Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent to be recognized until Senator Kyl returns to the floor or for a shorter period of time, whichever may be the shortest.

Mr. President, nobody disputes the intent that we ought to go after the fraud that has been associated with the mortgage industry and some of the problems thereof. We passed the stimulus bill that had a lot of money for the Justice Department in it. We didn't tell them they should

use the money on this. We passed an omnibus bill, none of which did we put money in. We put $10 million in for the FBI. Now we come before the Senate wanting to authorize $500 million more for a bill in a department, the Justice Department, that will end this fiscal year with over $2 billion in the bank. Since I have been a Senator, they have had over $2 billion at the end of the year. There is something unique about the Justice Department. The Justice Department is the only Federal agency that doesn't ultimately have to send its unspent money back to the Treasury. They get to keep it.

In a time where we are spending money to the tune of $112 billion a day every day we have been in session so far in this 111th Congress, to say that we ought to send another $500 million to an agency that is going to have $2 billion left over at the end of this year and the next few years to come tells us we are not good money managers, but most of the American people know that already.

On fiscal grounds, what we are doing is, we are authorizing money. And that is what will be the response to this debate: It is just an authorization. The fact is, if you are authorizing, you intend to spend it. You are going to try to get another $500 million appropriated on this bill.

Secondly, we don't have ex post facto laws. So everything this bill does has no application in terms of a statute change to any of the crimes committed, either the fraud or money laundering or anything else. It has no application. None of it will apply to misdeeds and infractions of the law that happened that got us into this crisis.

Additionally, every act that was committed that broke a law under the statutes we have today, both Federal mail fraud and wire fraud, can be prosecuted already. What is going on? What is going on is, we are going to pass a bill in reaction to a problem that Congress created in the first place by incentivizing poor behavior at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, by not doing oversight, and we are going to make everybody feel better because we reacted to it. We don't need new laws on the books. What we need to do is enforce the laws we have today. It may be true that the Justice Department might need additional moneys. But where is the oversight?

We released a report earlier this year that showed $10 billion over the last 5 years of waste in the Justice Department. Here is a department that has wasted $10 billion over the last 5 years, has $2 billion at the end of this year with which they could fund this. We didn't fund any of it except $10 million in the stimulus bill or the omnibus bill, and we are adding new laws to the books that we don't need to prosecute the people who broke the law. It is a typical congressional reaction when what we should be doing is enforcing the laws already on the books and supplying on a priority basis the funding for the Justice Department to prosecute that.

I see Senator Kyl is here. I will continue my comments later.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss S. 386, the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. Although I certainly support the well-intended purpose of this bill, I have concerns about the proposal that I would like to explain today.

S. 386 aims to ``beef up'' the Government's efforts to combat fraud, particularly in the mortgage industry and Federal assistance programs. To that end, the bill creates a host of new criminal provisions and authorizes nearly half a billion dollars in spending over the next 2 years.

As a threshold matter, I am concerned about the necessity of these new criminal provisions. In my mind, Congress should have a compelling reason for adding to the already monstrous Federal criminal code. With more than 4,400 Federal offenses already on the books, it is hard to imagine there being conduct the Government cannot reach.

The Federal criminal code is often criticized for being overly broad, and legislators on both sides of the aisle have been known to bemoan its growth. Yet when ``tough-on-crime'' bills come before Congress, nobody wants to stand in their way and risk political consequences. This is a truly unfortunate trend.

Turning back the tables on over-criminalization isn't a partisan issue. Legislators from both sides of the aisle have seen first-hand the sometimes devastating unintended consequences that flow from the application of Federal law. Democrats and Republicans could be working together to reevaluate some of these provisions; instead, we are doing business as usual, responding to every crisis by further littering the criminal code.

With respect to S. 386, two prominent organizations, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Heritage Foundation, formed an unlikely alliance in opposition to the bill. Both organizations believe that S. 386 contributes to overcriminalization, and their concerns are detailed specifically in a joint letter that describes the new criminal proposals as ``redundant and risks overreaching.''It notes that within the 4,450 offenses already in criminal law, prosecutors have all the tools needed to reach crimes associated with fraud. In general, it points to the Federal mail and wire fraud statutes as being sufficiently broad to cover mortgage fraud and other related crimes. As further evidence, it references an FBI press release identifying nine existing Federal criminal statutes that can be used to prosecute mortgage fraud.

Because it is not my intention to prevent law enforcement from pursuing truly criminal conduct, I studied the issue to determine whether there are any insufficiencies within existing law that would give perpetrators of fraud safe haven. I have found no examples of conduct or entities outside the reach of current law.

It is true that not every provision of the criminal code reaches certain fraudulent acts. It is also true that not every entity in the mortgage industry is regulated by the Federal Government. It is not true, however, that the conduct or entities targeted by this bill are currently going unpunished. Prosecutors have successfully used other laws, particularly the mail and wire fraud statutes, to aggressively prosecute these crimes at the Federal level.

The FBI's recent successes serve to demonstrate this point. The FBI has handled mortgage fraud since 1989 and is actively pursuing these crimes now. It has 65 mortgage fraud task forces and working groups across the country that coordinate federal, state and local law enforcement officials. The FBI has 180 agents devoted to the sector. They are handling more than 2,000 investigations, and have opened 734 cases this year. In fiscal year 2008, they obtained 560 indictments/ informations and 338 convictions. Last year, one operation resulted in the roundup of more than 400 people accused of inflicting more than $1 billion in losses, who were caught up in a nationwide sweep named Operation Malicious Mortgage.

The Secret Service has also been working hard to combat fraud directed at financial institutions. It has an established network of 35 financial crimes task forces and 24 electronic crimes task forces. The Secret Service also partners with U.S. Attorney's Offices across the country to participate in mortgage fraud working groups. In fiscal year 2008 alone, the Secret Service indicted and arrested 5,633 individuals responsible for $442 million in fraud losses.

These impressive statistics, from both the FBI and the Secret Service, suggest that Federal criminal law is more than sufficient to address crimes of fraud associated with the ongoing economic crisis.

Federal prosecutors are not alone in pursuing mortgage fraud. Just last month, the New York Times ran an article saying, ``Across the country, attorneys general have already begun indicting dozens of loan processors, mortgage brokers and bank officers. Last week alone, there were guilty pleas in Minnesota, Delaware, North Carolina and Connecticut and sentences in Florida and Vermont, all stemming from home loan scams.'' The article gave specific examples of State actions being taken to address the crisis:

State and local prosecutors, it seems, do not need the

nudge. Last week, the district attorney's office in Brooklyn

announced the creation of a real estate fraud unit, with 12

employees and a mandate to ``address the recent flood of

mortgage fraud cases plaguing New Yorkers.'' In late

February, Maryland unveiled a mortgage fraud task force,

bringing together 17 agencies to streamline investigations.

As the joint letter from the Heritage Foundation and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers correctly notes, States are the ``primary regulators of mortgage brokers and the insurance industry.

State governments are also closest to the people and are well- situated to detect and prosecute these crimes. Aided by the recent allocation of nearly $5 billion in Federal funding for State and local law enforcement, states should be able to continue and enhance their existing efforts to pursue mortgage fraud.

In short, both Federal and State criminal law is sufficient to combat mortgage and other financial fraud crimes. Congress should resist the temptation to overreach on this issue by enacting new criminal laws, and instead focus its efforts on enforcing existing law.

Enforcing existing law, of course, requires resources. In addition to the significant resources already being expended by the Federal Government to address fraud, S. 386 authorizes $490 million for fiscal years 2009 and 2010. CBO has scored the bill and estimates that implementing it would cost the full amount over the 2010-2014 period.

Proponents argue that the recent influx of Federal dollars into the economy is sure to invite fraud. I do not disagree, but this problem did not develop overnight. Surely Congress realized the possibility for fraud when it wrote these checks just months ago? Instead of taking time to include safeguards in the bill or otherwise ensure responsible, effective allocation of hard-earned taxpayer dollars, Congress rushed the bills out the door at break-neck speed. In doing so, Congress created an environment ripe for fraud.

The answer to this problem is, of course, to ask the taxpayers to shoulder even more of the burden. The 111th Congress has now spent more than $1.5 trillion, yet it has somehow neglected to fund a priority as important as combating fraud. The omnibus appropriations bill, passed just weeks ago, only contained $10 million for the FBI to pursue mortgage fraud. The stimulus bill, which provided $4 billion for State and local law enforcement, amid nearly $1 trillion in spending, failed to provide any money specific to fraud enforcement. Why, when opportunities to address this problem arose, did Congress not do the right thing and prioritize the funding authorized by S. 386?

In this time of economic crisis, Congress no longer has the luxury of spending money haphazardly. We must learn to set priorities and make sacrifices, and perhaps even think creatively about how to stretch limited resources to meet our needs.

For example, the Department of Justice has access to ``unobligated balances,'' which are unspent dollars that have been appropriated but not obligated during a fiscal year. Such money is typically required to be returned to the U.S. Treasury, but the Justice Department has unique authority to retain and carry over its unobligated funds for use in the following year. Fiscal year 2007, DOJ had almost $2.9 billion in unobligated balances, and it is estimated to have had nearly $2.3 billion at the end of fiscal year 2008, and to have $2 billion at the end of fiscal year 2009. This excess would be a good source of funding for priorities such as investigating and prosecuting mortgage fraud during a housing crisis.

Moreover, the Department of Justice has become infamous for its wasteful spending. Last year, I released a report titled, ``Justice Denied: Waste & Mismanagement at the Department of Justice,'' which identified more than $10 billion in wasteful spending. The Justice Department should be required to make more responsible use of the funds currently within its authority before Congress entrusts it with even more of the taxpayers' hard-earned money.

Unfortunately, many of the dollars wasted at the Department of Justice are done by way of congressional earmarks. Earmarks consume scarce resources and prevent experts at DOJ from allocating money to areas with the most pressing need. Congress should allow DOJ officials to reprogram existing earmarks so that higher priority needs, like combating mortgage fraud, can be met.

One thing is certain, the American taxpayer has already paid too high a price for irresponsible governance. Continuing ``business-as-usual,'' by funding parochial pet projects before we take care of legitimate business, cannot continue.

While I surely support the legislation's goal of addressing fraud, especially in the mortgage industry, I do not believe S. 386 is either necessary or prudent at this time of economic crisis. Our national debt is more than $11 trillion, and CBO recently set this year's deficit at $1.7 trillion, projected to rise to $1.845 trillion by year's end. I believe Government can and should prioritize spending to fulfill its responsibilities without asking more of the American people. I also believe that State and Federal criminal law are sufficient to address fraud and would father see efforts focused on enforcing those existing laws, rather than on creating new ones.

Amendment No. 982

I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 982 be called up.

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

Earlier today, I spoke for a short period of time on this bill. I wish to retrace some of that before I talk about this amendment. It is important that the American people understand what this bill is doing.

All of us wish to get rid of the fraud, the money laundering, we wish to punish the people who have, in fact, helped cause part of this problem. I would tell you the biggest person or group of people responsible for the problem we face today is the Congress, this body and the House of Representatives.

We failed to do our job on oversight. We incentivized and socialized housing, we incentivized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to do things that were inappropriate, to take risks they should not have done, and then we did not have the regulatory mechanisms in place, nor did we do the oversight to see what was going on.

This bill, however, is attempting to fix a problem with a statute, criminal statute. Most people know we do not need more criminal statutes. The fact is, nobody can name an act that occurred on any of this fraud or any of this money laundering that is not prosecutable under the Criminal Code we have today.

Off the record, when we asked some pertinent people from the Justice Department, they laughed when asked if we needed these new criminal statutes. The other point I would make is, none of this, with the exception of the false claim portion, has any application to what has already happened because you cannot apply a new law to a crime that already existed under our Constitution.

So what are we doing? What we are doing is trying to make the American public think we are doing something now that, in essence, does not need to be done. We may need to fund the Justice Department at a greater level because we did not do what we should have done earlier.

It is the typical knee-jerk reaction. We have plenty of laws on the books. As a matter of fact, the new penalties in some of this stuff are greater for fraud and mortgage than for manslaughter under the Federal Code.

We need to be very careful as we approach this. I am not saying we should not go after all those people. I am not saying we should not put in the resources to do that. But when we put the resource there, we ought to make sure they are used just for that.

No. 2, we ought to look at the Justice Department and how they spend money. Late last year I released a report on the $10 billion worth of waste in the Justice Department over the previous 5 years, $10 billion that was wasted over the previous 5 years.

Nobody disputed it. I mean, the Justice Department did not even answer it and say, that is not right, because they knew it was right. The fact is we refuse to make priorities.

This amendment is very simple. If we are going to appropriate a half billion dollars in increased funding to go after the fraud and money laundering associated with this financial situation that the Congress created and incentivized individuals, should we take it from the American taxpayers or should we take it out of money that we have already allocated?

The Justice Department is different than every other agency in the Federal Government, because at the end of the year, every other department's unexpended balances, unobligated balances eventually filter back to the Treasury. Not so at the Justice Department. They actually get to keep theirs. They are the only agency that gets to keep it.

Now, what have they averaged over the last 5 years in unobligated and unexpended balances? Over $2 billion a year. So here is an agency with $2 billion that they have not spent, and we are going to give them another $500 million, and their incentive is not to spend the money on the things we need to do; it is to keep it to do with what they want out of the direction of those that control the purse strings.

What this amendment says is we have already allocated money in terms of TARP funds; that if, in fact, we are going to send more money, which I do not think we should--I think we ought to spend it from the money we have--but if we are going to do it, let's take it from the money we have already taken from the American taxpayer, and it is not the American taxpayer; it is their grandkids, and let us use some of that money because the return on that money will be far greater than the return we are going to get on any TARP money.

It is very simple, very straightforward as a funding treatment. What we will use is money that has already been appropriated in the TARP funds, which they have a significant balance--in the billions--and we will take, over the next 2 years, $250 million or so to give to the Justice Department, if we agree we should be giving it to the Justice Department. Do not be fooled by the typical Washington turnaround that happens all the time up here, the sleight of hand that says: We are fixing a problem. We tend to fix problems that are not broken and not fix the problems that are broken. The mess we are in demonstrates that very straight forwardly.

We are going to have a $2 trillion deficit this year. We are going to double the national debt in 5 years. We are going to triple it in 10 under the Obama budget. Should not we be about priorities? Should not we be about holding the agencies accountable? Should not we be about making sure the money is spent properly?

If we are going to spend new money, try to get it from areas we already are not spending the money in but it has been appropriated. The American people would agree with that. I hope my colleagues will as well.

Madam President, the thing many of my colleagues don't know is, before I was a physician I was an accountant, and the thing about numbers is you can make them show anything you want. That, historically, is what Republicans and Democrats have done with budgets. They play games. The only year that counts is the next year, this next 2010 fiscal year. That is the only thing that counts in terms of what they are going to do.

The important thing before us ought to be the following: At the end of the budget that is offered by both President Obama and the majority, the deficit will be higher than it has ever been any time prior to this year, and it will not go down. It will never go down, in light of that, in terms of a sustainable level.

The second point I want to make on this budget is this budget is a real budget that says to every American except our fighting men and women and our seniors and our veterans: Everybody has to sacrifice for us to get out of the mess we are in. The sacrifice will not necessarily be hard because of the tremendous amount of waste that is in the Federal Government right now. At a conservative minimum, 10 percent of everything we spend is pure waste or fraud. We will not do anything about it. One of the things with the McCain budget, the Republican budget, is that it will force us to do something about it.

We take some of that $380 billion a year that is now defrauded of the Federal Government, or pure waste, and we will recapture that to do something positive. But the underlying point is, as Americans, if we are going to get out of the problems we are in, we cannot spend our way into prosperity, and we can't borrow our way out of debt. That is what this budget does. It attempts to grow Federal Government.

The claim is that it only grows it 2 percent over 5 years. But when you look at the numbers in this budget, it grows at 7 percent in the next year, in terms of discretionary spending. Then all the pain is after that. We all know the reality of the Senate. There will not be any pain. It will be 7 percent the year after that. You watch what comes from the appropriators.

The House budget has a 12-percent increase in it. The President's had an 11-percent increase. We can hear all these statements on the floor, but the No. 1 fact is, everybody in this country is going to have to sacrifice except those who have already sacrificed. If we do anything less than that, then what we are doing is sacrificing the future of our kids and our grandkids.

In this budget we have a proposal that will pick up the 11 million Americans who are eligible for Medicaid who are not even getting health care now and, at the same time, save the States $88 billion a year and save the Federal Government $40 billion a year and improve the health care of everybody on Medicaid today. That is $1.3 trillion of efficiency in health care that we will save. The States will love the plan.

Does it fit into the overall plan of what we have now? Is it the only way we can do it? No. But the fact is, 40 percent of the doctors and caregivers in our country today will not even see a Medicaid patient. We are up to almost 20 percent not seeing a Medicare patient. We have to do something about that. But we don't need more money in health care; what we need is a more efficient market and common sense in the way we spend the money so we get great quality care at a fair price, which is not happening today.

I hope my colleagues will consider the McCain budget because of the significant truth that underlies it, that everybody is going to have to sacrifice some. Everybody has to sacrifice if we are to get out of the mess we are in. You can be critical of it, but the fact is, there is no program, in terms of total dollars, that is going to see a marked decrease in terms of spending without getting exactly the same or better results.

Our President said he wants a line-by-line review of every program, that he wants competitive bidding, he wants metrics. That is what we do. We actually do what the average American would do. We apply common sense to the way the Government spends money, and we look at it and say we cannot continue on the path we are on without bankrupting our kids.

