[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 95 (Wednesday, June 29, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4181-S4201]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      PROVIDING FOR EXPEDITED CONSIDERATION OF CERTAIN NOMINATIONS

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 116, which the clerk will 
report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       A resolution (S. Res. 116), to provide for expedited Senate 
     consideration of certain nominations subject to advice and 
     consent.

  Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

[[Page S4182]]

  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


              Remembering Senator Richard Brevard Russell

  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I rise for a moment--and I will be joined 
shortly by my colleague, the senior Senator from Georgia--to pay 
tribute to a great American who passed this Earth 40 years ago on 
January 21, 1971. His name was Richard Brevard Russell, Jr. He was one 
of the handful of Senators everybody and every historian rates as the 
finest of the Senate. He was a great Georgian with an interesting past.
  He was elected to the State legislature in the 1920s and rose to be 
the speaker of the house of representatives in the State of Georgia. He 
then went on to be Governor of the State of Georgia from 1931 to 1932. 
During that time, he served as Governor at the same time another 
gentleman was serving as the Governor of New York, Franklin Delano 
Roosevelt. They became good friends.
  President Roosevelt even became a constituent of Senator Russell's 
because, with his affliction, the springs of Warm Springs, GA, were 
where then-Governor, soon-to-be-President Roosevelt would come to heal 
and get better and thank his good friend, Richard Russell, for his 
support. It was that relationship that brought Richard Russell to be 
one of the first Governors in the United States to come out and endorse 
Franklin Roosevelt to be President of the United States.
  In his career in the Senate, Richard Russell served with Franklin 
Delano Roosevelt. He served with Harry Truman--8 years side by side 
with Harry Truman. He served under President Dwight Eisenhower. He 
served under President John F. Kennedy. He served under Lyndon Johnson. 
In fact, in just a minute I will explain why he made Lyndon Johnson who 
he was. He finally passed away under Richard Nixon's first term as 
President of the United States. But back for a second to Richard 
Russell and Lyndon Baines Johnson.
  Lyndon Baines Johnson became the President of the Senate and later 
became the President of the United States. In his own works, Lyndon 
Johnson credits Richard Russell with being the strength of his career 
as a Senator. In fact, so great was Senator Russell's control of the 
Senate that in a quote by Powell Moore, his press secretary, a few 
years ago, he said: When President Kennedy gave advice to newly elected 
Senators, he said the following:

       If you want to learn how to be an effective Senator, you 
     should start by going to see Dick Russell.

  That is exactly what Lyndon Johnson did.
  So good a friend of Lyndon Johnson was Richard Russell that every 
Sunday night in their careers in the Senate, Lady Bird would have 
Richard Russell over at the house to cook him dinner just to thank him 
for what he had done the week before for Lyndon Johnson. As Lyndon 
Johnson grew in power, he kept beside him Richard Brevard Russell of 
Georgia.
  Richard Brevard Russell of Georgia is the greatest Senator who ever 
served from our State. Senator Chambliss and I will be the first to 
tell you, we are way back in the back of the line when you compare our 
record to his record. He was a great Georgian. He was a great American.
  When I was elected to the Senate and was asked to pick an office, I 
said: The only requirement I have is it be in the Russell Senate Office 
Building because I wanted to serve in the same building, named after 
the greatest Senator ever to serve from our State.
  So on the 40th anniversary of his passing, I want to leave this 
Senate floor by reminding America we had a great Senator from Georgia 
whose lasting contribution to our country is indelible in the hearts 
and minds of our people: Richard Brevard Russell, a great American, a 
great Georgian, and one to whom all of us owe a great deal of thanks 
and a great deal of credit.
  I yield back my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Isakson and appreciate 
his eloquent remarks on one of the great American public leaders, 
Richard Russell. I am honored to be in the Russell Office Building 
myself.


                             Budget Crisis

  Mr. President, I am deeply concerned about where we stand now with 
the budget crisis we are facing. We have no budget action that has been 
undertaken in the Senate. We have not done our bit. The House has 
passed a budget, a 10-year budget that is historic. It is honest. It 
will actually change the debt trajectory of America. But the Senate has 
not done anything.
  Secret meetings are occurring. We are not told what is going on in 
those meetings. The deficit is clearly the largest issue facing our 
country at this time, I believe. Except for matters of war, it is the 
biggest issue, clearly, in the 14 years I have been here.
  We are on an unsustainable path. It cannot continue. Every expert has 
told us that. But we remain not focused in any public way on how to 
solve it. Just meetings and leaks are occurring. Admiral Mullen, 
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said that the debt is the greatest threat 
to our national security. So this extraordinary fiscal crisis is facing 
us. Yet this Chamber has done nothing about it. We are borrowing 40 
cents of every $1 we spend. In 3 months our gross debt will be larger 
than our entire economy. Our Nation's staggering debt is already 
costing millions of jobs because when you have a debt that is 
equivalent to 90 percent of your economy, it reduces growth by 1 
percent. We are now at roughly 95 percent, going to 100 percent before 
the year is out.
  More than 22 million Americans are out of work. A majority of 
Americans now fear the next generation will be worse off than theirs 
has been. In just 5 weeks, we are told we will reach the firm deadline 
on our Nation's $14.3 trillion debt. Then major reductions occur unless 
action is taken.
  The Republican House has set forth their plan, but the Democratic 
Senate has not done so. This year the Senate has not produced a budget, 
has not met to work on a budget, and has not passed a budget in 791 
days. We have not had a budget in 791 days. During that time we have 
increased the debt of the United States by $3.2 trillion and have spent 
over $7 trillion.
  On the Senate floor we spend week after week on bills that have 
little or nothing to do with this increasing danger to our economy. We 
name courthouses and post offices, but we do not deal with the 
gathering financial storm. Now the Senate is scheduled to take a week 
off, to go into recess to celebrate the Fourth of July, Independence 
Day. We unite as a nation on that day to celebrate our heritage and way 
of life--a way that has been earned through hard work, responsibility, 
and sacrifice.
  Before the Memorial Day recess, I presented to the majority leader a 
letter signed by 46 Republican Senators stating that we should not 
recess for the Memorial Day week but remain to do the work we need to 
do on our budget and financial plan.
  Rather than face a vote on adjournment the leader opted for a series 
of pro forma sessions where the Senate gavels in, only to gavel out 
moments later, having once again not done any work. Rather than vote on 
it, that is what they decided to do.
  So I renew today my request in that letter. We also owe the American 
people an honest, open debate on the debt limit, the debt ceiling we 
have. This should not be talks behind closed doors by only a few 
Senators, Congressmen, maybe the Speaker, the Vice President, or now 
maybe the President. Are they the ones to decides this? Aren't we all 
elected to do so?
  Then should we be faced with a situation in which this small group, 
having produced what they consider the perfect deal, brings it to the 
Congress and demands, in a period of panic and fear, that it must be 
passed without any significant amendment or the country would have a 
crisis?
  We have seen that before. Is that good business? I do not think so.
  It is astonishing that we are so close now to the deadline we have 
been given without the Nation's President, our Chief Executive, having 
set forth a proposal on what he thinks we should do and should be 
included in a debt limit bill. Shouldn't the President tell us

[[Page S4183]]

that? He presides over the executive branch. All of the Cabinet people 
work for him. He has a 500-person Office of Management and Budget. We 
have a small staff on the Budget Committee where I am ranking member. 
Shouldn't he be providing some leadership, like Governor Christie, 
Governor Cuomo, Governor Brown, Governor Bentley in Alabama? Shouldn't 
we expect that?
  The only concrete fiscal plan we have from the President is his 
February budget, which proved to be the emptiest promise of all, the 
most disappointing document. We were told by the President that his 
plan would not add more to the debt. In reality, it would grow the 
debt, if passed, by $13 trillion, doubling the entire debt of the 
United States again in the next 10 years. It would spend more than 
current spending projections. It would tax more and run up the debt 
more than current expected expenditures. It is an irresponsible budget.
  So it is this kind of rhetoric that makes those of us in the Senate 
who are working on these issues concerned. We would need to see what 
the proposal is and have time to evaluate it. So I am calling on the 
President and the Vice President to make public the proposals they 
discuss during these secret meetings, including the tax hikes they have 
proposed. If they believe in these tax hikes, let the American people 
see them. Let's count up what it really means and let's evaluate them. 
Maybe there will be enough votes to pass that. I doubt it. Let the 
Congressional Budget Office provide an estimate of what the spending 
alterations and the tax alterations will be. Let the Budget Committee 
meet to address the impact of these proposals. It is time to remove the 
blindfold.
  Since the election in November, the Congress, divided between a 
Democratic Senate and Republican House, has seen an increasing reliance 
on closed-door meetings to resolve our greatest public challenges. In 
so doing, I think Congress has once again ignored the public will. 
Ultimately, our challenges can only be solved through the Democratic 
process. Let's hold votes--dozens if necessary. Let's hold hearings. 
Let's have an open debate. Democracy may be messy. It may be 
contentious. But it is the best system we have and the only system that 
works.
  The House Republican budget cuts $6 trillion in Federal spending over 
the next 10 years--$6 trillion. Let's hold votes to see whether the 
Democratic Senate is willing to reduce the spending that much. If not 
$6 trillion, than what about $5 trillion or $4 trillion?
  The simple reality is that the American people expect us to reduce 
spending the way their cities, counties, and States are doing this very 
minute. They do not expect us to raise taxes to bail out Washington for 
reckless spending by raising taxes on the American people. Economic 
studies show again and again that spending cuts, not tax hikes, will 
result in greater growth and more successful debt reduction to make 
America competitive in the 21st century. We need a smaller, leaner, 
efficient government, not a heavy, more burdensome Tax Code.
  So let's have the debate. Let's have it out here in the open. And 
let's allow the American people to participate and help decide. But 
until we work on a budget, until we work on the debt limit, until we 
work on the people's business, we do not have a right to go home and 
adjourn with a looming deadline--supposedly August 2--by which 
decisions have to be made. I believe to do so would be to fail the 
public.
  This debt is the largest challenge of our generation. We have to meet 
that challenge. I don't believe it can be met by a small group of 
people meeting in secret. We need a national discussion about the 
threats we face. I have seen the studies in China, New Zealand. New 
Zealand had 22 years of deficits. They have had 16 years of surpluses 
since they made a national decision to get their finances in order, and 
the economy has grown far above the world average. That is what we need 
to be doing here. That is what our States, cities, and counties are 
doing.
  I appreciate the opportunity to share these remarks. We have to rise 
to the occasion and face the defining issue of our time and put our 
Nation on a path to growth and prosperity and job creation, not a path 
to decline.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.


                 remembering senator richard b. russell

  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the life and 
commitment of Senator Richard B. Russell to the State of Georgia and to 
our Nation.
  Senator Russell died on January 21, 1971, 40 years ago as of this 
past winter.
  Senator Russell devoted 50 years of his life to public service as a 
state legislator, as Governor of Georgia, and as U.S. Senator. I take 
great pride in recalling before this body the lasting imprint on the 
history of Georgia, the U.S. Senate, and our Nation that Senator 
Russell left behind. He was a natural-born leader who had the 
persuasive ability to unite men, a quality which aided in his rapid 
rise to positions of political power. He will be remembered as the most 
prominent of politicians of his time.
  He began service in public office early in his life, serving in the 
Georgia House of Representatives at the age of 24. That was in 1921. 
His composed demeanor and civil nature quickly led to his nomination 
for Speaker of the Georgia House a few years later. He was the youngest 
Speaker ever elected in the Georgia House. Under Russell's guidance, 
the State of Georgia saw drastic improvements in the organization of 
State government. He went on to win the largest majority in the State's 
history for the election of Governor in 1931. It was in the midst of 
our Nation's most devastating economic downturn, and he was only 33 
years old.
  Despite all this, he succeeded in guiding Georgia out of the Great 
Depression. Through his tremendous efforts to promote economic 
development, he was ultimately able to create a balanced budget for the 
State.
  His time in office is recognized as being one of the most significant 
eras in Georgia's history, creating economic relief for the State after 
only 18 months in office.
  The powerful economic impact left behind by Senator Russell is still 
felt in Georgia today through many of the Federal facilities he brought 
to our State, as well as through the piece of legislation closest to 
Senator Russell's heart, and to my own: The National School Lunch Act.
  He was sent to Washington by Georgians to serve in the U.S. Senate in 
1933, making him then the youngest member ever to serve in the Senate. 
Senator Russell came to be one of this body's most respected members 
ever. He was looked upon by his colleagues for his leadership, 
integrity, equality and intellect. His colleague from Mississippi, 
Senator John Stennis, was once approached by a tourist, who told him he 
would like to see the Senate and asked him how to go about it.
  At that moment, Stennis spotted Russell walking down the other end of 
the hall. Stennis told the tourist he could go to the Capitol to see 
the Senate Chamber, but if he really wanted to see the Senate, he 
should take a look at the man walking down the hall. ``He represents 
the living embodiment of United States Senate,'' Senator Stennis said.
  During his time in office, his powerful position as chairman of the 
Senate Armed Services Committee aptly rendered him the label of ``Mr. 
Defense,'' a role for which he will continue to be remembered. He was 
known as one of the Nation's leading experts on military and defense 
policy, acting as adviser to six Presidents, valued for his knowledge 
and judgment. He was called ``a great patriot who never failed to 
facilitate the United States when its security was an issue'' by 
President Nixon.
  In a dedication speech given on this very floor 15 years ago, Senator 
Sam Nunn recalled Senator Russell's ``strong belief in the independence 
and co-equal role of the Congress of the United States'' and his 
``insistence that he had not served under six Presidents, but rather 
served with six Presidents, a real difference.''
  Russell later served as this body's senior Senator, becoming 
President pro tempore of the Senate, putting him fourth in line to the 
succession of the Presidency. But beyond all of his accomplishments, 
what truly set Senator Russell apart from other men was his commitment 
to civility. He demonstrated his fair and conscientious nature on many 
occasions, most notably a he presided over the 1951 dismissal hearings 
of GEN Douglas McArthur, a

[[Page S4184]]

time in which his judicious handling of such a volatile event did much 
to diffuse an explosive situation. He effectively navigated the 
bipartisan barriers of the Senate through his unrelenting civility and 
trustworthiness, and, of course, his humor.
  Once, when he was in need of a tailor, he asked his good friend, 
then-President Johnson, for a recommendation. Johnson gave him one, so 
Russell sent his suits over to the man. When the bill arrived, he just 
stared at it, dumbfounded. ``No wonder this country is going to hell if 
the President is willing to spend this much just to fix his suits!'' he 
exclaimed.
  When I was first elected to the Senate in 2002, the Dean of the 
Senate at that time was Senator Robert Byrd, who sat right on the aisle 
across the way.
  I will never forget that the first day, as I was sworn in, I went 
over and introduced myself to Senator Byrd, who was so well respected 
by everybody on both sides of the aisle and is without question the 
greatest historian within the Senate that the Senate has ever had, and 
he looked up at me and said, ``You hold Senator Russell's seat.'' I 
said, ``Yes, sir. That's right.'' He said, ``My favorite Senator was 
Senator Richard Russell.''
  From then on, every time I would walk by Senator Byrd's seat when he 
was there, he would stop me and he would give me another anecdote about 
Senator Russell, about their close relationship, and about what a huge 
impact Senator Russell had on our Nation and on this institution during 
his 32 years of service.
  Senator Russell devoted his life to public service with only one 
desire: to be remembered as an honorable man. We can all agree that his 
legacy more than fulfills that objective. His name lives on in our own 
Russell Senate Office Building and throughout the State of Georgia, 
giving evidence to the amount of honor deservedly bestowed upon this 
great man. His leadership skills, his honest dealings, and his fairness 
to both sides in an argument created a remarkable representative for 
the people he served. He was an unfailing champion in Washington, and a 
revered statesman of Georgia for more than 38 years.
  The epitaph on his tombstone, at his home place in Winder, GA, is a 
simple carving: ``Richard B. Russell, Jr.--Senator from Georgia--1933-
1971.'' Mr. President, that says it all.
  There is only one Member of our body today who served with Senator 
Russell; that is, Senator Inouye. Senator Inouye has again, just like 
Senator Byrd, given me very many fond memories of Senator Russell.
  It is a pleasure to serve with Senator Inouye. I wish I had the 
opportunity to serve with Senator Russell because he truly was a great 
patriot, a great American, and a great champion for this institution.
  I believe all of us here today can learn from the life of one of the 
greatest Senators in this body's 200 year history.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Durbin). The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                          Montana Flood Heroes

