Floor Statements

I object.

Mr. President, I object.

Mr. President, I object.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I wish to speak in morning business and will confine my remarks to the objections I just made to the leader's motions.

Mr. President, I am simply amazed that, when we are borrowing $4.2 billion a day from our grandkids--that is what we are borrowing, $4.2 billion a day--we are going to run a $1.4 trillion deficit, and we have a unanimous consent request to move to things that spend more money, money we do not have that we are going to borrow from the Chinese or Russians to be able to pay for it, and we are going to spend the money overseas. There is no question that we should try to develop consensus in our body, but the first consensus we should have is the priorities of the problems that are facing this country. The problems that are facing this country are so big and so massive that our attention ought to be focused on those large problems, not on five separate bills that have been proffered for special interest groups. I don't understand the motivations. What I do understand is that the American people get it, even if we do not.

The fact that we are going to make attempts for political purposes to put bills that are not paid for and that will add to the $4.2 billion a day that we borrow on the floor when our economy is languishing because we continue to grow the Federal Government, continue to build regulations that affect and diminish the desire for people with capital to invest it in our economy--and we force people out of this country to build their plants and manufacturing facilities because of our regulations and tax codes, I do not understand.

My objections--I will not spend the time exactly outlining my objections to all these bills, but my overall objection is the priorities we are setting in the Senate. We ought to be about creating confidence so people will invest in this country rather than continuing to undermine that confidence with superfluous, well-meaning bills that are put up for political purposes instead of addressing the real problems that are facing our country.

Out of a courtesy to Senator Reid and the agreement I just made with him, I will not offer my unanimous consent request at this time, but I will later today after he has had a chance to read them, on the following five bills:

The Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act. Mr. President, 140,000 veterans in this country have lost their second amendment rights. It has never been adjudicated that they were a danger to themselves or anybody else. Yet a bureaucrat somewhere has taken away their second amendment rights. This bill has come out of committee twice. Senator Burr is the lead sponsor on it. We treat veterans as second-class citizens when it comes to their second amendment rights. We ought to pass that. I will ask that later.

The Firearms Fairness and Affordability Act. We make firearms manufacturers pay their taxes every 2 weeks instead of quarterly like every other manufacturer in this country. But we penalize them. We ought to treat them the same as everybody else.

The earmark transparency bill gives one Web site so everybody in America can see where the earmarks are, who offered them, what the basis for them is, whether they were competitively bid. That is something America would like to see.

Then there are two tax cheat bills, for us as Members of Congress and our employees and then other Federal employees.

So I will not offer those unanimous consent requests at this time, but I will later in the day. Again, there are important, big problems in front of this country. We need to be about addressing those rather than special interest favors at this time.

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

Mr. President, I wish to spend a few minutes talking about where we are. There is no question the chairman of the Appropriations Committee has finished his bills, and they have not come up. But the quality of the work doesn't meet with the depth of the problem we have today, No. 1; No. 2, it doesn't address the concerns of the American public.

So we are going to have a continuing resolution that we are going to pass through this body tonight, probably by a vote of about 80 to 20 or 75 to 25. But the signal we are sending is based on our tin ear. We are going to continue spending at the same rate we have been spending. We are borrowing $4.2 billion a day under this continuing resolution. The government now is twice as big, in terms of expenditures, not including the war, as it was in 1999. We are not addressing what the American people want us to address; that is, that we ought to start living within our means.

I will not offer an amendment to the bill. There are several amendments. My colleague from South Dakota offered one that will bring us back to 2008 levels, but that is not enough. The fact is, we have to engage the American public in what is rightfully a cogent criticism of the Congress; that is, that we are allowing wasteful Washington spending to go on, not by intent--and I am not questioning anybody's motives--but the fact is, we have not done our job in terms of oversight.

We heard Senator McCain talk about the tax cuts and raising taxes during a very soft economic time. The vast majority of the Americans don't want us to do that. I don't know why we are not discussing it, and I don't know why we are leaving town before we send that signal, but that is way above my pay grade.

What I will tell you is, I can take any group of Americans and sit down and go through this with them and show them, without question, $350 billion worth of waste every year in the Federal Government. The amendment of my colleague from South Dakota is cutting less than $50 billion from what we are going to spend--in fact, we did it in 2008, other than for homeland security, defense, and veterans. So even though I love what my colleague is doing, it doesn't go nearly far enough compared to what the real need is for us.

There are two real needs. One, if we are going to finance the debt we have today, we have to send a message and signal to the world that we are interested in getting our house back in order, that we are interested in becoming efficient, and interested in becoming austere with our taxpayers' money. The second message we need to send is to those who have capital in this country; that they, in fact, can have confidence that we are going to right this ship, and we will start seeing them deploy some of those assets to create the very jobs we so desperately want for the American people who do not have them today.

I have been here long enough to know what is going to happen. But what I wish to do is register my dissatisfaction that we are not addressing the real problems in front of our country today. Instead, we are ducking out on tough decisions so we can go home--and I am up for reelection as well--and get to the voters. My question is a much more powerful message than going to the voters; it is us making hard choices that the American people want us to make.

This week, the 2010 fiscal year is coming to a close. On October 1, 2010, it will become the new budget year. Here is what we failed to do as a body--our fault just as much as yours. We didn't pass a budget. We didn't set priorities. We didn't decide where to spend and where to save. We didn't pay for new spending--$266 billion in the last 6 months in this Congress on new spending that we waived pay-go on and borrowed it against our children. We didn't pass any appropriations bills. We didn't make any tough choices. We didn't conduct any significant oversight on the waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government or the duplication in the Federal Government. We didn't eliminate any duplicative or ineffective programs--not one. We didn't do our job. No wonder America is disgusted with us.

What did we do? We increased the debt limit to more than $14 trillion. We added more than $1.4 trillion to the deficit and charged it to our grandchildren. We ignored the Constitution and expanded Washington's reach into our private lives, shrinking freedom

and growing government. We put ourselves first and the country second. Despite promises from us that government programs can solve every challenge, taxpayers are getting ripped off. We sent $1 trillion of their income to the Treasury this year just to watch it waste $350 billion. At the same time, we created a lot of new programs, and some people are very proud of them. I am very worried about them. But I give you the credit that you went down the road you thought was right and did it.

The real problem is, we are continuing the same old habits. The real issue is, until we truly understand the severity of the difficulty we are in and start acting like we understand it, this ship is going to continue to sink. We are not going to create the confidence in the American public or the $2 trillion that is sitting on the sidelines right now if, in fact, they had a clear signal it would start flowing into investment and capital that would create jobs.

Last December, my office spent 3 weeks just looking at duplicative programs. When we passed the debt limit, we agreed with an amendment I inserted that the GAO would give us a list of those. They are starting that work, and this February we will see the first large tranche of that. It is going to take 3 years to compile that because the government is so big.

We ought to have a little taste, and the American people ought to have a little taste, of what we didn't get rid of and didn't fix. We have 1,399 Federal programs that serve rural America; 337 of them are considered key. One thousand of them aren't considered key. They are not considered substantive. That is before you even take the test of saying whether they are authorized by the U.S. Constitution.