The very real possibility that out of the budget that is being presented today we will have a fiat currency or a currency that is inflated, which will devalue the assets of everybody in this country, is absolutely real and recognized.

I thank the Senator from Arizona for the time to speak on his budget, and I yield.

I would take it by unanimous consent.

Mr. President, imagine tomorrow morning, if we are in session, and you no longer get to vote your conscience, that a Federal bureaucrat will tell you what you can and cannot do.

The fact is, we have wonderful physicians in this country who make decisions every day based on a multitude of factors, including what they think in their conscience is right. This is an amendment which simply protects that right, just as you would want the right for your vote in this body to be protected. It also protects the conscience of a patient to be able to choose the physician and the caregiver to whom they trust their body and their health.

I hope this body will support this amendment.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, in a few minutes there will be a unanimous consent request on a voice vote for a nominee to the No. 2 position at Homeland Security--a very nice lady by the name of Ms. Lute.

I would make the point, as the second most senior member on Homeland Security on the minority side, I cast a ``no'' vote for this person in committee, and that is very well detailed in my statement.

But I think there are some important things the American people should know about her previous service in terms of the peacekeeping forces under her direction as far as the procurement, management, and followup.

Here is what we know. Forty-three percent of all the money spent on international peacekeeping at the United Nations was either involved in fraud or kickback schemes and illegal contracting.

The other thing we know is that the international peacekeepers raped and abused hundreds and hundreds of people, for which at this time today the services under the direction of Ms. Lute have not been directed toward or the care given for those individuals who suffered those consequences.

The other thing we know is that the contracting associated with her administration in the U.N. was associated with several no-bid contracts that were inefficiently done and ineffectively carried out. It is on that basis that I agreed not to hold up her nomination. She will go through, and she will be confirmed. But this nominee has to prove herself at the Department of Homeland Security. I am willing to be proven wrong, but the fact is, her reason for the problems she had at the U.N. was the lack of cooperation at the U.N. She is going to be running a much larger budget with greater responsibilities, and if, in fact, that is the case, and it was all the U.N., then her limited experience, we can hope, will grow, and she will be an effective Assistant Secretary.

There are other people much more qualified who could fill this position. As I said, this is a very humble lady. She has served with great distinguished service in the Armed Services of this country. There is no personal animosity nor direction toward her individually. But the fact is, one of our most difficult agencies is the Department of Homeland Security. It has big problems, conflicts, lack of transparency, and inefficiency.

It is my hope that after she is confirmed, she will, in fact, be up to the task, and we, both in the Senate and as American taxpayers, will get real value out of her service.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Jane Holl Lute has been nominated to become the Deputy Secretary for Management at the Department of Homeland Security, (DHS). If confirmed, she would be responsible for the following at DHS: budget, appropriations, expenditure of funds, accounting and finance; procurement; human resources and personnel; information technology systems; facilities, property, equipment, and other material resources; and performance measurements tracking.

After reviewing the parts of her U.N. record that had to be leaked for any of us to know about it, it is clear that Ms. Lute is either not qualified or not experienced to manage the DHS. When pressed to explain the mismanagement, fraud, and corruption that took place under her watch at U.N. Peacekeeping Operations, Ms. Lute consistently diverted blame to other U.N. officials or departments--making it appear she really didn't manage much of the U.N. If accurate, she is not experienced. When pressed to explain how she is experienced enough to manage DHS, Ms. Lute then claims she was at the center of Peacekeeping Operations, managed the internal operations--making it appear that she was responsible for everything. If accurate, this means she is also responsible for the mismanagement and waste. Ms. Lute cannot have it both ways.

An overall assessment of Peacekeeping Operations is that they are saturated in fraud and abuse.

In 2007 and 2008, the U.N. Procurement Task Force, a branch of the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services, OIOS, issued several reports that had to be leaked in order for anyone outside the U.N. to know about them.

The reports were based on investigations related to U.N. peacekeeping management and procurement that uncovered a significant amount of corruption, fraud, waste, overpayments, abuse, negligence and mismanagement in a number of high value contracts. This reflects a lack of an internal control system within U.N. Peacekeeping procurement under Ms. Lute's management.\1\

The findings of the U.N. audit reports are alarming.

For example, the reports found 43 percent of mostly U.N. peacekeeping procurement tainted by fraud. Out of $1.4 billion in U.N. contracts internally investigated, $610 million was tainted by 10 ``significant fraud and corruption schemes.'' \2\ Since 43 percent of the procurement contracts are tainted and the U.S. taxpayer contributes up to 26 percent of all U.N. funding, it is safe to say the entire U.S. contribution in this case was tainted by corruption an waste.

``Total disregard for controls'' is how the task force described senior U.N. officials involved in peacekeeping procurement fraud.\3\ In an environment of no controls, Ms. Lute's Peacekeeping Operations suffered from numerous problems that greatly increased the cost of operations or lost resources altogether.

Specific examples listed in the report include criminal acts such as bribery and kickback schemes, overpayments to vendors, lack of competitive bidding, lack of acquisition plans, lack of qualified procurement staff, splitting single contracts apart to avoid reporting requirements, transactions with no contract in place, unauthorized contracts issued, use of uneconomical contractors, unnecessary expenditures, and dysfunctional asset and property management.

The task force found that significant Peacekeeping missions lacked ``indicators of achievement and performance measures'' for the political and civilian affairs components of operations. Specifically, roles and responsibilities were not formally established, and there were no defined reporting lines and accountability.\4\

The task force reports that a major roadblock to its investigation is due to ``limited cooperation'' from U.N. staff and vendors due to the lack of a compulsory process for obtaining documents and testimony.\5\

Even after the task force exposed Peacekeeping mismanagement, peacekeeping and procurement management were not ``consistent in applying the standards to which they are supposed to hold staff accountable.'' \6\

For each of its audits and investigations, the task force made recommendations to Ms. Lute and her U.N. Peacekeeping team on how to address the serious fraud and mismanagement issues. A number of critical recommendations were not accepted.\7\

Regarding Peacekeeping procurement, Ms. Lute tries to have it both ways by diverting blame but also claiming she still has procurement experience.

When asked at her nomination hearing about the procurement corruption under her watch, Ms. Lute claimed that the corruption and mismanagement was not her fault but the fault of procurement staff in the field.

Since she indicated at the hearing that she had little or no responsibility for the Peacekeeping procurement, Ms. Lute was asked in her questions for the record what other procurement experience she had that would qualify her for managing procurement at DHS. Her written response reveals that Ms. Lute was much more responsible for Peacekeeping procurement than she admitted at the hearing. She wrote in her response that she had ``responsibility for oversight of personnel responsible for directly engaging and supervising the provision of contract services.''

Another indication that Ms. Lute has a much larger role and influence on Peacekeeping procurement than she admitted at her hearing is how she pushed through a no-bid contract for her mission to Darfur in 2007. In 2007, Lute personally steered a $250 million no-bid contract for U.N. peacekeeping in Darfur to a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin.

At the time, the Officer-in-Charge of the U.N. Department of Management where much of the U.N.'s procurement took place sent Ms. Lute a memo responding to her charges that Peacekeeping procurement problems was the fault of the U.N. Department of Management.

While the Department of Management has many faults and has an equally tarnished record within the U.N., the comments in the memo are telling in that they reinforce the findings of several OIOS and Procurement Task Force reports.

According to the memo, Ms. Lute failed to plan for the Darfur peacekeeping mission which led to sole source contracting despite having 18 months to prepare. The memo also indicates Ms. Lute failed the preparedness test by not having a logistics concept in place to embark on a logistics delivery capability at short notice that will also meet U.N. procurement rules. Finally, the memo states that the delays in startup of the mission were due to Ms. Lute constantly changing mission requirements. According to the memo, these delays ``constitute a pattern, to which oversight bodies of the U.N. may be less charitable towards and may well find the pattern as troubling.''

In a 2008 OIOIS Procurement Task Force report, U.N. auditors expressed concerns that based on prior audits and investigations that Peacekeeping Operations will face a ``higher-risk exposure to mismanagement, fraud and corruption'' as a result of the no-bid contract requested by Ms. Lute.\8\

It is also important to point out that almost the entire U.N. shares concerns about what Ms. Lute did with this contract. In 2007, the U.N. General Assembly voted 142 to 1, sadly with only the United States dissenting, to express concern about the no-bid contract \9\

Even though Ms. Lute claimed at her hearing that she had little responsibility in contracting decisions or oversight, she clearly had enough influence on the process to pressure her U.N. colleagues to accept a no-bid contract. Why would she then be unable to use this same influence to press for controls, transparency, and accountability in order to protect her Peacekeeping Operations from being undermined by cost overruns, waste, and illicit behavior?

If the assessment from the U.N. official in the Management Department is correct, Ms. Lute failed the preparedness test when it came to rapid deployment of resources and personnel to respond to new crises. Preparedness is what she was responsible for at U.N. Peacekeeping, and it will be what she is responsible for at DHS.

Another indication that Ms. Lute had more responsibility for Peacekeeping procurement than what she admitted to at her hearing was that she publicly defended the Peacekeeping procurement fraud when it was made public in

the media. In 2007, the Washington Post published its report on the Peacekeeping procurement fraud after the U.N. audits were leaked. Ms. Lute chose to respond on behalf of U.N. Peacekeeping. In her op-ed, she makes excuses for the fraud, claims there is no pattern of abuse in peacekeeping procurement, and misrepresented the Washington Post article in order to discredit it. She claims the article was misleading when it said that peacekeeping ``suffered losses in the hundreds of millions.'' In reality, the article quoted directly from the U.N. audits saying correctly that U.N. auditors found multiple instances of fraud that tainted $610 million worth of contracts.\10\

If Ms. Lute was truly not responsible for the massive amount of procurement fraud, it is odd that she would then choose to represent peacekeeping procurement and rebut this article. Even if she had no responsibility for the mismanagement and fraud, it would have been much more productive if Ms. Lute chose instead to use this opportunity in her op-ed to make the case for reforming Peacekeeping operations and procurement, offer suggestions for cutting waste, and laying out a better preparedness plan and logistics concept. Unfortunately, we have no record of Ms. Lute speaking out about the problems that were undermining U.N. Peacekeeping or offering reform ideas whether at a press conference or in a report to the U.N. Security Council.

The Procurement Task Force released a report in July of 2007 regarding its investigation of ground fuel procurement in the U.N. peacekeeping mission to Haiti, MINUSTAH.\11\ The conclusion of the report indicated the ground fuel procurement process was not conducted in a fair and transparent manner resulting in bid rigging and the awarding of the contract to a company initially ranked as ``non- compliant.'' U.N. staff from both Procurement and Peacekeeping Departments was responsible. This report made several findings that reflect on Ms. Lute's performance as manager of resources and field deployment.

For example, it reports that Ms. Lute failed to staff MINUSTAH with experienced fuel staff that could evaluate the technical and commercial aspects of the fuel contracting.\12\

It also illustrates that Ms. Lute failed to act on the continual supply chain inconsistencies. The report shows that Peacekeeping staff reported problems including the discrepancy between how much fuel was purchased and what was actually delivered, the contractor's use of substandard fuel tankers, and other problems. Even after the problem had been flagged, the contract was never pulled and reassigned.\13\

Making the U.N.'s risk exposure even worse, under Ms. Lute's watch, MINUSTAH received its fuel supply with an expired contract. The initial fuel contract expired, and while the long-term contract was being prepared, the poor-performing contractor continued to supply fuel to the mission without a written contract.\14\

Ms. Lute failed to step in when poor-performing contractor was given long-term contract despite repeated reports of inconsistent fuel supply and poor performance measurements.\15\ Bid rigging by U.N. Peacekeeping and Procurement staff was again to blame.\16\

Since this took place towards the end of her time managing U.N. Peacekeeping, it is telling that, even after five years managing Peacekeeping Operations, Ms. Lute failed to have the proper controls in place that would prevent this from occurring or from being overlooked so many times.

Another U.N. audit report written towards the end of Ms. Lute's time managing Peacekeeping revealed another mission she deployed without proper controls in place. The Procurement Task Force released an audit in May of 2007 regarding its assessment of procurement fraud indicators in the mission to Liberia, UMIL.\17\ The audit was designed to test whether UNMIL had the proper controls in place to protect against fraud and corruption.

Regarding UNMIL's requisitioning office, which is under Ms. Lute's management, the audit found that Ms. Lute failed to initiate good business practice and internal control principles by not limiting the number of persons that can raise requisitions.\18\ It also found that Ms. Lute failed to staff the requisition office with qualified staff that could ensure specifications on the requisition are accurate. This could lead to inefficient procurement, wasteful purchases, and loss of funds.\19\

Ms. Lute's record responding to Peacekeeper rape and sexual exploitation of women and children is also troubling.

For years, U.N. watchdogs, human rights groups, and now U.N. auditors have been documenting hundreds of allegations and confirmed instances of sexual crimes against women and small children under U.N. peacekeeping care and protection. The perpetrators include both military and civilian Peacekeeping personnel. Allegations of misconduct have been made in every major Peacekeeping operation including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bosnia, Burundi, Cambodia, Guinea, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Kosovo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Sudan.\20\

Ms. Lute was responsible for the U.N. response to and prevention of the rape and sexual exploitation. Despite claiming a ``zero tolerance'' policy and having systems in place to help prevent this abuse, Ms. Lute's record suggests otherwise with abuse continuing to plague peacekeeping operations and no known prosecution and imprisonment of a single perpetrator.

In 2004, reports first began emerging of the rampant sexual exploitation of children at the Republic of Congo, DRC, peacekeeping mission. According to press reports, in June 2004, U.N. Peacekeeping managers were informed by the head of the DRC Mission that there were initially 50 allegations of sexual abuse, 42 involving minors, but total allegations rose to 72 in a followup report.\21\ The report detailed acts such as the rape of a minor in a U.N. armored personnel carrier and a prostitution network of minors at the U.N. airport.

The media reports indicate that the investigation done by Ms. Lute and the other managers of U.N. Peacekeeping Operations was fatally flawed. There was no witness protection offered to the victims which led to witnesses being bribed or threatened to change their testimony. Investigators were reportedly ordered to only investigate claims in one town while ignoring the numerous claims made throughout the DRC.

It is also reported that a high-ranking Peacekeeping official for the U.N. Mission to the DRC was sexually exploiting minors as young as 13, and eventually 150 cases were brought against Peacekeeping soldiers and civilians ranging from abduction and rape of minors to the finding of more than 250 images of child pornography involving Congolese children on the laptop of a U.N. official.

The OIOS documented in January, 2005 at least 7 cases of underage sexual abuse committed by U.N. peacekeepers, and all but one of them were fully substantiated.

There were also press reports of abuses in the Sudan during this same time period. According to The Daily Telegraph, in 2005, U.N. officials knew of the sexual abuse of children as young as 12 that began in 2005 soon after the U.N. Peacekeeping mission in Southern Sudan, UNMIS, went to work to rebuild the region.\22\ A leaked internal report compiled by the U.N. children's agency, UNICEF, in July 2005 referred to the sexual exploitation perpetrated by U.N. peacekeepers, military policy, and civilian staff. According to the paper, this report was substantiated by a preliminary report from a leading U.N. affiliated NGO that was unwilling to be named for political reasons.

Allegedly hundreds of children have been abused, and the Telegraph has independently documented at least 20 victims claiming U.N. peacekeepers and civilian staff regularly picked up young children in U.N. vehicles and raped them.

As Under Secretary General for Field Support, Ms. Lute was responsible for responding to this issue and implementing policies to prevent this abuse and bring the perpetrators to justice. Sadly, even after implementing weak reforms--such as what amounts to sexual harassment training for peacekeepers--the abuse continued and there are no known prosecutions or imprisonments for the perpetrators.

In 2006, U.N. investigators at the OIOS substantiated reports that U.N. peacekeepers in Liberia had sexually

abused an under-age girl and U.N. peacekeepers in the Sudan had sexually abused four women.\23\ In 2008, the NGO Save the Children reported that peacekeepers were sexually abusing very young children in war zones and disaster areas in the Ivory Coast, southern Sudan, and Haiti-- and going largely unpunished.\24\ Save the Children reports, ``Children as young as six are trading sex with aid workers and peacekeepers in exchange for food, money, soap and, in very few cases, luxury items such as mobile phones.''

According to Marianne Mollman of Human Rights Watch, the current status of the U.N. response to peacekeeping abuses continues to be poor.\25\ Mollman describes investigations of the abuse carried out by Ms. Lute as follows: lack of speed of investigations, lack of transparency and follow through of investigations, and lack of breadth of investigations.

There are other instances of illicit behavior going largely unpunished during Ms. Lute's tenure at Peacekeeping. In 2008, Human Rights Watch issued a letter regarding several cases where Peacekeepers were involved in other illicit activities such as gold-smuggling and weapons trading. In these cases, like the sexual abuse case, Human Rights Watch reports that ``the slow process in carrying out this investigation and the continued lack of action raises important questions on how the U.N. investigates itself.'' \26\

When I questioned Ms. Lute about the number of victims she provided assistance to, the budget of her victims' assistance program, the number of perpetrators she successfully had prosecuted, and other basic information, she responded saying she knows of no reports that track this information. This is a disturbing answer from someone claiming to effectively deploy victims' assistance into the field while reports on the ground claim there are many victims that have been waiting for over 4 years but still have not received assistance from Ms. Lute. This certainly does not sound like a policy of ``zero tolerance.''

