[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 44 (Wednesday, March 30, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1967-S1970]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         OFFERING OF AMENDMENTS

  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I am coming to the floor because we have 
not seen much action on the floor on this bill. We are hung up over the 
right of Senators to offer amendments, but the Senate works best when 
we have a free and open process of offering amendments. One of the 
amendments in particular that I was going to offer on the blending 
requirements for ethanol I now plan, at this time, not to offer. I have 
made that known to the majority leader but have still not been able to 
get an agreement to offer other amendments.
  Our country is in a pickle. I have $20 billion worth of cuts that the 
vast majority of the Members of the Senate would vote for. Yet I can't 
get those amendments up because people don't want to take the difficult 
votes. I understand that. Senator Reid has been more than gracious in 
working with me. I understand his problem, but the problems are a lot 
bigger than the problems of the Senate. The problems facing our country 
are tremendous. They are not only tremendous, they are also urgent.
  Here we have a small business bill, where we are trying to create 
jobs, and one of the ways we create jobs is making sure we are not 
sending money out of here that doesn't create jobs. So I come to the 
floor somewhat worried about our process and not critical of Senator 
Reid in any way. I wouldn't have his job. Being the majority leader is 
the toughest job in Washington. But it is somewhat worrisome, and yet 
amusing, that we will not take a vote to eliminate unemployment 
payments to millionaires. That is amazing to me. We can save $20 
million starting tomorrow by not cutting unemployment checks to people 
who make $1 million a year through their investments but who are 
unemployed. I mean, $20 million. We could do that.
  We could put a garnishee on the $1 billion owed by Senate employees 
and Federal employees in back taxes, where it has already been 
adjudicated they haven't paid, but we can't get an amendment up to do 
that. Isn't that strange?
  Here we are, running $1.67 trillion deficit, and yet we can't go 
about solving our problems $1 billion at a time to help get rid of 
that. We can't have the right to offer an amendment to that effect.
  How about the fact the GAO, 3 weeks ago, issued a report on 
duplication, and, according to my calculations, there is at least $100 
billion in savings in that. I have an amendment that would save us $5 
billion over the rest of this year on the easiest part of the 
elimination to carry out. I can't get that amendment up. We can't vote 
on it. We can't do the things that will start getting us out of our 
problems. Even though I have withdrawn the amendment on ethanol that is 
so controversial, I still can't get my amendments called up.
  Covered bridges--$8.5 million. It is a good thing to do, if we had 
the money. But we shouldn't be spending $8.5 million right now on old 
bridges that are of historical significance, because we are borrowing 
the money to do it.
  I have an amendment to identify and disclose every Federal program, 
one of the things the GAO report said would be very helpful to them to 
have--if every department would give, every year, a list of all their 
programs. There is only one government agency that does that today, and 
it is the Department of Education. The rest of them don't know all 
their programs. Isn't that interesting; they do not even know their 
programs? Yet we can't get an amendment up that will help us solve some 
of the problems with duplication and inefficiencies.
  So I come to the floor tonight to ask: What is the deal? This is the 
Senate. We are expected to make tough votes. If Senators want to 
continue to pay millionaires unemployment, then vote against the 
amendment, but don't keep that amendment from coming to the floor that 
would save us $20 million. If you think Federal employees shouldn't pay 
their back taxes, then vote against it, but we can collect $1 billion--
$1 billion that we wouldn't have to borrow. Vote against it, but don't 
block the amendments from coming up.
  I have an amendment that I understand is controversial. I don't think 
there is a role anymore for us in funding the Corporation for Public 
Broadcasting to the tune of $\1/2\ billion a year. You may not like it, 
you may not agree with me but vote against it. Don't say you can't have 
the amendment. Because what goes around comes around, and we don't want 
to get into the dysfunctional state where because somebody can't have 
an amendment today, somebody else isn't going to have an amendment 
later. That is what we are going to degrade into, and it will not be 
because we would not want to vote on them. So what happens is the 
Senate gets paralyzed.
  The unfortunate thing is that I have $20 billion worth of cuts we can 
make. Yet we are not allowed, under Senate tradition, to offer an 
amendment, even though, on the most controversial one I have, I have 
said: OK. I won't offer it at this time. Still, I can't offer an 
amendment. To me, I think that tells the American people what they 
already know; that we don't care about what the real problems are, we 
care about the politics.
  We no longer have the pleasure or the time to worry about political 
outcomes. We need to be worrying about what the outcome is of the 
future of

