[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 17 (Monday, February 4, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S580-S596]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 RECOVERY REBATES AND ECONOMIC STIMULUS FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ACT OF 
                        2008--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the time until 5:30 
p.m. is to be divided between the two leaders or their designees, with 
the Republican leader controlling the first 5 minutes.
  Who yields time?
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, 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. BAUCUS, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Madam President, the Book of Proverbs teaches:

       Listen to your father, who gave you life, and do not 
     despise your mother when she is old.

  This afternoon, the Senate will begin to address whether we honor our 
mothers and fathers, our grandmothers and grandfathers. The Senate will 
begin to address whether we extend needed stimulus checks to 20 million 
seniors whom the House of Representatives left behind.
  The author Pearl S. Buck said:

       Our society must make it . . . possible for old people not 
     to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a 
     civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless 
     members.

  This afternoon, the Senate will begin to be tested. The Senate will 
be tested whether it cares for 20 million seniors or deserts them, as 
did the House of Representatives.
  America's seniors deserve to get stimulus checks every bit as much as 
other Americans. They worked hard, very hard all their lives. They paid 
a lifetime of taxes. They contribute to the economy. And with the 
economy turning down, seniors can use the stimulus checks every bit as 
much as other Americans. Everyone knows the Social Security check does 
not pay the bills. The average retiree's Social Security check is about 
$1,000 a month, and with the current hard times and gas, food, and 
health care costs all increasing, it makes it even more difficult for 
them.
  Two out of three Social Security beneficiaries get most of their 
income from Social Security. Two out of three get most of their income 
from Social Security. Social Security is the only income for nearly one 
in five seniors, and without Social Security, most older Americans 
would live in poverty. Without Social Security, more than 50 percent of 
senior citizens would be living in poverty today.
  Because they can use the money, seniors are excellent targets for 
economic stimulus checks. Because they can use the money, they will 
spend it quickly.
  The chart I have next to me is a reminder that the Senate bill 
provides rebate checks for 20 million Americans. The House of 
Representatives excludes rebate checks for these 20 million Americans.
  Americans over age 65 spend 92 percent of their incomes. Households 
headed by a person over age 75 spend 98 percent of their income. That 
is higher than any other demographic group over the age of 25. Seniors 
spend their money. That means checks sent to seniors will have a 
greater bang for the buck in terms of helping the economy. The Finance 
Committee amendment will help 20 million seniors left out of the House 
bill. The Finance Committee amendment will provide seniors with rebate 
checks of $500, and the House bill will not help those 20 million 
seniors.
  The Finance Committee amendment will also provide rebate checks for a 
quarter of a million disabled veterans who receive at least $3,000 in 
nontaxable disability income. The Finance Committee amendment would 
make them eligible to receive the same rebate checks as wage earners 
and Social Security recipients. It is not right to

[[Page S581]]

exclude 250,000 disabled veterans from getting a rebate check, which is 
what happened under the House bill. Those folks will get rebate checks 
under the Senate bill and the Veterans' Administration will distribute 
the rebates. The House bill, again, does not provide disabled veterans 
who don't pay taxes with rebate checks.
  The Finance Committee amendment would provide an additional 13 weeks 
of unemployment insurance, and high unemployment States will qualify 
for an extra 13 weeks. The House bill does not provide an extension of 
unemployment insurance, whether it is 13 or the extra.
  Almost a million more Americans are unemployed today than there were 
a year ago. One million more are unemployed today than a year ago, and 
69,000 additional unemployed workers filed claims last week.
  The Finance Committee amendment has been endorsed by AARP, the 
Seniors Coalition, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Military Officers 
Association of American, Vietnam Veterans of America, the American 
Legion, the United Spinal Association, and the Disabled American 
Veterans.
  Again, seniors groups and disabled groups strongly endorse the 
Finance Committee amendment, clearly because they get benefits.
  Let us listen to our fathers who gave us life and not despise our 
mothers. Let us not desert our seniors or disabled veterans or 
unemployment workers. Let us move to proceed to the stimulus bill.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order and pursuant to rule 
XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion which 
the clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 566, H.R. 5140, 
     the economic stimulus bill.
         Max Baucus, John D. Rockefeller, IV, Kent Conrad, Jeff 
           Bingaman, Blanche L. Lincoln, Debbie Stabenow, Maria 
           Cantwell, Ken Salazar, Herb Kohl, Daniel K. Inouye, 
           Byron L. Dorgan, Mark L. Pryor, Robert Menendez, Jon 
           Tester, Christopher J. Dodd, Barbara A. Mikulski, 
           Joseph I. Lieberman.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call is waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
motion to proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 566, H.R. 5140, 
an act to provide economic stimulus through recovery rebates to 
individuals, incentives for business investment, and an increase in 
conforming and FHA loan limits, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Biden), 
the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Byrd), the Senator from New York 
(Mrs. Clinton), the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Dorgan), the Senator 
from Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy), the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Kerry), the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Lieberman), and the Senator 
from Illinois (Mr. Obama) are necessarily absent.
  I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Kerry) would vote ``yea.''
  Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. 
DeMint), the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici), the Senator from 
South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. 
Gregg), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from 
Louisiana (Mr. Vitter), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 80, nays 4, as follows:

                       [Rollcall Vote No. 5 Leg.]

                                YEAS--80

     Akaka
     Alexander
     Allard
     Barrasso
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Bennett
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Brown
     Brownback
     Bunning
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cochran
     Coleman
     Collins
     Conrad
     Cornyn
     Craig
     Crapo
     Dodd
     Dole
     Durbin
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Grassley
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lincoln
     Lugar
     Martinez
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Nelson (NE)
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Salazar
     Sanders
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stabenow
     Stevens
     Sununu
     Tester
     Thune
     Voinovich
     Warner
     Webb
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--4

     Coburn
     Corker
     Hagel
     Shelby

                             NOT VOTING--16

     Biden
     Byrd
     Chambliss
     Clinton
     DeMint
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Graham
     Gregg
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Lieberman
     McCain
     Obama
     Vitter
     Wicker
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 80, the nays are 4. 
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in the 
affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
  The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I have been told by the Republican leader 
what to me is incredible. We have two issues this week, among others, 
that we need to complete. One is the stimulus package, and the other is 
FISA. They are not in order of importance, but they are both issues we 
need to complete. I have been told we are not going to do anything. 
That is why I had to have the vote called before 6 o'clock. The 30 
hours will run out a few minutes after midnight tomorrow night.
  Now, they are going to waste 30 hours of the people's time on 
nothing. They will not allow us to work on FISA to complete it. The 
President said he is not going to extend it any more than one time for 
15 days. We wanted to finish this piece of legislation. They are not 
allowing us to work on it.
  On the stimulus package, the President told us last Saturday in his 
radio address: We need to have Congress complete this.
  We are trying. We are trying, but we are told now that, no, we cannot 
do this. We need the 30 hours postcloture.

  I hope everyone can understand what we are trying to accomplish. We 
are trying to accomplish the work on the Foreign Intelligence 
Surveillance Act that the President said he so badly needs. We are 
trying to complete the stimulus package the President so badly needs. 
We have the House bill. We just voted to proceed on that. Now we are 
going to use the 30 hours postcloture, which, to me, is something that 
is difficult to comprehend.
  But, of course, why should we be surprised? Last year, the 
Republicans filibustered 64 times--64 times--wasting the people's time, 
breaking all records. They broke the 2-year record in 1 year in the 
number of filibusters. But here we are starting again--the same thing. 
Rather than legislate, maybe they are afraid these votes that have been 
worked out on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--maybe they are 
afraid some of them will pass, or maybe on the stimulus package, the 
Finance Committee package that we have, which is tremendous.
  What does it do? It includes 21.5 million seniors who are not in the 
package we got from the House, 250,000 disabled American veterans who 
are covered. Unemployment benefits are extended. People who have been 
out of work for 13 weeks or more will get additional unemployment 
benefits. That is in the package that was brought to us on a bipartisan 
basis by Senators Baucus and Grassley.
  In addition to that, we have provisions in this bill that are so 
important to our staggering economy. The homebuilders are in town. They 
are running ads on television. They are visiting Republican offices 
tomorrow to say: Vote for this. They need it because it has a tax 
provision in there, a loss carryover that will allow them to continue 
building homes, getting people in homes. It is so very important we do 
this.
  As I told the Republican leader, we are also going to add something 
that was not in the Finance package that will allow people who have no 
money, the so-called LIHEAP people, who do not have the money to pay 
their heating bills--they have to make a choice

[[Page S582]]

on whether they are going to have warm houses, whether they are going 
to be able to get their drug prescription filled, or whether they are 
going to be able to buy some groceries this year. We have money that 
will help, and it will go right into the economy. Everything I have 
talked about will stimulate the economy. Are the Republicans afraid 
that we will bring this matter to the floor, and it will pass? Because 
it certainly should pass. Economists up and down the line--
conservatives, liberals, moderates--say this is what is needed.
  We are not complaining about the House package. It was a good first 
step, and we appreciate what they sent us. But it is a first step. And 
shouldn't we be legislating here rather than stalling for time for fear 
somebody is going to have to take a tough vote either on the Foreign 
Intelligence Surveillance Act or on the stimulus package?
  We are ready to work, as we were all last year. We were at a 
disadvantage early in the year. Of course we were, because Tim Johnson 
was sick. He is not sick now. He walks into this Chamber like any other 
of the 99, and he is ready to work as many hours as we have to work. 
But now we have a majority, 51 to 49, not 50-49 anymore.
  On the package we are going to vote on, whether they make us wait 
until Thursday or Wednesday, whenever it is, we are asking nine 
Republicans of good will to vote with the American people and pass this 
stimulus package.
  I have said before--this morning--this matter has to go to conference 
anyway. We are not slowing up or stalling anything. It has to go to a 
conference because this House package allows benefits to go to people 
who are undocumented, and that should be changed.
  I am dismayed we are going to have to stay in session tonight and do 
nothing and all day tomorrow and do nothing. But that is what I have 
been told. And I think it is incredulous, amazing, and not very good 
for the American people.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). The Republican leader is 
recognized.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, if we ended up doing nothing tomorrow, 
that would be like last Tuesday, last Wednesday, and last Thursday, in 
which we could never get a vote. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we 
could not get a vote because we could not get an agreement on the FISA 
bill.
  Finally, last Thursday night, we get an agreement on the FISA bill, 
and the majority leader tells me he will give us the paper--in other 
words, what he wishes to bring up on this stimulus package--last 
Thursday night. In addition, last Thursday, he says if that is 
defeated, of course, we will amend the House bill. Neither of those 
things apparently is going to happen.
  No. 1, we got a few moments ago the version of the Senate Finance 
Committee package that the majority leader wants to call up. We wish to 
read it. It is a fairly extensive package. Secondly, apparently it is 
no longer the case that if this package is not approved that we will 
amend the House bill. We all know the House bill needs to go back 
because it needs to be fixed because of the illegal immigration 
problem.
  The majority leader has been arguing all along that the House bill 
was inadequate. So it would make no sense at all, if whatever the final 
version of the Finance Committee provision is not approved, why we 
would not want to add seniors and veterans and fix the immigration 
problem to the House bill.
  There is a certain amount of spin in politics, but this is beyond 
spin. These are the facts. Three days last week--Tuesday, Wednesday, 
and Thursday--there were no votes on FISA because we could not get an 
agreement. Finally, on Thursday, we get an agreement on the FISA 
amendments, and the majority leader tells me he is going to give us the 
paper on what he is going to bring up on the stimulus. We got it a few 
moments ago. It is not unreasonable for the minority to read the 
proposal. To suggest from that it is a certainty we will not have 
anything voted on tomorrow, I would suggest to my good friend, the 
majority leader, is nonsense. We will insist on reading it. It is in 
the process of being read now. When we read it, we will be happy to 
communicate further with the distinguished majority leader.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, to show the absolutely dilatory tactics of 
this Republican minority, think about last week. My friend, the 
Republican leader, said we did not have votes last week. Why didn't we 
have votes last week? They would not let us have votes.

