Floor Statements

Mr. President, I will take a few short minutes because I know others want to honor Senator Byrd, and there is some other business to discuss. The bill I objected to today comes before us because we have some questions. The chairman of the committee, Senator Kerry from Massachusetts, and Senator Snowe, the ranking member, have it right, wanting to help our veterans and to make sure they have great opportunities as they return. But I remind my colleagues that this last year, in the SBA, we stole $26 million worth of their salaries to run that, to do directed earmarks. So we have this great new leader at the SBA, Steven Preston. Yet we have handcuffed him in his ability to do what he needs to do at the SBA.

We noticed in the paper yesterday a tremendous, large number of loans where things have been faked. The SBA hadn't had the capability of managing the SBA properly. So our purpose in doing this is not to go against the veterans we see. Nobody stands as a greater supporter than I in terms of protecting their privacy, their second-amendment rights, and honoring them.

We do want to do this. The offset that is in this bill comes out of a microloan that is also designed to help veterans. So we are taking money from one area and not the other at the same time we are stealing money from the SBA's operational money to do earmarks that don't do anything to help veterans.

My pledge to both Senator Kerry and Snowe is to look at this and see if we can't come to some resolution about our concerns over the intervening time between now and the time we come back and make a commitment to try to do that.

But most important is, what we want to do is preserve freedom. An ever-encroaching Federal Government does not preserve the very freedom that those veterans fought for.

I yield.

Mr. President, I wanted to spend a few moments this morning talking about the business as usual in Washington.

As a nearly 60-year-old male baby boomer, I believe we face some of the most serious challenges we have ever faced as a nation, and certainly in my lifetime. The challenges are going to continue to grow unless Congress changes how it works, how it does business, and starts setting priorities. The last election was about change. We heard a lot of great promises, and I think they were well-intentioned. But let's look at what has happened.

After the last election, we were told we would have an earmark moratorium until we had a real reform process that was in place. We do not have a reform process; we have a faint claim for a reform process. Instead, we have seen thousands--the average is 2,000 earmarks per bill. The American people were told that the earmark process would be more transparent. Yet we have seen Congress backtrack on that at every opportunity.

The earmark reform has really been a triumph of ``business as usual.'' The original Senate version of S. 1 required Senators to publicly disclose the following within 48 hours of the committee receiving the information: the earmark recipient, the earmark's purpose, certification that neither they nor their spouse would directly benefit from the earmark. Now, what is in the real language? The real language was secretly changed. It no longer requires public disclosure of who is going to get the earmark or the earmark's purpose. That is the Senate's rules.

You know, there is a foundational principle; that is, you cannot have accountability in anything unless you have transparency. What we have is obfuscation of transparency.

We don't want the American people to see who is going to get an earmark or what its purpose is. Thankfully, we passed the transparency and accountability act that starts this January so the American people are going to see it anyway, except they are going to unfortunately have to see it after the fact.

Yesterday my office learned of another attack against transparency. The just-released conference report for the Transportation-HUD spending bill contains an earmark provision that attempts to prohibit the White House from releasing publicly its budget justifications. When they send up their budget, they send the reasons for why they want that money spent in certain ways. I worked last year to make sure that OMB agreed that the American people were entitled to see the justification for why they would want to spend money in certain areas. The appropriations process doesn't want that to be public. Why should it not be public? Why should we not want to know why the administration wants to spend certain money in certain ways and their reasoning and justification?

There is a reason why this was added. This was added so the authorizing committees won't have the same information the appropriations committees have. We are not supposed to be appropriating anything that isn't authorized, yet we continue to do so. This is a commonsense approach to make transparent to the American public as well as the rest of the Members of this body the justification and reasoning of the administration.

I agree, the broken promises we have seen have contributed to the 11- percent favorability rating of Congress. It isn't a Republican or Democratic issue. No Americans want their leaders to say one thing and then do another. The American people are tired of hearing the same defenses of the earmark favor factor. They didn't work when Republicans were in control, and they will not work today.

Let's talk about that for a minute. The earmark system exists to serve politicians, not local communities. Members earmark funds rather than advocate for grants because they want the political credit for spending money. Earmarks oftentimes are worthwhile, but the system under which they are propagated is not. Earmarks are the gateway drug to overspending, one of the No. 1 issues for which the American people have a problem with Congress. Our problem is, we refuse to make the tough choices families have to make every day, every week within their own budgets. Consequently, we now have this last week surpassed $9 trillion on the debt. We have $79 trillion worth of unfunded liability which is going to cause us to break the chain of heritage of this country. That heritage is one of sacrifice where one generation works hard, makes sacrifices to create at least the same or hopefully better opportunities for those generations to come.

We have heard complaints that it is illegitimate to single out or strike an earmark with an amendment. It is not our money. It is the American people's money. What is scandalous is how few of the special interest projects are ever challenged on the floor. Only one-tenth of 1 percent of the more than 60,000 earmarks passed since 1998 have ever received a vote. Where is the accountability with that? Where is the transparency?

Finally, we hear Senators complain that it is partisan to strike individual earmarks. I can't speak for anyone else, but I have been going after this process for a decade. No one has gone after more Republican earmarks than I. Plus, if you don't like my amendments, I ask the body to offer some of their own. I would appreciate the help. In spite of a lot of grand talk about earmark reform, we haven't seen anyone on the other side of the aisle attempt to strike an individual earmark. Does that mean all these projects are worthwhile? Is there not a single earmark in the 32,000 requests this year that should not be debated on the floor of the Senate?

The conference report on the Transportation-HUD bill includes a number of questionable earmarks, some of which I will try to eliminate when the bill comes through the Senate.

We developed a new rule that one can't earmark in conference. Yet in the new conference report on the Transportation-HUD bill, 18 new earmarks were air dropped, new earmarks violating the rules the Senate just set up. We can't help ourselves. Such earmarks as an international resource center, the Coffeyville Community Enhancement Foundation, Minihaha Park development, buses, upgrades to airports, may be good things to do, but are they good things to do when the projected budget deficit is around $300 billion? Are these the priorities we should have?

I won't spend a whole lot more time on this issue today, but I can tell my colleagues that the American people

are fed up with this process, not just the process of earmarking but the lack of accountability and the absolute lack of transparency when it comes to how we make priorities in spending their money, not ours, every year. I think preserving Social Security, fixing Medicare to where it is available for those after the baby boom generation, solving our budget deficit today might be greater priorities. The real balance is between us and our grandchildren, and we lack the courage to make the hard choices now because it impacts our political careers. We have taken our eye off the ball. The ball is what about the future of the country? What about the opportunity for those who follow us? What about the liberty and freedom they are going to have or not have as a consequence of us ducking the hard choices today?

I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. President, I heard the majority leader's speech. I wanted to put him on notice that I will object to the bringing forward of this bill. It was introduced September 19 and reported out of the Banking Committee on November 13, 2 days ago. We received notice, via hotline, that they were attempting to clear the bill by unanimous consent yesterday afternoon.

This bill addresses a very delicate and complicated area of housing policy on which we cannot afford to make mistakes. I know many Senators, including myself, are strong advocates of how we can help those who find themselves in trouble now. I know the authors of the bill would like to pass it expeditiously. However, it is a big bill. It is an important bill. Under the unanimous consent request, that would mean we would not debate it and offer amendments. For those two reasons, I object, as a Senator from Oklahoma, and I know several other Senators would as well.

The problem with hotlining bills is they don't get due deliberation. Here is a stack of bills that were offered by unanimous consent in the Senate before the August break. Most of the Senators had never read the bills, didn't know what was in the bills. Thankfully, many of them were objected to by Members of the Senate. It is not a good way to legislate.

This is an important issue. We seem to have a tendency that we are afraid to do the real work we need to do because we will be criticized as the one stopping the bill. I am not afraid to stop a bill. I believe we need to get things right. It is not about not wanting to help those in need today, but there are several significant things in this bill.

First of all, the bill changes it so that if you have a $417,000 home, you can get a mortgage; if you are in trouble, we are going to take care of that. That is twice the median price of a home in this country. It lowers the downpayment to 1.5 percent. It exposes American taxpayers to $1.6 billion over the next 5 years. We can solve this problem. We cannot solve this problem by blowing a bill through here without good debate, rigorous discussion of the issues, and alternative options, via amendments, which will address, No. 1, how we got where we are in terms of the subprime mortgage mess; No. 2, how we restore confidence in that market; No. 3, how do we work to secure better oversight on the mortgage industry that put people in the position of owning property they could not afford; and the predatory lending practices Senator Reid talked about. We can address those. Doing it under a hotline, under unanimous consent, where we don't have an option to study the bill and think about what other options there can be or how many hearings were held on the bill and what is the response, is not the way to legislate.

