Floor Statements

I will get through them fairly quickly.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. President, I withdraw my request.

Mr. President, if there is a pending amendment, I ask unanimous consent it be set aside, and I call up amendment No. 4562.

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

Mr. President, this is an amendment we have had several times on appropriations bills. It is about sunshine, pure and simple. What most Americans do not realize is that when conference reports come on appropriations bills, there are things that are added in the House that we in the Senate do not have any idea of what they are. They are not printed except in the report language. When we vote on the bill, we have no awareness whatsoever of what those things are.

This is a fairly simple amendment that just ensures that every earmark or directive must be included in the final Homeland Security appropriations bill that is approved by both Chambers. The American people ought to get to see that, and we ought to be able to know, as Senators, what is in the bill.

This amendment is for transparency. It adds to the debate, and it provides the American taxpayers an additional safeguard that their money is not wasted on unnecessary projects that might jeopardize the Nation's fiscal health or lessen the impact of the Homeland Security bill.

The first time I offered this amendment, it was defeated. The second time I offered it, last year, we won it, and the third time we won it on separate appropriations bills. Thereafter, it was agreed to. That is all good and fine. But after it was done on every appropriations bill, it was dropped in conference, saying: We don't need to know what we are voting on. We don't need to have the information that we are having. The American people shouldn't know what we are voting on, and we shouldn't know what we are voting on.

I believe this is something that we ought to put into every appropriations bill. We ought to know what we are voting on. We ought to know who is responsible for what is in there. And we ought to be able to go home and defend it or object to it here on the floor. But nobody can make a case for us not knowing what is in the bill.

So my hope would be that the secrecy of the appropriations process or the sleight of hand in how things are written, so nobody can know where it is going or who put it there, would be eliminated. All this is is a sunshine amendment saying: We ought to know. My hope is we will accept this amendment, one, and then we will keep it in in conference so that when a conference bill comes back out, we can know what the House did on earmarks and directives, as well as knowing what we did.

I think it is a commonsense amendment. My hope would be the chairman and ranking member of this committee would accept this amendment.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object for one moment, I want to make a point. The example used of the Senator from West Virginia is exactly the way it ought to be done. It is out in the open. There is direction. His name is tied to an amendment. And everybody in America who is watching this place knows who is doing what they are doing.

This amendment is to make sure that happens. The point is not what we are doing. This amendment is as to what the House is doing. And I would confirm with the Senator, the chairman, that this is a great bill in terms of earmarks. There are very few in it. We study every bill to see where it is and what the direction is. My hope is that an example will be set. There are a couple of earmarks, directives in this bill we will be talking about in amendments, but I will tell the Senator that I agree and I appreciate the fact that we are seeing a little bit of a change in culture in that regard.

My hope would be, also--I might ask the Senator--if he would agree to hold this in conference so we can see what the House does when we come to the conference report.

With that, I withdraw my objection.

I appreciate that.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and that amendment No. 4561 be called up.

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

Mr. President, this requires public disclosure of all reports delivered to the Appropriations Committee, including the President's justification on his budget, with the exception of national security issues by the Department of Homeland Security, so that everybody can see what the request is, what the justification for the request is, and what the reports are.

Unfortunately, in this bill, there is a section that requires the opposite. There is a directive that says they are not to release it to the American public, that they are only to release it to the Appropriations Committee. A little bit of experience: This year, when the President's budget request came up, and the justifications for it, as a U.S. Senator it was unavailable to me. It was unavailable to my staff. It was unavailable to any staff except Appropriations staff. They do a good job. But as to the justifications for the request, just like the Senator from New Hampshire said--we have the right of the purse strings. The House and the Senate have the right to say where the money goes. If we cannot have the justifications for why the President's budget is so numbered and divided, then we will not have the ability to defend that--and that is those people outside of the Appropriations Committee.

In the committee report is this sentence:

The committee is deeply disappointed in the actions taken

by the Department to combine the reporting requirements of

this committee with other reports and then releasing the

results of those reports publicly prior to submission to the

committee. Reports to the committee are not expected to be

turned into publicity events again in the future.

Well, whose business is this? It is the American people's business; it is not just the Appropriations Committee's business. And it is the other Senators' business. And it is the other Congressmen's business. It is not just one committee's business. They have the authority and the obligation to bring it to the floor, but the knowledge of what the President requests and the knowledge of the reports required by bills that we all vote on coming back to the Congress should be shared with the American people.

All this amendment says is that 48 hours after they report it to the committee--and they should get it first; I adamantly agree they should see those reports first, since they are the ones who asked for them--it becomes on line and available to the rest of the Senators, the rest of the Congressmen, and, beyond that, the rest of the American people.

Why should they not see the President's budgetary request?

As a matter of fact, Josh Bolton, before becoming Chief of Staff for the President, was head of the OMB, and he agreed last year that this year they would put that all on line at the time they give it to the Appropriations Committee. This is simply another sunshine amendment.

I am happy to.

Certainly, in answer to the Senator's question. On the trust fund, we never got to know who was going to give the money. It was same thing. So there are big problems everywhere. I believe in sunshine everywhere. You won't see me fighting sunshine. The people of this country deserve to know what is in the bills, what is in the reports, and what is in the requests and the justifications.

I only have 45 minutes to get through three other amendments. I don't want to put this into a political game. What I want to do is talk about what the American people ought to be getting from us. This language ought to be changed so that we accept the Appropriations Committee getting the reports early, but then the Department of Homeland Security making it available to the rest of the American public, provided it doesn't have a security implication within it. It is a very straightforward amendment. I hope the committee will accept it and keep it in in conference.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 4585 be called up.

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

Mr. President, I know there is going to be a radical difference of opinion on this amendment. Let me explain. This is about the LORAN stations nationwide. This is an old-time aid to navigation that this bill has requested another study of. This has been studied. There are volumes of reports from every agency of the Federal Government that has anything to do with this. All of them say we don't need this system anymore.

LORAN stands for long-range aids to navigation. The original LORAN-A system was developed during World War II. LORAN-C, where we are today, was developed during the 1950s and 1960s. There are 24 LORAN stations across the United States. One of them is actually in my State.

These stations send out radio signals and LORAN receivers on board vessels and aircraft measure the differences in the time that it takes for a signal to come back and determine both the longitudinal and latitudinal positions. It is used rarely for some civilian navigation, but it is no longer a primary source for civilian navigation needs because it has been replaced with a far superior system called global positioning or a satellite-based system. That has been totally functioning since 1994.

The plan was released February 10, 2006. It was prepared by the Department of Defense, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Homeland Security. The Coast Guard requested to terminate this program. There is no longer a need for the Coast Guard for either primary or secondary. If GPS fails, there are other systems that back it up besides LORAN. And it is not needed for the Department of Transportation. The Department of Defense said they don't need it. The Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard, and the FAA said they do not need it. In this bill, it calls for DHS and DOT to submit a report to the Senate Appropriations Committee that requires them to come up with excuses to continue the LORAN operation. Here is the report.

I would like to submit for the Record the report and also the statement of administration policy on this.

The administration objects to this provision because it is going to postpone the inevitable. This is a program that we don't need. Every agency of the Federal Government that uses this program or has been involved with it says they don't need it anymore. There are special interests that might want it, but the country doesn't need it. The Government doesn't need it. You don't need it for navigational purposes.

I am quoting now:

The Department of Transportation has conducted numerous

studies that make clear that the benefits of terminating the

LORAN system far outweigh the costs. Furthermore, as

discussed in the Subcommittee Report, the Global Positioning

System is a far superior navigational aid, with sufficient

backup capabilities in place to meet the Coast Guard's needs

for the Maritime Transportation System [and to meet the FAA's

need for air travel, and the Department of Homeland Security,

as well as the Department of Transportation].

I ask unanimous consent to print that in the Record.

I draw the attention of my colleagues to the formal report on the LORAN system as put forward by the three agencies.

We are going to hear debate that there is not sufficient backup. Let me answer that first. The 2005 Federal Radio Navigational Plan reported that the U.S. Coast Guard has determined that there are backups. LORAN is not needed for it. In case there is a GPS failure, conventional navigation is used, using all available equipment which includes GPS, DGPS, radar, lights, buoys, celestial navigation, daymarks, and dead reckoning. There are seven backups besides this.

Coast Guard Congressional Affairs has indicated that LORAN is one of many backups. It is not needed for aviation backup. They have very high-frequency omnidirectional beacons that give the same backup. Distance measuring equipment, the ILS systems, a backup to GPS, it is not going to be long when we won't even have ILS systems at airports. We will probably have somebody who wants to keep those in. The fact is, we need to recognize the technology. These dollars would be better spent somewhere else.

The Coast Guard is going to spend $35 million in 2007 on operations and the maintenance of the LORAN system. The Federal Aviation Administration will spend between $15 and $25 million on recapitalization. The Coast Guard tried to start getting rid of this in 2000. The FAA at that time said they still needed it. They now no longer need it. It will take another 6 to 10 years and another $300 million to complete the recapitalization that was mandated since 2000 for a program this isn't needed.

Here are the savings: $500 million over the next 7 years if we go on and terminate a program that we don't need and nobody needs as a backup.

The Senate report on this bill and the proponents of LORAN will claim that GPS used along with LORAN provides the most accurate positioning. That is one of the claims. They aren't even used in tandem anymore. If you are looking at GPS, you don't use the LORAN system. And GPS is far superior to anything that LORAN could give us. One of the claims will be that shutting down will adversely affect other Federal agencies that use LORAN. The navigational plan asked for by this Congress indicated that it is no longer a mission-essential device. It is not needed for either a primary or secondary source for positioning, navigation, or timing for the Department of Defense, the Department of Transportation, or the Department of Homeland Security. Who is that? That is the FAA, the Maritime Commission, the Coast Guard, all of them saying: We don't need this. Yet we are going to spend another $500 million over the next 7 years if we don't get rid of it.

So it is simple. Somebody wants it, yes. Why? There are special interests that will want this to continue. But the fact is, a half a billion dollars is a lot of money that we don't have. We ought to eliminate this program. I know there are others who disagree with that. I look forward to the debate.

I yield the floor at this time.

Mr. President, I have a couple of comments to the Senator from Washington State. LORAN won't go away if this instruction for this study is taken out. There are still 4 years that LORAN will be there under the Coast Guard's plan. I also remind the Senator that the FAA has already said they don't need it. The Maritime Commission has said they don't need it. The Coast Guard has said they don't need it. Who needs it when we have other backups? It is true that in 2000 the FAA said we don't have sufficient backup to eliminate LORAN. They have since, in the report--the study that has already been made--said they don't need it. So this is a report to extend the life of LORAN, something that we don't need.

I know the Senator from Alaska will oppose this. I look forward to a vigorous debate with him.