  Mr. BAUCUS. John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach who has 
won more Division I NCAA championships than anyone else, once said, 
``Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.'' It 
takes teamwork to win 10 championships. I rise today to recognize the 
remarkable teamwork, championship level teamwork, that we are seeing 
back home in Montana during these floods.
  This is the third time I have come to the Senate floor to share 
stories about the remarkable actions taken by regular folks across 
Montana. Their teamwork is making a huge difference. John Wooden would 
have been proud to coach this team. This is a championship team. And we 
need this kind of teamwork. Flooding continues to damage property and 
disrupt lives across Montana. The President has issued a major disaster 
declaration. Warm weather threatens to unlock water stored in record 
levels of mountain snowpack. The whole time I was at home, I had never 
seen anything like this, so much snow, yet melting so quickly.
  The chart to my left is part of Wolf Point, MT. Wolf Point sits along 
the mighty Missouri River on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. 
Floodwaters hit hard and hit fast, forcing 40 families from their 
homes. Many are still unable to return.
  Darrin Falcon, pictured here, is the director of the Roads 
Department. He has used his expertise as an engineer to help his 
neighbors on projects of every scale. He constructed berms and dikes to 
prevent floodwaters from damaging more homes. He delivered sandbags to 
residents to protect major public infrastructure.
  In one instance, an elderly neighbor was stranded; 300 feet of 
roadway around his home was underwater. Falcon went right to work and 
helped build a new road so his neighbor could spend that night at home. 
Falcon's work ethic and willingness to help make him a real Montana 
hero and is something to observe.
  The Milk River has been dumping water into Glasgow for weeks. Floods 
have washed out roads and damaged bridges all across Valley County. 
County roads supervisor Rick Seiler and Wayne Waarvik have worked 
endless hours to keep roads open and residents safe after the Milk 
River burst its banks.
  In a crisis such as this, roads are lifelines. Roads mean access to a 
doctor. Roads mean groceries and fresh water. Rick and Wayne, teaming 
up with the whole Valley County road crew, went above and beyond to 
keep these vital lifelines open.
  Meanwhile, across town, Tanja Fransen, a meteorologist for the 
National Weather Service, was taking extraordinary steps to help her 
friends and her neighbors.
  This is Tanja.
  She would never abandon her post. She served as the voice of the 
National Weather Service across northeastern Montana. Tanja knew her 
neighbors; she knew they depended on her for the latest weather 
reports. Beyond that, of all things, Tanja, despite a broken leg in a 
cast, spent hours filling sandbags to protect homes along Cherry Creek. 
She went above and beyond the call of duty to make sure her friends and 
neighbors were equipped with the information they needed to stay safe 
throughout the disaster.
  Tanja, I might say to you: Take some time out and let that broken leg 
heal.
  Tanja asked that the entire team at the National Weather Service in 
Glasgow be recognized. That is just how generous she is. She did not 
want recognition for herself--it is her team. Working together, they 
helped Glasgow weather these difficult floods.
  In Billings, MT, floods have left dozens of families without homes.
  In a normal week, Jeff Rosenberry spends his time as assistant 
director for housing and student life. He makes sure students at MSU-
Billings have a safe and comfortable place to stay during the school 
year.
  This month, Jeff had extra work--work he very much enjoyed doing. 
Jeff stepped to the plate. He converted a resident hall into a home 
away from home for displaced families. I saw it and was very impressed. 
Jeff worked 15-hour days to make sure everyone felt welcome. He 
delivered food and water to hungry families. He also made sure everyone 
had the latest information about the floods. Ask anyone on the team 
helping these families, and they will tell you Jeff was the team 
captain. His hard work and generosity will long be remembered. The 
families who needed a place to sleep, of course, will never forget Jeff 
and his efforts.
  Finally, the teamwork between our local disaster and emergency 
services coordinators and crews has been extraordinary. DES 
coordinators are the go-to leaders to help their communities respond to 
and recover from floods. They are the first to be called to help and 
the last to leave.
  Montana's disaster and emergency services teams have been working 
nonstop. They are a model of public service. I hope Montanans 
everywhere will reach out and shake their hands, e-mail or write a 
letter and thank these heroes for their service. These remarkable 
Montanans remind us that sometimes it is all about teamwork. We are the 
strongest when we work together.

[[Page S4185]]

  I am proud of these stories. I am asking Montanans to share their 
stories of ordinary folks doing extraordinary things for friends and 
neighbors, whether on Facebook, call my office--whatever works. We want 
to hear these inspiring stories because we want to help bring Montanans 
even closer together, showing we are working together.
  Someone once observed that Montana is a big State, big geography, but 
not a lot of people. Montana is really one small town. We know each 
other--one or two degrees of separation. We know each other, and we are 
there to help each other. We are spread out in space but together in 
spirit.
  In closing, I would like to share a humble thank-you for all Montanan 
heroes back home. I don't know what we would do without you. Thank you 
so much for your service.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           THE NATIONAL DEBT

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I am pleased to have a chance to talk about 
the work I think we should be doing this week and surely will do in the 
weeks to come. We are really discussing who we are going to be as a 
country, what model we are going to follow. Are we going to continue to 
be a country that believes we need to help create opportunity or are we 
going to be a country that believes the government needs to continue to 
accept more and more of the challenges of life?
  Our debt today is over $14 trillion, and apparently that is not 
enough, so every discussion in Washington, including some that you are 
in, is focusing around the idea of how do we get even more ability to 
borrow more money so we can pay off the money we have already borrowed. 
There are 13 million Americans out of work today, looking for a job, 
and during that process we continue to spend money we don't have for 
things we don't have to have.
  I think we ought to be focused totally on two things domestically 
right now. At the top of every list should be what do we do to create 
more private sector jobs and how do we get Federal spending under 
control. The Federal Government doesn't create private sector jobs in 
very many instances.
  By the way, if we are going to have something we are going to be 
paying for 30 years, I hope we are investing in something that will 
last for 30 years.
  But the most the Federal Government can do that impacts jobs is 
create an atmosphere that takes all the uncertainty out of the 
decisionmaking process. There are enough risks in creating jobs without 
having the additional risks of how fast can the utility bill go up, how 
high will the taxes be, and what new unknown regulations are you going 
to have to deal with. Frankly, those are the wrong messages in all 
three of those areas right now if you hope to be focused on the idea of 
how do we create jobs for those 13 million Americans who are looking 
for jobs and better jobs for the Americans who have jobs. What are we 
doing to encourage private sector job creation for the future?
  We are now spending at the Federal level almost $1 out of $4, right 
at $1 out of every $4 that the economy can create in goods and 
services. The number for 40 years, ending in 2008, was $1 out of $5. 
There is a lot of difference in an economy--who competes for that 
dollar that the Federal Government is now spending that for 40 years 
was available for somebody else to get their hands on and use to create 
opportunity for somebody else? We have to get that under control.
  The Cochairs of the President's own fiscal commission say we are 
looking at the most predictable economic crisis in the history of the 
country. There is a train moving down the track to a destination nobody 
wants to go, and it continues to move at that same speed. It is totally 
predictable. It is something we have to do something about, and we 
cannot continue to spend somewhere between $3.7 and $3.8 trillion in 
this spending year and collect $2.2 trillion.
  I have said on this floor before that I am not sure anybody really 
has a good grasp of what $3.8 trillion is. But we do know that if you 
are making $22,000 and you are spending $38,500--oh, and you have 
already borrowed all the money anybody really should have ever loaned 
you--you have a problem you cannot deal with for very long without 
changing behavior.
  That behavior has to change. It has to change in ways that look at 
the programs where we, up until now, have just been able to define who 
benefits from the programs without any real controls over how that 
money is spent. This year, the $2.2 trillion that I mentioned the 
Federal Government collected, that all was spent by the programs that 
we normally do not even appropriate money for because we have defined 
who gets that money. For the first time ever, those programs exceeded 
all the money that came in.
  Most of those programs, of course, are the big programs we want to be 
sure are there as safety nets for people who have been told they need 
to rely on them. I think about 80 percent of that side of the budget is 
Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. We need to see what we can 
do so those programs continue to work. But if all of that side of the 
budget spent all of the money, that means every other penny the Federal 
Government spent for an air traffic controller; for somebody to open 
the gates to a national park; sadly, for somebody to put on a military 
uniform or to put a gallon of jet fuel in a plane or to buy a gallon of 
paint for a ship--that was all done with borrowed money. We are 
defending the country on borrowed money. The No. 1 obligation of the 
Federal Government is just that. We have to figure out what to do to 
structurally begin to define how we spend the money that comes in and 
to make sure we don't spend more money than comes in.

  That is why I am supporting the balanced budget amendment. I think we 
need to spend a lot of July talking about what we do to get this budget 
back in balance, how long it takes, and I look forward to that debate 
being the principal debate of the next month.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I have been listening very carefully to 
the remarks of my friend about what we have to do, what is in front of 
us. Of course, he is speaking for the Republican Party for a balanced 
budget amendment to the Constitution.
  Let me say this: I want a balanced budget. That is what I want. I 
don't need an amendment to the Constitution to get me to vote for a 
balanced budget. What I want is for all sides to come together--that is 
what I want--and write a balanced budget. I want us to do it in a way 
that is responsible and do it in a way that is fair and do it in a way 
that protects our middle class, protects our kids, and stimulates 
economic growth by making smart investments and cutting out spending in 
areas we don't need it.
  So all this yak about a balanced budget amendment--and I call it 
that, and I apologize if it sounds as though it is a derogatory term--
it is just so much talk. Let's get to it.
  I think we ought to go back to the people and the party that was the 
only party and the only people to balance the budget in 40 years. I 
hate to break it to my Republican friends, but that is the Democratic 
Party. We are the ones who did it. We did it when Bill Clinton came 
into office. We did it after hard work. We did it after painful cuts. 
We did it with smart investments. We did it with everybody paying their 
fair share, and we didn't need a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution to do it. It is a gimmick. We need a balanced budget, not 
a balanced budget amendment.
  Let's look at what we did the last time this country ever had a 
balanced budget. Lucky for us, it wasn't that long ago. Lucky for us, a 
lot of us are still here who made that fateful vote. We didn't have one 
Republican voting for that budget, and when they came to the floor--I 
have all the quotes, chapter and verse--they said: This is horrible. It 
will never balance the budget. This is going to lead to a depression. 
This is the worst thing. But we know what happened. We not only 
balanced the budget, but we had a surplus. We not only had a surplus, 
but the debt

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was going down so fast we thought we would never have to have Treasury 
bonds again. On top of that, we created 23 million jobs.
  So I hope the public understands, when they hear Republican colleague 
after Republican colleague come to the floor saying we need to stay in 
all through July--fine with me. I will stay here through August. I will 
spend the night in the cloakroom, I don't care. Let's not talk about a 
balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Let's talk about doing 
the hard work of balancing the budget. The way we do it, again, is to 
follow the lead of the plan that was laid out by President Clinton and 
which worked in the most amazing way beyond our greatest expectations.
  What did we do? We looked at this deficit and we said: This is 
unacceptable. We went after programs that made no sense and we cut 
them. We either eliminated them or we cut them back. Then we asked: 
What are some investments we could make that would actually stimulate 
the growth of the private sector? I thought my friend, Senator Blunt, 
was right. That is what we need to do. We need to stimulate growth in 
the private sector. At that time, the investments were on the high-tech 
side--high tech, biotech. Today, clearly, it is clean energy. That is 
what the whole world wants. That is where we ought to be leading. That 
is what our President knows. So we cut out programs that don't make 
sense. We invest where it makes sense to create jobs and then guess 
what we do. We make sure we have enough revenues coming in to pay for 
the priorities.
  I have news for my Republican friends. It is not that hard. Go after 
the billionaires. They can't get themselves to do it, can they? Go 
after the billionaires and the millionaires, the people who aren't 
paying what they should be paying. But when the House had its chance, 
what did it do? It allowed the biggest tax breaks ever to continue for 
the billionaires and the millionaires and they killed Medicare. 
Medicare is gone. It is becoming some kind of a voucher program, where 
we can imagine some 90-year-old woman who is suffering from disease has 
to now go out and try to find out where she can buy an insurance plan. 
Tell me who is going to cover her, A; and, B, tell me if she has the 
strength to do that; and, C, her Medicare benefit no longer goes to 
her. Who does it go to? It goes to the insurance company. That is the 
plan the Republicans passed in the House, and they cut everything that 
is near and dear to the hearts of the American people. In addition to 
Medicare, they cut education. They cut funding for clean air, clean 
water. Highways they cut by a third, and here they talk about jobs on 
the other side, private sector jobs. The highway bill creates thousands 
and thousands and thousands of jobs in the private sector. They cut 
that bill by 36 percent.
  So when I hear my Republican friends talk about the importance of 
balancing the budget and they are talking about a balanced budget 
amendment to the Constitution--why don't they show us their balanced 
budget? Because the one they showed us from the House was such a 
disaster that they lost a congressional seat they held for eternity. It 
is easy to talk about a balanced budget amendment. It is harder to 
balance the budget the fair way, and that is what we have to do.
  My friend, Senator Blunt, also talked about the importance of jobs. 
He is so right. I just ran for reelection. Jobs, jobs, jobs, the top 
three issues. Guess what. My Republican friends have filibustered every 
single jobs bill we brought to the floor. The last jobs bill is one I 
am very familiar with because it is a bill that came out of my 
committee. The whole committee voted, with one dissenting vote, for the 
Economic Development Administration to give seed money to areas in the 
country that need job creation and attract $7 of funds for every $1 of 
Federal money. It would have created 1 million jobs over 5 years. They 
filibustered it. They added amendments about the prairie chicken. They 
added amendments about things that had nothing to do with it, just to 
bring it down. They didn't even have--what is the word I am looking 
for? They didn't even speak against it when they voted against it at 
the end of the day. They didn't even come to the floor because they had 
nothing to say because it is a jobs bill, because it has passed every 
Congress since the 1960s. The last time it passed, it passed without a 
dissenting vote in the Senate in 2004 because the last President who 
signed it was George W. Bush. It is a jobs bill. They said no. Why? I 
go back to what their leader said. His top priority? Beating President 
Barack Obama. So we have to figure they are bringing every jobs bill 
down so this economy gets worse.
  Let me tell my colleagues, it is not going to go down easy at home. 
It is not going to go down easy at home.
  They killed a bill that Mary Landrieu brought out of her committee 
unanimously, a small business bill. It would have created thousands of 
small businesses. They voted it down. That bill was written by Warren 
Rudman, a Republican Senator. They voted it down. They filibustered it 
and voted it down. Why? They say jobs are their top priority. Why would 
they vote down a bill that was written by a Republican, that is passed 
without objection year after year after year? Why would they vote down 
another bill that was last signed by George W. Bush without a 
dissenting vote in the Senate? Why? Two jobs bills. Why? We have to ask 
ourselves why. Maybe they are willing to sacrifice jobs for political 
reasons. That is all I can come up with. I put that together with what 
Mitch McConnell said.
  Now their big push is a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution--a lot of talk. Balance the budget, folks. We know how to 
do it. End the wars. That is $1 trillion over 10 years. Go after the 
millionaires and the billionaires who don't pay their fair share. That 
is another $1 trillion over 10 years. That is $2 trillion, right there. 
Go after the people who never pay their taxes. Go after the oil 
companies that are ripping us off at the pump and taking the highest 
profits ever. It is not hard to do. Yes, we are willing to cut some 
things that don't make sense. We could have a $4 trillion package 
pretty easily if we are willing to look at it in a fair way.
  I heard our President today speaking to the Nation through a press 
conference, and he was very sweet about this issue. I was saying to 
Senator Durbin, as I watched him, he is explaining it to the people. 
Everybody has to give up something. If we want bipartisanship, that 
doesn't mean we all get what we want and somebody gets nothing. It 
means I give up some of the things I want and they give up some of the 
things they want. But we have declarations by the Republicans: We will 
never ever agree to any new revenues. Why? They just voted to eliminate 
the ethanol subsidy. That brings revenues. So why would they not take 
that to the table? How can they believe it is fair that billionaires 
sometimes pay less in terms of the effective tax rate than a secretary 
or a teacher or a nurse?
  Come on. Come to the table. Don't come to the table with a balanced 
budget amendment to the Constitution. That doesn't do anything to 
balance the budget. It is a lot of talk. Balance the budget. Put a 
little faith in the people who know how to do it who did it before.
  I was proud to vote to balance the budget. I was proud to vote for a 
fair budget. I was proud to be here when we saw 23 million jobs come. 
That didn't happen because we just said: Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. End 
Medicare as we know it. It came because we were willing to look at what 
was working, what wasn't working, where to make the investments, where 
to make the cuts. We have to come to the table with everything on it. 
We have to say we are willing to listen to the other side. We need a 
fair plan. We have that as Democrats. We are not going to end Medicare. 
We are not going to hurt working people. We are going to do this in a 
fair way.
  I hope the American people will put this together and connect all the 
dots. We have a Republican leader who has said on more than one 
occasion the most important thing is to defeat Barack Obama. We have a 
Republican Party that says it is for jobs and filibusters every single 
jobs bill that in the past they have broadly supported. We have 
Republicans walking out on the Vice President, taking their little 
teddy bear and their blankies and walking out of the negotiations 
because they didn't like the way the discussions were going. They 
walked out. Then, my friends on the other side--

