[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 153 (Monday, November 29, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8227-S8239]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FDA FOOD SAFETY MODERNIZATION ACT--Continued
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, in about 35 minutes we are going to be
voting on cloture on the food safety modernization bill, a bill that
brings us forward almost 70 years. Seven decades it has been since we
have modernized or changed our food inspection and safety system in
America. So we are taking that step tonight. Hopefully, we will have a
final vote on it by tomorrow.
I just want to take a few minutes now before that vote to again lay
out why this bill is so important and why we need to invoke cloture
tonight so we can have a final vote on this bill tomorrow.
First of all, the statistics are that Americans are getting sick and
they are dying because of foodborne illnesses. You would think in this
day with modernization and such we would not have this.
Madam President, 325,000 Americans every year are hospitalized and
over 5,000 die. Many of these are kids. I have met them with a group
called Safe Tables Our Priority. I have met some of these kids. They
will be damaged for life, I say to my friend from Illinois, Senator
Durbin, who has been such a leader on this bill. In fact, I daresay we
would not be here were it not for Senator Durbin's leadership in
getting this bill started, how many years ago I do not know.
Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question.
Mr. HARKIN. I would be glad to yield.
Mr. DURBIN. First, I thank the Senator from Iowa for his leadership
on this issue. The fact is, it was almost 18 years ago when I received
a letter from a woman in Chicago--written to me as a Congressman--named
Nancy Donley. Nancy had a personal tragedy. Her 6-year-old son Alex
died from E. Coli from food Nancy literally prepared for him in their
home. She wrote to me a handwritten letter, to me as a Congressman from
Springfield, IL, 200 miles away, saying we have to do something about
food safety.
Nancy lost her son, but she never lost her passion for this issue. As
the Senator said, she formed the organization Safe Tables Our Priority,
which has been an effective voice for so many others to bring us to
this moment.
But, for the record, I have worked on this issue for a long time, and
we would not be on the Senate floor tonight with this historic vote
were it not for the Senator from Iowa who has lead the effort. Senator
Tom Harkin has, with the help of Senator Mike Enzi and a number on the
other side of the aisle who have stepped up to make this bipartisan.
This is a reasonable approach to making our food safer in America. I
thank the Senator from Iowa for all of his leadership on this issue and
so many others.
Mr. HARKIN. Well, I thank my friend from Illinois, but he is being
way too generous. Again, I recognize the instigators of this, the ones
who started this ball rolling, and Senator Durbin is the one who got us
started many years ago. And it has taken us many years to put this
together. But that is why we have such a good bipartisan bill. We have
worked on this. We reported this out of our committee a year ago
without one dissenting vote, Republican or Democrat. Since that time,
we have been working to get other people, not on the committee,
obviously, onboard to get the way paved so we could have a bill that
would be broadly supported.
This bill is very broadly supported, both by the industry and by the
consumers. It is one of the few bills where, as a matter of fact, we
have a wide range of consumer and industry support, everything from the
Snack Food Association, the Grocery Manufacturers Association,
Consumers Union, Center for Science in the Public Interest, the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Anytime you
get the Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group
on the same bill, you know you have a bill that has broad support. This
bill does.
Again, I thank my colleague, Senator Enzi from Wyoming, our ranking
member on our committee, for all of his help in getting this bill
through and working on it diligently over the past year.
I would be remiss if I did not also thank Senator Gregg and Senator
Burr for being heavily involved in this bill and working through all of
the compromises a bill like this entails.
The Food Safety Modernization Act enhances our food safety system in
three critical ways. It improves the prevention of food safety
problems. I always think this is key. We have to get in front of this,
not to just sort of catch the food once it is contaminated and try to
get it done, but to try to prevent it in the beginning. We had success
in the meat and poultry industry some years ago with a preventive plan
to look at where pathogens could enter the food supply and stop it
there. We have applied the lessons we have learned from those last 20,
almost 25 years now of that to this, so now we are going to be able to
look to have a better system of preventing food safety problems and
foodborne pathogens.
It improves the detection or response to foodborne illness
outbreaks--detect it earlier, stop it earlier, and have a better
response to what is happening. In other words, for example, in the bill
we provide that retailers have to in some way notify customers if a
food has been recalled. That could be a grocery store putting a sign on
the shelf, for example, saying: This food has been recalled, maybe
putting out a notice in their supplements that they put out in order to
advise consumers they may have purchased a food that has been recalled.
Third, it enhances our Nation's food defense capabilities. Right now,
how many people know that less than 2 percent--about 1.5 percent--of
all of the food imported into America is ever inspected? That is 1.5
percent. Well, this is going to increase those inspections. It is also
going to increase the defense capabilities in case we have a
problem. For example, we have stronger trace-back authority so we can
get to the source of where this happened in a better way than we ever
have been able to do in the past.
As I mentioned earlier, it provides the FDA with mandatory recall
authority. A lot of people are surprised to know--consumers are
surprised to find out that if there is a foodborne illness or outbreak,
the Food and Drug Administration has no authority to even recall the
food. One may say: Well, the companies have the authority to recall
it--and they do because, frankly, they don't want to get sued,
obviously. So why have a mandatory recall? Well, you might have bad
actors. You might have a company that is located offshore. Maybe they
have imported some bad food into this country, and maybe they think
they can just take a few bucks and run. The FDA would not have
mandatory recall authority. Now they would have that to protect our
consumers. As I said, it also requires the retailer to notify consumers
if they sold food that has been contaminated.
Now, again, the opponents of this bill have put a lot of rumors out
there. Since I have lived with this bill for so long, I am surprised
people would be saying things like this. One myth I read is that this
bill would outlaw home gardens--you couldn't even have a home garden. I
think that comes from Glenn Beck, if I am not mistaken, but it is
factually incorrect. It said it would do away with family farms. In
[[Page S8228]]
fact, the bill states explicitly that the produce standards ``shall not
apply to produce that is produced by an individual for personal
consumption.'' There is also an exemption for small farmers, small
facilities, as they sell their products at roadside stands, farmers
markets, places such as those.
Then there is another rumor that anyone who grows any food will now
come under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security. I
heard this myth that Homeland Security agents now will be tromping
through your farms and your pastures and your tomato plants--again,
absolutely, totally, factually wrong.
I am proud to say this legislation comprehensively modernizes our
food safety system and does so without injury to farms and small
processors; otherwise, we wouldn't have all of the industry groups on
board if we were adding undue hardship on our processors and farmers.
Our food safety system will continue to fail Americans unless we
modernize our food safety laws and regulations. We should give the FDA
the authority it needs to cope with the growing, varied risks that
threaten today's more abundant food supply. We need to act, and we need
to act now. We need to invoke cloture on this bill in just a little
over half an hour.
How much time do I have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Eight minutes 10 seconds.
Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I know my friend, Senator Coburn, was on
the floor earlier talking about this bill. He has a substitute he is
going to offer. I have worked with Senator Coburn over the months. I
know we have a basic philosophical difference about the role of
government in this area. Be that as it may, we have worked hard, as I
said, on bill compromises between people who do have differences of
opinion. Again, as with any bill, there may be some things in here that
I don't particularly like that I think we ought to do differently, but
in the spirit of compromise, we don't get our way all the time around
here; we have to give and take to get something done. That is what this
bill is.
So I say to my friend, Senator Coburn, I know he has some problems
with it, but, quite frankly, his substitute--and I wish to say this
very forthrightly--his substitute kills our bill in its entirety. It
kills it in its entirety. In its place, what my friend from Oklahoma
would offer would be a few studies to help improve collaboration
between FDA and USDA. There is weaker language on preventive
contamination, which I think is so important--to prevent in the first
place. The substitute will eliminate all of our prevention control
provisions. It would eliminate the provisions that enhance coordination
between State and Federal laboratories.
My friend from Oklahoma--and maybe later on we will get into this and
debate it a little bit--my friend has always been saying we need better
coordination. He is right. I said that earlier. He is absolutely right.
We need better coordination between the FDA and USDA and other
agencies, and that is being done. It is being done in this bill. But at
the same time, his substitute would eliminate the provisions in our
bill that enhance the coordination between State and Federal
laboratories, which is exactly what we need to do--have State and
Federal coordination. His substitute would eliminate the trace-back
provisions that are so important to find out where the foodborne
pathogen might be originating from. It would eliminate the important
foreign supplier verification provisions we put in this bill--that if
you are importing food from a foreign country, you have to verify that
the food has met the same kinds of inspection standards we have in our
own country. The substitute of my friend from Oklahoma would eliminate
that provision. It would eliminate the requirement that we increase our
inspection frequencies in this country, and it would eliminate the
FDA's ability to recall food--the mandatory recall provision we have--
even when life-threatening contamination is detected.
So for all of those reasons, I hope the substitute will not be
adopted. As I said, I know my friend has some feelings about this bill.
I understand that. But many of the things Senator Coburn brought up
earlier and in good faith I worked with him and his staff on--some of
his ideas, we appropriated in this bill. Senator Coburn--I say this as
a friend--has a keen eye a lot of times for things that are duplicative
or things that maybe sound good but don't do what you think they are
going to do. He has a keen eye. I give him credit for that. So a lot of
those things we have looked at that in the past he suggested, and we
have adopted those things and put them in the bill.
Lastly, one of Senator Coburn's objections is that the bill is not
paid for. Again, I think that is misguided. He knows my feelings on
this issue. This is an authorization bill. Any funding that would come
for this would have to be appropriated in the future. There would be
absolutely no deficit increase at all.
This is from the Congressional Budget Office. From our bill, we asked
them what would it do to increase the deficit. As my colleagues can
see, from 2010 to 2020, there is a zero increase in the deficit because
of our bill.
