body is going to agree this is what we should do--does not the Senator think this should apply to the administration as well, the executive branch, that this should apply the same 30-day rule to every member of the executive branch? You talk about real knowledge of inside information, they have it. We do not have it. They have it. Why would this rule not apply to-- no matter who is President--executive employees in the administration?

Mr. President, I would make a couple points. One, we already file all our stock trades--correct?--every year.

Every change in every investment we have, we file every year. We already do that. We are already under rule 37 of the rules of Senate Ethics, which forbids any conflict of interest action that would benefit ourselves. That would include inside information to trade stocks. There are 5 to 10 times as many senior executive positions within the administration than Members of Congress that, in fact, this same thing should apply to.

If the important thing is ``within 30 days,'' my hope would be the chairman and the sponsor of the bill, Senator Brown, would give very clear instructions to the Ethics Committee on how this is to work. Because I will note for you, last year 16 Senators got a 90-day extension on their filings with the Ethics Committee. That is 16 percent. We have to have some vow to make sure we do not put the Members who are absolutely innocent of anything in a corner because they cannot timely respond to this bill.

So my hope is--and I will finish with this; I know Senator Brown wants to speak--looking at the timeliness of the filing I think is important to still accomplish what you want, but not make it so rigorous that people are going to fall out of that. We all know how things get busy here, how we come in, we come out. We are traveling, and we have all these things we are responding to. It will be difficult for many Members to comply with the 30 days.

My hope would be you would look at that, and you would also look at rule 37 of Senate Ethics because, in fact, we are already doubly covered. We are covered under 10b. And I do not have any problem with modifying my amendment to say we are covered so you cannot have a defense to say you are not. But we are also covered under rule 37, which forbids any conflict of interest under which you would benefit personally.

With that, I yield the floor and thank the chairman of the committee.

Mr. President, I submit the following notice in writing: In accordance with rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby give notice in writing that it is my intention to offer an amendment to the Standing Rules of the Senate, by proposing Amendment No. 1473 to S. 2038.

Mr. President, what is the pending business before the Senate?

And the amount of time that has been allocated by the majority leader and under the unanimous consent agreement?

I understand that, but what is the total amount of time that has been allocated to H.J. Res. 98?

So the total amount of time is less than 2 hours today that we are going to discuss this resolution; is that correct?

Thank you. I ask unanimous consent to speak on the resolution for 20 minutes.

Well, actually, that was my whole point. We are going to spend a little more than 2 hours to raise the debt limit by $1.2 trillion, and we can't give a Senator 20 minutes to talk about it?

Mr. President, I am asking for unanimous consent to speak on this issue, a $1.2 trillion raise in the debt limit, for 20 minutes.

Mr. President, I come to the floor aghast that we have entered into a unanimous consent agreement to spend less than 2\1/2\ hours talking about raising the debt ceiling another $1.2 trillion-- $1.2 trillion.

We passed the Budget Control Act that raised the debt limit to $15.2 trillion. The President has requested another increase in the debt limit of another $1.2 trillion. We passed the Budget Control Act that didn't cut spending. There is no absolute reduction in spending. We didn't eliminate one program. We didn't do one oversight hearing on the waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government from the time of August, when we passed that, until now. No wonder America is disgusted with Congress.

On September 7, the debt limit was increased from $8.9 trillion to $9.8 trillion. In July of 2008 the debt limit was increased to $10.6 trillion, and in October to $11.3 trillion, in February of 2009 to $12.1 trillion, in February of 2010 to $14.3 trillion, in August of 2011 to $14.7 trillion, in September of 2011 to $15.2 trillion, and now we are going to raise it to $16.3 trillion.

I did not vote for one of those. The reason is a debt limit does not mean anything in this country, because every time we come up to the debt limit, what we do is just pass it rather than do what the American people have asked us to do.

Little has changed in Washington in the last 5 years. We have argued, debated, and lamented over how to rein in the Federal Government's costs and the out-of-control spending. All the time that was going on, we were on a spending binge, spending money we do not have on things we do not need. Even though we knew we had to borrow more money, Congress has done nothing to avoid raising the debt limit--nothing.

We did not do oversight of Federal programs. We did not eliminate one duplicative program. We did not eliminate any spending in the Tax Code.

We hear all the Members of Congress and the President talking about how we have to change stuff. We did not do anything on that which would generate more revenue, fair revenue to the Federal Government. We did not work to save Medicare. We did not work to save Social Security. Instead of fixing the problem, we made it worse. We increased the deficit. We funded ineffective programs. We wasted money on

silly projects. We funded duplication. We approved $1 trillion in more spending for next year--all of which will essentially be borrowed on the backs of our grandkids and our kids.

Let me give some examples of what we spent money on last year.

We spent $75,000 to promote the awareness that Michigan raises Christmas trees. We spent $113,000 for video game preservation. We spent $550,000 for a documentary about how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. We spent $48,000 for the second annual Hawaii Chocolate Festival. We spent $350,000 to support an international art exhibit in Venice, Italy. We spent $10 million to remake ``Sesame Street'' for Pakistan. We spent $35 million on our own party conventions, and we spent $764,000 to figure out how students use mobile messaging devices for social networking, which they already know how they do it.

In February of last year, GAO brought us a wonderful report. It showed thousands upon thousands of programs that are duplications. The majority leader of this body voted against both attempts I made to take advantage of that and eliminate waste and duplication. He never once instructed committee chairmen to go find this duplication and eliminate it to save our children, to save our country, and we did not do any better on our side of the aisle. The fact is, we did not do anything. Of the thousands of things we could have done, we did nothing to lower our deficit, cut the waste or eliminate duplication.

