[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 167 (Tuesday, November 10, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7881-S7884]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DRIVE ACT
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask that the Chair lay before the
Senate the House message accompanying H.R. 22.
The Presiding Officer laid before the Senate the following message
from the House of Representatives:
Resolved, That the House insist upon its amendment to the
amendment of the Senate to the text of the bill (H.R. 22)
entitled ``An Act to authorize funds for Federal-aid
highways, highway safety programs, and transit programs, and
for other purposes,'' and ask a conference with the Senate on
the disagreeing votes of the two Houses thereon.
Compound Motion
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to disagree to the amendment of
the House, agree to the request from the House for a conference, and
authorize the Presiding Officer to appoint conferees.
Cloture Motion
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
The bill clerk read the following:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to
disagree to the amendment of the House, agree to the request
from the House for a conference, and authorize the Presiding
Officer to appoint conferees with respect to H.R. 22.
Mitch McConnell, Mike Rounds, Lamar Alexander, Johnny
Isakson, Deb Fischer, John Cornyn, Chuck Grassley, Thad
Cochran, Joni Ernst, Cory Gardner, John Thune, Daniel
Coats, Orrin G. Hatch, John Barrasso, James M. Inhofe,
Thom Tillis, Roy Blunt.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
mandatory quorum call be waived.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time
between 2:15 p.m. and 2:45 p.m. be equally divided between the two
leaders or their designees and that notwithstanding rule XXVIII, at
2:45 p.m. the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the
compound motion to go to conference; further, that if cloture is
invoked, that the Senate agree to the compound motion to go to
conference and that Senator Wicker be recognized to offer a motion to
instruct the conferees; that there be up to 4 minutes of debate equally
divided on the motion and that following the use or yielding back of
that time, the Senate then vote in relation to the Wicker motion; that
following the disposition of the Wicker motion, Senator Blumenthal be
recognized to offer a motion to instruct the conferees; that there be
up to 4 minutes of debate equally divided on the motion and that
following the use or yielding back of that time, the Senate then vote
in relation to the Blumenthal motion.
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Mr. President, I ask to withhold my request until Senator Carper
arrives.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I understand that a request is pending,
and I would like to reserve my right to object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection to the majority leader's
request?
Mr. CARPER. I have a statement I would like to make at this point in
time. If this is the appropriate time to do it, then I would like to do
it. I would like to speak for 10 minutes.
Mr. McCONNELL. I renew my request.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. CARPER. Reserving the right to object.
Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. CARPER. I am happy to yield.
Mr. INHOFE. There is a lot of mumbling going on. I am not sure what
we finally decided to do.
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I will speak for 10 minutes on
transportation, and then we will have our caucus lunch.
Mr. INHOFE. All right.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the
remarks of the Senator from Delaware, I be recognized for up to 10
minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Wicker). Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, something came to my attention today that
I haven't seen before. Actually, it is a blog which was apparently
written by Ben Bernanke, the immediate past Chairman of the Federal
Reserve. He wrote it for the Brookings Institute, and he talked about
one of the pay-fors for the transportation bill for which we will be
sending conferees to discuss later today.
As my colleagues may recall, the House passed a 6-year authorization
bill for transportation--roads, highways, bridges, and transit--with
funding for 3 years. When we sent our legislation over to the House,
they came up with some new pay-fors. Frankly, it is not user fees, it
is not even like pension smoothing, it is not like stealing TSA fees or
Custom fees, but something new. They found money--about $40 to $50
billion--in the Federal Reserve and said: Why don't we use that for
transportation spending?
Interestingly enough, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve has
written about this issue, and it has been editorialized in today's
Washington Post, among others. I will read a sentence or two out of
Chairman Bernanke's comments, if I may, talking about the new pay-for,
where we take money from the Federal Reserve and use it for
transportation purposes.
Here is what Chairman Bernanke says:
More substantively--and this is what I want to focus on in the post--
``paying'' for highway spending with Fed capital is not paying for it
at all in any economically meaningful sense. Rather, this maneuver is a
form of budgetary sleight-of-hand that would count funds that are
already designated for the Treasury as ``new'' revenue.
Every year this extra money that the Federal Reserve has is turned
over to the Treasury. In fact, it may be as much as one-half trillion
dollars. That money goes into the earnings that the Federal Reserve
makes, and at different points during the year, they turn money over to
the Treasury.
What the House language says here is that we are going to reduce that
amount of money that would normally go from the Federal Reserve to the
Treasury during some part of this year, and we are simply going to pull
that money out and use it for transportation. Now, that money was going
to go to the Treasury anyway. It was going to go from the Federal
Reserve to Treasury anyway, and now we are going to sort of slip in and
pull that money out and say: No, no, we are going to use it for roads,
highways, and bridges. It is a sleight of hand. GAO is blowing the
whistle on it as well, and I am delighted Chairman Bernanke is calling
it for what it is.