So, again, while I understand Senator Coburn has problems with the
bill, I think his substitute really wipes out everything we have done
on a bipartisan basis. Senator Enzi has worked hard, as well as Senator
Gregg, Senator Burr, and others. We have worked with industry and
consumer groups for over a year now to make sure we had a good bill, a
comprehensive bill--one that was a true compromise between competing
interests but one that gets the job done. And what is the job? To help
reduce the number of foodborne illnesses in this country.
I say in closing, is this bill going to stop everybody from getting
sick while eating food? No, no. It will not be 100 percent. Will it be
better than what we have? You bet. It is going to prevent a lot of
foodborne illnesses that otherwise would happen in this country under
the present system.
Just think about this: We are operating under a food inspection
safety system in this country that was adopted 70 years ago. Think of
how our food supply--the growing, the processing, and the shipping--
have all changed in that 70 years. We go to the grocery store in the
wintertime and we buy fresh raspberries from Chile or blueberries from
Argentina. We go to the store in the summertime and we buy produce made
in this country from all over, commingled and shipped together. A lot
of times, you don't know where it is coming from. There are so many
different things that have happened over the last 70 years. Yet our
inspection system has not kept up with how our food is produced, how it
is processed, how it is shipped and stored, and we have not updated
what we should do with imported foods. We are getting more and more
imported foods into this country.
So for all of those reasons, I hope we will have a good, strong vote,
a good bipartisan vote on the cloture issue and that the other measures
that are coming up--we have an amendment on taxes--if either the
Johanns amendment or the Baucus amendment is adopted, it will kill this
bill. It will kill the bill.
I happen to be one of those who think we have to change the 1099
provisions for small businesses but not on this bill. We will do that
before the end of the year, but if it is adopted on this bill, it will
kill our food safety bill because the House will blue-slip it because
the Constitution says bills of revenue have to originate in the House,
not in the Senate; likewise, the earmark provision Senator Coburn will
be offering--we will have a good debate on that too--again, if that is
adopted, it will kill the bill. There is just no doubt about it.
So we worked hard for many years to get to this point. We have a good
bipartisan bill. We have a bill we believe the House will pass and send
on to the President to keep our people more safe. So I hope this body
will reject any extraneous amendments.
Madam President, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. McCASKILL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. McCASKILL. Madam President, I rise to talk about an amendment we
[[Page S8229]]
will be voting on tomorrow concerning earmarks. Since coming to the
Senate, I have decided I am not going to participate in what I think is
a very flawed process. I don't think it is the right way to spend
public money. I am not going to quarrel that some of the projects that
have been funded are not meritorious; they are. In my State, some of
the projects that have received earmarked funds are wonderful
expenditures of public money. But it is the way in which the money is
expended that is a problem; the way to decide it is the problem. It is
the process.
There have been a number of defenses of earmarking. I am going to
spend a couple minutes debunking the defenses of earmarking. I will
tell you my favorite one: We are somehow abdicating the power of the
purse that is delineated in the Constitution. Give me a break. We
decide every dime of Federal money. Congress makes the decision on
appropriations for every Federal program. How is giving up a secretive
process, where nobody is sure how it is decided who gets how much
money--how is getting rid of that somehow removing our constitutional
authority to make spending decisions? It is like they want the American
people to believe that if we quit earmarking, the appropriations
process is going to go away, that we will no longer pass judgment on
the President's budget, that we will not have oversight over Federal
money. It is silly and absurd. In some ways, it is almost insulting.
The constitutional powers to decide how Federal money is spent will
remain with the Congress long after this bad habit has been broken.
Make no mistake about it, it may not be this year, it may not be next
year, but the American people are on to us. They now know and
understand that earmarking is about who you are. It is about what
committee you sit on. It is about whom you know.
If this is such a fair process, if this is something we should be
proud of, then I want someone to come to the floor and explain to me
how they decide who gets the money. I ask it at home all the time, and
I say: If you know, will you tell me because I am a Member of the
Senate and I don't know.
In some committees, the ranking member and the chairman of the
subcommittee get more money than everybody else. In other committees,
they don't. Where is that decided? In what room? Is there a hearing?
Can I go and watch? When the money is split, who is in the room? Who is
on the phone? If we are brutally honest with the American people, we
will tell them that is a process we don't want them to see. Yes, we are
better because we reformed. I am proud my party led the reforms on
earmarking right after I came to the Senate. Now your name is on your
earmark.
I will tell you what is not public. Do you know what people at home
actually believe? They believe the Senators don't pick the winners and
losers. They actually think there is some mysterious process, but what
we don't know is what are all the earmarks that Senators say no to.
Senators say no to these earmarks. It is not a committee that says no
to these. It is not a chairman. Each individual Senator decides winners
and losers. I don't think the losers know that. I think the losers
think that Senator had nothing to do with them being a loser. If we can
make all that public, this would be a much less popular activity
because all of a sudden the people who wanted the bridge in this part
of the State would realize that the Senator thought the bridge on the
other side of the State was more important. So we take credit for the
earmarks we get, but we are not willing to own the fact that we have
chosen winners and losers.
Finally, this notion that somehow the bureaucrats are going to
decide--most of the money taken for earmarks comes out of programs that
are grant programs and formula programs and are decided by population
or by local people. It is not Washington bureaucrats. They are
supplanting the judgment of one person for the local planning process
and the State planning process. That is not the way.
I hope people vote for the Coburn-McCaskill amendment. This is the
wrong way to spend public money. Whether it happens tomorrow or 2 or 3
years from now, make no mistake about it, the American people are tired
of it.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the following
cloture motion, which the clerk will report.
The legislative 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 Harkin
substitute amendment No. 4715 to Calendar No. 247, S. 510,
the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.
Harry Reid, Patrick J. Leahy, Claire McCaskill, Tom
Harkin, Carl Levin, Daniel K. Inouye, Richard J.
Durbin, Byron L. Dorgan, Jack Reed, Jeff Bingaman, Mark
Begich, Blanche L. Lincoln, Robert Menendez, Daniel K.
Akaka, Sherrod Brown, Sheldon Whitehouse, Patty Murray,
Debbie Stabenow, Barbara Boxer.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent the mandatory quorum call
has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on
amendment No. 4715 to S. 510, a bill to amend the Federal Food, Drug,
and Cosmetic Act with respect to the safety of the food supply 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 Connecticut (Mr.
Lieberman), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Pryor), and the Senator from
Montana (Mr. Tester) are necessarily absent.
Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Kansas (Mr. Brownback) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr.
Burr).
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 69, nays 26, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 252 Leg.]
YEAS--69
Akaka
Alexander
Baucus
Bayh
Begich
Bennet
Bingaman
Boxer
Brown (MA)
Brown (OH)
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Collins
Conrad
Coons
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Enzi
Feingold
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Grassley
Gregg
Hagan
Harkin
Inouye
Johanns
Johnson
Kerry
Kirk
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
LeMieux
Levin
Lincoln
Lugar
Manchin
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murkowski
Murray
Nelson (NE)
Nelson (FL)
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Snowe
Specter
Stabenow
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Vitter
Voinovich
Warner
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden
NAYS--26
Barrasso
Bennett
Bond
Bunning
Chambliss
Coburn
Cochran
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Ensign
Graham
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Kyl
McCain
McConnell
Risch
Roberts
Sessions
Shelby
Thune
Wicker
NOT VOTING--5
Brownback
Burr
Lieberman
Pryor
Tester
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 69, the nays are
26. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
Mr. BROWN of Massachusetts. Madam President, I come to the floor
today to talk about a provision that was included in the Federal health
care reform bill. It is a provision that adversely impacts small
businesses and entrepreneurs, both an engine of job growth in
Massachusetts and across the country.
I support Mr. Johanns' efforts and leadership to repeal this
provision of the law. I am proud to be a cosponsor of his efforts to do
just this.
The provision that I am referring to--section 9006 of the Federal
health care reform bill--requires that every business, charity, and
local and State government entity submit a 1099 form for every business
transaction totaling $600 or more in a given year. It has been
estimated that this mandate would affect approximately 40 million
entities across the country.
Under the law, businesses will be required to report purchases of
items
[[Page S8230]]
such as office equipment, food and bottled water, gasoline, lumber, and
plumbing supplies if payments to any vendor in the course of a year
total at least $600. They will, in many cases, also have to report
payments for things such as travel and telephone and Internet service.
To comply with the mandate, businesses--especially small businesses--
would have to institute new, complex record-keeping data collection and
reporting requirements that track every purchase by vendor and payment
method. The provision will increase accounting costs, expose businesses
to costly and unjustified audits by the IRS, and subject more small
businesses to the challenges of electronic filing.
So what does all of this really mean? And why does this provision
need to be repealed? Well, what it means is that small businesses and
entrepreneurs will be busy completing paperwork, filling out forms, and
complying with government mandates.
The provision needs to be repealed because when small businesses are
focused on keeping the government at bay, they aren't creating jobs or
making investments that spur economic growth.
This is a policy we can all agree on--from both sides of the aisle.
It is a policy that I have supported from the very start and that I
will continue to support and fight for.
Passing this amendment is the right thing to do--for small business
owners, for entrepreneurs, and for every business that is eager to hire
workers, expand its business, and grow.
I commend my colleague's leadership on this issue. My colleague, Mr.
Johanns has been leading this effort since the Federal health care
reform passed earlier this year, and I support him fully. And I urge my
fellow Senators to repeal this job-and investment-killing mandate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from
Nebraska will be recognized to offer a motion to suspend the rules.
