[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 68 (Wednesday, May 15, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3519-S3525]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   AGRICULTURE REFORM, FOOD, AND JOBS ACT OF 2013--MOTION TO PROCEED

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I now move to proceed to Calendar No. 73, S. 
954.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 73, S. 954, a bill to 
     reauthorize agricultural programs through 2018.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.


                          Disturbing Behavior

  Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, I rise this evening to discuss a 
disturbing pattern of behavior, a culture of intimidation that 
continues to emerge from the Obama administration.
  For the past few days, headline after headline has revealed one new 
controversy after another. In every case Americans are right to wonder 
what kind of leadership led to this and just how far this culture of 
intimidation goes.
  Americans need to learn the extent to which this misconduct has 
occurred by the heavy hand of the executive branch of government.
  The first indication was on Friday of last week, and it involved the 
Internal Revenue Service issuing an apology for targeting conservative 
groups seeking nonprofit status and treating conservative groups more 
harshly than other groups.
  These groups were excessively scrutinized if they used the words 
``patriot'' or ``tea party.'' As we would later learn from the 
inspector general report, not only were these groups targeted, but 
senior officials knew about it for at least a year and made no report 
to the Congress. It has also been confirmed that confidential 
information about some of these groups was leaked to the liberal 
nonprofit group ProPublica.
  The whole situation disgraces the basic constitutional freedoms to 
which every American is entitled. It is appalling that Americans have 
been deliberately targeted for IRS scrutiny based on their political 
beliefs or affiliations. No American should fear arbitrary government 
harassment simply because of the expression of his or her views.
  The administration needs to be held accountable for its failure to 
protect Americans. An apology is not sufficient in this instance. An 
internal inspector general investigation talking about mismanagement 
errors will not suffice in this instance. The acknowledgement that 
mistakes were made and that changes, indeed, need to be made will not, 
in and of itself, rebuild the public trust that has been broken.
  Particularly troubling is that the IRS is not the only agency in 
which these types of abuses have occurred. Americans are also right to 
be outraged by the news that Health and Human Services Secretary 
Kathleen Sebelius has been fundraising among the industry people she 
regulates on behalf of the President's health care law.
  As reported in the Washington Post on May 10, Secretary Sebelius 
``has gone, hat in hand, to health industry officials, asking them to 
make large financial donations.''

[[Page S3520]]

  Presumably these donations are being collected in order to pay for an 
advertising campaign in the media, including television. Further 
investigation is necessary to determine the extent to which these 
solicitations constitute a conflict of interest. It is curious that the 
Secretary of Health and Human Services is seeking support from the 
health industry now when these affected parties were largely ignored or 
in many cases intimidated during the debate on the President's health 
care law.
  Meanwhile, questions remain about the administration's handling of 
the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in 
Benghazi that left four Americans dead, including Ambassador Chris 
Stevens. During his recent news conference, the President tried to 
deflect serious concerns about altered talking points by calling it a 
political ``sideshow.'' I do not think the American people are going to 
be convinced that it is a sideshow. The real sideshow is the 
President's attempt to distract from an unraveling narrative that began 
with the administration wrongly casting blame on an inflammatory 
YouTube video. Subsequent testimony from State Department 
whistleblowers, who came forward despite administration pressure, has 
only expanded the controversy surrounding the administration's apparent 
misrepresentation of the terrorist attack to the American people.
  Let's not forget that it was President Obama who promised, after he 
took office, that his administration would be ``the most open and 
transparent in history.'' It is increasingly clear that the President's 
rhetoric does not match this reality.
  Whether these scandals continue to make mainstream news, our 
questions and inquiries will not stop until we get answers. The 
administration's conflicting storylines and blame games are inexcusable 
in the wake of serious allegations. In America, those in power are not 
above the law, and those responsible must be held accountable. A Member 
of this body on the other side of the aisle asked publicly on the radio 
this morning: What does it take to get fired in this town? A good 
question coming from the other side of the aisle.
  What we are continuing to see is a culture of intimidation, a pattern 
of big-government heavyhandedness and overreach by the administration. 
What is lacking is credibility and integrity from those elected to 
serve.
  Each scandal is distinct in its grievances but not isolated in its 
impact. A New Yorker article published yesterday by Amy Davidson noted 
``the Obama Administration's strange belief that if it can just find 
the right words, that reality will comply and bend to meet it--that its 
challenges are so extraordinary that the use of any exceptions built 
into normal processes should be regarded as unexceptional.''
  Americans deserve direct, straightforward answers, and they deserve 
the facts. They deserve to know why the IRS deliberately targeted 
conservative groups and gave liberal groups a pass, why Secretary 
Sebelius solicited the health care industry to help implement 
ObamaCare, and why the administration downplayed the atrocities in 
Benghazi and pressured fact witnesses to stay silent. It time for the 
President and his inner circle to provide a full explanation.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, good evening.