I believe the President has not said he would not support this bill. I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that from the past.

I also would like to put in the Record an article from the Roll Call of September 17 entitled `` `Hotlined' Bills Spark Concern.'' I ask unanimous consent to have this article printed in the Record.

The increasing practice of this body of passing bills by unanimous consent rather than debate and knowledge about what we are agreeing to does the Senate a disservice. All you have to do is watch C-SPAN and see how much time is spent in quorum calls in this body. I, for one, would never object to unanimous consent for us running several bills at the same time so we can continue to discuss them. We should not be passing bills without good thought, good debate, and an amendment strategy that will improve the bill and protect the future taxpayers of this country. That has to be a requirement as we address it.

I thank Senator Reid for his attention to what is truly a real problem. But the process is really what matters on this issue. We need to get it right. There is too much risk. Therefore, if we decide to bring this request back up, I will come back down and object.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to support the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey to be Attorney General of the United States. Judge Mukasey is eminently qualified for this position. For almost 20 years he served as U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York, presiding over prominent terror trials and gaining familiarity with complex national security issues that continue to challenge our Nation.

Specifically, Judge Mukasey presided over the trial of the ``Blind Sheik,'' who was involved in planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Upon conviction, Judge Mukasey sentenced the terrorist to life in prison. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in affirming the verdict, praised Mukasey by saying: ``The trial judge, the Honorable Michael B. Mukasey, presided with extraordinary skill and patience, assuring fairness to the prosecution and to each defendant and helpfulness to the jury. His was an outstanding achievement in the face of challenges far beyond those normally endured by a trial judge.'' Indeed, Judge Mukasey's ruling in the Blind Sheik case presented extraordinary challenges--his ruling drew death threats that required him to receive years of 24-hour armed protection.

Yet Judge Mukasey maintained his objectivity as a judge, ruling years later that while Jose Padilla--a U.S. citizen later convicted of Federal terrorism support charges--could be held by the government as an enemy combatant, he was also entitled to legal counsel. One of Padilla's defense lawyers who said he had ``more cases before Mukasey than I can count,'' praised the judge saying, ``I don't always agree with where he comes out . . . [but] I am always happy to draw him as a judge. You are going to get your day in court.'' Another of Padilla's lawyers said about Judge Mukasey, ``I admire him greatly,'' describing herself as ``another weeping fan.''

Since his nomination, many of Michael Mukasey's colleagues and lawyers who appeared before him have offered statements of praise and support. While it would be impossible to reiterate them all, perhaps former U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White's statement best encapsulates the general sentiment. She said that Judge Mukasey ``is a man of great intellect and integrity with an unswerving commitment to the rule of law. He is independent, fair-minded and has a wealth of relevant experience from his years of service on the bench, in the private sector and as an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of New York.'' I agree that Judge Mukasey's intellect, integrity, and experience make him uniquely qualified to serve as Attorney General.

It is, however, imperative that our Attorney General put his oath to protect and uphold the Constitution before

all other loyalties. As such, I looked to Judge Mukasey for assurances that he would put the Constitution first. Judge Mukasey gave the first of such assurances on October 5, 2007, the day that he was nominated, when he said, ``The department faces challenges vastly different from those it faced when I was an assistant U.S. attorney 35 years ago. But the principles that guide the department remain the same--to pursue justice by enforcing the law with unswerving fidelity to the Constitution.'' After studying his record and participating in the confirmation process, I am confident that Judge Mukasey's great respect for the Constitution and the rule of law is sincere.

The Justice Department has undergone difficult times of late, but I know Judge Mukasey has the integrity and intellect to carry out the necessary work to restore the American public's trust in the department. America has been well-served by Judge Mukasey's past public service and is fortunate that such an accomplished individual--who entered retirement just one year ago--is willing to answer the call to public service once again. I thank Judge Mukasey for his continued sacrifice.

I am pleased to vote in favor of Judge Michael Mukasey's nomination to be Attorney General of the United States and look forward to working with him in the future.

Madam President, I am not going to exercise my privileges under the unanimous consent request.

Mr. President, I submit the following notice in writing: In accordance with Rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby give notice in writing that it is my intention to move to suspend paragraph 4(b)(3) of Rule XXVIII for the purpose of proposing to the amendment of the Senate to the bill (H.R. 3043), making appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, and for other purposes; as follows:

At the appropriate place in division A, insert the

following:

Mr. President, I wish to share my concerns regarding the process currently being utilized by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to pass legislation on the Senate floor. As many of my colleagues know, I am currently objecting to unanimous consent on two en bloc packages reported by the committee, containing more than 40 bills.

I want to make clear to my colleagues that I do not object to all of the bills contained in the two packages. In fact, I have offered to give consent to all those bills where I have no fiscal or policy concerns. Unfortunately, the committee is insisting on passing all of the legislation en bloc and will not allow the noncontroversial bills to be released for passage. These bills are in effect being held hostage by the committee.

As my colleagues know, I evaluate all unanimous consent requests, in part, on whether the proposed legislation increases authorizations for spending. If it does, I also look to see whether the new cost has been offset by a corresponding reduction in another program authorization. I also review each bill for specific policy concerns.

Of most concern to me, the two packages authorize over $150 million in new spending, without a single offset. This does not include the $640 million reauthorization for the Geologic Mapping Program. I have offered to work with the committee to identify possible offsets that would allow the en bloc packages to move forward. Given the considerable program oversight performed by the committee, I am eager to hear where it believes other programs may not be working as intended or where they may have become of a lesser priority than the bills currently under consideration.

As stewards of the Federal tax dollar, I believe it is imperative we proceed with the hard but necessary work of prioritizing our spending. Every American taxpayer is forced to do this every day, and so should we. Prioritization begins with the authorization process, and so does long-term fiscal discipline.

I renew my pledge to work with any Member of this body to identify offsets, to ensure that our actions today never add to the already heavy financial burden we have placed on the next generation of Americans.

It is my hope the committee will abandon the practice of en bloc unanimous consent requests. Each bill should be considered on its merits, and if it is truly worthwhile, should be allowed to stand on its own. As an institution, this Senate is more than capable of this task.

To make the Record absolutely clear, I am including the list of noncontroversial bills in these packages that should be cleared and allowed to pass under unanimous consent: S. 216, S. 266, S. 241, S. 202, S. 232, S. 262, S. 220, H.R. 386, S. 320, S. 553, H.R. 497, H.R. 658, S. 1139, H.R. 235, H.R. 482, H.R. 467.

Mr. President, I wish to spend a few minutes of time speaking about the ``revised'' SCHIP bill and what it means to the American people. The rhetoric associated with the bill is that we want to cover children. That is a laudable goal. But that is not what this bill is about. If that were what this bill is about, what we would be doing is having a bill on the floor that expands the current payments of $5 billion a year to $7 billion a year, which is what is required by the CBO to truly cover the kids whose parents make $41,000 a year or less. That is not what this bill is about.

The bill is about having the American taxpayers, and especially the poor American taxpayers, pay $133 billion over the next 10 years to cover families presently with insurance.

What does the Congressional Budget Office say about this bill? First of all, it spends $400,000 more than the bill the President vetoed; it covers 500,000 fewer kids. It still maintains that 10 percent of the people in 2012 on SCHIP will be adults. It gives exemptions for the State of New Jersey--a family of five earning $89,00 a year, they will still be covered. It creates loopholes where rural hospitals get paid the same as metropolitan hospitals, as a favor or an ``earmark'' to certain Members of Congress.

What it does not do is solve the problem. What is going on here? There is not anybody in America who does not think we corporately should be helping poor children with their health care. But this isn't a bill about helping poor children with their health care; otherwise, we would not be taking 1.2 million middle-income kids and putting them on SCHIP, at the same time the only increase we see on the poor kids, families making under $40,000, is $800,000. So what is going on? What is going on is this is a political campaign. It is a political campaign that, under the guise of helping children, what we want to do is start the march toward single-payer, government-run health care. That is OK if you believe that and you want to put that out. But this idea of, we are going to wink and nod to the American public under the name of poor children when, in fact, this bill will cover not poor children and 10 percent of the people covered will be

adults 5 years from now and we are going to take kids off their parents' insurance.

One of the things people will not talk about is in 35 States, the SCHIP program is Medicaid. Of those 35 States, over 50 percent of the doctors will not see a Medicaid child. Why is that? Because Medicaid will not pay a rate at which the doctor can pay their overhead and still see the child. So what we are going to do is we are going to take the parents' right away to choose the doctor they want for their kids, and we are not going to lower their insurance premium at all by taking the kids off--the ones who have insurance, the 1.2 million who the CBO says will come off private insurance--and then we are going to take away the parents' right to pick the doctor to care for their kid.