Motion to Suspend
Mr. JOHANNS. Madam President, I move to suspend the rule XXII,
including any germaneness requirements, for the purposes of proposing
and considering amendment No. 4702, and I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to
be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Motion to Suspend
Mr. BAUCUS. Madam President, pursuant to the previous order, I move
to suspend the rules for the consideration of my amendment, which is at
the desk, and I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the vote will first
occur on the motion of the Senator from Nebraska.
The Senator from Montana.
Mr. BAUCUS. Madam President, I understand, under the order, each side
gets to speak for 1 minute.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct. The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. JOHANNS. Madam President, if I might take my minute to explain
what is happening tonight, the first amendment we will vote on is the
Johanns' amendment. It repeals the 1099 requirement in the health care
law. This came before us in September. Many colleagues came to me and
said: I do not like the pay-fors coming out of the health care law.
This is paid for. It is paid for out of unobligated funds in the
Federal system, if you will.
The second amendment, the Baucus amendment, simply is not paid for.
So you will be adding to the Federal deficit if you support the Baucus
amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Mr. BAUCUS. The Senator from Nebraska and I both seek to repeal the
provisions in the health care reform act referring to 1099. They are
identical in that respect, but actually we go further and give more
relief to small business than does the Senator from Nebraska.
The Johanns amendment would also give the unelected Director of the
Office of Management and Budget the power to slash $33 billion in
appropriated spending entirely at his own discretion, taking away the
responsibility of the Congress. I do not think that is a good idea.
The Johanns amendment, thus, puts at particular risk slower spending
accounts that fund vital purposes. The Johanns amendment puts at risk
international narcotics control, law enforcement funding, $39 billion
worth of funding solely in the discretion of the OMB Director, taking
that power away from the Congress. I think that is a bad idea. I urge
my colleagues to oppose the Johanns amendment.
Mr. JOHANNS. Madam President, do I have any time remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 24 seconds remaining.
Mr. JOHANNS. In reference to the argument of the Senator from
Montana, Congress has allowed the administration to make similar
decisions on rescinding funds in 1999, 2004, and twice in 2008, while
our friends on the other side of the aisle were in control of Congress.
That argument simply does not hold water.
I urge my colleagues to support the paid-for amendment, the Johanns
amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired. The question is on
agreeing to the motion of the Senator from Nebraska.
The yeas and nays are ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Connecticut (Mr.
Lieberman) and the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Pryor) are necessarily
absent.
Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Kansas (Mr. Brownback) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr.
Burr).
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 61, nays 35, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 253 Leg.]
YEAS--61
Alexander
Barrasso
Bayh
Bennet
Bennett
Bingaman
Bond
Brown (MA)
Bunning
Cantwell
Chambliss
Coburn
Cochran
Collins
Conrad
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Ensign
Enzi
Feingold
Graham
Grassley
Gregg
Hagan
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Kirk
Klobuchar
Kohl
Kyl
LeMieux
Lincoln
Lugar
Manchin
McCain
McCaskill
McConnell
Menendez
Murkowski
Nelson (NE)
Nelson (FL)
Risch
Roberts
Sessions
Shelby
Snowe
Stabenow
Tester
Thune
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Vitter
Voinovich
Warner
Webb
Wicker
NAYS--35
Akaka
Baucus
Begich
Boxer
Brown (OH)
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Coons
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson
Kerry
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Merkley
Mikulski
Murray
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Specter
Whitehouse
Wyden
NOT VOTING--4
Brownback
Burr
Lieberman
Pryor
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). On this vote, the yeas are 61,
the nays are 35. Two-thirds of the Senators voting not having voted in
the affirmative, the motion is rejected.
The Senator from Montana.
Motion to Suspend
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, this next vote is very simple. It repeals
the 1099 provisions that we all said to small businesses that we are
going to repeal. Purely and simply, it repeals 1099. I urge Members to
vote to repeal, get this over with so we can move on to other business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. JOHANNS. Mr. President, this adds $19 billion to the Federal
deficit.
I yield the remainder of my time to Senator Judd Gregg.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, this is not the proper way to address this
issue, to add $19 billion to our deficit. That has to be paid too by
our children and by small businesses being affected by this 1099
proposal. Let's do this the right way. Let's do it the way the Senator
from Nebraska has suggested--pay for it. It should be corrected that
way, not by adding $19 billion to our debt.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.
[[Page S8231]]
The question is on agreeing to the motion offered by the Senator from
Montana.
The yeas and nays having been ordered, the clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Connecticut (Mr.
Lieberman) is necessarily absent.
Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Kansas (Mr. Brownback) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr.
Burr).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 44, nays 53, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 254 Leg.]
YEAS--44
Akaka
Baucus
Bayh
Begich
Boxer
Brown (MA)
Brown (OH)
Cantwell
Cardin
Casey
Coons
Dorgan
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Hagan
Inouye
Johnson
Kerry
Kirk
Klobuchar
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Manchin
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (NE)
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Specter
Stabenow
Tester
Warner
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden
NAYS--53
Alexander
Barrasso
Bennet
Bennett
Bingaman
Bond
Bunning
Carper
Chambliss
Coburn
Cochran
Collins
Conrad
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Dodd
Durbin
Ensign
Enzi
Feingold
Graham
Grassley
Gregg
Harkin
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Kohl
Kyl
LeMieux
Lincoln
Lugar
McCain
McCaskill
McConnell
Murkowski
Nelson (FL)
Pryor
Risch
Roberts
Sessions
Shelby
Snowe
Thune
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Vitter
Voinovich
Wicker
NOT VOTING--3
Brownback
Burr
Lieberman
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 44, the nays are
53. Two-thirds of the Senators voting not having voted in the
affirmative, the motion is rejected.
vote explanations
Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, unfortunately, I was not able to be
present to cast an important vote this evening due to a delayed flight.
The vote was for cloture on the substitute food safety bill, which
includes my amendment. After widespread foodborne illnesses have
sickened millions of Americans throughout the country, including in
Montana, this bill will help restore Americans' confidence in our food
supply. With my amendment, it will also recognize that family-scale
producers that have immediate relationships with their customers at a
local level have not been at the root of our food safety problems, so
they should not and cannot bear the same regulatory burden.
Had I been present, on vote No. 252, cloture on substitute amendment
No. 4175 to S. 510, Food Safety Modernization Act, 60 vote threshold, I
would have voted in the affirmative.
Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, due to my airline flight delay traveling
back from Arkansas, I inadvertently missed the vote on Senator Johanns'
motion to suspend rule XXII for the purpose of proposing and
considering his amendment No. 4702 to repeal the 1099 information
reporting requirement. I would have voted for Senator Johanns' motion
had I been present.
(At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to
be printed in the Record.)
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I regret having missed votes to
suspend the rules and consider two amendments to the FDA Food Safety
Modernization Act. I was unable to be present for these votes due to a
family wedding.
Had I been present, I would have voted in favor of the motion to
suspend the rules to consider Senator Baucus's amendment to repeal the
form 1099 reporting requirement. This provision imposes an onerous
compliance requirement on businesses of all sizes, and Congress should
act quickly to remove that burden and allow businesses to direct their
time, energy, and resources to growing their businesses and creating
new jobs.
I would have voted against the motion to suspend the rules to
consider the Johanns amendment because it would have delegated
Congress's constitutionally delegated responsibility to make spending
decisions to the executive branch, also shifting accountability for
making difficult and unpopular spending cuts from Congress to the
President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, we have just invoked cloture on the food
safety bill, and I think it is important for the American people to
know what that means. That means we are going to spend another $1.4
billion of their money. No. 2, we are going to raise the cost of food
over the next year, and therefore we are at about $200 million to $300
million. We set $141 billion per year in unfunded mandates on the
States if we pass this bill, and we didn't fix the real problem with
food safety in this country, according to the Government Accountability
Office.
The other point I wish to make is that we went through this process
over the last week and a half with no amendments being allowed--no
amendments being allowed--which really violates the spirit of the
Senate. We could have finished this bill probably the week before
Thanksgiving had amendments been allowed.
The thing Washington gets wrong--it is not their intent, it is not
their well-meaning desire to fix problems that are in front of the
country--what Washington gets wrong is they think spending more money
and setting up a ton more regulations will fix problems, and it
doesn't. What it does is it raises costs. So we are going to see a lot
of small food manufacturers no longer making food. We are going to
raise the cost of our food and, by the way, see significant increases--
if I could have my charts on the floor, I would appreciate it--this
year in food, and we are going to see that extended, but we are not
going to fix the real issue.
Food safety is on the minds of everybody in this country because of
the recent 500 billion egg recall in this country. It is important to
know what went on there. It is important to note that the head of the
FDA, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, said had their rule been in existence, we
wouldn't have had that problem of salmonella with eggs. They
promulgated the finished rule around the time of the salmonella
infection and contamination on the eggs.
The problem with that is it took 10 years to develop that rule.
Nobody has asked why it took 10 years. Nobody had a hearing before we
passed this rule to say: How did we allow this to happen? But we took
10 years.
Senator Harkin has the right idea on food safety. He didn't get it
proper, that bill, because he couldn't get it through, but his idea is
that we need one food safety organization, not three, and we now have
three, and we are going to exacerbate that problem with the bill on
which we just deemed cloture.
The intent of my colleagues is great, but, as somebody trained in the
art of medicine, what I see in this bill is different from what you see
in this bill. You see, I see the problem is not lacking regulatory
authority; the problem is not holding the regulators in their expertise
and carrying out the authority they have. How do I know that for sure?
