Floor Statements

Mr. President, I am here to talk about the nominee, Ms. Kagan, for the Supreme Court, but I thought I would put it in the context of how I view what we are doing.

As a physician, a father, and a grandfather taking a look at where we are as a nation, it is very worrisome to me. The 62 years I have lived have been fraught with great opportunity, great challenges, but never with a fear that what we have in this country may not last. I have to admit to my colleagues that I have that fear now. And it is not an unfounded fear. You see, this year we will borrow almost $1.6 trillion from our grandchildren. We will borrow in excess of $4 billion a day-- money we don't have. At this moment, we owe $13.35 trillion. No question, we are the biggest economy in the world, being fast caught by other large economies.

The uniqueness of the American experiment could have been predicted by those who studied republics because freedom and liberty were the basis for such an explosion in growth and wealth and freedom and standard of living. The poor in our country live far in excess of half of the world's populations because of the great republic we are.

I believe we have a short period of time to right the ship for our country. We have large disagreements in this body on how we do that, and others' ideas have as much value as mine. But it is not debatable the kind of trouble we are in as a nation. It is indisputable. We have a mountain of debt, and we are going to have interest costs that are going to chew up our freedom and chew up our children's prosperity and opportunity over the years that lie ahead of us.

So we have great responsibility as we place somebody on the Supreme Court. Our constitutional responsibility is to advise and either give consent or not give consent. I have no doubts that my speech on the floor this afternoon will change any Senator's mind. It won't. But what I hope to do is to lay out the questions, as we put Ms. Kagan on the Court, of where we will be with the basis of her philosophy. I have served on the Judiciary Committee for almost 6 years. I have been through four Supreme Court Justice hearings. I have met with four-- actually, more than four--prospective nominees to the Supreme Court, and the responsibility is heavy.

Elections do have consequences. They give the President of the United States the right to appoint, with advice and consent, all the judges in this country, as well as numerous other officials. But none is greater and none is more important than a Supreme Court Justice.

My concern with Ms. Kagan is whether she really believes in what our Constitution says, and by her own words she fails to meet that test. So I think it is time for an extra parameter to be considered in light of the difficulties we face when we give consent for somebody who is going to be in a lifetime position who will, I believe, have negative consequences for our future. And I am going to spell out why I believe that.

Ms. Kagan is a highly qualified woman who has attained much in her young life. She is highly intelligent, highly articulate, and quite pleasant. I believe she did the best job of at least letting us get to see some of what she thinks of any of the Supreme Court nominees we have heard, and I give her credit for that. But what I saw causes me to shake in my boots, and let me tell you why.

Ms. Kagan made two critical statements. She believes Supreme Court precedent trumps the original intent of our Founders. Think about that for a minute. We just heard the Senator from Delaware mention Brown v. Board of Education. Under that philosophy, reaching back to our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, Brown v. Board of Education would never have happened. We would have had ``separate but equal'' had we relied on Supreme Court precedent and not the underlying body of our Constitution.

As I was reading recently, I came across something written by Calvin Coolidge. He is not very often quoted in this body, and for some of that I understand why.

But one of the other things Nominee Kagan did was she refused to embrace natural rights in her testimony before the committee. You see, the whole foundation for our country is based on the fact that the rights we have are not given to us by the Congress of the

United States or the Government of the United States or the Constitution of the United States; they are inherently ours. They are inalienable rights--the right of life, the right of liberty, the right to pursue happiness. We have a government to be a caretaker, to ensure our rights are not infringed upon. So lacking that understanding--and it wasn't just once that she was asked that; she was asked that in terms of Blackstone's principles on the right of an individual to defend their life. She does not embrace that concept. It was not only evident in her plain words that she spoke but in her answers indirectly to other questions.

So we have a Supreme Court nominee who believes that the wisdom of men today, outside of the Constitution, based on precedent, trumps the wisdom that was brought forth by our forefathers in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. And there are other proofs for this that I will go through during my speech to explain.

Listen to what Calvin Coolidge had to say:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is

exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has

made a great deal of progress since 1776; that we have had

new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great

advance over the people of that day, and that we may

therefore very well discard their conclusions for something

more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this

great charter.

Or the Constitution that followed it.

If all men are created equal, that is final.

It can't be improved upon. It can only be lessened.

If all men are endowed with inalienable rights, that is

final.

It cannot be improved upon. It can only be lessened.

If governments derive their just powers from the consent of

the governed, that is final.

The power of the U.S. Government comes from the power we loan to the government as people and citizens of the United States.

No advance, no progress can be made beyond these

propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their

soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed

historically is not forward, but backward toward the time

when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no

rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that

direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary.

Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those

of the Revolutionary fathers.

Well said, Calvin Coolidge. Well said.

So we have before us a judge who said the following to me during our hearing:

To be honest with you, I don't have a view of what are

natural rights, independent of the Constitution.

Oh, really? So we are going to have a Supreme Court Justice who has no view of what our inalienable rights are other than what the Constitution says? Where can that take us? It can take us anywhere she wants to go, outside the bounds of the very liberties we loan to the government to have a civil society.

If you look at the Declaration of Independence, it says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident--

Why aren't they self-evident to her? Why doesn't she hold an opinion on them--

that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by

their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among

these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to

secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men

deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed .

. .

We have inalienable rights. We have natural rights. Yet we are about to put a Justice on the Supreme Court for life who, by her own words, does not have a view of what are natural rights. I don't know anybody who is an adult in this country who doesn't have a view of what they think are their natural rights.

This is a quote from Elena Kagan:

In some cases original intent is unlikely to solve the

question, and that might be because the original intent is

unknowable or might be because we live in a world that's very

different from the world in which the framers lived. In many

circumstances, precedent is the most important thing.

No, that is just the opposite of what Coolidge had to say about the Declaration of Independence, just exactly the opposite. More modern, we got it right. Natural rights do not matter. Our wisdom, our intellect, our arrogance--of a government and the governing body--has more import, has more value, has more to do with what we do today than the wisdom of those inalienable rights and the Constitution that came out of it.

Do you realize that in the Constitution, for every time it gives us a responsibility, it says four or five times what we can't do? Because the Framers were interested, and knowing the condition of men, that we would abandon--our tendency would be to allow the concentration of power to abandon those very principles they put into the Constitution.

What did Madison have to say, just on the general welfare clause of the Constitution? He anticipated the Elena Kagans of this world. He said:

With respect to the words general welfare, I have always

regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected

with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense

would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character

which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its

creators.

You see, that is how we have gotten into trouble as a country. That is why our economic future is not secure--because the Congress has exceeded its authority under a limited Constitution and the courts have failed to rein us in. They have failed to recognize their obligation.

So we are going to have someone who believes that the precedent and wisdom of modern men is much more important than the original intent of our Founders to keep us free, to secure our liberty, to provide our inalienable rights to the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Here is another area. If we read the Constitution and we read where they have set up our judicial system, what they reference, they say:

The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and

equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the

United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made,

under their authority. . . .

They gave no wiggle room for the utilization of foreign law in interpreting the U.S. Constitution--none. Here is Elena Kagan:

It may be proper for judges to consider foreign law sources

in ruling on constitutional questions.

Here is what the Constitution says. Here is what the nominee to the Supreme Court says--exactly opposite of what the Constitution says. In other words, it is OK to use any source of law you want, not the source that the Constitution says you will be bound by in your oath.

Let's take it a step further, same quote: ``Judges can get'' good ideas ``on how to approach legal issues from a decision of a foreign court. It may be proper for judges to consider foreign law sources in ruling on Constitutional questions.''

Here is their oath:

I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as a justice under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.

``Under the laws and the Constitution of the United States'' is not foreign law. That is the U.S. Constitution and our statutes. So as soon as she takes the oath, her very philosophy violates it because she honestly testified that it is fine to use foreign law to interpret our laws and our Constitution.

Again, how did we get in the trouble that we are in today? How did we get that 20 years from now every man, woman, and child in this country is going to be responsible for over $1 million worth of debt? How did we get to the point where $350 billion of waste, fraud, and duplication occurs every year in the Federal Government? How did we get to the point that we can take people's rights away because we deem so in the Congress, in our smart, modern wisdom that lessens liberty and freedom throughout this land?

We do it because we do not use the book, and we don't follow the oath that we are sworn to uphold; that is, the U.S. Constitution and the laws of this land.

Then it comes to the commerce clause. Elena Kagan:

The commerce clause has been interpreted broadly. It's been

interpreted to apply to . . . anything that would

substantially affect interstate commerce.

When asked if a Federal law requiring Americans to eat three fruits and three vegetables every day would be unconstitutional, Ms. Kagan avoided the question by simply saying, ``That would be a dumb law.''

Madison had something different to say:

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

He is talking about us.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If

angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal

controls on government would be necessary. In framing a

government which is to be administered by men over men, the

great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the

government to control the governed; and in the next place

oblige it to control itself.

We have had this vast expansion since the late 1940s in this country in the commerce clause. It started with Wickard v. Filburn. A farmer raising chickens was raising his own wheat. But the Government didn't want him raising his own wheat because they had allotted limits during the 1930s, the Great Depression--limits to what you could grow. So he owns his own land, he has his own chickens, but the Supreme Court said: You can't raise your own feed. You have to buy it from somebody.

So here we started with the Supreme Court ruling and moving in to take away the freedom of an individual farmer to raise his own feed for his own chickens for a greater good--supposedly to control the price and availability of wheat.

What has happened to us since then? Look at the expansion of the commerce clause and how it is moving power away from those who are governed without their consent to a central government in Washington. What does Ms. Kagan complain about during the hearing? That she thinks the Supreme Court may be moving to reverse that--of which she adamantly disagrees. When asked about the Seminole case and the Lopez case, she worried that it moves us back to individual freedom and a more restrictive commerce clause, a commerce clause that says our rights are more important than those of the government.

That goes back to the basis that she doesn't believe we have natural rights. The fundamental question of whether an individual, free in a country, can walk on to the Supreme Court and disavow inalienable rights and natural rights, that is a very dangerous concept because if you don't believe in natural rights, you don't worry about taking them from those who are governed. You don't worry about the Congress taking them from those of the governed.

We are about to move to a point where we are going to put somebody in a lifetime position on the U.S. Supreme Court who believes in foreign law utilization to interpret the issues before it; who believes that precedent trumps original intent of the Founders--in other words, the arrogance is we are much smarter than they were, our wisdom is much better, we are more modern, therefore things have changed, therefore we have to ignore what they have said; that the commerce clause is boundless; even if Congress passes stupid laws, they have the right to do it and there is no obligation on the Court to look at the Constitution and the documents behind it and what our Founding Fathers had to say about the authority and what they intended and meant as they wrote that clause into the Constitution.

Then, finally, one last point. She does not believe in the individual natural right that you have as a person to defend yourself. She wouldn't embrace that--which implies, very rightly so, that the second amendment, even though we now have precedent, is at risk under Elena Kagan as a Supreme Court Justice.

So, summing up, we are going to put somebody on the Court that I see will further the problems we have versus starting to reembrace the principles that made this country great. Are we going to embrace what has gotten us into trouble? Are we going to embrace the $13.34 trillion worth of debt growing at $1.4 trillion to $1.6 trillion today, that is stealing the opportunity of the future? We are. We are going to put her on there, and her wisdom and her vision is very different from our Founders, our Constitution, and our natural rights.

This will be a huge mistake for this country if we want to solve the problems in front of us. As I said, I don't expect anybody to change their vote on the basis of my viewpoint. I will congratulate her for being more honest and open on her testimony than others would because normally we would not find out these things about judges.

With a worried heart, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I have listened to my colleague from California. I am somewhat amazed to think she would imply we don't care about the unemployed. The fact is, we do. I went through the list of the things she mentioned, as did the Senator from Vermont. I was not here in 2001. I was not here in 2003. I was not here when both the wars were initiated. I had no part in any of that. But even had I been, the fact is, we can help two groups of people with this unemployment insurance. There isn't anybody on our side of the aisle who doesn't think we ought to pass extended unemployment benefits. To state or imply that is absolutely absurd. It is not about stalling. The majority leader did not allow one amendment to allow us an opportunity to have a vote on whether we ought to pay for it.

The question isn't whether we help the unemployed. Every time we have offered ways to do so--as a matter of fact, five times it has been rejected that, in fact, our grandchildren should not have to pay for the unemployment benefits of the people who are unemployed today. Five times it has been rejected. Multiple times we have chosen to not do the responsible thing for two groups of people. It is easy to come to the Senate floor and throw darts at people who have a drastic disagreement on where we stand in this country. But to imply that they don't care is out of bounds. The people in Oklahoma who are not getting unemployment checks today I care about just as much as the people who don't have a job who aren't getting one. But there is another group of people whom I am pressed to serve in Oklahoma as well; that is, their children. The assumption that this body can't make the hard choices to eliminate things that are much less important, much more wasteful, an absolute waste of Federal dollars and eliminate those things to pay for unemployment insurance is out of the bounds of reality.

My colleague from California mentioned several times that all the people who are getting these extended benefits have paid into a fund. They paid zero. This is extended benefits. The extended benefits are 100 percent paid for by Federal tax dollars. It is the 26 weeks, the routine unemployment, that is paid for through the unemployment fund. The extended benefits, long-term benefits, don't come from any pot of money except the pot of money of our grandchildren's future.