I will soon ask unanimous consent again to submit the 2005 Federal radio navigational plan into the Record so everybody can see all the claims that

have been made by the groups that supposedly don't need it. The plan has already been done. It is not required as a navigational backup.

Now, will some people somewhere want to get a better navigational system? Yes. You can buy a GPS system for a boat now for about $300 and you can have something far superior than LORAN ever was or you can use the VOR system or one of the myriad--seven other backups for maritime without using LORAN.

With that, I ask unanimous consent that this amendment be set aside, and I will call up another amendment.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask that amendment No. 4589 be called up.

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

Mr. President, this is a very simple amendment. The Improper Payment Information Act was enacted in 2002. It was very specific, and Congress was very wise to do it. What it said is that the agencies have to make an assessment of improper payments.

Now, what the American people don't know is that at least $65 billion in improper payments--payments made by the Federal Government to people who don't deserve to get them--are made every year. Think about that: $1.6 billion in food stamps; $20-some billion at the Pentagon; $42 billion in Medicare improper payments; $30 billion in Medicaid improper payments. So the $60 billion number I quote is a very conservative estimate.

What we saw with Katrina is that tons of improper payments were made. But we had the Department of Homeland Security say they didn't have any improper payments. That is what they asserted to this Congress in 2005. The fact is that they didn't do the studies which were necessary to assess whether they were at risk. The $65 billion that I quote represents only 18 of 70 entities of the Federal Government, and it is only 18 out of 70 that are reporting.

The Department of Homeland Security, in its fiscal year 2004 performance and accountability report, said none of its programs or activities were deemed to be at significant risk for making improper payments. The OMB put some special definitions on what that is. It is $10 million or 2.5 percent. We know of at least a billion dollars that has been wasted in Katrina that we can document right now. The Department has since admitted they are finding and reporting improper payments for 2005 that were not in full compliance with the law.

We are seeing that everywhere in my Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, where we look at these agencies. They actually ignore the law and don't make a concerted effort. Senator Obama and I asked in September that a chief financial officer be set up in terms of the response in September of last year to Katrina. We never got that through, but had we gotten that through, we would be a billion dollars ahead of where we are today, just in terms of the funds for Katrina.

The price tag is going to be over $200 billion in Federal money by the time we finish. If you take the rate of improper payments within DHS just in terms of Katrina, we are probably going to have $2 billion or $3 billion in improper payments.

For the record, I believe it is important that the American public know why we ought to be having an assessment of how we spend our money. Sixteen percent of the dollars and assistance initially spent after Katrina and Rita was spent on divorce, sex changes--bogus things--and $1.5 million went to credit card waste, a 1-week Caribbean vacation, five season tickets to the New Orleans Saints, and Dom Perignon in San Antonio. A thousand credit cards were given to people with Social Security numbers belonging to State and Federal prisoners, and $14,000 was given to an inmate in a Louisiana jail. Subcontracting--we were to pay, on average, $32 per cubic yard for debris removal, but the actual cost was $68. We had the rest taken up in layers of subcontractors. I could go on and on, but I will not.

This amendment gives a million dollars to the Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Homeland Security and says: Do improper payments reporting. I ask that this be accepted by the committee because it makes common sense and we have a real problem in Homeland Security with waste, fraud, and abuse. To start fixing that, we must know what the problem is.

Mr. President, I made an error in the number of the amendment I called up. I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside and the true number be 4590 instead of 4589 and that the debate be considered with regard to No. 4590 rather than 4589.

Mr. President, I wish to respond to the chairman for a minute. I know this isn't going to solve the problem. This takes away the excuse for not doing proper payment analysis at the Department of Homeland Security. I know they are working hard in that regard.

Mr. President, I note that the Senator from Alaska is here. I wonder if we might recall amendment No. 4585.

Mr. President, I ask that amendment No. 4590 be reported.

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

The pending amendment is exactly as I described. It is an amendment that moves $1 million to the chief financial officer of Homeland Security so they will do the improper payments report.

That is correct.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his words. I want to clarify something which is just my understanding, and please correct me if I am wrong.

The GPS is never limited by line of sight. It is a satellite. It is the LORAN system that is limited by line of sight. The mountainous structures in Alaska limit the LORAN system. GPS is far superior to the LORAN system. That is accurate. Both as a pilot I know that and from what we have said.

The other point that I would make--

I am happy to yield to the Senator.

I would concede that.

I would concede to the Senator that there are occasional times that the GPS cannot be utilized. I would concede that.

There are also places where LORAN cannot be accessed in Alaska today.

I would concede to the Senator that LORAN can be used in places where GPS cannot be utilized. But I would also concede that the study that asked for this has already been done. Everything that this study asked for has already been put forward. The 2005 Federal Radionavigation Plan answers every question you have asked in this amendment.

What the Department of Transportation says, what the FAA says, what the Maritime Commission says, what the U.S. Coast Guard says is LORAN is not needed for a backup for a navigational system anywhere in this country. That is what they say, and that is what you are asking for. They have also done a cost-benefit analysis, and they have said, without question, the cost-benefit is on the side of eliminating LORAN.

Let's talk about what it will cost. The Government estimates it will cost $300 million to upgrade the LORAN

system in Alaska over the next 6 to 7 years. And what they are certifying--and I understand the concern of the Senator from Alaska because some people might not have a system they are used to today. But when these agencies certified that LORAN is not needed as a secondary backup, that is what you are asking them for in the study, and they have already said it is not needed.

I will finish my point, and then I will turn the time over to the Senator.

Mr. President, the Federal Radionavigation Plan is a 120-page report. Let me just go through it real quickly.

FAA has said: Sufficient alternative navigational aids exist in the event of a loss of GPS-based services. They have VOR, which they have in Alaska.

The Maritime Administration determined that there would not be significant disruption in the movement of vessels in and out of U.S. ports or affect commercial enterprises as traditional aids to navigation are still in use and capable.

The Department of Homeland Security has determined that LORAN-C is not needed as a backup for timing users, as adequate alternatives are already in place.

The Federal Railroad Administration said they have no need for LORAN.

The bottom line: The accuracy of LORAN in these areas can be equally degraded and compromised, and therefore, there would be no material degradation in navigational safety should GPS be the only RNAV source for Alaska. Traditional backups for maritime navigation would still be in place: VTSs, buoys, ranges, radar, lighthouses, and fathometers. Since 1997, $160 million has been appropriated to recapitalize LORAN. $117.5 million of that has been transferred to the Coast Guard. It is estimated that it will take another 6 to 10 years and $300-plus million to recapitalize that.

The point is, even without the amendment of the Senator from Alaska, his addition in committee, it is 4 years before this is decommissioned. So it gives 4 years for anybody who has any problem with it a chance to adjust to that problem.

I would offer to the Senator from Alaska that there might be a compromise that we could discuss in keeping LORAN working just for Alaska where there is a problem, rather than keeping LORAN working everywhere else there is not a problem. I would suggest there may be a compromise to address the issues of concern that the Senator from Alaska has, that would also save us a considerable amount of money and solve his problems with those who feel at risk without elimination of LORAN. I yield to the Senator.

Mr. President, I would just make a couple of points.

Norm Mineta of the Department of Transportation signed this report on October 21, 2005--the Secretary of the Department of Transportation-- the Federal Radionavigation Plan. So for the Department of Transportation to claim now that they didn't agree with this report, when their Secretary and his staff signed off on the report, there is something amiss. There is some miscommunication.

What I would like to do is note the absence of a quorum in the hopes that I could work with the Senators from Alaska and Washington to come to a compromise on this amendment.

Mr. President, I would note that in the report, the considerations for backups are very well and very explicitly listed, including Alaska's backup system. So I agree that there is some confusion and there certainly is some difference in what was signed off on the report and what we are hearing now.

I would ask to note the absence of a quorum.

I have no objection.

I do. I have a modification of amendment No. 4585.

The amendment will remain intact with the following added at the bottom which says ``except in Alaska, far Northwest, and far Northeast Continental United States of America.''

I want to be clear that the Record show what that means; that is, they can dismantle LORAN everywhere except there. And that would protect specifically Nantucket, Caribou, George, and all six in Alaska. The study would still go forward for those areas only, not for the rest of the country. The dismantling of these areas that are not used would be able to continue as the administration and the Federal Radio Navigational Plan suggests.

I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be accepted.

Madam American, I thank the chairman and ranking member for the acceptance of the amendments today and the cordial way in which they have worked with us. I appreciate it very much.

Mr. President, I am going to take a few minutes. I am very happy with the support of the Senator from Illinois for the nomination of Mr. Paulson, but I challenge what was just said.

There is no question we have deficits. There is also no question that on 9/11, we experienced a great economic shock and we had a recession that was big. The tax cuts have led to the highest revenues this Federal Government has ever had.

On the spending side, I find it somewhat curious, the Senator from Illinois ranks No. 6 in the most spending voted for in the Senate last year. He ranks No. 8 in the cosponsorship of the most new spending outside the appropriations bills. You can't have it both ways. You can't complain that we are in deficits and we are in debt and never vote to lower the spending, never vote for amendments that trim wasteful spending, and then complain that somebody else made you do it.

If we look at the voting record on appropriations bills, there are not very many noes coming from that vote. The way we control spending-- and we have proven it on our committee, the Federal management oversight committee--we identified over $200 billion worth of waste. If we want to balance the budget, let's have everybody on both sides of the aisle voting to trim the waste, fraud, and abuse out of the Federal Government, rather than when we go to a conference or a meeting with the President when there is excess money and demanding more spending, not less.

The numbers are fairly revealing. Last year, Senator Durbin sponsored $93 billion in new spending--new spending, outside of what we did on appropriations. He put his name to spend $93 billion, and he put his name to trim $100 million. That is the problem we have. It is not taxes, it is wasteful spending and the idea that the only way we can accomplish something is to spend more money.

I am for the same priorities. We need to help the people who need help in this country. But we will never be able to afford it in the future without stealing from our kids if we don't do the hard work to get rid of the waste now, and that means voting against appropriations bills, not voting for them. The President signed what the Senator from Illinois voted for.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I have great respect for the Senator from Hawaii, for his service as a veteran, as well as his service in this body, but I couldn't disagree more.

Our Founders used the word ``speech.'' They didn't say ``expression'' or ``expressive behavior.'' They used the word ``speech'' very critically. It was discussed in the documents: What word will we use in the Bill of Rights in this first amendment?

They chose the word ``speech'' because they meant speech. They didn't mean behavior. They meant speech.

I think it is real important for the American people to understand what this debate is all about. It is not about burning the flag. It is about restoring the balance of the three branches of Government, and that when one of the three becomes imbalanced, that we have the right to restore that balance. Our Founders were wise in that regard

to give us this vehicle of amending the Constitution.