Because it wasn't a week after the recall on the eggs on the salmonella
scare that we had two FDA inspectors cross-contaminating farms in Iowa,
not even following their own regulations. This doesn't do anything for
that because the only thing that is going to fix the real problems with
food safety in this country is us holding the regulators accountable,
not giving them a whole bunch more regulations, and we haven't done
that. We have failed to do that.
It is not just in food safety. The reason we have a $1.3 trillion
deficit is because we don't hold agencies accountable. We are going to
have a debate in a minute on earmarks, and we are going to hear it put
forward that the only way we can control it is to direct money
ourselves. That is just absolutely an untruth. The way you can direct
where money gets spent in this country is having oversight on the
agencies and them knowing you are going to look every time on how they
are spending the money and make them justify it. But the fact is, we
are not looking because we have decided we will take ours and we will
put our $16 billion over here, and you, administration, can take your
money and put
[[Page S8232]]
your money where you want to put it. That is the real debate on
earmarks. There is nothing in our oath that says anything about our
obligation to our State to bring money back to it. And the hidden
little secret on earmarks is that they are used as much as a political
tool as they are to claim ``I am doing something good for my State.''
Motions to Suspend
I ask unanimous consent to move to suspend the rules for the
consideration of amendment No. 4696 and amendment No. 4697.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I wish to
ask the Senator from Oklahoma if he could explain the nature of his
unanimous consent request. I may not object, but I just didn't
understand it.
Mr. COBURN. To the Senator from Illinois, I am just bringing these
up. I have to bring them up either in the morning or this evening for
votes in the morning, so I am just bringing them up to be available for
consideration under a suspension of the rules.
Mr. DURBIN. So it is my understanding the votes will still be
tomorrow on the two issues the Senator has pending?
Mr. COBURN. Yes, they will.
Mr. DURBIN. I do not object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motions to suspend are pending rather than
the amendments themselves. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Oklahoma has the floor.
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I just want to show my colleagues the
difference. One of the motions we will vote on on suspending the rules
tomorrow is, here is S. 510, 280 pages of new rules and new
regulations. Here is the alternative, which is one-sixth of that. This
one costs $1.4 billion in direct costs, $400 billion in food increased
costs, and $141 million in mandatory new spending, mandates to the
States. This one does none of that.
What does this bill do? This bill uses common sense to say what
really controls our food safety. Our food safety is controlled by
market forces more than anything. And if you look at our history on
foodborne contamination, we are by far the safest in the world, and our
rates have been coming down since 1996. Over the last 14 years, our
rates have come down in terms of foodborne illnesses.
I am not fighting against food safety; I am fighting for common
sense. What we see in the bill we are going to vote on versus the
alternative which I am going to offer is one builds and grows the
government, one raises the cost of government, and ultimately we will
be taxed to pay for that. One raises the price of food and one puts
unfunded mandates on the States.
I am saying that we can accomplish exactly the same goal as my
chairman, the Senator from Iowa, would like to accomplish without 280
pages of new rules and regulations. So what do we do? We require the
FDA and the USDA to immediately establish a comprehensive plan to share
their data. They have agreements to share data, but they don't share
the data, so we force them to do that. We require a strategic plan for
updating their health information technology systems, which the
Government Accountability Office for the last 5 years has been saying
is their No. 1 problem. We require the FDA to submit a plan to
expeditiously approve new food safety technologies and more effectively
communicate those technologies to the industry and consumers. We
leverage the free market existing food safety activities by allowing
the FDA to accredit third-party inspectors, and we provide unlimited
new authority without imposing new costs or additional regulatory
burdens. These new authorities intend to better leverage the free
markets and focus resources on preventing foodborne illness and
contamination. They include emergency access to records, clarifying the
HACCP authority relating to high-risk foods, and allowing the FDA to
develop strategic international relationships.
What will this bill do? It will fix the real problem: ineffective
government, ineffective bureaucracies. What we are going to do when we
pass the food safety bill that is on the floor is we are going to grow
the government. We are going to create more barriers. We are going to
raise the cost, and we are still going to have foodborne illnesses.
So I will end with that and move over to earmarks. I know I have
several colleagues who wish to speak about it. I am not going to spend
a long time on it. We have debated it and debated it. The fact is that
this country did just fine for the first 200 years without the first
earmark. And when anybody in the Senate in the first 200 years in this
country tried the earmark, they got shouted down in this body because
they were told their responsibility was to the country as a whole, not
to the privileged, well-connected, well-knowing few who helped them
come up here.
We have a problem, and the problem isn't earmarks; the problem is the
confidence of the American people. They see the conflicts of interest
associated with earmarks. It is not wrong to want to help your State.
It is not wrong to go through an authorizing process where your
colleagues can actually see it. It is wrong to hide something in a bill
that benefits you and the well-heeled few without it being shown in
light to the American people.
If we are to solve the major problems that are in front of this
country over the next 2 or 3 years--and they are the largest we have
ever seen, they are the biggest problems we have ever seen in this
country--we have to restore the confidence of the American people.
Utilization of an earmark is not our prerogative; it is our pleasure.
We claim a power that we have in fact created. We do direct where the
money goes. But we should never do it with a conflict of interest that
benefits just those we represent from our States or just those who help
us become Senators. All we have to do is look at campaign contributions
and earmarks, and there is a stinky little secret associated with that:
the correlation is close to one. That is not something this body should
embrace, tolerate, or stand for.
The American people expect us to be transparent, aboveboard, doing
the best, right thing for the country as a whole. The real process is
that the Appropriations Committee ignores authorizing committees; $380
billion a year in discretionary funds are appropriated every year that
are unauthorized. With that rebuff of the authorizing committees, they
also put in any earmarks they want or that any other Member wants. It
is time that stops. It is time we re-earn the trust of the American
people.
With that, I yield to my colleague, the Senator from Arizona.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona is recognized.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Coburn. I also express my
appreciation to Senator McCaskill and Senator Udall for joining in this
very important amendment. As the Senator from Oklahoma mentioned, this
issue has been debated many times on the floor of the Senate. There
have been efforts to repeal certain most egregious earmarks. A ``bridge
to nowhere'' in Alaska was one of those that became more famous than
others.
I have to say to my colleagues that I have seen with my own eyes--and
I say this with great regret--the influence of money and contributions
in the shaping of legislation. I have seen that come in the form of
earmarks. One of the individuals I admired a great deal, a former
Member of the House of Representatives, now resides in Federal prison
because of earmarking. Another Member of Congress recently got out of
prison. It was earmarking. We just saw that the former majority leader
of the U.S. House of Representatives was convicted in court in Texas,
and earmarking played a major role. The system of rewards for campaign
contributions was an important factor in that conviction.
So for many years I have been coming to this floor to express my
frustration with this corrupt practice. It has been a lonely fight and
hasn't won me many friends in this body. I understand that. But I also
want to point out that my criticisms have not been directed just from
the other side of the aisle. Earmarking is a bipartisan disease, and it
requires a bipartisan cure. After so many years in the trenches to
eliminate this practice, I am pleased the American people are demanding
that they stop this practice.
As my colleagues know, earlier this month the Senate Republican
caucus unanimously adopted a nonbinding resolution to put into place a
2-year earmark moratorium. I applaud my fellow
[[Page S8233]]
Republicans in the Senate for joining our Republican colleagues in the
House in sending a message to the American people that we heard them
loud and clear in the election on November 2 that we will get spending
under control and we will start by eliminating the corrupt practice of
earmarking.
Mr. President, I have had a lot of communications and relations with
and even attended tea party rallies across my State. There is very
little doubt that a real revolt is going on out there. I can't call it
a revolution because I don't know how long it is going to last. I don't
know how it is going to be channeled. I don't know exactly where this
movement will go. But I do know it involved millions of Americans who
had never been involved in the political process before because of
their anger and frustration over our practices here, and they believe
earmarking is a corrupt practice. They believe their tax dollars should
not be earmarked in the middle of the night, without any authorization,
without hearings.
The Senator from Oklahoma just pointed out $380 billion in earmarks.
Some of those earmarks are worthy. If they are worthy, then they should
be authorized. So what has happened? What we have seen in the last 30
years or so is an incredible shift from the hands of many to the
decisions of a few. We don't do authorization bills anymore. We don't
do an authorization bill for foreign operations. We don't do an
authorization bill for all of these other functions of government for
which there are requirements because, what do we do? We stuff them all
into the appropriations bills. Then the members of the Appropriations
Committee make decisions that are far-reaching in their consequences,
with incredibly billions of dollars, without the authorizing committees
carrying out their proper role of examination, scrutiny, and approval.
The way the system is supposed to work--and did for a couple hundred
years--is that projects, programs, whatever they are, are authorized,
and then the appropriators appropriate the certain dollars they feel
necessary to make this authorization most effective and efficient. So
we don't authorize anymore. We only appropriate. That is wrong. That
really puts so much power in the hands of a very few Members of this
body and, inevitably, it leads to corruption--inevitably.
The Heritage Foundation wrote a report I urge my colleagues to read.
It is entitled ``Why Earmarks Matter.'' The first point they make is
this:
They invite corruption. Congress does have a proper role in
determining the rules, eligibility and benefit criteria for
federal grant programs. However, allowing lawmakers to select
exactly who receives government grants invites corruption.
Instead of entering a competitive application process within
a federal agency, grant-seekers now often have to hire a
lobbyist to win the earmark auction. Encouraged by lobbyists
who saw a growth industry in the making, local governments
have become hooked on the earmark process for funding
improvement projects.
There are small towns in my State that feel obligated to hire a
lobbyist to get an earmark here through the Appropriations Committee.