We have known about this significant $100 billion gold mine of savings from the GAO report for over 1 year now, and we have done nothing--zero. America should be disgusted with Congress because what we care about is party power, not fixing the problems of this country.

Just this week, the GAO reported--an additional report; and next month we are getting the second third of the Federal Government on duplication, and it is going to have another $100 billion identified as waste--we have 209 separate Federal programs to advance science, technology, engineering, and math education--209 programs, of which most of them overlap one another.

We have put amendments on the floor to say: We want every agency to tell us of all the programs. It is defeated. They vote against it because they do not want to know what all the programs are. The only way we eliminate the duplication is to make the agencies show us what they are doing. That goes down to defeat. Why? Because we do not want to do the hard work of living within our means such as every family and every business in this country does. We ignore the realities. We are in la-la land on who can win the next election.

We have done nothing about the $9.5 billion in government benefits that have been paid to people who earn more than $1 million a year in this country. We have done nothing about that since that report came out. Government benefits from unemployment insurance to student loans, $9.5 billion a year, and we have done nothing--zero. We could have done it. We could save money. We have done nothing.

Real Americans--everyday Americans--understand the way we get out of our problems is through sacrifice and prioritizing what is important for our country. We lack the leadership in this body to do that.

A veteran who served our country in a time of war wrote me a letter about our current financial situation. More than nearly anyone I come in contact with in Washington, this regular citizen from the middle of the country understands the problem, and he understands what is needed to fix it.

Dear Senator Coburn:

I'm a retired military member and Veteran, deployed four

times during my career--having spent years of my life in some

very dangerous places, away from home, and in tough

conditions. I am very familiar with shared sacrifice. In all

those days away, my sole purpose was to be prepared and

ensure my Soldiers were ready to deploy and return alive. In

our current situation, it's easy to feel like we're (as a

country) going into battle unprepared against an economic,

financial enemy of political gridlock and no compromise [no

leadership]; with two political parties vying for the next

election.

I'm well aware that many proposals currently out there

would potentially affect me. However, I'm willing to work

hard now and be part of a solution which solidifies our

country's future versus robbing my kids and grandkids from

the same opportunities our great country [offered me].

Please inform your colleagues--there are more people like

me awaiting leadership and good decision making than there

are left and right side uncompromising voters. These times

call for briefings to the American people, not speeches.

These times call for members of congress to stand together

and [to brief us on our unfunded liabilities]--and to show

how sacrifice now can lead to renewed prosperity later.

Sincerely,

Robert Boudiette, Jr.,

Lawton, OK.

I am embarrassed for us that we fail to meet the very standard we ask of the people who serve this country.

So rather than give a speech, let me give a briefing. We have done nothing to fix the 100-plus programs in surface transportation. We have done nothing to eliminate the duplication in the 82 Federal Government programs for teacher quality. We have done nothing to consolidate the 88 economic development programs. We have done nothing to consolidate the 80 different transportation assistance programs. We have done nothing to eliminate the 56 financial literacy programs. We have no business teaching anybody financial literacy when we do not even have it ourselves. We have done nothing to consolidate the 47 job training programs. As a matter of fact, we heard the President say he wanted to add to it. Homeless prevention and assistance, 20 programs we have done nothing to consolidate; the food programs, disaster response and FEMA, and there are hundreds more. Yet we have done nothing.

Shouldn't we come together as men and women, Americans--not Democrats and Republicans--and say we are going to do what we can do to assure the future of this country and quit thinking about the next election? We ought to be doing what is needed. It is called making priorities. We could save $50 billion if we got together and said: OK. Every committee is going to do oversight, eliminate duplication, and eliminate fraud. We have a bill with 37 cosponsors to eliminate the fraud in Medicare-- 37. It is bipartisan. We cannot even get it to the floor to vote on it to make sure CMS eliminates some of the $100 billion a year in waste and fraud at CMS in terms of Medicare. That is how we save Medicare. But yet we cannot get it to the floor. So when we do work together, we are blocked or impeded from having a vote where we have bipartisan consensus.

I call on my colleagues--I love them dearly; I think they are tremendous individuals--we better change our vision. We better change what we have our eye on in terms of the risk to our country, the survival of our country, and it is time we come together, put partisanship aside, and say we are going to solve the problems in front of this country. We can do it. The brainpower is here. The capability is here. Let's do it.

I have a question for my colleagues. Are we proud of this process? Have we fulfilled the responsibility to the citizens of this country with this process? Nobody can answer yes to that. And yet nothing seems to change.

You know, $3.5 billion worth of phony earmarks totally puts an earmark ban on its head. The idea that parochialism trumps our Nation's vital interests puts our responsibility and our oath on its head.

I know the hearts of everybody here. They are great. The intentions are great. With this bill, we have failed America. We failed America in the process, we failed America in our oath. This next year is going to be much more difficult than anybody can anticipate. At a time when we are facing our national survival, business as usual occurs. That is a reflection of lousy leadership by all of us, including me. It means I didn't make my case big enough about what the priorities should be in our country.

It is a great time for reflection. We are going to go home. We are going to pass this bill that is going to be far less than what this country needs in terms of its integrity and its actions. Hopefully, we will think and return with a renewed spirit to fix the ship of state and do what is in the best interest of the Nation, not what is in the best interest of our parochial political careers.

I yield the floor.

boiler mact

I thank the Senator for his question.

