Floor Statements

Mr. President, I would like to speak a few minutes on the Emmett Till amendment that I have up. We heard this morning from the Honorable Senator from Maryland, utilizing the letter from the Attorney General saying they would work hard in approving and working on the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. However, the defense for not approving my amendment was the fact that the Justice Department is going to work hard on it anyway.

I would note for my colleagues that is exactly the opposite amendment that we had last year when we were trying to pass this bill, when it was my contention that we didn't need additional money and that the Justice Department could do it. What we heard almost unanimously outside this Chamber is they couldn't do it without funding.

So now we have an amendment that actually puts in funding to go after these perpetrators of these heinous crimes. Yet we don't want to do it because now the very excuse we said wasn't good enough last year is good enough this year.

That is disloyal to the cause, No. 1; and, No. 2, it does not make any sense in light of the very statements made by some of the very same Senators last year.

The fact is, not funding this will make a real difference in the number of cases that get brought to prosecution. We have a letter from the Attorney General that says he will try, but what we are talking about is giving him more money so he does not have any excuse for not trying--which lines up exactly with the reasoning behind the appropriations bills on almost every other topic.

I say to my colleagues, having a letter which was generated last year in my support for trying not to increase the funding--which was said that wasn't adequate, that we needed funding--now the fact that you refused to fund something you promised to fund and say it will get done anyway does not speak very well of our effort in that behalf.

It is my hope the Senate will look hard and long at this. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot say you need to authorize funding, we need to have funding, and send out a press release saying you authorized $15 million a year for the next few years to do something and then have a chance to fund it and not fund it and say we didn't need to authorize the funding in the first place. It is hypocritical, in my opinion, and my hope is we will give great and concerted consideration to my amendment.

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

Madam President, it is interesting, the first of the Senator's remarks had to do with the Constitution. He conveniently skipped over article I, section 8, and went straight to article I, section 9. If you read what Madison and the Founders wrote about article I, section 9, they had a very limited scope for what we ought to be doing. As a matter of fact, the trouble we find ourselves in today is because we have abandoned the enumerated powers of the Constitution. We have excused them and we have said: We should fund it all.

As far as education, Federal funds fund 20 percent of education but 80 percent of the problems. If you think our schools are successful, look at our scores compared to everywhere else in the world. Our scores started going down when the Federal Government started getting involved in education, not prior.

The other assumption is, you have to have a great building to have a great education. That is absolutely wrong. Education is based on the incentive of the children, the quality of the teacher, and the control of discipline. You can teach as well in a Quonset hut as you can the most modern school, if you have motivated kids, great teachers, and great control of the classroom.

The purpose for trying to eliminate these earmarks isn't necessarily that they are wrong. They are truly unauthorized, but that would be a totally different story if a group of peers had said these are priorities, but they haven't. The problem is, is it a priority now, when every penny you will use, whether it is the new school program you want me to cosign or the earmarks

you have in the bill today, is going to be borrowed from your grandchildren.

The very schools you are going to build in Iowa, that we are not going to build in the rest of the country, by leveraging Federal dollars are going to be charged to the kids of the kids who are there. They are going to pay for it. It is not about whether it is right or wrong; it is about whether it is a priority, whether we ought to be doing it now.

The Agricultural Research Service is a fine organization. Every time we need money for agriculture, we steal money from the Agricultural Research Service. There is nothing wrong with studying manure and its application as both a fertilizer, soil enhancer, and other things. There is nothing wrong with studying the other aspect of the odor. We slaughter 10,000 hogs a day in one plant in Oklahoma. I know exactly what it smells like. I have traveled every farm area in my State. As a matter of fact, to me a lot of it smells pretty good compared to what you smell in the cities. But the fact is, is it a priority that we spend that money now?

The real problem we have isn't earmarks. It is two: One is, we give this document short shrift; No. 2, we have become parochialized. We forget what our oath was that we signed when we came in here, to uphold the Constitution, to do the right things for this country as a whole in the long term and do the best things we can for the future of the children who follow. But what we have turned into is what can we take home; how do we look good at home; how do we send Federal dollars home.

The reason the stimulus bill was bad is because we took the lack of fiscal discipline in this body and we transferred it to every State house in the country. Ask any Governor what is happening now that we have passed the stimulus. The hard choices will not be made in the States. So the future prospect for fiscal discipline in the States is now gone. The next time they have problems, they will be counting on us. We have now transferred our bad habit of being fiscally irresponsible to the States.

I think it is ridiculous that at this time in our Nation, when we are going to have a $1.7 trillion deficit, we would spend the first penny on anything other than a necessity because when we have a $1.6 trillion deficit, it is not just $1.6 trillion, it is $1.6 trillion we are going to borrow over the next 30 years, and we are going to be paying awfully high interest rates. It is not very long--2015--when we are going to be at 40 percent of the budget going to interest. There will not be a Harkin school program for Iowa in 2015 because there will not be any money. We will not be able to borrow any more money because the interest rates and the cost to borrow it will be too high because the rest of the world will doubt whether we can pay back the money.

So the prudence I am asking for in trying to eliminate some of the earmarks is to think about the long term rather than the short term, to think about what is best for our country in the long term, not what is best for us and how we look at home, and to do what is within the framework of the Constitution.

The final point I will make: Presidential earmarks ought to have exactly the same dealing as we do with congressional earmarks--get them authorized, put them in a list of priorities, and then fund them. But do not send an earmark to the floor that is not authorized by the Congress and the relevant committee it comes through.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this amendment is a very straightforward amendment. This Senate made a commitment last year through the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act that we would fund in this bill money to be applied to the Justice Department to start and bring up to a level that is appropriate the funding of the investigative, prosecutorial, and other necessary agencies with which to go after these unsolved crimes.

The reason it is important is that in most of these crimes, the witnesses are very elderly. So the timeliness of it is very important.

It is interesting today that the other side produced a letter from the Attorney General that states exactly the opposite position they took last year when I opposed trying to get the money to pay for this bill. They bring forth a letter that says Attorney General Holder is going to make sure we try to do this within the funds he has. That is the very argument I made last year, but it was not good enough. So we had hundreds of press releases go out on all these things we are going to do on the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. Yet when it comes time to fund it this year, we cannot find $10 million in a $410 billion bill to do it. Either we mean to do it and we mean to uphold the promise we made to this group that has worked hard to have that bill passed or we are full of hot air.

This amendment takes $10 million from a program that has questionable results in half of its grant money. I will not go into the details of it. Yet we will not fund this bill. I said last year on the Senate floor, we will see if you fund it. And sure enough, you didn't fund it. So you didn't keep your commitment, you didn't keep your commitment to Alvin Sykes, a guy who has worked 10 years to get that bill passed. And now we come up and say we will take care of it through the administration, which was the very argument I used that said we didn't need increased authorization. Now all of a sudden you say that is good enough. Well, it is not good enough. It breaks your commitment to fully fund this program to bring to justice those who committed these terrible crimes.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, first, I regret the inference that my obstruction to this bill was anything other than financial. To me it is a fairly low blow to imply, by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, that I had a motivation other than financial. I am known in this body for trying to make us more efficient and to save money.

The second thing is it is laughable to call it an earmark. It is authorized. That is what we passed last year. It is authorized. It is authorized by 100 Senators. The commitment that was made was that we would fund it.

One of my negotiations for finally agreeing is that if you are going to do this and you are going to authorize it at $15 million a year, you ought to at least fund it since the very statements were that we didn't have the money within the Justice Department to do this the way the Justice Department was funded.

There is not one mention of this bill in either the report language or the text of the bill related to this particular act. So what we see is cover.

I truly wish to see us solve all these. But the game that is being played today is somebody forgot to fund it.

The final point I will make before my time runs out is that if this gets added, we are not going to not fund this. This bill is still going to pass, we are still going to do the hard work, and we are still going to fund the agencies. To imply otherwise is disingenuous.

This amendment was put up in a sincere effort to keep a commitment to Alvin Sykes, not to create mischief, not to be a bill killer, but to create a commitment. The last thing I told Alvin Sykes: You got it authorized. Your problem is going to be getting it funded. He was assured by the office of Senator Dodd and others that it would be funded. And what do you know, the bill comes through and it is not funded. I don't know if it was a mistake. Just say it was a mistake and we will take care of it in the next bill. But to deny the fact we made a commitment and now are not keeping it and assign all sorts of motives different than what they are is pretty distasteful, I would say.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

I thank the Chair.

You know, it is interesting, when I hold bills it is hardly ever on policy. Every one of you got a letter from me--everybody in this body-- which said I will oppose all new legislation if you are spending new money unless you decrease authorization somewhere else. The American people get that.

You can't keep growing the government and promising we will do things. So we are seeing it wrung out--the true operations of the Senate--because what we are doing is promising something, but when it comes down to dividing the pie, we don't have the money. So instead of recalling our press releases, we don't fund them. We don't keep our commitments.

No wonder the American people don't trust Congress. We play games. We manipulate. This is something that should have had, and was committed to having, a line item in the appropriations bill to make sure this money funds what is necessary on a timely basis.

The letter the chairman of the Judiciary just submitted for the Record has already been submitted for the Record. It was submitted this morning. But it is ironic that the very argument I used in trying to get them to offset this bill last year is the very argument they are using now to say we don't need to have a line item in the appropriations bill for it. It wasn't a good enough argument last year, but it is a good enough argument now that you don't want to fund this directly.

This is a matter of timing. We ought to put the money in this on a timely basis to make sure we solve these crimes. The witnesses are dying and the information is going away. Justice denied comes about because we are delaying justice. Regardless of the good intentions of the Attorney General, we can force them to spend this money in that way, and the way to do that is to put a line item in the bill.

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

Mr. President, this amendment would not kill this bill. What it will do is, it will go back to the House, and they will have to agree to it. Everybody knows that. We have known this day was coming for a long time. Whatever the outcome, the fact is, those commitments weren't kept. We didn't do what we told the very people who worked very hard to accomplish this we would do, and it sheds a light on our body that should not be there.

Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, could I inquire of the Chair what the order of business is now?

Do we have any arrangement for the division of time?

I ask unanimous consent to be recognized and to share that time with anybody in opposition.

Mr. President, this amendment is straightforward. There is an alleged significant violation of Federal law associated with the firm that was responsible for lobbying for the insertion of these 13 earmarks. I have not said anything about the quality of these earmarks. I have not said anything about the individuals who actually placed them. What I ask my colleagues is, in light of where we are today, should we not back off and say these should be stricken from the bill at this time until that situation is clarified?

It is prudent from a couple of standpoints. The investigation is rolling forward. We have had private residences now searched by the FBI, computers taken, and information pulled under subpoenas and search warrants issued by Federal courts. Do we want to be in the midst of passing things that were connected with what appears to be and is alleged to be improper behavior both in terms of the source of the funds, the payment of campaign funds, and the lobbying efforts on behalf of these firms?

I cast no aspersion on the firms or the entities that are getting this, nor on the individuals who have placed these earmarks. But I can tell my colleagues the American people are not going to be happy if we don't recognize that maybe there is a checkpoint here where we ought to reconsider what we are doing in light of the developing situation around this firm. If we go forward and assume there will be prosecutions and convictions, we find ourselves in a very uncomfortable position of having encouraged it. We also send a signal to other individual lobbying firms that there isn't a standard of behavior to which we will not respond to their lobbying efforts.

I ask my colleagues to take a look at this not as Members of the Senate but as individual citizens outside of the

Senate in the country, as others look at us and say, What are you doing?

Is there not a point in time--again, I make the point that the Senator from Arizona made that it would be totally different if these were authorized earmarks, but they are not. They went through the Appropriations Committee, not the authorizing committees. They have never been judged by a group of our peers. They weren't voted on; they were inserted. We raise the specter of whether we can be trustworthy in front of the American people. We need to work to regain their trust.

I will not say any more. This will speak a lot about our body and what the American people say. I understand the votes are lining up. I understand that. But I will assure you that I will keep coming to the floor on earmarks--not because I am against earmarks. If you authorize an earmark, I will give you your right to do whatever you want to do. On unauthorized earmarks that aren't vetted and are put out in front of the rest of the Congress and the rest of the individuals on committees to have a vote on whether they are a priority, I am going to keep raising that issue. I am sorry if that is irritating, but that is the way it is going to be.

Mr. President, Senator Boxer defended an earmark she sponsored that I have singled out as an example of misplaced priorities.

The Boxer earmark, which is one of nearly 9,000 tucked into this bill, is listed on page 100 of the bill's report and is described only as $475,000 ``for improvements to the Orange County Great Park'' from the Economic Development Initiatives to ``Orange County Great Park Corporation, CA.''

Nothing more is stated as to the purpose or intent of this earmark.

Senator Boxer claimed that my criticism of this earmark was an insult to veterans in her state. This is apparently because the unwritten and unspecified intention of the earmark according to her statement is to restore the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station Hangar Number 244 into a history museum and welcoming center.

The reality is this type of legislating without transparency is an insult to all taxpayers.

With nearly 9,000 earmarks in this bill described with nothing more than a few words or a single vague phrase, it is next to impossible for anyone other than the Senators and lobbyists who requested these earmarks to know the real intent of how billions of dollars in taxpayer dollars are intended to be spent.

As I found from statements made by the Senator from California and the Great Park's own Website, the Great Park ``will be larger than New York's Central Park and San Francisco's Golden Gate Park COMBINED.''

This municipal park is expected to cost $1.1 billion. Its main attraction is a massive helium balloon operated by two pilots with six- figure salaries. According to the Orange County Great Park Corporation Website, ``The Orange County Great Park Plan will provide a wide array of active and passive uses, including a 2.5 mile canyon and lake, miles of walking and biking trails, a cultural terrace, Orange County's largest sports park, a botanical garden, and a tethered helium observation balloon that will be an icon for the Great Park. More than 3,885 of the 4,700 acres will be dedicated to open space, education, and other public uses.''

As found by the Los Angeles Times, the Great Park also includes a $300,000 tent designed to resemble an airplane hangar that costs $75,000 a year to clean; a four-person visitor center crew hired under a $370,000 annual contract; a series of orange dots painted along the park's entrance road at a cost of $14,000.

Additional costs have included $838,000 to build a road to the balloon, plant citrus trees and buy a $300,000 special 50-by-50-foot tent that will serve as the visitor center, $380,000 a year for two balloon pilots, a hostess and maintenance, $100,000 a year for a balloon replacement fund, $94,000 a year for portable restrooms, $52,000 annually for security between 1 and 5 a.m., and $30,000 a year for trash removal.

This appropriation of almost half a million dollars could have gone to any of these initiatives none of which sound like true national priorities.

Local county officials were, in fact, outraged with what local funds were being appropriated for. The bulk of the first $52 million the city spent on this project went to hire a team of dozens of design, engineering and public relations consultants, to build the balloon ride and to pay administrative staff.

``To have nothing more than a balloon and the possibility of a 27- acre park is disappointing,'' said county Supervisor Bill Campbel, `` They're spending a lot on engineers, PR people and other things, and they're not delivering.''

State Assemblyman Todd Spitzer--a Republican from Orange Country-- also criticized the city for not building recreation facilities that could be used by the public, while wasting money on ``a ridiculous, oversized balloon and free rides.''

With a state-wide unemployment rate at over 10 percent and almost 2 million unemployed, Californians may also prefer these funds to be spent on other more pressing priorities.

While we all want to honor the great sacrifices or our veterans, I do not believe this earmark is a national priority, especially in light of the poor local spending decisions made in the past on this ambitious municipal park project. Perhaps this money and the billions spent on the other pork projects in this bill could have been better spent on veterans health care or survivor benefits for the spouses and families of those who lost their lives fighting for our great Nation.

Mr. President, I yield back my time.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and that amendment No. 596 be called up.

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

Mr. President, I have to identify with the words of Senator

Hutchison about how the American public have to view this bill, especially in light of the fact of the stimulus bill we just passed. I will add some more to those comments as we go through this amendment.

This is a very straightforward amendment. It has been voted on by the Senate several times. Last time it passed 97 to 0. All it requires is that the money expended in this, where appropriate, be competitively bid.

I am sure there is going to be people who vote against this this time because of the situation in which we find ourselves. I wonder how you go back to your State and say that you do not think we ought to competitively bid the money we are going to spend on behalf of the American people. But some are going to say that.

We will hear all sorts of things. What this requires is all contracts, all grants, and cooperative agreements awarded under this act to be competitively bid. What do we know about competitive bids and what do we know that President Obama campaigned on? His campaign was, anything over $25,000 in the Federal Government ought to be competitively bid. So I have no doubt that my friend, the President, will endorse this idea. It is an essential part of his campaign to help us clean up the corruption, clean up the cost excesses, and clean up the overruns that we have seen.

The other thing is, we already have several laws that require it. But then we have words in the appropriations bill that exempt us from those laws requiring competitive bidding. So what do we do in this bill? We actually take away the enforcement of existing statutes so we do not have to competitively bid. Is it not interesting that the reason we do not want competitive bids mainly has to do with earmarks. It has to do with the fact that people have earmarks in the bill that they want to go to a certain set of people; maybe not the best qualified to perform that function or task under which the Government wants this service to be done, but you can bet your bottom dollar it is where the Senator or the Congressman wants it to go so he can get credit for it.

So not only do we have a tendency for less than sunshine, what we have bred is tremendous inefficiency. And it goes back to the very idea of why earmarks are so damaging to this country, which is because they give elevation and attention to the politically entitled money class. That is where 80 percent of the 7,700 earmarks in this bill are; they are to the politically entitled money class in this country, the people who can give campaign donations. That is who they are to.

So we do not want competitive bidding because the person we are counting on sending money back for a campaign contribution will not get the contract. So the deal does not get completed. In May 2006, the Senate voted 98 to 0 to require that we have competitive bidding on the stimulus package. We voted 97 to 0. What did we do in conference? They took it out so their friends do not have to competitively bid. Where I come from, in Oklahoma, we call that corruption. We call it corruption. That is a tough word. But that is what is going on with a lot of the money that our grandchildren are going to pay back that is going to go on this bill and in the stimulus bill.

The other reason we should do this is because no-bid contracts historically, when you look at them, never give value. What we get is cost overruns.

Great example: The census this next year is going to cost close to $20 billion. The census in 2000 cost $10 billion. Now we have to be scratching our head to say, why would it double? Well, $1 billion of that is because the Census Bureau had a no-bid contract for electronic data collection that fell on its face.

In spite of oversight by this body, in spite of assurances that it would not happen, we wasted $800-plus million on one contract that we cannot utilize anything from. That is the competency of no-bid contracts. If we do a review of this bill in the future, and we did not put in competitive bidding, we are going to see that same thing to a lesser degree across the whole board.

The other thing, the reason we should use competitive bidding, is that all of us would do it if it was our own money. We would want to get value. We would want to make sure we got the most value for the dollar that was spent.