In her response, Ms. Lute also points out that she coordinated meetings and discussions and conferences at the U.N. regarding Peacekeeping abuse and victims' assistance. But she cannot produce any evidence or information illustrating she carried out the victims' assistance programs or whether any such programs were effective.

In my questions for the Record, in order to ascertain whether or not Ms. Lute has the qualifications to manage DHS, I asked Ms. Lute whether she had experience managing DHS issues and activities such as border security, immigration, port security, counterterrorism, or other DHS- specific portfolios. In her written response, Ms. Lute claims she had ``responsibilities for border security and management where stopping the flow of illegal arms and narcotics is a central part of the Mission's mandate.''

It is important to point out that we have no evidence or data that suggests Ms. Lute has been successful in this endeavor. Using the Peacekeeping Mission to Lebanon as an example, this one mission alone illustrates Ms. Lute's poor performance at stopping the flow of illegal arms as Hezbollah has, on multiple occasions, successfully armed and rearmed on the Israeli border. There are also multiple reports of illegal arms smuggling involving Peacekeepers in Africa supplying arms to local militias.\27\

Ms. Lute also pointed out that she operated a port in the Congo along a river. When I questioned her at the hearing regarding her responsibility for the abuse that took place in the Congo on her watch, she claimed that she had little ``on the ground'' management responsibilities. Her story changes when asked to provide her experience and qualifications to manage DHS.

In her response to my prehearing questions, Ms. Lute indicated that she utilized several performance indicators to determine whether or not her programs were effective. I then asked Ms. Lute whether there is any record of these performance measures or any reports that audit her operations based on these indicators. Ms. Lute responded that she ``cannot recall specifically which report or which measure'' were tracking her performance. In other words, it appears Ms. Lute has not received specific performance reports and lacks a working knowledge of how she performed according to those standards. I believe it is impossible to manage what you do not measure.

Unfortunately for Ms. Lute, the entire U.N. system, including Peacekeeping Operations, lacks even the most basic transparency or accountability. Without transparency, we cannot discover whether or not there is evidence that Ms. Lute, during her tenure at U.N. Peacekeeping, was able to turn her operations around, institute controls, make policy reforms, and whether these efforts were successful.

Every U.N. report that we were able to receive after they were first leaked indicates that operations under Ms. Lute's management were undermined by fraud, waste, corruption, and mismanagement. We have no positive record of Ms. Lute's performance measurements. Several former U.N. officials have written letters of endorsement for Ms. Lute, but the endorsements were based on Ms. Lute's verbal commitment to address the waste and fraud, and none of these officials actually investigated what Ms. Lute did in response or whether her response was effective.

I believe that Ms. Lute is unqualified and inexperienced to manage the Department of Homeland Security. Given her record that we are able to document, I cannot in good conscience support her nomination.

Madam President, as somebody who is still practicing medicine, I wish to tell you, we see comparative effectiveness every day. We cannot even get recertified unless we know comparative effectiveness.

The NIH last year spent $267 million on comparative effectiveness research, not associated with cost but based on quality outcomes. What is in this bill is a short-term look to say who is going to cookie- cutter cut a way to practice medicine that a bureaucrat will say is the best way, rather than what the science says.

There is no question we have tons of waste. The biggest inhibition for anybody getting into the health care system today is cost. The chairman of the Finance Committee is right, there is tons of waste. The reason there is tons of waste is 61 percent of the health care in this country is controlled by the Government today.

I can document it fully, each component of it, 61 percent. It is designed to create the mess we are in. If you want to change this system to where we get better value for the dollars we put into health care, let's create a clear, transparent, competitive market where you know quality and you know cost before you ever enter it. That is a goal we can all agree on.

We should know what it costs, and we know what the quality parameters should be. What comparative effectiveness as outlined by the acting head of the NIH is, what is the cheapest treatment we can do to get it there? Not what is best for the patient in consideration of that patient's particular needs and what is the best thing the doctor could recommend.

There are conflicts of interest. I do not deny that. Here is the No. 1 thing that comparative effectiveness fails to remember: Everybody thinks we can take the science over here and we can fix everybody. Well, I have news for you. Medicine is 40 percent art. Since we will not pay for physicians and providers to take the time to listen to their patients, to actually know what is going on with them, we have created a system where we spend a ton of money that does not have anything to do with a better outcome for the patients.

Two examples. Two patients in the last 4 years in my own practice, denied, under comparative effectiveness, MRIs; did not have a hard sign at all, had soft signs. Both of them had cancer of the brain. Both insurance companies and Medicare denied that they needed an MRI because it did not match with the guidelines.

That goes to show you that when you just use guidelines, you are not going to really care for the patients. The art of medicine has to be included. Comparative effectiveness never considers the art of medicine. That is 40 percent of taking care of people and giving them great health care and great outcomes. This amendment is a good amendment. The reason it should be there is we seek comparative effectiveness. You cannot get reboard certified unless you know comparative effectiveness, at every chance, at every corner, for every disease.

Do we need more? Yes. But we are spending billions every year on comparative effectiveness research. We finished a 7-year study on the heart. You know what it told us after we spent $100 million on that study? We do not have the answer on which is the best. A double-blind, progressive, controlled study, and we do not have the answer. What makes us think some bureaucrats can take less research and come to a better conclusion than the best scientists in this country? What we are looking for is an answer in the wrong place.

The way we fix health care in this country is to truly allow doctor and patient relationships that will take advantage of the scientific advances that are out there and do so in a transparent way, where you know quality and you know price.

It is called performance for pay, rather than pay for performance. If you perform, you get paid more. If you do not perform, you do not. We apply market forces to everything we are doing, much less so since the new administration came in, but if we would apply that, we would have a tremendous advantage in terms of quality outcomes in this country.

I support the amendment and yield back the remainder of time.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I ask if we could bring up some amendments. They would be voted in the vote-arama, and I have no problem with that, not wanting a specific vote before that, but we could get them up and get them pending.

Every one of them has been filed.

I ask unanimous consent to speak on the budget until the time should come up for the UC and not to exceed 15 minutes.

Mr. President, if we have a unanimous consent agreement, I will cease the discussion.

Mr. President, first off, I thank the chairman for his graciousness.

If you are sitting at home right now and you have a job and you see the tough times that are out there, or you are sitting at home and looking for a job, one of the things you are doing is you are starting to say: Here is what is coming in and here are the mandatory things that have to go out, and you are starting to prioritize.

We have a budget before us that prioritizes two things. It prioritizes growing the Federal Government by a huge amount over the next 10 years. If you were running a business and you were at these times, the last thing you would do is go borrow money to expand a business into a market that is not growing. Yet we have before us the biggest budget in the history of the country--a budget that will, in fact, double the debt that is going to our kids over the next 5 years and triple it over the next 10 years. It does not fit what any of us would do with our own families' budgets or our own businesses' budgets.

Why is it we are afraid to say that what we really need to do is live within our means? Instead, we are going to have a $1.7 trillion, maybe a $1.8 trillion, maybe even a $2 trillion deficit this year and something very close to that next year.

Instead of cutting some of the $380 billion of documented waste, fraud, and abuse associated with the Federal Government, we are not looking at it at all. When President Obama ran for the office, he said one of the things he was going to do was a line-by-line item analysis of every Department, at every area, to make sure it was effective and efficient at accomplishing the task it was set out to do. We have not seen any of that, and there is none of that in this budget. If, in fact, we were to do that, here is what we would find. We would find $50 billion worth of wasted money at the Pentagon. There is no effort to do that in this budget.

Mr. President, I will be happy to yield.

Mr. President, I would be happy to. I would like to have 1 minute to wind up the one point.

Thank you.

We have $80 billion worth of fraud in Medicare. Yet we are going to talk about health care, but we are not going to fix the problem with Government-run health care and the fraud that is associated with it. We have $40 billion in Medicaid. There is no attachment to do that. So what we are doing is we are not trimming spending anywhere, we are going to raise taxes significantly, and we are going to grow the Federal Government in a time when we can least afford to grow it.

The idea that we can have prosperity out of the Government instead of out of our own individual efforts is counterintuitive to everything this country stands for.

With that, I will carry on my debate at a later time, and I thank the Chair.

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

Madam President, I wish to spend some time tonight talking about the budget that is before us as well as some good Government things we can do.

If you are a typical American family, husband and wife working and you are bringing home $3,500 a month, and all of a sudden one of you gets a cut in pay, where now you are bringing $3,000 a month home, what is the first thing you do? The first thing you do, knowing the kind of economic times we are in, is you start saying: What is necessary and what is not? Where can we make up this difference? What can we not spend money on so that, in fact, we are not using our credit cards to finance a living standard that is less than what we have today? Almost every family in America would do that. They would go through and they would say: Well, utilities are important, food is important, clothing for the kids is important, automobile repair, gasoline is important, but building a new addition onto our house isn't important right now. It needs to wait. Going to the movies may not be important. Going out to eat may not be important, in terms of a list of priorities. Every family would look at what their expenditures are and say: Where do we cut spending?

This budget does exactly the opposite of that. We have markedly declining revenues, and we are going to increase spending $1.3 trillion. The net effect of that is not so much that we might want to do good things for people, but it is that we are going to be doing those good things by taking the money--not from us and not even from our kids--but from our grandkids. So within this budget--the real budget, the Obama budget--are the plans for us to grow Government spending over the next 10 years to a level we have never seen before and at a rate of growth we have never seen before.

Why would we do that? We wouldn't do it with our own home and our own family; we certainly wouldn't do that with our own business. Why is it Congress thinks, and this budget purports, that we can borrow our way and spend our way out of financial difficulty? The fact is, we can't. We cannot do that. It is impossible for us to do that.

The dread secondary effect of that is to cripple potential growth in the future. Let me explain how that works. As we go from $11 trillion in debt to $30 trillion in debt, what is going to happen to us? How much inflation ultimately will come about because we do that kind of borrowing? Well, what will happen is everything you have and everything you try to buy will cost more and everything you own will be worth less. So what we are doing is we are generationally thieving, stealing money for us today so we don't have as much problem recognizing the pain.

What is called for in our country today is not growing the Government, it is shrinking the Government. Here is what we do know, according to GAO and IG reports that are published and that any American can find: that out of the money we do spend every year, at least $380 billion of it is lost to fraud, duplication or waste. Nowhere in this budget is there any attention to any of that; not one place is there attention to it. My friend, President Obama, campaigned on the fact that the first thing he was going to do was a line-by-line analysis of every department of every program and get rid of the things that don't work and the things that work marginally, make them better. Well, that comes up to $380 billion. That is what it comes up to.

Tonight I am going to introduce a series of amendments--I know they can't be called up by the unanimous consent agreement we are operating under, but they will be voted on during our votes tomorrow--that are plain common sense and that we would all do with our own business or with our own family; that we would actually put into place. The first thing we would do is we wouldn't give somebody a bonus who is repairing our house who didn't repair our house. Yet every year in this country, this Government pays out about $7 billion to bonuses to people who didn't perform.

We create a reserve fund so we don't do that anymore. Let me give some examples. We have paid $8 billion to contractors for nonperformance bonuses--they didn't perform but got paid bonuses anyhow--in the Defense Department. Why would we continue to do that? I will put into the Record throughout the evening the line-by-line areas associated with that.

The first amendment says we are going to quit paying for performance that we didn't get, so we will save $8 billion a year, or $80 billion over the next 10 years. It will get voted on, and everybody will vote for it, but then in conference it will get stripped out. That is the game we are playing in the Senate this week. Anything that passes, and we put it in, we will take it out in conference. Why would we continue to pay extra money for something that didn't perform the way it was supposed to? I am not talking about not paying the bills--that is a totally different question--and about absolutely not meeting the contract.

I will give you an example. The Census Department had a contract--a no-bid contract with Harris Corporation--for hand-held recorder devices for the census. Oversight hearings were done in the Senate, and we said: What is your plan B if it doesn't work? They said it is going to work, no problem. Now we have spent $700 billion and paid $26 million in bonuses for something that doesn't work and will not be used by the census.

Why would we do that and allow that to continue to happen? The Government is rife with that. So why would we not put a prohibition into the budget that has teeth, which says we are not going to pay bonuses for work that didn't meet performance standards? Yet we will vote on it, and it will get jerked right out when it goes to conference because of the connectedness of the elite in this country.

The second thing I have an amendment for creates a reserve fund so we will do exactly what President Obama

said we would do and that is a line-by-line analysis of every Government program: Does it work? Is it accomplishing what it is supposed to? If it is not, we should be eliminating it or fixing it. That may or may not pass. But it will get pulled out, even though that was a campaign promise--not only in the campaign, but in his inaugural statement, as well as in his statement to the Nation. He has embraced the very idea that we need to do that. Everybody knows we need to do that. If you are running a business and have hard times, you go through what is not working and get rid of it. But we don't do that in the Federal Government.

One of the other amendments we will have says we will apply metrics to every program we have. In other words, we will say here is the goal, and we will put in measurements as to whether we are achieving the goal. Then we can, for sure, tell what we are doing. The fact is that 50 percent of the programs aren't living up; 12 programs, specifically, have been on the warning list by the GAO for 10 years, and Congress has done nothing about that. The reason is because they don't want to put a metric system in because they don't know what it is. It might cause them to lose a vote with somebody if, in fact, it is not an effective program.

The third amendment is to offer a reserve fund to set up metrics, so that when we do that and see that things aren't working, we can get rid of them.

The fourth amendment we will offer is another one President Obama advocated. He said this time after time and he believes it and I believe it. The question is whether we will do it. There ought not to be any no-bid contracts for anything above $25 million. We mandate that there has to be competitive bidding.

It is interesting that when we passed the stimulus, we all voted for it, but when it came out of conference, there was no competitive bidding requirement in the over $870 billion worth of spending. What does that mean to the average taxpayer? That means you are not going to get good value for the money we are spending. So there is no mandate, even though that is a commitment that was made, and we should live up to it.

So we will have an amendment that says no bonuses if you don't earn it; No. 2, line-by-line going through the budget; No. 3, metrics performance measurements; No. 4, competitive bidding.

Then, finally, an amendment I will offer is something that will make a real difference in people's lives today. The Senator from Texas and I worked on that during the stimulus. What it says is that if you have an IRA or 401(k) and you are underwater on your mortgage and you have money in that 401(k) or IRA and you want to take that money and apply it to your primary residence mortgage, where you are underwater, you can do that without a 10-percent penalty. In other words, we are not going to penalize you for taking out money you have saved to get yourself out of trouble today.

That will be a controversial amendment, I am sure. The fact is, that is something that would make a big difference for families because they have money locked up, but we have such a harsh penalty for them to take it out; they have to give the Government 10 percent so they can use it to get themselves out of trouble on their mortgage.

There will be two other amendments I will offer. One will be with Senator McCain on an alternative budget, which describes what we should do, and it will save over $3.5 trillion, compared to this budget, which shrinks the size of the Federal Government and doesn't allow it to grow in terms of nondiscretionary spending, except for defense and veterans. It puts a cap on how fast it can grow. It doesn't raise taxes like this budget does.

The last thing we should be doing--we know the history of what we did wrong in the 1930s and at other times--is raising taxes on individuals and corporations at a time when we are in a deep recession. That is exactly the wrong tax policy to create jobs. So we will be offering all those amendments come tomorrow.

The draft budget increases the veterans spending by $25 billion over 5 years to take care of the commitments we have made to our veterans. It increases the defense spending, which we need to do rather than decrease it, in terms of real dollars, $190 billion. It decreases some of our real problems, which is our mandatory spending in Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, by $3.2 trillion less than what the President's budget and this budget will portend. It doesn't play any games with AMT, as far as paying for it. It doesn't raise taxes. It will reduce the cumulative deficit, over the next 10 years, by $3.5 trillion. It also will give us $3.5 trillion less debt. It is a budget that reflects a family's budget, that reflects the real times we are in, and it is a budget that says we recognize that if we are going to do something for our kids and grandkids, some sacrifice has to come now. Will people peel at it and shoot at it? You bet.

The fact is, we have a way too big Federal Government. It is highly inefficient. It wastes at least 10 percent of everything it does every year--at least. That is a very conservative estimate. What we are going to put forward is a budget that doesn't do any of those things. When we waste $80 billion a year through fraud in Medicare, think what that means. That means 20 percent of the money spent in Medicare is defrauded. Our biggest problem is we are not going to be able to keep up with Medicare. Yet we have 20 percent of it that we are not doing a thing about in getting rid of fraud and improper payments. We have at least $40 billion in terms of Medicaid. We have a Medicaid Program here and a health care program that will save the States $880 billion over the next 10 years, and the Federal Government $400 billion over the next 10 years. That is $1.3 trillion. It will cover everybody at a level, where every doctor--no matter who they are--will take their insurance and will take the stamp of being a Medicaid patient right off their forehead, and nobody will ever know they are a Medicaid patient because they will have an insurance card just like everybody else. We can buy for them something better than they have and also save $1.3 trillion.

Why wouldn't we want to do that? That is in our budget. Why wouldn't we want to do that? Why wouldn't we want to create the opportunity so people will have an option? Instead of going to a nursing home, they can have a program that gives them in-home care, and we can still save money.

Going back to what we were talking about on bonuses, do you realize that CMS paid out $322 million last year to nursing homes that were also on their list as substandard nursing homes? Think about that. We paid out in excess of $300 million in bonuses to nursing homes that had significant problems in terms of giving the care and meeting Medicare standards in the first place, but we still paid it. Why? Why wouldn't we fix that? We don't want to. It is hard to fix--except our budget would fix that. This budget will cause us to not waste as much money.