[[Page S1968]]

this country. When a sitting Senator can't offer $20 billion worth of 
cuts in a $3.7 trillion budget on a bill that is related to business--
and this $20 billion will be money we will not be competing with 
against them for the capital to create jobs in this country--it strikes 
me that we have lost balance; that we need to reright the ship.
  Everybody in this body wants to vote on the 1099. We know it was a 
mistake. I think there will be very few Senators who will vote against 
that. There is a controversial amendment--the Inhofe amendment--but 
this is the Senate. Let's vote on it. Whatever way it turns out, let's 
let the body do its work, rather than not allowing the body to work. So 
my hat is off to Senator Reid. He has been cooperative. But we can't 
run the Senate this way, saying people don't have a right to offer 
amendments.
  I will never forget when I first came to the Senate 7 years ago and I 
had an objection to an amendment that was offered, another Senator from 
the other party came and said: You can't do that. This is the 
Senate. We debate amendments. We vote on amendments.

  Somebody on the other side of the aisle defended the process of the 
Senate. The fact is, we are in tough times. We are going to be taking a 
lot of tough votes--if not now, a year from now. But they are going to 
get tougher every year we take them because the writing is on the wall 
for America in terms of its spending and its debt.
  If you look at what has happened to interest rates on our T bonds the 
last 2 days in a row, T bonds are strong, interest rates are going up. 
What does that mean to us? Our historical average interest rate on our 
debt is about 6.07 percent. We paid 1.97 percent last year. For every 1 
percent that rises, that is $140 billion additional that does not help 
the first American. We ought to be about getting rid of things that we 
can get rid of that will survive OK on their own, that are not 
duplicating things we should be duplicating. The Senator from Alaska 
and I put in an amendment on the FAA bill getting rid of old earmarks, 
money that is parked. It will save us $1 billion. The fact is, we can 
do this if we will stand up and do the job we were hired to do. The job 
we were hired to do is to make the difficult decisions. My hope is that 
things will break loose and we will revert to the best of the tradition 
of the Senate, which is having real debate about real amendments, 
taking the tough votes, and defending them on principle. Take the 
political calculus out of it. It is not popular for me, in Oklahoma, to 
eliminate the blenders' credit on ethanol. We have a lot of corn 
farmers. But the fact is the very people who get this--British 
Petroleum, Valero, ExxonMobil, Chevron--do not want it. I have a letter 
from them saying they don't want the blenders' credit. That is who gets 
it. Only 16 percent of the ethanol is produced by farmer cooperative 
ethanol plants; 84 percent is not. It is produced by the big boys and 
they are saying they don't want it.
  Why don't we save $5 billion between now and the end of the year, 
because we are going to borrow 47 percent of it? Why would we do that 
to our children? So I relented on that. We will have a vote on it. I 
will have to have a 67-vote threshold to do it but we are going to vote 
on it. Senator Reid knows we are eventually going to vote on it. We 
ought to be about being grown up and going back to the best traditions 
of the Senate and taking the tough votes. Our country is in tough 
times. Families are having tough times. Why would we want to duck 
making tough decisions? The only reason we would want to do that is 
political. It is so somebody can gain a political advantage rather than 
do the best, right thing for our country.
  I call on my colleagues, whoever it is who is objecting to 
commonsense amendments, who does not want to fulfill their obligation 
to their own constituents by casting a vote, to look at what you are 
doing to the Senate. There is no reason we should get into this 
