[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 160 (Wednesday, December 14, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13531-S13546]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              PATRIOT ACT

  Mr. ROBERTS. Mr. President, I rise today to support the conference 
report for the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005. 
That is a long title. We are talking about the PATRIOT Act.
  I am pleased to report to my colleagues and to the President that the 
House just passed the PATRIOT Act with a very strong bipartisan vote. 
We need to do the same. I thank Chairman Specter for his hard work in 
getting this important legislation to the conference.
  This conference report is one of the most important that we will pass 
this year. We must do it prior to leaving because it contains a number 
of provisions that are absolutely vital to our national security. I say 
that from my perspective as chairman of the Senate Committee on 
Intelligence.
  Like the original PATRIOT Act, this legislation does contain a number 
of compromises that are not to my liking. But it is often said that the 
mark of a good compromise is that it leaves both sides unhappy. We have 
a great number, apparently, who are unhappy about this bill. I think we 
can safely say that no one is entirely happy with all of the provisions 
in the legislation. Simply put, this is not the best possible bill but 
the best bill possible under difficult circumstances. Again, it is 
absolutely needed on behalf of our national security.
  My primary concern as a conferee was to ensure that the intelligence 
community retains its ability to effectively use the important tools 
that are provided by the PATRIOT Act, and I think we have accomplished 
that goal.
  This act reauthorizes all of the PATRIOT Act provisions that are 
scheduled to sunset at the end of this year. It does, however, impose a 
4-year sunset on the use of FISA court orders for business records and 
roving electronic surveillance and an additional sunset on the FISA--
what is called the lone wolf authority.
  Personally, I am opposed to these extended PATRIOT Act sunsets. I 
know Congress has conducted extensive oversight of these provisions. I 
know the Intelligence Committee and other committees have, and we have 
yet to find any evidence--I know this is not the perception we read 
about in the newspapers or that we hear on the electronic media, but we 
have yet to find any evidence of abuse or overreaching with respect to 
these or any other provisions of the PATRIOT Act.
  Moreover, this very legislation makes modifications to address the 
perceived problems with the FISA business records and roving wiretap 
provisions. I ask this simple question: If we fixed these provisions, 
why is there need for additional sunsets? It seems to me that Congress 
always retains the ability to amend the law that is enacted. We have a 
duty to conduct vigorous oversight with the use of these provisions. 
The Judiciary and Intelligence Committees certainly do that. We don't 
need and should not use sunsets to compel oversight of these important 
issues. That ought to be our reasonable obligation, and we do meet 
those obligations.
  Having said that, I want to highlight the modifications made to two 
investigative tools that have been widely mischaracterized, in my view, 
by critics and some in the media--FISA business record court orders and 
national security letters.

  With regard to the FISA business record court orders, one of the most 
contentious issues during this conference was whether a relevance-plus 
standard should be added to the FISA business record provisions. 
Critics argued this tool could be used for fishing expeditions. Our 
oversight did reveal that this was not the case, but we agreed that 
relevance was the proper standard for obtaining a business record court 
order.
  Some are not satisfied with this approach and demand that we include 
not only a relevance standard but a requirement to specify facts that 
would tie the requested records to a foreign power or to an agent of a 
foreign power, a so-called relevance-plus standard. The problem with 
this is very easy to understand. It is a standard not used on any other 
subpoena, certainly not requiring the prior approval by a judge like 
these FISA orders. The standard would also leave gaps in the FBI's 
ability to use what is in reality a nonintrusive investigative tool. 
Under relevance-plus, by then the FBI would have lost the use of 
section 215 in important circumstances.
  Ultimately, the conferees reached a compromise to address the 
misperceptions about section 215. Under the conference report, the 
standard remains relevance to an authorized investigation. Let me say 
that again. The standard remains simple relevance to an authorized 
investigation. There is no increased burden of proof. The standard 
remains the same as every

[[Page S13532]]

other subpoena that Congress has ever enacted.
  If the FBI seeks records that are relevant to any authorized, full 
investigation or a preliminary investigation, it should be able to 
obtain those records. Under this conference report, it still can. But 
to address the allegations that the scope of lawful national security 
investigations is too broad, the conferees included language that does 
provide for a presumption of relevance if the FBI does provide a 
statement of facts explaining the link between the requested records 
and one of three statutory categories. Thus, the compromise language 
encourages the FBI to seek the protection of presumptive relevance by 
including a link to one of the three statutory categories in its 
application, but it also maintains the use of investigative technique 
in those limited circumstances that fall outside the three categories.
  The conferees also placed additional restrictions on section 215 
orders. Under the conference agreement, the records obtained with a 
FISA business record court order must be screened through minimization 
procedures adopted by the Attorney General. These procedures are not 
required for any other subpoena, grand jury, court order, 
administrative, or otherwise. In my opinion, minimization procedures 
should not be required for this low-level investigative activity, 
especially in light of the requirement for prior judicial approval of 
an order.
  These procedures unfortunately were part of the price we paid to get 
this legislation passed--a price that I did reluctantly accept to 
preserve this investigative tool. I urged the Attorney General when 
this bill was passed to adopt flexible minimization procedures.
  These procedures must maintain the ability of the intelligence 
community to analyze the important foreign intelligence information now 
obtained by FISA business record orders. That information must be made 
available over an extended period of time so that the intelligence 
community will not lose its ability to connect the so-called dots. One 
current phone number that would be connected to one 2-year-old credit 
card record that would be connected to one 10-year-old hotel receipt 
might be the information necessary to stop an attack. We should never 
forget that, especially in the age in which we live.
  Severe retention or any rules of dissemination for these third-party 
business records will limit the FBI's ability to prevent attacks, and 
that is the standard we have demanded post-9/11. I can assure you that 
the Intelligence Committee will examine these procedures with great 
interest once they are issued.
  Next, with regard to national security letters--and the acronym for 
that is NSL--this conference report makes three important 
modifications.
  First, it will provide for express enforcement of national security 
letters by creating criminal penalties for noncompliance with the 
request.
  Second, this bill clarifies the process by which the recipients of a 
national security letter may seek judicial review of requests that are 
either unreasonable, oppressive, or otherwise unlawful.
  Third, this legislation does replace the current blanket 
nondisclosure rule with a process that requires a special certification 
by a high-level official to invoke the protection of the nondisclosure 
provision. If the official is sufficiently high level, the 
certification that the disclosure would endanger national security or 
interfere with foreign relations will not be overturned by a court 
without a showing of bad faith.

  Some have questioned the need for nondisclosure provisions on these 
national security letters or complained that they can be invoked or 
defended much too easily. I have an opposite concern. I am concerned 
that the disclosure of the fact that the FBI has sought business 
records might hinder the investigation of a terrorist network or an 
espionage ring. Nondisclosure requirements on these national security 
letters are absolutely necessary for the protection of our national 
security. We must all keep in mind that these so-called NSLs are issued 
in the context of classified investigations of terrorists and spies.
  Make no mistake, the national security letter that requests 
information in support of a classified investigation should also be 
classified. But because many phone companies, Internet service 
providers, financial institutions, or credit card companies don't have 
the facilities to handle classified information, these national 
security letters are submitted in unclassified form. The FBI relies on 
the nondisclosure provisions in the NSL statute to prevent the 
disclosure of classified investigations of terrorists and spies. 
Without the protection of a nondisclosure provision, the FBI would have 
to choose between not using a national security letter or taking the 
risk that its investigation will be disclosed to the spy or terrorist 
under investigation. We can't afford either option.
  If a terrorist becomes aware of an FBI investigation that was 
directed at him based on the fact that a national security letter has 
been issued, he obviously can take actions to protect other members of 
his cell, ensure that the terrorist network does proceed with other 
planned attacks, or, in the worst-case scenario, speed up the time line 
of a planned attack.
  We also cannot afford for the FBI to walk away from valuable 
intelligence information from fear the disclosure of a national 
security letter might undermine an ongoing investigation. These NSLs do 
provide access to limited categories of third-party business records 
that form the building blocks of national security investigations. They 
allow the FBI to identify the activities of a terrorist or spy and 
others who associate with them.
  The conference report maintains the protections of the NSL 
nondisclosure provision. It does modify the nondisclosure provision so 
it is no longer automatic; it must be invoked. It provides the 
recipients with the avenue to challenge the nondisclosure not once, but 
every single year. Subsequent challenges also require the Government to 
reexamine the need for secrecy.
  With these modifications, it seems to me the conference report 
strikes the balance needed on this issue. First, we protect the very 
legitimate rights of the recipients and ensure the sensitive 
investigations of terrorist and spies certainly are not compromised.
  So as my colleagues can see, the protections that are provided in the 
conference report for privacy and civil liberties are extensive. In 
fact, I think the modifications to the FISA business record orders and 
the national security letters should address all concerns raised about 
these tools. I hope my colleagues who have concerns about this know 
what is in this bill as opposed to what the perception is.
  The conferees did not stop there. In addition to the modifications I 
have mentioned, the conference report includes the provisions enhancing 
existing oversight of these tools. For example, the bill requires the 
Department of Justice Inspector General to conduct extensive audits of 
both the use by the FBI of the national security letters and FISA 
business record orders. The bill also expands public reporting on these 
investigative tools.
  I cannot help but note at this point that many of the protections for 
privacy and civil liberties incorporated in this bill were derived from 
the protections that the intelligence committee would have applied to 
the national security administrative subpoena that we reported in June 
in our bill. This conference report has essentially taken all of the 
protections that were contained in the national security administrative 
subpoena provision, but it has failed to provide the FBI with the same 
ability to access records that now exist in 335 other contexts.
  Far too often we legislate to the possible rogue FBI agent, one-tenth 
of 1 percent who might go beyond the law. When we take this step, we 
deprive the other 99.9 percent of FBI agents of a lawful investigative 
tool, and then if something is missed or we have an attack, why, of 
course, we blame the FBI. Our oversight reveals no abuses. Yet we 
deprive our national security investigators of these constitutional 
tools.
  I challenge opponents of national security administrative subpoenas 
to provide one good reason the FBI should not have the authority. I 
have listened to their arguments. I still have not heard one good 
reason. Four years removed from 9/11, it is far too easy to put 
restrictions on the intelligence community that are not necessary or 
appropriate. It seems to me we must

[[Page S13533]]

continue to ensure that we provide lawful access to data with 
appropriate precautions. We must tear down the remaining walls that 
prevent access to lawfully collected intelligence information. One of 
the top priority goals of the intelligence committee is information 
access. That is the one thing that seems to me that we must reach out 
and accomplish, and obviously passing this act and not rebuilding walls 
to make this problem worse is a top goal.
  When we needlessly restrict intelligence investigations, we increase 
the possibility that the next attack will succeed. I will oppose such 
restrictions and will continue to fight for new authorities for the 
intelligence community. I believe the national security administrative 
subpoena is an appropriate tool that would increase our security 
without sacrificing our civil liberties. I will continue to ask a 
simple question: Why are we withholding administrative subpoenas from 
those who investigate spies and terrorists when they are being used 
every day by those who investigate health care fraud, drug violations, 
and other similar matters.
  As I have asked many times before, why can the Attorney General use 
an administrative subpoena to stop a dirty doctor or a dirty drug 
dealer but not a dirty bomber? That does not make sense. This is a tool 
that the President, the Attorney General, and the Director of the FBI 
have all asked Congress to provide in regard to our national security 
investigators. Once again, Congress has denied them.
  Before concluding, I want to highlight one more important 
intelligence-related provision in this bill: section 506. That is the 
section that will establish a national security division within the 
Department of Justice that is consistent with the recommendations of 
the executive WMD Commission. The national security division will be 
headed by the Assistant Attorney General for National Security who will 
be appointed by the President, with the advice and consent of the 
Senate.
  This process, in regard to confirmation, will be subject to the 
shared jurisdiction of the Senate Judiciary Committee and our 
Intelligence Committee.
  The provision also requires the Attorney General to consult with the 
Director of National Intelligence before recommending a nominee to the 
President. I believe the creation of the national security division 
will help prevent the rebuilding of these walls that I keep talking 
about that once hindered access to foreign intelligence information. 
This new national security division will help ensure that law 
enforcement and intelligence are indistinguishable partners in the 
protection of our national security.
  Finally, I strongly oppose passing a short-term continuing 
resolution, as some have suggested, to reauthorize existing 
authorities. The conferees have already worked extremely hard to 
reauthorize the existing authorities. I do not believe that any 
additional time or negotiations will close the gap between the 
opponents and the supporters in regard to this act.