I think the people need to know what the GAO actually does. The GAO is nonpartisan; they are not Democrats or Republicans. They are accountants, and they are investigators, and they are the most valuable tool we have because we won't do the oversight of calling agencies up here. I think the numbers are that we are going to lose 400 investigators and auditors out of the GAO. One question to ask is, Why is it we are cutting the GAO more than we are cutting our own budget?

Let me make one additional point. Things are not right in our country because things aren't right in the Senate. This 1,200-page bill that should have come out here appropriations bill by appropriations bill-- 11 or 12 appropriations bills--has over $3.5 billion worth of phonemarks in it. We don't have earmarks anymore; they are all phonemarks. The corruption is still here. The pay-to-play game is still going on in Washington. Now we just don't do it in the bill, we do it by telephone, and we threaten agencies: If you don't give this money to this person, your money will be cut the next year.

So the fact is, although we have an earmark ban, there are thousands of earmarks in this bill. And what do we do? We cut the very agency that is going to be required to help us solve our financial problems over the next few years; we cut them more than we cut our own budgets. Now, they can be cut, and appropriately so. Everybody is going to have to share. But to cut the GAO 6.4 percent--40 percent more than we are cutting our own budgets--out of spite? They and the Congressional Research Service do the best work on the Hill. They do better than we do. Yet we are going to take away a tool that is going to help this country solve its very difficult financial problems. I think it is outrageous. It nauseates me.

I would just respond to the Senator, I don't know for sure because we haven't been able to go through the whole bill, and the creativity associated with parochialism and getting reelected by helping the very well-connected few in this country is unbelievable. So it is hidden, and it takes a long time. It doesn't take 48 hours.

We got this bill at 2:00 Tuesday morning. That is when we got it. And of course nobody is around at 2:00 Tuesday morning, are they? So we will have 72 hours to read a 1,200-page book, and then we have to figure out what is in it. As the Senator said, we are not going to know what is in it, not until the next Solyndra comes, not until the next person goes to jail, not until the next Senator goes to jail. We are not going to know.

The fact is, what we are seeing is irresponsible behavior on the part of the Congress with this bill, and if we don't break this cycle of protecting incumbency through spending money, we are not going to have a country left. It is not just wrong, it is immoral. It is immoral.

The Senator talked about research at the Department of Defense. There are good reasons to do medical research at the Department of Defense, but we have the world's premier institutes, the National Institutes of Health. Now, we are not increasing them significantly, but we are markedly increasing the study of MS at a military research facility instead of through NIH, where we are spending $100 million already a

year on it? So we are going to duplicate it.

I have said it before: We have taken a stupid pill. We have either taken a stupid pill or a corruption pill. I don't know which it is. But I know that the long-term effects of doing this kind of legislating at this time in our history, when we have the greatest difficulty and the greatest landmines ahead of us financially--for us to do what we are doing here today to please a very small group of Congressmen and Senators who happen to make up the Appropriation Committee and to address their election concerns and their knowing better than the authorization committees--it won't surprise the Senator that in this bill, this conglomeration of what I will call an omni-terrible, is over $400 billion in spending that is unauthorized, that has never been authorized or the authorizations have expired long ago and the authorizing committees don't reauthorize it for a reason, and yet we keep spending the money.

So I think it is amazing that we have as high as a 9-percent approval rating. And I am saddened not just for us, I am saddened for the future of America that we would now, right before Christmas--because we are running on a deadline to go home we are going to pass a bill that is essentially irresponsible, inept, and loaded with political favors instead of doing the best right thing for this country.

The GAO, in late February, early March, put out a report on duplication in the Federal Government. Most of my colleagues applauded it. It was a great deal of work that they spent a lot of time on. The second and third component of that, of the Federal Government, is coming out this February, and in it were hundreds of billions of dollars of duplicative programs. Not in one place in this bill that we have been able to find so far has any of what the GAO said should be eliminated, should be discontinued--none of it has happened.

What is the consequence of spending $200 billion of borrowed money-- money we don't have--on things the GAO says we don't need? What is the consequence of that? The consequence of that is impoverishment of our children. It is the theft of opportunity from our children. That is what it is. So I don't say the word ``corruption'' lightly. When you are stealing opportunity and you are impoverishing those who follow, that is corrupt. It is also immoral.

We won't be able to defeat this bill. We won't be able to amend this bill. We won't be able to offer amendments to what the GAO said is absolute stupidity because of the way we are bringing this up and the fact that we didn't bring these bills through here. And the bills they did bring through, they limited the amendments on anyway. So the voice of the average American doesn't get heard in the Senate under the way it is operating right now. Good ideas that actually will improve our country and save us money don't ever get heard. That is not the America I know. That is not the country I love.

So we are leading by example into our demise, and this is one of the greatest examples of that I have seen.

If I could respond, that $25 million is going to go to one company--we don't know where yet--that is well-connected and well- heeled to either a Member of the House or the Senate. Mark my words, that is where it is going. Somebody--one individual business, one individual constituent--is going to benefit from that at the expense of our children and our future.

Mr. President, I rise today to give tribute to Mr. Earl Devaney, who will be retiring from 42 years of public service at the end of this year.

In an era when the American people have a record-level of distrust in government, Mr. Devaney has risen above partisanship as a staunch defender of taxpayers and champion of government transparency.

Devaney started his career as a cop on the beat in Massachusetts. Then, Devaney went to work for the U.S. Secret Service until 1991, where he was the Special Agent-in-Charge of the agency's fraud division. In 1999, President Clinton appointed Devaney the inspector general of the Interior Department. There, he gained wide renown for overseeing the public corruption investigations that helped lead to the convictions of Jack Abramoff, a Washington superlobbyist and major beneficiary of the congressional earmark favor factory that polluted our politics for several decades. He also presided over the landmark investigation of the royalties program in the Minerals Management Service, finding a ``culture of ethical failure'' among public officials there, involving illegal gifts, illegal drug abuse, sexual misbehavior and more.