They should not have to do that. They should not be spending thousands
and thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for a lobbyist to come
here to get an earmark. They should have their desires and their needs
and their requirements considered on an equal basis with everybody
else's, not only in their State but in this country. But now they
believe the only way they will get their pork or their project done is
through the hiring of a lobbyist.
The Heritage Foundation goes on:
They encourage spending. While there may not be a causal
relationship between the two, the number of earmarks approved
each year tracks closely with growth in federal spending.
Then the Heritage Foundation says:
They distort priorities. Many earmarks do not add new
spending by themselves, but instead redirect funds already
slated to be spent through competitive grant programs or by
states into specific projects favored by an individual
member. So, for example, if a member of the Nevada delegation
succeeded in getting a $2 million earmark to build a bicycle
trail in Elko in 2005, then that $2 million would be taken
out of the $254 million allocated to the Nevada Department of
Transportation for that year. So if Nevada had wanted to
spend that money fixing a highway in rapidly expanding Las
Vegas, thanks to the earmark, they would now be out of luck.
So what we do is deprive the Governors and the legislators from
setting the priorities they feel are the priorities for their States.
And all too often, the earmark is not what the State or the local
citizenry or town or county needs as their priorities because they are
decided with the influence of lobbyists in Washington. I say, with all
due respect to the appropriators, they don't know the needs of my State
like I know the needs of my State, and not nearly as much as the mayor,
the city council, the Governor, and the legislature. Let them make the
decision where these moneys should be spent, and not on a bike path
instead of improving a highway.
Mr. President, I could go on and on. I come down here year after year
and look at the porkbarrel projects and earmarks, and we discuss the
ones that are the most egregious and then I am amused and entertained
by Members who come down and defend many of these absolutely unneeded
and unnecessary projects. I will not go into many of my favorites at
this time. I know my colleagues are waiting to speak.
I ask my colleagues to understand the voice of the people of this
country. I just read today that more seats were gained by the
Republican Party than in any election since 1938. Since 1938, there has
not been such a political upheaval in this country. That is not because
our constituents have now fallen in love with Republicans. That is not
the case. The message is that all of our constituents are tired of the
way both Republicans and Democrats conduct their business in
Washington, frivolously and outrageously spending their hard-earned tax
dollars. They believe we are not doing right by them, that we are not
careful stewards of their tax dollars, that we are engaging in
practices that need to stop which has disconnected us from the American
people. We need to connect again with the American people.
I am going to hear the arguments that it is only a few dollars, not
much money, and we don't trust the Federal Government to do it. I have
heard all of those arguments year after year. I have watched year after
year the earmarks go up and up. I have seen the corruption. Senator
Dorgan and I had hearings in the Indian Affairs Committee about a guy
named Jack Abramoff. We saw firsthand the effects of unscrupulous
lobbyists and the millions and millions of dollars they got in earmarks
as a result of their corrupt influence. There are many Jack Abramoffs
in this town; they just haven't gotten famous.
Mr. President, again, I thank Senators Coburn, Udall, McCaskill, and
others who support this amendment. As I said 20-some years ago, we will
keep coming back and back and back to the floor of this body until we
clean up this practice and restore the confidence and faith of the
American people--the people who send us here to do their work, not our
work.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I rise this evening----
Mr. COBURN. Would the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?
Mr. INOUYE. I yield.
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after the
chairman of the Appropriations Committee speaks we alternate back and
forth. We are planning to turn in a bunch of our time--to yield back a
bunch of our time--and I would suggest that Senator Udall be given 8
minutes after the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and
following him Senator LeMieux, with an intervening statement from the
other side, followed by Senator McCaskill for 10 and Senator Inhofe for
15 minutes, alternating back and forth.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. COBURN. I thank the chairman for yielding.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I rise this evening to speak against the
Coburn amendment which imposes a moratorium on congressional
initiatives for the next 3 years.
Mr. President, our Founding Fathers bestowed upon the Congress the
authority to ensure that the people's representatives would make the
final decision upon spending, not the executive
[[Page S8234]]
branch. They had lived under a monarchy in which the power of the purse
resided with the Executive, and they had no desire to repeat that
experience. In short, our Founding Fathers did not want another King,
they wanted a President but a President whose power would be held
firmly in check by a coequal Congress.
None of us should be surprised that President Obama is expressing his
opposition to earmarks. A ban on earmarks would serve to strengthen the
executive branch of government by empowering the President to make
decisions that the Constitution wisely places in the hands of Congress.
This is the exact same reason Presidents Clinton and Bush sought the
line-item veto during their Presidencies.
As I have said many times before, the people of Hawaii did not elect
me to serve as a rubberstamp for any administration. Handing over the
power of the purse to the executive branch would turn the Constitution
on its head.
So I must admit, Mr. President, I find it puzzling that some
Republicans would want to grant all authority over spending to any
President but especially a Democratic President. Make no mistake, that
is exactly what this amendment will do.
We have heard numerous misleading arguments from opponents of
earmarks, but several in particular seem to be repeated again and
again. I cannot allow the misinformation or misrepresentation to go
unanswered.
First and foremost, opponents falsely claim that earmarks contribute
to the deficit. Perhaps the strongest proponent of this argument is the
junior Senator from South Carolina who stated the following in a
fundraising letter he sent out in October:
I am not willing to bankrupt my country for earmarks.
It is a fine statement. This is but one example of the many times
over the past year in which so-called deficit hawks have falsely
asserted that earmarks are the root cause of our Nation's fiscal
problems. This is especially galling when you consider that many of
these same individuals supported the policies that led directly to the
current budget crisis.
In the interest of setting the record straight, and as chairman of
the Senate Appropriations Committee, I feel compelled to point out to
my colleagues that eliminating earmarks would do virtually nothing to
balance the Federal budget. This is a cynical attempt to distract the
American people from the serious challenges before us and nothing more.
The numbers clearly demonstrate just how misleading the arguments of
earmark opponents are. According to the most recent Congressional
Budget Office estimate, Federal spending for fiscal year 2010 totals
about $3.5 trillion, and revenues for that year total about $2.2
trillion, resulting in a deficit of $1.3 trillion. Congressional
initiatives make up less than \1/2\ of 1 percent of the total Federal
spending. If we accept this proposal to eliminate all earmarks and take
the second necessary step of actually applying the savings to deficit
reduction, the total deficit for the United States would still be $1.3
trillion.
If opponents were serious about eliminating the deficit and paying
down the national debt, they would offer a specific plan for cutting
the $1.2 trillion in spending or for increasing revenues. Instead, they
choose to mislead the American people by implying that we can balance
the budget by cutting a tiny fraction of Federal spending.
Calling for the elimination of congressional earmarks is a legitimate
philosophical position to take, although not one with which I agree.
However, to suggest that earmarks are the cause of our deficit of $1.3
trillion is irresponsible.
Adding to this misleading rhetoric are allegations that
congressionally directed spending is an inherently corrupt practice
that is hidden from the public eye. That allegation is simply false. We
all recognize that the practices of the previous majorities led to
significant abuses of the system. However, since we recaptured the
Congress in 2006, Democrats have instituted a series of major reforms
that now hold Members accountable and have made earmarking more
transparent than ever. That is the law.
I would ask any of my colleagues: Can anyone name another part of the
Federal budget--and let me remind my colleagues we are talking about
less than \1/2\ of 1 percent of the budget--that is subject to more
scrutiny than earmarks?
The Appropriations Committee requires every Member to post his or her
request 30 days prior to the committee's consideration of the relevant
appropriations bill. The committee requires every Member to submit a
letter that he or she does not have a pecuniary interest in the
projects for which the funding is being requested. The committee's Web
site provides a link to every single Member's request. These are all
reforms that were implemented when the Democrats took control of the
Senate and the House.
To pretend and suggest that earmarks are being doled out in a
business-as-usual manner reflective of previous Congresses is flatout
misleading. Reforms have been made that allow great projects that
provide benefits to the Nation and to individual States and districts
to be funded while ensuring that the abuses of the early and mid-2000s
are a thing of the past. There can be no doubt that we have entered an
age of real transparency when it comes to earmarks.
Moreover, each and every earmark that comes before the Senate today
is listed in the committee report so that all Members are able to
identify them and know exactly what they are voting on. Of course, the
Internet makes all earmark requests available to the press and to the
public. The Internet also makes all campaign contributions over $200
equally accessible. So where is the so-called corruption? Where are the
secret deals? I would like to know about them.
Further, I remind my colleagues that in 2010, funding for earmarks is
less than half of the $32 billion in earmarks provided in 2006.
I have spent considerable time refuting the misinformation being
spread by those who are opposed to congressionally directed spending
initiatives. If I may, I would like to highlight a few examples of why
the practice of earmarking is indeed necessary.
As chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I have
witnessed the benefits of earmarks firsthand over many years. I have
previously discussed the benefits to our troops and our Nation of the
Predator drone--the pilotless drone that is able to pick up enemy sites
without endangering our troops. I have pointed to the new bandages that
quickly stop bleeding in serious wounds that have saved countless lives
of our soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. President, these
are earmarks.
Let me now turn to other areas of the Federal budget. I will start by
reminding my colleagues that one of the most successful programs for
low-income women and infants started out as an earmark. In the 1969
Agriculture appropriations bill, Congress earmarked funds for a new
program called WIC to provide critical nutrition to low-income women,
infants, and children.
Over the past 41 years, this program has provided nutritional
assistance to over 150 million women, infants, and children, making a
critical contribution to the health of the Nation. This vital program
has provided much needed assistance to millions, and it came into
existence as an earmark.