The Federal Government operates 70 programs costing tens of billions of dollars that provide domestic food assistance--70 different programs--and many of them overlap or are inefficient. Most of them cannot demonstrate they are effective. That is according to a recent review by the Government Accounting Office. We didn't fix it. We could have saved taxpayers some of that money. There are 14 programs administered by the U.S. Department of Education related to foreign exchanges and designed to increase opportunities for students to study abroad. Why do we have 14 programs? Why not have one good one that meets the needs of Americans?

We fund 44 job training programs, administered by 9 Federal agencies across the bureaucracy. The cost is $30 billion a year, and we don't know what the overhead is because we have 44 programs instead of 2 or 3. We didn't address any of that. There are 17 offender reentry programs across 5 Federal agencies, costing $\1/4\ billion. There has been no oversight. In other words, we have not looked where the problems are. We have not looked to say: How do we make this government more efficient?

What we have done is to say we are going to raise taxes--or at least we are not going to vote on raising taxes until after the election. No matter whether you are middle income, lower income, or upper income, it makes no sense for us to say we need more money here, when we will not do the very simple job of eliminating the waste.

I don't question the motivation for job training programs; I think they are necessary. I don't question the motivation for food programs; I think they are necessary. But 44 and 70 different programs, with 70 sets of bureaucracies and 44 sets of bureaucracies? Then we are going to tell Americans they should pay more tax, when we will not even do the simple thing to save $100 million here or there. With a $30 billion program, if you save 10 percent, that is $3 billion. So all you have to save is one-tenth of 1 percent or three-tenths of 1 percent. We will not even do that.

I have a book full of duplicative programs. It is available to anybody who wants it. We ought to ask what kind of rating or grade would the American people give us--Republicans and Democrats alike--in terms of running the government, funding the government, and working to make the government efficient and effective. I don't think we have any good defense. I think people's intentions around here are excellent, but we never get around to the hard work of holding the bureaucracies accountable.

Senator Carper had a great hearing today on the Defense Department and the fact that the Defense Department is trying to get where they can manage what they are doing by measuring it with a significant system, in terms of IT. It is just $6.9 billion over budget. Where is the oversight on that procurement? What the GAO said is the following: The management was ineffective at looking at those programs. The management was ineffective in the testing of those programs during their development. The management was ineffective in terms of the procurement of those programs. When I asked the heads of every branch in the military whether they agreed with that, they said, yes, they agreed they were ineffective.

We don't have anything in the appropriations bills to change that effectiveness. We didn't have anything in the Defense authorization bill to change that effectiveness. We are just going to let it go on, and next year it will be $7.9 billion or $8.9 billion over. So we are not doing our job.

That is not to question my colleagues' motive; it is to raise the awareness that the jig is up. The American people know we are not doing our job. They want us to start doing our job--both Republicans and Democrats.

We have several colleagues on the floor. Rather than take more time, I just note that I am consistent in terms of coming down here and worrying about our future. I have done so for 5\1/2\ years--much to the chagrin of a lot of my colleagues. I wish to leave you with one statement.

Our children deserve to have the same opportunities in this country that we have experienced. By us failing to do the very duties that are called upon us in a rational, straightforward basis, of doing oversight of the Federal Government and making the hard choices, we abandon our oath, but, more importantly, we steal the heritage that was given to us.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I will not object if the Senator would kindly amend her request to include a substitute amendment with a Barrasso proposal to establish a National Commission on Outer Continental Shelf Oilspill prevention.

Mr. President, I object.

Mr. President, today, I, along with Senators LeMieux, DeMint, and Inhofe, am introducing the FAST Act. At the same time, this same bill is being introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Representative Peter Roskam. Both of us were present at the White House summit with the President.

What the FAST Act does is attack the $100 billion worth of waste and fraud in Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP.

In the President's February 22, 2010 proposal for health reform, President Obama endorsed several Republican proposals designed to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid. While some anti-fraud provisions were included in the health care overhaul that passed Congress, these Republican proposals were not fully included.

Today, along with Senators LeMieux, DeMint, and Inhofe, I am introducing the ``Fighting Fraud and Abuse to Save Taxpayers' Dollars'' or ``FAST'' Act. An identical bill is also being introduced today in the U.S. House of Representatives by Representative Peter Roskam, who also attended the White House health summit. The FAST Act notionally represents the Republican solutions the President endorsed to combat waste in Medicare and Medicaid as, as well as a bipartisan provision to reduce from by removing Social Security numbers from Medicare cards.

The status quo in Medicaid and Medicare is unsustainable and unacceptable. American taxpayers lose $60 to $100 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid each year. Congress and the administration must do a better job of working to staunch this flow of taxpayer dollars that goes to crooks instead of providing care.

The current system was designed to be defrauded. And under the status quo today, organized crime affiliates and criminal gangs are bilking billions of taxpayer dollars from Medicare each year because it is so easy to defraud the system. HHS' Inspector General told Congress recently that a street gang in California has defrauded Medicare to the tune of $11 million by establishing a fake company and billing Medicare for expensive items like wheel chairs and oxygen supplies. The American people ought to be outraged and should not stand for this.

Imagine how we could improve Medicare's solvency if we could recoup two-thirds of the known fraud and abuse in the program each year. We could save $400 billion over a decade, just by preventing fraud.

But the loss of taxpayer dollars due to waste and fraud under Medicare and Medicaid not only threatens the financial viability of programs, they erode the public trust. American taxpayers should not be expected to tolerate rampant waste, fraud, and abuse in publicly-funded health care programs.

The new Federal health overhaul that Congress passed earlier this year dramatically expands Medicaid, significantly changes Medicare, creates new regulations, and will send hundreds of billions of dollars to insurance companies. Without improvements to current anti-fraud efforts, taxpayers could be at risk to even more money.

Congress and the Administration must do a more effective job in combating waste, fraud, and abuse in public health care programs and protecting the American taxpayer dollars. This bill is not a magic bullet, but I believe it offers a common-sense step forward to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in our Nation's largest two health care programs. This bill gives increases data sharing, stiffens penalties, and pilots new ways of combating egregious fraud.

I sincerely hope politicians and bureaucrats can put the public interest ahead of their own. Congress and the administration cannot afford to continue to tolerate such fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. I look forward to working with any member of Congress who is serious about reducing waste, fraud, and abuse in public health care programs.

Just think for a minute what would happen to Medicare solvency if, in fact, we could recoup two-thirds of the fraud and inappropriate payments that are ongoing. It is straightforward. Many of the ideas in this were embraced by the President at our meeting.

It is my hope that the Senate will look at this and, in a bipartisan fashion, jump on board to fix a problem that is undermining one of our possible solutions to health care, which is that the Medicare trust fund is belly up.

There has been a lot of work done on this by Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. It is my hope we will have their consent and cosponsorship for the bill.