We do not do that because it is not our money. Now there is a Congressman on the other side from Arizona who has above his desk written in great big red ink: The greatest pleasure in the world is to spend somebody else's money. But it instills all sorts of mischief when we do it.

So this is very straightforward, very direct. There are no tricks. It just says: Let's do what everybody else in the country would do who was making the decision about spending $410 billion. They would make sure each segment of it got some competitive bidding so we could reassure ourselves that at least we were getting value. It is not hard to do. It is easy guidelines. It is straightforward. Let's not exempt this bill from that.

Amendment No. 608

I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment 608.

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

This is an amendment that is about a serious issue. I agree that $10 million in a bill of $410 billion is not a lot of money in relationship, but let me tell you what this $10 million is going to do. There are 100 unsolved civil rights murders from the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s that have not been investigated, that have not come forward because Congress hasn't put the money there.

Last year, under great fanfare, several of my colleagues were critical of me because I wanted to pay for it as we passed the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime bill. What I said in opposing that bill initially, which I never was successful in getting it paid for, was that there is plenty of money at the Justice Department if we just direct the Justice Department to put $10 million to this. There are three cases recently that are coming due, three that have been solved now. We have several other leads. Timing is of the essence.

What I was told is: No, we will appropriate this money this year. That is what we were told. I won't go into the five pages of quotes by the general cosponsors of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime bill, about how they would put the money in right now. Guess what is not in this bill. What is not in this bill is any money to the Justice Department to be directed to the Emmett Till unsolved civil rights crimes. They said to my staff: Don't worry about it. There is plenty of money at the Justice Department to do it. So the same argument that was not good enough last year when we tried to pay for it is now turned around, and they say: It is the same amount of money. We now have it, in their judgment. But we didn't last year.

The fact is, there is a sham being perpetrated. It is to claim a moral position and say you will fund something and then, when it comes time to have to give up an earmark or have to eliminate something else, you can't quite have the courage to pull up to the level of moral transparency and keep your commitments.

The information is fading away quickly. They are old crimes. People who have testimony are dying and won't be available for the future. Yet we have the insistence to say it doesn't matter to spend that money now.

There is nothing in this bill more important than solving unsolved civil rights crimes. The reason is because it says something about our justice system. It says we realize that justice delayed is justice denied, and the hurt and trauma that came out of this country in the civil rights movement will

only get closed when we have true justice. For us to now in a petty way say: We will get it next year, do you realize that ``next year'' is coming September 30, and 6 months from now, two or three more witnesses will be gone, two or three more people who committed a crime will not get convicted because the evidence and the testimony will be gone? Yet we can't bring ourselves to the point of saying this is a priority. This says something about who we are, that we are going to give up a few earmarks so we can actually stand on the side of justice. The hypocrisy of the debate we heard last year and then what we hear today at the staff level about why we can't fund this is unfortunate.

I advise the Senator from Connecticut, I have two more amendments to offer. I will talk a very short time and then be finished, if that is OK with him.

I will come back to the floor and discuss these amendments again, but I will give the courtesy to my friend from Connecticut of being fairly short.

Amendment No. 623

The next amendment is amendment No. 623. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment number 623 be called up.

I renew my request to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 623.

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

I gave my assurance yesterday to the majority leader that I would offer no division of any amendments so he would not worry that we would have more votes than he wanted. But I will make the point at this time, at the rate we are going, we will have less than 12 amendments on a $410 billion bill that spends $363 million a page. I would love for every American to know we are so good in the committee that none of us should be able to have significant amendments to modify this bill that I guarantee has $50 billion worth of waste, fraud, abuse, or lack of direction in how the money is spent. So to be able to get four amendments on the floor, just four on a $410 billion bill, which we are only going to spend 3 days on, I have to agree to limit what the American people should know about this bill. That tells you where we are in the Senate. But I agreed to do that to be able to at least bring some forward.

This amendment is entitled PMA earmarks. We are in the midst of an investigation of a lobbying firm that is alleged to have committed some very serious felonies. It is uniquely curious that as this has progressed, they have decided to shut down. However, within the bill, not through necessarily their clients' fault, and not saying what they are trying to do was necessarily wrong in terms of the intent of the earmark, within this bill are 14 earmarks that you can see, if you have any common sense, if you look at the lobbying efforts of the PMA firm and then look at campaign contributions in the Congress, you can see a very worrisome pattern. That is the very reason I don't do earmarks. If I did earmarks, the last thing I would do would be take any campaign money from somebody for whom I did an earmark.

Needless to say, the accusation and the alleged straw donor technique used by this lobbying firm to funnel campaign funds to Members who then give earmarks through this bill, 14 of them listed in this bill--all this amendment does is say: In the cloud of this and the way it looks, ought we be continuing to do that under the cloud of what look to be very serious allegations of impropriety at the least and, at the worst, quid pro quos for placing earmarks in campaign funds?

We will vote on this amendment. It probably won't pass. Then the American people make a judgment about how well connected we are to reality. The stench associated with this investigation is at the root cause of us having $300 billion worth of waste a year in Congress in the money we spend. It is at the root cause that we can't get commonsense amendments passed that lack competition, lack funding, real priorities in a timely fashion, such as the Emmett Till bill. This is at the root of it. It is the pay-to-play game. All this amendment does is wipe out those. It just strikes them. It won't delay the bill. It does nothing but strike them. If they are legitimate, let them come back in this next year's bill and be done in an ethical, straightforward, aboveboard, transparent manner that doesn't utilize the concept of under-the-table, false campaign contributions, allegedly.

Amendment No. 610

I ask unanimous consent that that amendment be set aside, and I call up amendment No. 610.

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

This is a simple little amendment. Out of the 7,700 earmarks,

I took 11 that looked a little stinky to me, a little questionable-- just 11. If I had my way, I would offer an individual amendment on every earmark in this bill, but just 11. I will go through them very lightly for a moment, and then I will come back and talk on it later, maybe this evening.

I want you to put this in your mind, that this year we are borrowing $6,000 from every man, woman, and child. That is how much we are going into debt, $6,000 for every man, woman, and child. Put that in your mind as we talk about whether these ought to be a priority: A $1.9 million earmark for the Pleasure Beach water taxi service in Connecticut. That may be great to do, but we are borrowing all this from our grandkids. Our kids are already broke, so now we are borrowing from our grandkids. Our kids will never have the same standard of living we have. Now we are going into our grandkids, and next year we will be going into our great grandkids. Should we spend $2 million on a water taxi service? I will show the pictures later of where this is to. It will knock your socks off.

There is a $3.8 million earmark to preserve the remnants of the old Tiger Stadium in Detroit. It may be a good idea to preserve that. Should we be doing that now when we are borrowing all that money? Is that a priority for the Congress? If it is really a priority for the Congress, I don't belong here. I just don't think the same way the Congress thinks if that is a priority right now for us, to preserve an old stadium that we are not going to do anything with, and we can preserve it later, spending that kind of money.

There is $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society of Honolulu, which organization runs sea voyages in ancient-style sailing canoes. Tell me, as we borrow $6,000 from every man, woman, and child in this country, that is a priority. I can't see it being a priority. I don't think anybody from my State can see that being a priority. I don't know about the rest of the States. I would be interested to hear the answers of the Senators who are going to vote against this amendment and what they tell people. I would like to have it in my repertory. I would like to know what to tell people about this kind of foolishness.

There is a $300,000 earmark to commemorate the 150th anniversary of John Brown's raid on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry National Historic Park in West Virginia. Let's do it for no money. Let's just commemorate it, and let's save 300 grand for our grandkids.

There is $1.719 million for pig odor and manure management in Ames, IA. That goes to Iowa State University. Pigs stink. We know why. We know where they live. So is that a priority for us right now?

There is $475,000 for the Orange County Great Park in California. More millionaires live there than anywhere else in the world. Yet we are going to spend money for a new park now when we are borrowing this amount of money?

Here is my favorite: $200,000 earmarked for tattoo removal in Mission Hills, CA. We are going to take Federal money, send it to California, and say: You can have this money to remove tattoos. I would think under a personal responsibility platform if you were responsible for getting a tattoo put on you, you might ought to be responsible for getting it taken off, and I do not think our grandchildren ought to be paying for it.

There is $1.5 million for the California National Historic Trail Interpretive Center. We are going to build another interpretive center at a time of economic malaise--as President Obama calls it, a crisis. I do not think it is a crisis. I think we are in a deep slump, but I do not think it is a crisis yet. It is a crisis to those people who have lost their job. But the more we say ``crisis,'' the worse we make it. But we are going to do an interpretive center now? Is now the time we should be doing it, knowing we are borrowing the money? Remember, for every $1 million we borrow, we are going to pay back $3 million. I am not including long-term interest costs in any of these numbers.

Then there is a $5,471,000 earmark for the Harkin grant program in Iowa, which says Iowa gets treated differently than every other State in this country. They actually get direct money going directly for public education outside all the other programs. We have been doing it for years, but everybody else in this country gets to pay so Senator Harkin can look good in Iowa. I have attacked this earmark before. It is wrong. It is unfair. It is not befitting the body. But it is going to stay in. So we have brandnew schools in Iowa, and the rest of us deal with what we have in our States.

Then we have $380,000 for the construction of recreation and fairgrounds in a town in Alaska. It may be a good idea. But should we do it now? Should we do it at that cost?

Amendment No. 623, as Modified

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that on amendment No. 623, lines 19 through 21 be removed.

On amendment No. 623, lines 19 through 21.

Madam President, I will end now so I can yield to my friend, the chairman of my committee, the Senator from Connecticut, so he will have an opportunity to speak on the floor but not before I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a listing of the earmarks provided today by Taxpayers for Common Sense. I ask unanimous consent that list be printed in the Record.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor, and I thank the Senator from Connecticut.

I would ask if the Senator would modify her amendment to allow for me to speak on the Wicker amendment. Could we do that?

Madam President, I wanted to spend a minute talking about the Wicker amendment No. 607. I am having trouble, from a philosophical viewpoint, understanding why the language is in this bill the way it is. There is no confusion as to my stand on pro-life issues, pro-choice versus pro-life. I stand in the corner of pro-life. But I want to debate this issue as if I were pro-choice, that I believe that the law as we have it today should be enforced. If, in fact, we believe that if, in fact, women have a right to choose, why in the world would we send money to UNFP that is going to take that right away from women in other countries? It is beyond me that these little six words in the bill, ``notwithstanding any other provision of law,'' are intended to eliminate the ability of the President to certify that our UNFP money is going to be used for coercive abortions and coercive sterilizations. I am having trouble understanding why those in this body who absolutely believe without a doubt that a woman has a definite right to choose on whether to carry a pregnancy to term, have a definite right to choose the number of children they are going to have or have none, we would allow this bill to go through here this way that will deny that ability to Chinese women.

If somebody in our body can explain that to me, I would love them to do so. You can't be on both sides of this issue. Either you believe in a woman's right to choose or you do not or you only believe in a woman's right to choose in America. And because the Chinese have too many people, you don't think that same human right ought to be given to women in China. I won't go into the details. There is no question that UNFP will mix this money, and we will fund forced abortions in China. That is what these six words do. They mean American taxpayer dollars are going to go to China to enforce coercive abortion against the will of women and force sterilization against the will of women in China. China is not in bad shape. They don't need our money in the first place. But then we are going to send that money over there to enable and allow that policy to progress. I find it disconcerting that anybody who is pro-choice could not vote for the Wicker amendment. Because what it says is, you are double minded. The standard applying in this country is one thing, but human beings throughout the rest of the world, that same standard doesn't apply. I think it is unfortunate that this was put in here. We will rue the day it was.

In fact, we lessen our own human rights campaigns for equal treatment and the protection of human rights around the world as we do that.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, before we get started----

Yes, I am happy to yield to the chairman.

I will not at this time.

Mr. President, it is interesting--and the American people ought to pay attention to this--what we have right now is a bill that is $410 billion. It is $363 million a page. And now we have instructions from the majority leader that no amendments are allowed to be offered. That is what the intent of the quorum call was. That is why the honorable chairman asked me that question. The only way I can talk on the floor is if I agree not to offer an amendment to $410 billion worth of spending, at $363 million per page. What are we coming to? Now we can't offer amendments. I reached out to Senator Reid and said I would work with him on packaging amendments in a way that would not delay this bill, in a way that we can still have a good debate and lots of amendments offered. My goodness, you have 57 votes. You can win almost any vote here. Why do you not want to have amendments? They don't want to have amendments because they really don't want the American people to know what is in this bill. That is why.

This bill represents the spending for all of these agencies we have not sent the money to this fiscal year. But it also represents the worst excesses of Congress. It represents parochialism ahead of principle. It represents putting politicians first and putting the people last. That is what this bill represents. It represents the exact opposite of what our President said he wanted, which was ``change you can believe in.'' Now we have change that is exactly what we saw before President Obama became President. We have the same standard of behavior. Tons of earmarks are in this bill. That is a totally different question. This bill has grown by over $32 billion from the same period last year, of which we just increased most of these agencies on an average of around 80 percent with the stimulus bill. Now we are going to increase it another 8.4 percent, and we are not supposed to offer amendments. We are not supposed to take out things that are obviously quid pro quo in terms of earmarks and campaign contributions, as the Senator from Arizona just mentioned, from the donors we are seeing who are being investigated right now.

The way to get our Government back is to have free and honest debate in the greatest deliberative body in the world, which is supposed to be the U.S. Senate. Now we cannot offer amendments on a bill that is almost half of the entire discretionary spending of the country because we are not sure they want to take a vote on a bill. I have not been bashful about what I want to do.

There is an Emmett Till bill that we passed under controversy here. We got it passed. There is not one penny for funding for the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes in this bill, which your side totally promised would be in this spending. You are abandoning Alvin Sykes and all these families who had unsolved civil rights crimes over the last 30, 40 years in this country and reneging on a promise that said you would put the money in the Justice Department. Yet there is not a penny there. We are high and mighty when it comes to authorizing and when we promise we will do the right thing. But when it comes down to it, we would rather give earmarks for pig smell than fund the solution for unsolved civil rights crimes. I tell you, by doing that, I think we have dishonored a great number of people who worked hard to make sure that bill got passed, the least of which is not Alvin Sykes, a man who has dedicated the last 10 years of his life to seeing that justice was not denied to these families. Here we have a bill which we made promise after promise that we would take care of, and we have done nothing. Of course nobody wants to change this bill. They don't want to change the bill because we are running up to a deadline we have known about since the fiscal year started. No, you cannot change the bill because we will have to extend the CR. There are a lot of benefits to extending the CR: One, we save our grandkids $38 billion--that is one of the benefits-- and two, we don't reward behavior that causes us to be less than honorable.

There are 8,570 earmarks in this bill. I am not opposed to earmarks if they are authorized and go through a committee and Senators say they are a priority. But the average American, when they look at all these earmarks, is going to say: How in the world is that a priority? Yet we spend $7.7 billion out of that $30 billion--increased spending--so we can help Senators get reelected and so they will look good at home.

Mr. President, I worry about our Republic. You should be worried too. In the face of the greatest economic difficulty we have seen in over half a century in this country, the status quo has not changed in the Senate. We have not called up the courage to do what is best for this country. What we have done is relied on what is best for the politicians. I worry about what our kids are going to see, what standards of living they are going to have, because it is exactly this behavior that will mortgage their future, and it is not just the dollars, it is the misdirection of funds against a standard that common sense would say is not a priority now. We ought to be doing what is most important for this country first and what is best for the politicians last. This bill has it wrong. It has it backward.

I told the majority leader a moment ago that I would work with him to make sure we didn't obstruct. But maybe we should obstruct this bill, we should stop this bill. Based on the waste in it, the lack of oversight, lack of metrics in the programs, the earmarks in it, and the outright greed for the special class in this country--and that special class is the connected class of the politician. That is who benefits most from this bill. It makes me want to vomit.

You should worry about process in this Chamber because process is the thing that creates transparency. The American people are going to get to see--if we get an opportunity to offer amendments--what is really in this bill.

I will finish my rant by saying that I wonder what the Senators before us, 50 and 100 years ago, would say about what is going on with process in this Chamber right now. You have the votes to defeat anything. Yet you don't want to have an amendment that you have to take a vote on that says this is a priority or this isn't a priority.

To me, I think that lacks honor, I know it lacks courage, and it lacks the dignity this institution deserves.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, and I do, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 5 minutes to make comments regarding what has just been said.

Madam President, on February 16, 2009, a pet non-human primate, NHP, attacked Ms. Nash, a friend of the pet's owner--almost killing her. My thoughts and prayers are with Ms. Nash and I am sure I join all of my colleagues in wishing her a speedy and full recovery.

This unfortunate event has rushed consideration of the Captive Primate Safety Act, H.R. 80. H.R. 80 would make it illegal to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase non-human primates, such as monkeys and apes, by amending the over 100-year old Lacey Act to include ``any nonhuman primate.''

H.R. 80 does not affect laboratory animals, zoos, and some veterinarian cases.

This bill does not address a national priority and should not be considered by Congress.

Last Congress, I held the similar Senate version of the Captive Primate Safety Act, S. 1498, because of concerns with its fiscal impact and because I did not believe it was appropriate for the Federal Government to be regulating pets.

Today the Senate is trying to pass the similar House version that still seeks to increase Federal regulation of pets in a fiscally irresponsible manner without amendments or debate.

Supporters of this bill hope that somehow creating a new Federal law to prohibit transporting pet primates across State lines, on top of the Federal laws and regulations that already make it illegal to import them and the dozens of State laws that outlaw owning non-human primates as pets, and

giving the Fish and Wildlife Service $5 million to hire extra ``law enforcement'' staff to pursue chimps will make Americans safer.

Supporters of this measure are using the tragedy that occurred this month to ram this bill through Congress with no debate. This attack occurred in Connecticut, where a State law already existed that outlawed the possession of NHP's weighing more than 50 pounds without a permit. The NHP weighed 200 pounds and should have not been allowed under state law to live with its owner as a pet, but passing the Captive Primate Safety Act last year would not have prevented this tragedy and is not a national priority.

The bill authorizes $5 million in fiscal year 2010 to hire additional United States Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement personnel to enforce the new monkey provisions and CBO says the bill will cost taxpayers $17 million over 5 years. To enact such legislation without any offsets and therefore simply add to our national debt is extremely imprudent at this time in our nation.

There still have been no hearings and therefore no official statement or testimony available from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as to whether or not this law is necessary and/or enforceable within the agency's current resources.

There is even a more basic question of whether or not a Federal wildlife agency should be regulating interstate pet transportation at all.

This law may be duplicative, unnecessary, and ineffective.

This matter of pet ownership may be more appropriately and effectively handled by local and State governments and agencies.