  During the time that Rockefeller, Leahy, Bond, and Specter were 
trying to work something out on FISA, we wanted to finish Indian 
health. No, you can't do it. You can't do Indian health. Indians can 
wait another 6 years. They have waited 6 or 7 years during this 
administration. What is another few weeks for the Indians? They, 
according to the Republicans, don't matter that much anyway, as they 
have been treated like--the worst health care we have in America today 
is on our Indian reservations, and the Republicans don't seem to be at 
all concerned about that. So Senator Dorgan brought a bill to the 
floor, and we have been rocked and socked and pushed and pulled. We 
can't do that either.
  The other thing we could have done last week--of course, we have an 
agreement to do a package that has been held up by the Republicans for 
a year dealing with bills that are some 45 in number--energy bills--
that usually are handled just like that, in wrapup. Oh, no, not now, 
not with this Republican minority, we do not do them.
  I suggested we go to those last week. No. Work out FISA, the 
President's favorite, his ability to spy. That is what he wants. The 
problem is that he wants to do it not in keeping with the Constitution, 
which raises some concern with us and the American people.
  So, no, we could not do anything on Indian health, we could not do it 
on the energy package, until we got an agreement on FISA. It is obvious 
what is being done here. The Republicans are trying on FISA to do what 
they did last August. Even though the President has been forced to 
extend this for 15 days, they now want to do what they did in August: 
Stall it until the last day so we are forced to do something here and 
send it to the House so the House has no time to do anything about it.
  The House has passed something. What we want to do--what we think is 
good government--is pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and 
do it quickly so the House and the Senate--Democrats and Republicans--
have an opportunity to work together to come up with something to give 
to the President that is not 1 minute before midnight on the last day 
of that legislation.
  It is not as if this picture has not been seen before. This is the 
same picture we had to deal with all last year--all last year. Every 
inch we have been able to grind out has been tough because there has 
been a stall that has been ongoing with this White House and this 
Republican minority.
  For 6 years, Congress was ignored by this President--ignored. There 
was not--in his mind, there was not a legislative branch of Government. 
He did not have to deal with it because the Republicans in the House 
and the Senate gave him anything he wanted. Why wasn't there a veto? 
Because there was nothing to veto. He got everything he wanted.
  Last year, suddenly some people in the White House, at least, came to 
the realization that there was another branch of Government that the 
Founding Fathers put in the Constitution. So last year they were forced 
to realize that there was a legislative branch of Government. We had to 
prove to the President that we were part of the process. We were able 
to get some things done, but it was difficult, and we had 64 
filibusters to overcome. I would have thought this year would be a 
little different. We have a Presidential election. We have many Senate 
seats that are up. I would think the Republicans would like to get 
something done this year. I would have thought this continual stalling 
that is going on might reflect on these elections we are going to have 
next November, that maybe there would be a new day in Washington, that 
the Republicans are used to being in the minority and would try to work 
with us on a bipartisan basis to get some things done. But it does not 
appear that is the way it is going to be. If that is the way it is 
going to be, that is the way it is going to be, and we will continue to 
work around their dilatory tactics.

[[Page S583]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader is recognized.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, we have before us--last week and this 
week--two measures that are overwhelmingly bipartisan. We have a FISA 
proposal--Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act proposal--we tried 
repeatedly last week to get some votes on, and to no avail. That came 
out of the Intelligence Committee 13 to 2--the Rockefeller-Bond bill--
overwhelmingly bipartisan, which would be signed by the President. That 
would be a significant accomplishment on a very important issue to the 
American people.
  With regard to the stimulus, the American people witnessed something 
they rarely see. They saw the Speaker of the House--a Democrat--the 
leader of the House Republicans, and the Secretary of the Treasury have 
a joint press conference among the three of them, indicating they had 
an agreement on a stimulus package that we could pass rapidly.
  Senate Republicans have been prepared to do that. It came over to us 
January 29. The majority leader felt that the Senate Finance Committee 
needed to reconvene and do it a different way.
  This was a situation where you had the Democratic leader of the 
House, the Republican leader of the House, the Republican leader of the 
Senate, and the President of the United States all on the same side. 
That is pretty close to bipartisan. But, no, my good friend, the 
majority leader, said the Senate needed to do it differently, in spite 
of the fact that everyone was saying the two most important things to 
do with regard to a stimulus package were to keep it targeted and do it 
quickly. We had an opportunity to do that. We may have an opportunity 
to do it again. But make no mistake about it, no amount of finger-
pointing or no suggesting that just because you file cloture motions, 
that amounts to a filibuster. Nobody believes that. You can't just run 
around routinely filing cloture motions on everything and then claim 
there are filibusters going on.

  In fact, the message from the last session was: When you meet in the 
middle, you get things done. It finally happened in December: an 
omnibus spending package that met the President's top line, $70 billion 
for Iraq and Afghanistan without strings attached, an AMT without 
raising taxes on anybody else, and an energy bill that neither raised 
taxes nor raised rates in the Southeast. All of that was accomplished 
at the end by meeting in the middle.
  Now, in spite of all of this back-and-forth between my good friend, 
the majority leader, and myself, we are pretty close on these two 
issues as well. The American people are expecting us to cooperate. But 
I repeat: We are going to read the proposal which we got some 15 
minutes ago. I don't think anybody in America would think that is an 
unreasonable request. When we get through reading the new stimulus 
proposal, which I was told we would get last Thursday night, we will 
respond to my good friend, the majority leader, and we will see how we 
can go forward to accomplish two important things for the country. In 
the end, they will be done and must be done on an overwhelmingly 
bipartisan basis.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, to show you, with all due respect, how 
shallow this statement just made by my friend is, let me just say this: 
It is a public record, what came out of the Senate Finance Committee. 
It is a public record. You can read it on the Internet, what is in the 
stimulus bill. It came out days ago--days ago--not Monday, not today, 
but days ago. Last week, it was reported out. I believe it was on a 
Wednesday that it came out. I told my friend that we added LIHEAP to 
it. One reason I added it is because the Republicans want LIHEAP. 
Republicans want it. Why not have a chance to vote on it? So to talk 
about: We want a chance to read this bill--this is really something.
  I cannot take any more lectures on the bipartisan nature of the 
Intelligence bill because it was referred at the same time to the 
Intelligence Committee and to the Judiciary Committee. That is the way 
it is sometimes around here. There are joint referrals.
  Now, I admire people who have had us take a close look at what is 
going on with spying in this country, OK? Senator Feingold and Senator 
Dodd are the leading advocates of taking a look at this bill. Are they 
saying we are not going to have a bill? No, they are not saying that, 
but they are saying it needs to be improved. So, yes, it came out of 
the Intelligence Committee on a bipartisan basis, and that is good, but 
the Judiciary Committee wanted to put their stamp on it, and they did, 
and big time. A number of the amendments that were offered today and 
will be offered whenever we have the ability to go back to the bill are 
measures that came from the Judiciary Committee.
  We want to work to get things done, but we don't need excuses such 
as: We need to read the proposal--30 hours to read the proposal, and in 
the meantime we are doing nothing.
  Last week, I repeat, we had a lot of we could have done. We were 
prevented from doing that while this very difficult agreement was 
reached on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
  Mr. President, let me just say this: People around here in the 
Senate, in the country, know me by now. I pretty much call things the 
way I see them. Sometimes I need to step back a little bit and look at 
how I see them.
  I want to say to my friend, my friend from Kentucky, the word 
``shallow'' was improperly descriptive. So I will have that stricken 
from the record and insert therein--let's see, what word? Something 
that I didn't agree with, OK?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader is recognized.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I thank my friend, the majority leader. It is, it 
seems to me, possible to have a civil and spirited debate without 
violating rule XIX, and I appreciate his withdrawing that comment.
  I see the Republican whip is here on the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader has the floor.
  Mr. McCONNELL. It looks as if I may lose the floor, so I wonder if 
the Senator from Arizona has a question.
  Mr. KYL. I do have a question. This is why I was trying to get the 
attention of the minority leader just a moment ago.
  I am on the Finance Committee, and I am very familiar with the 
Finance Committee bill. Now, I am certain the majority leader did not 
mean to suggest that the proposal we were just handed is, in fact, a 
bill that passed the Finance Committee. It is more than that, is it 
not?
  Mr. McCONNELL. Yes. It is my understanding--again, we just got it 15 
minutes ago. In response to the question of the Republican whip, we are 
not sure what is in it, but our impression is that it may not be what 
came out of the Finance Committee last Thursday.
  Mr. KYL. If I could ask just one more question, I just asked my 
staff. I haven't had a chance to read it yet. My staff has begun to 
look at it. I would simply represent what my staff said, which is the 
first thing they noticed is that there is an additional $1 billion--$1 
billion in spending on a program called LIHEAP. Is the minority leader 
aware of that yet?
  Mr. McCONNELL. No, I didn't know because I haven't had a chance to 
look at it yet, but that would make it somewhat different from the 
Finance Committee bill, I gather.
  Mr. KYL. It would, indeed.
  The majority leader would like to comment.
  Mr. REID. Yes. I said starting at 2 o'clock this afternoon and every 
chance I get that we added that, they didn't add it. I added it to the 
Finance Committee. I told the Republican staff, I told my friend this 
afternoon when we first--the first time we visited that LIHEAP had been 
added.
  Mr. KYL. And there are some additional changes from the Finance 
Committee version as well; is that not true?
  Mr. REID. Yes, there are some minor changes, but I say to my friend, 
who is a member of the Finance Committee, that we have made some 
changes, but they are very minor, other than the LIHEAP matter.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I am not sure who has the floor, Mr. President. Do I 
still have the floor?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I will be happy to yield the floor.
  Mr. DURBIN. Would the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. McCONNELL. I am happy to yield the floor as I see there are 
others who wish to speak.

[[Page S584]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California is recognized.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I have been trying to get to the floor 
since this morning--well, actually, since we came into session at 2 
o'clock. We have had a very spirited debate about FISA, and now we have 
invoked cloture on the stimulus package just to begin this debate. I 
also want to add my voice of distress that we may be facing a slowdown 
here on the stimulus package.

  We are in a recession in California. This isn't a recession 
``maybe''; this is a recession in California. There are several States 
that already have begun a recession, a real recession, including a 
contraction in jobs, and a housing crisis that has hit our State.
  We can't wait. When the minority leader, the Republican leader, says: 
Oh, my goodness, LIHEAP was added to the package--of all people who 
understand this, it is the Presiding Officer. LIHEAP is a program that 
has been around for a very long time, and it is low-income energy 
assistance. To express shock that this would be added to a stimulus 
package or to say we need hours and hours of delay to study the impact 
of adding LIHEAP, it just strains credulity.
  Would my leader like me to pause for a question?
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I appreciate very much my friend yielding to 
me.
  Lost in all this debate about spending is I would hope everyone would 
understand that we always knew the stimulus debate would not be 
completed until Wednesday. That is when the vote will take place, at 
the earliest, on the package that came from the Finance Committee. What 
is stunning to me is we will not be able to finish FISA prior to 
Wednesday. We could start on that tonight. We have a number of 
amendments. I wanted to vote on those tonight. Of course, all day 
tomorrow, we could finish FISA. We could finish it tomorrow.
  I want to make sure the record is very clear that they can spend all 
the time they want reading this amendment, which, by the way, doesn't 
add anything to the bill other than what we have--what I said: It adds 
to it housing language from the House bill which everybody approves of, 
and it adds some money to pay for some IRS things but a little, tiny 
bit of money. Anybody who reads this could do it very quickly and 
simply.
  Why can't we work on FISA tomorrow? What would be wrong with that?
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, would the leader yield for a question?
  Mrs. BOXER. I have the floor.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I am sorry. Would my friend from California yield for a 
question?
  Mrs. BOXER. Yes, so you can ask a question.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I thank the Senator.
  So if the minority leader, the Senator from Kentucky, came down and 
he would give consent, we could go ahead and debate on FISA and 
actually finish it by tomorrow evening; is that correct?
  Mr. REID. Yes. The reason it was so amazing to me, what I heard, is 
that postcloture people have 30 hours to basically stall for more time. 
I thought, why in the world wouldn't they let us finish FISA?
  Now, everyone knows--and my Presidential candidates, when we had four 
and when we had two, have never missed an important vote. Obama and 
Clinton will not miss this important vote we are going to have on the 
stimulus package, but I have to give them a day's notice to get here. 
With what is happening here--and that is why I had to hurry and call 
the vote before 6 o'clock, because the 30 hours runs out a couple of 
minutes before midnight tomorrow night. I have to file cloture 
tomorrow, which would be Tuesday, when we could have a cloture vote on 
the Senate stimulus package. What a waste of time.
  So I say to my friend from New York, the answer is yes. The 
Republican leader only has to say: Well, let's go ahead and finish 
FISA, and we will decide what we are going to do after I read the 
amendment. If they decide that they are going to continue with the 30 
hours running and they are not going to let us file cloture until 
tomorrow rather than tonight, they have that right.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Would my friend from California yield so I might pose 
another question to the Democratic leader?
  Mrs. BOXER. Yes, I will.
  Mr. SCHUMER. So in other words--I just want to understand this, Mr. 
President--the FISA bill--which the President and many on that side 
said we should hurry up on, we should move quickly, it is important--is 
really what is at issue here. The whole debate about reading the 
stimulus bill, which we have heard from the minority leader and the 
minority whip, has no relevance for tomorrow, as the leader--our 
leader, the Democratic leader--has agreed we are not voting on it until 
Wednesday. But really the focus is on whether we could vote on FISA--
this important bill which we need to get done quickly--and the minority 
is blocking that for no known reason.
  Should the minority leader come to the floor within an hour and work 
it out and say that we could go forward on FISA, we could start voting 
on FISA tonight and tomorrow and perhaps finish it?
  Mr. REID. We would finish it tomorrow. The only thing that might hold 
it up is there are a couple of Senators who might want to speak for 
awhile, but that is OK. We have a unanimous consent agreement that 
limits the number of amendments we are going to have on it, so we could 
finish it tomorrow for sure.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Would my colleague yield for one final question?
  Mrs. BOXER. Yes.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I am a little confused. Does the majority leader have 
any idea why the minority would want to be holding up FISA?
  Mr. REID. I sure do, I say to my friend.
  Mr. SCHUMER. What would that be?
  Mr. REID. There have been books written on this--books written on 
this--how the President has circumvented the laws we pass to have his 
wiretapping, OK? Now, there is not a single Democratic Senator who 
doesn't want to get the bad guys. We want to be able to do wiretapping 
so we can listen in on some of their evil conversations. But the 
President, you see, based on his past and how we have been treated 
here, doesn't want this FISA bill to change in any manner except to 
give them retroactive immunity; that is, to say to the phone companies: 
All the things you have done, good, bad, or indifferent, the courts 
can't look at it civilly. They can't look at it civilly. So the 
President wants to have that out of the way so that he can wait until 
the last minute to not have all these amendments that Senator Feingold, 
Senator Dodd, Senator Leahy, Senator Feinstein, and others have offered 
to improve this legislation, to make it more in keeping with the 
Constitution. So, as I have indicated earlier, I say to my friend from 
New York, they want to wait until the last minute. So that whatever we 
do here, the House will have to accept.

