[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 17382-17386]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          CHECKS AND BALANCES

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, our job in the Senate is to debate. We 
are

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said to be the greatest deliberative body in the world. The great 
conflicts in our country come here so that we can resolve them. After 6 
months of President Obama's administration, Americans admire him, like 
him, like his family, and appreciate his seriousness of purpose. But 
Americans are beginning to see some significant differences of opinion 
between the kind of country the Democrats are imagining for our Nation 
and the kind of country Republicans and many independents are 
imagining. There is concern in Tennessee, as well as around the 
country, about the lack of checks and balances on too much debt and too 
many Washington takeovers.
  In terms of debt, we see the President's proposals for debt for the 
next 10 years are nearly three times as much as all of the money the 
United States spent in World War II. As far as Washington takeovers, it 
seems to be a weekly running reality show. First the banks; then the 
insurance companies; then the student loans; then the car companies 
even, according to recent legislation; your farm pond, according to 
some Federal legislation; and now maybe even health care.
  But people have a right to say to us on this side of the aisle: What 
would you Republicans do? You can't just point with alarm--although 
that is part of our job. What would Republicans do?
  I wanted to mention three areas where Republicans have a different 
opinion than the current administration and where we hope we might 
persuade the American people and many Democrats and even the President 
to join us on a different path for the country. The first has to do 
with the Government's ownership of General Motors. We want to give the 
stock back to the people who paid for it, the taxpayers. The second has 
to do with health care. We want to begin at the other end of the 
discussion. We want to start with the 250 million Americans who already 
have health care and make sure they can afford it. After we are through 
making sure of that, that they can afford their government, because 
they can't afford these trillion-dollar additions to health care we 
keep hearing about.
  Third, on clean energy, we want clean energy as well as the President 
does. But we also want energy that Americans can afford. We know cheap 
energy is key to our economic success. We want jobs to be made. We want 
cars to be made in Michigan and Ohio and Tennessee and not Mexico or 
Japan. We have a plan for clean energy that is low cost, that will 
reduce utility bills and keep jobs here which would compare with the 
Waxman-Markey climate change bill passed by the House and headed our 
way.
  I would like to talk about each of those three very briefly. First, 
General Motors. I congratulate the new GM for emerging from bankruptcy 
today. General Motors has meant a great deal to our country and a great 
deal to our State, Tennessee. When General Motors decided nearly 25 
years ago to put the Saturn plant in Tennessee, we had very few auto 
jobs. Nissan had already made a decision to come to our State. That was 
a pioneering decision because most auto plants were in the Midwest. 
Today there are a dozen such auto plants, including the General Motors 
plant in Spring Hill. In Tennessee, instead of having a few auto jobs, 
a third of our manufacturing jobs are auto jobs.
  So we are grateful to General Motors for its decision 24 years ago, 
and we want it to succeed. We want that Spring Hill plant to be making 
some GM products soon and believe that it will be because of all the 
natural advantages it has.
  What are the best ways we in Washington can help General Motors 
succeed? That was the question asked of me last week in Tennessee. The 
answer is to get the General Motors stock that is owned by the 
government out of Washington, DC, and into the hands of the taxpayers. 
I have legislation I have introduced, and I am looking for the 
opportunity to amend an appropriate bill on the Senate floor that is 
cosponsored by the Republican leader and Senator Kyl and a variety of 
others. It would take the 60 percent of General Motors the U.S. 
Government owns and give it to the 120 million Americans who pay taxes 
on April 15.
  What is the reason for doing that? They paid for it. They should own 
it. What is the second reason for doing that? If the stock stays here, 
we find that Washington bureaucrats and those of us in Congress can't 
keep our hands off the car company.
  We have the President calling up the mayor of Detroit saying: Yes, I 
think the headquarters ought to be in Detroit instead of Warren, MI. We 
have the Congressman from Massachusetts calling up the president of 
General Motors saying: Don't close the warehouse in my district. And 
you have the delegation from Tennessee and from Indiana and Michigan 
saying: Put a car plant here. And you have 60 committees in Congress 
authorized to summon the executives here--we own the company, after 
all; let's hear what they have to say--and tell them what to do. Paint 
it this color. Get your battery from this district. Make it this way.