  In fact, on the one issue that prevented some conferees from across 
the aisle from signing onto the conference report, the so-called bad-
faith certification provision, this conference report is actually more 
protective of national security letter recipients than the version 
previously passed by the Senate.
  I hope the folks who are upset about this know that is in this bill 
and that this is actually more protective. As convinced as I am that an 
additional 3 months will not close the gap between opponents and 
supporters, for those who want a continuing resolution, I am equally 
convinced that further negotiations will only result in additional 
concessions that will make the PATRIOT Act tools virtually useless.
  I remind my colleagues again that 4 years of oversight of the use of 
the authorities that are provided by the PATRIOT Act have not revealed 
one single substantiated--let me emphasize that, substantiated--
allegation of abuse. Yet despite this fact the conference report before 
us today contains numerous additional checks on the use of the PATRIOT 
Act tools.
  The arguments for these additional checks and restrictions are not 
based on any factual allegations of abuse but, rather, on 
unsubstantiated allegations, hypotheticals, innuendo, and perception. I 
understand the concern, but facts are stubborn things, and there has 
been no abuse. Nonetheless, this conference report will place more 
burdens on national security investigators using these constitutional 
tools to defeat terrorists and spies. Further compromise will only 
serve to negotiate away these very crucial tools. I urge my colleagues 
to base their position on this important legislation on facts. Facts 
are stubborn things, as I said before: The fact that terrorists 
continue to seek to kill Americans, the fact that they continue to plot 
attacks against us, the fact that they are determined to continue their 
war against us, the fact that this conference report does provide 
significant increased protections for privacy and civil liberties, and 
the fact that our national security investigators have not abused 
authorities that are provided under the original act.
  We have had plenty of time to oversee the use of authorities that are 
provided by the PATRIOT Act and plenty of time to separate fact from 
fiction or the wheat from the chaff.
  I am deeply committed to the men and women of the intelligence 
community. The USA PATRIOT Act has provided them with important tools 
to keep us safe. We should continue to do that. I will vote for cloture 
if necessary--I hope it is not necessary--and in favor of this 
conference report. I, again, am very glad that the House has passed the 
reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act by a large bipartisan vote because 
this allows the intelligence community to retain these important 
PATRIOT Act tools and keep America safe. I urge my colleagues to do the 
same.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. ROBERTS. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Under the previous order, the Senator from Maryland is recognized for 
15 minutes.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Thank you, Mr. President.
  (The remarks of Ms. Mikulski pertaining to the introduction of S. 
2097 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced 
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Murkowski). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Martinez). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Under the previous order, the Senator from Delaware is recognized for 
30 minutes.


                                  IRAQ

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, 10 days ago, I returned home from a 
bipartisan, bicameral congressional factfinding mission that took a 
number of Members, including Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, myself, 
and Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher from California, to a number of Middle 
Eastern countries. There we met with, among others, the leaders of 
Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, as 
well as with our own civilian and military leaders. For me, our visit 
was informative, highly informative, even illuminating, and provided me 
with a number of insights that I wish to share today with my colleagues 
and with the American people.
  For the past several months, Americans have become increasingly 
skeptical about our ongoing military presence in Iraq, leading to a 
fierce debate on how to succeed in Iraq and when to begin to redeploy 
American troops. With so much discord at home, I was surprised and, 
frankly, heartened to learn during our mission that there is a growing 
consensus among both U.S. and Iraqi civilian and military officials on 
a reasonable path forward that I believe many Americans can embrace.
  As our President acknowledged somewhat belatedly today, a number of

[[Page S13534]]

grievous mistakes were made during his administration following the 
ouster of Saddam Hussein--for example, literally telling the Iraqi army 
to go home, you are disbanded, not needed anymore. Having said that, 
there is a whole lot at stake, too much at stake, for us to just cut 
and run. But somewhere between withdrawing all U.S. forces within 6 
months and staying the course is a commonsense policy and a path 
forward for the United States, for Iraq, and for its Arab neighbors.
  I believe tomorrow's parliamentary elections and the likely emergence 
of a coalition government in Iraq gives us a great opportunity, not so 
much to stay the course but to begin to alter it. This altered course 
would provide for a moderate but significant redeployment of U.S. 
troops from Iraq beginning early next year. It could start with our 
National Guard men and women, might start with our Reserve Forces. We 
might bring some of them home. Some of them we may wish to deploy to a 
place such as Afghanistan where they probably would be needed.
  Redeployment or drawdown is, maybe, a good beginning, but by no means 
does it end there. We must also redouble our effort to enlist the full 
cooperation of the Arab League and others to stabilize Iraq politically 
and economically as we continue to help Iraq militarily and their 
police force shoulder more of the burden in providing security in their 
country.
  On the sensitive issue of withdrawing U.S. troops, I believe if we 
were to withdraw all of our military forces within the next 6 or even 
12 months, we would leave that country in danger of a civil war, and 
America and Iraq's neighbors would be less safe, not more safe, than 
they were before we invaded Iraq. The truth is, though, a modest 
American force may well be needed in Iraq for some time. While it will 
not be close to the 160,000 or so troops we have there now, America 
will likely maintain some kind of military presence in Iraq, if the 
Iraqis want us to, just as we currently do in Afghanistan and Kosovo 
and several other places around the world.
  The President's open-ended statements, however well intentioned, 
about staying the course cause many Iraqis to question our Nation's 
true intentions. More and more, Iraqis view our troops as occupiers, 
not liberators. To a lot of them, the President's rhetoric is code for 
``We are here for your oil, and we are going to stay until we get it.'' 
That is an interpretation that fuels the very insurgency we are trying 
to defeat.
  That is why it makes sense to me to announce as early as January that 
we plan to redeploy a significant number of American troops from Iraq 
in 2006 and then begin to do so shortly thereafter. Taking this step 
will help make clearer to most Iraqis our desire ultimately to leave 
Iraq and its natural resources where they belong--in the hands of 
Iraqis.
  These views are not mine alone. They reflect the views of Iraq's 
civilian and military leaders as well as those of top American 
officials on the ground. We should listen to them. In the words of one 
of our top American military commanders, he said, pointing toward the 
door of the room in which we were meeting, it is time for us to begin 
moving toward the door. And I believe he is right. Otherwise, I fear 
our troops, who continue to perform courageously under incredibly 
difficult circumstances, will remain targets of opportunity for months 
or even years to come.
  Although much of the debate in America has focused on withdrawing 
troops, if all we do by the end of next year is reduce our troop 
levels, we will not set Iraqis up for success; we will set them up for 
failure. There is also a political war to win, and it is not going to 
be easy. I believe America's Ambassador to Iraq, the gifted Zal 
Khalilzad, has done a remarkable job this year in narrowing the 
differences among competing factions in Iraq. Now it looks like 
tomorrow's turnout for the parliamentary elections will be strong, even 
among minority Sunnis, and result in the need to form a coalition 
government.
  In fact, when we were there, we heard that the Sunnis--of which only 
3 percent of them voted a year ago when they formed their interim 
government, and barely a third of them voted 2 or 3 months ago when 
they voted on their constitution--I understand now that over half the 
Sunnis are going to vote tomorrow. They will elect anywhere from 50 to 
55 to maybe 60 members of this new parliament. The Kurds are expected 
to elect a similar number, and the Shiites will elect maybe 100, 110. 
There is not enough among any of them to have a majority. That outcome 
will create a need, and that is a need to form a coalition government.
  The real challenge will come, though, after the vote, as Iraqis 
confront at least two enormous tasks. One is setting up a functioning 
government, and the second is rewriting or amending the constitution 
they just adopted a couple months ago, while at the same time trying to 
subdue an armed insurgency.
  America must do all we can to make sure that the Iraqis' experiment 
with democracy does not founder, even if this experiment results in 
something less than a Jeffersonian democracy. But to succeed and become 
a new and prosperous country, Iraq will need more than just our help. 
European countries and other nations, including democratic nations, can 
do their part by helping Iraq set up government ministries and agencies 
designed to oversee everything from defense and finance to human 
services and environmental protection.
  In fact, I strongly support a proposal that would call for individual 
countries to adopt a new ministry in Iraq and help them to develop and 
implement and execute sound policies. For example, Nation A might adopt 
a finance ministry, Nation B might adopt a foreign ministry, Nation C 
might adopt the petroleum industry, Nation D might adopt the 
transportation industry, and on and on and on. It should not be just 
us; it should be a whole lot of countries joining with us in this 
effort.
  Arab countries that have been extremely critical of the war and of 
America's occupation must realize they have a dog in this fight, too. 
On that point, I am more optimistic than I was before my trip. As Saudi 
King Abdullah told us a week or so ago--these are his words--``In Iraq, 
what's done is done.'' That is coming from a monarch, a King, who, 
frankly, did not appreciate, nor did his people much appreciate, our 
invading Iraq and taking down the regime of Saddam Hussein. But his 
words: ``In Iraq, what's done is done.'' And from that, I infer he 
means it is time to turn a page. It is time for them and other Arab 
nations in that region to get off the bench and get into the game. And 
they sure need to.
  To that end, I sense that many of Iraq's neighbors, including Saudi 
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar, realize it is in 
their interest to make sure that Iraq does not erupt into civil war, a 
civil war that could become a regional war or turn Iraq into a haven 
for terrorism. Those nations could help ensure a better outcome in Iraq 
by, among other things, forgiving the Iraqi debt they hold while also 
working to improve political relations within Iraq. The United States, 
perhaps through the Arab League, should exert considerable influence in 
the region to make sure this happens.
  Another area in which the United States and other nations can be 
helpful is to assist Iraq in formulating and implementing, next year, 
an economic recovery and growth strategy. Iraq, as we all know, is 
blessed with enormous oil and gas revenues. Yet it is almost beyond 
belief that today, some 30 months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and 
the lifting of the oil embargo in Iraq, oil production in that country 
is really no higher today than it was on the day of our invasion. In 
fact, we were told on our visit that oil production today continues to 
hover at barely one-third of Iraq's capacity of some 5 million barrels 
of oil per day. But, roughly, that leaves 3 million barrels of oil a 
day untapped in the ground, even though there is the capacity to draw 
it out and to refine it and to sell it. At $50 per barrel and 3 million 
barrels per day, that means that Iraq is leaving approximately $150 
million per day on the table in unrealized revenues. That is about $1 
billion a week. For $1 billion a week, you could hire several armies to 
protect the generating capacity, the oil production capacity in that 
country.
  That kind of revenue also would allow the Iraqis to have some money 
left over to meet a number of their needs. And they have plenty of 
needs to

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meet. That is money that could be used to lower the 25-percent 
unemployment rate among young Iraqis, along with the unemployment rate 
among adults in that country. How? By putting them to work on a host of 
worthy projects around the country--schools, health centers, roads and 
transit projects, housing, wastewater treatment, electricity 
generation, telecommunications infrastructure, and the list goes on.
  Speaking of economic development, Saudi Arabia continues to increase 
its oil revenues by more fully integrating their oil and gas business 
to include surveying, exploration, drilling, recovery, refining, and 
transportation, as well as providing feedstocks to a growing 
petrochemical industry. There is no reason why Iraq could not also do 
the same over time.