Look, we had the opportunity to pay for transportation projects. We
had the opportunity to pay for roads, highways, and bridges, and to do
it the old-fashioned way, and frankly, in a way that the chairman of
our committee, Senator Inhofe, was in favor of. We have a tradition and
history in this country of saying that things that are worth having are
worth paying for, and people and businesses that use roads, highways,
and bridges here in the past have said we ought to pay for the use of
them. Now we are looking at a transportation bill that says: No, we are
going to take money from TSA--TSA fee increases--and instead of using
it to make our skies and aviation safer, we are going to steal 10 years
of TSA revenues and put it over here in transportation. We are going to
take money that ought to go to fortify our borders to make us stronger
and better equipped so we can do a better job of finding out whether
what is in the trucks is really produce or some other product, such as
narcotics--our border crossings, where we have literally tens of
millions of dollars' worth of trade going through trade every day--and
instead we are going to take those revenues and put them into
transportation.
There is the idea of taking money out of the Strategic Petroleum
Reserve, where we pay $80 to $90 to $100 a barrel and are now selling
it for about half that and using the proceeds from that--buy high, sell
low--to pay for transportation.
The latest trick from the House is to take the money out of the
Federal Reserve when it is already going to go to Treasury anyway.
Instead, we are going to take that money away from the Federal Reserve
and pretend like it has no consequence. Well, actually that $50 or $60
billion would have reduced the deficit. That is where it would have
gone.
This is not the way to do business. We had the opportunity to fully
fund a robust transportation plan. Several of us--Senator Durbin,
Senator Feinstein, and I--offered legislation, very much like Bowles-
Simpson, that would actually restore the purchasing power of the gas
and diesel taxes in this country. We have not raised them since 1993.
Since 1993, the Federal gasoline tax has been roughly 18 cents. It is
now worth less than a dime because of inflation. The diesel tax, since
1993, is worth less than 15 cents. Nominally, it is 23 cents.
Meanwhile, roads, highways, and bridges are more expensive. Asphalt is
more expensive, as is concrete, steel, and labor. Instead of being able
to fund transportation in a genuine, honest kind of way, we are
spending about $50 billion a year at the Federal level for
transportation. It is about one-third of what is being spent
nationally. Out of that $50 billion, we are only raising $35 billion
through our user fees, and we just go out and borrow the money for the
rest. When we run out of money in the general fund, we go around the
world and borrow money from China and other places so that we can build
roads, highways, and bridges.
When the Chinese are mucking around in the South China Sea or the
Spratly Islands or some of those other places, we say: You can't do
that. They say: We thought you wanted to borrow our money. If they are
manipulating their currency or dumping their goods and products into
our markets, we say: You can't do that. They say: We thought you wanted
to borrow our money.
We should not be beholden to them or to anybody else. We should fully
fund transportation projects, and we could do that.
The legislation that Senators Feinstein, Durbin, and I offered would
gradually raise the tax on diesel and gasoline by 4 cents a year for 4
years, and then index it going forward. How much money would that
generate? That would generate about $220 billion over the next 10
years.
Our roads, highway, and bridges get D-plus these days. Why? Because
about a quarter of our bridges are in bad shape and the service of our
roads and highways is as well. People say they don't want to pay any
more money for user fees on gas or diesel. Well, people paid less than
$2 a gallon for gasoline at about 30,000 gas stations across America
last week.
My friends, as it turns out, if we actually did raise the price for
gas and diesel by 4 cents a year for 4 years, what would the effect be
in 2020--4 years from now--for average drivers? The out-of-pocket
impact would be about the cost of a cup of coffee a week. Meanwhile,
because our roads, bridges, and highways are in such lousy
[[Page S7883]]
shape, we, as constituents--people who drive around this country--have
an average cost of damage to our vehicles, tires, steering, and rims of
our tires of over $350 a year. That is not my number; that is a real
number.
The other thing that is going on here is that we sit in traffic a lot
in our country these days because we are not addressing our bottlenecks
and doing what we ought to be doing in terms of upgrading our roads,
highways, and bridges.
Every year Texas A&M does an analysis. What they do is to look at how
much time we sit in traffic in this country. The average driver in this
country sits in traffic 42 hours a year. In cities such as Washington,
DC, the numbers are more like 80 hours a year. We are not moving. We
are just sitting there wasting time, wasting fuel, and polluting the
skies. We don't have to do that. Instead of doing something that is
intellectually honest, what we are doing is really, I think, shameful.
I think it is shameful.