conflict--because I can't offer amendments I am eventually not going to 
let other people offer amendments? Why would we go to the childish 
resolution of this rather than the adult resolution? The adult 
resolution is to give people their votes, vote on them and go down the 
road and if you don't agree with them, defend it; if you do agree with 
it, vote for it. But don't duck on taking a position. That is belying 
the oath you have being a Senator.
  Those who are objecting to cutting $20 billion out of this 
government, out of a $3.6 trillion budget, wake up. You are going to be 
cutting this money in the next 2 years, whether you cut it today or 
tomorrow. It is coming. Let's do it now, because every day we do it 
earlier saves us money. But it also preserves and enhances the future 
for our kids.
  I will not harp on this other than to say I am disappointed because 
we had started this year out pretty well in terms of going to 
amendments. The leaders, both leaders, have worked hard to make sure 
that could happen. Now that we have tough votes people want to revert 
to childish behavior and not honor the reason they were sent here in 
the first place. Not voting on something is the chicken's way out. It 
is the coward's way out. Voting on something and defending your vote is 
honorable. You do not have to agree with me but don't say you cannot 
have an amendment and you cannot have a vote, because I assure you I 
know the parliamentary procedures to get a vote on every amendment I 
will ever offer. We will get votes on these amendments. The question 
is, if you are trying to duck, not having to vote on an amendment 
because you don't like the political choices, you are going to get a 
vote anyway, so why degrade the Senate into childish behavior because 
you want to duck a vote? We are not going to duck these votes. We are 
going to have them. I promise you, we are going to have every one of 
these votes eventually. I am talking over a short period of time. Or we 
are not going to do anything. We are going to live up to the tradition 
of the Senate or we are not going to function at all.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to engage in a 
colloquy with the Senator from Oklahoma.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. I have a couple of questions for the Senator from 
Oklahoma. My understanding is that he seeks to have an amendment 
considered that would eliminate the subsidies which are $4 billion?
  Mr. COBURN. We do not seek to eliminate any subsidies. We seek to 
eliminate a blenders' credit that the very people who receive the 
credit do not want, and it is $4.9 billion between now and the end of 
the year.
  Mr. McCAIN. It is $4.9 billion and the recipients themselves want it 
reversed?
  Mr. COBURN. Yes. I have a letter from the refiners. I actually have 
it here and I will introduce it to the Record if we need to, that says 
they don't want it, they don't need it.
  Mr. McCAIN. So the recipients of this government largesse would want 
it eliminated. What is the basis, if I may ask, of the opposition to 
the amendment?
  Mr. COBURN. I think I can clarify it. The opposition is we are doing 
it abruptly rather than over a period of time and not allowing people 
to plan for the elimination of this. Those are the arguments I hear. 
The fact is, this is just one of a series of things we do for ethanol.
  I am not going after ethanol. I am going after saving money for our 
country that is being spent. We have a mandate that says the country 
has to buy a specific amount of ethanol. Before we had that mandate, a 
blenders' credit was a smart thing to do if you believed that ethanol 
was a way to solve our problems. But the fact is, we now have a mandate 
that they have to produce it. It is going to 15 billion gallons a year. 
I can give you the exact numbers in terms of what we produce. But 
because we have a blenders' credit, last year we produced 397 million 
gallons more and we exported it to Europe. So the American people 
subsidized $200 million worth of ethanol consumption in Europe through 
these blenders' credits.