  But unlike a number of other Arab nations, Iraq's economy does not 
have to be what I call a one-trick pony. Iraq is blessed with an 
adequate water supply and plenty of fertile land. Crops, produce, and 
fruits raised on that land can feed all of Iraq and much of that 
region. We can help the Iraqis figure out how to realize their 
potential, and we ought to do it.
  Iraq is also blessed with a well-educated workforce, many of whom 
would like to be entrepreneurs in their country as they move away from 
a command-and-control economy to more of a free enterprise system. I am 
told that last year some 30,000 Iraqis applied for business licenses to 
start their own businesses. A lot of them could have used an infusion 
of capital to get started, too. They did not need $50,000 or $100,000, 
either. In a number of instances, as little as a couple of hundred 
dollars is all they might have needed.
  One of the missing ingredients in Iraq in terms of an economic 
recovery is a banking system that can make and service loans, including 
loans to small businesses, which generate a lot of the jobs. In 
America, we know banking. So do some other nations. We need, 
collectively, to do more to help Iraqis establish a banking system to 
fuel, among other things, the growth of small businesses--the engine 
for job creation.
  On a positive note, USAID has begun operating in Iraq trying to 
develop those micro-loan programs that they are putting in place in 
other nations around the world where maybe $100 or $200 or $300 is 
extended in a loan to a small businessperson. That is a good program. 
It is just beginning, but it is one we ought to kick into high gear 
there.
  The idea of Iraq as a tourist mecca was not the first thing that came 
to mind as we headed for that part of the world. Having said that, Iraq 
is the home of several of the holiest shrines in the Muslim world, and, 
lest we forget, it was also the cradle of civilization. Muslims come 
from all over the world already to visit a number of those holy shrines 
in Iraq. Given the chance, I believe a lot more of them would come to 
visit some of those holy places, other holy places, in Iraq if there 
were airports to serve them, along with restaurants and hotels, bus 
service, auto rental agencies, and the like.
  Next, let me add a word or two about Iran, a largely Shiite nation 
that borders Iraq, as we know. Iraq's Shiite population lives primarily 
in the southern part of Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of people have 
crossed over the border from Iran into Iraq over the past year or two. 
Tens of millions of dollars have followed them into Iraq. Many in the 
region fear, understandably, that Iran is attempting to expand its 
influence through southern Iraq all the way to its border with Saudi 
Arabia. Others fear a balkanized Iraq divided into three parts, and 
maybe eventually three countries, will evolve, and those fears are 
understandable.
  Last week, in an unprecedented move, Iran's supreme religious leader, 
the real boss in that country--not the President, the real boss in that 
country--sent a personal emissary to Saudi Arabia to meet with its 
King, King Abdullah, apparently to begin a dialog. That was 2 weeks 
ago. I said 1 week. It was 2 weeks ago.
  Recently, Iran has also sent word to U.S. officials in Iraq, through 
the U.N., through Shiite persons in Iraq, that the Iranians would also 
like to send, I believe, their national security adviser to meet in 
Iraq with our representatives there. I am told that our administration, 
apparently, is not prepared to give the green light for those talks, 
arguing that any talks should involve much lower level Iranian 
representation.
  The words of another Arab leader we spoke to on this subject are 
instructional. That Arab leader said to us during our stay--he was 
talking about the U.S. unwillingness to join multilateral talks over 
Iran's nuclear policy but this monarch said to us:

       Ignoring someone doesn't mean they cease to exist.

  Think about those words: ``Ignoring someone does not mean that they 
cease to exist.'' I would encourage our own administration to give 
American officials in Iraq the green light and find out what is on the 
Iranians' minds. It is hard to imagine much damage coming out of such a 
conversation, and there may be some upside to it. Time will tell.
  If we are willing to engage in multilateral discussions with some of 
those wild and crazy North Koreans, I don't know that there is a lot of 
danger in sitting down and being involved in direct or multilateral 
relations with Iranians, all the while making clear that their 
possession of nuclear weapons is not acceptable to us and the views 
they have toward Israel and pushing Israel into the sea is anathema to 
us and something we would never countenance.
  Let me conclude on the Middle East by sharing with my colleagues an 
old Navy story. Long before I came here, I served as a naval flight 
officer during the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia and later on as a 
Reserve naval flight officer and mission commander of a Navy P-3 
airplane, a four-engine airplane. Our Presiding Officer may have seen 
the Navy P-3s land at Jacksonville, FL, any number of times in our job 
to hunt for Red October and patrol the oceans of the world.
  Every now and then, we would have to change an engine in one of our 
planes. They break. You land the plane. You pull into the hangar and 
pull off the engine and put another one on. It takes a day or two, and 
you have to test it before you go up in the air again. In the Navy, if 
you had a really hard job to do, we would liken it to changing an 
aircraft engine in one of our planes. But a really tough job is one 
that we had to do by changing the engine of the airplane while the 
airplane was in flight. When you are doing that, that was a tough job.
  What the Iraqis face in the coming weeks and months is the political, 
economic, and military equivalent of changing the aircraft engine while 
the aircraft is in flight. Tomorrow, they are going to hold elections. 
The good news is that for 275 parliamentary seats, some 6,500 
candidates have filed and are running. That is an astounding number. 
When the smoke clears literally and figuratively later in the week, 
they will have to figure out who won and who of those 6,500 lost. They 
will have to seat a parliament. Then they will have to start putting 
together a coalition government, not unlike what the Israelis do from 
time to time. Nobody is going to have a majority. The Shiites may have 
100 or 120. But they will need other forces. Or maybe some of the rest 
of the people who are there, the Kurds or the Sunnis and others, can 
create a majority coalition on their own.
  They will have to figure out who is going to be the prime minister or 
deputy prime ministers. They have to figure out who is going to be the 
minister of finance, of foreign affairs, of transportation, of housing, 
the environment, petroleum, on and on. They have to put the right 
people in the leadership roles of those agencies and have good people 
up or down the line in those agencies so they can formulate, implement, 
and execute policy.
  While they are doing all of that, they will have to rewrite their 
constitution, or at least part of it. To make matters more challenging, 
they have to do it all while in the face of an armed insurgency. I 
suggest to my colleagues, doing any of those things in and of itself--
going through the elections tomorrow, electing a parliament, standing 
up a government, putting the right people in place to lead those 
ministries, rewriting the constitution--any one of them by itself is a 
hard thing to do. Doing them all almost simultaneously during the 
course of an armed insurgency, achieving that would be

[[Page S13536]]

like the triumph of man's hope over experience.
  I returned from Iraq more hopeful than when I left. I acknowledge 
that a lot of hard work lies ahead for us and, hopefully, for a new 
coalition of the willing in the Middle East. While there are no easy 
choices or solutions, I acknowledge that. I think we know that. But if 
we do begin to alter course, as I have outlined earlier, I believe we 
increase the likelihood that America, Iraq, and its neighbors will 
arrive at the destination we all seek.


               Sergeant First Class James ``Shawn'' Moudy

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise to talk about a young man who lost 
his life last Sunday in Iraq. He is an Army sergeant first class who 
grew up in Delaware, a graduate of Tatnall High School. His name is 
James ``Shawn'' Moudy. He is the ninth soldier from Delaware to have 
died in Iraq.
  Shawn epitomized the best of our country's brave men and women who 
fought to free Iraq and to secure a new democracy in the Middle East. 
Shawn exhibited unwavering courage, dutiful service to his country and, 
above all else, honor. The way he lived his life and how we remember 
him, Shawn reminds each of us how good we can be.
  Shawn was born in Wilmington, DE, on July 14, 1968, to James and 
Thelma Moudy who now reside in Newark, DE. Shawn attended the 
Independence School and graduated from Tatnall School in 1986, where he 
enjoyed playing football and lacrosse. Shawn then attended 1 year at 
Marion Military Institute in Marion, AL.
  After earning a nomination to the Coast Guard Academy, Shawn decided 
instead to enlist in the Army. For almost two decades, Shawn traveled 
the world on tours of duty in Korea, Germany, Bosnia, and later at Ft. 
Benning, GA. It was in Korea that he met his wife Myong Sun, and today 
they have a daughter, Sandra Rebecca. She is 13 years old.
  In September 2004, Shawn was transferred to Ft. Drum in Watertown, 
NY, where his family resides today. He was deployed to Iraq in August 
2005, a few months ago. Shawn's mission was to train Iraqi troops, and 
he joined in the security patrols there. Shawn was a member of the 71st 
Cavalry Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division. He always knew he 
wanted to be a soldier. He had several uncles who served in the 
military. As a child, his mom and dad told me, he always drew pictures 
of soldiers. According to his mom, with whom I was privileged to speak 
the night before last, Shawn believed that ``the world needs to be safe 
and protected and free. That's what his whole life was dedicated to.'' 
Those are her words and his.
  Shawn's parents take comfort in knowing their son was doing what he 
believed was right. Their son was resolute in his belief that the 
United States should not leave Iraq until a free society has been 
established. He died Sunday in western Baghdad when the humvee he was 
driving struck another one of those roadside bombs we hear so much 
about.
  I rise today on behalf of Senator Biden and our whole congressional 
delegation and the people of Delaware to celebrate his life, to 
commemorate his life, and to offer his mom and dad and family our 
support and our deepest sympathy on their tragic loss and on ours.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Order of Procedure

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, on behalf of our leadership, I ask 
unanimous consent that the following Senators be recognized to speak as 
in morning business:
  Senator Clinton for 1 hour, followed by Senator Collins for a time to 
be determined; Senator Kennedy for 30 minutes to make a motion to 
instruct; Senator Landrieu for 20 minutes.
  I further ask unanimous consent that Republican Senators be 
accommodated, if seeking recognition, in between two Democratic 
Senators, and that Republican Senators be allocated time that is equal 
to that consumed by the minority Senators.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Motion to Instruct Conferees

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, tomorrow, we are going to have a series 
of votes in the Senate to give instructions to our conferees. It is an 
expression of the Senate to give instructions to conferees on priority 
items that are going to be before the conference. In this particular 
instance, it is dealing with the issues of higher education.
  I intend to address the Senate again tomorrow. I want to urge a 
favorable vote by Republicans and Democrats alike because the 
resolution I will be offering is a reflection of the action that was 
taken in our HELP Committee, chaired by Senator Enzi, in which there 
was extremely broad bipartisan support--virtually unanimous support--
for that position. That position basically was that the committee would 
have $8 billion in additional savings for need-based aid.
  Our intention is to give this additional aid to Pell eligible 
students. We would also offer an additional grant of up to $1,500 to 
Pell-eligible juniors and seniors who are majoring in math or science.
  We know that one of the great challenges we are facing in the United 
States is how we are going to deal with the challenges of 
globalization.
  We have to ask ourselves as Americans whether we are going to be 
consumed by globalization or whether we are going to accept the 
challenge and equip every man, woman, and child with the ability to 
compete in a global market and to equip our country with the ability to 
succeed in a global market. That means we must be the country, the 
society, the economy that is innovative and creative, and that is going 
to mean new opportunities that are presented. That is going to be 
essential not only for our economy but for our national security. The 
kind of investments we have and those recommended by our committee are 
a good start.
  I believe we are going to have to do more, and I welcome the 
opportunity to do more in the next session of this Congress.
  This motion that I offer and others support, that will be voted on 
tomorrow, is a reaffirmation of the importance of strengthening higher 
education. There are many different aspects of the education budget 
which are of concern to us. Senator Harkin and others have outlined 
those concerns. I join them in expressing our anxiety and disapproval 
at the fact that we are either going to support education or support 
greater tax incentives, essentially giveaways, to the wealthiest 
individuals in our country.
  This is really the issue. This is the question. We will have an 
opportunity to express ourselves tomorrow. The whole battle over the 
budget is an issue about priorities for our Nation. We can say 
expending more resources in the area of education isn't going to solve 
all of our problems, but it is an expression of a nation's priorities: 
investing, investing, investing to make sure that every young person 
who has ability, who wants to continue their education is going to be 
able to do it.
  Finally, I will just mention that the additional reason this motion 
is needed is because the Republican proposal from the House could 
actually increase the cost of college loans by more than $2,000.
  Mr. President, I send a motion to the desk. As I understand, the 
leadership will work out the voting sequence, and we will have an 
opportunity tomorrow to go into greater detail on this motion.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy] moves that the 
     managers on the part of the Senate at the conference on the 
     disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the House amendment to 
     the bill S. 1932 be instructed to insist that the Senate 
     provisions increasing need based financial aid in the