This budget recognizes that we have real problems in our country, and the way to get out of it is not to borrow more money and spend more money. It is to be frugal and learn what we were taught by our grandmothers: If you have a penny, spend it wisely. If you have a dollar, don't spend it all. If you get fortunate enough to get more than a dollar, make sure you are saving something for the future.

We all know that is right, but we don't apply it to the Federal Government. Consequently, what will happen is the standard of living of our grandchildren will erode. We are in a seminal moment in this country, where we are going to become on an equal basis with Europe. What does that mean? That means the standard of living in this country is getting ready to drop 30 percent, both by what we spend and the printed money that will come after that in terms of the inflation that will devalue everybody else's assets in this country.

There are a lot of ways to run this Government, but the way we are running it now wouldn't pass muster anywhere in anybody's household. Nobody would throw 10 percent of their money away every year. Nobody would give bonuses to people who didn't deserve it. Nobody would not make measurements about what they are doing to see if it was working. We need a change. The seminal moment is coming. We may not win the budget battle but, in fact, if we don't win the budget battle, the problems are just going to be that much more severe.

The debt load we will carry with this President's budget will shackle the next two generations in this country for their entire lifetime.

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, since I am controlling the remaining 10 minutes, I would be happy to yield to the Senator from Florida 2 minutes of that time.

Madam President, I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Florida.

Amendment No. 683

Madam President, I wish to rebut some of what the Senator from New Mexico said in terms of the real property reform.

What you heard in his statements is a profound admission that we do not have the information right now. We do not have it. We have over 650 million acres of land, we have over 21,000 empty buildings now that we know of. That is just a guess.

How, in a time when we are going to run a $2.2 trillion deficit this year, can we say we do not want the tools to manage the real property in this country. The Executive order has not done it. It was basically about buildings, Federal buildings.

I worked with the OMB on that 3 years ago to set that up. Much to the avail, we now know we have the 21,000 buildings, but the Senate continues to block any real property reform so we cannot get some of the $18 billion we are wasting every year on those 21,000 buildings. We cannot get any of them sold; we cannot dispose of any of them; we cannot even raze any of the ones that need to be razed.

The very fact that we would oppose having the information we need to make real decisions, frugal financial decisions with America's taxpayer dollars, at a time when we are in an economic malaise, and have a deficit that is going to be $6,000 to $7,000 per every individual in this country is amazing to me.

This requires 1 year of hard work and requires very little work anyway after that. So it is not an onerous task. But even if it were an onerous task, the thing we ought to be doing is getting the information with which to make good management decisions, which we continue to not want to have, so it can be an excuse so we can do what we want to do without knowing what the facts are.

Nobody would run any organization without trying to know about their assets. Yet we are going to refuse to list out and know what we own, where it is, where we are behind, what needs to get fixed, and what does not need to get fixed.

Common sense would dictate that if, in fact, you have a large number of assets and a limited budget, and it is going to get more limited as the years progress given the tremendous borrowing, the tremendous taxing that is getting ready to come about in this country, common sense would suggest we know what we are doing and that we have the information with which to make good decisions.

To defeat this amendment says we want to continue to go on blindly; we do not want to have the information at our fingertips with which to make good, informed decisions about where to put taxpayer dollars. The very fact that the GAO now says we have between a $13 and $19 billion backlog just on structures in national parks and that the Department of the Interior is so far behind and is growing about $400 million every 6 months in terms of its backlog and for us to not know what is there and what should be prioritized to me is the height of foolishness.

So we can defeat this amendment, and we can continue to go on blindly, making poor decisions because we are not making them within the perspective of the complete knowledge of what we own, what is important, and what should be prioritized. The Senate continues to refuse to prioritize its spending. The whole purpose behind this amendment is to give us the knowledge with which to make those decisions. But our political nature tells us we want an excuse so we do not have to make those good decisions. We do not want to have the information.

Consequently, we put the credit card in, we spend money not wisely, not fiscally responsibly, and we charge it to our grandkids. At some point in time it has to stop. Now, it is probably not going to stop with this amendment. But you would not run your personal household this way. If you had your own business, you would never run it this way. You would never want your city government to not know what it owned and what its backlogs were, you would have an accounting.

States do not do that. But we do that, and we do it at our own convenience, which I think is a shame. It belies our responsibility to future generations. It also belies the fact that we need the capability to make the tough choices. Not having this information means we will continue to make

choices that are politically expedient but are policy poor and policy foolish.

So I understand--actually I do not understand. Let me correct that. I do not understand why somebody would not want this information, and why--even though it is hard to get the first year, why we would not want it.

Now, 100 percent of the Senators agreed we ought to have the Federal Financial and Transparency Act where we put online where we are spending the money, 100 percent of us. We thought that was a good deal. Here is another step toward transparency we can make that will give us information, give the American people the information to judge us.

If we are going to put X money on a certain project, they ought to be able to see it in relationship to everything else we are doing. We are going to refuse to do that. I don't understand why. I don't have a clue to understand why we would not want factual information with which to make priority decisions in terms of the Department of Interior and in terms of national parks and forestland. It belies any sense of reality and any connection with common sense that we would refuse to do that.

I retain the remainder of my time.

Let me answer my colleague. There is an exception in this bill for anything of national intelligence or confidence, that it should not be related to the general public. It is already in there. So there is no problem where we would expose things we should not. It has been covered in the amendment. If Members truly believe we need to have the information, they need to be voting for the amendment. This is a wise approach to give us information we need to make cogent decisions.

I retain the remainder of my time.

Madam President, that argument rings hollow. The two of you sitting right there have the power to amend and change this and fix it with what your concerns are. It hasn't been offered once. You say you are for it. You have the power to change it to meet what you think are problems with the amendment. Yet there has been no offer to do that. That says one of two things: Either you don't want us to have this information or you are claiming a false claim that there is a defect with the amendment. You have every ability to change this, offer an amendment, modify it with my consent to meet your needs, but it has never been offered. The real fact is, we don't want the information. We can't manage 650-plus million acres; we can't manage millions of facilities without the information. We are going to sit here in the dark of night and continue to throw darts, missing the dart board all the time with what we do when we don't have this information.

I yield back the balance of my time and ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, the chairman is correct. I will gladly accept a voice vote.

Madam President, I won't spend the time to refute all of what the distinguished Senator from California said, other than to note that in 1924 the salmon were gone from that river; before any of the water canals or anything else was built. We are going to spend $30,000 a fish based on the 300,000 salmon.

More importantly, this amendment talks about five total different earmarks in this bill. My office had a conversation with the mayor of St. Augustine, FL, this morning. Here are his words: I am really worried about the fiscal nature of this country. I am really worried that we are in real trouble, but I still want my money.

Well, the way a republic dies is when the constituency learns they can vote themselves money from the public Treasury regardless of what the overall financial situation of the country is. These are the main earmarks in this bill. The President has said he doesn't want a bill full of earmarks. This strips them all out. We can either do what the American people want--we can act fiscally responsibly--or we can continue the age-old process of putting our positions ahead of those of the constituents we represent.

With that, I yield the floor and ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I have just a few observations before we start the vote. This has been a long process on this bill. I appreciate the pain and patience of the chairman of the committee. He has been a gentleman to work with all the time in our discussions.

I also note for the Senate that over 70 of these bills could have gone by unanimous consent, but because we chose to have a procedure where up until now, over the last 2 years, no amendments were ever allowed to be offered on any of these bills--none; it was never an option--we have taken approximately 7 weeks on something we could have done in 2 weeks if we had an open amendment process like the Senate is supposed to. We find ourselves ping-ponging between the House and the Senate because we want to avoid the very purpose for which we

are here, which is open debate and amendment.

It should be a lesson to us. The American people win when there is a debate. They lose when we use unanimous consent to pass something that is controversial. To say it is not, the average we got on our amendments was 31 votes. That is almost a third of the Senate. So to say we should pass legislation by unanimous consent when a third of the Senate does not agree, I would say there is a great lesson for us and that is, let's open up, let's have a debate, let's put a short period of time on it, and let's not have to use procedures to try to, in fact, get a debate for the American people.

I will also say, in looking at this bill, what have we done? There are a lot of good provisions in this bill. I am not opposed to half of this bill. Half of this bill I am adamantly opposed to.

I was thinking, as we recognize the Republican and Democratic staff, who is representing truly the American people rather than parochial interests and what staff worked on that? We went through this. We rejected transparency for the American people. We rejected the ability to know what we have and how to deal with it and how to manage it. We have said no by a vote of this body that we are not going to do that; we like the darkness, the lack of accountability, the lack of transparency that goes to the American people. We rejected eliminating earmarks. Every appropriator voted against that amendment, even though the President says and the American people say that is not the way they want to do business. But we rejected it.

We have rejected significant amounts of potential renewable energy. Ninety percent of all geothermal, potential renewable clean energy, is put at risk by what we are doing. I know that is disputable, but our own Secretary of the Interior this week said we should not put the cart before the horse. We should have good planning on where we are going with transmission lines, the grids, and everything else, so we can take advantage of solar, wind, and geothermal. But yet we have rejected that.

We have rejected prioritizing the needs of our national parks. That is what the Senate has done this week. We said: No, we are not going to do that, if we want to do something new, even though we have between $12 billion and $19 billion worth of backlogs, as the Government Accountability Office said we have significant health and safety risks for our employees and the American public who visit our parks--we rejected that. We said: No, we should not take care of what we have now before we start something new. We have done exactly the opposite of what the average American would be doing with their own assets.

The other thing we have done is we have taken a large amount of oil and natural gas and said you can never touch it again. Let me emphasize why. Of the 80 wilderness bills my colleagues put in this legislation, 35 of them, under the Wilderness Study Area they said they never should be put into the wilderness, and my colleagues put them in the wilderness anyway.

The whole project of having the Wilderness Study Area is to use the study to determine if an area should be wilderness. Not counting Colorado and Utah, my colleagues put 448,000 acres into wilderness that the study says should never go into wilderness area because they have significant oil and gas and other energy.

We rejected the process by which we do it because parochial interests have trumped the national energy needs of this country, and that does not count Colorado and Utah. Utah has a significant area. So probably well over 35 percent of all the land my colleagues have taken away and said forever we are never going to touch, we are never going to utilize the natural resources that this country could utilize when we are sending $400 billion a year overseas for carbon-based energy which we are going to do for the next 20 years no matter what, you have taken it away. You said never.

As I said earlier, you have taken clean renewables. We don't know what the percentage is but a significant percentage of geothermal for sure. A bill is going to be introduced that is going to take several hundred thousand acres out of the California desert by the Senator from California which is prime land for solar. It is getting ready to be introduced so that can never be touched.

We have to have energy, and we are ignoring assets that we have. We are putting into wilderness area assets that have significant energy. We are ignoring the process under which we said we would make those determinations. When well over 35 of the 80 were recommended they not be put into wilderness area, what are the American people to think? Where is the common sense to say maybe we ought to plan for the future? Maybe we ought to look and say: If we are going to go to a renewable portfolio totally of energy in this country, how long is it going to take us to get there and what do we need in between now and then to do that?

We are not making good long-term decisions with this bill. We are handicapping ourselves, and we are telling the Middle East: Go ahead and jack it up because we are going to limit our options with which we can balance energy needs in this country by what we are doing in this bill.

Finally, we have said in this bill eminent domain is going to be utilized. We say we are not going to do it, but we certainly said: American landowner, if we are there and if we decide we want to do something, we are going to keep it.

The fact is, one of the most painful things that occurs to an American citizen in this country is your land, without your permission, even though you are paid an equitable price for it, is taken from you. We said that is fine. We rejected that. Thirty-five Senators voted to not reject it but 60-some voted to reject it.

Let me summarize. We like our earmarks. We don't want to think long term on energy. We reject policies that say we should not put land into the wilderness area, but we do it anyway. We have taken away our ability to handle the next energy crisis, which is coming. We have told the American people we are going to keep eminent domain and, by the way, it doesn't matter if you own property, we will take it if we need it.

Besides all that, we have now more land area in wilderness in this country than we have developed land. There is 108 million acres now in wilderness in this country and only 106 million acres of developed land. When do we have enough? When do we stop tying our arm behind our back in terms of energy, whether it is renewable or carbon based? When do we do that? Is it wise and prudent to say we should not leave all options on the table for our energy needs for the future, whether it is green energy or traditional energy? Why would we send that signal to the rest of the world? And why would we do that to the American taxpayers?

What is going to happen on energy prices in this country is natural gas is going to double in the next 2 years, and it is going to double for a couple of reasons. One is because they cannot afford to drill for it right now at $4. No. 2, we are taking a large swath, 13 million cubic feet, one area you have isolated, enough to run this country for 2\1/2\ years. It is proven, we know it is there, it is easy to get out, we don't have to do a whole lot more drilling, but you can't have it. We have taken 300 million barrels of oil in that same area and said: America, you can't have it. We know its there, its not hard to get out, but you can't have it. And that is just in one of the ranges we are setting off to the side and not making available to the American public to lower their energy costs, to balance the supply-and-demand imbalance we will see in the future.

It is important that this bill was put together by combining what individuals wanted for their States. I know some of these land and water rights issues are complicated. I know the exchanges are hard, and I know protecting things in the right way is important. I know it is to the Senator from Idaho, the Senator from Alaska, and the Senator from New Mexico. But when does the overall best benefit for the American people start trumping things around here instead of what we want parochially?

I think we have two diseases. I think we have attention deficit disorder in the Senate to what the real problems are, so I think we need to be in a 12-step program to correct that. Then I think we have hyperparochialism in the sense that what is most important

is what is important in my State; be danged what happens to the rest of the country.

Our country is failing in a lot of areas now, and most of it is our fault. But what we will ultimately fail on is when we start thinking more about individual States than the best long-term benefit for the country. This bill is a classic example where we put parochial interests ahead of the long-term interests of the country.

I worry about the grandchildren of this country. This is an $11 billion bill with $900 million in mandatory spending. When we have all these things we need to do that are a much higher priority, we are going to do this now. I am disappointed in us because we don't think long term, that we think short term. It is beneath the oath we take when we continue to do this. I want to be proud of what we do, and I want us to be above the influence of any short-term, any parochial, or any political decision.

The people in this body know me, that I go after Republican projects as much as Democrats. I go on the basis of what I think is in the best long-term interest. That is not to say my colleagues don't too, but as a collective body we have not been doing that. And we are not going to fix the real problem in our country, which is the economy. It is amazing to me that we are spending time on this bill instead of fixing the economic problems of this country; that we are sitting here and we have spent a total of 7 weeks in the last 3 or 4 months on this bill rather than working on the real problems and the real needs of this country.

The long-term future of our country is at great risk today, and I am not just talking economically. When we choose to protect home--i.e. State or city or earmark--at the expense of the long-term interest of our country, we won't last. What has made this country great throughout its years is we have had leaders who have said: The heck with my position. What is best for the country should come first.

The irony of that--and it is really paradoxical--is, when people see that, we restore confidence. When they see the opposite of that, they lose confidence in us. And we ought to be about restoring the American people's confidence. They are rattled today. They are rattled over the economy. They are rattled over their confidence in us, and we ought to be about restoring that. I don't think this bill does that.

I appreciate the patience of my colleagues. I have great respect for you. I know your sincere desires. But I truly think we need some coaxing to get our eye back on the ball.

Madam President, I yield the floor--I understand we will not vote until 12:20--and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to yield back all time on the Kirk nomination.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that H.R. 146 be the pending business.

Mr. President, first of all, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the statement of the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, given yesterday before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. I think Members will find significant support for my amendment on alternative energy in his statement.

Mr. President, we are putting the cart before the horse, because one of the things the Secretary spoke about yesterday is that we have to figure out how to transfer all this renewable energy from Federal lands. What this bill and what a previous amendment that I have offered and that is now pending would do is to say this bill is going to offset that. We are not going to know where we need to send it or how we need to send it. With this bill, we are going to deny the options to the Secretary of the Interior in terms of transmission lines with geothermal, with solar, and with wind.

Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the opening statement of the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator Bingaman, because I am very pleased with his statements on oil and gas and renewables, and it again would support the amendment I have offered that we should not preclude renewables from this bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 682 be brought up and considered.

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

Mr. President, this is a very simple amendment. We do have a problem with thieves stealing significant fossil remains from public lands, but the way the bill is written currently is that we are going to hit a fly with a sledgehammer. What we are going to do is put Scout leaders and troops, graduate students, and the regular public in line for tremendously harsh penalties if they inadvertently or inconsequentially pick up a small rock that might have a fossil.

All this amendment does is it tells the Secretary that ``they shall allow,'' without penalty, the insignificant capture of these small items--not to resell, not for going on the black market, but actually for educational purposes--by Scout troops, graduate students, college classes, and the like.

What we know from the history is that there have been significant difficulties in terms of the lack of law enforcement on public lands. This goes back to one of our other amendments we talked about earlier, which is not only is there a backlog in the repair and care of our public lands, but we don't have the money to enforce and protect the very assets which we think are paleontological assets, which we know are valuable both for history and science. We haven't had the forces capable of even enforcing what is already illegal. It is already illegal to steal those items from public land.

So what this amendment does is just change the wording from ``may'' to ``shall''; that the Secretary ``shall allow casual collecting'' that will not harm any of our public lands and will not put the truly innocent--simply inquiring minds--at risk of the harsh penalties of this segment of the bill. It is as simple as that. All it does is lighten up on the inadvertent and the non-inappropriate looking for small fossils and small rocks that may not even contain fossils. We have already had testimony that the majority of the people who have been arrested under the illegal statute have not been those who have been in the black market. It has been Scout leaders and graduate students and college professors who have actually been out there.