[[Page S1969]]

  We are not going after all the other loans, the loan programs, all 
the other energy grants and everything else. We are not doing any of 
that. All we are saying is here is a simple thing that is no longer 
needed; 86 percent of the ethanol production is by majors, not small 
ethanol plants. They do not want this money, they do not need this 
money to blend ethanol because there is already a mandate there 
requiring it. I have already withdrawn--I have agreed that we will not 
vote this amendment until after cloture and I will file a motion to 
suspend the rules and then we will have a 67-vote threshold which we 
will not win. But the American people are going to lose. The American 
people are going to lose $4.9 billion.
  Mr. McCAIN. If the argument is that maybe we ought to eliminate this 
but not abruptly, wasn't the message of last November 2 that they 
wanted a lot of things done abruptly?
  Mr. COBURN. I think the message of the American people is they want 
the spending cut. They want it cut now. They want us to quit spending 
money we don't have on things we don't need, and this is a ideal 
program--just like the other portion of it. I have $20 billion worth of 
amendments. None of them can come to the floor because there is an 
objection to having votes on $20 billion worth of cuts.
  Mr. McCAIN. That was my understanding, that as part of the beginning 
of the new session of Congress, the 112th Congress, there were going to 
be amendments allowed; that there would be kind of a different 
environment where it would not be bringing up a bill, filing cloture 
and shutting out Members from offering amendments. That is apparently 
not the case?
  Mr. COBURN. I think it is the case, but to be fair, there is 
bipartisan opposition to this amendment. I understand it. It is from 
the corn-producing States. They are worried that this might have an 
effect on ethanol production and corn processors. Actually, CBO 
estimates that the maximum impact of this amendment on the price of 
corn will be less than 35 cents a bushel. Corn is near $7--record high.
  Mr. McCAIN. Near an all-time high.
  Mr. COBURN. Yes, so this might have an effect of 35 cents on the 
price. But let me carry that out for a minute. Corn is the primary feed 
source for cattle, hogs, chickens--the whole range of the things we 
eat. So what we have done, through just this portion of it, is we are 
raising the cost because 40 percent of our corn production this next 
year is going to go for ethanol.
  It is not just that we have raised the tax because we have given $5 
billion or $6 billion annually in credit to the blenders; we have also 
raised the costs for everybody else's food. But do you know what we 
have also done? We have increased the cost of our Food Stamp Program 
because we have raised the cost of food. So we are paying for it twice. 
It is not just the fact--it comes back to the point that is this is not 
an attack on the ethanol industry. I actually met with the ethanol 
industry yesterday in my office. I think Americans ought to be able to 
buy whatever they want, E-85 or 10 percent--I think they ought to be 
able to buy it. But what they should know is when you go buy a gallon 
of gasoline today, accounting for all the credits and incentives and 
everything else in there, there is $1.78 in your taxes in every gallon 
that you buy. So when you buy blended ethanol gasoline, you are not 
paying $3.50, you are paying $5.35.
  Mr. McCAIN. I understand this amendment has been objected to by some 
``conservative organizations'' that want us not to increase taxes in 
any way, shape, or form, something that has characterized the voting 
record of the Senator from Oklahoma and myself. But now you are being 
attacked for being a tax increaser?
  Mr. COBURN. I would not worry about that so much.
  Mr. McCAIN. What is the argument?
  Mr. COBURN. The argument is they do not agree with the blenders' 
credit, but if in fact you take it away you need to give somebody else 
a tax break. I think the American people know, for us to get out of the 
problems we are in we are going to have to do a lot on both sides of 
the balance sheet. One of the ways--we have $1.3 trillion worth of tax 
expenditures in this country. A large portion of them--not a large 
portion, a significant amount of money is in programs such as this that 
are directing people to do things that they are going to be doing 
anyway and we are paying them to do it. So it is a tax expenditure. It 
is cutting spending is what it is. It is a true credit, so they get it. 
The more they blend, the more money we pay.
  So if they blend beyond what the mandate is, they cannot sell it. 
Then we ship it to Europe or wherever else will consume it, but yet we 
are subsidizing. First of all, it hurts our own energy usage because we 
are taking a lot of oil and a lot of water to do it. But we are helping 
the Europeans with our own subsidy in terms of shipping this over.
  So I do not care about the debate outside of the Senate. What I care 
about is that the American people ought to have a shot at saving $4.9 
billion through the rest of this year.
  Mr. McCAIN. And it seems to me that this issue has some complexities 
to it----
  Mr. COBURN. It does.
  Mr. McCAIN. That the average citizen would not understand. But I 
think they understand $4.9 billion and that those savings would accrue 
to them, along with the reduction in inflation and the costs of the 
products of corn.
  So it is a very interesting situation. So when I go back home and 
some of my constituents are skeptical about whether we are really 
serious about taking on some of the sacred cows--and certainly ethanol 
has been a sacred cow around here--maybe there is some justification 
for their skepticism.
  Mr. COBURN. Well, since we started the blenders' credit, the American 
people have spent $32 billion on it. And it is fine for us to look for 
alternatives, and I think it is great. I would like for them to convert 
corn to butanol instead of ethanol because it burns a whole lot better, 
it is more efficient, it does not pollute as much, it burns like 
regular gasoline, and it is not water-soluble, so it can be transported 
like other petroleum products. I would like to see them go there, and I 
think they are eventually going to go there.
  But the fact is, markets work, and we are playing with markets--and 
the reason we have such an objection to this is because we probably 
have the votes to win it and they know it. So I have pulled it out.
  But, more importantly, there is another $15 billion of amendments I 
would like to offer that are common sense, that a good portion of the 
American would absolutely agree with, and we do not have people who 
want to have a vote on that. They do not want to stand up and do their 
jobs.
  I will read into the Record a letter from Charles Drevna, president 
of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association.