[[Page S13537]]

     bill S. 1932, which were fully offset by savings in the bill 
     S. 1932, be included in the final conference report and that 
     the House provisions in the bill H.R. 4241 that impose new 
     fees and costs on students in school and in repayment be 
     rejected in the final conference report, for the following 
     reasons:
       (1) The cost of public college tuition and fees has 
     increased by 46 percent since 2001.
       (2) The lowest income student at a 4-year public college 
     faces an average of $5,800 in unmet need.
       (3) For families in the lowest income quartile, the average 
     cost of attendance at a 4-year public college represents 47 
     percent of their income.
       (4) More than 5,300,000 students received Federal Pell 
     Grants in 2004 through 2005.
       (5) The buying power of the maximum Federal Pell Grant has 
     decreased from 57 percent of public college tuition to 33 
     percent in the last 20 years.
       (6) The gap between the cost of attendance at a 4-year 
     public college and the maximum Federal Pell Grant has 
     increased from $5,282 in 2001 to $8,077 in 2005 through 2006.
       (7) The typical student who borrows money graduates with a 
     bachelor's degree from a public college with $15,500 of debt.
       (8) A person with a bachelor's degree makes $1,000,000 more 
     over the course of the person's lifetime than a person with 
     only a high school degree.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I associate myself with the comments of 
the Senator from Massachusetts and underscore the importance of the 
points he was making about the need for us to be better prepared to 
compete in the global economy. I look forward to supporting the 
Senator's motion, and hopefully the conferees will pay heed to the 
Senator's strong admonition about what is in our Nation's best interest 
in terms of investments. I hope I may be added as a cosponsor of that 
very important effort.
  Mr. President, the holiday season is upon us, presenting an 
opportunity to give thanks for our blessings, reflect on the past year, 
and consider how we can better demonstrate goodwill to one another. 
That is the true spirit of this wonderful and blessed season.
  Sadly, the budget we are debating this week and, quite frankly, the 
work of the Congress this entire session has failed to keep faith with 
the spirit of the season or the priorities of the American people. We 
are not following through on the promise to rebuild New Orleans. We are 
not taking the necessary steps to reduce health care costs or make 
energy more affordable. We are not investing in education as we should 
to prepare the next generation.
  This entire legislative season has been about the misplaced 
priorities of the White House and the Republican majority in Congress 
who are unable or unwilling to recognize the realities facing America's 
families.
  Washington Republicans seem oblivious to the fact that 1.1 million 
more Americans fell into poverty last year for a total of 37 million of 
our fellow citizens, including 13 million children. In New York City, 
one in five residents lives below the poverty line. They have turned a 
blind eye to the fact that 45 million Americans are without health 
insurance, including almost 3 million New Yorkers.
  They have ignored the devastating effects of the job losses that 
workers at GM, Ford, and Delphi face and our huge and growing national 
debt, now $8.1 trillion, that threatens the future of our children.
  The Republican budget lays bear the priorities of Washington 
Republicans: Loopholes for oil companies instead of student loans for 
middle-class families; irresponsible tax breaks instead of affordable 
health care for the working poor. Now these are choices that would even 
give Ebenezer Scrooge pause--choices that not only ignore the 
challenges facing American families but make those challenges more 
difficult to overcome.
  Congress is on the verge of enacting a fatally flawed budget plan 
that finances further irresponsible tax breaks on the backs of 
Americans who struggle to pay college tuition, to provide health care 
coverage for their families, and keep their homes warm in winter.
  This budget plan is written in the full spirit of the ``Grinch Who 
Stole Christmas.'' But instead of taking away the presents and the 
Christmas decorations like the Grinch did, Congress is ringing in the 
holiday season by taking away Medicaid benefits, food stamps, child 
support enforcement, childcare programs, affordable housing grants, and 
student loan benefits.
  At the end of the story, the Grinch sees the error of his ways. I can 
only hope that the Members of this Chamber experience a similar 
revelation.
  We have been told that these steps are necessary to pay down the 
deficit. We have been told that the proposed additional cuts and tax 
breaks are the priorities of the American people necessary to continue 
economic growth.
  Cutting Medicaid, food stamps, childcare, affordable housing, and 
student loans is no way to balance the budget or secure our children's 
futures. It is not in the long-term interest of our country, and it is 
not in keeping with the values of the American people.
  What is more, under the Republican majority's budget proposals, the 
budget deficit would actually increase by anywhere from $10 billion to 
$20 billion.
  Democrats in the Congress know what real deficit reduction looks 
like. It involves difficult choices on both the revenue and spending 
side. During the Clinton administration, making the tough choices not 
only eliminated the deficit but produced the largest budget surpluses 
on record. If those in Congress who support this budget, the Grinch 
budget, were truly concerned about deficits, then they would not have 
opposed the restoration of the pay-go rule, a very simple rule which 
means you don't spend money you don't have. They certainly would not 
have approved an additional $70 billion in tax breaks along with the 
budget cuts, tax breaks skewed toward the most affluent among us that 
will worsen our Nation's growing fiscal imbalance.
  What this bill represents is not only an abandonment of our 
responsibility to middle-class and working families but the steady 
erosion of the work support programs that have enabled millions of 
Americans to find work, get off the welfare rolls, and rise above the 
poverty line.
  The right way to cut the deficit is clear.
  Instead of cutting programs that help working families get ahead, cut 
the subsidies flowing to corporate tax breaks, delay further tax cuts 
on capital gains and dividends while passing those cuts that benefit 
the middle class such as AMT reform. The tax cuts going already to the 
wealthiest in this country are nearly seven times larger than all of 
the proposed budget cuts in the House and Senate. Moreover, there are 
tax cuts not yet in effect, such as the repeal of the phaseout of 
personal exemptions and limitations on deductions that go into effect 
next year, which will cost over $27 billion in the next 5 years.
  We could also allow the Government to negotiate with drug companies 
to lower the cost of prescription drugs, which was prohibited in the 
flawed Medicare drug benefit. If Medicare were able to reap the kinds 
of savings we have seen through the VA system's negotiations, seniors 
could expect to save more than $100 billion over the next decade in 
drug costs. This alone is more than four times the savings achieved 
through the harsh budget cuts being proposed.
  We could establish a fund for alternative energy investments by 
requiring that oil companies, which as we know are experiencing amazing 
record profits this year, to invest in alternative energy. We could 
require that they help with people's heating bills this winter. We 
could bring in $20 billion a year with the right energy investments 
through the strategic energy fund that I have recommended that would 
have the benefit of making us less energy dependent on foreign oil.
  Of course, we could eliminate the $2.6 billion in new tax breaks that 
those same record profit-making oil companies lobbied for and won in 
this year's Energy bill. Why do we not take the oil companies off 
welfare? I think that is an idea we at least ought to debate in this 
Chamber. Unfortunately, the Republican majority and the administration 
have made their choice: Breaks for the special interests instead of 
compassion for common citizens who face new hardships. They must 
literally wake up each morning and ask, what are we going to do to help 
our friends today? Never has so much been done for so few who need it 
so little.
  Look at their plans for Medicaid. The Republican majority is 
recommending cuts of up to $11.4 billion over the next 5 years. The 
Congressional Budget Office has estimated that these cuts will

[[Page S13538]]

result in higher premiums and copays for over 7 million people, 
including 3.5 million children. Some 70,000 people may lose their 
health care altogether. A family just above the poverty line could see 
an increase of more than $1,000 annually to maintain their health care 
coverage.
  New York would bear a disproportionately high burden of these cuts, 
as we would stand to lose over $1.37 billion, putting at risk the more 
than 4 million New Yorkers who depend on Medicaid. Over 97,000 New York 
children and 12,400 New York seniors would lose a substantial portion 
of their services under the cuts being debated. Instead of closing tax 
loopholes, Washington Republicans are cutting health care. It is very 
difficult to understand how we could be doing this. If we took that 
$2.6 billion in new tax subsidies for oil companies that are having an 
aggregate year of profits of--give or take a billion or so--around $100 
billion, with that $2.6 billion we could cover the health care costs of 
an additional 1.7 million children nationwide.
  Sadly, the majority has chosen health care cuts and Medicaid as the 
tip of the iceberg. We can take a look at other damage that will come 
to American families because of these misplaced priorities. Working 
parents struggling to pay for child care, health care, and housing will 
now have the added burden of losing their food payment assistance. Two 
hundred and twenty-five thousand people will see their food stamps 
vanish, including up to 14,000 New York residents and some 5,000 New 
York children.
  To put this in perspective, the Republican majority is proposing an 
approximately $700 million cut in food stamps. If we simply reinstated 
the Superfund polluter tax, which forces companies that pollute to bear 
the expense of cleaning up instead of passing it on to the average 
taxpayers to clean up their mess, that would generate $7.3 billion over 
the next 10 years, more than 10 times the cost of the food stamp cut.
  Additionally, children in households receiving food stamps are 
automatically eligible for school meals. The Republican bill in the 
House, while reducing the number of people who will receive food 
assistance, also eliminates the automatic link and makes it more 
difficult for hundreds of thousands of low-income children in New York 
State, as well as many more around the country, to qualify for free or 
reduced priced meals at school. The House budget is literally taking 
food from the mouths of children.
  Then, what are they thinking when it comes to child support 
enforcement? If there ever was a win-win program, it is this. It is 
designed to go after deadbeat parents, collect the money that is owed, 
which in turn can be provided to the families that are in need, helping 
lift those single-parent families out of poverty by requiring that 
their parents work and make regular payments to support their children. 
Well, no, that is going to be cut as well. Funding would be slashed by 
$16 billion. That means some $24 billion in child support payments 
would go uncollected. In the next 10 years, children in my State would 
stand to lose over $1.4 billion in child support payments.

  It is almost impossible to imagine this happening at any time but 
here we are in the Christmas season, and we are giving a boon to 
deadbeat parents, taking food out of the mouths of children, cutting 
people off of health care and, of course, under the radar screen, the 
Republican majority is trying to use this budget reconciliation process 
for a major overhaul of our Nation's welfare rules.
  I am very proud of welfare reform. In 1997, we created a welfare 
program that valued work, built around the notion that people should 
work and that people who do work should not still be poor after they 
have worked. And that work leads to dignity and self-sufficiency and 
provides strong role models for children. Back then--it was not so long 
ago--Republicans claimed to agree that we should support working 
families, but the policies they are pushing today will punish working 
parents. It will push those who are literally tottering on the brink of 
poverty over the edge.
  Under their proposal, 330,000 families would lose child care 
assistance and cities and towns throughout my State would be the ones 
that would have to provide some kind of help but not with Federal 
assistance because they would be required to eliminate subsidies for 
working families. They are the ones down at the local level who will 
see the results of these wrong-headed policies.
  As working families grapple with rising home prices, the Republican 
majority is trying to eliminate critical grants that create more 
affordable housing. These grants have been an invaluable source of 
funds, providing for the rehabilitation of homes that would otherwise 
be out of reach for low-income working families.
  Since 1995, New York has saved 1,746 units of housing as a result of 
this program; on the chopping block. Goodbye to help for housing. I do 
not know where the working families in my State or other States will 
end up living. A lot of them will end up being homeless.
  Then we come to a program that is about the future. It is 
particularly stunning--I am sure many in this Chamber and the House 
believe that a college education is certainly critical for their own 
children and grandchildren and is part of the route to success in 
today's competitive global economy. Well, one would not know by the 
budget numbers that are coming out of the Republican majority that they 
have any value for education at all because they are instituting an 
additional $14.3 billion in charges for student loan recipients, making 
an education even more difficult to finance. This would be the largest 
cut in student aid in the history of the loan program.
  So while with one hand we paint college education as the path to 
achievement, with the other we are erecting an even higher barrier for 
middle class families and working families, let alone poor families, 
who all of a sudden are going to be told they better try to get their 
kid to go to college, but tuition is rising so we know it is more and 
more expensive. Instead of giving more help as we used to do, we are 
going to make it harder to get the financial assistance that is needed 
to go to and complete college.
  An average student would be saddled with a lot more in costs. For 
example, if a student had $17,500 in student loans they might pay an 
additional $5,800 under the Republican plan. In my State, approximately 
472,000 students would see an increase in their costs. I do not 
understand what we are trying to achieve. If we simply took the $18 
billion revenue-raising package adopted by the Senate in its tax bill, 
which repeals among other loopholes another $4.3 billion tax giveaway 
to oil companies--honest to goodness, don't the oil companies ever get 
enough tax breaks? I mean, it is not enough that we are paying so much 
money to them out of our daily paychecks, now they are going to ask us 
to pay it out of our tax payments--more and more and more subsidies to 
companies that are making tens of billions of dollars in profits. It 
doesn't add up to me.