Let's put that to rest. There is not a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent in this body who does not want these folks to get extended unemployment benefits. We do. The question is, at a time when we are going to borrow $1.6 trillion this year alone against the future of our children, whether maybe we can find $30 billion, that doesn't come anywhere close to the priorities of helping people who are unemployed today. I reject out of hand the idea that we don't have any compassion. The fact is we do.

As a matter of fact, our compassion is both short term and long term. We are thinking about the habits of Congress that continually put the credit card into the machine and borrow against the prosperity and well-being of generations that follow. Let's not have any more talk about the fact that we don't want people to have unemployment. We do. We do want them to have unemployment. Multiple times we offered ways for that. It may, in fact, pass this afternoon or early this evening that we are going to extend them and not pay for it. But as the Senator from California said: It is a defining moment. It certainly is. Is the Federal Government, in this difficult economic situation, going to at least make some small attempt to rein in the $300 billion worth of waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication in the Federal Government? The answer we get is no. Discretionary programs over the last 2 years, not counting the stimulus--we can have the stimulus debate some other time--have risen 19.6 percent, when the average wage went up less than 2 percent. The Federal Government is now twice as big as it was in 1999, not counting the stimulus. We have 6,400 sets of duplicative programs that the body will not touch. They are all designed to do good things for people. They are highly inefficient, highly ineffective. Yet what we will do is not that hard work to get rid of the things that aren't working. We will just charge our children so we can say we took care of unemployment.

Hard times require hard decisions. What we are seeing is the easy way out. The easy way out is to not pay for this. The easy way out is to charge it to our children and grandchildren. There is no difference in the level of compassion. Everybody wants to take care of those who are unemployed. The easy way is to put it on the backs of our children and grandchildren.

The question is, Will we do the right thing for the country? Will we do the best right thing for the country or will we do the easy thing, the politically expedient thing, class envy, ``I am going make somebody look bad because they don't agree with me on the timing of something'' or will we act as a body that will ensure both caring for the now and ensuring the future? It is easy in the Senate to spend money you don't have. The bias is for it. The hard thing is to take and do the best right thing. My colleagues, many on both sides of the aisle, in numerous cases over the last 5\1/2\ years, have too often done the easy thing. We have all these fingers pointing at this administration did this and this administration did this. There are plenty of problems for every administration and every political party to be considered guilty on because too often both groups have done the short-term politically expedient thing rather than the best right thing for the country.

I had, at one of the events that my staff attended this weekend, an individual in Oklahoma who lost his unemployment insurance. He said: You tell Dr. Coburn to be sure and continue to pay for it. I want my unemployment insurance. I need my unemployment. I will not be able to make my house payments unless I get that. But I don't want that to come from my children and grandchildren. I want it to come from the excesses and waste in Washington today.

So there is another viewpoint, even though we hear it is a critically nonpertinent viewpoint. This isn't a partisan issue. This isn't a delaying tactic. This is a real philosophical difference on how we get out of the mess we are in.

A lot of my colleagues are not happy that I am a Republican a lot of times because I go after my party just as much as I go after anybody else's. But the fact is, core principles matter. Go look at the history of republics. The Senator from California talks about a defining moment. The defining moment for the Athenian Republic was when they decided to start spending money they didn't have on things they didn't need.

Here is our option today. The reason we are going to have motions is because we were given no opportunity to amend. That is the only reason we will have motions to suspend the rules. It has nothing to do with a delaying tactic. It has to do with a debate and a Senator's right to offer amendments. The Senator from California would be doing the same thing if the shoe was turned the other way. If she was precluded from offering amendments, she would find a way to offer an amendment, if she believed from a position, a conscientious position that can be defended on the basis of facts. You don't have to agree with it, but you can't deny there are economic factors that should play in how we pay for unemployment insurance.

You can demean us. You can say we are mean. You can say we don't care. But the fact is, none of that is true. It is an absolute untruth.

The defining moment is, Will we embrace the quality that built this country in the first place? That is, being responsible for the problems that are in front of us and not shifting that responsibility to generations that follow. That is what this debate is all about. When we left here for one break, we had agreed with Senator Reid and Senator Levin about extending unemployment insurance. We were told by the Speaker of the House that she wasn't about to set the precedent of starting to pay for unemployment insurance. Why not? When we have a $1.6 trillion deficit, when we have $13.3 trillion worth of debt, when we are mortgaging the future of our children, we are stealing opportunity away from them as we do it, why not? Why not meet the challenges that are in front of us by responding in a way that says meeting people's needs today is important, and it is important we not take away from the needs of the future as we do so. Yet we are lectured that it is a partisan debate.

There is nothing partisan about this. In my soul, I want to help everybody out there who is unemployed and facing the tough times. But also in my soul is that I do not want to mortgage the future of any more American children, when we have tremendous amounts of waste, fraud, and duplication that can easily be eliminated.

One of the motions I am going to offer is to cut $40 billion from the Federal Government. America, tell me what part of this you do not agree with. The fact is, we are going to ask that we quit wasting money on real property. We spend $8 billion a year maintaining property we do not want. We have $80 billion worth of empty buildings. It is costing us $8 billion a year. Should we continue to spend that $8 billion or should we not spend that $8 billion and take that $8 billion and pay for unemployment insurance?

How about collecting unpaid taxes from Federal employees and Members of Congress. That is $3 billion. As to currently hired Federal employees, it is already adjudicated they owe $3 billion. I think we ought to pay it back. I do not think we ought to borrow from the future of our children and grandchildren because we do not have the guts to say: Pay up. Quit cheating the Federal Government, employee of the Federal Government. That is a small number in terms of the number of employees, but that is a big number: $3 billion. Let's have them pay up.

Why is it we are not going to eliminate $8 billion in bonuses to Federal contractors who did not meet the requirements to get a bonus, yet we gave the bonus anyway? Why not eliminate that rather than charge this to our children? Tell me why you will not vote for that? Do you think we ought to be paying bonuses to people who do not deserve them, contractors? It is $6 billion over a 4-year period in just the

Defense Department alone. But you do not want to get rid of that? You would rather charge the money to our kids than make the hard choice of alienating some defense contractor or some government contractor because they got something they did not deserve in the past, when somebody is unemployed who deserves to get unemployment insurance? I do not understand it. Or eliminating nonessential government travel--one of the things President Obama wants to do. We spend billions--$14.8 billion, in excess of that--on Federal travel. We are some of the worst abusers. Yet we will not discipline ourselves and set an example that we can use a teleconference rather than getting on an airplane and going somewhere--a video teleconference. At a time such as this, when we are having an economic problem, we will not make the hard decision to make tough choices that are maybe not as fun, maybe not as easy. What I have found is a video teleconference is a whole lot easier than travel, but we will not make that hard choice. We are not going to tell the agencies they are going to have to do it.

We will not even put on a Web site all the times we violate our own rules on pay-go. On February 12, we passed a law. It used to be a rule in the Senate, but now we passed a law. It is called pay-go. It says you cannot have new spending unless you pay for it. Since February 12, when the President signed that law, we have violated it to the tune of $223 billion, where we said: Oh, time out. The pay-go statute does not apply. We don't have to pay for it. We don't have to eliminate all the inefficiencies, all the duplication. We don't have to go after any fraud. We are just going to charge it to our children and grandchildren.

Where is the integrity in that? Where is the integrity? Where is the character in that? Where is the courage to do the tough thing that accomplishes both helping the people who are unemployed but helping our kids and helping our Nation? There is not any. There is none. It is the easy way out.

Lest you think I am making up this stuff, let me give you some examples of Federal duplication. I will just give you four easy examples. We have 70 different government programs--70 different sets of bureaucracies--that spend billions of dollars a year, and on none of them is there a metric to measure whether they are effective to help people with food who are hungry. Why 70? Why across six or seven different agencies? Why not one or two programs keenly focused with metrics on saying: Are we feeding them or not? Why not eliminate 68 sets of bureaucracy and overhead? That is a small one.

We have 105 different sets of programs to incentivize our young people to go into math, engineering, science, and technology. It costs $3 billion a year, for 105 different programs, in 9 different Federal agencies. They are not in the Department of Education. They are everywhere.

Nobody knows the data, but nobody will vote to make them accountable, make them transparent, eliminate the overhead, streamline the bureaucracy. No, we do not want to do that. This body has voted against doing that multiple times when those amendments have been offered.

We have a total of 78 job training programs outside the Department of Labor, costing billions of dollars a year, none of which have a metric on them. Yet we do not want to streamline that, eliminate it, get it down to two or three that are focused--some on the chronically unemployed, some on the new workers coming in, some on those who are handicapped who might need special assistance. No, we are going to keep the 70-plus programs we have because they are somebody's baby, all of which are highly inefficient and none of which can prove effectiveness when you measure them with a metric because they do not have a metric. They cannot demonstrate they are effective.

So the debate is not about whether we want to help people who are unemployed. The debate is about whether we want to help the people who are unemployed as well as the generations that follow us.

I am amazed, and continue to be so, how easily this body can abandon common sense. I do not know if we do not have it to begin with or if we are similar to a magnet, and it is two positives, so we repel any common sense. But nobody would run any organization--private, public-- business or anything else the way we run the agencies in the Federal Government.

When you start wanting to do something about it, the only thing you get is: We can't. Well, the American people are asking us today: Please, do what you can. Do what you can. What we can do is we can pay for unemployment for the next multiple periods of months by eliminating things that are absolutely unnecessary.

Do you realize we can save $4.5 billion over the next 10 years by not printing stuff that people do not want. It is all online. We can save $450 million a year just by putting common sense into the Government Printing Office. It has been voted down three times on this floor this year. Why not? Why do we continue to take the easy task when the future of our country is going to be determined on whether we take the hard road and do the hard thing that benefits both the coming generations and those who are experiencing problems today?

I tell you why it is. It is because we say we care, but we do not. We play the game, but we do not get in the game. Getting in the game means that you get criticized, that you offer ideas, some of which may work and some of which may not, but you are not afraid to change the game because our kids' future, our country's future depend on changing the game.

What we have heard today is the resistance to changing the game. We do not have a future if we do not start making hard choices. It is an easy choice for me to vote with the Senator from California to pay for unemployment benefits. I want those people to get it. It is a hard choice for me to vote against it and say: Let's pay for it. If, in fact, you will pay for it, I will vote with you. It is not like we cannot find $40 billion. Every third grader in this country can find $40 billion in this budget. There is no rocket science to it. There is so much waste, so much duplication, and so much fraud that anybody can find it.

The question is, Do we have the will to do the best right thing for this country? One of the things I have learned in 5\1/2\ years in this body is that when people use straw men and people use half-truths, it is usually because they are hiding something. What is being hidden from the American public today? What is this debate truly all about? Is it just about unemployment or is it about we like the way things are?

We do not want to change the way things are, we do not want to get out of our comfort zone to solve the real problems of America, so, therefore, we will use all sorts of tactics to deflect what the real issues of the day are.

What are they? The Senator from California rightly outlines that millions of Americans need unemployment compensation right now. I am all for it. What is the other truth about where we are? The truth is, this country is on an absolute unsustainable course. The American people have awakened to it. They know it.

As the Senator from California knows, this is not new for me. I have been doing this for 5\1/2\ years. So it did not matter if it was the ``bridge to nowhere,'' which a Republican authored, or unemployment compensation today, I think we use common sense and do the best right thing for America, not the politically easy thing.

So the challenge before us today is to go home and explain, when this bill passes, why we charged it to the least of us. That is whom we are charging it to: to the least of us.

I told a story not long ago. In my profession as a physician, I have delivered nearly 4,000 babies--maybe over that. I quit counting. But the thing that has always gotten me, when I am delivering a baby--and I have a mother there and a father there and that baby comes out--is to see the glow on the face and in the eyes of those parents. The glow is about hope and promise for the future and about what things can be and the potential that is unlimited when that new life is here. You see it in the parents, and you see them puff up and say: Wow, what a phenomenon.

As I think about what we do today, we are stealing that. We are taking it from those kids because we refuse to have the backbone and courage to do the hard, yet the best right thing for this country.

We will hear a lot of speeches about how bad we are because we want to pay

for it. We will be talked down. It will be said that we want to obstruct. I honestly admit I don't want anything to go through this body that isn't paid for. You can count on it every time. Everybody on that side of the aisle, and most on my side of the aisle, have run in cross-wise with me on things that aren't paid for. They know. It is not a fetish; it is that I actually recognize the long-term future of this country depends on us getting our fiscal house in order.

So it is a defining moment, as the Senator from California said. But it is not the defining moment she thinks it is. It is the defining moment of whether this body is going to grab onto and truly accept the responsibility given to us by the American people. Will we truly accept it? How we act on it determines our commitment to this country.

I don't disagree with those who just want to get it through and get people paid. They have a right to have that position. I am not demeaning that position. I am just saying the country can't last if we keep doing it. Our kids don't have a future if we keep doing it. If we look at the budget projections for our country, we will run--even with the tax increases that are coming at the end of this year--we are going to run $1 trillion deficits until 2020.