What this is, is moving to single-payer, government-run health care. What I would say is, if that is what we want to do, let's call it that. But that is not what we are calling this. We are claiming we want to help poor children.

President Bush got it right. Before we expand to families of $60,000 or $80,000 a year who have insurance and put them on a Government program, shouldn't we make sure the program we have now has enough money to cover the kids whose families make under $41,000 a year? And shouldn't we make sure that, when we say we are giving you coverage, we are giving you coverage?

The other thing we ought to ask is: Why aren't the American people going to get value out of this? The cost in this program, to buy $2,300 worth of insurance--and that is the highest level at which the average kids cost, the average is probably around $1,700--why would we be spending $4,000 in this bill to buy $2,300 worth of insurance? The American people have to look at that and say: What is wrong with this picture?

The other side of it is we are going to get all the money, we say, by taxing tobacco. Who pays tobacco taxes? Who are the majority of people in this country who pay tobacco taxes? I will tell you who they are, they are disproportionately poor. They are disproportionately the disadvantaged. They are disproportionately those people who can least afford to pay a tax. So it is no wonder the CBO, in this evaluation of this program, said: This is the most regressive tax we have seen in years. It is going to hurt the very people we say we want to cover. Does the Senator have a question?

Absolutely.

I wasn't in the Senate or the Congress.

I would be remiss if I thought I could speak for the President. But I will tell you what this Senator thinks. Medicare Part D hung on the shoulders of our children $8.3 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities.

So today we are giving prescription drugs to seniors, and we are taking away future opportunity from our kids. Had I been here, I would not have voted for Medicare Part D. In fact, I lobbied a lot of my former friends from the House to vote against Part D. That is not what we are talking about today.

What we are talking about today is, if we are going to have a program for poor children, which I support, we at least ought to cover up to 95 percent of the kids who are eligible before we expand the eligibility. That is where the $7.8 billion over the next 5 years needs to be added to this program, and then with the caveat that says: States, you cannot go to the higher income until you cover the poor.

This is a typical example of what Washington does and America rejects all the time. We do not measure what we are doing to see if we are accomplishing things. What we do know about SCHIP is that in many places it has been a valuable lifesaving tool for the poor people in this country. But, in fact, the States have done a poor job of enrolling many of those kids.

What we also know about SCHIP is that 35 of the States put their kids on SCHIP into Medicare. Now, what does that mean? Since you get no choice of half the doctors who are out there who are eligible to care for the kids, what we have said is, we are going to give you care, but you get no choice. You get care, but you get no choice. You get no freedom when the Government helps you with who your child is going to see.

So I do not doubt that there are inconsistencies in any President's position. I can debate Medicare Part D all day. I am with you. I am on your side. But the point is, this debate is not about helping kids. This debate is about changing the underlying structure of our health care and starting to build a Medicare from the ground up, and we have a Medicare here and merging them in the middle.

I am willing to debate that, too, but I want us to be honest about what we are debating; otherwise, we would not have a family of five in New Jersey making $89,000 a year eligible under this program, someone who already has insurance.

So here is the question for the American people: Do you want to pay taxes to buy health insurance for 1.2 million kids, for parents who already have it, and give them a program that is subpar to what they already have with no decrease in the insurance cost to parents for the insurance they are covering now? That is the question.

And do we have a way of covering poor kids that would be better? I would propose to the Senator from Missouri that a refundable tax credit to poor children, allowing their parents to have enough money to buy a policy, which the average is truly $1,700 per year, per kid, a refundable tax credit that gives them the freedom to choose any doctor they want, that does not put a Medicaid on their forehead, that automatically excludes 50 percent of the physicians in this country, is a far better way to do it and a more equitable way to do it.

If we did that, that would pay for itself without raising taxes anywhere because you would eliminate the cost shifting that goes on in the health care industry for the kids who do not have care today. And we will not raise taxes on the poorest of the poor because that is who is going to be paying for this.

Plus, we all know, 21 million new Americans are not going to start smoking. We all know that. But yet that is how we chose to meet the requirements of pay-go here, through a false claim that we will have enough revenue to pay for it by raising the tax on cigarettes.

So I am all for having a debate on national health care. Senator Wyden and I and Senator Bennett and Congressman Conyers and myself and Senator Burr had that debate in New York this week at the New School. That is a good debate to have. But this is a slight. This is a slight about what we are doing. And the question to the American people has to be: Do you really think, if you are making $45,000 a year or $65,000 a year, that your taxes ought to go up to pay for somebody who is making 61,000 or less, and at the same time limit the availability of those same children to have the physician of their choice? That is what we are talking about. I believe we ought to cover poor children. I think that the SCHIP program now ought to be held accountable to cover the poor children. If we are going to pay for it, I am willing to

put the money and find offsets somewhere else to pay for it, if we do not do a tax credit.

Mr. President, I reclaim my time to say the following: I think the Senator from Missouri makes a good point on consistency. I think they are finally awakened to what the American people want at the White House. I think they are finally starting to pay attention that being efficient in the Federal Government is important.

But having not been, maybe, efficient with Medicare Part D, I applaud the President for now taking a stand on something that is common sense that would say: If we are going to have a program for poor children, let's make sure it covers poor children. Let's make sure it covers poor children. Right now it does not. Right now it does not.

Rather than expand the program that is not meeting what it is supposed to do and raise taxes on the poorest of the poor, I think the President's response and the CBO's score, which is $7.8 billion more over the next 5 years instead of $35 billion more over the next 5 years, is a reasonable response to really cover poor children.

And what we know, by what CBO says, is that will do it. Now, let's talk about the difference in what we are going to be having the cloture vote on now versus the bill that the President just vetoed. This bill covers 400,000 less kids; it spends $500 million more. So we are not at $4,000 anymore, we are at about $4,200 to buy $2,300 worth of health insurance. It does not fix the fast lane for illegal immigrants as the authors claim. It does not fix adults on the SCHIP program.

CBO says in 2012, at least at a minimum, 10 percent of the enrollees will still be adults. It does not fix the crowdout issue. This bill will cause 2 million people to lose private insurance coverage and come in a government-run program, crowding them out of the private insurance market. Despite a fix for the problem of enrolling more higher income kids than currently eligible kids in SCHIP, the CBO still projects only 800,000 currently eligible, currently eligible SCHIP kids, will get enrolled.

But 1.2 million kids of families making more than $60,000 will get enrolled. So for every two kids we enroll who are poor, we are going to take three kids out of the private sector. We have talked about what kids lose when they go to the Medicaid Program.

What are the other problems? In this bill are earmarks for specific hospitals to violate CMS payment rules to pay those hospitals more than what the rules say because some Congressman or Senator thinks they should not have to live within the rules. I would love to be able to tell that to people in a community in Oklahoma who just had to shut down their hospital because they could not make it under what CMS rules pay.

So what we have is about seven of those in here, where we are going to take care of the little hospitals of seven Members of Congress, but we are going to ignore all of the rest of the community hospitals in this country that are struggling under a payment system that does not pay for the care of people they are supposed to be caring for.

There is still an income disregard loophole, which means it does not matter what you said because we have a loophole that says if States want to, they do not have to follow the income guidelines. You can still enroll families making more than $100,000 a year in the SCHIP program.

Well, that is in there by design because the desire and design of this bill is to move to single-payer, national health care.

I think the Presiding Officer sitting in the chair right now probably believes that is where we should go. I do not have any problem debating that. But the incrementalism and the real effort of this bill is to expand SCHIP to a point where Americans who have insurance are going to pay higher taxes so everybody can get covered. If you look at the mess that is trying to be created by these five or six hospitals in here right now, how are we going to solve that problem when everything is Medicare?

Some say we are going to take the profit motive out of medicine. We are going to take the profit motive out of the drug industry. We are going to have a 220,000-physician shortage in 15 areas in this country. The applications for enrollment at medical school are diving. Why are they diving? Because they cannot afford the education and then have an income to pay off their student loan, let alone pay for housing and income to feed their kids.

How did that come about? It could have been Medicare creating that. It could have been that we were not willing to pay. What else is going to happen? Eighty percent of all innovation in health care in the world comes from this country. Eight out of every ten new ideas that are lifesaving, eight out of ten of every new treatments, eight of ten new devices are developed in this country.

Why are they developed? Because we still have 48 percent of the health care system that is not run by some government program. And through there, there is enough risk taken, based on the reward that can be gained, to invest in capital and research to develop these lifesaving treatments.

We say we want to move SCHIP in the name of kids, but what we really want to do is to have national health care. Well, we better think about that hard and long because here are the statistics on cancer treatment in this country compared to everywhere else in the world. It does not matter what cancer you get in this country, you have a 50-percent greater chance of living 5 years than anywhere else in the world.