[[Page S4187]]

and I thought Senator Blunt was very eloquent on the point. He said we 
need two things. We need to work on job creation in the private 
sector--and I just showed that despite the language, they voted 
everything down--and then we have to take uncertainty out of the 
equation. That was his big point. He is so right. How do we take 
uncertainty out of the equation? Do not play politics with the debt 
ceiling. Do not play politics with it. Because I have read what 
economists say, that if we do not do this right, and we do not agree, 
and the debt ceiling becomes a victim of this partisanship, Treasury 
bonds of the United States of America will be junk bonds--will be junk 
bonds.

  So you want to play games? Go home, go on the corner, and I will play 
you a game. But do not bring it in here. It is too serious. This is the 
greatest country there ever was.
  My parents, one of whom was born outside of this country, told me 
that I should kiss the ground of America. And how proud I am that I am 
here. But I will tell you, if I see people who are willing to turn U.S. 
Treasury bonds into junk bonds, I am going to do everything I can in my 
life to make sure those who have done this will not be nameless or 
faceless. It is too important.
  The fact that we are even playing these games is ridiculous. The fact 
that we cannot come together and shake hands and say this budget 
deficit is terrible, we are going to deal with it, we are going to deal 
with the debt, we are going to do what we did under Bill Clinton, we 
are going to balance the budget, we are going to create a surplus--we 
can do this. You shake hands on it. You have the parameters of the 
deal. You pass a debt ceiling that is clean. You send a message to the 
market.
  I used to be a stockbroker. When the President would sneeze, the 
market would go down 200 points. That is how the market responds to 
these things. We do not have to be playing with the stock market, with 
the full faith and credit of the United States of America.
  It is pretty simple if everything is on the table. If all you want to 
do is destroy Social Security and Medicare, it is not simple. But if 
you are willing to talk to us, to have a fair taxation system, where 
the Warren Buffetts of the world are at least paying as much in an 
effective tax rate as a nurse, there is something to talk about here. 
But do not go walking out of discussions and going home because you did 
not get 100 percent of what you want. Life does not work that way.
  I speak as a mother, a grandmother, a Senator from the largest State 
in the Union when I say this: You do not get everything you want in a 
negotiation. The Republicans control the House. The Democrats control 
the Senate. The Democrats control the White House. Correct me if I am 
wrong: two-thirds Democratic. In a fair world, we would get two-thirds 
of what we want. But we are going to give up more. It ought to be a 50-
50 deal. That is how you negotiate.
  This is a tough time. If the other side thinks a balanced budget 
amendment to the Constitution balances the budget, it does not. You 
have to do the hard work of balancing the budget. You have to sit down 
in this tough time, in a tough, fragile economic recovery.
  Remember when President Obama took over, we were bleeding 800,000 
jobs a month. He had to handle two wars, unpaid for by George W. and 
his friends; a tax cut, unpaid for, to the richest people in America. 
He had to deal with a banking system that was frozen solid. He had to 
deal with an automobile industry that was going out of business. We had 
to work, and a few brave souls from the other side of the aisle worked 
with us, thank God, or who knows where we would be today.
  And now, when we are finally moving out of this nightmarish economy--
not quickly enough--we have Republicans filibustering jobs bill, then 
coming down here and saying how important jobs are, and saying how 
important it is there is certainty, when they are playing games with 
the debt ceiling.
  I am an optimist. That is why I stay in this world I am in, and I 
thank the people of California for giving me the chance so many times. 
But there is a saying back home: Are you on the level? Are you on the 
level when you are in negotiations? Do you want to have a deal? Do you 
want to fix it? Do you want to work with us? I do not know when I see 
them filibustering jobs bills, when I see them walking out on the Vice 
President, when I see them saying: Oh, that is off the table, and this 
is off the table, and that is off the table, when they do not run this 
country. They run the House. I wonder: Where are we going?
  When I hear people saying: What is the big deal if we do not pay our 
bills, if we do not lift the debt ceiling and we cannot pay our bills, 
what people have to understand is, lifting up the debt ceiling is not 
about the future payments, it is about payments due.
  I said we had a balanced budget under Bill Clinton--and a surplus. We 
went into deficit mode when George Bush took over and did the tax cuts 
for the wealthiest among us, and did not pay for it, and did a 
prescription drug benefit and never paid for it, did two wars and never 
paid for them, and we got into big trouble.
  What is the solution of my friends on the other side? We are walking 
out of the negotiations because we cannot talk about taxing 
billionaires or taking away corporate welfare from oil companies. God 
forbid. It makes me wonder, really, who is on the level.
  We can do this. We did it before. It is not that hard. We just need 
people of good will. I will say to my friends on the other side: Forget 
the reelection of Barack Obama. Forget the next Presidential race. You 
will have your candidate and we will have ours, and that is for another 
day. Right now we are in this Chamber. We are talking about how to have 
a credible plan to get this deficit down, to get this debt down, to 
strengthen our economy, to strengthen job creation, to keep the middle 
class vibrant.
  I hear some Republicans now on the Presidential trail talking about 
doing away with the minimum wage. Can you imagine going back to the 
days when the minimum wage was $4 an hour? I remember when it was 50 
cents an hour. It dates me a bit. That is what we hear from the other 
side. Their vision is not a good vision for the young people of this 
country who are looking forward to a life at least as good as that of 
their parents.
  In conclusion, this is not a time to play games or reach for a 
political advantage. This is not a time to hold the future of this 
country hostage to some ideological agenda or some pledge that somebody 
signed to some political person outside of this Chamber. Pledges 
signed--it is not about that. It is about putting America first. It is 
about putting our families first. It is not about amending the 
Constitution with a balanced budget amendment. It is about balancing 
the budget in a fair way.
  The Republican plan that passed the House that started with Paul Ryan 
did not balance the budget for 40 years. That is not a plan. We have to 
do better. But when you are willing, as they are, to say to 
millionaires and billionaires and trillionaires: You do not have pay 
your fair share, the revenues do not come in. What happens as a result, 
they have to kill Medicare--which they did in the House budget--they 
have to hurt education, make the Environmental Protection Agency a 
shadow of its former self.
  I go out and look at polls. Eighty percent of the people want the EPA 
to stay out there and clean up the air and make sure we have safe 
drinking water. They want food inspections. They want air traffic 
controllers on the job. They want a next-generation air system.
  This is the greatest country in the world. We do not have to walk 
away from our dreams. We just have to have everybody paying their fair 
share. If that happens, we can do this. And we need to end those wars 
that are so costly in so many ways. If we do those two things, we are 
on our way to a balanced budget. We are on our way to surpluses.
  We can do this. The only thing standing in our way is politics. That 
is what it seems to me. If people think that more important than fixing 
this budget crisis is bringing down a President politically, we have a 
problem.
  We take the oath of office, and we raise our right hand, we put our 
hand on the Bible, to be loyal to this country, to do right by this 
country. That is what we should be doing now.
  If people want to stay in July, August, September, October, through 
Christmas, that is fine with me. But we have to have a plan that is 
fair. If we have a plan that is fair, we balance the

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budget. We do it over time. We do it wisely. We create jobs. Interest 
rates remain low. We can do it because we did it before. The only 
people who have ever balanced the budget in the last 40 years have been 
the Democrats. That is a fact in evidence.
  We have the path lights showing the way. It is fairness on spending; 
cut the things that do not work; fairness on taxation; make sure 
billionaires pay their fair share. We follow that path. We bring home 
our troops. We are golden. I think that is a pathway I would like to 
support.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cardin). The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. JOHANNS. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in favor of the 
balanced budget amendment.
  Let me offer a thought or two as I get started today.
  I had the privilege at one point in my political life to serve as the 
Governor of a great State, the State of Nebraska. I served in that 
capacity for 6 years. In that capacity, as in virtually every other 
State, we had a provision in our constitution, and it was not a gimmick 
at all. It was a very serious statement. It said, in a very 
straightforward way: Thou shalt have a balanced budget. It was as 
simple and as straightforward as that.
  The other interesting thing about my State of Nebraska is that in 
addition to having that constitutional provision--and keep in mind, 
part of my oath of office, as Governor, was to uphold that 
constitution--but part of that was a requirement, a mandate, that we 
could not borrow money. In fact, I think the limitation, if I am not 
mistaken, was $50,000 or $100,000.
  I would say to people back home, when I was Governor, that probably 
was a pretty handsome sum of money more than a century ago when that 
constitution was passed, but, in effect, today what that meant was that 
when we got down to the business of balancing our budget, as required 
by the constitution, I did not have the ability as Governor to issue 
bonded indebtedness to go out and borrow against the full faith and 
credit of my State to balance that budget.
  In fact, I will tell you today, I am not even certain the State of 
Nebraska has a bond rating because it is unnecessary. Very simply, we 
followed a philosophy that we would not spend money we did not have. So 
we did not issue bonds to build highways. If we did not have the money 
in the bank and planned for where the money would come from in the 
years ahead--if it was a multiyear project--we did not do it. We did 
not build them.
  Many who may be listening to this will say: Well, my goodness, how 
would that work? Here in this country we have $14 trillion worth of 
debt. Where would we be without all of that borrowing? In this last 
economic recession, the unemployment rate of Nebraska never rose over 5 
percent. Today the unemployment rate in our State is 4.1 percent.
  It never occurred to me that I should ever argue to the people of 
that great State that if they were successful, they should be punished 
for that success. Very much the opposite. I said: I want you to come to 
Nebraska, I want you to create your jobs here, and we are going to do 
everything we can to be your partner in that effort.
  The current Governor has followed that same philosophy, and we often 
hear about those Governors who are doing a great job. I know of one; 
his name is Dave Heineman. He is the Governor of the State of Nebraska. 
He has balanced his budget, he has not borrowed money, and he has, 
during one of the toughest economic times since the Depression, under 5 
percent. It is 4.1 percent today. He was my Lieutenant Governor.
  At the national level, we did not follow that philosophy. I believe 
we are now at a crossroads because for decade after decade Washington 
has promised too much. It has said over and over again we can be all 
things to all people. But the real truth of it is, it never said how it 
planned to pay for it. The result is, we face a financial crisis unlike 
any financial crisis that maybe our Nation has ever seen. Do not 
believe my words. This is being studied by the hour, by the minute, by 
the second.
  A recent Congressional Budget Office report confirms the assertion. 
Last week the CBO released its latest economic forecast. It is kind of 
a report of where we are headed as a nation, and it is grim by even the 
most liberal economic point of view.
  The Congressional Budget Office now predicts that debt held by the 
public will exceed 100 percent of our gross domestic product by 2021, 
if we continue the current policies. Twelve months ago, when they 
released the report, it was equally as grim--well, I should not say 
equal because the number I have just cited got worse by 10 percent in 
just 12 months. Our debt is rising exponentially, exceeding 200 percent 
by 2037, and at that point we might as well just stop making the 
projection. Just think about this: Our great Nation in 25 years will 
have so much debt that the Congressional Budget Office cannot compute 
it.
  Erskine Bowles has said many times before that this is a crisis that 
is predictable. He was one of the Chairs of the President's own deficit 
commission. CBO went on to say that ``growing debt also would increase 
the probability of a sudden fiscal crisis during which investors would 
lose confidence in the government's ability to manage its budget and 
the government would thereby lose its ability to borrow at affordable 
rates.''
  It is Erskine Bowles who has said this crisis is so predictable. CBO 
also found that in the next 25 years, Federal health spending will 
increase by 50 percent as a share of GDP while Social Security spending 
will increase by 20 percent. What is happening is predictable.
  My generation--I am right in the middle of the baby boomers--is 
starting to access all of the promises that have been made. It is no 
longer an option for us to just simply say: A little nip and a little 
tuck here, and we all give a little, and it all works out. There is a 
mountain of debt clearly ahead of us, and we can either do course 
corrections or, believe me, we will perish.
  I have no qualms about saying that both parties made mistakes over 
the years. This is a bipartisan problem. But for some to advocate even 
more stimulus spending--which we heard in the last couple of weeks, 
repeating the misguided policies of the last 2 years, adding more debt 
on more debt on more debt--defies logic and common sense.
  If stimulus spending were the answer, our economy would be firing on 
all cylinders today. But, unfortunately, even with that massive 
spending plan, that stimulus plan of $1 trillion when we add the 
interest, it has not yielded the results.
  Remember the President's promise: We will keep unemployment under 8 
percent. We just have to bite the bullet and spend all of this money. 
And here we are today with unemployment almost locked down at 9.1 
percent. Just look at where our country was 2 years ago.
  In January 2009, the debt was $10.6 trillion. I would argue that was 
far too much 2 years ago. Today, it is over $14.3 trillion and growing 
exponentially. We are talking about a 35-percent increase in our 
Nation's debt in 2 short years.
  To put these numbers into perspective, today each U.S. citizen would 
have to pay $46,000 to pay off our national debt. That is $11,000 more 
than 2 years ago. Each American family--and I hope you are sitting down 
when you are listening to this--each American family would need to 
write a check for $127,000 just to square up the books, just to get the 
debt paid off. That is not even addressing the spending that is out of 
control today.
  Looking at unemployment, in January 2009 the unemployment rate was 
absolutely unacceptable at 7.8 percent. Today, after almost $1 trillion 
of stimulus spending, unemployment has grown 17 percent, with almost 2 
million more Americans who cannot find work notwithstanding their best 
efforts.
  Maybe somebody is going to come down here and say: But there is other 
news you should be looking at. Well, I looked at some other news 
regarding health care costs. Contrary to the proponents of the health 
care overhaul, health insurance premiums for the average family have 
gone up 19 percent since 2009.
  Put simply, doubling down on deficit spending has failed our economy. 
It has failed our American people. In fact, the President's plans have 
made it worse. So why would we want to repeat the same mistake? I 
thought raising the

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$14 trillion debt limit was actually about reducing spending. Why would 
we arrange for a stimulus plan in order to raise the limit? Why would 
we be arguing for larding it up with more stimulus spending? When will 
we learn this hole we have dug for this great country requires us to 
quit digging?
  There is no doubt that our debt problem is the defining issue of our 
time. I see two paths. We can continue to run up trillion-dollar 
deficits, operate the government with no budget--which has been 
standard fare for the last 790 days--double down on failed policy 
objectives that did not make any sense 2 years ago and have not 
improved with time, or we can be frank and candid and honest that we 
have promised more than our economy can afford to generate.
  I have heard the arguments: Just tax those rich people some more. In 
fact, I spoke about that soon after I came to the Senate. There was 
this idea that if a person made over $250,000 a year, then they should 
be taxed more.
  So I said: OK, if that is going to be the new mantra around here, 
just to balance the budget for a year, what would the effective tax 
rate have to be for everybody making over $250,000 just to balance the 
budget? I am not talking about paying off the deficit, just to do what 
Nebraska has done for years and years, balance the budget without 
borrowing money.
  I spoke about this on the Senate floor. The rate would have to be 90 
percent. That was 2 years ago. It is probably worse now. If does not 
make any sense. Is that the kind of encouragement upon which our Nation 
was founded? That is not a pathway to solvency; that is a pathway to 
destroying a great nation. Only one path will provide future 
generations what I grew up with, which was a land of opportunity, an 
America that my parents believed if you just worked hard and stayed out 
of trouble you could do just about anything, two dairy farmers who 
caused their kids to believe that they could experience greatness in 
this great country.
  Well, let's be up front and honest about the road that we need to 
travel as a nation. We can get there. Our Nation has such a proud 
history. It has faced so many challenges. It has looked adversity in 
the face, and it has forced it down. Each and every time our great 
Nation has risen to the challenge.
  So as we reflect and pay homage to the history of this great country 
in the days ahead, let's use this as an opportunity to work toward a 
solution to this challenge of our time, our debt crisis.
  As the CBO report indicated:

       Waiting to address the long-term budgetary imbalance and 
     allowing debt to mount in the meantime would make future 
     generations worse off--

  That is your children and your grandchildren--

     although some current generations could receive a benefit 
     from that delay.