In his role as the chief watchdog of the Department of Interior, I got to know Earl and spent significant time visiting with him. What I have learned to appreciate about him was his honesty, integrity and forthrightness.

In February 2009, President Obama named Devaney to head the Recovery Board, which is charged with overseeing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, ARRA. In this position, he was integral to making sure that the spending in the stimulus was as transparent as possible.

At the end of the year, Mr. Devaney will be resigning from three posts: the Chair of the Recovery Board, inspector general for the Department of the Interior, and Chairman of the Government Accountability and Transparency Board, the position that Vice President Biden appointed him to for managing the administration's efforts to reduce government waste and to provide ``concrete methods'' for improving oversight and transparency of Federal funds.

I can't think of a tougher defender of the interests of citizens and taxpayers in the Federal Government than Mr. Devaney. As one of the best inspectors general, his dogged pursuits of corruption and waste in government will be missed.

In his resignation letter to President Obama, Mr. Devaney thanked the President for the ``opportunities you have given me to serve my country, and I will always look fondly on my decades as a public servant.''

Mr. Devaney, the American people will also look fondly on years of public service. Thank you for all you have done.

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

I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business.

I am coming to the floor now because we will not have an opportunity to debate on the payroll tax cuts because the vote is going to be at 2:30 and that time is taken.

I think it is important for the American public to look at what is happening in Washington right now. There is not a disagreement in Washington about whether we want people to continue to receive this tax cut. The disagreement is, should it come out of Social Security? Should we continue to undermine Social Security or should we do it a different way? That is No. 1.

No. 2 is, if we are going to borrow $117 billion against our children knowing that we have significant waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication in the Federal Government of in excess of $350 billion a year, should we not eliminate some of that, pay for this rather than borrow the money?

So we have the posturing between the two parties based on the election that is coming to create a predicate that some people only care for the rich and some people only care for those who are less fortunate, which is all smoke and mirrors. There is unanimity that we want this to continue. So what the American people are not hearing is the real debate.

The real debate is, should we eliminate some of the waste, some of the stupidity, some of the duplication in the Federal Government and actually do that to be able to pay for this so that as we do this thing that we all want to do--in other words, keep this $1,000 to $2,000 per family in the economy now--that we do not do that by crippling the children of the very people who are in the economy.

You know it is a zero-sum game. Somebody is going to pay the bill sometime. If it is us who refuse to do the hard work of ferreting out waste, duplication, fraud, then our service will have been in vain because what we are really doing is transferring to our children the responsibility for us today. Actually, it is going to come doublefold because the way this bill is lined out is we are going to borrow the money in the market to pay for this continued decrease in Social Security taxes.

We have already stolen $2.6 trillion from Social Security, Congresses have the last 20 years. When we borrow that money and put it back in, there is no reduction in what is owed, so our kids are actually going to get to pay for it twice. They are going to pay for it now with the new debt that we are taking, and the fact that new payment was not recognized as a reduction, they are going to get to pay it again.

So it is going to cost our children a quarter of a trillion dollars. There is a lack of honesty in talking plainly with the American people. They know we are in trouble. The question is, Will we be honest with them, treat them as adults in terms of how we go about solving the problem? We hear the mess. The press takes advantage of that. There is not a lot of difference between the Senator from Ohio who just spoke, in terms of what we want to do in terms of protecting seniors. But the politics surrounding it and the game playing poorly serves our country.

So for all the press that is watching, we are going to get this done. I know it is the game Blood Sport that is happening right now, with the press saying: Will they or will they not? It is going to happen. We are going to fix unemployment so that we have a continuation of that. The real question is, Will we fix the real things that the

country needs fixed or are we just going to kick the can down the road?

What we are doing is kicking the can down the road because we won't make the tough choices to pay for it. We won't pay for the unemployment benefits. The first 26 weeks is what is earned; that is what people contributed to. We are up to 99 weeks, and that comes directly from the American taxpayer--it actually comes from the future American taxpayer.

Some real questions ought to be asked. What is the game being played in Washington by both sides--trying to get advantage in the next election? As our country drowns in debt, we continue to further mortgage our children's future, and we continue to treat the American people like children rather than the adults they are. Everybody knows we are all going to have to sacrifice. Does that mean we are going to abandon the social safety net? No, it doesn't. Does that mean a 62- year-old who is trying to get on Social Security is not going to get there? No; they are. Those are the tactics of fear that something will not be there. As a fiscal conservative or a constitutional conservative, I want us to fulfill our obligation to the promises we have made and to our oath, which is to uphold the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson said you should never borrow money which you have not laid a tax to pay for. He is a Founder--one of the Founders of our country. We would do well to go back and revisit the wise and prudent advice of our Founders. You don't see that or hear that much anymore in the U.S. Congress.

These are big problems our country is facing. I am 63--soon to be 64--years old. We have never faced anything close to what we are facing today. How we react and how we respond is going to make all the difference in the world--not only for our short-term future but also for our long-term future.

I hope the American people who are listening right now understand that we are going to do what is necessary to help get the economic process of our country running again in a better and viable way. I hope you will dismiss the partisan rhetoric and the class warfare rhetoric that is all too commonplace today. If we will focus on what the problem is rather than the next election, we will have a great deal more success in coming together and forging solutions the American people can be proud of and we will actually move our country ahead.

