[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Pages 25873-25915]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION EXTENSION ACT OF 2009--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 3548, which the 
clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to H.R. 3548, a bill to amend the 
     Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2008 to provide for the 
     temporary availability of certain additional emergency 
     unemployment compensation, and for other purposes.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan is recognized.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I have come to talk specifically about 
the urgency of passing the unemployment benefit extension.
  I want to take a moment to respond to my friend from Oklahoma, who 
was essentially bashing the Government's ability to provide any kind of 
structure or opportunity for health care, saying that the Federal 
Government cannot be trusted to provide access to health care for 
people. I suggest that the 40 million people who receive their health 
care through Medicare--seniors over age 65 and people with 
disabilities--would probably disagree with that. I think my 83-year-old 
mother would wrestle me to the ground if I tried to take away her 
Medicare card. She has access to choose her own doctor and procedures.
  This is a system that involves the public and private sectors, and it 
was in fact established in 1965 by the U.S. Government to make sure 
seniors and people with disability have health care. Also, those who 
are poor in this country and have lost their jobs and are fearful of 
losing their health care, families, and low-income seniors who need to 
go into nursing homes would probably disagree with my friends from 
Oklahoma about Medicaid, even though there are many challenges that we 
need to work on in terms of rates and so on.
  Medicaid is a safety net for many Americans. That is the difference, 
in some cases, for seniors in nursing homes between life and death.
  I am proud the Federal Government also stepped up on Medicaid. I also 
think the Children's Health Insurance Program, which was started in the 
nineties for low-income working families to make sure that if someone 
is working in a job and does not have health insurance, at least their 
children can be taken care of with a low-

[[Page 25874]]

cost policy they pay for. But we established and created a way for 
families to get health insurance. I think those folks would probably 
disagree with the statement as well.
  In many regards, the VA--and while there are certainly challenges and 
issues and we all push through to make sure our constituents are 
served--has been in the forefront of health information technology, 
electronic medical records, and so on. The VA is a system that works 
for our veterans as it should. When it is not well funded, as it has 
not been in the past with the previous administration, we stepped up to 
increase the funding repeatedly to make sure our veterans have what 
they need through a Federal Government health care system.
  Finally, I will just say, there are our military and military 
retirees as well whom, I am proud to say, our country has supported 
through providing a health care system.
  We can talk more about health care at another time. But I do think 
this ongoing effort to be critical of anything we do collectively as a 
country, through a democratic process of government, that somehow that 
is bad, I find that interesting, when we are saying to those around the 
world they should go to our system. We, together through our system, 
have made sure there are opportunities for many Americans, most 
Americans, if you count the employer-based health care system, the tax 
credits, the incentives for employers, the government policy. In some 
way, our government has been involved in incentivizing health care. The 
question now is, Do we complete the job? I am very hopeful we will 
complete the job for every American and tackle health care costs that 
are crippling our businesses, our government, and our families.
  I wish to speak about something else that is of tremendous urgency 
for families. I was very pleased that last night, finally, after 3 
weeks of blocking our ability to get to this bill to extend 
unemployment benefits, we have the opportunity to get to a vote. 
Eighty-seven Members voted to proceed to the bill. I don't understand, 
when 87 Members vote to proceed to the bill, why we could not have done 
this sooner.
  Since we started to try to get to this bill, to this point today, 
143,000-plus people have lost their unemployment insurance benefits--
just in the last 3 weeks, over 143,000 people, who have done nothing 
but work all their lives, play by the rules, the job goes away, they 
are trying to find another job and, in the meantime, keep a roof over 
the head for their family, food on the table, turn on that electric, 
turn on that heating system, which is going to cost even more to the 
family budget--just keep things going.
  We know 7,000 people today will lose their unemployment benefits; 
7,000 people tomorrow will lose their unemployment benefits; 7,000 
people the next day. We have been trying to build on what we did in the 
Recovery Act. I am so grateful our President immediately wanted to 
extend unemployment benefits. We did not have to struggle, as we did 
for 8 years, to try to make that happen. President Obama gets it, and 
it was in the recovery package.
  Now we come to a position where we need to extend it. The House 
passes it, and we spend 3 weeks procedurally trying to get to this bill 
so we can consider it.
  There are amendments that will be offered. There are amendments that 
are very good amendments that I support, such as extending the first-
time home buyers tax credit, help for our businesses in this economy, 
adjusting tax issues of net operating loss, positive things, bipartisan 
things. But fundamentally, the question I have is why did it take us so 
long to get to the substantive discussion on this bill?
  That leads me to the second matter about which I wish to talk.
  Since the beginning of this year, we have seen 82--yesterday it was 
81, now it is 82 times, as of this week, that we have seen Republican 
objections to moving America forward, forcing us to go to a vote, such 
as yesterday, where 87 people said yes. Why did it take a vote? Why did 
it take 3 weeks? If people were sincere about moving this country 
forward, about solving problems, all the talk of bipartisanship and all 
our efforts to create that, we would not get no, no, no; I object, I 
object, I object. That is all we hear as we try to move forward to 
solve some of the most critical issues facing the country, facing 
families, facing businesses--the economy, internationally with wars. 
Over and over again, things that should take 2 hours take 2 weeks.
  It is time to say enough is enough. We have done this too long this 
year. Now is enough. It is time to get on with the business, the 
people's business, and to, frankly, call it like it is.
  I wish to go through a few of the 82--not all of them--a few of the 
82 objections because we started the year with efforts to block the 
President from getting his team in place.
  We know there was an election. Somebody won. They have a right to 
have their team in place to govern. That is how this works. Yet right 
out of the box, the day after the swearing in, January 22, there was an 
objection to calling up the Jackson nomination, the Sutley nomination, 
the Solise nomination, the Rice nomination--objection, objection, 
objection. We can go on through point by point.
  I will jump down to April 21, when there was an objection to 
scheduling a vote on Christopher Hill to be the Ambassador to Iraq. We 
are in the middle of a war, years of a war, and there was an objection 
to moving that nomination for most of April, but then he was confirmed 
with 73 votes.
  This, obviously, was not about the fact that there was not a majority 
of people--overwhelmingly, over two-thirds of the Senate wanted to have 
this vote, wanted to confirm the Ambassador to Iraq, but yet there were 
objections and slow-walking and slow-walking and slow-walking, trying 
to slow down the business of governing and getting things done for this 
country.
  Two days later, there was an objection to moving forward to the 
nomination of Thomas Strickland, the Assistant Secretary for Fish and 
Wildlife. Ultimately, he was confirmed with 89 votes. What took so 
long?
  Seconds after that objection, there was an objection to Kathleen 
Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services, right as we were 
first beginning to respond to the H1N1 virus, and we didn't even have a 
Secretary of Health and Human Services. Yet there was an objection.
  Seconds after that, there was an objection to David Hayes to be 
Deputy Secretary of Interior. They filibustered this nomination. We had 
to go through all these procedural votes. In the end, he was confirmed 
unanimously. So even the person who objected to going to this 
nomination ultimately supported the nomination, which leads one to ask: 
What is the motivation of what is going on here?
  In May, they objected to proceeding to the Family Smoking Prevention 
Tobacco Control Act. Ultimately, it passed with 79 votes in June. Twice 
we had to file procedural motions, cloture motions to get the credit 
card bill in front of the Senate. Ultimately, it passed with 90 votes.
  In July, we had to file again. We had to go through the slow process, 
start the 30-hour clock, another 30-hour clock, waste time on the floor 
trying to get the Homeland Security bill up, which passed with 84 
votes.
  The Defense authorization bill, another absolutely critical bill that 
everyone agrees must move forward for our troops, for our security, was 
held up on the floor most of the month of July and ultimately passed 
with 87 votes.
  In September, the Interior funding bill, the same thing. It 
ultimately passed with 77 votes. Finally, last week, Republicans 
objected to even going to the conference committee.
  When we look at this, we have a bill that passes with 87 votes on 
Defense authorization, goes to conference committee, comes back, 
another objection, have to do a cloture vote, run the clock, and then 
the bill passes with 68 votes.
  That leads us back to where we are today. Twice there were objections 
to bringing up the extension of unemployment compensation for millions 
of

[[Page 25875]]

American families, middle-class families who are caught in the middle 
of an economic tsunami. They did not create it.
  It is our job to create the economic framework to support the jobs 
that need to be created. We are focused on that, laser focused on that. 
Every piece we do relates to jobs, whether it is health care, energy 
policy or financial reform. Whatever it is, it all comes back to jobs. 
But we take 3 weeks to get in front of us a bill on which ultimately, 
last night, 87 people voted to proceed.
  We have a new President of the United States this year. There was an 
election. There is a new Congress. We know there are differences on 
substance, and that is what a democracy is all about, honest 
differences. I have differences on specific policy issues. But what we 
see here is a conscious strategy that has to stop. It has gone on all 
too long. We have many challenges as a country that need to be 
addressed. We have families in crisis who need us to act, and this has 
to stop.
  We can no longer continue to see this number go up from 82 to 85 to 
90. Who knows where this will end, who knows, in terms of objecting to 
moving forward, objecting to taking up bills.
  We have one of the most important issues that I know I will ever 
address or have worked on in my time in the House or Senate coming 
before us on health care reform. We have differences. We have people of 
good will who have differences. We will have a motion whether to even 
proceed to the bill and debate those differences. Yet my assumption is 
that almost all--hopefully not all--almost all the Republicans in the 
Senate will vote no to even proceeding to discuss it.
  We are in one of the most important times in our country's history. 
We don't have time for this. We don't have time for these ongoing 
antics that just burn the time on the clock, stop us from taking votes, 
stopping us from getting the team in place so the administration can do 
their work, stopping us from solving problems, extending unemployment 
compensation, focusing on jobs, focusing on health care costs, tackling 
what we need to do for clean energy. We don't have time. The American 
people don't have time. Our country doesn't have time to waste on items 
that are blocked that eventually have overwhelming support.
  We know there are times when we all feel passionately about 
something, when there are divisions in the Senate, when we choose to 
stop moving forward. We all have been in that position, and I respect 
that decision. I certainly hold that as a right of mine, as it is for 
each of us. But what we are seeing over and over are efforts to slow-
walk the business of this country, of solving problems, and then when 
we get to the end, such as yesterday, there are 76 votes or 90 votes or 
it is unanimous. That is what I am objecting to--the strategy of 
stopping the people's business from getting done. I hope as we go 
forward on health care and go into the new year, we will be able to 
focus on the substance of things, debate that vigorously--as we will--
but stop what is the gratuitous objection over and over and over just 
for the purpose of saying no.
  I strongly urge my colleagues to support the unemployment extension 
legislation that is in front of us. There is a sense of urgency. As I 
indicated before, we have a situation where we have over 148,000 
people, just in the last 3 weeks, who have lost unemployment benefits--
7,000 people, every day we debate this, every day it goes back to the 
House, every day before it goes to the President. It is time to get 
this done.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Casey). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about the 
pending business before the Senate, the unemployment insurance 
extension, and I rise today to say that it should come as a surprise to 
no one that we have a jobs crisis in America. To help fix it in the 
short term, we need to extend unemployment insurance benefits to help 
families who are suffering through the worst job market in many years, 
not obstruct and stonewall to score political points.
  I sometimes wonder whether my colleagues understand that people's 
lives are in the balance. It is not a time for political grandstanding, 
not a time to once again say no--no to everything, no to the people who 
need help. This is not a time for amendments about ACORN or E-Verify--
amendments that have been offered and voted on on the floor of the 
Senate time and time and time again. It is nice that those people who 
offer them get their paychecks direct deposited every 2 weeks. This is 
not the time to offer those amendments again after the job crisis this 
administration inherited.
  Unemployment in New Jersey is at 9.8 percent, just shy of double-
digit unemployment, and the experts tell us it will get worse before it 
gets better. This is not the time to keep saying no, especially when we 
are trying to come out of the policies of the last 8 years that brought 
us to these present economic circumstances, the policies of the last 
administration that favored the bottom line over the lives of people--
Wall Street over Main Street--and sent millions of jobs overseas, 
leaving us vulnerable to any economic downturn, let alone one as severe 
as the one we were left with.
  When the economy sheds 263,000 jobs in 1 month alone, it is a crisis. 
When 14.9 million Americans are unemployed, and we know that there are 
only 3 million jobs available, it is not the time to say no. When over 
a third of all unemployed--more than 5 million Americans--have been 
jobless for 6 months or longer, and 500,000 Americans will exhaust 
their unemployment benefits this month--1.5 million by the end of the 
year--we have to say yes to extending unemployment benefits.
  We could recite the numbers all day. We could hold up chart after 
chart showing State by State the unemployment figures. But as the 
Presiding Officer knows, from his own comments on the Senate floor, the 
numbers don't tell us what this is all about. It is about people and 
their lives and their hopes, and the look on their faces when the bill 
comes due and the fear that they could stand to lose everything. 
Everywhere I go, when I am back home, someone comes up to me and I see 
that look on their face. It is a look of panic. It is a look of 
anguish. They lost their job after the holidays, their benefits are 
about to run out, they lost their health care, they are behind on their 
mortgage, their husband or wife is working two part-time jobs to try to 
make up. The story of these troubled times is not in the numbers, it is 
in the faces of those families who are looking to us for help.
  The numbers are significant, but they are merely a snapshot frozen in 
time. The truth of joblessness in this country is an ever-changing 
story of men and women who are one check away from ruin--mothers and 
fathers who have struggled all their lives to make ends meet, who had a 
good job for years, made a decent wage, then saw 8 years of government 
policies that favored Wall Street over Main Street. They watched their 
companies downsize for greater productivity and send jobs overseas. 
They watched their friends being laid off. They went to bed at night 
praying that they would not be next, and then they got the news: They 
were next.
  But they had hope because of the wisdom of Franklin Roosevelt, who on 
August 14, 1935--74 years ago--signed into law the Social Security Act, 
which included the first provisions for unemployment insurance. The 
Republican opposition in his day called him a socialist and they tried 
everything they could to stop the New Deal, notwithstanding an economy 
in depression. For F.D.R., the story was not in the numbers, it was in 
the faces of the people in grainy black and white photographs, of bread 
lines and old women selling apples on street corners.
  Today the faces of the unemployed are no different. Their need for 
help is

[[Page 25876]]

the same, and our duty to provide it is the same.
  This is about them. It is about real people who maybe, just maybe--if 
we have the will and the wisdom to do what is obviously right sooner 
rather than later--will look across the kitchen table tonight, knowing 
they are able to hold on just a little longer.
  I know there are those who have bought into the notion that 
government is the problem for everything; that it can do nothing right 
and should stay out of just about everything; that the free market 
should be left to its own devices and everyone should fend for 
themselves without government oversight or involvement. Those are the 
same views that fought the New Deal. They fought against Social 
Security and Medicare and civil rights. They supported Reaganomics. 
They told us the government was the problem and Wall Street knows best.
  I think history, especially recent history, has proven them wrong. 
Good, well-run, decent, honest government can be part of the solution. 
This is one of those times when it is government's responsibility to 
act. Extending unemployment insurance is what we, as responsible 
government leaders, must do when there are those in the community who 
have no other option. This is not a time to say no. To delay voting on 
this bill is to turn our backs on millions across this Nation who are 
still unemployed and facing financial disaster. To look into their 
faces and say no is not who we are as a people or what we stand for as 
a nation. We are a community, united by shared values and common 
concerns, not a nation of 300 million disconnected individuals. The 
plight of any one of us should be a concern to all of us.
  The Federal Government stepped in at the right time to help companies 
we determined were too big to fail--not for the sake of them failing 
but for the sake of what they would do to our national economy. We said 
they were too big to fail. I say the American people are too big to 
fail. Now we have to step in and help them. This is America. We do not 
let the situation get the best of us. We take it as an opportunity, as 
Franklin Roosevelt did, to renew the promise of this Nation, to 
recommit ourselves to the concept and spirit of community--one nation, 
indivisible.
  Whether that means 20 more weeks of Federal aid for those who still 
cannot find a job, those who wake up every day with the want ads in one 
hand and their resume in another trying to figure out how they can 
match them up and get that job, or whether it is providing incentives 
to home owners to boost the economy, we have always risen to the 
challenge. We have done it before, and we can do it again. This is our 
chance for each of us in this Chamber to do what is right for every 
American who is looking to us for a little help and a little hope. It 
is not the time to say no again.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized.
  Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
allowed to proceed as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Health Care Reform

  Mr. BENNETT. Thank you, Madam President.
  We are in a time when we are talking about money; we are talking 
about debt; we are talking about taxes; we are talking about stimulus; 
and we are talking about health care. I wish to put the whole situation 
with respect to money into some perspective.
  Having been a businessman, I did my best to try to draw up a balance 
sheet for the United States. This is a very simplified balance sheet. 
It is in summary numbers only. But by going to the Federal Reserve 
Board and the Social Security and Medicare trustees and the Census 
Bureau, I have come up with the following balance sheet for citizens of 
the United States.
  We start out with assets and liabilities. These are personal assets 
and personal liabilities. It is amazing to me that the number of 
household assets on a per-person basis is this high, but it is. If you 
take all of the personal assets in the United States, lump them 
together, and then divide them by the number of people in the United 
States, you get personal assets of $218,000 per person, and personal 
liabilities or household debt of only $45,000 per person. So the 
balance sheet looks pretty good.
  However, as citizens of this country, we have debt beyond our 
personal debt. So when we add the national debt and each individual's 
share of it to the balance sheet, that adds an extra $37,982, so that 
the amount of debt goes up when you add each individual's share of the 
national debt.
  The national debt is not the only debt we have. Let's add State and 
local government debt on a per-person basis, and it goes up another 
$7,500. But that is not the only debt we have. We have obligations, 
each one of us, with respect to Social Security. There is a Social 
Security liability and the present value of that Social Security 
liability is another $17,251 per person.
  All right. It still looks like a pretty good balance sheet. With the 
assets at $218,000, this is about half. But there are two other 
liabilities we have to put on the balance sheet. The first one is the 
present value of Medicare hospital insurance. Over the next 75 years, 
the present value of that unfunded liability is $43,616 per person, 
almost as much as the total amount of debt that each one of us has as 
an individual. Now the balance sheet is looking a little scarier.
  But we have one more item we have to put on the balance sheet, and 
that is the present value of Medicare supplemental medical insurance, 
and that is another $79,095 per person. So when you add it all up, this 
is the balance sheet we are facing today: $218,000 in assets, and 
$231,000 in liabilities. If this were a corporation with this balance 
sheet, we would say the corporation is underwater.
  As we begin to break this down, we realize that the Medicare 
liability is more than everything else put together. The Medicare 
liability is more than our personal debts, our share of the national 
debt, our share of State and local debts, and our share of Social 
Security. The Medicare liability is more than all of that put together. 
Is it any wonder, then, that the No. 1 issue we should be talking about 
when we are talking about health care is how to get the health care 
costs under control; to use the terms that the budgeteers use, how to 
turn the cost curve downward on health care. We can talk about 
earmarks. We can talk about spending on appropriations bills. We can 
talk about holding down discretionary spending on other issues. All of 
those things are worth talking about, but they are dwarfed by the 
challenge of turning down the cost curve on health care.
  I have said this before, but it still works: One of the statements 
that has gotten into American folklore is a statement attributed to 
Willie Sutton. Willie Sutton was a bank robber. Not very many people 
knew much about his robbing banks, but he kept doing it. He would get 
arrested, he would get out on parole or he would leave prison and he 
would rob another bank. Finally someone said to him: Willie, why do you 
keep robbing banks? He said: Because that is where the money is.
  If we are going to talk about the balance sheet that every American 
faces in debt and debt obligations, we have to talk about health care 
because that is where the money is: more for health care liabilities 
than everything else put together.
  Let's discuss this question of turning the cost curve down. How good 
a job have we done as a government in making projections as to the cost 
of health care? On the second chart, let's look at the years and at the 
projections. In 1965 when Medicare was first proposed, we made a cost 
projection. We, the government, made a cost projection as to how much 
it would cost us, and that is represented by that red bar there on that

[[Page 25877]]

chart. Then the actual numbers came in, and they are represented by the 
green bar on the chart. Let's look at 1965 Medicare hospital insurance. 
That is a separate program. The cost projection is there in the red 
bar; the actual figures that came in are in the green bar. In 1987, we 
added Medicaid, and the Congress told the people: Medicaid won't cost 
much at all. You see, it is hard to find even on the chart. The actual 
cost was 17 times the projection that was made. In 1988 we added 
Medicare for home care. It was going to cost a little more. Once again, 
the gap between the red bar and the green bar--it has always cost more. 
We did a little better with SCHIP, but SCHIP is still a relatively new 
program, created in 1997, so the disparity between the projection and 
the reality is relatively small, but, once again, the reality has been 
greater than the projection.
  There is one exception, and that is Medicare Part D, and that is the 
final pair there. The red bar shows what was projected that Medicare 
Part D would cost and the green bar shows, almost magically, this one 
costs less than the projection. Why?
  I wish to quote from an editorial in the Wall Street Journal where 
they quote from White House Budget Director Peter Orszag. Peter Orszag 
was the head of the Congressional Budget Office at the time that cost 
projection was made. This is what the Journal has to say:

       But as White House budget director Peter Orszag told 
     Congress when he ran the Congressional Budget Office, the 
     ``primary cause'' of these cost savings is that--

quoting from Orszag

     the pricing is coming in better than anticipated, and that is 
     likely a reflection of the competition that is occurring in 
     the private market.

  I will repeat that: That is a reflection of the competition that is 
occurring in the private market.
  The Journal goes on to point out something I recall, because I was 
here during that debate. I was part of that debate. The Journal says:

       Liberal Democrats fought that private-competition model 
     (preferring government drug price controls), just as they are 
     trying to prevent private health plans from competing across 
     state borders now.
       The lesson here is that spending on nearly all federal 
     benefit programs grows relentlessly once they are 
     established. This history won't stop Democrats bent on 
     ramming their entitlement into law. But every Member who 
     votes for it is guaranteeing larger deficits and higher taxes 
     far into the future. Count on it.

  The history of cost containment with respect to health care is not a 
pleasant one. The history of predicting what health care will cost is 
not a pleasant one. The only example we have where costs have come in 
lower than projected has been in that circumstance where competition in 
the private sector has been protected. That has been the core of the 
bill Senator Ron Wyden and I have introduced as the Healthy Americans 
Act: private competition absent a government plan. We look at the 
history and see that will turn the cost curve down. That will begin to 
save money.
  CBO examined our bill. Peter Orszag was the head of CBO when they 
looked at our bill and said it is revenue neutral--that is a good 
start--and then likely to save money in the future. They didn't put a 
number on it, but the Lewin Group has put a number on it and said that 
the Healthy Americans Act, cosponsored by Senator Wyden and myself, 
would save $1.3 trillion over the next 10 years. I don't know whether 
that number is right or wrong. I do know. It is wrong. I don't know how 
far wrong it is. But the point is it demonstrates turning the cost 
curve down rather than turning the cost curve up. And that is what we 
have to do, as our balance sheet reminds us so dramatically.
  Let me talk briefly about the idea of a government-run plan, a public 
option, or whatever it is we want to call it, as the way to turn the 
cost curve down. Once again, the history of government plans is not 
encouraging as far as turning the cost curve down as we look at 
Medicare and how little it was supposed to cost and how dramatically 
much it has cost.
  Let me quote Robert Samuelson from his column that appeared in the 
Washington Post recently:

       Medicare has low marketing costs because it's a monopoly. 
     But a non-monopoly public plan would have to sell itself and 
     would incur higher marketing costs. Private insurers' profits 
     (included in administrative costs) also explain some of 
     Medicare's cost advance. But profits represent only 3 percent 
     of the insurance industry's revenue. Moreover, accounting 
     comparisons are misleading when they don't include the cost 
     of Medicare's government-supplied investment capital.

  So we are trying to mix apples with oranges when we say, look at the 
low administrative costs with Medicare and the high administrative 
costs with private insurance. Medicare can do it cheaper. Every 
projection about Medicare doing it cheaper has demonstrated not to work 
out.
  Samuelson says this:

       The promise of the public plan is a mirage. Its political 
     brilliance is to use free-market rhetoric (more ``choice'' 
     and ``competition'') to expand government power. But why 
     would a plan tied to Medicare control health spending, when 
     Medicare hasn't?
       . . . A favored public plan would probably doom today's 
     private insurance.

  I think that is true. That is one of the reasons I am opposed to that 
kind of thing.
  Samuelson goes on to make this final comment:

       Many would say: Whoopee! Get rid of the sinister insurers. 
     Bring on a single-payer system. But if that's the agenda, why 
     not debate it directly? It's not insurers that cause high 
     health cost; they're simply the middlemen. It's the 
     fragmented delivery system and open-ended reimbursement. 
     Would strict regulation of doctors, hospitals and patients 
     under a single-payer system provide control? Or would genuine 
     competition among health plans over price and quality work 
     better?
       That's the debate we need.

  I agree. That is the debate we need. That is the debate that focuses 
on, how do you get this cost curve under control? How do you start to 
turn it down? How do you get the kind of score that Senator Wyden and I 
have gotten from CBO that says our plan is revenue neutral and that 
others say will save $1.3 trillion over the next 10 years, compared to 
the cost history of government-run plans that say they are only going 
to cost this much and end up costing that much and driving us to this 
kind of present value liability--twice as much as everything else put 
together. That is a staggering thing to contemplate, but that brings us 
back to what I said in the beginning. The core of this debate should be 
focused on how we turn the cost curve down.
  I have one more comment to make with respect to that. As I have 
worked with Senator Wyden over the last 3\1/2\ years to try to 
understand this issue and come up with solutions to it that make 
marketplace sense rather than political sense, I have come to a great 
truth that we don't seem to be discussing in this debate at all, and 
that is this: The greatest cost control factor in health care is 
quality. The best health care is the cheapest. And we have built into 
the system now incentives that drive us away from the best care. Most 
of the perverse incentives that drive us away from the best care and to 
the highest costs are in Medicare. They are in the Medicare system that 
has gone 10 times, 20 times above its original cost, and they are still 
there, and the care they produce is less than the maximum care people 
can get when they go to the places that give us the best health care.
  It is parochial for me to repeat this, but I am happy to do it on 
every occasion. Dartmouth has done a study as to where the best care is 
available throughout the United States, and they said it is in three 
cities: Seattle, WA; Rochester, MN; and Salt Lake City, UT. And then 
they say that if every American got his or her health care in Salt Lake 
City, UT, it would be the best in the United States and one-third 
cheaper than the national average, and that is because of a variety of 
reasons. They practice the best health care, and they have focused on 
outcomes rather than the kinds of perverse incentives that are built 
into government-run programs.
  We have a lot to do and a long time to go before this health care 
debate is finished, but I hope we recognize that hanging over us, 
regardless of everything else we say with respect to health care, is 
the fiscal reality that our current value obligations for

[[Page 25878]]

health care dwarf every other debt we have in the United States. 
Personal household debt, the national debt, State and local debt, and 
Social Security debt all put together do not add up to the amount of 
health care debt we are facing.
  The challenge of turning the cost curve on health care down is the 
No. 1 issue we should be addressing as we are talking about this. The 
irony of it is, if we are successful based on what we know, we can get 
the cost curve down and produce a better health care outcome and 
result.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio is recognized.
  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 
minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I will talk about the extension of 
unemployment benefits, which is as important as health care in the next 
2 months to this country, to our economy, and to people's way of life. 
What we do in the next day or two on the unemployment extension is 
paramount.
  Some 400,000 Americans across the Nation, in every State--it doesn't 
matter if it is John McCain's State or Barack Obama's State or if it is 
a big or small State--400,000 Americans exhausted their Federal jobless 
benefits last month. More than 14,000 Ohioans are among the 200,000 
Americans who will lose their benefits this month if we don't act. By 
the end of the year, more than 64,000 Ohioans will exhaust their 
unemployment benefits if there is no extension coming from the House, 
Senate, and the White House. Despite my Republican colleagues' efforts 
to dismiss the statistics, these are not just numbers; they are people 
in every State in our Nation.
  Let me tell you about some Ohioans who deserve more consideration 
than they are getting from my Republican colleagues.
  Sandra from Van Wert County in western Ohio, on the Indiana border, 
wrote this in a letter:

       There were more than 300 of us who were locked out of our 
     factory in April 2008--only a handful getting new jobs.

  Mr. President, this is a small town where 300 jobs are very hard to 
replace.