Let me close with one final thought. We have a $4 trillion budget. We are going to run a $1.6 trillion deficit this year. That means we are going to borrow that from our children. The deficit by this time next year will be close to $14 trillion.

Have my colleagues ever thought about what $1 trillion is? My colleague from Georgia explained it to me. I didn't believe him, so I did the math.

If we spend $1 a second, so that means we spend $60 a minute, or $3,600 an hour--$3,600 an hour, the wealthiest in our country probably don't spend that, but let's say we did--how long would it take us to spend $1 trillion? The answer is 31,709 years spending $3,600 an hour before we ever get to $1 trillion. We get $1 trillion deficits $30 billion, $40 billion at a time, which is the cost of this bill. The way we start getting out of debt is to stop adding to it.

If we go back to February 12 when the law went into effect on pay-go, and we add this bill to it, we are going to be at $\1/4\ trillion since February 12 that this body will have added to our children's deficit. It is not our debt. Nobody in this room and probably very few people listening to this debate are going to pay one penny against it. It is all going to be borne by the children coming.

So what is pay-go about? Pay-go is about this, America: You pay and we will go spend. We are seeing evidence of it today on the Senate floor. It is not just that we pay; We pay, our children pay, and our grandchildren pay. We are going to pay with real dollars, but our grandchildren are going to pay with lost opportunity, lower levels of education, lower levels of everything in the future.

There is not one problem in front of this country we can't solve. We can't solve them by borrowing money that we don't have to spend on a good thing, let alone a bad thing, but on a good thing while we allow hundreds of billions of dollars to be wasted every year in this country.

So when we hear the cry that somebody doesn't care, we have to ask the question, What do they care about? Can we care for those who are unemployed today as well as care for our kids? Yes, we can. It is really not all that hard, with the examples of waste and duplication. There is $100 billion worth of fraud in Medicare that we can document. So there are all sorts of things we can do. The question is, Do we have the courage? Will we step to the line? Will we do what is best for our children and the unemployed? That is the question. It is not that somebody doesn't have compassion for the unemployed.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I move to suspend provisions of rule XXII for the purpose of proposing and considering my motion to commit with instructions with respect to H.R. 4213, which is at the desk.

Mr. President, I move to suspend provisions of rule XXII, including germaneness requirements, for the purpose of proposing and considering my amendment No. 4493.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this is a very straightforward amendment. It is a re-vote where we voted 100 to 0 to make sure we are transparent with the American people about when we change and go around pay-go. All it does is create a Web site so the American people can see when we have done that and how often and what the total amount is. We voted 100 to nothing for it the last time it was presented to this body.

I yield back my time.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the introduction of S. 3627, The HIV/AIDS Save Lives First Act of 2010. This important piece of legislation will make crucial improvements to our approach to bilateral global AIDS efforts. As a practicing physician and former co- chair of President Bush's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, I have introduced this bill to ensure that our global AIDS continue to prioritize life-saving medical treatment and reduce the transmission of the disease from mother to child.

The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief--known as PEPFAR--has been wildly successful and has begun to reverse the course of the AIDS epidemic worldwide. Two and half million HIV/AIDS patients from 30 different countries currently have access to lifesaving treatment because of PEPFAR. A 2009 report found that from 2004-2007 as many as 1.2 million lives had been saved because of the program.

In 2008, Congress and the President in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion passed the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008 to continue the important life-saving work of the PEPFAR program.

It is of grave concern, then, that our fight against AIDS is now at risk of failure. A recent New York Times article, ``At Front Lines, AIDS War Is Falling Apart,'' details how hundreds of thousands of patients are being denied promised care in countries such as Uganda--a country once held up as PEPFAR's success story. Government officials have confirmed the rationing of treatment slots and have advised their partners to support ``an equitable system of triage for total ART [antiretroviral drug treatment] slots. . . .''

Former UNAIDS chief Dr. Piot remarked about past success and doubts about the future: ``Then, we were at a tipping point in the right direction,'' he explained. ``Now I'm afraid we're at a tipping point in the wrong direction.''

We must not lose sight of the fact that HIV/AIDS is a disease that we can diagnose, treat, and prevent. Not only does treatment save lives-- it is the best prevention tool we have. Treatment lowers viral loads, which reduces the likelihood of individuals spreading the disease by as much as 92 percent. Treatment reduces transmission among partners, eliminates baby AIDS, and keeps those with HIV in the medical system where they can receive proper counseling and care. And the availability of treatment is integral to promoting HIV/AIDS testing and early diagnosis.

With the U.S. spending more than $6.7 billion on global AIDS efforts, we are not losing the war on AIDS due to lack of commitment or resources. Instead, we are losing because of misplaced priorities.

We can eliminate the tragedies of baby AIDS and AIDS orphans and prevent the spread of HIV by focusing on saving lives by expanding access to treatment.

It costs less than $300 a year to keep someone with HIV healthy and alive, about the same price to cover the airfare to send each of the 25,000 participants to the ongoing AIDS conference in Vienna. If saving lives is truly our priority, we must ask every time we spend a dollar intended for AIDS relief if that dollar would be better spent paying for lifesaving treatment that would keep a mother alive, a family together, or a baby born free of the virus.

If you ask Africans what PEPFAR is, they will tell you it is about AIDS treatment. It is the treatment component of PEPFAR that has made it the most successful U.S. humanitarian effort in history because it has literally saved the lives of millions, preserved families and communities, and rescued countless babies from being born with an AIDS death sentence.

The PEPFAR program's long-term success relies on the promise of life- saving medical treatment to those in need. Unfortunately, according to a recent report the recent moratorium on new enrollees in the program has already caused an estimated 3,000 deaths.

The HIV/AIDS Save Lives First Act strengthens the current policy that requires a majority of all funding under PEPFAR be spent on life-saving HIV/AIDS treatment. Specifically, this legislation would increase the treatment allocation to 75 percent of all PEPFAR funding. It also sets the modest goal that by 2013 we treat 5 million people with HIV/AIDS.

Many claim that we cannot treat our way out of this epidemic, but they ignore the simple truth that treatment is prevention. Analysts from the World Health Organization published research arguing we can drastically reduce the transmission of AIDS and virtually halt the widening epidemic in Africa within a decade through aggressive routine testing and early treatment.

Other prevention efforts remain an important component of the program. Without the reliable promise of access to treatment, however, the PEPFAR program will not enjoy long-term success. This legislation ensures that the PEPFAR program fulfills its promises, saves the most lives possible, and reduces transmission of the disease.

The HIV/AIDS Save Lives First Act also allocates a small percentage of funding for the critical diagnostic screening that must be ramped up dramatically if we are to locate and treat every infected person in the countries where PEPFAR operates. Finally, the bill acknowledges that every baby infected with HIV by her mother during birth or breastfeeding is a largely preventable tragedy. The bill would target baby AIDS for complete elimination with 100 percent coverage with the medical protocols that prevent almost all instances of mother-to-child HIV transmission.

The Save Lives First Act requires recipients of funding to spend no more than $500 in annual PEPFAR funding per patient they treat. As recently as 2008, documents provided by the administration show that the PEPFAR program spent $1,100 in annual treatment costs per patient. This is unacceptable--inefficiencies come at the cost of human lives by limiting the number of patients PEPFAR can treat.

The most commonly prescribed drug regimen costs just $64 per year and many organizations are providing care to patients for no more than $250 per year. For example, Doctors Without Borders has had remarkable success in achieving treatment efficiencies and now reports that its per-patient treatment costs in Malawi were only $237 per year.

While costs may vary from country to country--and patient to patient--it is both reasonable and important that every funding recipient under PEPFAR limit their aggregate per patient expenditures to $500 per patient. The costs of drug regimens continue to fall dramatically, and PEPFAR must take advantage by providing treatment to more individuals.

The HIV/AIDS Save Lives First Act would require that any funding recipient under PEPFAR be limited to a treatment allocation of $500 per patient treated. This act would also set the modest goal that PEPFAR would treat 5 million patients by 2013. If the program's per patient expenditures were down to $500 per patient, the program should actually treat 6 million patients by 2013, and if everyone were as cost- effective as Doctors Without Borders, we could be treating 10 million patients.

In the rare instance of a country in which per patient expenditures remain above $500 per patient, it is more than reasonable to assume that these more developed countries have the resources--along with other global partners--to ensure that the per patient treatment expenditures ensure access to the highest-quality treatment for each patient.

Everyone can agree that dollars provided to HIV/AIDS treatment should go directly to patient care--not bloated administrative budgets. A common way of protecting this important principle is to limit the administrative budget for PEPFAR funding recipients.

The HIV/AIDS Save Lives First Act limits administrative overhead to 10 percent of total expenditures for every

funding recipient under the program. The bill also limits the State Department's administrative budget for PEPFAR to 10 percent of total funding.

Again, treatment is prevention. But this strategy relies on identifying HIV positive individuals who are unaware of their status and linking them to treatment and counseling. The first step to any prevention strategy is an aggressive testing strategy. Unfortunately, only about 40 percent of people with HIV in developing countries are aware of their status.

The HIV/AIDS Save Lives First Act sets aside 5 percent of PEPFAR funding to dramatically ramp up rapid HIV diagnosis to identify people who do not yet know their HIV status in order to get people into treatment and early reduce their transmission rates through treatment and education.

This bill also sets a target of conducting 1 billion rapid tests by 2013 and sets aside 25 percent of testing money to help countries implement a policy of universal, opt-out rapid HIV testing.

Rapid testing and access to treatment are particularly important to end baby AIDS, babies being born infected with HIV or becoming infected during their first year through breastfeeding, once and for all.

An estimated 430,000 children were born in 2008 newly infected with HIV, mainly through mother to child transmission. About 90 percent of these infections occurred in Africa. Only 28 percent of pregnant women in Sub-Saharan Africa received an HIV test in 2008. Moreover, the World Health Organization reports that access to AIDS drugs is severely limited in developing countries, with fewer than 10 percent of pregnant women with HIV in those countries having access to medication for their own health.

Of course, dramatic gains are seen when universal testing of pregnant women and newborns is provided along with appropriate prophylaxis of infections that are that are identified through testing. In the United States, new cases of baby AIDS have been virtually eliminated. Studies have found that 99 percent of babies were born uninfected if an infected mother was diagnosed and proper treatment was administered.

Botswana, a country that used to have HIV infection rates as high as 50 percent of child-bearing-aged women, instituted these interventions. Ninety-two percent of pregnant women in the country are now being tested and the drop in HIV-positive mothers delivering infected babies dropped from 35 percent to 4 percent from 2004-2007, with 13,000 HIV- infected moms being identified annually.

Prevention of mother-to-child-transmission, PMTCT, is cheap per life saved: as of 2008, estimated costs of PMTCT drugs to prevent the spread of HIV for (1) mother/child pair was US$167--generics--and US$318-- branded--and the price of drugs and treatment have only declined since.

The HIV/AIDS Save Lives First Act sets a target of eliminating baby AIDS in all PEPFAR countries by 2013, and sets out expectations for how to work towards that target by screening 100 percent of pregnant women and newborns in PEPFAR countries and providing prophylactic or ARV treatment for all HIV-positive moms or babies.

By emphasizing providing lifesaving treatment under the PEPFAR program, we can continue the enormous success we have had in saving lives and preventing the spread of this terrible disease. It is my sincere hope that my colleagues adopt these common sense policy changes that will significantly reduce human suffering, keep families together, and save millions of lives.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the introduction of S. 3627, The HIV/AIDS Save Lives First Act of 2010. This important piece of legislation will make crucial improvements to our approach to bilateral global AIDS efforts. As a practicing physician and former co- chair of President Bush's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, I have introduced this bill to ensure that our global AIDS continue to prioritize life-saving medical treatment and reduce the transmission of the disease from mother to child.

The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief--known as PEPFAR--has been wildly successful and has begun to reverse the course of the AIDS epidemic worldwide. Two and half million HIV/AIDS patients from 30 different countries currently have access to lifesaving treatment because of PEPFAR. A 2009 report found that from 2004-2007 as many as 1.2 million lives had been saved because of the program.

In 2008, Congress and the President in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion passed the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008 to continue the important life-saving work of the PEPFAR program.

It is of grave concern, then, that our fight against AIDS is now at risk of failure. A recent New York Times article, ``At Front Lines, AIDS War Is Falling Apart,'' details how hundreds of thousands of patients are being denied promised care in countries such as Uganda--a country once held up as PEPFAR's success story. Government officials have confirmed the rationing of treatment slots and have advised their partners to support ``an equitable system of triage for total ART [antiretroviral drug treatment] slots. . . .''

Former UNAIDS chief Dr. Piot remarked about past success and doubts about the future: ``Then, we were at a tipping point in the right direction,'' he explained. ``Now I'm afraid we're at a tipping point in the wrong direction.''

We must not lose sight of the fact that HIV/AIDS is a disease that we can diagnose, treat, and prevent. Not only does treatment save lives-- it is the best prevention tool we have. Treatment lowers viral loads, which reduces the likelihood of individuals spreading the disease by as much as 92 percent. Treatment reduces transmission among partners, eliminates baby AIDS, and keeps those with HIV in the medical system where they can receive proper counseling and care. And the availability of treatment is integral to promoting HIV/AIDS testing and early diagnosis.