The UC does not allow an opportunity to amend this bill to address cost concerns.

This Bill spends money we don't have on something that is unnecessary.

CBO estimated last Congress that both the House and the Senate versions of the Captive Safety Act and last Congress's Senate bill, would cost $17 million over 5 years. H.R. 80 is almost identical to last Congress's House bill.

According to CBO, the cost of hiring four additional U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, FWS, employees to conduct inspections and investigations and storing, transporting and boarding confiscated NHP's totals $17 million over 5 years.

The costs may in fact be even higher. According to one chimp sanctuary the annual cost to house two chimpanzees can exceed $35,000 a year. According to the Humane Society of the United States and various Members of Congress, there are an estimated 15,000 non-human primates in private hands. If the FWS were to try and confiscate and then house all 15,000 chimps, that could add up to a total cost of $262.5 million a year for the federal taxpayers, or $1.3 billion over 5 years.

The unanimous consent agreement would not allow anyone to offer amendments to offset the cost of this bill or perhaps cut back on other areas within the Fish and Wildlife's jurisdiction to pay for these new responsibilities.

Fourteen Monkey bites a year do not justify annual appropriations of $4 Million.

While the Humane Society of the United States said in a February 2009 press release that the Captive Primates Safety Act is an ``urgently needed public safety and animal welfare measure,'' other Americans may feel differently about prioritizing this issue above more pressing national issues.

The group justifies prioritizing H.R. 80 with American taxpayer resources because of recent captive primate incidents. An analysis of its list of ``recent incidents involving captive primates'' finds:

In 2008, 11 monkeys were reported as being involved in biting 14 people. One of the monkeys was in a university laboratory and another was in a wildlife sanctuary. Both of these types of monkeys are exempted and therefore would not be affected by the Captive Primates Safety Act.

In 2008, there were 39 non-human primates involved in 21 incidents, but 28 of the 39 monkeys involved in the reported incidents were not noted as having harmed humans.

Similarly, last Congress, the Humane Society and the Senate EPW committee justified the creation of a new Federal law by citing 132 reported incidents of human injury from captive or escaped captive primates over a 10-year period--which still averages out to only 13 a year.

In contrast, 4.7 million Americans are bitten by dogs each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Taking both the Humane Society and the CBO score together, the bill before us today, essentially calls for the Federal Government to spend the equivalent of over $444,000 per year to take nine biting monkeys out of their private owners' hands. Using another measurement, the FWS would spend the equivalent of over $285,000 per bite--$4 million divided by 14 people who were bitten by monkeys in 2008--if this bill passed.

Yet even these cost estimates may be understated because it is possible that none of the nine offending monkeys will ever cross State lines. In that case, unless State or local laws and officials caused their removal, these pets would remain with their owners.

While not seeking to diminish the physical or psychological effects of any monkey bites or attacks, taxpayers have a right to question if such a small number of incidents justify the large cost to the Federal Government of taking on additional animal control responsibilities.

In contrast, though some of the 4.7 million Americans bitten by dogs each year die as a result of these bites, Congress is not adding interstate dog transport to the lists of Federal wildlife responsibilities and prohibitions. If preventing human injuries caused by pets was a national priority, why aren't Senators and special interest groups pushing to outlaw the private ownership of dogs?

Passing the Captive Safety Act last Congress would not have prevented the recent attack.

Tragically, a 200-pound, 15-year-old chimpanzee named Travis--who was raised by the same owners since he was an infant--brutally attacked one of his owner's friends, Charla Nash, outside his house in Stamford, CT, in February 2009. The chimp, for still unknown reasons, attacked Ms. Nash, severely damaging her face and hands, according to news reports. She is in critical but stable condition. Travis died after being stabbed by his owner and being shot by a police officer after he charged the officer.

Following the recent chimp attack, the Humane Society has argued that if I had not held last year's bill, S. 1498, Ms. Nash would not have been attacked. This statement, however, is incorrect, because this bill would have only have removed Travis from his owner if the NHP crossed State lines.

Additionally, since 2004 under Connecticut State law it has been illegal to own an NHP weighing more than 50 pounds if the animal is not registered. Yet, State officials did not even require Travis--a 200 pound NHP--to be registered, even though he was well known. It appears Travis lived in Stamford, CT, for most of his life. His attack took place in front of his home. With the possible exception of an appearance on the Maury Povich show, which may or may not have been filmed in the New York City studio, nothing indicates that Travis was crossing state lines on a regular basis, nor did his unprovoked attack have any interstate aspect to it. The fact that he might have been born in another State 15 years ago, would not have affected Travis's private ownership 2 weeks ago if this bill had been signed into law last year.

What if Travis or his siblings grew up in the same State where they were born? The bill does nothing to address this situation; they have to cross State lines to fall under Federal jurisdiction. Why is a chimp native to and living in Missouri ok, but one moving to Connecticut, for example should suddenly become the business of the Federal Government? It is very unlikely that Travis' trip 15 years ago across a few State lines led to his attack in February. This is yet another reason why this bill is a misplaced priority and misguided effort.

If people are saying all chimps are dangerous and are against private ownership of nonhuman primates, why doesn't this bill simply make it a Federal crime to own them and take away the estimated 15,000 animals in private hands? Instead, to justify questionable Federal involvement, Congress is using the interstate commerce clause even

though this approach is both inappropriate and ineffective.

In a recent Boston Herald article April Truitt, director of the Primate Rescue Center in Kentucky, had the following to say regarding

Mr. President, what is the pending amendment?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to offer a perfecting second-degree amendment to Senator Ensign's amendment.

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

Mr. President, this is simply a perfecting amendment to change the date of the actual enactment of this bill.

I ask unanimous consent to speak for a few moments on the underlying bill.

I will do that for a very short period of time.

We have heard a lot about the constitutionality of this, but I think there is an important point that has not been raised, and I would take exception to the fact that this is not a partisan debate. This is about whether we really follow this wonderful little document each of us in this Chamber has sworn an allegiance to and what it says.

I wish to quote a legal scholar because I think it leads to a lot of common sense. Here is the quote:

It would be ridiculous to suggest that the delegates to the

Constitutional Convention or ratification conventions would

have worked out such specific and exacting rules for the

composition of Congress, only to give the majority of

Congress the right to create

a new form of voting members from federal enclaves like the

District. It would have constituted the realization of the

worst fears for many delegates, particularly the Anti-

Federalists, to have an open-ended ability of the majority to

manipulate the rolls of Congress and to use areas under the

exclusive control of the Federal Government as the source for

new voting Members.

I have no doubt that if this present bill is passed, it will be found unconstitutional. As my colleague from Alaska stated earlier, if what we want to do is change the Constitution, the way to do that is through a constitutional amendment and a joint resolution.

So there is no question that people who are taxed have the right to representation, but there is another way to solve that. The best way to solve it is to eliminate the tax on the citizens of the District of Columbia. I will be offering an amendment this afternoon that will do just that.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and that amendment No. 581 be called up.

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

Mr. President, I know my colleague from New York wishes to speak and I will be very brief. I should not take more than 10 minutes.

We are in a debate about the District of Columbia and the fact that they are taxed and not represented with a vote in the Congress. It is a legitimate debate. I tend to look at the Constitution and, as a matter of fact, as I read the Constitution--and I am not a constitutional lawyer, but I will tell my colleagues that anybody who reads the Constitution can say this is an unconstitutional bill we have in front of us.

I also reject the idea that the District of Columbia does not have representation. All one has to do is look at the facts: $66,000 per resident of the District of Columbia, that is how much money the Federal Government spends per capita in the District of Columbia. That is $5.5 for every dollar they pay in taxes. So the 535 votes in the Congress have well represented them greater than any other group of citizens in the country. But there is a claim--a legitimate claim--that they don't have their own representative and that they are taxed.

This is a simple amendment. What it says is while we work this out, the way to be fair is to eliminate Federal income tax on citizens of the District of Columbia. They don't have a vote. Their tags even say taxation without representation is unfair; no taxation without representation. This solves that. They will have to change all of the auto tags. I don't know what that will cost. But the fact is we will take away Federal income taxes on money earned in the District of Columbia from every citizen of the District of Columbia.

Now, two things happen with that, especially since they have 535 representatives already. Think about what will happen to the District of Columbia in terms of income. Think about what will happen to the District of Columbia in terms of economic progress. Think about what will happen in terms of the value of the ownership of any asset in the District of Columbia. Think of the growth. Think of the modernization that will happen as we make this the center of progress based on the idea that because there is no representation, there should be no Federal taxation. It is a very simple, straightforward amendment. It solves the immediate problem. When we finally do a constitutional amendment with a joint resolution, which we are ultimately going to have to do, what we will have done is given the people of the District of Columbia the benefit of having a tax advantage because they don't have, under their thinking, representation in the Congress.

I am not trying to have a cute vote. If I had my way, I would try to eliminate almost every Federal income tax. As the Senator from New York knows, I try to do that quite often, and try to eliminate a lot of spending. The whole point being, there is a legitimate point to be made by the citizens of the District of Columbia in that they are treated differently than everybody else in this country. My argument is they actually have 535 representatives plus their Delegate, and it has shown to be very effective for them, because no place else in the country gets as much Federal money per capita as the District of Columbia. So if we want to treat the citizens of the District of Columbia fairly--by the way, this excludes all Members of Congress, so if my colleagues are thinking about voting for it for a selfish reason, please don't. If you are thinking about voting for this amendment on the basis of fairness, please consider it.

Amendment No. 575

I wish to take a few more minutes to comment on the Ensign amendment, if I might, and then I will finish. The Ensign amendment isn't about concealed carrying, it is about the right that is guaranteed under the second amendment to be applied to people in the District of Columbia.

James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 46:

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans

possess over the people of almost every other nation . . .

forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more

insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form

can admit of.

If you look at the murder rate in the District of Columbia, what happened when the gun ban in 1975 was first instituted, we didn't see it rise that much because we allowed people to keep their guns. When the complete ban took place, we saw a fivefold rise that is still going up--except for the last 2 years--in the murder rate compared to the rest of the cities in this country. There is something to be said for the thinking that a perpetrator of a felony thinks he or she may possibly be harmed significantly. That tends to drive down violent crime--we know that--in the States that have concealed carry, and that, I believe, is 26 or 28 States. It may be even more than that now.

The fact is, this isn't about concealed carry; this is about guaranteeing the

rights of individual citizens in the District of Columbia to represent themselves with a right that every other citizen in this country has. Because Congress didn't act on that right, it took the Heller decision to give them that right. All this does is bring into line the District of Columbia with the rest of the States in the country. I will have taken the amount of time that I should in favor of Senator Schumer. I thank him very much for the consideration of allowing me to go first. I thank the chairman of the committee as well.

Will the Senator yield?

I will be happy to yield myself the time. The Senator paints with an awfully broad brush. I have been in this Senate for 4 years. He knows very well that I voted against most appropriations bills. I talked about the debt in almost every speech I have given. So I hope we would talk about individuals rather than a group because it is not necessarily representative of all on my side.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Nebraska be recognized next.

Mr. President, I have been sitting here for about an hour. I have to think the American people are pretty sick of what they have been hearing. We heard the Senator from New York talk about how bad the Republicans were. We heard the Senator from Utah talk in Hobson fashion. It doesn't come anywhere close to solving the problem. I think we ought to have a discussion about how we got here. How do we find ourselves in the mess we are in? I think we can look at history.

There was a great historian named Alexander Tytler. He looked at the ancient Greeks and looked at what happened to them as they fell. He said this about republics. He said: All republics fail. They fail as soon as the people figure out they can vote themselves money from the public treasury.

There is no question we are in hard times. There is no question we need to do a stimulus package. There is no question the Federal Government has the power to make a big difference in a lot of people's lives who are hurting right now. I don't think it would be fair to say that there is anybody in this Chamber who doesn't want to try to accomplish that. The difference is, how do you do it? In doing so, what kind of problems do you create?

The way we got here is abandoning this little booklet. If you read article I, section 8 of the Constitution and then read what the Founders had to say about article I, section 8, it is called the enumerated powers. They were very clear in the role of the Federal Government. We are in trouble today, this Nation is in trouble today-- not something we can't get out of, we can; not something that the American spirit won't overcome--because we let the politicians abandon the very clear rules and wisdom that was given to us by a unique, almost ordained group of individuals over 200 years ago who saw a vision and said: How do we keep this?

When we abandon this book, as we have and as we did, and we get into trouble, it is important to recognize what we did wrong, if we are going to try to fix it.

The other thing I am tired of hearing about--and I think the American people are too--this isn't a Bush, Clinton, or Obama thing. This is a Congress thing. No President can spend money without us allowing it to happen. I almost laughed when I heard the claims on the Senate floor from both sides about the trouble we are in and how we got there and deficits and the Senator from Vermont and his claim of a trillion dollars.

I think the CBO cost on that was $60 billion on estate taxes. But the idea that we would put a blame on anybody other than ourselves, the truth of that is, go look at the votes on appropriations bills for the last 8 years. It is nearly 100 percent on one side and almost 95 percent on this side of people voting to spend money we didn't have for things we didn't need.

It is important the American people, as they see us trying to work through a process, No. 1, reject any partisanship they will hear. When somebody starts being partisan, turn the TV off because what it means is, they don't have anything substantive to talk about if they are pointing their finger at somebody else.

The second question we ought to ask is, is what we are doing going to fix the problem? Here is the problem. The problem goes back to this. We set up two agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to socialize the risk for homeownership, a total violation of what is in this book. It is a total violation. Then we said: Maybe we can help people a little more, so let's go to subprime mortgages and let's bonus the people who work at the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The more subprime mortgages they take, the more money they make.

If I remember, one former leader of Fannie Mae made $140 million because we bought mortgages he knew people weren't going to be able to pay for, but the incentive was there, in a quasi government-owned agency, to do something that is outside of the enumerated powers of the Constitution.

So as we abandon principles, the best way for us to solve the problems in front of us is to go back and look at the principles.

The other concern is, do we have the potential to make things worse? Nobody has talked about that today. Does what we are doing have a potential downside? You can't talk to one economist who doesn't say yes. As a matter of fact, by CBO's own score, 10 years from now this will either have zero effect or anywhere from a minus 2 to a plus three-tenths effect on the economy. The reason for that is we are going to borrow so much money, as we do in this bill, we are going to crowd out private investment. The Government is going to have all the money, and people will not be able to borrow money to invest in new ideas which create opportunity, which create jobs, which create increased standards of living.

So going back, how did we get here and what is the real problem for us to create a stimulus bill right now, before we have a way to solve the housing and mortgage crisis--because the bank problem wouldn't be there if the mortgage and housing crisis wasn't there, for us to fix those first before we do this and for us to have a plan to do that--as a physician, one of the things I notice is, if somebody comes into the emergency room with chest pain, it is one of three or four things. Either they have an esophageal spasm or their esophagus is irritated or they have terrible reflux where the fluid from the stomach acid is burning the esophagus or they are having angina, heart pain, due to lack of blood supply. If you treat the symptoms, you can make that angina go away, but they still have a vascular abnormality around the heart that could kill them.

My worry with this bill is that we are treating symptoms. We are not treating the disease. We are arguing, partisan arguing: Was this a bipartisan bill, wasn't it a bipartisan bill; you did this over the last 8 years, you did this. We need the country thinking forward, not backward. The guide for that has to be the Constitution, which every Member of this body is sworn to uphold but violates daily. We are in this trouble because the Congress put us in this trouble. The blame lies solely here.

Let me talk about the bill for a minute. This is the bill. I won't pick it up and wave it around for fear I would be called into account of using theatrics. But do the American people realize nobody who is going to vote on this bill has read it? There is $727 million worth of spending on every page of this bill. That is what it averages out. So not counting interest, we have a less than $800 billion bill that had 30 amendments in the Senate before it went to conference. We hear they are accepted. Some of them were accepted. We voted on one unanimously, and it got thrown out in conference, just a simple little thing like maybe we ought to make sure that contracting is competitively bid. Now the language reads we ought to try to do that, but we will not make sure that happens.

I brought along with me, thanks to somebody down in the Senate gift shop, this little green item. It is called a thimble. In Oklahoma, we have a statement for that kind of thinking. It is called ``there is not any more commonsense than what can fit in a thimble.'' So when we take out something that is agreed to unanimously in the Senate to mandate competitive bidding so even if

we are wasting money, we waste it efficiently, you have to wonder what is going on.

Let me tell you what is going on. This is a massive bill. Supposedly, it doesn't have any earmarks, which is laughable, if you have been around here any period of time.

The conference did clean it up so you can't truly find out where the earmarking is. You could find it out a little bit before it went to conference. Now you can't pinpoint it all. But we are going to move from earmarking to a concept called ``phone marking.'' It is a new concept. It is more powerful than earmarking. Phone marking is this: This bill gets signed, $500 billion of it is going to be disbursed through the agencies. Guess what is the first thing that is going to happen after President Obama signs this bill. Members of Congress and Senators are going to be on the phone saying: I want this money spent here and here and here, and if you don't, in your appropriations next year, you are going to suffer.

That is exactly what will happen with the money in this bill. Everybody who works inside Washington knows exactly that will be what happens.

We have heard talk about the earmarks. I won't try to repeat some of the things that are in this bill. But I will talk about one. We have a private company that was developed. It has spent several million dollars developing a railroad from California to Las Vegas.

Do you know what this bill does? It wipes them out. They invested private capital to develop a railway. In excess of $10 million has already been invested in that, and with the wisp of one earmark, we are going to bankrupt people who invested their life savings to try to do something good because the Government is now going to do it through an earmark and going to try to accomplish something that has only been done in one country and not effectively. It costs $100 million a mile to build a maglev train, and we are not going to see any of that money spent for 4 or 5 years because the technology is not here.

That aside, there also was an amendment that truly would have done something to fix the real problem: housing--the Isakson amendment, with a $15,000 tax credit, if you are buying a primary residence, whether it is a foreclosed home or a new one. It would have done something magnificent in terms of lessening the crisis in housing.

What did we do? Out. It had an overwhelming vote in the Senate, but it is out. How do you explain that? What is going on here? What is going on here is the initiation of what Alexander Tytler talked about: the failure of a republic. And it is about short-term politically, expedient thinking to the benefit of politicians, instead of what is the best right thing we can do for our country.

The very claim that Senator McCain did not offer a substantive bill that would have significantly increased the number of jobs created, at a significantly lower cost, as scored by CBO and as scored by outside economists, is a spurious claim.

Another thing that got added into the bill is the most dangerous precedent for health care in this country we have ever seen. We are now, with this bill, embracing Great Britain's health care system. What we are saying is that we are going to allow the Government in the future to decide what care you will get. It is called comparative effectiveness, and it is going to be based on cost, not clinical outcomes. We are going to abandon the knowledge of physicians, the experience they have with their patients, the 8 to 12 years of additional training they have and the lives that have been dedicated to improving the health of their patients. We are going to abandon that to a bureaucracy where the Government says: We know best.