  But if we took away those $4.3 billion in new tax giveaways to oil 
companies and we cracked down on abusive corporate tax transactions 
such as setting up offshore tax havens in places such as Bermuda to 
avoid paying United States taxes, we would not have to make it more 
painful and costly for students to go to college.
  So what is the tradeoff here? More subsidies for the oil companies, 
more offshore tax havens for companies that call themselves American 
but are not willing to pay their fair share to fund our young men and 
women in uniform, to help pay for the victims of Katrina or literally 
anything else? We could keep doing that. I guess that is the Republican 
philosophy. Or, we can say: Wait. Enough is enough. We don't have to 
give the oil companies any more tax breaks and let's close these 
loopholes. It is unpatriotic for these companies to pay not one penny 
in taxes to this Government, to our national defense, for the blessings 
that make it possible for them to do business and have a good standard 
of living. It is wrong.
  Apparently that is not the way the Republican majority sees it. What 
they say is that these spending and tax cuts are progrowth. They are 
right about that. They are progrowth for the oil companies. They are 
progrowth for the tax haven companies. But they are sure not progrowth 
for somebody trying to get through college or some working mom who 
needs to collect child support

[[Page S13539]]

from an ex-husband. I do not see anything progrowth about that for 
them.
  They do not even make economic sense. You know, we know how to do the 
economy right. We did it in the 1990s. We not only balanced the budget 
and created a surplus but helped to create 22 million new jobs and 
lifted millions and millions of people out of poverty. We enjoyed a 
long period of sustained economic growth. We took on the challenges of 
the day and we tried to prepare for the future.
  That is not what is happening in Washington today, and I am deeply 
troubled and regretful about the choices that are being made on both 
ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
  I have spent many years working on behalf of children in foster care. 
They are probably the most vulnerable of all of our children, the 
poorest of the poor--abused, neglected, children who get taken away 
from their families because their families are unable or unwilling to 
care for them. When they are taken away by the police or by a court or 
social worker--maybe they are turned in by a neighbor or relative--they 
become our children. They become the responsibility of every single one 
of us and we have to work very hard to try to get them reunited with 
families, to try to find a relative who will love and care for them; 
absent that, to try to make sure they are safe and secure in foster 
care while hopefully we try to find a permanent, loving family for 
them.
  It is going to be a lot harder because the Republicans are choosing 
corporate tax breaks instead of foster care. They are going to slash 
$600 million from foster care support.
  I grew up loving the Christmas season, telling the story over and 
over again about how Mary and Joseph found themselves with no place to 
stay and how Jesus was born in the manger. Many people say: Look, they 
were shut out, left behind. We are shutting out and leaving behind a 
lot of our children with these budget decisions. It is wrong. It is 
wrong to reward special interests who can do perfectly fine for 
themselves and slam the door on foster children who need all kinds of 
help to even have a chance in life.
  It is wrong to give more tax breaks to oil companies and not be sure 
we are going to have enough money to help families pay their heating 
bills this winter. It is wrong that we are using Orwellian language to 
call a budget bill that actually raises the deficit a deficit reduction 
bill. It may be clever. You might fool some of the people but not for 
long. The deficit will continue to be a drag on our economy and a 
burden for future generations.
  The American people, and particularly our children, deserve better. 
The Republican majority's proposals for this budget are not in the best 
interests of America. They will undermine the hopes and dreams of a lot 
of hard-working people, people who took us at our word 8 years ago. 
They got off welfare and they are working now. I see them every day. I 
go into offices or restaurants all over New York and somebody will come 
up to me and they will say: Senator, I used to be on welfare, but I am 
working now and my children are so proud. Thank you. Tell your husband 
thank you.
  I always say: Well, God bless you, take care of those children.
  Now what are we doing? We are going to cut the childcare that people 
need to help take care of their children while they are at work. We are 
going to cut the housing assistance that people need in order to be 
able to afford a house or an apartment in most places of which I am 
aware. We may be cutting their children off Medicaid with all these 
cuts in Medicaid, so that little girl who needs that expensive asthma 
medicine in order to keep going to school may be out of luck. We are 
going to be cutting child support so we are not going after those 
deadbeat parents to collect money that will help that family stay on 
the right path, stay out of poverty.
  It doesn't make any sense to me, but those are the choices that the 
elected representatives of the people of this country are about to 
make. It is time that we go back to arithmetic and reality; we go back 
to a conservative fiscal policy that pays as you go, doesn't spend what 
you don't have, produces balanced budgets and surpluses, and takes care 
of people who are working as hard as they can or who are vulnerable and 
need our help.
  There is a lot of talk about family values. Well, let's value 
families and let's do it, not just with rhetoric, but with money, 
decisions, budgets that show what our values are.
  So in the spirit of this holiday season I call on the Members of this 
body to reflect on the choices they will be making in the next few 
days. These choices are going to have a profound impact on millions of 
people, less fortunate than we are, but there but for the grace of God 
go any of us. It will not just be for a holiday season, it will be for 
years to come.
  I think we can do better. I know America deserves better. We can get 
back on the right path of fiscal responsibility and moral 
decisionmaking that takes into account the needs of the least among us.
  We can build a nation that reflects the best of what we can and 
should be. I hope we will take this opportunity to do so. If we do not, 
there will be consequences, and they will reflect badly on our 
Government.
  Let us have a happy ending to the story. The Grinch had an epiphany. 
The Grinch came back and said: I don't want to be a bad guy. I want to 
share in the Christmas spirit.
  So let us replace this ``Grinch budget'' with an American budget that 
does what it should do for all the people of our country.
  I thank the Chair. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coburn). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                          American Priorities

  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I thank the Presiding Officer. I thank 
you for the opportunity to speak.
  I had not intended to come to the floor today but I passed my 
television set in my office, and I caught the preceding speech 
regarding American priorities and certain allegations regarding 
leadership at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. I felt compelled for a 
second to try to answer some of the rhetorical questions that were 
asked but never responded to in the speech. If I heard it right--I 
could be corrected--one of the questions was ``I don't understand what 
we are trying to accomplish.'' It was stated in the context of 
extending the tax cuts, I presume the tax cuts the House passed--to 
extend on capital gains and dividends. I will assume for a second that 
was part of them. There may have been others, and I will address some 
of them, but I thought it was time, at least for those who might be 
watching and listening today.
  There are two distinct philosophies in Washington, DC. One has just 
been characterized. My hope is, in the few minutes I have been 
allocated, to be able to characterize the other.
  When George Bush took office at the beginning of his first term, this 
country was moving into a serious recession which was realized shortly 
after that term began.
  In September, on the 11th day of September, in the year 2001, America 
had the most unbelievable, heinous attack upon us that has ever been 
perpetrated, even worse, both in death toll but also in tragedy, than 
that of Pearl Harbor. That event, on top of the declining economy which 
was inherited in large measure by the administration, this President, 
and in turn this Congress, set on a new course to do two things: One, 
empower the great economic engine of America, which is American 
business and free enterprise. We did so by strictly passing legislation 
in terms of tax cuts and changes in tax policy that would empower 
American business, offer the incentives for more jobs and bring us out 
of the economic difficulty we were having.

  I submit that is precisely what has happened. If you look at the last 
5 years, we have gone from a period of recession, which began in 1999, 
peaked probably in 2000-2001, and since, we have continued to climb and 
improve. Why have we done so? We have done so because we empowered the 
American business person and the American employer and the American 
employee by allowing them to keep a little bit more of their business 
and invest it in this great country, spend it in discretionary 
spending, buy a new home. Economic

[[Page S13540]]

enterprise breeds economic enterprise which breeds more economic 
enterprise.
  We know from the standpoint of our side of that philosophical issue, 
if you empower business to do more business, the American Government 
will prosper. Our revenues have gone up in this country. They have not 
gone down because of tax cuts. June 15, 2005--this year--was the 
largest single take in tax revenue in the history of the United States 
of America. It was because our country is running on all cylinders, or 
almost all cylinders.
  When I went to college, 95 percent employment was full employment. We 
have that today. We have had an unbelievable sustained period of very 
positive interest rates. We have had an economy that has not been 
attacked by inflation, and inflation continues to be under control. The 
jobs that were lost because of the recession in the early part of this 
decade are coming back, and they are coming back at a rapid rate. 
Business formations, prosperity, American home ownership is at an all-
time high. The real estate industry is at an all-time high. American 
business enterprise is thriving, and I submit it is not confusing to 
me. I do understand what we are doing. What we are doing is we are 
empowering that which has always taken this country to great heights: 
the American free enterprise system, the American taxpayer, the 
American employer, and the American employee. We are empowering them 
with their money and believing they can do it better, and we can 
prosper together.
  The other side's philosophy is, you charge the people more money to 
take care of the problems you perceive. Instead of empowering them, you 
shackle them with less money, you empower government, you breed 
mediocrity. That is wrong.
  No one predicted September 11. Nobody could have ever predicted 
September 11. But while in the process of reinvigorating the American 
economy through strategic tax cuts, this administration has confronted 
the most horrible fate a country could confront on September 11 in the 
attack of terrorism. We have pursued terrorists around the world. We 
have secured our airports. We are securing our ports. We have been 
fortunate not to have an attack on our soil since that date. That did 
not come cheap. It came at a great price. A great price we have 
financed, in part, obviously, with the deficits that were referred to. 
But we paid for an awful lot of it with the growth in our revenue from 
an empowered taxpayer and an empowered employer and an empowered 
employee.
  I just want to make a couple things clear. I am one member of the 
majority party of this Senate, and I can only speak for myself. But I 
take issue with being characterized as someone who is trying to cut 
health care, someone who is trying to take food out of the mouths of 
children, somebody who is trying to take welfare and turn it back 
around and hurt people on welfare to recovery, someone who is trying to 
make it harder for kids to go to college.
  All of those examples that I heard in the previous speech were 
examples of taking an issue and distorting an issue to make it appear 
that one side is against children, for hunger, against education, for 
ignorance--all those negative connotations. So for a second I will 
address them, if I can.
  We had an earlier motion in the Senate today with regard to Medicaid. 
We have a lot of Governors in this country who are attempting to get 
flexibility with Medicaid. I happen to be one who supports giving the 
Governors flexibility from the standpoint of Medicaid. Why? First of 
all, they and their legislatures administer Medicaid, we don't. We pay 
for two-thirds of it, but we hold them accountable for its 
administration. If they are accountable for its administration, and 
they are paying a third of the costs, and we are holding them 
accountable, by golly, they ought to get flexibility to use some of the 
tools. I know the distinguished Presiding Officer knows about tools in 
medicine today and applies them to health care for our poorest.
  Being more flexible for our Governors to deal with one of the largest 
single expenditures of State government, the largest in my State, is 
good common sense. It is not cutting health care. It is empowering the 
people who are helping to get it to the people who need it.