So I think it is a commonsense amendment, and I hope my colleagues will consider it and adopt it so that we don't overshoot on what is intended to be a solution to a very serious problem.

I would also like to spend a moment in rebutting some of the words of the Senator from California. I have not yet offered, but intend to offer, one amendment that will in fact strike some earmarks from this bill. The San Joaquin River has, no question, been engaged in a lawsuit. But if you ago back to 1924 and see what the Federal Government said about the salmon run over this area, it was already in decline. As a matter of fact, it was in a decline to a level very close to what we have seen today.

What we have had is a lawsuit that has reached a settlement that now we are to pay $1 billion with the specific goal not of 100,000 salmon, not of 30,000 salmon, but the goal in the settlement is 500 salmon. The likelihood of achieving that, for $1 billion, first of all, is unlikely. The ultimate outside costs are going to be tremendous. What are the costs? Through this lawsuit, we are going to put at jeopardy, put at risk, $20 billion worth of economic activity in one of the most fertile areas of California.

The Congressman who represents 85 percent of that district and his constituents are adamantly opposed to this settlement because they know what it is going to do in terms of the water resource for that agricultural community. Not everyone supports this settlement, as the Senator from California said, certainly not the Congressman representing the district.

The other claim Senator Feinstein made is it would be less costly than the alternative litigation. If you use the two analyses done in the late 1990s regarding the economic impacts of water supply reductions, estimates paint the total costs of this settlement to the community at over $10 billion; $10 billion is the economic loss to be associated with this settlement.

At a time of economic difficulty, the last thing we need to be doing is cutting out another $10 billion of economic productivity.

Amendment No. 677 to Amendment No. 684

I ask the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 677 be called up.

Mr. President, this is a simple amendment, too. It is a good housekeeping amendment. What this amendment does is requires the Federal Government every year to detail to the people of this country the amount of the property that the Federal Government owns and the cost of that land ownership to taxpayers. Do you realize right now we have 21,000 buildings that are owned by the Federal Government sitting empty? We have 40 million square feet of excess space that is not being used, just by the Department of Energy alone.

The Federal Government currently does not disclose these assets. As a matter of fact, they do not even know what they are. What this amendment would do is ask the Federal Government, through the OMB, to create an inventory of Federal assets as far as land and buildings are concerned. We do not know what it costs us to maintain it. We don't know if it is economical for us to continue to maintain it as a Federal Government property or whether we ought to put it up for sale or we ought to cede it to the States, to an Indian tribe or some other Government agency where it can be utilized. We just don't have the knowledge. Without this kind of knowledge there is no way that Congress can manage Federal properties and Federal lands.

What this would specifically require is the Office of Management and Budget to issue a report detailing the following: the total amount of land in the United States that is owned by the Federal Government; the percentage of all U.S. property controlled by the Federal Government, that is controlled--maybe not owned but controlled; the total cost of operating and maintaining Federal real property, including land, buildings and structures; a list of all Federal property that is either unused or vacant--that is something we should know which we do not know--and the estimated cost of the maintenance backlog on Federal land, buildings, and properties by agency.

This will give taxpayers greater transparency. It allows the taxpayers to know what kind of poor stewards we are with Federal property and land. It will also give us a focus to direct the maintenance backlog that we have today, to create a priority for it. We can see it in light of all the maintenance problems by agency.

It also will help us when we are considering a bill like this one. Nobody knows the total impact of this bill--this bill, 170 bills. Nobody has done a study to say what the total impact is going to be. We don't know what the total impact is going to be on energy transmission. What we do know is it is going to hinder it greatly. What it does is it gives us a management tool.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the total amount of Federal land is unknown. In fact, different sources show significantly different estimates. This is their direct quote:

The estimate of $650 million assumes the four Federal land

management agencies have reasonably accurate data on lands

under their jurisdiction, and the Department of Defense.

I would note that this amendment specifically excludes any properties that should not be known publicly, that are of national security or defense nature.

It is interesting, the Government tracks property we own, but the taxpayers cannot track the property the Government owns. Let me repeat that. Government at all levels tracks the property we own, but the taxpayers are not allowed to track the property the Government owns through them--ridiculous. The Government should have to disclose exactly the same information, when it is not a national security issue, that we have to disclose on our own property.

What we do know is that the Federal Government controls more than one-fourth of the Nation's total land, and that continues to grow. It is going to grow by almost 3 million acres in this bill. Between 1997 and 2004, the latest years for which reliable information was available, Federal land ownership increased from 563 million to 654.7 million acres. In 7 years it grew 100 million acres. That is 100 million acres on which nobody is collecting any property tax. It is 100 million acres we are not taking care of. It is 100 million acres that have facilities and structures and backlogs on maintenance issues on it that are costing us dearly every year. As the Federal Government takes more land, the costs of maintaining the property increases and the maintenance backlogs continue to grow.

It also does something else. In this 100 million acres of growth in the 7 years up to 2004, that is 100 million acres that is not available to the American public to utilize in a productive way, in a way that could build capacity, could build wealth, could build jobs. None of that happens. The only jobs that come with Federal Government programs or Federal Government property is Federal jobs that are not necessarily productive of new assets, new wealth, and new job creation beyond it.

The other thing we know is, as this 100 million acres has been added over the previous 7 years, that the maintenance backlog of what we do own has fallen further and further behind. We know, according to the GAO, the maintenance backlog just at the Forest Service--not the national parks--we know that is somewhere between $12 billion and $19 billion. But the Forest Service has tripled.

The other problem I mentioned earlier, of the 21,000 buildings we have now that we are not utilizing, we could reduce the debt by $18 billion just in the maintenance costs to those buildings. Think about that. We have 21,000 buildings sitting. We are not doing anything with them except maintaining them, and we are spending $18 billion that we do not have taking care of buildings whereas we could get $18 billion for those buildings if we would dispose of them. But we have been blocked in this body from proposing real property reform.

The first step, then, is to know what we have, and this is just a guess of what we have. I mentioned earlier that the Department of Energy--I said 40--it is 20 million square feet of excess capacity. That is three times the size of the Pentagon. So three times the size of the Pentagon, you could put five U.S. Capitols inside the Pentagon in terms of square footage.

The other benefit from this is transparency will help us every time in every way. Knowing what we need to know about Federal property, knowing what we need to know about maintenance backlogs, is key to us fixing the problem. We cannot manage Federal property unless we know what we are managing, unless we have the details and the data. My hope is this amendment will be accepted and that the American people can actually know what they own, much like the Government knows what they own.

I have one other amendment to offer, but I will defer that to a later point in time, and at this time I yield the floor.

While I thank the chairman, the Senator from New Mexico, for his words and his comments, I would note that true eminent domain was not truly exercised in this country until the authority was given in 1960, not at the start of our founding. As a matter of fact, we believed in property rights in our founding. It is only since 1960 have we decided the Government knows better than a private landowner.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the present ongoing debate on eminent domain between the Friars and the National Park Service on the Appalachian Trail, just to show you how controversial the taking of land of private homeowners, landowners is, when we, in our ultimate wisdom, say we know better than the people who own private land in this country.

I would also note the testimony yesterday given by the Secretary of the Interior on his idea that we have to figure out where the transmission lines are going to run.

This bill goes against exactly his testimony before your committee yesterday. Because what he said was, we need to plan ahead where the transmission lines are going to go. We need to know that before we block off anything else. That was the implication of his testimony.

For these renewable energy sites to succeed, we need to work closely with other agencies, States, tribes, and interested communities to determine what electric transmission infrastructure and corridors are needed and appropriate to deliver the renewable resources to major population centers. Our own Secretary of the Interior, our former colleague, says we have the cart before the horse.

What we heard in opposition to the first amendment, No. 680, is a continued slight to the American people in terms of taking care of the properties we have. Now, the GAO says, and the IG of the Department of the Interior, it is somewhere between $12 and $19 billion in backlog.

What we hear is nobody wants to put a priority in taking care of what we have. What we want to do is build more new and let what we have crumble. The last thing we should be doing is building something new until we take care of what we have. Go to any of our national parks and talk to the people who are in charge of the maintenance and they will tell you: Congress never gives us the money to take care of it. And it is growing at $1 billion a year in terms of backlog.

I understand the chairman's reluctance to accept these amendments. I respect him greatly. But we are going to continue on doing what we have been doing, which is a shame looking at our national parks.

I have not even talked seriously about the backlog at the Forest Service. So if we want to deny the amendment to not start new construction unless the Secretary certifies it is something for safety or that it would, in fact, help us build something that would cost more to fix than to repair, then we are going to keep on allowing this backlog to grow. That is exactly what this bill does. This amendment is not trying to stop or play any games, it is saying, let's catch up with the real need we have in our parks now. Let's catch up with the needs on the National Mall. Let's catch up with the $200 million backlog at the Statue of Liberty. No, we are not going to do that. We are going to authorize all these new programs. Then we are going to fund the new programs because we look better doing it than taking care of the very valuable assets we have.

I disagree with my colleague from New Mexico on the importance and the intention of that amendment. The amendment is to cause us to focus on priorities which this body has not. One of the reasons we have not is because we do not have my other amendment

saying we need a list of what we have, where we have it, what the problems are, and what the backlogs are.

With that I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown.) The Senator from Iowa is recognized.

Mr. President, the amendment we are going to be voting on next is amendment No. 680. If my colleagues have not read the GAO report on the Department of Interior released this month, they should as they consider this.

The national parks have--according to the national parks--a $9 billion backlog. According to the GAO, it is

somewhere between $13 billion and $19 billion. This amendment is not intended to do anything except cause us to order a priority that we will take care of what we have now before we spend new money on new parks and new areas under the Department of the Interior. It is simple. It is straightforward. There is nothing underhanded about it.

The fact is, we cannot continue adding things when we are not taking care of the Statute of Liberty, the National Mall, and many of our national parks that are falling down and are a threat to health and safety of the visitors and the employees who work there.

Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, this does not limit the ability of the National Park Service to consider something they do not want to repair. In fact, there is an exact exemption in this amendment for that.

We are going to do the same thing. We are not going to take care of what we have and we are going to spend money on new things and we are going to put the employees and the people of this country at risk. Let's take care of what we have. Let's agree to this amendment.

I yield the remainder of my time and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, this is another amendment, the whole purpose of which is to think forward not think short term. What we are going to do in this collage of 170 bills is restrict, significantly restrict, the availability of geothermal, solar, wind, and biomass energy.

We are doing that because we are going to limit the places where we can get that. Ninety percent of the geothermal capability in this country lies on Federal lands. What we are doing in this bill is not thinking about what we are going to do on transmission lines, not thinking how we are going to bring solar, wind, and geothermal, as well as biomass, to the population centers of this country.

Yesterday, the Secretary of the Interior outlined, in his testimony before the committee, the importance of getting transmission lines and grids right in anticipation of having this access for renewable energy that is clean and without a significant carbon footprint.

All this amendment does is say we are not going to allow it to prohibit our utilization of geothermal, our utilization of solar, and our utilization of wind by what we are doing in the bill.

So everything else stays the same, but we are not going to handicap ourselves and handcuff ourselves by eliminating the ability to gather these energy sources off these lands.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, what we are doing in this country is we are shutting off oil and gas energy that we

are going to need for the next 20 years. Now we are going to handicap the renewable, clean energy that is in the bill.

I disagree that the President has the ability only under an extreme national emergency. Well, we have an emergency right now and nobody is doing that. What we ought to do is make sure we do not limit further energy potential for this country. We are going to see petroleum prices rise. We are going to see energy costs double in the future.

This will eliminate some of that.

I yield back the time.

Mr. President, I yield a minute to the minority whip.

Mr. President, there is eminent domain, and then there is the threat of eminent domain. The threat of eminent domain is as powerful as eminent domain in itself because we cause people who have pure and sincere and guaranteed rights to their property to give up their property.

The fact is, this bill relates to all sorts of statutes that utilize eminent domain. If, in fact, we do not intend to utilize eminent domain, why won't we say it? We will not say it because we want to use the power of having that to intimidate property owners in this country and landowners.

This is about protecting one of the most important principles of our country: the right to have and hold property. This is an issue under which we either accept the rights of individuals to hold property or we say the Government knows better. Even though we are saying we are not going to use it, we are going to use it to intimidate landowners.

I would appreciate your vote.

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

Mr. President, H.R. 146 is the pending business; is that correct?

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 683.

Mr. President, this is the last of the amendments I will offer on this bill. These are specifically five particular directed authorizations and spending that really do not fit--maybe with the exception of one--that do not pass the smell test and do not pass the commonsense test. I have no delusions about how the Congress will handle this. We have demonstrated our inability to choke off our own parochial interests. These are five areas that, I believe, if the American people really knew what they were about, would reject out of hand.

This bill is going to cost the American taxpayers $11 billion. If we adopt this amendment, we will reduce that by 10 percent.

In this bill is $3.5 million for a birthday celebration for the oldest city in America, St. Augustine in Florida. That is going to occur 6 years from now. Think about that. We are in one of the most difficult financial times we have experienced. Families are being hit severely with unemployment, declining values of their savings, declining values of their No. 1 asset, their home, and we are going to authorize $3.5 million to study how to best have a birthday party in a town in America. It may be a great thing to celebrate this early city in our country, but it is not a great thing to steal $3.5 million from the next two generations to pay for it. Noting, and I have said this on the floor, that we will have a $2.2 trillion deficit this year, any example of less than the tightest fiscal ship ought to be made fun of, it ought to be brought forward, it ought to be made public so people can see it.

There is not a whole lot of difference between this and somebody inserting something in a bill to say the people who got the $176 million worth of bonuses will be able to keep them. That is what happened in the conference. That is why the AIG problem is there, because some Member of Congress made it happen that way. We should be just as outraged when we see these kinds of projects earmarked in an authorization bill that do not pass the smell test either.

There is $5 million for botanical gardens in Hawaii and Florida. We don't have to spend that money. That is an option. This is directed authorization to make sure when it comes to appropriations we know where it is going to go. It is going to go to somebody's benefit--some Congressman's benefit or some Senator's benefit.

So in this bill is a birthday celebration, $5 million for botanical gardens in

Hawaii and Florida, a controversial issue, to say the least, in terms of spending over $1 billion on a settlement claim on a river. Prior to a dam being placed there, they already had a marked decline of the salmon run in it. That is what the historical records show. But we have a lawsuit and a Federal judge who says we are going to do this. By the way, we are going to put at risk $11 billion worth of commerce in some of the most productive areas of California. The metric on spending the $1 billion that has been agreed to is when you have 500 salmon. That comes out to over $2 million a salmon. I have not figured that up by ounce, but it is pretty expensive salmon. It is not to say we should not do good things and right things to maintain fisheries and to maintain natural salmon runs. The fact is, this happened a long time ago, and it was diminished before there was ever an imprint in terms of damming in the waterway.

There is also $250,000 to study Alexander Tyler's boyhood home in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, with the idea of making it a national landmark. First, it is not a priority--it cannot be a priority for us. It cannot be a priority that we would spend money right now at this time when we are facing these significant difficulties financially, when, in fact, we are going to borrow $7,000 per person across the whole Nation more than we spend this year--$7,000. That works out to almost $30,000 a family that we are going to borrow against our kids and our grandkids. And then we have the gall to say it is OK to spend money on this.

The final aspect is a study and an authorization to allow an unspecified amount for a new national ocean exploration program and undersea research program within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that is tasked to conduct scientific voyages to locate, define, and document historic shipwrecks. There is $320 million authorized to be spent over the next 7 years on that. It may be something we want to do when we have our ship aright and our ship is not sinking, but to authorize and spend that money now on a new program to look for sunken ships does not pass the commonsense test this body ought to be about.

We already have the following that documents shipwrecks, old ones as well as new ones: the U.S. Coast Guard, the Library of Congress, 12 private museums, 8 libraries, 8 historical societies. And those are just a few. There are other Government sources, including the National Archives and Records Administration, Internal Revenue Service, Office of Distribution Services, the Defense Mapping Agency, the Smithsonian Institution, the Naval Historical Center, and the Federal Building, Great Lakes Courthouse papers. There are 12 separate museums and 8 other libraries and historical societies. There are 22 publications out this year on shipwrecks. Oh, there are nine U.S. Government shipwreck publications, and there are eight other additional sets of records in custody of the National Archives.

The other thing that this bill does is it throws five earmarks right at President Obama and says: We don't care what you said, we are going to do it anyway. It goes against his pledge. It goes against our pledge. It goes against the idea of change you can believe in. It diminishes hope when we have items such as this in this bill. It is discouraging to the people who are out there struggling that we would put such things in this bill. I understand they are authorizations and they may not happen. I agree that you ought to authorize earmarks before we do them. But I can tell you, I don't think these pass any resemblance to anything that has common sense.

I will talk about this again in the morning. Tomorrow, I also plan, before the final vote on this bill, to list specifically over 30 wilderness areas that the wilderness study said should not be transferred into wilderness as we do in this bill. Hear me clearly: 30 new wilderness areas which the study said should not be included in the wilderness area that we have included in wilderness in this new bill. Why spend the money on a study if you are not going to pay attention to it? Why did we waste all that money?

I will go through a limited but thorough critique of the bill again tomorrow.