Initially, I was just confused by what the House wants to do with the
Federal Reserve by moving $50 to $60 billion out of there. Now that I
understand what they are doing, it is even more shameful. We can do
better than this, and the American people deserve better than that.
Our friends at the McKinsey Global Institute spent some time last
year trying to figure out if we were actually investing robustly in our
roads, highways, and bridges in this country. They looked at how it
would affect our GDP and if it would have any effect on putting people
to work. If we are willing to make robust investments for the next 10
years instead of, frankly, not much at all in terms of investments,
here is what they said: We would grow GDP by about 1.5 percent per year
for the next 10 years. So far this year it has been somewhere between 2
and 2.5 percent. We could increase it by another 1.5 percent if we make
these kinds of honest investments. We are not going to come close to
making robust investments.
The McKinsey Global Institute also told us that in terms of new
employment, if we were actually to invest robustly in roads, highways,
and bridges in this country, we would put 1.8 million people to work
building roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems. But we are not
going to do that.
We are not even close to what the McKinsey Global Institute was
calling for in robust investments that would actually grow our GDP by
1.5 percent each year and increase employment by 1.8 million people. In
fact, what we are passing here isn't even close to the 4 cents a year
for 4 years and indexing going forward. That produces $220 billion over
the next 10 years.
What we are doing is barely keeping Federal funding at $50 billion,
and the way we are doing most of that is by sleight of hand and by
using money that has nothing to do with roads, highways, and bridges
and nothing to do with businesses and people that use those
transportation modes to pay for them--nothing. And now we are about to
name conferees and go to conference on that kind of deal? The American
people aren't stupid. They are not stupid.
Do you know what a bunch of States around the country--like 12 States
in the last 2 years--did when they found out they were running out of
money to build their transportation systems in their States? They
raised their user fees. They actually raised them.
Do you know what happened when they had elections last November? Some
95 percent of the Republicans who voted to raise their user fees were
reelected, and 90 percent of the Democrats who voted to raise their
user fees in those 12 States were reelected. They didn't pay a penalty
for it. They were rewarded for it. The people who voted the other way--
who voted not to raise the user fees--didn't do as well. People aren't
stupid.
We are going to have an opportunity here to name conferees and go to
conference, and I just want to say that this man sitting next to me,
Jim Inhofe, is a good man. He chairs our Environment and Public Works
Committee. Our committee reported out a very good 6-year authorization
bill. He is proud of it. Senator Boxer and I worked on it, and I am
very proud of what we did. I commend Senator Inhofe for a great bill.
That is the authorization piece. If we could just stop there, we would
be fine. Unfortunately, the authorization is only half the game.
What was the picture of the guy they had on the floor not long ago?
It was a picture of a cowboy wearing a big hat and lying back sleeping,
and the caption under the picture says: All hat, no cattle. Well, when
you have a great authorization bill but no real money to pay for it,
that is really all hat, no cattle. I don't think there is a better
example of it that I have seen than the legislation that we are going
to be conferencing on very soon.
I wish I could sit here and say it is all going to work out and we
will do just fine, but that is not the truth. We have let a great
opportunity pass us by. We are about to let a great opportunity pass us
by.
We are worthy of a better opportunity than that, and frankly the
people of our country deserve a better effort than that.
With that, I yield the floor to my friend from Oklahoma.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the request?
Mr. CARPER. I withdraw my objection.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, let me say in response that a couple of
times my good friend from Delaware has observed that the American
people are not stupid, but the American people also want highways. That
is one of the big things they want. In fact, we have a document called
a Constitution that says we are supposed to be doing two things here:
defending America, and roads and bridges. And I think we both agree on
the significance of that.
Burundi
I hope I will have time to get into something because our State
Department of the United States of America is getting involved in
Burundi, in their election. They had a duly-qualified election. The
constitutional convention declared that Nkurunziza, who is the
President, had a legal election, and we ought to stay out of their
business. If there is time, I would like to elaborate on that, but I
know I am competing for time.
Gitmo
On the President's Gitmo message, we have--I will give a little
chronology on that. On January 22, 2009, Obama signed an Executive
order to close Gitmo within the year.
On February 3 of that same year, 2009, I introduced a bill to
permanently prevent Gitmo detainees from being relocated anywhere in
the United States. At that time they were ready to talk about
relocating them to parts of my State of Oklahoma, in the Fort Sill
area.
In May 2009 I authored bipartisan legislation with Senator Danny
Inouye to block funding to close Gitmo and to move the detainees
anywhere on U.S. soil. That passed 90 to 6.
Every year since, Congress has blocked the attempts by this President
and his administration to close Gitmo or move terrorist detainees into
the United States.