  So am I to tell my children and grandchildren, so that I can benefit 
from just pushing this down the road, kicking this can down the road, 
that my kids and grandkids will pay the price for this? They will have 
their own wars to fight. I wish they were not going to, but they will. 
They will have their own new pandemics to deal with, and on and on.
  But, you see, I started my adult life with our Nation owing $380 
billion. In 5 years our Nation will owe $20 trillion. It will not be 
canceled at my death. It will be owed by those next generations.
  My hope is that we can come down here, that we can be honest about 
the overpromises that have occurred, that we can speak candidly about 
the need to put in place forever a requirement that says to every 
Senator who follows me that, as hard as it is, we must balance the 
budget. The only way we can do that is by doing what our States have 
historically done--including my great State--and that is what it says 
in the Constitution.
  It is not accidental that this proposal gets so much support in our 
country because, to the average family, it is what they do every day. 
We in Washington must come to grips with this and do the same.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, may I inquire of the Chair what the status 
is on the bill? Are there pending amendments?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Currently, there are no amendments pending.


                           Amendment No. 521

  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 521.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant editor of the Daily Digest read as follows:

       The Senator from Oklahoma [Mr. Coburn], for himself, Mr. 
     Udall of Colorado, Ms. Collins, Mrs. McCaskill, Mr. Burr, Mr. 
     Paul, Mr. Brown of Massachusetts, and Mr. McCain, proposes an 
     amendment numbered 521.

  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

   (Purpose: To prevent the creation of duplicative and overlapping 
                           Federal programs)

       At the end of the resolution, insert the following:

     SEC. ___. PREVENTING DUPLICATIVE AND OVERLAPPING GOVERNMENT 
                   PROGRAMS RESOLUTION.

       (a) Short Title.--This section may be cited as the 
     ``Preventing Duplicative and Overlapping Government Programs 
     Resolution''.
       (b) Reported Legislation.--Paragraph 11 of rule XXVI of the 
     Standing Rules of the Senate is amended--
       (1) in subparagraph (c), by striking ``and (b)'' and 
     inserting ``(b), and (c)'';
       (2) by redesignating subparagraph (c) and subparagraph (d); 
     and
       (3) by inserting after subparagraph (b) the following:
       ``(c) The report accompanying each bill or joint resolution 
     of a public character reported by any committee (including 
     the Committee on Appropriations and the Committee on the 
     Budget) shall contain--
       ``(1) an analysis by the Congressional Research Service to 
     determine if the bill or joint resolution creates any new 
     Federal program, office, or initiative that would duplicate 
     or overlap any existing Federal program, office, or 
     initiative with similar mission, purpose, goals, or 
     activities along with a listing of all of the overlapping or 
     duplicative Federal program or programs, office or offices, 
     or initiative or initiatives; and
       ``(2) an explanation provided by the committee as to why 
     the creation of each new program, office, or initiative is 
     necessary if a similar program or programs, office or 
     offices, or initiative or initiatives already exist.''.
       (c) Senate.--Rule XVII of the Standing Rules of the Senate 
     is amended by inserting at the end thereof the following:
       ``6. (a) It shall not be in order in the Senate to proceed 
     to any bill or joint resolution unless the committee of 
     jurisdiction has prepared and posted on the committee website 
     an overlapping and duplicative programs analysis and 
     explanation for the bill or joint resolution as described in 
     subparagraph (b) prior to proceeding.
       ``(b) The analysis and explanation required by this 
     subparagraph shall contain--
       ``(1) an analysis by the Congressional Research Service to 
     determine if the bill or joint resolution creates any new 
     Federal program, office, or initiative that would duplicate 
     or overlap any existing Federal program, office, or 
     initiative with similar mission, purpose, goals, or 
     activities along with a listing of all of the overlapping or 
     duplicative Federal program or programs, office or offices, 
     or initiative or initiatives; and
       ``(2) an explanation provided by the committee as to why 
     the creation of each new program, office, or initiative is 
     necessary if a similar program or programs, office or 
     offices, or initiative or initiatives already exist.
       ``(c) This paragraph may be waived by joint agreement of 
     the Majority Leader and the Minority Leader of the Senate 
     upon their certification that such waiver is necessary as a 
     result of a significant disruption to Senate facilities or to 
     the availability of the Internet or a bill or joint 
     resolution is designated as `emergency.' ''.

  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, about 3 months ago, one of the results of 
the last time we raised the debt limit was a report by the Government 
Accountability Office. Ninety-seven Senators in this body voted to put 
that in the last debt limit extension. What was that? That was a 
requirement for the Government Accountability Office over the next 3 
years to list every program for us in every area so that we knew what 
we were doing.
  The purpose for that amendment was--and that happened to have been my 
amendment. I went to the CRS and the Government Accountability Office 
and I said I want to know every program in defense, education, et 
cetera. They told me: It is impossible; we cannot do it. So 
collectively, as colleagues, we said that you will do this. It has been 
a big job. They have done a fantastic job on it thus far. I cannot wait 
until we get the second and third part.

[[Page S4190]]

  One of the results in the first report the GAO gave to us showed 
close to $200 billion worth of duplication. Those are my numbers, not 
theirs, in terms of looking at it. Let's say I am twice wrong, and say 
it is $100 billion. The fact is, what we found in just the first third 
of looking at the Federal Government is that we have multiple 
duplicative programs that do exactly the same thing; they are just in 
different agencies or across agencies. In a moment, I will talk about 
what those are.
  The response to that report was the greatest response GAO has ever 
had to any report they have ever listed. The curious thing about that 
is that 95 percent of what they reported was a culmination of reports I 
had asked for over the last 6 years put together, which means we had 
the information, as Members of Congress; we just would not use it. In 
other words, it didn't get up to the level of being recognized. When we 
saw it together, we all of a sudden started seeing the magnitude of the 
problem of duplication.
  The purpose of this amendment--it is very straightforward--is that on 
average the Senate considers, in a session of Congress, in a Congress 
over 2 years, about 700 pieces of legislation. The Congressional 
Research Service now writes a report on each one of those and advises 
us about the legislation, what it does, what it doesn't do, and what is 
out there. But the one thing they don't do is tell us where it 
duplicates.
  The purpose of this amendment is that with each of those bills, we 
would have the knowledge the GAO has put out there, which the CRS will 
then go and get and say: Here is what is out there, and you need to 
consider that as you consider, why do we need another program to do 
something we are already doing? What is wrong with the programs we have 
now that are not accomplishing this?
  This great transparency is not just for us but for the American 
people. We add duplicative programs every year. It raises the question, 
where is the oversight?
  The motivations here are wonderful. The motivations are to try to 
solve problems. Too often, we lack the information and the knowledge 
with which to make a great decision. The reason we lack that is because 
we fail in our duty to do oversight. So this information which would be 
provided becomes powerful. More importantly, it creates tremendous 
transparency for the American public in saying, for example, if we are 
going to create another job-training program--we have 47 of them right 
now that are funded by the Federal Government across 9 different 
government agencies. None of them are coordinated and all but three 
overlap each other. If we create another job-training program, maybe we 
ought to know what all these others are and why we need to create 
another one rather than make the ones we have now work. I would 
actually question why we have 47 job-training programs. But the problem 
is big.
  Let me spend a moment and put some highlights into the Record. These 
are just highlights. This represents less than 10 percent of what the 
findings were of the last GAO report.
  We have 101 programs for surface transportation. They are run across 
four different agencies.
  We have 82 teacher quality improvement programs--82 separate programs 
across 10 different agencies, and they are not in the Department of 
Education. There are 10 different agencies--9 of which are outside of 
the Department of Education--that have teacher training programs.
  We have 88 economic development programs run by 4 agencies costing 
$6.5 billion a year--88 separate economic development programs.
  We have 80 programs to provide transportation for the disadvantaged, 
across 8 different agencies. We spend $314 million on it. That is a 
good cause, and it is something we can do, but 80 different programs?
  We don't know what we are doing. So the purpose of this amendment--
and it will require a rules change to have it--is to ask CRS to show 
what we are doing and what is there already, just as they analyze every 
other aspect of a bill before it comes to the floor. This won't be 
required on emergency legislation or required on committee reports or 
required on the filing of bills; it will only be mandated if a bill 
comes to the floor for consideration by my colleagues.
  Let me finish.
  We have 56 programs for financial literacy from 21 different 
agencies. Based on the talk we just heard from the last two Senators, 
we are the last people who ought to be teaching anybody about financial 
literacy when we are running the kind of deficit and debt we have and 
have the kind of duplication we have. Nobody who knows financial 
literacy would run 88 separate economic development programs and pay 
for the overhead of all of those through all these different agencies; 
rather, they would have 2 or 3 and have a concentrated program and 
direct the emphasis of that economic development program.
  We have 21 programs for homeless assistance.
  We spend $62 billion on 18 different food and nutrition assistance 
programs. We only need 2 or 3, not 18. We need to have metrics 
measuring whether we are effective in helping people with food and 
nutrition.
  We have bureaucracy after bureaucracy, and each of them doesn't know 
what the other agencies are doing. There is no coordination, and there 
is no measurement of the effectiveness of what we are doing.
  CRS claims they don't have the manpower to do this. They have 350 
analysts who do nothing but analyze legislation. This would require one 
analyst, one time a year, to look at the duplication on a bill coming 
to the floor--one analyst, over a period of a year, one time, looking 
at it.
  CRS is a great resource for me, and I want them to have the resources 
they need because the only way we get out of the bigger problems the 
Senator from Nebraska was talking about is having the knowledge of what 
we are doing today.
  I hope my colleagues will consider this not as a partisan amendment 
but one to give us the information that gives us the power to make the 
best decisions for our country. We need to be making better decisions.
  The final thing this will do is help us not create duplication again. 
It will let us know what we need to do; that is, before we pass it into 
legislation. I am so concerned as I look at bringing forward some 
options for my colleagues to look at in terms of solving our financial 
problems because everywhere I go, as we dig deeper into this, we see 
the duplication and inefficiency, the lack of direction, and the lack 
of pointed purpose to get an end result in program after program in the 
Federal Government. Some of those truly aren't our role, but on those 
that are our role, that we are responsible for constitutionally, it is 
the responsibility of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Government--we 
ought to know what we are doing, and we ought to know what is being 
done out there already. We operate in a vacuum when we don't have this 
information.
  It is my hope that my colleagues will support this in a way to give 
us information. There is nothing political about it. It is, how do we 
make better decisions and how do we do this in a way that will cause us 
not to create more duplication in the future, and it will cause us to 
ask the smart questions about legislation. You see, those questions 
don't get asked unless somebody goes and does the digging now.
  My hope is that we would all be empowered by having greater knowledge 
over what we are doing. It is very simple and straightforward. It is my 
hope that we can accomplish that.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate the Senator from 
Oklahoma on his remarks and participation in this debate.
  Before long, we should have--whenever the majority leader decides--a 
vote on the Coburn amendment. We are in a position on this resolution 
that relevant amendments are in order. At the moment, we don't have any 
others. If we don't have others, then we will proceed to the final bill 
later this afternoon when the majority leader decides we should do 
that. We passed the bill this morning with 79 votes. I will have more 
to say about this resolution in a moment.
  I wish to say something that is directly relevant to what the Senator 
from Oklahoma talked about. We keep

[[Page S4191]]

talking about duplication, which is an important part of our oversight 
responsibilities. Sometimes that leads to the elimination of government 
bureaucracies, which is a rare event.
  Ronald Reagan once said a government bureau is the nearest thing to 
eternal life that we will ever see on this Earth. I had an example of 
that this morning, I say to the Senator from Oklahoma, in a Rules 
Committee hearing. The purpose of the hearing was to review the 
qualifications of three excellent men and women who were nominated by 
the President to serve on the Election Assistance Commission. But what 
I said at the hearing and what I would like to say on the floor--with 
all due respect to those excellent nominees--instead of considering the 
nominees, we should be abolishing the Commission because it doesn't 
have anything to do. It has finished its work and it ought to be 
abolished.