  Mr. SCHUMER. I thank my colleague from California and the majority 
leader for that. Now it all becomes clear what the minority is doing.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California is recognized.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I want to say, while my leadership team is 
here, I have just gotten the 2 pages--actually, it is 1\1/2\ pages--of 
the additional language on LIHEAP. The rest was taken verbatim from the 
House bill, which the President supports.
  Mr. REID. Has the Senator had time to read that yet?
  Mrs. BOXER. I read it while the Senator talked with Senator Schumer.
  This is LIHEAP, a program that has been around for decades. This is 
$1 billion to help people pay for the expensive cost of heating their 
homes. As I look at my friend, Senator Sanders, who is in the chair, 
what a champion of this program he is--to those in the Northeast in 
particular.
  I have to take the minority leader at his word. He says the reason he 
is holding everything up, he doesn't want to do any work--or do 
anything--because he must study this bill. If he were here now--of 
course, he is now gone, but Senator Kyl is here--I would say let's read 
this together. This is easy, almost as easy as ``Jane and John took the 
dog for a walk.'' Yet, still, they come out here and are holding up the 
business of the Senate and the country.
  Mr. President, I say to my leaders, look, we can argue about how many 
angels dance on the head of a pin, but 20 million seniors are waiting 
for this. They were left out of the President's and the House package.

[[Page S585]]

  I wish to say to my friend, Senator McConnell--and he is not here 
right now--that this matters. When he says the deal has been cut, that 
the President agreed with the House, well, wait a minute, look at the 
Constitution. There is a Senate, there is a House, and there is a 
President. We work together. We work our will, they work theirs, and we 
get together and compromise.
  Twenty million seniors were left out, and we are fixing that. What 
else? We are also fixing the fact that they left out 250,000 disabled 
veterans. So why are we holding up work on something as simple as that? 
The answer comes back in a very convoluted way. I just have to say to 
someone who represents a State that is in a recession--and I know the 
State of the Senator from Nevada is in a recession. Many States are in 
a recession.
  The President said we should act and we are not acting; we are not 
acting on FISA. Again, to respond, Senator Bond and Senator Rockefeller 
agree on how to fix the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Well, 
good for them. But guess what. The Senate has to debate that and work 
its will.
  Some people think the phone companies should have immunity. Some of 
us other folks think that if you give them immunity, you will never 
find out who was spied on and how, why, and how long they were spied 
on. We feel strongly. Is the minority suggesting that because two 
Senators agree, the rest of us are ``chopped liver,'' as my mother 
would say?
  This place is like ``Alice in Wonderland.'' Tonight, more than any 
other night, it is like ``Alice in Wonderland.'' You have a President 
who is scared about the economy. He is begging us to act on the 
stimulus package, and we have intelligent Senators stand up--and they 
are very smart--on the floor saying: Oh my goodness, you added LIHEAP, 
and now, we are sorry, we are holding everything up. And then they said 
maybe they won't. I hope they will not.
  While I support, with every fiber of my body, the Senate package, it 
is just the start of what we need to do. Until we start paying 
attention to the needs of the American people and end the war in Iraq, 
which is stealing our treasure, both in our young men and women in 
uniform and our money, we will never get where we need to get.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, will my friend yield?
  Mrs. BOXER. Yes.
  Mr. REID. Did the Senator know that before the night is out, I am 
going to come to the floor and ask unanimous consent to be allowed to 
proceed, during the 30 hours they are going to try to use postcloture 
on the motion to proceed to the House-passed stimulus package--that 
during the 30 hours, we be able to proceed to work on the FISA 
amendments? Is the Senator aware that I am going to do that?
  Mrs. BOXER. I am very glad the majority leader is going to do that 
because the President--not only is he pushing us to pass his version of 
the stimulus package--and he is worried about it; he is scaring the 
American people, saying if we don't have FISA done, terrible things 
will happen. It is time to stop scaring the people and start protecting 
the people. That is what we want to do. So I am going to support the 
leader's call to move to FISA.
  I believe if we have a debate on the stimulus and we don't talk about 
the biggest drain on our people--the Iraq war--we are missing the 
elephant in the room, because until we end this war once and for all 
and end this failed policy in Iraq, we are simply going to be dragged 
down further and further into an abyss, where we don't have the funds 
we need for the rest of the things we do, where our military is being 
stretched, and where we have no way out.
  We actually have Republican candidates who are running for President 
saying we might be in Iraq for a hundred years. I have been around 
politics a long time--not quite a hundred years but for my adult 
lifetime. I have served with four Presidents from both parties. What an 
honor to have served with all of them. But I have never, ever worked 
with a President who didn't have a clue as to how to end a war he got 
us into--not a clue. I have never seen a President who hasn't given us 
some idea of how a war will end. So we need to remove this weight from 
around our necks. If we don't, my future, your future, the future of 
our kids and grandkids is not going to be what it ought to be.

  We are spending $10 billion a month in Iraq. That is $2.5 billion a 
week and $357 million a day in Iraq. And the President and my 
Republican colleagues say we cannot afford to extend the stimulus 
package to include seniors and disabled veterans? Well, for the price 
of 1 month in Iraq, we can provide rebates to 20 million seniors who 
need it the most. Let me say that again. For the price of 1 month in 
Iraq, we can provide rebates to 20 million seniors who need it the 
most.
  I hope the senior citizens within the sound of my voice have already 
contacted us to tell us to cover them in this recovery package. They 
are the ones who really need it the most because they are living on a 
fixed income and they are struggling. Some of them have to cut their 
pills in half every day they have to take them to stay alive so they 
can stretch their medicine.
  Well, the President and my Republican colleagues say we cannot afford 
to extend the stimulus package to include disabled veterans. That is 
why we have these charts made up here: 250,000 disabled veterans. I 
hope they are also calling. These are the folks who should be honored, 
loved, appreciated, but not just with words but by deeds.
  Mr. President, I will tell you, for less than the cost of 1 day in 
Iraq, we can provide rebates to 250,000 disabled veterans--1 day in 
Iraq. We can take care of our veterans.
  That is why we don't know why this stalling is going on. What about 
our kids? For less than the cost of 3 months in Iraq, we can enroll 
every eligible child in the Head Start Program and give them the start 
they deserve. For the cost of 2 weeks in Iraq, we can provide health 
insurance for 6 million uninsured children in the United States for a 
year. The list goes on and on.
  Last year, in the name of budget austerity, the President vetoed 
children's health care. But he has an open checkbook for Iraq. He puts 
it straight on the debt. He vetoed critical investments in our 
infrastructure.
  Mr. President, the occupant of the chair helped me when we worked 
together on the Environment Committee with Senator Inhofe. We overrode 
a veto because the President said: Sorry, we are rebuilding in Iraq. 
But we cannot afford to fix our infrastructure here in America. The 
President vetoed education spending and health research.
  I don't know about my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but 
when I talk to families, they are very scared now about a lot of 
things. One of those things is, is someone getting cancer or getting 
Alzheimer's, or is a child getting autism, and there are a lot of other 
fears. They are real fears because they hit millions of our families. 
But the President vetoed the bill that had that health research money 
in it. We were forced to cut back.
  So where are we now? We are spending money we don't have in Iraq. 
Remember when Budget Director Mitch Daniels said the war would cost no 
more than $60 billion? Paul Wolfowitz assured us that with Iraqi oil 
revenue, the war would pay for itself. Some people said the war might 
cost $200 billion, and they were ridiculed as vastly overstating the 
costs. Well, the President's most recent stimulus package is almost 
that.
  The President has spent more than half a trillion dollars on his 
failed policy. There is no end in sight. It is shorting the funds we 
need to rebuild our own country--and it is borrowed money. It needs to 
stop. We are hemorrhaging taxpayer money in Iraq, and the wake is 
beyond disgraceful. For a base in Iraq that was never built, we paid a 
contractor $72 million. We paid them to build a barracks for the police 
academy in Baghdad, and instead we got a building with ``giant cracks 
snaking through newly built walls and human waste dripping from the 
ceiling.''
  The administration loaded $9 billion in cash onto pallets and shipped 
it to Iraq, where it simply disappeared. And we cannot take care of 
250,000 disabled veterans or 20 million seniors, and we cut spending to 
find a cure for diseases that ail our people. We cut funding from 
afterschool programs when our kids desperately need to have a place to 
go after school.

[[Page S586]]

  Mr. President, the Republicans are stalling because these facts, when 
we have these debates, are coming to light. So they are stalling. Can 
you imagine what would happen if $9 billion disappeared from a Federal 
grant in Vermont or California or Minnesota or New Jersey or Ohio? The 
people responsible would go to prison. But in Iraq, the President 
shrugged it off.
  The President said we lack fiscal discipline. Yet, look what he has 
done to this budget. He took a surplus and turned it into a massive 
deficit, and he took a debt we were paying down and it exploded on his 
watch.
  For him to say we are not fiscally responsible because we want to 
invest in our people, we want to invest in our infrastructure, we want 
to find cures for disease, and, yes, we want to invest in alternative 
energy so we don't have to be dependent on foreign oil and we can clean 
our air of the carbon dioxide that is warming the planet--fiscal 
irresponsibility? That is the name of the game with this 
administration, whether it is the missing billions or the bases that 
were never built or this enormous embassy that is being built in 
Baghdad. It is nothing short of breathtaking. The President and his 
supporters shrug their shoulders, and yet we cannot get to the stimulus 
package because somebody said they don't understand we have added $1 
billion, 1\1/2\ pages to the bill to help poor people pay for energy. 
They have to be kidding. That is a stall.
  The checkbook is open for Iraq; it is closed for America. This 
President wouldn't even be doing what he is doing now unless he is 
scared this recession is hitting.
  Let me tell you what else we added to this stimulus bill that is 
being held up. We took the House language as it pertained to the 
housing crisis, and we increased the amounts that Freddie and Fannie 
and FHA can lend our homeowners to give them the chance to refinance 
these mortgages to keep responsible homeowners in their homes. We 
cannot wait on this provision. We can't wait on it. Thousands and 
thousands of cities are witnessing these foreclosures.
  What happens when a home forecloses? The pool might go. The new owner 
of the home ignores keeping up the property, and it is a danger to have 
a pool that has not been attended to. Mosquitoes breed in the pool and 
the whole lawn gets all brown and the values go down and suddenly you 
have a downward spiral. We have to turn it around. But somebody has to 
hold up a bill because they have to read 1\1/2\ pages about LIHEAP, a 
program that has been around for decades and, by the way, supported on 
both sides of the aisle.
  The toll this Iraq war is having on our Armed Forces is stretching 
our military to the breaking point. Recently, we learned with sadness 
in our hearts that suicide attempts among U.S. troops have reached a 
record high, a sixfold increase since 2002. Last year, the Washington 
Post reported there was a readiness death spiral, that is their term, 
that senior officers warn puts our Nation at risk because we lack the 
strategic reserve of ground forces to respond to potential crises 
throughout the world.
  We are borrowing billions, putting that cost on the backs of our kids 
and grandkids, shorting our ability to take care of the people who need 
us now that the economy is in a downturn, and that hurts our security.
  Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mrs. BOXER. As soon as I finish my statement, I will be happy to 
yield.
  We have to ask this President: Why are we in Iraq? The answer depends 
on when he was asked. Once upon a time, we were told it was about 
weapons of mass destruction. Remember? We had to go find them. Our 
military found there were none. Then we were told it was Saddam's ties 
to al-Qaida. Well, there was no connection to al-Qaida. Then we were 
told we had to get Saddam's family and show their pictures to the world 
so the world knew America meant business. And we did that, and the 
fighting went on. Then we were told they need to have an election, and 
how proud we were when the Iraqi people went and as a free people 
elected their leaders.
  All that happened. The President said: Mission accomplished. But it 
goes on and on because it is a changing mission every day, no vision of 
how to get out of this situation, and we have colleagues on the other 
side talking about us being there 50 years, 100 years, who knows, maybe 
1,000 years. This is not at no cost or little cost. It is costing us an 
absolute fortune, and it is tied to this deficit because it is tying 
our hands.
  The President says our commitment to Iraq is not open ended, and yet 
he will not tell the leaders over there: Get your act together because 
we have trained 500,000 of you and now it is your turn to stand up and 
fight for your freedom and fight for your democracy, frankly, the way 
we did and other countries do.
  There is a point in time when you have given so much blood and 
treasure that you have to say: We want to help you, we will be there, 
but we will not be in the forefront of this fight.
  We have never been leveled with. How many more brave men and women 
will die? Oh, we don't know. How many more will be wounded? We don't 
know. But what we do know is some of the wounded are coming home to my 
State and they are suffering, suffering, suffering. Yet in the 
President's stimulus package, there is no help for disabled veterans. 
No, oh, no, we couldn't do that. For a day of the cost of Iraq we can 
help them. That is why we want the debate and we want the debate to 
start.
  The President says the surge will lead us to victory. We hope so, but 
the President says he knows it. How long will the surge last? It was 
supposed to provide a quiet time for the leaders to resolve their 
problems. It hasn't happened.
  Our brave men and women in uniform have performed remarkably. They 
have done every single thing we have asked of them and more. But you 
know what, there has to be an end to this. As our military leaders tell 
us every day, there is no military solution to the situation in Iraq.
  I said before we trained 500,000 Iraqis. I want to correct that 
figure. It is 440,000. That is how many Iraqis we have trained. Our 
taxpayers have laid the money out to train.
  I think we ought to look at what the British did. The British were 
very clear. They said their presence in Iraq was fueling the violence, 
fueling al-Qaida, and it would be far better if they played a 
supportive role. And most of them will be gone. As a matter of fact, 
the coalition of the willing has been massively depleted.
  There is a beginning, a middle, and an end to a mission. But you 
cannot change the mission every few months. It is not fair to our 
troops. It is sending a mixed message to the Iraqis.
  Why do I bring this all up in the context of the stimulus? Because 
the outflow of money is hurting us. We cannot take care of America. I 
think we need to make a choice, and this stimulus package is the time 
for us to connect all the dots. This economic recession needs our 
attention. We need to put the resources to it so it doesn't become a 
deep and darker recession. We have to ask ourselves in the context of 
this debate: Is it time for America, for our families, for our soldiers 
coming home, for our children, or is it the time to continue an open-
ended commitment to a war without an end, a price tag without an end, a 
war that is tying our hands as this recession becomes more real day 
after day?
  Clearly, it is no surprise that I say it is time for America and it 
is time for change. I do believe the people out there, whether they are 
Democrats, Republicans or Independents, are crying out for that change.
  I will also say, they may not all agree on one particular path, but 
one thing they want us to do is our job. They don't want stall tactics, 
they don't want delays, they don't want brilliant Senators coming to 
the floor and saying: Gee, there has been a change in this bill, and we 
need 30 hours to figure it out. Stay up until 10 or 11; you can read 
that part of the bill. It isn't complicated, and it isn't time to 
continue an open-ended commitment to a war without end.
  As we try to soften the blow of this recession on the American 
people, let us understand that if we don't change when it comes to this 
war and start bringing our troops home and start giving the Iraqi 
leaders a signal that they need to take charge of their own country, I 
will tell you, I can't be part of