       Several of us went back to school for more education, but 
     unfortunately, only one person in our class has even gotten a 
     job.
       It is not that we are just sitting around collecting 
     unemployment. We are trying to improve our skills and to be 
     gainfully employed.
       I had 30 years of employment at the same company and now I 
     am on my own and my unemployment runs out in 2 weeks. There 
     are a lot of people who are running out of unemployment every 
     day.
       I have used all but $200 of my savings and I know others in 
     the same situation. Please help us.

  I thought a lot about this issue as I read these letters in my office 
and on the floor. Part of the problem is that not very many colleagues 
really know any unemployed workers. Not very many people here spend 
time as a single parent trying to make ends meet or spend time with 
somebody who is laid off because of a plant closing. We don't spend 
enough time with small business owners, with a mom-and-pop operation, 
maybe running a store or something, and they cannot make it because 
people have lost jobs in their community. We don't spend our time with 
people who are really suffering. We don't see them enough.
  Let me tell you about Dawn from Cuyahoga County in northeastern Ohio, 
the Cleveland area. She wrote:

       I lost my job two years ago and my mother passed away 6 
     months afterward. If not for a friend who allows me to sleep 
     on a couch, I would be homeless.
       I have worked hard ever since I was 15, but now I find 
     myself applying for so many positions over and over.
       I consider myself lucky when I get the exceedingly rare 
     call for an interview. But if the proposed [unemployment] 
     extension doesn't pass soon, I honestly don't know how I'll 
     survive.
       Please, Senator, make whoever's blocking this extension see 
     reason. There are a lot of us in Ohio who are really hurting.

  I know there are a lot of people in Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham in 
the Presiding officer's State and in Galion, Zanesville, and Xenia in 
my State who are trying to find jobs. They are barely getting along on 
their unemployment checks. If the unemployment runs out, they cannot 
get anything. It has to be extended before it runs out. That is why 
time is of the essence.
  Every day Republicans delay and obstruct, more Americans and their 
families will slip into poverty. It is not just a human tragedy, it is 
another blow to the tough economy this country is enduring. Poverty 
reduces consumer spending and increases the need for public assistance. 
That is two steps back without one step forward.
  Let's not forget that unemployment insurance is not retroactive. As I 
said a minute ago, once unemployment insurance is exhausted, whether 
today or last week or last month, they are not eligible for the 
extension. So we have to do this. Every day we wait hurts another 
hundreds and hundreds of families in Ohio and North Carolina and all 
over this country.
  The Senate bill would extend unemployment insurance for 14 weeks in 
all States, plus an additional 6 weeks in high-unemployment States--
those States above 8.5 percent unemployment, such as Ohio. This means 
unemployed workers in Ohio, such as Sandra and Dawn, whose letters I 
shared, would receive a total of 20 weeks' additional unemployment 
compensation. They are not choosing to just sit home and get 
unemployment. As you can see from some of the letters, people are 
driving from rural areas, driving county by county, to urban areas, 
knocking on doors over and over to find jobs.
  The unemployment insurance in the Recovery Act has kept 800,000 
people out of poverty. That means fewer Americans on Medicaid, fewer 
Americans with income assistance, food stamps, and other public 
assistance programs. This isn't welfare; this is an insurance policy. 
Every paycheck, workers pay something into the insurance fund.
  It is not just what it does to help workers, but every dollar in 
Federal extended benefits produces $1.64 in economic growth. It is not 
as if they are taking this money, this check of $200 or $300 a week in 
unemployment benefits, and investing in a factory in China. It is not 
as if they are blowing this money. They are using this money to buy 
school clothes for their kids, to buy food, maybe even to go to a movie 
once every month or two. Maybe they are putting a little money in the 
church plate. Whatever they are doing, they are spending this money, 
not holding it. That is why it is $1.64 in economic growth with every 
dollar we send into a community. In the first 6 months following 
passage of the Recovery Act, unemployment insurance pumped about $19 
billion into the economy. I wonder how many jobs and how much more 
economic activity would have been lost without unemployment insurance 
putting dollars into workers' pockets, into local communities, boosting 
consumption, and saving jobs.
  How much longer are we going to let people like Melody, from Geurnsey 
County in east central Ohio, go without the insurance they so 
desperately need.
  Melody wrote to me saying:

       We need help in Guernsey County and all around Ohio.
       I look for work every week, traveling 75 to 100 miles, 
     going to counties in every direction from Noble, Belmont, 
     Muskingum, Harrison, Washington, Coshocton, and Licking.

  She goes to that entire area where she lives looking for a job.

       And after making phone calls, I've been told not to call 
     back because there are no jobs.
       My unemployment is running out. What am I supposed to do 
     until I find a job?

  Again, that is Melody from Guernsey County.
  It is unacceptable, irresponsible, and par for the course that the 
Republicans want to play politics and come up with amendments that 
don't have anything to do with extending unemployment benefits, but it 
helps them with messaging for the next election and scores political 
points with the newspapers back home and scores big political points 
with talk radio, which cheers them on and says: Keep trying to 
embarrass the Democrats.
  The fact is, these workers at home are not Democratic workers, they 
are

[[Page 25879]]

not Republican workers, they are not Independent workers. These are 
people who have lost their jobs. These are people who need assistance. 
These are people who want to go back to work. These are people who will 
benefit not just from the unemployment check they get to keep their 
heads above water but the money they put into the community so there 
will be job growth in the months ahead, and the people will, in fact, 
get back to work so they will not need their unemployment benefits.
  We need our Republican colleagues to start putting Americans first, 
ahead of their reelection campaigns, ahead of their message campaigns, 
ahead of their appeals to talk radio, and start helping to move us 
forward on the extension of unemployment benefits not tomorrow, not 
next week but this afternoon.
  I yield the floor.
  THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware is recognized.
  Mr. KAUFMAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Delaware is recognized.
  (The remarks of Mr. Kaufman pertaining to the introduction of S. 1959 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. KAUFMAN. Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burris). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, 3 weeks ago we came to the floor of the 
Senate and asked our Republican colleagues to join us in a bipartisan 
effort to extend unemployment compensation benefits for those across 
America who have lost their jobs. This fairly routine and common 
political request was met with opposition from the Republican side. It 
came as a surprise because we know the unemployment we face in this 
country is not confined to States represented by Democratic Senators, 
it is nationwide. The recession has cost us so many jobs and, sadly, I 
am afraid that, although there are signs of recovery, it will be some 
time before many unemployed people actually do get back to work.
  It is said there are six unemployed people for every available job. 
The frustration that creates for those who are unemployed is obvious. 
So the object of our request was to ask our Republican colleagues to 
join us in extending unemployment insurance benefits for those who are 
about to see them expire.
  Unfortunately, the Republican side objected, and they objected 
because they said they wanted to offer some amendments. It is not 
unusual to offer an amendment to anything that comes to the Senate 
floor, but in the case of an emergency such as this, an economic 
emergency where people have, within the last few weeks or months, seen 
their livelihood extinguished because they have no job and no benefits 
coming in, it is a little hard to understand why some Members on the 
Republican side of the aisle insist on offering amendments that have 
virtually nothing to do with unemployment.
  Let me give one example. The Senator from Louisiana wants to offer an 
amendment that would, once again, punish an organization known as 
ACORN. ACORN is not in Illinois--it has not been for many years--so I 
don't know on a personal basis, but from what I read, it is an 
organization involved in grassroots organizing. It helps organize 
States to pass increases in the minimum wage in each State. They have 
also organized to register voters in many States. They have been 
involved in counseling people who are about to lose their homes to 
avoid foreclosure.
  Having said those good things, there were clearly acts of wrongdoing 
by employees of ACORN. In fact, a couple were videotaped. What we saw 
on those videotapes, a few weeks ago, was nothing short of outrageous. 
The employees involved were fired by ACORN. I have suggested, if there 
is any criminal activity associated with it, it should be investigated 
and prosecuted, no ifs, ands or buts. But, unfortunately, this has 
become a big cause on rightwing radio and TV: go after ACORN. Some 
Senators are inspired by that to come to the floor on a frequent basis 
and offer ACORN amendments--one after another after another. We think 
some four or five different amendments have been offered, ways of 
punishing ACORN.
  The House has already passed an amendment saying ACORN cannot do 
business with the Federal Government. There have been amendments 
offered--I have offered one of them--calling for a complete 
investigation of the organization. Other appropriations bills have 
limited any expenditures involving this organization. So it is not as 
if it has been ignored or glossed over or excuses are being made. There 
is a full investigation being ordered, action taken against it.
  But for some Senators, particularly one from Louisiana, it is not 
enough. We have to go back and debate ACORN again. We have to debate it 
on a bill for unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of 
Americans.
  Another Senator wants to extend a program called E-Verify. E-Verify, 
conceptually, is sound; that is, you could verify whether a person 
applying for employment is, in fact, a citizen; that you could have a 
number or computer contact verifying the name and Social Security 
number of the person. It is sound in principle, but it turns out in 
operation it has been a problem. Many times, the numbers have not 
matched when they should have, people have been disqualified from jobs 
when they should not have been, and the system clearly needs to be 
repaired and improved. It will last for 3 more years, this system, if 
we do nothing. A Senator from Alabama has come to the floor and said he 
wants to make this a permanent program, despite some of the obstacles 
and problems we currently have with it.
  So a Senator from Louisiana wants to flog ACORN, this organization, 
again; a Senator from Alabama wants to extend a law beyond the 3 years 
it is going to be in existence to make it permanent; and they are 
holding up unemployment benefits for people all across America. We are 
now doing nothing in the Senate except making speeches because these 
Senators insist on their amendments and will not agree to unemployment 
benefits until they get them.
  Twenty-one days after we requested an extension of unemployment 
benefits, the Republican Senators and leadership are continuing to hold 
us up. Two hundred thousand Americans will lose their unemployment 
insurance this month if the Republicans continue to obstruct a vote to 
extend the benefits. To put it in perspective, around 200,000 people 
live in Birmingham, AL, and in Montgomery and in Mobile. The 
Republicans are refusing to help roughly the number of people who live 
in the three biggest cities in that State, all because a Senator wants 
to vote to extend, permanently, the E-Verify Program.
  Around 200,000 people live in Baton Rouge, LA, and in Shreveport as 
well. Republicans are refusing to help roughly the number of people who 
live in those two biggest cities in Louisiana outside New Orleans, all 
because the Senator from Louisiana wants one more chance to give one 
more speech for one more amendment about ACORN. Yes, one more.
  Meanwhile, here is what I learned from one of my constituents in 
Chicago who wrote and said:

       I have been out of work 9 of the last 12 months. I have 
     applied for over 200 jobs and I still am unemployed. I am 
     educated, worked since I was 15 years old and cannot find 
     work. I have applied for everything from hourly to above my 
     skill level including city and state jobs and have not heard 
     from most.

[[Page 25880]]

       Further, Peoples Gas cut off my service this week--for 
     months I have let them know what I was able to pay and have 
     paid it, they still cut off my service. What are we citizens 
     to do. . . .
       My son and I will be living on the street any day. Where is 
     the help?

  That is from one of my writers from Chicago. Here is a letter from a 
woman in Genoa, IL.

       . . . I am currently one of many who is unemployed and 
     almost out of benefits. I have 2 young children I am 
     responsible for and have made a full time effort to look for 
     work. I have applied at gas stations, McDonald's, 
     restaurants, everywhere. There are just no jobs. Can you 
     please tell me if the Senate will be voting on the extension 
     [of unemployment benefits] sometime soon? I am expecting my 
     last check next week and then I don't know what I am going to 
     do about keeping a roof over mine and my children's heads.
       Please help us from becoming homeless. Any kind of response 
     on this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

  How can my colleagues on the Republican side hear stories like that, 
if they are even listening to these unemployed people, and refuse to 
help so they can come to the floor and debate their amendments? For 
goodness' sake, tomorrow is another day. There will be another chance 
to give a speech and debate an amendment. Why wouldn't you let the 
unemployment compensation benefits go forward for people such as those 
who have written to me? The unemployment rate in my State is 10.5 
percent, and I think it is my duty to help these people with a safety 
net that will help them get by while they are just one out of six 
applicants for every available job. While they struggle to keep food on 
the table and a roof over their heads, we ought to be doing our part in 
the Senate.
  Apparently, yesterday when we voted to go to the unemployment 
benefits, 13 Republican Senators voted no, against moving to the 
extension of unemployment benefits. In case some of those Senators 
missed it, here are the unemployment rates in the States represented by 
the Republicans who voted against even debating an extension of 
unemployment insurance: Texas, 8.2 percent; Mississippi, 9.2 percent; 
Missouri, 9.5 percent; Alabama, 10.7 percent; Kentucky, 10.9 percent; 
South Carolina, 11.6 percent. I don't understand it. How could you 
represent a State with over 10 percent unemployment and vote against 
unemployment benefits for the people there who are searching for jobs? 
That, to me, does not represent family values. It doesn't represent 
what this Senate ought to be about. For goodness' sake, it doesn't 
represent the kind of bipartisanship that was always behind voting for 
unemployment benefits.
  This Republican obstruction, when it comes to something this basic, 
is fundamentally unfair. It is way past time. We should not be playing 
games and posturing. We ought to stop the politics. We ought to be 
voting in the next 5 minutes so we can respond to the people who write 
to us in desperation and tell them, in fact, we are moving the bill 
forward so they will have the basics in life to take care of their 
families.


                              Health Care

  I also wish to say a word or two about health care because that is 
the issue that, while we work on others, is coming to the floor soon 
for a historic debate. Senator Reid, the Democratic majority leader, 
has sent a bill to the Congressional Budget Office to score it, which 
basically means to find out will it cost us money. If so, will it add 
to the deficit? Will it reduce the costs of health care? The 
Congressional Budget Office is doing that analysis at this current 
time.
  It is clear we desperately need this because we find fewer and fewer 
businesses offering health insurance across America, and the cost of 
health insurance is going up so fast people cannot afford it. The New 
York Times reported that insurance brokers and benefits consultants say 
small business clients are going to see premiums go up on health 
insurance an average of about 15 percent for the coming year. That is 
double the rate of last year's increase. When Republican Senators come 
to the floor--and they did this morning--and say: Let me tell you, if 
you pass health care reform, the cost of health insurance will go up, 
what they don't say is, if you don't pass health care reform, health 
insurance costs will go up anyway and possibly higher. What we are 
trying to do is slow the rate of growth in the cost of health care 
across America.
  In one national survey, nearly three-quarters of small businesses 
that did not offer benefits cited high premiums as the reason. So as 
the premium costs go up and businesses offer less coverage, individuals 
have to go out on their own and it is even more expensive. Small 
businesses pay up to 18 percent more than large firms. What we have 
tried to do in the health care reform we are working on is to give 
small businesses a chance. I joined with Senator Blanche Lambert 
Lincoln of Arkansas as well as Senators Snowe and Collins of Maine in 
introducing the SHOP bill, which has become part of the health care 
reform.
  It is an effort which we put together with the help of the National 
Federation of Independent Businesses and the National Realtors 
Association and the SEIU labor union to try to find a way that small 
businesses could afford health insurance, allow them to pool into 
larger groups, allow them to shop from a market of health insurers so 
they would have some choice to lower the cost, the overhead costs they 
face, and to lower the premium costs, so small businesses could offer 
health insurance.
  But it is not just small businesses that are stuck. Many Americans 
actually stay in jobs today because they are afraid that if they move 
from one job to another, they will lose their health insurance. Even 
business owners, the risk takers among us who have so often led us out 
of the recession, are less willing to take that risk when it comes to 
people who are sick and need employment.
  Melissa Wilhelm in Chicago knows what I am talking about. Melissa 
spent years as a research associate, then decided it was time for a 
change in her professional life. She felt she had outgrown the position 
she was in. She said: I did not want to put the widget in the hole 
every day.
  Melissa had good reason to want the most out of each day. Only a 
couple of years earlier, at the age of 35, Melissa had been diagnosed 
with stage IV lymphoma, an aggressive type of cancer that affects the 
lymph nodes. As frightening as her diagnosis was, one thing Melissa did 
not worry about was how she was going to pay for her cancer treatment. 
She had a good health insurance policy. In fact, she had two, one 
through her employer and another one through her graduate school.
  In 2006, thank God, Melissa went into remission. It was after her 
recovery that Melissa decided it was the time for a career change. She 
wanted to start her own education consulting company.
  Knowing her medical history, she knew her first step was to meet with 
a health insurance agent. Melissa said the agent actually laughed in 
her face. Getting affordable health insurance as a self-employed cancer 
survivor is apparently a laughable request in the world of insurance. 
Melissa was not alarmed at that point. She qualified for 18 months of 
COBRA coverage and assumed she would have enough time to shop around. 
But a couple of months later, she came home from vacation to bad news: 
her COBRA insurance had been terminated. She apparently missed paying 
one monthly payment. It had been sent to the wrong place. But for 
COBRA, since she missed the payment, it was the end of the story, the 
end of her coverage. She was not refunded the $2,000 she had already 
paid in premiums; they just cut her off. Suddenly, she became one of 
the uninsured, a cancer survivor without insurance.
  She had one last option: the Illinois Comprehensive Health Insurance 
Plan, our State's high-risk pool, a pool for those individuals unable 
to buy health insurance otherwise. But the coverage would not come 
cheap; it would cost her $780 a month, plus a $2,000 deductible--a 
price she had no choice but to pay. As she waited for her coverage to 
be finalized, she put off checkups and CAT scans. It was risky, but, as 
she said: I did not want to drag myself and

[[Page 25881]]

my family into bankruptcy. Those apparently were the choices: go to the 
doctor or face bankruptcy--not much of a choice in modern-day America.
  We know health care costs are a major factor in two out of three 
bankruptcies in our country today. How many families can even entertain 
the idea of paying $25,000 a month for chemotherapy? Not many. And none 
of us should ever be in a position where professional growth is not an 
option because it means giving up health care coverage.
  Melissa said: People do not have the ability to leave their jobs. 
They cannot afford to be more productive or more challenged. That is 
not the American spirit. And Melissa is right.
  Melissa was living the American dream, pursuing new goals and 
opportunities with the entrepreneurial spirit we need in this country. 
But she was stopped--stopped cold because of her lack of health 
insurance.
  Melissa eventually succeeded and started her business as an 
educational consultant. She is currently helping evaluate Chicago 
public schools at risk of failure and developing good practices so that 
students can do better. With a Ph.D. in child development policy, 
Melissa is certainly up to the task. I think we can use more people 
like her, determined to improve their lives even though they have to 
battle cancer and the health insurance companies at the same time. 
Health care reform will free more people to leave dead-end or 
unfulfilling jobs and to pursue new goals without fear of becoming 
uninsured.
  Today, many of the unemployed spend countless hours trolling job 
sites, motivated at least in part by the desperate need for health 
care. What if these people had a safety net, a health care option 
outside of employer-provided health care? Maybe, like Melissa, they 
would strike out on their own, open the restaurant or the business they 
always wanted to open. Maybe those businesses would grow, employ more 
people.
  It is clear that small businesses suffer in today's health insurance 
market more than most. It is extremely difficult for those businesses 
to compete against big firms that are able to spread the cost of 
unexpected illness across a large pool.
  The bottom line is this: We have a health care reform bill that is 
now being carefully reviewed, as it should be. It is one we will debate 
at length. The critics will come to the floor, as they did this 
morning, and will tell us what is wrong with the bill. But the fact of 
life is, those who are criticizing the bill have no alternative. Their 
alternative is to stay with the current system.
  The current system of health care in America is too expensive, the 
cost is going up too quickly, fewer and fewer people are insured each 
year, and more of us are bearing the costs of the insured as they are 
treated in hospitals and by doctors who pass along that cost to other 
people.
  We are the victims of health insurance companies which on a whim can 
deny coverage, can claim there was a preexisting condition unreported 
or a cap on the amount of money they will pay, or the fact that you are 
sick, they just do not want to be there. That is the reality of what we 
face today.
  Those on the other side of the aisle who will not participate have 
opted out of the health care debate and really have little room to 
criticize unless they want to step forward with their own proposal and 
their own plan. And the honest answer is, they don't have one. They 
don't have an answer.
  I hear from many of my constituents who ask me what we are going to 
do to get this economy moving again. That is our highest priority. But 
in addition to that we have to liberate families and businesses and 
individuals from the fear they have of health insurance they can't 
afford, health insurance companies that just say no, or the fact that 
losing or changing a job can cost them the peace of mind they need to 
protect their families.
  We can do a lot more for the American people. I hope we will have the 
cooperation of the Republican side in doing this. It would be great if 
we had a bipartisan bill. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle will come around and be part of the solution.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first let me thank my colleague and 
friend from Illinois for, as usual, his articulate, right-on-the-money 
and right-to-the-point remarks which I agree with.
  Right now, many middle-class families are facing the prospect of 
losing the unemployment benefits they are relying on to get them 
through this recession. Out-of-work Americans consider these benefits a 
lifeline. But too many Republicans are treating this like a political 
football. If Congress does not act to extend these benefits, nearly 2 
million Americans will lose their unemployment insurance by the end of 
the year--2 million. They have families, people who depend on them. And 
90,000 of those are in my home State of New York. That is 2 million 
people--90,000 in New York--who have been trying to find work and are 
now going to have their safety net pulled out from under them. Well, we 
cannot pull the rug out from under so many Americans. We owe it to them 
to do the right thing and extend unemployment insurance.
  It is a mystery to me why so many on the other side of the aisle are 
blocking passage of this legislation. Everywhere I go in New York--
downstate, upstate, large cities, urban suburbs, rural areas--people 
come up to me with a pleading look in their eyes: Can you please renew, 
extend unemployment benefits?
  What in the heck are we waiting for? Why are we putting people 
through this agony? So far, Republicans have been opposed to this 
extension as they seek to extract political amendments out of Leader 
Reid. It is just another example--the latest one--of a stalling 
strategy. On one legislative priority after another, their motto has 
been the 1980s slogan ``Just say no.'' But if there is one thing this 
recession and budding recovery has taught us, it is that America can't 
recover leaving behind our workforce.
  There is a general view that since much of the first stimulus package 
has not yet impacted the economy, a second one is not necessary. But 
unemployment benefits are the quickest, most effective form of economic 
stimulus, and they are aimed at the weak point of this economic 
recovery, which is jobs. The dollars get out the door fast and will be 
spent by those who don't have another source of income at a time when 
we need to boost consumer demand.
  So I plead with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle: Stop 
playing the games, and let's just pass unemployment insurance. I know 
there are lots of extraneous amendments on all kinds of issues that you 
wish to debate. Leader Reid has been very generous in allowing debate 
after debate on these amendments, much to the chagrin, frankly, of many 
on this side of the aisle. This is one time when we should put the 
games aside. We should just unite. My guess is that unemployment 
insurance extension will get a large high vote on both sides of the 
aisle. Stop playing politics with this benefit extension. Extending 
unemployment benefits is crucial to ensuring that as our economy picks 
back up we do not leave the recession's victims in the dust.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I rise today to join my distinguished colleague from 
New York, Senator Schumer, to express my strong support for extending 
unemployment benefits for workers around this country who continue 
their struggle to find jobs in this weak economy.
  The problem is especially acute in my home State of Rhode Island, but 
this is a national problem, and it is

[[Page 25882]]

creating significant unhappiness, significant distress, and significant 
woe in families all around the country as they approach the end of 
their unemployment benefits and cannot find a job. And the end is 
coming up for so many people. We really need to do something about it.
  Right now, we are on a motion to proceed to the Unemployment 
Compensation Extension Act of 2009. We are not actually on the bill yet 
because our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are using every 
available form of procedural delay. It is not hard to figure out why 
they are doing it. There are only so many days in the year. There are 
only so many days the Senate can be in session. And when they force 
these votes and when they force delays, what they are doing is burning 
the work time of the Senate. They would like to burn the work time of 
the Senate because that inhibits the President, that inhibits us, it 
inhibits progress, and that presently is their motivation. They are the 
party of no. And because they do not have the votes for a lot of this 
stuff, until they can get to it, they are the party of slow. And we 
have had innumerable--I think the record right now is that we are at 82 
efforts--to filibuster or force the majority leader to file cloture. We 
have had votes forced on judges. Some of the judges went through with 
huge margins by the time the vote actually came, but they wanted to 
burn the time. Indeed, as the Presiding Officer, the distinguished 
Senator from Illinois, may recall, the other day we voted on a judge, 
and the vote was 100 to 0. Yet they had to force a vote. Why? To burn 
the time of the Senate to prevent progress.
  This should be one bill where they would stand down from their 
mission to be the party of no and the party of slow. Because since 
October 8--when they first put up the procedural obstacles to this 
bill--to now, 7,000 Americans a day have lost their coverage. They have 
come to the end of their unemployment coverage. It has expired, and 
they have lost their incomes.
  As the Senator from Illinois, the distinguished Presiding Officer, so 
distinctly knows, there are millions and millions of families in this 
country who live paycheck to paycheck and when they lose their jobs, 
they live unemployment check to unemployment check while they 
desperately seek work to feed their families and put a roof over their 
heads.
  This bill--if we could get to it, and if we could vote on it--would 
provide a badly needed lifeline to those Americans, and I would hope at 
some point our Republican colleagues would relent and simply let us 
make this decision, which is in everyone's best interest. It is 
inhumane, frankly, to put those families--7,000 a day--through the 
torment of coming to the end of their income and having to think about 
losing their houses, losing their cars, not paying for their 
prescriptions, not paying for their food, worrying about their 
children--all of that. That is an awfully high price to score political 
points on this floor and to be the party of slow and the party of no. I 
would hope their point of view will change.
  I want to, first, applaud the efforts of my senior Senator from Rhode 
Island, Jack Reed. He has long been a champion of helping the 
unemployed, and he has played a critical role in getting this 
legislation to the floor for the Senate's consideration. 
Notwithstanding the fact that our Republican colleagues are interfering 
with allowing us to pass this legislation, Senator Reed's leadership on 
this issue has been remarkable, has been commendable, and we in Rhode 
Island are fortunate to have his service.
  One of the reasons Senator Reed is so concerned about this is because 
our home State--the State of Rhode Island--has the third highest 
unemployment rate in the Nation. We broke 13 percent last month. That 
is the highest level Rhode Island has seen for unemployment since World 
War II.
  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 74,000 Rhode 
Islanders are currently looking for work. There are 74,000 families 
with a wage earner out of work in a State with just over 1 million 
people. At that level, there are very few Rhode Islanders who are not 
touched in some way by our unemployment crisis.
  Families are struggling through this recession in every State, but 
the situation is particularly dire in States such as Rhode Island, 
Michigan, and Nevada where the unemployment level has hit double digits 
and is climbing still. People who have worked their entire lives have 
been unable to find work this year. The economies of the worst hit 
States are getting worse, and the unemployment benefits continue to run 
out.
  I have heard from hundreds of constituents who fear they will be 
unable to keep their families fed or keep the electricity on or keep up 
with their prescription drugs when their unemployment benefits expire. 
My State is in economic crisis, and we need help.
  One of my constituents, Carole, from Centerdale has degrees in 
architecture and business, but she has been unable to find work for 18 
months. She has two children. They are 12 and 15. Her unemployment 
benefits have run out. Without more help, she may lose her home.
  I send out my good wishes to Carole and my thoughts to her for a 
complete recovery. She has recently suffered a heart attack. She is 
recovering nicely, and I wish her well in her health. But we could do a 
lot for her if we could clear this bill so she did not have to look at 
her 12-year-old and her 15-year-old and, in this market, say: I don't 
know where our income is coming from now because this government cut 
off the unemployment benefits.
  Another constituent is Patricia. She is a 51-year-old woman from 
Warwick. She has been unemployed for 17 months. She spends over $300 a 
month for her prescriptions, and she can no longer afford to keep up 
the COBRA payments that will protect her if she gets seriously ill. 
Without assistance, she may need to go into bankruptcy.
  I tell just these two stories, although there are thousands more from 
those 74,000 Rhode Island families, because the statistics are 
sobering--13 percent unemployment, the highest level since World War 
II. That is a deeply distressing statistic. But behind those statistics 
are these personal stories, over and over again, thousands of examples 
of human suffering, human courage, that we must not ignore as we 
quarrel over irrelevant amendments and do not get to the business of 
helping these people in their hour of need.
  I am pleased that in addition to the 14 weeks of benefits this 
legislation would provide to unemployed workers in all States, workers 
in States with the worst job markets would receive an additional 6 
weeks. That additional time is desperately needed by Rhode Islanders, 
who, day after day, week after week, pore through the want ads looking 
for the job postings and hoping that the next interview will be the one 
that puts them back on their feet again.
  I am confident the economy of Rhode Island and the economy across the 
country will recover. It always does. But right now it looks as though 
it will take time. Economists say the stock market tends to be a 
leading indicator of recovery, while employment numbers are lagging 
indicators of recovery. This means the recent uptick in the stock 
market should lead to more jobs being available in the future. But 
until then, unemployed Rhode Islanders such as Carole and Patricia, 
unemployed Americans across our country, need their government to help 
provide the bridge to those better days.
  I implore my colleagues to join me in supporting swift passage of 
this urgently needed and--I hope once we cut through the fuss--
ultimately noncontroversial unemployment benefits extension.
  I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I enjoyed the comments of the 
distinguished Senator from Rhode Island. He is one of the most 
thoughtful and intelligent Members of the Senate. I always enjoy 
listening to him. But I have a different characterization of what we 
are doing in the Senate.
  He pointed out that the majority leader believed it was necessary to 
cut off debate 82 times; that was a record.