Mr. President, today, I, along with Senators LeMieux, DeMint, and Inhofe, am introducing the FAST Act. At the same time, this same bill is being introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Representative Peter Roskam. Both of us were present at the White House summit with the President.

What the FAST Act does is attack the $100 billion worth of waste and fraud in Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP.

In the President's February 22, 2010 proposal for health reform, President Obama endorsed several Republican proposals designed to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid. While some anti-fraud provisions were included in the health care overhaul that passed Congress, these Republican proposals were not fully included.

Today, along with Senators LeMieux, DeMint, and Inhofe, I am introducing the ``Fighting Fraud and Abuse to Save Taxpayers' Dollars'' or ``FAST'' Act. An identical bill is also being introduced today in the U.S. House of Representatives by Representative Peter Roskam, who also attended the White House health summit. The FAST Act notionally represents the Republican solutions the President endorsed to combat waste in Medicare and Medicaid as, as well as a bipartisan provision to reduce from by removing Social Security numbers from Medicare cards.

The status quo in Medicaid and Medicare is unsustainable and unacceptable. American taxpayers lose $60 to $100 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid each year. Congress and the administration must do a better job of working to staunch this flow of taxpayer dollars that goes to crooks instead of providing care.

The current system was designed to be defrauded. And under the status quo today, organized crime affiliates and criminal gangs are bilking billions of taxpayer dollars from Medicare each year because it is so easy to defraud the system. HHS' Inspector General told Congress recently that a street gang in California has defrauded Medicare to the tune of $11 million by establishing a fake company and billing Medicare for expensive items like wheel chairs and oxygen supplies. The American people ought to be outraged and should not stand for this.

Imagine how we could improve Medicare's solvency if we could recoup two-thirds of the known fraud and abuse in the program each year. We could save $400 billion over a decade, just by preventing fraud.

But the loss of taxpayer dollars due to waste and fraud under Medicare and Medicaid not only threatens the financial viability of programs, they erode the public trust. American taxpayers should not be expected to tolerate rampant waste, fraud, and abuse in publicly-funded health care programs.

The new Federal health overhaul that Congress passed earlier this year dramatically expands Medicaid, significantly changes Medicare, creates new regulations, and will send hundreds of billions of dollars to insurance companies. Without improvements to current anti-fraud efforts, taxpayers could be at risk to even more money.

Congress and the Administration must do a more effective job in combating waste, fraud, and abuse in public health care programs and protecting the American taxpayer dollars. This bill is not a magic bullet, but I believe it offers a common-sense step forward to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in our Nation's largest two health care programs. This bill gives increases data sharing, stiffens penalties, and pilots new ways of combating egregious fraud.

I sincerely hope politicians and bureaucrats can put the public interest ahead of their own. Congress and the administration cannot afford to continue to tolerate such fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. I look forward to working with any member of Congress who is serious about reducing waste, fraud, and abuse in public health care programs.

Just think for a minute what would happen to Medicare solvency if, in fact, we could recoup two-thirds of the fraud and inappropriate payments that are ongoing. It is straightforward. Many of the ideas in this were embraced by the President at our meeting.

It is my hope that the Senate will look at this and, in a bipartisan fashion, jump on board to fix a problem that is undermining one of our possible solutions to health care, which is that the Medicare trust fund is belly up.

There has been a lot of work done on this by Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. It is my hope we will have their consent and cosponsorship for the bill.

Mr. President, I object and ask unanimous consent to be recognized after the majority whip finishes.

Mr. President, what is unfair in this country is the fact that we label bills to fix things and fix a lot of the symptoms, but we do not fix the underlying problem. We are going to spend several hundred million dollars

when the bill ultimately goes through, and much of it will be well applied, but the underlying problem will never be fixed.

The Senator mentioned we have 12 agencies--12 agencies across this government--responsible for food safety. What I would contend to my colleagues is that the same amount of money we spend now, if we spent it wisely, would give us a much safer food supply.

All through the course of this debate, I have had staff at every meeting raising the consistent objections I have raised. At every meeting, one of my staffers has been there. They were ignored. I am not stopping this bill because it was ignored; I am stopping the bill because I do not think we are fixing the true underlying problem.

Let me give you an example. Here is what Dr. Hamburg said. This is on the egg rule.

We believe that had these rules been in place at an earlier

time it would have very likely enabled us to identify the

problems on this farm before this kind of outbreak occurred.

How long did it take them to develop the rule? Ten years. It started with President Clinton asking that this be addressed. Robert Reich went and inspected and said it is unbelievable what has happened. And what happened is, he initiated it with the FDA, the start. Somebody ought to ask the question and hold accountable FDA taking 10 years to get a rule so we have safe eggs in this country. We did not ask that question. So the next thing that comes up after we pass a bill like this is that we are going to see another problem because we are not fixing the core problem.

Let me read to you from the oversight hearings the Senate has conducted on food safety. I think I have them here. There was a full committee hearing on October 22, 2009, ``Keeping American Families Safe, Reforming the Food System.'' There was a full committee hearing developing a comprehensive response to food safety on December 4, 2007. And there was a Senate Appropriations Committee oversight hearing on Hallmark/Westland meat recall--a special hearing. There was not one hearing that said: FDA, what are you doing, how are you doing it, and why are you doing it that way? There was not one hearing that said: USDA, why in the world can't you get your act together? We did not do the structural oversight that is necessary to fix these problems.

I am not denying that this bill will have some positive effect. But it will not solve the problem. So we will pass a bill, and then we will still have contaminated food, but we will have answered the questions of late. We can't keep running government that way.

I appreciate sincerely Senator Durbin's efforts. We come from vastly different backgrounds. I don't question his integrity, his desire, or his goodwill to try to solve the problem. As he told me on the phone, I can't be involved in everything, so, therefore, I shouldn't participate in this. That is the implication. I am not saying the Senator said that, but the implication is, you can't be involved so, therefore, you can't know enough to be involved. Well, having run a $70 million-a-year business in the health care field, having managed hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of people, and being trained as a physician in practice for 25 years, I know a heck of a lot about food safety. What I do know is if you don't fix the problems in the underlying agencies that are responsible for food safety, it doesn't matter how many bills we bring up.

There is a prohibition in this bill. Section 403, Jurisdiction Authorities:

Nothing in this act or an amendment made by this act shall

be construed to alter the jurisdiction between the Secretary

of Agriculture and the Secretary of Health and Human Services

under applicable statutes, regulations, or agreements

regarding the products eligible for voluntary inspection

under this agreement.

We actually are doing something wrong here--not just right. We are telling them they can't shift stuff around to solve the problem. Not only do we not do the vigorous oversight that is required to actually fix the real problems; we put up a roadblock, a silo back up and say, By the way, you can't do any of this together. That is in the bill.

What has happened? The FDA Commissioner says had we put this rule out, this probably wouldn't have happened on the egg recall, salmonella enteritis. It wouldn't have happened. Where is the answer from the FDA? Where is the oversight hearing of the FDA on why it took them 10, almost 11 years to get a rule out on egg safety? That is my core objection.