With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

I have cleared with Senator Levin to be able to speak about a topic but not offer an amendment. I understand we are working on a unanimous consent agreement. I do have an amendment that at the appropriate time hopefully will be able to be brought up, but I wish to discuss it now. I think it is a way for us to save $1.1 billion over the next 5 years in the Defense Department, give children of on-base military schools a better education, help the local school districts through Impact Aid by $12,000 per student per year, and actually do what we are intending to do in terms of education.

We have 64 schools right now on 18 military bases within the United States. There are 26,000 students taught by 2,300 teachers. That is 1 teacher for every 11 students. The average cost per student per year is $51,000 in a military school--$51,000. That is 250 percent higher than the highest cost district anywhere in the United States--2\1/2\ times.

This amendment says let's use local schools, let's help local schools through these military bases, and let's give an exemption if we need to, if it is not available. If we were to do that, three positive things would happen. The first one is probably a better education. According to the teachers, conditions are so bad that some of the educators at base schools envy the civilian public schools off base, which admittedly have their own challenges. ``Some of the new schools in town make our schools look like a prison,'' said David Primer, who uses a trailer as a classroom to teach students German at Marine Corps headquarters in Quantico, VA. In other words, what they are looking at, what they are doing, and for the cost of it, the value can be higher. That is No. 1.

Second, it will help the local school districts because they will not only get Impact Aid, but they will be given up to $12,000 per year per student off a military base.

Then, finally, third, it will, over the next 5 years, save $220 million a year out of the military's budget that they would not be spending. That is after the $12,000 and the Impact Aid. So it is a way to save $1.1 billion and give a better education with better facilities to the children of our military service bases, these 26,000 students at 16 military installations. It is a win-win-win.

My hope is we will be able to call up this amendment and make it pending in the future.

I thank the Chair.

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

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

Mr. President, I listened to part of what Senator Reid had to say as we opened the Senate today. I was struck by the fact that so many people are unemployed and our economy is still barely growing, that there probably is not any firm objection to trying to alleviate some of the pain by continuing a process where we lessen the tax burden through a decline in the Social Security tax. I don't think that is going to be the issue with many Senators.

The question is, do we do that by raising taxes on other people or by getting rid of waste. I had an interesting phone call today with somebody I trust and have been talking to for 3 years, who actually predicted everything that has happened so far. He predicted what is going to happen in Europe, and he predicted the fact that ultimately there will be default in Europe on government bonds. There is no way they grow themselves out of it or no way we loan them enough money to buy them enough time to get out of it. The only way is to trim their spending, which they should have started 2\1/2\ or 3 years ago.

The same lesson applies to us. I think some things that are factual ought to be brought up. We had, over this past week, the inability of the committee to come to an agreement on $1.2 trillion. Therefore, there is going to be a sequestration. The interesting thing, on the way to the farm, is that when you have the sequestration carried out, there will actually be no decrease in spending in the Federal Government. This is the important thing I want the American people to hear. They think we are cutting spending. Defense will rise 16 percent with sequestration; nondefense discretionary will rise 6 percent; Medicare will still rise 71 percent; and net interest will rise 160 percent with the sequestration. So it is dishonest--to put it mildly--to say that we are cutting anything in Washington. And there begs the problem.

The problem is that the political elite in this country are failing to make the adjustments we have to make or we are going to end up like Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and ultimately France. We have to do that. The sooner we do it the less pain we are going to have. The first thing we ought to do is be honest with the American people. Nobody has done anything in Washington yet to cut any spending, because it is still going to rise in discretionary, defense, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest. It is still going to rise. So we have to go back to the fundamental problem.

What President Obama is proposing costs about $240 billion for next year. I think he would get great support from many of us if he said I want to do this to help people out there, and I want to do it by getting rid of some of the waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication we have. I would be the first to help him. But that is not what is going to be proposed. Instead of playing the political game, why don't we solve the problem?

We had a GAO report that came out in March that showed massive duplication throughout the Federal Government--massive. My estimate is close to $200 billion a year. That is not theirs, that is mine. But at a minimum, $100 billion a year could be saved by consolidating programs and eliminating duplication. We have not done anything or made any attempt to do that. Senator Warner and I offered an amendment to eliminate $5 billion of it. The bill it was riding on was withdrawn. We haven't had an opportunity in all the bills that came before to offer an amendment to eliminate duplication. Before we ask anybody to pay more taxes to offset the taxes we are going to decrease for the businesses under $50 million, and for the decline in the payment of Social Security tax of 3.1 percent for business and 2 percent for the individual, we ought to get our house in order first. We are doing exactly what the European countries refuse to do.

Now we hear over the weekend that we are about to participate, through the IMF, in socializing the debt of Europe, of which we are required, through the IMF, to absorb 26 percent of the cost. We are not going to let that happen, because what we are going to do is exactly the same thing we are doing in the cities--delaying the onset of the time to make the hard choices.

Here is the growth curve on this chart. In the red is sequestration. The blue line is without sequestration. Spending is still going up. We are going to be at a $5.4 trillion annual budget in 2021, 9 years from now. No spending has been cut. We need to quit lying to the American people about what we are doing. A 9-percent approval rating is well earned as long as we are dishonest with the American people about what we are actually doing. They understand the problem. We are broke.