[[Page 25883]]

I do not believe I would be bragging about that. This is the Senate. 
What that means is the majority leader has said to the minority: Be 
quiet. Don't debate. We don't want your amendments--82 times.
  The House of Representatives is the place where we have the train 
that runs through according to the majority. That is not the Senate. 
Senator Byrd, the senior Democrat, the senior Senator, has written four 
big volumes about the history of this body and what is unique about the 
Senate. Our Founders said: We will have one popular body where there is 
one man one vote, one woman one vote, and whoever has the majority the 
train runs through. So whatever Speaker Pelosi wants, Speaker Pelosi 
gets. That was the view of the Founders more than two centuries ago. 
But we are going to have a little bit different Senate.
  Do you know what the idea of the Founders was, the Founders, whom we 
revere and admire? Unlimited debate. Unlimited amendment. That is the 
Senate. That is the only reason we have it. There is no need for the 
Senate if we do not have that.
  When Alexis de Tocqueville, the young Frenchman, came to this country 
in the 1830s and wandered around our Nation and wrote that perceptive 
book, ``Democracy in America,'' which every serious student of the 
American Constitution in our country discovers, he saw one thing he 
worried most about in the new American democracy, and it was, in his 
words, the tyranny of the majority. He said the Senate was the one 
institution which helped work against the tyranny of the majority.
  So this is the body that protects the minority view. It does slow 
things down. In the case we are talking about, unemployment 
compensation, we have already voted to limit debate on unemployment 
compensation. That is what we are talking about today.
  I see the Republican whip on the Senate floor. As I recall, the vote 
to limit debate on unemployment compensation was overwhelmingly 
bipartisan, was it not?
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, could I just interrupt?
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Of course.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Thank you.
  To answer my colleague quickly, I think the vote was 87 to 13, or in 
that general range. Almost all Republicans voted to conclude the 
unemployment compensation legislation by getting to the process where 
we could offer amendments and then have a vote on the final passage.
  But I would ask my colleague from Tennessee, have Republicans been 
afforded the opportunity to offer five amendments? How about four 
amendments, three, two, one? Obviously not. Have Republicans been 
afforded the opportunity to offer any amendments, I would ask my 
colleague? Then I have a follow-up question.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
Senator from Arizona and I be allowed to engage in a colloquy on this 
subject.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I believe the answer is no. If I am not mistaken--if I 
am not mistaken--I say to my friend from Arizona, the Democratic side 
has a nongermane amendment they would like the Senate to bring up, and 
I believe the Republican side has a nongermane amendment we would like 
to bring up. They are saying: Because we are in the majority, we are 
going to run over you. That is the tyranny of the majority. That is 
what Alexis de Tocqueville warned against, and we are saying: No, you 
are not. We are elected from Arizona and Tennessee to represent our 
constituents. If you are going to run over us, we might as well go 
home.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, if I could further inquire of my colleague, 
is it not the Senator's understanding that of all of the issues the 
American people are concerned about today, the No. 1 issue is jobs and 
economic recovery--how do they get back to work?
  When our friends from the Democratic side say: We need to hurry up 
and extend unemployment compensation, my guess is the vote on that will 
be overwhelming. I will support it. I am sure my colleague will support 
it. That is not the question. The question is, Instead of just 
continuing to extend unemployment compensation for all of the increased 
number of Americans who are out of work, what are we going to do to put 
people back to work?
  Then I have one other question to ask my colleague. I may not be 
correct that it is the No. 1 issue in public opinion surveys, but I 
recall it is pretty high on the list.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I think the Senator is exactly right, 
and we on the Republican side--and I believe some Democrats do as 
well--have some proposals about how to restart housing. We would like 
to deal with that on this issue as well. But the Senator is exactly 
correct. The No. 1 issue for most Americans is what to do about jobs. 
Unemployment is about at the rate of 10 percent.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, if I could further inquire, the first thing 
we want to do is find out how much this unemployment extension is going 
to cost. I think the number is about $2.4 billion. The second thing we 
want to find out is, how is it going to be paid for? I understand it is 
proposed to be paid for by a continuation of a tax on payroll; that is 
to say, employers and employees will have to pay a certain percentage 
of the employee's wage to the Federal Government in order to provide 
funds to those who are unemployed.
  Some of us are concerned if our goal is to put people back to work, 
to allow companies to hire more people, that the worst thing we would 
want to do is impose another tax on hiring, another tax on employees 
or, to be totally accurate, to extend the existing tax on workers, on 
payroll, as a way of paying for the extension of unemployment benefits. 
Perhaps a better way to pay for that would be, for example, to take the 
$2.4 billion out of unspent and unobligated stimulus funds, which was 
$780-some billion, half of which is not going to be spent for the next 
8 years--or over the period of the next 8 years.
  One of the amendments we wanted to offer was not just to extend 
unemployment benefits but to pay for it in a way that would not harm 
job creation, as is contemplated under the bill. Am I correct in that?
  Mr. ALEXANDER. The Senator from Arizona is correct. And as a member 
of the Finance Committee, he has once again come up with a very good 
suggestion. He understands better than some appear to that if we add 
taxes to payrolls, it makes it more likely that payrolls will be 
smaller or there will be fewer jobs. So if we can find a way to pay for 
unemployment compensation that does not add to the debt and does not 
add to payroll taxes, that is worth taking a little time to do.
  Mr. KYL. I know my colleague wanted to talk about student loans, so I 
will close my point here.
  The whole point, when colleagues and friends of ours on the other 
side of the aisle say: Well, Republicans are just trying to slow this 
down; the answer is: No, we could have been done with this bill 24 
hours ago. All that was necessary was a simple agreement between the 
majority leader and the minority leader that the minority would get a 
couple of amendments. One of them is an amendment to say, Let's pay for 
this worthy cause of extending unemployment benefits in a more sensible 
way with respect to job creation; at least in a way that isn't going to 
cost us jobs, to prevent employers from hiring more people. Let's pay 
for it by taking some of the unobligated stimulus funds that won't be 
spent for another 6 or 7 years and achieve our goal in that way. But 
no, no agreement to do that. The majority says no amendments, take it 
or leave it.
  If you ask for amendments, then you are slowing the process down and 
somehow standing in the way of those who are unemployed. The benefits 
haven't run out yet. We are going to pass this before the benefits run 
out. That is not the question. You can either come down here and make a 
pitch to people to make it sound as though you are trying to help them 
and the other side is not or you can try to do things the right way. I 
submit that on this, the right way is to pay for it in a way that 
doesn't cost jobs because our goal here ought to be to put people back 
to work.

[[Page 25884]]

  I would also say that if the majority were serious about getting this 
legislation completed, they would not in the middle of the process have 
parachuted onto the floor a bill that around here was called the ``doc 
fix''--a most unfortunate term--a bill that was going to add $250 
billion to our debt in relationship to the reimbursement of physicians 
who provide Medicare benefits. The minority didn't do that. Republicans 
didn't do that.
  My point is that a week ago we could have had an agreement to 
conclude work on the extension of unemployment benefits that would have 
taken maybe 24 hours, maybe 48 at the most. We would have had the 
benefit of voting on a couple of amendments, which I think are very 
well taken, directly relating to the subject, germane amendments, but 
for some reason the majority has not seen fit to permit that to happen.
  So as friends around the country consider what is the reason for this 
being slowed down, I hope there would be a better appreciation of the 
reason why this has been delayed. A, we didn't ask for the delay. The 
delay was occasioned by action by the majority leader by, first, going 
to another bill and, secondly, by filing cloture and, third, by not 
agreeing to allow the minority to have a couple of amendments.
  Finally, I would say I wish we did have that opportunity because I 
think when we do support this, it will be a better bill by not only 
taking care of those who find themselves without a job today but 
helping to find a way to get them back to work, and that ought to be 
our primary goal.
  I thank my colleague for yielding.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, if the Senator from Arizona has another 
minute, I thank him for coming to the floor because he has pointed out 
the value of taking a little time on these important pieces of 
legislation. He has suggested a way we can not only extend unemployment 
compensation benefits, which almost all of us want to do, but a way to 
pay for it in a way that creates more jobs rather than fewer.
  There is another example. The Senator from Rhode Island was 
complaining about the 82 times that the majority leader has invoked 
cloture, and I was saying that was nothing to brag about. We should be 
complaining about that, because that is 82 times he has cut us off. In 
general, he has allowed during this year a fair amount of amendments, a 
fair amount of debate. But take the health care bill for a moment. It 
takes a little time. Over in the House I hear they may run that through 
in 3 days. That is not going to happen here. When we have time to stop 
and think about it--the same thing happens on this floor that happened 
last week. We had our first vote on health care and the question was, 
Shall we raise the debt \1/4\ trillion dollars?, and 13 Democrats 
joined all Republicans and said no.
  We have another important vote coming up soon that might be called a 
procedural vote but, in fact, is a vote for or against a bill.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, if I could comment on that, that is another 
very important point. I think Americans very much want to engage in a 
debate about health care reform. I think Republicans are anxious to 
engage in that debate here on the Senate floor. But, first you have to 
have a bill. You can't just have a debate on the floor; you have to 
have a bill you are debating.
  We are told there is a bill. It was written in the majority leader's 
office with some people from the White House and a couple of other 
Democratic Senators, and then the bill was sent to the Congressional 
Budget Office to be scored, for a cost estimate to be developed. I know 
several people have said, Could we see the bill? Could you share that 
bill so the American people can see what we are talking about here? So 
far, no luck. No bill. If we are talking about getting this debate 
going on health care, one would think that we would get the bill 
written, we would get it out there, we would all get a chance to read 
it, our constituents would have a chance to understand what is in it 
and, by the way, know how much it costs.
  I ask my colleague from Tennessee, are Republicans doing anything to 
slow down the bill or making it public or understanding it?
  Mr. ALEXANDER. We are here every day. We want to do what the Senator 
from Arizona said. We want to read the bill and we want to know what it 
costs because when we hear about it--and the Senator from Arizona was a 
part of the Finance Committee that developed one bill; I was a part of 
the HELP Committee that developed another bill. What we hear is that 
instead of lowering premiums, which is the idea for 250 million 
Americans, it will probably raise premiums; that it will raise taxes; 
that it will cut Medicare by $450 billion.
  Now we learn from the majority leader this week that there will be a 
new government-run insurance program. We are going to put the 
government in the insurance business with a ``State opt-out,'' whatever 
that might mean. I am a former Governor. I am wondering, Does that mean 
we can opt out of the taxes as well as the benefits? So the Senator 
from Arizona is right. We are here. We are ready to go to work. We are 
anxious to read the bill, but it is being written behind closed doors.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I would say to my colleague, the minority 
leader yesterday in a press conference talked about this bill that has 
been written. I am not actually even sure it has been written. 
Obviously, we have never seen it. All the majority leader has chosen to 
talk about publicly is the so-called public option. So maybe that one 
feature of it has been written.
  My point is it isn't Republicans who are slowing anything down. As 
far as this health care debate is concerned, I think we are very 
anxious to engage in that debate now. As my colleague from Tennessee 
pointed out, we are not going to be in debate on a bill which is going 
to raise taxes, raise premiums, cut benefits under Medicare, increase 
the deficit, reduce the quality of our health care, and I am not going 
to vote to begin work on that kind of a bill, but I certainly will vote 
to begin work on a bill which meets the primary objective.
  There are two primary things we need to try to resolve. One is to 
make sure we could get insurance to about 18 million Americans who 
can't afford it and don't have it, and the other is to keep premiums 
from going up. As the Senator from Tennessee pointed out, under the 
legislation that came out of the Finance Committee and out of the House 
of Representatives, insurance premiums go up more than they otherwise 
would have--according to who? The Congressional Budget Office, the 
nonpartisan entity that we all ask to analyze these things. There are 
many other studies that came to the same conclusion.
  So I am not anxious to begin working on a bill that does those 
things, but so far we haven't seen any bill.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. If I could ask one more question of the Senator from 
Arizona, who is giving a lot of time to this discussion. I thought this 
health care debate was supposed to be about reducing costs--the cost to 
the government and the cost to people buying premiums. Whatever 
happened to that goal?
  Mr. KYL. Well, I would say to my colleague, something happened to it 
on the way to the Senate, I guess. Because, first, the bill is going to 
cost somewhere between $800 billion and $1 trillion. That is obviously 
money that isn't being spent today that will be spent tomorrow. I don't 
know of any American who believes you can have a $1 trillion new 
government program and not add to the debt, but we are told: Wait for 
the details; we will show you.
  There is only one way to make sure it doesn't add to the debt: Raise 
taxes so much that you cover the costs of it. Then that gets to the 
other half of the equation. What about for the American people? Are we 
going to be better off? No. It turns out we are going to have our taxes 
increased by $400 billion, Medicare cut by almost $500 billion--by the 
way, if it is ever cut. There is a question about whether we will ever 
achieve those savings; we never have in the past--in which case the 
bill is then out of balance by $500 billion; $500 billion in debt. So 
either there is going to

[[Page 25885]]

be a big debt there or seniors are going to see their benefits lost.
  But I wandered off the point. My colleague was asking, Wasn't the 
exercise here to reduce costs. Yes. And what will the bills do? It will 
increase costs for the Federal Government so, therefore, the taxpayers. 
It will increase costs for all Americans in the form of higher taxes, 
some imposed directly on us. For example, if we don't comply with the 
government forcing us to buy insurance, the Congressional Budget Office 
says other taxes will be passed directly through to us. For example, 
there is a tax on the manufacturers of medical devices. If you have an 
angioplasty or some kind of heart problem and they put a little stent 
in there, one of those very high tech items, that is going to get 
taxed. Why should you be taxed on something that makes you well? I 
can't understand that. But in any event, the tax is first on the 
manufacturer and it will be passed on to the consumer, so increased 
taxes.
  Finally, my colleague asked about premiums. According to CBO, the 
premiums will go up over what they otherwise would have been. The 
Oliver Wyman study that I think is very credible on this said the 
average would be $3,300 per year per person. In my State of Arizona, it 
was over $7,000, an increase in insurance premiums over what it 
otherwise would be. When Americans see that, they are going to say, 
Where is the reform? This is a lot worse than it was before.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Arizona. All of this got 
started because the Senator from Rhode Island had complained that the 
Democratic leader had to cut off debate 32 times, and my response was 
that was nothing to brag about; that is what the Senate is for. That is 
how the Founders created it.
  I appreciate the Senator from Arizona pointing out that in the case 
of unemployment compensation, we all want to extend the benefits. We 
think we may have a way to do that in a way that creates more jobs 
rather than taxes on jobs. In the case of health care, yes, we want to 
go slow enough to be able to do two things: Read the bill, know what it 
costs, because we want to make sure that if we pass a health care bill, 
we are not the Congress of higher premiums, higher taxes, Medicare 
cuts, and adding to the debt. I think the American people want to make 
sure we do that as well. So I am grateful that we have the Senate. We 
are always a little more grateful for those rules when we are in the 
minority, because they protect our rights to represent the people who 
elect us and to ask us to offer amendments. But the American people 
have been served very well by a Senate that has different rules and 
procedures.


                             Student Loans

  I wish to say a word about a subject which has nothing to do with 
health care and nothing to do with climate change, which is the other 
subject I have been in hearings on today, but it is a subject that will 
affect millions of families in America, and that is the question of 
going to college and student loans.
  All of us can imagine the anxious moments in our family lives--and 
there are a number of them, including when a baby is born or when the 
daughter goes out on her first date; when someone is sick; when a child 
goes off to college. But one of the most anxious moments comes just 
after the first of every year when, in millions of homes across 
America, students and their parents wait to see if they have been 
admitted to college and to which college. The next anxiety comes when 
they turn to the various options they have to see whether they can 
afford to go to that college.
  Fortunately, in America we have the best system of higher education. 
We not only have the best colleges; we have almost all of the best 
colleges. We have 6,000 autonomous institutions of one kind or 
another--public, private, religious, secular, profit, non-profit--among 
which students may choose. Second, even though prices have been going 
up, we have bent over backward in this country to try to make it 
possible for the largest number of Americans to attend college. 
Seventy-seven percent of Americans who attend college--nearly 20 
million--have a Federal grant or Federal loan to help them do that.
  So just after January--and I want to paint this picture--in homes 
across America, we have millions of students, millions of families who 
are waiting for their college admissions and then will turn to the 
question of: Can I get some help paying the bills? Specifically, we 
have 14 million--if next year is anything like last year and the year 
before--14 million of those students who will be going to college on 35 
campuses who will be borrowing $60 million through the Federal Family 
Education Loan Program--what we call the traditional student loan 
program.
  We have two types of loan programs. We basically have one through two 
thousand lenders, profit and nonprofit, across the country. For 
example, we have an organization called Edsouth in Tennessee that is 
nonprofit. It offers a variety of student loan options to Tennessee 
students. It has five regional outreach counselors to provide college 
and career planning, financial aid training, college admissions 
assistance, and financial literacy. It makes 443 presentations at 
Tennessee schools through college fairs, guidance visits, and 
presentations. It works with 12,000 Tennessee students to improve their 
understanding of college admissions and the financial aid process. Last 
year, Edsouth provided training to over 1,000 school counselors and 
distributed 1.5 million financial aid brochures.
  The various lending institutions--profit and not-for-profit--are 
usually in these communities and easy for these 14 million students to 
get to. There is another group of students--about a fourth to a third 
in total--who choose to go another route in getting a student loan, 
called direct lending. They borrow directly from the government. This 
was set up as a pilot program when I was the Secretary of Education in 
the early 1990s. It was set up to see whether the traditional student 
loan program, which is through your local bank or nonprofit, was 
working right, and what was best for students.
  Students and colleges have voted over the years with their practices. 
For example, in Tennessee, most Tennessee campuses and most Tennessee 
students choose the traditional student loan program. At the University 
of Tennessee, where I was once president, in Knoxville, there are 
30,000 students, and 11,000 have a Federal loan. They get that through 
the traditional loan program, not the government direct loan program. 
At Maryville College, in my hometown, where my parents went, 824 of 
1,100 students have a Federal loan. They get that through the 
traditional loan program. At Carson-Newman, at Jefferson City, where I 
am going Friday to help inaugurate a new president, with 2,000 total 
students, 1,259 have a Federal loan. I can go through each of the 
institutions in our State. You can see the number of families that any 
change in the student loan program affects, and if you add the anxiety 
that comes with receiving your college admission and worrying about 
whether you can pay the bill--you can see the problem that causes.
  The reason I came to the floor is that for those 14 million 
students--more or less--who, in January, February, and March, would be 
expected to turn to the traditional student loan program, we are about 
to have a 14-million car pile-up on the interstate highways of American 
education because of action taken by the U.S. Department of Education.
  The Secretary of Education--a man I greatly admire--has sent a letter 
to the various schools--3,500 or so campuses--that now use the 
traditional loan program, and he said you better get ready for the 
government-run program, and you need to do it because I may not be able 
to continue to offer the traditional loans.
  That is a big mistake. I want to point out the reasons. First, there 
is not time to switch, even according to a New York Times article.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the Secretary's 
letter to the campuses and the New York Times article.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:


[[Page 25886]]




                                               Washington, DC,

                                                 October 26, 2009.
       As this academic year moves forward, it is hard to believe 
     we already need to consider the 2010-2011 year to come. In 
     doing so, I am writing to seek your assistance and offer mine 
     in taking the necessary steps to ensure uninterrupted access 
     to federal student loans by ensuring your institution is 
     Direct Loan-ready for the 2010-2011 academic year.
       Eighteen months ago, uncertainty in the financial markets 
     seriously threatened the availability of Federal Family 
     Education Loan (FFEL) Program loans for the upcoming 2008-09 
     academic year. Congress acted quickly to provide the 
     Department of Education with unprecedented temporary 
     authority to directly finance loans made through FFEL Program 
     lenders. The goal was to ensure that every student or parent 
     with a need for a federal loan would be able to get one, 
     whether or not the student's educational institution had 
     taken the steps to provide loans through the Direct Loan 
     Program (where loan access was not affected). This stopgap 
     measure, the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act 
     (ECASLA), was helpful in assisting FFEL Program lenders in 
     making $61.3 billion in new loans to students and their 
     parents this past year. And the bulk of those funds--some 
     $46.3 billion--was provided by the Department of Education.
       While many institutions like yours continued to use the 
     FFEL Program loan delivery process last year, more than 500 
     others responded to the uncertainty by switching to the 
     Direct Loan Program. These colleges' move to direct lending 
     happened in an efficient and effective manner, without any 
     interruption of service to students, and the number of Direct 
     Loans increased by nearly two-thirds compared to the previous 
     year. As you know, the Direct Loan Program provides students 
     with the same types of loans, with essentially the same 
     terms, as those made in the FFEL Program.
       I do not anticipate any major loan access problems during 
     the remainder of this academic year because Congress's 
     temporary measure remains in effect. However, while there are 
     encouraging signs that the financial markets are rebounding, 
     the most prudent course of action is for you to ensure that 
     your institution is Direct Loan-ready for the 2010-2011 
     academic year. That way, loan access for your students will 
     be assured. As you may know, President Obama has proposed 
     that Congress make the loan system more reliable by moving to 
     a 100 percent Direct Loan delivery system. In any event, 
     under current law, ECASLA will expire, and the continued 
     participation of FFEL Program lenders will be in question.
       The Department of Education stands ready to assist with any 
     questions you and your staff may have about becoming Direct 
     Loan-ready. Many institutions have already taken the initial 
     step of contacting us to ensure the appropriate transition 
     steps have been taken at Federal Student Aid to begin the 
     process. If your school has not taken this initial step, we 
     recommend that you do so. Please also reach out to your 
     technology, financial aid, and business offices to make sure 
     they are working together to ensure federal loan access for 
     your students and their parents. If they are unsure of the 
     steps to take, please have them contact our school relations 
     center, or e-mail us with questions.
       Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
                                                      Arne Duncan,
     Secretary of Education.
                                  ____


                [From the New York Times, Oct. 27, 2009]

               Colleges Are Pushed To Convert Loan System

                            (By Tamar Lewin)

       Congress has not given final approval to legislation ending 
     federal subsidies for private student loans for college. But 
     Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sent a letter Monday to 
     thousands of colleges and universities urging them to get 
     ready to use the government's Direct Loan Program in the 
     2010-11 school year.
       The House of Representatives last month passed the Student 
     Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, expanding the government's 
     direct lending and ending the current program of government 
     subsidies and loan guarantees for private lenders. Under that 
     law, all colleges would be required to convert to the federal 
     Direct Loan Program by July 1.
       But the Senate has yet to take action on the legislation, 
     and it is uncertain whether it will do so before the health 
     care debate is resolved.
       Meanwhile, most of the nation's 5,000 colleges and 
     universities have not taken the necessary steps to convert to 
     direct federal lending. The letter, sent to some 3,000 
     campuses that have never used direct lending, was an effort 
     to prod them into action.
       ``Some campuses are thinking they'll wait until Congress 
     acts, but to wait is to endanger loan access for students,'' 
     said Robert Shireman, the deputy under secretary of 
     education.
       In the past year, Mr. Shireman said, about 500 institutions 
     have switched from the subsidized program, the Federal Family 
     Education Loan program, into direct federal lending.
       A year and a half ago, when uncertainty in the financial 
     markets threatened the availability of private loans, 
     Congress passed a stopgap law to ensure that families with 
     financial need could get student loans, even if their college 
     was not in the federal direct loan program.
       But that temporary legislation, which colleges used to make 
     billions of dollars worth of new loans in the past year, will 
     expire in June. And even if Congress does not act to end the 
     subsidized lending program and require direct federal 
     lending, there is no guarantee that any lenders will continue 
     with the private loan program.
       Private lenders are fighting to stop the switch to direct 
     federal lending. And at their third-quarter earnings 
     conference call last Wednesday, executives of Sallie Mae, a 
     private lender, spoke of the ``transition risks,'' saying 
     many schools' financial aid offices are thinly staffed, have 
     only just finished processing loans for this academic year 
     and would have trouble making the transition to a new lending 
     system in time for next year.
       Mr. Shireman said that for most colleges and universities, 
     it takes three weeks to four months to make the switch, which 
     requires changing computer programs and retraining financial 
     aid administrators.

  Mr. ALEXANDER. The Secretary's assistant says it takes at least 3, 4 
months for colleges to switch their computers around, so instead of 
offering aid through a traditional program, they offer it through the 
government direct loan program. There will be a lot of confusion in 
January, February, March and April. There is not time to switch.
  Second, the Secretary has gotten ahead of himself. The President has 
proposed a Washington takeover of the student loan program, but this 
Washington takeover requires congressional approval. We have more than 
one branch of government in this town. I know the House of 
Representatives has passed the President's request, but there's one 
more--the United States Senate has not approved the President's 
request, and I hope it does not. It is a bad idea.
  So I hope the Secretary will write another letter and say I have 
changed my mind, given the lateness of the situation in the year--we 
are almost to November--and the fact that it takes up to 4 months for 
any college to make a changeover, and because most students will begin 
to receive their college admissions in January and February, et cetera. 
I hope the Secretary will say I am going to take a little different 
approach and work with Congress, recognizing that the Congress has to 
approve this proposal as well.
  First, we are going to extend the law that was passed a couple of 
years ago, which provides emergency financing to back up all of the 
traditional student loans that are made. That has worked out very well. 
The institutions participating have paid large fees to the government 
and students have gotten their loans. We can extend that another year. 
It doesn't expire until June.
  Second, the Secretary might say that I am going to work with Congress 
to make some changes in the existing student loan program to make it 
right. We can talk about ways to do that.
  Third, I hope he will say I am going to work with Congress to set up 
a transition time that is appropriate for any colleges that want to 
move from the traditional student loan program to the government-run 
direct loan program.
  When time comes for us to debate and act on whether there should be a 
Washington takeover of student loans, I am going to say, no, there 
should not be. I have a little history here. I think the American 
people have had enough Washington takeovers--banks, insurance 
companies, General Motors, et cetera. The President can argue that he 
inherited a lot of that. But this takeover is truly voluntary.
  Nobody is asking the Secretary of Education to become the banker of 
the year. I would rather he become the Secretary of the year. I think 
he could do that. I think he is an outstanding Secretary, one of the 
best appointees--maybe the best--of the new President. The Presiding 
Officer is from Illinois, and he knows Arne Duncan very well. I would 
like to see him reward teachers and setting higher standards, instead 
of making 20 million student loans every year. I want him to be the 
educator of the year, not the banker of the year. Deep in his heart, 
maybe he wishes that as well.