I want us to solve the problems. I don't have any problem with the issues about foreign inspection. Mandatory recall I don't have a problem with, although we have never had a food supplier in this country that has not recalled when asked to recall. So having a mandatory authority is a false claim because nobody has ever not recalled when they were asked to, because it is in their best interests to recall.

My problems are characterized by this chart, when you think about the egg recall. The USDA knew what was happening on the farms in Iowa but said nothing to the FDA. The FDA didn't look to see, and Congress didn't want to hear about it. So we have a bill before us that does a lot of good things, but it doesn't fix the real problem. That is my basic complaint. We are treating the symptoms of the disease. My colleagues have heard my analogy before, but I am going to make it again. If you come in to see me, as a practicing physician, and you have fever and chills and cough and body aches and are short of breath, and I give you something to take care of your fever and chills; I give you something to suppress your cough; I actually make you feel better, but I don't diagnosis the fact that there is a pneumonia in your lung, you are going to get better for a little while and then you are going to get really sick. Then you come back. I have treated your symptoms the first time, and then I treat your pneumonia and I get you over that. Then I don't follow up after that to see what the real cause of the pneumonia is, which was a little tumor in your lung that caused blockage which caused the pneumonia. If I continue to treat symptoms, all I do is delay the time in which we get to the final fix for your problem. My analogy is I think that is what we are doing. I believe we have not been thorough enough. The intentions are great, but I don't think we have been thorough enough. I understand foodborne illnesses. I have treated a lot of them. I have had a lot of them. When I was in Iraq for 30 days, I had it for most of the time I was there.

The other question this has raised is we can't keep doing this. We can't afford to keep doing this. We have more than enough money at the USDA and the FDA to do everything you want to do in this bill--more than enough. That is one of the things the American people are asking of us. We are going to make this point on a food safety bill, and I am fine with the heat I will take from the groups and the press on it, because I think the underlying principle is more important. It is easy to pass a bill that looks as if it does something. And even if it does something, if it passed on what we are going to spend when we don't address what we are spending wisely, we will never get out of the jam we put our kids in.

To Senator Durbin's point: Yes, it is an authorization bill. The Senator from Illinois and Senator Harkin, as well as every member of my caucus and every member of your caucus, get a letter the first of every Congress saying I would absolutely object to any bill that increases authorizations in this Congress that are not offset with a reduction in less important, less priority items. I offered to do that to the majority leader. I offered to give that to him 2\1/2\ weeks ago. He hung up the phone on me; wouldn't even say goodbye. I said, I will give you a list. How about the $500 million the U.S. Department of Agriculture pays out to dead farmers in crop payments--to dead farmers who have been dead 6, 7, 8 years, still paying crop payments. We have plenty of money to pay for it. We don't want to do the hard work of getting rid of the things we should.

What America is screaming for now is they want food safety, but they want security for their kids as well. If we continue this bad habit of ignoring the actual idea that there is a limitation on how much we can spend, we will never solve any of the critical problems, whether we have clean food or not.

I do honor my two colleagues who are in the Chamber. They are men of great

intent, honest intent, caring hearts, but I disagree on how we have gone about this. This isn't the first time I have heard the wonderful eloquence of Senator Durbin. He is great at what he says and how he says it. He is a very bright man. He makes his case well. But there are important things in this country that we are ignoring, and this bill is an example of it.

Why in the world won't we fix the real problem? Why won't we ask--you know, the one thing that should happen--it amazes me. There is not a hearing scheduled on why it took 10 years to have an egg safety standard. We have allowed this. We have allowed it.

The other point I wish to make is, yes, the money has to get appropriated. I agree with that. But we are going to spend this money. Senator Durbin, we are going to spend it, aren't we?

Does the Senator have every intent to make sure it is appropriated?

So wait a minute. If we can find the money.

The earlier statements of this will solve the problem, but yet we are not going to find the money. It should be 100 percent that we are going to find the money to do this.

I want to continue my point, if you don't mind. You have always been courteous to me and I will be courteous to you, but I wish to continue for a few minutes and then I will give my colleague the chance to respond.

I will allow that in a few minutes.

If this bill is that important, and the majority whip says we will fund it if we can find the money, rather than saying we are going to fund this because this is a priority--and he has the power to make sure that gets done. Don't let anybody kid you. If he wants this bill funded, he can get it funded. So the point is, either it is going to be funded and it is going to get spent and the argument about authorizations is bogus or there is going to be a real question on whether it is going to get funded. If there is a real question about whether it is going to get funded, then the importance of the issue isn't nearly as great as we have explained it to be, which goes back to an argument we have had for the 6 years I have been here.

I understand you don't agree. I am a hardheaded guy from Oklahoma who actually believes we ought to make hard choices, we ought to downsize the government rather than grow it; and when we have an issue such as food safety, what we ought to do is hold accountable the agencies--let me say it again--we ought to hold accountable the agencies, because I am not sure that we don't have enough rules now. What I think we have is not enough effectiveness of the agencies and the dollars they spend. With the exception of foreign inspections, which I fully support--I fully support--anybody who wants to sell food in this country ought to pay for the inspections and we ought to be able to certify that it is safe. I have no problem with that. There are a lot of components of this bill I agree with. But I refuse to agree to a unanimous consent request until we start looking at the real problems underlying not just the FDA and USDA but the Pentagon, Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice. The waste in this government and our refusal to look at that waste and eliminate it so we can do good things is one of the reasons--not the only reason, one of the reasons--we find ourselves $13.4 trillion in debt.

Ideally, how would we go about this? Because one of the complaints is: Coburn, you stop things in their tracks. How would I have done it differently? So I think I owe you an explanation. First of all, the tomatoes were never contaminated. They were thought to be contaminated. It was the jalapenos. So we, our agencies, identified falsely a food that wasn't contaminated. So the agency is responsible for the $350 million cost for the tomatoes. That is a very important point. The incompetency of the agency cost $350 million, which is a very different story than my colleague from Illinois talked about. It was jalapeno peppers.

So how should we go about this? Before we do one other thing on food safety, every one of those agencies ought to know we are looking over their backs all the time. That is the first thing. We should have routine oversight hearings on the appropriate committees three to four times a year. The second thing we ought to do is we ought to say, GAO, we want to know everybody who has anything to do with the quality of food in this country as far as a Federal agency and we want to know their line responsibilities, we want to know their authorities, we want to know X, Y, and Z, and their effectiveness. Because a GAO study at the Department of Agriculture, as well as the FDA, says they are incompetent at most of this stuff. I will be happy to give my colleagues the quotes. They lack the competency to carry out--how else do you explain that the FDA cost the State of Florida $350 million by falsely claiming that tomatoes weren't any good? That is incompetence. There is no excuse for it. There was no hearing held to hold them accountable. It is ignored in this bill.

So how would we go about it? We would find out everybody who has anything to do with food safety. Then we would do what Senator Durbin wants to do. We would eliminate the duplication. We would make one line authority: This agency is responsible for all the food safety in this country. That is a marvelous goal, Senator Durbin. This bill delays that happening. He is on to the right thing.