I know the ranking member would like to speak and to praise a species of stamina and courage that I would only hope we would reflect in the Senate.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise to talk about the pending bill. I understand we will have a unanimous consent agreement that the majority leader and I have worked out on the omnibus lands package. Having spent 10 years in a legislative body, I understand how things work, and I know we have a bill that is a compilation of 150-plus other bills that is so peppered with individual parochial interests that the hopes of defeating the bill are somewhat diminished. However, I would be remiss in the oath I took to the Constitution to not try to inform my colleagues in the Senate as well as--and more importantly--the people of this country what is coming about with this bill.

Yesterday, one of my constituents sent me a news article described as the following: ``Natural Gas Rig Shutting Means Prices May Double.'' Natural gas right now is under $4 a million British thermal units. It was as high as $13 in the height of what I would say was the manipulation of the commodity market but also in the height of the expansion we saw in economies around the world.

Why is that important to the American public? When people look for natural resources, they look for natural resources--to find them--so they can sell them at a profit. Natural gas exploration in the continental United States--not offshore--is fraught with great difficulties in terms of finding great supplies. However, what we do know in terms of the law of economics is: If you cut exploration in natural gas by 45 percent--and that is just through February of this year versus July of last year--what is going to happen? What is going to happen to natural gas prices? Well, they are going to rise and they are going to rise significantly and, most probably, they are going to approach $10 a year from now.

Is it a great policy we are going to pass a bill that is going to make it harder to find additional natural gas resources in this country, that shuts off 13 trillion cubic feet of known reserves right now? That is enough to supply our country for 2 years. Is it smart for us to pass a lands package that is going to take 2.8 million acres and say: You cannot ever touch it for energy, regardless if natural gas is $45 a million Btu's, you cannot touch it?

But at the same time, if our demand rises, what are we going to do? We are going to import it. So we are doing two things highly negative in the long run that will have major effects on the average American family. One is, we are going to limit the ability to go find it; and, No. 2, we are going to continue to fund imports with our dollars to burn the same natural gas we could have developed here.

The same thing could be said for oil. We all remember oil at $140 a barrel. We pretty well like that gasoline--in my hometown, I filled up with regular unleaded gasoline for $1.64 a gallon this weekend versus the highest it got in Oklahoma, I think, was $3.90 a gallon. We like that. But we are getting ready to pass a bill that says the likelihood of us going back to that era of demand--supply inequality--will be increased and that to pay for that will be a tax on every American family's budget. It is a pretty tough tax if you are commuting or if you are heating your home with natural gas our if you are buying heating oil. Many of our families in the Northeast and upper Midwest bought their heating oil at the peak of prices.

So the opposition to this bill, from my standpoint, comes from a lot of areas, and I am going to spend some time outlining that today. But I want to be a predictor of what is going to happen. What is going to happen is energy prices are going to rise. If you are the greenest of green and think we can provide all our energy from renewables,

great. But what you cannot deny is the fact that it is going to take us 20 years to get there. What this bill is going to do is markedly hamper our ability to supply needed energy products for American families. It is not just oil and gas.

Ninety percent of the known geothermal and absolutely clean, safe, environmentally friendly way to produce steam and power a turbine to produce electricity is taken off in this bill--90 percent of the known geothermal reserves. So when we say we want to use renewables and we want to get away from a carbon-based source, there are some things we have to do. One is to recognize how long it is going to take us and make sure we do not have a disruption in our supplies; No. 2, markedly increase the supplies we need in the meantime; and, No. 3, not hamstring our ability to use completely renewable sources from sources we know are available to us right now.

There have been a lot of claims this bill is not controversial. Well, coming from an energy-producing State, it is controversial as all get out for Oklahoma. When we say we are going to shut off large portions of this country forever to future energy exploration, it does not just impact--Oklahomans have cheap energy. We are the least impacted by it. What the American citizens ought to be asking is: What did we get individually that can put 150 bills together that will make your Representative in Congress vote for something that in the long term is damaging to our energy independence and will keep us more dependent on people who are supplying energy who do not necessarily believe in freedom, do not necessarily like our way of life, and do not necessarily believe we ought to have the standard of living we have?

This bill has 1,248 pages--1,248 pages. There is a total of 170 unique, different bills. This bill, also, is going to cost the American taxpayer--our kids--$10 billion, and it has $900 million of mandatory spending that is going to be spent no matter what anybody in Congress says. So we are going to add another $11 billion to our spending. It is opposed by over 200 different groups. Whether it is property rights groups, the Chamber of Commerce, energy-producing groups, recreation interests across the country, they are uniform in their opposition to this bill.

It is not necessarily just in their own self-interests they are in opposition to it. They know what is coming. They are not thinking short term. They are not thinking about how I look good at home. They are thinking about what is in the best long-term interests of our Nation.

One hundred of these bills have no effect on us as individual Americans. They will not have an effect on energy. They will not have an effect on property rights. There probably is no problem with them. But 70 of these bills will markedly impact every American.

When this bill went through the House on suspension--and it is important you know what ``suspension'' means: You get a vote on it, but you do not get any opportunity to amend it--it did not pass the requirement to pass the House without amendment.

This bill has been smoldering here for 2 years. I wish it would smolder a whole lot longer. I will have to admit that. This is the first time in 2 years we are going to be able to offer an amendment to change this bill. It is going to be a limited set of amendments: six amendments on 1,248 pages of legislation, on $11 billion worth of spending, but, more importantly, on a significant decline in the American people's standard of living because energy costs are going to rise. They are going to rise anyway, but they are going to rise dramatically because of what we are going to do in this bill.

It is a massive collection of unique provisions, some quite controversial. There is actually a section of wilderness area in one Congressman's district that nobody from his district wants and neither did he, but it got put in the bill, and he has no ability to amend the bill. So we are going to take a section out of one of our States and put it in a wilderness area, where the citizens do not want that to happen and the Congressman does not have the ability to try to stop it. That is what happens when you start playing games in trading things in Congress to pass a bill that cannot pass any other way except for buying off votes with something that looks good at home.

It creates 10 new National Heritage Areas. It creates three new units of the National Park Service. We have a $9 billion backlog in just keeping the buildings maintained in our national parks right now, and we are going to add three new parks--at a time when we are going to have an over $2 trillion deficit. We are going to have a deficit that will add $7,000 per man, woman, and child, $28,000 per family this year alone--this year alone.

It creates 14 new studies to expand or create more national parks. It creates 80 new wilderness designations or expansions. It takes 2.2 million acres of direct Federal land and says: You can never touch this, regardless of how much oil is there, how much natural gas is there, how much geothermal is there. You can never touch it. No matter what our need is, we will never be able to access it.

How stupid are we when we are going to tell the rest of the world's suppliers of oil we are going to limit our ability to influence their pricing to us?

It creates 92 wild and scenic river designations--that is more than we have total wild and scenic rivers now--1,100 miles of shoreline. It is going to kill an LNG, liquefied natural gas, port in Massachusetts that is not a scenic river at all because we are so green we do not want to use natural gas, one of the cleanest carbon-based fuels we have, and we are going to eliminate the ability for people in the Northeast to have cheap natural gas. But we are going to do it.

It creates six new National Trails. I will tell you, the trails it creates have eminent domain. Even though this bill says they are not going to use it, the bureaucrats are still going to have the ability to take private property from individuals without their consent.

The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act will prohibit any gas transmission lines, any electrical lines, any utility lines, that may be in our Nation's best interest, to either pump oil from Canada or natural gas. You cannot go near the river, so you cannot cross the river. So what we are going to do is, not only are we going to raise the cost, we are going to increase the cost of getting it here because we are going to have to go circuitous routes to bring energy to people in this country.

It includes 19 specific instances where Federal lands are permanently--permanently--withdrawn from future mineral and geothermal leasing. Three million acres are impacted by this permanent withdrawal. In the Wyoming Range that is in this bill, according to the National Petroleum Council, 12 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is proven and sitting there right now--and that is enough to run our country for almost 3 years--300 million barrels of oil. That is the most up-to-date study by the BLM. Each of the 19 withdrawal provisions of the 3 million acres also excludes future geothermal leasing. Studies performed by the Bureau of Land Management confirm geopotential on many of the designations in this bill. In other words, it has been studied. I will have a chart later to show that. We know where the geothermal sources are in this country--clean energy, cheap, abundant--yet we are going to take it away. We are going to say we are not going to use it.

The threats posed by this bill to American energy independence have grown since the last time we considered this bill. Secretary Salazar has withdrawn 77 major leases in Utah. He has withdrawn eight--and these are leases that are already completed, signed, and paid for-- energy leases in Wyoming, outside of this bill. He has delayed any increase in offshore drilling because it ``needs more study.'' We do it with perfection in the Gulf of Mexico. The vast quantity of our oil that we produce domestically comes from there. He has delayed the development of oil shale because it needs more testing, except all the prototype plants have been highly effective in how they have utilized it.

The bill is another direct challenge from Congress to President Obama's pledge to clean up the earmark process. There are multiple earmarks in this bill for things that none of us would be proud of and none of us would say would meet with any common sense, especially in light of the fiscal and monetary difficulties in which we find ourselves.

There is $1 billion for a water project in California to repopulate 500 salmon. There is $5 million for a wolf compensation and prevention program for

wolves that we reintroduced in the wild that are now killing cattle. So we are reintroducing wolves, and then we are going to pay the ranchers for the cows the wolves killed.

There is $3.5 million to celebrate the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine in 2015. Do we really think right now we ought to spend $3.5 million to plan a birthday party in 2015 when we are stealing every penny we are going to spend this year--in the remaining portion of this year--from our kids and our grandkids? Is that really something we want to do?

We are going to spend a quarter of a million dollars to study whether Alexander Hamilton's boyhood estate in St. Croix, the U.S. Virgin Islands, is suitable as a new national park. Well, let's do it after we get out of the mess we are in; let's don't do it now. Let's not spend a quarter of a million dollars. What would a quarter of a million dollars do? It would buy at least 20 families health insurance for a year, 20 families who don't have it. It would supply lots of small businesses with the working capital they require to keep going and keep their employees on board instead of laying them off.

This bill gives $5 million for the National Tropical Botanical Garden to operate and maintain new gardens in Hawaii and Florida. Is that really a priority for us right now? Is that something--if we were a family, would we be making those kinds of decisions? It gives us a new ocean exploration program which has as its No. 1 job to locate, find, and document historic shipwrecks. It may be a good idea in a time of plenty, but in a time of hurt it is a terrible idea.

There is $12 million for the Smithsonian to build a new greenhouse for a national orchid collection. Is that something we should do now? A full waiver for the Cave Institute in New Mexico to be fully funded by the American taxpayers rather than by the State of New Mexico. It just happens to be one of those little things snuck into the bill.

What about property rights? There is little transparency. It is estimated the Federal Government now owns 653 million acres, 1 out of 3 acres in the United States, and 1 out of 2 acres in the Western United States. The 10 national heritage areas--what does that mean? The Park Service funds advisory committees in these heritage areas which means they have an advantage over the local residents because they have money. So they come in and pass requirements and code changes that impact private property rights in all of these areas.

So if you are in the heritage area or if you are abutting it, you now have the Federal Government funding a group that may be counter to your own private property rights. Eighty wilderness areas and another 2.2 million acres. Recent court decisions have now said being in the wilderness area isn't enough. If you are close to it, you can't have your rights; we will decide what you do with your land.

Ninety-two national scenic rivers--again, eminent domain--anything touching it or anything they want to have touch it, they have eminent domain to take private property, and we are creating 92 of those. So if you live along one of those rivers, you should worry about whether you are going to have the freedom to do with your property as you want, whether you are on the river or not. You just have to be in proximity.

Six national trail designations. The underlying National Trails Act grants land acquisition and eminent domain authority. So if they want to put a national trail through your backyard, they can come and take your home. Do we really want to give that kind of capability, and is now the time to do it?

Here is a quote from the National Property Rights Advocates:

This bill is a serious threat to all property owners in

this country. Over the past several decades there has been a

proliferation of programs dedicated to the preservation of

land that has extended the grasp of the Federal Government

and its influence over private property rights.

Amen.

As a result of this legislation, landowners will see their

property value diminish due to increased land use regulations

and outdoor recreation enthusiasts will find new restrictions

on both public and private land.

So you can have private land where you allow people to horseback ride, but if you are next to one of these areas and they are not allowed in that area, you are not going to be allowed. So you may actually even lose income because you no longer have that as a capability of your property.

The experts go on and say:

This legislation should never arbitrarily attempt to seize

land from the public and restrict its use as this package

will.

The problem is, there is no priority in this bill--there is no priority for energy independence or less dependence. There is no priority to protect rights that are guaranteed under the Constitution.

Let's think for a minute about what we have tasked the American agencies with. The National Park Service, here is what they are responsible for: 84 million acres of land in the National Park Service, 391 different units; 54 national wilderness areas which include 44 million acres; 15 wild and scenic rivers, and we are getting ready to add 92 to that; 40 national heritage areas, and we are getting ready to add 12; 28 national memorials, 4 national parkways, 120 national historic parks, 20 national preserves and reserves, 24 national battlefields, 18 national recreation areas, 74 national monument areas, 10 national seashores, 4 national lake shores, 3,565 miles of national scenic trails, 12,250 miles of unpaved trails, 46 miles of Canadian border, 285 miles of Mexican border to patrol and manage, 27,000 historic structures--27,000 historic structures that are falling down-- 26,830 camp sites, 7,580 administrative and public use buildings, 8,505 monuments and statues, 1,804 bridges and tunnels, 505 dams, 8,500 miles of road that they have to maintain yearly, 680 waste water treatment systems, and 272 million visits annually.

The National Park Service has a $9.6 billion maintenance backlog, so severe that the backlog grew $400 million since the time we first passed this bill and its coming back to us. The backlog has grown by $400 million, which includes some of our treasures--the USS Arizona Memorial, where 1,117 American sailors were killed--and faces a backlog of $33.4 million. It is not getting fixed; Gettysburg National Battlefield, 51,000 casualties in 3 days, $29 million backlog; the Grand Canyon National Park, $299 million backlog; the Statue of Liberty Park, $197 million backlog; The National Mall in Washington, DC--The Mall that is just west of here--$700 million backlog. There is even miscellaneous and supposedly noncontroversial provisions in the bill that could pose a threat to American families. It is not intended; it is just that it is a consequence.

In this bill is a little provision that if you are on Federal lands and you happen to pick up a rock--not intentionally to steal a fossil, but if it is a fossil, 5 years in jail, and they can confiscate your automobile, plus a fine. One of the amendments we have tries to fix that. We don't have a big problem with fossils being stolen, but we are going to fix a problem that isn't great by this amendment, by this bill, and we need to clean it up.

There is a provision to codify an existing agency program at the Bureau of Land Management which will, in fact, consolidate power over 38 million acres of land onto a few anti-energy, anti-recreational bureaucrats. This jurisdiction will extend the wilderness study areas lands, many of which have been deemed already nonsuitable for wilderness.

I am going to make a point later in the presentation just to show my colleagues--as a matter of fact, I will make it right now. One of the things the law requires is that we, in fact, do studies on the applicability of lands for wilderness area. My staff just had time to go through California, Oregon, and Washington. By law, it is mandated there has to be a study to see if it is suitable. I am going to read through some of these.

Granite Mountain, CA. It is not suitable for wilderness recommendation because resource conflicts in the WSA include modern to high geothermal resource potential. It should never get a wilderness designation. We are going to designate it a wilderness area.

Spring Basin, oil and gas, moderate potential for occurrence based on several factors. Soda Mountain wilderness study area, California; again, the entire wilderness is considered to have a moderate potential for the occurrence of oil and gas. So we know in many of

these areas there is tremendous energy potential for us, and we are going to shut it off forever.

Sabinoso wilderness study area, oil and gas; Pinto Mountain, CA, zero acres--this is by the Bureau of Land Management--zero acres were deemed suitable for wilderness. Yet we are going to put that area in a wilderness classification. Beauty Mountain, CA, no wilderness is recommended for this wilderness study area. The wilderness values for most of the area are not outstanding at all and commonplace.

Little Jackson, Big Jackson, wilderness study area, Idaho, natural gas pipeline between it and a supposed source of minerals; Bruno River wilderness study area, geothermal resources are found at the northern and southern ends of it. The solitude of this area is frequently disrupted by flying military aircraft utilizing the U.S. Air Force bombing range just east of the wilderness study area.

I can go through Oregon, Idaho, Washington--and we will go through the rest of them before this debate is over--but the fact is, we are not even paying attention to what the law says. When we have a study that says we shouldn't be, we are putting them in wilderness areas anyway.

One of the things I would like to do is commend to my colleagues highlights of GAO-09-425T, a study released March 3, 2009, on the Department of the Interior by the GAO. I would bet my colleagues a nickel against a penny, or any multiple of that, that less than one person in the Senate besides myself has read this report because you can't read this report and come out and vote on this bill. This is the Government Accountability Office. What they say is, the Department of the Interior is essentially poorly run, poorly managed, and the safety and welfare of our people who are on BLM lands and in the national parks is at risk because of the poor management and the lack of oversight that has been carried out by Congress. It is the very same committee that brings us this bill.

Mr. President, I also commend to my colleagues the testimony of Mary Kendall, the acting inspector general for the Department of the Interior, her statement before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies. When you read it, it will scare you to death. Here is what the internal inspector general is saying, and it mirrors what the GAO is saying. Yet this has received zero consideration from the authors of this bill; otherwise, we would see an opportunity to fix the problems that are outlined in these two documents in this bill. There has been no consideration to fix the problems and no significant oversight.