With the U.S. spending more than $6.7 billion on global AIDS efforts, we are not losing the war on AIDS due to lack of commitment or resources. Instead, we are losing because of misplaced priorities.

We can eliminate the tragedies of baby AIDS and AIDS orphans and prevent the spread of HIV by focusing on saving lives by expanding access to treatment.

It costs less than $300 a year to keep someone with HIV healthy and alive, about the same price to cover the airfare to send each of the 25,000 participants to the ongoing AIDS conference in Vienna. If saving lives is truly our priority, we must ask every time we spend a dollar intended for AIDS relief if that dollar would be better spent paying for lifesaving treatment that would keep a mother alive, a family together, or a baby born free of the virus.

If you ask Africans what PEPFAR is, they will tell you it is about AIDS treatment. It is the treatment component of PEPFAR that has made it the most successful U.S. humanitarian effort in history because it has literally saved the lives of millions, preserved families and communities, and rescued countless babies from being born with an AIDS death sentence.

The PEPFAR program's long-term success relies on the promise of life- saving medical treatment to those in need. Unfortunately, according to a recent report the recent moratorium on new enrollees in the program has already caused an estimated 3,000 deaths.

The HIV/AIDS Save Lives First Act strengthens the current policy that requires a majority of all funding under PEPFAR be spent on life-saving HIV/AIDS treatment. Specifically, this legislation would increase the treatment allocation to 75 percent of all PEPFAR funding. It also sets the modest goal that by 2013 we treat 5 million people with HIV/AIDS.

Many claim that we cannot treat our way out of this epidemic, but they ignore the simple truth that treatment is prevention. Analysts from the World Health Organization published research arguing we can drastically reduce the transmission of AIDS and virtually halt the widening epidemic in Africa within a decade through aggressive routine testing and early treatment.

Other prevention efforts remain an important component of the program. Without the reliable promise of access to treatment, however, the PEPFAR program will not enjoy long-term success. This legislation ensures that the PEPFAR program fulfills its promises, saves the most lives possible, and reduces transmission of the disease.

The HIV/AIDS Save Lives First Act also allocates a small percentage of funding for the critical diagnostic screening that must be ramped up dramatically if we are to locate and treat every infected person in the countries where PEPFAR operates. Finally, the bill acknowledges that every baby infected with HIV by her mother during birth or breastfeeding is a largely preventable tragedy. The bill would target baby AIDS for complete elimination with 100 percent coverage with the medical protocols that prevent almost all instances of mother-to-child HIV transmission.

The Save Lives First Act requires recipients of funding to spend no more than $500 in annual PEPFAR funding per patient they treat. As recently as 2008, documents provided by the administration show that the PEPFAR program spent $1,100 in annual treatment costs per patient. This is unacceptable--inefficiencies come at the cost of human lives by limiting the number of patients PEPFAR can treat.

The most commonly prescribed drug regimen costs just $64 per year and many organizations are providing care to patients for no more than $250 per year. For example, Doctors Without Borders has had remarkable success in achieving treatment efficiencies and now reports that its per-patient treatment costs in Malawi were only $237 per year.

While costs may vary from country to country--and patient to patient--it is both reasonable and important that every funding recipient under PEPFAR limit their aggregate per patient expenditures to $500 per patient. The costs of drug regimens continue to fall dramatically, and PEPFAR must take advantage by providing treatment to more individuals.

The HIV/AIDS Save Lives First Act would require that any funding recipient under PEPFAR be limited to a treatment allocation of $500 per patient treated. This act would also set the modest goal that PEPFAR would treat 5 million patients by 2013. If the program's per patient expenditures were down to $500 per patient, the program should actually treat 6 million patients by 2013, and if everyone were as cost- effective as Doctors Without Borders, we could be treating 10 million patients.

In the rare instance of a country in which per patient expenditures remain above $500 per patient, it is more than reasonable to assume that these more developed countries have the resources--along with other global partners--to ensure that the per patient treatment expenditures ensure access to the highest-quality treatment for each patient.

Everyone can agree that dollars provided to HIV/AIDS treatment should go directly to patient care--not bloated administrative budgets. A common way of protecting this important principle is to limit the administrative budget for PEPFAR funding recipients.

The HIV/AIDS Save Lives First Act limits administrative overhead to 10 percent of total expenditures for every

funding recipient under the program. The bill also limits the State Department's administrative budget for PEPFAR to 10 percent of total funding.

Again, treatment is prevention. But this strategy relies on identifying HIV positive individuals who are unaware of their status and linking them to treatment and counseling. The first step to any prevention strategy is an aggressive testing strategy. Unfortunately, only about 40 percent of people with HIV in developing countries are aware of their status.

The HIV/AIDS Save Lives First Act sets aside 5 percent of PEPFAR funding to dramatically ramp up rapid HIV diagnosis to identify people who do not yet know their HIV status in order to get people into treatment and early reduce their transmission rates through treatment and education.

This bill also sets a target of conducting 1 billion rapid tests by 2013 and sets aside 25 percent of testing money to help countries implement a policy of universal, opt-out rapid HIV testing.

Rapid testing and access to treatment are particularly important to end baby AIDS, babies being born infected with HIV or becoming infected during their first year through breastfeeding, once and for all.

An estimated 430,000 children were born in 2008 newly infected with HIV, mainly through mother to child transmission. About 90 percent of these infections occurred in Africa. Only 28 percent of pregnant women in Sub-Saharan Africa received an HIV test in 2008. Moreover, the World Health Organization reports that access to AIDS drugs is severely limited in developing countries, with fewer than 10 percent of pregnant women with HIV in those countries having access to medication for their own health.

Of course, dramatic gains are seen when universal testing of pregnant women and newborns is provided along with appropriate prophylaxis of infections that are that are identified through testing. In the United States, new cases of baby AIDS have been virtually eliminated. Studies have found that 99 percent of babies were born uninfected if an infected mother was diagnosed and proper treatment was administered.

Botswana, a country that used to have HIV infection rates as high as 50 percent of child-bearing-aged women, instituted these interventions. Ninety-two percent of pregnant women in the country are now being tested and the drop in HIV-positive mothers delivering infected babies dropped from 35 percent to 4 percent from 2004-2007, with 13,000 HIV- infected moms being identified annually.

Prevention of mother-to-child-transmission, PMTCT, is cheap per life saved: as of 2008, estimated costs of PMTCT drugs to prevent the spread of HIV for (1) mother/child pair was US$167--generics--and US$318-- branded--and the price of drugs and treatment have only declined since.

The HIV/AIDS Save Lives First Act sets a target of eliminating baby AIDS in all PEPFAR countries by 2013, and sets out expectations for how to work towards that target by screening 100 percent of pregnant women and newborns in PEPFAR countries and providing prophylactic or ARV treatment for all HIV-positive moms or babies.

By emphasizing providing lifesaving treatment under the PEPFAR program, we can continue the enormous success we have had in saving lives and preventing the spread of this terrible disease. It is my sincere hope that my colleagues adopt these common sense policy changes that will significantly reduce human suffering, keep families together, and save millions of lives.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter dated July 20, 2010, to Senator McConnell.

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 move to suspend rule XXII for the purpose of proposing and considering the following amendment to amendment No. 4425 to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 4213, including germaneness requirements:

At the appropriate place, insert the following:

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 move to suspend rule XXII for the purpose of proposing and considering the following motion to recommit with instructions of H.R. 4213:

The Senator from Oklahoma [Mr. Coburn] moves to recommit

H.R. 4213 to the Committee on Finance with instructions to

report the same back to the Senate with changes to include:

(A) a reduction in unnecessary government printing and

publishing costs to save $4.6 billion over ten years;

(B) a requirement to sell off $15 billion worth of unused

and unneeded federal real property;

(C) a requirement for the Internal Revenue Service to

collect any unpaid taxes from federal employees, which would

bring in $3 billion, including nearly $2.5 million owed by

employees of the U.S. Senate;

(D) a prohibition on bogus bonuses for government

contractors whose projects are over budget, behind schedule,

or do not meet basic performance standards, saving more than

$8 billion over ten years;

(E) a prohibition on nonessential travel by government

employees to save $10 billion over ten years; and

(F) a requirement the Secretary of the Senate post on the

Senate's public website the total dollar amount of new

borrowing and spending and other violations of PAYGO approved

by the Senate since the PAYGO law was signed into law.

Mr. President, as Blanquita Cullum's service as Governor on the Broadcasting Board of Governors comes to an end, I wish to make note of her untiring efforts to maintain United States international broadcasting during times of enormous pressures.

Throughout her tenure, Blanquita Cullum has been a champion for the mission of American international broadcasting, but also for the audiences who rely upon our international broadcasts for credible, authoritative, accurate and factual news and information.

Chief among her concerns has been for the continuation of U.S. international radio broadcasts, the form of communication which to this day remains the most readily accessible and cost-effective means of communication for billions of oppressed people living in poverty.

In our technologically driven consumer society, it escapes our attention that almost two billion people make less than $2 a day. Blanquita Cullum has insisted, often in the face of resistance, that these populations not be abandoned and their fate left to chance.

In addition, she has argued strongly that cuts not be made to critical strategic regions of the world where regions are often one incident away from open conflict. She was among those calling for the resumption of United States international broadcasts to Russia. This call to action was given added impetus during the armed conflict between Russia and the Republic of Georgia, days after U.S. international broadcasts to Russia were ended. Even though the other members of the Board inexplicably refused to restore Russian broadcasts, Blanquita Cullum's forceful arguments helped avert their planned termination of U.S. broadcasts to the Republic of Georgia and the Ukraine.

Blanquita Cullum has global vision. International terrorism and other threats to the United States are globalized. We ignore this fact at our own risk. For example, she has argued strongly for a more robust presence of U.S. international broadcasting to Latin America, including targeted broadcasts to Cuba, Venezuela, and other audiences whose airwaves are saturated with antidemocracy sentiments and propaganda.

Further, she has strongly argued for increased oversight and accountability with regard to U.S. international broadcasting, recognizing the importance of our broadcasts being above reproach. In the course of my own investigations, I discovered VOA broadcasts to Iran that undermined U.S. policy and gave a platform for the propaganda of our enemies. U.S. broadcasts in Arabic have also given uninterrupted and unchallenged platforms to terrorists and other enemies of the U.S. and our allies. Blanquita Cullum was the only Governor to support my and my colleagues' calls for greater transparency and accountability in our broadcasts--an ongoing need that has yet to be adequately rectified.

In the Asian sphere, she resisted efforts by the BBG bureaucracy to reduce the agency's Tibetan broadcasts and made certain that broadcasts to Burma during its violent crackdown of pro-democracy advocates were not interrupted.

Long before it became a topic of urgency, Blanquita Cullum recognized the importance of cybersecurity and argued for increased vigilance on the part of the agency's technical component to take measures necessary to ensure that BBG broadcasts and Internet assets were protected against such threats.

Finally, it is a secret to no one that Blanquita Cullum has been a strong believer in the human component of the agency's operations. She has enjoyed an engaged relationship with the agency's employees and bristled over the agency's poor showing in the annual Human Capital Survey. An organization that cannot command the confidence of its staff is not likely to be fully engaged with the audiences it portends to serve.

One needs to look no further than Governor Blanquita Cullum as the model of unselfish public service in the National and Public Interest. She will be sorely missed by those at the BBG and in Congress who still believe in the original purpose of U.S. international broadcasting. The new Board of Governors will have a challenge ahead of them as they attempt to fill her shoes and continue her efforts to reform U.S. International Broadcasting.

Mr. President, today I honor Dr. James Kimpel who has served our government for the last 13 years as director of the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory, NSSL, in Norman, OK.

Dr. Kimpel held the position of director, where he oversaw research in weather radar, technology transfer from research to applications, and forecast and warning improvements. The activities that Dr. Kimpel coordinated at NSSL helped save lives and property throughout the United States. During his tenure at the lab he provided the United States with devoted and visionary leadership.

Through research and development during his 13 years as director, NSSL finished development of a Doppler weather radar technology that led to the birth of the national NEXRAD network, which consists of more than 150 radar systems. The NEXRAD network was also upgraded from proprietary to open systems, which enabled dual-polarization upgrades. These technological advancements will greatly increase precision when it comes to estimates of rainfall, delineation of rain from snow, and provide a more exact estimate of hail size. Since its installation, the NEXRAD program has reduced tornado related deaths by 45 percent and reduced personal injuries by 40 percent.

Under the leadership of Dr. Kimpel, radar-based rainfall analyses were created to improve flash flood and river forecasting. He was also a key player in sparking interest and support for new facilities for NSSL that led to the construction of the National Weather Center building, which is shared by the National Weather Service and the meteorology enterprise at the University of Oklahoma.

During Dr. Kimpel's watch as the director, NSSL scientists had over 600 archival, refereed journals published, were granted three patents and participated in four cooperative research and development agreements with private companies. He also played a large role while at the University of Oklahoma as a full professor, dean of the College of Geosciences, provost, and senior vice president of the Norman campus.