[[Page S587]]

that kind of a value system because our people are suffering.

  Again, my State is in a recession. I have sitting councilmen coming 
to me--by the way, not always in my party, believe me--saying to me: 
Senator, you have to help us. We are in a spiral. Help us. When I 
called and said help is on the way, we are going to raise those loan 
limits for Fannie, Freddie, and FHA, we are going to give the 
homebuilders some kind of a tax break, we are going to give a tax break 
to the alternative energy industry so they can start hiring people, 
they smiled, there is hope. But if they heard tonight the back and 
forth between the Democratic leader and the Republican leader and they 
heard the Republican leader say: We are really sorry we are going to 
hold things up because I have to read this bill when, in fact, the 
changes that were made are so minuscule we could read it in 10 minutes, 
they don't know what is going on, and they throw up their hands.
  I am here tonight to tell them: Don't give up hope because we are 
motivated. We are motivated to get this package through. We are telling 
our seniors to let their Senators know, Democratic and Republican 
Senators, they need to be included, the disabled veterans, the 
homebuilders, the people who are struggling with their mortgages. We 
are on your side. If your voice is heard, even in this Senate, it will 
have an impact.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I think the Senator from California makes a 
compelling case to take up the stimulus package right away. The bill, 
by the way, is a 71-page bill. I do think we need a little opportunity 
to read through it. If, as the Senator says, there are only two or 
three changes to it, I am tempted to ask unanimous consent that we vote 
on that package tomorrow. The reason I will not is because I owe it to 
the majority leader to advise him in advance of making such a request, 
and I know what his response will be. His response, I believe, will be 
he has made a commitment to Senators who are campaigning for the 
Presidency that they will not have to come back tomorrow to vote. That 
is why we are not voting tomorrow. It is not that Republicans are 
trying to hold up things.
  Yes, the minority leader made the point that since we just received 
the bill, we would like an opportunity to read it. I will get back to 
that in a moment. But the reality is, as the distinguished Senator from 
California said, why are we holding up work on this stimulus bill? We 
are not. As I said, I will be happy to move to vote on it tomorrow.
  Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. KYL. I will yield to the Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Now I am confused, truly, honestly. I thought Senator 
McConnell said, after you informed him there were changes to the bill, 
that he was very concerned about that and he needed time to read the 
bill. That is what I heard both of you talk about. You came down and 
told him that. I heard that.
  Then I heard Senator Reid say: While you are reading this bill, let's 
get done with FISA. We can't seem to get that done. But it was my 
friend, Senator Kyl, and my friend, Senator McConnell, who said very 
clearly they needed time to read this bill. I pointed out that the 
bill--
  Mr. KYL. So what is your question? What is the question?
  Mrs. BOXER. My question is, if you want to go to it right now, why 
did you tell the majority leader that there were changes to it and you 
needed to read and take all 30 hours to read the bill? I don't 
understand.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, the answer to the question, which is, Why 
don't we go to the stimulus bill; Why do we need 30 hours to read it, 
is, as I said, I would be happy to propound a unanimous consent request 
right now that we go to the stimulus bill and vote on it tomorrow. I 
will not do that because I know what the majority leader would say, 
which is, no, I will object to going to a vote on the stimulus bill 
tomorrow because I have told our Senate colleagues who are running for 
President and some others who are campaigning for them that we are not 
going to vote on it tomorrow. We are not going to have a vote on that, 
which they would miss, because it is too important. That is what he 
said a moment ago.
  I said I would come back to the point of reading the bill, and I do 
want to get back to that because I do think we should read bills before 
we vote on them. But the key point here is that Republicans are not 
holding up action on this stimulus package. And for anybody on the 
Senate floor to suggest that we are, it is simply not the case. We 
voted overwhelmingly to grant cloture so we could take up the bill. I 
think all of the Democratic Senators voted to take up the bill. So we 
are on the bill. We are on the stimulus bill. But we can't vote on it 
because there has been a commitment to Senators who are running for the 
Presidency and some others that we won't vote on it tomorrow. Now, we 
didn't make that commitment. That commitment, I understand, was made by 
the distinguished majority leader. That is why I am not going to ask 
unanimous consent to try to embarrass people on the other side.
  Let me get to the matter of reading the bill.
  Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield for a question? It is so confusing 
to me.
  Mr. KYL. Well, Mr. President, I am sorry the Senator is confused, but 
let me continue on to make the point the Senator wanted to talk about, 
which is why we need to read the bill.
  The bill was just handed to me by staff. I have not yet read it. It 
is 71 pages. Here it is. It starts out ``Strike all after the first 
word and insert the following.'' Well, if we are striking all after the 
first word, then I want to know what we are inserting. Now, the 
representation from Senators on the other side is that we have added $1 
billion in spending on LIHEAP. There is a representation that in the 
bill there is an increase in the amount of mortgages that can be 
refinanced, and it was represented that is the same as in the House 
package. If that is the case, that takes the amount--I believe it is 
over $700,000.
  I don't know a lot of low-income Americans who have mortgages of over 
$700,000 or mortgages up to $700,000. But as I understand it, if that 
is what the House bill provides for, and if that has been added to this 
bill, then that is what that provision would be. And the majority 
leader said there were some other small changes. I am not exactly sure 
what they are. It may be as simple as Dick and Jane, as the Senator 
from California said, in which case, as I said, perhaps we can go to it 
tomorrow. But, again, I don't think that is what the majority leader 
wants to do because of the commitments he has made to Senators who 
would have to come back here for a vote on it.
  What is at work here is not that we are holding up action on the 
stimulus bill. What is at work here is a desire to move forward with 
votes on the FISA bill, which we are not on. We all voted to go to the 
stimulus bill, including all the members of the Democratic majority. If 
Members of the Democratic majority want to go on the stimulus bill, 
then let us consider the stimulus bill. If now the request is we just 
got on this, but now we want to go back to the FISA package, I wonder 
what it is about collecting intelligence on terrorists that is somehow 
less important than the stimulus bill so we can have the Senators vote 
on that but we can't have them vote on the stimulus package. These are 
both big important issues.
  I don't want to come down here and engage in this tit for tat. I 
frankly think the American people are tired of it. They see all this 
bickering and they wonder why we can't get business done, why we can't 
get to solving these critical problems.
  The Senator from California has made an eloquent plea for why we need 
to get out of Iraq, but we hear language like ``breathtaking 
irresponsibility'' and ``never worked with a President that didn't have 
a clue''--meaning this President doesn't have a clue--''about how to 
end the Iraq war. An earlier speaker said: The President wants to spy 
in violation of the Constitution.
  Now, look, you can disagree with the President, but he doesn't want 
to spy in violation of the Constitution. He wants to collect 
intelligence on our enemies consistent with the Constitution. We can 
have legitimate debate and disagreement about whether what

[[Page S588]]

we have done is constitutional. Some people might say no; others would 
say it is constitutional. But I do know this: Six months ago this body 
overwhelmingly--there may have been only one negative vote, I am not 
positive of that, but overwhelmingly--in a bipartisan vote we agreed to 
allow the collection of foreign intelligence under a particular regime 
for doing that, and it is that method of collection we want to 
reauthorize and we want to continue.
  It is not just two Senators who decided to get together to develop a 
bill. By a bipartisan vote of 13 to 2 the Intelligence Committee agreed 
on the reauthorization and the method by which we have been collecting 
intelligence on our enemies for the last 6 months. Now, if we have been 
doing it for the last 6 months, and the Intelligence Committee by this 
bipartisan majority said let's keep on doing that, virtually no other 
changes except in one area dealing with liability protection for the 
communications companies, then I don't think it is fair to say this has 
all been done unconstitutionally. That would mean the majority, almost 
all Democrats, agreed to allow intelligence collection that was 
unconstitutional. That certainly isn't what my colleagues intended, 
what I intended, or what anybody else in this body intended.
  So let us not say the President wants to collect intelligence that is 
unconstitutional and that is what we have been doing under a Senate and 
House-passed bill for the last 6 months. That is the kind of 
irresponsible debate the American people, quite frankly, are tired of.
  The basic question that is before us tonight is, Shall we pass a bill 
that the majority leader has laid down dealing with stimulating the 
economy? We all just voted--virtually all of us voted--to take up the 
stimulus bill. We had hoped we would actually have this 3 or 4 days 
ago, but now we have it, and the majority leader has the absolute right 
to substitute what he wants us to consider, and he has done that. This 
is his proposal. And we have received some assurances as to what is and 
what isn't in it. I think we trust, but we also want to verify. As I 
said, it is 71 pages, but it shouldn't take that long for us to figure 
out whether there are other things in here other than what has been 
represented to us. If in fact it turns out that is the case, that all 
we have done is add another $1 billion in spending on the LIHEAP 
program, we have increased the amount of mortgages that can be 
refinanced up to 700 some thousand dollars--I think that is the number; 
I will read it here to make sure--and then some other minor changes, 
whatever those are, then, again, I would be perfectly happy to take up 
this bill tomorrow.

  If I wanted to score cheap political points, I would do the same 
thing some on the other side have talked about, which is to say: All 
right, I ask unanimous consent that we take this up and vote on it. But 
I know there are people out campaigning. I know the majority leader has 
given them assurances they wouldn't have to come back for a vote on it. 
I respect that. It is a perfectly reasonable request. We can be taking 
the time now not just to ensure what is in the bill but to debate the 
bill, so that when we do vote on it, presumably the next day, we would 
have had our complete debate. It is not a waste of the American 
people's time for the Senate to take 1 day to debate a bill this 
important.
  We don't have to be disagreeable about this. We can assure ourselves 
of what is in it and we can take tomorrow to debate it. A lot of the 
candidates are gone--presumably we don't want to ask them to come back 
to vote on it--so then we can vote on it the following day, and then 
take up the FISA bill, which is equally important, if not more 
important in terms of foreign intelligence collection. We have, what, 
another week or 10 days to complete work on that, with plenty of time 
to do it.
  I think we should take a step back, not play political games here 
with the dueling unanimous consent requests to do something that does 
nothing but embarrass the other side. Let us get to the business of the 
American people, let us get a stimulus package voted on, let us then 
turn to the FISA bill and get the amendments voted on and pass that to 
the President before we take the work period off that we will be taking 
off in, what, 12 days or so.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I appreciate the constructive comments by my 
friend from my sister State of Arizona. As I understood what he said, 
he suggests we debate the stimulus package tomorrow and have a time 
certain to vote on the proposal that came from the Senate Finance 
Committee and do that all on Wednesday. Is that what my friend is 
saying?
  Mr. KYL. I am very sorry. I apologize.
  Mr. REID. No problem, I will repeat it. My understanding of what my 
friend from Arizona said is that you think we should debate the 
stimulus package tomorrow and have a time certain to vote on the Senate 
Finance Committee package on Wednesday.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I said it was my own personal view that we 
would not be wasting the American people's time to have a debate on the 
stimulus package and to have a vote on it on Wednesday. Obviously, I am 
not speaking for any of my other colleagues, and we would obviously 
have to do that, but if the leader is concerned about not having people 
come back for votes tomorrow, which is a perfectly reasonable concern, 
given the importance of tomorrow on both sides--there are Senators who 
are out campaigning, and I understand that is a very important 
proposition--then I think it is appropriate to wait until Wednesday to 
have a vote on the stimulus package.
  Mr. REID. We only have three Senators out campaigning, McCain, 
Clinton, and Obama, and it was my suggestion that tomorrow, if the 
Republicans don't want votes, then shouldn't we at least have the 
ability to see if we can complete the offering of amendments on the 
FISA legislation? We can intersperse that with people who want to talk 
about the stimulus. They can do that.
  I am happy to set a time certain on Wednesday so McCain, Obama, and 
Clinton know when to come back on Wednesday. I am happy to do that.
  I understand my friend is saying that he is speaking for himself, and 
I appreciate that, but he is the second ranking Republican leader in 
the Senate. What I would suggest, Mr. President, is that he talk to 
whomever he needs to speak with--I am sure the Republican leader--to 
see if what he suggests is doable, and we will get that worked out 
tonight. And that is tomorrow we can come in, people can talk about the 
stimulus package all they want, and set a time certain on Wednesday to 
vote. That would save me having to file cloture on it either tonight or 
tomorrow night, which will happen. If I file it tomorrow night, the 
vote will have to be on Thursday. In the meantime, we have to wipe out 
a lot of time.
  I think it is very important we get FISA done. The end is near on 
FISA. We have worked out an agreement to finish that bill.
  So I say to my friend, if I came and offered a consent agreement in 
keeping with what your suggestion is, do you think you could get it 
approved tonight?
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, obviously, our colleagues are not here. I 
would not object to that kind of agreement. I don't know what others 
would do.
  To be fair, did I represent the distinguished majority leader 
correctly, that you had assured Senators they would not be voting on 
the stimulus package tomorrow?
  Mr. REID. Yes, I have said, starting at 2 p.m. today--I might even 
have said it last week--that I have two Senators, Obama and Clinton, 
whom I would try to give at least 1 day's notice when a vote was to 
occur. That is why it is important to me, and I would think it would be 
important to Senator McCain also, that we have a time certain on 
Wednesday to tell them when they have to be here. If we can't do it by 
agreement, then the only thing I can do, if the Republicans are going 
to waste all the time on 30 hours postcloture, I will have to, before 
midnight tomorrow, file cloture so we can have a Thursday cloture vote.