If you don't think that is the case, look at this chart. Medicare is broke, no question about it. Medicaid is broke. The census is broke. Fannie and Freddie are broke. Now FHA has 0.2 percent of the capital they need when they have a minimum statutory requirement of 3 percent. FHA is broke. Social Security is broke. There is $2.6 trillion in the trust fund. We put $105 billion from the Treasury in to offset what we did last year. Now we are going to pay for it twice because there was no decrease in the IOU. For that $105 billion, our children and grandchildren will pay back $210 billion. With the new program, they are going to pay back $280 billion. The U.S. Post Office is dead broke. We won't even pass a bill that allows it to be fixed. We just delay the time of its demise. Cash for Clunkers was broke. The highway trust fund was broke. We are passing bills for the highway trust fund, which is $13 billion short. We don't know where the money will come from because the trust fund is broke. Government-run health care--we don't know, but it is likely to be broke before it starts.

How do we solve the problem?

Yes.

Yes, and the recommendation of the President of the United States. What about duplication? Is there not someplace we can find the $240 billion that President Obama wants to put into the economy for helping those of the middle and lower income levels make it through this tough time? Sure there is.

We have 100-plus surface transportation programs that can be consolidated into about 20 programs. We have

82 Federal teacher quality programs. Not one has the metric on it, and we don't know if they work. Economic development programs--we have 88. Transportation assistance programs, outside surface transportation--we have 80 of those. We have 56 financial literacy programs. We have 47 job-training programs, at $18 billion a year. All but three of those overlap one another, and not one has a metric to say it works. Homelessness prevention and assistance--there are 20 separate programs. There is nothing wrong with that goal, but why do we need 20? Food for the hungry--we have 18 different programs. Couldn't we do that through one Federal program? Why do we need to have 18? Disaster response and preparedness in FEMA has 17 different programs.

We have taken a ``stupid'' pill, and now we sit bankrupt. We are physically bankrupt--fiscally and physically bankrupt at this moment, except we just haven't recognized it, and what is happening in Europe is going to happen to us in less than a year. The price we pay for our bond interest is going to go up. The price differential between a German and Italian bond in the last 10 days has risen 270 basis points--a spread of 270. Germany couldn't even sell all its bonds Friday.

What is happening? It is a lack of confidence. So we have to restore confidence, and the way we do that is by actually paying for the good we need to do by putting forth commonsense solutions for elimination of programs that are duplicative.

I will finish with just a couple other points, just some ideas.

If you started now, you could put the 2020 census online and save $2 billion. If we increased the paperless transactions at the Treasury Department, we could save $1 billion. These are per year, by the way-- per year. We need to gradually increase fees for GSE securities. President Obama has started that, but it needs to be accelerated. Move the core functions of the Election Assistance Commission to the FEC. That is $161 million. We could consolidate that. We could do some commonsense things. We could combine the SEC and the CFTC and save $2.8 billion. We could move the SBA disaster loans to FEMA. You have to go through FEMA anyway before you ever qualify for one, so why not let them do it? Why do we have two separate programs? Why do you have to go through two doors? It would be like getting your license where you bought the car, but then you had to go somewhere else to get it, and then you had to go somewhere else. We could eliminate that. The National Drug Intelligence Center--it doesn't do anything. It is an earmark we have spent $488 million on in the last 10 years. It does nothing of concrete value to anybody in the intelligence network, but it is an earmark gone crazy.

So what do we do? Well, we put together a shopping list that could be used. You don't have to agree with any of this, but over the next 10 years, if you just agreed with one-third of it, you could find the third and save $3.3 trillion. That is $85 billion more--if we just did one-tenth of it this year--than what the President would like to do with this jobs stimulus program.

None of this is hard. There certainly can be some debate over what we fund and don't fund in defense, but most of it is common sense. Will people squeal? Yes. Everybody is going to have to squeal if we are to get out of the problem we have in this country.

I will conclude with this: I think we ought to continue, until our economy is back on keel, with a Social Security tax cut, but I think the only way we should do that is by eliminating some of the $350 billion a year of waste, of duplication, and of fraud in the Federal Government. And if we can't do that, we shouldn't be here. None of us should be here.

The fact that the politics of the next election is crippling this country says we deserve the 9-percent rating the American people are giving us. All we have to do is change that. What we have to do is grow a backbone, stand, and say no to people. We have to say it to everyone. We have to do this. It is for our future and for our kids' future. And these are the things that are least painful.

Here is what happens if we don't. The very people we say we don't want to harm by eliminating the multitude of duplication in all these programs, eliminating all this waste, all these feel-good things that part of the time accomplish good things, are the very people who are going to suffer significantly more because of our inaction.

It is time for us to act. It is time for us to do what is necessary to put our country back in the right direction and on a healthy diet of fiscal prudence, smart tax policy, and get out of the rut we are in. That requires leadership--and not just by the President but by all of us.

It means you have to take some hits. When I put ``Back in Black'' out, I got some terribly nasty letters from all sorts of people. I understand. They are getting something, and some of that is put at risk, so therefore you can't represent them. But everybody is going to have to give, and if everybody doesn't give, we won't have a country left. That is what is coming--default. We are broke now; we just are not in the reality of it. But what is coming is default of American bonds if we do not act now. It can't wait 2 years. It can't wait for the next Presidential election. We have to do it now.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to spend a minute because I do not think the American public knows how badly they have been hoodwinked by Congress. The Budget Control Act told the American people that we cut $1 trillion. That is what the claims were. The fact is, under the Budget Control Act spending, discretionary spending will still rise by $850 billion over the next 10 years. That is the truth.

We hear in the bills that are coming up the word ``emergency.'' One of the things the American people cannot quite understand is--when they have an emergency what they do is they end up having to make choices. They do not have a bank that will loan them money regardless of whether they are worthy of paying it back, and that is where we are. We are not worthy of paying the money back that we are borrowing now. That is going to become acutely obvious over the next 18 months in our country as we see our interest rates rise.