Dr. Kimpel's service to our country goes far beyond the NSSL. As a member of the U.S. Air Force, he served in Vietnam and earned the Bronze Star Medal for his acts of courage and valor. He was also elected president of the American Meteorological Society, received the University of Oklahoma Regents Alumni Award, and received the Presidential Rank Award-Meritorious Executive. He is a well-respected academic, researcher, and mentor. He is also the proud father of five children and a grandfather to two grandchildren.

I give my highest regard to Dr. Kimpel and wish him the best. He has contributed much not only to the State of Oklahoma, but to the United States. The achievements and service of Dr. James F. Kimpel are worthy of celebration and commendation.

Madam President, how much time remains?

Madam President, I wish to take over for Senator Thune, if I may. I want to cover for a moment what Senator Gregg talked about, because we are looking for the pea under the pinochle shell.

We passed, on February 12, pay-go. On February 24, we borrowed $46 billion outside of pay-go. We said it didn't apply. On March 3, we borrowed $99 billion and said it didn't apply. On March 2, it was $10 billion and we said it didn't apply. In April, it was $18 billion.

Yes.

It happened because we waived the pay-go rules and we were outvoted. The pay-go rules are a farce.

On May 27, $59 billion. With the new bill, another $50 billion. So 46 and 18 is 64, 74, 173, 193, 262, and now 50--that is $312 billion added to the deficit this year above the $1.5 trillion we are already going to run.

We get criticized all the time--and I specifically do--as the party of no. Here is what we have offered: Reduce the national debt; this body said no. Sell unused property; this body said no. Reduce the printing costs, which is $4 billion, and we can save printing this, which nobody reads, and it is all on line; this body said no. Freeze total Federal pay for right now until we get out of the mess we are in; this body said no. Living within our means--an amendment that said we have to live within the revenues that come in--this body said no. Complying with pay-go; this body said no. Cut agency overhead costs; this body voted no. Cut Congress's own budget; this body said no. These are all recorded votes. Eliminate corporate welfare; this body said no. Stop the bridge to nowhere, that happened 4, 5 years ago but this body said no. Make Federal employees pay taxes; they owe $3 billion in unpaid taxes and we have no enforcement, but this body said no. Consolidate duplicative government programs that do the same thing. There are 70 programs to feed the hungry, 105 programs for math, education, science, and technology incentives--6 different agencies-- this body said no. Eliminate bonuses for failed contractors in the private sector who don't perform, which is $8 billion a year; this body said no. Decrease nonessential government travel, which saves $5 billion a year; this body said no. Require the Department of Energy to save energy; ironically, they are the worst offender in the Federal Government in terms of wasting energy, and this body said no.

Isn't it interesting that, with 41 votes, we offer these things and every time they are rejected? They are commonsense things that everybody else in America expects us to be doing, but this body says no.

Why should we do the Thune amendment? I heard the chairman of the Finance Committee say a minute ago that having a 5-percent cut across the board in all of the agencies, except the VA and the Defense Department, would wreck the Federal Government. He obviously isn't aware that President Obama has asked his own agencies to do exactly that. All Senator Thune is doing in this amendment is what the President is asking the agencies to do. But do you know what. This body is going to say no. We bring forward a bill that only spends $50 billion of our children's money instead of $78 billion or $88 billion, which was defeated yesterday, as if that is some big deal.

This body is going to pass it. They are not going to say no to growing the government, to spending money that we don't have, to giving advantage to those who are well heeled and connected. They are not going to do that. We have lost control of what is important in America. If we were to pass the Thune amendment today, do you know what would happen? The international financial community would get the first signal from the American Congress that we are starting to make some steps toward austerity--the first signal. We don't have any out there now.

Yesterday, it was reported that the M3 money supply in this country is at the lowest level of GDP since 1932. Do you know what that predicts? It predicts that the economy is going to slow rather than increase. That predicts a double dip recession. We have tried everything Japan tried for 10 years, and it didn't work. It is a lost decade in Japan. It is stimulus money and not failing to cut the spending of the government. We are going to do that again. We are going to continue to increase the government.

People may say, why would you want to freeze total Federal wages? Well, it is easy. The average Federal employee in the United States today makes $78,000 a year. They have benefits of $40,000 a year. The average private sector employee makes $42,000 a year and has $20,000 worth of benefits. Shouldn't we, when we are running a $1.6 trillion-- it is not $1.4 trillion because we have added $200 billion, and we are going to add another $50 billion with this. When we are running that kind of deficit, shouldn't we say, time out, no increases, except for stellar performance, in the Federal Government, until we get our house in order? But this body is going to say no again. They are going to say no.

The question is, what can we do to fix our economy? Borrowing money that we don't have to spend on things that we don't absolutely need is not the answer to solving the problems with our economy. The answer is for us to live within our means, create a stable environment where business will invest and can plan on what is coming next from Congress. We have them so skittish that they won't spend. That is the reason we are going to have a double dip recession. That is the reason the money supply has shrunk in spite of zero percent interest rates at the Federal Reserve--because people will not take a risk, because we are not leading with something that gives them confidence about the future. We have to change that.

I will end with this. That is the party of yes. Increase the national debt, yes. Violate pay-go, yes. More corporate welfare, yes. Increase the debt limit, yes. Fund the bridge to nowhere and every other earmark like it, yes. Increase Congress's own budget at a time when we should be austere, yes. Tax breaks for special interests, yes. Borrow billions--not billions, but trillions--from our grandchildren, yes. Create duplicative government programs, yes. Finally, create a lower standard of living for us, our children, and our grandchildren.

That is not what we are about, except that is what the Baucus bill does. It thinks in the short term and ignores the long term. It ignores the reality that this government has to get smaller for us to not become Greece. It plays the games that are typical of Washington, which the American people are rejecting.

One final word about doctors, having been one and practiced for over 25 years. What is happening out there right now? What is happening out there now is the same kind of confusion that is happening in the business community. Doctors are saying: I can no longer take a Medicare patient. You are going to give me an extension for 6 months, but there is no guarantee that in 5 or 6 months I am going to have the revenue I need to keep an office open to care for Medicare patients. So what is happening? Medicare patients all across this country are going and finding out their doctors no longer take Medicare.

We saw, earlier this week, when HHS released the first of the thousands of regulations that between 87 million and 127 million Americans aren't going to get to keep the insurance they have. They are not going to under the grandfather clause. So what we are doing is sending every mixed signal possible to not create stable planning, positive input, and positive attitudes about what can happen positively in this country. We have to send a signal to the doctors. The Thune amendment pays for a doctor fix until 2012. It gives them a chance to say, yes, I will stay in Medicare; I can afford to stay in Medicare. If we don't do that, we are going to have hundreds of thousands of Medicare patients who no longer have the doctor they have had for years. It is not because the doctor wants to turn away the patient, but because the doctor has to turn away the patient because they can no longer afford to care for Medicare patients.

So we play this game and bring to the floor a bill with $50 billion that we are going to charge to our grandchildren, and we have bought the votes off so we can pass it, and we are still doing the same thing. We are still expanding the Federal Government, we are borrowing against our future, we are lowering the standards of living of our children, and we are creating a mockery of the American dream.

I reserve the remainder of our time.

A fairly short period of time.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 4331 to the Baucus substitute.

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

Mr. President, at this time, I ask that the amendment be divided in the form I now send to the desk.

Mr. President, this is an amendment that will actually pay for everything we are doing. It does several things that the American people are demanding that we do.

It discloses the true cost of borrowing and spending that we actually do in this body.

It reduces the budgets of the Members of Congress. We had a 4.8- percent increase in our budgets. This is going to decrease that by less than a third, making us suffer with the rest of the country in terms of trying to get control of our massive debt and deficit spending.

It enacts what President Obama has been asking his own agencies to do: it takes 5 percent from all the agencies, except Defense and Veterans Affairs, and says: Cut that amount. The size of the agencies has doubled since 1999. We are asking the agencies to find 5 percent of efficiency within their agency to help us not continue to add trillions of dollars of debt to our children.

It eliminates nonessential government travel. It will save us $10 billion over 10 years. It doesn't eliminate essential; it just says that when you can do a teleconference, you do that. You don't necessarily fly and take a hotel room when you can accomplish it another way.

It reduces unnecessary printing and publishing costs of government documents. That saves us $4 billion over 10 years. Nobody reads these. They are all available online. If we get rid of the ones that don't have to be printed, we save hundreds of thousands of trees every year-- which absorb CO2, by the way--but it also saves us $4.4 billion by not printing stuff we all have on our computers already.

In working with the OMB, they are behind what we are trying to do in terms of unused and unneeded government property and government buildings. So what it does is it gives us $15 billion in direct savings in revenue by getting rid of things that we are spending $8 billion a year on maintaining that we are not using. So we save $15 billion over 10 years, plus we get the savings of not having to maintain what we own but are not using.

We will sell unused and unneeded equipment. We have $\1/4\ billion worth just sitting there in warehouses. We are never going to use it, but it is sitting there. We can get good prices from the private sector that can go out and utilize this and put it to work.

It caps the total number of Federal employees. Why is that important? I am a supporter of our Federal employees. We had a speech on the floor today accusing those of us who want to limit the growth of the Federal Government in terms of employees and the size, saying we were against our Federal employees. We are not. What we are saying is that in a time when we are running a $1.6 trillion deficit--that is what it will be this year; we said 1.4, but we have already borrowed $200 billion more than that on this floor since February 12--we ought to be getting more productivity out of what we have, not because it is not the right thing to do--it is the right thing--but because we cannot afford to be lax in anything we are doing today. Every time we don't save a dollar, we are now charging that dollar to our children and grandchildren.

It puts a cap on the total number of Federal employees. There is plenty of flexibility within the Federal Government. The Federal Government has added 160,000 employees in the last 16 months. There are 441,000 for the census, but that doesn't count them. This is 160,000 full-time Federal employees in the last 16 months. How many more employees do we need? Can we afford more Federal employees at this time or should we get more with what we have?

We also put a temporary 1-year freeze on total salary. That doesn't mean people who work for the Federal Government cannot get a raise. They can. But they need to be more productive and recognized for it. But there should be no more automatic pay increases this next year because we are running a $1.6 trillion deficit and also because the average Federal employee makes $78,000 a year and has benefits worth $40,000. The average private sector employee makes $42,000 a year and has benefits worth $20,000. Freezing that for 1 year will have a minimal long-term effect, especially when we saw today that we are actually in a deflationary period where the Consumer Price Index went down one-tenth of 1 percent. We had a nine-tenths of 1 percent decrease this year. So the cost of living is not going up; it is going down. All we are saying is, let's do this for 1 year and demonstrate that we understand the tough choices the public is making and that we are willing to make tough choices.

I agree, it is a tough choice. It is hard. But it does not mean that stellar employees cannot get raises. They can. That saves $2.6 billion this year, for 1 year.

It collects unpaid taxes from employees of the Federal Government. We have employees of the Federal Government who owe $3 billion. It directs a garnishee of those payments from the Federal employees. These are not disputed. These are not still under negotiation. These are things that have already been agreed to that are owed by Federal employees to the Federal Government. That gets us $3 billion that we do not have.

We also have a section that excessive duplication and overhead within the Federal Government should be eliminated. Two easy examples: Across 60

different agencies, we have 70 different programs to feed people who are hungry. Why do we have 70? Why don't we have 7 or one? Not one of those 70 programs has a metric on it to see if it is effective in what it does.

We have 105 programs across seven different agencies that incentivize at the cost of billions of dollars a year people to go into math, science, engineering, and technology. Why do we have 105 programs? Why not one run by one set of overhead and one agency and measure the results? There are 640 other examples of duplication just like that in the Federal Government.

What this amendment says is we ought to be about eliminating that duplication. We ought to be able to increase productivity and also increase the results of the very programs for the people we are trying to help.

The other thing we do is we eliminate bonuses for contractors to the Federal Government who are not meeting performance requirements. That is $800 million a year that your government is paying out to people who do work for the Federal Government who do not meet the minimum requirements for their contract, and yet we are paying them $800 million in bonuses as if they were meeting the requirements of their contract. That saves $8 billion over 10 years. None of us would do that with anybody who worked for us. Why do we allow the Federal Government to do that?

This government gives the United Nations 25 percent of its entire budget. But we also give voluntary payments to the United Nations. I just talked with Peter Orszag from OMB, and I am getting that report as we speak. It was due January 1. It is now mid to late June.

What we do is eliminate no more than $1 billion more than what our obligations are in terms of peacekeeping or our dues to the United Nations. There are good reasons to do that. There was, with the last foreign appropriations, a requirement that the United Nations show us where our money is going. That got thrown out in conference. But we do not even know where the $6 billion a year that we give to the United Nations is spent because they will not show us where it is spent. We would never tolerate that from any agency we fund. And yet we don't. We are saying do not give more than a billion more than that to the United Nations. We limit that. That is a $10 billion a year savings.

Here is what we do know about the United Nations. In the peacekeeping money that we give, 45 percent of it is lost to fraud. Think about that. Forty-five percent of the $3 billion that we give to peacekeeping operations is lost to fraud, documented. We found that one out by accident. They did not want us to find that out.

We ought to be good stewards with the money of the American people when it comes to contributing their money to the United Nations.

Returning excessive funds from an unnecessary, unneeded, unrequested, duplicative reserve fund that will never be spent: That is $362 million. It is a one-time savings. It will never be spent. It is sitting there. We ought to take it back.