  Mr. KYL. If I can respond, obviously, the majority leader knows I 
can't make that agreement here on the floor, but I will pass that on to 
the minority leader and consult with our colleagues and see what can be 
agreed to in terms of an agreement.
  I think the majority leader is exactly correct. As a matter of 
courtesy to Members on both sides, it is probably

[[Page S589]]

not the best idea to have votes tomorrow. It is an historic day in 
American history.
  Mr. REID. If I can interrupt my friend, on FISA, I think we can 
easily have votes tomorrow. There would be no problem with that, 
because those votes, most of them, aren't going to be that close 
anyway. I think we need to work through that. I have told all my 
Senators we would do our best to try to have votes on FISA tomorrow.
  Now, maybe this has been in the works for a long time, because one of 
my Senators told me she was coming over and one of the reporters said: 
No votes tomorrow, right? She said: What are you talking about? They 
said: Senator McConnell has told his Senators there will be no votes on 
Tuesday.
  So maybe this has been in the works for some time, that there would 
be no votes on Tuesday. But we may have a couple anyway, to make sure 
we have some. I do have that ability, to have votes. It may not be much 
on substance, but it will be votes, and it will be counted on Senators' 
voting records.
  Mr. KYL. If I can interrupt, I don't think Senator McConnell said 
that. And you can have votes tomorrow. I think our Members would be 
perfectly fine on any votes you want to call.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I appreciate the constructive tone of my 
friend's statement, and either I or Senator Durbin will tonight 
sometime offer a consent agreement so we can have a pathway to whatever 
we are going to do in the next couple of days.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2248

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following 
morning business Tuesday, February 5, the Senate resume the FISA 
legislation, then proceed to a vote in relation to the four amendments 
that were debated today, with 2 minutes between each vote equally 
divided, and that on the disposition of those amendments, the Senate 
continue to consider amendments in order to the FISA legislation and 
that all time consumed during that debate count postcloture.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, for the reasons I expressed with the majority 
leader a moment ago in our colloquy, I must object at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I understand that. I was not making an 
offer to put my colleague on the spot but merely putting on the Record, 
because I think the American people sense what is happening in Congress 
and Capitol Hill and the Senate.
  I have been out watching the Presidential debates, both the formal 
ones and the presentations made by candidates. Change is the biggest 
word of this election cycle on both sides. I think it is evident the 
American people feel America is headed in the wrong direction by 
overwhelming numbers. When they look at Congress and Washington, they 
do not sense that we are sensitive to the real challenges families face 
every day. They listen, some of them do, particularly those suffering 
from insomnia, watch and listen to C-SPAN and wonder why, why all the 
quorum calls in the Senate? Why all the time wasted? Why not more votes 
on bills? If you are here in Washington, why not earn your keep?
  Sometimes I wonder if this would be a better institution if Senators 
were paid by the production of this Chamber because certainly this week 
we are not likely to earn much pay. Last year, the Republican minority, 
and it was their right under Senate rules, were responsible for 62 or 
64 filibusters.
  A filibuster is an attempt to continue debate indefinitely rather 
than reach a conclusion and a vote. Sixty-four filibusters made an all-
time record in the Senate for 1 year. Sixty-four times the Republicans 
said: Whatever you are doing, let it go on forever, let's not bring it 
to an end.
  And that, unfortunately, meant many important issues were not voted 
on, were not decided. That is their right, the minority's right. It is 
the nature of the Senate to slow things down. But I think the 
Republican minority in this circumstance has taken it to an extreme.
  I think it is this extreme that has led to the frustration across 
America as they try to witness what is going on in the Senate and 
wonder why more is not accomplished.
  Well, what we have tried to do today, unsuccessfully, is to ask 
permission from the Republicans to make tomorrow a productive day, to 
make tomorrow a day when we can either debate the stimulus package, 
preparing for a vote on Wednesday, or consider amendments to the 
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act so we can move that bill toward 
passage; in other words, let's not waste a day. Let's not turn the 
lights on and bring all the staff out, turn on the television cameras 
and stand here before the microphones and say nothing and do nothing.
  But the Republican position is to insist we do nothing tomorrow. 
Nothing. I made a request that we go to the Foreign Intelligence 
Surveillance Act. Now, this is the law the President is asking for, in 
fact demanding, on a timely basis. The President is saying: I need this 
authority to keep America safe. It took us a long time to work out an 
agreement on amendments. I am sure fingers can be pointed to both 
sides. But we reached the agreement on how many amendments, how many 
votes will be necessary.
  Now I have made a request that we go to that bill tomorrow, let's not 
waste tomorrow, let's move on this important domestic security issue. 
Let's have our debate, let's have our amendments, let's move forward, 
let's get it done, let's put in a good day's work. And the Senator from 
Arizona, on behalf of his leadership, has objected.
  It means tomorrow we will gather, we will bring in the Chaplain, he 
will say an inspiring prayer, we will say the Pledge of Allegiance, 
then we will figure out how to kill a day. That is what will happen.
  We will fill the Congressional Record, there will be some interesting 
speeches, no amendments will be considered and voted on, no debate on 
the economic stimulus package, it will be a wasted day.
  Can America, can the Senate afford a wasted day? We are in the midst 
of, or at least close to a recession, if not there. A lot of people are 
worried about it. People back in Illinois whom I represent are 
concerned about what is happening to our economy. We have a lot of 
folks with 401(k)s and IRAs and pension plans who look at the stock 
market on a daily basis and worry about their life savings and their 
retirement, as they should.
  People are concerned if we slide into a recession there will be even 
more unemployment than was reported last week, on Friday, when we had 
sobering figures about the thousands of Americans who were out of work.
  The President has expressed alarm about the state of the economy. All 
these things argue for us to move forward and do something. We can 
start doing something tomorrow. We can have a legitimate, substantive 
debate on the economic stimulus package and a vote on Wednesday. Now, 
would that not be historic, that the Senate would actually get an 
important measure out of the way in a matter of a few days? What is the 
difference between the Republicans and the Democrats at this moment on 
the economic stimulus package? I am not sure anymore. You see, the 
President's original position with the House, Democrats and 
Republicans, suggested we would be sending checks for $600 or $1,200 
for a family, to individuals, to try to stimulate the economy and extra 
money for children if there are children in the family.
  That is a good start. It is a start that we built on in the Senate 
Finance Committee on a bipartisan basis. In the Senate Finance 
Committee we said: Beyond those individuals covered by the House, we 
think 20 million seniors should receive this kind of rebate check as 
well. They will spend that money, many of them on fixed incomes, and 
stimulate the economy. Let us, in fairness, give them a helping hand.
  I am not sure, as I stand here, whether the Republicans in the Senate 
are supporting this. Only three Republicans in the Senate Finance 
Committee voted for it. But what is at stake in our vote on the 
economic stimulus package is whether 20 million seniors in America will 
be included in the rebate checks. That is a pretty straightforward 
vote. You either think they should be or they should not be included. 
The Democrats think they should be included.
  In addition, some 250,000 disabled veterans who receive compensation 
from

[[Page S590]]

our Government for their disabilities for their wounds, we too believe 
they should receive a rebate. Some say they already get a check. That 
is true. But if any group deserves an extra helping hand, it is those 
who stood up and fought for this country and risked their lives for 
America.
  I certainly believe 250,000 disabled veterans should be included in 
the economic stimulus package. I do not know if the Republicans now 
support that. As I said, three, only three in the Senate Finance 
Committee would vote for that.
  We also have a provision which says that if you are unemployed, 
receiving unemployment compensation, we will extend your unemployment 
compensation benefits for a matter of 13 weeks. And if your State is 
hard hit by unemployment, 26 weeks. Most economists will tell you that 
is the easiest and quickest way to stimulate the economy, people who 
are unemployed are scraping by.

  Every dollar received is spent to keep things together while they 
look for a job. Well, we think that group, which has historically been 
part of any economic recovery package, should be part of this package 
as well. Now, some of the Republicans object to it. They have said so 
publicly. They have a curious notion that if you give people 13 weeks 
of unemployment benefits, they will then decide to pull out the motor 
home and go on vacation and stop looking for work. I wonder if these 
same Republicans have taken a look at how much these people are paid. 
You know, it is not a princely sum. In many cases it is $500 a week, 
$500 a week for someone who has had a good job is not going to be 
enough to get by. Trying to survive for 3 months or 6 months on that 
could be extremely challenging. I think it is only right and just and 
fair and moral for us to say to unemployed families: Here is a little 
extra help so you can get by as we push toward and try to avoid a 
recession.
  Some Republicans disagree. So perhaps that is the reason why they 
oppose the Senate Finance Committee package. There are other provisions 
there. You can argue them up or down. Should we have a provision, as 
the Presiding Officer from Vermont has asked for, to extend LIHEAP. 
This is the Low-Income Heating Energy Assistance Program. It is a way 
to help people pay utility bills who otherwise cannot afford to do it.
  The Senator from Vermont who is presiding has been one of our leading 
spokesmen for that. Interestingly enough, as Senator Boxer from 
California mentioned earlier, the Republican leader said that was one 
of the reasons we could not take up the economic stimulus package, he 
had to read the provisions on LIHEAP because they are the only major 
change in this bill.
  Those provisions take all of a page and three lines. I think any 
Senator could get through that without a lot of strain. You do not have 
to be a speed reader to understand exactly what it says.
  So here we are again, as we were last year 64 times, the Republican 
minority doing everything they can to slow down the Senate, to stop us 
from considering important legislation, so at some later date they can 
complain that we have not accomplished enough. Well, you cannot have it 
both ways. You cannot object when we try to move to the FISA 
legislation and consider amendments and then say later we are not 
moving quickly or on a high priority.
  You cannot object to an economic stimulus vote on Wednesday, as we 
try to schedule it and then object that the Senate Democratic 
leadership is not responsive to America's economy. We are going to do 
the best we can under the Senate rules. We are going to, unfortunately, 
kill a lot of time because of this Republican approach. It is their 
right under the rules. I do not question it. But I do question the 
wisdom of allowing this Senate to continue to move so slowly, to be so 
unresponsive, to spend so many wasted hours and wasted days for no 
earthly purpose.
  It would be far better for those of us who were drawing a paycheck 
around here to roll up our sleeves and go to work, be accommodating to 
schedules as we must be, but for goodness sakes, would it hurt us 
tomorrow to take up these amendments to the FISA bill, to debate them 
and vote on them?
  I think it would be a good, healthy thing. It almost would bring the 
Senate perilously close to being a deliberative body again, which we do 
not do enough of. I hope the Senate leadership on the Republican side 
will reconsider their position, will stop objecting to considering 
substantive amendments to important legislation that we ought to move 
as quickly as possible.
  I will make a comment that I think most Members are aware of, but 
there will be no further votes today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. I know the Senator from New Jersey wants to speak, but since 
some of this was directed to my comments on the unanimous consent 
request, I think I should take a couple of minutes to respond.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. If I may have the courtesy of a question to the 
Senator from Arizona. My subject is away from the present discussion. 
Short subject. It talks about the pride we in New Jersey have about our 
Giants. But if I might have a few minutes?
  Mr. KYL. Since we have had this discussion, let me take no more than 
4 minutes. I will join the Senator in the pride he has for the Giants 
and their wonderful victory in my home State of Arizona yesterday. I 
hope a good time was had by all, including those who had their string 
broken.
  I do wish to respond because there have been a couple suggestions 
made I think that are inaccurate. We are not going to come in tomorrow 
and have the prayer by the Chaplain and do nothing.
  I hope that debate on the stimulus package is not perceived by people 
as doing nothing. All of us, almost all of us I think, everybody on the 
Democratic side voted to take up the stimulus bill. That is what we 
voted on an hour ago. We voted to take up the stimulus bill. Now we are 
on the stimulus bill.
  I have not had a chance to speak on it yet. I would like to do that. 
Tomorrow is my opportunity. The majority leader is the one who said 
there would be no votes on the stimulus package tomorrow, not the 
Senator from Kentucky, the minority leader.
  So the fact that we are not voting on the stimulus bill tomorrow has 
nothing to do with Republican delay. It is a commitment made by the 
majority leader. I have no problem with the commitment. There are 
people out campaigning. But that was the majority leader's decision not 
to vote on the stimulus bill tomorrow.
  As I said, we voted for cloture for the House bill. I am happy to 
vote on the House bill. I do not know whether my other colleagues are 
going to be done debating this in 1 day tomorrow. But I do know this, 
we have gone to the stimulus package. We are going to be on it 
tomorrow. That is what we all agreed to do.
  Now the assistant leader comes down and asks unanimous consent to go 
off the bill we voted to go on and to start voting tomorrow on some 
FISA amendments, some amendments to the FISA bill. He said: What a 
waste it would be.
  Now, as everyone in this body knows, we did not vote last Wednesday, 
last Thursday, last Friday, not because Republican's were not ready to 
vote, there was no agreement on how to proceed to a FISA bill.
  We have now reached that agreement. That agreement is in place. The 
minute we finish this stimulus package, we will move to the FISA bill. 
We can get that done within the next 10 days. There is no question 
about that. So I do not know why this constant attempt to try to put 
people on record, as the distinguished assistant leader said, and then 
to talk about 64 filibusters by Republicans.
  The majority leader set a record last year in the number of cloture 
votes that were required in order for us to do business. When the 
majority leader brings up a bill and then precludes any other 
amendments and files cloture, we have no choice but to vote on that 
cloture motion. If we vote against it, it is called a filibuster. That 
is not a filibuster. But by the reckoning of the other side, I gather 
that is how they count up the number of filibusters.
  Every time we vote against a cloture vote, the majority leader has 
required--and there is no opportunity for Republican amendments--many 
of those times Republicans are going to say: No, we want a chance to 
offer