We can talk about the flag all we want, but the real debate here is, when an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with this and all 50 State legislatures have passed requests that we do this, why we don't do this? The only way we have to balance the judiciary with the legislative branch is to do it in a manner that represents the will of the people as prescribed by our Founders.

Seven new Republican Senators were elected in 2004, and if there was an issue that dominated that debate more than anything, it was, what kind of judges are we going to put on the courts? Are we going to confirm judges who take what they want, twist the Constitution into what they believe, and change the basics of how we operate in this country or are we going to put judges on the courts who understand that they have a very limited role to interpret the Constitution, interpret the treaties, and interpret the statutes of this country?

The reason we were sent here, the seven of us, the vast majority of the impact of that election, was to have an impact on what kinds of judges we were going to put on the courts. This is that same debate coming from a different angle. Do we want a 5-to-4 decision where five Members of the Court determine and twist what the real words of our Constitution say--speech, not behavior; it says ``speech,'' not behavior, not expressive conduct; it says ``speech''--and do we want to allow that to continue to be twisted or do we want to reserve the right for Congress to go through the method that our Founders allowed to bring about a constitutional amendment that says we have the right to control whether somebody can do that.

To vote against this amendment will limit the ability of this body to hold on to its balanced share of one-third of the power of this Government. This is about restoring the power of this body and the House to, in fact, represent what the people in this country want in an overwhelming majority in all 50 States.

It is not about burning the flag. It is about reestablishing the proper role of the balance of the three branches that run this country--the executive, the judiciary, and the legislative.

We are going to miss a great opportunity if we don't do this. It will do two things: One, it will reestablish the power, but it will send a signal that when judges take an oath, they have to follow the oath and the oath is not to determine what they think is best based on what they believe. Their oath is to follow the Constitution, not change it but follow it; and No. 2, interpret the statutes and interpret the treaties.

We have to reestablish a balance. This resolution is about reestablishing that balance and sending the message that we are serious that judges take their oath seriously, that they don't get to play games with what they would like but they, in fact, have to uphold their oath. They also have to follow what the Constitution says, and the Constitution says the same thing as their oath. They don't get the privilege of deciding what they want. They have the privilege of only deciding what the Constitution says, what the statutes say, and what the treaties say.

I remind the Members of this body that our Founders put the word ``speech'' in the first amendment on purpose. They didn't put the words ``expressive behavior.'' They used the word ``speech,'' and we ought to establish the right of the Congress to establish within itself the right to do what the American people want and to follow the Constitution. That is what this is about.

There have been a lot of statements made about what would you do with a flag; what about a bathing suit? The way you judge what is a flag is what you drape over the coffin of one of our fallen soldiers. That is how you judge what it is. That is what it means. You can't define what it is other than the value of service and sacrifice that is part of the heritage of this country. To say we cannot preserve the value of that and bring back our constitutional responsibility to do that--No. 1, which does follow the Constitution and, No. 2, is the desired will of this country--means that we won't stand up to the obligations of our office, and we ought to be very serious about it as we do that.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator.

I want to spend a few minutes, first of all, praising the chairman and ranking member of this committee. It is important, I think, that we see the relationships that develop, as well as the standards that have been developed on this bill, the fact that Chairman Warner was here very late last night, the fact that we are moving forward in an expeditious way.

I have several areas and several amendments I am going to call up. I will try to be cooperative as to whether we have votes. But I think the issues are important enough that the American people ought to hear the debate about them.

I am not under any illusion that will necessarily win some of them. But I think we need to pay attention to them and the debate needs to be a part of the Record.

With that, I call up amendment No. 4454 and ask unanimous consent to modify it with the language of 4491, which I have here in my hand.

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

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 4491, as modified, and I ask unanimous consent to make it a first-degree amendment.

Mr. President, this is a great case for the American people to see what is not operating right in many of the branches of our Government.

There is a procurement contract that started out 8 years ago. The total cost was to be $200 million. The idea was to save money on purchasing travel vouchers for our military. That was the goal. The original cost was $246 million. We are now 8 years into this, and we are over $464 million. It is working at a 30-percent level. It was working at less than 10 percent last year. Even though we have the GAO saying they may have saved $13 million this year, the fact is that study didn't consider the fact that the vast majority of time when they buy an airplane ticket they do not get the best price. So that wasn't even considered. The purpose of this amendment is to cause us to focus again on what we are doing.

There are no-bid contracts, contracts that change in terms of violation of the contracting laws, performance bonuses, pay for back costs, negotiating through the procurement procedure. There is no significant oversight in this Congress on procurement in the agencies of this Government. That has to change. Nobody in the private world would get away with this. Nobody in their personal life would be able to get away with this.

Yet we have a system now where almost every ticket that is bought through this $464 million program still has to be checked by a travel agent, of which we pay anywhere from $5 to $11 an hour, even though we might have saved $20 on a payment system through the Pentagon.

What is the problem? I have worked with the comptroller at the Pentagon. They were aware of this. The Secretary of Defense is aware of it. The chairman is aware of the problem. The ranking member and I have had multiple discussions.

The problem is the Pentagon has hundreds of computers that won't talk to each other. Instead of fixing that problem, we contract to make a system that should be off the shelf for less than $59 million, and we pay $500 million for it so it will speak to all these different programs--and it is not doing it effectively.

The purpose of this amendment is to quit sending good money after bad and say don't get rid of the program, but let us incentivize the program. If it is a good program, then let us pay the contractor every time it is used. If it is not used enough, and if it doesn't get used-- and it is not getting used now because it is too hard to use in the vast majority of the cases, most people go straight to a travel agent-- let us pay them on a per-transaction basis just like this contractor has on every other travel program that it has with the Federal Government.

Why would we do it differently in the Pentagon? We are doing it differently because our procurement system is broken in terms of how we hold people accountable.

I have nothing against the contractor.

If you would let me continue to do a program and not perform and continue to give me money, I will take it. But what it is doing is breeding incompetency. It is wasting taxpayer dollars, and we ought to say there is a point in time.

What do we know about travel systems in the Federal Government? What we know is in five other agencies they don't have any problems at all, two of which were developed by their same contractor.

Why are we having problems here? One of them is because we have a cost-plus contract. What is the incentive to fix the problem? There is not any because it is going to continue to be renewed.

This amendment says very simply change the incentive. If this is a good program--Oh, I know. This doesn't say throw the money out or throw the program out.

It says, change the program to incentivize it to be operational. It is in less than 30 percent of our military bases now. It is still not used. The one place it has been used is one Air Force base where it was mandated by the commander: You will use this system.

Do you know what the utilization rate is? Ninety percent. And the cost in terms of getting it done is about three times the benefit in terms of savings for paying for the bill.

On that same Air Force base, over 50 percent of the time they never get the cheapest fare, so what we save in terms of paying--the actual accounting work within the Pentagon, which I agree is a worthy goal--we lose because the system does not find the best fare.

As a matter of fact, most Pentagon employees would be better off to go to Travelocity or Orbitz, buy their own ticket on their own dime, get reimbursed, and the Pentagon can do it cheaper than with this.

This is a very straightforward amendment. It says don't get rid of the defense travel system, keep it going, but fund it on a per- transaction basis that says if this is good for the Pentagon, then use it and we will pay for it. That incentivizes the contractor to make it easy, to make it useful, and to get our value for it. Isn't half a billion enough to pay for a travel system that you could have bought off the shelf for $50 million? It reflects on what we have as problems within the Pentagon.

Let me touch on that. I am a supporter of the Pentagon. I am a supporter of our Defense Secretary. He has told me this is one of the areas where they have great problems. Last year, the Pentagon paid $6 billion in performance bonuses to contractors who

did not meet their performance requirements. Think about that for a minute. That means if you are told where you work: If you meet a certain expectation you are going to get a bonus, except we will pay you even if you do not meet that expectation--what are you going to think next year? You are going to think: I don't have to meet the expectation because I am going to get paid.

That is exactly what is happening within our contracting within the Pentagon and several other agencies within the Federal Government.

I ask the chairman and the ranking member to consider this. I believe it is a way to straighten out a contract and also send a signal. At best, we are going to have a $350 billion deficit this year. Should we spend our kids' and grandkids' money in an inefficient way? This is a good message we ought to send so other contractors see it. You will not get a cost-plus contract if you do not perform, and you are not going to continue to have contracts renewed.

There are a lot of other details, and I ask unanimous consent to have them printed in the Record.

There were violations in contracting law with this. There were promises made last year when we had this same discussion in the Senate that certain things were happening that did not happen in terms of this contract. There is no question there has been some improvement, but they have not achieved a level that would say we are anywhere close to the level of making this an efficient system.

They have.

The actual numbers on utilization of this system, if the Senator can bear with me for a minute, the utilization rate right now is 30 percent in the military. In other words, 3 out of 10 facilities that purchase travel are utilizing this. If that is what we wanted when we contracted it, great. But that is not what was in the contract.

This same contractor, by the way, had a system developed through the Department of Transportation 6 months ago that is working just fine.

I portend that proves the problem with the system is the contracting, not the contractor. We ought to send a signal. Say it is 90 percent, if that is the case, they will make more money doing it on a per- transaction basis than they would under a contract basis.

I am not an expert, but I don't like waste. I think we have wasted money.

Early in my statement I made this point: We are fixing the wrong problem. The problem is the computer system. The reason this is so expensive, the computer systems in the Pentagon do not talk to one another. We have designed a monstrous computer system to make it talk to all these systems that will not talk to one another rather than to fix the computer system in the Pentagon to make them talk to one another.

If we do that on every project that we need to enhance and overfill for the Pentagon, we are going to get into the same problem. They make all their money by being able to pay the bill. But it is a travel system.

If they make efficiency in terms of being able to pay the bill--which is the problem the Pentagon was having--we ought to also expect them to get the fares right and not have to pay another $6 to a travel agent for every ticket they write, to doublecheck to see if the system was right. That is what is happening.

When you say 90 percent, that is 90 percent, plus we are having the travel agents check it. It is not an automated system.

Have they made improvements? Yes, I do not deny that. But if they are where they need to be, and if their contract as originally specified and modified, if they are at 90 percent, they will make a ton more money on a per-transaction basis, and we will get what we need and they will get what they need.

But they are not. That is why we have the resistance to a transaction basis. You cannot have it both ways. If they are at 90 percent, any prudent businessman would say: Sure, we want it on a transaction basis. If they are not at 90 percent, if they are at 30 percent, as I propose they are, and inefficiently at 30 percent, the reason they want a contract through next year is because they are going to make a lot more money than they would on the transaction basis.

I will gladly do that, and I am happy to work with you.