Rescinding unspent Federal funds: There is $1.7 trillion sitting in accounts right now. Of that, $690 billion has not been obligated for the future expenditure. We are saying move $50 billion of that back into this year and use it to pay for things that are important, such as unemployment insurance, rather than borrow from our children.

Why is that important? If you have three bank accounts and each one had $100 in it and you had to write a $200 check, you would go to the accounts you had and write the check from the two accounts so you could pay the check. This money is rolling out there to the tune of $600 billion every year that is not obligated.

Common sense would say we would be more efficient with our money rather than paying interest on that money. We would use it in a more timely fashion. Everybody does that except the Federal Government. We ought to be doing it as well.

Reducing wasteful costs at the Department of Energy. The Department of Energy is supposed to be setting the example for this country on energy efficiency. They are the worst agency as far as energy costs and efficiency in energy. All we are doing is you follow the rules you have set for everybody else. It saves $13.8 million per year. That is just one agency following the rules they have told every other agency to follow.

Finally, we strike the new taxes that are in this bill because we do not need to pay for them because we can cut spending somewhere else. The last thing we need to be doing, as we have the threat of a double- dip recession, is taking more private capital out of the economy and putting it into government because the multiplier effect of government spending is very low. Private spending multiplier effect is about 1.5. That means for every dollar you spend, you end up generating about $1.5 in economic activity. For every government dollar that is spent, you generate $1.1 in economic activity. The last thing we ought to be doing is raising taxes. I don't care where it is in this economy. It is so precarious that we need private capital being invested to create jobs and opportunities for jobs in this country.

I have listed the vast majority of provisions that are in the bill. I will be back to discuss each one individually.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Madam President, I offered a rather lengthy amendment to this bill, not because I was trying to be cute, but I think the American people have got to hear from us on whether we are going to make some of the commonsense changes they would expect us to make.

There are a lot of easy votes in this amendment. I mean, to not pay contractors when they do not deserve to be paid, whether to continue to do it, we did it to the tune of $6 billion at the Pentagon in the last 6 years. That is not hard.

To quit printing and wasting money on printing things we should not be printing, that is not hard. But the debate is.

It is just as important as taking care of those people who are unemployed. If we don't cycle through to a good recovery, we are going to have less opportunity to borrow money to help those people who are unemployed. We now stand at a crossroads we have never been at before. Our gross debt is in excess of $17 trillion. Our net debt is at $13.2 trillion. The difference between that is the money the Congress has stolen from Social Security and myriad other trust funds that are much smaller. But we have borrowed it and put a piece of paper in that says: We will pay you back.

The fact is, we have to pay interest. It is compounded. We will eventually have to pay it back. Only in Washington would we talk about net debt when, in fact, we are paying interest on the gross debt.

We had testimony before the debt commission 2 weeks ago by Dr. Reinhart, one of the leading economists in the country, who said we are in excess of 90 percent of our GDP, our debt. What did they tell us? We are struggling with a recession. We are trying to come out of a recession. They told us with that much debt, it is suppressing the growth of our economy by 1 percent a year. One percent a year is $170 billion in productivity and economic activity that didn't happen. If we calculate that in terms of jobs, that is about 3 million jobs that are not going to be created next year because Congresses before us and this one as well have refused to live within their means.

We have, in terms of Washington, a relatively small bill now, $100 billion plus. It was pulled from the floor to make it smaller--not to pay for a significant amount more, just to make it smaller--when, in fact, what the American people want us to do is find something within the Federal Government that doesn't make sense, don't borrow it from our children, do the hard work of finding what is not working here.

We are going to have a cloture vote on this legislation. My hope is, unless we change this bill, that this bill does not proceed until we accede to the demands of the American public. It is simple: Congress, start living like we are living. Start making the hard choices. When you have a limited budget, do what is most important first. Do what is least important last. Get rid of waste, get rid of things that should have been gotten rid of a long time ago and do what is best for the future.

We are not doing that with this bill, and we can't get anybody to debate on the other side. They will not defend it. You cannot defend borrowing $50 billion more against our children and grandchildren when we have $300 billion of waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication in the government right now that we have rejected every time when those amendments come to the floor. You can't do it.

So we play the political game in Washington. We had it in February, when our colleagues passed pay-go. It is really to pay-go or not to pay-go. What pay-go means is, you American taxpayers, you pay, and we will go spend your money.

The statute said we would no longer spend new money on anything unless we paid for it. Since February 12 when this bill was signed into law, on February 24 we borrowed $46 billion. We waived pay-go. We said the rule doesn't apply now. This is more important. It was the highway trust fund. Rather than cut some of the waste, fraud, and abuse, rather than cut out some of the things that are duplications, we borrowed that from our grandchildren. We did it twice in March, $99 billion out of the Senate and $10 billion. One was for an extension; one was for the overall tax extenders. We didn't quit there. April came, $18 billion more. May came, May 20, we did $20 billion more. Pay-go didn't apply. We waived it. We said it doesn't count. The rule doesn't count.

What good is it to have a rule or a statute that says we are not going to steal from our children anymore, and every time something comes up we steal from our children? It is a farce. It is meaningless. That is why we didn't vote for it, because it was just a charade to tell the American people somebody was doing something they actually weren't.

The proof is in the pudding. Then we borrowed $59 billion on May 27. Now we have a bill out here on June 17 that is going to borrow another $50 billion. How valuable are the lives of our children that we would steal opportunity? That sounds like a fallacious claim. It is not.

I want you to meet Madeline. Madeline is a little girl. I saw this on the Internet. I actually got to meet her. Her sign actually said $37,000 6 months ago. In the last 6 months, she has gone from owing $37,000, every individual, man, woman and child in this country, to owing $42,000. What is her life worth? What is the opportunity for her worth? Are children just a toy, or do we owe it to them, based on what has been given to us, to create opportunity and a chance for a better life for the Madelines of this country?

The problem is, as we are set up right now, 9 years from now, that number is going to be $187,000 per man, woman, and child. In 25 years, if we don't change what we are doing--and we will change because the world financial community will quit loaning us money--it will be over $1 million.

Put your calculator on for a minute and calculate 6 percent of 1 million. That is the interest cost for what we will have spent in money that we didn't have per person in this country. That is $60,000 25 years from now that every one of us who is still alive will be paying each year just in additional interest before we do anything with the Federal Government.

This government is so far out of control. It is not President Obama's fault, it is the Congress's fault. Presidents can't do things without us. We allow it or don't allow it. We have been rebellious against the principles and values that made this country great. There has never been a country that has achieved--economically, culturally, and scientifically--anything close to what we have created. Congresses are destroying it. This bill is another drop that will eventually turn the statute over that says the future is not here.

This isn't a partisan debate, this is a generational debate. We are thieving. Generational theft is what we are about because we lack the courage to confront the real problems we have and embrace, though it may cost us politically, doing the right things to ensure an American dream for the Madelines of this world. We are failing to do that. What an abandonment of our oath, what a rejection of what was given to us. Yet we have the gall to come out here week after week and spend money we don't have on some things that are necessary, some that are not, but that allow us to continue to spend billions of dollars on things that we should not be spending it on because, basically, we lack courage. It is cowardice.

I am committed not just to Madeline. This doesn't have anything to do with the Republican or Democratic Party. It has to do with the survival of our country as we know it.

Yet we continuously hear: No, we can't. We can't do this. We can't do this. We can't get rid of the easy things to get rid of because somebody well heeled or somebody well connected somewhere doesn't want us to. So who runs the country? Do the people of this country control us or is it the well heeled or the well connected or those who will be advantaged by us continuing to waste money?

Is it a fact that we spent $6 billion over the last 5 years paying performance bonuses to companies that contract with the Federal Government on performance they didn't earn, and we will not pass a law in a bill that says they can't do that anymore? Who is getting that money? Whose palms are we greasing? The fact is, we will not vote that out of here and say it isn't going to happen anymore. You are either going to perform under your contract or you are going to lose the contract, and we are not going to give you bonuses for not performing. Yet three times the Senate has voted that down.

Who benefits? It certainly isn't the average American. It is some corporate client somewhere who has too good of a sweetheart deal contracting with the Federal Government and has allies

within the Congress who say: We will protect you on the basis of having helped them in a campaign before. Do we want a future or do we want well-heeled buddies for the short term when it all collapses around us?

What we are is addicted to bad behavior. We are addicted to spending money that we don't have on things we don't need. We are addicted to not confronting the very real problems in the government. Again, it is not President Obama or President Bush's fault. Congress has that responsibility. We reject our responsibility. We have abandoned our responsibility and, with that, our integrity by not doing what we should do.

As a physician, I know what addictive behaviors are all about. What do we need to do? One of the things President Obama wants us to do that we refuse to do is to end no-bid contracts. Let's end the sweetheart deals. Let's get rid of the no-bid contracts that the well connected, well heeled get to have at a higher price than what we would pay if we competitively bid it. Why don't we do that? That has been voted down by this body as well twice; we can't do that; we have to protect our friends; we are more interested in protecting our friends than we are in saving the country. Eliminate bonuses to contractors, I talked about that. Determine the total number, cost, and purpose of every Federal program. The Government Accountability Office can't give us that number. It is too big. The Congressional Research Service can't tell us all the government programs, what their cost and what their purpose is.

We did get through, late last year, an amendment that is going to force the Government Accountability Office to tell us. Do you know how long it will take them to tell us? Three years. That is how big the problem is. With all their resources, it is still going to take them 3 years to tell us all the government programs.

What do we know that I found out and my staff has found out in researching this over the last 5\1/2\ years? We have identified at least 640 different areas where there are more than five programs that have the same goal run by different agencies in the Federal Government.

We know, for example, right now some American people are struggling and a lot of people are actually having trouble getting enough food. So we have to guess how many programs to help feed those people who are needing food? Across six different Departments, we have 70 government programs. Not one of them has a metric on it to say: Are you effective? How do you measure your effectiveness? But we have 70 sets of overhead in the Federal Government to do exactly the same thing.

You may say, How in the world did that happen? I will tell you how it happens. Some constituent comes up here and says: Here is a problem. Oh, yes, it is a problem. We do not research it to see what the Federal Government is already doing, so we author a bill. Because nobody wants to keep food away from the hungry, we pass a bill, not knowing that we already have 69 other programs. That happens time after time after time, still today, because we do not know what we have.

In math, engineering, science, and technology, which is where we would like for lots of our young people to go, we have documented 105 different programs that are funded by the Federal Government to incentivize our young people to go into those areas in eight different government agencies, eight different government Departments. Not the Department of Education--some of them are in there--but in every area. Why? Yet we do not want to do the hard work of eliminating those.

Let's identify the 105, and let's cut it to one. Let's put metrics on it. Let's have just one set of overhead. Let's accomplish that.

We have added 160,000 Federal employees in the last 16 months. Every business I know out there is doing more with less. That is not a denigration to our Federal employees. It is embracing reality that we cannot continue to add Federal employees. We cannot afford the government we have. Forty-three cents out of every dollar the Federal Government spends today is borrowed from China or Russia or countries with sovereign bank accounts, many of which would like to see us end. Can we continue to do that? Can we continue to have 40 percent of everything we are spending borrowed?

What we do know is, necessity becomes the mother of invention, and if we put the clamps and the brakes on both the growth and the size and the total amount the government spends, we will get more for the same amount--but not until we try, not until we mandate it has to happen.

Limit the overhead costs of the Federal programs. The overhead and the layers of duplication are unbelievable. A tremendous amount of savings can be done. I just visited with a three-star general who is working inside the Pentagon. One of the areas where I want to see us eliminate $50 billion a year in spending is inside the Pentagon because they have that much waste. They are going through a process now to look at where they have redundancy. Do you know what. They are finding it everywhere. But the Pentagon is so big, unless you look for it you are never going to see it.

So we now have the military starting to do what they finally need to do. They have never done it before--starting to look at redundancy, starting to look at good management, best practices, to create efficiencies so more dollars can defend us and less dollars will be spent on overhead. We need to do that government-wide, but especially in the Pentagon because it is our greatest discretionary cost with the exception of interest.

Disclose the cost, purpose, and text of legislation that is considered by Congress. There should not be a bill that comes before Congress that we do not adequately and accurately know what it is designed to do. Have a measurement on it so we know it did what we designed it to do, know what it is going to cost, and then force ourselves to evaluate it.

This is the 111th Congress. In the 109th Congress, I held 47 oversight hearings. That was more oversight hearings than the entire rest of the Senate combined. You see, we do not want to do the oversight because it is hard work and you do not get great press clippings. It does not help your campaign, your political career. But we were not sent up here for a political career. We were sent here to do the best, right thing for the country as a whole.

Most of the problems we are seeing are parochial in nature, where we have concentrated on what is best for our State at the expense of what is best for our country. I would posit that my State, Oklahoma, and the Presiding Officer's State cannot be healthy if the country is not healthy. They cannot be. Yet when our focus becomes more parochial than national, we actually undermine our future as a country.

No. 8, require the Congress to justify the creation of new government programs that duplicate existing ones. I am notorious for not letting bills get to the floor because they duplicate something that has already been done. We have created a new program, but we did not eliminate the old one, so now we have both of them running. I usually get beat. I usually get rolled with 60 votes and we create the new program. But we never eliminated the one that was not working, and we never changed the one that was not working. So we just create another program.