We need to get there, I agree. But when you go to Piggly Wiggly or Homeland, as we have in Oklahoma, and you go to the freezer section and buy a pizza for Friday night when--in Oklahoma, you are going to play dominos after high school football is over. If you buy a cheese pizza, the Department of Agriculture is responsible for that. But if you buy a pepperoni pizza, it is the FDA. I may have them reversed. I do have them reversed. The FDA is responsible for cheese pizzas. How does that make sense?

It is a symptom of the disease in Washington. First of all, it is stupid. Second of all, it is inefficient. Third of all, it guarantees the two agencies are not going to be talking to each other.

The Food and Drug Administration and the USDA have--I think my number is correct; I may be wrong--187 agreements for how they work across the field. Except you know what happened with regard to the egg situation. Nobody paid attention to the agreements. We have the rules. USDA did not tell the FDA. Then, finally, we have an egg producer--the State of Iowa has done tons of stuff to say this guy's quality is poor. Did USDA do anything about it? No. Did the FDA do anything about it? No.

USDA knew there was a problem. It did not need any more inspections. They knew there was a problem. They did not communicate it to the FDA as per their protocol.

What do we have going on here? We have a mess. As well-intentioned as this bill is and as hard as the Senators have worked on it on both sides of the aisle, it does not fix the cancer in the lung that caused the pneumonia that caused the fever, cough, chills, and malaise of the patient. Until we start drilling down to get to the real problems, the real issues of food safety, we are going to spend a lot of money. We are going to create a whole lot more regulations. We are going to have another 200-plus page bill.

What we ought to say is, time out. Let's do some things. Let's have a one-page bill that can pass by UC today that says we are going to do safety inspections on foreign foods. Done. We can do it. That takes care of our foreign food.

A good portion of our seafood is imported. It is farm raised. It is important. We can do that tomorrow. We can have sanctions and penalties and criminal penalties for Federal bureaucrats who do not follow the rules of their own agencies.

Everything was in place on the egg situation. We did not execute. We did not carry the ball down the field. Here is what we know about the DeCoster Egg Farms. They are a habitual violator. They have had eight known run-

ins or citations from State and Federal regulators. They were designated by the State of Iowa as a ``habitual violator.'' Robert Reich called the state of the farms simply atrocious.

USDA inspections--I have a copy of the inspections--routinely noted unsafe and unsanitary conditions without communicating any of those concerns to the FDA.

What we had was a failure to execute. It was seen. It was known. What we had in place did not work. But this bill does not fix that. It does not fix that.

I have treated a lot of people with toxic e. coli in my life. That is what causes kidney failure. Salmonella hardly ever does that. It is not a fun disease to have. There is nothing in this bill that says we are going to prioritize pathogens. You see, e. coli, compared to all the rest of the pathogens, is much more important in terms of hospitalization, death, morbidity, and mortality. So any food safety bill ought to work on the most ravaging problem first, not treat them all the same. Yersinia pestis, shigella, and salmonella cause enteritis, that is true. Rarely will you have long-term effects from those. But from toxic e. coli, it is a whole different actor.

We ought to prioritize what we do in food safety through the food safety problems that cause the major problems. We do not do that.

I know I have disappointed my colleague from Illinois. I know he has worked hard on this bill. We have some very stark philosophical differences about how to make the government work better. I hope through the next few years to convince him more often than not to go in a different direction.

I know Senator Harkin's heart is one of the softest and best in our body. If somebody has a problem, I don't care what it is, he is interested in it. For disappointing my colleague, I sincerely apologize. For standing on my principles and what I believe, I do not. I do not see a great future for our country if we do not start changing the way we do things, whether it is drilling down and looking at what the real problems are with the agencies and doing the appropriate oversight and taking priorities and getting rid of things that do not work and making things that do work work better.

I worry about my grandkids, and I worry about all of our grandkids. With them at $43,702 today per man, woman, and child in this country, we cannot do it anymore. I am not going to do it anymore. I will be as compliant as I can be living within my principles, but I am just not going there. For that, I apologize. I apologize for disappointing my colleagues, but I sincerely regret we could not have solved some of these problems along the way.

I yield the floor and yield to the Senator for a question, if he wishes.

Madam President, I appreciate the Senator's offer, but I cannot do that. I also want him to know that this bill is not going to solve the problem of that gentleman from Owasso, OK. This bill is not going to solve that situation because we are not fixing the real problem.

Madam President, again, if I truly felt this bill was going to solve those problems, I would be out here supporting it. I do not think so. We have an inherent disagreement.

The Senator from Illinois can file a cloture motion any time he wants to proceed to this bill. He can file it today, and we can have a cloture vote next week--we are not going to be doing anything next week anyway--and we can go to the bill. File the cloture motion, if that is how he feels about the bill and he thinks I am dead wrong. File the cloture motion, get the votes, and do it.

What we are hearing is we want it to pass in a short period of time so there cannot be the real debate there needs to be on the problems in this country on food safety. That is what we just heard.

We have been talking about this issue. We could have been here tomorrow debating this bill. The fact is, they did not file a cloture motion. They filed cloture motions 179 other times this Congress, more than any other Congress in the history, and the vast majority of them less than 24 hours after the bill was introduced.

If the Senator really wants to have the debate, put the bill on the floor, file cloture, and have the debate. I will debate this for 30 hours.

Washington is great about saying they are fixing things. They are great about passing bills. They are not great about fixing things because they fix the symptoms, not the real disease. That is the problem with this bill. It does not drill down and fix the real disease.

My hope is that we can fix the real disease and that we will have the legitimate, tough hearings on why and how and what is needed to be changed in the agencies, not more regulations, not more money, but holding the agencies accountable, which we have not done. That is how Washington works. If there is a problem, we do not look at what we are doing already, we just create an answer for what we think needs to be done rather than holding people accountable. That is why we have a $3.9 trillion budget. That is why our kids are bankrupt or getting ready to be because we continue to make the same mistakes.

I do not apologize for my principles on this issue. If, in fact, we will ever get to where we fix the real problems in the Congress, my colleague will find me as docile and compliant as any other Member of the body. But do not

tell me to treat pneumonia with an aspirin because that is exactly what we are doing with this bill.

Madam President, if the Senator will yield, I would just say that I think we ought to fix the real problems. By fixing the symptoms, we delay the time in which we fix the real problems, and I think that is what we are doing.

I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I will not object if the Senator changes the proposed agreement to say that the only amendments in order, other than the committee-reported substitute, will be these three: Harkin-Enzi substitute amendment, which is fully offset and has been agreed to by both managers, which will be agreed to as original text for the purpose of further amendment; the Harkin-Enzi technical amendment; and the Tester amendment in regard to small farms.

I would not need one because the bill would already be offset.

I thank the leader.

I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 15 minutes.

I have no problem.

Mr. President, there is nobody in this country who doesn't want our food to be safe. There is no question, we all rely on the intent that the vast majority of food is safe in this country. There is no question that we have some problems with food safety. But the biggest problem we have is in fixing the symptoms of the problem rather than the problem itself.