  The Election Assistance Commission was commissioned in 2003. Since 
then, the Rules Committee didn't have one single oversight hearing on 
the Commission. My predecessor asked for an oversight hearing, but we 
didn't have one. I asked for one earlier this spring, and we didn't 
have one. At a time when we are borrowing 40 cents out of every $1 that 
Washington spends, we should not have been there this morning 
considering new appointments to a commission that is out of work. We 
should have been there considering recommending to this body that the 
Commission cease to exist.
  This is why. It was created by the Help America Vote Act in 2002. It 
was authorized for 3 years and given certain tasks. The primary task 
was to distribute Federal payments to the States to help them upgrade 
their voting systems. We appropriated $3.2 billion for these payments. 
That has been distributed. Given our current financial situation, it is 
very unlikely that any more Federal payments will be forthcoming. We 
don't have any more money for that purpose. President Obama seems to 
agree with this, since in his last two budgets he has requested no 
funds for this purpose.
  The Commission was also directed to develop voluntary voting system 
guidelines and a testing and certification program for voting machines. 
The actual work involved in this process is performed by another 
agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which 
develops the guidelines, and the independent laboratories that conduct 
that testing. So in the spirit of Senator Coburn's comments, we don't 
need two agencies assigned the same responsibility.
  Finally, the Commission was to act as a clearinghouse to collect and 
distribute information on best practices in election administration. 
Yet the intended beneficiaries of this service don't seem to have much 
use for it. The National Association of Secretaries of State--every 
State has one--a bipartisan organization made up of our country's chief 
State elections officials, has twice voted in favor of a resolution 
calling for abolition of this agency, the Election Assistance 
Commission.
  So here we have a classic example of: I am the government. I am here 
to give you help you don't want. As a former State official myself--I 
was Governor of Tennessee--I have a little bit of a bias. I don't see 
the need for a Federal clearinghouse of best practices for secretaries 
of state. I don't know why the secretaries of state themselves can't do 
that. When I was a Governor, I didn't need a Federal agency telling me 
the best practices of the Governor of Oklahoma so I could use them in 
Tennessee. We had regular Governors' conferences, and we got to know 
each other pretty well. If Governor Graham of Florida had a good idea 
about education, I borrowed that. If I had a good idea on education, 
Governor Clinton borrowed that, and it worked pretty well. We didn't 
have to fly to Washington to have a clearinghouse.
  So the tasks of this Commission have either been completed or can be 
performed by more appropriate entities. This is in the spirit of 
Senator Coburn's amendment. The Commission did its job. We should thank 
the Commission and their staff for their service.
  But if the completion of their appointed task isn't enough of a 
reason to close it down, the Commission also appears to have a serious 
management problem or two. Though its mission has dwindled, its staff 
has grown. It has less to do but has more people doing it. The 
Commission had a staff of 20 in 2004. Last year, it had three times 
that many. It had 64 people--more staff needed for less work.
  I am sure there are some very good people there. There must be, 
because the average salary--according to Congressman Gregg Harper of 
the House of Representatives--for all the members of the Election 
Assistance Commission is over $100,000 a year. This year's budget 
submission from the Commission proposes spending $5.4 million to manage 
$3.4 million worth of programs. Does that make any sense, when the cost 
of overhead and staff salaries exceeds the programs they have to 
administer? Clearly, something is wrong.
  That is precisely the kind of small thing in the big picture we are 
dealing with that adds up and up and up and creates an environment in 
which we seem to be content in spending more and more and borrowing 40 
cents of every $1 we spend.
  Finally, the Commission has an unfortunate history of hiring 
discrimination. The Office of Special Counsel found they engaged in 
illegal discrimination when, during the search for a general counsel, 
an employment offer was made and then withdrawn when the Democratic 
Commissioners discovered the applicant was a Republican. This resulted 
in a substantial financial settlement being awarded to the applicant; 
thereby forcing taxpayers to bear the cost of the illegal acts of 
Commissioners. Amazingly, it has been reported that in a subsequent 
interview with another applicant for the same position, one of these 
Commissioners again tainted the hiring process by asking the applicant 
what the Department of Labor has termed ``inappropriate questions about 
his military service.''
  Apparently, the Commissioner didn't want Republicans or members of 
the military working at the Commission. The Department of Labor has 
reportedly found the applicant's claim of discrimination to be 
meritorious and, if not resolved, this case may be referred to the 
Office of Special Counsel.
  I said this morning that the three men and women whom President Obama 
nominated seem to have exceptional backgrounds, and they are not to 
blame for any of these incidents. But what I also said was, since they 
seem to be exceptionally good nominees, maybe we should find a 
commission where there is something for them to do, instead of a 
commission that has finished its job and where we are just perpetuating 
it with employees who, on average, make $100,000 a year in salary, 
according to Congressman Harper.
  Even if we were to assume these nominees before us could right the 
ship and correct the problems, the question remains: Where would the 
ship sail, and why would they make the trip? Do we need the Commission, 
with its main job completed? Couldn't any remaining duties be better 
performed somewhere else? Can a government program ever be terminated?
  As I said at the beginning of these remarks, Ronald Reagan once said: 
A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life that we will 
ever see. Shouldn't we try to use this opportunity to prove that Ronald 
Reagan was, in that case, wrong?
  I congratulate the Senator from Oklahoma for his work on duplication. 
This isn't the first time. This is one of the many times he has spoken 
and acted on the subject. I offer this example of the Election 
Assistance Commission as one small step we could take in the right 
direction by, in the appropriate way, canceling the Commission instead 
of confirming three new nominees to it.
  I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I failed to mention the cosponsors of this 
amendment, and they are Senator Udall of Colorado, Senators Collins, 
McCaskill, Burr, Paul, Brown of Massachusetts, and Senator McCain.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.


                           Amendment No. 514

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the

[[Page S4192]]

Toomey amendment No. 514 be considered as having been adopted before 
the managers' amendment to S. 679.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Hearing no objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I 
be allowed to speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the Senator is recognized.


                         Alleged Passport Fraud

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I wish to quote from a 
publication.

       Days after working at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, a U.S. 
     Navy veteran found himself behind bars--where he could remain 
     for a decade--for alleged passport fraud.

  I had to read that article--from CNN's Web site--twice. I couldn't 
believe it. But that is what it said.
  Former U.S. Army SPC, now Navy reservist, U.S. PO2 Elisha Leo 
Dawkins--a 26-year resident of Florida--was arrested in April and has 
spent now more than 2 months behind bars in a Federal detention center 
in Miami, and a Federal indictment says the serviceman failed to 
acknowledge he had once applied for a passport when filling out a new 
application, something the prosecutors call passport fraud, but his 
public defender calls an innocent oversight. Petty Officer 2nd Class 
Dawkins now faces up to 10 years in prison if he is convicted.
  Remember John Dillinger? He was sentenced not to 10 years but to 8\1/
2\ years on a conviction for assault and battery with the intent to rob 
and conspiracy to commit a felony.
  We all recognize that falsifying information on a passport has grave 
implications for our national security, and we want our government to 
be vigilant and to crack down hard on those who would attempt to sneak 
in here and do us harm. Zero tolerance. Zero. But according to Petty 
Officer Dawkins' Guantanamo naval base work evaluations, his superiors 
praised his work ethic and performance. He was a military photographer 
who, because of what he was photographing, had to have a secret 
clearance. By the way, he had that secret clearance when he was an Army 
photographer in Iraq. When he went into the Naval Reserves, they--and 
this is according to the U.S. Navy--gave reciprocity for the secret 
clearance for him to go into the Naval Reserves.
  As the Miami Herald reports in today's edition, he took 7,500 photos 
during the 7 months of his service at Guantanamo, and this was after 
his 8 years in the Army, where he was in Iraq.
  His evaluation right before this unexpected arrest by the U.S. Navy 
says that Dawkins ``always'' lived up to the core Navy values of 
``honor, courage, and commitment.'' Honor, courage, and commitment, and 
he had that secret clearance while he was at Guantanamo. This morning's 
Miami Herald chronicles the sensitive photos he took of detainees at 
Guantanamo.
  In one evaluation report that was obtained by CNN, a superior lauds 
Dawkins as ``a team player with a strong work ethic and a desire to 
learn'' and recommends him for promotion. It goes on to say:

       Dawkins is eager to tell the military story and to further 
     the image and success of U.S. servicemembers.

  That was written by fellow PO1 Sally Hendricks.
  Let's see: honor, courage, commitment, and a team player. I have 
sought explanations. I have been on the phone. I have talked to 
government high-ups in person. I have talked to the highest levels in 
the U.S. Navy, the Army, and Homeland Security. I have just been on the 
phone with very high levels of the U.S. State Department. I want to 
know: Does the military stand by the evaluations they made of this 
fellow? Is Petty Officer Dawkins suspected of other misdeeds? If so, 
they better get it out. How did they give him a secret clearance while 
he was named in an old deportation order? Was this case part of an 
ongoing State Department diplomatic service crackdown on passport 
fraud?
  Does the State Department have any additional information they are 
not telling us? From time to time they have intimated that there is 
something more, but they are not saying. Well, did the U.S. military 
believe him to be a citizen during all those years of service in the 
Army in Iraq and now in the Navy in Guantanamo?
  This case raises lots of questions, and we need to get to the bottom 
of it. I have taken an interest in this case because when I read these 
stories on CNN, the Miami Herald, the New York Times, and now it has 
gone all over the country on Associated Press, there seems to be a 
disconnect in government agency coordination. One hand doesn't seem to 
know what the other hand is doing--and a Floridian, with honorable 
service in two services of the U.S. military, has been in jail being 
held on a $100,000 bond. He would have to produce a $10,000 bail, which 
he obviously doesn't have, and he has been there for over 2 months.
  I didn't call the U.S. Attorney's Office because I respect the 
independence of the prosecutorial rule. But let me just quote for you 
this morning's Miami Herald. Carol Rosenberg is the reporter. She 
disclosed that a Federal judge has now said that the U.S. Attorney's 
Office has made a secret offer to resolve this passport prosecution.
  The judge revealed the offer of a pretrial diversion in a conference 
that set a July 12 trial date for Petty Officer Dawkins. The idea, 
according to the Herald, is to give someone facing charges an 
opportunity to avoid prosecution through a program such as doing 
community service or perhaps taking a civics class. The judge was so 
taken aback by hearing this secret offer that the judge said she was 
left speechless, and she was quoted in this morning's Herald story as 
saying it appeared to reflect ``a kinder, gentler'' approach to 
prosecution.
  So whether the petty officer is released from jail tomorrow or 
whenever it is, we will have to see, are there further things? If it 
has to do with his immigration status; according to his public 
defender, whom we have talked to, he came to this country from the 
Bahamas when he was a kid. He still is not a citizen, but he has served 
this country for years and years.
  In conclusion, if the facts of this case are, as we have been told in 
the scratching and scraping, with some reluctance on the part of 
agencies to talk--if it is as it has been reported to us, wouldn't it 
be interesting if the DREAM Act were in fact law? The DREAM Act would 
have prevented something like this from happening in the first place 
because the DREAM Act says, if a kid has been brought here illegally as 
a child but that child grows up and wants to go into the U.S. military, 
as Dawkins has for almost a decade already served, then that 
legislation would grant legal status through a green card to that 
undocumented young person who wanted to serve the country.
  We ought to pass the DREAM Act. Every day we have examples of 
children who came here through no fault of their own, but who are 
unjustifiably having the law come down on their heads.
  I want to close by reading a letter to the editor in the Herald from 
Sandra Wallace of Miami. This is what she writes.

       Elisha Dawkins served 7 years in the military in both Iraq 
     and Guantanamo, where he was awarded medals for his behavior, 
     yet he's being held in Federal lockup awaiting deportation to 
     the Bahamas. This man thought he was a U.S. citizen because 
     his relatives told him he was when he came here as a young 
     child. Our military was certainly glad to consider him a 
     citizen.

  Mr. President, the DREAM Act would allow the U.S. Government to 
consider as a citizen someone who, like Elisha Dawkins, was brought 
here as a child and wants to serve this country.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.


                         Bipartisan Tax Reform

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, millions of Americans are hurt 
economically. Yet so much of the debate on the Senate floor seems to be 
Democrats and Republicans fighting with each other or rehashing old 
arguments. It seems almost as if there is a default strategy: either 
pound on the other party or recycle some of the stale positions that 
have been repeated again and again.
  Senator Coats and I believe that none of this really does anything to 
help the millions of Americans who are out of work or get the economy 
moving again. The two of us have been coming to the floor of the 
Senate, and will continue to do so in the days ahead, to talk about 
what really works, what really works to get the American economy moving 
again.

[[Page S4193]]

  An example would be tax reform, tax reform like the sort of tax 
reform that was passed when Democrats and Ronald Reagan teamed up. That 
tax reform effort helped to create 6.3 million new jobs in the 2 years 
after it was enacted. No one can say there is any one factor that alone 
creates millions of new jobs, but it certainly didn't hurt. Certainly, 
it helped to set the economic climate, Democrats and Republicans coming 
together. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the 2 years 
after that kind of bipartisan effort, the country created 6.3 million 
new jobs.
  It is not going to be possible, of course, to pass comprehensive tax 
reform between now and August 2. But Senator Coats and I have said that 
as part of these budget negotiations, as part of the effort to deal 
with the budget in a comprehensive way and to deal with the debt 
ceiling issue, it ought to be possible to lock in for consideration in 
the fall and in the remainder of this Congress the kind of bipartisan 
effort that we saw a quarter of a century ago that represents an idea 
that really works; an idea with a proven track record of working to 
boost the economy that has been bipartisan, where Democrats and 
Republicans, instead of spending their time pounding on each other, 
say: Let's come together and eliminate some of these ridiculous special 
interest tax breaks which are limiting our ability to grow and create 
family-wage jobs.
  Senator Coats and I are going to spend a few minutes this afternoon 
talking about the impact of real tax reform on jobs and economic 
growth. I would just like to start by thanking my friend from Indiana. 
He has been a pleasure to work with. But his reaction to that kind of 
approach, where we focus on really what works, especially between now 
and August 2 in these budget negotiations, Democrats and Republicans 
having an opportunity to look at spending and look at growth to make 
sure that out of those negotiations by August 2 there is a way to lock 
in for the fall and the remainder of the Congress the effort to promote 
bipartisan tax reform and get our economy growing again--I would be 
interested in hearing my colleague's reaction to that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Oregon for helping 
to organize this colloquy. We have worked together to try to fashion a 
comprehensive tax reform package that we think makes a lot of sense. 
Just about every analyst or economist or budget expert that I have 
talked to and listened to over the past several months has said we are 
not going to successfully address our current debt and deficit 
situation unless comprehensive tax reform is part of the package.
  Senator Wyden and I have had the opportunity to sit down and talk 
about this. We, obviously, have been encouraging the Congress for 
several months to go forward and address this. We realize that such an 
effort cannot successfully take place before we reach the point in 
August where we have to make a decision on raising the debt limit and 
whatever package is brought before us relative to what kind of changes 
we can make in our financial structure to put us in a better fiscal 
situation.
  Nevertheless, knowing the importance of comprehensive tax reform to 
create success for what we ultimately want to achieve, we would like to 
encourage all those negotiating these packages and all those Members 
and our colleagues to look carefully at the proposal, as my colleague 
said, to lock in to whatever package is before us a commitment--a hard 
commitment, an enforceable commitment--to take up comprehensive tax 
reform; not to wait until after the next election but take it up this 
fall as a one of the follow-ons to the package that we ultimately will 
have to address, debate, and vote on coming up in the next several 
weeks.
  I couldn't agree with my friend more that doing so now can be a very 
important component of addressing the serious fiscal situation which is 
facing our country and which is one of our biggest challenges.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank my friend. We are going to talk 
through some of the specifics of why this is important as a way to 
boost the economy. In the beginning, what I would like to just lay out 
is that as we have seen these discussions go forward over the last 
couple of months about boosting the economy, invariably the fight comes 
down to the question of whether we ought to spend more in order, 
particularly in a consumer-driven economy, to create jobs and put our 
folks back to work.
  What Senator Coats and I have described is an opportunity and a way 
that is deficit neutral. As my friend from Indiana knows, this has been 
demonstrated by our analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation. This 
is a deficit-neutral strategy for putting our people back to work 
because by eliminating some of these special interest tax breaks--and 
thousands and thousands of them have gotten into the Tax Code over the 
last quarter century--we can take those foolish tax breaks off the 
revenue roles and use those very same dollars to create what we call 
red, white, and blue jobs to put people back to work in the 
manufacturing sector in Indiana. Of course, the President and I know 
how deep the hurt is in our home State.
  I wanted to begin this by way of making sure that folks saw last 
month's job report as a wake-up call that would indicate that current 
economic policies are not creating the jobs our citizens and our 
economy need and would specifically be willing to look at new 
approaches, new approaches in the sense that they be genuinely 
bipartisan but proven in the sense that they have a track record.
  The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the national unemployment rate at 
9.1 percent in May. As the distinguished Presiding Officer knows, we 
have parts of rural Oregon with unemployment that probably, if you were 
to calculate the real rate of unemployment, is over 20 percent. So the 
economic hurt is enormous. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that of 
almost 14 million Americans who want to work but cannot find jobs, 
almost half of them have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. Of the 
employed, 8.5 million have to settle for part-time jobs. Among the 
hardest hit are young people, the people who are trying to get in the 
workforce, are anxious to show that they have good work habits and 
discipline but cannot find work.
  We lost 8.5 million jobs between the worst of the fiscal crisis and 
the end of 2010, and only a small portion of those jobs has been 
created. Moreover, many of the new jobs that have been created do not 
pay as much as the jobs that were lost, in particular, the loss of 
manufacturing jobs. So many of our citizens, when they can get 
alternative employment, end up with wages far less than what they made 
in manufacturing. In addition, income inequality is growing because 
high school graduates have a jobless rate twice that of college 
graduates.
  With millions of Americans struggling to find jobs, Senator Coats and 
I wish to spend a few minutes to talk about how we can come together, 
and talk about ways to grow the economy. I have mentioned there is a 
proven track record in terms of tax reform helping. Because of the 
historic tax reform in 1986 between populist Democrats such as former 
Congressman Dick Gephardt and the late President Reagan, we had 6.3 
million new nonfarm jobs created in the 2 years after that law was 
passed. I believe it can happen again.
  The Manufacturers Alliance forecasts that Senator Coats and I, with 
our legislation, might have the opportunity to create nearly 2 million 
new jobs. The Heritage Foundation came in with the same sort of 
analysis.
  We can never lose sight of the need to create jobs in an economy such 
as this. I wish to bring my colleague into the discussion at this point 
because he has done so much work, not just in Indiana--where they have, 
to their credit, focused on a manufacturing strategy for our country--
but as part of this bipartisan effort, and get his sense of why the 
approach we are advocating today could be an economic boost for our 
country.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I cannot help but agree with my friend. It 
is a sad situation that we have in this country as our economy is kind 
of limping along, and so many young people graduating from school 
recently are unable to find meaningful jobs and work; so many middle-
age Americans trying to raise a family and save money to send their 
children to school are out of work and cannot find employment, not only 
at the level they