[[Page 25887]]

  The administration has told us about this latest Washington takeover 
that is starting next year, and that the nearly 20 million students who 
want government-run direct loans should all line up at offices 
designated by the U.S. Department of Education. This will, the argument 
goes, save taxpayers $87 billion in subsidies that now go to greedy 
banks. In anticipation, Members of Congress--we--have already spent the 
$87 billion for more Pell grants, community college improvements, and 
other new programs. That sounds very good. Banks are punished, students 
are helped and, most important, Congressmen look real good.
  Here is what they have not told you. Your friendly government, for 
all this, will overcharge you, the student--and use the profit to pay 
for the new programs that make the Congressmen look good. Yes, those of 
you who borrow student loans--the 20 million--the Education Department 
is going to borrow the money at 2.8 percent from the Treasury and loan 
it to the students at 6.8 percent, and spend the difference on 
administrative costs and new government programs. That means a student 
will spend a few more months or years working to pay off the student 
loan in order to help pay for someone else's education and help the 
Congressmen's reelection.
  There are a few other things the government ought to tell you. The 
$87 billion isn't real. According to a letter in July from the 
nonpartisan CBO to New Hampshire Senator Gregg, the savings are closer 
to $47 billion. If we use the same cost scoring analysis that the CBO 
required when we passed the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, 
the savings I think are less than that, since the government assumes it 
can make 19 million loans each year for what it now costs to make 4 
million loans.
  Finally, the government needs to disclose to these 20 million 
students who are thinking about going to college next year that getting 
your loan will become about as enjoyable as waiting in line for your 
driver's license. Today there are 2,000 lenders--banks and nonprofit 
institutions--competing to offer government-backed students loans at 
4,400 campuses. I mentioned earlier the kinds of services they provide. 
That is all about to change. There will only be one student loan banker 
under this proposal, the U.S. Secretary of Education. I wouldn't have 
wanted that job when I was in that position, and I cannot imagine any 
Education Secretary wanting that job. There will be no competition to 
make it easier to get your loan.
  Imagine 20 million students and families trying to call a Federal 
call center to make their arrangements to go to college. It is true 
that during the last 20 years subsidies the government paid to lenders 
to make student loans were excessive. Congress took steps to correct 
that 2 years ago. If there is still $87 billion, or $47 billion, in 
real savings, then the subsidies are too high and we should lower them 
and give the savings to students, not trick students by overcharging 
them to pay for more government programs and run up the Federal debt in 
the process. Seven-eighths of the students who applied for Federal aid 
using the Free Application for Federal Student Aid had an average loan 
of about $25,000. Assuming a standard 10-year repayment at 6.8 percent, 
which is the rate set by Congress, these students would pay roughly 
$9,400 in interest. But we could use the savings to reduce the interest 
rate by as much as 1.5 percent--down to 5.3--and those students would 
pay only $7,100 in interest, a savings of $2,200.
  If this Washington takeover goes through, every one of the 19 
million-plus student loans made in 2010 should carry this warning 
label: Beware, your Federal Government is overcharging you so your 
Congressman can take credit for starting a new government program. 
Enjoy the extra hours you work to pay off your student loan.
  Mr. President, I see my colleague from South Dakota on the floor and 
my colleague from Nebraska, so I will conclude.
  The Secretary of Education should change his mind, withdraw his 
letter, and work with Congress to extend the temporary law and improve 
the student loan program and reassure students that they don't have to 
be anxious about standing in line in January for a loan.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin is recognized.


                              Afghanistan

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, in 2002, then-Senator Biden chaired a 
series of Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on U.S. policy 
toward Iraq. These hearings challenged many prevailing assumptions and 
called into question the wisdom of invading Iraq. To the detriment of 
our Armed Forces, our counterterrorism efforts, and the standing of the 
United States around the world, our government ignored those prescient 
warnings.
  Our country is again contemplating sending tens of thousands of 
troops into battle, this time as an escalation of the 8-year war in 
Afghanistan. In fact, the escalation has already begun, with an 
additional squadron to begin deploying in November.
  Sadly, the impact of our expanding military engagement in Afghanistan 
is becoming increasingly and painfully clear, as October has become the 
deadliest month for U.S. troops since the war began, and more 
servicemembers have been killed this year than in the first 4 years 
combined.
  I commend Senator John Kerry for holding a series of exceptional 
hearings in the Foreign Relations Committee over the past month on U.S. 
policy in this critical region. Expert witnesses have provided a sober 
analysis of the situation there.
  I urge my colleagues, if they have a chance, to read the transcripts 
of these hearings and consider the opinions of this diverse group of 
former military officials, intelligence officers, diplomats, academics, 
and experts in the region. Of course, a handful of the witnesses 
supported an escalation of our military involvement in Afghanistan, but 
the majority of the regional experts--including CIA veterans who have 
deep experience in the region--questioned whether the stated aims of 
our military strategy are achievable or necessary in order to deny al-
Qaida an uncontested safe haven in Afghanistan. Many expressed concern 
that our current military-focused approach may be making things worse.
  President Obama has refocused our attention on the Afghanistan-
Pakistan region, and for this I give him great credit. I am also 
pleased to see this administration is taking the time to have serious 
discussions about our strategy and the many possible alternatives. We 
must find a way to relentlessly pursue al-Qaida's global network 
without destabilizing this critical region, overstretching our military 
or needlessly spending money we do not have. This will require a 
smaller, more targeted, and sustainable military strategy combined with 
far more robust regional diplomatic engagement.
  I would like to go over what I consider to be some of the myths that 
are being used to support the notion of a significant buildup of troops 
in Afghanistan.
  One is that preventing a potential al-Qaida safe haven in Afghanistan 
is more important than addressing existing safe havens elsewhere. That 
is not what we heard at the hearings.
  The committee's hearings have revealed that calls for an open-ended 
or increased military presence in Afghanistan are based upon several 
flawed assumptions or myths. The first common myth is that preventing a 
potential al-Qaida safe haven in Afghanistan is more important than 
other potential safe havens. Again and again, we hear that if we do not 
send more troops, the Taliban will regain control of Afghanistan and 
again provide a safe haven in which al-Qaida could reestablish training 
facilities or launch attacks on the United States. That statement may 
be true, but it contains a number of assumptions that need to be 
closely examined. Will more troops make a difference? How likely is it 
the Taliban will actually regain control of Afghanistan? Even if it 
does, what will its relationship be with al-Qaida? But the biggest 
unasked question is: What are the costs of pursuing this strategy and 
is it necessary to address the very real threat posed by al-Qaida?

[[Page 25888]]

  Al-Qaida already has a safe haven in Pakistan and is operating in 
other countries around the globe. Addressing this global threat 
requires a smart and sustainable use of our resources around the world, 
including in Afghanistan, rather than disproportionately directing our 
resources toward only one of many potential safe havens.
  Several witnesses called into question even the likelihood that the 
Taliban would overrun Kabul. Even if the Taliban were to continue to 
exert control over certain areas, experts challenged the simplistic 
assumption that al-Qaida would then be able to reestablish the kind of 
operational freedom it had in Afghanistan prior to 9/11.
  Moreover, sending more troops to Afghanistan may not prevent an al-
Qaida safe haven there. As General McChrystal noted in his own 
assessment, even if we send additional troops, they would necessarily 
be focused on limited areas and would still leave substantial portions 
of the country outside the control of the Afghan Government or U.S. 
forces.
  Several witnesses questioned whether we can afford to dedicate so 
many resources to one country when we face a global adversary. Instead, 
as Robert Grenier, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad during the 
2001 invasion in Afghanistan, testified:

       The best that we can hope for is not a permanent 
     elimination of a safe haven [in Afghanistan] . . . but rather 
     the elimination of an uncontested safe haven. [W]e need to be 
     in a place where we can continue to play the game, which 
     means that we need to be able to do that on a sustainable 
     basis. . . .What we are currently doing I believe is not 
     sustainable either by us or by the Afghans.

  We have to have a sustainable, targeted counterterrorism strategy 
that can contest potential safe havens and, thus, prevent al-Qaida from 
regaining the footing they had in the 1990s. Trying to achieve total 
elimination of such safe havens through a large-scale, open-ended 
military mission is not only infeasible, it is physically and 
politically unsustainable and could provoke even greater instability in 
the region. It is time we develop a counterterrorism policy for 
Afghanistan that places it in the context of al-Qaida's many current 
and potential safe havens, including in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa 
and many other places around the world.
  A second oft-cited myth is, we already tried engaging in such a 
limited counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan after the 2001 
invasion and the situation on the ground only deteriorated.
  On the contrary, the strategy of the United States in Afghanistan, 
over the past 6 years, has been uncoordinated and neglected and much of 
the limited resources went to pursuing militants in Afghanistan while 
al-Qaida was rebuilding in Pakistan. This strategy failed not because 
it was targeted at al-Qaida but because it generated resentment among 
the local population and created a groundswell of opposition. It also 
failed because it turned a blind eye to the corruption and lack of 
legitimacy of both the Afghan and Pakistani Governments. The previous 
administration's extreme reliance on Pervez Musharraf not only failed 
to achieve our immediate counterterrorism goals, but it undermined the 
perception among the Pakistani population that we were working with 
them against mutual threats. As a result, we lost a crucial opportunity 
to eliminate al-Qaida and the Taliban from, and bring stability to, 
Afghanistan.
  By contrast, the Obama administration has focused on Pakistan and 
supported the emergence of a civilian government that shares our 
counterterrorism goals. We have a strong interest in Pakistan's 
continued military operations. We must remain engaged so any tactical 
successes are accompanied by rules of engagement that protect the 
civilian population and ensure humane treatment of displaced persons, 
which are essential to ensuring that these successes actually result in 
strategic victories.
  Much more remains to be done, including efforts to strengthen 
responsive civilian governance and encourage Pakistan to tackle the 
deeper socioeconomic problems that the Director of National 
Intelligence has testified are driving instability in that country. 
None of this will be easy, but counterterrorism in Pakistan will not be 
achieved through our escalation in Afghanistan. One thing is certain. 
At no point in the last 8 years has this kind of comprehensive, focused 
strategy for Pakistan been attempted.
  In Afghanistan, I am not suggesting we would necessarily just limit 
ourselves to what some have called an over-the-horizon presence. We may 
need to maintain bases and consider a range of counterterrorism 
options. But we will never return to the neglect and strategic drift of 
the pre-9/11 period, nor should we resume the unfocused mission we saw 
for much of the previous administration.
  This recognition is why several witnesses testified that a targeted 
counterterrorism strategy, which has never been tried before, would 
likely succeed in denying al-Qaida an uncontested safe haven. This 
sustainable strategy, along with a flexible timetable for the 
withdrawal of troops of the United States from Afghanistan, could 
easily reduce the perception that we are engaging in an open-ended 
military occupation of that country.
  As to a third myth, there are many who argue that a larger military 
presence is required in order to stabilize Afghanistan. However, many 
of the experts testified that an increase of foreign troops in 
Afghanistan will likely provoke additional militancy.
  Reports indicate that militancy in both Afghanistan and Pakistan has 
increased over the years. According to Milt Bearden, the former CIA 
station chief in Islamabad: ``40,000 troops will beget 40,000 more 
enemy . . . .'' We must appreciate that our military presence may well 
be counterproductive and, in fact, driving the conflict, creating more 
militants than it is eliminating.
  Indeed, it may even be undermining our ability to divide our enemies. 
CIA veterans Robert Grenier and Mark Sageman testified that, in Mr. 
Grenier's words, Afghans ``tend to coalesce against what is perceived 
as an outsider.''
  It is not surprising, then, that many of the witnesses who appeared 
before the Foreign Relations Committee agreed that a political solution 
is essential to stability in Afghanistan. As Mr. Bearden testified, 
there is no ``military solution--for us or the Afghans.''
  We can and will relentlessly pursue al-Qaida. We have to find a way 
to do so that does not further destabilize the region. Increasing our 
troop levels in Afghanistan will only make this more difficult.
  As to a fourth myth, another frequently cited myth is we must 
maintain a large military presence in Afghanistan in order to prevent 
the destabilization of Pakistan. In reality, our massive military 
footprint in Afghanistan has contributed to instability in Pakistan.
  Several witnesses agreed the majority of Pakistanis would not welcome 
an increased military presence in Afghanistan. Mr. Grenier stated:

       I think that a large increase in U.S. presence in 
     Afghanistan would not be welcomed by the majority of 
     Pakistanis. I think that it would make the struggle seem all 
     the more starkly one of the U.S. against Muslims as opposed 
     to the U.S. supporting Afghans in their own struggle.

  As former British diplomat Rory Stewart testified, the ``stabilized 
Pakistan'' rationale for a military presence in Afghanistan also 
ignores ``the real drivers of the problems in Pakistan. Pakistan will 
not stand or fall on Afghanistan. It's about the Pakistani government, 
it's about the Pakistani military, it's about the Pakistani economy and 
the Pakistani society . . . by and large, Afghanistan is far less 
important to the future of Pakistan than we're suggesting.''
  In fact, our presence in Afghanistan could be counterproductive. CIA 
veteran Paul Pillar recently testified in the House that ``an expanded 
U.S.-led counterinsurgency in Afghanistan would be more likely to 
complicate rather than to alleviate the task of Pakistani security 
forces insofar as it succeeded in pushing additional militants across 
the Durand line.'' We need to carefully consider the unintended

[[Page 25889]]

consequences of sending additional troops to Afghanistan, lest we 
further destabilize its nuclear-armed neighbor, Pakistan.
  The Afghanistan hearings provided a crucial forum to question 
conventional wisdom, justifying our current and proposed military 
strategy. These expert witnesses have challenged many of the 
assumptions underlying many of the myths I outlined.
  In his testimony before the House, Pillar warned that:

       An expanded military effort in the cause of 
     counterinsurgency in Afghanistan would be unwarranted. The 
     benefits in terms of ultimately adding to the safety and 
     security of the American people would be marginal and 
     questionable. At best, the difference such an effort would 
     make in the terrorist threat facing Americans would be 
     slight. At worst, the effort would be counterproductive and 
     would not reduce the threat at all. Even at its best, the 
     benefit would be, in my judgment, outweighed by the probable 
     costs of the counterinsurgency.

  There is strong consensus that we must not abandon Afghanistan, and 
the lack of strategy and focus on this region that occurred over the 
past 6 years must not be repeated. But there has also been significant 
agreement among the witnesses that we continue to greatly overestimate 
the potential benefits and underestimate the risks associated with 
maintaining or expanding a large, open-ended military presence.
  I urge my colleagues, again, to review this excellent testimony from 
these hearings. We need to reduce our unsustainable military presence 
in Afghanistan in order to pursue al-Qaida without further 
destabilizing the region and work through diplomatic channels and the 
provision of assistance to support the emergence of legitimate, 
competent governments in both countries that will be effective partners 
in fighting terrorism.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. JOHANNS. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to speak to the 
pending issue, which is the extension of unemployment benefits.
  The pending proposal basically says we would extend benefits for 14 
weeks for all States. There would be an additional 6 weeks attached for 
those States that had unemployment that exceeded 8.5 percent.
  You don't have to look very far around this country to see people are 
struggling. In fact, just an hour or so ago, I was pulled aside by a 
member of the media. He said: There are numbers coming out tomorrow 
that indicate some improvement here and there. What would your reaction 
to that be?
  I said: You know, until we see improvement with unemployment, we will 
never convince the American people that things are better.
  We are hearing 10 percent unemployment. I hope not, but some predict 
we will actually go over that number around Christmastime or the first 
of the year.
  People across this country are struggling. Jobs are being cut. People 
are being laid off. As I said, many experts are predicting that 
unemployment could get into the double digits before we see any 
improvement.
  I am not here to say the extension of unemployment benefits is the 
wrong course of action. Not at all. I am not here to dispute any of 
these assertions about how difficult this economy is for people. But 
what I am here to do today is to say this: If we are going to consider 
a bill of this nature, of this importance to people, I believe it is 
important that we, as Senators, have the ability to come to the floor 
to submit an amendment, to make our best case on the amendment, to ask 
for a vote on that amendment, and then see where it ends up.
  The original stimulus bill--and again I emphasize, the stimulus 
bill--extended unemployment benefits for 33 weeks. So very clearly the 
majority of this body, considering the issue of extending unemployment 
at the time the stimulus was passed, said we should use stimulus funds. 
I would argue that the same logic applies today. This extension should 
also be from stimulus funds, and that is what my amendment would simply 
say.
  Here are the reasons why: The stimulus bill, quite simply, did not 
provide the jobs that were promised. Put forth whatever excuse you want 
to put forth. Argue that maybe you didn't think the economy was as bad 
as it is, although I must admit I find that hard to imagine. But 
whatever the argument, the stimulus bill did not provide the promised 
jobs. The bill in front of us today would do this: It would levy a tax 
on our job creators--our businesses--of $2.4 billion to finance it. It 
is an 18-month tax on small businesses, which are the backbone of our 
job creators and certainly the backbone of our economy in the State of 
Nebraska.
  The interesting thing about this extension of unemployment benefits 
is that it would expire in December but the taxes would live on for 
month after month after that expiration.
  So you see, I think it is appropriate to come to the Senate floor to 
make the case that we should not be taxing the job creators in order to 
support those who are out of work and looking for a job. We should be 
encouraging those job creators to do all they can to add another job to 
bring these people back to employment.
  To make this relevant to the citizens back home in Nebraska, this 
will have a $17 million impact on our businesses. That is $17 million 
that will not be spent on creating a single new job. It is $17 million 
that won't be spent to hire new workers.
  I have talked to many of these businesses in our State, and they are 
saying to me: Mike, we are doing all we can to try to keep people 
employed. I don't want to do layoffs or any more layoffs, they tell me. 
But what we are saying to businesses is: We know you are struggling, we 
know you are fighting this brave battle to keep these families with a 
job, but here is another tax extension, and could you also go out and 
hire some new workers? This is simply out of touch--exactly what 
Washington was criticized for during our August townhall meetings.
  A lot of jobs could be created if we expand this from my small State 
of Nebraska to a nationwide phenomenon. Think of the jobs that could be 
created with $2.4 billion spent on salaries instead of on taxes.
  I have this amendment which basically says this: A more sensible 
approach would be to use a very small portion of the unspent stimulus 
money to finance this extension. Don't tax these small businesses. The 
stimulus was sold as a shot in the arm. It was going to jump-start the 
economy. But that goal has proven very elusive. In fact, it has even 
been very difficult to get the money flowing. And don't take Mike 
Johanns' word on this. The Congressional Budget Office says that some 
of the stimulus money won't even be spent until 2018, 9 years from now. 
CBO predicts $22 billion will be spent in 2014, about 5 years from now. 
I don't know a single person who could argue that is a shot in the arm.
  The Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, Christina 
Romer, recently said:

       Most analysts predict that the fiscal stimulus will have 
     its greatest impact on growth in the second and third 
     quarters of 2009.

  She goes on to say:

       By mid 2010, the fiscal stimulus will likely be 
     contributing little to growth.

  This baffles and frustrates the American people.
  Piling more taxes on people who hire to help those without jobs makes 
no sense when you recognize that originally a portion of the stimulus 
money was set aside to extend unemployment. Why not use a small--very 
small--portion of the overall sum to provide an extension?
  Mr. President, I just want the opportunity to have an amendment that 
we can vote on, to be able to make the case that my amendment is a 
better alternative than what we are doing today. It uses unobligated 
stimulus funds to pay for the extension. It just simply says to the 
Office of Management and Budget: Go to the unused accounts--and having 
been a Cabinet member myself, I will tell you that those funds will be 
found--and allocate that money to help these people instead of taxing 
the job creators. My amendment requires only 1 percent--I repeat, 1 
percent--of the original stimulus to pay for unemployment benefits. Why 
not use the money parked in these

[[Page 25890]]

accounts--which literally is years away from being allocated--to 
stimulate this economy?
  I would respectfully argue that my option gives all Americans a 
break. It allows the unemployed workers to have that important safety 
net while they struggle to find a job; it helps businesses that are 
fighting to stay open and to keep their employees in place, to keep 
that job in the family, and, my hope, to hire new workers; and it 
allows us to use taxpayer dollars--taxpayers who are tired of seeing 
their tax dollars wasted--in a way that I believe they would approve 
of.
  Given the opportunity to submit this amendment on the floor of the 
Senate, I could ask for its support and we could send a message to the 
American people that we are listening to their concerns. This amendment 
immediately puts money back into the economy to pay the bills or wages 
and to put food on the table. Unfortunately, it appears increasingly 
likely that I will not be allowed to offer the amendment.
  Mr. President, I have not been here a long time. I have been here 
about the same time as the Presiding Officer. But I have to tell you, 
one of the things that impresses me so much about this great body, this 
deliberative Senate, is that we have the ability, whether we are in the 
majority or the minority, to offer an idea, to craft an amendment--
oftentimes that we get from a citizen back home--and to come to the 
floor and offer that amendment, make our best case, and then get a 
vote. It is a remarkable system. But what is happening these days is 
that precious right is being taken away from us.
  I think this amendment makes sense. There may be many who will 
disagree with me. There will be many who will agree with me. All I am 
asking for is that I be given the right to offer the amendment, to make 
the case, and then to get a vote on this idea.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me begin by suggesting that at a 
moment in American history when we probably have more serious problems 
than at any time since the Great Depression, I find it rather sad and 
distressing that time after time the response of our Republican 
colleagues is no, no, no; filibuster, filibuster, filibuster. In fact, 
what we are seeing now is that the filibuster is the norm. Most 
Americans think it takes a majority to pass something. Not around here. 
Our Republican friends, I think, have broken the alltime world's record 
for bringing forward filibusters--my understanding is 81 in this 
session alone.
  So here you have a crisis in health care, a crisis in the economy, a 
crisis in global warming, a crisis in foreign policy, a crisis in terms 
of our national debt, and yet our Republican friends say: No, no, no; 
filibuster, filibuster, filibuster. So it is easy to understand why the 
American people are extremely frustrated with what is going on here.
  The election in November was all about the American people saying 
very loudly and clearly: We did it their way for 8 years. We gave the 
tax breaks to the billionaires that these folks wanted. We went into a 
war we should never have gotten into. We drove up the national debt to 
a recordbreaking level. We ignored the crisis in global warming and 
forfeited enormous opportunities to create jobs addressing that. We did 
it their way.
  Now let me tell you the results of having done it their way.
  During the Presidency of George W. Bush, over 8 million Americans 
slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. Today, nearly 40 
million Americans are living in poverty.
  During the 8 years of the Bush administration, 7.8 million Americans 
lost their health insurance. Today, these guys still do not want to 
address the issue of soaring health care costs and 46 million Americans 
uninsured.
  Under President Bush, 4\1/2\ million manufacturing jobs in this 
country were lost in the Midwest and other parts of this country. We 
are seeing desolation in areas where workers used to earn good wages, 
producing real products. In my own small State of Vermont, we have lost 
10,000 manufacturing jobs over the last 6 or 7 years.
  During the Bush era, 3.2 million American workers lost their 
pensions--pensions they were dependent upon in order to provide some 
security when they retired. Incredibly, during that period, median 
household income declined by over $2,100.
  My colleagues may have seen an article in USA TODAY recently which 
mentioned that from 2000 to 2008, middle-class men experienced an 11.2-
percent drop in their incomes. Do you believe that--11.2 percent? That 
is a reduction of $7,700, adjusting for inflation, during the Bush era. 
Middle-class women in this age group saw a 4.8-percent decline in their 
incomes as well.
  We did it their way, and the middle class is on the verge of 
collapse, poverty is increasing, more and more people are losing their 
health insurance, and the national debt has exploded. And then, after 
hearing President Bush tell us how robust the economy was, Secretary of 
the Treasury Paulson saying how strong the economy was, they walked 
into Congress over a year ago and said: Seems we made a little bit of a 
mistake. The economy is not actually robust. If we don't get $700 
billion within the next couple of weeks, the entire world's financial 
system will collapse. Sorry about that. We not only have many hundreds 
of supervisors and the Fed, we have the whole Federal bureaucracy 
looking at what is going on--we kind of missed it. We are sorry about 
that.
  What ended up happening, as everybody in America knows, the economy 
plunged as a result of Wall Street greed and illegal behavior and 
recklessness; the conversion of Wall Street to a gambling casino, to 
all the deregulation that these guys fought for for years--both 
parties, by the way, not just Republicans--we ended up with the 
greatest economic decline since the Great Depression.
  Let me tell you a little bit about where we are today when we talk 
about the need to extend unemployment benefits. We hear the official 
unemployment statistic of 9.8 percent. That is bad. But that only tells 
literally half of the story. If we add to the 9.8 percent who are 
unemployed all those in high unemployment areas who have given up 
looking for work or who are not part of the official statistic, and we 
add to that number people who want to work full time but are working 
part time, do you know what we end up with? We end up with 27.2 million 
Americans who are unemployed or underemployed. This is over 17 percent 
of our population.
  That is a disaster. That is an absolute disaster causing massive 
suffering for working families all over this country.
  I rise today in the midst of that economic disaster in strong support 
of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act. I am proud to be an 
original cosponsor of this legislation. I thank Majority Leader Reid 
and Senator Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, for their 
leadership on this legislation. We are in the midst of the worst 
economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the suffering, from 
California to Vermont, is enormous.
  I am sure my colleagues get the same letters I get:
  I lost my job, I am looking for a new job, there is no job available.
  I lost my job, I got a new job, but it only pays half of what my old 
job did.
  I lost my job and I lost my health insurance and maybe I am 1 of the 
1 million people this year who are going to go bankrupt because of 
medically related illnesses.
  I am a young person, I graduated high school, I want to get a job. I 
can't find a job.
  I graduated college, I can't find a job.
  That is what we are looking at. We have to address that problem.
  As bad as the current situation is, what we also understand is that 
long-term unemployment is soaring. It is a bad thing if somebody loses 
their job. That is always bad. If they get a new job in a couple of 
weeks, that is one thing. But what is happening now is we are looking 
at 5.4 million Americans who have been unemployed for over 6 months. 
That is the highest on record. We have a crisis of long-term 
unemployment. The average length of unemployment is now 27 weeks, the 
longest

[[Page 25891]]

since World War II. In the midst of serious unemployment numbers, the 
fact we are looking at long-term unemployment at record-breaking levels 
tells us it is absolutely imperative to extend and increase, expand 
unemployment benefits.
  There are fewer jobs in America today than there were in the year 
2000, even though the workforce has grown by over 12 million since that 
time. We now have the fewest manufacturing jobs at any time since April 
of 1941. Can you believe that? We have fewer manufacturing jobs, blue-
collar jobs, the jobs that made the middle class, since April of 1941.
  The American people need our help. That is why it is so important 
that we pass this legislation and why it is so important that we do 
this in a bipartisan way. I hope our Republican friends will finally 
stop saying no and say yes to American working families. This bill 
provides an additional 14 weeks of unemployment benefits to all 50 
States. That is important to me. It is important to me because while I 
do understand there are States which have a lot higher unemployment 
rates than the State of Vermont, the truth is there is long-term 
unemployment in 50 States in America, and I believe we should be 
extending unemployment for all of our workers.
  If we do not pass this legislation, by the end of this year nearly 2 
million Americans will see their unemployment benefits expire, 
including some 2,000 people in the small State of Vermont. In the midst 
of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and at a time 
when long-term unemployment is extremely high, we cannot turn our backs 
on jobless Americans by letting their unemployment insurance expire. 
That would be driving people into the abyss. We cannot do that. This 
bill will allow workers who have lost their jobs during the severe 
recession to get the help they deserve while they try to find new jobs 
to support their families.
  The American people are looking to the Congress for help. These are 
tough times all over this country. We cannot turn our backs on hard-
working Americans who are trying as best they can to keep their 
families above water. I hope we pass this legislation and we pass it as 
soon as possible.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I want to speak to the bill before the 
Senate right now and also to an amendment I would like to have voted on 
as a part of the underlying legislation. But I do want to also react to 
some of the remarks made by my colleague from Vermont.
  When it comes to some of the legislation some are trying to jam 
through the Congress this year, we believe it is OK to say no to some 
things. We think it is OK to say no, for example, to 1,500-page bills 
written behind closed doors, in secret. We think it is OK to say no to 
higher health care premiums for our constituents in our home States and 
most Americans in this country who currently have health insurance. It 
is OK to say no to trillion-dollar spending bills that don't do 
anything to create jobs. We think it is OK to say no to higher taxes 
for small businesses and working families who are going to get hit by 
many of the proposals in front of the Congress, including the health 
care bill which, according to the Congressional Budget Office, more 
than half the tax burden is going to fall on families making under 
$100,000 a year.
  We think it is OK to say no to energy taxes that will kill jobs and 
wreck the economy. We think it is OK to say no to a $2 trillion 
expansion of the Federal Government in Washington to create a new 
health care entitlement that will be financed with higher taxes, 
Medicare cuts, and borrowing from future generations. We think it is OK 
to say no to a $\1/2\ trillion in Medicare cuts that are going to 
impact senior citizens across this country. It is also OK to say no to 
the extension of what has become a TARP slush fund, what has become a 
political slush fund that is now being used for lots of things for 
which it was not intended.
  I do not apologize for saying no to bad policies that are going to 
wreck the economy, cost Americans jobs, and put more and more of our 
future generations at risk because we are saddling them with a burden 
of debt that they will be carrying forever into the future. I think it 
is OK for people in this Chamber to stand up to bad policies and to say 
no.
  I am going to continue to defend the right of my colleagues in the 
Senate, whether I agree with them or not. A lot of my colleagues on the 
other side, they have things they want to do. Some of them I do not 
agree with. That is why we have the Senate. It is to come here and 
resolve our differences and try to reach common ground if that is 
possible. But if there are bad things being proposed, I don't think 
there is anything wrong with saying no--to higher taxes, higher health 
care premiums, more borrowing, and more debt we are putting on future 
generations. I don't particularly have a problem with that.
  I do think it is important, however, that we act on legislation that 
will create jobs, that will provide a better, stronger economic future 
for people in this country, and that will address the needs of the 
people who are hurting because of this economic downturn. The 
legislation we have before us will do just that, and I voted to proceed 
to that legislation last night so we could have this debate, so we 
could get on this bill, so we could provide an additional 14 weeks of 
assistance to people who need unemployment benefits because of what is 
happening in our economy and this country.
  I do not think we will find a lot of disagreement that we need to 
take those steps that are necessary. I will say the amendment offered 
by the Senator from Nebraska, Mr. Johanns, is a germane, legitimate 
amendment that ought to be voted on. All he is saying is, if we are 
going to do this, we ought to figure out a way to pay for it that 
doesn't lead to higher taxes on small businesses.
  I think that is a fair vote to have. It is totally related to the 
underlying bill. But the underlying bill that would provide and extend 
unemployment insurance benefits to people in this country who are 
suffering as a result of the economic downturn, we are not objecting to 
that. Nobody here is. In fact, we could finish that in the next hour or 
two if the majority would agree to allow a couple of amendments to be 
voted on.
  Having said that, I do have an amendment on which I think it is 
important to get a vote, and the reason it is important to get a vote 
on it now is because we are not going to get many opportunities. The 
TARP program expires at the end of this year. If Congress doesn't take 
steps to end it, the Treasury Department can extend it. The reason that 
is important is because the TARP program has gotten far afield from 
anything it was designed to do. It was designed to stabilize the 
economy last year at a very difficult time. So we voted to extend $700 
billion in this authority for the Federal Reserve to go out, to buy 
some of these troubled assets in various financial firms. They decided 
to take equity positions.
  I think it is a very different use of the funds than what many of us 
intended when we voted for it, but that having been said, it was done 
to stabilize the financial system in the country. That was a year ago. 
I think it is fair to say it is not an emergency anymore. In fact, many 
of the TARP funds that have been extended are now being extended to 
other types of industries. We have seen the auto industry, to the tune 
of about $80 billion, come in and get TARP assistance. We have seen 
insurance companies get TARP assistance. We have even seen TARP 
assistance made available to help modified home mortgages in this 
country to the tune of $50 billion, on which the Congressional Budget 
Office says we will never see any return.
  The TARP has become--I hate to call it a political slush fund. I hate 
to refer to it that way, but at a minimum it has become a revolving 
fund that can now be used by the Treasury for all kinds of purposes. In 
fact, I think from statements that have been made by the Treasury 
Secretary, the indications are they expect to reuse a lot of those 
funds even after they are paid back by