  What are the poor executives going to do? Drive in their 
congressionally approved hybrid cars from Detroit to Washington to 
testify before 60 subcommittees while Toyota is busy making cars?
  GM will never succeed if we keep this incestuous political meddling 
alive.
  There are a variety of ways to get the stock out of the government 
and back in the hands of the people. The President has said he would 
like to do it. He has also said he wants to keep his hands off it. But 
that has not been the practice so far.
  Senator Bennett of Utah and I have introduced this legislation that 
would give the stock to the taxpayers who paid for it. That is the best 
way to do it, in my opinion. That would happen within a year. It would 
be a fairly common occurrence in the American corporate world. It is 
what Procter & Gamble did with Clorox a few years ago. It is what 
PepsiCo did with its restaurant businesses a few years ago. The company 
decided it had a subsidiary that did not fit the role of the major 
company, and so it spun it off--a stock distribution, a corporate 
spinoff.
  I think we can all agree--at least 90 percent of the American people 
agree, according to surveys--that the government in Washington has no 
business whatsoever trying to run a car company. What do we know about 
it? So the best way to get rid of it is to give it to the people who 
paid for it.
  There are other ways to do it, and several Senators--Senator Corker, 
for example, has suggested an ownership trust to try to make sure that 
while it is here, the government keeps its hands off the day-to-day 
operations. Senator Johanns and Senator Thune also have bills of this 
kind, as does Senator Nelson of Nebraska.
  But my point is, now that General Motors has emerged from bankruptcy, 
let's celebrate that by taking the 60 percent of the stock the American 
taxpayers paid $50 billion for and giving it to those same taxpayers 
and getting our hands off the company and cheer them on.
  There is another reason this would be a good idea. Most of us know 
the Green Bay Packers are a popular team, especially in their home 
area. Why is that? Because the fans own the team. That would be the 
same thing we would have with the General Motors stock distribution. 
Just as Green Bay Packer fans have a special interest in who the 
quarterback might be because they own the team, if 120 million 
Americans had a little bit of GM stock, they might be a little more 
interested in the next Chevrolet, and that might create a nice fan 
investor base for the new GM as it seeks to move ahead.
  So that is the first idea we Republicans have: get the government 
stock ownership of the car companies out of Washington and back in the 
hands of the marketplace where it belongs.
  Here is the second idea we have. It has to do with health care. We 
would start at the other end of the debate. We would start with the 250 
million Americans who already have health care and say to them: We want 
to make sure you can afford your health care, that you can choose your 
health care, and that when we are done fixing it in this

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health care reform--that we would like to do this year along with our 
Democratic friends--we want to make sure you can afford your government 
as well. That is our message.
  Our friends on the other side--the Democrats--have more votes than we 
do, so they have set the agenda and they are writing the bill. In the 
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, on which I serve, 
they are being very polite and collegial and nice to us, but they are 
taking almost none of our ideas and recommendations, and they are 
starting at the other end. And their other end is not going very well.
  It is not going very well in terms of costs and debt because the 
Congressional Budget Office has begun to tell us how much some of these 
proposals will cost; and we are talking about $2 trillion in addition 
to all the trillions we have been spending this year.
  This Nation cannot afford that. Even though we are adding $1 trillion 
or $2 trillion to the debt in order to have this sort of health care 
reform that is being proposed, it does not begin to cover the uninsured 
people in America.
  We would like to cover the uninsured people, too, but we think we 
ought to do that after we make sure we keep the costs down for the 250 
million who already have health insurance, including the small 
businesses of this country. That is our main goal: to lower costs. And 
we do not want to end up with a health care plan that adds debt to the 
government either.
  That is why we have introduced a number of plans. Senator Coburn and 
Senator Burr have introduced one. Senator Gregg of New Hampshire has 
introduced one. Senator Hatch has introduced a health care plan that 
gives the States more responsibility in figuring out exactly how to 
provide health care, especially to low-income Americans.
  The essential differences between our approaches and the Democratic 
approaches that are being presented is that, one, ours do not add to 
the debt; and, two, the government does not run ours.