I make a final point. Supposedly, this contract is going to be out for bid at the end of this year. It was supposed to have been out for bid last year. They renewed the contract without putting it out for bid, so I don't have any hope it will go out, first.

And, No. 2, nobody is going to bid on this. It is a mess. Nobody is going to bid on it. The only person you will have bid on it is the original contractor. Whether that is accurate or not, I am willing to work with the chairman to bring down the costs.

The fact is, the real problem is the computer systems in the Pentagon. We all know that. The Senator is aware of it, the ranking member is aware of it. The comptroller is working hard to change that. That is a 4- to 7-year program that we have embarked on which everyone knows has to happen.

Here is my worry: I will be back here next year doing the same thing because it is still not going to work. That is my worry. That is not fair to our grandkids.

If I could ask the chairman a question, if, in fact, it is at 90 percent, as the contractor says it is,

then by the contract they should have already converted over to a per- transaction plan. So why haven't they? They haven't because it is not at 90 percent because they would be making a whole lot more money if it was.

I am happy to ask unanimous consent to set this amendment and discuss other amendments and work with the Senator and his staff prior to the voting or conclusion of this bill.

I am happy to let the Senator from South Carolina intervene for a short period of time.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and that amendment No. 4370 be called up.

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

Mr. President, this is an amendment that is going to have some emotion with it. I want to talk about it first. There is no question when it comes to the wisdom of many of the Members of our body that directing the Pentagon to do certain things is valuable. We know that from anecdotal experience. But what we don't know is how many times we have told them to do something that has been a complete waste. What I am talking about are earmarks in the Defense authorization bill as well as in the Defense appropriations bill.

There is a wonderful body of knowledge, plus an institutional knowledge, here that helps give wisdom to direct the Armed Services. I believe we ought to be in that position. What this amendment does is ask for a report. I want to explain, for a second--and I want the American public to see--what has happened in terms of earmarks.

In 1994, there were $4.2 billion worth of earmarks in the Defense appropriations bill. Last year, there were $9.4 billion. The question we should be asking is not whether or not there should be earmarks, but what is the result of those earmarks? What is the consequence of the earmarks? Not only were the numbers up, the dollars up, but the numbers have skyrocketed.

So the question which I think would be prudent for us to ask is, No. 1: Earmarks are consuming a larger percentage of defense dollars. They also, according to Pentagon reports and some Members of this body, are taking money away from other priorities that are deemed to be higher a lot of the time. They also account for some of the problems we are having in the emergency supplementals and adding to the rising cost of our debt. Many times they are not needed, but, in fact, they are associated with benefiting a region or an industry that is not necessarily in the highest priority.

So this is not about eliminating earmarks. This is about looking at earmarks and saying: What are we getting for them? Where are they working great for us? Where are they not working? Are they beneficial to the defense of this country? Is it something that gives us a benefit?

The other thing I would remind us of is, in the most recent history we have seen an ethical lapse in association with some earmarks, and we have actually seen some criminal behavior in association with earmarks. That ought to be a part of the report as well.

So the whole idea is to add transparency and accountability to earmarks. Let's look at them. What are we getting for them? What are we losing? What are the opportunity costs that are lost because we have them there? The total annual cost of earmarks in Defense appropriations bills would be put in this report.

We can determine the actual numbers of earmarks and the actual price tags. But we don't know the hidden costs of those earmarks, which include staff time and administration. And we don't know the opportunity cost of those earmarks: What did not happen for our soldiers, what did not happen in terms of procurement because we put in something else of maybe a lesser priority?

The annual report will provide Congress and the public a more complete understanding of the total cost of the earmarks to the Department of Defense, the purpose and location of each earmark, and an analysis of the usefulness of each earmark in advancing the goals of the Department of Defense. This will provide Members of Congress a more complete view of the cost-effectiveness of each project and whether those projects warrant continued funding.

The last amendment we were on started as an earmark. I remind the Members of this body, it started at $200 million, and now will have grown to over $500 million in initiatives and earmarks, but we did not have the benefit of a report such as this to see if we were getting value for this money.

This is a simple amendment. It is not going after earmarks. It is not saying they are bad. It is not saying they are good. What it is saying is: Shouldn't this body know? Shouldn't we know the impact, positively and negatively? Shouldn't we know the lost opportunity cost?

I hope both the ranking member and the chairman of this committee will give this amendment consideration. And I ask for their response.

I say to the Senator, I will be happy to.

Mr. President, I would like to call up amendment No. 4491 again.

I ask for its consideration for the purpose of a vote.

I call up amendment No. 4370.

I ask for its consideration.

Mr. President, the Senate today accepted three amendments that I offered to S. 2766, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, intended to improve transparency and accountability of taxpayer funds provided to the Department of Defense.

Amendment No. 4370 addresses the practice of the earmarking of Federal funds by members of Congress. ``Earmarks,'' more commonly known as ``pork projects,'' are provisions inserted into bills or directives contained within a joint explanatory statement or reports accompanying bills specifying the identity of an entity, program, project or service to receive assistance.

Many Congressional earmarks inserted within Defense appropriations bills are not needed, or even wanted, by the Pentagon. Just this week, the Washington Post published an article titled, ``The Project That Wouldn't Die; Using earmarks, members of Congress kept money flowing to a local company that got $37 million for technology the military couldn't use.''

Earmarks contained within Defense appropriations bills have been linked to a number of recent Congressional corruption and ethics probes. Convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff openly boasted that earmarks were his political currency and he called the Appropriations Committee that doles them out a ``favor factory'' for lobbyists.

The $80 billion emergency supplemental passed last year was riddled with add-ons. It included $10 million to expand wastewater facilities in Swiftwater, PA. The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center got $3 million. A wastewater treatment plant in Desoto County, MS, got $35 million, and $4 million went to the Fire Sciences Academy in Elk, NV. While these many have been local priorities for these communities, it is difficult to argue that they are needed for our national defense.

In its report on its fiscal 2001 Defense appropriations bill, the Senate Appropriations Committee wrote: ``The committee understands that medical studies indicate the potential benefits of cranberry juice and other cranberry products in maintaining health. The committee urges the Secretary of Defense to take steps to increase the department's use of cranberry products in the diet of on-base personnel and troops in the field. Such purchases should prioritize cranberry products with high cranberry content such as fresh cranberries, cranberry sauces and jellies and concentrate and juice with over 25 percent cranberry content.''

Most Americans do not support earmarking Federal funds, especially for such dubious purposes that serve parochial interests at the expense of our national defense. A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, in fact, found that of all the issues facing our nation, curtailing earmarks was identified as ``the single most important thing for Congress to accomplish this year.''

The number of earmarks in Defense appropriations laws has grown from about 587 in fiscal year 1994 to about 2,847 in fiscal year 2006, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service, CRS. The amount of money earmarked has increased over the same period, from about $4.2 billion to $9.4 billion. The amount earmarked as a percentage of the total in the Defense appropriations bill has correspondingly increased from about 1.8 percent in 1994 to approximately 2.4 percent in 2006.

While we can determine the total number of earmarks and the actual pricetag of each, we have no way of calculating the hidden cost of earmarking, which includes staff time and administration expenses.

Specifically the amendment accepted today requires the Department of Defense to report annually: The total annual cost of earmarking in Defense appropriations bills; the purpose and location of each earmark; an analysis of the usefulness of each earmark in advancing the goals of the Department of Defense. This will provide Members of Congress a more complete view of the cost effectiveness of each project and if such projects warranted continued funding.

This annual report will provide Congress and the public a more complete understanding of the total cost of ``pork'' to the Department of Defense.

The earmark grading system will, likewise, provide needed information to lawmakers and the public about projects inserted into bills that have not had proper oversight, debate or discussion. This added transparency will ensure that every Member of Congress can cast a truly informed vote and ensure greater accountability for how Federal funds are allocated and hopefully return some integrity to the appropriations process that has been undermined by recent investigations into earmarking.

My second amendment, No. 4371, accepted by the Senate today seeks to end the practice of Defense contractors being rewarded for poor performance. The Department of Defense has been improperly paying awards and incentives to contractors that do not fulfill the terms and conditions of their contracts. These are intended to be paid only for outstanding performances on contracts but are routinely paid out without regard to performance.

In a recent study conducted by the Government Accountability Office, GAO, DOD paid out at least $8 billion in fees over 4 years, the vast majority of which were not earned and were improperly awarded. This of course, was just a small fraction of the overall

total of award fees given out to contractors every year.

My amendment seeks to end this process and require performance as a prerequisite for award fee bonuses. My amendment specifically requires that a contractor cannot receive an award fee unless the contractor has met the basic requirements of the contract.

This amendment has the potential to save the Federal Government billions of wasted tax dollars every year and improve contractor performance.

The third amendment, No. 4491, as modified, will require DOD's Defense Travel System, DTS, to transform its ``cost plus'' contract to a fee-for-use-of-service system similar to the private sector travel reservation systems currently available in the marketplace.

DTS was initiated in 1998 DTS and intended to make travel arrangements for the military service branches and defense agencies. It was supposed to be fully deployed by 2002. However, that date has been pushed back to September 2006--a delay of over 4 years--and has cost the American taxpayer $474 million--a staggering $200 million more than it was originally projected to cost.

DTS has a long record of failure. In July 2002, the DOD inspector general released a report on DTS which highlighted numerous concerns with the program and stated that DTS was being ``substantially developed without the requisite requirements, cost, performance, and schedule documents and analyses needed as the foundation for assessing the effectiveness of the system and its return on investment.'' Following on that IG report, DOD's office for Program Assessment and Evaluation prepared a report recommending termination of the program.

In January 2006, GAO reported that ``DTS's development and implementation have been problematic . . . thus it is not surprising that critical flaws have been identified, resulting in significant slippages between the planned and actual deployment dates of the system'' and that selected requirements for display of flights and airfares found that system testing was ``ineffective in ensuring that the promised capability was delivered as intended.''

This means that not only is DTS not performing, the current system is incapable of testing properly in order to determine what is required in order to meet DOD's plan.

Further, DOD could not prove that DOD travelers even had access to the flights that were available for travel. There is no doubt such a flaw would have produced higher travel costs.

Compounding this problem is the fact that some DOD agencies continue to use the existing legacy travel systems at locations where DTS is already deployed. This means that all of the proclaimed savings that DTS was supposed to reap are nowhere to be found--because DOD continues to use legacy systems to do the same thing.

As originally envisioned, DTS was supposed to be a pay-for-use-of- service system in which the DTS was paid by the government based only on the extent to which the system was used--thereby creating an incentive for DTS to be a cost effective travel reservation system for the Department of Defense.