What does it find? At no point during their testimony did they agree that it was a good idea to add any additional responsibilities to the Department of the Interior, based on what has been found: We find ourselves in the biggest mess in terms of maintenance. There is actually a public safety and health issue for people who are visiting our parks highlighted throughout both of these reports. There is no attempt to fix that, no attempt to authorize the money to get the backlog caught up with what we presently have and should be taking care of. There is no attempt whatsoever.

In the GAO report--I quoted almost $9 billion--they are saying it is between $13.2 billion and $19.4 billion to get our national parks up to date and manage the things we should be managing. In contrast, the entire budget for the Department of the Interior in 2007 was under $11 billion. We are going to take significant moneys that should be spent on the backlog of repair and maintenance and we are going to use that to implement this 1,243-page bill. I don't get it. I don't understand the lack of common sense. I understand the political drive. I understand we want to do things for people back at home. But I don't understand why there hasn't been a change in behavior given the economic situation we are in. I flat don't get it. I guess I have a lot to learn about politics.

The GAO wasn't necessarily critical of the management of the Department of the Interior, they were really critical of Congress. They said that although Interior has made a concentrated effort to address its deferred backlog, the dollar estimate of the backlog has continued to escalate. It sounds as if they need help. The last thing they need is another 3 million acres for which they have to be responsible. They classify the backlog into four categories: roads, bridges, and trails, between $6 billion and $9 billion; buildings, including historic buildings, between $2 billion and $3.5 billion; irrigation, dams, and other water structures, between $2.4 billion and $3.6 billion; recreation sites and fisheries, between $2 billion and $2.93 billion.

The Department of Interior by itself manages more than 500 million acres of Federal land, more than 1.8 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf, and its 70,000 employees working in 2,400 locations. Yet congressional leadership intends to add another 3 million acres and hundreds of new commitments to DOI in this bill.

In one instance of mismanagement, in this GAO report, GAO points out that the Fish and Wildlife Service is responsible for 132,000 acres of farmland, most of which it doesn't manage. However, even though these farmlands are unwanted, the Fish and Wildlife Service cannot sell these lands because they are now part of the National Wildlife Refuge System. So Fish and Wildlife owns thousands of acres of good farmland that it doesn't manage and doesn't even inspect. It is less than 13 percent of the land they inspect yearly. It is land we could use for agricultural production, but we don't use it because we in the Congress have handicapped them.

What the GAO report also said was, in describing the maintenance backlogs, that the deterioration of these facilities can impair public health and safety, reduce employee morale and productivity, and increase the cost for major repairs and early replacement of structures and equipment.

Other groups have made similar observations. According to the National Parks Conservation Association, ``From neglected trails to dirty or deteriorating facilities, national parks across the country are showing the strain of budget shortfalls in excess of $600 million annually. . . .'' It will be greater than that this year. ``The visitor center at the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii is overcrowded, its foundation is cracking, and it is sinking. . . .a shortage of staff and funding limits the ability of the Park Service to maintain campgrounds at Nevada's Great Basin National Park. Broken benches, dilapidated buildings, and a crumbling boardwalk greet visitors to Riis Park in Gateway National Recreation Area in New York and New Jersey. Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico lacks funding to maintain and repair the park's 28 miles of backcountry trails. As a result, trails are damaged by heavy use and weather, compromising the experiences of visitors and the integrity of cultural resources and nearby natural resources that become trampled when visitors cannot follow the trails.'' They are not maintained, and that becomes an ecological problem.

According to Acting IG Mary Kendall, ``Our work has documented decades of maintenance, health and safety issues that place the Department of Interior employees and the public at risk.'' She listed the following examples of where poor management has led to safety concerns:

The U.S. Park Police, responsible for maintaining security at national icons, ``failed to establish a comprehensive security program and lacks adequate staffing and formal training for those responsible for protection [of those assets].''

Opportunities for improvement remain in the security of our Nation's dams.

The Department's Office of Law Enforcement, Security, and Emergency Management still struggles with issuing centralized policy and providing effective oversight of DOI law enforcement.

In 2006, they found a National Park Service visitor center literally falling apart, severe deterioration at the Bureau of Indian Education elementary and secondary schools, and Fish and Wildlife employees working for almost 7 years in two buildings that were condemned and closed to the public.

That is how good the oversight is that we have done.

They identified abandoned mines where members of the public had been ``killed, injured, or exposed to dangerous environmental contaminants''

by abandoned mines, and Congress is prioritizing a massive increase in the public lands without funding or prioritizing the true national concerns in DOI.

What was also found in the GAO report is that despite increasing firefighting funds fourfold, there is incompetent forest fire management. The fact is that they are made worse because of poor management. We have done nothing for that.

Her statement was:

In other words, DOI has not managed to even develop goals

for maximizing fire management and prevention funds.

Another statement is:

High prevalence of waste and fraud in the procurement and

Federal assistance process.

They also found problems throughout the solicitation process: a lack of presolicitation planning, a lack of competition, selection of inappropriate award vehicles, and poor administration of contracts and grants.

Mary Kendall said:

Financial management has remained a top challenge for the

department.

Why don't we fix it? You cannot fix what you cannot measure. Yet we are going to add this bloated bill.

There is something everybody should know. For the Native American schools in this country, we are spending a billion dollars a year for 50,000 kids. And when you look at performance, what you see is something akin, in many areas, to Washington, DC--not all but in many. The cost per student running through that is $20,000. We could put them in the best private schools, with the best private teachers, and bunk them, for $20,000 a year. Yet we continue to allow this.

BLM grazing fees collected were $12 million in fiscal year 2004--that is the latest year for which we have numbers, which tells you something about the accounting--even though the cost to implement the grazing program was $58 million. We would be better off eliminating the grazing program and saving $46 million.

So what is it about this bill that has had me so persistent? I will tell you. It is a great example of what we do wrong. It is a great example of the worst tendency of Congress. We were in an energy-short environment, and even though it doesn't feel that way today, it will feel that way 10, 12, 18 months from now. We are going to eliminate the potential for us getting out of it. We are going to add significant responsibilities to an agency that both the GAO and their own IG says is in trouble. Yet we don't approach anything to fix it.

We are going to make everybody feel good in this body because they all have something in the bill and they can go home and say: Look what I did, look what I accomplished. I got something that is important for our State. The problem with that thinking is that, when we only think in a parochial manner--if I only think about Oklahoma or if the Senator from Texas only thinks about Texas or any other Senator thinks only about their State and themselves--the whole country loses. Not once in our oath does it say that our allegiance is to our State. What it says is that our allegiance is to our country. And if our country is not healthy, no State can be healthy. Yet we have allowed parochialism and the politics of the Senate to design a bill that, for sure, will pass but which in the long run is going to be harmful to the country. It is going to pass. It will have 65 or 70 votes, maybe even 80 votes, because the press release at home is more important than the principle in Washington. Consequently, not only will we spend this $11 billion and overburden an agency that is struggling to keep itself above water, we will commit the Department of Interior to further backlogs, further problems, and we will strangle our ability to respond both with clean energy and the energy we know we are going to need for the next 20 years the next time the supply-demand balance gets upset.

The question the American people ought to ask is, Is it worth it? Is it worth it for somebody from Oklahoma to get something and to do this to the Nation as a whole? Is it responsible? Is that how our country is going to work in the future? Are we going to always place parochial interests first or are we going to go back and grab ahold of the heritage which made this country great, which says the politician doesn't matter; the principles and forbearance of our forefathers in accomplishing what is best for the nation, is that going to win the day? My thoughts are that it won't. When it doesn't win the day, I don't lose--I fought for it--but my kids lose, my grandkids lose, and so does everybody else in this country. In the name of playing the good game, what we are doing is undermining our country.

We have a lot of financial problems in front of us today. We as a nation can get out of those problems. As a matter of fact, we will get out of those in spite of the U.S. Congress because what makes America great is its people, not its politicians. What makes America great is the fact that the people get up every day, and no matter what is ahead of them, they will struggle to try to defeat the problems in front of them to make a better life for themselves, their kids, and their neighbors. We could learn a great deal from the average American citizen as we approach the legislation.

This little bill, which I assure you nobody in this body has read, is a compilation of 170 bills--some good; some don't have any of the negative effects I have described. But 50 of them are going to have devastating effects. And how we respond, how the American people respond to our doing this, is going to reflect on the character of the American people. They need to become informed about what we are doing.

Later today, we will have a unanimous consent that I thank the majority leader for. He has the toughest job in the Senate, and I recognize that. I have given him fits on this bill. I don't apologize for that. I think this bill is the wrong thing at the wrong time for the wrong reason. But we will have a unanimous consent agreement that allows six amendments, which I will offer either later this evening or tomorrow, which eliminate some of the stupidity in this bill. It won't fix the bill. It won't fix the problem I have described.

We are then going to walk out of here happy, because it will go back to the House, not have a chance to be amended in the House, and the President is going to sign a bill that is going to hurt our energy independence. We are going to hear all sorts of statements to the contrary, but that is not true. The fact is it is going to hurt our capability of becoming more self-sufficient for our own energy needs.

So a year or 18 months from now, when you are no longer paying under $2 for gasoline, and it is $4, I hope the American people will remember this bill, because this is the start of the battle against undermining utilizing our own resources in our own country for what is in the best long-term interest--not the short-term--for our country. And it doesn't have anything to do with climate change or global warming. Because if it did, we wouldn't worry about 20 years of carbon usage when we know we are going to go away from it.

Mr. President, I thank you for your patience and the time today. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

I ask unanimous consent that instead of going in the order that the unanimous consent had requested, Senator Vitter from Louisiana be recognized for 5 minutes, then followed by myself, and then followed by Senator Thune.

Mr. President, I will spend some time tonight offering two amendments to the bill under consideration.

I begin by asking: Why is it in the midst of all the problems that face the country, the Senate is going to spend time on an omnibus lands package? It is no emergency. There is no crisis. There is nothing critical about it. Instead of working on the problems that are in front of this country, we will spend the next 2\1/2\ days or next 1\1/2\ days on a 1,243-page bill that has 170 separate bills in it that, in fact, for the average American doesn't come anywhere close to being a priority. One has to ask that question. Why are we doing this? We don't have anything better to do. We don't have anything more important to do. If that is the case, we probably should go on until we do have something that can make a significant change in the country.

I call up amendment No. 680.

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

I spent about an hour this afternoon talking about the problems of the National Park Service. They are severe. I introduced into the record the GAO report on the problems at the Department of Interior, as well as the testimony of the acting inspector general, Mary Kendall, about the significant problems that parks are experiencing. Our parks are falling down. The maintenance backlog, according to the Park Service, is $8.9 billion. But according to the testimony of the GAO, it is somewhere between $13 and $19 billion.

This is a very straightforward amendment. What it says is, before we start anything new and new parks, we are going to bring up-to-date what should be brought up-to-date in the parks we have today. That is important because they need to be fully operational. They need to be fully accessible to the public which many are not now because of maintenance backlogs. They need to pose no safety or health risk for both the employees of the parks and the Department of Interior as well as the American citizen, some 270 million who visit them every year.

This is a very straightforward amendment. It says we are going to do something we don't often do. We are going to prioritize how we spend money in the parks. What we are saying is, we are not going to do any new construction in terms of units of the national park system until the Secretary--and this is left to the Secretary, not us--determines that the existing sites, the structures, trails and transportation infrastructure of the National Park Service are fully operational, fully accessible to the public, and pose no health or safety risk to either the public or park employees.

We have thought about other things. We want to make sure there is an exclusion in there. If something is going to cost more to repair than to build something new, we say build something new. The other thing, anything that the Secretary deems is important for public safety that is new, we let them do that as well. All this is saying is with this $10 billion of new authorizations and $900 million of mandatory spending accompanying this bill, the first thing we ought to do is take care of what we have before we start off on another project.

The crown jewels of our national parks are fading. They are fading because we won't take care of them. The backlog since the last time we considered this bill has grown by $400 million. That is just what we know since the last time we considered this bill. The other thing we know from the GAO report is there is a marked risk to both employees and the public in many areas of our national parks. The other thing we know is many of our best parks, the Grand Canyon, for example, a large number of the trails are in such disrepair that they are closed. The people can't access them because we haven't said put the money where it needs to go to make sure we keep the things we have today operational and pristine. So it is straightforward.

What we also know is that the agency needs some help in terms of priorities. In spite of what we have had, oftentimes we are sending them messages to do something else that is not within these priorities. All we are saying is, we have these wonderful assets. Before we go create new assets and new things to enjoy, let's take care of the ones we have. We would not build a new addition onto our own homes when the whole rest of the home is collapsing from lack of maintenance. The first thing we would do is take care of the home, the maintenance of the home.

The bill in front of us actually has the potential to make the situation in our parks worse. It is because we are going to mandate certain things in the bill that will take away from true priorities of maintaining our existing structures.

A recent memo prepared by the Facility Management Division of the National Park Service reveals at least 10 States where the National Park Service backlog exceeds $100 million. At least 20 States have facilities with deferred maintenance exceeding $50 million. That excludes $4 billion that is sitting there for roads and bridges in our national parks. This is in spite of the historically high appropriations levels we have sent to the parks.

I listed earlier--and I will not list again--all the things the National Park Service is responsible for. But it is a litany that, when you look at it, is almost incomprehensible that one agency can take care of everything we have asked them to take care of.

The USS Arizona now faces a maintenance backlog of $33.4 million; the Gettysburg National Battlefield site, $29.4 million; the Statue of Liberty Park has a backlog of $196 million. Are we going to let it fall apart while we create something new or should we take care of what we have first?

What we do know from both the inspector general's report and the GAO is the Park Service is denying access in an increasing number of areas because of the growing maintenance backlog.

Representative Rob Bishop is from Utah. The Dinosaur National Monument is largely inaccessible due to its overwhelming backlog. The center is designed so a kid can go in there and see, within the mountainside, the fossils that are there and see what scientists say about those fossils and then be able to put all that together in their mind. Unfortunately, no one has been able to access this building for 10 years--for 10 years--because we do not have enough money to fix the building and it has been condemned.

So here is an area where there is great educational value, great historical value and for 10 years the building has been condemned and we have not put the money there. This amendment is meant to fix what is wrong now before we spend money on new things.

According to the inspector general of the Department of Interior, financial management has remained a top challenge for the Department, and their work--this is the inspector general--has documented decades of maintenance, health, and safety issues that place Interior Department employees at a health and safety risk, as well as the public.

A report by the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees found widespread evidence of major problems that will be evident, including decreased safety for visitors, longer emergency response times, endangerment of protected resources, and dirtier and less well- maintained parks. The problem will only grow worse in the coming years if we pass this bill and do not prioritize the maintenance backlog.

It is noted that at the Grand Canyon, the cross-canyon water line is deteriorating so badly that it had 30 leaks this year and is in danger of failing entirely. Yet we did not spend any money on that in this bill. We did not authorize them to fix it. We are not about taking care; we are about solving our own political situation.

At Yellowstone, 10,000 gallons of raw sewage this past year leaked from a broken pipe and flowed into a trout-spawning stream in Yellowstone National Park. It is the absence of maintenance. We know the life expectancy of many of these infrastructures, and

yet we have not done anything about it.

Carlsbad Caverns--a great experience. Sewer lines were actually leaking into the caves because of deferred maintenance. Superintendent Benjamin said: Believe me, if there's sewage dripping down into the cavern, people are not going to believe we are doing a good job.

No kidding. Well, that starts with us.

The National Park System has grown to almost 400 units, 84 million acres, and a $9.6 billion maintenance backlog. That is according to the Park Service. It is much higher if you look at the GAO's numbers.

We appropriated $540 million for new land acquisition from 2001 to 2008. We have increased the number of National Heritage Areas since 2000 from 18 to 40. We added 10 more in January of this year. In the 110th Congress, 35 bills were introduced to expand the National Wild and Scenic Rivers.

The National Park Service already manages over 3,000 miles of scenic rivers. This bill includes 1,200 miles. But yet the maintenance dollars, the dollars put there to take care of what we have, are not there.

In April of 2008, the Congress passed and the President signed the Consolidated Natural Resources Act. That was another big lands bill that impacted land and property rights in over 30 States. It authorized $380 million in new spending and not one way of paying for it and none of it for maintenance backlogs.

What we also know is this agency, the Department of Interior, is unable to prioritize the maintenance of existing obligations over new commitments. They get mixed signals. We say: Go do this new one. And then we send appropriations dollars and say: You have to spend it on this rather than taking care of a rotting sewage line.

Until we in Congress and the administration prioritize the maintenance of our existing national parks, these problems are going to grow. There is no excuse for it.

Amendment No. 679 to Amendment No. 684

So I would put forward this is a simple amendment. It does not cost us anything. It actually saves us money because to repair something that is falling down--before it gets to that stage--is much cheaper than waiting until it is a catastrophe. Consequently, if we were to plan appropriately, and if we were to direct the funds appropriately, we would be repairing that which we need to repair so we do not spend extra dollars once they have failed.

My hope is we will get positive consideration of this amendment. This is a commonsense amendment. People at home would do the same thing. They take care of what they have before they go and add something else that is going to take away money that is required to maintain what they have.

I would say, again, individuals do not build additions to their homes when the roof and the foundation is caving in and neither should the Park Service and neither should Congress.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and that amendment No. 679 be called up.

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

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I wish to read this amendment because it is very short and very straightforward:

At the appropriate place, insert the following:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, nothing in

this Act shall restrict the development of renewable energy--

``Renewable energy''--

on public land, including geothermal, solar, and wind energy

and related transmission infrastructure.