We are going to do that because we cannot afford Medicare in the future, and we are going to say, just like England says, if you only get 1 more year of life, then the most we can spend on you is $49,000. If you are 75 years of age and you are a Medicare patient and you fall and break your hip, we are sorry, we are not going to do it because it is not cost-effective.

The first leg of you losing a doctor-patient relationship and the freedom to have health care decisions made by you and your caregiver is buried within this bill and will kill health care in America as far as its quality. You will get access--you will get to wait just like Canada and England do--but you will kill the quality and will kill medical innovation in this country. This country leads the world. Mr. President, 7 out of every 10 major breakthroughs in medicine occur in this country. And the reason? It does not mean we have a good system now. It needs to be improved.

Here is the theory as I have observed it in the 10 years I have been in Congress: Never do what is best when you can do what is safe. That is how it operates in Washington and throughout the Federal agencies. They are risk averse, just like the politicians are risk averse to challenging priorities in this bill, that we ought to have priorities to spend the money for what would get the most jobs, the most economic benefit.

I had an amendment that was adopted. It had 73 or 74 votes. It got watered down and divided in conference because a lot of special interest groups said: Oh, no. You can't do that. So what did we do? They are not a priority as far as what we should be doing right now. As a matter of fact, 80 percent of--most of the groups that were complaining about it get their funds from private sources. The best way to get them funded back up is getting private sources moving again in terms of the economy. But what did we do? We chose the politically expedient path. Again, it was not often thought of--political expediency--by the people who created this country who risked their lives and their fortunes to make sure we have the freedom we have today. But yet we are abandoning that.

It comes back to: What is our heritage as a nation? What is the heritage we as a nation have been brought forward with? I will tell you what I think it is. I think the heritage we have is that one generation was willing to make hard choices and hard sacrifices so the generation that followed would have greater opportunity--greater opportunity--a higher standard of living, more freedom, more liberty.

What have we done? We are going in reverse. What we have been doing for the last 10 to 15 years in this country, what we have been saying is we will take it now. Kids, you lump it. As an example of that, if you look at 2008, the Federal Government spent $25,000 per household of your money. A good portion of it--a third of it--was borrowed. But we spent $25,000 as a Federal government per household. With this bill, we are going to spend $38,000 per family--just with this one bill. And we are hurrying it up. We have to get it done right now because there are CODELs, trips, and junkets waiting for Members to go on, including the Speaker of the House.

So we have a bill that nobody has read, that has some real questions about whether it is going to be stimulative, that has taken out good financial controls such as competitive bidding, taken out listing priorities, and we are going to vote on it tonight, with nobody ever having read it. That is about as bad as the partisan bickering we have heard.

Does it serve us well to hurry and do something when we do not know what we are doing? Now, there are some staff members who know some of what is in here. But there is not one person who knows the full extent. Mark my words, within a month, we will be back in here passing a bill to do all the corrections to this bill that we do not have right and correct at this time. That is how sloppy we do our work. So it is not only sloppy in terms of our effort, it is sloppy in terms of our theory.

I would also add we are going to move from $2,000 per family in interest costs to $4,817 per family this next year. Now, in my State, the average family income is below what the Federal Government is going to spend with this bill. In my State, average family income is under $36,000. Yet we are going to spend $38,000 this next year per family in this country, and we are going to justify we had to do it to get us out of trouble. And we are going to do it because we did not fix the real problem, we are treating the symptoms. We are all going to feel good, and we are all going to take the invite of the Senator from New York to come on over and join us.

The fact is, my oath as a Senator should disallow me from ever voting for this bill. Anybody who votes for

this bill will be violating their oath to this Constitution. America demands something be done. They are right. We need to do something. Should we do it sloppily? Should we do it without focus? Should we do it without temperance? And should we do it in a timely manner to make sure we are not treating the symptoms as reflux or esophageal spasm, but we actually go in and take the clot or the plaque out of the artery that surrounds the heart? Isn't that what we should be doing? Shouldn't we be fixing the real problem?

While we are at it, we ought to be fixing us because we are the cocommitters of the real problem. Shouldn't we all be thinking long- term rather than short-term political benefit? Shouldn't we be realizing what is expected of us?

I would hope Americans tonight, if they have children, will go and look into the eyes of their children. There is something you see in children in this country that is very different than when you look in the eyes of some starving African child or some Third World country child. What you see, when you look into those beautiful brown, blue, green or hazel eyes, is hope.

I think about my four grandkids and the one who is on the way. When I look in their eyes, I see hope. Then contrast that with the pictures you have seen of the despair and look of no hope of the kids around the world who have not had the opportunity of this country. What we are doing is we are stealing some of that hope tonight from our children.

If you do not have a young child but you have one who has grown up, think back to that picture you have on the wall and look into those eyes and say: Do you want to steal that hope? Because that is what we are doing. We are limiting their liberty economically. We are limiting their freedom to be the best and brightest and have the greatest potential that any society has ever offered their youngest citizens. That is what we are doing with this bill.

I will close with this and reserve the remainder of my time. There was a President we had who made a statement that was fairly popular, but it has great application right now. He said: Freedom is a precious thing. It is a precious thing. It is never guaranteed. It is not ours by inheritance. It has to be fought for and maintained and won by every generation.

As we embrace this bill, we are selling out the heritage of our country. We are denying the hope and joy in those young eyes and we are limiting the freedom our children will enjoy. We can do better. We must do better for this country. Our country needs statesmen who will sacrifice themselves for the best interests of the country rather than the best interests of their party or the best interests of their political career.

Freedom is precious. We are going to take a bit of it away tonight. It is going to go away, and you will see a little decrease in the glimmer of those children as they contemplate and we contemplate their future.

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

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

Mr. President, I wanted to spend a few minutes this evening talking about what we think, what we think--I am going to emphasize that--because nobody has seen the bill that I understand we are supposed to vote on tomorrow morning, that spends almost $700 plus billion. We have not seen the bill. We have not seen the report language. And I can assure you that this Senator is not about to vote on this bill until he has read the bill and we will do due diligence to do that, if we ever get a copy of the bill.

But I wanted to talk about a couple of things that are important that we think are in the bill, and it has to do with health care. I have a little bit of experience in that. I have practiced medicine now for 28, 29 years. I find parts of this bill that I know when it is explained to the American public, they will agree with me, it is ludicrous.

Let me tell you the first part of the bill. There is $20 billion in this bill to pay hospitals and doctors to buy health IT. Now, at the beginning you would say, well, what is wrong with that? We want electronic medical records. We want to see the benefits that come from the economy of scale, the increased productivity that comes from IT to help us in health care.

Where this bill does not understand what is happening out there is doctors will buy health IT, and hospitals will improve--they all have health IT right now, by the way--will improve their health IT once there is a program out there that is interoperable with the rest of the program. The reason doctors are not buying programs for electronic medical records has nothing to do with a lack of money, it is this very simple reason: They know if they buy it now they get to buy it again, because none of the computers in health IT talk to each other. They will not talk.

The way to make them talk is called an interoperable standard. And a good example for you to compare, think about where we had ATMs. How did we make an ATM, where you can go anywhere in the country if you have a credit card that allows you to get cash and go into any ATM in this country and get cash. How did we do that? How did ATMs come about? They came about because the private sector, the banking industry, created an interoperable standard first. Because they had the interoperability standard, where every bank could make sure that they could talk to every other bank, they put in ATMs.

All of a sudden, voila, anywhere in the world today, if you have money in the bank and you have an ATM card, you can get money out of the bank. They did not build the ATMs first, they did not have the Government buy the ATMs before they had the standard set.

People say, well, we have taken care of that in this bill. We are going to have the Government decide what the interoperable standard is. Well, the Government has been working for 6 years to develop an interoperability standard. They are at least doing it through a private consortium now, and 80 percent of that standard has been accomplished. It will be completed in 2011. But it will not be completed the way this bill is written, because we are going to pull it all back from this public-private consortium and we are going to have some bureaucrats at HHS decide what the standard is going to be.

There are a lot of problems with that. One is nobody at HHS knows that information. No. 2 is, everything that is out there in the market today is now put at risk, so you are going to absolutely stop private investment in this area that is so much needed.

So what we are going to do is we are going to allow bureaucrats to decide what is it going to be. We are going to eliminate companies that have great ideas, because they are not going to be in the mix, and we are going to accept a standard that is not going to be the best standard.

The way HHS has it set up now with a public-private consortium was a poor way to do it, but at least it has got it 80 percent of the way there. We are going to backtrack on it. Just so you know, we are so good at spending money. We have spent $780 million already of your money trying to get this, that we are going to now throw down the toilet so we can start over and have bureaucrats exactly decide what the standard is going to be.

Well, I will predict to you, everything else we do in IT in the Federal Government, 50 percent of the money we waste. That is what our studies show. We waste $32 billion a year on IT programs that never work, out of a $64 billion budget for IT programs alone. So we are going to waste a ton of money.

But that is not the important thing in this bill. We are going to give every doctor in the country, no matter how much money they make, if they do not have electronic medical records, we are going to give them $60,000 to buy an electronic medical record.

Now, it would seem to me that with the incomes of the average physician being over $200,000, the last place we want to give $60,000 to buy a piece of software that is not going to work, that is going to have to be replaced anyway, is to those who are in the upper income in this country.

But that is probably not as important as we are going to give for- profit hospitals and the profitable non-profit hospitals $11 million each to buy electronic medical record software that still will not talk to the doctors who bought it and we gave $60,000.

The total cost of this, and what we are doing, is going to be in excess, by the time all of the problems are solved and all of the defects are figured out, and all of the wasted money, of $100 billion. This bill is going to waste $100 billion.

Now, tell me for a minute why we would give some of the most profitable companies in the country, the for-profit hospitals and the not-for-profit hospitals who last year made in excess of $6 billion-- that is the not-for-profit hospitals made in excess of $6 billion besides doing the charity care that they did--why are we going to give them $11 million each to accomplish something that cannot be accomplished?

I will tell you why we are going to do it. Because some Congressman or some Senator said the way you solve this problem is to throw money at it. They haven't thought it through. There has been no development on or recognition of what is needed, which is an interoperable standard. What should we have done? Seven years ago when we started down this process, there were three great programs out there: one at Mayo--I am talking big programs--one at Cleveland Clinic, and one at Kaiser Permanente. What should we have done? We should have bought all three of those, created the ability for those three programs to talk to each other and given it away. We would have spent about $20 or $30 million, maybe $100 million, maybe $200 million, but not $100 billion. So again, Washington has messed it up. The very thing we are hoping to fix we are going to ruin. As we do it, we are going to waste $100 billion, and $30 billion of that total is in this bill.

The other interesting thing is none of this money starts rolling out until the middle of next year.

I am told I have 1 minute remaining. I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

That is one of the problems with this bill.

Let's talk about the big problem. As a practicing physician, I know what physicians are taught. First, do no harm. Second, listen to your patient, and they will tell you what is wrong with them. Third, if it has already been done, don't do it again. That is what they are taught. With that comes years of experience, clinical judgment, and in-depth knowledge about people and their disease. In this bill is a statement that says: We are going to develop, through a large slush fund at Health and Human Services, a model called comparative effectiveness. There is nothing wrong with comparing effective outcomes. There is nothing wrong with trying to use clinical data to move us in a better direction. But that is not what this is about. This is comparative effectiveness to control cost.

I warn the American people tonight, if this bill goes through, we are well on the way to absolute government control of the patient-doctor relationship, because we are going to assume that there is no way that a doctor can make a better decision than a computer. I will give two examples that happened in the last 5 years in my practice, two people who came in who had no clinical signs, had no indications other than my knowing them for years and developing a suspicion that something was wrong. They didn't come with a complaint. Their complaint was something else. I ordered MRIs on both patients. They were both denied by their insurance company. I arranged for both of them to get MRIs. Both had deadly brain tumors. They never would have fit in the comparative effectiveness or the cost control mechanism that we are setting up with this so we can control Medicare costs. This is the first step for the government to start rationing the very care it says it wants to give to the American people.

I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

The American people better pay very close attention to this bill. If you are on Medicare today or if you are 55 years of age, you better be plenty afraid of the language in this bill, because it is setting up the basis with which the Government will decide what kind of care you get. We are going to use a chart. If you don't fit in the chart, you are out of luck. You are going to lose the ability for clinical skills to make a difference in your life. Talk to the people of Great Britain where cancer cure rates are lower than ours because they don't have access to treatments Americans have today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank my friend from Nevada. I wish to spend just a few minutes. I am not going to talk for a long period of time, and I will yield back my time.

I am extremely concerned with the nomination of Mr. Lynn. It has nothing to do with Mr. Lynn. Some can be critical of his time as Comptroller. Some can be critical of some of the lack of forthrightness in some of the answers about the accounting and controlling and auditing systems in the Pentagon, and I think that is rightly so. We had several hearings on IT improvements and waste in the contracting of IT through the Pentagon. We had several hearings in the last two Congresses about the waste in contracting. Mr. Lynn dealt with a large amount of that.

Let that be as it may. The reason I stand to speak against his nomination is this is a nomination that is going to be the person who runs the day-to-day operation of the Pentagon. If you look at management experience, what there has been in running an organization that has 2.9 million employees--it is the largest component, even including mandatory programs, that we have.

It also is the area where we have some of the greatest amount of waste. We had it during his tenure as Comptroller. We had it during the Bush administration years. Why would we put someone into that position who has not performed in a stellar fashion when given the authority to fix a lot of those problems before? Why would we put someone in charge who is going to be handicapped? There is no question, given the waiver he has received, he will be absolutely handicapped in all the contracting that goes before the Pentagon.

Let me explain. His former company is one of the five largest defense contractors in the country. It is not just the areas he has lobbied in the past few years, such as the Aegis Ballistic Missile, the DDG-1000 destroyer, the Excalibur precision-guided munitions, the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Netted Sensor System and the Multiple Kill Vehicle System, which comes to $41 billion, 10 percent of the Pentagon's budget, but every other contract that has Raytheon as a subcontractor from which he is going to have to recuse himself.

What he is going to be limited to is personnel matters and accounting matters. He will not be able to make those decisions without first getting a waiver to make them and then, if you are granting a waiver to make the exception and make a decision, here is what is going to happen.

Let me give the history of the tanker program in the United States. We, first, had a contract let to Boeing, which was complicated by some very bad acting on the part of Boeing and some Defense Department officials, and it got thrown out.

We last had a contract for the tanker program that was awarded to EADS. There was a protest filed on it. It got thrown out.

Everything he is not involved with, Raytheon can file a protest that they were excluded because the management chain was not the same. We have created the basis for a new protest on everything Raytheon will not win in the future. If Raytheon does win a contract, we have created a protest for everyone who wasn't Raytheon to protest because there is a conflict of interest.

Ask yourself, in this dire economic time we are in, with the largest agency we have, why we would put somebody in that position who is going to be--for at least 1 year and probably for 2, if we wanted to ethically look at it--totally out of the realm of the most important, outside our military men and women, most important aspect of the Pentagon, which is purchasing, contracting defense weapons systems.

We are setting a man in a position. It is no reflection on him. He is very knowledgeable. He has been a good public servant. We are putting him in a position to fail. We have guaranteed that contracting will not go smoothly at the Pentagon because we have created two new bases for protests over contracts. We can go through all the contracting, and it is going to be raised--and rightly so. There is going to be a legitimate protest on both sides of these issues that is going to delay the ability of the American people to

contract for things we should be contracting for. More importantly, it is going to significantly raise the cost.

The third point I would make is, because he is going to have to exclude himself from the vast majority of decisions in contracting and purchasing, the very position he is meant to fill, to run the day-to- day operations, means Secretary Gates is going to have to run the operations. If he has to run the operations himself, why does he need a Deputy Secretary of Defense?

President Obama, I think rightly, has asked Secretary Gates to stay on. I think the continuity with that was great. I am sorry he didn't ask others to stay on until we got past this period of time. In spite of the good will of Mr. Lynn, a man of character, a man of integrity, we have set him up to fail.

I have no doubt he is going to be placed in that position today when we vote. But we ought to think. The biggest problem we have with our body, in terms of what we do, is we do not think long run. We think short term. What we have done is totally handicapped him, but we are also going to handicap our military.

This is not a time we should be doing that. We should be creating a streamlined procurement process that rebuilds the procurement offices, which need to be rebuilt--that has no question about the authority of the Deputy Secretary of Defense to make solid, fair, clear, and decisive actions and decisions. What we are going to do is ensure that does not happen.

I thought it was interesting that Senator McCain's main point was he did not have the managerial experience to do this. Senator McCain is going to vote for him because he has such high regard for Secretary Gates. But think about that statement. He does not have the managerial experience to run a 2.9 million individual organization, and he is handicapped. We are going to handicap him so he meets the ethical outlines President Obama so rightly has put in place.

I think it is a bad decision. I think it is a wrong decision. Once again, the consequences for that will be inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and a greater cost for this country. Anytime we have a greater cost on anything now, it goes directly to our kids and our grandkids.

I hope my associates in the Senate will give a rethought to whether we ought to handicap this man this way. Surely somebody can fill the bill and let Mr. Lynn wait a year and then come in and do what he wants to do and what President Obama wants him to do.

Again, we will make a serious mistake if we approve him, not only for us, not only for our kids but for him as he attempts to run the largest organization in the world.

Madam President, this economic stimulus bill contains $87.7 billion to bail out State Medicaid programs and more than $21 billion to have the Government control the adoption rate of health information technology (health IT) through Medicare and Medicaid.

We are in the middle of an economic crisis today. Yet the health IT spending through Medicare and Medicaid will not start until 2011. Interestingly enough, the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, has stated it ``anticipates near-universal adoption of health IT over the next quarter century even without legislative action. As a result, the 0.3 percent reduction in health care costs estimated to result in the near term from enactment of this bill would diminish in later years, when the use of health IT will be more pervasive in any event.'' So this stimulus bill spends money more than 2 years after the economic crisis has started on an issue that the market would have addressed on its own.

This is just one of the many examples that illustrate that the stimulus is, as recently noted by the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, ``90 percent social policy and 10 percent economic policy.'' I believe that this ``social policy'' will be counterproductive to the goals of universal adoption of health IT because it will mire the health care system in new bureaucratic red tape.

Another example of the stimulus's social policies is its inclusion of $1.1 billion for research on medical treatment comparative effectiveness. This is to be used to ``accelerate the development and dissemination of research assessing the comparative clinical effectiveness of health care treatments and strategies, including through efforts that: (1) conduct, support, or synthesize research that compares the clinical outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of items, services, and procedures that are used to prevent, diagnose, or treat diseases, disorders, and other health conditions and (2) encourage the development and use of clinical registries, clinical data networks, and other forms of electronic health data that can be used to generate or obtain outcomes data.''