                               The Budget

  While I was waiting for a chance to say a few words on the floor, I 
was on the phone and had a conversation with someone who has run a 
couple of very successful companies in our country. I do not know if he 
is a Democrat or a Republican, but it was an interesting conversation. 
We talked about how the economy is coming along, and we talked about 
how the companies he is especially interested in are doing. We sort of 
looked ahead.
  One of the things I asked is, what do you think we could be doing 
here, where we are working in our Nation's Capital in the U.S. Senate?
  He pretty much said there are three things we need to do. He said: 
You need to answer maybe three questions for us. One, can you govern in 
a divided Washington, a divided Congress? He said: No. 2, can you be--
can we be as a nation--fiscally responsible? And the third thing he 
said was, can you provide some certainty with respect to the Tax Code 
to actually know what taxes are going to look like, not just this week 
or this month or just this year, but how about having some certainty 
going forward?
  I think there is a lot of wisdom in what he said. As some other folks 
have been talking about here on the floor today, when we were not 
passing the Water Resources Development Act, a good bipartisan bill, I 
think a responsible bill, an encouraging step, if you will, but in 
between we have had other people speak and talking about one side or 
the other moving forward on a budget. Someone talked about other issues 
that are in the news these days.
  I want to follow up on some of the earlier conversations today with 
respect to demonstrating that we can govern, that we can be fiscally 
responsible and we can provide some certainty with respect to the Tax 
Code. Folks who might be listening in to what is going on in the Senate 
this afternoon may or may not know the way the budget process works. 
Obviously this is budget 101.
  In my old role as State treasurer and Governor of Delaware--in 
Delaware we have two budgets. Not one but two budgets. We have an 
operating budget and we have a capital budget, a brick-and-mortar 
budget. The brick-and-mortar budget is for schools, K-12, sort of 
postsecondary education; infrastructure: roads, highways, bridges, 
prisons, that kind of thing. But we have an operating budget as well. 
Here we only have one. For, gosh, I want to say about 30--40 years, 
actually, the way we are supposed to run our finances as a country 
basically called for the President to submit a budget, usually in 
February, one budget not two but one budget. The Congress is expected 
to come in and sort of pivot off of that budget and create what we call 
a budget resolution. The Senate passes a budget resolution, the House 
does. The idea is to be able to do that sometime in April, and 
hopefully by the end of April agree between the House and Senate on 
that budget resolution.
  People think a budget resolution is a budget. But it is not. It is a 
resolution, a framework for a budget. It is not actually signed by the 
President. It is something we work out. It provides a foundation on 
which to pass a number of maybe a dozen or so appropriations bills that 
cover everything from agriculture to transportation.
  The budget resolution provides a framework for any revenue measures 
we might need to pass as well in order to get us closer to a balanced 
budget or to meet some kind of responsibilities for running our 
country. But the idea is for the Senate to pass a budget resolution, 
the House to pass a budget resolution, and we create a conference 
committee and work out our differences.
  For the last 4 years, our friends in the Republican Party delighted 
in accusing the Democrats of never passing a budget. What they meant 
was we never passed a budget resolution, that framework. I think of the 
budget resolution as a skeleton. The skeleton is the bones, if you 
will. But we put the meat on the bones when we pass the dozen or so 
appropriations bills, and whatever revenue measures are needed. That is 
the meat on the bones. Then eventually we have a full budget.
  Right now, as our colleagues know, we passed in the Senate a budget 
resolution several weeks ago. It called for deficit reduction. It did 
not balance the budget over the next 10 years, but it further reduced 
the budget deficit and put us on a path to stabilize our debt, and to 
get us on a trajectory where debt as a percentage of gross domestic 
product is starting to come down--not as much as I would like, probably 
not as much as the Presiding Officer would like, but to get us headed 
in the right direction. It was a 50/50 deal, 50 percent deficit 
reduction on the spending side, 50 percent on the revenue side.
  Actually, ironically, the last time we had a budget--1998, 1999, 
2000, 2001 in the Clinton administration--Erskine Bowles, then the 
President's Chief of Staff and a woman named Sylvia Matthews, now 
Sylvia Matthews Burwell who is our new OMB Director, worked along with 
the Republican House, Republican Senate to come up with a deficit 
reduction plan in 1997 that led to four balanced budgets in a row.

[[Page S3521]]

  Their deal, worked out with Republicans, was a 50/50 deal. Fifty 
percent of the deficit reduction was on the spending side, 50 percent 
was on the revenue side. Anyway, this year the Senate passed a budget 
resolution, passed with all Democratic votes, no Republicans. It is a 
50/50 deal, half of the deficit reduction on spending, half on the 
revenue side.
  Over in the House, they have a different approach. The Republicans in 
the House argue, with some justification, that they get more deficit 
reduction accomplished. You might quibble with some of their 
assumptions. They assume the repeal of ObamaCare. They also assume that 
even though they are going to repeal it, the $1 trillion in deficit 
reduction that CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, says flows from 
ObamaCare over the next 10 years in the Affordable Care Act--even 
though they assume repealing ObamaCare, they still assume the $1 
trillion in deficit reduction. I do not know if that is entirely 
consistent, but that is part of their assumption. So they end up with 
deficit reduction that is dependent solely on the spending side. No 
revenues, it is all on the spending side.
  So they passed their budget resolution. We passed ours. They passed 
theirs with almost all Republican votes, we passed ours with all 
Democratic votes. When that happens, the idea is to say, here is the 
Senate budget resolution, here is the House budget resolution. Why 
don't we create a conference committee--I used to think of it as a 
compromise committee--where some of the Senators, Democrat and 
Republican, gather together and work out the differences between the 
two budget resolutions. That is what people sent us here to do.
  The Presiding Officer knows I like to sometimes ask people who have 
been married a long time, what is the secret for being married a long 
time? I usually ask this to people who have been married 50, 60, or 70 
years. I get some real funny answers. I got a great answer about a week 
ago. A couple has been married 55 years. I asked the wife and husband. 
I said to the wife: What is the secret to being married 55 years?
  She looked at her husband, and she said, he will tell you that he can 
either be right or he can be happy, but he cannot be both. I thought 
that was pretty funny. He said something to the effect of, when you 
know you are wrong, admit it. When you know you are right, let it go. 
That is pretty good advice.
  I think the best answer I ever heard to that question of what is the 
secret to being married a long time--I have heard this from a number of 
people. The answer is the two Cs, communicate and compromise. Think 
about that. The two Cs, communicate and compromise. I think that is not 
only the secret to an enduring union between two people, but I think it 
is also the secret to a vibrant democracy, communicate and compromise.