[[Page S4194]]

were previously used to but even at a lower level. It is a situation 
that requires Congress enacting policies that will do everything we can 
to stimulate this economy and get America back to work.
  As I said earlier, comprehensive tax reform has been described by 
about everyone who has looked at this situation as an essential 
component of the kind of reforms necessary to get us back to fiscal 
health.
  As the Senator from Oregon said, one of the components of the tax 
reform plan, the Wyden-Coats plan, is that we want to maintain revenue 
neutrality but at the same time we want to go after those tax 
exclusions and exemptions and subsidies that favor a few but do not 
have broad application. They have been added over the years, 
particularly since 1986 when we had our last comprehensive tax reform. 
Over these last 25 years, a number of special breaks, special 
subsidies, special exemptions have been added totaling hundreds of 
billions of dollars. What we are trying to do here is look at those in 
a comprehensive way, reduce or eliminate many of them, and then use the 
money saved from those eliminations to lower tax rates.
  Let's look at the corporate tax rate. Out of the 36 countries with 
which our country competes most directly for sales around the world, 
the United States ranks 35. We would be 36 except the Japanese deferred 
lowering their rate based on the tsunami and the aftereffects of that, 
but they already had in place plans to lower their rate. We literally 
are at the highest corporate rate of any major industrialized 
competitive country in the world.
  Senator Wyden and I in our bill agreed that we would take the money 
that was saved from eliminating a lot of those special breaks for 
special interests and lowering the corporate tax rate to make the 
United States more competitive, to bring that rate down to the mid-
twenties or perhaps even lower. In doing so, it will stimulate our 
industries here, stimulate our exports, and put our companies in a much 
better position to expand and grow and compete across the world and 
ultimately that translates into jobs.
  If we look at small businesses alone, the real job creators, under 
our plan we allow those businesses, almost all small businesses, to 
expense their equipment and inventory costs in a single year. We also 
incorporate a provision for reciprocity, so those companies that do 
have overseas sales and entities producing and selling their products, 
we allow the earnings gained there to be brought back to the United 
States without being taxed twice, they can be brought back over a 1-
year reciprocity period at a very low rate--again to encourage 
investment in plant, equipment, and employment here in America.
  At a time when consumer consumption is very weak--consumers do not 
have money to spend--we believe comprehensive tax reform and 
particularly some of the ideas outlined in our plan will help stimulate 
the economy, will help bring about growth and ultimately put people 
back to work.
  I would kick this ball back to my colleague, Senator Wyden from 
Oregon, for his further thoughts on that as we continue this colloquy.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am glad Senator Coats made that last 
point, especially because it is getting hardly any discussion here in 
the Senate, and that is with respect to the weak consumption we are 
seeing in our country, particularly middle-class folks who have the 
sense that there is not going to be economic security right now. They 
do not have as much money in their pockets as they would like. They 
have suffered huge shocks that have caused them to pull back from some 
of the purchases they would otherwise make.
  The Presiding Officer of the Senate has done outstanding work with 
respect to trying to protect middle-class people who lost all this 
equity in their homes. That usually serves as some kind of collateral 
for folks with a need to get a loan. That has not been there. We have 
had folks underemployed in much of the workforce.
  What we see is that in our economy, which has always been consumer 
driven, as Senator Coats has pointed out, we are not seeing the kind of 
demand from middle-class folks for goods and services. They are not 
going out and buying the refrigerator they might wish to have for their 
family. They cannot get a computer for their child. They are not able 
to make the purchases that are so important in a consumer-driven 
economy.
  What Senator Coats and I are saying is that as Democrats such as Dick 
Gephardt and former President Ronald Reagan said a quarter century ago, 
they want to come together and put money into people's pockets. They 
want to make sure the middle-class folks--who are just getting 
clobbered, as we have seen for months now--would be in a position to 
get back into the economy and start demanding some of those goods and 
services that are so important for long-term economic well-being.

  Senator Coats and I have sought to put more money into people's 
pockets by repealing the alternative minimum tax. We had an excellent 
hearing in Chairman Baucus's committee yesterday on simplification.
  Get this. The middle-class person is now essentially going through 
bureaucratic water torture on this alternative minimum tax. They have 
to fill out their taxes twice on two separate systems. What Senator 
Coats and I have said is let's repeal it. That will put some money back 
into the pockets of middle-class folks. As Senator Coats has pointed 
out, middle-class folks won't have to spend all that money paying out 
for accountants and all kinds of other people, trying to fill out all 
those alternative minimum tax forms. We will put some money into the 
pockets of the middle class that way.
  Senator Coats and I also advocate nearly tripling the standard 
deduction for all our taxpayers, which again can be a real boon for the 
middle-class consumer, which can help us spur consumer demand and, with 
that, job creation.
  I am very glad Senator Coats has zeroed in on the question of the 
consequences of underconsumption by consumers.
  I think I would next probably like to have my friend go through some 
of the benefits we wish to provide to small business. We all know that 
small business is the job creator, the job engine of our economy.
  If Senator Coats would outline some of the benefits that on a 
bipartisan basis we ought to be zeroing in on with respect to small 
businesses, I think that would be very helpful.
  Mr. COATS. As the Senator from Oregon has said, small business is hit 
particularly hard these days. Because many choose not to incorporate, 
there is a passthrough, a passthrough of taxation rates as if these 
small businesses were individuals. They are taxed at that rate.
  As my friend from Oregon knows, at the end of 2012 that tax rate is 
scheduled, under current law, to rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. 
Small businesses, which currently are having trouble getting credit and 
making ends meet, are facing a tax increase--within a relatively short 
period of time. That is a deterrent to making decisions relative to 
expanding the business and hiring new people, because they know the 
taxes they have to pay out of their earnings flow through directly to 
them so they are going to have to be paid at the highest rate.
  Again, the Coats-Wyden bill prevents that from happening. It keeps 
those rates at the current level. Also, as my friend from Oregon has 
said, simplification is a major underlying principle of the Wyden-Coats 
tax reform bill. It is a nightmare for individuals, as the Senator from 
Oregon said, to try to figure out how to do this. In fact, about $6 
billion is spent each year to hire professionals to fill out tax forms 
because it is virtually impossible for many individuals to figure it 
out and work through this, as my friend said, bureaucratic water 
torture of a process.
  The thousands of hours, hundreds of thousands--millions of hours 
spent filling out tax returns based on the complexity of the current 
Tax Code is a detriment to small businessmen who do not have the 
privilege of having an accountant in the back room or hiring somebody 
who is an expert in taxes as big businesses can do. They either have to 
go outside and hire one or they have to spend a great deal of their own 
time complying with the Tax Code when they ought to be on the floor 
selling their product or running their business. So whether it is tax 
rates or

[[Page S4195]]

whether it is simplification or whether it is incentives for small 
businesses which provide the bulk of the hiring in the United States--
in fact, from 1995 to 2005, between 60 and 80 percent of all new jobs 
were those created by small businesses--our comprehensive tax reform 
bill ensures that not only individuals but small business people will 
have a much simpler, easier way of reporting their taxes and complying 
with the Tax Code. They also will not be facing a tax increase under 
our bill because the current law is due to expire at the end of 2012.
  I will, once again, kick it back to my friend to wrap this up. I 
agree with him that together in 1986 Ronald Reagan and congressional 
Democrats, including Senator Bill Bradley, Congressman Dick Gephardt, 
and Congressman Jack Kemp, worked on a bipartisan basis to pass 
comprehensive tax reform. It did many good things and stimulated the 
economy and brought about a lot of new jobs. It has been 25 years since 
then. That code has now become evermore complex. I think we need to 
move ahead.
  As I said at the beginning of all of this, fundamental tax reform is 
one of the best tools in the economic tool shed, and it is time we use 
it. We know it will not be easy, but we know it has been done before 
and we can do it again. Working together, I believe we can take on the 
special interests that benefit from the Tax Code and create a much more 
business-friendly tax system.
  I conclude on that point. I would like my colleague to wrap up. I 
thank him for his inspiration and leadership on this effort. He started 
this more than 2\1/2\ years ago with Senator Gregg, in a bipartisan 
way. Senator Gregg retired at the end of the last Congress. I have the 
privilege of not only being a close friend of Senator Gregg's and an 
admirer of his understanding and depth of knowledge about financial 
issues, but I inherited all the hard work that he and Senator Wyden put 
together to bring this comprehensive tax bill to fruition.
  We have made some adjustments in debates and discussions between the 
two of us. We think it can be the primary vehicle for moving forward. 
Are we locked in stone? No. Are we open to suggestions to make it 
better? Yes. But, clearly, there is an agreement between the two of us 
that is unbreakable, which is that this is an essential part of dealing 
with our current fiscal crisis, and without this we will come up short.
  Just about everybody who has looked at this situation has come to 
this conclusion, and we are hoping we can in these next few weeks get a 
commitment from our colleagues and all those engaged in the process of 
trying to put together the package that can put us back on the right 
fiscal track and get our fiscal situation in order, that they will 
incorporate into this plan, incorporate it into what is brought before 
us, a commitment, locked in, to go forward with comprehensive tax 
reform. And we believe the Wyden-Coats plan is the place to start.
  I thank my colleague for his efforts, and I will turn it back to him 
to conclude this colloquy.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Indiana. He makes a 
number of important points we want to make sure are considered as the 
discussion about taxes goes forward. For example, Senator Coats pointed 
out on this question of changing just the corporate tax alone--what are 
essentially C corporations--the reality is the vast majority of 
businesses in this country are not C corporations; they are 
partnerships, limited liability corporations, sole proprietorships. 
They are about 80 percent of the businesses in this country. So Senator 
Coats has made the important point that to bring about tax reform, we 
can't just go with corporate taxation. We have to get at the needs of 
millions and millions of these small businesses.
  Chairman Bernanke was asked about this in the Budget Committee, and 
he said specifically that it was important to do comprehensive reform 
in order to generate the best opportunity for economic growth and job 
creation rather than corporate reform alone. Senator Coats also makes 
an important point, as we wrap up, about the temporary nature of our 
Tax Code and how frustrating that is to American businesses that need 
to have some capacity to predict what is ahead to generate jobs.
  The Wall Street Journal reported the other day that the only thing 
permanent about the American Tax Code is that it is temporary, and we 
have more than quadrupled the number of temporary provisions in the Tax 
Code in just the last few years. That uncertainty discourages 
businesses from investing in growth and hiring, as Senator Coats has 
noted, and that is why it is going to be important to look at the Tax 
Code in a comprehensive way, both for individuals and corporations, so 
that going forward, all our taxpayers have some sense of predictability 
and certainty about what their tax treatment will entail.
  My last point is, I recently had a chance to talk to one of the 
veterans of the 1986 tax reform debate, and we visited about some of 
the circumstances involved in that historic reform and some of the 
challenges ahead. When he was done, he said: What in the world is 
holding people up from getting going on this? What is really holding 
everybody up? We know what we need to do. There have been commissions, 
a whole host of them. President Obama had an excellent one that agreed 
with much of what we have talked about this afternoon. President George 
W. Bush had a commission that was chaired by several of our former 
colleagues. I thought much of their proposal was on point. That is why 
what one of the veterans of that 1986 reform legislation had to say to 
me about ``what is holding people up'' is so important.
  As Senator Coats noted, we are not going to do comprehensive tax 
reform between now and August 2. Everybody understands that. But there 
is absolutely no reason--in order to come together in the Senate with 
an approach that doesn't add to the Federal deficit, with the proven 
track record of helping to advance economic security--that between now 
and August 2, as part of these budget negotiations, there is no reason 
in that agreement we shouldn't lock in a strategy for getting on to tax 
reform in the fall and in the remainder of this Congress.
  So I thank Senator Coats. He mentioned Senator Gregg. I feel so 
fortunate to have had two colleagues--and we were in the House 
together--having an opportunity, Senator Coats and I, to work together 
on this in the Senate. I think we have always believed that we ought to 
focus on what works rather than the default strategy of rehashing old 
arguments and just having these partisan fights. So I thank Senator 
Coats. We will have our eye on the effort between now and August 2 to 
make sure tax reform gets the place it deserves for the fall and the 
remainder of the Congress.
  I thank my friend from Indiana.
  Mr. President, with that I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). The Senator from Maryland.


                      Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, last night, S. Res. 185, a resolution that 
was cosponsored by about 90 percent of the Senate, passed the Senate by 
unanimous consent. I am very grateful to my colleagues for their help 
in developing this resolution. This resolution expresses the strong 
support of the United States for our closest ally in the Middle East: 
Israel. I was joined in this effort by my good friend, Senator Susan 
Collins from Maine. The two of us worked together to draft this 
resolution, and we are grateful that so many of our colleagues joined 
us in the process and that it has now passed the Senate by a unanimous 
vote.
  This resolution first and foremost expresses our strong support for 
Israel. It recognizes that these are extremely challenging times. It 
expresses our support for peace between the Palestinians and the 
Israelis and recognizes that the only way we are going to be able to 
move forward on the peace process is through direct negotiations 
between the Israelis and the Palestinians. That is the only way we can 
resolve these longstanding issues in order to achieve peace in that 
region.
  The resolution also reaffirms our opposition to the inclusion of 
Hamas in any Palestinian unity government unless it is willing to 
accept peace with Israel and renounce violence. An entity cannot 
negotiate with those sworn to bring about its destruction; therefore, 
Hamas' inclusion in the Palestinian Government is a nonstarter for any 
possibility for peace.

[[Page S4196]]

  Any unilateral attempt by the United Nations to establish a 
Palestinian State is detrimental to any final peace agreement. A 
permanent and peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 
can only be achieved through direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. 
Any Palestinian effort to gain recognition of a state outside of direct 
negotiations demonstrates their lack of a good-faith commitment to 
peace negotiations. The Senate is now firmly on record that this kind 
of action would be directly counterproductive to peace. If the 
Palestinians pursue this, it may well have implications for the 
continued U.S. participation with the Palestinians.

  Israel has always been willing to come to the peace table for direct 
negotiations. Quite frankly, it has been the Palestinians who have been 
dragging their feet for many months, refusing to have direct 
negotiations between the parties, which is the only way it can be 
accomplished. Lasting peace can only come through direct negotiations 
that settle all outstanding issues to the satisfaction of both sides. 
Obviously, there is going to be give-and-take. There has to be give-
and-take. There has to be mutual respect and security, and that 
requires active participation in the peace talks.
  The two sides can achieve a peace agreement only when they 
acknowledge each other's right to exist. That is pretty fundamental. 
This is particularly critical now for the Palestinians and their unity 
government that includes Hamas. Unless Hamas fully renounces violence 
and acknowledges Israel's right to exist, it cannot be a partner of 
peace and their inclusion in the Palestinian Government is a major 
obstacle.
  As Prime Minister Netanyahu stated so well in his speech before the 
joint session of Congress in May:

       I will accept a Palestinian state. It is time for President 
     Abbas--

  President Abbas, of course, is the head of the Palestinians--

     to stand before his people and say: ``I will accept a Jewish 
     State.''