  This business of taking food out of the mouths of babes, I do not 
know what the Senator from New York was referring to specifically, and 
I will give her the benefit of the doubt. But I will say, cutting the 
rate of growth in programs is not taking food out of the mouths of 
people who are getting it. Cutting the rate of growth in spending is 
trying to manage our budget. I have never seen a time, even back in the 
early 1990s, when the Republicans were attacked in the House for taking 
the food out of the mouths of young children. It was the rate of growth 
in programs that was talked about. It was not real dollars. I submit 
the reference today was probably precisely the same thing.
  As far as welfare rules are concerned, one of the great legislative 
initiatives of the 1990s was welfare reform and welfare-to-work. I have 
been to the centers in my State. I have seen the bulletin boards, the 
success stories today of people who were on welfare, shackled for a 
lifetime, and then empowered by welfare-to-work legislation. We have 
reduced our roles in this country tremendously. We have not really 
reduced the cost of welfare that much because we are providing 
childcare, we are providing training, we are providing transportation, 
and we are providing education.
  But do you know what we did. We slowed the growth of the cost of 
welfare to the American taxpayer. In the process of doing it, we 
empowered Americans who thought they were shackled for a lifetime in 
poverty, in welfare, because we got them job training. We got them 
child assistance while they were being trained. We empowered them and 
challenged them to go off of welfare and on to work. And they are there 
today. That is a great accomplishment.
  As to the student loan business, I do know a little bit about that. 
We were tasked in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee 
on budget reconciliation with finding some savings. The 
characterization in the previous speech was it will cost students more 
money to go to college and to borrow on student loans. There are going 
to be some costs, that is correct. We still, however, as a government, 
provide through Pell grants and through assistance in the College Loan 
Program unparalleled assistance to students wanting to go to college 
and to finance that education. We are merely trying to make that 
program accountable and live to a certain extent within our means.
  There was a comment in the preceding speech that it is time to get 
back to arithmetic and reality. I will address my remarks to that for 
just a second.
  There is not one Member in here who likes the deficit situation we 
have been in. I applaud the White House for encouraging us, and I 
applaud Senator Gregg in his diligent leadership to force us to try to 
bring about savings and begin to reduce the rate of spending in 
programs. The reconciliation bill we passed, which I believe was $39.4 
billion in savings, is a start. It is only a start. We will have to do 
more.
  In the case of the reconciliation and those savings, whatever the 
program might be, there is going to be somebody who says: Don't cut 
here, cut there. But for us eventually to make this budget process 
accountable, we will have to be able to open all of government, look at 
all of government, analyze all of government, and make hard choices. 
The reality of arithmetic is you cannot tax America into prosperity. 
You cannot solve everyone's problem by taxing those who are producing 
the jobs that employ the people of the United States of America. What 
you can do, however, is hold yourself accountable on the spending side 
and empower those who produce the revenues to do more.
  The arithmetic of our tax cuts is simple, because of capital gains 
reductions, mature assets which were held and not liquidated because of 
the tax rate were sold, and new money was made, and it was deployed in 
new investments with growth because dividends became equalized with 
capital gains and, in fact, were lowered in a rate of taxation. Wall 
Street began to focus on dividends as being a positive thing for 
companies to do.
  There has been a tremendous move on Wall Street, and the market is

[[Page S13541]]

stronger and investment in America is stronger because of what we did 
in bonus depreciation, because of what we did in expensing. In every 
one of those things that was called a cut, we raised revenue, and we 
did so because we empowered American business.
  But if the Senator from New York or anybody else thinks that if you 
have a billion-dollar problem, you can just raise taxes by a billion 
dollars and solve it, and that is the way for us to go in the 21st 
century, they are dead wrong. Because there is a point at which when 
you tax, you suppress prosperity, you cause people who have money to 
make the decision not to deploy that money anymore. You cause the exact 
opposite of what has happened in this country for the past 3 years 
since the tax programs were passed.
  So while I may have missed some of the points because I caught this 
in passing and stopped at the TV to listen, I did not miss one point. 
The point was the question: I don't understand what it is we are trying 
to accomplish. I will tell you what we are trying to accomplish. We are 
trying to accomplish empowering the great locomotive of prosperity, 
American free enterprise, the American employer and employee to do 
better. And as they do better, the American Government does better, and 
revenues go up, not because we raised rates but because we raised hope 
and we raised opportunity.
  Secondly, I know where we are trying to go in budget reconciliation. 
We are trying to go where every American is every day of their life. We 
are trying to sit around the kitchen table, setting priorities, looking 
to the future, seeing where we can slow the rate of growth of 
Government expenditures. We are not trying to take food out of the 
mouth of a single person, nor to take health care away from a single 
person. Nor do we want a deadbeat dad not to get caught. We want every 
child support payment to be made. To characterize one party as being 
for those things and the other being against them, to me, is quite 
ludicrous. But you have to go through a budget process of 
reconciliation and savings by looking at programs, analyzing programs, 
setting realistic goals for the future, and trying to make them more 
accountable.
  The United States of America is a great and prosperous nation for a 
lot of reasons. But the most important reason of all, it is a land of 
hope and opportunity. Taxation can destroy the hope and, in turn, 
destroy the opportunity when it is carried to the excess no matter how 
noble the cause on which it is levied.
  Mr. President, I thank you for the time yielded to me. I thank you 
for the opportunity to serve with you in this body. In the next few 
days, as we close out this legislative session, I hope we can, in the 
end, be where we started this year, with a goal of empowering the 
American taxpayer, doing a better job handling the expenses of this 
country, and doing what we always do in giving thanks to live in the 
greatest Nation on the face of this Earth, the United States of 
America.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I commend the Senator from Georgia for his 
excellent statement. He presented the themes and the basic philosophy 
which are behind this bill, the deficit reduction bill, which includes 
that we, as a government, need to come close to living within our 
means. Hopefully, we could live completely within our means. Secondly, 
the American people should not always have money taken out of their 
pockets to support the largess of the Federal Government. We should 
have a tax burden that is reasonable, but to the extent we can, we 
should allow Americans to keep their hard-earned money and allow them 
to make decisions as to where their money should go.
  If we increase taxes dramatically, we basically reduce the incentive 
of people to go out and be productive, which translates directly into a 
loss of jobs because people are not willing to take risks, are not 
willing to be entrepreneurs because if their tax burden is so high, the 
practical effect is they do not create jobs. A job, of course, is the 
ultimate economic benefit for any family.
  So I congratulate the Senator from Georgia. I think his statement was 
right on. I especially appreciate his comments relative to trying to 
put in context the comments of the Senator from New York because the 
Senator from New York used a few hyperboles, referring to ``The Grinch 
That Stole Christmas.'' ``How the Grinch Stole Christmas,'' of course, 
is a classic story. First, I congratulate her. I do congratulate her 
for using the term ``Christmas'' and recognizing this is the Christmas 
season, not the holiday season, something which my wife continually 
reminds me about. We don't have a holiday tree; we have a Christmas 
tree.
  But independent of that small aside, let me point out that ``How the 
Grinch Stole Christmas'' is a wonderful story. It was written by a 
fellow who went to school in New Hampshire. It is a fantasy. He wrote 
some other things such as ``The Cat in the Hat.'' And quite honestly, I 
think the Senator from New York was talking through her hat when she 
delivered her statement because it, first, was inconsistent with all 
the facts on the ground, and, second, it represented a philosophy which 
essentially says, as the Senator from Georgia has pointed out, if you 
simply tax people more, you can solve your problems as the Federal 
Government. All it takes is you take more of people's money and we can 
solve any problem around here.
  Where is it factually inaccurate? Well, to begin with, the deficit 
reduction bill which we passed was a very unique bill. It has only been 
done once in the last 8 years. This is the first attempt to do it 
again. It was unique because the way it was structured, as it came out 
of the Senate--and I congratulate the various chairmen who did this, 
especially the chairman of the HELP Committee and the chairman of the 
Finance Committee and the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, which 
bore the biggest reductions here, and the chairman of the Commerce 
Committee. Other chairmen also participated, but they had the big, 
heavy lift.
  The way it came out of the Senate was this: It actually ended up 
saving about $70 billion. But there were decisions made that as we 
saved some of this money we should reallocate it toward better ideas 
and better concepts. The practical effect of this was that we 
significantly, under this bill, expanded the availability of loans 
called Pell grants to people who want to go to college, low-income 
people who want to go to college. We significantly expanded it. So 5 
million more people, 5 million more kids who want to pursue a college 
career or college path are going to be able to do so under this bill 
because of the expansion of the Pell grants.

  Why was that decision made? That decision was made because we 
believe, as Republican Members of this Senate, that if you give people 
a good education, you give them a better chance to be productive, you 
give our Nation a better chance to be productive, that as we give more 
people a better education, we become globally more competitive, and we 
create more jobs and more economic activity in the United States. As a 
result, we end up probably benefiting the Federal Treasury because we 
have more people earning higher incomes who pay more in taxes. But we 
believe very strongly in that type of commitment.
  So this bill, rather than as was represented earlier by the Senator 
from New York as being some sort of a negative event around here for 
low-income people, was actually the most significant expansion of the 
Pell grant program for low-income individuals, certainly in the last 12 
years since the beginning of the Pell grant program.
  Secondly, the bill again, under this same philosophy, dramatically 
expanded the availability of funds for low-income and disabled children 
under Medicaid. This bill, as it passed the Senate, will add 1.1 
million people, make Medicaid available for 1.1 million people, 
basically kids who are disabled and of extremely low income so they 
will have health care coverage. So some of the savings we took and we 
applied there.
  In addition, the bill expanded the effort to try to help out people 
who have been impacted by Katrina--unfortunately, a lot of people have 
been devastated by that storm--and had the effect, and will have the 
effect, if it is passed, of helping 1.9 million people

[[Page S13542]]

who were dramatically impacted by Katrina get Medicaid coverage. Again, 
that was a decision that was made to reallocate resources.
  So the bill itself is probably the biggest and most aggressive effort 
to try to help people of low income that has gone through this Senate 
in recent history, probably since the welfare reform bill that was 
signed by the husband of the Senator from New York.
  How were these savings generated which were able to be reallocated? 
Remember that the bill overall, on a net basis, as it left the Senate, 
saved about $39 billion. My hope is, after we go to conference, it will 
save about $45 billion, maybe $46 billion, maybe be as high as $48 
billion, $49 billion in net savings. But there are other savings that 
we have taken and reallocated. Where did those savings come from? Did 
they come from low- and moderate-income individuals? Were they slashing 
programmatic activity that benefited low-income individuals, as would 
be represented by the statement of the Senator from New York that the 
Grinch has been at work? No. As I said, a more appropriate analogy 
would have been the Cat in the Hat because she was talking through her 
hat on that issue.