Why is that? Is it those big, bad pharmaceutical companies that have to spend a billion dollars just to get through the maze at FDA? Is that what it is? Is that why? I am a two-time cancer survivor. I am so thankful for the pharmaceutical industry. I would not be here without them. Two times they have developed, researched, and made drugs that have saved my life.

I do not disagree that we have some excesses in corporations in this country. But the pharmaceutical industry, with all the negatives that are out there, still leads one of the most positive responses we have ever seen in this country to solving real problems for real Americans. So we can beat them up and we can beat the President up and say Medicare Part D. I do regularly on Medicare Part D. I don't think we ought to steal from our children to have drugs paid for. But this bill steals from everybody. It also steals from the poorest. It steals from the poor, blue-collar, low-income worker who has the benefit of a lot of other programs. It says: We are going to raise your taxes because you happen to be addicted to nicotine. We are going to steal from you to pay for somebody who is making $61,000 a year who already has insurance. Do we want to do that? Do we want to steal from the people who are working, barely getting by, so we can pay for people who already have insurance? Is that what we are doing? That is what we are doing.

I have listened to the debate. I offered some ways to change this. Senator Burr and I offered an amendment. We didn't get a vote on it. It solves through tax credits a way to insure, not go into a Medicaid program but insure with choice, so you take the stigma of Medicaid off patients' foreheads.

We offered a way that every kid could get covered. It is called a refundable tax credit. It can only be spent on health insurance or health care. But people don't want to do that. Why would those who are more progressive in thought not want to do that? Because they offered the original income tax credit. Why would they not want to do that? It is because the agenda is different than we say it is. The agenda is to start toward a nationalized, single-payer, government-run, no-choice health care system that will eliminate that 80 percent of innovation in the world made by American ingenuity, American capitalism, American idea that ``I will invest some of mine to see if I can come up with an idea that will help somebody else and, by the way, I will profit from it.''

What we are saying is, we don't want markets to work. We want the Government to run it. If you think about everything else we have today, everything with the exception of health care and primary and secondary education, we believe in markets. They have been very good to us. They have given us the highest standard of living of any society ever in the history of the world. They have advanced causes in terms of treatment of disease more than any advancement ever in the history of the world. What this bill is about is saying: We don't believe markets ought to apply.

Myself, Richard Burr, and five others have a bill called the Health Care Quality and Choice Act. It creates a tax credit for everybody to buy their health care. We treat everybody the same. Everybody gets the same amount. Everybody gets to buy a private health insurance plan. We create a market so the insurance industry doesn't steal 25 percent of the cost of that. We set up a way to create markets. The Every Child Insured Act, legislation offered by Richard Burr, creates a way where every kid is covered. Senator Martinez and Senator Voinovich have a bill that covers up to 300 percent with tax credits of all the kids in the country who don't presently have health insurance. This bill isn't about covering kids. This bill is about putting the Government in control of the last 48 percent of health care. As P.J. O'Rourke says, if you think health care is expensive now, wait until it is free.

A couple other things the American people should know is that England is pouring billions of dollars into their national health care system now. Why? Because on average when you get cancer in England, up until 18 months ago, once you were diagnosed, you waited at least 12 months before treatment started. They have a goal by 2010 to get to 3 months to start your treatment. Do you know what the average length of time, insured or uninsured, in this country is from the time you have a diagnosis of cancer until you start getting treated? It is 3 weeks and 2 days. Why do you think we are doing better than they are on these things?

We are about to go into a system that destroys innovation, destroys quality. I agree, there is plenty wrong in health care. I have a bill that changes us toward prevention. I am all for working on the problems we have in health care. But the question the American people ought to ask is, do we want to tax ourselves to pay for care for kids who are already covered in the name of not doing a good job under the SCHIP bill now, and should we have the kids who need to be covered covered before we start reaching beyond those who already have care? They are not going to answer that question. Because the real debate is, the first step is to get away from your choice of choosing a doctor, your choice of what facility you will go to, your choice in getting to choose what drugs you will take and what options you will have, because the Government bureaucrats are going to decide all that for you.

If you believe that is not true, look at what Medicare is doing right now for women who have osteoporosis. They get diagnosed with a DEXA- scan. They get treatment. But because doctors in this country have ordered too many DEXA-scans, according to the bureaucracy in Washington known as the Center for Medicare Services, we have now limited physicians. You can't check to see if the medicine you are giving is working and maybe change the medicine to give them one that might be working, because a bureaucrat has decided we are doing too many tests. That is called rationing. That is why health care costs are lower around the world, because they let people die from cancer. They let people die with a broken hip. They let people die with congestive heart failure.

We don't. We value individual lives and we are willing to put the resources in for the best, longest, and best quality life. Don't be fooled about what this bill is about. This bill is the first step toward national health care. This bill fails to address the problems in SCHIP as they are today. This bill raises taxes on the poorest of the people in the country--all in the name of having a political issue in 2008 to say those people who oppose this don't care about kids. I have spent my whole life delivering babies, 4,000 of them now. That is a false claim. If you care about these kids, you will balance the budget, pay for the war by the expensive, duplicative, wasteful programs we could eliminate. We would have a balanced budget, and we wouldn't be charging the very thing we are getting ready to pass on to our kids, which is a $300 billion deficit this year alone. Caring about kids means you will make the tough choices, that means you go against the interest groups to do what is right for the future, not what is best for the next election.

I yield the floor.

There is no objection.

Has the Senate concluded morning business?

Mr. President, I understand the Senator from New Jersey may object to a unanimous consent request.

I need to make it first.

My attempt is for a colleague, an amendment for Senator Ensign, amendment 3482. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside and we consider 3482.

Mr. President, I note that this amendment could be considered nongermane afterwards and could have been held after that. The fact that we are not going to have a discussion on the amendment is somewhat disconcerting, but we will honor the objection of my colleague from New Jersey.

Amendment No. 3474

I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 3474.

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

Mr. President, this is a straightforward amendment. Last night, at 11 o'clock, I arrived at Union Station, taking the Acela Express from New York City to Washington. It is a great value, with good service. It is one of the areas where Amtrak makes money.

But what the American public needs to see about this bill--and I am going to talk about in this amendment, specifically--is we are right here now at this level, as shown on this chart, and total subsidies will not go down, they will go up over the next 5 years for Amtrak. If you consider operating subsidies and capital subsidies, here is where they are, as shown on this chart.

What we are going to have is about a $600 million increase between now and 2012 in the amount the American taxpayers are going to subsidize Amtrak. That may be something we want to do. This amendment specifically deals with an area where Amtrak can make a difference right now, and it is on food service. Over the last 3 years, American taxpayers have subsidized food service on Amtrak to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollars. Now, anybody who travels knows when you get on American Airlines, you can buy a Milky Way candy bar for $3. The same thing costs 75 cents on Amtrak. They know you can buy a beer for $5. It costs $3 on Amtrak.

Why is it we have food programs and food sales programs that the American taxpayer is subsidizing on Amtrak that we refuse to subsidize on airlines?

Now, we have heard during this debate that, well, we subsidize Amtrak,

but we subsidize all the rest of them. Here is the analysis of the Department of Transportation on how much we do subsidize the other forms of transportation in this country. It is pretty revealing.

If you are driving a car, you are paying in to the Federal Government. It is a negative subsidy. You, the individual driver, are paying $1.79, for every 1,000 miles you drive, to the Federal Government--just for the privilege of you driving. But if you are riding a bus, it is a $4.66 subsidy from us, the taxpayers, to us, the bus riders. If you are flying on an airplane, the subsidy is $6.18 for every 1,000 miles we travel. It is what we pay us to fly.

When you get to public transit, it is quite a bit bigger. Could you make justifications for that? I am not saying we should not. But when you get to Amtrak, we are talking about $210 per thousand miles traveled, on average. We know on certain rail lines, certain routes, there is not much subsidy, Amtrak actually makes money. They have slightly improved in certain areas, especially with their latest data. But $210?

Now, if you take their total subsidy, which right now is $1.3 billion--which counts all the subsidies, both capital and others--if you were to take out the losses on food, you would save another $125 million to $150 million.

Nobody expects, when you get on Amtrak rail passenger service, that the rest of us ought to pay for your beer. Nobody expects we ought to pay for your 3 Musketeers candy bar. Yet, in essence, that is what is happening on Amtrak.

This amendment is fairly straightforward. What it says is three things:

It says Amtrak has to calculate and report quarterly to the Department of Transportation and Congress on the quarterly profits and losses, by route or rail line, of food and beverage services. What that means is they ought to know where they are losing their money, and we ought to know where they are losing their money.