[[Page 25892]]

some of the institutions that have gotten assistance.
  So we have the $700 billion TARP authority out there. With payments 
that have been paid back, there is now over $300 billion that is 
unused. This is about $213 billion that was never used. And with 
payments that have now come back from some of the institutions that 
received assistance, there is a little over $300 billion of unobligated 
funds in the TARP account. Why is that significant? It is significant 
because if we do not use those funds for some other purpose than for 
which they were intended, those funds will be to retire the Federal 
debt. To me, that is probably as good a use of funds as we could 
possibly find right now.
  We had a deficit last year of $1.4 trillion. We are looking at 
trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. If the predictions 
of the Congressional Budget Office are accurate, in the next 5 years we 
will double the Federal debt. In the next 10 years we will triple the 
Federal debt to the point where every American, every household in this 
country is going to owe $188,000 of debt.
  So as a young couple gets married and starts out in their life 
together, they are going to get a wedding gift from the Federal 
Government, a big fat IOU for $188,000. The best thing we can do in 
addition to extending unemployment benefits to people who have lost 
their jobs and whose coverage is running out is to try to get this debt 
under control so we are not passing on this enormous liability to 
future generations.
  I would argue if we allow this situation to go unabated, if we 
continue to borrow money at the rate we are borrowing it today, and we 
continue racking up debt at the rate we are today, it is going to 
create all kinds of economic consequences down the road in the form of, 
perhaps, higher interest rates; we could see inflation pick up down the 
road. Nobody sees that in the near term, but in the long term, when we 
start having to print money to monetize our debt, and we are paying 
back our debt with cheaper dollars, the people who are buying our debt 
are going to start saying: Wait a minute. I want a better return on my 
investment.
  So the interest rates start to pick up, and that could have some very 
disastrous consequences for our economy when it comes to homeowners and 
small business owners and people who are trying to get student loans. 
There are all kinds of consequences from this incredible binge of 
borrowing that we are on as a country.
  I think the best we can do if we have got unobligated funds in the 
TARP authority right now is use those funds to pay down that Federal 
debt. That is what my amendment does. I am coauthoring it with the 
Senator from Utah, Mr. Bennett. But we believe we ought to end the TARP 
authority this year when it is set to expire. If Congress is not heard 
on this, then the Treasury has the authority to extend it.
  I wish to at least have Congress heard. Congress, after all, created 
the TARP fund. It seems to me that if it is going to be extended, 
Congress ought to have a vote on that. As I said, that extension or 
that expiration date is looming. It is December, the end of December of 
this year. So if Congress is going to be heard, that is going to have 
to happen in the very near future.
  So I wish to see a vote by the Senate on whether we believe that TARP 
ought to be extended, ought to continue to be used for all of these 
other ancillary purposes I mentioned that are unrelated to the 
underlying purpose for TARP when it was created a year ago, and whether 
we are going to say we think it is a priority that we start paying down 
this gargantuan Federal debt that is growing by the day, and the 
interest payments are growing with it.
  I wish to see, on this opportunity, this legislation that is moving 
through here, a vote on whether we can extend TARP. My amendment is one 
page. In fact, it is only four lines long. It is very simple. It is 
here for everyone to take a look at. It will not take very long to 
figure out what it does. I cannot imagine why the majority would not 
want to have a vote on whether we are going to allow a $700 billion 
authority of the Federal Government to continue to use these funds, why 
Congress would not want to be heard when, in fact, it was the Congress 
that created this program in the first place.
  My amendment is very simple. All it says is when TARP expires at the 
end of the year, it ends. That does not mean that the Treasury does not 
have the authority to wind down some of the assets in some of the 
places where it has already invested those TARP dollars. Not at all. 
All it simply says is the moneys that are not expended out of that 
account will be used to pay down the Federal debt and no additional 
moneys will be extended to other programs or other uses.
  Some people might say: Well, what if we have another emergency? If we 
have another emergency, Congress can act again. That is what we do. We 
are the legislative branch of the government. We have the power of the 
purse. There is not any reason to think that if for some reason it 
became clear that a TARP-like authority was necessary down the road 
that the Congress would not take the necessary steps to address that 
emergency.
  But in the meantime, we have a $700 billion out there which, as 
people are making payments back in, are now going back out. We have got 
about $300 billion right now of head room in that fund. It seems to me 
we ought to take that $300 billion and apply it to paying down the 
Federal debt, so that future generations of Americans are not having 
their future mortgaged because we have not been able to live within our 
means.
  It is a one-page amendment, four lines long. The bill that I am told 
is being written on health care, which is 1,500 pages, the last version 
of it that I heard or saw--we have not seen the current version of it. 
But that 1,500-page bill is being written behind closed doors.
  This, on the other hand, is one page, four lines long--a very simple, 
straightforward amendment. It would not take us probably but a half an 
hour to debate it and vote on it. If the majority does not want to have 
a vote on this amendment, I am not sure why, because it would seem to 
me that the Senate would want to weigh in on one of the most important 
issues of the day, and that is whether we are going to take some of 
these unexpended funds and use them, apply them to paying down the 
Federal debt.
  With regard to the debate before us on unemployment insurance, it 
needs to be extended. There is no debate about that. In fact, I think 
there will be a big bipartisan vote when it happens.
  But why wouldn't we, in the interest of having a vote, a fair debate 
and a vote on amendments, allow amendments such as this which, as I 
said, because of the expiration date being December 31, it is unlikely, 
in my view, that Congress is going to get an opportunity, if we do not 
vote on this now, to vote on whether a $700 billion expenditure of 
taxpayer dollars is going to be extended. And, if in fact, it has 
served its purpose--and it has not--then why would we not use that 
unexpended authority, that unobligated balance to pay down the Federal 
debt which, I would argue, I think most Americans would agree is one of 
the most difficult and protracted problems that is going to face the 
country going forward.
  I guess I would simply say that this, in my view, is related to the 
debate we are having. Because the debate we are having is about the 
economy. It is about people who have been displaced and who have lost 
jobs and extending assistance to them, which they need and which we are 
all supportive of doing.
  But if you are talking about things we can do to bring greater 
stability to the American economy, to provide a better and a brighter 
and more secure future for future generations, and to try and get this 
economy back on track, I think it would be a great message to send to 
the American people that the TARP, which was created for a specific 
purpose for a specific time, has accomplished that purpose. We do not 
believe it ought to become a slush

[[Page 25893]]

fund for other activities. The unexpended balances in that fund ought 
to be used to pay down the Federal debt and to provide a better and a 
brighter future for the taxpayers of tomorrow, unencumbered by a huge 
mountain of debt that is going to be passed down to them if we are not 
able to get our fiscal house in order.
  I hope the majority will come around to the view that let's have a 
vote, let's have a 30-minute or hour debate on a couple of these 
amendments. Let's pass this bill and be done with it. But it seems to 
me, at least, for some reason--I am not sure what that is--the majority 
does not want to have a vote on what I think is a very consequential 
issue of our time, and a very consequential issue for the future of 
this country.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Stabenow.) The Senator from Texas is 
recognized.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up 
to 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I wish to talk about another one of 
those consequential issues of our day that we have been talking about a 
lot lately. That is health care reform. I wish to start by asking a 
question of my colleagues and anyone who is within the sound of my 
voice, and that would be: Before we create a new government-run health 
care plan, why don't we fix the ones we already have? Why don't we do 
more to fight fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid?
  Of course, Medicare is a government-run plan for seniors. It is part 
of a commitment we made that people who have achieved a certain age 
will have health care available to them, and that is a commitment we 
need to keep. Medicaid, conversely, is for low-income individuals. It 
is a State-Federal Government share program. But like a new government 
plan could be dressed up in many different ways, kind of like a child 
on Halloween, like some calling a government plan a public option, or 
some talking about opt-outs, opt-ins, and triggers, once the mask comes 
off, what we are left with is plain and simply another government-run 
health care plan.
  When I was on the floor on Monday and talking about our current 
government plans, Medicare and Medicaid, I pointed out the very serious 
fiscal problems that both of these programs have and ones that we 
should attend to before we go creating another government-run plan with 
perhaps its own set of fiscal problems.
  For example, Medicare, which is health care for our seniors, has $38 
trillion in unfunded liabilities and will go bankrupt in 2017 unless 
Congress acts sooner.
  Medicaid, we know, has its own share of problems. It actually reduces 
access to health care. It promises access on the one hand but denies 
that access because of unrealistically low reimbursement rates to 
health care providers. So many health care providers in my State, in 
Texas and elsewhere, simply will not accept a Medicaid patient. What 
good is Medicaid, what good is Medicare, if you cannot find a physician 
who is willing to see you? It is not much good at all.
  I agree with our colleague, Senator Landrieu of Louisiana, who has 
asked why don't we fix the two public options we have now instead of 
creating a new one. This afternoon I wish to talk about how we need to 
fix another problem with our government plans; that is, how we should 
do more to fight waste, fraud, and abuse.
  I noted earlier this week that both Medicare and Medicaid combined 
have, by some estimates, as much as $90 billion lost in taxpayer 
dollars each year, stolen from the intended beneficiaries of those two 
important government plans.
  ``60 Minutes'' ran a story on this on Sunday which included the story 
of a former Federal judge who discovered that someone had billed the 
government for two artificial limbs on his behalf, even though he still 
has the ones God gave him when he was born. Someone is using his name 
and in this instance his billing number in order to defraud the 
American taxpayer. We ought to be doing more to stop it.
  This morning in the Judiciary Committee, we discussed health care 
fraud. We listened to some witnesses from the Justice Department. 
Basically what I concluded from that hearing is there are more bad guys 
than there are good guys, and we are stuck with a lack of resources to 
deal with this. We need to change the way we approach it to prevent 
fraud and waste on the front end rather than on trying to chase it down 
on the back end.
  According to the Department of Health and Human Services, $32.7 
billion--$32.7 billion--of Medicaid funds were consumed last year by 
waste, fraud, and abuse. That is about 10 percent of Medicaid's total 
costs, which were $333 billion.
  Medicare has similar problems. Medicare fraud may consume up to 15 to 
20 percent of the $454 billion in the Medicare budget. According to 
Harvard Professor Malcolm Sparrow, that means the amount lost to fraud 
would be between $70 to $90 billion each year.
  Some of the examples of waste, fraud, and abuse should be 
embarrassing. For example, between 2000 and 2007, more than $90 million 
of claims were ordered by dead doctors. According to a report of the 
Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations last year, some of these 
dead doctors have been very productive. They have been ordering 
Medicare benefits for up to 10 years.
  This past August in Houston the FBI discovered that a doctor and his 
wife had defrauded health care providers of more than $31 million, one 
doctor and his spouse, $31 million. They claimed to have administered a 
number of injections and other treatments that never, in fact, occurred 
but they still charged the taxpayer for them and were paid because of 
Medicare fraud.
  Defrauding the Federal Government and the Federal taxpayers through 
their health care programs is so lucrative that Mafia figures and other 
criminals are getting into the act. According to the Associated Press 
this month, members of a Russian-Armenian crime ring in Los Angeles 
were indicted for bilking Medicare of more than $20 million. A week 
after the FBI issued search warrants related to Medicare fraud in 
Miami, the body of a potential witness was found in the back seat of a 
car, riddled with bullets.
  Violent criminals are moving into defrauding the government and the 
American taxpayer because the risks and rewards look better to them 
than, for example, the drug trade. According to this same AP story, a 
Medicare scammer could easily net $25,000 a day, while risking a 
relatively modest 10 years in prison if convicted on a single count. A 
cocaine dealer, by comparison, could take weeks to make that amount, 
while risking life in prison. So it is a matter of incentives, risks, 
and rewards. Apparently, the risk of committing Medicare and Medicaid 
fraud is so low and so lucrative that it has continued to grow and grow 
and grow.
  We know vulnerability in government programs also facilitates drug 
abuse. According to a General Accounting Office study of five States 
released last month, the General Accounting Office found that about 
65,000 Medicaid beneficiaries in these States each visited 6 or more 
providers for the same type of controlled substance. Each of these 
65,000 Medicaid beneficiaries visited 6 or more providers for the same 
type of controlled substance. These controlled substances included 
Valium, Ritalin, and various amphetamine derivatives. Together, these 
65,000 Medicaid beneficiaries charged taxpayers $63 million to feed 
their habits--in just 2 years.
  Sometimes providers aid and abet these drug addicts. The GAO reported 
that a Florida physician was sentenced to life in prison after writing 
multiple prescriptions for controlled substances to patients whom he 
knew were drug abusers. Tragically, five people died as a result of the 
drugs this doctor prescribed.
  We know there is a better way to deal with the fraud in the two 
public options or government-run plans that currently exist. We do not 
have to accept the 3- to 10-percent loss in taxpayer dollars because of 
fraud, waste, and abuse. That is 3 to 10 percent of the taxpayer 
dollars.

[[Page 25894]]

  Let's just compare that for a second to another industry that deals 
with huge amounts of money and millions of transactions: the credit 
card industry. According to the Center for Health Transformation, the 
credit card industry processes more than $2 trillion in payments every 
year from 700 million credit card transactions, used at millions of 
vendors. Yet fraud in that industry is a fraction of what exists with 
Federal Government programs. It is at least 100 times higher.
  Then--more close to home--private health insurance companies do a 
much better job of fighting fraud, waste, and abuse than do government 
bureaucrats. I know everyone likes to bash the insurance industry, but 
in this area they sure beat any government plan I have seen. Fraudulent 
claims in the private sector are much lower. They are roughly 1.5 
percent of all the claims submitted, according to a new book called 
``Stop Paying the Crooks,'' edited by Jim Frogue. This is because the 
private sector operates with a different paradigm, a different 
strategy. They use a ``detect and prevent'' strategy, as opposed to the 
Federal Government, which will pay first and then we will chase the 
crooks later on. Because, as I said earlier, there are more bad guys 
than good guys and our efforts to combat fraud are underresourced, this 
``pay first and chase the crooks down'' is not working at all. We need 
to change that paradigm to one that more closely follows the private 
sector strategy of ``detect and prevent'' rather than ``pay and 
chase.''
  So why isn't the Federal Government doing a better job of fighting 
fraud? We heard testimony this morning, as I said, from representatives 
of the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human 
Services. I congratulated them, first of all, for their service to our 
country. They have had some modest successes with stepped-up 
investigations and prosecutions for health care fraud. I say ``modest'' 
because the volume of the problem, the enormity of the problem, dwarfs 
any of their successful efforts. Still, the administration--I will give 
them credit--is trying to get their hands around the problem.
  Regarding Medicaid, for example, the inspector general of HHS 
released a report in August. He said the data collected by the Medicaid 
Statistical Information System was not timely or accurate enough to 
help fight fraud, waste, and abuse. Data from the Medicaid Program 
takes a year and a half to be publicly available, by which time the 
crooks will have already gotten the money and escaped, perhaps long 
retired in the Caribbean.
  This morning, the administration told us they were going to conduct a 
national fraud summit. I can tell you, sometimes having a meeting is a 
substitute for doing something about the problem. So having a summit is 
fine in and of itself, but I do not have a whole lot of confidence that 
another meeting or summit is going to solve this problem. Instead, we 
need to give the Federal Government--and our law enforcement personnel, 
in particular--and those custodians of the Federal tax dollars better 
tools to be able to solve the problem.
  I have offered a number of pieces of legislation designed to help 
fight health care fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. For example, earlier 
this year, I introduced something I call the STOP Act, which is called 
the Seniors and Taxpayers Obligation Protection Act. This legislation 
would give Federal agencies greater tools and authority to detect 
waste, fraud, and abuse before they happen. The STOP Act has bipartisan 
sponsors, and I believe its provisions should be a part of what we do 
to reform our health care system.
  I had also offered an amendment to the bill in the Finance Committee 
that would have made sure we fixed the fraud already existing in 
Medicaid before we expanded the program. Specifically, my amendment 
would have said that Medicaid had to reduce its improper payment rate 
to 3.9 percent. That may sound like a lot, and it is still too high, 
but it is actually the average of improper payment rates across the 
Federal Government. So my suggestion in my amendment was, just be 
average. Yet my amendment was voted down largely along partisan lines.
  Fraud is not the only problem we see in government health care 
programs, but it is one reason I am skeptical of the so-called public 
option or government insurance companies or government takeovers of the 
rest of the health care sector that they do not currently control. It 
is a serious problem we ought to address rather than just creating a 
new plan with a similar set of problems and see 3 to 10 percent of the 
amount of money we spend on this new program lost to crooks and other 
criminals.
  Madam President, 61 percent of the American people, in one poll, said 
they believe the issues of fraud and waste in Medicare and Medicaid 
should be addressed before--before--we create a new government-run 
program. I believe we should listen to the American people. I believe 
we should fix the current government-run programs before we create 
another one.
  So, Madam President, I leave with a few more questions that I think 
must be addressed, will be addressed over the weeks and months ahead.
  First of all, we know Senator Reid, along with help from Democratic 
leadership, has merged the Finance Committee bill with another Senate 
committee bill behind closed doors and sent it to the Congressional 
Budget Office to be scored or a cost estimate provided. I would like to 
ask, why can't we see the bill? Why can't we see the bill? Why can't 
the American people see the bill so they can read it for themselves 
online and they can tell us how they will either be positively or 
negatively affected by the provisions in another thousand-page bill?
  Secondly, I would like to ask--and I guess we will find out sooner or 
later, but we do not know now--how much will it cost? Will this be 
another trillion-dollar-plus bill?
  Third, I would like to know how much this bill will raise premiums on 
people who already have health insurance coverage--as virtually every 
opinion we have heard surveying the Finance Committee bill, the HELP 
Committee bill, and the House committee bills has said that Federal 
controls on health insurance plans will actually raise premiums. So we 
need to know how much the Reid bill--that is going to come to the 
floor, that has been written behind closed doors, that we need to see 
posted on the Internet--we need to know how much it is going to cost. 
We need to know how much it is going to raise insurance premiums for 
people who already have health care coverage.
  The next question is, How much is it going to raise taxes on the 
middle class? I know some people around here think you can impose taxes 
on insurance plans, you can impose fees on medical device providers, 
you can do all of this, and it will be absorbed by those entities, by 
those companies, when expert after expert tells us what we know, what 
our common sense tells us; that is, those costs will be passed down to 
the consumer and they will be passed down to the taxpayer to pay for 
them, middle-class taxpayers. How much will this bill raise taxes on 
the middle class?
  Then I think the American people would like to know--and this was in 
the Finance Committee bill; we will find out, I assume, at some point 
whether the Reid bill does the same thing--there was roughly $\1/2\ 
trillion in cuts to Medicare. Yes, that is right. It is the same 
Medicare plan that is scheduled to go bankrupt by 2017. Yet the 
proposal is, let's take another half-trillion-dollar chunk out of this 
fiscally unsustainable program, with $38 trillion in unfunded 
liabilities. We are going to take that, we are going to cannibalize 
from that plan to create yet another government plan or a public 
option, as some like to say around here.
  Well, I think these are all important questions, and I wish I had the 
answers to them. I know constituents call my office. They write me. 
They e-mail me. They tell me in person: We are pretty worried about 
what we see coming out of Washington these days--with the spending and 
the debt, the responsibilities we should be meeting today, ourselves, 
but which we are kicking down

[[Page 25895]]

the road and going to ask our children and grandchildren to pay for.
  This particular subject is one that will affect all 300 million 
Americans. I know they will be paying close attention, as they should, 
to the debate as we go forward.
  Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KYL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Health Care Reform

  Mr. KYL. Madam President, I wish to talk for a moment about health 
care since, hopefully, one of these days we will be able to begin a 
debate on a piece of national health care legislation. I wish to make 
it clear that Republicans support sensible health care reform, but we 
believe the bill the majority will bring to the floor could create a 
whole new set of health care problems. We don't have the specifics yet, 
but I think we can be sure that certain things are true.
  First, the bill is a Washington takeover of health care that will 
raise taxes, cut Medicare by nearly $\1/2\ trillion or more, and 
increase premiums as new taxes on the insurance industry and medical 
device manufacturers are passed on to consumers. This much we know. 
Before any bill is considered and as we debate the legislation, we 
think it is important to remember Americans have some rights in this 
process.
  They have the right, for example, to have access to all the specifics 
of the bill and to have time to weigh it and to give us their 
reactions, their concerns. Let's not forget we function as a result of 
their consent, the consent of the governed.
  Americans also have the right to know what the legislation is going 
to cost them and their families, including what it will cost their 
children and grandchildren 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. They have a 
right to know what it will cost the Treasury and how much debt will 
have accrued. By the way, if Medicare is a model for the new 
Washington-run health care program, how can anyone believe it is going 
to be deficit neutral? In fact, I asked people at a townhall meeting: 
How many people here believe you can have a $1 trillion health care 
bill and not add to the national debt? Not a single hand, of course, 
was raised.
  We also have the right to know about the unintended consequences of 
the bill. A lot of my constituents are concerned because of a Lewin 
Group prediction that 119 million people will end up on the Washington-
run insurance plan. That is of great concern to them, among other 
things. They also are concerned this will interfere with their sacred 
doctor-patient relationship. They have a right to have their concerns 
taken seriously.
  I think one of the guarantees we need to give to our constituents is 
that the President can keep his pledge not to raise taxes on the 
American people, as he pledged not to increase taxes by one single dime 
on middle-income Americans. Yet as we read the legislation that has 
come out of the various committees, taxes are raised on Americans.
  Republicans will insist on these protections, these guarantees for 
our constituents: protections from increased premiums, from Medicare 
cuts and from increased taxes and, perhaps most importantly, protection 
from rationing of health care, the delay and denial of care that comes 
from things such as Medicare cuts of $\1/2\ trillion.
  We support legislation that features cost-saving measures Americans 
can support, things such as medical liability reform. But what we want 
to ensure is that our constituents do not have to suffer high taxes, 
high premiums, a bill that cuts Medicare and ends up rationing their 
health care. Americans deserve better.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Madam President, I wish to speak about jobs and 
unemployment. I know we are in this period postcloture on the effort to 
extend unemployment benefits. Frankly, I have great difficulty 
understanding why we should have to be going through this kind of 
procedural obstacle in order to extend unemployment benefits to the 
many Americans who need those benefits. So I hope we can get through 
that. I hope we can go ahead and pass the extension of unemployment 
benefits. Frankly, that does not begin to address the overall 
employment and job needs of the country. I think we all recognize that. 
I wish to talk a little bit about that today.
  Frankly, we need additional policies to create jobs. Even as Congress 
and the President focus on other critical challenges facing the 
country, including health care reform and climate change and energy, at 
the same time those issues are being discussed, we need to also 
prioritize job creation.
  While there has been considerable debate about whether the Recovery 
Act is working, whether it has raised the gross domestic product, 
whether it is creating jobs, most economists tell us the Recovery Act 
has boosted the gross domestic product by 2 to 4 percentage points 
during the past 6 months. With two-thirds of the funds not yet spent, 
the Recovery Act certainly has the potential to create or save 4 
million jobs, as the administration has expected it would and as all of 
us hope it does.
  I have divided my remarks into three parts. First, I wish to describe 
the scale of the job-creation problem the country faces. Because of the 
anemic job creation we have seen in this country over the last 9 years, 
the economy is short by about 12 million jobs from what we actually 
need in order to have reasonable employment. Second, there is 
considerable evidence--and this is the second subject I will address--
there is considerable evidence that this recession is much worse than 
it was expected to be. Critics of the Recovery Act are missing this 
fundamental point. The Recovery Act is working, but the recession is 
more severe than the Recovery Act was designed to address. Accordingly, 
we need to do more.
  Finally, I will propose four ideas to create jobs I think Congress 
should hold hearings on and fully debate. These are, by no means, the 
only good ideas, but given the size of the problem we face, Congress 
should consider all ideas that have a potential to create jobs.
  I have two charts that illustrate the scale of the job-creation 
problem. Let me start by putting up this first chart. The black line on 
this chart shows the monthly change in the number of jobs since January 
of 2001. The red number, which is right here, this red area represents 
100,000 jobs. That is an important number to understand. It is the 
break-even number. Because our population is constantly growing, we 
need to create about 100,000 new jobs every month just to maintain our 
unemployment and our employment level. That is 100,000 jobs per month 
just to keep unemployment from going up. Every time the black line--
this black line you see here--every time that black line is in the red 
area, which is most of the time in the last 9 years, we are not 
creating enough jobs to break even and the jobs deficit is getting 
larger and more Americans are out of work.
  As my colleagues can see, for most of the past 9 years, the number of 
new jobs has been far short of where it needs to be. From 2001 to 2004, 
the jobs deficit grew by 5.8 million jobs. Even when job creation was 
above the break-even level--and that is this period where this black 
line is above the reddish area on the chart--even in that period, it 
was never high enough to dig us out of the hole we had created in the 
previous years.
  The second chart I wish to show is labeled ``The Jobs Deficit.'' It 
shows the total jobs deficit that has accumulated over the past 9 
years. It illustrates the cumulative effect of 9 years of slow job 
creation and job losses. The country had 132.5 million jobs in December 
of 2000. If job creation had kept pace with population growth, today we 
would have 143 million jobs, but it has not. Today, we are 12 million 
jobs short of that number. The chart shows how that has happened. Today 
we have only 131 million jobs. We actually have fewer jobs today than 
we had before President Bush took office.