[[Page S591]]

some amendments. That is not a filibuster. Yet that is the kind of 
accusation that has been made here.
  I want to get back to the point that surely we can have a 
constructive debate without constantly trying to cut each other off at 
the knees; that the Republican minority has taken this to an extreme, 
that they are not sensitive to the challenges the people face, that the 
Republican position is to do nothing tomorrow.
  Well, we are all going to debate the stimulus package tomorrow 
because we all voted to debate the stimulus package tomorrow. That is 
not doing nothing.
  I ask my colleagues again: Let's quit this business of trying to put 
the other side into an embarrassing position to object to something or 
complain that we want to do nothing or we do not care about people or 
that the President wants to violate the Constitution. This is the kind 
of thing the American people are sick of.
  We voted to take up the stimulus package. Let's take it up. We will 
have time to read it. If it is as simple as the other side says, that 
is great. It is 71 pages long. But if it is pretty simple, then 
presumably the debate will not take all that long. Then we can turn to 
the FISA bill, on which we have reached an agreement.
  I hope my colleagues, in moving forward, will consider the interests 
of the American people first and stop this bickering to try to put each 
other into embarrassing positions so we gain a little bit of a 
political advantage.
  Mr. President, I am very happy now to join my colleague from New 
Jersey in a bipartisan exercise; that is, to congratulate the New York 
Giants on their victory.
  I am happy to yield the floor to him at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
  (The remarks of Mr. Lautenberg are printed in today's Record under 
``Morning Business.'')
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor and 
suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                       Warrior Citizens Ceremony

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, yesterday I met American heroes--dozens and 
dozens of American heroes--citizen soldiers who had returned from 
service in Iraq. Out of Brooklyn, OH, High School near Cleveland, 81 
soldiers in the 256th Combat Support Hospital were honored at the 
Warriors Citizen ceremony.
  Many years ago--200 years or so ago--George Washington talked about 
farmers putting down their plows and serving their country. Yesterday I 
met nurses, teachers, doctors, farmers, and small business owners, all 
of whom had returned from Iraq last October, and all of whom we were 
honoring yesterday in Brooklyn, OH. MAJ Michael Evarts trained Iraqi 
soldiers. MAJ Michael Evarts, a citizen soldier, returned to Ohio; he 
works every day supporting his family as a pharmaceutical 
representative.

  Bryan Block from Zanesville left his restaurant for a year to serve 
his country. He left Charlie's Subs to his son-in-law in Zanesville and 
last October returned to a growing, prosperous restaurant. Bryan Block 
is a citizen soldier.
  LTC Shirley Koachway spoke with an infectious enthusiasm and with an 
obvious dedication to the veterans she serves. Not only is she in the 
Army Reserve, but she told me about her work in Sandusky--a city just 
west of Lorraine where I live--in a community-based outreach clinic 
serving veterans--a citizen soldier.
  CPT Dionne Moore is an optometrist who works for the Department of 
Veterans' Affairs in a community-based outreach clinic in Lorraine, OH. 
Captain Moore told me with some pain in her eyes how she is seeing more 
and more diabetic veterans who have not gotten their medicine or not 
often enough kept up with taking their medicine, which is causing a 
decreased use of their vision and an increase in blindness in all too 
many veterans.
  CWO Ron Kuntz, who directed the choir for the ceremony, spoke 
passionately not just about his service for our country but spoke 
passionately about his students whom he has as a music teacher in the 
Cleveland city schools--another citizen soldier.
  I also spoke with COL Ron Dziedzicki, who was a nurse and is now a 
hospital administrator who has been working with these men and women, 
with these soldiers in Europe and in Asia and all over the world in his 
many years--more than two decades--of service to our Nation--all 
citizen soldiers.
  Now, when I think of whom I met yesterday, when I think of these 
soldiers--men and women of all races, of all ages--when I think of 
these soldiers who give up their lives or time away--more than a year 
away from their families--one of these soldiers told me his child was 
born when he was overseas--when I think about them, I think about the 
duty we have to them.
  I know the Presiding Officer has spoken about this many times. The 
President and this Congress, for too many years in the past, have 
simply not taken care of veterans the way we should take care of them. 
For the kind of service we have asked of them and sacrifice we have 
asked them to make for our country, we haven't--even in a small way in 
too many cases--paid them back.
  That is why I come to the floor today just for a few more minutes to 
talk about the GI bill: the post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance 
Act of 2007. A whole generation of Americans in the 1940s and 1950s, a 
whole generation of soldiers and sailors and marines were educated 
because of the GI bill. They were people who came back without much 
money, enrolled in school, and the Government--paying them back for 
their service for winning World War II, for Korea, for all of their 
service to our country--the Government decided the most important thing 
to do was to give them the kind of educational opportunity that they 
earned and that they deserved.
  Do we know what happened? It wasn't just that the GI bill helped 
thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, a few million 
returning veterans, it is also what it did for the prosperity of our 
Nation because without the GI bill in the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s, we 
would not have had the educated workforce, we wouldn't have the kind of 
educated citizens this country, the ``greatest generation,'' gave to 
us.
  That is why a government program such as this, a program that is all 
about opportunity to give these veterans the GI bill, give these 
veterans an opportunity, an education, will not only help them 
personally and help their families, it will help their neighborhoods, 
it will help their communities, and it will help us to make our country 
even more prosperous. That is the whole point of programs such as the 
GI bill. It should help those veterans whom I met yesterday, those 
returning soldiers, some of them still in the Reserve, some of them 
having served their time and left. But that GI bill will spark the kind 
of economic growth and expansion for a whole generation of Americans.
  With programs such as this one, when we provide opportunities to 
college students, when we provide opportunities through Head Start, 
when we provide opportunities with helping families through the earned-
income tax credit, not only does it help those individuals and help 
those families, it helps our communities, it helps our States, it helps 
our country.
  That is the story of the GI bill. That is why we need a new GI bill 
that really does pay those veterans back, pay those soldiers, sailors, 
and marines back for the service they gave our country. It is the smart 
thing to do. It is the morally right thing to do. It is the best thing 
to do for our country.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota is recognized.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

[[Page S592]]

                      NEW SOLUTIONS AND PRIORITIES

  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, last month I traveled to dozens of 
communities throughout my State. I actually visited 47 counties in 
Minnesota in January, from towns on our southern border with Iowa to 
towns way up on our northern border with Canada. I saw a lot of great 
entrepreneurial activity out there. I got to see ethanol plants. I was 
with Senator Conrad in North Dakota for his entrepreneurial forum. I 
got to jump on solar panels to show that hail doesn't hurt solar panels 
in Starbuck, MN.
  What I heard from people throughout our State--and I think what we 
are hearing from people throughout America--is that Washington must 
provide a new direction to address the Nation's priorities and solve 
our economic challenges. They know what is happening. There has been a 
doubling of foreclosure rates in rural Minnesota. We have seen rising 
energy prices, as my colleagues can imagine when it is so cold. I was 
in International Falls, where it gets to be 10 below zero. In 
International Falls, it is pretty cold. In Embarrass, MN, it can get 
pretty cold.
  There are also skyrocketing health costs. I heard about that not just 
from individual families and workers but from small businesses that are 
having trouble keeping their employees on health care plans or big 
businesses that are having trouble competing internationally because of 
the costs of health care.
  What people told me out there is they need new solutions and new 
priorities from Washington.
  What I want to talk about today is, first of all, the President's 
budget and how it doesn't give us new solutions, it doesn't give us new 
priorities, and then our own stimulus package that is so important to 
push through this Congress and not to be obstructed.

  The President's budget continues a familiar pattern of misplaced 
priorities. It continues a 7-year pattern of fiscal irresponsibility, 
borrowing money and then leaving an ever-larger debt to our children. 
In just 7 years, this administration took a budget surplus of $158 
billion and turned it into what will soon be a budget deficit of 
something like $300 billion, $400 billion. It is quite an 
accomplishment. Meanwhile, this new budget continues to neglect 
critical investments that are needed to strengthen our economy and our 
Nation in a very difficult time. It does not make the investments we 
need in our Nation's transportation infrastructure. It does not make 
the investments we need in developing renewable energy sources to move 
us toward greater independence and security. It does not make the 
investments we need to get new technology to solve our climate change 
problem--what I call building a bridge to the 21st century. It doesn't 
do that. It doesn't make the investment we need in the basic medical 
and scientific research that has always been a key driver of our 
country's innovation and growth. It doesn't include a shift in these 
priorities, and it also doesn't include how we are going to pay for it.
  When I went around our State in January, people were willing to talk 
about reform. They are willing to talk about rolling back some of these 
Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest people--people making over $200,000, 
$250,000 a year--so we can actually pay for some of the investments we 
need in our State. People out in rural Minnesota said: Fine by me. Roll 
back those tax cuts on people making over $200,000 a year. That is not 
me. Meanwhile, I have a road that I can't even go on because it has so 
many potholes and that has a shoulder that is going downhill where four 
people were killed in the last few months. I am happy if you can put 
some money into infrastructure.
  Here are a few examples in Minnesota of how the President got the 
budget wrong. I think people are well aware of our tragic bridge 
collapse. That was only six blocks from my house, when a bridge just 
fell down in the middle of a summer day in the middle of America. It 
was a tragic wake-up call that the Nation's bridges are deteriorating 
faster than we can repair or replace them. So what does the 
administration do in its budget? It reduces funding for the Federal 
highway construction fund.
  Minnesota is home to premier medical institutions such as the Mayo 
Clinic and the University of Minnesota that conduct breakthrough 
research on lifesaving cures. Many of the researchers at these 
institutions depend on Federal funding. So what does this 
administration do in its budget? What was I going to tell the people in 
our State, when I met with them at the Mall of America, who are trying 
to find a cure for children's diabetes, for the parents who met with me 
as we see autism on the rise and we are trying to find a cure or the 
people on the Alzheimer's ward? What does the President say to them? 
Well, for the sixth year in a row, it freezes funding for the National 
Institutes of Health, the Nation's leading medical research agency that 
provides essential funding to doctors and scientists.
  The budget also cuts health care services. For example, the 
administration is calling for an 86-percent cut in funding for rural 
health programs, including rural health outreach grants and the Rural 
Hospital Flexibility Grant Program.
  I can tell my colleagues what I heard when I was up in Brickstown, 
MN. I was up there. They have a hospital. They have one surgeon--one 
surgeon. You have to go miles and miles and miles to find another 
hospital. You can see towns miles and miles away, it is so flat up 
there. But they have this one hospital that is so important to their 
area. The surgeon is reaching retirement age. He might even want to 
retire now, but he can't because they can't find another surgeon to go 
up there. If they don't find another surgeon, they are not going to be 
able to have babies born in that hospital because they don't have a 
doctor who can do a C-section.
  Much of my State is rural despite the thriving metropolitan area we 
have in the Twin Cities and thriving places such as Moorhead and 
Rochester and Duluth, and we have these rural hospitals and health care 
providers that depend on this Federal funding to provide services for 
the rural residents of my State. It is not just a nicety; it is a 
necessity.
  In Minnesota, we are on the leading edge of the renewable energy 
revolution that promises to transform our economy and lead us toward 
greater energy security and independence. So what does the 
administration do in this budget? It cuts funding for solar energy 
research, hydropower, and industrial energy efficiency. It also cuts 
Department of Agriculture programs that are important for developing 
new farm-based energy sources such as biomass and cellulosic ethanol.
  Now, we heard the President at the State of the Union talking about 
moving to this new energy era. Well, put the money where the mouth is. 
It is not there. How are we going to stop spending $200,000 a minute on 
foreign oil if we are cutting the possibility of research into things 
such as cellulosic ethanol which, if done right with prairie grass, 
which puts carbon back into our soil, will allow the prairie grass to 
be grown on marginal farmland? This is the direction we need to go but 
not if we are going to cut funding. We have seen these wind turbines in 
our State where people are so excited they have wind turbines 
everywhere, wind turbine manufacturing, but every time the wind tax 
credit goes away, the investment stops about 8 months earlier because 
it is like a game of red light-green light: They don't know what is 
happening. So this is what the administration does.
  This budget would shut down the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 
North Central Soil Conservation Research Lab in Morris, MN. That was 
one of the places I visited in January. This lab, on the University of 
Minnesota campus, is at the forefront of research and development to 
promote homegrown renewable energy. This is our energy future, but you 
would hardly know it from looking at the President's budget.
  Finally, as I mentioned, it has been a little cold in Minnesota. It 
did get up to 10 degrees below zero one day, but it was down to 20 
degrees below zero in Embarrass about a week ago. Nationwide, the 
average household is expected to pay 11 percent more for heating this 
winter compared to last year. Families who rely on home heating oil are 
facing record prices 30 to 50 percent above last winter.
  What does the administration do in its budget? It cuts in half the 
emergency funding for the low-income heating assistance program. This 
is a program which enjoys bipartisan support.