Included in this $1.1 billion spending is a $400 million ``slush fund'' given to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, HHS, that could be construed to allow the Secretary to use however he or she wishes. Let me be clear, none of the comparative effectiveness research funding under the stimulus may be used for anything but research on comparative clinical effectiveness.

While I recognize and appreciate that the comparative effectiveness provisions of this bill only permit comparative clinical effectiveness, I am concerned that this lays the groundwork for comparative cost effectiveness with bills that the Obama administration will push and Congress will consider in the future. Why else would they be pushing to spend $1.1 billion on comparative clinical effectiveness, if the intention was not to one day tie the answers from that research to cost and coverage decisions?

To quote one of President Obama's top White House health advisers, Jeanne Lambrew, ``There is a bipartisan--I should be careful about the bipartisan, working the bipartisanship in the Senate. The House isn't quite as bipartisan as we would like but there has been support for investing about $1.1 billion in this economic recovery act for over two years for ARC and partly for NIH and partly for under agency activities to begin to try to say how do we get at the relative costs, excuse me, the relative effectiveness of the different services.'' That statement could be characterized as a Freudian slip.

While Congress has limited comparative effectiveness research funding in the stimulus to clinical effectiveness questions, I am concerned that the sponsors of this bill and the Obama administration have plans to force on the American public coverage decisions based on comparative cost effectiveness. Make no mistake: I will vigorously fight those efforts in the future.

In addition to the comparative clinical effectiveness research spending, the stimulus bill creates a structure

similar to the Federal Health Board described in the book ``Critical'' by former Senator Tom Daschle. President Obama endorsed this book and has relied on Senator Daschle's advice in crafting his health care agenda. A new, bureaucratic Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Clinical Effectiveness Research would be established under section 802 of the stimulus. The council will advise the President and Congress on No. 1. strategies with respect to the infrastructure needs of comparative clinical effectiveness research within the Federal Government; No. 2. appropriate organizational expenditures for comparative clinical effectiveness research by relevant Federal departments and agencies; and No. 3. opportunities to assure optimum coordination of comparative clinical effectiveness and related health services research conducted or supported by relevant Federal departments and agencies, with the goal of reducing duplicative efforts and encouraging coordinated and complementary use of resources.

The council would be composed of 15 members, all of whom are senior Federal officers or employees with responsibility for health-related programs. It concerns me that no attempt is made with this language to ensure council membership includes private, nongovernment experts. The American people know that medical experts at places like Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Yale have more expertise on medical issues than bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services. In the future, I will work to ensure that this council--and the American people--benefit from the expertise that resides in the minds of our country's premier medical experts.

The council would report annually on Federal activities in this area and recommendations for further research. While I recognize and appreciate that the comparative clinical effectiveness research and the council in the stimulus do not go as far as the board outlined in Senator Daschle's book, I am gravely concerned that it is simply the precursor to a full-fledged Federal Health Board. In Senator Daschle's own words, a Federal Health Board may alter the traditional doctor- patient relationship by giving the Federal Health Board new powers to make coverage decisions about medical technologies, treatments, drugs, and procedures, ``Doctors and patients might resent any encroachment on their ability to choose certain treatments . . .''

The model proposed by Senator Daschle and endorsed by President Obama--and which I am concerned the stimulus lays the groundwork for-- would be disastrous for American patients. This exact model is a failed policy of the past in Great Britain's health care system. Great Britain's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellent, NICE, evaluates new medical drugs and treatments for coverage decisions for all British citizens.

An approach like NICE neglects the basic fact that medical decisions vary by individual patient and disease processes. Medicine is not simply a cold science; it is also an art that reflects each individual patient's condition.

An approach like NICE will ultimately attach price tags to patients' lives and result in treatment rationing. To quote my friend Dr. Scott Gottlieb in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion editorial, ``[NICE] has concluded that $45,000 is the most worth paying for products that extend a person's life by one `quality-adjusted' year. (By their calculus, a year combating cancer is worth less than a year in perfect health.) . . . In Britain, there's vocal dissent against NICE constraints, especially among the cancer patients who are denied many effective new drugs that, for now, are widely prescribed in the U.S. The rich, of course, are able to opt out of the British controls. But the rest of the country has to appeal to politicians--rather than their doctors--to gain access to restricted medicines.''

Rather than top-down Government solutions that control costs by one- size-fits-all coverage mandates, I believe that a health care market that plays by fair rules is a far more powerful force to control costs and improve quality. The American people know it works because that competition and entrepreneurship has worked in every other American industry. I support creating a health care system where patients and doctors are able to make decisions based on individual patient conditions and needs.

The American people know that bureaucrats and politicians cannot be trusted as the ultimate arbiters of medical decisions. I will vigorously oppose any efforts to take choice and individualized care away from patients and their doctors.

Madam President, I rise to address my colleagues regarding the importance of improving access to health care in our rural communities. Rural America accounts for about 20 percent of the Nation's population, yet only 9 percent of the country's physicians. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that nearly 70 percent of the primary care health professional shortage areas are in rural communities.

The disparity in access to quality health care has a substantial and tangible impact on the quality of care and the quality of life for rural Americans, who are typically older, poorer, and

sicker than the population at large. That also has an impact on the economic vitality of those regions.

I do not believe that the stimulus legislation is the right vehicle for the majority of the spending it contains. Of the spending it contains, I note that the bill spends a substantial amount of money for health care in rural communities. This spending is directed toward health care access points, health information technology, workforce training development, and broadband deployment. At this point, it is likely some version of this package will move forward. As Congress spends this money, I would encourage my colleagues to give appropriate focus to preventive care and approaches that integrate these various components of health care across an entire region.

Improving health outcomes for a community requires going beyond building hospitals and clinics. A regional ``systems'' approach to improving health may provide effective opportunities to improve the health outcomes of individuals and communities in a cost-effective manner. Such an approach could integrate health coverage initiatives with prevention programs, primary care clinics, advanced specialty outpatient care programs, hospital-based care, and a regional health information network.

I plan to work with my colleagues to shape policies this Congress that will improve health care across America, including rural communities. Individuals, communities, private foundations, and the Government must work together if we are to be successful.

Madam President, how much time remains on this side?

I ask unanimous consent to consume that 4\1/2\ minutes and an additional 1 minute, if the generous chairman will accept.

Madam President, I hear the word ``legacy.'' The legacy that is going to be left from this bill is demonstrated to us by history. Here is what we did the last time we found ourselves in this shape. The Federal Government as a percentage of GDP went from 2\1/2\ percent to 20 percent in all the New Deal programs.

There is a wonderful book, and people ought to read it. It is called ``The Forgotten Man,'' Roosevelt's ``Forgotten Man'' series. This is an analysis of what we did, how we did it, what worked, and what didn't. Quite frankly, what you can see from this chart is that Government never got small again. Never. And what is going to happen is, if you look outside of this chart to what we are doing now, you are going to see Government grow again. So the total State and Federal take from GDP will be above 38 percent from now on. Now, what does that mean to you? What is the legacy of that? The legacy of that is lost opportunity--not for us; we will be pushing up daisies. Our children and our grandchildren, though, will suffer from a massive decline in their standard of living.

That is not to say we shouldn't do a stimulus bill. The stimulus bill we should do should be very targeted--this one is not--it should be timely--this one is not--and it should be temporary--this one absolutely is not because we are going to see this same thing happen. Even our own budget chairman, the honorable Senator from North Dakota, says, at a minimum, $124 billion a year increase in the baseline, additional spending that will never go away--never go away.

So what does it mean when we say we have a legacy? Here is the legacy of this bill: The cost this year, not including interest, for every family in this country is going to be $11,000. That is what we are going to borrow against your future earnings. We will increase the baseline budget this year $350 billion. That is just this year. The increase in the annual deficit will be somewhere between $50 billion and $185 billion, before interest. And we are going to pay $438 billion in interest on this borrowed money over the next 10 years. Everybody knows that if you save before you spend, it costs you about half. But what we are doing is spending and costing the future of our children.

What is the Congressional Budget Office's best guess? That we will create somewhere between 1.3 and 2.9 million new jobs. But also their best guess is that in about 10 years, this ``stimulus'' will have a negative effect on the economy. We are going to spend $15 billion to renovate offices for Federal employees. What percentage of this $800- plus billion bill will really stimulate? About 12 percent.

The other thing that is wrong with the bill is that there are no brakes on it. What happens when we have two or three quarters of growth? Do you think this body will come back and take this money away? No. Politicians are averse to ever taking anything away because they care more about getting reelected than they care about what is in the long-term best interest of the country. So here we have a stimulus bill that will forever raise the baseline and the interference of Government.

Now, what does this really mean if it goes to 35 percent? What it means is that you lose liberty. You lose freedom. If you think the Government is involved in the decisions you make now, just grow it another 10 percent total and see what happens. Your liberty and your freedom. It doesn't mean we shouldn't do a stimulus bill. We should. But we ought to do one that will really make a difference.

The other moral hazard with this bill is that we didn't hear today what the plans are for the mortgage problems, the housing problems, or the bank problems. Now, the reason we didn't hear about that is because we have to get past this vote because when you get ready to swallow the near trillion dollars they are going to come and ask for on those two problems, this is going to seem small. But if you have to talk about both at the same time, $1.8 trillion, now we are at $25,000 per family.

The fact is, what was done in this country from 1929 to 1938 didn't work. We are not even doing as good a job as they did in terms of directing the money. Yet, because of the basis of fear, we are going to pass a bill saying we have to do something. We do have to do something, but it doesn't have to be done today. It needs to be done in a very meticulous manner to make sure we get it right.

There is a legacy with this bill. I will spend the last few minutes talking about the fact that there are no earmarks in this bill. That is an out and outright untruth. There are tons of earmarks in this bill, from electric golf carts, to power generations for specific lobbyists who spent well over $1 million getting it in there, to a new building for the State Department to train its security personnel. They spend $12 million a year now. They are going to spend $275 million now and still spend $12 million a year, but we get a building in West Virginia because the Senators from West Virginia want that building there.

The competitiveness clause we put in, which the Senate voted unanimously on to put all contracts competitive, it will be blown out of the water, it will never come out of conference----

Because we don't want to do what is best for the children of this country; we want to do what is best for the politicians.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the question we need to ask ourselves is, What is the real problem we have in the economy? And what is the best way of fixing it? Not whether somebody looks good or looks bad. How do we do what is in the best long-term interest of the country?

The problem with this bill, once you really see it--and even a $100 billion smaller bill--is, it does not address the real problem. We are going to be treating symptoms, and we are going to be highly inefficient as we do that. We say we want to have a stimulus bill. Yet what we are going to do is stimulate a baseline increase in the budget every year from now on of at least $124 billion, probably closer to $300 billion, because we have not done what we say we are doing with this bill.

The other thing is, the fear that is driving this bill and what might happen if we do not hurry up and get a bill is probably the worst motivation we could have. The real fear we ought to have is, have we done it right and have we not created a situation in which generations that follow us, especially the next two, will say: What were they thinking? Why didn't they do it right? Why didn't they target the money truly to stimulus instead of creating this worst of all habits--which we are now going to ensure that the States pick up and learn from us. It is a virus. It is a virus we have that says: You do not have to worry about what it costs in the long run. You do not have to target it. You do not have to be efficient. You do not have to look at programs and make sure they are working. You do not have to have metrics.

Now that the States are in trouble, we are going to absorb a portion of the problems the States have because they have not been fiscally prudent, and we are going to say: We are going to bail you out. Well, think about what that says to State legislators all across the country.

Mr. President, I yield back.

Mr. President, this is a simple amendment that says we ought to have a priority of what we do. It is not about being against swimming pools, zoos, museums, or anything else. It is about saying to the American people we are going to prioritize the spending on this legislation.

What this amendment does is prohibit money to go to low-priority, low-infrastructure things. We have 233,000 bridges in this country that are in trouble--233,000. Instead of spending money planting trees along a causeway, what we ought to be doing is fixing the bridge that is on that causeway.

So this amendment is designed to prohibit money going into these areas so we will have money next year and the year after that, or maybe redirect money within the bill to actually do something we are going to have to spend money on anyhow, rather than do something that is optional and low priority.

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

I yield back my time.

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

Mr. President, I can't say I didn't expect that we would be where we are tonight. But this country needs to know the way this bill we have been talking about, and probably the bill we are going to see, is undoubtedly the largest generational theft bill in the history of mankind. When I say generational theft, I am not just talking about money. I am talking about opportunities and I am talking about futures.

There is nobody on this side of the aisle who doesn't want to do something to fix our economy and stimulate our economy. What this bill does--and the families who are listening to this right now, you ought to think: If you are one of those who are unemployed right now and hurting, $12,000 is going to be added to your debt once you get a job again, for your family. If you are struggling out there, but you are holding on, we are going to steal $12,000 from you and your kids. Then those of us who might be doing well, we are going to take $12,000 from you, so maybe that is OK in a time such as this. But what is not OK is how this bill is going to spend that money.

If you like how efficient the post office is that lost $3 billion this year, and if you like the way the Federal Government works, wait until this money starts going through the Federal Government. If we have $450 billion that is going to be in programs, 10 percent of it is going to get chewed up before it ever leaves Washington. Then, when it gets to your State to supposedly be a stimulus, another 10 percent of it is going to get chewed up. So we are going to lose $90 billion because we are going to decide to run it through the inefficient bureaucracies. I would ask: What does that stimulate? Federal workers are great, but they don't produce wealth, and the money ought to go into job-creating exercises that create wealth. What is going to happen to your family? The question will be, What is going to happen if we don't do anything? We are not proposing to do nothing.

There could be a true bipartisan solution to this, but that hasn't been offered. We have seen slow walked all day the inability to get amendments. It is highly unlikely any other amendments will be offered.

I want my colleagues to think how can we best stimulate this economy, and how can we do no harm as we do that? This bill--this generational theft bill--does tons of harm. Let me tell my colleagues the biggest harm it does. There is no guarantee this is going to work, especially when we haven't fixed the housing and mortgage system and we haven't fixed the liquidity issue. Here is the harm it does. Every State, save California and New York, will get more money out of this bill than their deficits are today--every State. We are going to transfer, by what we are doing here, a lack of fiscal responsibility to every State. We have had Governors calling up here from all across this country saying, You are going to send us a whole lot more money than we need. I have legislators who are trying to spend money. They are slow walking me now, so I can't run this State and keep it fiscally sound. That is coming from Democratic and Republican Governors alike. We are going to transfer the incompetence of the Federal Government in Congress to every State house in this country. Think about what we are doing with $12,000 per family.

One final point I will make. Barack Obama is my close personal friend. One of the things he said is that we ought to get rid of the programs that don't work. We ought to put metrics on the programs so we can measure them, and then when we look at them we will know whether we are truly investing in an adequate way. We are blindly going to invest in things and there is not one iota in this bill or the House bill that eliminates any of the $300 billion that we know is being wasted right now and can be fully documented--not one attempt to do that. So if we cared about stimulating the economy and we cared about the future and we cared about those who are having a hard time today, why wouldn't we do the hard work to get rid of what doesn't work before we spend more money on things that don't work?

I would end with this. We got in trouble and we are in this mess because we spent money that we didn't have on things we didn't need. And the answer for Congress is to do more of the same. When we do more of the same, what we do is we mortgage--the only thing we are doing on mortgages is we are mortgaging our children's and grandchildren's future.

This body works on the power of 60, and it will happen, but the precarious nature we find ourselves in today, the responsibility of passing this bill when most of it is not going to make a big difference--not truly going to stimulate the economy--and claiming it is bipartisan when it is not, is going to leave a legacy that nobody who votes for this bill is going to embrace.

With that, I yield the floor.

I yield back our time.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that after the order we have set up that following Senator Hutchison, the majority have time, then Senator Wicker have time, then the majority have time, and then Senator Hatch.

I thank the Chair.

Madam President, I have been listening to the debate this morning. I want to make one point. How did we get where we are? We have seen all this finger pointing. We have said that President Bush got us where we are, that we do not want to take responsibility for the fact he could not spend a penny we did not give him, and the vast majority--97 percent of the majority--voted for every appropriations bill that came through this place.

So when we point to other people, where we need to be pointing is to us. The vast majority of the majority party voted against every amendment. I offered over $10 billion per appropriations cycle on the bills. The vast majority voted against the cut. So I think if we are going to point to a pox on a house, it ought to come right here--the lack of responsibility, where we demonstrate with our actions every day we are much more interested in the next election than we are in the next generation.

We heard Senator Alexander today talking about that it is not our money, it is the taxpayers' money, and we are going to have to pay it back. Nobody alive in this room today will pay back any of this money. Their children and their grandchildren will pay back this money.

This bill is doing exactly the same thing we did to get into this mess. We are about to spend $1 trillion of money we don't have for the vast majority of the things in this bill that we don't need.

Let me explain to the American people a little bit of the workings in the Senate. There is about $300 billion worth of spending in the bill we have on the floor that has been put in there so we won't have to make hard choices when it comes to the appropriations bills that come through this body this year. So we take $300 billion that we know should be in the regular appropriations bills and we put it in this bill so we don't have to use regular order. That gives us more room to do more Government spending, more interference in the lives of Americans without being responsible for it. When I say $300 billion, the real cost is $600 billion.

It strikes me that if you were going to ask the American people how best to stimulate the economy and you are going to spend $1 trillion to do it, the best and smartest allocation of those resources would be to give the money back to the American people. In our wisdom, we think we know better than they do how to spend money. The thing that made this the greatest country in the world is this wonderful market capitalism that said people will serve their own best interests. We have the very ego to think we can decide for them.

I think we need some stimulus--I don't disagree with that--but I don't think we need to do it right now. I think we need to fix the mortgage market and the housing market and the credit market before we touch any kind of stimulus. If we do a stimulus, the best stimulus we could do would be to give the money back to the American people and let them allocate it in ways they know are best for them individually. That proposal was rejected out of hand. Now, why would that be rejected? Because we have this false sense that Washington knows better. Well, I will tell my colleagues the predicament we are in proves we don't. We don't know better, we don't have a clue, when we bring a $900 billion spending bill to the floor and we have accepted one amendment to cut $246 million out of it and we have had votes--both voice votes and recorded votes--on less than 20 amendments, and we are told by the majority leader we have to finish so we can get to conference. This bill ought to have 1,000 amendments on it, if we are truly going to do the work of the American people. We ought to debate this bill line by line. I will not agree to any unanimous consent until the next 15 amendments I have, have a scheduled time to be brought up so the American people can hear about all the stinky stuff that is in this bill.