[[Page 25896]]

  The takeaway from these charts is this: The job situation for 
Americans is dismal. Congress needs to act quickly so new job-creation 
policies will overlap with and will complement the remaining Recovery 
Act funds that will be invested this next year. There is no danger of 
doing too much to create jobs, as I see it. We should learn from 
Japan's lost decade. Japan was plagued by weak economic growth and 
lackluster job creation all through the 1990s. Its lost decade, as that 
period is referred to, was caused by the bursting of an asset price 
bubble similar to what triggered the financial crisis we experienced 
last year. The primary lesson from Japan's lost decade is, intermittent 
stimulus policies are ineffective. We need to take sustained and 
overwhelming action to reenergize our economy.
  Let me speak for a moment about the current recession and data about 
the current recession. In January of this year, the prospects for the 
economy were truly grim. The country had lost jobs in every month in 
2008--over 3 million jobs in total. Over 1.6 million jobs were lost in 
just October, November, and December of 2008. The financial system had 
suffered a massive self-inflicted wound, causing the biggest crisis 
since the Great Depression. The prognosis was far from clear. American 
families in every State were worried about their jobs, their homes, 
their children's futures, and economists were making dire predictions 
about what would happen in 2009.
  So that was what was happening when we began January of this year. 
Yet, in January, while the Recovery Act was being designed, these 
predictions still substantially underestimated how bad the recession 
would turn out to be. The 54 economists regularly surveyed by the Wall 
Street Journal said, on average, gross domestic product would shrink by 
3.3 percent in the first quarter of 2009. There were only 4 of those 54 
economists who predicted the gross domestic product would decline by as 
much as 5 percent. Yet now we know the economy actually contracted by 
6.4 percent in that first quarter, twice as much as the economists had 
projected. Over the entire year, that is a difference of $420 billion 
or more than half the size of the Recovery Act.
  The effect on jobs and on unemployment was also underestimated. This 
same group of 54 economists thought job losses would average 154,000 
per month in 2009. There were only 3 of those economists who thought it 
would be more than 300,000 per month. So far this year, the country is 
losing, in fact, an average of 458,000 jobs every month--3 times more 
than economists predicted.
  In January, these same 54 economists thought the unemployment rate 
would be 8.2 percent in the first half of 2009. Mark Zandi, at Moody's 
economy.com, estimated unemployment would be less than 7.5 percent in 
the first quarter of 2009 and 8.5 percent in the second quarter if the 
Recovery Act was not enacted. The administration said, if the Recovery 
Act was not enacted, unemployment would be less than 8 percent in the 
first half of this year and would peak at 9 percent in 2010. Those were 
the estimates if the Recovery Act was not enacted. Yet we now know the 
unemployment rate was already 8.1 percent in February. It grew to 8.5 
percent in March and 9.5 percent in the second quarter. Even with the 
Recovery Act, the unemployment rate is worse than anyone predicted it 
would be without the Recovery Act.
  In January, the administration said that enacting the Recovery Act 
would keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent. Critics are trying to 
score political points based on that estimate. But as I have said, the 
unemployment rate was already 8.1 percent in February, when there had 
hardly been enough time for the ink to dry on the Recovery Act, let 
alone for the stimulus funds to be obligated and spent.
  In short, with perfect hindsight, it is obvious this recession is 
much worse than economists had predicted it would be. More jobs have 
been lost than economists predicted. I say this not to disparage those 
professionals, only to point out we need to do more to create jobs 
because the situation is worse than almost anyone thought it would be.
  The Recovery Act is working, but the problem is bigger than the 
Recovery Act was designed to solve. We must all recognize this. 
Congress and the administration need to work together to enact 
additional policies to create jobs. We need a combination of policies 
both to encourage hiring and to increase the demand for goods and 
services.
  I want to talk briefly about four ideas that have been proposed that 
Congress needs to look at, and look at them hopefully sooner rather 
than later.
  First is a job creation tax credit. Last week, the Economic Policy 
Institute released a new and noteworthy version of this idea, developed 
by John Bishop of Cornell and Timothy Bartik of the Upjohn Institute. 
The EPI proposes to give businesses a tax credit worth 10 to 15 percent 
of the cost of creating new jobs. Such a credit would help businesses 
choose to take the risk of expanding and hiring more workers. The 
authors estimate their job creation tax credit would create 2.8 million 
new jobs in 2010 that would not otherwise be created. In addition, 2.3 
million jobs would be created in 2011 under their proposal, as they 
predicted, for a total of 5.1 million new jobs over a 2-year period. 
Their proposal is to put this job creation tax credit into place for 2 
years. According to EPI, the cost to taxpayers for each job would be 
between $4,600 and $15,000. That is expensive, but it is well worth 
considering if their analysis is correct.
  Critics say the job creation tax credit will not work, that only more 
demand for a business's products and services will cause the business 
to hire more employees. While there is some truth to this, it is also 
the case that entrepreneurs frequently start new businesses or expand 
existing businesses before having a steady stream of new orders. This 
is the fundamental idea behind innovation. In other words, businesses 
often create new jobs before there is a confirmed increase in demand. 
Moreover, a similar but more difficult-to-use tax credit was enacted in 
1977 and is thought to have created 700,000 jobs by the end of 1978.
  Critics also say that businesses will use tricks to game the system 
and fraudulently claim the tax credit. This is certainly possible. If 
Congress pursues this idea, we need to take care to design the credit 
to eliminate that problem. Already the authors of the proposal 
recommend that the credit be based on the increase in a business's 
Social Security wage base, so that a business could not fire and rehire 
employees in order to claim the credit.
  Some of these criticisms may be valid, but there is enough promise in 
this idea that we need to take the time to fully explore and consider 
it.
  The second idea I want to mention is the possibility of enacting an 
investment tax credit for manufacturing. Such a credit would subsidize 
the cost of building new factory space or purchasing new machinery. 
This credit could be tied to research and development that has been 
done in the United States in order to ensure Americans get the maximum 
benefit from that R&D or the credit could be more broadly designed and 
made available for all manufacturing investments. Manufacturing jobs 
are critical to the long-term health of our economy, and we need 
additional policies to create those jobs.
  Third, we in Congress need to consider providing additional aid to 
States. This could be accomplished through the expansion of the Federal 
role or the Federal share of Medicaid, as we have done in the past. It 
could be done through additional education funds or other direct 
grants. The Recovery Act included $144 billion in aid to States and 
localities, but now we know the total budget shortfall of States is 
projected to be nearly $360 billion over the next 2 years. Thirty-nine 
States will face budget shortfalls in 2011. Without additional help, 
States will have to cut services and raise taxes, making the recession 
worse and slowing job creation even more. As Nobel laureate Paul 
Krugman has written, there is a real danger that the States will become 
``50 little Herbert

[[Page 25897]]

Hoovers'' by cutting back on spending, laying off workers, and raising 
taxes all at the worst possible moment. Enacting additional aid to 
States could have immediate benefits by curtailing plans to cut State 
programs. Direct aid to States would complement the new tax credits I 
have mentioned. It would be a fast, effective way to stabilize and 
increase demand for goods and services.
  Finally, Congress should explore the idea of providing emergency 
bridge loans to families to help families stay in their homes. The 
government did provide bridge loans to Wall Street. American homeowners 
should get the same assistance. The amount of the loan would be equal 
to up to 2 years of mortgage payments and could be repaid over 10 or 15 
years. These bridge loans would also complement the job creation tax 
credit and the manufacturing investment tax credit by preventing a 
fall-off in the demand for consumer goods and services. Senator Jack 
Reed and Congressman Barney Frank have proposed similar ideas to 
provide bridge loans to homeowners. All of these ideas should be fully 
discussed and considered.
  Over the longer term, Congress and the administration need to 
consider proposals that address the structural flaws in our economy, 
including reforming financial regulation, fixing our unemployment 
compensation system, so that it assists more workers in our economy, 
and creating additional countercyclical economic policies that would 
automatically be triggered during a recession. I hope to discuss some 
of these issues in the coming weeks.
  The four proposals I have outlined today are ideas that could create 
jobs in the short and medium term. Congress should hold hearings on 
these and other job creation proposals. We should act quickly to 
address this issue. If the trend this year continues, another 15,000 
jobs will be lost each day we wait. If we do nothing, unemployment is 
projected to climb past 10 percent next year, more families will lose 
their homes, our economy will grow weaker, making it more difficult for 
the United States to compete in the global market. Even as Congress 
continues working on other strategic challenges such as health care, 
energy, and climate change--and I support taking action in those 
areas--we must give renewed priority to job creation in order to 
strengthen the long-term competitiveness of the United States and the 
prosperity of the American people.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida is recognized.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that 
I be able to have a facsimile of the successful rocket test brought 
onto the floor for demonstration purposes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the Senator from Nevada be able to follow in the order. He was kind 
enough to let me go ahead so I might be able to then sit in the chair 
and preside at the appointed hour.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator from Florida is recognized.


                         Successful Rocket Test

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, this is a facsimile of the 
rocket that was a successful test today, called the Ares I rocket. The 
test flight was the Ares IX-X for ``experimental.'' It wanted to show 
all of the flight control systems. It was an exceptionally successful 
test. It was only intended to go into suborbit.
  The stages that were live were the first four of the five stages of 
the solid rocket booster, which presently are identical to the solid 
rocket boosters--the two big candlestick-type things on either side of 
the space shuttle orbiter and the big external tank, what makes up the 
stack that we refer to as the space shuttle.
  In the design of the new rocket that was extraordinarily successful 
today, they have added a fifth segment. Instead of that being loaded 
with solid propellant--which, by the way, has the consistency of a 
pencil eraser--a dummy fifth stage was constructed, with the same 
weight and flight characteristics, along with the second stage of the 
rocket--again, designed and configured and weighed to be exactly what 
would be the second stage of the rocket. And then, with the upper part 
here, the capsule looks a lot like the old Apollo capsule, but instead 
holding six or seven astronauts instead of the three in the Apollo--the 
crew being known as Orion. And then we have the escape rocket, these 
rockets here, so that if you had a malfunction and explosion at any 
time in the first couple of minutes of flight, you could eject the 
capsule with the humans on board, and it would parachute back. We don't 
have that capability, for example, in the space shuttle today because, 
for the first 2 minutes of flight, you are basically married to those 
solid rocket boosters. If anything goes wrong, there is no escape 
possibility on the space shuttle. The new rocket is designed so that it 
has that increased safety factor.
  What I wanted to point out to the Senate is that, with this success 
today--and there is some question about whether it is this rocket--the 
President will decide, along with his NASA administrator, Marine GEN 
Charlie Bolden, whether they want to complete this rocket in its 
present architecture, as the way for us to get into space after the 
space shuttle has shut down or if they want some other kind of 
configuration.
  But the fact is we had a very successful test today. What I want to 
say to the Senate is that it is another example of the ability of this 
country and its people, in science and technology, in its engineering 
prowess, in its can-do spirit, in its ability to build on experiences 
that we have had in the past, in order that we can create machines we 
can marry up with humans and explore the unknown.
  Most every child in America in school knows of the Hubble space 
telescope. That was put up by an astronaut crew. Remember, its lens had 
been erroneously ground, and it was blind once it was put up. We had to 
send a second astronaut crew up in a space shuttle, retrieve it, put 
new glasses on it, and they have had three servicing missions on the 
Hubble space telescope over the course of the last decade and a half. 
Of course, Hubble has peered out into the unknown, back to the origins 
of the universe, to the light that was emitted shortly after the big 
bang. And with the new upgrades to the Hubble space telescope, we are 
even going to be able to look back further in time in the universe. 
This is the prowess, the genius of America. This is what we do not want 
to give up.
  I congratulate the team at NASA for the tremendous success they had 
today. Whether it is this rocket for the future or some other 
derivative, America has exhibited her can-do and successful spirit 
again this morning.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada is recognized.
  Mr. ENSIGN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              Policy Czars

  Mr. ENSIGN. Madam President, I rise today to talk about the growing 
number of so-called policy czars in the current administration and the 
impact it is having on the Senate's oversight function over the 
executive branch.
  I will begin by saying that I am not here to question the President's 
constitutional or statutory authority to name advisers. I think we all 
can agree that the President is entitled to surround himself with 
experts to help coordinate policy and to provide advice. However, as 
many of my colleagues are aware, there are some 18 new policy advisers, 
or czars, in the White House whose job descriptions may be a bit 
blurred.
  While some media reports cite more than 18, I think we can reasonably 
say that there are at least 18 new positions that have not been 
established by statute, are not confirmed by the Senate, and have not 
existed before.
  Early in his administration, President Obama sent a memorandum to the 
heads of the executive departments and agencies stating that ``a 
democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires 
transparency.''

[[Page 25898]]

  Despite this charge, the President has taken it upon himself to 
nominate a number of advisers who appear to wield a great amount of 
power and who are seemingly without public accountability.
  I am not the only one who is concerned with this lack of 
accountability. We have seen members of the President's own party 
express concerns over this unusually high number of policy advisers in 
the White House.
  In February of this year, Senator Robert Byrd, the constitutional 
conscience of the Senate, wrote to the White House and said:

       The rapid and easy accumulation of power by the White House 
     staff can threaten the constitutional system of checks and 
     balances.

  Like the senior Member of the Senate, I too am concerned that the 
Obama administration is creating what can be perceived as a shadow 
Cabinet by creating policy positions that do not follow the same advice 
and consent of the Senate as other relevant policy positions in the 
White House.
  In September, Senator Feingold, the chairman of the Constitution 
Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the 
White House requesting information on the roles and responsibilities of 
the czars in question. His letter was specifically focused to ensure 
that these advisers are not in violation of the appointments clause of 
the Constitution.
  Article II, section 2 of the Constitution says the President ``shall 
nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall 
appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the 
supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose 
Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be 
established by law. . . .''
  Unfortunately, because we know so little about the roles and 
responsibilities about the czars in question, it is simply not possible 
to determine whether the czars are actually officers and, therefore, 
constitutional.
  In response to Senator Feingold's letter to the administration last 
month, the White House claimed that the one and only role of the 18 
positions in question is to advise the President. Yet when we look at 
the press releases and Executive orders announcing these policy 
advisers, they seem to have far more authority than strictly advising 
the President.
  Take, for example, Executive Order No. 13507 on April 8, 2009, 
announcing the establishment of the White House Office of Health 
Reform. The order states the office, run by a director, will ``develop 
and implement strategic initiatives'' and ``work with Congress.''
  Is it not the role of the Secretary of Health and Human Services to 
implement strategic initiatives? In the White House press release 
announcing key members of his energy and environmental team, President 
Obama announced that Carol Browner, the new Assistant for Energy and 
Climate Change, would be ``indispensable in implementing an ambitious 
and complex energy policy.''
  Again, the administration is leaning on its newly created czar 
positions to implement policy. This question of policy implementation 
was brought up during a hearing last week in the Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs Committee which I attended. Senator Collins, who 
also wrote the White House with others in September questioning the 
increasing number of czars in the administration asked the panel of 
constitutional law experts about the issue of implementing policy.
  Dr. James Pfiffner, a university professor at George Mason's School 
of Public Policy, testified that ``with respect to the implementation 
of health policy, I think that's very troubling.''
  Lee Casey, a former attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel 
at the U.S. Department of Justice, testified that ``by law,'' these 
czars ``cannot implement.'' Casey did suggest, however, that Congress 
could ask what the administration means by ``implement.''
  I believe that is the true question here. What exactly are these 
czars doing? Are they simply advising the President, or are they 
actually implementing policy?
  A few of my colleagues have come to the Senate floor to offer 
amendments prohibiting funds to these czars if they are directing 
actions to the Cabinet officials who have been confirmed by the Senate. 
Other amendments would ensure that the czars will respond to reasonable 
requests to testify before Congress, therefore, allowing our proper 
oversight in this body. Unfortunately, these amendments were defeated 
on procedural grounds.
  I even offered an amendment during the Finance Committee's health 
reform markup that will require the czar handling health care issues be 
subject to Senate confirmation. My amendment was defeated on a party-
line vote.
  What is the answer? How can Congress and the American public feel 
confident the people who are appointed by the executive branch are 
appropriately carrying out the duties they are supposed to?
  More importantly, how can we be sure the balance of power does not 
get out of balance? I think we all have the right to know exactly what 
these policy czars are doing, to whom they are reporting, and who is 
responsible and accountable if something goes wrong.
  If the President can answer these questions for us, I think we will 
all feel better about this process.


                           Health Care Reform

  Madam President, I wish to talk briefly about the health care reform 
bill that is going to be coming before this body in just a couple of 
short weeks.
  There are certain facts that we know. We have not seen the bill 
because it has just been written and given to the Congressional Budget 
Office for the official scoring to be done. What we do know about the 
bill, though, is that there is over a $400 billion cut in Medicare. We 
know that. We know that people who currently have health care, their 
premiums will go up. That is according to the Congressional Budget 
Office. We know for many Americans--and mostly this will fall on people 
making less than $250,000 a year--their taxes will go up. We know also 
there will be government bureaucrats making decisions on health care. 
We also know people who currently have policies they like, especially 
those who have Medicare Advantage, millions will lose their current 
policy because over $120 billion is being taken out of the Medicare 
Advantage Program.
  We need to ask ourselves a couple of very fundamental questions. Does 
anyone really believe we can have a trillion-dollar health care bill 
and not add one dime to our deficit, as the President promised? Does 
anybody seriously believe that? How does adding a government-run plan, 
this so-called public option, which mirrors the Medicare Program, 
actually fix the health care problem when Medicare itself is going 
bankrupt?
  Everyone agrees Medicare is going bankrupt. Yet we want to add a new 
government entitlement program into our health care system? That is 
going to fix the problem?
  Do the American people really trust Washington, politicians, and 
bureaucrats to run their health care system? I believe we need to 
design a patient-centered health care system instead of a government 
system or an insurance company system. Let's design a health care 
system which makes health care more affordable and more accessible by 
encouraging people to make healthier choices, such as quitting smoking, 
eating better, and exercising more. That will improve people's quality 
of life, but it will also lower the cost of health care for all 
Americans.
  Let's enact real medical liability reform to stop the practice of 
defensive medicine which, once again, will lower the cost of health 
care in the United States. It will save the government over $50 
billion, and it will save the private sector a similar amount, and 
these are both conservative estimates.
  Lastly, instead of taking $400 billion out of Medicare to fund a new 
entitlement program, let's work on getting the fraud out of Medicare 
and let's use that savings to preserve that system that has been so 
incredibly important for seniors for the last several decades.
  I believe we need to start over. We do need to take a bipartisan 
approach to

[[Page 25899]]

health care reform. We need to actually forget about whether we are 
Republicans or Democrats and let's just be Americans. Let's sit down 
together ahead of time, not based on ideology but based on what systems 
can work in America for the American people to achieve better quality, 
lower costs in our health care system today that puts the patient at 
the center of our health care system instead of a government bureaucrat 
or an insurance company.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson of Florida). The Senator from 
Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the 
conclusion of my remarks, the Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Casey, be 
recognized.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I thank him for his courtesy in allowing me 
to precede his remarks this evening.


                           Health Care Reform

  A little more than a year ago, President Obama said:

       I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making 
     less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. 
     Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital 
     gains taxes, not any of your taxes.

  We have not seen the bill yet--the bill written in the majority 
leader's office--but it is probably fair to assume that the Finance 
Committee bill will cover most of the tax provisions.
  So how does the President's commitment fare under the Finance 
Committee bill? It turns out that the bill will raise your taxes. In 
fact, it will raise them in several ways.
  First, the Finance Committee bill would levy a host of new taxes on 
millions of Americans--and I am not just talking about the wealthy--in 
fact, primarily on middle-income Americans who I think will tell you 
they already have enough taxes to worry about.
  Let me discuss the specific elements of this bill. The first one is 
on taxing flexible savings accounts. Under current law, employees can 
make contributions to flexible spending accounts. Many middle-income 
families enjoy the benefits of these accounts which allow them to set 
aside tax-free income for their medical expenses. In fact, the 
Employers Council on Flexible Compensation estimates that the median 
income for those 35 million Americans who have an FSA is $55,000. The 
bill would limit their contributions to $2,500. So the less they can 
contribute, the more their taxable income rises. The total cost for 
taxpayers? It is $15 billion over 10 years.
  The Finance bill would also tax many Americans through their 
insurance plan by imposing a 40-percent excise tax on certain high-cost 
plans. So while another part of the bill taxes you if you don't buy 
insurance, this provision will tax you if you buy too much. So tax No. 
2, if you don't buy insurance; tax No. 3, if you buy more than 
Washington thinks you should.
  Tax No. 4, Americans who suffer catastrophic illnesses and the 
chronically ill would face a harmful change in the IRS Code, the Tax 
Code. Currently, catastrophic medical expenses are deductible if they 
exceed 7.5 percent of income. The bill would raise that threshold to 10 
percent. Mr. President, 87 percent of Americans who would be hit by 
this tax earn less than $100,000 a year. Seniors, who already face 
hardships through Medicare cuts, would be exempt from this tax for only 
4 years.
  In addition to raising these four taxes, the bill taxes insurance 
which would be passed on to everyone who buys health insurance. 
Specifically, the bill would impose an annual $6.7 billion so-called 
fee on the insurance industry. The entire amount collected by this tax: 
$67 billion over 10 years would be passed on to patients in the form of 
higher premiums, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That is 
tax No. 5.
  The bill would also impose a new tax on medical devices, $40 billion 
over 10 years. The entire cost of this tax, too, would be passed on to 
patients in the form of higher premiums, according to the CBO.
  The medical device tax will be assessed against thousands of products 
such as contact lenses, stethoscopes, hospital beds, artificial heart 
valves, and advanced diagnostic equipment, thereby increasing costs for 
consumers, physician practices, hospitals, and the sickest patients who 
require the most care.
  There is serious, bipartisan concern over this provision. But the 
last time we looked, it is still in the bill.
  So here are six ways Americans earning less than $250,000 will be 
taxed, contrary to the President's promise. Some are direct taxes, such 
as the IRS tax if you don't buy the exact insurance policy Washington 
says you must. Others are indirect but a tax nonetheless because the 
first target, be it the device manufacturer or the insurance company, 
will, according to the CBO, pass it on directly to you.
  The bottom line, Mr. President, is that the tax provisions in the 
bill will, in fact, violate a fundamental promise President Obama has 
made about health care--not to raise taxes on middle-income Americans. 
The American people have a right to expect some guarantees from 
Washington. Keeping the President's promise on tax increases is one of 
them. But that is not the direction in which this bill is moving. This 
bill would increase taxes on working families, seniors, and the 
chronically ill by more than one-half trillion dollars over 10 years. 
Republicans have better ideas, starting with protection from taxes and 
premium increases. The whole point of health care reform is to make 
things better for American families. These taxes only make things 
worse.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the unemployment 
insurance issue and the bill that is before the Senate.
  Sometimes in a bad economy and when we have so many families, so many 
communities that are hurting, maybe the best way to convey information, 
other than a personal story, is in the few words of a headline. 
Unfortunately, in Pennsylvania today--and I am sure this is true in 
many communities throughout the country--the headlines in just the last 
24 or 48 hours have told the whole story or at least most of the story.
  This is a headline you may not be able to see clearly, so I will read 
it. This is from the Times Tribune, my hometown newspaper. This was 
from yesterday: ``Jobless rate hits 9.5 percent.'' The subhead says: 
``Regional unemployment reaches highest level since December '93; 
highest in 15 years in northeastern Pennsylvania.'' Then we go to 
southwestern Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh and that region, some 5 hours by 
car from where I live--and this is what the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 
said on the same day, October 27: ``Region's jobless rate hits 23-year 
high in southwestern Pennsylvania.'' That is a part of our State that 
has been hit hard over a couple of decades now by the loss of 
manufacturing jobs and steel jobs. We know that tragic story. So a 
corner of the State that was doing much better than the national 
average is having its numbers go up. Northeastern Pennsylvania is at a 
15-year high and southwestern Pennsylvania is at a 23-year high in 
unemployment.
  But this last one might tell the story even more graphically for 
those who have a sense of the Pennsylvania economy. This is from the 
Harrisburg Patriot-News. This is from our capital city, Harrisburg, but 
it is in a region of the State that is more south central Pennsylvania, 
which has had a lower unemployment rate historically and more recently. 
``Jobless rate in region hits 26-year high.'' The subhead reads as 
follows: The midstate is faring better than the State as a whole and 
the Nation, but we are still hurting. Professional and retail jobs 
disappeared while health care and education held steady. But other than 
those two sectors, all the other sectors are hurting--Dauphin County, 
8.4 percent--right where the capital is; Cumberland County, 7.2 
percent; Lebanon County 7.4; Perry County, 8.8.
  For some parts of our country, one might say: Well, 7.2 or 7.4 sounds 
a lot better than a lot of communities. But you have to put it in the 
context of this region of Pennsylvania, where the unemployment rate is 
usually at 4 or 5

[[Page 25900]]

percent. So we are way above that now, and it is in places where we 
don't expect it.
  Unfortunately, in Pennsylvania, as I am sure is true in many States--
in the State of Florida, the Presiding Officer's home State, I am sure 
he sees this--this isn't limited to big urban areas. Philadelphia has a 
lot of unemployment, but there are small rural counties in northwestern 
Pennsylvania and now we see even in south central Pennsylvania that are 
hurting. And in some places, it is not just 7.2 or 7.4 but 11 and 12 
and 13 percent in a very small area in terms of population.
  So these job figures and these headlines tell the whole story. And we 
know now, just as we knew weeks ago, that the Senate has stalled too 
long on providing an extension of unemployment insurance. Think of it 
this way: Each day, 7,000 Americans lose their unemployment benefits. 
Over 23,000 Pennsylvanians have lost unemployment insurance just 
through the month of September, and that number is expected to go to 
over 60,000 by the end of the year. Pennsylvania ranks fifth highest in 
the Nation with respect to the number of persons who will lose 
unemployment benefits by the end of the year if the Senate and the 
Congress overall do not act.
  As I mentioned before, our statewide unemployment rate is about 8.8 
percent. Someone living in another State might say: Well, that is not 
nearly as high as this State or another State. But 8.8 percent in 
Pennsylvania means roughly half a million people are unemployed. And 
there are some people here in the Senate who say: Well, we shouldn't 
act on this now. We don't have time for it. We don't think it is 
important to act. Well, I would like to have them say that to the half 
million people in Pennsylvania who are out of work or the tens of 
thousands right now who are losing their unemployment insurance month 
after month, week after week.
  The legislation that is before the Senate would provide needed relief 
by extending benefits to all States by 14 weeks. At the expiration of 
those 14 weeks, if a State has an unemployment rate of higher than 8.5 
percent, it would receive an additional 6 weeks of unemployment 
insurance benefits. So it contemplates an extension for everyone by 14 
weeks and then additional help if a State is above the 8.5-percent 
level.
  I have to commend the work of our majority leader, Senator Reid, who 
has made this a central focus, as it should be, in the midst of a 
recession.
  One of the biggest challenges we face in the midst of a recovery--
even the beginnings of a recovery--is that you don't see the 
unemployment rate get much better. You don't see the jobless number 
come down. The unemployment figure is often the last number to come 
down during a recession. But for an economist or a Senator or anyone 
else to say: Well, the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator, that 
is not much comfort to someone who is out of work, and it is not a very 
good reflection on the urgency of the problem. So we have to be 
concerned with the unemployment rate even in what we hope is the 
beginning of a recovery.
  Even though our economy has shown promising signs of a recovery, 
which I just spoke of, the rate of unemployment is far too high. In 
order to boost our economy, passage of this unemployment extension 
would benefit so many communities.
  Another way to look at this is not just from the vantage point of the 
most important thing here, which is helping those who are unemployed, 
though that is reason alone to get this passed, but also what we will 
get for the rest of our economy, the kind of positive impact it has. It 
certainly has a positive impact for someone out of work--that is 
obvious--for his or her family and their community. But there is 
another way to measure it as well. Moody's chief economist, Mark Zandi, 
who is not a partisan either way, is a skilled and capable economist 
who says that every dollar spent in unemployment benefits generates 
$1.63 in new demand. So if you spend $1, you get $1.63 back. There is a 
return on investment for the overall economy when we target resources 
for unemployment insurance.
  The Congressional Budget Office, quoted widely in our health care 
debate, has also stated that unemployment benefits are one of the most 
cost-effective forms of economic stimulus. I mentioned some of the 
rates throughout Pennsylvania, throughout both urban and rural areas. 
All of these communities--whether a small town, a rural area, suburban 
or urban area--would benefit by keeping our citizens at work and not 
facing the threat of joblessness. I think it also helps our overall 
economy.
  We have tried to move the unemployment extension through the Senate 
two times by the so-called unanimous consent process. A lot of things 
move through the Senate by agreement on both sides. So you would think 
that would be the case in the midst of a recession, in the midst of 
these unemployment numbers, in the midst of week after week of bad news 
on jobs. And we know the unemployment rate doesn't choose between a 
Republican area and a Democratic area. The unemployment rate does not 
have a Republican or Democratic flavor to it. Everyone is out of work 
no matter who they are or of what party. But what has happened? We 
tried to move the unemployment extension through the Senate by 
unanimous consent, and the Republican side of the Senate blocked it 
both times. We could have had this done weeks ago but for one reason: 
the Senate Republicans blocking the unemployment extension going 
forward.
  It is tragically and I think painfully ironic that we are having to 
face this difficulty with our Republican colleagues because I keep 
hearing the following argument in the context of another topic. We are 
having an argument as to what our President should do with regard to 
our policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We hear people on the other 
side of the aisle, and pundits around Washington, saying the President 
has to decide on Afghanistan right now. They were saying that 3 or 4 or 
5 weeks ago. They didn't want to give him more than a few days to 
decide on what our policy should be. I have a strong disagreement with 
that. I think when you are committing men and women on a field of 
battle, you ought to have a policy that you have thought about and 
where all the options are analyzed and reviewed thoroughly, completely, 
and with the kind of scrutiny we should apply to that question. Some 
Republican Members of the Senate wanted to move very quickly and wanted 
to have the President decide in a matter of days--not weeks but days. 
They wanted him to make up his mind on Afghanistan in days. Yet when we 
went to them with the sense of urgency about unemployment insurance and 
an extension of that, where you can literally document the impact of a 
delay on real people's lives and real jobs and real communities across 
our country, many of them in Republican communities, what do we hear 
from the other side? No, we don't think we want to do that right now.
  So they want what I think is a kind of dangerous and, I would argue, 
irresponsible speed on a decision about war, the grave question of war, 
but they want to delay and block and be an impediment to an extension 
of unemployment insurance, which is an urgent problem. We can document 
exactly the number of people who are running out of their unemployment 
insurance. We can document the exact number of people who are out of 
work in a State or in a community.
  So I think they have it backward. I think when it comes to a question 
such as the President is facing regarding Afghanistan, he should take a 
couple of weeks to analyze it, and thank goodness he has. But on 
unemployment insurance, I think it is a much simpler question: We are 
either going to extend it now and help people who are out of work or 
not. And I think it is long overdue for the Republicans in the Senate 
to release their hold or their blockade of this.
  So we tried on October 8, and now it is late October. Over 140,000 
Americans have lost their coverage in the past 20 days--140,000 
Americans--because we have people on the Republican side of the aisle 
blocking what we have tried to do. Thousands of Americans have