  It is clear it is in the interest of all parties for there to be two 
states--the Jewish State of Israel and the independent Palestinian 
State--living side by side with secure borders in peace.
  Let me again acknowledge what I think Prime Minister Netanyahu said. 
Israel is prepared to acknowledge a Palestinian State. It is time for 
the Palestinians to acknowledge the Jewish State.
  Difficult negotiations need to take place. There are critical issues 
such as security, power, and water concerns, as well as larger issues 
of historical, religious, and territorial matters still to be decided. 
That must take place through direct negotiations between the Israelis 
and the Palestinians. This is precisely why it is so important to 
discuss, negotiate, and ultimately resolve these issues rather than 
taking unilateral action that would leave them unsettled and 
unsustainable. Real and lasting peace will only occur at the peace 
table, and I am grateful the Senate has strongly and unanimously gone 
on record to affirm this approach.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.


                               The Budget

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today to join again in the 
debate occurring in Washington on bringing our Federal budget into 
balance and facing up to our looming debt limit.
  Our Nation right now is like an overburdened ship wallowing in the 
seas. We are in danger as a nation of foundering if we don't sort this 
out. As former Comptroller General David Walker testified to us in the 
Budget Committee over a year ago, we face ``large, known and growing 
structural deficits that could swamp our ship of state.''
  To get the ship in trim, we need to make adjustments. We need to 
reduce the deficits and ultimately reduce the debt.
  We agree on a lot. We need to cut spending. Democrats and Republicans 
agree on that. We need to protect ordinary families who enjoy ordinary 
levels of income from tax increases. Democrats and Republicans agree.
  The disagreement here in Washington is whether we also need to raise 
some revenues for our Nation in other areas to help balance our 
national budget--areas such as oil and gas and ethanol subsidies that 
we could close and contribute to fixing our budget deficit, closing 
corporate tax loopholes, bringing to an end high-income, tax-dodge 
schemes.
  The Republicans are threatening that they would rather sink the boat 
than raise revenues in those areas. Just this week, Senate Republican 
Leader Mitch McConnell called on President Obama to take any revenue 
raisers ``off the table'' and to focus only on spending cuts. In an 
opinion piece on CNN.com, the Republican Leader, Senator McConnell, 
proclaimed ``tax hikes can't pass the Congress.''
  Let's start with the fact that, as I said a minute ago, we are not 
talking about tax hikes on ordinary Americans. When Leader McConnell is 
talking about tax hikes, he is talking about the rates that the 
wealthiest Americans pay in taxes, often lower than ordinary American 
families, believe it or not, gas and oil and other subsidies that go to 
big industries, and tax loopholes that generations of corporate 
lobbyists have wangled into the Tax Code. That is what they are talking 
about when they talk about tax hikes in this context.
  Let's take a specific look at what the Republicans are fighting so 
hard to protect.
  Last month, Republicans filibustered a measure that would have ended 
$21 billion in unnecessary tax subsidies for the largest oil companies 
in the Nation--companies that have enjoyed record multibillion-dollar 
profits and do not need continued support from the American taxpayer. 
When we tried to break the Republican filibuster, Republicans voted to 
protect those big oil subsidies, even though they add to the deficit. 
That happened right here on the Senate floor a short time ago.
  To keep our American ship of state afloat, the Republicans are 
demanding that we cut early childhood education while at the same time 
they fight to protect big oil subsidies.
  Here is a building in the Cayman Islands. It is called Ugland House. 
This nondescript building does not look like much, but over 18,000 
corporations claim that this building is their place of business. Mr. 
President, 18,000 corporations claim this building is their place of 
business. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ``small business'' 
to imagine 18,000 corporations fitting into that little building.
  As Budget Committee Chairman Conrad has pointed out, the only 
business going on down there in the Cayman Islands is funny business, 
monkey business with the Tax Code. It is corporations getting out of 
paying their responsibilities to this country by hiding behind phony 
shell corporations down in the Cayman Islands. It is estimated to cost 
us as much as $100 billion each year to put up with this offshoring tax 
shelter of income.
  To keep our ship of state afloat, the Republicans are asking us to 
cut investments in science and technology that will cure disease for 
Americans and for mankind, and at the same time they are fighting to 
protect corporations that hide in offshore tax havens so the honest 
American taxpayer has to carry the burden in their place.
  Here is another building with a story to tell. This is the Helmsley 
Building on Park Avenue in New York City. We remember Leona Helmsley 
who famously said: Taxes are for the little people to pay. Well, we 
know something about the Helmsley Building and its taxes because this 
building is large enough to have its own ZIP Code. The IRS compiles tax 
information by ZIP Code. So we know from IRS actual information what 
the wealthy and successful individuals and corporations that call this 
building home pay in Federal tax each year.
  Guess what we know. We know that in the last year that was recorded, 
for which this has been pulled out--which was 2007--the occupants, 
together, of this building--the Helmsley Building--paid a 14.7-percent 
total Federal tax rate. They actually paid 14.7 percent. The average 
American taxpayer, the average middle-class American, pays far higher 
than that.
  We hear a lot of talk about how high tax rates are for wealthy 
Americans. In real life, when you go to actual examples--14.7 percent, 
how does that compare, for instance, to the people who work in that 
building, the average New

[[Page S4197]]

York City janitor or doorman or security guard? Well, far, far lower. 
They all pay tax rates in the 20 to 25-percent range, even higher in 
some cases, on average--far higher than the high-income occupants of 
the building.
  It is not just because this is the Helmsley Building that this is 
true. This is not some anomaly. Each year, the Internal Revenue Service 
publishes a report that details the taxes paid by the highest earning 
400 Americans. I spoke earlier this year on last year's report, which 
was based on that same year's data, 2007. In that year, these superhigh 
income earners, earning nearly a third of a billion dollars--with a 
``B''--in income in 1 year, 2007, on average--all 400 of them in that 
year--the superhigh income earners paid a lower tax rate than an 
average hospital orderly, who is a single filer, pushing a cart down 
the hallways at midnight, of a Rhode Island hospital. They paid a lower 
tax rate on their income than that hospital orderly.
  In May, the IRS published data on the top 400 taxpayers for 2008. 
Let's take a look at what happened in this most recent year they have 
categorized.
  In 2008, the top 400 took home an average of $270 million each--more 
than a quarter of a billion dollars each. We can and do applaud the 
success of these individuals. It is the American dream to make more 
than a quarter of a billion dollars in a single year. But, on average, 
these 400 extremely wealthy Americans paid an average Federal tax rate 
of 18.2 percent.
  We spend a lot of time around here debating whether the top income 
tax rate should be 35 percent or 39.6 percent. Folks, that is not what 
they paid. The Tax Code is filled with special provisions that tend to 
exclusively or disproportionately benefit the wealthy, so the top 400 
income earners paid an average of 18.2 percent.
  A single filer, at $39,350 of income, pays the same tax rate. Mr. 
President, $39,350, that is where you hit 18.2 percent and match the 
rate people making a quarter of a billion dollars pay. Those of us who 
are in between the truckdriver and those ``uber'' billionaires pay far, 
far higher rates. The average truckdriver in Rhode Island, according to 
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is paid $40,200, which means the 
average truckdriver is paying as high or higher rate than these top 400 
income earners earning over a quarter of a billion dollars.
  To keep our ship of state afloat, the Republicans are asking us to 
cut employment and training support at a time of record joblessness 
while they continue to fight to make sure people making a quarter of a 
billion dollars a year pay lower Federal tax rates than middle-class 
American families.
  When all is said and done, everyone agrees that there needs to be 
cuts, and everyone agrees there should be no tax increases on middle-
class American families making up to $250,000 a year. That is already 
agreed to. Those concerns are not an issue.
  What is at issue is that the Republicans are willing to sink the ship 
of state to defend tax rates for billionaires that are lower than those 
paid by regular, hard-working Americans.
  The Republicans are willing to sink the ship of state to defend 
special interest loopholes in the Tax Code won by big corporate 
lobbyists, in effect earmarks--earmarks that happen to be in the tax 
side of the budget rather than in the spending side of the budget.
  The Republicans are willing to sink the ship of state to defend 
offshore havens for corporations and high-income earners to dodge 
taxes. That is where they have chosen to stand and fight. That is where 
the disagreement is--not for the middle class that is the backbone of 
our Nation but for the special interests, the big corporations and the 
ultrarich. When you say that revenues cannot be on the table, that is 
who you are protecting. That is just a fact.
  They say it is tax increases they are protecting against. The 
question Americans should ask, when they hear that, is: Tax increases 
for whom? For the corporate lobbyists who drove down corporate taxes to 
the point where significant numbers of American corporations do not pay 
a dollar in taxes? Yes, there should be tax increases there. We should 
close those loopholes. Tax increases for people making more than a 
quarter of a billion dollars, who pay less than the average working-
class family as a rate? Yes, there should be tax increases there. But 
that is just in the spirit of fairness.
  It is simply inexcusable that our tax system permits billionaires to 
pay lower tax rates than truckdrivers and allows some of the most 
profitable companies in the world to pay little or no taxes to support 
our Nation. Even if we had no budget deficits, fairness and equality 
would demand that we address these inexcusable discrepancies.
  Our budget crisis, however, brings new urgency to the problem. As we 
continue to debate ways to close the budget gap, I hope the Republican 
leadership and the Republican Conference will revisit the potential to 
significantly cut the deficit by addressing the tax loopholes, tax 
gimmicks, and, frankly, outright injustice to the ordinary taxpayer 
that they are now defending.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 
a few moments as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


               Measure Read The First Time--S.J. Res. 23

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, if this week has shown us anything at 
all, it is that the American people cannot wait on Democrats to do the 
right thing when it comes to spending and debt and putting us on a path 
to balance. So today Republicans are beginning the rule XIV process on 
a balanced budget constitutional amendment.
  A balanced budget amendment would require that lawmakers stop 
spending money we do not have. When we return from the Fourth of July 
break, we will fight for an opportunity to vote for it.
  We have had a chance this week to see how Democrats in Washington 
want to deal with the fiscal mess they have helped create--by forcing 
the taxpayers and the job creators to actually bear the burden. Well, 
Republicans think it is about time Washington bears the burden, for a 
change. Let Washington find a way to balance the books on its own. The 
American people have paid enough of a price over the past few years for 
Washington's recklessness. Republicans are not going to allow Democrats 
to make them pay even more.
  Speaker Boehner has already committed to a balanced budget vote in 
July, so the Speaker and I are united in this effort. Americans can 
expect all 47 Republicans in the Senate to support this amendment. It 
is time to put the American people back at the helm of our ship of 
state. And if that is what the vote achieves, then the debate we are 
having will have been well worth it.
  If Washington is forced to finally reform its ways, then we will all 
look back and say the American people, indeed, won this debate. And we 
will say the balanced budget amendment was just the thing we needed to 
get our house in order.
  Broke or balanced, that is the choice.
  Mr. President, I am going to rule XIV the proposal. I do not think 
the Presiding Officer has it yet. The Chair should have it momentarily. 
It has miraculously appeared.
  I understand there is a joint resolution at the desk. I ask for its 
first reading.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will read the resolution by title 
for the first time.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       A joint resolution (S.J. Res. 23) proposing an amendment to 
     the Constitution of the United States relative to balancing 
     the budget.

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I now ask for a second reading, and in 
order to place the joint resolution on the calendar under the 
provisions of rule XIV, I object to my own request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard. The bill will be read the 
second time on the next legislative day.
  The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up 
to 15 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come here today to compliment the 
minority leader, Senator McConnell, for his resolution in our effort to 
put a balanced budget amendment onto the Constitution of the United 
States.

[[Page S4198]]

  I come here today to tell you a little story about a friend of mine 
from Douglas, WY. I was in Douglas on Memorial Day. Every year on 
Memorial Day in Douglas, they have sunrise ceremony services in the 
cemetery where they raise the flag, go through the names of all the 
veterans from Converse County who have passed in the last year, put the 
flag back at halfstaff, 21-gun salute, and a time for people to come 
together and think about this great Nation and honor those who have 
given their lives.
  After the ceremony this year, people were leaving the ceremony. My 
friend Bernie Seebaum stopped me and said: You know, Senator--we have 
known each other a long time. He is on Medicare now, Social Security, 
has lived a long life, contributed to the community. He said: I don't 
care if you do a number of things--if you raise taxes, cut Medicare, 
take away Social Security--as long as you use it to pay off this debt, 
this $14 trillion debt.
  I said: Bernie, the problem is, if Congress ever does something like 
that, they are going to get the money and they are just going to spend 
it.
  The first thing we need to do is amend the Constitution so that we 
actually balance the budget. Then you can start talking about ways to 
pay off this incredible debt we have.
  Here in Wyoming, we live within our means, balance the budget every 
year. It has paid huge dividends for our State.
  You know, you think about the Constitution, and our Founding Fathers 
produced the greatest governing document, in my opinion, ever 
conceived. It was written at a time when our country's future was in 
serious doubt, when our country faced countless threats from abroad, 
threats that were becoming increasingly difficult to confront, and when 
the Federal Government lacked both the structure and the foundation to 
do anything about it. But there we had the Constitution, written in 
part as a response to those challenges of the day, and it has endured 
till this day. So amending the Constitution is not something to be 
undertaken lightly. The Constitution is the highest law of this great 
land. It has been amended, but infrequently and almost always at a time 
of crisis. Now, I support a balanced budget amendment to our 
Constitution because now is just such a time.
  When the Constitution was written, they had to decide what the future 
would bear, so when it was written, as that time came, we now have to 
decide what sort of future we want for our country. Do we want a future 
where our children and grandchildren are overburdened by debt, where 
the U.S. dollar is backed by nothing more than worthless promises, or 
do we want a future where the only thing we can afford to spend money 
on--what we are facing right now--is entitlements and interest on our 
debt. Do we want a future where our country goes broke and a future 
where Washington lacks the political will to do anything about it or do 
we want a future with less spending, lower taxes, and more 
accountability?
  Facts are stubborn, and the numbers do not lie. This month, the 
Congressional Budget Office released a report saying that the outlook 
of America's debt is growing grimmer. The Hill newspaper put it best 
when it said that the new CBO report numbers are ``much worse than last 
year's outlook.'' To anyone who does the math, this is not a surprise. 
Every day, Washington borrows $4.1 billion more--borrowed over $4 
billion yesterday, $4 billion today, and we will do it again tomorrow. 
That is over $2 million a minute, every minute. Washington did that 
yesterday, it is doing it today, and it will do it tomorrow. Of every 
dollar Washington spends, 41 cents of it is borrowed. Much of it is 
borrowed from China. Every American child born today and tomorrow and 
the next day is born with an incredible debt of over $45,000. Next 
year, of every dollar Washington spends, 68 cents will go for Social 
Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the debt.
  If we as a nation continue down this path, Washington will spend all 
of what it takes in on these items alone. Everything else, from defense 
to education, will be paid for on a budget of borrowed money. So you 
may ask, where is the money going to come from, and how will we ever 
pay it back? Well, a lot of it is going to come from other countries, 
countries that do not always have our interests, America's best 
interests, at heart.
  John Kennedy stood outside this building in 1961, 50 years ago. He 
said:

       Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can 
     do for your country.

  Well, a few years from now, that may change. It may change to: Ask 
not what your country can do for you. Ask what your country must do for 
China.
  So consider this. When John Kennedy was President, America's total 
debt was just over $300 billion, and we only owed 4 percent of our debt 
to foreign countries. Today, our total debt is over $14 trillion. And 
debt isn't just a disaster for the distant future; our current debt is 
irresponsible and it is unsustainable. Even our military leaders have 
condemned it. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ADM Mike 
Mullen, has said, ``The biggest threat to our national security is our 
debt.'' The debt is the threat. We do not and we should not take the 
biggest threat to our national security lightly.
  The amount of debt we owe right now, today, is so high that it is 
hurting our employment at home. Experts tell us that our current debt 
is costing us 1 million jobs in America. Spending like this makes it 
harder for the private sector to create new jobs. Because of this, it 
is harder for American families to buy gas, to buy groceries, to buy 
cars, homes, to pay tuition for the kids to go to college. And it is 
harder to create jobs for those kids who will be graduating this year 
and next year and every year until we get the spending under control. 
Everyone in this body claims to understand that the situation is 
irresponsible and is unsustainable.
  Back in February 2009, the President called experts to the White 
House for what he called a fiscal responsibility summit. In his opening 
remarks, this is what the President had to say:

       Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Washington these past 
     few years, we cannot simply spend as we please and defer the 
     consequences to the next budget, the next administration, or 
     the next generation.