The second thing it says is, Amtrak ought to restructure their food and beverage service contracts for any rail line that is losing money on its food and beverage services. This is not rocket science. This is that if you are going to sell it, you ought to at least sell it for enough to cover the cost. Yet we continue to not do that. We continue not to want to hold them accountable to do that.

Then finally, if they cannot present a way to be able to sell food and beverages at a break-even cost at least, then they ought to have to discontinue selling food or have a food service on it. And they have done it on one line because it was losing so much money. The question is, why haven't they either raised the prices or done it on the other lines?

All this amendment is is a management audit tool for Amtrak that says: You are going to tell us every 3 months by route where you are making your money. They need to know that anyhow. They don't right now. They do not account for it right now. They cannot tell you how much by line or route they are making or losing on food service. Any manager of any process knows if you do not know the information, if you do not have the metrics, you cannot manage it. If you do not have the metrics, you cannot manage it.

The history in this debate on Amtrak is interesting, because in 1997, the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act of 1997 was supposed to solve all the problems, and by 2003 we were not supposed to have a subsidy in Amtrak. That is what the bill said. It said we will, in fact, by 2003 solve this drain of $1.3 billion per year coming out of everybody else's hands into those people who ride Amtrak. We have not had an authorization since 2003. This bill claims that, in fact, the subsidies will go down. But they will not. That is their numbers. That is the bill's numbers.

So now we are saying we are fixing the problem--except the problem continues to grow. If, in fact, we would fix the food service portion of this, the subsidies would do this, as shown on this chart. It would be a flat line. There would be no increase in subsidies--capital or otherwise--if, in fact, we were breaking even on all the food.

It is a straightforward amendment. I know there is some consternation with this amendment by the authors of the bill and the managers of the bill. I understand that. But the fact is, it is hard to explain to the American people why we are subsidizing a 3 Musketeers candy bar and a package of pretzels and a can of beer for people who ride Amtrak--and we are.

It is interesting; I fly every week, and my total travel time is 8 hours each way. I price bottles of water at airports. A bottle of water on Amtrak is $1.99. Do you know what the average price is for a bottle of water at airports in this country? And that is not even on the airplane. It is $2.49. Yet we are selling it 20 percent cheaper on Amtrak than you can buy it in an airport. If you buy it at a convenience store, you can buy it for 99 cents. But we have a captive audience.

The airlines know how to take advantage of that, and we are not subsidizing them, except for the $6, which we pointed out, per 1,000 miles. That comes to 6 cents a mile, by the way, versus $21 a mile for those on Amtrak.

So my hope is we will at least look at this issue and say: OK, if you are not going to manage it, at least look at the food side of it. Measure it. Then, if we want to come back in a year and take this amendment away, saying: OK, you have done it--with this amendment, if they start breaking even on the food, it does not have any effect on them, other than reporting. If they are not going to break even on their food and beverage service, what it says is: Give us a plan to show how you are going to do it. It is very simple. But if you are not going to do either of those, then stop losing money on food service and beverage service on Amtrak.

With that, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, it is interesting that two-thirds of the airlines don't have pretzels anymore because they have to make a profit, and they have to report to their shareholders. So it is not there anymore.

We heard a statement that subsidies have been reduced by 40 percent. That is the operating subsidies. The total subsidies haven't been reduced at all. They are actually going up. They are actually going up by this amount over the next 5 years. These are Amtrak's numbers, based on this bill.

These are the numbers of the Department of Transportation, based on this bill.

Now, if you would break even on food service, there wouldn't be an increase in total subsidies. But none of us would

run a business with a loss leader that would continue to undermine our ability to put the capital into business and to stay in business. We would, in fact, make a change. This amendment gives them 2 years. It says, the first year--you get 2 years to lose money, so the first year if you have lost money, renegotiate it, raise your prices, cut your labor costs. The cost of food service on Amtrak is 52 percent labor costs. The average person doling out the food on Amtrak makes twice what somebody does in the private sector doing the same thing. So what we really have is a subsidy to the food service workers on Amtrak because that is 52 percent of the cost, rather than a subsidy to the food.

Again, the question the American people ought to ask is, should we be subsidizing somebody's beer and 3 Musketeers on Amtrak when we don't do it anywhere else? Isn't it common sense that if you are going to offer food service, you at least ought to break even?

What we know from the testimony of the head of Amtrak is they use it as a loss leader. The only problem is where they use it as a loss leader, they continue to lose more money. On their profitable routes, they make money on food service. So the question is, should we, in fact, subsidize food? Nobody wants a diabetic not to have food available, and that would not happen. That is why we put 2 years in here. The first year you recognize you have a problem, and the second year you fix it. This isn't an amendment that is designed to get rid of service in terms of train routes. This is an amendment that says none of us would run a business losing this kind of money. It is a quarter of a billion dollars the last 3 years lost on food, on Amtrak--a quarter of a billion dollars.

I am happy to yield.

Mr. President, the difference is, that becomes a management decision of the airline, which has to compete. Amtrak has no competition. They have no competition. So, therefore, they continue to do things, because we will subsidize them, that somebody in the private sector would not do. That is a decision that is made that says-- American Airlines saved $30 million last year by their restriction of food services. It was in the paper today, $30 million they saved on all the routes by a restriction of the food service. To them, in an airline industry that has been struggling, that is a significant amount of money. You know what. We still flew American Airlines; we just bought it before we got on.

The statement that there is no food available in all of the Amtrak stops is not true. That is true in the most remote areas, but there is food available.

So if we, in fact, would pass this amendment, and Amtrak would run the food service like any other business would run it, this number would become a flat line. In other words, we would go up here and then we would come across, and the American taxpayer would save about $1 billion over the next 5 years if, in fact, we would do that.

So the opposition--I want to finish my point. The opposition to this amendment is the fear that we may lose a route because we may not offer food service. I would be happy to offer----

Let me finish my point. I would be happy to offer the managers of this amendment, to make a second degree to this amendment that says on long-haul routes, if, in fact, there is no possibility you can never do it on a certain subsidy level, I will be happy to accept that. The purpose is that--we lose a quarter of a billion dollars subsidizing somebody's Heineken every day, every year, when we have this system where we don't make a management decision that is in the best interests.

Here is the real reason the decisions aren't made on food service. It is because they don't have to be because we are still going to put the money there. That is the real reason why it is not there.

In the private sector, it would have happened already. If there were private trains competing, I guarantee the prices would be higher for the food component of it. Nobody is going to lose it.

So it is a straightforward amendment. I have a couple of minutes left, and I am happy to yield for a question from the Senator from New Jersey.

Reclaiming my time, the reason we do is we subsidize for $6 per 1,000 miles traveled on the airlines, and we subsidize $210 per 1,000 miles of travel on the railroad. That is a significant reason we ought to be all the more efficient with what we do.

The Senator is correct. The last year, we only subsidized $80 million worth of food, but on average, every 3 years, it is a quarter of a billion dollars. That was my statement. So ask yourself, should we be subsidizing $80 million worth of food on Amtrak.

This is a straightforward, commonsense amendment that most Americans would say makes sense. We at least ought to cover the cost. If we can't cover the cost, then maybe we ought to renegotiate the contracts with the food service workers who make $43,000 a year who are selling you a bottle of water. Compare that to somebody who is working at an airport or a stewardess on an airplane who is serving you and who is making less than that.

So the consequences of our actions have great impact. Why is it important? Is it because of the subsidy we give Amtrak? Do you know what it is? It is borrowed from our grandkids. We can't deny it. We have the administration claiming a $160 billion deficit this year, and the real deficit is going to be $300 billion because we are going to borrow $140 billion from Social Security to pay for Medicare, and then we are going to borrow $200 billion to pay for a war that we are charging to our grandkids. So that is important because the subsidy isn't coming from us. It is coming from the next two generations.

I yield the floor. I understand all time has expired.

I ask for the yeas and nays on this amendment.

I yield back any remaining time.

Mr. President, I wish to make a few comments about what is in the bill and what is going to happen if we don't accept Senator Enzi's amendment.

When we crafted the Ryan White Act, the goal was to make sure the dollars followed the disease and to make sure people who were infected with HIV who had no other means of seeking treatment and having a life that is not the scourge of this disease with the modern medicines that have come about, to create a platform where we could have fair availability for medicines and treatment and care to where the disease is growing.

What has come out of the House, with Speaker Pelosi's direction, is to actually take money from African-American women and the medicines they need to stay alive, or medicines to treat their newborn infants, and send it to San Francisco, which in the last few years has not even spent the entire amount of money that has gone to it.