[[Page S593]]

It provides much needed help to seniors and families who are struggling 
with ever-rising heating costs. Maybe the President thinks we are going 
to have so much global warming that we don't need this heating, I don't 
know. While these prices are going up and you are in the middle of 
winter, you shouldn't cut the heating program. I hope the next 
President see things differently.
  I believe deeply in the importance of fiscal responsibility. I 
support the pay-as-you-go rule for budgeting. My husband and I keep our 
financial house in order, and we think the Government should too. If 
you want to talk about fiscal responsibility, you don't have it in this 
budget. There is no willingness to talk about doing things differently. 
Do we want a budget that offers tax giveaways to the wealthy or one 
that provides relief to middle-class families who are squeezed by the 
rising costs of housing, energy, health care, and tuition? You know 
what happened on the AMT debate. We voted to pay for it by taking money 
away from the hedge fund operators, but the other side would not do it. 
Do we want to give lucrative favors to the rich and the corporations, 
or do we want to invest in our future prosperity, in things such as 
research and development and renewable energy?
  Instead of investing in the oil cartels in the Mideast, we need to 
invest in the farmers and workers of the Midwest--maybe a few in 
Vermont, as well, Mr. President. Do we want a budget that continues to 
send tens of billions of dollars to Iraq--I think it is $12 billion a 
month--or do we want a budget that provides our local and State law 
enforcement with the resources they need to protect public safety here 
at home?
  I want to see an administration that aims for fiscal responsibility 
by rolling back the tax cuts for the wealthiest people making over 
$200,000 or $250,000 a year.
  I would like to see an administration that aims for fiscal 
responsibility by eliminating offshore tax havens for 
multimillionaires.
  I would like to see an administration that aims for fiscal 
responsibility by ending the tax breaks and royalties that have been 
handed out year after year to the big oil companies.
  I would like to see an administration that aims for fiscal 
responsibility by allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prescription 
drug prices for seniors. Exactly what we predicted would happen has; 
you are seeing the prices go up, not down. They just had a re-up period 
for Medicare Part D. Seniors in my State are trying to figure out all 
these call-in lines and are trying to save a little money, and they are 
caught in the doughnut hole. This could have been done better. It 
wasn't done in a fiscally responsible way.
  The President's budget doesn't provide the new priorities and new 
solutions America needs. Instead, it continues to take us down the 
wrong path for the future.
  Even as we must plan and invest for the long term, I am also 
concerned that we have our priorities right in the short term. At this 
time, the urgent priority for America is to get our economy moving 
forward again and not let it weaken further. That is why we have put 
together an economic stimulus package that would respond promptly and 
responsibly. It would get this economy moving with tax rebates that are 
fair to the middle class, carefully targeted, and fiscally responsible. 
But tonight we find out that we are not going to be able to vote on 
that tomorrow.
  I do commend Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley for their swift work 
in getting this comprehensive, simple, and effective measure to the 
floor.
  A short-term stimulus package needs to be targeted for the people who 
need it most. Although economists are wary to declare that we are 
officially in a recession, many middle-class American families have 
been feeling the effects of an economic slowdown for months. From the 
impact of the mortgage crisis on the value of homes in their 
neighborhoods, to the skyrocketing costs of the oil that fuels their 
cars and heats their homes, to the rising prices in the grocery store, 
the middle class is feeling economic pressure from each and every side.
  When I went across my State on our Main Street tour in January, no 
matter where I went--all 47 counties--the economy was the first on the 
list of what the people in my State wanted to talk about. From city 
hall, to the cafe stops, to the turkey-processing places, to the little 
solar panel company, that is all they wanted to talk about--the 
economy. The message was loud and clear. I heard a lot from the middle-
class families. Even before we began to experience this economic 
slowdown, the families were finding it harder to get by.
  To give you a sense of what we have in our State, in Minnesota, the 
unemployment rate recently jumped to 4.9 percent, up from 4.4 percent 
the month before. Our State lost 23,000 jobs in the last 6 months 
alone. Over 50,000 Minnesota families lost their homes to foreclosure 
in the past 3 months. Home heating prices for Minnesota families have 
risen by 14.1 percent per household in the past year alone.

  In order to get communities along Main Streets in Minnesota and 
across our country booming again, we need both short- and long-term 
solutions. While everybody agrees the rebate checks will be a part of 
whatever targeted and effective stimulus package Congress ends up 
sending to the President, I am here today to voice my strong support 
for several additional provisions that are in our Senate proposal. 
These proposals would do much to help improve the middle-class lives 
behind those statistics I just talked about. These are real people all 
over our State. These proposals are a proven stimulus for our economy. 
They deserve a full debate and proper consideration in our Chamber.
  First, we need to expand our rebate effort in order to ensure that 
certain deserving groups are not left out. As I said, part of creating 
a targeted stimulus for the economy is through helping those who need 
it most. I was sorry to see that the House proposal fell short.
  It is crucial to this package that the 20 million American seniors 
who worked all their lives, paid taxes, and contributed to our society 
in countless ways will get rebate checks. That is the first point. We 
need to include the seniors.
  In the past week, I have heard from hundreds of Minnesota seniors who 
told me that the Senate proposal to include Social Security recipients 
is the only fair way to stimulate the economy. I agree, and I support 
the Senate effort to include seniors.
  It is also crucial that we include disabled veterans in this package. 
These men and women have served our country both here and abroad. They 
signed up to serve; there wasn't a waiting line. When they come up and 
people are getting rebates, there should not be a waiting line. Go to 
the end of the line--you disabled veterans, who served our country, are 
at the end of the line; you don't get a rebate check. That is not 
right.
  Second, I firmly believe we should include an extension of the clean 
energy tax incentives in any stimulus package. We can do that in 
another package, but we have to do it. These benefits certainly meet 
the definition of what we need for a short-term stimulus package.
  If you look at the data, we have seen a revolution going on across 
the country in wind and solar and other forms of renewable energy. This 
has been like a game of red light-green light. You can go through the 
lights, and then it lapses for 6 months. It goes on again, and then it 
lapses. The proven statistic is that every time it lapses, the 
investors stop investing. That is not what we want. Our country came up 
with all of the technology for wind and solar, and now we are falling 
behind the rest of the world in developing it because we don't have the 
investment tax credits in place.
  Third, I believe the stimulus package should also include additional 
funding for LIHEAP. Working families in Minnesota and across the Nation 
should not have to choose between paying home heating bills and putting 
food on the table. Increasing LIHEAP funding to keep pace with the 
skyrocketing price of oil is essential to this stimulus package.
  I see the stimulus package as a first step, and it is crucial to 
support it. But long after those rebate checks are spent, we are going 
to need a long-term economic strategy in response to the problem or we 
are going to be back where we started in the first place. We need an 
economy that creates good, stable middle-class jobs. We need 
infrastructure investment so we don't have

[[Page S594]]

bridges falling down in the middle of America. We need energy 
investment. That will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and create 
good jobs in the green-collar energy sector.
  In the Senate, we have our stimulus package, and it is a good one. 
The people we serve are asking for a new direction and priority. That 
means being fiscally responsible, being willing to roll back some of 
the tax cuts for the wealthiest, closing down loopholes, negotiating 
for lower prescription drug prices, and taking the oil giveaways and 
putting them into renewables. Those are new priorities for this 
country.
  Last year, we made a downpayment on change in this country. We moved 
toward a more responsible budget process. We gave working Americans an 
increase in the minimum wage. Today, we can continue that progress and 
continue that change with a system that is fair for all Americans. That 
means getting the stimulus package done, including these necessary 
changes with seniors and disabled veterans and the LIHEAP funding, and 
then looking at the long term and making sure in this package--or in 
another one--we get the tax cuts in place for clean energy and do 
something about fiscal responsibility. And we are willing to talk about 
change and really do it.
  This is our moment. The American people have spoken. At least they 
spoke to me in Crookston and Worthington and Starbuck. I think if the 
people who live in those towns were standing here, they would tell the 
Senate what we need to do. So let's get it done.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Klobuchar). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                              The Economy

  Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, during the last several weeks and 
months, in fact, there has been increased discussion and comments about 
the state of our economy. As you know, last month our Nation actually 
shed some 17,000 jobs and many economists tell us we are now in a 
recession and that is certainly true for some parts of this country.
  The House, the Senate, and the White House are wrestling with an 
economic stimulus package, and President Bush has presented his new 
budget. This week, the Director of the OMB and the Secretary of the 
Treasury will come before the Senate Budget Committee to discuss their 
views on the economy.
  Let me begin by stating how dismayed I was by the budget President 
Bush has provided us today. Frankly, this budget is unconscionable and 
reflects priorities that are almost impossible to comprehend. While 
providing hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the 
wealthiest three-tenths of 1 percent of our population over the next 
decade, this President has proposed major cuts in health care, LIHEAP, 
weatherization, nutrition, housing programs, and other basic needs for 
moderate- and low-income people. This is a Robin Hood in reverse 
budget. This is a budget that takes from the poor and working families, 
those most in need, and gives to millionaires and billionaires, those 
least in need.
  This proposed budget tells us how out of touch this President and his 
administration are with the needs of the American people.
  Let me be very clear; as a Member of the Senate Budget Committee, I 
will do everything I can to make sure Bush's budget is rejected and 
that we bring forth a new budget that reflects the priorities of all 
our people and not just the wealthiest and most powerful.
  Most Americans understand, for example, our health care system is 
disintegrating. Since George W. Bush has been President, 8.6 million 
Americans have lost their health insurance, and we now live in a 
country in which 47 million of our neighbors have no health insurance. 
We live at a time when health costs are soaring, when people are paying 
larger and larger deductibles and copayments. That is the reality of 
American health care today.
  How does President Bush respond to this crisis in health care? His 
response is to slash funding for Medicare, slash funding for Medicaid, 
slash funding for rural health care programs, making a terrible 
situation even worse.
  I understand it will be asking too much for this President to stand 
up to the insurance companies, to stand up to the drug companies and 
move us toward a national health care program which guarantees health 
care for all our people, something, by the way, which every other major 
country on Earth now has.
  I understand that is something George W. Bush is not going to do. I 
understand that. But at the very least, at a time when some 17,000 
Americans a year die because they lack health insurance, he should not 
be making a terrible situation even worse. He need not deny health care 
to even more Americans.
  In the State of Vermont and through many parts of our country, 
Minnesota included, we have experienced extremely cold weather this 
winter. At the same time, as every American knows, the price of home 
heating oil has more than doubled, skyrocketed since President Bush has 
been in office. The result is the LIHEAP program, the Low-Income Home 
Energy Assistance Program, which keeps millions of seniors and low-
income households warm in the winter, is stretched to the breaking 
point. That is the reality. Cold winter, price of home heating oil 
soaring, the program is stretched.
  In State after State, because of soaring fuel prices, either fewer 
people are able to access LIHEAP or the amount of help they are getting 
has been significantly reduced. That is simply the arithmetic of the 
situation: lower payments, fewer people. Those are the choices States 
have with reduced LIHEAP budgets.
  I know President Bush has no problem, no problem whatsoever, with the 
fact that his good pals at ExxonMobil have announced the largest 
profits in the history of the world for the third consecutive year, 
over $40 billion in profits in the year 2007. I am quite sure the 
President has no problem with that, and I understand that. He has no 
problem, apparently, with the fact that home heating oil prices are now 
at $3.30 a gallon. I am sure he has no problems with the fact that a 
few years ago, the former CEO of ExxonMobil, a gentleman named Lee 
Raymond, received a $400 million retirement package from that company. 
It is not a problem for the President of the United States. He is close 
to those people. As he once famously said: That is his base.
  But despite the President's lack of concern about rising fuel costs, 
it is beyond comprehension that he would slash the LIHEAP program by 
$570 million, a 22-percent reduction from last year. The price of home 
heating oil is soaring, more and more people are losing their LIHEAP 
benefits, and the President's response in the midst of this crisis is 
to slash the program. That is pretty cruel. What is a low-income senior 
living on Social Security supposed to do when the weather gets below 
zero and she cannot heat her home? That is the story today, and you 
propose to make it even worse next year.
  At a time when millions of low-income seniors are struggling to 
survive on inadequate Social Security benefits, this President in his 
budget wants to cut back on nutrition programs for low-income seniors, 
in addition to cutting back on low-income housing and senior citizen 
housing.
  Hunger in the United States of America is increasing. Emergency food 
shelves are simply running out of groceries. There is no moral 
justification for the President of the United States to be cutting back 
on nutrition programs for low-income elderly Americans by proposing to 
completely eliminate the Commodity Supplemental Food Program which is 
providing assistance to well over 4,000 low-income senior citizens in 
the State of Vermont and hundreds of thousands nationally. With hunger 
going up, the President cuts back on an important nutritional program 
for low-income seniors.
  I am a member of the Veterans' Committee, and I am proud that last 
year, against opposition from the White House, we substantially 
increased funding for the VA and are providing billions more so 
veterans can gain access

[[Page S595]]

to quality VA hospitals and clinics. That is what we accomplished. That 
was the right thing to do. And yet despite all of his rhetoric about 
how much he loves the troops and how much he respects the troops--last 
week, I might add, in his State of the Union Address, President Bush 
said:

       We must keep faith with all who have risked life and limb 
     so that we might live in freedom and peace.