  It is kind of ironic that our Republican friends, after beating us 
over the head for 4 years for not supposedly passing a budget--although 
if you looked at what we put in place, some of the legislation was law; 
we actually did have a budget. We had spending caps and directions to 
reduce spending in a lot of different categories. We saved in deficit 
reduction well over $1 trillion as a result.
  But, ironically, the very people who criticized us for not passing a 
budget have now, here in the Senate, made it impossible for us to 
create that conference committee, a compromise committee between the 
House and the Senate, and take the next logical step of reconciling the 
differences between the Senate-passed budget resolution and the 
House's.
  It is not going to be easy to do that, but we need to get started. If 
you think about the way we spend money--I want to commend the chair of 
the Budget Committee. She has had some very sad losses in her family. 
We extend our sympathy there. I want to commend the Senator and her 
committee for taking on a tough job, one of many tough jobs she has 
taken on, and to give us a budget resolution that we can go to 
conference with. I want to have a chance to do that.
  I want to mention this and I will yield. We had a bunch of Realtors 
in from Delaware. They wanted to talk about the budget and how we are 
doing. I explained that if you think of the Federal budget, think of it 
as a pie, think of it like a pizza pie or a chocolate pie, but think of 
it as a pie. The way I explained this is, over half of that pie is 
entitlement program spending. That is things we are entitled to by 
virtue of our age, our station in life, our service, Medicare, 
Medicaid, Social Security, some of our veterans' benefits. But over 
half of the budget of that pie for spending, over half of it is 
entitlement spending and it is growing.
  Another roughly 10 to 15 percent of that pie is interest on the debt. 
With the debt growing, interest on the debt--thank God the interest 
rates are low right now or that would go through the roof. Interest on 
the debt continues to maybe creep up. If you add those two together, it 
is about 70 percent of the pie we are thinking about.
  That leaves another 30 percent. What is in the remaining 30 percent? 
The rest of the whole Federal Government. About half of that 30 percent 
is defense. About half of that 30 percent is everything else from 
agriculture to transportation and everything in between--law 
enforcement, courts, Federal prisons, the FBI, education, housing, 
environment. Everything else is in that 15 percent.
  The difference between the Senate-passed budget resolution and the 
House-passed budget resolution is the House would make some changes in 
entitlement spending. We do some of that as well. We do more to try to 
reduce spending. But the real difference is what happens with that 15 
percent of--we call it domestic discretionary spending. The other 15 
percent in discretionary spending is defense.
  But they would take, in their budget resolution in the House, that 15 
percent over the next 10 years and take it down to roughly 5 percent--5 
percent. That is everything in the Federal Government other than 
defense and entitlements and interest. That is everything else. That 
includes workforce development, starting with early childhood education 
programs, Head Start, all the way from kindergarten up to high school; 
programs especially promoting the education in STEM, science, 
technology, engineering and math, postsecondary education. It includes 
infrastructure; roads, highways, bridges, everything broadly defined in 
infrastructure. It includes investments in research and development 
that can create products and technologies that can be commercialized 
and sold all over the world. All of that stuff is the rest of 15 
percent and it goes down to about 5 percent.
  I do not think that is smart. I do not think that is smart for 
growing the economic pie because of things--the areas we need to invest 
in or look for. We need a world-class workforce. No. 2, we need 
terrific infrastructure, much better than our decaying infrastructure. 
The third thing we need is to invest in R&D that can be commercialized 
and turned into products.
  In any event, we have a difference in priorities here. The Senate-
passed budget resolution is not perfect, but I think it is a very good 
document and a good starting point. The Republicans have their ideas, 
some with merit, some not. But the next thing we need to do is we need 
to meet. We need to create that conference committee and we need to go 
to work and let the chair of the committee and her counterpart over 
here, Senator Sessions, do their job, along with their House 
counterparts. But they cannot do their job until Republicans in the 
Senate agree to form a conference committee and go to conference. We 
need that to happen. Rather than just talking about and pointing 
fingers at one another, we actually need to do that. We need to stop 
pointing fingers, join hands, and see if we cannot work this out.
  I yield the floor again, with my thanks to Senator Murray for the 
leadership she continues to provide for all of us.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up 
to 10 minute as in morning business, and following me, the Senator from 
Rhode Island will speak for 5 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               The Budget

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Delaware 
who spoke about the fact that we are