  The savings that expand the Pell grant come directly out of the 
lenders who, if we do not act under this bill, will realize a $12 
billion windfall because the interest rate which students will have to 
pay will be artificially high unless we adjust that rate to 
appropriately reflect the marketplace. What this bill did, under the 
leadership of Chairman Enzi--and interestingly enough, this language 
came out of that committee in a bipartisan way.
  The Senator from New York serves on that committee, as do I. I don't 
think there was any opposition to this proposal. We essentially said, 
rather than allowing this $12 billion windfall, which will occur if we 
don't act by the end of the year, which will occur so that these 
lenders, these corporations which lend this money to students, and they 
do a service for the Nation by doing that, but they are getting this 
artificially inflated rate of return. Because of the way the law was 
structured, it didn't reflect the actual interest costs or what the 
real interest costs are today, if we don't act, they will get a $12 
billion windfall.
  What Chairman Enzi and the HELP Committee said was: That doesn't make 
any sense. Let's take back that windfall, which was artificially 
created by Federal law, and take a significant amount of it and expand 
the Pell grant program so 5 million more kids will be able to get Pell 
grants, low-income kids. In fact, the whole program is targeted to the 
lowest of low-income kids who want to go to college. And take another 
big chunk of it and use it to reduce the debt of the Federal 
Government. That is a pretty logical approach, certainly not a Grinch 
approach. It is a rather thoughtful approach, a good approach.
  I would say the characterization of the Senator from New York of this 
bill is inconsistent with the facts on the ground and inappropriate.
  The Finance Committee looked at places where we could save money in 
the Medicaid system. It came to the conclusion that a considerable 
amount of money could be saved by changing the way pharmacies are 
reimbursed under Medicaid. So they made a decision. They said: Rather 
than having an artificially high reimbursement for pharmacies and drug 
manufacturers, they would rather more accurately reflect the cost of 
those drugs and what those drugs would go for on the open market and 
thus take the savings from that and, once again, split those savings. 
They said: Part of those savings should go to expand assistance to low-
income kids, adding another 1.1 million kids to the SCHIP program, the 
Medicaid Program for low-income kids, and taking another part of the 
savings and applying it to debt reduction, creating a deficit reduction 
event.
  In addition, they said: Listen, if we don't do something about doctor 
reimbursements, doctors will end up with their fees being cut by 4.8 
percent at the end of the year. We are going to have doctors dropping 
out of the Medicare system. That is not a very good idea. Low-income 
senior citizens who want to go see a doctor aren't going to have 
doctors to see because doctors are going to say: I am not going to 
practice because my income is being cut. Everytime I see one of these 
patients who is a Medicare patient, I am losing money. I have to pay 
insurance, my nurses. I have to pay my overhead. I can't take a 4.8-
percent cut.
  So the committee said: Let's hold the doctors harmless, basically 
give them no cut. Well, they gave them a 1-percent increase, but it 
basically amounts to no cut. And they paid for that, again, by 
basically reducing areas of Medicare which legitimately should be 
reduced. Specifically, there is $5.6 billion sitting in the Medicare 
Part D trust fund, which is actually in Part C, but it applies to Part 
D, which was euphemistically called the stabilization fund, which 
essentially was walking-around money for the Department of Health and 
Human Services to basically pay out to various insurance companies, 
HMOs, and drug companies in order to buy them into the drug program 
because there was some concern that not enough people would participate 
in the drug program.
  It turns out, in every State, there has been an overwhelming number 
of different drug companies and insurance companies offering 
pharmaceuticals that have been willing to participate. In my State, we 
have 41 different plans. The problem isn't that there aren't enough. 
The problem is there are so many people getting confused as to what is 
available. And that is good news. We hope that there are so many 
participating. We hope to be able to clarify who is offering what. The 
fact is, the logic behind the stabilization fund didn't come to 
fruition. So there was no need to have this walking-around money. It 
has been referred to as a slush fund. So this committee decided to take 
that walking-around money and basically use it to make sure that 
patients, when they go to see somebody under Medicare, when they need a 
doctor, will be able to find a doctor.
  Tell me what is Grinchlike about that. What is Grinchlike about the 
idea of creating a system where there is actually a doctor when a 
senior citizen wants to find a doctor because they have a problem and 
having a proposal which accomplishes that? Obviously nothing. Once 
again, on the facts of it, the Senator from New York was inaccurate as 
to the implications of this bill and how it affects seniors and low-
income seniors.
  Yes, this bill does reduce the debt by, as it passed the Senate, $39 
billion. And I suspect if we get it back from conference, it will 
probably be closer to $45, $46, maybe even higher, $48 billion. Again, 
what is Grinchlike about that? I ask: What is wrong with reducing the 
Federal debt? What is the Federal debt? It is our generation spending 
money to benefit, in most cases, people today, and then taking the bill 
for that and saying to our children and our children's children: You 
have to pay for it. It is akin to using a credit card only you don't 
pay the credit card. You give the bill for the credit card to your 
children or grandchildren. That is not very nice. That is Grinchlike. 
If the Senator from New York wants to talk about something that is 
Grinchlike, it is having a Government that continues to run up debt for 
current expenses, passing those current expenses on to the next 
generation and the next generation after that to pay for it. That is 
unfair. That is stealing the Christmas of our children and our 
children's children or at least undermining their capacity to go out 
and have the funds to have as good a life as we have had.
  The purpose of this bill was, for the first time in 8 years, to step 
up to the plate on the most significant part of the Federal budget 
where the most money is spent and where the most growth is occurring 
which is the entitlement accounts. As I mentioned before, people need 
to understand how the Federal Government works in the area of spending. 
We have the account called appropriations. It represents 30 percent of 
the Federal Government. It is everyday expenses such as national 
defense, education, laying out roads, environmental expenses. Those 
dollars are a decision we make every year to spend. We decide to spend 
dollars to buy our military equipment. We decide to spend dollars to 
assist a State in laying out a road. But we don't have to spend that 
money. We can decide not to buy that piece of military equipment or not 
to lay out that road.
  We can do it every year, and it is called the appropriating process.

[[Page S13543]]

  In the appropriation accounts, we have essentially frozen spending, 
under this budget, under the budget which was passed in nondefense 
discretionary activity. But again, it only represents 30 percent of the 
Federal budget. The rest of the Federal budget, outside of debt 
financing, is entitlement spending or mandatory spending. Those are 
programs where people, because of their situation, or institutions or 
corporations, because of their situation, have the right to come to the 
Federal Government and get paid.
  They may be veterans, students, senior citizens on health care or on 
Medicaid or on Social Security. They have a right to that benefit 
because they fit certain criteria--age or income or experience. Those 
entitlement accounts are the fastest growing element in the Federal 
Government. They have been for years. Now they are projected to explode 
in their rate of growth because of the fact that we have something 
called the baby boom generation that is about to enter the Federal 
system. A CBO report is coming out that reflects that it is going to 
overwhelm our capacity as a society to support it.
  The concept that you can tax your way out of this, which appears to 
be the proposal of the Senator from New York, cannot stand in the face 
of facts. It cannot stand in the face of facts. Three programs--Social 
Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--make up about 80 percent of the 
mandatory spending. Those 3 programs today absorb I think probably 
around 8 or 9 percent of the Federal budget. Maybe it is higher.
  When the full baby boom generation has retired by the year 2030, 
those three programs will cost the American taxpayer 20 percent of the 
gross national product of the Federal Government. Why is that an 
important number? Because 20 percent of the gross national product is 
how much we have, historically, as a Federal Government been willing to 
spend for all Government activity, including defense spending, 
education, environmental protection and health care for senior citizens 
and Social Security. But by 2030, those three programs alone will cost 
as much as the entire Government spends today as a percentage of our 
gross national product.
  What are the implications of that? The implications are that in order 
to pay for that, and to have a functioning government, you would have 
to raise taxes on our children and grandchildren over this 20 percent 
level. That number keeps going up because the unfunded liability of 
Medicare and Medicaid alone is $27 billion. The unfunded liability of 
Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid together and all of the other 
entitlement programs is about $44 billion. So the number keeps going up 
well beyond 20 percent, so by 2040 you are looking at 25 to 30 percent 
gross national product for those three programs. Maybe the Senator from 
New York is willing to raise taxes as a percentage of the gross 
national product well above what we have done as a Nation, generally. 
We have never had a tax rate which has exceeded 21 percent. That has 
been hit occasionally, but usually the tax rate has been about 18 
percent of GDP. Once you get above 18 percent of GDP as your tax rate, 
you suppress the Nation's ability to be productive. People will come to 
the conclusion that there is no point in going out and working harder 
because the Federal Government is simply going to take their money.
  That is what happened in the late 1970s when tax rates were up to 70, 
75 percent. People said: Why should I go out and work hard to produce 
that extra dollar? They are just going to tax it away from me. So 
Ronald Reagan came along, following the ideas of John Kennedy, and 
said: Let's cut the tax rate, and it will produce more incentive for 
productivity, more entrepreneurship, and therefore more jobs and more 
revenues, and that is exactly what happened.
  That is also what happened with George W. Bush. He cut the tax rate 
in the middle of a very severe recession, followed by the attack of 9/
11. As a result of the tax-rate cut, we have seen a huge increase in 
revenues in the last 2 years. That revenue increase is a direct result 
of the fact that we have created an incentive for people to be 
productive and create jobs.
  So you cannot, as a practical matter, even if you wanted to do this, 
follow the course that has been outlined by the Senator from New York, 
which is essentially trying to tax your way out of the problem we 
confront, which is called the Federal deficit, and the spending of the 
Federal Government resulting from entitlement spending. The only way 
you can address this issue is if you take a hard look at the 
entitlement programs and begin to restructure them so that they become 
affordable for the next generation.
  I wish this deficit reduction bill was much more expansive than it 
is. I wish it took a hard look at Medicare. I wish we were addressing 
Social Security. Both of those issues were taken off the table through 
the political realities of the time. Our colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle, in I think an act of real fiscal irresponsibility, 
basically demagogued the President when he suggested that we address 
the Social Security issue. So we could not move forward on that. 
Regrettably, the President took Medicare off the table because he said 
we should let Medicare Part D go forward before we start to move to try 
to restructure Medicare. I think that was a mistake, but that was the 
decision. We were left with a narrow number of entitlement programs to 
look at. Even within those narrow programs, we were asked to limit 
significantly the scope of our review.
  For example, in the area of Medicaid, which we will spend $1.2 
trillion to $1.3 trillion on over the next 5 years, our suggestion was 
simply to reduce that rate of growth of spending by $10 billion. So the 
rate of spending in Medicaid, instead of being 40.5 percent, would fall 
back to 40 percent. Even with that, less than a one-tenth-of-1-percent 
reduction in the rate of growth of Medicaid, it has been described as 
Grinchlike, even though none of it, as proposed in the Senate, came out 
of beneficiaries. In fact, as I mentioned, the number of beneficiaries 
that will receive Medicaid under the Senate bill will expand by 1.1 
million people. Rather, the savings came out of pharmacy and drug 
manufacturers as a result of pricing. But that, under the theory of the 
Senator from New York, is Grinchlike.
  It is hard to accept that on its face, if you look at the facts 
behind this bill. But what we do know will be Grinchlike is if we pass 
on to our children a continued expansion of the Federal debt and 
deficit, so that undertakings which we pursue today as a Government 
that benefit people today--they are not capital expenses, but they are 
basically the ordinary operating expenses of the Government from day to 
day. Those undertakings will continue to be paid for by our children 
and our children's children. That would be Grinchlike. That takes away 
from them the opportunity to have as high a quality of life as we have 
had because their tax burden to pay for our bills will be added to 
their general tax burden to pay for their bills and, as a result, they 
will have less money available to do things for their kids, whether it 
is buying toys, putting them through college or buying a decent family 
home.
  So this deficit reduction bill, which was structured in a very 
careful way to make sure it expanded benefits to low-income 
individuals, adding 5.5 million new people to Pell grants, 1.1 million 
kids to Medicaid, and 1.9 million people who were impacted by Katrina 
relative to health care costs.
  At the same time, it moves forward for the first time in 8 years in 
an attempt to address the issue of reducing the debt. It is the right 
policy and it is, rather than being a Grinchlike event, truly an 
appropriate gift, should we get around to passing it, to our children 
and our children's children and to those people who benefit from this 
bill.
  Mr. President, at this point, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleague from 
Rhode Island in offering a motion to instruct the conferees to include 
$2.9 billion in additional funding for the Low-Income Home Energy 
Assistance Program as part of the budget reconciliation bill.
  This funding is absolutely critical to help our Nation's low-income 
citizens keep warm this winter. I believe we simply must provide more 
LIHEAP funding this year. Let me describe the situation we are facing 
in my home State.