I hope America will pay attention to this. Ask yourself why it took the Food and Drug Administration 10 years to give us an egg safety standard and that no oversight committee of either the House or the Senate, through the previous 10 years, held an oversight hearing to ask why it has taken 10 years to get that egg safety standard. It came out 10 days afterwards, coincidentally, to the salmonella infection we have recently seen.

As a practicing physician who has treated Shigella, Salmonella, Yersinia pestis, Campylobacter, and Listeria monocytogenes, which are infectious gastrointestinal bacterial diseases that can come from food, I want it to be safe. What I want more than that is for the organization that is supposed to keep it safe to do its job. The problem with this bill, besides it not being paid for, is it doesn't fix the real problem.

The American public should know, if you go to the grocery store anywhere in this country and buy a pepperoni pizza, the FDA is responsible for food safety. But if you buy a cheese pizza, it is the USDA. How does that make any sense to anybody in America?

What happened on the farms in Iowa, as far as eggs, is the USDA knew there was a problem, but they didn't tell the FDA because the FDA is only responsible for the egg once it gets out of the chicken. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It was then shipped and was the responsibility of the FDA.

This bill doesn't address any of those problems. As we look to solve a very critical and real problem--and I acknowledge Senator Durbin's work on this and that of our chairman and ranking member. I had a staff member at every meeting they had raising these same objections. We now have a bill that will cost the American public $1.5 billion over the next 5 years that doesn't fix the real problem.

The real problem is the lack of focus of the agencies to do their job. It does not eliminate the crossover and lack of consistency. If you buy red meat in the store, you only have to trust one agency. But if you buy an egg, you have to trust two. If you buy a salad or lettuce, you have to trust two. They are not talking to one another. There is nothing in this bill that makes them do that.

What we have done is we have created a lot of new regulations, with a lot of money, without solving the real problem. The only way we get to the real problem is to have the FDA up here once a week for the next 4 weeks and have the USDA up here once a week for the next 4 weeks, talking about these critical crossover issues.

In the bill, it actually states that nothing in this act or an amendment made by this act shall be construed to alter the jurisdiction between the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of Health and Human Services. In other words, there is a prohibition to alter the responsibility so we might have safe food--in other words, to hold one agency accountable, rather than two so one can point the finger at the other. We had a House hearing today on the egg recall, and the fact is that is what happened. USDA knew there were problems. But the FDA didn't know there were problems until after somebody got sick.

So we create a high level of additional regulation, a high level of various inspections--and I am not against inspections. I eat salad like the rest of us. Sometimes I am not accused of being human, but, in fact, I consume the same food everybody else does. I don't want to get sick from it. But we can't continue to pass bills that pile on regulations that cost the American people $1.5 billion and don't fix the real problem. That is the problem. My objection is it is not paid for.

I will hear the objection that it is an authorizing bill. Oh, really. It is just an authorizing bill. So that means there is not any money going to be spent? Then we aren't passing the bill to do what we want it to do. Because if we say we are not responsible for spending another $1.5 billion, then there is no problem. It is not spending money. If it is not spending money, it is not going to do anything. But if it is spending money, we ought to decrease the priority somewhere else within the waste of the USDA--which there are billions--and within the FDA, which has tons of properties they are not using that could pay for this bill easily. We ought to eliminate the things that are not working.

So I want our food to be safe. As a practicing physician, I know the public health aspects of this bill. But I refuse to go forward when we continue to make the same mistakes that have given us a $1.4 trillion deficit and have given us lack of control and oversight of the bureaucracies. The biggest thing is, we are not holding anybody accountable for this because we will pass this. Then, the next time there is a food problem, in terms of contaminated food, we will pass something else. In between times, there will not be the first oversight hearing to say: What did we do that didn't work and show us a result that works. Is it efficient, effective, and did it improve the safety of the food? We will not do that. We will just react and pass another bill.

I am through passing bills that don't solve the real problems. I am through spending the next two generations' money, when we can't make the priority choices. The fact that we have refused to say we are going to eliminate something that is very low priority to be able to have a food safety bill, then that tells the American people we are not up to the task of getting us out of our problems.

I know everybody in this body wants safe food--even me. I am not tired of taking the hits for holding up this bill. We can't be perfect on food, but we can be a whole lot better. This bill can solve some of the problems, but it is not complete. It hasn't looked at the levels it needs to straighten out the bureaucracy on food safety. It hasn't eliminated the overlap. Nobody with any common sense says you will have pizzas in the grocery store, one controlled by the USDA and one by the

Mr. President, today I have introduced two separate bills, S. 3790 and S. 3791, intended to hold members of Congress and other Federal employees to the same tax rules Washington imposes on the rest of America.

In 2009, the Internal Revenue Service, IRS, found nearly 100,000 civilian Federal employees were delinquent on their Federal income taxes, owing over $1 billion in unpaid Federal income taxes. When considering retirees and military, more than 282,000 Federal employees owed $3.3 billion in taxes.

These bills are not intended to single out the majority of Federal employees who work hard and pay their taxes, but members of Congress and Federal employees have a clear obligation to pay their Federal income taxes. Legislators and government employees should not be exempt from the laws they write and enforce. The very nature of Federal employment and the concept inherent to ``public service'' demands those being paid by taxpayers contribute their fair share of taxes. They should lead by example.

Tax delinquency rate among congressional employees exceeds the rate of all returns filed nationwide. Taxpayers are fed up with those in Washington living under a different set of rules than the

rest of America. At a time when Congress may allow taxes to increase on some or even all Americans, Congress should not expect other Americans to pay more taxes when they are not even paying the taxes they owe under the rates they set themselves.

The bills I am introducing are fair to Federal employees and other taxpayers. Both bills carefully reach only those paid by the taxpayers who have willfully neglected to pay their incomes taxes.

The legislation excludes elected officials or Federal employees who made oversights in their personal taxes but willfully agree to pay them, or if they are challenging the delinquency in court or through the IRS. Instead, it targets those who willfully neglect or avoid the pay their taxes.

Specifically, it excludes Federal employees from termination and Members of Congress from repercussions if the individual is currently paying the taxes, interest, and penalties owed to IRS under an installment plan; the individual and the IRS have worked out a compromise on the amount of taxes, interest and penalties owed and the compromise amount agreed upon is being repaid to IRS; the individual has not exhausted his or her right to due process under the law; or the individual filed a joint return and successfully contends he or she should not be fully liable for the taxes, interest, and/or penalties owed because of something the other party to the return did or did not do.

The first bill requires all Federal employees to be current on their Federal income taxes or be fired from their jobs.

The second bill requires Members of Congress to report any outstanding tax liability. If the Member possesses a tax liability, this bill would require the appropriate congressional committee to launch an ethics investigation and the Member's salary would be reduced in accordance with the amount he or she owes.

These bills require no more of members of Congress or Federal employees than is required of other Americans.