This amendment requires the Department of Defense to honor the original intentions of the DTS contract. Within a year of enactment of this bill, DTS will be required to utilize a fee-for-use-of-service system. The funds raised through fees charged will be used by DTS to pay for its operational and maintenance costs as the system is slated to be fully developed and deployed by September 2006. DTS will be required to: (1) levy a one-time, fixed price service fee per DOD consumer using the system, and (2) charge an additional fixed fee for each transaction.

Together these three amendments ensure greater transparency and accountability of Federal funds and ensure taxpayers and our men and women in service are guaranteed that the funds we are spending on the defense of our Nation are better spent.

I would like to thank Chairman Warner and his staff and look forward to continuing to work with them on these issues as this bill goes to conference.

Mr. President, I want to congratulate Senator Byrd as well. What a wonderful gentleman. What a gentle spirit, but what a firm voice. We value your service and we appreciate what you can teach us and what you have taught us.

I also want to thank Chairman Cochran for the hard work that he has done on this supplemental bill. He also has put up with a lot of grief from myself and others. The bill is important. I am going to spend a few minutes on things I think the American people ought to be asking about this bill.

The fact that we have the largest supplemental appropriations bill ever to come before this body to me is a great problem. It tells me part of the system is broken. The fact that the administration would request such a large emergency appropriation, and the fact that we would pursue it and pass it tells us that the system of the true appropriations and authorizing process is broken.

We are in the fourth year--the third-and-a-half year--of a war, and a large portion of what is in this bill has been known in advance that we were going to need it and it should go through the regular order. The fact that we take it outside of the budget caps, the fact that we take it outside of the regular order when we know we are going to spend $60 billion to $70 billion at least in executing and prosecuting the war and put it in an emergency supplemental I think says a lot about our process that we need to take very seriously and try to change.

That is a criticism for the administration as well. A lot of the money in this is for the National Guard to refurbish and bring things up that we knew and in regular order we are going to be processing in the Defense appropriations bill that is going to be coming before this body in the next couple of months. So the excuse to say this is all emergency falls short, because it is not. It is not all emergency. We have known all of this money is going to be spent, it should have come through the regular process, and we really don't have a good excuse to tell the American people why we are not doing that.

The second criticism I have of this bill is that the administration requested no rescissions whatsoever. There is nothing in the Federal Government that we could trim to help pay for this emergency bill. That is the assumption of the request by the administration. I want to tell you that is the wrong assumption. Employees who work for the Federal Government, the valuable employees, they know that is not true. People outside of Washington know that is not true. Constituents all across this land know that if we had to find money and if we could drive things to make them more efficient, we could do it. The fact that we are not doing it is another problem with our process. That is not a criticism of individual Members of this body; it is a criticism of the process that we find ourselves in and that we are blinded in the forest by the trees.

We ought to be back to regular order, and if we truly have emergencies, we ought to look to say, How can we trim from somewhere else to pay for it? Because, in effect, this $94.5 billion, my grandchildren, your grandchildren, and the generation that follows are going to pay for. Nobody that is working today is going to pay for this. We are transmitting the cost to our children and grandchildren. We are saying that we can't make an effort, or the administration doesn't request us to make an effort, or we don't make an effort to find other areas that are less important, lower on the obligation level for us, that we will just print the money and sign the notes and sell them overseas and say, Children and grandchildren, you pay for this because we don't have the courage to do the hard work to pay for it. We ought to take that criticism and say, Is that really what we want to be known for? Do we want to be known for not making the hard choices that are necessary to fund this war and at the same time not take away opportunity from our children and grandchildren? That is not a personal criticism, but that is a legitimate criticism that the American people ought to be asking.

The third thing is there are things in this bill that are pure politics in nature. Let me just describe one. I withdrew this amendment on the floor, but I think the American people ought to understand what is going on. There is over $200 million in this bill for Osprey aircraft, the V-22 that has never proven itself in combat. It has never made the test in battle simulation that says it is a viable option. Neither the administration nor the Defense Department requested this money, and this money is going to be spent, it is in the bill, and this bill is going to pass and the President is going to sign this bill. But we are going to spend money, a quarter of a billion dollars, on this program, not because it was requested by the Pentagon, not because it was requested by the administration, but because it was requested by a business to continue a program that hasn't proven itself yet.

There has to be some risk to those who don't perform when they are supplying our military with the latest in terms of equipment and materials, and there is not any, if we continue to do it this way. I am not an expert in the Defense appropriations process, but I have read what the Defense Subcommittee has said on this, and I have read what the articles have said on this, and it doesn't meet the test. Yet, we are going to spend it.

The reason we are going to spend it is because there are enough Members in this body that have employment with this company throughout the country that the pressure to not fund it is greater than the pressure to do what is right. I believe we ought to ask ourselves about the criticism of that. That is not a way to run the future of this country, and it is certainly not a way to protect the heritage for our children in giving them the opportunity that we have all experienced in being in the freest and greatest country in the world.

The risk for our country is a risk that we will lose that heritage of sacrifice today to create opportunity tomorrow. I know I am like a broken record to the appropriators, but my heart says that we should create at least the same opportunities in the future that we have all experienced, and to do less than that denies the very heritage that was given to us.

So I haven't decided for sure whether I am going to vote for this bill. I know

it is important to take care of the critical needs in the hurricane area. I have had two hearings on that, part of my subcommittee, the waste, fraud, and abuse associated with that. But I must emphasize, out of 37 hearings in the Federal Financial Management Oversight Committee, we found over $200 billion--$200 billion--of waste, fraud, and abuse in the last year and 2 months. Forty billion dollars of it in Medicaid in terms of false and inappropriate payments, $46 billion in Medicare, and $16 billion in Medicaid fraud in New York City alone. Yet we don't respond to it. There is no action on it.

We had the Pentagon in 2005 pay $6 billion--$6 billion--in performance payments to contractors who did not meet the performance requirements of their contract. Yet we paid it anyway. But we haven't had a prohibition on that.

I know on the Defense authorization as we get to that, Senator McCain is going to offer an amendment that I think is appropriate that we require that portion of the funding of the war that is legitimate to go through the appropriations process and regular order will be there. There are certain portions of that which are unexpected and we will continue to have to do supplementals to do that. But I would remind my colleagues that we are not going to be measured on what we do now; we are going to be measured on what is the opportunity for America 10 years from now and 15 years from now.

We were sent here to make the hard choices, and they are not fun. But we are not making the hard choices, because we are not looking at the programs that aren't effective, that aren't accomplishing the goals and eliminating them to pay for the things that we think are; we are just ignoring them and paying as we go, except we are not paying as we go. We are asking our children and grandchildren to pay.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

A lot has been made that we are going to borrow money to pay for this tax. But the fact is that the amount of money not collected that is owed to the Federal Government is close to $400 billion a year. The other side of that is there is over $200 billion a year that has been proven to be wasteful or fraudulently misspent by this Government, which we condone each year. That is $600 billion.

We would not be debating this tax if we were doing our job in terms of oversight. Just in terms of improper payments, is the Senator aware of the fact that there is over $150 billion a year paid out by the Federal Government to people who do not deserve it, have not earned it, and yet have manipulated the system to get it? I am not talking about poor people; I am talking about contractors. The point I want to make is that we would not even be having a discussion on the principles of this tax because it is not needed because we are not doing our jobs in terms of oversight. There is $600 billion that would put us into surplus by $200 billion right now, including the cost of the war, if we would just do our job. I wondered if the Senator was aware of that.

Mr. President, months ago in the Judiciary Committee markup I offered an amendment that codified the process of expedited removal and extended it to include criminal aliens. We have to remember, this is about criminal aliens. What we do know from one of the Judiciary Committee hearings is somewhere between 6 and 8 percent of the people coming across our southern border have a criminal history.

There are valid points to the questions that have been raised by the Senator from Wisconsin, who I have the utmost respect for, but I think this is a question about what could happen versus what is getting ready to happen. What is getting ready to happen is instead of 28 percent of our Federal prisons today being filled with illegal aliens, it is going to become 45 and 50 percent, because they are going to stay here. We are going to give them 27 months. They are going to use stays to stay here, and what we are trying to do is have a balance.

Is it possible that somebody could be denied entry into this country and have a negative consequence? Yes. But it is far more likely there is going to be a tremendous negative consequence to us in costs and to our children as we allow this system to continue to go on and be perpetuated the way that it is.

I also remind my colleagues that current law under what we call expedited removal is law, and it is being carried out. What this amendment does will get rid of the expedited and ultimately will get rid of the removal, and what we are going to see on criminal aliens is we are going to see our prisons not having 28 percent illegal aliens who are criminals, but we are going to have 50 percent. The cost right now is $7 billion a year to our country, and $1.7 billion of that is associated with Federal prison costs for illegal immigrants. So we are talking about expedited removal.

The other thing to remember that we are talking about is this is only going to be applied to people who have been here less than 14 days and within 100 miles of the border.

The administration opposes this amendment, and for good reason. The Feingold amendment would allow aliens to remain in the United States and would perpetuate the incentive for aliens to pursue even the most meritless appeals. That is what happens when we allow this. I am not a lawyer, but I know that the obligation for clear and convincing evidence is a high standard, and that is a difficult thing. But we have to measure it against all the other consequences of not having that standard.

The arguments that the Senator from Wisconsin makes are real. They are true. But he doesn't talk about what the downside is, and the costs and the lost opportunity and actually human grief that comes from having that process for those who are going to bear the cost of it.

The section that the Senator from Wisconsin focused on in his amendment is already law. It is already U.S. Code, Section 242(f) 28 USC 1252(f2). All my amendment did to this section of the Code was to add the judicial injunction being amended to include stays. What is happening is that 90 percent of these stays are overturned right now. Ninety percent of them are overturned at the appellate division. So what we are doing is comparing what could happen to what is happening and what is the cost of that.

The heart of the Senator from Wisconsin is good. The heart of the Senator from Kansas is good. The question is, How do we balance that with the human costs of carrying out this sacrifice of not being 100 percent? We could be 100 percent. What we would do is not allow anybody to return to their country until we know that they are going to be adequately clothed and adequately fed. Forget abused and incarcerated. What about the standard of making sure they have the same opportunities that people in America have. We are not applying that standard to these people, the 90 percent where the stays are denied.

So I don't challenge what could happen to somebody who was denied the basis of asylum. What I ask is, where is the common sense on how we handle these thousands and thousands and thousands of cases that allow somebody 27 months here, who uses the claim of asylum, which, in fact, has nothing to do with why they are here, but allows them to stay another 27 months? It also raises a tremendous cost for us, because they not only have to be held, they have to be defended, and we are paying for that as well.

As to the points made by the Senators from Kansas and Wisconsin on the possibilities of what could happen, it is true; they could. But it doesn't consider what is going to happen if we continue to allow this abuse of the system where an injunction is forbidden by Federal law and a stay is issued because they can't offer an injunction, because it is illegal to do so.