[[Page S13544]]

  Just yesterday, I was in northern Maine, in Aroostook County, which 
is where I come from, and the high for the day was 12 degrees. That was 
the high temperature for the day. In weather like this, people simply 
have no choice but to devote a very large part of their household 
budget to heating their homes. Unfortunately, with the escalating cost 
of home heating oil, many people simply cannot afford to do so.
  In Maine, 78 percent of the households use home heating oil to heat 
their homes. Currently, the cost of home heating oil is approximately 
$2.34 per gallon. That is 38 cents above last year's already inflated 
prices. These high prices greatly increase the need for assistance, and 
at least 3,000 additional Mainers are expected to apply for LIHEAP 
funding this year.
  So we have a situation where there are more people in need of 
assistance compared to last year. The prices are much higher than last 
year, and yet the average benefit is expected to fall by roughly 10 
percent to $440 per qualifying household. Unfortunately, at today's 
high prices, $440 is only enough to purchase 188 gallons of oil. That 
is far below last year's equivalent benefit of 251 gallons. I can tell 
you, that is not nearly enough to get even through the first half of 
the winter in Maine. With rising prices and falling benefits, we have a 
real problem. Just to purchase the same amount of oil this year as last 
year, the State of Maine would need an additional $10 million in LIHEAP 
funds.
  Just a few months ago, we passed and the President signed into law 
the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This law passed the Senate 
overwhelmingly, and it authorizes $5.1 billion for the LIHEAP program 
for fiscal year 2006. The chairman of the appropriations subcommittee, 
Senator Specter, worked very hard to find some funding to increase 
LIHEAP. He increased it to $2.2 billion. I commend him for his efforts 
and hard work, but $2.2 billion is not nearly enough.
  Our Nation has been struck by three extremely powerful hurricanes. 
These hurricanes have been devastating to the people of Florida and the 
gulf coast, but we need to remember that they have had a major impact 
on the rest of the Nation as well. Just as the Nation should have been 
building oil supplies for the winter heating season, these hurricanes 
disrupted our already strained supplies and sent both home heating oil 
and gasoline prices to painfully high levels.
  While high energy prices have been challenges for many Americans, 
they impose an especially difficult burden on our low-income families 
and on our elderly living on limited incomes. Low-income families 
already spend a greater percentage of their incomes on energy, and they 
have fewer options available when energy prices soar. High energy 
prices can even cause families to choose between keeping the heat on, 
putting food on the table, or paying for much-needed prescription 
medicine. In America today, in a country as prosperous as our country, 
no family should have to make such a choice. No elderly person should 
have to choose between buying the fuel oil they need to keep warm to 
avoid hypothermia and filling a much-needed prescription to stay 
healthy.
  With winter upon us and energy prices soaring, home heating oil bills 
are already pounding family budgets mercilessly. For low-income 
families, LIHEAP funds can be the factor that prevents them from having 
to choose between paying their bills and putting food on the table.
  I call on my colleagues to support this motion to instruct the 
conferees to include this vital assistance as part of the budget 
reconciliation bill.
  I wish to recognize the efforts of my colleague from Rhode Island. We 
have worked very closely toward this common goal. Those of us who live 
in the Northeast or the Midwest or cold-weather States have a special 
appreciation for just how much hardship will be imposed if we do not 
increase this funding.
  I commend the administration for calling for $1 billion in additional 
funding, but, frankly, that is simply not enough. We need to do more. I 
hope that just as many of us are responding to the needs of those 
victims of the hurricanes in the gulf region, that our colleagues from 
that area of the country and from other areas of the country will join 
us in averting this looming crisis.
  I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, first, I commend my colleague, Senator 
Collins, for her leadership on this issue and for the eloquence and 
persuasiveness of her statement today. She has truly been in the 
forefront of all these efforts to increase the funding for the Low-
Income Home Energy Assistance Program.


                      Motion to Instruct Conferees

  Mr. President, I send to the desk a motion to instruct conferees on 
behalf of myself, Senator Collins, Senator Kennedy, Senator Snowe, 
Senator Lieberman, Senator Leahy, Senator Bingaman, Senator Coleman, 
Senator Salazar, Senator Stabenow, Senator Clinton, Senator Lugar, 
Senator Harkin, Senator Smith, Senator Kohl, Senator Dayton, and 
Senator Corzine.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

     The Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. Reed] moves that the 
     managers on the part of the Senate at the conference on the 
     disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the House amendments 
     to the bill S.1932 (to provide for reconciliation pursuant to 
     section 202(a) of the concurrent resolution on the budget for 
     fiscal year 2006 (H. Con. Res. 95)) be instructed to insist 
     on a provision that makes available $2,920,000,000 for the 
     Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Act of 1981 (42 U.S.C. 8621 
     et seq.), in addition to the $2,183,000,000 made available 
     for such Act in the Departments of Labor, Health and Human 
     Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations 
     Act, 2006, for the following reasons:
       (1) High energy prices threaten to overcome low-income 
     households in the United States. On average, households 
     heating their homes primarily with natural gas will likely 
     spend 38 percent more for home energy this winter than last 
     winter. Households heating their homes primarily with heating 
     oil will likely spend 21 percent more for home energy this 
     winter than last winter. Households heating their homes 
     primary with propane will likely spend 15 percent more for 
     home energy this winter than last winter. For many low-income 
     households, including households with individuals with 
     disabilities or senior citizens living on fixed incomes, 
     those price increases will make home energy unaffordable.
       (2) An appropriation of $2,920,000,000 would bring funding 
     for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Act of 1981 for 
     fiscal year 2006 to $5,100,000,000, the amount authorized in 
     section 2602(b) of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Act 
     of 1981 (42 U.S.C. 8621(b)), as amended by the Energy Policy 
     Act of 2005, for fiscal year 2006.
       (3) In the United States, no family should be forced to 
     choose between heating its home and putting food on the table 
     for its children. No senior citizen should have to decide 
     between buying lifesaving pharmaceuticals or paying the 
     senior citizen's electric bill.

  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I have very little to add to what Senator 
Collins said. Her remarks were compelling and eloquent. With the 
increase in prices, with the severity of the winter which is already 
upon many parts of this country, Rhode Island, and particularly Maine, 
it is obvious we need more funds just to keep what we were able to do 
last year. In fact, even if we are successful--and I hope we are--in 
authorizing the full allocation of $5.1 billion, there will still be a 
significant number of Americans who qualify for the program who will 
not be able to receive any type of help this winter. So this is an 
important step, but it is certainly not a complete solution to the 
problem of low-income people struggling to heat their homes.
  As the Senator also pointed out so accurately, there is a real 
dilemma. Many families will have to give up food to heat their homes, 
and they will have to make other sacrifices. This is an extraordinary 
burden and particularly so this winter because of the huge increase in 
heating costs and the severity of the weather that is predicted for the 
region.
  There has been some suggestion, or objection, I should say, to our 
proposal on several grounds. There is a suggestion that we have been 
inconsistent in what we have asked for. Last September, Senator Collins 
and I authored a letter, and we were joined by 40 of our colleagues, 
for an increase of about $1 billion. Forty-three Senators, including 
myself and Senator Collins, wrote to the Appropriations Committee. What 
we were asking for was allocation of emergency funding, funding that 
would go to the President so that at his discretion he could identify

[[Page S13545]]

areas of the country under severe conditions and make allocation of 
these funds.
  What we are talking about today is fully funding the State grant 
program. One of the reasons it is essential to fully fund the State 
grant program at the level of about $5.2 billion is because of the 
complexity of the formulas. Unless we fully fund this program, many of 
the States that are in the most dire circumstances won't receive 
funding.
  Essentially, what happens is there is a front loading of funds to the 
areas of the country that are affected by winter, but as the funds in 
LIHEAP increase, appropriations and allocations go to areas of the 
country--the Southwest, the Southeast--that have problems in the 
summertime and need cooling assistance. The irony would be if we 
increase money but do not really increase it to the full level, we 
would be funding--and I think it is appropriate to do that--States that 
are not affected by the winter and providing very little for the States 
such as Wisconsin, Maine, New Hampshire, and others that need the 
heating assistance today. So that is the rationale underlying our 
request.
  I point out that we have brought this issue to the floor on numerous 
occasions, and we have had the support of a majority of the Senators on 
both sides of the aisle and across the country. This is not a regional 
issue; this is a national issue. This is not a Republican or Democratic 
issue; this is a bipartisan issue. We have had that support because the 
majority of our colleagues recognize the reality. Prices are up, the 
temperature is down. People are going to suffer if we do not act.
  There has also been a suggestion that this is inappropriate because 
it is not offset by cuts in other programs. Well, I would hasten to add 
that in the next few weeks we are going to consider many programs and 
funding requests that are not offset. Today, if one reads the 
newspapers, the Pentagon is preparing about a $100 billion supplemental 
request for funding in Iraq and Afghanistan. That may come down; it may 
go up. No one is proposing that we not consider that because it will 
not be offset by cuts in other programs. I think we are going to see, 
at least in the House version of the tax reconciliation bill, 
significant tax cuts which I believe are not offset. I think we should 
move to a balanced budget. I think we should take the tough steps that 
we took in the 1980s. I came here as a Congressman in January 1991, and 
we were running huge deficits every year. It took us a while. It was 
under the leadership of President Clinton that we were able to reverse 
that.
  At the end of the 1990s, in the year 2000, we were looking at a 
projected surplus. Lo and behold, it is now the year 2005, and we are 
back into annual deficits and a projected deficit over many years 
before us. So we can do it, but I suggest those are not strong 
arguments to stop us from doing what we have to do today to help people 
who really will suffer if we do not take appropriate action.
  I hope my colleagues would join Senator Collins and I--and again I 
would point out that this is a bipartisan, broadly based group of 
Senators who are coming together to make a simple request that I think 
is compelling, given the obvious reality, huge increase in prices, 
falling temperatures, people who will give up eating to heat their 
homes, people who will take drastic steps. Unfortunately, we read about 
it every winter in our part of the country, Senator Collins and I, 
where they turn the stove on at night, they go to sleep, and there is a 
fire, an explosion, a terrible tragedy. They are just trying to keep 
warm. We can help them. I hope we will.
  I am pleased and proud to be doing this with my colleague and friend, 
Senator Collins from Maine.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thune). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wanted to take a few minutes to just 
kind of talk a little bit about the process of the end of the year here 
in the Senate and something that I do not think is healthy for the 
American people. It is certainly not healthy for the Senate, but in the 
long run it is not healthy for our country.
  I have thought a lot about this, considering the campaign I went 
through to become a U.S. Senator. The theme that keeps recurring in my 
mind is that we are all Americans. There are multiple parties, there 
are differences within parties, there are conservative Republicans, 
liberal Republicans, conservative Democrats, liberal Democrats, but we 
are all Americans. If there ever was a time our Nation required 
leadership instead of partisanship, it is now.
  We are on an absolutely unsustainable financial course. We have heard 
great criticisms today, not by a member of any party but by a person 
who chooses to make those criticisms of the direction it is trying to 
go in terms of trying to get us off that unsustainable course. It kind 
of grieves me for our country that we lack the leadership to stay 
focused on what is important for the country and instead focus on what 
somebody else does wrong or is perceived to do wrong.
  We can have tremendously intelligent and respectful debate that is 
directed toward a difference of opinion about issues. But the problems 
that face this country today are greater than any in my lifetime. This 
last year, we charged to our children and our grandchildren $528 
billion. That $528 billion is how much the debt grew last year. It is 
going to require absolutely zero partisanship over the next 20 years in 
this country for us to try to attack the structural problems that are 
going to undermine the future opportunities of our children.
  I am reminded of history because Franklin Delano Roosevelt, facing a 
similar situation to what we have right now in our country, cut out 
three of his most favorite programs and cut discretionary spending by 
22 percent so he could do what was right for the next two generations.
  I worry we lack that foresight, or if we do not lack it, we place 
partisan political positioning and elections that are coming ahead of 
the best interests of our Nation.
  We have heard about cuts. We have heard about taxes. We have heard 
about all sorts of things, described in a way so you would think 
anybody who believed opposite of that would just be terrible. That is 
not the truth. It is not anywhere close to the truth. Anybody who is a 
Member of this body cares immensely about this country. They just 
differ about how they want to go about getting to a solution.
  If we have half a trillion dollars that we added to our children's 
debt this year and we are on a course, with Medicare, Medicaid, Social 
Security, and interest on the national debt--by the way, which nobody 
ever speaks of, which is the fourth largest item and will soon become 
the largest item--if we do not have the desire and the will to work 
together as loyal opponents, with the best interests of our country at 
heart, taking the partisanship out of it--nobody is bad, they just have 
a different idea.
  I hope as we wind up the Senate year that we will keep in mind that 
what I believe to be true throughout the country and that is that 
country is nauseated by partisanship. It doesn't build our country, it 
tears our country down. It doesn't promote unity, it promotes division, 
it promotes polarization, and our problems are so great that we ought 
to be following the advice of John Kennedy. We ought to be following 
the advice that says: Don't ask what your country can do for you, ask 
what you can do for your country.
  If there is ever a time that we needed to be doing that, both as 
Members of the Senate and as citizens of this country, it is now. The 
numbers that face us in the future--a war in Iraq, the devastation on 
the gulf coast, and a structural deficit--require that we have a shift, 
and the shift is that we look to the long run, that we don't try to 
gain the short run, and that we do what is in the best interests of the 
country, and the first thing we do that is in the best interests of the 
country is to put partisanship aside.
  I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

[[Page S13546]]

  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coburn). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, if I might inquire of my friend and 
colleague from Louisiana, I know she is preparing to speak. Might I ask 
about how long she may speak? I have a speech. I ask unanimous consent, 
after the Senator from Louisiana finishes speaking, that I be 
recognized for up to half an hour.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Senator. I will probably speak for about 15 
minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________