We have a bill on the floor that meets the numbers and meets what the Budget Control Act said but totally denies what the American people are expecting. Let me talk about what I mean by that. There are five major problems with this bill.

No. 1, it claims to cut spending when in fact it does not. When you take all spending, it does not cut spending. We are going to hear and we have heard already how it cuts spending but usually with the caveat ``not counting emergency spending.'' So the first thing it does is not to address any of the problems our country has in terms of having to deal with real cuts in spending, not decreases in the rate of growth of spending. We have to have real cuts if we are going to create a future for our kids. If we are going to be able to borrow money in the future at an affordable interest rate, we are going to have to have real cuts. We have to quit playing the game to the American people and start talking to them as adults, not playing the game and actually being dishonest with them about what we are doing.

This bill also continues to demonstrate that we are shirking our duties in terms of doing oversight. We have provided funding for things that obviously need to be corrected but we will not correct them. We do not eliminate the wasteful programs. There is nothing in here, not one duplicative program in any of these three segments of appropriations bills, that is eliminated. Yet we know there is over $200 billion a year in duplication costs to the Federal Government on programs that do exactly the same thing. Yet we did not do any of it. It is no wonder you can't cut spending if you don't get rid of programs that do the same thing, none of which or 80 percent of which never accomplish their goals or never have been measured as to whether they accomplish their goals. That is the third thing.

The fourth thing this bill does is absolutely ignore FHA's condition. It was announced they are about to run out of money. What do we do? We raise the amount of money that people can borrow from the FHA at the time when FHA is running out of money. The only problem with that is FHA has a very friendly banker which the Congress has no control over because when FHA runs out of money, do you know what they do? They go and get it from the Treasury and we cannot stop it.

What we have done is we have raised the loan limit for FHA homes to $729,000 in this bill. FHA is going to be out of money this year. They will have no capital to protect the $1.1 trillion worth of loans they are guaranteeing, and they will go get the money. Where is that money going to come from? That money is going to come from--we are going to borrow it from the Chinese. So we are going to compound the

very problem we have today. It is absolutely ignoring what the real situation is on the ground, ignoring the real complications of not acting, and consequently we actually make it worse for our kids and our country.

Finally, it includes very few of the amendments that were passed by wide margins in the Senate. One of mine is there. I am very thankful for it. I think it is an appropriate amendment. But several others are not, that were good, commonsense amendments. Yet somebody in the Appropriations Committee decided even though they may have voted for it, they pulled it out. It was not the majority on the other side who insisted it come out because I checked.

What we have done is we are up here and we are going to pass this bill. I have no doubt about it. But we are continuing down the road of, No. 1, being dishonest with the American people about what we are doing, how we are doing it; No. 2, we are shirking our responsibility to eliminate the wasteful portions of the Federal Government which at least are $350 billion a year, when you combine waste, fraud, and duplication. None of that was attacked in this bill, none of it. Then we are lying to them about whether we are actually increasing spending or not increasing spending.

Our time is shortening. If you look at what happened in Europe in the last 2 weeks, to the bond yields for Italy, to the bond yields for Spain, we know what is coming. How bad does it have to get or how close does it have to get to us before we will act in the best interests of the country instead of the best interests of partisanship or the best interests of our careers?

This is not a bad bill. It just doesn't do what the American people need us to do right now, which is start cutting out the waste, fraud, and duplication in the Federal Government so that their children will have an opportunity to live in a country of opportunity.

This bill fails on that count. It should be defeated and a bill coming back here with $10 or $12 or $15 billion less is what ought to come back here. That is what ought to happen, if we were going to be truly honest. Either I am being dishonest about the situation facing our country or you are being dishonest in what you are bringing as the answer on the floor. One of us is not telling the truth and I guarantee the markets are going to prove me right. When we can no longer borrow, as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve said, we are going to eventually fix all this, regardless of the politicians. Do you know why we are going to fix it? Because they are going to quit loaning us money. And we have done nothing with this bill to solve the very real and immediate problems in front of this country.

I yield the floor.

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

It is my understanding we have until 11 a.m.

Madam President, our country is at a crossroads. Anybody who is watching Europe will find that they have been very slow to address the real underlying problems of debt and deficits there. They have a much more difficult time than what we should because they have a monetary union without a political union. We have a monetary and political union.

The fact is that over the next 10 years we are going to have a debt-- including borrowing money for student loans, borrowing money to pay back Social Security, what has been stolen--we are going to have a true debt of about $27 trillion to $28 trillion. It is absolutely unsustainable. It won't happen--according to Ben Bernanke--because his statement is, the world will not loan us the money.

What is going on in Europe today? What is going on in Europe today is the markets are punishing the countries that have excessive debt-to-GDP ratios. We sit at 100 percent debt to GDP. We see what has happened just in the last 2 weeks to bond rates for Italy. The differential between an Italian bond rate and a German bond rate is now about 430 basis points, a 4.3 differential for the same length maturity bond for Italy versus Germany. What is the difference? Germany is living within the confines of its economic capability. Italy didn't. How does that apply to us? It applies to us in that we are not and what will happen to us if we don't make the difficult changes that are necessary.

There has been a lot of rhetoric on both sides of the aisle and there has been rhetoric from the President in terms of us looking at who pays what in terms of taxes in this country. But nobody is looking at what we are doing with our Tax Code that enables those who are the wealthy in this country to pay less taxes. So I had my staff put together a list of the subsidies for the wealthy in this country, because the answer isn't just to raise taxes; part of the answer is to quit subsidizing these behaviors.