[[Page S3522]]

now 53 days since passing the Senate budget. We are pushing very hard 
as Democrats to keep this process moving and get our budget to a 
conference committee. I appreciate his coming out and explaining why 
that is so important. I agree with him.
  We believe with all the urgent challenges we face today, there is 
every reason to get to work right away on a bipartisan budget deal. 
There is no reason to delay this until the next crisis. But we have 
come out here now seven times and asked for consent to go to conference 
to work on the budget with the House, and seven times the Senate 
Republicans have stood and said, no, we do not want to go to work on 
the budget.
  Given how much Senate Republicans have talked about regular order 
over the last several years, we are rather surprised on this side that 
they are now resisting this very important next step in this bipartisan 
negotiation. By the way, it is not just Democrats who are saying they 
want to go to conference. There are quite a few Senate Republicans who 
are surprised, as we are, that they are not allowing us to go.
  My colleague Senator McCain said blocking conference is 
``incomprehensible'' and ``insane.'' Senator Corker said that to ``keep 
from appointing conferees is not consistent.'' Senator Flake said he 
``would like to see a conference now.''
  I sincerely hope the Republican leaders in the Senate will listen to 
the Members of their own party, because we have a lot of problems to 
solve and we have to get started. Our children today, young adults, 
need a world-class education to succeed in the global economy they are 
entering. Many of them are graduating in the next several weeks. Too 
many Americans are out of work yet or still underemployed. Our national 
infrastructure is quickly becoming an obstacle rather than an asset to 
our competitiveness.
  We need to do more to responsibly tackle our long-term deficit and 
debt challenges and make our Tax Code work better for our middle class. 
The debate about all of those challenges couldn't be more important. We 
should start working toward a bipartisan budget deal that works for our 
families, our economy. We should do it as soon as possible and engage 
the American people in a thorough and responsible debate.
  That is why I, frankly, was very disappointed to see that today, 
instead of meeting to discuss moving toward a bipartisan conference 
between the House and Senate, House Republicans are meeting to discuss 
what they will ask for in exchange for not tanking the economy a couple 
of months from now.
  Instead of moving with us toward the middle and joining us at the 
table ready to compromise, they spent their afternoon debating what to 
write on a ransom note and saying if they don't get what they want, 
they are going to allow the United States to default. That is an 
unprecedented event that would devastate our entire economy.
  I think a lot of families across our country are very concerned that 
House Republicans haven't learned any lessons at all from the past 2 
years, and that we are looking at more brinkmanship, more governing by 
crisis, and more harm for our American families and our businesses.
  House Republicans are even telling us they are willing to put foreign 
creditors before our seniors, our veterans, and our businesses and 
claiming that somehow this plan will protect the economy.
  That is absurd. A default is a default. If the Federal Government 
pays its foreign creditors--but defaults on its obligations to our 
families and our communities--the results are going to be catastrophic. 
Rating agencies would rightly see that as a serious abdication of our 
responsibility. Our fragile economy would be seriously threatened, and 
people across the country would lose their faith again in our 
government's ability to function.
  Fortunately, I hope and think it will not come to all of that. 
Republicans have been saying default would be a ``financial disaster'' 
for the global economy and ``you can't not raise the debt ceiling.'' A 
few months ago, Republicans acknowledged how dangerous it would be to 
play games with the debt limit and how politically damaging it would be 
to play politics with the potential economic calamity and dropped their 
demands.
  What has changed since then? Why are Republicans once again issuing 
this empty threat that does nothing more than rattle the markets and 
increase uncertainty across our country. Maybe the House Republicans 
think since we won't hit the debt ceiling until later than we 
originally expected, there could be less pressure to get a deal and 
more opportunity for them to extract some kind of political concession.
  That is exactly the wrong way to look at this because even if we know 
they are going to reverse course eventually, the Republican strategy of 
holding our economy hostage and creating this uncertainty again and 
trying to push us toward another crisis has terrible consequences. All 
of us remember the summer of 2011 when extreme elements in the 
Republican Party demanded economically damaging policies, leading to a 
downgrade of our Nation's credit.
  Economic growth and job creation slowed to a halt, consumer 
confidence plummeted, and out of that summer came sequestration. That 
was a policy that was meant to serve only as a trigger and, in fact, 
was only implemented because Republicans were focused on protecting the 
wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations from paying even a penny 
more in taxes rather than working with us on a deal to prevent 
sequester.
  Now what do we have? Sequestration. It is forcing families and 
communities across the country to cope with layoffs and cuts to 
services they count on, things such as childcare and public safety. 
Yesterday, we learned that DOD civilian employees, many of whom are 
veterans, by the way, are going to be furloughed.
  We have to replace sequestration. We need to do it with a balanced 
and responsible deficit reduction plan, but we also have to stop 
lurching from crisis to crisis that allows those kinds of policies to 
be enacted. There is absolutely no reason to double down on an approach 
that has those kinds of effects on the families and communities we 
serve and on those who bravely served our country.
  Contrary to what we are now, unfortunately, hearing from the House, I 
believe with more time to reach a fair and bipartisan agreement we have 
all the more reason for us to move to a conference quickly and get a 
budget agreement. Let's get to work. Our country's challenges--rather 
than a looming artificial deadline or crisis--should guide this debate, 
and it shouldn't be controversial. There are responsible Senate leaders 
on both sides of the aisle who agree.
  I hope Senate Republicans will listen to members of their own party 
who are calling for a conference and bring us one step closer to 
negotiating a bipartisan budget deal in a responsible way instead of 
insisting that we run down the clock.
  I know there are factions in our government that believe compromise 
is a dirty word and that getting a deal will not be easy, but I 
continue to believe it can and needs to be done because alongside those 
who refuse to compromise there are responsible leaders who came here to 
show Americans that their government works. It would be deeply 
irresponsible for the House to continue delaying a conference and for 
Senate Republicans to continue to cover for them, especially if they 
are doing it for political reasons or to keep the negotiations out of 
the public eye or to, what I have heard, avoid taking a few tough 
votes.
  I urge Republican colleagues to reconsider their approach. Join us in 
a budget conference ready to compromise and work with us toward a 
bipartisan deal the American people deserve.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, it is my understanding that Senator Reed 
is speaking next. I would like to ask that I be recognized as in 
morning business at the conclusion of his remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. First, Mr. President, let me rise to commend Senator Murray 
for her extraordinary leadership on the Budget Committee and in so many 
other ways in the Senate. She did a remarkable job in bringing together 
a