Every year, Congress has passed laws that continue to limit the
transfer of these detainees, including in the conference report for the
fiscal year 2016 NDAA bill. That is what we are talking about right
now. It prohibits the transferring of Gitmo detainees to the United
States through December 31, 2016. That also tightens the restrictions
on the detainees being transferred to other countries.
The fiscal year NDAA also included language preventing closure of
Gitmo through December 31, 2016. However, this has not prevented
President Obama from trying to empty Gitmo and releasing these
terrorist detainees to any country he can pay to take them back and now
threatening an Executive order to bring them to the United States--to
the States of Colorado, South Carolina, and Kansas--against the will of
the Senators from those States, the House Members from those States,
and the American people.
This is not the first time the President has gone against the will of
the American people and violated our laws. The President violated the
law last June when he transferred the Taliban Five from Gitmo in
exchange for Sergeant Bergdahl, and my colleagues will
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remember that issue. He failed to notify Congress. The laws we passed
said they had to notify Congress 30 days in advance of any transfer of
terrorists to any facility. His failure to adhere to the law he signed
placed our Nation's security at great risk.
Let me just mention--I carry this with me. If people realize whom he
turned loose, the Taliban Five--this is a statement that was made by
the Taliban commander. His name is Mullah Khan. He was talking about
Mohammad Fazl. Keep in mind he was arguably the most dangerous person--
terrorist--who was being held in Gitmo. He said:
His return is like pouring 10,000 Taliban fighters into the
battle on the side of jihad. Now the Taliban have the right
lion to lead them in the final moment before victory in
Afghanistan.
These are the kinds of people he is turning loose.
According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 29
percent of the detainees transferred out of Gitmo have either been
confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight and killing Americans.
That is how serious this is.
Gitmo is outside the sovereign territory of the United States, which
means detainees held there do not have constitutional rights. But if we
put them back in the United States, it is very likely they would have
those rights.
I have a quote from former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who
said:
The question of what constitutional rights may apply to
aliens in government custody is unsettled, but it is clear
from existing jurisprudence that physical presence in the
United States would be a significant, if not a decisive,
factor.
I am also concerned about the security of the people here who would
have to guard these terrorists.
Back when a Thomson, IL, prison was discussed--that was in 2009--
Representative Mark Kirk--at that time he was in the House; that was
before he was in the Senate--called the move ``an unnecessary risk,''
and other Illinois Members were concerned that the transfer of
prisoners--some for trial and some for indefinite detention--could make
the State a target for terrorists. Mark Kirk was then and is now
correct that prisons holding these detainees will become magnets, and
there is the very real possibility that these detainees would recruit
more terrorists.
We have to keep in mind that a terrorist is not a criminal. A
terrorist is someone who trains other people to be terrorists, and that
is what we would be seeing happening in our courts.
FBI Director Robert Mueller said there is the very real possibility
that Gitmo detainees will recruit more terrorists from among the
Federal inmate population and continue Al Qaeda operations from outside
the country.
I have been to Gitmo several times, as has the occupier of the chair.
It is a state-of-the-art facility that provides humane treatment for
all detainees. When I was there, the biggest problem they had with the
detainees was that they were overweight. They are all obese because
they are eating so well. It is fully in compliance with the Geneva
Convention and provides treatment and oversight that exceed any maximum
security prison in the world, as tested by human rights organizations
such as the Red Cross, Attorney General Holder, and an independent
commission led by Admiral Walsh. It is a secure location away from
population centers, and it has a $12 million expeditionary legal
complex. That is a courtroom. We can't use our courtrooms because of
the confidentiality of information that is extracted from these
individuals and used in the courtroom, so they use the expeditionary
legal complex.
The last thing I would say is that it is clear that--and this comes
from former CIA Director Leon Panetta. He was talking about the fact
that our President--talking about the way they were able to get the bad
guy, and what they have refused to understand is the information they
extracted at Gitmo was used to actually capture Osama bin Laden.
Anyway, we don't want that to happen, we can't afford to let that
happen, and we are going to do everything we can to keep the President
from making that happen. This has become an obsession of his, and we
are not going to let that happen.
Burundi
Lastly, I do want to mention that on this whole issue in Burundi
right now, we have to understand in this country that there are other
nations that have their own systems of government. They are the ones
that have their elections. In this case, I happened to be there in
Burundi when the court declared that the incumbent President,
Nkurunziza, was qualified to run again, even though they have a term
limit. The first term was not a complete term, so that didn't count,
according to the court. For us to come in afterward and say ``Well, we
think the court was wrong, we don't think he is qualified to run, and
we are going to withhold things from that country'' is something we
should not be doing in this country.
I can assure my colleagues that the six Members who went with me over
there were all on the scene and agreed that Nkurunziza should be
legitimately elected, and we should stay out of their business.
With that, I yield the floor.
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