  The essential nature of the Democratic proposals is to expand one 
failed government program for low-income people that is called the 
Medicaid Program and to create another, which we believe will tend to 
drive out your choices and your competition and not do very much to 
reduce your costs, while adding heavily to the national debt we already 
have.
  That is a major difference we have. And we have our proposals on the 
table. The discussion is not going very well because it is one-sided. I 
suggested, 3 weeks ago, when we began to discuss the Kennedy bill, we 
ought to start over and suggested they might want to take some of our 
ideas.
  There is a Wyden-Bennett piece of legislation I did not even mention. 
Mr. President, 14 of us--8 Democrats and 6 Republicans--are cosponsors 
of that legislation. It has a zero addition to the national debt, 
according to the Congressional Budget Office. The principle of it is 
basically to take the dollars we have available and give them to 
Americans and let them buy their health care insurance, so instead of 
expanding government programs, including for low-income Americans, you 
get the dollars, you get the health care, and that takes care of 
virtually everybody.
  All the plans from this side of the aisle, like those on the other 
side, say everybody needs to be insured. You are not disqualified for a 
preexisting condition. And the cost has to be affordable. All of us 
agree on that. The difference is whether it is going to be government 
programs or whether you are going to have dollars you can choose. That 
is the big difference, and we hope the American people will pay 
attention to the differences we are offering. We believe they will 
because, as you look at the Democratic plans, the costs are becoming 
alarming.
  The first cost we saw was to the national debt, which was to expand 
between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, at least in the bill we have been 
considering in the HELP Committee. But then in the new versions of it, 
the sponsors began to shift the costs. Well, where do they shift it? 
The first place they shift it is to employers. It is a bad idea.
  We have a 10-percent unemployment rate in the country today. People 
work for employers, and all the evidence shows, if we add costs to 
employers, one of a couple things happens. One is, the wages of the 
employees are reduced because the employer has to pay higher taxes. The 
second thing is, you add costs to employers and some of those employers 
go overseas.
  I was in Tennessee last week talking to a lot of auto suppliers, air-
conditioning manufacturers. They watch their costs every day. They are 
in discussions with their companies about that if costs of electricity 
or health care or anything else go up too much, they begin to go 
overseas and look for lower costs. We have already seen what has 
happened to the automobile industry in the Midwest because of high 
health care costs. So why is it such a good idea to begin to shift the 
costs and have every employer pay at least a $750-per-employee tax as a 
way of reducing the cost of health care?
  Then the other place these plans begin to shift the costs is to the 
States. That is a convenient place to shift it. I used to see that as 
Governor. The Acting President pro tempore was speaker of the house in 
his State. We are familiar with Members of Congress who hold big press 
conferences and announce a good idea and take credit for it, and then 
they send the bill to the Governor or the speaker of the house or the 
legislature or the mayor and say: Here, you pay for it. It is called an 
unfunded Federal mandate.
  The unfunded Federal mandate in this case is to the Medicaid Program. 
The Medicaid Program, in my view, is a terrible choice for a way to 
expand coverage for low-income families. Already, 60 million Americans 
get their health care through their State Medicaid Program, which is 
usually funded about 60 percent by the Federal Government. But the 
problem is, it is so poorly run and so underfunded the way it is 
managed that 40 percent of doctors will not see Medicaid patients.
  So when you expand the Medicaid Program and dump more low-income 
Americans into it, you are giving people a bus ticket to a company that 
does not have very many buses. So they do not get good health care 
service. That is not the way we should be doing this. But that is the 
way we are trying to do it.
  Then there is another person who is going to be affected by that 
expansion of Medicaid, the government program, and that is the 
taxpayer. The costs of the expansions that are being discussed when you 
expand the program to 150 percent of the Federal poverty level--and 
when you, in addition to that, try to attract more doctors and 
hospitals to serve Medicaid patients, and you require States to pay 
more to doctors and more to hospitals than they are today--the numbers 
are staggering.
  The Congressional Budget Office has said: It is a $500 billion figure 
over 10 years, or maybe it is $700 billion if you go to the fourth year 
and go for 10 years after that, or maybe it is more than that, 
depending on the various formulas you come up with. And we will assume 
all that at the Federal level? Maybe we will to start with, but after a 
few years, it will go back to the States. We say that easily here 
because we have a printing press, and we have suddenly gotten used to 
talking about trillions of dollars. But States cannot do that. States 
do not have printing presses. They have to balance their budgets.