[[Page S3523]]

budget that responds to the urgent need we see in the United States 
today to create jobs, to strengthen the economic recovery and, in fact, 
to provide more momentum to this recovery, much more.
  In my State of Rhode Island, despite certain gains, we are still at 
roughly 9 percent unemployment. This is unacceptable. We have to do 
more.
  The first step on that path is to move this budget to conference. 
That is what Senator Murray has spoken about, and that is what is so 
critical. Fifty-three days ago, under her leadership, the Senate passed 
a budget. The budget invested $100 billion in a targeted jobs and 
infrastructure package that would start creating new jobs quickly. And 
that is what my constituents need. Indeed, when I go back to Rhode 
Island that is what people are asking about: Where are the jobs?
  The budget would begin, in this jobs and infrastructure package, to 
repair public roads, bridges, and help prepare workers for the 21st 
century. All of these things are essential to our present economic need 
for job creation, our future productivity, and our future ability to 
compete in an increasingly competitive global economy. Our budget path, 
as laid out by Senator Murray, would end the economically damaging 
sequester and make the tough and balanced choices we need for sound 
fiscal policies.
  Now the House Republicans also passed a budget. The next step in 
regular order is to go to conference. Admittedly, the House Republican 
budget stands in stark contrast to our budget, and it is clear we have 
a lot of work to do to reach an agreement. For example, the House 
Republican budget calls for a total of $4.6 trillion in cuts, it 
voucherizes Medicare, it would leave the sequester in place, and it 
calls for tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest Americans.
  I believe these and other choices in the House Republican budget 
would be a very bad deal for the people of Rhode Island. These are the 
kinds of differences that must be and can only be resolved effectively 
in conference. Again, the first step to do that is to appoint our 
conferees, to go to conference, and to begin the difficult discussions 
and negotiations to provide the American public the answers they are 
looking for.
  So it is past time we move to conference with the House. And I hope 
there is a real chance that Senate and House Democrats can negotiate a 
bipartisan agreement with our Republican colleagues in the House of 
Representatives, and with our Republican colleagues in the Senate that 
will move the country forward.
  Unfortunately, despite the insistence over months and months and 
months by Republicans in the House and in the Senate that we go to 
regular order, that we pass a budget--that was the biggest problem they 
were talking about for many months, last year and the year before. Now 
here we are looking for regular order, and they are looking the other 
way and block us from moving forward and conferencing the Senate and 
House budgets. That can't go on. We have to get to conference. We have 
to take the next step.
  We can't delay. We have 11.7 million Americans out of work and 
looking for jobs. We have to address the sequester.
  As Senator Murray just said, yesterday the Secretary of Defense 
announced hundreds of thousands of civilian personnel will be 
furloughed, civilian personnel that support from our military forces. 
That will not only disrupt their lives, which is the first great toll, 
but it will also disrupt the efficiency and the ability of the 
Department of Defense to fully and capably carry out its mission. These 
are critical issues.
  We have to make sure, again, that the full faith and credit of the 
United States is not jeopardized by another manufactured crisis over 
the debt ceiling, which is once again on the horizon.
  We have to deal very soon with all of these issues. The logical and 
appropriate step is to go to conference. We have a lot of work to do.
  Let me also say I am encouraged that I have heard that Leader Reid is 
prepared to call up for a vote the nomination of Richard Cordray to 
head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is critical because 
a well-regulated marketplace is not only good for consumers, it is good 
for companies. That is something that could add to this economic 
recovery, this certainty, this knowledge that consumers will have the 
information they need.
  Also, I presume and hope that very soon we will have a vote with 
respect to the pending doubling of the student loan interest rate. Last 
year we avoided this by pushing it forward a year. We have another 
deadline facing us July 1. We have to make sure students don't face 
another crippling increase in interest rates they pay on student loans.
  Student loans are a huge burden on the generations that are coming 
up. In fact, it could delay our economic progress by a decade or more 
as students can't buy homes and form households because they are 
saddled with the debt. So we have to work on that too. We just can't 
lurch from crisis to crisis.
  The first thing to do, the immediate thing we should do, is to invoke 
regular order. Let's go ahead, let's go to conference. Let's start 
dealing with the issues that affect the people of America. Let's start 
serving their primary concerns--creating jobs and a stable economy--and 
doing that through regular order and the procedures that we have 
adopted and used for decades.
  I yield the floor.