[[Page 25901]]

withdrawn their last dollars from their savings accounts over the past 
20 days. Thousands of Americans have been wondering for the past 20 
days how they are going to provide a meal for their families or keep a 
roof over their head, pay the mortgage, pay the bill for their 
electricity, or make an investment in their children's future.
  Every day for the last several weeks, Jackie, from Monaca, PA, out in 
southwestern Pennsylvania, which, as I said, is suffering a 23-year 
high in unemployment, has called our office. She is wondering whether 
we are going to pass a bill. Her benefits expired at the end of 
September. So this isn't theoretical to Jackie and to her family and to 
many people like her. She used the last of her savings to pay her rent 
at the beginning of the month and now is struggling to get by on 
nothing--nothing right now. She waits every day to see if we will 
provide her with just a lifeline--not some handout, not some promise, 
but a lifeline to get from here to there, to get her over the bridge, 
so to speak, from where she is now to where she hopes to be in a couple 
of weeks or months. She looks for work and she tries to keep up with 
her bills, but her story is similar to that of thousands of others who 
have been directly impacted by the Senate Republican blockade. It is 
vitally important we pass this legislation right now.
  Finally, I will conclude with a comment about health care in the 
context of the unemployment rate and our economy. In addition to the 
obvious problem with unemployment insurance benefits that we should 
pass and get done, a lot of people are losing their health care at the 
same time. The recovery bill, the bill we passed and the President 
signed back in March, the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, provided a 
subsidy of 65 percent, where an individual pays 35 percent of the 
coverage for so-called COBRA coverage for those who were involuntarily 
terminated from their job. This subsidy only lasted for 9 months and is 
expected to expire at the end of the year.
  Following passage of an unemployment insurance extension, we should 
also, in addition, push for an extension of the COBRA health care 
subsidy. If we pass an unemployment insurance extension and do not 
provide an extension of COBRA health care subsidy, Americans who are 
out of work will have to decide between using their unemployment check 
to pay for a drastic increase in their monthly premium or no health 
insurance, no health coverage at all. I urge the Senate to swiftly pass 
not only the unemployment extension but, when we get to it in the next 
couple days or weeks, an immediate extension of COBRA and health care.
  We have to do both to protect people from the ravages of this economy 
which, as I said before, knows no party, which is not a partisan issue. 
It is an issue that affects all of America, urban and rural, big city 
and small town. We have to continue to push hard. I urge my colleagues 
on the other side of the aisle, the Senate Republicans, to allow this 
to go forward because, if they do not, I think their own constituents 
are going to be as harmed as many of my constituents are, in both 
parties.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Casey). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I think it is important, as we 
approach this monumental debate on health care reform and health 
insurance reform, to understand what it is we are trying to achieve at 
the end of the day. I don't think there are very many people in America 
who would say the present system of health insurance and health care 
delivery is sufficient, given the fact there is uncertainty as to 
whether someone will be able to continue in their health insurance and 
whether, even if that health insurance is available, it is going to be 
affordable today. Availability and affordability are two of the goals. 
As we go through this amendatory process once the bill comes to the 
floor, we have to remember that is the goal.
  If you listen to our good friend, the Senator from Arizona, he ticks 
off a whole bunch of things he says are additional taxes, fees, and so 
forth on the people. Let's examine that.
  First of all, if you do nothing, we have a system that is not serving 
our people. I am going to round the percentages, but this is 
approximately the case: About half the American people get their health 
insurance through their employer in a group policy. Indeed, what we are 
finding out, as those policies are being renewed, is employers are 
coming back to their employees and are saying: We have this humongous 
increase in premium we are going to have to pay to continue to give you 
the same benefits in group health insurance policies. One of the 
executives of one major telecommunications company told me they were 
forced, by the insurance company, to endure a 47-percent increase in 
premiums and, he said, we negotiated that down from a 53-percent 
increase.
  Let's not lose sight, as we get into the nits and gnats, of what we 
are trying to achieve. About half of us are insured through group 
policies through our employers. Then there is another 16 percent of us 
or so for whom our health care is taken care of by Medicare. There is 
another 10 percent of us whose health care is taken care of by 
Medicaid--because we are either poor enough or we are disabled enough 
to qualify under the Federal law that has a joint Federal-State 
financial responsibility. Generally, that split is about 55 percent of 
Medicaid paid by the Federal Government and 45 percent paid by the 
State government.
  How much of the entire populace of the country have we already talked 
about? About half employer-based health insurance, about another 15 or 
so percent Medicare, another 10 percent--we are up to about three-
quarters of the American people.
  What is the remaining 25 percent? About 5 percent of us, we don't 
have an employer or our employer doesn't offer it, but we desperately 
need health insurance. Where do we get it? We go to an insurance 
company and we get an individual policy. Of course, since it is only 
our life, there is not a big pool of people to spread that health risk 
over. Guess what happens to our premiums if we have an individual 
policy. The premiums go through the roof. Oh, by the way, don't even 
try to get an insurance policy on your health if you have a preexisting 
condition.
  What does that leave in the American population with regard to health 
care through health insurance? About 20 percent don't have any health 
insurance. They are uninsured. A major part of this health reform bill 
that will come to this floor in a few weeks is to try to bring them 
into the system, the uninsured, and get them insured. Why? First of 
all, it certainly makes sense, from a quality of life standpoint, that 
we have someone able to get preventive care from a doctor before it 
turns into an emergency. But that is not now the case. They don't have 
health insurance, they can't afford it or they choose not to get it--
but they get health care. Where do they get it? They go to the most 
expensive place, which is the emergency room, at the most expensive 
time, and that is when the sniffles have turned into pneumonia. Of 
course, the care is exceptionally more costly.
  By the way, who pays for that? All the rest of us back here pay for 
that. Do you know how we pay for it? With our increased premiums on the 
policies we are paying for, either individually or through our group 
employer-sponsored health insurance. Do you know what that cost is? It 
is, on the average in America, about $1,000 more per year for a family 
insurance policy that we are paying to take care of those people who 
are uninsured but still get health care.
  When you come out here for the nits and the gnats, saying: It is 
wrong here, we are going to have a fee here and a tax there, let's not 
lose sight of the goal of what we are trying to do, which is bring 
everybody into the system, let the principle of insurance operate for

[[Page 25902]]

you, where you spread the health risk over millions of lives so you 
bring down the health costs, get a system of health insurance for those 
who are uninsured and those who cannot afford insurance and especially 
those who are getting stuck in the wallet through individual policies--
get them into a health insurance exchange, where there is competition 
and where there is no barrier if you have a previous existing 
condition; so you have a guarantee you can get health insurance, and it 
is going to be at a competitive price.
  We have had a rhubarb in this country over something known as a 
public option. Most people do not realize that 90 percent of the 
American people will not be affected by a public option. But the 10 
percent who will be getting their health insurance in the previously 
uninsured or unaffordable group, who is now going to get it in this 
health insurance exchange, where insurance companies are going to come 
in and compete for that business--that public insurance company, if it 
is in existence by the time the final bill passes, will compete in that 
health insurance exchange against those insurance companies on an even-
steven competitive basis.
  Let's remember the goal. We are trying to bring in folks who cannot 
get insurance, the folks who do not have insurance but still get health 
care that all the rest of us pay for. It lowers our bills over here by 
not having to pay for them. When we bring them into the system, into 
this new health insurance exchange, those who do not have health 
insurance--some of them cannot afford it, but they are not poor enough 
to qualify for Medicaid in their State--the bill that will come to the 
floor will provide a series of subsidies according to the person's 
income, based on their percentage of the poverty level, that will 
assist them to get that health insurance in the private insurance 
sector.
  I come back to the beginning, the reason I asked the Senator from 
Pennsylvania if he would sit in the chair so I could come back to my 
desk and make a response in response to Senator Kyl.
  Is everyone satisfied with what we have? Clearly no. Is health 
insurance available to everybody? The answer is no. Is it affordable 
for everybody? The answer is no. Can it be streamlined by us changing 
the health delivery system, which we want to do? That clearly is the 
case.
  We can do it with electronic records and accountable care 
organizations. We can do it by following the patient, instead of the 
patient going to this specialist and this specialist and this 
specialist, and none of the specialists are talking to each other and 
they are duplicating all of the tests. We can put primacy on a primary 
care physician who will follow that patient. We can do it with those 
kinds of delivery reforms. This is the desirable goal. This is why we 
have to have health insurance and health care reform.
  My final point is this: The previous Senator who spoke, the Senator 
from Nevada, said we are going to take a lot of money out of Medicare. 
In the bill that is coming to this floor, the money that is coming out 
of Medicare is the money that is going to be contributed to the reform 
of the system coming from the Medicare providers, not the Medicare 
beneficiaries, in other words, not the senior citizens.
  The Senator says: But there is $120 billion that is coming out of 
Medicare Advantage. Well, what was Medicare Advantage? Medicare 
Advantage is a fancy term for a Medicare HMO. You know what a Medicare 
HMO is? It is an insurance company. When it was originally set up 10 or 
15 years ago, a Medicare HMO was going to save money to the Federal 
Government, Medicare, by paying only 95 percent of what Medicare fee 
for service did.
  But then the people in the rural areas did not get it, so it did not 
work. Along comes this famous prescription drug bill 6 years ago, and 
added to it is this fancy new thing called Medicare Advantage that 
creates an advantage for the insurance companies by giving them an 
additional 14 percent of reimbursement over the standard Medicare fee 
for service.
  Guess who gets to keep most of that. The insurance company gets to 
decide what they are going to do with most of it. It is true that in 
the 75 percent that the insurance company keeps per Medicare senior 
citizen in Medicare Advantage, that money often is given as a break to 
the senior citizen in things such as copays and the premium payments 
for Medicare Part B and Medicare Part D.
  That is why this Senator in the Finance Committee offered an 
amendment that would say: Okay, we are going to get Medicare back to 
being standardized where we are not going to give a cushy 14-percent 
extra to the insurance companies called Medicare Advantage. Instead, we 
are going to start getting that on a more competitive basis over time 
to bring those payments down. But it would not be fair to take it away 
from the seniors who already have it, so this Senator offered an 
amendment to grandfather in the seniors who have it now.
  So do we need health reform? You bet we do. And the Senator from Utah 
is over here. I commend him. Because he and I are cosponsors on another 
health reform bill that is even more visionary than what the two of us 
think is going to come to the floor. But it is a recognition that we 
have to reform the present system.
  I want to take this opportunity to try to set the record straight on 
some of the statements that have been made here. I look forward to 
continuing this debate on all sides of the issues as the bill comes to 
the floor.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for up to 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                        Tribute to Iris Morales

  Mr. KAUFMAN. I rise once again to recognize the service of one of 
America's great Federal employees. Right now the Congress, the 
President, and the American public are engaged in historic discussions 
about the future of our health insurance system. This is one of the 
most important issues facing the country.
  The dedicated public servant I will speak about today works for a 
government-run health insurance program already serving 44 million 
Americans. Medicare was established in 1965. Its mission is to provide 
coverage for all Americans over the age of 65. At the time of its 
creation, Medicare faced criticism from those who were apprehensive of 
a government-run health insurance program. Today, however, Medicare is 
praised as a great success. Indeed, its fiercest defenders sit on both 
sides in this Chamber.
  Medicare continues to protect nearly one out of every seven Americans 
against what would be otherwise prohibitive medical costs. The reason 
for its success is not only that it provides a much needed service to 
America's seniors; one of its greatest strengths is that the men and 
women who administer Medicare benefits are among the most outstanding 
Federal employees. They work for an agency called the Centers for 
Medicare and Medicaid Services or CMS. The CMS employee I will talk 
about today has worked as a Medicare benefits administrator for 11 
years. Iris Morales joined the CMS Chicago Regional Office after having 
first served several years in the Navy. She has been on the front line 
as a benefits administrator helping to set at ease those who contact 
the CMS with inquiries about their coverage.
  Iris has called her job incredibly rewarding, and she is one of so 
many Medicare administrators who spend their days solving problems for 
America's seniors. On one day she might work to make sure a cancer 
patient has access to lifesaving chemotherapy. On the next Iris might 
reassure beneficiaries that their copayments are low enough for them to 
afford critical treatments.
  Iris is set to retire next year, and when she does, she will join the 
ranks of Medicare beneficiaries herself. I know that Iris, as a 
beneficiary, will receive from those helping her in the

[[Page 25903]]

years to come the same kind of attention to detail, diligence, and 
professionalism she has demonstrated through her years at CMS.
  Iris Morales and all of the hard-working employees of CMS are proof 
of the constructive and important role our government already plays in 
ensuring Americans' access to affordable health care. I hope my 
colleagues will join me in recognizing this unsung hero and all of the 
employees at CMS. I honor their contributions, and I thank them for the 
great job they do every day. I know that America's seniors are grateful 
for their patience, their caring, and their service to the Nation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed 
to proceed as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                                  TARP

  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, it has been a little over a year since a 
group of us met in the Foreign Relations Committee room headed by the 
distinguished Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Dodd, to talk about the 
financial crisis we were facing and how we would deal with that. We 
came out of that meeting, held a press conference where we sounded 
perhaps more optimistic than we should have at the time about having a 
solution to that problem. And out of that has come now a name that is 
well known throughout the country called TARP. We did not call it that 
at the time.
  But we talked it through in a completely bipartisan and substantive 
way and voted for the rescue package that came out of that discussion. 
I voted for that package. I voted for the original disbursement of 
TARP. I stand by that vote a year later. It was the right vote, the 
right situation, the right time, and the right thing to do.
  But I will share now some of the thoughts that went into my 
participation in that particular meeting and some of the things that 
came out of it. In anticipation of the meeting, I called some people 
whose judgment I trust and discussed this. I was told Treasury cannot 
physically push $700 billion out the door. You cannot sign that many 
contracts. That is far too much money.
  The suggestion I made was: Why don't we give them $50 billion, 
because I was told that is the most they could spend in any one month. 
Why don't we give them $50 billion for 5 months or $250 billion and see 
how it works before we buy into the $700 billion number that Secretary 
Paulson was talking about.
  No, Secretary Paulson let us know he had to have $700 billion as the 
headline. He could not calm down the markets, the international 
markets, unless he had a number that big. We talked it over in that 
room and came up with this solution, which I think was a good one. We 
would give them a $700 billion headline, because we authorized $700 
billion, but we actually only gave him $350 billion and said he would 
have to come back to the Congress for the second 350.
  Also in that group--and it was not by any means my suggestion or 
anyone else's suggestion--it was overwhelmingly the consensus: We have 
to put some controls in here. We have a congressional oversight 
committee that we created. We have to create an inspector general. I 
remember one of the members of the group saying: I do not trust any 
Treasury Secretary, no matter how bright he is, with $700 billion and 
absolutely no reporting or transparency or control situation.
  One of the things that was discussed and that I thought was put in 
the bill was that when the money starts to come back--because, 
understand, TARP was not a bailout program in the sense that we gave 
money to people never to recover anything. It was a program where we 
were acquiring things, either acquiring collateral or acquiring stock. 
When the money starts to come back, it will be used to pay down the 
national debt. If we are going to expend $700 billion to stabilize the 
system, when the $700 billion comes back, it goes to reduce the debt 
that was created when it went out. That was my understanding of the 
agreement we made.
  Well, I voted for the TARP and I voted for the first $350 billion. 
After we came to the second tranche, the second $350 billion, listening 
to the inspector general and listening to what the congressional 
oversight committee had to say, and looking at how well the first $350 
billion had worked in stabilizing the situation and getting us past the 
panic we were facing, I voted against the second $350 billion because I 
was afraid it would turn into somewhat of a bailout fund that could be 
used for things other than acquiring assets that could be liquidated 
and bring money back to the Treasury. That is indeed what has happened, 
because much of the money went for things very different than that 
which we were talking about in that room that morning.
  The amendment I will offer to the bill, when we get on the bill, will 
be to sunset TARP at the end of this year. This is where we are. 
Treasury is sitting on about $370 billion in the TARP fund right now. 
The recession certainly is not over and the challenge in our economy is 
still there with tremendous force. But the crisis we were facing when 
we had that meeting is over, and Treasury, to deal with that kind of a 
crisis, no longer needs that money.
  The fear I have is that Treasury is starting to recycle the money and 
it is not going to pay down the national debt. It has become something 
of a slush fund to say: All right, if we have a circumstance here where 
we wish to spend some money, we cannot get it from the Congress, let's 
take it out of the TARP. If there is a situation over here where we 
think it might be helpful, and we cannot get the Congress to support 
us, let's take it out of the TARP. The temptation, sitting on $370 
billion, to spend that money, is overwhelming.
  When Secretary Geithner came before the Banking Committee or the 
Joint Economic Committee--I am sorry, I cannot, with my memory right 
now, put the exact committee to it--the question arose about repaying 
the national debt rather than recycling the money. He said the lawyers 
from the Treasury Department had looked at the act of Congress, and 
they made it clear we in the Congress had made it clear the money could 
be recycled, it could be relent, it could go out again. That came as a 
great surprise to me because I thought the conversation we had in that 
room, as the bill was being written, made it clear the money had to go 
to pay down the national debt. But I am not in a position to sue the 
Treasury and argue with their lawyers, and even if we did over the 
actual meaning of what was in the bill, it would take so many years to 
adjudicate there is no point in it.
  But it comes as a great surprise, as I say, to me that as the money 
comes back in--and money is coming back in from TARP--it does not go to 
pay down the national debt, and that it is being treated as a revolving 
fund, almost a revolving credit card, if you will, that the Treasury 
can use for the purposes it deems well.
  So I will offer an amendment that will sunset TARP at the end of this 
year. I will point out, the inspector general and the congressional 
oversight committee we set up on that occasion still have a number of 
questions about TARP and the way it is being used, and there is great 
concern that the transparency we had hoped for is not there.
  I had come to the decision to offer this amendment for myself and 
Senator Thune--and we will do so, if we are allowed to, when we get on 
the bill--long before the Wall Street Journal offered an editorial. But 
on October 27, the Wall Street Journal had an editorial entitled 
``Rolling up the TARP,'' which I ask unanimous consent be printed in 
the Record following my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. BENNETT. The lead paragraph I wish to quote. It says:

       The Troubled Asset Relief Program will expire on December 
     31, unless Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner exercises his 
     authority to extend it to next October.


[[Page 25904]]


  They obviously did not know about my amendment or I am sure they 
would have endorsed it.

       We hope he doesn't. Historians will debate TARP's role in 
     ending the financial panic of 2008, but today there is little 
     evidence that the government needs or can prudently manage 
     what has evolved into a $700 billion all-purpose political 
     bailout fund.
       We supported TARP to deal with toxic bank assets and 
     resolve failing banks as a resolution agency of the kind that 
     worked with savings and loans in the 1980s. Some taxpayer 
     money was needed beyond what the FDIC's shrinking insurance 
     fund had available. But TARP quickly became a Treasury tool 
     to save failing institutions without imposing discipline 
     (Citigroup) and even to force public capital onto banks that 
     didn't need it. This stigmatized all banks as taxpayer 
     supplicants and is now evolving into an excuse for the 
     Federal Reserve to micromanage compensation.

  I think we take the decision for Secretary Geithner and we sunset 
TARP on December 31, and that will be the amendment I will offer when 
we get on the bill.

                               Exhibit 1

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Oct. 27, 2009]

                          Rolling Up the TARP

       The $700 billion for banks has become an all-purpose 
     bailout fund.
       The Troubled Asset Relief Program will expire on December 
     31, unless Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner exercises his 
     authority to extend it to next October. We hope he doesn't. 
     Historians will debate TARP's role in ending the financial 
     panic of 2008, but today there is little evidence that the 
     government needs or can prudently manage what has evolved 
     into a $700 billion all-purpose political bailout fund.
       We supported TARP to deal with toxic bank assets and 
     resolve failing banks as a resolution agency of the kind that 
     worked with savings and loans in the 1980s. Some taxpayer 
     money was needed beyond what the FDIC's shrinking insurance 
     fund had available. But TARP quickly became a Treasury tool 
     to save failing institutions without imposing discipline 
     (Citigroup) and even to force public capital onto banks that 
     didn't need it. This stigmatized all banks as taxpayer 
     supplicants and is now evolving into an excuse for the 
     Federal Reserve to micromanage compensation.
       TARP was then redirected well beyond the financial system 
     into $80 billion in ``investments'' for auto companies. These 
     may never be repaid but served as a lever to abuse creditors 
     and favor auto unions. TARP also bought preferred stock in 
     struggling insurers Lincoln and Hartford, though insurance 
     companies are not subject to bank runs and pose no ``systemic 
     risk.'' They erode slowly as customers stop renewing 
     policies.
       TARP also became another fund for Congress to pay off the 
     already heavily subsidized housing industry by financing home 
     mortgage modifications. Not one cent of the $50 billion in 
     TARP funds earmarked to modify home mortgages will be 
     returned to the Treasury, says the Congressional Budget 
     Office.
       As of the end of September, Mr. Geithner was sitting on 
     $317 billion of uncommitted TARP funds, thanks in part to 
     bank repayments. But this sum isn't the limit of his check-
     writing ability. Treasury considers TARP a ``revolving 
     fund.'' If taxpayers are ever paid back by AIG, GM, Chrysler, 
     Citigroup and the rest, Treasury believes it has the 
     authority to spend that returned money on new adventures in 
     housing or other parts of the economy.
       A TARP renewal by Mr. Geithner could thus put at risk the 
     entire $700 billion. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas) and 
     former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins sit on TARP's 
     Congressional Oversight Panel. They warn that the entire 
     taxpayer pot could be converted into subsidies. They are 
     especially concerned about expanding the foreclosure 
     prevention programs that have been failing by every measure.
       TARP inspector general Neil Barofsky agrees that the 
     mortgage modifications ``will yield no direct return'' and 
     notes charitably that ``full recovery is far from certain'' 
     on the money sent to AIG and Detroit. Mr. Barofsky also notes 
     that since Washington runs huge deficits, and interest rates 
     are almost sure to rise in coming years, TARP will be 
     increasingly expensive as the government pays more to borrow.
       Even with the banks, TARP has been a double-edged sword. 
     While its capital injections saved some banks, its lack of 
     transparency created uncertainty that arguably prolonged the 
     panic. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former 
     Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson recently admitted to Mr. 
     Barofsky what everyone figured at the time of the first 
     capital injections. Although they claimed in October 2008 
     they were providing capital only to healthy banks, Mr. 
     Bernanke now says some of the firms were under stress. Mr. 
     Paulson now admits that he thought one in particular was in 
     danger of failing. By forcing all nine to take the money, 
     they prevented the weaklings from being stigmatized.
       ays Mr. Barofsky, ``In addition to the basic transparency 
     concern that this inconsistency raises, by stating expressly 
     that the `healthy' institutions would be able to increase 
     overall lending, Treasury created unrealistic expectations 
     about the institutions' conditions and their ability to 
     increase lending.''
       The government also endangered one of the banks that they 
     considered healthy at the time. In December, Mr. Paulson 
     pressured Bank of America to complete its purchase of Merrill 
     Lynch. His position is that a failed deal would have hurt 
     both firms, but this is highly speculative. Mr. Barofsky 
     reports that, according to Fed documents, the government 
     viewed BofA as well-capitalized, but officials believed that 
     its tangible common equity would fall to dangerously low 
     levels if it had to absorb the sinking Merrill.
       In other words, by insisting that BofA buy Merrill, Messrs. 
     Paulson and Bernanke were spreading systemic risk by stuffing 
     a failing institution into a relatively sound one. And they 
     were stuffing an investment bank into one of the nation's 
     largest institutions whose deposits were guaranteed by 
     taxpayers. BofA would later need billions of dollars more in 
     TARP cash to survive that forced merger, and when that news 
     became public it helped to extend the overall financial 
     panic.
       Treasury and the Fed would prefer to keep TARP as insurance 
     in case the recovery falters and the banking system hits the 
     skids again. But the more transparent way to address this 
     risk is by buttressing the FDIC fund that insures bank 
     deposits and resolves failing banks. The political class has 
     twisted TARP into a fund to finance its pet programs and 
     constituents, and the faster it fades away, the better for 
     taxpayers and the financial system.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Cantwell). The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. DODD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed 
to speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DODD. Madam President, before I get to the substance of my 
remarks, let me comment briefly, if I can, on the comments of my 
colleague and friend from Utah, Senator Bennett. He has been an 
invaluable Member when it comes to these issues of economics in our 
country. His background and experience has brought a wealth of talent 
to this institution at some very critical moments.
  I want my colleagues to know, as the new chairman of the Banking 
Committee after the election of 2006, I happened to have been in the 
position of being asked to manage a situation that began, as many will 
recall, back in September of last year. September 18 is a date which 
will be forever emblazoned in my mind and memory. It was on that 
evening that a small group of us were asked to gather in the office of 
the Speaker of the House, where Chairman Bernanke of the Federal 
Reserve Bank and Secretary Paulson, the Secretary of the Treasury, 
announced to us that we had a matter of days to act as a Congress or we 
would face a meltdown of our financial system in this country and 
elsewhere.
  In some ways, it was the economic equivalent to 9/11. It took all the 
oxygen out of the room, I can tell you. I was sitting next to Dick 
Shelby, my friend from Alabama. As I say, there were about 10 or 12 of 
us in that room that evening who received that message.
  Within 2 weeks, from September 18 to the end of the month, we ended 
up voting here on the floor that night--we all sat in our chairs, as we 
do on rare occasions when there is a moment of significant import. 
Every single Member cast a ballot from their seat.
  I knew that evening, by the way, as I listened to the call of the 
roll, that there were several of our colleagues here who were 40 days 
away from the election, and that probably they were going to lose their 
seats if they supported the proposal. And they did. But they did what I 
thought was the courageous and right thing to do. And 74 people voted 
that night in favor of it; 25 against. Our colleague from Massachusetts 
was not here that evening, Ted Kennedy. There were 99 Senators.
  As long as I live, I will never forget that vote that evening because 
I think it is what the Founders sort of had in mind. We recall--those 
of us who were here, I am sure my friend from Florida remembers, it 
made the townhall meetings pale by comparison--the reaction over those 
2 weeks across the Nation. There will be historians who debate the 
wisdom of the specifics of the bill.