  I did a little calculation. If we expanded the Medicaid Program by 
150 percent of the Federal poverty level and required States to put 
everyone in there, and if we increased the payments to doctors and to 
hospitals to 110 percent of Medicare levels, which is still 
significantly below what private plans pay, it would add about $1.2 
billion every year to the budget just for the State's share of 
Medicaid. That is about a 10-percent new State income tax in our State 
to pay.
  So that is the shifting of a cost. That is not just a little cost 
shift. That is an impossible cost shift. That is not even in the area 
of reality. I think as employers begin to discover what they are going 
to be taxed and when States discover what they are going to be taxed

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and Medicaid recipients realize if they get into this program that 40 
percent of the doctors will not see them, this is not going to be a 
very popular alternative.
  Then, last week, we heard about Medicare cuts. Some of the Democrats 
in the Senate have made an agreement with the hospitals to cut 
Medicare. That is not so bad, they say. But what is even worse--even 
worse--is they are going to take the savings from Medicare cuts and 
spend it on a different program. We all know that the biggest problem 
we have with the Federal budget is the rising cost of Medicare, and we 
have to bring that under some control--control the growth of Medicare.
  But if we are going to take any money out of the Medicare Program, it 
ought to be spent on the Medicare Program for the seniors who are in 
it. We ought not to take money from the Medicare Program and use it to 
pay for some new program we are talking about passing.
  So all these plans that are being talked about are shifting the 
costs. First, they are adding to the Federal deficit by maybe $1 
trillion. And then they are shifting the rest of the cost to employers 
who are struggling, to States who are broke, to taxpayers in the 
States, 10 percent of whom are unemployed. Then they are taking money 
out of Medicare and spending it instead of spending it on Medicare.
  I do not think this is going to work. So I suggest my advice at the 
beginning of this discussion 3 weeks ago is still good: Start over. 
Start over with one of the Republican plans or with a bipartisan Wyden-
Bennett plan. Fourteen Senators are already there: 8 Democrats and 6 
Republicans. And let's begin with the 250 million Americans who are 
already covered and make sure their costs are appropriate, that they 
can afford their health care, and that when we get through with this 
health care fix, that Americans can afford their government.
  One other area of an idea that I hope--and we hope--our friends on 
the Democratic side will agree with and the President eventually will 
agree with and the American people will agree with has to do with how 
we go about having clean energy.
  On Monday, I will be making a speech at the National Press Club at 11 
a.m. about a blueprint for 100 new nuclear powerplants. This is a part 
of the Republican clean energy strategy which has four provisions to 
it. The first is 100 new nuclear powerplants in the next 20 years. The 
second is: electrify our cars and trucks. I believe we can electrify 
half of them in 20 years. The third is: explore offshore for natural 
gas and oil. And fourth is: double research and development of energy. 
I would call it mini-Manhattan projects to help make alternative 
energy, such as solar, cost competitive with fossil fuels, so the use 
can be more widespread or for carbon recapture so our coal plants can 
be cleaner or for advanced biofuels from crops we do not eat to make 
that fuel more competitive with gasoline or even with fusion and green 
buildings. These are the kinds of things we should be doing.
  The Republican energy plan, which is based on 100 nuclear 
powerplants, is a cheap energy plan. It is cheap and clean energy. The 
Waxman-Markey bill, the so-called climate change energy bill that is 
coming from the House, the Democratic plan, is a high-cost clean energy 
bill.
  Let's stop and think about the kind of America we would like to have. 
We want an America in which we have good jobs, and that is going to 
take plenty of energy. We use 25 percent of all of the energy in the 
world. We want an America in which we don't create excessive carbon so 
we can reduce global warming. We want clean air--that kind of an 
America. We want one, too, in which we are not creating a renewable 
energy sprawl where these gigantic machines are spreading across 
landscapes we have spent a century preserving. Of course, we want the 
hundreds of thousands of green jobs that can come from renewable 
energy, but we don't want to do it in a way that kills the tens of 
millions of red, white, and blue jobs that most of us work in. We don't 
want to run our manufacturing and technology, high-tech companies 
overseas looking for cheap electricity because of the strategy we take 
for clean energy.