The biggest earmark in history is in this bill: $2 billion. There are tons of things that need to come out of this bill. As the American people have learned what is in this bill, their common sense--which is on a one-for-one basis a thousandfold greater than our common sense as Senators--is being totally ignored. That is why the people in this country routinely are rejecting this bill now. You can do all the promotion of it you want; you can use all the moveon.org; you can do all the Web sites you want, but when they smell a skunk--their olfactory senses are quite acute--this is a skunk. This bill stinks. This bill is the biggest generational theft bill that has ever come through this body. What I mean by that is we have a standard of living in this country that is 30 percent greater than anywhere else in the world, and it will guarantee, this bill will guarantee your children and grandchildren will lose every bit of that edge, every bit of it.

So how did we get here? We got here by us thinking we knew better, by us ignoring the very principles that created this great country. Then we refused to admit it. We created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Then we blamed an administration when we tied their hands to fix it, and we say it is an administration's fault when it is our fault. We tried to socialize the risk so everybody in this country, even if they couldn't afford it, could have a home. Now what we are doing is we are going to charge our grandchildren to get us out of it when we were in a business where we never had any business. If you look at the enumerated powers of the Constitution, it gives us no authority whatsoever to do what we have done. So when we abandon the principles we were founded upon, we get in tremendously tall, deep weeds. That is where we find ourselves now.

The idea that we can borrow more money we don't have to spend on more things we don't need and ignore the wisdom of the average American citizen on how best to spend their money is insane. Yet we have spent 2\1/2\ days--that is all we have spent so far on a $1 trillion bill, 2\1/2\ days--and have had 20 votes, and now we are told by the majority leader we need to hurry up. ``Hurry up'' is what got us in this trouble. We need a methodical explanation to the American people for every line that is in this bill--every line item. We need an explanation of why we are putting in Medicaid funds to bail out the

States at twice the level of what the Governors actually asked for. Why would we do that? Because we know better. In our ultimate wisdom, we know better? And while we are talking about the States, the worst thing we can do is bail out the States because we will be transferring our wonderful illogic to the States and saying you don't have to be fiscally responsible. That is what we are going to be telling them, so that in the future, they won't put in a rainy day fund, as Oklahoma has, and plan for the future and control their spending increases. No, they will say: Don't worry about it; the Federal Government will come bail us out.

I am adamantly opposed to us transferring the absolute economic chaos we have created to the States. The States need to make hard choices now. We need to do what we need to do, which is fix housing, fix mortgages, fix the banking system. Then, when we have done that, which will fix all these other problems, then come with a real stimulus that allows the American people--the American people--much like what the majority of the McCain bill does--to decide how they are going to spend the money.

Since we are so down on the business sector in this country that creates all the jobs, small business and large business alike, why don't we think about maybe having a competitive tax on our corporations that is competitive with the rest of the world. No. What do we do? We have one 10 percent higher than anybody else in the world. Yet it is business's fault we are in this mess. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are in this mess because Congress put us in this mess; not any President, not Bill Clinton, not George Bush, and certainly not Barack Obama.

Let's be honest with the American people. Let's fess up: We don't know what we are doing. A $1 trillion bill was cobbled together in 4 weeks with earmarks like crazy through it for every special interest group that is out there so we can look good to certain of our buddies and especially the ones who give us campaign contributions. That is what describes this bill, not an ethical, methodical, ``how do we fix the problem we have'' kind of scrutiny that is required. You cannot fix a problem until you know what the problem is, and the problem is us. We created this mess, and our actions created this mess.

The President signed the children's health program. I am not opposed to a children's health program. I am not opposed to helping children get the health care they need. But this body rejected a way to do that which wouldn't have increased taxes $71 billion and would have covered every child. But, no, we are smarter than that because we want to tell people where they are going to get their health care and how they are going to get it. And then, when we can't afford it, do you know what we are going to do? We are going to ration it, just like every other country that has centralized control over their health care. Then what is going to happen to our cancer cure rates which are 50 percent higher than anywhere else in the world? They are going to be the same as the rest of the world: They are going to go down. Now we have comparative effectiveness that we want to put through that says the Government-- some Government bureaucrat is going to tell doctors how to practice medicine. That is in this too. We are going to have them tell us how to practice medicine. We forgot one thing on the way to the barn, and that is the practice of medicine is 40 percent art and 60 percent science and everywhere in the world, where they have a centralized government health care system, they have thrown out the art of medicine, which tends to deal with the whole person and how that interacts with the physical aspects of that person.

To me, it is deeply disappointing that we find ourselves where we are today. I don't think pointing fingers anywhere except back at ourselves accomplishes anything. Yet I have heard that three or four times this morning on the floor: It is somebody else's fault. No, it is not; it is our fault.

The first thing to getting healthy as addicts is to admit we have a problem. We need to be in a 10-step program. That is what we need, a 10-step program that will put us back on the board to where our Founding Fathers thought we ought to be and where the average American wants us to be. We are addicted to the ego of trying to run other people's lives. We are addicted to the ego of spending money, thinking we know best how to spend it. We are addicted to the ego that when somebody else has problems, we can always fix it. We can't always fix it. We can't fix all the problems that are in front of us today. The American people, through their own ingenuity and their own sacrifice, are going to have to make some hard choices. When we don't make hard choices, we are doubly guilty because what we have done is we have made the choices harder for them that they are going to have to make.

My prayer--and it is a prayer--is that we would, as a body, drop the words ``Democrat'' and ``Republican,'' drop the words ``conservative'' and ``liberal,'' and that our goal would be what is in the most efficient, long-term, best interests of those of us who are here today and those who are coming.

I ran a campaign to become Senator and the focus of my campaign, unfortunately, was we were about to find ourselves where we are today. I am so sorry I was right. I am so sorry I was right, but it doesn't take a lot of vision to see where we were going. Nobody has voted against President Bush and nobody has voted against more appropriations bills than me. It didn't have anything to do with party politics; it had everything to do with the future. Yet we find ourselves bogged down in debate.

I wish to add one other thing. One of the reasons we have to get out of here is because we have Members who have booked hotels this weekend. Tell me how many people in America think that is an important reason for us to hurry up and finish this bill. There is no reason for us to hurry up, No. 1. There is no reason for us not to look at every area of this bill and make sure the American people know about it. There is no reason for us not to do what the average man would do, and that is make priorities.

The other problem with this bill, which is extremely disappointing-- and I know it has to be to President Obama because he campaigned on a line-by-line look at the Federal Government to get rid of some of the $300 billion every year in waste, fraud, and abuse. That was one of his campaign issues. One of his campaign promises was to do competitive bidding on every contract over $25,000. There is not one mandate in this bill to force competitive bidding. That is one of the amendments I wish to offer, to force us to do competitive bidding. If we are going to pass this stinky bill, at least if we waste $1 trillion, we will waste it efficiently.

When I look at my grandkids, as does everybody else in this country, we wish for the best for our grandchildren. I have to tell my colleagues this body has put the first shackle already on their future. When we pass this bill, we are going to put that lock around their other leg and we are going to put a padlock on it and we are going to throw away the key and we are going to hobble them away from the American dream.

We are going to take it away. We are going to take away the very bright light shining on a hill. America, if you are listening, don't let this body do what it is about to do. It will ruin your children's future in the name of us knowing best rather than you knowing best.

Yes, the taxpayers lost $80 billion. I voted for the original TARP money because we were told that money was going to address the toxic assets, which is the problem we need to solve first.

I spoke on the floor two nights ago using the corollary of treating symptoms versus treating disease. This bill

treats symptoms; it doesn't treat disease. I know several colleagues are waiting to talk.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, isn't there a unanimous consent agreement that Senator Schumer goes next, then Senator Inhofe, and then somebody from the majority side, and then Senator Hutchison, and then somebody from the majority side, and then Senator Wicker, and then somebody from the majority side, and then Senator Hatch?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside to call up amendment No. 176.

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

Mr. President, this is a straightforward amendment. What this amendment says is that all the money we are going to spend in this bill, the American taxpayers are going to get value.

I am not going to win the debate on this bill. We are going to spend somewhere between $750 billion and $1 trillion, but the one thing we ought to be able to assure the American people is that when we go to spend the money, they are going to get value for it. This is an amendment that says there will be competitive bidding on all the contracts, all the agreements so we get real value. As malodorous as this bill is in terms of the spending that is not going to produce the first job, the one thing we ought to make sure of is that the American taxpayer is protected.

What we know from 40 hearings in the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee is the biggest problem we have in the Government today, besides waste, fraud, and abuse, is the fact that many of the Government contracts, in violation of Federal law, are never competitively bid. That does a couple things. One is it puts people who are connected to the Government in line to get a contract that is not necessarily the best value for our country. Whether that is lobbying here or lobbying at the executive branch, what we know is that at least $50 billion a year right now is wasted because we don't do competitive bidding.

All this amendment says is that if you are going to spend the money, if it is greater than $25,000--which is what President Obama has asked us to do--you competitively bid it. You don't play favorites; you make sure we get great value.

So my hope is nobody can find a fault with this agreement and this amendment that would say in common sense:

Everybody out there who is in business who is going to do something such as that, spend any significant amount of money, is going to get value for what they pay on their money. Every household is going to try to do that as they try to make decisions on how they spend money. So as we spend $900 billion on the items that can be let for contract, we ought to insist that there is competitive bidding.

What do we know right now in the Federal Government as far as waste where we have not competitively bid? Here is what we know. We spend as a government $64 billion a year on IT contracts--on IT contracts. The vast majority are not competitively bid. Some people may say: Well, that is no problem. Well, when you hear that 40 billion of them are in trouble, way outside the cost that we thought things were going to cost, what we see is the American taxpayer doesn't get any value when it comes to IT purchasing in the Federal Government. Whether that is the Pentagon, whether it is Homeland Security, whether it is the Small Business Administration, whether it is the Department of Energy, we get no value because 50 percent of the money we spend on IT ultimately gets wasted because we don't competitively contract it and competitively bid it.

Out of this $900 billion, there is somewhere around $400 billion of that which can, at one point or another, be competitively bid. To not competitively bid it says, first of all, we are not going to be able to spend it to create as many jobs as we would like if, in fact, we don't get value when we competitively bid it. So my hope is the chairman will consider this amendment take it under advisement. I would also relate that even in spite of the fact that sections 303 of the Federal Property and Administrative Act, 10 U.S. Code 2304 all require it, the Federal Government doesn't do it. Last year, in the Consolidated Federal Funds Report, the Federal agencies issued $1.2 trillion in financial assistance in 2008.

Mr. President, $400 billion of that was in grants, so that means grants need to be competitively bid; $453 billion in contracts and $22 billion in direct loans. A large portion of that was never competitively bid.

I will shorten the time I spend on this amendment. I ask for its consideration, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. President, first of all, let me thank the chairman for his kindness. I agree we should be going back and forth.

Whatever we do with this bill, we ought to determine what is most important and what is least important. When we take $900 billion and are about to spend it, we ought to do that in a way that again promotes value. We as a body oftentimes are resistant to make hard choices; I know that, but every family out there in our country today is making hard choices.

I found it peculiar, when this bill came to the floor, that it didn't include a prohibition that was in the House bill. Somewhat strange. What was in the House bill, which was passed by the House and agreed to by the House, was a prohibition on any funding to pay for aquariums, zoos, golf courses, swimming pools, stadiums, parks, theaters,

art centers or highway beautification projects. Somehow, strangely, it was left out of the Senate bill.

So I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside to call up my amendment No. 309.

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

What this amendment does is it prohibits stimulus funding to pay for casinos, museums, aquariums, zoos, golf courses, swimming pools, stadiums, parks, theaters, art centers or highway beautification projects. I am not necessarily against those, but if we are going to spend money, we ought to spend money on the highest priority things first, not the finer things that we can't afford.

We cannot afford to spend a penny on a museum right now with the trouble we are in. We cannot afford to spend a penny on a golf course with the trouble we are in. We cannot afford to spend a penny on theaters or art centers or highway beautification. Those are not a priority. Plus, most of those won't generate near the jobs as if we were spending it on something more substantive. There are billions of dollars in this bill for various grant programs for State and local governments, for supposedly local shovel-ready projects. How do we know that? Because the U.S. Conference of Mayors has a wish list of shovel- ready spending projects entitled Main Street Recovery Ready-to-Go Infrastructure Report. It includes billions in questionable and wasteful projects that should never be funded by the taxpayers, even if we had extra money--which we don't--and certainly should not be funded at this time, with the limited dollars we have and the way we are funding. We are not borrowing--no, we are stealing this money from our grandkids.

I will.

Does the Senator have another question?

That is true.

No.

No.

Yes.

Yes.

Mr. President, I thank my fine friend from Kansas for those questions.

As I was saying before I was interrupted for a question, the U.S. Conference of Mayors has a wish list. I would do the same thing. But I want my colleagues to hear what is going across the legislatures of all the States right now: How much of this money can we get so we don't have to do the hard job in our legislature right now to make cuts we need to make? How much of this money can we get?

They just happened to have 31,000 requests totaling $73.2 billion. I thought the American people would like to hear what some of them are because I guarantee you, we will fund them. We are going to fund them. If this bill passes, we are going to fund them unless we accept this amendment.

How about $192.6 million for 12 projects directed to stadiums, including $150 million for a Metromover extension to Marlin Stadium in Miami, FL, where their average attendance is less than 45 percent, less than 16,000 fans? Is that a priority for the country right now? It is not a priority. Unless we agree to this amendment, that kind of stuff is going to get funded.

How about $87 million for 56 projects on paths? Right now, when we are stealing $1 trillion from our grandchildren, is it a priority for this country to build bicycle paths? Tell me that is a priority. Tell the American people that is a priority.

How about $700,000 to plant 1,600 trees along the sidewalks in Providence, RI? Is that a priority? Because once this bill moves out of here, it is out of your control, and the bureaucrats are going to grant it based on the pressure you put on them, not on a competitive basis but based on what greases the skids the most.

How about $500,000 for eco-friendly golf course improvements in Dayton, OH? We like that one?

How about $8.4 million for a brandnew polar bear exhibit at the zoo in Providence, RI? Is that really a priority? When we are in this kind of trouble, we are going to be building zoos? That is what the Senate says we should do with this money, allow zoos to be built?

I like this one: $6.1 million for corporate jet hangars in Fayetteville, AR. Those are the kinds of jobs we want to create? We want to create that kind of program?

How about $100,000 to rehabilitate a skateboard park in Alameda, CA? We are going to take $100,000 from our kids to rehabilitate a skateboard park. That is what the American people want us to do with this money to put people to work?

How about the Sunset View Dog Park in Chula Vista, CA? Just half a million dollars. That is on this list.

If we do not accept this amendment, then tons of this stuff is going to go through--low priority, not high priority job creating but everybody's wish list in the country. When they heard this bill was first coming, every city across this country said: Well, what can we get? When you run a country that way, you can expect to get these kinds of requests.

In this request is a new museum for Las Vegas, a mob museum. We will spend $50 million on a mob museum? That is really a priority right now for American citizens, especially their grandchildren who are still in the womb who are going to come out owing $500,000 as soon as they hit the ground? If we do not add this amendment to this bill, tons of stuff just like this is going to be included.

Let me tell you the other justification for this. One of the best functioning things we have is a library and

museum grant-seeking body. They have done a wonderful job through the last few years, except when we earmark around them, which we do routinely every year. But they go through an ordered process.

What is going to happen is this is going to go around the ordered process again, and we are going to take away competitive grants. They are the only agency in the Federal Government that 100 percent follows up on every grant. They know the quality of the grants they give, and they never give another one if it was not quality. They make people pay back if it was not quality. There is nothing in this bill that will require us to get back the money from people who abuse the process.

In the next appropriations bill--probably the one that is coming in the next week or so--we are going to have well over $100 million for museums. I guarantee you, it is probably in the omnibus that is coming. I bet you we have $100 million in there in spite of this $900 billion bill. I guarantee you we have $100 million in it. Maybe by me mentioning it we will not have it when it comes to the floor. I don't know.

There is nothing in here that would say, if you are a highly endowed museum, you cannot get this money. Are we going to give the same amount of money to any museum, even when several have $1 billion or $2 billion in endowment? There is no direction in this bill. None.

The golf course industry in the United States boasts approximately 12,000 golf courses. There is no prohibition in this bill that any of this money will not be spent building golf courses. Again, if you don't believe me, ask your 6-year-old grandchild: Do you think we ought to borrow your future to pay for a golf course in this country right now? There is no prohibition on that. It is going to happen. We all know it is going to happen.

To go back to the mayors' wish list: $5 million for golf course renovations in Shreveport, LA; $1.2 million for a new golf park restoration in Brockton, MA; $1.5 million to replace the golf clubhouse in Roseville, MN; $2.1 million for Forest Park and urban golf renovation in St. Louis; $3 million for golf clubhouse replacement in Lincoln, NE; $500,000 for an environmentally friendly golf course in Dayton, OH; and $3 million for renovation of a golf course building in Hawaii.

I know it is hard to put a bill such as this together, and I am not meaning to be overly critical, but I believe that unless we put a prohibition on what the money can go for, the money is going to go for low-priority items. I think it is reprehensible that we would not put a limit on the worst tendencies of local governments, the worst tendencies of State governments, and our own worst tendencies to spend money, especially when it is 100 percent borrowed; that we would not limit ourselves, that we would not put a choke chain on us to make sure we don't allow projects to go this way.

I have talked about this long enough. I appreciate the indulgence of the chairman.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and I call up an amendment.

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

Mr. President, we are in the midst of debating a ``stimulus bill'' that has been brought forth in the hopes of alleviating some of the economic pain we have in this country.

Principally, I object to many of the provisions in the bill because they are not stimulatory whatsoever. We all know that. We are going to add $1.2 trillion to the debt and we are not fixing the real problem this country is encountering, and that is the absolute collapse of the housing industry. We can spend all the money we want to spend on ``stimulus'' packages--which this one isn't--and it is not going to do a thing, unless we fix housing and the liquidity crisis.

I bring up this amendment because it shows how misaligned this bill is. This amendment seeks to eliminate a $246 million earmark. It is nothing but that. It is a tax earmark for the movie industry. Let's put the history out there. The movie industry today can take advantage and write off all of its

production costs and take an additional $15 million out of the taxpayers' pocket for every movie they produce in this country, of which 75 percent of the expenses are actually incurred in this country. What we have added is an earmark to markedly increase all movies produced in 2009, which is an additional $246 million.

I am not against tax breaks that are general across the board and will be truly a stimulus, but this is a tax break earmark that has a tremendous odor to it. The odor is this: We already created tax breaks, starting in 2004, for the movie industry that are greater than we have for any other industry, and now we are going to add to it--at a time when Hollywood is at one of its zeniths of success. As a matter of fact, yesterday in USA Today is the headline: ``Billion Dollar January is the Box Office's Best in History.''