So is it a difficult issue? Yes. Do I see the problem of abuse of this much greater than they? Yes. Do I balance the scales differently? Yes. Because the undetermined cost and the undetermined consequence of the way that we are doing it now is just as dangerous in the long-range measure of humanity as of the potential dangers of one person--even if it is one--if only one person was denied asylum, if it is just one, should we go even further? The fact is we can't be perfect. Even without clear and convincing evidence, we are not perfect. Even 90 percent of those that are--the stays are overturned. Some of those we decided wrongly. So it is not as clear-cut as the Senator would make it seem. And it is not just the issue of some people who might be interested, because some are going back now after a denial of the stay, using a better standard of evidence.

So I would hope that we would keep this in the bill. It is not in the House bill. It may not stay in the complete bill. But it is certainly something that will turn resources that are today wasted tremendously and turn those resources to help those people who get here and have gotten asylum to have a better life.

Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am proud as we approach this Memorial Day that we will have occasion to celebrate the renaming of the Department of Veterans Administration Hospital in Muskogee, OK, after a true American hero--Congressional Medal of Honor winner, and Cherokee, Jack C. Montgomery.

I would first like to thank a fellow member of the Oklahoma congressional delegation, Congressman Dan Boren of Oklahoma's 2nd District, for his diligent work in bringing this important matter to a successful conclusion. This legislation has been cosponsored by the rest of the Oklahoma delegation and also has garnered the strong support of Oklahoma's major veterans' service organizations.

H.R. 3829 pays tribute to the heroism of Mr. Montgomery, who was awarded the highest honor bestowed by our Nation upon a member of the armed services for his courageous actions on February 22, 1944, during the Italian campaign of the Second World War. On this date, Montgomery's platoon had sustained intense fire near Padiglione, Italy, from three echelons of enemy forces, at which point Montgomery displayed a singular act of courage by attacking all three positions himself and taking prisoners in the process. After witnessing this tremendous display of courage, Montgomery's men rallied and defeated the enemy.

In addition to being only one of five Native Americans to be awarded the Medal of Honor, Lieutenant Montgomery was also awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart with an Oak Leaf Cluster. Upon his release from the U.S. Army, Montgomery continued his service to our Nation by beginning work with the Veterans Administration in Muskogee where he remained for most of his life.

Mr. Montgomery is survived by his wife Joyce, and I am hopeful the President can sign this bill into law in swift fashion.

In conclusion, as we do pause this Memorial Day to remember those who sacrificed so that we may remain free, I can think of no veteran more worthy of our gratitude than Jack C. Montgomery.

Mr. President, I spend a lot of time on the floor on budget issues and on spending issues, and I am first of all appreciative that this point of order was brought up. One of the greatest problems we have is not thinking in the long run. We think in the short run. We think in election cycles. We don't think in generation cycles.

Here are some facts that we do know: We are on an unsustainable course as a country. We have approximately $70 trillion in unfunded liabilities. That is greater than our private net worth today. And we are going to transfer those liabilities to our children and our grandchildren.

What is important about this point of order is a reflection of one of the things we are going to be talking about in June in this body, and that is budget process reform. Because the instructions to the CBO are so arcane that they didn't really even look at the real numbers associated with this bill. They didn't talk about the discretionary costs associated with this bill. This bill actually costs $40 billion over the first 10 years. After that, at a minimum, this bill will cost in the next 10 years one-half of $1 trillion. That is $500 billion.

Let me put that in perspective for a minute, what a billion is, because we throw that number around here all the time. A billion seconds ago it was 1959. Three hours and 20 minutes ago, we spent $1 billion, over 3 hours and 20 minutes, this Government. The debt that we are transferring now is close to $27,000 per person; that is $8.3 trillion. That is 8,300 billions. So the fact is that the scoring by the rule says CBO has to say it costs in excess of $5 billion. The fact is, CBO didn't even look at this. The one thing that they did look at is that in one year, in 2016, the 10th year, the direct spending, the direct cost is at a minimum of $11 billion. That is not counting EITC. That is not counting figuring in the 12 million people who are here already in any of the numbers or any of the costs associated with this.

So when we use CBO scoring to say it is a net plus in the first 9 years, you have to ask, what does CBO say about where we would be on surpluses? What does CBO say about the cost of Medicare when it was started and the cost of Medicare 10 years ago when they projected it to be about 70 percent of what it is today, and the projected cost in the outyears of Medicare? They never get it right. One of the reasons they never get it right is because we are not honest with them in the legislation that we put through.

So if we are going to pass this bill out of the Senate, as I suspect we will, the American people need to know not only the four things that are in this bill that are inappropriate for a constitutional republic that is going to need to defend itself in the future--and I am not talking about anti-Hispanic or anti-immigrant; I am talking about the rule of law and how that will impact us as a future country--we have to be considerate about what this will do from a financial impact to the very perilous state that we will find ourselves in 10 years from now anyway.

In 2016, we are going to be close to having 81 percent of the budget--81 percent of the budget--consumed by Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest on the debt. That means 19 percent is going to have to do everything else. So what you are talking about with this bill in the outyears is at a minimum of $50 billion in new expenditures per year starting in 2016. And probably the CBO scoring, because it does not reflect the direct costs of discretionary spending in this bill today for the 12 million who are here, this will be a net cost of several billion dollars over the next few years, up to $40 billion to $50 billion in year 10, and $50 billion plus after that. That violates the budget rules of this body.

We may not get the votes to win this point of order, but the American people should know, even if they agree with everything that is in this bill, that they are transferring again a lower standard of living, less opportunity, and less future to the Americans who are here today by passing this bill.

Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Is the Senator aware whether the CBO included in their scoring the disaggregated cost of the 11 million people who are here already in terms of the discretionary costs associated with them?

I am talking about the discretionary costs associated with the implementation. There are 11 million people here today. In fact, if the Senator will yield for just a moment, they do not consider that. That is just one of the flaws in the CBO's report.

I thank the Senator for allowing me to ask a question.

Mr. President, I ask that it be submitted to the Record that I inadvertently missed the vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 22, the Medical Care Access Protection Act of 2006, due to unavoidable airline flight delays. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Americans are going to spend $2.3 trillion this year on health care. One out of every three dollars does not go to help anybody get well. We are never going to be able to compete globally if we cannot control the health care costs in this country. The threat of medical liability raises the cost of health care for everybody in this country.

Only 16 percent of the lawsuits that are filed across the entire country have any merit whatsoever--84 percent of them are filled with the idea that we can intimidate people into settling a case so a lawyer can make money. It has nothing to do with the patient. It has everything to do with enriching the trial bar. I have experienced that personally as a physician who has delivered over 4,000 children into this world.

We have a problem with out of control medical liability--the cost of defensive medicine alone is up to $126 billion per year. We can fix those problems. But we can't fix them by protecting special interest groups that have been protected for years--special interest groups that claim they want to do something great for people but who most of the time are motivated to do something great for themselves.

The Medical Care Access Protection Act of 2006 is based on the successful Texas model of medical liability reform. It's a solution to the problem that is already getting results.

Mr. President, first of all, thank you for taking my stead in the Chair this evening so I could participate in this debate. I have been in the Chair 2 hours and 30 minutes and have heard quite a range of things.

Health care is a problem that affects the whole country today. We are going to spend in our Nation $2.3 trillion this year. The largest amount of money we are going to spend on anything in our country, we are going to spend on health care, and one out of every three dollars we spend does not help anybody get well.

We ought to ask ourselves--with 45 million people truly not covered in an insurance product, with the cost of health care rising double digits every year, with the cost of drugs skyrocketing, with the cost of hospitalization, emergency care skyrocketing--how is it we are spending all this money, with $1 out of every $3 not helping somebody get well, and costs are going through the roof?

It is because we have some real structural problems. This bill is meant to address a small portion of that. It is not the end-all, answer-all to our problems in health care. We all realize that. But this is something we can do in the short term that will make available an opportunity for costs to be controlled in a small area of our economy that will have impact and will create accessibility.

I would say we all in this body want everybody to have access to health care. The question is, Who pays for it? Right now, in terms of Medicare, our grandchildren are paying for it because it ran a $120 billion deficit last year. In other words, we borrowed $120 billion to run Medicare last year because that is the amount of money we did not have coming in from Medicare premiums.

The whole question on how we address health care is going to be: How do we get a better system that will give more people access, that does not waste that $1 out of $3? That is what we have to be concerned with. We have the brains, we have the science, we have the facilities, but something is wrong. What is wrong is there is not a competitive system out there where we allocate scarce resources based on quality and value and price.

This bill will move a little bit in that direction. There are going to be a lot of areas where we move. The one thing I have heard from the other side that I agree with today is, we ought to be emphasizing prevention. I agree with that 100 percent.

We have 19 different agencies in the Federal Government that have something to do with prevention. We are going to be introducing a bill that pulls all those together into one and has a leader who is emphasizing prevention and what we can teach the American people about saving money, preventive health care. As grandma used to say: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And it works every time.

We know we can prevent diabetes. We can stop 50 percent of diabetes just with education, but we don't have it. We are wasting resources and duplicating resources. We have opportunity costs from programs that are designed to do it and don't do it well. Others do it much better, but we are still funding the ones that don't do it well. There are lots of problems we have.

I want the American people to understand that the choice that has been outlined by those who oppose this bill today isn't a choice of whether we have to have mandates. It is a choice of somebody who has no care now, no mandate, versus getting some care. If we do our job on prevention, then we will be educating the American people. But the ultimate health care responsibility in this country isn't the Congress. It isn't the States. It is the individuals who make choices about what is going to impact their lives and what value they want on their health care. That is why HSAs, although they have been blocked, need to be expanded vastly. They need to be funded better. They need to have an application for chronic care, and they need to have a tax deductibility to bring you up to the level of that so that we put everybody's skin in the game, so you know you are going to make a choice based on what is valuable to you.

Everywhere else in this country, we have trusted markets to allocate scarce resources. We are a little timid about how they are doing it in oil, but the fact is, the market is scarce, and the price is up. As soon as either demand decreases or supply increases,

the price will come back down, or some other form of energy is going to be there to supply it, such as agrifuels.

We have to trust the market to help us because we can't afford what we have promised. We can't afford what we promised in Medicaid, in Medicare. The money is not going to be there in 10 years. It is going to start winnowing away. So what are we to do? Continue to create a charade for the American people that says yes, we can, or start with one small step with this bill which offers availability through group purchasing, expanded purchasing power, lowering the overall risk to a million people? Why would we not want to do that?