In 1969 and 1970, Congress earmarked $25 million for a children's
hospital in Washington, DC, despite the objections to and the veto by
the President. That funding resulted in what we know today as the
Children's National Medical Center. Children's Hospital has become a
national and international leader in neonatal and pediatric care,
providing health care to over 5 million children since its doors
opened. Again, I note this was an idea--an earmark--directed by
Congress and vetoed by the President.
In 1987, Congress earmarked funds at the request of Senator Domenici
for mapping the human gene. This project became known as the human
genome project. This research has led to completely new strategies for
disease prevention and treatment, including the discoveries of dramatic
new methods of identifying and treating breast, ovarian, and colon
cancers. No one disputes that these advances will save many lives, and
it all began with an earmark.
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This was a project that was not supported by unelected agency
bureaucrats in the executive branch, and thus would never have made it
into the budget without congressional intervention.
In the early 1990s, I pursued, along with my dear friend, the Senator
from Alaska, the late Ted Stevens, an earmark through NOAA to fund a
tsunami warning system. This earmark came under attack in the late
1990s and early 2000 by a few Members as wasteful spending. Of course,
in this particular case, as in many others, time and events would prove
this to be a wise investment of tax dollars.
We all remember that on December 26, 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami
occurred, killing over 200,000 people in 14 countries. Two years later,
the Republican Congress passed and the Bush administration signed into
law the Tsunami Warning and Education Act. This legislation was based
on the foundation established by the 14 years of earmarking for the
Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program.
A congressional initiative that began in 1998 at the behest of
Senator Gregg would lead to the creation of the National Domestic
Preparedness Consortium, which is now the principal vehicle through
which FEMA identifies, develops, tests, and delivers training to State
and local emergency responders. The program began as a series of
earmarks for several nationally recognized organizations which focused
on counterterrorism preparedness and response needs of the Nation's
Federal, State, and local emergency first responders and emergency
management agencies. As a result of the training and expertise
providing by NDPC members, thousands of New York City first responders
had been through counterterrorism preparedness and response training at
the centers prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
There are thousands of other earmarks just like these that, over the
years, have made a difference in the lives of Americans, projects the
bureaucrats in downtown Washington never hear about because they do not
communicate with constituents on a regular basis, programs such as the
Predator and the Human Genome Project that are so innovative that an
unelected, unaccountable government official is reluctant to include
them in the budget out of fear that he or she will be accused of
wasting taxpayer funds on an unproven technology.
Other Members will be speaking against this amendment and will have
examples of why simply stopping all earmarking is wrong and detrimental
for government and our citizens. The Founding Fathers bestowed upon
Congress the responsibility to determine how our taxes should be spent,
rather than leaving those decisions to unelected bureaucrats in the
administration, and obviously with good reason. Certainly we can all
agree that Members of Congress who return home nearly every weekend to
meet with constituents have a much better understanding of what is
needed in our cities and towns across rural America than do the
bureaucrats sitting in Washington.
For all these reasons, I will continue to defend the right of
Congress to direct spending to worthy projects as long as I am
privileged to serve in the Senate and call attention to those who
distort the facts of the subject.
I urge my colleagues to vote against the Coburn amendment. We have
already taken significant and forceful steps to ensure the abuses of
the past are not repeated. This amendment ignores those steps while at
the same time deprives the Congress of essential constitutional
prerogatives. It does nothing to decrease the debt and is designed to
give political cover to those who lack a serious commitment to deficit
reduction.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. UDALL OF Colorado. Mr. President, I will take a few minutes, if I
can, to speak in favor of the bipartisan earmark moratorium amendment
before us. This is the amendment that Senator Coburn, Senator
McCaskill, Senator McCain, and I have introduced.
I wish to specifically start by talking about what I have heard in
Colorado. There is an old saying--I know it is widespread; you hear it
all over our great country--that if you are in a hole, you stop
digging. That sums up what I have heard from many Coloradans who are
justifiably worried about our Federal deficit. I believe we cannot
climb out of that hole we have dug for ourselves unless each one of us
here in the Senate--and, frankly, across the Rotunda in the U.S. House
of Representatives--takes ownership of this problem and agrees to pitch
in to solve it.
I have long pushed for the President to have line-item veto
authority, and we ought to restate pay-as-you-go spending which served
us so well in the 1990s, among other measures. But we can't just
continue to talk about these reforms; we need to take action. That is
why I have joined a chorus, a growing chorus of legislators on both
sides of the aisle to end the practice known as earmarking.
I know many people will argue that earmarking does not significantly
contribute to the budget deficit. But, with all due respect, I disagree
with that argument, and I believe it misses the point. It is true that
earmarks are a tiny fraction of money we spend each year--less than 1
percent of the Federal budget or $16 billion last year, according to
numerous watchdogs. It is also true that some earmarks may be
worthwhile, even necessary projects. But because earmarks are inserted
in spending bills by lawmakers, thereby circumventing the budget
process, they are both a symptom and a source of the spending problem
in Congress and are emblematic of how poor our budgeting habits have
become. Members of Congress have become so focused on protecting their
pet projects that they feel pressure to not speak up about Congress's
spending habits. In fact, I suggest that earmarks lure Members into
habitually voting for increased spending so as not to jeopardize their
own earmarks.
In addition, from a practical standpoint, I believe Congress spends
its limited time and resources shuffling earmarks when we could be
conducting much needed oversight, making our Federal Government leaner
and more responsive to the people. This diversion means earmarks are
partly to blame for the lack of oversight necessary to ensure that the
remaining 99 percent of the Federal budget is well spent. If we had
extra money to spend, that would be one thing, but we are truly in a
deep fiscal hole, and we need to stop digging. Earmarks are only a
small part of why we are in that spending hole, but banning them now,
in my view, will be a small but important step toward fiscal
discipline.
Ultimately, I believe that all Colorado families, and Americans, are
the ones who will be hurt if we do not begin to reform spending and
control our debt. We will have many more opportunities to address our
crushing deficits in the coming months and years, but banning earmarks
is the right place to begin down this path of fiscal responsibility.
I urge my colleagues to support this important small step to fiscal
responsibility. It is a bipartisan amendment. I look forward to the
vote tomorrow, and I know many of my colleagues are going to join me
and this bipartisan group of Senators who believe it is now time to
reform this earmarking projects.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa. Just a moment.
The understanding was to alternate between those who are opposed and
those who are supporting.
The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask if I could have 15 minutes.
Mr. INOUYE. I yield 15 minutes.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Hawaii for
yielding me 15 minutes of our time.
I challenge anyone--even my friend from Colorado who just spoke, a
new Member of this body--I challenge anyone to identify any other part
of the Federal budget that is more transparent, more open, more subject
to scrutiny, more accessible to the media and the public than
congressionally directed funding or earmarks. Every Member who requests
an earmark in an appropriations bill must post his or her request
online at least 30 days before the Appropriations Committee considers
the bill. Every Member who requests an earmark must certify that he or
she does not have a pecuniary interest in those requests. Each and
every
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earmark that comes before the Senate is listed in the committee report
for all to see, and if you log on to the committee Web site, you can
find a link to every single request any Member has made. It is all out
there in the open.
I remind people of this because one of the misleading arguments
against congressionally directed earmarks is that they are supposedly
done in secret, hidden from the public eye. At one time, that may have
been true to some extent but today, thanks to reforms that were
implemented by Democrats, by a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate
in 2007, there is more sunshine on congressionally directed spending
than on any other spending decisions in the entire Federal Government.
There is more sunshine on congressionally directed funding than on
any other Federal spending in the entire Federal Government. Why do I
emphasize that? Let's consider how the executive branch--the
President--directs spending to States and local communities. Make no
mistake about it, the executive branch earmarks funding, but there is
very little sunshine when it comes to those decisions. They are very
hidden.
When a Federal agency announces that a facility should be built in
Nebraska rather than Texas or Alabama or whether a defense contract
should go to a company in Colorado or Arizona rather than Rhode Island
or Ohio, there may be no accountability to voters for those decisions.
The employees of Federal agencies are civil servants. They are good
people, but they are not elected. They do not meet with constituents.
They cannot possibly understand the needs of local communities as well
as those who stand for election.
Most important, no one knows when those civil servants get a phone
call from their bosses, higher up, telling them, for example, to
jiggle, to rig a grant competition for political reasons. Does anyone
doubt that is done? Every single year it is done.
Frankly, Senators and Congressmen do it. What Senator worth his or
her salt or any Member of the House fighting for their constituency
doesn't call up the Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Housing
and Urban Development, Secretary of Defense? We all do it. We all do it
to protect our own constituents. And if you happen to be on the right
committee--for public works, maybe, or for education or for the myriad
of things the Federal Government does--those Secretaries tend to pay
attention, and they especially pay attention if they are in the same
party you are or they may pay attention if they want your vote for
something else.
An example: A few years ago during the Bush administration, I asked
the inspector general to examine a program in the Employment and
Training Administration called High-Growth Jobs Initiative. It sounds
great, doesn't it--High-Growth Jobs Initiative. This was an executive
branch program. The IG reported that, of the 157 grants awarded under
the program, 134 had been awarded without any competition.
Noncompetitive awards accounted for 87 percent of the total funding,
and the inspector general found many serious lapses in the award
process. For example, a failure to explain why there was no
competition; the lack of any documentation regarding potential
conflicts of interest.
So was it any surprise when we found out that some of these
noncompetitive grants went to organizations that supported President
Bush's reelection campaign or was this just a coincidence? Let's not be
naive. This happens. I may have pointed out President Bush because it
happened to be an investigation I asked for. It happens under
Democratic Presidents too.