  The strategy that is coming toward us from the House, the Democratic 
proposal, is a high-cost strategy. It is a $100 billion a year burden 
on the economy which is unnecessary. It is high taxes, and it is more 
mandates, and it is a new utility bill for every American family.
  What Republicans want to say is there is a different approach that 
will get us to about the same place. I actually think it will get us 
there faster. This approach starts with 100 new nuclear powerplants. 
That means we will have electricity that is cheap enough so that cars 
can be built in Michigan and Ohio, as well as Tennessee, instead of 
Mexico and Japan. It means we would be producing more of our energy at 
home. It means our air will be cleaner. Nuclear power is 70 percent of 
our pollution-free, carbon-free electricity today, while solar and 
wind, for example, is 6 percent. And it will do what we need to do to 
reduce global warming. In fact, our plan should put us within the Kyoto 
limits by 2030, because nuclear power produces 70 percent of the 
carbon-free electricity, and carbon is the principal greenhouse gas 
that contributes to global warming.
  So my question would be: Why would we adopt this contraption headed 
this way from the House--$100 billion of taxes on the economy, 
giveaways, payoffs, surprises, complications, cow taxes--why would we 
do that? Why would we raise our prices deliberately when we can 
deliberately lower our prices with the technology we already have?
  We haven't built a new nuclear plant in 30 years, but France has. 
They are 80 percent nuclear. So European plants are moving to Spain. 
France has among the lowest electric rates in the European Union and 
among the lowest carbon emissions in the European Union. India and 
China are building nuclear plants, with our help, our technology, and 
we are helping them do it. Japan is building a nuclear powerplant about 
every year, and the President has even said Iran can do it. Then why 
don't we get in the game? We know how to do it and we should, and we 
should be doing it.
  On Monday, I will be suggesting at the National Press Club on behalf 
of Republicans--but I want to recognize right at the outset that we are 
not trying to make this a Republican--it is a Republican initiative, 
but we don't want to end up there. We know that several of our friends 
on the other side are strong supporters of nuclear power. We would like 
for more of them to be. We would like for the President to be. I would 
like for him to be half as interested in 100 new nuclear powerplants as 
he already is in windmills. I think he would get a lot farther with a 
plan that includes 100 new nuclear powerplants.
  All this needs is Presidential leadership. It doesn't need a lot of 
money. The financing systems we need to help get the first six or eight 
nuclear plants up and going are designed so the taxpayer doesn't lose a 
cent. The first 100 nuclear powerplants which were built in about 20 
years were built by the utilities with ratepayer money, not government 
money.
  As far as safety, as far as what do we do with the waste, we have 
come a long way in the last 30 years. Our plants are safely operated. 
Dr. Chu, the distinguished scientist who is the Energy Secretary, said 
that to me at a hearing this week. We have operated safely our nuclear 
reactors and our nuclear submarines since the 1950s. We sometimes 
forget about that. France and Japan and Germany and India and China all 
know that if they want clean air and cheap energy for good jobs, they 
will have to use nuclear power. So we need to do that as well. And the 
waste? Let's call it used nuclear fuel. Scientists assure us that used 
nuclear fuel can be safely stored on site--and there is not very much 
of it in mass--safely stored on site for the next 40 or 60 years. That 
is step one. Step two is a mini-Manhattan Project of the kind we had 
during World War II to explore all of the most important ways to safely 
recycle the nuclear fuel so we can use it again and

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never create plutonium in the process. Scientists believe we can do 
that, figure that out in 8, 10, 12 years. We already have acceptable 
ways to do it. France is doing it that way now. But while we store it, 
we can figure that out. The United States is smart enough to do it.
  So that would be our proposal on Monday. All 40 Republican Senators 
are united on it. We are looking for support on the other side. I think 
more support will come, because as Americans look at this $100 billion 
economy-wide cap and trade, they are going to say, Whoa, I hope that is 
not the answer to this problem.