Senator Enzi is right in the fact that this violates the very agreement we made over a long period of time to get Ryan White funds to start following the disease. By taking an extra $6.2 million and sending it to San Francisco, it violates, No. 1, the agreement on that bill, but most importantly, it takes away the opportunity for health for minority women, which is where the disease is growing the greatest amount. We have all these women throughout the country who have been on waiting lists for drugs for treatment. They are getting some, but they are not getting what is going to save their lives. And we are going to steal that opportunity for minority women to be adequately and fairly treated under this bill.

The Ryan White bill we passed last year was a good compromise, knowing that we needed to shift money to where the disease is. What happened in the House bill is we have actually reneged on that commitment. What we are actually saying is that the establishment age groups in northern California deserve more money than a single African- American woman who was infected with HIV and cannot get the medicines to treat her disease. That is the choice.

For the first time, the Ryan White Act changed the direction of where the money went. The Ryan White Act, as we passed it, had the money following the disease, going to those who need treatment rather than to established organizations that are used to a certain budget. So the tragedy will be that if we don't pass the Enzi amendment, we are taking a step backward from the very principle--a public health principle, by the way--that you put the money where the epidemic is. What is in the House bill negates that.

What we are doing is playing politics with the lives of African- American women, who are the fastest growing numbers of people who have HIV in this country. We are taking $6.2 million away from them and we are putting it in facilities that, quite frankly, have done quite well under the Ryan White Act. The availability, the access, and the programs are at the greatest level in San Francisco as compared to any other place in this country. Yet we choose, if we do not accept the Enzi amendment, to say that is a higher priority than a poor African- American woman in the South. That is the choice.

I support this amendment. I think the Senate, in good conscience, ought to live up to its agreement on the Ryan White Act.

I yield back my time.

Mr. President, I wish to make a couple of points.

I know this is a large step down for San Francisco EMA and a smaller step down for some of the others. But the thing that needs to be kept in mind is the amount of dollars spent per HIV patient in those areas is 2\1/2\ times what the average is around the rest of the country-- 2\1/2\ times. We spend 2\1/2\ times more per HIV case in those areas than we do in North Carolina or Florida or Mississippi or Michigan or Kansas or Texas or Arizona. So what we are talking about is proportionality; giving the same opportunities to everybody who has HIV, not more opportunities.

So with the 30-percent cut, you are still going to be spending 1\1/2\ to 1\3/4\ times more per HIV case in San Francisco as you are in the rest of the country. So I appreciate the work of the Senator in the HIV area, which is exemplary, and I understand she would want to protect this, but it is not fair to the rest of the country. It is not fair to tell somebody that you are going to spend 2\1/2\ times as much on somebody with HIV in San Francisco as you are in Dallas, TX, or Miami, FL. That is what this amendment is about--keeping the fairness that was in the Ryan White Act.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, amendment No. 3358 is a pending amendment we discussed this last Friday. I believe under the unanimous consent agreement I have 10 minutes, and those in opposition do also. I am going to speak a few moments, if I may.

What the country is looking for us to do is to choose priorities, to make good choices about the priorities of what we do with their money. Quite frankly, there has not been a top-down review on all the Government programs, ever. We have had very limited oversight hearings, which should be the No. 1 part of our job. And we have in front of us a bill that has $400 million in directed earmarks, which we think, through what the appropriations process has brought to us, is an important priority.

What this amendment says is that we are going to give the Members of the Senate an opportunity to vote on whether those are the most important priorities or whether we ought to have children's health care because what this amendment does is redirects this money in abeyance until we say we have the kids in this country covered.

There is a large debate over the SCHIP bill that the President recently vetoed. There are a lot of things wrong with it. It is not wrong to help poor kids get health care. Nobody in the Senate opposed that. What they did oppose is changing, under the guise of a debate for children, a debate of having the Government start running all of the health care for kids. What it did do is spend $4,000 to buy $2,300 worth of care, and a lot of other things.

So what this amendment is about is asking the Senate to choose-- choose your directed earmarks for back home or make a statement that says: We really believe kids health care is important, and we are not going to spend the money on directed earmarks until we have solved that problem.

I know this makes some of my colleagues bristle, that we would challenge the direction. This is not saying specific earmarks are not good ideas. A lot of the earmarks in this bill are good ideas. What it does say is: Should they be a priority before we take care of one of the greatest problems this country is facing, which is health care? Are we going to go after and really change health care to where we get value, we get controllable costs, we get freedom of choice, or are we going to continue to do the same thing of putting earmarks into bills and ignoring the big problems that are in front of us?

So what this amendment says is that until the Secretary of HHS, whoever they may be, certifies that we have the kids under 18 in this country covered, we should not be spending money on directed political benefits for ourselves and our careers; instead, we should be spending our time solving the health care needs of the kids in our country.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, may I inquire as to the remaining time?

I thank the Chair.

I stand somewhat amused that we are so powerless that the bureaucracy is going to decide where everything goes. Earmarks are not the only way to decide how the budget is put out, and the fact that we use the excuse that we don't have any control, it is called oversight. Last year in the last Congress more oversight hearings were held by myself and Tom Carper, true oversight hearings, than all the rest of the Senate. The fact is, we don't want to do the hard work of oversight because it is easy to earmark something. But in fact, in dredging, you can hold the Corps of Engineers to a priority list. You can bring them before Congress and say: Why aren't you dredging this? How is this a priority against something else? We don't do the hard work of oversight. That is our problem. Instead, we want to do it the easy way.

I don't deny these are good projects. They are. I am not saying they are not. What I am saying is, what about the long term? What about the fact that a

child born today is inheriting $400,000 in unfunded liabilities and that earmarks happen to be the tool that allows us to spend more than we should, not directly through the earmarks but by voting for bills that should not be voted on? But because we have an earmark in the bill, we vote for the bill.

We have an unfunded liability right now on Medicare of $34 billion. We are never going to be trusted to fix that problem when we can't be trusted to have an arm's-length separate allocation and look at what the problems are in front of us in terms of labor, health, and human services.

I don't deny what people want to do in this bill could be prioritized. But the number of requests were 36,000 this year. The fact is, can we get what are priorities for this country if we continue the process of using earmarks?

How about children's health? Yes, we passed a bill. We passed a bill that truly wasn't paid for unless we want 22 million Americans to start smoking. We passed a bill that said: We are going to pay $4,000 to buy $2,300 worth of care. We are great stewards when it comes to the American taxpayers' money on this new SCHIP bill. There is no question we are going to get an SCHIP bill. That SCHIP bill is going to truly reflect the needs of the poor people who are not eligible for Medicaid. We are going to put the money there we need to accomplish that. But to confuse that bill with a process which has got us $9.5 trillion in debt and hung every one of our kids out to dry, that is what this amendment is about. It is the process I am attacking.

I am not attacking individual Senators. I am saying if we are going to get control of the spending, at some point in the future we have to look at the process and how it works. For us to say it is easier for us to earmark than to hold the bureaucracy accountable means we are not doing our job. We can hold the bureaucracies accountable. All we have to do is have an oversight hearing three times a week and make them come up here and explain how they are spending their money. They will start spending on priorities Americans want. We don't have our hands tied behind us just because we don't do earmarks.

The real question America is asking is, are we going to change our ways about real priorities, the real future for our country, or are we going to continue the same old process that has brought us all the corruption we have seen come through the House in the past that leads to conflicts of interest?

We talk about transparency. We gutted the transparency rules as far as appropriations are concerned in this bill and in our ethics bill, because no longer do you say who is getting it or what it is for. You only say where it is going. The very things that are in the House bill in terms of transparency are not available to us in the Senate, so we can't claim transparency. We are going to get transparency in September of next year when the transparency bill comes about.

Senator Harkin mentioned that we didn't offer an option. Senator Burr and I both did, the Every American Kid Insured Act. We talked about it on this floor during the debate on the SCHIP bill. There are other ways to do this. Give them all a tax credit. Let them buy the insurance. We have 9 million kids out there uninsured, 3 million more within 1 year. There are ways for us to solve that. But this is not a farce amendment. This is an amendment about a very real problem. Will we have the right priorities when it comes to this country or are we going to send $42 million to international labor organizations with no accountability whatsoever from the United Nations? That is what we are doing. That is what this bill does. We have another $400 million worth of earmarks that are not competitively bid and will never be overseen, and you will never see where the money goes. So the question on the amendment is, will we change the process.

It is a serious amendment. We should not be earmarking things until we do our business of taking care of kids' insurance.

With that, I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: As to the unanimous consent request that we agreed to, was it not agreed to that we were going to have votes on these amendments up or down?

That was not part of the unanimous consent agreement? Fine.

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

Mr. President, this is a straightforward amendment. It is an amendment about where our priorities lie. Do they lie in our directed spending or do they lie with the children of this country who aren't covered?