We came up with a piece that we put out called ``Subsidies for the Rich and Famous.'' It is a report that looked at every government program. We looked at everything we do. What we found is every year, for people having adjusted gross incomes above $1 million, we give $28 billion worth of benefits in the Tax Code or through our programs. I will tell my colleagues that if we wanted--I am one of those who thinks we ought to reform our Tax Code, we ought to lower the rates, we ought to make it where it actually increases productivity in this country, creates capital investment. But one of the first steps in doing that is to make sure our Tax Code and our safety net programs are for those who truly need it and not for those who don't.

We went through the total tax breaks of $113.7 billion over the last 4 years. Mortgage interest: $27.7 billion in tax breaks to people who are making more than $1 million a year. That is a lot of dough.

Rental expenses. The writeoff of rental expenses for those making more--we are not talking businesses. None of these are business deductions. These are personal deductions for the very wealthy in this country who are making more than $1 million adjusted gross income a year. We allow them to write off $64.3 billion in rental expenses.

Gambling losses. We allowed the rich and famous to reduce their taxes by $21 billion because we allow them to gamble, and if they lose money, they get to write it off. So we are subsidizing the loss. We are subsidizing their gambling losses.

Canceled debt, debt writeoffs, debt forgiveness. We have allowed $128 billion in terms of writeoffs for those people making more than $1 million adjusted gross income.

Business entertainment--and this is not through business, though, not run through a business; this is personal deductions for business entertainment--$607 billion.

Electric vehicle. What are we seeing? Who are the people taking advantage of our messing in the economy and creating an incentive for somebody to buy an electric vehicle? The vast majority are the people who don't need the writeoff in the first place. What we have is $12.5 million last year alone in tax credits for the very wealthy to take a $7,500 or $8,500 tax credit for buying an electric car.

Childcare, nanny care for the very wealthy last year: $18 million.

Renewable energy tax credits for the very wealthy: $75.6 million.

The whole point of putting this report out is we are schizophrenic with our Tax Code. We have it upside down. When people talk about how they want millionaires to pay more--they are paying plenty. The top 1 percent pays 38 percent, the top 20 percent pays 80 percent of all of the taxes in this country. But if we want to start getting at this, the way we do it is start taking away the things that reduce their tax burden that don't make sense, that aren't smart, and that don't help those who need the true safety net in our country. These people aren't dependent on these. They will do fine without them. The whole purpose for most of these programs was to create and sustain a safety net for those who are less fortunate.

When we allow $113.7 billion in tax breaks for the wealthy over 4 years, what could we do with that money? Well, we could run a NASA that is twice as big. We could not borrow $113 billion because the interest rates on that are significant; another $4 billion or $5 billion a year in interest that we

wouldn't have to borrow. We wouldn't have to make some defense cuts that are going to have to come. We could maybe put more money into Medicare prevention and disease prevention rather than what we have done. There are all sorts of things we could do.

The point behind the report is that most Americans don't realize how we are subsidizing through tax credits the very wealthy in this country. I don't have any real problem with them taking the tax credits. We put it out there. The real question we ought to be asking is why are we doing all of this in the first place. Does the economy itself in a free market not allocate resources better than we can do? How many Chevy Volts have been sold this year? The answer is 5,000. So 5,000 times $7,500 is what we paid in tax credits to have the Chevy Volt sold because everybody who bought it got a $7,500 tax credit. If it is a viable product, then let people buy it. If it is not, they won't. Yet who are the people who bought most of the Chevy Volts? People making significantly more than the average American.

If we are going to play in the Tax Code, what we ought to do is play on a very level playing field. If we want to create incentives, then we ought to create incentives that actually will do something for the economy rather than benefit those who make the most money in the economy.

I would say what this spells is a case for us to totally reform our Tax Code. Most people don't realize this is one of the side effects. That is not to say there are not some good side effects. But the fact is when we are running $1.3 trillion deficits, do we want to be subsidizing the rich and famous in this country with our programs? I would say no.

When Medicare Part B started, 50 percent of the cost of Medicare Part B was to be borne by the Medicare recipient. We are at 25 percent now. There was never any thought--and, remember, nobody ever paid anything for that. In other words, that is all borrowed money to do that. Nobody ever contributed into a Part B fund. They contributed into a Part A fund which, by the way, will be bankrupt in 4\1/2\ years. What about those on Part D? Nobody ever paid a penny, and we have $13 trillion in unfunded liability in Part D. Why should the very wealthy get subsidized drugs in this country? Why should they get subsidized Part D? In other words, we ought to ask ourselves a question.

Think about Social Security. Why is Canada's Social Security system not in trouble? Because Canada looks at how much income a person is making every year, and at certain levels a person gets half of their Social Security because they obviously don't need it because their income is up there, and at a certain other level they get none of it. Why? Because it is based on a means-testing mechanism that says this program is designed to be an underpinning for those who need it. We have gone completely the other way.

My point is we have all this discussion about what we should do. We are wringing our hands. The first thing to do is to fix the Tax Code and the best way to fix it is to say 3 months from now it is going away, and have Finance and Ways and Means Committee in the House come together with a new Tax Code that fixes all of this. Everybody in Washington says that can't be done. Nobody outside of Washington says it can't be done, but we say it can't be done. It can be done. It needs to be done.

If we want a healthy future, we need to reform our Tax Code to generate greater investment, greater job opportunity. We need to lower the rates, and we need to eliminate things such as these that don't truly help the economy, but help those who were smart enough to figure out how to play the game, who are the wealthiest in this country. I am proud of them. I want them to be more successful. But in these difficult times, we need to ask them to contribute more. We need to not have these kinds of programs in our Tax Code that actually subsidize those who need no subsidy.

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