If this amendment passes, if the Coburn amendment passes, there will
still be earmarks. There will be earmarks, but only the executive
branch will be able to do it. They will have the power to designate
where those earmarks go, and that flies in the face of the clear intent
of the Constitution. Article 1 of the Constitution expressly gives the
power of the purse to the Congress. We are all familiar with the
principle of checks and balances.
One way the Constitution puts a check on the executive branch is by
giving this branch, the legislative branch, the final say on spending.
I have said so many times that the President of the United States
cannot spend one dime that we do not authorize him to, and we can take
it all back if we want. Oh, they have set up an executive branch but
only because Congress gives that power to the President.
The Constitution gives Congress the final say on spending. I realize
the Constitution may seem like ancient history to some people. I am
sorry to say it may seem like ancient history to some Members of this
body. So let me paint a picture of a world where only the executive
branch can decide to direct Federal spending. Let me paint this
picture. Let's imagine the Coburn amendment passes and a future
President wants Congress to pass a bill. It can be a Democratic
President or it can be a Republican President. It does not matter.
The vote on the bill is going to be close. The President calls
Senator Jones and says: Senator, I would like your support on this
bill. Senator Jones says: I am sorry, Mr. President, I have thought
hard about it. I am not going to be able to support that bill.
Oh, there is probably a little pause on the phone, and the President
says: You know, Senator, I know that replacing that bridge in your
capital city is real important to you. It would be a real shame if your
State missed out when the executive branch is setting its priorities
for next year. Now, Senator Jones, would you like to reconsider how you
are going to vote on that bill?
That is executive branch earmarking. Again, as I said, it makes no
difference whether the President is a Republican or Democrat. It is a
matter of respecting the Constitution and preserving the constitutional
prerogatives of the legislative branch. Some people say: Well, Harkin,
why do you fight so hard for these earmarks? As Senator Udall says, it
is \1/2\ percent of total Federal spending. I fight so hard because the
Constitution gives that power to the legislative branch. We should
protect the constitutional prerogatives of the legislative branch, not
just willy-nilly give them to any President of the United States, which
is what the Coburn amendment does.
Read the amendment carefully. See how it defines ``earmarks.'' It
applies only to ``a provision or report language included primarily at
the request of a Senator or Member of the House of Representatives.''
There is nothing in the Coburn amendment to prohibit any earmarks by
the President. They can earmark anything, and they will because they
always do. They will earmark, and guess what. Senators--Senators--will
start going to the President and saying: Mr. President, can you,
please, I need that bridge. I need that flood control project. We just
had a disaster, Mr. President.
Well, Senator, I will think about it when we set our priorities next
year. Well, now, Senator, how are you going to vote on my priorities?
Do you want to be in that position? I do not want to be in that
position. I want to be in the position where Congress fulfills its
Constitutional prerogative. So under the Coburn amendment, if Congress
requests, it is an earmark; if the President requests, it is not an
earmark. How does that make sense? How does that make sense?
Well, here is an example again of the double standard. The fiscal
year 2011 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education appropriations
bill that the Senate will probably vote on in December includes funding
for national education groups such as Teach for America, Reading is
Fundamental, Reach Out and Read, the National Writing Project, and many
others. These are successful, proven programs with significant
bipartisan support.
But under the definition of the Coburn amendment, all are earmarks
and none would be funded. They would all be eliminated. But under the
terms of the Coburn amendment, if the President wanted to fund those
programs, no problem. They would not be considered earmarks at all and
they could receive funding, as long as the President wanted to do it.
Again, I ask, what sense does that make?
My State of Iowa had terrible floods in 2008--a lot of damage.
Louisiana and Texas have had destructive hurricanes on a regular basis.
In the wake of these disasters, typically the Corps of Engineers comes
up with a plan to mitigate the damage from future possible disasters.
For example, the Corps is now
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working to improve a flood prevention program in Cedar Rapids, IA,
which was devastated by the worst flood in the history of Iowa in 2008.
If the Coburn amendment passes, whatever the Corps plan comes up with
will be final, even if local officials strongly disagree with that.
Under the terms of the Coburn amendment, a strong case may be made that
any legislative action by Members of Congress to modify the Corps plan
would be an earmark--an earmark. Representing my constituents, it would
take an extraordinary two-thirds vote in the Senate to change the Corps
of Engineers plan--not a majority, not 60 percent but two-thirds of the
Senate. Again, I again ask you, what sense does that make? How are we
fighting for our constituents when the President decides it; we cannot.
We have local constituents who say: We have better ideas and plans on
what to do. The Corps says no. Well, that is the end of it, unless the
President tells the Corps what to do. I do not want to lose my ability
to intervene effectively for local or State officials when this kind of
issue arises, and I do not think Senators from Texas, Louisiana or any
other State want to lose their ability to stand for the best interests
of their State. I cannot imagine any Senator who would forfeit this
important constitutional prerogative, give up, give up your
constitutional prerogative to the President, so you would not be able
to fight for your State and your constituents. Is that what you are
going to tell them?
Proponents of this amendment say: Forget about article 1 of the
Constitution. We have to do whatever it takes to cut the deficit. The
only way to do that is to ban earmarks.
This is grossly misleading. Yes, we do need to cut the deficit.
Banning earmarks will not do anything to help.
Congressionally funded mandates, as I said, are less than one-half of
1 percent of total Federal spending. As one observer noted: The best
way to lose weight is to shave. My friend, Senator Udall, said reforms
circumvent the budget process. No, it does not. Nothing we do on
appropriations at all circumvents the budget process.
He said: When you are in a hole, stop digging. Well, sure, we can
stop digging. We can stop the earmarks here. We are just going to shift
them to the President. That is all. That is all that is going to
happen.
Lastly, I had to laugh when I read this quote from Representative
Michele Bachmann in the House. This was in Congressional Quarterly
Today. She is founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, one of several
lawmakers who have pledged not to seek earmarks. But she told the
Minneapolis Star Tribune she thinks the word ``earmark'' should not
apply to infrastructure projects. ``I don't believe that building roads
and bridges and interchanges should be considered an earmark.''
Oh, so she gets to decide what is an earmark. She wants no earmarks
except for what she wants as an earmark. That is it. Congressman Mica
of Florida said: ``There are some bills that require some legislative
language to direct the funds, otherwise you're just writing a blank
check to the administration.'' That is a Republican Congressman from
Florida.
Congressionally directed spending is congressionally directed
spending whether it is a highway or a hospital, whether it is in
Wyoming or Tennessee. I, for one, am proud of the directed funding that
I have been able to secure on behalf of my State and for other States
that I have worked hard for or other entities such as Teach for
America. It does not necessarily help Iowa but it helps a lot of
States.
These fundings have created jobs, trained nurses, built roads, and,
as the distinguished chairman said, one time I remember when Pete
Domenici put that money in there for the Human Genome Project, it led
to the establishment of the Human Genome Institute and a complete
mapping and sequencing of the human gene. Had that money not been
directed, it never would have happened, I say to my chairman.
So a lot of times Congressmen, Senators have good ideas on what to do
to direct some of this funding. I think we ought to be proud of that.
As long as the sunshine is on it, it is out in the open, everybody
knows where it goes, everybody knows who has requested it, to me, this
is the constitutional prerogative of the Senate and the House, and we
should not--should not--give it up to any President.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent, to get an order so we know what
we are doing after we hear from the Senator from Florida, Mr. LeMieux,
and then the words from the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Lautenberg,
that I then would get my 15 minutes from this side to run consecutively
from the 15 minutes I would get from the distinguished Senator from
Hawaii.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Florida.
Mr. LeMIEUX. Before I start my remarks, I ask unanimous consent to be
added as a cosponsor to Senator Coburn's amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, it occurs to me that when I address this
august Chamber tonight--and I follow my colleagues who have served here
for a very long time and with distinction; I am new to this Chamber--I
have a different perspective.
But my comments tonight are not meant without respect because I have
a great deal of respect for those who have spoken in opposition to this
amendment, but I have a differing view. I am new to the Senate, as you
know. I came here last year, in 2009. I did not have a specific
position on earmarks before I got here. I knew that there was a problem
with Federal spending. But I had not yet made a decision as to whether
I would support earmarks.
When you hear about a project for your home State, whether it be for
a hospital or for a road or for a bridge or for a sewage treatment
plant--and for the folks who are at home who are watching this, if they
have not yet found Monday Night Football on their television and may
have stumbled across C-SPAN, these projects all sound very good, and a
lot of them are very good.
I hear from a lot of people in my State wanting me to support a
particular project via an earmark. An earmark is a Member-driven
appropriation, where a Member of Congress says: I want this specific
spending for my home State or for an issue or project that I think is
important.
They come to me and they say: We need this project. We need this
funding. We need this research. It all sounds good. I think in a world
where our financial house was more in order, there could be a role for
those earmarks, if transparent.
But I cannot support them in the situation we are in. The chairman of
the Appropriations Committee, just a few moments ago in his speech,
raised the point that this Congress in last year's budget was $1.3
trillion in deficit.
It is our constitutional responsibility to appropriate. That is what
article 1 says. The power of the purse lies in the Congress. Congress
has not been doing a very good job--$1.3 trillion in debt, in deficit,
in just 1 year. It took 200 years for this country to go $1 trillion in
debt. We just incurred a $1.3 trillion deficit.
Those who are in favor of continuing earmarks and who are against
this prohibition say: Look, it is just a small percentage; it is $16
billion. In light of a $1.3 trillion deficit, what is a mere $16
billion? Frankly, that argument doesn't ring true with the people of
Florida. When one talks to a Floridian and says there is $16 billion in
spending, that is still a lot of money to regular people.