                  Unanimous Consent Agreement--S. 954

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that on Monday, May 
20, at a time to be determined by me, after consultation with Senator 
McConnell, the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 73, 
S. 954.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.


                   Iran Sanctions Implementation Act

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, it is very rare that we have an 
opportunity to do something that is in the benefit of our country in 
terms of our protection. It doesn't cost anything. If anything, it 
makes money, and it is something I am going to share. It is a bill I 
introduced today, which is S. 965.
  Let me give a little background to let you know why we are 
introducing this bill and why the Iran Sanctions Implementation Act of 
2013 is significant.
  First of all, it is imperative that we know, because most people 
don't understand this, that Iran's source of revenue comes from oil 
exports. This is something that one of our fine Senators has had as one 
of his efforts, to come up with something that is going to effectively 
embargo the country of Iran.
  We have a lot of countries, for example, that we don't import 
anything from, but they do have a very large supply of oil. To date, 
Iran is exporting about 1.25 million barrels of oil. That amounts to 
somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million a day or about $3 billion 
a month.
  The influence of Iran is something throughout the Middle East, and it 
ranges from Yemen all the way to Sudan, to Hamas, to Hezbollah, to 
Lebanon, and, of course, to Syria. One of the concerns I have had for a 
long period of time is that Iran--one of the things the President did 
that I think we are going to live to regret is 4 years ago he did away 
with our ground-based interceptor in Poland. And when this happened, 
that was set up to knock down missiles that might be coming from the 
east into the United States.

  We have 44 ground-based interceptors on the west coast, and I am 
comfortable we can knock down anything coming from that way, but from 
the east, we don't. It would take maybe one shot--it would have to be a 
fortunate one--from the west coast.
  Anyway, the reason I bring this up and why it is pertinent to the 
legislation we are introducing right now is that our intelligence has 
shown us since 2007 that Iran is going to have the bomb--the weapon, 
the nuclear capability--and the delivery system to send something from 
Iran by 2015.
  If we had stayed with our effort to have the radar in the Czech 
Republic and the ground-based interceptor in Poland, we would be well 
prepared to protect ourselves. However, that is not the case. So I look 
at Iran--and a lot of people don't agree with this; I may be the only 
one who will say this--as the greatest threat we have in the Middle 
East. We all talk about Syria and the problems taking place in Syria--
the 70,000 people who have been the victims

[[Page S3524]]

of Assad's barbaric slaughter of his own people--but we know that 
Iran--the Iranian security and intelligence services--is propping up 
the Assad regime by advising and assisting the Syrian military forces, 
providing essential, lethal military supplies and progovernment 
military.
  I am going to read something now that I just received to quantify how 
much Iran is doing to assist Syria. This was in the Economist magazine. 
It said:

       Iran reportedly sent $9 billion to Assad to see it through 
     sanctions on Syria.