It is a very simple amendment. I know there are things in the bill for children, but the fact is out of the 9.5 million who are uncovered, we have 3.6 million who have not been covered for a year.

So this amendment simply states we are not going to spend any money on the directed spending until the HHS Secretary certifies that we have done our job in terms of taking care of the kids. Whether that is the SCHIP bill, negotiations with the administration or whatever it is, we are not going to spend the money.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending business be set aside and amendment No. 3358 be called up.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending business be set aside and that amendment No. 3358 on this bill be called up.

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

Mr. President, this amendment, for myself and my colleague Senator Burr, is about the topic of the Children's Health Care First Act of 2007.

There has been a lot of debate, a lot of politics on children's health care. The House failed to override what I think was a poor solution to take care of children in this country by expanding children's health care through the SCHIP program and spending $4,000 to get $2,300 worth of coverage for our kids.

What we do know is we do have problems with health care. We need to be debating health care. We need to figure out how we are going to do this. Myself and Senator Burr have an amendment that solves the health care problem, which has not been considered yet but which we are soliciting and for which we have received a number of cosponsors. This amendment, however, redirects us toward priorities. It is something we need to talk about. It is something the Senate doesn't talk about.

We had numerous quotes in this body about how important it is to make sure kids in this country have access to care. What we do know--and I used the number $2,300 because that is the high end if we were to buy every kid in this country a health insurance policy. It is probably more like $1,700. So if you take the $2,300 that we have as a high-end number to buy kids health insurance, and not put them in something that has a Medicaid stamp or a SCHIP stamp on their forehead but real health insurance, and you look at the earmarks in this bill, which are $398 million, you could, in fact, buy insurance for 173,000 kids, in this bill alone. So 173,000 children could be covered for health care from the earmarks alone in this bill.

Now, this amendment is real simple. If everybody in this body claims they want to take care of kids and their health care, they ought to be willing to give up their earmarks to cover kids. So what this bill says is, let's have no earmarks, no directed spending until such time as we have covered the kids in this country. We put kids ahead of us. We put kids ahead of our political interests. We put children's health care ahead of the politics and the consequential action of using politics in terms of earmark spending.

Now, $400 million is a lot of money, and $400 million is out of the priorities of what this country ought to be doing that are in this bill that is Member-directed spending. This amendment simply says: We don't direct any of that money--none of it, zero, not one earmark--until we have cared for the kids, until we are caring for the kids. So in essence, what we are doing by accepting this amendment is saying, instead of rhetoric, we are going to say kids count. We are going to start putting the priorities back. If access to care for children is important, is it less important than your favorite earmark?

I know if you total up certain of the earmarks of one certain State which has $72 million worth of earmarks, you have enough to cover all the uninsured kids in that State--all the uninsured kids in that State from the earmarks in this bill. So what are our priorities? Are our priorities children? Are our priorities the health care of kids?

This amendment is going to be a fun vote because what it is going to tell your constituency is: Kids aren't important if you vote to keep your earmarks, but if you say I am willing to abate on the earmarks, and I am going to do what is right. This amendment says none of this directed spending goes until the Secretary of HHS certifies that kids under 18 in this country have access and have care. We have had months of debate about the children's SCHIP. We are going to have more because another bill is coming. But it seems to me the American public might want to ask: Why are you earmarking special money for special projects when you have a chance to make sure it will go toward children and solving the problem?

So this is going to be a tough vote: kids versus my political career, kids

versus my political power, kids versus my political earmarks. We are going to see. We are going to begin to see what the real priorities of the Senate are. Is it our ability to direct funds without competition, without oversight to special projects all across this country, or is it to truly solve the health care needs of the kids in this country? It is real simple, real straightforward. It is either yes or no, kids are important, and directed, unaccountable, noncompetitive earmarks aren't or political power, political earmarks, noncompetitive grants, no oversight is more important than kids having access to health care.

The $400 million in earmarks will be set aside for children's health care in this bill with this amendment. So the reason it is called the Children's Health Care First Act is because children ought to come first. As parents, we put our kids first, or at least we should. Should the Senate not put the kids first? Should we not put them out in front to make sure they are our priority or are we going to play the game: Well, this isn't the way to do it, Senator Coburn.

This is going to speak volumes to the American public about our priorities. I have challenged this body on our priorities. I am going to continue to challenge the body on our priorities. As we vote on this amendment, the American people are going to see what our priorities are. It is either going to be kids or it is going to be us.

Let's talk about what is in this bill. This is the bill through which Congress can and should provide funding for health care for children. Yet it diverts $400 million away from children's health in order to pay for earmarks.

Here is a little ``smitling'' of what the earmarks are: $350,000 for an art center, $100,000 for a celebration around a lake, $500,000 for field trips, $500,000 for a virtual herbarium, $50,000 for an ice center. How can we spend money on those things when kids in this country don't have access to care?

So we are going to debate this again on Monday when we come back in, but it is going to be a test of our true priorities. You are going to see all the rhetoric in the world on the repeat SCHIP bill. You have seen it. You have seen it in television advertisements against people who didn't think that was the best way to do it, and now is the chance to put your words into action. Either kids are important or they are not. But it would seem they are going to be less important than our political power, our political expediency, and our ability to empower the select and the well-connected and the well-heeled in this country.

With that, I yield the floor and ask the cosponsor of this amendment to speak.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and I call up amendment No. 3399.

This amendment has been cleared on both sides. I will talk with the Senator about it.

Mr. President, I intend to speak after Senator Schumer speaks as well.

Mr. President, we heard Senator Kyl talk about the problem. The Woodstock Museum is not the problem; it is a symbol of the problem. Alan Gerry has done great things for the State of New York. He should be praised for what he has done. This isn't an attack on him. This is an attack on the process--the process where we inappropriately send money back on the basis not of priority but on the basis of a low- priority need.

Now, there was a historian by the name of Alexander Tyler. These words are attributed to him. Nobody can say for sure he is the author of them, but they bear a very important lesson for us. He wrote about the Athenian Empire which had collapsed, and he was writing this about the time that our Founders were writing our institutional documents. Here is what he said: All democracies eventually fail. They fail because people learn that they can vote themselves money from the public Treasury. Consequently, they only vote for people in elected office who will return them money from the public Treasury. Consequently, all democracies fail over a fiscal collapse.

Now, is that where we are headed? Have we walked into the trap of history which talks about how every other democracy in the world has, in fact, failed over fiscal issues? They haven't failed over the principles of their democracy. They haven't failed over their freedom. They failed over the financial collapse of their system because the political class used public monies to pay off private citizens.

This is a symbolic vote. It is not about going after Senator Schumer or Senator Clinton and this earmark. I have been going after Republican and Democratic earmarks for 2\1/2\ years. But this is a great example. I am part of the hippie generation. I was a junior in college when Woodstock occurred. It may be great for upstate New York to empower and have this as an economic development tool. It is certainly a part of our history and ought to be remembered. There is no question about it. But the question is, should this be a priority for this body over the priority of women and children, of maternal-child health, which isn't funded adequately in this country? Should we fund $1 million to a worthwhile project but low priority? That is the question. It is not about whether great things have been done in this area or whether great things can continue to be done.

New York has a $1.6 billion surplus right now. If this is great, why shouldn't the State of New York fund it more, this $1 million? We have, according to the latest estimate if you use Enron accounting, a $160 million deficit. If you use real accounting, it is going to be about a $300 billion deficit. So why should we put the credit card in and charge another $1 million to our kids for something that is low priority? If we are going to charge another $1 million to our kids, why don't we do it for the kids, for maternal and child health? We will earn the 11 percent if we reject this amendment.

The problem is, this is a good thing to do. Senators have a right to do it. We know that. Even though, I disagree that, before we fix the major financial problems that face our country, we shouldn't be sending money home. I am in the minority on that issue. I understand that. You are not bad if you disagree with me. But according to the American public, you don't agree with them either because 85 percent of the American people in the latest poll think we ought to eliminate all earmarks until we get our house in order.

The question is, how will they ever trust us to fix Medicare or Social Security if they can't trust us on these small things? And they can't. We can't help ourselves. Surely, $1 million for a Woodstock museum and performance center is not a priority for this country at this time.

I am happy to yield.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I would ask to modify that time on the provision that we be finished this debate. In other words, that being the first order of business after we finish this debate rather than setting a fixed time because I am not sure we will be through at 12:30. If the Senator would care to modify, so that at 12:30, or the soonest thereafter we finish this debate, I would be more than happy to agree.

I guess we can do that. I would do that if that is what you want to do. I would love for us to finish this before the vote.

Is that OK with my colleague?

Then I think we should be finished. I have no objection to the original request.