It should be a priority of this Congress to pass these solutions as a way to guarantee equal treatment under the law. This is especially important at this time when our national debt exceeds $13.5 trillion since this legislation is estimated to reduce the Federal deficit by at least $3 billion.

I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will support these bills to demonstrate their commitment to requiring Congress to live under the same rules it imposes on the rest of the country. It is time for every member of Congress to pay their taxes rather than simply spending the taxes of others.

Mr. President, today I have introduced two separate bills, S. 3790 and S. 3791, intended to hold members of Congress and other Federal employees to the same tax rules Washington imposes on the rest of America.

In 2009, the Internal Revenue Service, IRS, found nearly 100,000 civilian Federal employees were delinquent on their Federal income taxes, owing over $1 billion in unpaid Federal income taxes. When considering retirees and military, more than 282,000 Federal employees owed $3.3 billion in taxes.

These bills are not intended to single out the majority of Federal employees who work hard and pay their taxes, but members of Congress and Federal employees have a clear obligation to pay their Federal income taxes. Legislators and government employees should not be exempt from the laws they write and enforce. The very nature of Federal employment and the concept inherent to ``public service'' demands those being paid by taxpayers contribute their fair share of taxes. They should lead by example.

Tax delinquency rate among congressional employees exceeds the rate of all returns filed nationwide. Taxpayers are fed up with those in Washington living under a different set of rules than the

rest of America. At a time when Congress may allow taxes to increase on some or even all Americans, Congress should not expect other Americans to pay more taxes when they are not even paying the taxes they owe under the rates they set themselves.

The bills I am introducing are fair to Federal employees and other taxpayers. Both bills carefully reach only those paid by the taxpayers who have willfully neglected to pay their incomes taxes.

The legislation excludes elected officials or Federal employees who made oversights in their personal taxes but willfully agree to pay them, or if they are challenging the delinquency in court or through the IRS. Instead, it targets those who willfully neglect or avoid the pay their taxes.

Specifically, it excludes Federal employees from termination and Members of Congress from repercussions if the individual is currently paying the taxes, interest, and penalties owed to IRS under an installment plan; the individual and the IRS have worked out a compromise on the amount of taxes, interest and penalties owed and the compromise amount agreed upon is being repaid to IRS; the individual has not exhausted his or her right to due process under the law; or the individual filed a joint return and successfully contends he or she should not be fully liable for the taxes, interest, and/or penalties owed because of something the other party to the return did or did not do.

The first bill requires all Federal employees to be current on their Federal income taxes or be fired from their jobs.

The second bill requires Members of Congress to report any outstanding tax liability. If the Member possesses a tax liability, this bill would require the appropriate congressional committee to launch an ethics investigation and the Member's salary would be reduced in accordance with the amount he or she owes.

These bills require no more of members of Congress or Federal employees than is required of other Americans.

It should be a priority of this Congress to pass these solutions as a way to guarantee equal treatment under the law. This is especially important at this time when our national debt exceeds $13.5 trillion since this legislation is estimated to reduce the Federal deficit by at least $3 billion.

I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will support these bills to demonstrate their commitment to requiring Congress to live under the same rules it imposes on the rest of the country. It is time for every member of Congress to pay their taxes rather than simply spending the taxes of others.

Mr. President, there has been much debate over the past year regarding ``secret holds'' stalling the consideration of presidential appointments or slowing expedited passage of legislation by the Senate. Lost in this discussion has been an issue that should be a far greater concern for taxpayers--``secret spending.''

This body routinely attempts to pass hundreds of bills costing tens of billions of dollars or more in secret without debate, votes, or amendments. It does so using an unofficial process not found in Senate rule books known as the ``hotline.''

The U.S. Senate is often referred to as ``the world's greatest deliberative body.'' This is because Senate rules grant each of the Senate's 100 members rights that cannot be overridden by a simple majority, including the right to require debate before a bill is considered or passed.

Yet, the Senate practice known as the ``hotline'' often prevents and precludes debate. In fact, Senators often do not even read the bills being passed using the hotline.

The term ``hotline'' or practice of ``hotlining'' bills does not appear in the Senate's official rules, but this procedure is utilized nearly every day the Senate is in session. A hotline is an informal term for an alert sent to members of the Senate giving notice of a proposed agreement to allow a bill or resolution to be approved by the Senate without debate or amendment. A measure that is ``hotlined'' is recorded in the Congressional Record as a being agreed to by unanimous consent, UC.

Hotlines occur at the discretion of the Majority Leader in consultation with the Minority Leader. The leader's office contacts each Senate office with a message on a special alert line called the ``hotline,'' which provides information on what bill or bills the leader is seeking to pass through unanimous consent. Hotline notices are only given to Senate offices.

If there is an objection to the bill being ``hotlined,'' a senator is asked to call the leader's office and give notice of intent to object to the bill being passed by unanimous consent whenever such a request may occur. The process of notifying the leader's office of an objection to ``hotline'' is informally referred to as a ``hold.'' In practice, instead of requiring explicit unanimous consent to pass a bill, the ``hotline'' process only requires a lack of dissent.

In many instances, bills are hotlined for which no text, description, or budget estimates have been made publicly available. In some Senate offices, the ``hotline,'' or request for unanimous consent to pass a measure, may never even reach senators, and the decision to allow a bill to be approved without debate is determined by staff, who do not even read the bill.

When a bill is ``hotlined,'' the public is not informed and neither is the media. Only the offices of senators are alerted. It is therefore a form of ``secret spending.'' Much like a ``hold'' can be kept from the public, so can the ``hotlining'' of bills, which can cost billions of dollars.

The vast majority of legislation approved by the Senate is done so via the ``hotline'' under the guise of unanimous consent. According to the Congressional Research Service, CRS, ``in

the last ten Congresses, 110th-101st, an average of 93 percent of approved measures did not receive roll call votes'' and ``in the 111th Congress through February 1, 2010, 94 percent of approved measures were approved without a roll call vote.''

Every time the Senate passes legislation without full and open debate, the American people are done a disservice. The Senate should not pass a new bill if its text, purpose, and budget estimate are not available to the general public.

Taxpayers and the media should have the right to read and analyze legislation prior to its passage. Senators, likewise, have a responsibility to know the contents of legislation prior to granting consent for its passage. Additionally, hotlining bills take away the accountability for legislation approved by the Senate. Since there is no recorded vote for most hotlined bills, senators have no culpability for most of the legislation approved by the Senate.

The lack of of an objection from unelected staff should not be sufficient to pass legislation that could spend millions or even billions of dollars and significantly alter U.S. laws.

In many cases, if a senator objects to a hotline request--even if the objection is merely to be granted sufficient time to study and review the text, cost, and impact of the legislation--special interest groups will immediately label the senator who is trying to be diligent as an undemocratic obstructionist.

But the truth is neither democracy nor taxpayers are served well by this process. ``Hotlining'' bills enable the hasty passage of legislation without the public's knowledge or feedback. This process benefits politicians and special interests rather than taxpayers.