They had the best January in their history--more profits, more revenue, a 20-percent increase in ticket sales. Yet we are going to take a stimulus bill and add another quarter of a billion dollars to one of the few industries in our country that is faring well.

To quote Rob Reiner, whom most people know--and I think this is probably disappointing to him--this is what he said when asked about Hollywood's relationship with Washington, DC:

We are a special interest group that doesn't ask for

anything, like earmarks, legislation, or tax breaks. We are

the one industry that doesn't ask for a quid pro quo.

What have we done in this bill? We have sent a quarter of a billion dollars of our grandkids' money to some of the most profitable businesses in this country, which at this point in time have not been impacted and don't project to be impacted at all by the recession we are currently experiencing.

This isn't stimulus; this is a gift. It is not going to stimulate the economy at all. What it is going to do is line the pockets of very wealthy individuals who are already not experiencing the downside of the economy. What we should have instead is tax breaks that go across the board to every small business and to every large business. If it is written that way, I would not object if Hollywood got some of the money. But we have singled out one industry to give them special treatment, when they already get special treatment under the Tax Code. This is not an appropriations earmark, this is a Finance Committee earmark. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee is on the floor as we speak. It is not aimed at him.

How long are we going to continue to play this game? How long are we going to continue to confuse the American people about what we are doing? I want the American people to respect what we are doing in this body. When we do things such as this and sneak in a quarter of a billion dollars for our friends, when they don't need it, because we can, we demean this institution. But more importantly, we contribute to the undermining of confidence in this country, showing that we are not about the best interests of all Americans, but instead the best interests of the special interests that have effective lobbying that can get a quarter of a billion dollars for this industry into a bill.

I will come back later and talk on this again. I want the people in America to ask a simple question: Is this something we ought to be doing right now to help and heal America? Is it going to help people who are out of work? Is it going to help in terms of restarting the engine of consumer spending? Is it going to do the things we need to do to make a difference in our economic situation in the world today? The answer, on this special interest earmark, is absolutely not. What we are going to do is benefit those who are doing the best in the economy today, not those who are doing the worst.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I wanted to respond to some comments by the chairman of the Finance Committee. The explanation of why we have a $250 million earmark for the movie industry was that when we attempted to give them this earmark before, somebody took it out, and now we are going to put it back. The consequence, however, belies the fact that we are only doing this for 1 year. If it is something they deserve and it should be equal, why wouldn't it be there every year?

The second point is that the movie industry gets to take advantage of every depreciation out there that every other business has. There was some debate in the House last year on whether they were truly manufacturers. But they also now have $15 million for every movie in direct writeoffs above their depreciation if they produce 75 percent of those costs in this country. If they do it in a low employment area, they get another $20 million. To say we are righting something that was wrong before doesn't fit with common sense. If we are righting it, let's put it in forever--if that is what we are trying to do. But in this bill we do it for 2009 only.

The second point I will make is that this bill is without any sacrifice. When President Obama was elected, one of the things he campaigned on was an item-by-item look at the Federal budget, to get rid of programs that don't work, get rid of lower priority programs that might work but are not efficient and are not a priority.

Nowhere in this bill is there an elimination of one Government program--not one. There is no line by line. There is no attempt to do what we are asking Americans to do every day. Here is

what we are asking them to do: We are in tough financial straits. Go through your budget, figure out what you cannot afford, and eliminate it.

We have not done that at all with this bill. There is no attempt to make the Federal Government more efficient. This bill is filled with bloating bureaucracies, further lessening liberty and freedom by way of having bureaucracies decide what we will have to follow.

I am not against the movie industry. I love the movies they produce-- the vast majority; some I abhor. But I enjoy their entertainment and the fact that they are profitable and viable. They have been very successful this last year. They had the best January in their history. For us to put a quarter of a billion dollars into an earmarked tax benefit for the movie industry at a time when Americans are struggling belies the honor and integrity of this institution.

With that, I retain the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask the Senator, if I am a manufacturer and I don't have $15 million that I can come up with in bonus depreciation, do I still get to write off $15 million?

Mr. President, let me reclaim my time. The fact is, this is a tremendous advantage to them compared to other businesses. They already have a program from which they get $15 million. Then they can add another $20 million. The average cost for a film is less than 100 million bucks. We are writing off $35 million out of the Tax Code immediately before this provision even begins, and we are going to add another quarter of a billion dollars this year for just 2009, which would say we are going to treat them differently than we treat everybody else in this country.

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

Mr. President, one of the things the American people have not heard about is everything that is in this bill. I want to spend some time tonight outlining the situation we are in as a nation, the fact that we have never had a bill this large at any time, in any way, shape, or form.

I want to first start out by noting my experience as a physician. The greatest mistake physicians make is when they don't listen to the patient. One of the things we know is, if we don't listen to patients when they are sick, we end up making a lot of mistakes. The other thing we know as physicians is that if we treat just the symptoms of a disease, what we oftentimes do is worsen the disease. I want to use an example of pneumonia. I will relate to this example throughout the time I talk.

If you come to me as a physician and you have a cough, a pain in your chest, a fever, and you are ill, I can make your symptoms go away, but I won't cure the underlying pneumonia you have as a patient. I can give you a cough medicine to suppress your cough. I can give you an antipyretic to control your temperature. I can give you, with that cough medicine, something to control the pain in your chest. I can do all those things. But if I fail to diagnose your real problem, which is pneumonia, all I am doing is covering up the symptoms of the real disease.

I would contend with my colleagues and the American public that the bill we have before us is a bill that covers up the symptoms of the real disease. The real disease we have is the fact that housing and mortgages are in trouble. Everything we do that does not address that disease first, that does not attempt to solve that problem, everything we do that does not address the real disease we have is going to be wasted effort. It is not going to accomplish its purpose. As a matter of fact, there is not an economist out there right now who says if we pass this bill without fixing the mortgage problem, without fixing the housing problem--none of them agree that what we are going to do is going to have a significant impact. There is not one. You can't get one to come and testify unless you fix the real problem.

We as American citizens are on the hook for 31 million mortgages.

We have 31 million we now own--Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--so whatever happens to those mortgages, the American people are going to pay for them. If they are upside down and they get worse or if they go worse underwater, if they get foreclosed upon, the American taxpayers are going to have to pay for them. Now, who is that American taxpayer? It is not us. We are going to be dead and gone when it comes time to pay off the massive amounts of borrowing we are putting forward in this bill. That American taxpayer is our kids and our grandkids. So we dare not make the mistake of treating just symptoms.

My contention is we are way too early with a stimulus bill. We can spend this $1.12 trillion by the time you add in the interest plus the six point some billion dollars we just added on top of it without paying for it. We can pass this bill. But we run the risk of doing exactly what the Japanese did in the 1990s. They passed eight separate stimulus bills, none of which addressed the real underlying disease of the Japanese economy. That is why it is called the ``lost decade'' in Japan. They now have a debt to GDP ratio of 150 percent of their GDP.

So what are we to do? Are we to continue down this path with a bill that is going to spend over $1 trillion or should we be about fixing the real disease, which is the housing and the mortgage problems this country faces?

Now, it is not easy to fix that. I know that. And I am not putting forward a definitive plan tonight to do that, although I think my side of the aisle is going to be offering one in the next few days that will address the real disease: housing and mortgages in this country.

We got here--and it is important to remember how we got here, how we got the ``pneumonia''--we got the ``pneumonia'' because we said we were going to socialize the risk on mortgages so people in this country could buy a home who really could not afford a home, and we were going to put that risk on the rest of the American taxpayers.

Well, that bill has come home. That bill now--besides the cost of actually being responsible for the 31-some million failed mortgages, of which probably 30 or 40 percent we are going to end up owning as American taxpayers; besides that cost, the cost in terms of lost jobs, the cost in terms of true, real pain to American citizens who are having trouble feeding their families, paying their bills, the real cost of that is enormous on our society.

What I want the American people to know is we caused that. We did that. We created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and then we did not do the regulatory work we should have done. We encouraged them to be irresponsible. We encouraged them to have bonuses, by making more and more and more of the loans and guaranteeing them and packaging them and selling them throughout the world. We did that. The

Congress did that. No President did that--not President Clinton, not President Bush, and not President Obama. We did it. So we ought to be about fixing the real problem.

Until we fix this problem, we are going to stay in a recession. We can pass a bill that spends $1.12 trillion, and we are still going to be in a recession because what the economists tell us this year is that home prices are going to decline another 11 to 12 percent, which is going to put millions more Americans and their mortgages in trouble. So we can pass a bill that spends $1.12 trillion or we can say maybe we ought to address the real problem.

It is not going to be long until the Obama administration comes to this body and asks for $500 billion more to solve the problem with bank loans and mortgages. We ought to be doing that first. That is the real disease. There is not anybody in this body who will deny that the real disease is the housing and the mortgage failure in this country.

We are going to spend a week on this legislation. It is going to go to conference. It is going to come back. Most of the stuff we are able to take back is going to be added in conference because the power to do that is there, and it is incumbent on the other side of the aisle that they are going to take care of those who are on their team.

I want to make another point. In this bill we are talking about, we are making a fatal mistake. Let me tell you what that fatal mistake is. We are transferring the irresponsibility we have had over the last 6 years in this Congress--or last 8 years in this Congress--to the States because what we are telling them is: You do not have to be fiscally responsible. You do not have to live within your means because Uncle Sam is going to bail you out. That is what this bill says. We are going to bail them out.

So for the States, such as my State, that were smart enough and wise enough to create a rainy day fund and live within their means, we are going to ask all the taxpayers of all the States that have done that to pay for the exorbitant spending and growth in Government in all the rest of the States.

What is that going to do in the future? What is the signal that sends to the rest of the States? Here is what the signal says. Do not worry about it because if you get in trouble again, the Federal Government is going to bail you out.

Remember when New York City was going bankrupt? What did we do? Did we just pay for everything? Did we just send Federal money? No. We created an environment where they made the changes. We helped them. And I am not opposed to helping the States make the changes to put them back on a fiscal course to live within their means.

The other thing that is bad about this bill is every American family out there today--I do not care what their income is--they are reassessing every day what they need to do in terms of how to get by in the economic situation in which we find ourselves. They are making tough choices. There is not one tough choice in this bill. Let me explain what I mean by that.

President Obama campaigned on the fact that we ought to live within our means; that every program ought to be reviewed; that those that are not effective, those that have waste, those that have high fraud rates, those that are low priority ought to be eliminated. There is not one penny of effort placed in this bill that will get rid of less important Federal programs today.

We know there is at least $300 billion a year that is inefficiently, erroneously, and fraudulently spent by the Federal Government. We ask our children and our grandchildren to choke down $1.1 trillion more of debt when we have not done anything--not one thing--to lessen the waste, fraud, and abuse, the inefficiency, and to make choices on what is more important. What we are saying is everything we are doing now is important, everything we are doing is efficient, everything is working fine, and, by the way, we are going to add another $1.1 trillion.

I have this chart to show how we got in trouble--because we were spending money we did not have on things we do not need. That is how we got in trouble. This chart shows the deficits of the Federal Government from 2004, plus what CBO expects, without interest costs, by the way, as to what is going to happen to us.

We know, last year, under real accounting, accounting for the Social Security money we stole--and that is the only way you can say it; we stole about $160 billion out of the Social Security system--the real deficit, last year, set a record we have never seen. It was $609 billion. That is as of September 30. The estimate of CBO for this year is we are going to have--before we even talk about stimulus, before we do anything on stimulus, and before we account for the interest costs on stimulus--we are going to have a $1.2 trillion deficit.

Now, divide that out by 300 million Americans, and what you see is we are going to have a deficit of about $16,000 per family. For every family in this country, we are going to borrow $16,000 against their kids' future before we do this, before we even approach doing this. It does not get a lot better. Note these numbers: $1.4 trillion, if we add what the CBO expects to come out of this stimulus package, and only one-fourth of it is going to get spent this year.

Now, what do we know about stimulus packages in the past? Here is what we know. Only two times in our history--only two times in our history--have we ever had a stimulus package that was effective. Two times. John Fitzgerald Kennedy created a stimulus package that was effective, and Ronald Reagan, in the early 1980s, created a stimulus package that was effective. All of the others have been ineffective to fix what was ailing us.

If we do not fix the mortgage problem in this country, and housing, this money will be to no avail other than to shackle our children and our grandchildren for years to come. What does that mean when I say ``shackle''? It means stealing their future. Right now the average American has a 30-percent higher standard of living than the average European and the average Japanese. What we are about to do--and we have been doing--is to guarantee that 30-percent advantage in standard of living is going to go away.

Other people say: Well, you have to fix the finance, you have to fix the credit markets, you have to fix the liquidity markets. You cannot fix the credit markets, you cannot fix the liquidity problems we have by spending money. We have already spent $400 billion of the TARP money, and other than pulling us back from the precipice of an absolute collapse of our financial markets, we still have the credit markets tied up and frozen in this country.

I want to give you an example. I have a farmer friend who has been banking with a bank for 15 years. He has never missed a payment. He has been 100 percent on his payments every time. He has assets far in excess of what his loans are--far in excess--15, 20 times what his loans are. He was told this last week by his bank: We don't want your business anymore.

Now, this is a guy who is a premium credit risk. Why do they not want his business? Because they want the money in the bank rather than to have even a good loan outstanding.

Our credit problems are not getting better. They are getting worse. We have not solved the problem by putting money on the equity side of the balance sheets of the banks. The reason we have not solved the problem is because we have not approached and fixed the real disease, which is the mortgage markets and the mortgages that are underwater and the housing crisis in this country.

I want to spend a moment on another issue. A lot of the rhetoric we have heard in the last 3 or 4 months in this country goes after markets and capitalism. Market forces and capitalism in this country created the greatest country that has ever been or ever will be. When we hear market forces and capitalism criticized as the cause of all of our problems, we need to do a gut check.

Market forces and capitalism didn't cause this problem. Congress caused this problem, by our short-term thinking, by thinking, How do I look good politically, how do I do something that isn't based on markets? That is what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were all about. We were actually giving loans to people who couldn't afford them. It wasn't market capitalism that got us in trouble, it was short-term, politically expedient thinking that got us in trouble. So the next time you hear

somebody attacking the very thing that generated liberty, that very thing that generated freedom, the very thing that generated the greatest standard of living in the world, you ought to ask the question: Is that true? Did market capitalism get us in this trouble?

What got us in this trouble was creating a socialized risk that abandoned the market principles and created a system of loans to people who could not afford the loans.

One of the questions I think we ought to ask--at least the American taxpayer ought to be asking every Member of Congress--is what guarantee do you have that passing this $1.12 trillion spending bill is going to solve the problem? You know what. There is not a guarantee out there. No Member of Congress can tell them that. We are going to treat the symptoms with this bill. We are going to solve some of the short-term problems. We are going to create dependency from the States. We are going to outline and do things we have no business doing. We are going to expand Federal bureaucracies. We are going to raise the baseline to $300 billion that will never go away. That is what we are going to do with this bill. We are going to emphasize and fund the most inefficient bureaucracies in the world, not on the basis of what is the best thing to do but because we will look good and we will help out somebody who needs our help right now.

I am not opposed to us helping people who are unemployed. I am not opposed to giving extra food stamps to people who find themselves, through no fault of their own, in a predicament they can't change, but that is not what this bill does. What this bill does is take a list of policy options that have been on the table for years and funds them in enormous, extravagant amounts, that will have no impact--zero impact-- in terms of getting us out of a recession, and will have a 100-percent impact in guaranteeing we are going to lower the standard of living in this country and we are going to steal opportunity from our children.

Let's look at where we are right now as a nation. At the end of this year, we will have an $11.6 trillion debt, probably an $11.8 trillion debt, very close to our total GDP. We have $95 billion in unfunded liabilities we are going to place on the backs of our children and our grandchildren through Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare Part D--things we are going to give people that they have not paid for or we have stolen the money that was there to pay for them, and we are going to transfer that to our children.

Last year, we paid, as Americans, $230 billion in interest. Do you know what it is going to be 2 years from now? It is going to be $450 billion. How many people think the interest rates we are seeing today are going to be stable and the same 5 years from now? All of the economists tell us they are not. As the world looks toward us and we continue to borrow--we have increased our debt by $5 trillion by the time you take what the Federal Reserve has done and what the Treasury has done--how many people think we are going to be able to borrow money for 10 years for 2.6 percent? No economist thinks that. They know it is going to rise 2 or 3 percent. So we are going to go from about 16 percent of our budget for interest payments to about 40 percent of our budget for interest payments. What are we going to do then? The very real important things we need to do--not the superfluous stuff; the important things the Constitution says we should be doing--what are we going to do then? Are we going to borrow more?

What happens when we borrow more? What happens when we borrow more is interest rates go up, inflation goes up, and we have one of two choices: We can file bankruptcy as a nation or we can have hyperinflation and a marked devaluation of the value of the dollar. What does that mean? That means you won't be able to keep up with your payments, you won't be able to buy a home, the cost of any good that is imported in here will rise astronomically. This is Armageddon for us. While we are in this shape, how dare we think we can spend money we don't have now on things we don't need now and get out of a problem that was caused by the very same philosophy: It cannot happen and it will not happen.

Let me outline what we have done so far in terms of this ``economic downturn.'' Last April, we borrowed $160 billion from our grandkids and we gave everybody a tax credit under $75,000 a year or $150,000 for families. We didn't pay for a penny of it. We didn't get rid of one wasteful program. We didn't make one hard choice. What do the economists tell us we did with that? What was the net effect? The net effect was that 12 percent of it had an effect. Twelve percent. Now, crank that up to $1.1 trillion at 12 percent, which is what the estimate is of this bill in terms of what kind of effect it is going to have. We are going to have about $120 billion that is going to have a positive effect, and then we are going to have another $850 billion or $860 billion that is going to have no effect whatsoever except to steal the future from our kids and our grandkids.

We are going in exactly the wrong direction. We ought to be standing on the principles that made this country great. There ought to be a review of every program in the Federal Government that is not effective, that is not efficient, that is wasteful or fraudulent, and we ought to get rid of it right now. We ought to say, Gone, to be able to pay for a real stimulus plan that might, in fact, have some impact.

I would be remiss if I didn't remind everybody that next week we are going to hear from the Obama administration wanting another $500 billion. Outside of this, they are going to want another $500 billion to handle the banking system. Still not fixing the real disease--the pneumonia--we are going to treat the fever or treat the cough, but we are not going to treat the real disease. Until we treat the real disease, this is pure waste. It is worse than pure waste. It is morally reprehensible, because it steals the future of the next two generations.