  Let me give you one example. The economy-wide cap and trade applies 
to fuel. That is the gasoline in your car or your truck. One thing we 
know for sure: It will raise the price of your gasoline at the pump. 
You will be paying 10 or 20 or 30 cents more. You might be paying 50 
cents more, but it probably won't reduce the carbon that comes out of 
it. Gasoline fuel produces a third of the carbon we are worried about, 
but they have adopted in the House a device called the economy-wide cap 
and trade that won't do anything about it. We have had plenty of 
testimony on that, because if it goes up 10 or 20 or 30 cents, that is 
not enough to change the behavior of Americans.
  The better way to do it is a low carbon fuel standard that gradually 
reduces the amount of carbon as people shift to other fuels. That is 
why we are for electric cars, because we have so much unused 
electricity at night that we can plug in our cars and trucks at night 
until we have electrified half of them without building one new 
powerplant. So why in the world would they go to the trouble of 
creating this 1,400-page contraption of mandates and taxes and rules 
that raises prices and doesn't reduce the carbon they are aiming at? Of 
course, on the coal plants, they are 40 percent of the carbon. If we 
can begin to build nuclear powerplants, then the utilities will 
probably close some of the dirtiest coal plants.
  Our vision is, as we look ahead 20 years, we can see 40 percent of 
our electricity from nuclear; maybe 25 percent from natural gas--that 
is a little more than we have today; maybe 8 or 10 percent from solar 
and wind and geothermal and biomass and some of these renewable 
energies; another 10 percent from hydroelectric; the rest from coal--a 
significant amount, still. Hopefully, along that way one of these mini-
Manhattan projects will have found an even better way to capture carbon 
from coal plants.
  This is the real clean energy policy. That would get us to the Kyoto 
protocol. What is more important is that we want to reindustrialize 
this country with cheap energy, cheap electricity. We don't want to run 
jobs overseas.
  Then the final part of this for the dream of energy is that it is 
cheap. People around the world are poor, and the single thing that 
would help them most is to have low-cost or no-cost energy. We are on 
the verge of doing that with nuclear power. We should be pursuing that 
instead of deliberately raising the price of energy in an ineffective 
way toward a goal--in this case combating global warming--that seems to 
be completely lost--completely lost--in the manufacturing of this 
contraption that came from the House of Representatives that is going 
to give you a new utility bill every month.
  So those are three Republican ideas that we have and that we hope our 
Democratic colleagues will be interested in. We hope the President will 
see them as constructive suggestions. We hope they will provide a check 
and a balance on the excessive debt and the number of Washington 
takeovers we are beginning to see in Washington.
  First, we congratulate General Motors on its coming out of 
bankruptcy, and a good way to celebrate would be to give all of the 
stocks to the taxpayers who paid taxes on April 15, stop the incestuous 
political meddling in the car companies, give them an investor fan base 
to cheer on the new Chevy.
  Second, let's start over on health care costs. Let's start at the 
right end. Let's start with the 250 million Americans who already have 
health care and make sure it is good health care, and that they can 
afford it, and that when we are through with our reforms, they can 
afford the government that they are left with and they don't have 
trillions more dollars in debt. To do that, we have four or five 
proposals on the table which fundamentally say: Take the dollars we 
have and give them to Americans and let them buy their own insurance 
rather than stuff them into government programs.
  Finally, we want clean energy, but we want low-cost clean energy. We 
want clean air. We want global warming dealt with. We want American 
independence, but we want energy at a cost that will keep our 
manufacturing jobs and our high-tech jobs right here at home and not 
overseas looking for cheap energy. We have a way to do it: 100 new 
nuclear powerplants, electric cars, offshore exploration for natural 
gas--that is low-carbon oil. We are still going to need it, so we might 
as well use our own, although we will use less. Finally, several mini-
Manhattan projects for research and development on solar and fusion and 
other areas that will help us change the energy picture, maybe after 20 
years.
  These are exciting times. We are glad to be able to contribute our 
ideas to the debate, and we hope the American people will listen and, 
eventually, we hope our friends on the other side will join us, and 
that even the President will take some of our ideas and make them a 
part of his agenda.
  I thank the Chair, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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