Mandate that Congress has to do oversight--has to do it. It must do oversight. We can do that by changing our rules. But we do not have any interest in changing our rules. It is easier to coast and not do the hard job of oversight.

I will just finish up.

One of the things I have thought about--I am not sure it will be helpful, but right now in the trouble we are in, everybody who walks through this Capitol ought to be informed of how much debt we owe and what it is per person. We ought to have that. It is in my office. If you walk by--the Rules Committee will not let me put it in the hall; they say it does not look professional--I have a computer screen where, if you walk by my office, you can see the national debt clock ticking. Your eyes will roll as fast as it is coming up. Remember, we are borrowing about $4 million a second. That is how fast it is going up.

So, anyhow, there are a lot of things we can do to stop the addiction.

I see the Senator from Georgia.

I ask the Senator, did you want to have some time? I will be happy to yield to you if you would yield back to me.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Georgia. It does not matter if you are a Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative or Independent, what your faith is, what your sexual orientation is: Out of many one. But if we are not careful, that one is going to fall based on what we do, and the debt affects a liberal as much as it affects a conservative. It steals opportunity from liberal children as much as it does conservative children. We have to come to a point where we say: Enough is enough.

I was just thinking, as the Senator talked, the $50 billion we are going to borrow from our kids with this bill, it would run the government of the entire State of Oklahoma for 8 years--every branch, every employee, pay all the costs, build all the highways, do everything we do for 8 years, just on what we are going to borrow.

When you start putting it down into, how much is $50 billion?--we throw away billions like they were pennies here.

And how many years for a trillion seconds?

That is 31,709 years. So we are going to have a $1.6 trillion deficit this year. Well, that is 50,000 years of seconds. Just this year, it is 50,000 years of seconds.

Let me go into the amendment a little bit and talk about it. The first section of this amendment would require public disclosure of the amount of any new borrowing or spending approved by the Senate. In other words, it is about transparency. It is about letting the American people hold us accountable. It means that on the Senate Web site, after we make new spending decisions and borrowing decisions, we have to publicize it so the American people can see it, rather than hide behind it. It is simple. There is no score for it on savings. I guarantee it will save money, because if we know the American people are going to know what the financial consequences are of what we do with every vote, it is going to change some votes around here.

The other question we ought to be asking is why shouldn't they know what we are doing and the ramifications of it. It is pretty simple. It is pretty straightforward. I have told the Rules Committee that I would pay out of my personal office budget the cost of that program. In other words, I would turn back over $500,000 every year. I will pay for it out of my budget and make sure that is available, so there is no cost to it whatsoever. I will pay for it out of my budget, out of my office, so it doesn't cost us anything. But it gives the transparency the President and I worked on in this body, and he wants to see from this body, and it makes it available to the American people. So we are going to get a vote on that.

It is important to know that with this bill, if it passes, we will have borrowed 59 plus 20, that is 79; 89, 97, 143, 513, 252, plus 50-- $302 billion since February 14, outside of the budget. That is outside of the budget. Now, $300 billion will run Oklahoma for 40 years. We could run the whole State of Oklahoma for 40 years on what we have spent in 6 months. So why shouldn't we let the American people see what we are doing, since it is going to cost nothing, and it is transparency, so they can hold us accountable? Why should we not do that?

The second thing that is important is in the last year, we have markedly increased--not counting the stimulus bill--the discretionary spending of the Federal Government. We didn't leave ourselves out on that. Inflation was nothing, but we increased our own budget by 4.8 percent. So the other component of one of these amendments is that 4.8 percent, I say we give $100 million of it back, which would be a third of that. That means we still get three times what the rest of the country got in terms of an increase, but it shows at least we are willing to let--and if anybody ran their office with any appropriateness, they would have a surplus as well every year. So it is not a hard cut, but it is important, since we gave ourselves a budget increase, that we demonstrate to the American people we are serious about doing it. Vote against it and say you don't think so or vote for it and let's put it in this bill. Let's start showing the American

people we get it. We will do the right, best thing for the country in the long term.

I have occasional conversations with the President, and one of the things he has told his administration to do, and we heard it flatly rejected--not just rejected but flatly rejected on the basis of a lack of knowledge by the chairman of the Finance Committee. He has told every agency to find 5 percent in cuts. Those are the instructions he has sent out to the head of every agency. Why has he done that? Because he knows we have to. This portion of the amendment says that is exactly what we are going to do. We are going to cut 5 percent of the discretionary spending of every branch of government save Defense and Veterans. Some would say, Well, that is \1/20\th of the budget. Yes, it is. But when you look at it in light of the size of the agencies today, in the last 10 years they are twice as big as they were 10 years ago. They have grown by an average of 10 percent per year and we can't find 5 percent or one-fifth of the growth they have had over the last 10 years that can be done more efficiently or as a lower priority or not as important? We can't find that? Yet, as the Senator from Georgia said, almost every family in this country is having to do that. We refuse to mandate that the Federal Government get on a diet, do things more efficiently, more effectively; take another look to see if it can be done a different way. It is called productivity increases. We can get that.

We won't ever get it if we don't ask for it. It is not a hard concept. We can do that. We allow the agencies to make those recommendations, and that is one of the things President Obama has already asked all of his agencies to do, to go find that 5 percent. That sends a wonderful signal to the American people that we get it.

It does something else that is important, and so will the defeat of this bill, and if we pass it with it being paid for. Right now in this country the value of our dollar is pretty good. The reason it is good is because people are worried about Japan and the value of the yen, and they are significantly worried about the Euro because of what is happening to Greece and now what is getting ready to happen to Spain. So money is rushing in. Smart money around the world in these other economies is rushing to hide in dollars. In about 2 years from now, that money is going to be sucked back out of here, because those economies will have made the hard choices of austerity with which to restabilize the Euro or their currencies. They will have done it.

What we need to send to the international finance market is a signal that says we too are way overextended and we are going to start making the appropriate choices to secure our financial future.

It was 2 months ago that Moody's put a notice out that said if things don't happen and start to change with U.S. Government bonds, they are going to be downgraded from AAA to AA. That is a big downgrade. We have never had an AA rating. So all of a sudden, the world rating system is going to say that maybe an investment in our product, our dollars, is not what it should be.

We need to make sure that doesn't happen. We need to make sure we have sent a signal to the world. When we start doing things where we are paying for new things by cutting lower priority items, we send that signal. We build that confidence back. When we start paying for new bills and the extensions of benefits, we extend that back up.

We are going to hear--actually, we won't hear, because we won't hear anybody come out and debate against these things. What they will choose to do is to ignore them and then vote against them. So the American people won't hear a legitimate debate on why we shouldn't cut 5 percent across the board, letting them decide what areas are most important and recommending them to us; we won't have a debate. We won't debate, and then we will kill it, thinking it will go away. Well, the American people have gotten that already. That is not acceptable to the American people. If you think we shouldn't cut spending in the Federal Government, come out here and defend it. Come out here and give us a philosophical, logical reason why we ought to continue to steal from our children and grandchildren. We won't see that. We won't see a strong debate against each of the points I am going to make associated with this amendment. The real question ought to be: Why? Because it is indefensible to vote against it. That is why. You cannot see the waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication in this government and not say we can do better.

Section 4 of the amendment eliminates nonessential government travel. Do my colleagues realize that almost every government office now has audio-visual equipment for the ability to carry on a teleconference anywhere in this country and overseas? Yet, last year, we spent--no, 2 years ago we spent--the data is behind--we spent $13.8 billion on airline tickets and hotels for Federal Government employees of which over half was nonessential. In 2006, $3.3 billion was spent on airfare. In 2007, $3.5 billion was spent on airfare. In 2008, $4 billion was spent on airfare. We can't get the numbers for 2009 yet. Hotel rooms, $2.3 billion, up to $2.5 billion. Car rentals, from $423 million to $437 million. Most of this can be done by teleconferencing. Why wouldn't we say at a time when we are borrowing $1.6 trillion from our kids that maybe we ought to teleconference rather than get on an airplane? I can tell you it is a whole lot easier than traveling 1,600 miles twice a week. So what does this do? It saves us money.

One of my favorite ways of saving money is to cap the printing costs in the Federal Government. We have examples of it right here. Every day, we put a Calendar of Business out, we put an Executive Calendar out, and we publish the Congressional Record, and we print hundreds of thousands of copies. You know what. It is all on line. We can save $4 billion over the next 10 years by printing limited amounts of things we need and not printing some things everybody else has access to on a computer. Why would we not do that? Why would we not cap our printing costs? Think of the thousands of acres of trees we can save every year. What we know is every year, Federal employees, through our direction, spend $1.3 billion on printing. The analysis by GAO says $440 million of that is unnecessary. So over 10 years, that is $4.4 billion. That is $4.4 billion that we won't take from Madeline. Madeline and her other 3- and 4-year-olds won't have to pay it back. Remember, they won't be paying $4.4 billion back; they will be paying the compounded interest that will double that debt in 10, 12 years. In 20 years, it will triple it. In 30, it will quadruple it. So they won't be paying $4.4 billion back, they will be paying $20 billion back. Why would we not do that? Why would we not make this decision to do that? It has been rejected by this body in the past.

Before the Bush administration left, I was working with them on unused Federal real property. We have billions, if not hundreds of billions, in underutilized Federal property owned by the taxpayers.

We spend $8 billion a year maintaining buildings we are not using. Think about that. We are spending $8 billion a year maintaining buildings we are not using. But we can't sell them because there is a little bill called the McKinney-Vento Act that says every used building in the Federal Government has to be offered as a homeless shelter first--even if it is an airplane hangar on a closed military base.

We created a bureaucracy nightmare that doesn't allow us to do that. Consequently, we could take a tenth of the $8 billion we are spending and appropriate that directly to the homeless and save $7.2 billion a year. But this body has rejected that as well. They voted it down. They didn't give a reason, they just voted it down. We have 46,745 underutilized properties, 18,849 properties we are not using at all, and a total of 65,000 properties we are not utilizing with an estimated value of $83 billion. That's $83 billion of property you are paying the maintenance on that we are not using, that we could sell and pay for almost all of this bill. But we won't do it.

Of course, we don't buy many properties anymore. The reason for that is because of the way our budget scoring is, even though it would be smarter to buy it because the total cost of the building is charged to the agency in the year in which the building is completed. None of the agencies are buying buildings anymore, they are renting

them. We should not be renting the first building. We should be getting rid of the $85 billion worth of buildings we don't need and buying a building, because you can own a building a lot cheaper than renting one--maybe not last year, but commercial rates are coming back up. Yet we don't do it.

Since 2005, out of this $85 billion, because of the bureaucratic nightmare of steps you have to go through, we have only sold $2.5 billion worth of an $85 billion portfolio. None of you would do that with your own property. If you had property out there that you owned, and you were spending 10 percent of the value of that property every year maintaining it, and you weren't utilizing it, and you had an opportunity to sell it, you would sell it. Not the Federal Government. We ought to be asking why. Who took a stupid pill to say not to do that?

Some of the properties are not of any value, so we ought to demolish them, because it costs less to do that than to maintain them. I will give you a rundown on some of them. On the buildings we now have, which we are utilizing, we have a maintenance backlog of $35.5 billion. We are spending money on buildings we don't want, maintaining them, but we can't take care of the buildings we have because we don't have enough money because we are spending it on buildings we don't use.

Section 7 provides that the Department of Defense would auction new, unused, or excellent condition excess inventory to the highest bidder, rather than transferring it at no cost to State agencies and others. You buy tons of stuff every year through the Defense Department that they don't need. As a matter of fact, they don't even know what they have. It is sitting in warehouses around the country. And what do we do when we figure out we don't need it? We give it away. When we are $13.2 trillion in debt, it is time to stop giving it away. It is time to get some value for the American taxpayers who paid retail price for that and turn around and sell it. It has been voted on before and rejected.

I mentioned in my opening words about capping the total number of Federal employees this year. That is called a hiring freeze. But it is not a hiring freeze because if you have retirements, you can replace them. We added 160,000 Federal employees in the last 16 months. We have only have an increase in net new jobs of about 450,000. Almost 50 percent of the net new jobs have been Federal jobs--at a time when our deficit is going to be one of the highest on record.

I say time out. I say do it with whom you have. If you have retirements, or people who leave, replace them, but don't increase the numbers anymore. Those numbers don't include the census of 441,000 temporary workers we have hired and will go away. How else are we going to get our budget under control if we don't do it in terms of personnel?

The other thing is, if you look at the process over the last few years on Federal employees--and I will say it again--I will discuss the fact that those of us who think we are in a crisis moment in our country and feel we ought to be making tough choices would say we ought to freeze total salary costs. That is not a salary freeze per individual. That is just saying that in this department, this agency, here is how much you are going to spend on salaries, and we are not going to go up this year. We are not going to raise the total amount we spend on salaries this year. That still allows every manager great flexibility. You can promote and give raises to people who are performing. But you can't increase the total amount of money.