I am going to wind up here and finish, but I wanted to spend some time to make sure the American people know what is in this bill. I think once they know what is in this bill, they are going to reject it out of hand. Let me read for my colleagues some of the things that are in this bill. The biggest earmark in history is in this bill. There is $2 billion in this bill to build a coal plant with zero emissions. That would be great, maybe, if we had the technology, but the greatest brains in the world sitting at MIT say we don't have the technology yet to do that. Why would we build a $2 billion powerplant we don't have the technology for that we know will come back and ask for another $2 billion and another $2 billion and another $2 billion when we could build a demonstration project that might cost $150 million or $200 million? There is nothing wrong with having coal-fired plants that don't produce pollution; I am not against that. Even the Washington Post said the technology isn't there. It is a boondoggle. Why would we do that?

We eliminated tonight a $246 million payback for the large movie studios in Hollywood.

We are going to spend $88 million to study whether we ought to buy a new ice breaker for the Coast Guard. You know what. The Coast Guard needs a new ice breaker. Why do we need to spend $88 million? They have two ice breakers now that they could retrofit and fix and come up with equivalent to what they needed to and not spend the $1 billion they are going to come back and ask for, for another ice breaker, so why would we spend $88 million doing that?

We are going to spend $448 million to build the Department of Homeland Security a new building. We have $1.3 trillion worth of empty buildings right now, and because it has been blocked in Congress we can't sell them, we can't raze them, we can't do anything, but we are going to spend money on a new building here in Washington. We are going to spend another $248 million for new furniture for that building; a quarter of a billion dollars for new furniture. What about the furniture the Department of Homeland Security has now? These are tough times. Should we be buying new furniture? How about using what we have? That is what a family would do. They would use what they have. They wouldn't go out and spend $248 million on furniture.

How about buying $600 million worth of hybrid vehicles? Do you know what I would say? Right now times are tough; I would rather Americans have new cars than Federal employees have new cars. What is wrong with the cars we have? Dumping $600 million worth

of used vehicles on the used vehicle market right now is one of the worst things we could do. Instead, we are going to spend $600 million buying new cars for Federal employees.

There is $400 million in here to prevent STDs. I have a lot of experience on that. I have delivered 4,000 babies. We don't need to spend $400 million on STDs. What we need to do is properly educate about the infection rates and the effectiveness of methods of prevention. That doesn't take a penny more. You can write that on one piece of paper and teach every kid in this country, but we don't need to spend $400 million on it. It is not a priority.

How about $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs? That might even be somewhat stimulative. New sewers. That might create jobs.

How about $150 million for a Smithsonian museum? Tell me how that helps get us out of a recession. Tell me how that is a priority. Would the average American think that is a priority that we ought to be mortgaging our kids' future to spend another $150 million at the Smithsonian?

How about $1 billion for the 2010 census? So everybody knows, the census is so poorly managed that the census this year is going to cost twice--in 2010 is going to cost twice what it cost 10 years ago, and we wasted $800 million on a contract because it was no-bid that didn't perform. Nobody got fired, no competitive bidding, and we blew $800 million.

We have $75 million for smoking cessation activities, which probably is a great idea, but we just passed a bill--the SCHIP bill--that we need to get 21 million more Americans smoking to be able to pay for that bill. That doesn't make sense.

How about $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges? Since when is a community college in my State a recipient of Federal largesse? Is that our responsibility? I mean, did we talk with Dell and Hewlett-Packard and say, How do we make you all do better? Is there not a market force that could make that better? Will we actually buy on a true competitive bid? No, because there is nothing that requires competitive bidding in anything in this bill. There is nothing that requires it. It is one of the things President Obama said he was going to mandate at the Federal Government, but there is no competitive bidding in this bill at all.

We have $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas. Well, that will put 10 or 15 people to work. Is that a priority for us right now?

There is $6 billion to turn Federal buildings into green buildings. That is a priority, versus somebody getting a job outside of Washington, a job that actually produces something, that actually increases wealth?

How about $500 million for State and local fire stations? Where do you find in the Constitution us paying for local fire stations within our realm of prerogatives? None of it is competitively bid--not a grant program.

Next is $1.2 billion for youth activities. Who does that employ? What does that mean?

How about $88 million for renovating the public health service building? You know, if we could sell half of the $1.3 trillion worth of properties we have, we could take care of every Federal building requirement and backlog we have.

Then there's $412 million for CDC buildings and property. We spent billions on a new center and headquarters for CDC. Is that a priority? Building another Government building instead of--if we are going to spend $412 million on building buildings, let's build one that will produce something, one that will give us something.

How about $850 million for that most ``efficient'' Amtrak that hasn't made any money since 1976 and continues to have $2 billion or $3 billion a year in subsidies?

Here is one of my favorites: $75 million to construct a new ``security training'' facility for State Department security officers, and we have four other facilities already available to train them. But it is not theirs. They want theirs. By the way, it is going to be in West Virginia. I wonder how that got there. So we are going to build a new training facility that duplicates four others that we already have that could easily do what we need to do. But because we have a stimulus package, we are going to add in oink pork.

How about $200 million in funding for a lease--not buying, but a lease of alternative energy vehicles on military installations? We are going to bail out the States on Medicaid. Total all of the health programs in this, and we are going to transfer $150 billion out of the private sector and we are going to move it to the Federal Government. You talk about backdooring national health care. Henry Waxman has to be smiling big today. He wants a single-payer Government-run health care system. We are going to move another $150 billion to the Federal Government from the private sector.

We are going to eliminate fees on loans from the Small Business Administration. You know what that does? That pushes productive capital to unproductive projects. It is exactly the wrong thing to do.

Then there is $160 million to the Job Corps Program--but not for jobs and not to put more people in the Job Corps but to construct or repair buildings.

We are going to spend $524 million for information technology upgrades that the Appropriations Committee claims will create 388 jobs. If you do the math on that, that is $1.5 million a job. Don't you love the efficiency of Washington thinking?

We are going to create $79 billion in additional money for the States, a ``slush fund,'' to bail out States and provide millions of dollars for education costs. How many of you think that will ever go away? Once the State education programs get $79 billion over 2 years, do you think that will ever go away? The cry and hue of taking our money away--even though it was a stimulus and supposed to be limited, it will never go away. So we will continue putting that forward until our kids have grandkids of their own.

There is about $47 billion for a variety of energy programs that are primarily focused on renewable energy. I am fine with spending that. But we ought to get something for it. There ought to be metrics. There are no metrics. It is pie in the sky, saying we will throw some money at it. Let me conclude by saying we are at a seminal moment in our country. We will either start living within the confines of realism and responsibility or we will blow it and we will create the downfall of the greatest Nation that ever lived. This bill is the start of that downfall. To abandon a market-oriented society and transfer it to a Soviet-style, government-centered, bureaucratic-run and mandated program, that is the thing that will put the stake in the heart of freedom in this country.

I hope the American people know what is in this bill. I am doing everything I can to make sure they know. But more important, I hope somebody is listening who will treat the ``pneumonia'' we are faced with today, which is the housing and mortgage markets. It doesn't matter how much money we spend in this bill. It is doomed to failure unless we fix that problem first. Failing that, we will go down in history as the Congress that undermined the future and vitality of this country. Let it not be so.

Mr. President, I appreciate the indulgence of you and the staff. With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, short of 15 minutes; probably 15 minutes.

Madam President, I thank the chairman for his graciousness, and I thank the ranking member.

Last week in the Judiciary Committee, I voted against the nomination of Eric Holder. I was not, because of time constraints, offered the opportunity to express my reasoning and logic for that opposition. Today, I rise to explain my opposition and to urge others to share my concerns to do the same.

I have high praise for Eric Holder as an individual and as a lawyer. I believe certain aspects, however, of his record disqualify him as serving as Attorney General. I plan on outlining those in this talk before the Senate today, specifically, his facilitation of the Marc Rich pardon, his defense as reasonable of the FALN terrorists' commutations, in addition to his views on the first amendment and second amendment, specifically his answers with respect to the fairness doctrine.

Eric Holder has spent most of his distinguished career as a public servant. By all accounts, he is a brilliant lawyer. His nomination was met with high praise from both sides of the aisle. His intellect and ability have been noted throughout his career, and they were duly noted in his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Moreover, I believe him to be a man of good character. The long line of individuals who have voiced support for his nomination speaks to the high regard in which he is clearly held. In our private meeting, I found him to be personable and kind. He is undoubtedly a good man.

These good qualities, however, are not enough to overcome the concerns I have with this nomination. In particular, four issues have caused me to conclude that Eric Holder should not be given the assignment as the next Attorney General of the United States. I believe these matters suggest he lacks judgment, that he lacks independence, and my concern is that he now, from his testimony, lacks candor for such an important job.

Eric Holder's role in facilitating the controversial pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich is perhaps the most notorious blight on his record. Even now, 10 years later, the condemnation of that pardon is strong. Indeed, not even Mr. Holder will defend his actions, telling the committee it was a naive mistake.

Eric Holder's involvement in this unconscionable pardon suggests he has dangerously poor judgment or he has an inability to say no to powerful political pressure. As Deputy Attorney General, he orchestrated an end run around the Justice Department, ignoring the advice of prosecutors and career professionals who opposed clemency for Marc Rich. Although pardoning a fugitive was extremely rare, the candidate appeared to have no qualms with the proposition.

While he acknowledges his role in this pardon as a mistake, Mr. Holder offers a curious explanation for the error. He told the committee he was not familiar with Rich's record at the time of the pardon. First of all, I find this to be unbelievable, as the facts suggest otherwise.

Just a few years before the pardon, when Holder was U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, his office sued one of Rich's companies after an extensive investigation into contract fraud. The complaint that was filed in that case and comments that were made to the press make it almost impossible to believe Eric Holder was unfamiliar with Rich at the time of the pardon.

Moreover, given that Rich had been featured as one of the FBI's top 10 most wanted fugitives, it is even harder to believe Mr. Holder did not become familiar with the man in the 15 months that passed between the time he was first contacted by Rich's lawyer and the day clemency was issued.

To say that this pardon was a mistake is an understatement of the worst kind. As others have pointed out, the best thing Eric Holder could have done for himself and his boss would have been to oppose the pardon and convince President Clinton not to issue it.

While I readily acknowledge mistakes are inevitably made by us all, I find the excuse for this one implausible. Eric Holder is a bright and contentious lawyer. At the time of the Rich pardon, he had served for 3 years as Deputy Attorney General. In short, he should have known better. Because he allowed his good judgment to be overridden by political influence, I believe this act alone should suffice to disqualify him from higher office.

Although the Marc Rich pardon may have been the best known act of controversial clemency in Eric Holder's record, the commutation of sentences for 16 FALN terrorists became an issue of equal, if not greater, concern throughout the hearing. The FALN organization had been linked to 150 bombings, threats, kidnappings, and other events which resulted in the deaths of at least six Americans and the injury of many more between 1974 and 1983. It is not hard to understand why these commutations were strongly opposed by the U.S. attorney, the FBI, the pardon attorney at the Department of Justice, as well as the victims' families. What is hard to understand is why Eric Holder chose to ignore those opinions and instead facilitate clemency for these convicted terrorists.

New information discovered just before the hearing revealed that Eric Holder played an active role in securing these commutations. According to the L.A. Times, ``Holder instructed his staff at Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney to effectively replace the department's original report recommending against any commutations, which had been sent to the White House in 1996, with one that favored clemency for at least half the prisoners.''

Unlike the Rich pardon, Holder has embraced his role in endorsing these commutations. He told Senator Sessions during our committee hearings that the decision was reasonable and has stood unapologetically by that statement, even when it was proven that he knew very little about the terrorists or their crimes at the time of the commutations.

Perhaps no one is as angry about Holder's role in this incident, or about his elevation to this distinguished office, as Joseph Connor, whose 33-year-old father was murdered when the FALN bombed the New York City restaurant where he was eating lunch. Mr. Connor was 9 years old. He has written numerous editorials and gave compelling testimony at our hearing about how devastating and indefensible these commutations were. I quote him:

We Americans have to make clear that we will not tolerate

officials who would put our lives in jeopardy by releasing

terrorists. It is a disrespectful affront to all Americans,

particularly to those of us who have come face to face with

their violence.

Mr. Connor's testimony struck a chord with me due to my own experiences with domestic terrorism. Having dealt with the shock and the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, which happened prior to the FALN commutations, I can relate to the grief and anger felt by the family member of a victim murdered senselessly by terrorists. I have seen the devastation these acts of violence inflict on a community and especially on the families they most directly impact. I have heard from the many law enforcement officers who work the scene, gather the evidence, and tend to the victims. I have witnessed the long and difficult process of prosecution, conviction, and sentencing. I know that bringing perpetrators to justice is a crucial part for these families' healing process.

I cannot imagine how all those things would come undone if justice were undermined, as it was in the FALN case.

The danger of commuting the sentences of terrorists responsible for the murder of American citizens and intent on killing even more is obvious. I will not recount those concerns here, but to help give a voice to Joe Connor and to the many other surviving family members of terrorist victims, I ask that our colleagues consider the effect these decisions had on them. We are accountable to each and every one.

Eric Holder also raises another concern with me and that is his hostility to the second amendment. I heard our chairman speak earlier about how he said he would uphold the second amendment, but when queried directly and specifically about components of the second amendment, the answers were not forthcoming.

As Deputy Attorney General, he advocated restrictive gun control legislation, such as waiting periods, an age limit, that a soldier coming back from Iraq could not own a shotgun because he wasn't 21 yet, a registration for every gun in this country, the elimination for me to be able to give my shotgun to my grandson when it is time to teach him to go hunting. All those things he has espoused limiting the second amendment.

While he has advanced those restrictions as a member of the Clinton administration, working under Attorney General Janet Reno, he remained active in anti-gun advocacy after he entered the private sector. After the attacks of September 11, he authored an

op-ed for the Washington Post, entitled ``Keeping Guns Away from Terrorists.''

I will not go through the details of that piece, but the details of what he purports to support would have a devastating impact on the second amendment in this country.

Perhaps the most telling and unsettling aspect of Mr. Holder's anti- gun record is the signing of an amicus brief in the Supreme Court's seminal second amendment case, in which he argued that the Constitution did not protect an individual's right to bear arms. I believe he actually believes that--that we don't have the right. He now tells us that is settled with the Heller case. But on further query, we get tremendously nervous about his support for the second amendment. The Supreme Court rejected his view on the second amendment unanimously.

His statement in our hearing that he respects Heller as the law of the land does not provide enough assurance on his commitment to defend the second amendment. It is neither controversial nor instructive to make such a statement. What matters are his views on specific proposals for gun control legislation and regulation.

At his hearing, I used the vast amount of my time in three rounds of questioning to try and extract opinions from Eric Holder on the second amendment. In his testimony, he advocated a permanent ban on so-called assault weapons, an age restriction on handgun possession--again, many of our troops returning home and out of the military after 2 years would not be able to have a handgun because they are not 21--and closing the gun show loophole. What that means is I cannot sell a gun to one of my neighbors without a background check on my neighbor. I cannot actually sell a piece of material I have to someone without going through a gun check, or I cannot even sell it to my brother.

He refused to commit to defending State right-to-carry laws. There are more than 40 States that have these laws. He was questioned over and over and would not answer affirmatively that he would use the power of the attorney to uphold the second amendment.

He repeatedly testified that gun regulation was not a priority for either he or the administration. Consistently, Mr. Holder has unapologetically embraced his anti-gun views. Yet at his confirmation hearing, he would not tell us what those views were.

He has been a vocal gun control advocate in the past, both in his official and individual capacities. He was not candid on the second amendment issue, an issue he has followed for years, as he was on interrogation techniques, an issue which he could not possibly have enough information to prejudge.

After an extensive review of his record and his testimony, I have concluded that Eric Holder as Attorney General will not defend--not adequately defend--the second amendment.

Finally, I have serious doubts as to whether Eric Holder is committed to defending the first amendment against threats such as the so-called fairness doctrine. This policy existed for decades before being abolished in 1987 and rightly so. Today, the concept has been revived and the threat of Government censorship over the airwaves is again a real possibility.

At our hearing, Eric Holder was asked about his thoughts on this proposal. Specifically, he was asked whether, as a matter of public policy, the fairness doctrine should be reinstated, to which he replied:

[T]hat's a toughie. I've not given an awful lot of thought

to [it].

It is hard to accept that Eric Holder, a former Deputy Attorney General, somehow missed the debate over this prominent issue in our society. It is even harder to accept his answer when reviewing his past statements about media bias.

This not-so-thinly-veiled attack targets the very media outlets that advocates of the fairness doctrine hope to cripple. While this may be an acceptable position for a private advocate, there is no room for this kind of bias in the Department of Justice. Unfortunately, Mr. Holder said nothing to ease concerns about his predisposition on this issue. In written responses to further questions from the committee he said this: If a law or regulation is enacted that seeks to implement some version of the fairness doctrine, I will work with other agencies in the new administration and in the Department's Office of Legal Counsel to reach a considered view about the constitutionality of the specific law or regulation under consideration.

Remarkably, although Mr. Holder was given an opportunity to distance himself from the inflammatory comments he made in the 2004 speech, the best he could offer was a commitment to give a ``considered view'' of any such legislation.

What I expected from a prospective Attorney General was, first and foremost, a clear and strong commitment to uphold and defend the first amendment. What Eric Holder said fell far short of my expectation.

The so-called ``Fairness Doctrine'' is not a ``toughie'' issue, as it was described by the presumptive Attorney General.

I ask unanimous consent for 3 additional minutes.

As former FCC Chairman James Quello argued shortly after the policy was repealed,

The fairness doctrine doesn't belong in a country that is

dedicated to freedom of the press and freedom of speech.

I agree and am disturbed that our likely next Attorney General apparently does not.

In conclusion, after listening carefully to Eric Holder's testimony, especially regarding each of the issues I raised today, I am forced to conclude that he lacks the judgment, independence, and candor necessary to be Attorney General. I did not reach this conclusion without careful consideration.

When I first came to the Senate, one of the first votes I had to make was on the nomination--to consent and advise--on Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. I had a catch in my spirit on that nomination. I should not have cast a vote for him. I was the first Republican to suggest that he should resign because he did not display the independence, the candor, or the support for the rule of law. Although hindsight is always 20/20, I reserve my right to do the right thing on this nomination. There is no difference between the lack of independence that has been demonstrated by the testimony of Eric Holder and his past and what we saw in the lack of independence of previous Attorneys General.

Oftentimes, nominees come to the Senate with nearly a blank slate. This was not the case with Eric Holder. His time in public service, specifically his stint as Deputy Attorney General for President Clinton, served as an audition for this position. His role in the pardon and commutations is very troubling. I believe, in summary, independence is lacking, candor is lacking, and judgment is lacking. President Obama deserves some degree of deference in his choices, but no President is entitled to a Cabinet member who will neglect the Constitution and his own sound judgment to facilitate a bad political decision.

I regret I cannot, in good conscience, support his nomination.