Very straightforward. We had a great experience with the harsh reality that we are energy dependent this past summer. It is going to come back again. Unfortunately or fortunately--depending on how you look at it--in the West, where the Government owns 1 out of every 2 acres, the vast majority of geothermal land resides.

What you will see--as indicated on this map--through this area, through southern California, along the coast of California, and Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, some areas of Montana, Wyoming, and Arizona, is where the vast resources of a clean renewable energy exists: geothermal.

The only problem is, in this bill we gut a large portion of that and say we can never touch it. Well, why would we, if we believe in climate change--and I am a skeptic, but I will take that point for a moment. Let's say we believe in climate change and we want to have energy produced that does not increase the CO2 content of the atmosphere. Why would we pass a bill that takes and restricts a large portion of this area from geothermal?

We know in Nevada and Arizona, for example, solar is a massive source for clean energy. Yet in this bill, in both the wilderness areas and the heritage areas and all these other areas, we are going to restrict not only the utilization of geothermal and wind and solar but also the ability to capture it and move it somewhere else.

Well, if we take all this area for geothermal, and if you concentrate Nevada and Arizona in terms of the solar and then you look at the wind corridor that comes up through here, as shown on this map, and say you cannot send a transmission line anywhere across any of these properties, what we are doing is shooting ourselves in the foot. We do not want carbon-based energy. And now, where the Government owns 650 million acres, we do not want wind, solar or geothermal. Why would we do that?

I guess we are going to go all nuclear. We do not see any nuclear coming from the President. We do not see any nuclear coming from anywhere else. So what are we going to have? We are going to have no energy.

So we are going to limit hydrocarbon energy, and then we are going to take our greatest sources for wind, solar and geothermal and we are going to say: Sorry, that is off limits. You cannot use it here. You cannot extract it.

Geothermal is so powerful because it is a direct conversion. We capture steam and we capture a temperature gradient that turns a turbine that puts off nothing but water vapor--no CO2, no nitrous oxide, no sulfur dioxide. It is free energy. Yet in this bill we are going to take 2.2 million acres out of these areas and say: You cannot touch it for renewable energy. Why would we do that? So all this amendment says is you can do whatever you want on all these areas, as what we have done in the bill, but you cannot exclude it from renewable energy.

I am reminded, everybody wants renewable energy, but they just do not want it in their own backyard. Everybody wants us to have wind. We love wind. We have turbines like crazy in Oklahoma, like they do in North Dakota and South Dakota and several other States. We are happy to have it. But if you applied the same thing to Oklahoma, in terms of wilderness areas, we would not have any of the windmills that are generating a significant portion of our alternative renewable energy today in Oklahoma. More importantly, you would not be able to transport the energy you are creating that is renewable, that does not create CO2, that does not supposedly contribute to ``climate change.''

We are going to pass a bill that is going to significantly restrict that.

What are we thinking? Why would we limit alternative renewable energy access in all these Federal lands, this extra 2.2 million to 3 million acres? Why would we do that? It is almost like we have a death wish. Either that or we are not thinking, we are not considering what we are going to need in the future. We are considering the short term, but we are not considering the long term.

So this map shows us specifically where geothermal is available. If you look down in southern California, we have heritage areas. Knock it out. If you look in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, we have heritage areas. We knock it out, saying: You can never utilize this land to capture clean alternative renewable energy. That is ludicrous.

So all this amendment does is say: Yes, you can. We are going to do everything else under the heritage areas, under the wilderness areas, under all the other restrictions we put in this bill, but we are going to capture renewable, clean energy for the American people. We should do nothing, given the fact that we are in trouble on energy and we don't even know it right now.

What we know is the supply-demand glide is going like this and we are in a recession now, and we don't feel it, but as we lock in and cut exploration for natural gas in this country, we will see a twofold increase in natural gas within the next 18 months. We know that because we have built reserves every year until this year in natural gas. We know we consume 4.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas every year in this country. As they shut down the exploration for known areas of natural gas because the price is under $4, what we know is the demand is not going to decrease significantly over what it is because we have gone to alternative sources for power generation--a lot of it natural gas--that the demand is going to increase and the supply is going to become static.

What is going to happen? The price of natural gas is going to go up. What is that going to do to utility bills? Before we do a monstrous cap-and-trade that is going to severely raise everybody's electrical rates in this country, we are going to limit an alternative supply for electricity with this bill, because we are going to limit the access to geothermal, we are going to limit the access to wind, and we are going to limit the access to solar, and solar thermal electricity generation.

I have trouble figuring it out. It must be my commonness being from Oklahoma, but I can't figure out why we would--I know we are going to cut one leg off in terms of going green over the next 20 years. I can't figure out why we are cutting off the other leg. I am wondering what we are going to use for power in this country. If we are going to severely limit alternative renewable, nonpolluting energy that is clean and we are going to massively limit--as the Department of Interior is already--exploration for hydrocarbon-based fuels, and we are going to limit the significance of coal, of which we have over 300 years available to us, what are we going to use for energy? We are also going to slow down the permitting process and the loans for nuclear, so what are we going to use? What is going to keep the lights on?

This amendment is about keeping the lights on in a way that nobody should be able to object to. It is not carbon based. It is a renewable, it is essentially almost free, it is something we can capture without any significant greenhouse effect. Yet we are going to limit it with this bill. I think it is significantly foolish on our part.

What we know is that this 140 million acres we see here, if we add in what is already in wilderness areas, what is already off limits in terms of national forests and Federal lands, you add in--and this does not include except a small portion of Alaska--we are going to markedly limit our resources. Ninety percent of all the geothermal capability in this country--a clean source for renewable energy--is found on Federal lands. As we grow the limitations on Federal lands, what we are going to do is take that 90 percent and we are going to take anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of that and say you can't have it. There are 29 million acres with solar potential in six southwestern States--these six States. If you can't transmit the power through power lines, if you can't disturb the soil to build, whether you put it above ground or underground, if you can't cross a river with a power line either overhead or under the river, how are we going to transmit the power? What we are saying is we believe in renewable, clean energy, but we don't.

The other point I wish to make is we now have in this country in wilderness areas alone 108 million acres. Do you know how many acres we have in developed land in this country? It is 106 million. Not counting the Federal lands outside of wilderness, which is 650 million acres, we have 108 million acres of wilderness and only 106 million acres of developed land. Where do we stop to the point where we don't steal away from the future potential energy production in this country? I am not talking carbon based; I am talking noncarbon based. How do we get the power from geothermal from these concentrated areas to the west coast and back to the upper Midwest if we can't cross any of these areas? And then, what is the cost and what is the line loss load when we have to do something such as this and then go underground and then come back up? It becomes prohibitive, and then we lose all advantage from renewable energy.

The other area we know where we have tremendous potential in all of these areas and others is biomass. We have a tremendous source. Approximately one-third of the 747 million acres across the United States is covered in forest land. Fifty-seven percent of those forests are owned by the Federal Government. Also, 590 million wet tons of biomass are available in the U.S. annually--590 million tons. Sixteen percent of renewable energy generated right now from electricity comes from biomass and 3 percent of our total energy in the year 2000. I don't have the dates for where we are today.

Here is what the U.S. Forest Service says: ``The technology to generate energy from wood has entered a new millennium with virtually limitless possibilities.''

Yet, even if we generate it, we can't transmit it under this bill, or the difficulty of costs for transmitting it will be prohibitive.

Each of the designations in this bill--somebody challenge me on this--each of the designations in this bill specifically withdraw the land from future mineral and geothermal leasing. That includes the wilderness areas, the wilderness study areas, and the wild and scenic rivers. They are withdrawn. They can't be used. Right now, there are 708 federally imposed wilderness areas totaling 107 million acres of land in 44 States. That will go to 1.92 million acres with the passage of this bill. It is a small portion of the 2 billion acres in this country, but it still denies the fact that we have more land now in wilderness than we have developed. The prohibition from capturing clean energy, renewable energy, and nonpolluting energy is unfortunate.

One of the things that is wrong with this bill also is that we are viewing tomorrow's energy potential on all of these lands with today's technology. Just like when you go back and look at the old BLM studies and the Department of the Interior studies on the land, if you use old technology, you can say there is no energy there. When you use new 3D seismic and electromagnetic seismology, what we see is a whole great potential for all other sources, including geothermal.

The other concern I have with this bill, and the reason I have this amendment, is we recently had a Federal judge in Washington, DC issue a restraining order to halt the development of major oil and natural gas reserves on 100,000 acres of Federal land in portions of Utah, not because it was in a wilderness area, not because it was in a heritage area, not because it was along a scenic river, but because it was near there. So we are going to abrogate to the courts and the aggressive environmentalists the ability to stop even clean renewable energy sources by the wilderness area designations.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, a former colleague of ours, recently ordered a secretarial order calling for the production, the development, and delivery of renewable energy; that it would be a top priority of the Department of the Interior, but this bill restricts that order. So here we have the Department of Interior Secretary saying this is our priority

and we are going to pass a bill that undermines that authority and that priority.

Secretary Salazar claims that this effort will include the identification of areas of high potential renewable energy, including geothermal, wind, solar, and biomass. It also includes mapping out transmission infrastructure to connect power to consumers.

Well, as we create all of these wilderness areas and heritage areas, guess what we are doing. We are limiting the ability to map out power transmission lines. In total, the lands bill will withdraw over 3 million acres from energy leasing, placing them outside the scope of Secretary Salazar's endeavors.

Majority Leader Harry Reid summed up the difficulties imposed by these designations when he discussed energy resources in Nevada. He said:

We know that our State has immense clean energy resources.

However, the Federal Government's management of 86 percent of

Nevada lands makes it challenging to explore and develop our

enormous renewable resources.

The only area in this bill that does not affect geothermal is in the State of Nevada. It is the only area.

If we are serious about alternative energy, this amendment should be accepted, should be voted for, allowing us to have a wilderness area, but at the same time utilizing clean energy as a way to bring us to energy independence in the 21st century. So this is a very simple amendment. It says, OK, let's have what we have, but let's don't restrict it as far as renewable, clean energy. Let's use the renewable, clean energy that is available. This happens to be geothermal, but we know where the solar is, we know where the biomass is, and we know where the wind corridor is in this country. Why would we restrict it?

Amendment No. 675 to Amendment No. 684

(Purpose: To prohibit the use of eminent domain and to ensure that no

American has their property forcibly taken from them by authorities

granted under this Act)

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 675.

Mr. President, that is a straightforward amendment. The authors of this bill said we are never going to use eminent domain for any of this, even though they reference two or three statutes that give eminent domain. Well, if that is the case, if we are never going to use eminent domain to accomplish the purposes of this, there should be no trouble accepting this amendment. This amendment just says we can't. On this bill, you can't use eminent domain to take the property away from somebody who doesn't wish to give their property.

Amendment 5 of the U.S. Constitution says:

No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property

without due process of law, nor shall private property be

taken without just compensation.

That is the Constitution. But the father of the Constitution said it a different way. He said, in a word:

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be

equally said to have a property in his right.

Eminent domain is necessary and appropriate at times in this country for national defense, for the health and well-being of the country, for priorities that protect the public at large, and that makes sense. There are times when we have to use it. There is not a time associated with any of the parts of this bill that we should have to use eminent domain.

I have been assured by the authors of this bill that they have no intention of using eminent domain. If that is the case, then support this amendment, and we will never have a problem with it. The property rights folks in this country, of which about 100 support this amendment, would say that is great, so let's vote it up or down.

But if we vote against it, what is it going to tell them? What it is going to do is erode the confidence of landowners in this country. We say we are not going to take your land away from you without your permission, without there being a willing seller, but we have kind of a king's edge. We have our fingers crossed behind our backs because there may be some time when a bureaucrat has made a decision other than what we are saying tonight.

So the way to enforce that would be a straightforward message that says, according to this amendment, ``notwithstanding any other provisions of this act, or any amendment that is made to this act, no land or interest in land, other than an access easement, shall be required under this act by eminent domain.''

That is straightforward. Let's give them confidence that we are not going to take their land away against their will.

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

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak on the pending business.

Madam President, the American people should pay very close attention this week. We are going to have on the floor what the majority leader calls a ``noncontroversial'' bill; a noncontroversial bill, in that we are going to take 3 million acres and deem it untouchable for further energy for this country; noncontroversial in that we are going to spend--in mandatory spending yearly from now on out--$900 million a year on things you will never see the benefit of; noncontroversial in terms of taking specific areas with known, proven oil and gas reserves--300 million by the Department of the Interior's estimation in one field alone--to the tune of 300 million barrels of oil and 13 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Yet it is noncontroversial.

The other thing we should be aware of is that throughout this omnibus lands bill there are 150 different individual bills, 50 of which never had a hearing in the House--they were voted

on in the Senate in committee but most had never had a hearing--and we are going to step all over private property rights in this Nation. We are not going to do it directly, we are going to do it through laws that we refer to in this omnibus package that allows the bureaucracy-- the faceless bureaucracy--to now utilize portions of preexisting acts to take land by eminent domain.

You are going to hear: Well, that is a small portion. It is specifically prevented in certain portions of the bill. They do say that. But they do not obviate the law. In this omnibus bill are 70 or 80 bills that I would happily pass, because I don't think they have a profound negative impact on our future. But there are 70 or 80 of the bills which I think have a profound negative impact on the future, and I readily admit to trying to stop this bill in the past. I will put forward that I will do everything in my power as an individual Senator to, if not stop it, slow it down so that the American people will actually know every aspect of everything that is in this bill.

This bill is over 2,000 pages. There has never been one amendment. There has never been one amendment allowed on the Senate floor to alter this bill. So I look forward to a debate. I look forward to an open amendment process that does not allow veto by the other side of what we want to try to amend and when we want to try to amend it. But I pledge to use every parliamentary tactic I have at my disposal to defend the right to amend this bill.

Some may say: Well, you have a lost cause. Why don't you give it up, Senator Coburn, and let them have it. They are going to win. The reason we shouldn't let them win on this--although there are good things in this bill--is because we are setting a precedent with a very weak foundation underneath us for our future energy needs. Recently, in the last 6 weeks, we had a Federal judge in Utah abandon and prohibit energy exploration because it was close to a wilderness area. We have had the Department of the Interior rescind energy exploration permits that were duly granted under a full and proper process because it was not environmentally acceptable.

What is not acceptable is to deny the fact that even if we get to a totally green energy source, it is going to take us 20 years to do it. What is not acceptable is to continue to send our hard-earned dollars out of this country when in fact we could provide that same energy without sending those dollars out of this country and increase our own economic base and freedom and prosperity.

I look forward to the debate. I plan on voting no on the motion to proceed, and I plan on using every tool I can to delay and obstruct this piece of legislation because it is not in the best long-term interest of our country.

A bill that is 150 bills or 160 bills comes to the floor with many people as proponents. The question Americans ought to ask their Senator is: Even though you get something for us, is this a good deal for us? Is this something with which we want to bless the other 149 bills throughout this mega, omnibus lands bill? Do you get something that is good for the country as a whole, that is good for the country in the long term, that benefits the next two generations; do we do so in a way that is prudent, efficient, effective, and manageable? The answer to that question is no. It is no today, it is going to be no tomorrow, and it will be no after we have done this and look back on it 10 years from now.

We live in a make-believe world where we think we can have our cake and eat it too. We can't. The fact is we are tremendously reliant on carbon sources of energy. We need to quit abandoning our own sources until we can be carbon free. This bill takes us a long way toward taking off multiple areas of both potential and proven reserves of natural gas, geothermal, and oil which we should be utilizing for our own benefit and our own future.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I would like to make a very brief statement explaining my opposition to the nomination of Thomas Perrelli, to be Associate Attorney General at the Department of Justice. Like other DOJ nominees, Mr. Perrelli's past advocacy includes work affecting obscenity. In particular, he signed a brief attacking the Child Protection Restoration and Penalties Enhancement Act of 1990 for ``criminaliz[ing] the production and distribution of `sexually explicit' speech unless the producer and distributor comply with burdensome recordkeeping and labeling requirements.'' The brief was filed on behalf of Penthouse, the American Library Association, and others, whom the brief collectively describes as ``mainstream national media entities.''

To be clear, I recognize and respect that lawyers are entitled to represent any client they choose. I do not believe that arguments advanced on behalf of a client necessarily reflect the lawyer's views. Moreover, I do not believe that examining past advocacy is sufficient or appropriate to ascertain the beliefs of a particular nominee, much less disqualify him. It does, however, invite legitimate questions about what a nominee's personal views are on those same matters.

Therefore, at his hearing, I asked Mr. Perrelli whether he believed that adult obscenity contributed in any way to the exploitation of children. He told me that he had not reviewed the science, so I sent him four studies to review after the hearing, asking him to respond with comments. His response was wholly inadequate. He said:

I have reviewed the two summaries you forwarded, compiled

by a social scientist at the University of Pennsylvania,

which indicate her view that exposure to extreme forms of

pornography can teach behaviors, including the sexual

exploitation of children. It appears there is a great deal of

literature on the subject, and without a comprehensive

examination of the research, I am hesitant to come to any

firm conclusions on the science.

Even after reviewing certain studies concluding that there is a connection between pornography and child exploitation, which Mr. Perrelli recognized, the most he could say in response was that he was he needed to review even more science before reaching any conclusions. Because Mr. Perrelli refused to recognize even the possibility of such a connection, or otherwise shed light on his own personal views, I am unsure how he will approach issues of obscenity and exploitation at the Department. Therefore, I am unable to support Mr. Perrelli's nomination.