  In other words, several countries, including us, had sanctions on 
Syria, and this is one reason we were sending money over there. That 
tells us our sanctions on Iran are not nearly as tight as they should 
be. And that was in the Economist. So it is very serious.
  Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran's proxy, is participating in a direct combat 
role aligned with Iranian strategic interests in Syria, and we know 
Syria provides crucial access to Iranian proxies that include 
Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic jihad. Iran is continuing 
an extensive, expensive, and integrated effort to maintain Syria as a 
base for fomenting future regional instability.
  Iran is all in in Syria, as evidenced by the frequent presence on the 
ground in Syria of Iranian force commander Major General Qassem 
Suleimani. Suleimani is on the U.S. Treasury and U.S. Security 
Council's watch lists for alleged involvement in terrorist activity and 
proliferation of nuclear missile technology. So this is how serious 
that situation is over there.
  A subordinate of Suleimani, Brigadier General Hassan Shateri, was a 
senior Iranian commander who was killed in the Damascus countryside. 
The death of Iranian generals on Syrian soil is a strong indication of 
Iran's commitment to the regime.
  Further, we know Iran has supplied Syria with ballistic missiles and 
chemical weapons, and the Assad regime in Syria, which is presently the 
greatest threat to stability in the Middle East, is being propped up by 
Iran. Iran is able to do this because it earns $3 billion a month in 
oil revenue. Now, if Iran--and this is a key point--did not have access 
to this money, its ability to influence the region would be 
significantly curtailed. In other words, they cannot pose a threat 
without their oil revenues.
  So the reason we have the threat from and the problems we have in 
Syria is because of the money that is being sent to Syria, and the 
source of that money is oil revenue, and it shows that the effort we 
have made in Iran is not really enough because they have access to that 
many resources.
  Fortunately, the international community has generally recognized 
this. Last year Senator Kirk of Illinois led the Senate in the 
consideration of sanctions against Iran's oil trade. At that time Iran 
exported 2\1/2\ million barrels of oil a day, and Senator Kirk sought 
an outright global embargo against Iranian oil. During the debate, 
however, many members of the international community stated they would 
not be able to wean themselves off of Iranian oil quickly enough to 
comply with the sanctions without causing a significant shock to oil 
prices and, in turn, their economies. So these are countries that would 
like to have complied with sanctions against Iran, but they felt it was 
not in their best interests to do so. So the sanctions were amended to 
require the international community to significantly reduce its 
reliance on Iranian oil.
  That legislation passed through the Senate, and Iran's oil exports 
have since fallen by about half. So instead of the 2\1/2\ million 
barrels a day going out, it is down to 1\1/4\ million--about half. This 
is a significant reduction, but with the Iranian regime intent on 
harming the United States and our allies, we have to do all we can to 
tighten sanctions and more fully isolate them.
  Our Nation doesn't import oil from Iran, and we haven't for a number 
of years. We embargoed them a long time ago. But despite our abundant 
untapped natural resources, we remain the largest oil importer in the 
world, and so we have a strong role to play in making the Iran oil 
embargo as effective as possible.
  Natural gas has always been a major U.S. energy resource, but it was 
just a few years ago that the energy industry believed the United 
States was on the verge of becoming a major natural gas importer. 
Permits were issued and facilities were under construction to handle 
the massive amounts of natural gas we were expecting to import to meet 
the domestic energy demand. Then came the development of two critical 
technologies. One is horizontal drilling, and the other is, of course, 
something we have known about for a long time--hydraulic fracturing.
  Hydraulic fracturing was actually developed in the State of 
Oklahoma--in Duncan, OK, where I will actually be this coming weekend--
way back in 1949. By the way, it is very safe. There has never been a 
confirmed case of groundwater contamination using hydraulic fracturing. 
But when all this came about, all of a sudden we had a huge boom here 
in the United States. This is all on private land. I want to make that 
very clear. Because the oil and gas industry developed and perfected 
these methods, which are environmentally safe, we are now able to 
economically reach oil and natural gas in places we never thought would 
be possible, and production has skyrocketed.
  Harold Hamm, who I think arguably is the most successful independent 
oil operator in America today, is from Oklahoma. He happens to be up in 
North Dakota right now, but he has been at the forefront of these 
technologies and has used them to unlock the Bakken shale formation in 
North Dakota. And that is where he is actually at this time.
  Before these practices were used there, oil development was expected 
to remain just a memory of the past, but with these technologies, he 
has turned North Dakota into one of the greatest economic success 
stories in the Nation. The change has been remarkable, and it occurred 
nearly overnight. North Dakota has grown its oil production by 300 
percent, to 660,000 barrels of oil a day in just 4 years. The 
unemployment rate in North Dakota is 3.3 percent. Normally, we say 4 
percent unemployment is full employment. Well, they are actually below 
full employment. His biggest problem right now is finding people to 
work. A driver in the oilfields makes $100,000 a year. This is what is 
happening in North Dakota.

  The promise of shale oil and gas development has spread well beyond 
North Dakota in recent years. It is happening in my State of Oklahoma, 
in Pennsylvania.
  Let's put this chart up here. That is significant. I can remember 
until recently people were thinking everything has to be in the oil 
belt. All the oil production has to be west of the Mississippi. But 
look at it now. This is in the lower 48 States. The shale plays that 
are taking place now are in places, yes, of course, where we would 
expect it, in Oklahoma, but look up here. That is in Pennsylvania. That 
is up there at Marcellus. And we have opportunities all over. So it is 
completely all over the country, not just in the western part of the 
United States. Where oil and gas activities have historically been 
isolated to just a few regions of the country, such as Oklahoma and 
Texas, they are now all over the country. Because of these great 
domestic resources, I believe we can achieve domestic independence in a 
matter of months.
  The use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling has caused 
domestic energy production to soar over the last few years. Production 
is now over 7 million barrels a day--40 percent higher than it was in 
2008. But, as the Congressional Research Service recently confirmed, 
all of this production is on State and private land--none of it on 
Federal land. In fact, on Federal land, in spite of the boom that has 
been taking place, production has actually been reduced because of 
President Obama's war on fossil fuels. Production has actually been 
reduced on Federal lands, and that is kind of embarrassing because we 
can see on the second chart that a significant amount of our Nation's 
oil and gas resources are on Federal land, which are all but completely 
off limits.
  This chart shows the Federal lands. They are not producing on any of 
these Federal lands, but look at the potential that is there and what 
we could do. It is incredible to look at. You can look at all of this 
land in the Montana west, in Alaska, offshore. The yellow land is

[[Page S3525]]

the Bureau of Land Management land, the orange is the Fish and Wildlife 
land, the light green is the Forest Service land, the dark green is the 
National Park Service, and the light blue is the Department of Defense. 
All of the Outer Continental Shelf is managed by the Federal 
Government, and oil is under many of these places, but the vast 
majority of it is locked up by the Obama administration and no one can 
get to it.
  We know the resources are there. They are massive. Everyone has 
agreed it is there. The Institute of Energy Research recently issued a 
report based on the most recent, though outdated, government data about 
these off-limit lands and showed that if we enacted policies that 
allowed aggressive development of these Federal resources, the process 
would generate $14.4 trillion in economic activity and would create 
2\1/2\ million jobs and reduce the deficit by $2.7 trillion, all over 
the next 40 years.
  Why is this land locked up? One answer is because of President Obama. 
He has allowed his alliance with the environmental left to run 
roughshod over issues as important as encouraging stability in the 
Middle East through a full isolation of Iran.
  If the President would lead, the United States, acting independently, 
without any assistance from any other nation, could singlehandedly 
offset all of Iran's oil exports by simply expanding our own domestic 
production on Federal lands.
  This is why I have introduced this Iran Sanctions Implementation Act 
of 2013. My bill would require the President to establish Iranian oil 
replacement zones on Federal lands so that the production from these 
zones will reach the 1\1/4\ million barrels of oil a day. This amount, 
1.25 million barrels a day, is what Iran is exporting at the current 
time.