Is it perfect? No. There isn't a bill we pass that is perfect. But this is a step in the right direction, although it does walk over some State mandates, I agree. But the problem is, Medicaid walks over State mandates every day. Medicare walks over State mandates every day. They set a mandate.

We have two choices in health care: the Government is going to run it all, or we go to the private sector where we really trust the market to allocate and protect those who need the help, those who can't help themselves. Those are the only two choices we have on health care. If you think we have problems now, wait until the Government runs it all.

I am a physician. I have practiced since 1983. That is 23 years. I have delivered 4,000 babies. I have done every kind of operation you can think of. I have seen a system decline based on how insurance has been applied to it and copying the mandates of the Federal Government. So we are in a mess on health care. Let's get out of the mess. Let's start with this, but let's don't stop there. Let's start with prevention. Let's make sure there is competition in the pharmaceutical industry. We don't have it.

As a practicing physician, there is no competition in the pharmaceutical industry. Drugs that do exactly the same thing and are priced the same way, nobody wants an increased market share. The Federal Trade Commission ought to be asking why. Why don't they want increased market share? I believe there is collusion on sharing of markets in the pharmaceutical industry so that they can keep the prices high. We need worldwide competition on pharmaceuticals. If we will do that, we will get a lot of bang for our buck.

There is even collusion when it comes to the generics. The FDA has created this wonderful system which enhances no competition for 6 months to 18 months for the first person who comes out with a generic. What is that all about? That is taking away from the market.

There are lots of problems, but this is a good start. It is not perfect. Is it as good as we can get? It probably is right now. But it starts us down the path on what we need to do to fix health care in this country. That is competition.

We need transparency. We have seen recently hospitals not wanting to give their rates, doctors not wanting to give rates, Medicare not wanting to publish rates. Why not? Let people know what they are supposed to be getting charged. Let's have a little open sunshine on the health care industry.

Let's talk about the 19 percent of every dollar that goes into the health insurance industry that never goes to help anybody get well. Let's talk about that. Let's create real competition in the health insurance industry. The more people get into it, the more competition we will have.

I thank the Senator for filling in for me so I could take the time to address the Senate. Our goal is making sure everybody has access to care and doing it in a way that our children can afford to pay for it because we are not paying for it today. We need to be mindful of that as we make those decisions. This bill starts with that.

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

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Colorado for his comments. He has made a great contribution. He knows a little bit about this because of his own background as a veterinarian in terms of health care.

I come to the floor to speak as somebody who has personally experienced the phenomenon of being placed in the position toward my practice--I am a practicing physician. I still practice on Monday mornings. I still practice on the weekends. I have delivered several babies during this session of the Senate.

What the American people need to understand is we are going to spend $2.3 trillion this year on health care in this country. And $1 out of every $3 does not go to help anybody get well. We are never going to be able to compete globally if we cannot control the health care costs in this country. So I wish to walk you through, for just a minute, how this threat of liability raises the cost of health care for everybody in this country.

Only 16 percent of the lawsuits that are filed across the entire country have any merit whatsoever. Mr. President, 84 percent of them are filed with the idea that we can intimidate people into settling a case so a lawyer can make money. It has nothing to do with the patient. It has everything to do with enriching the trial bar. I have experienced that personally as a physician who has delivered over 4,000 children into this world.

What happens is, we change the behavior of physicians because of the tremendous liability that is out there. There are some very good statistics that reveal that. We know that 6 percent of the cost of health care today is for tests that are ordered on patients in this country that are not needed by the patient at all but are needed by the physicians to protect them in case they have some aggressive lawyer who wants to try to say: You didn't do everything in your power to make sure somebody is getting well. So we are going to waste $140 billion-- $140 billion--this year on tests that our people do not need because of the threat of liability exposure. Think what that money could do for access for everybody else who does not have health care today. We could buy everybody in the country who does not have health care health care with just the money we are wasting on the tests.

The idea of extorting a settlement from a frivolous lawsuit does not come without significant cost to this country. It is not just the cost of the tests that are ordered that are not needed, there is also the cost of defending it. In the one case I have had in 24 years as a physician, the lawyer costs to defend me in that case, which was thrown out of court twice, were $65,000--for that one case. That was just the lawyer fees, and that was back in the 1980s. And I spent about $60,000 worth of time that I was not working taking care of patients to prepare myself for all the grilling and interrogation that comes from an aggressive lawyer who thinks they are going to hit a home run off my insurance that I pay. The consequences of that have been that malpractice rates, liability insurance rates, have skyrocketed.

In Texas, what we know is happening is, it is not just that with their new system, they have more doctors coming, it is not just that the cost of liability insurance is going down, but the availability of care is increasing, and the number of dollars spent on waste for tests we don't need is declining in Texas. But it is going up everywhere else where we have not addressed this problem.

We are going to hear all sorts of cases: that the problem is not the trial bar; the problem is we make mistakes and don't get compensated. Well, that is not the case because most insurance companies, if there is a legitimate case--and doctors make errors--they settle the case. They don't go to court.

What actually happens some of the time as to that 16 percent of the cases that are legitimate, in Oklahoma, is that somebody who truly had an injury does not get compensated because the lawyers who are now defending the doctors have gotten so good that they win cases they probably should not have.

So we have all these distortions that are occurring because the focus is on how much money can we put in the hands of people who ``are representing somebody with an injury,'' when, in fact, they are representing themselves and their own wealth.

I am going to support both of these bills, but we need to wake up in America. If we are going to compete globally, then we have to readdress all of health care in this country. We have to go to a consumer-driven, transparent market where you know what the price is, you know what the outcome of the provider is, you know they are following best practices, and you should not be paying more than anybody else for the same thing. And the value judgment you make on your health care needs to be yours.

We also need to make your insurance yours, not your employers'. And it needs to be able to go with you wherever you go. There will never be job lock if we do that. We need to give the individual the tax break rather than the company the tax break. And we need to put everybody with some skin in the game when it comes to health care. In our country, we know, if we have markets that really drive that, we will improve the quality, we will increase the access, we will get rid of the bad players, and we will lower the costs. And we have to lower the costs of health care. We can do it.

At $2.3 trillion, if we took 20 percent and squeezed it out, we would have $460 billion we would not be spending on health care because it is not being spent on it now--it is spent on the machine of health care and the waste, as I just described it, on tests that are not necessary. That money would go into capital which would raise innovation, which would raise salaries, which would create more jobs, which would create greater prosperity.

But when we have this false sense of entitlement to the trial bar, through extortion--and that is what it is; it is pure extortion, because most of them are filed not with the hopes of winning the case but with extorting the settlement because it is cheaper to settle than to pay all the lawyer fees--we continue to have this ordering of tests that are not necessary because we have to defend ourselves. I am glad we are going to be addressing that. I plan on introducing another couple of bills in the next week as we address health care to move some of the things I talked about.

In Oklahoma, we have three cities that have over 50,000 people. Since 2003, they each had a total of six OB/GYNs. There are two left out of those three cities because of malpractice rates. Malpractice rates for OB/GYNs in Oklahoma rose 89 percent last year. My partners can't deliver over 100 babies a year without having a tremendous increase, and their average cost for the delivery per baby is over $500 per child, based on the malpractice cost alone.

We have great problems. We can fix them. But we can't fix them by protecting a special interest group that has been protected for years that claims they want to do something great for people but who most of the time are motivated to do something great for themselves.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in the past week, the Senate has voted to reduce the overall cost of H.R. 4939, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery, 2006, now totaling nearly $110 billion by a mere $15 million. I am delighted that President Bush has pledged to veto this bill because Congress has, once again, been unable to resist the temptation to load up a must-pass bill with pork.

I offered several amendments to eliminate nonemergency items in this bill. I appreciate the patience of my colleagues. I am very pleased and encouraged that this body is increasingly willing to depart from our business-as-usual practices.

That is good because the American people are paying attention to this process. In a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, the American people said that ending earmarks should be the No. 1 priority for Congress this session. Thirty-nine percent said that members should be prohibited from ``directing federal funds to specific projects benefiting only certain constituents.'' It is interesting to note that ending earmarks was ranked ahead of immigration reform, which was cited as the No. 1 priority by 32 percent of Americans.

I hope that these results, combined with polls showing a 22-percent approval rating for Congress, will encourage conferees to avoid a confrontation with President Bush over spending. I would hope that when conferees look for items to remove from this bill they take a close look at my amendments that lost by a narrow margin as well as those I withdrew.

I believe that in this time of war and disaster recovery the American people expect us to make hard choices about spending. Taxpayers want us to be serving in a spirit of service and sacrifice, not searching for new ways to raid the public Treasury.

Congress is raiding the Treasury in two ways with this bill. First, many of the items in this bill should be considered in the regular appropriations process and through the regular order. The war on terror is no longer a surprise. We are entering our fifth year of this war. It shouldn't come as a surprise to Congress that we have needs related to this effort. We have also developed a good understanding about many of the priorities in the gulf coast that could have been addressed in the regular budget process.

Congress has also added billions of dollars for items that have no connection to the war on terror and the gulf coast recovery. Again, few of these items are true emergencies. The American people deserve to understand what defines a true emergency. According to the budget resolution for fiscal year 2006 all of the following five criteria must be met to be considered an emergency: necessary, essential, or vital; sudden, quickly coming into being, and not building up over time; an urgent, pressing, and compelling need requiring immediate action; unforeseen, unpredictable, and unanticipated; and not permanent, temporary in nature.

Designating a project as an ``emergency'' excuses Congress from paying for a project. The result of abusing the ``emergency'' designation is an even greater emergency. Our Nation's debt is nearly $8.4 trillion. Each American's share of this debt is $27,964.86. Our national debt is increasing by an average of $1.95 billion per day. Social Security, Medicare and the standard of living of future generations of Americans are in jeopardy as a result of decades of fiscal irresponsibility and rationalizations for spending more money today without considering the consequences tomorrow.

The Social Security trustees reported this week the program will exhaust its trust fund and begin running annual cash deficits in 2040. A year ago, that prediction was 2041, effectively meaning 2 years have been lost by a refusal to act. The trustees reported Social Security's unfunded liability is $13.4 trillion.

Of course, the real problem with Social Security and Medicare is much worse because the Federal Government uses an Enron-style accounting scheme. We habitually borrow or, more accurately, steal money from these trust funds to pay for more spending today.

When the 77 million baby boomers begin to retire in 2011, our Nation will be faced with the greatest economic challenge in our history. If we continue to indulge in earmarks, the gateway drug to spending addictions, we will never address these complex challenges, particularly if we can't resist the urge to abuse the earmark process on a bill designed to address the emergency needs of our troops and displaced people in the gulf coast.