  Well, I agreed with the President. He was right. So my question to 
the President is, What have you done about it? Well, one thing he has 
done is he has called together a debt commission. Late last year, the 
debt commission released their report on America's fiscal situation, 
and the findings were sobering. According to the report, they said: The 
problem is real. The solution will be painful. There is no easy way 
out. Everything must be on the table. Do you know what else they said? 
They also said: Washington must lead.
  Washington has not led. Instead, this administration has offered 
nothing but empty promises. As the White House makes promise after 
promise and speech after speech with no action--no action to back it 
up--it is clearer than ever that spoken promises have become broken 
promises.
  This persistent push to put our fiscal crisis off until tomorrow is 
unacceptable and must end now. The first step toward doing that should 
be to pass an amendment to our Constitution requiring Washington to 
balance its budget. A balanced budget amendment would require 
Washington to spend no more money than it takes in each and every year. 
Such an amendment would force Washington to live within its means. We 
cannot afford to continue to mortgage our children's future to pay for 
Washington's fiscal failures. Such an amendment would transform the 
kind of irresponsible spending that goes on today in this very body 
into an impeachable violation of every legislator's constitutional oath 
of office.
  The American people have overwhelmingly spoken on the wisdom of this 
approach. A recent poll conducted by Sachs/Mason Dixon showed that 65 
percent of Americans support a balanced budget amendment to our 
Constitution, and 45 percent said they would be more likely to vote for 
a candidate who did so. Of those, 68 percent of them were Independents, 
but there is support for this among Republicans, among Independents, 
and among Democrats. When the American people call for Washington to 
lead in numbers this big, it is time for Washington to listen. Every 
single member of my party on this side of the aisle agrees. That is why 
all 47 Republican Members of this body have cosponsored the balanced 
budget amendment. The American people are behind us, and they want us 
to act.

[[Page S4199]]

  Meanwhile, the administration and its allies on the other side of the 
aisle have offered nothing but more empty rhetoric, more of the same 
tax-and-spend policies that made this economic situation worse. You 
take a look at where we are and where we have been, they have made it 
worse.
  I am reminded of a quote from Ronald Reagan. He said:

       If the big spenders get their way, they'll charge 
     everything to your taxpayers' express card and believe me, 
     they will never leave home without it.

  The big spenders can get away with charging everything to the 
American people's taxpayer express card because no one--no one is 
forcing them to look at the bills. Now those bills are coming due, and 
this administration and its liberal allies want a new taxpayer express 
card and a blank check. They want a blank check to spend as they 
desire, and they are not going to get it from me, not without specific 
reforms that will introduce accountability into this broken Washington 
process.
  A balanced budget amendment will not solve every problem, but it is a 
critical step in the right direction. It would ensure that Washington 
is constitutionally obligated to avoid the reckless overspending of the 
past.
  Our debt crisis did not surface overnight. It certainly will not be 
solved without a great deal of additional work.
  Before any of that work can be done, Washington has to learn to live 
within its means the way families all across this great country do. It 
is time we show the American people they can trust their government 
with their money again. It is time we lead today instead of deferring 
leadership until tomorrow. It is time we show the same courage our 
Founding Fathers did when this country was on the verge of financial 
collapse. It is time for a balanced budget constitutional amendment.
  Then I can go back to my friend Bernie and his wife Sally, in 
Douglas, WY, and say: Bernie, finally, in Washington, they got it 
right. They realize, as we do in Wyoming, we have to live within our 
means. We have to balance our budget every year and then start working 
on paying off this incredible debt.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I believe Senator Harkin is coming in 
the next few minutes. In the meantime, I thought I would comment on the 
legislation that has been before the body since late last week--to 
reduce the number of Senate confirmations of Presidential nominations, 
so the Senate can exercise its constitutional duty of advice and 
consent more effectively.
  This all goes back to our U.S. Constitution, article II, section 2, 
which says that one of the most important duties of the Senate is ``its 
advice and consent responsibility.'' That is one of the well-known 
functions of the Senate. Many have written about advice and consent.
  The Constitution says the President shall nominate, with the advice 
and consent of the Senate, ambassadors, ministers, judges, and other 
officers of the United States. Today, there are about 1,400 of those 
officers. When President Kennedy was President, there were about 286, 
more or less. Under President Clinton, there were about 914, more or 
less. It continually goes up. This includes a large number of part-time 
advisory positions, such as the Library Advisory Board and a variety of 
other boards. That is why the Founders put into the Constitution 
another provision, which says Congress may, by law, vest the 
appointment of such inferior officers as they think proper in the 
President alone, in the courts of law, and heads of departments.
  It is up to us to make sure we don't trivialize the constitutional 
responsibility we have, so we define the number of men and women whom 
the President nominates, who require advice and consent, and we define 
the ones who don't. We have not done a good job deciding which ones did 
not. Over the last few days, the Senate has decided to remove 169 of 
the 1,400 nominations from the advise and consent requirement. It is 
debating, right now, removing another 272 full-time or part-time 
positions and putting them in an expedited process, so we will have 
affected 450 or so of the 1,400 nominations, either by removing them 
from advice and consent or speeding up the process. This will permit us 
to focus more attention on the job we are sent to do, which is to do a 
good job of evaluating the most important offices.
  Just one indication of how we have been trivializing the 
responsibility to decide who does deserve advice and consent and who 
doesn't is that only about 3 percent of all the Presidential 
nominations in the last Congress actually were deemed important enough 
to have a rollcall vote on the floor of the Senate. Ninety-seven 
percent were deemed not important enough. Of course, they were not. 
They were valuable people, but they were part-time advisory board 
members who were part of a board where an executive director, for 
example, already reported to someone who was confirmed by the 
President.
  We had examples of positions being confirmed by the Senate who 
reported to someone, who reported to someone, who reported to someone, 
who reported to someone else--all of them confirmed by advice and 
consent. So we made a modest step in the direction of helping us 
execute and exercise our Constitutional duty under article II, section 
2, in a more effective way.
  This resolution we are debating, unlike the bill this morning, does 
not remove one single person from the right of advice and consent. It 
expedites it in the following way: The President's nomination would 
come to the desk here--and this is after the President has done all his 
vetting--and then the relevant committee, say, the Finance Committee or 
the Judiciary Committee, would go through its usual exercise of asking 
the nominee to answer questions and provide all that information. When 
that nomination first comes here, that information is listed on the 
Senate Executive Calendar that we Senators and staffers read. Then, 
when the information is all gathered by the relevant committee, that is 
indicated. Then there is a full 10 days for all of us to look at that. 
If a single Senator says he or she would like for this nominee to go on 
to the committee for a hearing and then for the traditional markup, 
that happens. But if all 100 Senators say they looked at the 
information and it is not necessary to go to that extra time, expense, 
and delay, then it moves to the Executive Calendar, and the majority 
leader can bring it up whenever he or she wishes.
  What we have done is, in approximately 450 cases, we have affected 
the 1,400 nominations that are subject to advice and consent. We have 
either eliminated the requirement or we have expedited the process and 
made it possible for us to focus more attention on those deserving the 
most important attention.
  One other aspect--and I see the Senator from Oregon here and perhaps 
he wishes to speak, so I will conclude my remarks with this. There is 
one other important aspect that we deal with here. It may be the most 
important thing we can do. The first one I discussed was slowing down 
the trivialization of the Senate's advice and consent constitutional 
duty. That is what the first part of what we are doing does. The bill 
did that, which we have already passed. The resolution does that, which 
we are now debating.
  The second aspect that was dealt with in the bill this morning is 
dealing with the phenomenon of what I call innocent until nominated. We 
have developed a practice in this town of making or having the 
President select an otherwise unsuspecting distinguished citizen from 
Sioux City or Nashville or Bangor or Sacramento and after going through 
an FBI check and other things, nominated that person for some position 
deserving of advice and consent. By the time that person makes his or 
her way through all the executive vetting process, by the time people 
pore over the tax returns and answer multiple questions--often the same 
question asked in different ways--they have likely got an inaccuracy in 
there somewhere. Then their name is sent up here and the committee 
investigates them and asks them many of the same questions and they 
might have an inconsistency. Then they show up for a publicized hearing 
with their family and, all of a sudden, they are made out to be a 
common criminal because they made a mistake trying to decipher these 
forms.
  A former majority leader of the Senate, Howard Baker, and his wife,

[[Page S4200]]

former Senator Nancy Kassebaum, went to Japan a few years ago as 
President George H.W. Bush's nominee as Ambassador to Japan--Senator 
Baker was. All of us knew Senator Baker. He was voted by the Senate the 
most admired Senator by the Democrats as well as the Republicans when 
he was here. All the Senators who were here at the time knew Senator 
Kassebaum, his wife. Yet Senator Baker told me he had to spend $250,000 
in legal and accounting fees just to make his way carefully through the 
nomination process, with all the executive vetting and all the vetting 
the committees did, just so he would not make a mistake and just so he 
would not be subject to this ``innocent until nominated'' syndrome.
  The bill we passed this morning simply establishes a process. If the 
bill should pass the House and be signed by the President, then we 
would have a working group of people appointed by the Senate--people 
appointed by the executive branch--and we would work together to try to 
simplify the executive forms and the congressional forms that we use to 
see if we can have a smart form, a simple form that perhaps we could 
all use; and then at least, for the most part, a nominee, when 
nominated by the President, could fill out a single form, which could 
then be used by all of us who need to know basic information, such as 
what was their income last year. We can ask the question: Do we need to 
know every single residence address they ever had in their life if they 
are going to be on an advisory board, for example, for the United 
States?
  That practice will have to be done with respect to the constitutional 
separation of powers. The executive branch will have to create its own 
documents. The Senate will have to create its own. If we work together 
and create a smart form--and Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman have 
made important contributions to the process of how candidates are 
vetted, and the forms--we will not only have slowed down the 
trivialization of the Senate's duty of advice and consent by doing a 
better job deciding who not to confirm, we will also have reduced the 
phenomenon of innocent until nominated, which has not only made it 
difficult for Presidents to staff the government, delayed their ability 
to form a government, but unnecessarily harassed otherwise honorable 
men and women who are asked to serve their government.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.


                           Order of Procedure

  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
recognized for up to 10 minutes and that Senator Collins be recognized 
for up to 10 minutes following my remarks; further, that following 
Senator Collins' remarks, the Senate recess until 5:30 p.m.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               The Budget

  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, we have had a lot of discussion on the 
floor of this Chamber about the challenge of our deficit and our debt, 
and these are indeed very important issues.
  It is important to remember exactly how we got here because it was 
only one decade ago that we were running large surpluses at the 
conclusion of the Clinton administration. In fact, these surpluses were 
so large that economists were starting to argue over just what would we 
do if we paid off our entire debt. Didn't there need to be instruments 
of last resort, of great security, such as Treasury bonds? Didn't we 
need to preserve some deficit or debt in order to have that instrument 
available to stabilize society?
  Well, would it not be great to have that debate now? I remember being 
absolutely thrilled that we were going to turn over a debt-free America 
to our children. But what ensued? President Bush had a different view. 
He said: You know what. Let's spend these surpluses we are generating 
and do breaks for the best off in our society. Let's take and establish 
a new, major program--Medicare Part D--and not pay for it. Let's embark 
on wars around this planet and not raise funds to pay for them.
  The result of that was that those tremendous surpluses were reduced 
to huge deficits in short order.
  Indeed, the 10-year projection went from a $5 trillion surplus to a 
$5 trillion shortfall. It is why some folks call President Bush the $10 
trillion man--because he managed to do $10 trillion worth of damage to 
our economy. But that was only the beginning because then there was 
deregulation of the mortgage industry which resulted in predatory 
lending, liar loans, teaser rates that exploded after 2 years, and 
kickbacks allowed to the originators so that they didn't even have any 
sort of fair presentation to families negotiating the most important 
financial instrument in their lives--their home mortgage. The meltdown 
that came from that extraordinary regulatory abuse resulted in another 
$5 trillion in debt. So that is how we got there.
  Now we have a certain pattern we see on this floor in which Members 
of this Chamber--many of the Members across the aisle stand up and say: 
We want to protect the programs for the best off, but we want to cut 
the basic programs that serve working Americans in our Nation. Quite 
frankly, I think they have it exactly backward, and if you think I am 
making this up, let's just review recent history.
  The December deal on the continuing resolution--this increased our 
debt by $\1/2\ trillion, and virtually every Member across this aisle 
voted for it. I voted against a $\1/2\ trillion increase. And a big 
chunk of that $\1/2\ trillion increase in our debt was there because of 
the insistence on providing the continuation of the President Bush 
breaks for the best off in our society. Now, I don't know how one can 
rise and talk about cutting our investment in infrastructure in 
America. I don't know how one can rise and talk about cutting support 
for those who are needing to get food from food banks and at the same 
time be defending bonus breaks for the very best off in our society.
  The December deal wasn't an anomaly because it has happened 
repeatedly. We had a vote on oil and gas subsidies for the most 
powerful five companies in our economy, five very large oil and gas 
companies. Instead of getting rid of an anachronistic provision that 
was put there when the cost or the value of a barrel of oil was very 
low and the oil industry said it needed to have some support, instead 
of cutting that, many in this Chamber voted to continue it, continue 
this break for the most powerful corporations, a break that was 
designed for a very different period of time when oil wasn't $100 a 
barrel but was a fraction of that--$20 a barrel.
  No, these aren't the only two recent cases. We have the attack on 
Medicare. Indeed, we have the plan that has been widely supported by my 
colleagues across the aisle, both in this Chamber and across the 
building, in which they say: Let's end Medicare as we know it because 
we need to save money, and we are going to do it on the backs of 
seniors, but we are not going to take a look at the breaks we voted in 
over the last quarter century for the best off in our society.
  Well, this systematic plan works like this because these breaks for 
the best off have been done through the Tax Code, and every American 
understands that whether you give somebody $5,000 in the Tax Code or 
you give them a $5,000 grant, it is exactly the same thing. We had that 
debate over the ethanol subsidies just recently. Everyone understands 
it is exactly the same thing, but by putting these programs for the 
wealthy and well-connected in the Tax Code, now my colleagues are 
rising to say: We will not touch those programs because they are in the 
Tax Code. Now, if they were in the appropriations bill, then we would 
be willing to talk about it, but because we were clever enough to put 
them in the Tax Code, no, they are off limits.
  This is a sophisticated way of saying that the programs for the 
wealthy and well-connected in America are off limits, but the programs 
for working families are the ones we are going to cut. It is those 
programs for the hungry, it is those programs for the unemployed, it is 
that health care program for our seniors, it is the investment in 
infrastructure that will build America--those are the ones we will cut.
  My colleagues and citizens of the United States, we must have a 
national debate, a debate that doesn't employ this type of smoke and 
mirrors to try to protect the programs written for the

[[Page S4201]]

wealthy and well-connected while attacking the programs for working 
families. That is unacceptable, and I and others will rise on this 
floor and point it out time and time again, that using that simple ruse 
by saying only the appropriations bills on the table but not the tax 
bill is unacceptable.
  I am going to tell you that it must not be that we make our kids' 
education more expensive by diminishing Pell grants, that we make our 
parents' health care more expensive by obliterating Medicare as we know 
it, that we impoverish the future of this Nation by not investing in 
our infrastructure, while continuing to defend the programs that were 
developed for the best off, the wealthy, and the well-connected over 
the last 25 years and saying those are off the table. They must be on 
the table. We must fight for an America that works for working 
Americans.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
permitted to speak as if in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________