But it is more than that. When I came here and started to vote on
appropriations bills, in the first few months of 2009, I noticed those
appropriations bills were 5, 10, 15, 20 percent more than the last
year's appropriations bills. No wonder the country is so far in debt,
nearly $14 trillion. It is estimated that by the end of the decade, it
will be 26. We spend $200 billion a year on interest now, the debt
service on programs we couldn't afford in the past. It will be $900
billion by the end of the decade because the appropriations bills go up
and up and up.
I believe, sitting here, with all due respect, and listening to my
colleagues, part of the reason those appropriations bills get support
is because there are Member projects in them. You can't vote against
the bill once your hometown project is in it. It is the engine
[[Page S8238]]
that drives the train. So it is not losing weight by shaving, as my
distinguished colleague analogized. It is, as Senator McCain said, the
gateway drug. It enables the spending we can't afford.
We have to solve these spending problems. The future is in jeopardy.
We can't afford $900 billion in interest payments. What will this
Congress do when the interest payment alone is $900 billion? This is
not 20 years from now. This is not 40 years from now. This is 10
years--really 9 years from now. I contend this government will not
function with a $900 billion interest payment.
Maybe this is emblematic, but I believe it is more than that. If we
can't do the easy things, how is this Congress going to do the hard
things? How is it going to cap spending? How is it going to cut
spending?
The President announced today a moratorium on pay increases for
Federal employees. That is a good start. But there are 270,000 new
Federal employees since this administration took over, according to the
Cato Institute, 270,000 new employees with average salaries of about
$70,000 a year. We can't nibble around the edges, not with a $1.3
trillion deficit this year alone, and not with $26 trillion staring us
in the face by the end of the decade.
The future of the country is at stake. Our Founding Fathers gave this
Congress the power of the purse, but with that power comes a
responsibility not to run the country into the ground with deficit
spending.
This is an important step. It is a first step. It needs to be done.
What needs to be tackled next is much more difficult--the across-the-
board spending cuts that will have to come, tackling Social Security,
tackling Medicare and making sure those programs are there for our
seniors now but are reformed in a way that will save them for the
future and not run this country into a financial hole it can't get out
of. My friend from Colorado, who was courageous to talk on this issue
tonight, said: When you are in a hole, stop digging. This is the first
step. If we can't take this easy step, I don't know how in the world
Congress is going to take the harder steps that must happen if we are
going to save this country.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, it is my understanding that I have 15
minutes to make my presentation. I thank Senator Inouye for enabling
that.
I oppose the Coburn motion to place a 3-year moratorium on earmarks.
I thank Chairman Inouye for his leadership on this issue. It seems, as
has been said over the years, that we have heard this song before. If
Members really believe these programs are responsible for our terrible
fiscal condition, they are wrong. It is make believe. The deficit we
are wrestling with had its biggest boost during the Bush years when 8
years of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us brought a $2 trillion
increase in the national debt. But we never hear about that.
Earmarks are a vital investment for our communities. They help build
levees, dams that protect coastal towns from flooding. Look at the
water shortages across the country. A lot of these are helped by
earmarks, by congressionally designated programs. We earmark funds for
waste and drinking water problems, very serious problems. These are not
frivolous ideas. They help police departments, first responders,
hospital upgrades, and the purchase of new equipment. Look at
transportation. It is falling apart. These earmarks, congressionally
designated, build roads, bridges, and rail stations that strengthen our
transportation infrastructure. One wouldn't know any of this by
listening to the critics of designated funding from those sent here by
our States to represent them with a special knowledge of their needs
and requirements. These critics have dismissed earmarks as an example
of wasteful, runaway government spending. We hear them called dirty
programs, et cetera, mocking them.
To these critics I say: I would like you to see what happened in
Jersey City, NJ, where an earmark enabled the Metropolitan Family
Health Clinic to now screen women for breast cancer for the first time,
thanks to new equipment funded by an earmark. Or tell it to the
millions of people whose livelihoods are connected to the ports of New
York and New Jersey. Earmarks permit us to deepen the harbor at our
port so ever larger vessels can bring the cargo to our ports and help
stimulate the economy. That means 230,000 jobs and is a critical
component of our region's economy. Local communities rely upon this
kind of funding in times like these when so many State and community
budgets are stretched thin and revenues shrink and even philanthropy is
drying up all over the country.
The fact is, hundreds of communities and nonprofit organizations
across the country are expecting to receive congressionally earmarked
funds for the unfinished fiscal 2011 appropriations bills. The Coburn
amendment would pull the rug from underneath these communities,
snatching away the Federal support they are counting on us to deliver.
One has only to see the reception of an organization such as Campus
Kitchen, a nonprofit project that recently launched in Atlantic City to
feed needy families who flock there over Thanksgiving and at the same
time help unemployed workers upgrade their job skills. Campus Kitchen
is counting on $100,000 worth of congressionally directed funds. If
this amendment passes, they will close their doors, and those who need
the food and can only get it there will go hungry.
What about the resources needed to protect our residents from
terrorism. Hudson County sits just across the river from New York City,
right in the heart of one of the most vulnerable areas in the country
for terrorism.
This year's Homeland Security appropriations bill includes funding
for an emergency operations center so that the county can prepare and
respond to emergencies and potential terrorist threats. One of the most
serious problems we saw on 9/11, when 3,000 people perished that day,
was because the police departments could not talk to one another,
because first responders could not talk to one another, because firemen
could not talk to their leadership and died that day. Thousands more
are now sick from the dust and the atmosphere that was created as a
result of the demolition resulting from the attack. This amendment
would eliminate funding for this vital program. Yet those who criticize
these projects are the very same ones who were all too happy to provide
earmarks when they were in charge.
I don't want to fool the public. Let them understand what is going on
here. We are seeing raw politics at work. Earmarks make up just one-
half of 1 percent of the Homeland Security bill for fiscal year 2011
that was passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee. I was proud to
author that bill as the chairman of the subcommittee, building on the
work begun by our recently departed Senator Byrd.
Compare this to the fiscal year 2006 bill which was written when our
colleagues on the other side controlled the Congress. Under Republican
control, earmarks in the Homeland Security appropriations bill were 60
percent higher than the fiscal year 2011 bill.
In addition to funding emergency operations centers, the Homeland
Security bill funds important research that helps our Nation discover
new ways to prevent potential terrorist attacks and respond when they
happen. Earmarks also help to strengthen the Coast Guard whose mission
and value continually increase. It is not wasteful spending. Over the
years many people have recognized the value of these programs.
Democrats and Republicans alike proudly included earmarks for
worthwhile projects in their States. In fact, earmarks flourished when
the Republicans controlled the Senate. In fiscal year 2006, total
funding for earmarks was twice the amount included in last year's bills
when Democrats were in charge, and it was Democrats who implemented the
ethics reforms and earmark transparency that has significantly improved
congressionally designated programs.
Since becoming Appropriations Committee chairman, Senator Inouye has
been a great leader in this office. He has instituted important changes
that have made the earmarking process stronger and more transparent. It
was an essential factor in our review. At Chairman Inouye's request,
Senators are now required to post their earmark requests on the
Internet in advance so
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the public can see them. He has brought this entire process further
into the light of day, allowing constituents, the news media, and
outside watchdog organizations to track how taxpayer dollars are spent.
But a funny thing has occurred. Some of our Republican friends who
have used earmarks to serve their constituents for years suddenly have
had a change of heart and jumped on the anti-earmark bandwagon. In
fact, the Republican leader, who in the past brought home hundreds of
millions of dollars to his State of Kentucky, has done an about-face in
calling for an earmark ban.
The hypocrisy of these new earmark critics is outrageous. Here is
what the critics never mention: Earmarks do not add one cent to the
deficit, not a single cent. We heard that from our leader here, from
Senator Inouye.
When Congress includes an earmark in an agency's budget, it is not
increasing that budget. It is specifying how a portion of the funding
should be spent based on their understanding of their State's needs.
After hearing many requests all of us do, they can evaluate which ones
they see as the most important. It is a voice of reason and
understanding.
The fact is the Founding Fathers gave Congress the power of the purse
when they wrote the Constitution. Directing funding to specific
projects is one way Congress exercises this power.
If we eliminate earmarks, we will transfer our funding powers to the
President, and that is not the way the Constitution is structured. It
undermines the authority the Founders placed on us two centuries ago.
The people who work in the Federal agencies here in Washington
include some of America's best and brightest, but they simply do not
necessarily know the needs of our States as well as we do. This debate
over earmarks is nothing more than a distraction from the pressing
issues on which we should be focused.
I call on my colleagues to consider the facts and not the rhetoric.
Do not be misled. Do not allow the truth to be mangled, misconstrued,
and misrepresented. Earmarks help create jobs and help millions of
Americans through their lives, especially now in this stressful period
where we have people who are afraid they are going to lose their jobs
after many years of loyal support or, still, lose their homes because
they cannot afford the mortgages they were sold.
So I urge my colleagues to oppose the Coburn amendment because it
will not solve a single problem we face. I hope we will use our time
for more constructive debate. I would suggest that everybody who talks
in opposition to earmarks, congressionally designated programs, say now
on this floor--take an oath that you will in your own State announce
the fact you are opposing the earmarks that were proposed for it. Tell
the people back home that you are going to deny their right to accept
these things because it is dirty, because it is unclean, and they say
that it goes only to those who contribute large sums of money.
If you want to look at those who contribute large sums of money, look
at that side of the aisle. They dwarf what we do in our debate about
where funding goes and where funding stops.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. INHOFE. Let me ask if I could extend my time by 5 minutes. Is
there objection?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
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