  Here is the point. The reason we are talking about coming up with a 
very small amount is, if the President wants to continue his war on 
fossil fuels, that is fine, if he doesn't want to develop our potential 
public lands. But if he could take a very small amount, such as 1.25 
million barrels of oil a day--and do it anywhere, give him the 
discretion as to where he wants to do this--it could be here if he 
wants to do it out in the West, or ANWR up in Alaska, it could be over 
there or offshore on the east coast. By the way, that is off the shore 
of Virginia, and Virginia wants to be able to develop that land.
  This is enough oil to fully offset all current Iranian oil exports. 
If the President unlocks our energy potential and allows the production 
of an additional 1.25 million barrels a day in the United States, we 
would reduce our imports by the same amount. If we are not importing 
this oil to the United States, then other nations--these are the 
nations that are currently importing it from Iran--would be able to 
import it from those places where we no longer would have to.
  There are friendly countries--Saudi Arabia, Kuwait--where we are 
actually importing oil. But they would be able to sell their oil to the 
other countries, our friends, such as Japan and other countries.
  What we are saying is we have an opportunity here. When you look at 
these areas, you can see why it should be pretty easy for the 
administration to allow us to open one of these areas. The first one 
would be ANWR, this right up in Alaska. You can see four potential 
areas, the first being ANWR. The U.S. Geological Survey reported, in a 
1998 study, the latest comprehensive study of its kind, that the oil 
reserves there are up to 16 million barrels of oil per day.
  Imagine what we are talking about there. We are only talking about 
coming with 1.25 million barrels to offset the amount other countries 
are importing from Iran, to stop them from doing it. It doesn't require 
the President to make this area an Iranian oil replacement zone, but it 
would allow him to do it. This would provide enough oil to offset 
Iranian oil exports for about 12,000 days or about 35 years.
  The second is the Rocky Mountain West--parts of Wyoming, parts of 
Utah, and parts of Colorado. In 2005 the RAND Corporation estimated 
that oil shale reserves in this area could be as high as 1.8 trillion 
barrels of oil.
  The third is the Utica shale in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania--I hear a 
lot about the Marcellus up there. We are talking about oil now. We are 
not talking about natural gas. We are talking about oil. But USGS 
estimated in 2011 that the reserves in this region are up to 940 
million barrels of unconventional oil.
  The fourth area is the Outer Continental Shelf. I mentioned North 
Carolina and Virginia. Their legislatures have all encouraged their 
production. They have a lot they can benefit from. Of course 
nationally--in national security we have a lot to benefit from, too.
  With all those areas, if we stop the flow of oil from Iran, then we 
can stop the machine that finances Iran's nuclear weapons program. Many 
say that getting oil from the Rocky Mountains, Alaska, Outer 
Continental Shelf, will take years. By then Iran will not be a problem. 
But it doesn't take years to get it out.
  I mentioned a while ago Harold Hamm, the person who is the biggest 
independent in the country. I called him up because I was going to be 
on a major television show one night and I knew they were going to 
challenge me. The President has always said it doesn't do any good to 
open up public lands because if you do that it could take 10 years 
before that could reach the economy. I asked him, I said: Harold Hamm, 
make sure you give me an accurate response to what I am going to ask 
you because I am going to use your name on national TV. Make sure you 
are accurate. If you had a rig set up right now, off limits on public 
land, in New Mexico, how long would it take you to lift the first 
barrel of oil and get it into the economy?
  He said, without a flinch: Seventy days.
  I said: Seventy days? We are talking about 10 weeks, not 10 years.
  So he described what would happen each day. You could do it in 10 
weeks. We are talking about all of this could take place in 10 weeks.
  By the way, I have to say no one has challenged me on this ever since 
I used his name and his speculation a few weeks ago.
  I know this is a little bit complicated, but there is another reason. 
The reason I think the President would be willing to do something like 
this is we are not asking him to lift the restrictions on all of the 
public land. It would be great if he did that. Just think, we would be 
totally independent of any other country for our ability to develop our 
own energy. But we are saying find a zone where we can actually pick up 
an additional 1.25 million barrels a day. We can take that away from 
where we are currently importing it from friendly countries and allow 
them to export it to nations that are currently buying oil from Iran.
  I think we have made it very clear that if you want to do something 
that is going to have the effect of stability in the Middle East, you 
have to get rid of Iran. As I said before, Iran is a direct threat to 
the United States once they reach what our intelligence says is going 
to be a nuclear capability and a delivery capability by 2015.
  Over and above that, today we could stop them because 70 percent of 
their revenue comes from oil exports. We could stop the exports 
altogether with this legislation. That is something I certainly hope 
the President will look at. We are not asking for hundreds and hundreds 
of millions of barrels a day to be released from our Federal sources. 
We are asking only for 1.5 million barrels a day. On top of that, we 
don't have any obligation with this legislation to go any further. This 
would be something he could do that would provide stability in the 
Middle East and would keep Iran from funding the terrorist activity 
that is currently taking place by Asad in Syria.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Heinrich). The Senator from Connecticut.

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