       Senator Coburn. NPRA, the National Petrochemical and 
     Refiners Association, writes today in support of your efforts 
     to end the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit through both 
     amendment number 220 to S. 493, the SBIR reauthorization 
     bill, and the bill you recently introduced with Senator 
     Cardin, S. 520. The Association has a long history of 
     opposing mandates and subsidies and this opposition extends 
     to the VEETC. The VEETC is an unnecessary subsidy, 
     particularly given the federal Renewable Fuels Standards 
     requirement to bring 36 billion gallons of biofuel into the 
     fuel supply by 2022.

  So here are the people who are receiving the credit saying they do 
not want it.
  Mr. McCAIN. Well, I think the Senator has made a strong point. I just 
wanted to have a clarification, and I hope that perhaps we can also 
start addressing the issue of sugar subsidies, which I think is 
probably one of the really great ripoffs in America today, again, 
causing the cost of any confection or anything that contains sugar to 
rise, and then, of course, the American consumers pay for it, and 
preventing sugar from other countries from coming into this country at 
a lower price.
  Mr. COBURN. You know, the real issue is that we have spent 3 days 
this week not doing anything on this bill. We have borrowed $12 
billion. I have amendments, if we could pass, that would save us $20 
billion.
  Every day that we don't take hard votes is a day we don't fulfill the 
responsibility given to us, the privilege given to us as U.S. Senators. 
No matter what your philosophy, the fact is we ought to be taking hard 
votes, and people who don't want to do that, their constituency ought 
to ask the question: Why are you there? Why are you afraid to defend 
what you believe to be

[[Page S1970]]

right rather than disallow somebody else to make a point and a position 
with an amendment?
  The Senator didn't hear my speech prior to coming in----
  Mr. McCAIN. I was watching.
  Mr. COBURN. These are the worst tendencies of the Senate. I want us 
to go back to the best tradition. I am not always going to be right, 
and I certainly hardly ever win, but the fact is, the issues in front 
of this country are so great that we don't have time for this anymore. 
And every day we do not work on this small business job-creation bill 
because people do not want to take tough votes is a day we are not 
fulfilling the obligations we have as Senators.
  Mr. McCAIN. But if you believe in our great Nation and the democracy 
and the representative government that it is, over time, you will 
succeed. It requires tenacity. I do not think the Senator will be 
elected Mr. Congeniality this year again, either, but I appreciate his 
efforts on this issue and many others. I look forward to continuing to 
join him in the fight and following his leadership.
  I yield the floor.

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