Senators have an obligation to their constituents to do their jobs, which includes reading the bills and understanding the impact of legislation passed by Congress.

Today I am introducing the ``Stop Secret Spending Resolution'' along with Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri. This bi-partisan legislation would provide transparency and accountability by prohibiting a bill or joint resolution from passing without a vote until the hotline notifications are available on a public website for at least 72 hours. The public notice much include: a cost analysis completed by the non- partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO); the number of new programs created by the legislation; and the actual legislative text.

The new 72 hour rule would not apply to noncontroversial item such as post office namings and sense of the Senate resolutions; nominations; any legislation relating to an imminent or ongoing emergency; or a unanimous consent request made when a quorum of the Senate is present.

Voters are demanding Congress bring greater accountability to the legislative process. Ending secret spending represents a meaningful first step to guaranteeing increased accountability and transparency by providing sufficient time for the public to review legislation before it is passed by Congress.

I ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their support of this legislation.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the nomination of Ms. Jane Stranch to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. I am concerned about Ms. Stranch's nomination to the court of appeals because, like many recent judicial nominees, she embraces the use of foreign law by the courts, which is contradictory to the Constitution, the judicial oath, and the intent of our Founders.

I reached this conclusion after carefully reviewing her record, her hearing testimony, and her responses to written questions following her hearing. For example, in response to my question asking her whether it is ever proper for judges to rely on foreign or international laws or decisions in determining the meaning of the Constitution, Ms. Stranch admitted she believes using foreign law in limited circumstances is appropriate.

First, she stated that she is ``aware of only a very few cases in which [the Supreme Court] has referenced non-U.S law in a majority opinion, including Roper [v Simmons],'' but, then she continued: ``In these few cases, references to foreign law were made for such purposes as extrapolating on societal norms and standards of decency, refuting contrary assertions or confirming American views. None of these cases used foreign or international law to interpret a constitutional text. The Supreme Court's restraint on this issue is a model for the lower courts.'' Ms. Stanch's misleading answer fails to recognize that, by looking to foreign law to determine whether the imposition of the death penalty for those under 18 has become ``unusual,'' the Court is allowing foreign law to influence its interpretation of a constitutional text. Her statement that the Court is merely confirming American views or refuting contrary assertions is disturbing because foreign countries' views on the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution are irrelevant to what our Founders wrote and believed. Also, Ms. Stranch commended the Supreme Court for its ``restraint'' in its use of foreign law when an appropriate answer would be to condemn the Court for using foreign law at all. Her answer implies that she believes using foreign law is appropriate in some cases, as long as it is limited use.

Ms. Stranch compounded my concern about her views on the appropriate use of foreign law when she responded to my next question asking under what circumstances she would consider foreign law when interpreting the Constitution. She responded that, as a judge, foreign law ``would be used as confirmatory only'' in her cases. This answer suggests a judicial activist approach where she will use foreign law to confirm whatever result she deems appropriate. Ms. Stranch further states that because ``references [to foreign law] are so rare at the Supreme Court level [it] suggests even rarer usage in the lower courts.'' Allowing that the lower court should use foreign law rarely is deeply concerning. Judges should not be using foreign law at all.

Ms. Stranch's answers to questions relating to the proper interpretation of the eighth amendment are also problematic. In response to a question asking how she would determine what are the ``evolving standards of decency'' with regard to the eighth amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, she responded by citing the language in the opinion that the Court has ``established the propriety and affirmed the necessity of referring to the `evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society' to determine which punishments are so disproportionate as to be cruel and unusual.'' But, she then continues stating: ``The Court held that the beginning point of that determination is its review of objective indicia of consensus as expressed by enactments of legislatures. The exercise of the Court's independent judgment regarding the proportionality of the punishment followed.'' While she is merely reciting what the Supreme Court did in the Roper opinion, she fails to acknowledge what is concerning about the Court's opinion.

First, it is concerning that when the Court in Roper was looking to ``objective indicia of consensus as expressed by enactments of legislatures,'' it was not only looking at other States' laws--as opposed to the law of the State in question--but also to foreign legislatures' laws. Rather than look to other legislatures for ``evolving standards,'' the proper analysis in this case would have been to look to the meaning of the text when the Founders wrote it. Thus, the Court should be determining whether capital punishment for persons under 18 was considered ``cruel and unusual'' when the Constitution was written. To do otherwise embraces an evolving and ever changing Constitution. Ms. Stranch fails to acknowledge this concern. Second, Ms. Stranch admits that the ``exercise of the Court's independent judgment regarding the proportionality of the punishment followed,'' but does not acknowledge that a Court should not be making these types of ``independent'' determinations.

Ms. Stranch's answers on foreign law are concerning because she not only misstates how the Supreme Court has used foreign law in its cases, but she also refuses to pledge not to use foreign law herself. In fact, she believes that ``rare'' usage of foreign law by the lower courts is appropriate. For these reasons, I will vote against her nomination and urge my colleagues to do the same.

I also would note that I believe Ms. Stranch is just one of many concerning nominees by this administration who embrace the use of foreign law by judges. This trend first became apparent with the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor last year. Prior to her hearing, Judge Sotomayor stated that outlawing the use of foreign law would mean judges would have to ``close their minds to good ideas'' and that it is her ``hope'' that judges will continue to consult foreign law when interpreting our Constitution and statutes. She also said ``I share more the

ideas of Justice Ginsburg in thinking, in believing that unless American courts are more open to discussing the ideas raised by foreign cases, and by international cases, that we are going to lose influence in the world.''

Similarly, Ms. Elena Kagan asserted that ``it may be proper for judges to consider foreign law sources in ruling on constitutional questions.'' She further stated that judges can get ``good ideas'' from the decisions of foreign courts. For this reason among others, I opposed both Supreme Court nominees.

Even lower court nominees, such as Third Circuit Judge Thomas Vanaskie, have embraced the trend. In his testimony, Judge Vanaskie implied that he believed the Supreme Court used foreign law correctly in the much criticized cases of Lawrence v Texas and Roper v Simmons, and said the ``opinions of international tribunals and foreign courts may be relevant'' when interpreting our Constitution. Because of his statements on the use of foreign law and his expansive view of the commerce clause, I opposed his nomination.

Looking to foreign law is a tool of activist judges who seek to reach the outcomes they desire, based on their personal sympathies and prejudices, rather than on the law. As Justice Antonin Scalia aptly described it, the Court is merely ``look[ing] over the heads of the crowd and pick[ing] out its friends.'' Further, judges who do so violate their judicial oath. A circuit court judge must swear to ``faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon her as a judge under the Constitution and laws of the United States.'' The oath requires our judges to evaluate cases based on U.S. laws and the U.S. Constitution, not the decisions of foreign countries who do not treasure the same liberties and fundamental freedoms enshrined in our Constitution. The decisions of foreign countries should have no bearing on an American judge's decisions.

This progressive trend of looking to foreign law is deeply disturbing and is something I hope my colleagues will consider when voting on this nomination and the administration will consider when nominating individuals in the future.