Why is that important? There is an article in today's paper that OPM is starting to look at it. We looked at it, and here is what we know: In 1999, the average Federal salary was $49,536. It is now $78,806. Inflation during that period of time averaged 2.4 percent. Salary increases during that period of time averaged 4 percent--1\1/2\ times the rate of private pay increases in this country.

What happened to benefits? Average personnel benefit per Federal employee is nearing $40,000 per year. Depending on how much you make, that may seem like a lot, or not, but when you look at the average private sector pay, it is $42,000. It is $36,000 less than the average Federal employee is paid. I don't want Federal employees to get a cut. I just don't think we ought to increase them at a time when most people aren't getting pay increases. I don't think we ought to increase Federal pay.

The benefit differential is even more stark. The average for benefits for the average person in this country, who doesn't work for the Federal Government, is $20,000 per year. So we have almost twice as rich a benefit, or 1\1/2\ to 2 times as rich a benefit for Federal employees as everybody else in the country who is employed. I am not saying cut them. I am saying for 1 year let's not let it increase. Let's do right by the American people, who are struggling, and let's do right by the grandchildren and young children in our country by putting some common sense into what is allowable, given that we are in a time of crisis. We voted on that before. It failed.

Federal employees also have, unpaid to the Federal Government, $3 billion in back taxes, and that is not under dispute. Federal employees, who average $78,000 a year, owe the Federal Government $3 billion. I say they ought to be paying that. I say it ought to be coming out of their wages. It is time to not allow that as a condition of your employment anymore. It seems unconscionable to me that you cannot pay your taxes, when you make $78,000 a year, and we are not going to force you to pay them. So it is a $3 billion savings, but it is an important signal to send to people: We are all paying taxes, and you ought to, too, since you make 1\1/2\ times what the average person in this country makes.

We talked earlier about section 11. It eliminates the awarding of bonuses to government contractors when they have unsatisfactory performance. That is a no-brainer. Nobody in the private sector is going to give a bonus to somebody who isn't performing. But the Federal Government does it all the time. We need to statutorily say you cannot do that anymore.

We now know that we spent $6.2 billion at the United Nations last year. We have no transparency from them on how our money was spent. We know we account for 25 percent of their regular budget and 26 percent of the peacekeeping budget. We did get a little piece that leaked data on an audit. We know that nearly 40 percent of the money spent on peacekeeping is defrauded. Our voluntary additional contributions to the U.N. were $1.3 billion last year.

All this amendment says is, don't give more than a billion to an incompetent organization where we cannot find out where they are spending our taxpayer money. It is a ridiculous commitment. Why would we even let them have a billion? At least save $3 billion a year over the next 10 years, but by not allowing that to go forward.

I want to talk about one other thing I think is important that most of this body has voted against several times. We have $1.7 trillion sitting in the bank--money that the Congress has appropriated to be spent in outyears. Almost $700 billion of that has not been obligated for anything. Yet we have T-bonds and T-bills we are paying interest on while that sits over there.

Prudent management would say that rather than borrow more money, you would use money from the bank account you already have. So this portion of the amendment takes $50 billion out of that $700 billion. We ought to eliminate it all, if it is unobligated. I recognize they have to have some movement back and forth, but they will never notice that $50 billion that isn't in the unobligated balances, and when that expenditure comes, we can appropriate money for it. We are letting money sit idle while we borrow additional money to do additional things. This simply says that we move $50 billion out of that.

Section 18 is about getting energy efficiency at the Department of Energy.

Section 19--I talked to one of the Senators from California on this amendment. I am not opposed to fixing the problems with Medicare, the statistical inaccuracies in their payments, but I am opposed to not fixing it for the five other States that have it as well.

It is unfair to take the State of California when the States of Georgia, Minnesota, Ohio, and Virginia all have exactly the same problem. Yet in this bill, as we heard Senator Grassley say

earlier, we only fixed one of the States. That is called an earmark. There is nothing wrong with fixing it for California, but there is plenty wrong with fixing it for California but not fixing it for these other four States. If it is something that needs to be fixed, why would we advantage California over these other States? It is called favoritism. It is called exceptionalism. It says that the citizens of California are worth more in this country than the citizens in Ohio and Georgia and Virginia and Michigan. They are not. If it is a problem that needs to be addressed, let's address the whole problem.

Why did they not address the whole problem? Because it would have cost more money. We are going to borrow $400 million per year to fix it in California, and that is OK but it is not OK to fix it in the other States. That is inherently unfair, it borders on the unethical, and it is exactly the type of thing the American people reject. If there is a problem, fix it for everybody. Do not single out one group of people at the expense of the rest of Americans.

Finally, this amendment eliminates all tax increases in this bill. The last thing we need to be doing right now is decreasing capital formation in this country, decreasing the ability to invest in new ideas, decreasing the capability of small businesses, which this bill goes after in terms of their subchapter S status, and making it more expensive to start a new business or keep one running when 70 percent of the jobs that are created in this country--and we are hurting for jobs--are created by small businesses.

This amendment has 20 segments, and we are going to have 20 votes. We are going to see where this body lines up on these issues. Vote against common sense at your peril. Vote against the future of our country. Vote against Madeline and everybody else like her. Vote to increase the debt even higher. Vote to increase the size of the Federal Government. Vote to undo pay-go again. Continue doing what we are doing, and what we will see is the American people are going to reject that. They are rejecting it now. It is high time we started listening to the American people.

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

Mr. President, I have listened to a great deal of the debate. I have heard it claimed that the EPA has scientists; that none of us are--except that is not accurate. There are about four or five trained scientists in the Senate, and I happen to be one of them. But the whole predicate that we heard from the Senator from Massachusetts was: The basis was the Supreme Court. They are certainly not scientists.

The other thing I would reject is what the Senator from New Mexico said. As a scientist--and if you read the minority opinions on all the reports they have cited--this is not settled science. Even if it were, this is one Senator who would say this is not the time to do this. Our economy is still on its back, and it is going to be that way for the next 4 years. We have massive problems in front of us. And we are going to add a ruling--not a congressional ruling, a bureaucratic ruling-- that is going to kill jobs, that is going to increase the cost of everything we produce in this country because it all starts with energy. It is going to mandate changes in behavior that will affect every family in this country. So even if it were absolutely true, I would tell you we should not be doing it now.

The second thing is to say that the EPA is going to do this. Do you realize the EPA cannot even train 250,000 contractors for lead paint? They blew it. They totally blew it. They were incompetent, and, consequently, we have hundreds of thousands of people who today still are not working on older homes because of the EPA's incompetence.

So for us to claim we have to do this now, and we should not reject this now, is like cutting off our nose to spite our face. No matter what anybody says, it is going to have a major impact on our economy at the time when we cannot afford to have another negative drag on our economy.

Even if it is true--it is not; but even if it is--it would be stupid for us to do this now, especially when the rest of the world is not coming along at all and the footprint we might minimize will not have any impact on the health of Americans. So we are going to have a certain amount of CO2 no matter what because the Chinese certainly are not doing it, the Indians certainly are not doing it, and they are building one smokestack a day in China right now.

So for us to take this action--in light of the incompetency at the EPA, in light of our economic situation we find ourselves in--I find it highly ironic, even if it is the right thing to do, now is not the right time to do it, given the place where we find ourselves economically in this country.

Then, finally, I have been in this body for 5 years, and I have heard, time and time again, the people opposing this motion to disagree complain about an administration taking away our rightful legislative duty. This is not something that should come from a bureaucracy. This has way too big of an impact.

If we cannot get it through Congress, it should not happen. That is what our country is set up on. Instead, by default, we are going to allow a bureaucracy to take over what we are supposed to be doing? The way this country works is, if we do not do it, it should not be happening because there is not a consensus in the body to get a clean energy program out of the Senate. So you cannot have it both ways. You cannot complain about it when you are seeing it in things you like and not complain about it when it is things you do not like.

I will finish with this one point: We better be very careful in this body about what we are doing. We are playing with the future of 200 million Americans that is extremely precarious at this point in time from an economic standpoint. We can claim all the long-term negative health consequences, but as a physician, if you do not have an economy or you have an economy that crumbles, no matter what you have done on that, you have not helped anybody.

Mr. President, I yield back and thank the Senator from Alaska for the time.

I ask unanimous consent that my letter to Senator McConnell dated June 9, 2010, be printed in the Record.

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

Mr. President, I send to the desk to have printed in the Record a letter I sent to Justice Sonia Sotomayor dated the day before yesterday. The reason for that concern is our Supreme Court process has broken down.

I want to read you some quotes of the Justice, and then I want to read you the answers she gave to my queries during her hearing on the Judiciary Committee. I think it is going to be plain to see that we have to change what we are doing on Supreme Court nominees.

Previous quotes from Judge Sotomayor on foreign law; the use of foreign law to interpret the U.S. Constitution, which is forbidden under the Constitution, except in those international treaties where it is so directed under statute and treaty.

Statement of Judge Sotomayor:

To suggest to anyone that you can outlaw the use of foreign

or international law is a sentiment that is based on a

fundamental misunderstanding. What you would be asking

American judges is to close their minds to good ideas.

Nothing in the American legal system prevents us from

considering the ideas.

That is true.

The international law and foreign law will be very

important in the discussion of how we think about unsettled

issues in our own legal system. It is my hope that judges

everywhere will continue to do this. Within the American

legal system, we are commanded to interpret our law in the

best way we can. That means looking to what anyone has said

to see if it has pervasive value.

Well, that is wrong. The Constitution defines what judges look at in considering their decisions. So I asked her the following questions during her confirmation hearing before the Judiciary Committee:

[W]ill you affirm to this Committee and the American public

that outside of where you are directed to do so through

statute or through treaty, refrain from using foreign law in

making the decisions that you make that affect this country

and the opinions that you write? [or concur with.]

Sotomayor's response:

I will not use foreign law to interpret the Constitution or

American statutes. I will use American law, constitutional

law to interpret those laws, except in situations where

American law directs a court [to do otherwise.]

So you stand by it?

These are my words.

There is no authority for a Supreme Court Justice to

utilize foreign law in terms of making decisions based on the

Constitution or our statutes?

Here is her response.

Unless the statute requires you or directs you to look at

foreign law, the answer is no.

So her statements before she comes before the committee are totally opposite of what she tells the committee, and then what she has done since proves that her testimony before the committee was totally meaningless.

On May 17, Justice Sotomayor joined an opinion citing the ``judgments of other nations'' when interpreting the eighth amendment to prohibit sentencing of a juvenile offender. The opinion states the following:

[The] global consensus against the sentencing practice in

question provides support for our conclusion.

Well, either she was dishonest with us in the committee or she does not know what she is signing on to, which tells you that our process for intervening and holding Supreme Court candidates is a failure.

The opinion further states that:

The judgments of other nations and the international

community [and the] climate of international opinion are not

irrelevant to determining the acceptability of a particular

punishment.

That is a total violation of the U.S. Constitution and its statutes. It is a total negation of what she told the committee as she came through the

committee process. That is one of the reasons I did not believe her, because I believed her earlier statements to be her true feeling.

So what we have before the Judiciary Committee--and we have another nominee coming up now--is the ability for Justices to say whatever we want to hear, and then do whatever they want to do and ignore the U.S. Constitution, as she did, and in her testimony before the committee.

As journalist Stuart Taylor recently wrote in The Atlantic--this opinion that she cosigned onto:

The opinion was based on little more than the personal

policy preferences of the five majority justices. And it

looked abroad for consensus that so plainly does not exist

here and violates our own U.S. Constitution.

So it did not matter what she told the committee. She did exactly the opposite of what she told the committee as she signed onto this opinion. We are going to need more than promises from the next nominee. An acceptable Supreme Court nominee must have a demonstrated record of adhering to the Constitution and their judicial oath by strictly interpreting the Constitution, according to our Founders' intent, not international opinion or consensus. It has no role in the interpretation of our Constitution. Senators cannot simply accept pledges from Supreme Court nominees that they will not use foreign law when interpreting the U.S. Constitution. The nominee to come before us, Solicitor General Kagan, wrote the following:

There are some circumstances in which it may be proper for

judges to consider foreign law sources in ruling on

constitutional questions.

Oh, really? Is that what our Constitution says? Is that what this candidate believes? Here is what she said. What is she going to say before us in committee, that she will not? What value is that if, in fact, she knows that to be the law, she admits that is what the U.S. Constitution says, and as soon as she is affirmed, does exactly the opposite? The process has to be changed. We can no longer take it on faith because, in fact, the process under which--since Bork actually spoke what he believed, since him, nobody has said what they believe. They have all chiseled on what they believe. They will not be accountable to what they believe. So we have to change that process.

The other concerning thing about Nominee Kagan is that when she went to Harvard, she made international law mandatory in terms of getting a degree out of law school at Harvard. But do you realize Harvard does not require its lawyers to take constitutional law? You can graduate from Harvard Law School and never have studied U.S. constitutional law. That tells you the trend this country is going in; we are abandoning our Constitution and the very wisdom that gives us the freedom we have today.

I will finish by saying, the consideration of any judge in the future, in terms of this Senator, is going to be borne out by what they have said before they got to the committee, not what they say to the committee, because we can no longer, as a body, trust what the nominees say in committee.

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

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burris.) The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have my letter

to the Senate minority leader regarding the Global Food Security Act, S. 384, printed in the Congressional Record.