Mr. President, so here we have a bill, the Labor-HHS bill, and it has over $400 million in earmarks--some good, some priority, some are high priority, probably should be there, but many are not high priority.

When are we going to do what the American family has to do every year? What they have to do is say: Here is how much money we have coming in. Here is what we have needs for, and here is what we have available. What they do is make choices based on priorities. This debate is about making choices. If we had different rules, this debate would have been eliminating the earmark plainly, and several others. But because of the Senate rules, the money is going to be spent, so we have to figure out a higher priority place to spend it, and maternal and child health is certainly the place to do it.

The real question the American people are asking us, the 89 percent of the American people who don't have confidence in this institution are asking us is, when are we going to get it? When are we going to start doing what they want us to do? When are we going to start playing for them and their future, rather than playing for us and our future? That is the real question.

There is no question that the desirability of what this earmark supports is probably great. I don't have any problems with it. What I have a problem with is that we have a $9 trillion debt.

This Senator has never voted to raise the debt limit. We just raised the debt limit $850 billion, to almost $10 trillion, because we can't control ourselves.

So the question before us isn't whether this is good or bad. The question is, when are we going to change our behavior? When are we going to start doing $1 million here and $1 million here, up to $398,584,000 worth of earmarks in a bill? That is the question. This isn't conservatives who are asking this question; it is liberal Democrats; it is Independents; it is conservatives, because they know, in fact, this Government can run better, more efficiently, with less money than what we are doing now, if, in fact, we will stand up and do the oversight work we ought to be doing. But we refuse to do that.

So the vote will come. We will have a vote. If we don't enhance this amendment and pass it, we will go from 11 percent to 10.95 percent because, in fact, the American people will see, again, that we don't get it. We don't have to live by the rules they live by.

The tragedy is, in this bill, the Labor-HHS bill to help those most dependent in America, we are going to take money in the future from those who we are saying we are giving to now, through a decreased standard of living or an increased tax rate. If you don't believe that, read David Walker, the Comptroller General's report about what is getting ready to happen to us as a nation in terms of our finances, or read Peter Peterson's book, ``Running On Empty,'' about what is going to happen to us. Why in the world is the Euro at $1.42 when it was 83 cents 3\1/2\ years ago? Why is that? Is there a beckoning call about our financial condition that the world financial markets recognize, and yet we refuse to pay attention to?

So I call on my colleagues. This isn't a partisan amendment. I have gone after just as many Republican amendments--as a matter of fact, one of the amendments I am going to be offering today goes after a Republican amendment. I also plan on offering an amendment to get rid of all earmarks in this bill before we finish this bill. So we will get to see whether this body gets it, whether the 80 percent to 85 percent of Americans who want us to change our behavior have any influence on us whatsoever. Will we listen?

There is a rumble. I said this a year and a half ago. There is a rumble in America, and the rumble is this: We don't have confidence in our Government anymore. Where is the legitimacy of our Government when our own people don't have confidence in us? It is a great question to ask about the

greatest Republic that there ever was. It is a problem we need to be about solving rather than ignoring.

With that, I yield for the moment.

Will the Senator yield?

Can the Senator recall a time that I voted for a tax cut?

As a matter of fact, my public statements are that there should be no tax cuts unless you do spending cuts to pay for them.

I appreciate that.

Mr. President, I have a couple points as to Senator Schumer's statement. First, with an unemployment rate six-tenths percent lower than the national average and lower than New York's average, by the way--lower than New York's average--it is hardly in the dire consequences of what we see around the rest of the country.

The second point is, we have 60-some million dollars out there for competitive grant competition on museums for which the museum administration does a great job. In other words, everybody in the country who wants to have a museum has to compete against everybody else, and the ones who are most meritorious--by the way, they are also audited to see that the money is actually spent in a proper way; this will never be audited--they have to compete.

The major problem with Senator Schumer's argument is that Sullivan County can never be healthy if the country as a whole is not healthy. That is the problem with the argument. We can say we want to make XYZ healthy. It is akin to saying your finger is healthy when you are having a heart attack.

The fact is, the country as a whole is at the precipice--D day comes January 1, 2008. That is the demographic day on which all the baby boomers, the ``Woodstockers'' start taking Social Security, and 3 years later they start taking Medicare, $79 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities. How in the world can the American people ever trust us to fix those big problems if we don't even get it on the small problems?

If this is a great idea, put it into the competition on competitive grants for museums. To say they are in hardship with an unemployment rate of 4.1 percent compared to the rest of New York and the rest of the country, that is hard to believe.

Again, we have to start listening to the rumble in America that says start being good stewards with our money, quit doing things that help you as politicians that hurt us as a country.

The fact is, although this may be very worthy, why shouldn't it have to compete against everybody else in the country who wants a museum? Why shouldn't it have to compete? Why is it that I can pick out and place--and I guess I am one of the derelict Senators because I don't believe Oklahoma can be healthy if our country isn't healthy. I believe Oklahoma will ultimately fail if our country fails. I believe that future generations will live a less standard of living with less opportunity and ultimately less freedom if we don't solve the financial problems in front of us as a nation.

This is a symptom of our sickness, and until we reject and get rid of this disease of parochialism and start fulfilling our oath--do you realize the oath we take when we come to the Senate never mentions our State? It says you will uphold the Constitution of these United States--these United States, all of us. So the will and the best well- being of all of us as a country has to be our most important goal.

Alexander Tyler will be right about us if we don't wake up and change what we are doing. We will collapse under our own fiscal insanity if we continue to do these things.

Senator Schumer is a great Senator for the State of New York, there is no question about it. He is going to fight and defend this old way of parochialism. He is going to fight and defend it until we as a country collapse. That is why we have an 11-percent confidence rating. We are collapsing already in terms of our real duty to build confidence, that we are looking out for the country as a whole, not for our own political careers or not for local parochial interests. That is why the Senate was created. It wasn't for parochial interests. If you read the Founders' writings, they never thought about the Senate being considered anything other than a body that looked at the long term, ensure the future, create opportunities, and protect the liberty, and we fall away from that as we go through this process.

Mr. President, I know we have a unanimous consent agreement. I ask that all the Members of this body read Comptroller General David Walker's report about what is getting ready to happen to us and read former Secretary Peter Peterson's book ``Running on Empty'' and what they will see is not a pretty picture.

The time to diagnose the disease is now, not when we are in ICU and we could have prevented it.

I yield the floor. I thank my colleagues for their debate.

Mr. President, I was listening to Senator Byrd, the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and he asked who would stand up. I will stand up. I think we ought to cut a lot of things, but the first thing we ought to do is cut out claiming something that isn't true.

What we need to claim is that we can live within the same parameters that every family in this country has to live

within. We are not doing it on this bill. It is not about whether the FBI is funded. It is not about the ATF or the Drug Enforcement Agency-- it is about priorities. There is just $640 million worth of earmark nonpriority things in this bill. So we could get $640 million tomorrow out of the earmarks that are not priorities, and I will be happy to list for anybody the total for every State, for every Senator who has a priority they think is more important than families having to live within a budget that they have to live with every day.

This isn't a debate about the President. This is a debate about the future of our country starting to live within the means of which we have.

The very things we claim we want to do for all the States that they don't have money to do--by the way, there are cumulative budget surpluses over $40 billion right now. Ours is, if you take Washington speak, $160 billion; if you take true accounting, it is $330 billion. But the States have a surplus. The Justice Department had the highest unexpended balances they have ever had this last year--almost $1.6 billion. Yet we think they need more money. Does anybody in this country think every agency of this Government couldn't run 5 percent more efficiently? Nobody outside of Washington believes they couldn't. They know they can because they know they have to make those same choices every day in everything they do because they can't run with a credit card and charge it to their grandchildren.

Now, 10 percent growth in this bill is too much. This motion to commit doesn't have anything to do with the President. It has to do with whether we will stand up and do what every other American has to do, and that is live within the realities of the money available to them. We can claim that we are doing everything. Since when is fire prevention the total responsibility of the Federal Government? Since when is police protection the total responsibility of the Federal Government? It is not going to go away. If it is a higher priority, then let's make it a higher priority, but let's get rid of some things that aren't. There are no choices to get rid of things that are low priority. We can't have it both ways. Those who want to grow the Government can't have it both ways. Either you want to live within the means, you want to be honest with the American people and say: You are right; we can do a better job.

This bill does not do a better job. We ought to relook at it, reformulate priorities. That doesn't undermine what the committee has done. We added $1 billion on the floor. The committee didn't do that, we did. What we ought to say is let's add 2 or 3 percent, live with less than inflation, do what every American has to do, and if we do that all the way across the board, then we will start solving the fiscal problems that are in front of us.

I yield the floor.