  That was the President's statement 1 week ago at the State of the 
Union Address. But today, after all that flowery rhetoric, the 
President has proposed in his budget a very sharp increase in health 
care fees from $250 to $750 for veterans who access VA health care 
facilities. And there is no question, no doubt about it but that these 
increased fees, if put into effect, would result in driving many 
veterans out of VA health care which, in fact, is precisely the goal of 
that proposal. He wants to take veterans out of VA health care, which 
is consistent with what the President did several years ago when he 
threw large numbers of so-called category 8 veterans, those without 
service-connected disabilities, out of VA health care.
  The words tell us how much he loves our soldiers, but actions tell us 
he is prepared to raise fees for veterans health care, with the result 
of removing many veterans from the VA system.
  I say to President Bush that at a time when tens of thousands of our 
soldiers have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, please don't 
balance your budget on the backs of men and women who have put their 
lives on the line defending this country.
  Since George W. Bush has been in office, we have seen recordbreaking 
deficits, and our national debt is now $9.2 trillion, $3 trillion more 
than when President Bush assumed office.
  All of us in Congress want to move this country toward a balanced 
budget to make sure our kids and our grandchildren are not left with an 
enormous debt. But there are right ways to move toward a balanced 
budget and there are wrong ways to try to do that and, unfortunately, 
President Bush's budget moves us exactly in the wrong direction.
  As many Americans know, since President Bush has been in the White 
House, the middle class has been decimated, poverty has increased, and 
the gap between the very wealthiest people in our society and everyone 
else has grown wider. In fact, the United States now has by far the 
most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on 
Earth.
  Sadly, the gap between the upper-income people, the wealthiest people 
in our country, and the middle class is increasingly making our country 
look like a poor developing country. We have the same economic 
structure, in terms of distribution of wealth and income, that 
countries such as Brazil and Mexico have, rather than looking like 
other major industrialized countries in Europe, Scandinavia or in 
Canada.
  I am aware a lot of facts and figures are thrown about on the floor 
of the Senate, but let me mention one fact I hope all Americans pay 
attention to, and that is that according to the latest statistics 
available, the wealthiest 300,000 Americans--that is men, women, and 
children--take in more income than the bottom 150 million Americans. In 
other words, the upper one-tenth of 1 percent, 300,000 people, take in 
more money than do the bottom 50 percent. One-tenth of 1 percent. Fifty 
percent. And that is what is going on in the American economy today.

  Tragically, that gap between the superrich and everybody else is 
growing wider and wider every single year. For those people who live in 
the bottom 90 percent of the population, the vast majority of our 
citizens, their average income was $33,000 way back in 1973. Today, 
despite all of the free trade agreements and globalization, despite all 
of the huge increases in technology, despite the significant growth in 
worker productivity, in inflation-accounted-for dollars, that $33,000 
per year has declined to $29,000 a year, which is about a $75-a-week 
pay cut.
  That is what is going on in the economy today, and has been going on 
over the last three decades: people on top, doing phenomenally well; 
people at the bottom, the situation is getting worse; people in the 
middle are getting squeezed, working longer hours for lower wages. And 
perhaps those trends tell us why in today's Washington Post a front-
page story was headlined ``U.S. Concern Over Economy Is Highest In 
Year.'' That was the headline on the front page of the Washington Post 
today. The first line of that story tells us that ``The public views 
the national economy now more negatively than at any point in nearly 15 
years.''
  What is going on is that the American people are getting sick and 
tired--they are getting sick and tired--of paying $3.15 for a gallon of 
gas when ExxonMobil enjoys the highest profits in the history of the 
world. They are tired of paying outrageously high home heating costs. 
They are tired of losing their health insurance. They are tired of 
losing their pensions. They are tired of not being able to find 
affordable childcare for their kids. They are tired of seeing their 
kids come out of college $20,000 or $30,000 in debt and not able to 
find decent-paying jobs.
  And not only are they tired, they are worried. They are worried that 
for the first time in the modern history of this great country--despite 
the fact that so many people are working so hard, they are worried that 
their kids will have a lower standard of living than they do. They are 
worried that the American dream, which is what this country has always 
been about--the dream which says that if parents work hard, their kids 
will do better than they do--they are worried that dream is being lost.
  That is why there is so much deep concern about the economy. It is 
not just health care, it is not just the loss of pensions, it is not 
only outrageously high prices when you fill up your car, and it is not 
only home heating oil; it is the fact that when you go shopping, what 
you are doing is buying products made in China and Mexico that used to 
be made in the United States. Many American people understand that we 
are never going to have a great economy if we are not producing the 
products we need and the people throughout the world need.
  The American people understand that there is something profoundly 
wrong when 20, 25 years ago the largest employer in the United States 
was General Motors--manufacturer of cars--that paid workers good wages, 
good benefits, and there was a strong union, and today the largest 
employer in the United States is Wal-Mart, with low wages, minimal 
benefits, and vehemently antiunion.
  The American people are getting the point that people such as 
President Bush work tirelessly on behalf of the wealthy and the 
powerful. But who is standing up for the people who make our country go 
every day--for the cops and the firemen and the farmers and the people 
who work in factories and the nurses and the doctors? Who is standing 
up for those people? Maybe the time is now for us to begin standing up 
for those people.
  In the midst of all of this, the President has brought forth a budget 
that punishes working people, punishes poor people, but says to the 
wealthiest people in this country, the people who have now had it so 
good since the late 1920s, and says to them: Hey, I--the President--am 
going to help you. In his budget the President wants to repeal the 
estate tax, which would provide $1 trillion in tax relief to the 
wealthiest three-tenths of 1 percent. Let me say that again. Over a 20-
year period, $1 trillion in tax relief to the wealthiest three-tenths 
of 1 percent of our population.
  That is what this budget, this Robin-Hood-in-reverse budget, is all 
about. If you are old and trying to survive on Social Security, and if 
you are going to go cold this winter and next winter, the President 
wants to cut back on the heating assistance you receive. If you are a 
low-income American, or perhaps an American without any health 
insurance right now, the President wants to cut back on Medicaid and 
Medicare. If you are an American who lives in a home that lacks 
insulation, and if you are putting money into your heating bill and 
that heat is going out your poorly insulated home, it is going out the 
window, going out the roof, you have a President who wants to 
completely eliminate the low-income weather assistance program. If you 
are a veteran who has put your life on the line defending this country, 
the President wants to make it harder for you to access VA health care 
by substantially increasing your fees. But if you

[[Page S596]]

are a billionaire, the President is all there for you. If you are one 
of the wealthiest families in America, in this budget the President has 
brought forth today, you are going to get huge tax breaks. Let me cite 
one example of how preposterous this scenario is.

  One of the wealthiest families in America is the Walton family. The 
Walton family, as I think most people know, owns Wal-Mart. This one 
family is worth, it is estimated, a combined $82 billion. There are a 
number of sons and daughters, but combined they are worth about $82 
billion--one family. Incredible as it may sound, under the President's 
proposal of completely eliminating the estate tax, that one family 
would receive over $30 billion in tax breaks.
  So here we are. If you are old and can't afford to heat your home, we 
are going to cut the program that keeps you warm. If you are sick and 
you have no health insurance, we are going to cut the program that 
gives you access to a doctor. If you are living in a home where you are 
losing all kinds of heat through poor insulation, we are not going to 
help you. If you are a veteran who has served your country, we are 
going to raise fees for you to get into a VA hospital or a clinic. But 
if you are one of the wealthiest families in America, we are going to 
give you $30 billion in tax breaks.
  I say this without glee, but President Bush will probably go down in 
history as one of the least popular Presidents this country has ever 
had. And you don't need to know anything more to understand why that is 
so. A President who would give hundreds of billions in tax breaks to 
millionaires and billionaires and then cut back on the needs of working 
families, senior citizens, and veterans is not a President who is 
representing the vast majority of our people. I will do everything that 
I can as a member of the Budget Committee to not only make sure 
President Bush's budget is not implemented, but I will work with my 
colleagues to fashion a budget that begins to address the real needs of 
the American people.
  There is great disenchantment in this country about what is going on 
here in Washington, but I also note there is great hope out there. 
There is a belief that if we come together as a people, if we remember 
where we came from, if we are prepared to uphold the values that have 
made us a great country, if we are willing to stand up to the powerful 
special interests who have so much influence over what goes on in this 
institution--if we can do those things--not only can we once again 
create a great middle class, not only can we once again protect the 
most vulnerable people in our society, but perhaps, more importantly, 
we can once again give the American people a faith in their Government 
that they presently lack. That is something we must do.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. AKAKA. Madam President, I am pleased to support the Senate's 
bipartisan legislation designed to stimulate the economy and benefit 
working families, assist seniors and veterans, provide some relief for 
the unemployed, and encourage business and energy investments. I know 
that there are numerous families throughout the Nation who have found 
themselves working harder and having less discretionary income due to 
increases in living expenses such as gasoline and food costs. In my 
home state of Hawaii where the cost of living is already high, 
especially due to housing, families are struggling. they, like the rest 
of the Nation, have been hit hard by the decline in the economy. While 
Hawaii's unemployment is not as high as in other parts of the Nation. 
it is not uncommon for individuals in Hawaii to work two or three jobs 
just to provide their families with food and shelter and to have 
multiple generations living under the same roof in order to save money.
  One of the key provisions of the Senate's economic stimulus package 
is to put money in the hands of low-income and middle-class individuals 
and families by offering a rebate of $500 per individual and $1000 per 
couple, plus $300 for every child under the age of 17. For the many 
families in this Nation struggling to make ends meet, these rebates 
will help ease the financial pressures they are currently facing. Far 
too often, due to the downturn in our Nation's economy, families are 
finding that they simply cannot afford important, basic needs. 
Consequently, they are forced to make very difficult decisions and even 
more difficult sacrifices. More and more Americans are relying on high-
interest credit cards, not to buy luxuries but just to provide daily 
necessities. The rebates included in the Senate package will help 
families pay down those bills and provide much needed financial relief.
  The Senate Finance Committee's package also improves upon the House-
passed bill by extending these rebates to senior citizens and disabled 
veterans. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, I am 
strongly supportive of provisions in this bill that improve the House 
version of the bill by including hundreds of thousands of disabled vets 
in the stimulus package. It is vitally important that we ensure that 
our Nation's wounded warriors and their families who have sacrificed so 
much are given the assistance they need. I am pleased to support the 
extension of benefits in the Senate Finance bill to 20 million senior 
citizens living on Social Security. For many low-income senior 
citizens, whose sole income is their monthly Social Security check, a 
rebate check could provide much needed relief in addition to providing 
further stimulus to the country's economy.
  In addition to the rebates included in the Finance Committee package, 
another important provision is the extension of unemployment benefits. 
I know that for many workers who have found themselves out of jobs due 
to layoffs or business failures, unemployment benefits provide a much-
needed bridge to get them over the immediate economic financial crises 
until they can find employment. Providing an additional 13 weeks of 
unemployment benefits for individuals who have been caught in the 
economic downturn and another 13 weeks of benefits for workers in 
states with high rates of unemployment will go a long way toward 
providing the support they need as they look for new jobs in this 
difficult economic environment.
  I am also supportive of provisions in the Senate economic stimulus 
package that will encourage businesses to invest. Increasing the 
carryback period for net operating losses from 2 to 5 years, for 
example, will benefit the housing industry by allowing builders to 
avoid selling land and houses at greatly reduced prices and enable less 
costly financing. In addition, provisions to extend renewable energy 
and energy efficiency tax cuts for a year will help boost the economy 
by generating new employment opportunities. Given the growing demand 
for energy coupled with rising prices, it is critical to America's 
economy that we provide incentives to invest in clean energy 
production.
  As the Senate considers this bill, I will continue to work to ensure 
that the economic stimulus package passed by Congress is structured to 
help hard-working men and women who find it increasingly difficult to 
make ends meet. We must see that a broad segment of the population, 
including the unemployed, senior citizens, and disabled veterans, 
receives assistance and that business and environmental investment is 
encouraged. I ask my Senate colleagues to join me in supporting the 
Senate version of the economic stimulus package.

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