Another reason we must act today to rein in wasteful spending is because our ability to influence world events is diminished by our debt to other nations. We now have the distinction of being the world's largest debtor nation, and this bill will add to that debt. Many serious economists are warning that our excessive borrowing from foreign sources could cause the value of the dollar to collapse, which would lead to a disaster for our economy. It is incredibly shortsighted for this body to sell Treasury bills to countries such as China so we can finance economic development programs and other pet projects while, at the same time, we hope to encourage China to be more aggressive in terms of discouraging Iran from developing nuclear weapons. This is not just a numbers game. The future

vitality of our nation is at stake. We are slowly but surely whittling away our national power and ability to leverage other nations away by our refusal to make hard choices about spending.

Many of the items in this bill are obviously not emergencies, which is why this bill will be vetoed by President Bush if it is sent to him in its current form. Again, I hope conferees do not force the President to take this step. I am confident the President will veto this bill. He understands that it is more important to secure the next generation rather than the next election.

Past Presidents and Congresses have made hard choices during difficult times. Between 1939 and 1942, Congress and FDR cut spending for nondefense programs by 22 percent. In 1950, President Truman and Congress cut nonmilitary spending by 28 percent. I suggest to my colleagues that if we want to be here past 2006, we better do the same.

Still, I agree with my colleagues who say that the President's priorities don't come down from heaven. I suggest, however, that we are all subject to the judgment that comes down from the taxpayers. If we flippantly disregard the President's insistence that we make hard choices, the judgment of the taxpayers will not be kind to any of us.

Families across this country are faced with hard choices every day in order to live within their budget. They have elected us to make hard choices. Our refusal to do this only reinforces the perception that we are disconnected from the priority-setting reality that governs the rest of the country.

It is wrong, for example, for this body to fund pork projects such as grape research in the State of California force the taxpayers in my State and every other State to pay for a so-called emergency project that has been ongoing for the last 46 years and has already received more than $130 million from the American taxpayer. Where this body sees an emergency the taxpayers often see a series of misplaced priorities.

The State of California received 549 Federal earmarks this year totaling $733 million. That included $10 million in Federal resources alone for museums. Is it more important to protect the residents at risk from flooding by the Sacramento River or to fund grape research? Congress is spending over $3.6 million on a grape research center in California this year. We are spending another $1 million on a pedestrian walkway project in Calimesa and a half million on pedestrian/bike improvements on Tower Bridge in Sacramento? What is more important for Sacramento? Why can't we prioritize today so future generations are not forced to make even tougher choices between massive tax hikes, drastic cuts to Medicare and Social Security, or the defense of our Nation?

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, ``Cowardice asks the question--is it safe? Expediency asks the question--is it popular? Vanity asks the question--is it popular? But conscience asks the question--is it right?''

I plead with my colleagues. Do what is right. Our Nation is on an unsustainable course, and that course correction must begin today, not when it is too late.

Mr. President, what is the pending business of the Senate?

I would resume where we were last night, if I could get recognized on amendment No. 3641, division XIX.

I had planned on withdrawing that amendment, but I wish to make one last point. California received $753 million in earmarks last year. This amendment was to eliminate almost $11 million on levee reconstruction. Seventy times that amount went to California in earmarks. That is the problem.

I ask unanimous consent to withdraw this amendment.

Mr. President, I ask that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 3817 be called up.

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

Mr. President, I intend on withdrawing this amendment. I wish to make a few points before I do so.

In the supplemental bill, the Job Corps receives a direction that the Department of Labor can't manage it, can't use the resources to manage it. There are documented errors and documented fraud within it. Mr. President, section 7017 of the Emergency Supplemental would mandate that Job Corps operate with less accountability. Specifically, the language would make Job Corps the only program out of 100s to be operated out of the Secretary's office with direct contracting authority.

The Office of the Secretary of Labor does not have the staff or resources to effectively manage and conduct oversight on the Job Corps. The language of Section 7017 forbids the Secretary from shifting oversight and management personnel from any other support office in the Department of Labor. Secretary Chao is forbidden to utilize the same oversight and management that every other program normally receives from other support offices within the Department.

Section 7017 ignores recommendations from the Government Accountability Office and the Inspector General that warn against the dangers of waste, fraud, and abuse that will go undetected in the Job Corps program when one office controls all aspects of a contract- drafting, soliciting, bidding, and managing. The incestuous relationship between the contractors who operate the Job Corp program and the program officers operating the program will have no independent oversight to guard against improper payments, improper use of resources, fraudulent performance reporting resulting in fraudulent salary bonuses, and non-compliant accounting and record keeping.

Secretary Chao is trying to clean up the Job Corps program so that it effectively serves low income teenagers and young adults with a residential job training program. The Job Corps program needs accountability. According to the Office of Job Corps, the program failed to have aggressive monitoring of performance data making evaluations of the program's effectiveness unreliable. The Job Corps contractors are reporting misinformation regarding the number of students that successfully graduate or receive GEDs. The contractors fail to report that almost 40 percent of the students who go through the program fail to obtain a GED or diploma. This results in fraudulent bonus increases to the contractor's pay. The program fails to report that the median stay of a student at a Job Corps location is 8 months, while it takes at least 12 months to successfully obtain a GED. The program also fails to accurately report how many students successful receive job placement into the skilled jobs for which the Job Corps is supposed to equip the students. They fail to report that only 5 percent of the graduating students are placed in apprenticeships for skilled jobs. The contractors incorrectly consider job placement in unskilled jobs and the military--(obtainable without a high school education)--as benchmarks for success. This results in fraudulent bonus increases to their pay.

Examples of mismanagement illustrated in past Inspector General Reports include doctoring of program performance resulting in bonus pay, unethical use of resources, lack of cost controls and resource management. These examples makes the point for Secretary Chao--that the Job Corps program is in desperate need for accountability and oversight.

The September 30, 2005 Inspector General report, San Diego Job CORPS Center: Student Attendance and Training Data Overstated, stated that the number of vocational completions was overstated by over 50 percent. Training records did not support that students had completed all the vocation's tasks with an appropriate level of proficiency.

In the March 30, 2005 Inspector General report, Kittrell Job Corps Center: Manipulation of Student Attendance and Training Records, the Inspector General found that Kittrell managers manipulated student attendance and training records to improve the center's reported performance. Reported performance of high school diploma attainment and job placements was also was not reliable. This unreliable data affected Job Corps financially because reimbursed operating expenses and incentive fees paid to contracted center operators are based on reported performance.

In the 2001 independent auditor's report on the schedule of Job Corps expenses for the Turner Job Corps Center, the Inspector General found inadequate controls over payroll processing, that included hiring two instructors without proper credentials and keeping inaccurate records of leave. There was also lack of accountability over inventories of consumable supplies, evidence that the center underreported medical and dental expense, and the purchase of property and equipment that Department of Labor did not approve prior to acquisition.

In the January 31, 2000 report entitled OIG Questions $1.3 Million of Additional Costs Claimed by Contractor Report No. 18-00-003-03-370, the Inspector General found that the contractor Will H. Hall & Son, Inc. received an additional $2,365,622 due to delays at their construction site. The Inspector General found that this contractor failed to substantiate its claim that various events under the Department of Labor's contract constituted compensable construction delays caused by the Department of Labor. Certain amounts claimed were either double counted as both direct and indirect costs, already covered under the original firm fixed-price contract, or based on estimates instead of actual costs incurred.

Section 7017 of the Emergency Supplemental will virtually guarantee that we will see many more examples of

waste, fraud and abuse within the Job Corp program. Furthermore, why is the Senate being asked to make a program change to a 40-year-old program within an Emergency Supplemental bill? Why hasn't the Department of Labor been consulted in making this unprecedented move away from accountability? Why hasn't the Appropriations Committee or the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions held a single hearing about this radical change to the Job Corps program?

Due to time constraints and my desire to move Senate business forward, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. President, we are wrapping up the debate. It is finished on this bill, and we are going to have votes in the morning.

I think we need to ask some questions. We have a supplemental bill. Regardless of the amount of it, it is here. I think there is a real question in the country, and there should be a real question for us, on why we are doing a supplemental bill on the war which we know is happening, and also on projects associated with Katrina and Rita that we know are going to come through the authorization and the appropriations process. I think we need to look at that as a Congress and say why are we doing that, and be very honest about why we are doing it.

The second point I would make is, in emergency legislation we have a lot of things that really aren't emergencies. I think we as a body ought to look at that and use self-discipline.

But the third point is, and this is the one I think the American people are asking, we have a bill out here that is going to spend somewhere between $94 billion and $108 billion of taxpayers' money, and there was no attempt whatsoever to offset this spending--nothing. There were attempts on the floor to change it, but there was no attempt to do a rescissions bill. There was no attempt to look at the things where we know there is wasteful spending. There was no attempt to look at some of these things. This is a list of $54 billion in potential rescissions that I bet we could agree on $10 billion or $11 billion of if everybody knew the facts or the details. But we didn't do that. We didn't ask the Appropriations Committee to do that. It was not asked of them to do that. It is not their fault. They weren't asked to do it. That is the question the American people ought to be asking. Where is the oversight to see if everything is running well?

If you ask the American people: Do you think the Federal Government is efficient, there is not going to be 1 or 2 percent that will say yes. If you ask the American people: Do you think we could do it more efficiently for less money, the vast majority of the American people would agree with that. And that is probably true. If you ask Federal employees, they will tell you that, too.

The question is, Why are we not doing it when we are spending money we don't have? We ought to think about this the next time an emergency supplemental comes around. We ought to make an effort to find the offsets, and we ought to work together across party lines to say how do we secure the things we want. Some of those are different. If you are liberal or conservative, you may want different things. But if you are going to secure the future for those programs that help individuals and go a long way in securing what we need to do to make sure people have an honest, even start in this country, things that are valuable in that regard--whether it be the Food Stamp Program or Head Start or something like that--we are going to run out of money for those.

In 9 short years, 81 percent of our budget is going to be consumed by Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest. We should have the discipline to start now to make the significant changes that we need to make to be able to handle that emergency that is coming. The real emergency is not right now. The emergency is going to happen starting in 2009.

I just ask that we look at that and think about it. How do we answer to the American public that we didn't try to trim any other type of spending as we spend $104 billion?

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I will be very brief.

One of the things we know we are all going to have to look at in the 2007 farm bill is how do we continue down this road and be able to afford it.

The 2002 farm bill put in what was called crop insurance. Every time we put in a program that undermines the incentive to use crop insurance, all we do is add it to the deficit, and we come back.

There is no question there are some needs, and probably legitimate, but what this appropriation does is create an incentive for people not to use crop insurance. That is exactly what it does.

So if we want to unwind further and raise the costs for the American people of the farm bill we have today, all we have to do is keep this kind of funding in, and we will undo and make sure we spend more money in the future.

I yield the floor.