[[Page 25905]]

  But I recall with great clarity the morning my friend from Utah just 
described, with about five of us in the room, and that was S-116, one 
floor down from where we stand this evening. We met to try and fashion 
together something on a bipartisan basis that we could present to our 
colleagues and the administration and others that would incorporate the 
protections we thought we could pull together in a space of days to 
respond to this, and with the necessary resources.
  Bob Bennett was the author, as I recall, who insisted we break up 
this proposal into two parts so we would have a chance to evaluate the 
success of it. I think it was a remarkable and very valuable suggestion 
that contributed significantly to the outcome of that vote. It also 
offered those an opportunity at a later date to determine whether to 
proceed with it.
  There were differences of opinion about that, and, again, historians 
will debate this. But the people of this country ought to know that a 
guy named Bob Bennett from the State of Utah, along with several 
others, played a role which I think helped save our country at a 
critical moment. We have a lot of disagreements around here. I am a 
Democrat from New England. He is a Republican from Utah, although, as 
he well knows, my wife's family is from Utah, so I have some Utah 
connections. But it was one of those moments where I think Americans 
would like to think we can act around here when a crisis occurs.
  While we differ and disagree on a lot of issues, as he knows, despite 
our friendship--as long as I live, in the years I have served here, 
that morning, that occasion, and the events that followed in the short 
days afterwards, I think, helped keep this country on a stable footing 
and we avoided the kind of depression and collapse that could have 
occurred.
  I did not intend to speak about this, but since he addressed the 
issue--I have kept a lot of notes about those 2 weeks. I have copious 
notes, almost 500 pages of them, that describe the events of those 2 
weeks in great detail because I was involved in every meeting and every 
drafting session. So I can tell you down to every dotted ``i'' and 
crossed ``t'' what happened during those 2 weeks. It was a moment of 
great import, and I thank my friend from Utah for his contribution to 
all of that.
  Madam President, I want to address the issue of the Unemployment 
Compensation Extension Act. I am sorry we are still here debating this. 
This legislation was introduced nearly 3 weeks ago, and twice the 
adoption of this bill has been stopped, despite overwhelming support. 
Yesterday 87 of us voted to get us one step closer to extending 
unemployment benefits. We all would prefer to be talking about how we 
can get people back to work than extending benefits. It would be far 
better for the Nation if we could talk about what we are doing to 
create jobs.
  But in the interim, while we have not created as many jobs as we 
would like, providing benefits is crucial. Let me take a moment to add 
that we would not be here at all without the work of our colleague from 
New Hampshire, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who has championed this issue 
over the last month or so as a new Member. We are neighbors in New 
England, but she speaks for the country when she talks about the 
importance of this issue and what a difference it has made in the lives 
of families, as they struggle to keep their homes and provide the 
necessary resources for their children and others.
  As part of this effort--and I know there is some debate--I wanted to 
also recognize my colleague and friend from Georgia, Johnny Isakson. 
The two of us have been working, as many of my colleagues know, on a 
proposal to extend and expand the first-time home buyer tax credit. 
Senator Isakson has been the leader on this issue. I commend him for 
it, and I want to thank him and his staff for their work to get this 
extension before the credit runs out on November 30.
  Already we have seen the impact of this credit on jump-starting the 
housing sector. Sales of existing homes rose 9.4 percent in September--
the highest level in 2 years. Extending this credit, in our view, 
temporarily through the slowest housing sales months would help 
maintain the recovery.
  The great fear everyone has is that without swift action these good 
signals we have been getting--and while certainly not a recovery yet, 
they are an indication we may be heading now in the right direction--
will stall during these critical cold months, and the winter months are 
difficult months for the housing sector. I think inaction would be a 
great mistake.
  This legislation he and I have authored would extend the current 
credit through the spring, increase the income limitations, and provide 
a slightly smaller credit to the so-called move-up market--not just 
first-time home buyers, but the move-up market--helping to make more 
than 70 percent of current home buyers eligible for this credit.
  I want to stress, as my colleague from Georgia has on numerous 
occasions, including during a hearing I held only a few days ago of the 
Senate Banking Committee--where he testified eloquently, I might add, 
that this tax credit needs to be temporary. Democrats and Republicans 
on the committees, I think, were deeply impressed with how 
knowledgeable Johnny Isakson is about real estate issues. He spent more 
than three decades in the business and knows it well, and he impressed, 
I think, all of us with his knowledge of this industry and what a 
critical component it is of our economy.
  That aspect he advocated for, as I mentioned before, is that the 
effectiveness of this credit depends on it being temporary, which it 
is. That will encourage, we believe, prospective home buyers to buy 
that home now--those who are thinking about it. Extending it 
continuously would not.
  I want to indicate to my colleagues that this credit should remain 
temporary and not become a tax extender that we extend year after year 
after year after year, as we do in certain other areas of our economy.
  But neither the unemployed nor prospective home buyers will be helped 
by stalling on the speedy passage of this legislation.
  Every night for 3 weeks now--going back to the unemployment 
compensation issue--we have gone home and not had to worry about how we 
are going to make those mortgage payments or feed our families. We are 
Senators, and so we have these jobs that provide us with more than a 
decent income, and we never have to feel that gnawing worry about 
whether there is going to be enough money to allow us to keep our homes 
or to see to it that our families are going to have the basic 
necessities they need.
  Every night--every night--7,000 more Americans in our Nation have 
exhausted their unemployment benefits. So for 3 weeks--7,000 people a 
day have had their jobless benefits run out. They do not have jobs. 
They do not have benefits to help them. These are hard-working people 
who contribute to our economy and contribute to our country, their 
families, and their neighborhoods. They have been good providers. And 
because of a collapsing economy--which they did not create--they find 
themselves in the dire circumstances where they are unable to meet 
those obligations at home.
  Over the years I have been in this body, we have come together during 
critical moments like this--never quite as serious as this one--and 
have extended those benefits to people because we know how important it 
is to them. We have been able to come together to get it done. Yet now, 
for nearly 3 weeks, we have been stalled in our effort to provide 
needed relief.
  I mentioned early we provided relief for the banks, $700 billion in 
relief, in less time than it is taking us to provide relief to jobless 
workers. That is what Bob Bennett and I were doing. We had a crisis in 
the country. So we worked on the legislation for 2 weeks. From 
September 18 to October 1, that is how long it took for us to come 
together and vote 74 to 25 to provide $700 billion to stabilize the 
financial institutions in this country. I think we did the right thing. 
History will debate it.

[[Page 25906]]

Here we have been nearly 3 weeks and we can't even come up with 
unemployment compensation for the 7,000 people every day who are losing 
these benefits.
  You explain that to the American public. This collapse occurred in 
our economy not because they did anything wrong, but because they lost 
their job. Here we are still 3 weeks later dithering about whether we 
can get some special amendment we would like added that has nothing to 
do with this issue--ACORN payments or other proposals. I don't question 
the sincerity of people, but why would they allow that to obstruct an 
extension of jobless benefits that hundreds of thousands of Americans 
so desperately need?
  In total, since playing politics with this issue, 140,000 Americans 
have exhausted their benefits. That is my math. We know this is 
important. Last night we had 87 votes to move to the motion to proceed, 
but here we are running out 30 more hours while another 7,000 people 
are losing those benefits.
  So I don't have to tell my colleagues how vital this lifeline is for 
families back home in their states. They all know it. People can't find 
work. They need a little help to put food on the table and make ends 
meet until they can find that job again. Unfortunately, this recession 
is hitting families in all of our States.
  According to the National Employment Law Project, nearly 14,500 
people in my home State of Connecticut and 400,000 people nationwide 
have already exhausted all of their unemployment benefits. By the end 
of the year, that will rise to 20,000 people in my State, 1.4 million 
people across the country.
  One of my constituents wrote in desperation the following:

       I have been without benefits for two months now. I have a 
     family of 5. Every day is a struggle. My husband and I have 
     been looking for work every day. There are no jobs! Something 
     has to change. I ran out of my benefits. Please have someone 
     help not only me, but everyone that is without work.

  It is not just these people who will suffer when these benefits run 
out; it will be their children. It will be the local businesses whose 
customers can't afford to buy their products anymore. It will be the 
local governments who lose tax revenues that pay the salaries of our 
policemen and firefighters.
  We have a good bill that I worked on with Senator Baucus, Senator 
Reid, and, as I said, Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire, who has been 
our champion on this issue. Our new freshman Senator from New Hampshire 
has led the way, and again, her leadership has been invaluable.
  Madam President, 140,000 people over 3 weeks whose benefits have run 
out while Republicans have stood in the way of this important 
legislation, I think, deserve better. We managed to give the banks $700 
billion in 2 weeks; we ought to be able to take care of people who are 
losing their benefits by passing a bill that they need so desperately.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Thank you, Madam President. I wish to thank Senator 
Dodd from Connecticut for his kind words and for all of the work he has 
done to try and move an unemployment extension for people, and for his 
eloquence in talking about the need to help those people who are 
currently running out of their benefits. As is the Senator from 
Connecticut, I am here one more time to voice my support for the 
Unemployment Compensation Extension Act.
  I am pleased, as the Senator from Connecticut is, that yesterday the 
Senate voted by an overwhelming majority to move this legislation 
forward. But like the Senator from Connecticut, I remain very 
disappointed that even with 87 votes to move forward, we are still here 
today. Another day has gone by, a day when 7,000 more workers have lost 
their benefits, and the opponents of this extension are still playing 
politics to hold up the help that so many people around the country 
need.
  During the delay of the past 3 weeks, more than 100,000 Americans 
have exhausted their unemployment benefits. Without this extension, 
nearly 2 million jobless workers will lose their benefits by the end of 
the year. The American people should be outraged by this continued 
delay.
  I would like to read an e-mail I got this morning from Jane McDermott 
from Stoddard, NH. Jane has been unemployed for over a year, and she 
will exhaust her remaining benefits in the next 2 weeks. She writes:

       Right now, receiving unemployment means I can eat and I can 
     pay for my medication. Those of us who are still unemployed 
     still have bills and property taxes to pay. With the rug 
     being pulled out from under us, it means being on the edge of 
     homelessness.

  She writes to me:

       I urge you to make this fight a priority. Here in New 
     Hampshire there are many, including myself, who depend on 
     having heat, lights, and even enough gas in our cars to 
     search for employment each and every day, especially over the 
     holidays.

  She signs her e-mail: Sincerely, Jane McDermott from Stoddard.
  Jane McDermott is out looking for work every day, but with more than 
six people out of work for every job opening, she hasn't been able to 
find that new job. She is like millions of hard-working Americans from 
every community and every State and every part of our country. This is 
just one out of dozens of calls and e-mails my office gets every single 
day.
  So I urge my colleagues to stop playing politics and to pass this 
extension. It is the right thing to do for our unemployed workers, and 
it is the right thing to do to stimulate our economy. Let's not let one 
more day go by without extending unemployment benefits for the tens of 
thousands who need them all across this country.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Madam President, I note the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent 
that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to 
speak as in morning business for 1 hour. I also ask unanimous consent 
to engage in a colloquy with other Senators who may join me.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Madam President, first, let me speak on the 
issue that Senator Jeanne Shaheen spoke about before me just briefly. I 
wish to compliment her for being such a champion for extending 
unemployment compensation. We are talking about people who, in many 
cases, through no fault of their own, lost employment. They may well be 
the only provider for their family. They don't have the wherewithal to 
support their family.
  We have in this recession, this deep recession we are in the middle 
of, several times for people like that, extended unemployment benefits. 
Senator Shaheen and Senator Dodd and others who have spoken have 
described the personal circumstances people are in. We can't believe we 
can't move this legislation along to extend unemployment compensation 
benefits. These people need help in the recession and most likely they 
are the dollars that will be spent in the economy.
  I wish to describe the procedure that has occurred. We had 87 
Senators vote on a motion to proceed. The first thing we did to get on 
to a piece of legislation such as this unemployment benefits 
compensation legislation was we filed a motion to proceed because we 
didn't have the consent of the Republican leadership. We were then 
required to let that motion for cloture ripen over a 2-day period. So 
as many have watched, there hasn't been necessarily a lot of debate. It 
has ripened. We had the vote after 2 days--87 votes. Then, after 87 
said we should move forward on the motion to proceed, there was a 30-
hour postcloture period.
  Well, what has happened with that is we also haven't had that much 
debate occurring on the Senate floor, but the time continues to run. So 
these delay

[[Page 25907]]

tactics--they are called filibuster tactics, but in a way it isn't a 
filibuster. There is nobody here filibustering most of the time. So it 
is a delay tactic to do something the Nation needs.
  So I compliment all of the Senators who are standing up for this 
legislation. I know Senator Whitehouse is also one who believes we 
should pass unemployment compensation legislation very quickly.


                           Health Care Reform

  Madam President, we are here again this evening as a group of 
Senators--Senator Whitehouse has joined me--to strongly support the 
inclusion of a public option in health care reform legislation. I 
encourage other Senators who support the public option to come down and 
join us.
  We were heartened earlier this week when majority leader Harry Reid 
announced that he would include a public option in the bill he is 
merging from the Senate Finance and HELP Committees. Senator Reid 
showed real leadership in developing a compromise that includes the 
public option, something that a wide majority of Americans support and 
want included in this reform.
  This is another step in the direction of meaningful reform, but we 
are by no means finished with this debate. We expect defenders of the 
status quo, as well as those who continue to put insurance company 
profits over people, to step up their attacks and step up their 
misinformation campaign. The bottom line is that a public option is the 
best proposal on the table to help keep the insurance companies honest. 
It will insert much needed competition into the insurance market, and 
it will give Americans another affordable, quality choice for their 
health insurance needs.
  So with all of that said tonight, I want to continue by highlighting 
a story out of New Mexico. It is a letter I received from a woman from 
Placitas, NM. She is a small business owner who wrote to tell me about 
a rate increase notice she got from her health insurer. She was told to 
expect a 9- or 10-percent increase next year. For two people, that will 
mean $2,300 a month in premiums she will have to pay. Here is what she 
wrote:

       We can't afford it. I am now faced with the likelihood of 
     having to drop insurance which for two cancer survivors is 
     not the right answer.

  I know I speak for many of my colleagues here tonight when I say our 
offices get dozens and dozens of e-mails and letters like this each and 
every week. Americans are struggling, and they are looking to us for 
relief from an impossible situation they cannot fight or win.
  There was a story in the newspaper over the weekend that I think 
illustrates how urgent this situation has become. It illustrates why a 
public option must be a part of this reform. In the newspaper it was 
reported that many small businesses are facing the steepest rises in 
insurance premiums they have seen in years. That is saying a lot 
considering that insurance premiums have already more than doubled over 
the past 9 years.
  In this news story, insurance brokers and benefits consultants said 
their small business clients are seeing premiums go up an average of 
about 15 percent for next year and in some places as high as 23 
percent. That is double the rate of last year's increases which were 
already unacceptably high. Do you know why these small businesses are 
seeing such big increases? This report said it is because insurers are 
trying to raise their premiums ahead of anything we do legislatively 
that might reduce their profits.
  Health insurance companies are only looking out for themselves and 
their own profits. It is up to us to look out for hard-working 
Americans. It is up to us to look out for America's entrepreneurs, 
those small business men and women whose companies employ some 40 
percent of American workers.
  With that, I will open the floor to my colleagues. Let's talk about 
what a public option would mean for small businesses and how difficult 
it is for American entrepreneurs to keep their heads above water as 
health insurance companies continue to raise their rates, deny them 
coverage, or drop them completely when they place a claim to be 
reimbursed.
  I see Senator Whitehouse here. He has been a champion throughout this 
process in terms of the public option. I will yield to him. I also see 
Senator Durbin here, our majority whip, who I hope will join us, who 
has also been an incredible champion when he stands up in leadership 
time and throughout the day on the public option.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I thank the Senator from New Mexico 
for organizing this time.
  What do we mean by a public option? To begin with, I will explain a 
little what our public option is and why it is so important. Then I 
have some stories from people in Rhode Island who have contacted me and 
who are exactly the reason we need to do this.
  The first thing you will hear is our friends on the other side saying 
that the public option is a government takeover of the health care 
system, that it is going to squeeze out private providers and it will 
be subsidized by taxpayers and all these things. I know something about 
the public option that came out of the HELP Committee because, along 
with Sherrod Brown and Kay Hagan, I wrote it. So I know a little bit 
about what it does. Those things are just not true.
  The design of the public option is that it exists State by State. In 
each State, it has to stay solvent. It can't lose money. The government 
puts up the money any insurance company needs to start with, the 
initial capital. After that, the public option in each State, from its 
revenues, the premiums it charges, has to make money and stay solvent. 
If not, it fails like any other company. Secretary Sebelius of HHS is 
mandated to make sure each State's operation runs on a solvent basis. 
So there is no taxpayer bailout. It is head-to-head competition on a 
level playing field, and the insurance companies, frankly, should not 
be frightened of it. They are, but the reason they are has a lot to do 
with their bad practices and very little to do with anything about the 
design of the public option.
  One of the reasons we need it, to give a little background on this, 
you have to remember where our national health expenditures are going. 
Look at this chart. This is how much we spend on health care.
  I was born in 1955, when we were spending $12.5 billion a year on 
health care in this country. We probably spend that much a day now. In 
1979, just after I graduated from college, by then we had gone from 
roughly $12 billion a year to $220 billion a year. In 1987, which was 
about when my daughter was born, we were over $500 billion or $\1/2\ 
trillion a year. In 1992, we were at $849 billion a year. In 2009, we 
are at $2.5 trillion a year. You can see the shape of the curve on the 
chart. It is not going out and leveling off. It is getting steeper and 
steeper. Costs are going through the roof, and the private insurance 
industry is driving that.
  There are big savings that can be achieved. The President of the 
United States, President Obama, and his Council of Economic Advisers 
issued a report in July of this year that said:

       Efficiency improvements in the U.S. health care system 
     potentially could free up resources equal to 5 percent of the 
     U.S. GDP.

  They continued:

       It should be possible to cut total health expenditures by 
     about 30 percent without worsening outcomes . . . which would 
     again suggest that savings on the order of 5 percent of GDP 
     could be feasible.

  If you do the math, based on GDP, 5 percent is more than $700 billion 
a year--that is $700 billion with a ``b''--in excess costs in our 
health care system. So we have a big target this public option can 
shoot for.
  People say: Well, if there is no subsidy involved, how is it that the 
public option is going to be able to compete against these private 
insurers and save costs? Well, three ways:
  No. 1, no profits necessary; they will be not-for-profit. In Rhode 
Island, about a year ago, United Health Care, a big private insurance 
company which has a 16-percent market share in Rhode Island--and we are 
a small State; we are not like Illinois or even New Mexico; we are only 
a million people. So

[[Page 25908]]

this is a company in a State of a million people with only a 16-percent 
market share, and they asked to remove $37 million in profits from that 
1 year out of the State to go back and pay for salaries of CEOs and 
shareholders and all that. Think how much $37 million could have been 
delivered in health care to 16 percent of the insured population of 
Rhode Island, a State of only a million people, if it didn't have to go 
out in profit. So that is one thing. Profits don't have to be sucked 
out of the system.
  Second is administrative costs. One of the reasons this cost keeps 
going up is because the administrative costs of the insurance companies 
go up. In 2000, while these costs were going up, they were raising 
their administrative costs by more than 100 percent. What did they do 
with those administrative costs? They make it more difficult for you to 
get care and harder for your doctor to get permission to give you the 
treatment you need.
  You hear the other side talking about government bureaucrats standing 
between you and health care. They don't stand between you and your 
health care; insurance company bureaucrats stand between you and your 
health care. And they are getting better at it all the time. The 
armamentarium they are creating to make it difficult for providers to 
get paid and get authority to go forward is getting more complex and 
expensive every year.
  In addition to the fact that those costs have doubled, gone up more 
than 100 percent, what do the doctors and hospitals have to do? They 
have to fight back or else they will get rolled.
  So you have this whole other cost. I went to the Cranston Community 
Health Center, a wonderful community health center in Cranston, RI. 
They told me that 50 percent of their personnel are not dedicated to 
providing health care but are dedicated to fighting with the insurance 
companies to get paid and to get prior authorization. On top of that, 
50 percent of their personnel--they pay almost $300,000 a year to fancy 
consultants whom they have to hire to fight back against the insurance 
industry.
  So one thing they can stop doing is taking the profits out. Another 
thing they can do is to wind down all that administrative cost, stop 
torturing the doctors and hospitals, let them wind down their 
administrative costs, and bring down the arms race over claims payments 
and approval we are living with right now. That is something a public 
option can do in addition to not taking out profits.
  The third thing is to reform the health care system. We have all 
heard the testimony and seen the steps we put into our legislation to 
improve the quality of health care. When you improve the quality of 
health care, it saves money. It is interesting the way that works. When 
you improve the infection rate in intensive care units, people get out 
sooner and they don't get those postoperative infections, and it costs 
about $60,000 for infections, on average. It saves money. Everybody is 
out sooner and the costs are less. In Michigan, in 15 months, they 
saved $150 million and 1,500 lives just by cleaning up and preventing 
infections in hospital intensive care units.
  So you can save money and save lives if you are focused on improving 
quality instead of torturing the doctors and the providers and denying 
care and trying to throw people out when they get sick. It is a 
different way of going about the business. But it is something a public 
option can do.
  The same logic applies to the prevention of illness. We don't do 
anywhere near enough to prevent illness in this country. A public 
option is willing to invest in prevention. We will invest in health 
information technology and in promoting better public health records 
for everybody. We will make sure people understand the value of the 
treatments they get, how much they cost, and whether they work. People 
will make better decisions about their care.
  Finally, through the public option we will be able to stop paying 
doctors and hospitals for doing more and more tests and procedures and 
pay them for results. That will help change the direction of American 
medicine. That is how you get to the $700 billion a year the 
President's Council on Economic Advisers said could be saved in our 
health care system.
  People talk about the Lewin Group, which is a knowledgeable group 
about health insurance and health care costs. Here is what they say:

       Current levels of spending could be reduced by limiting 
     excess consumption, managing disease, promoting competition 
     and improving transactions.

  Here are the sources of potential excess costs. Right now, they are 
at $2.4 billion, the total cost. You can save $151 billion in excess 
costs from incentives to overuse services; $519 billion in excess costs 
from poor care management and lifestyle factors; $135 billion from 
excess costs due to competition and regulatory factors; $203 billion 
from excess costs due to transactional inefficiency. That is a fancy 
way of talking about administrative warfare between insurers and 
doctors.
  There are big savings to be had out there, and this legislation 
builds in those tools--quality, prevention, transparency, information 
technology, and payment reform. The key to making them all work their 
best is a public option that will pick them up and do the job for the 
American people.
  The question fundamentally for this legislation is, Do you trust the 
private insurance industry? Do you trust the people who, if you have a 
preexisting condition, won't let you in the door or will deny coverage 
for that? Do you trust the people who, the first time you show up after 
having been a loyal customer for years, the first thing they do is go 
back to look at the form to see if you filled it out wrong so they can 
throw you off because suddenly you became ill and expensive? Do you 
trust the people who, when you get sick and your doctor recommends 
treatment, butt in and say: No, no, no, we don't want you to get that 
treatment; we want something different than what your doctor 
recommends. They will say it is because of quality, but what you will 
notice is that every single time the insurance company steps in to 
prevent your care from coming from your doctor, what they recommend is 
something that is cheaper for them. They have never once said: Wait a 
minute, what the doctor recommended is not right, you need a more 
expensive regime of care because we want to treat you right. No, they 
say: Sorry, that is too expensive; we are cutting you off. Do you trust 
that industry to lead America out of this cost problem and into this 
new future? I don't. That is why we need the public option. And I think 
there are other reasons.
  Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Yes, I am happy to.
  Mr. DURBIN. One of the aspects of the bill now being considered by 
the Congressional Budget Office is the opt-out provision. We have heard 
from the Republican side of the aisle for as long as this debate has 
gone on about their resistance and opposition to the idea of so-called 
government-run health care.
  I have yet to hear the first Republican Senator come to the floor and 
suggest we eliminate Medicare, which is a government-run health care 
program which some 40 million Americans use every day to protect 
themselves when they need health insurance; nor have they suggested 
eliminating Medicaid, which involves health insurance for the poorest 
in America. Some 40 million to 50 million Americans are covered by 
Medicaid. They have not suggested eliminating veterans health care, 
another government health care program which helps millions of those 
who served our country; nor have they suggested eliminating the 
Children's Health Insurance Program, a creation of the Federal 
Government, so that literally millions of children across America have 
this kind of protection and the parents have peace of mind.
  By my estimation, more than a third of the people in America have 
protection from government health insurance. Although our friends on 
the Republican side are critical of government health insurance, they 
do not want to eliminate any part of it, but they are arguing that 
basically Americans do not like it.

[[Page 25909]]

  The polls say otherwise. When you ask the American people, throughout 
this debate, they say: We are generally confused, but we do know one 
thing; that is, if we have a chance to get Medicare for everybody, two 
out of three would like to see that. That is a government health 
program that two out of three Americans would like.
  Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, prepared a bill 
with a public option with an opt-out provision. I ask the Senator from 
Rhode Island what the opt-out provision will mean for those political 
leaders or people or legislatures or Governors in the States who might 
come to the same conclusion as our Republicans here, that they are 
opposed to any form of a public option that might involve the 
government.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The opt-out plan, as I understand it, would allow 
States to decide they don't want a public option in their State, so 
they don't have to have one. Each of us comes here representing a 
State. My colleague is the very distinguished majority whip, but he is 
also the Senator from Illinois. Our distinguished friend, Mr. Udall, is 
the Senator from New Mexico.
  The health care our constituents get is delivered to them almost 
entirely in our States. So one would think it would be satisfying to 
the people on the other side who object to a public option that they 
could go home and they could say: You know what. This public option is 
a terrible idea. You know what I have done. I have worked out an opt-
out and have protected you from it. It is only these crazies in places 
such as Rhode Island who want to take advantage of the public option. 
But I have saved you, and it is their funeral.
  The way we designed it, as I mentioned earlier, is State to State it 
has to be solvent. There is no cross-subsidization, that one State has 
to carry the water for another State. They would not have to pay for 
Rhode Island's costs if they got out of control, whether they have a 
public option or they do not. So they are protected.
  One would think that would be an adequate argument for them. The fact 
that it is not an adequate argument suggests to me there is a little 
bit more at stake; that the real party in interest is not the 
constituents of their own States, it is the private insurance industry.
  Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator will yield, to put clarity and a final 
point on this, if this is enacted into law and a Governor or some 
leaders in any given State decide that the public option in their 
State, giving the people who live in that State an additional choice 
when it comes to the health insurance they want to buy, if they decide 
that is too extreme, too socialistic, too French--whatever they happen 
to decide--they could initiate an effort to eliminate the public option 
under this law so it would not apply to anyone living in their State. 
Whether these are the folks inspired by the tea party folks or others, 
they have their chance. They have the last word as to whether there 
will be a public option in their State.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Absolutely, it is wide open, as the distinguished 
majority whip has pointed out. The choice would entirely be theirs.
  I suspect what we would see is, many people who are railing against 
the public option right here would find that their States, when they 
actually had the choice, would take it. Ninety-four percent of U.S. 
insurance markets are deemed highly concentrated by the U.S. Department 
of Justice. That is like the alarm going off in those markets, saying 
that if you find anticompetitive behavior, because that market is 
highly concentrated, you focus on it. You have to act.
  Ninety-four percent of our major urban areas are in that situation. 
So to add another choice for those consumers I think is something that 
when practical people look at it in real life and see what its effects 
will be in real people's homes and in their jobs and in their finances 
and in their world, it will be a lot harder to keep it going, but it 
will be their choice.
  Mr. DURBIN. If I can make one last point in a question. I know the 
Senator from Rhode Island is a former prosecutor, as is the Senator 
from New Mexico. When we come to the competitive nature of insurance 
companies--I know the Senator from Rhode Island was with me at a 
hearing recently in the Senate Judiciary Committee on the McCarran-
Ferguson law, which in the 1940s exempted insurance companies--in this 
case, health insurance companies and medical malpractice insurance 
companies--from antitrust regulations, so that literally the executives 
of insurance companies--in this case health insurance companies--could 
all meet in a room and decide what the premiums would be in any given 
place in America, across the Nation. They could meet together and come 
to a common agreement as to which States would be dominated by which 
companies and, as I understand the McCarran-Ferguson law, the Federal 
Government would have no power to stop them.
  We can stop virtually any other group of companies trying to do the 
same anticompetitive things, but there is no power to stop the health 
insurance companies because of McCarran-Ferguson under our Federal 
antitrust laws.
  I say to the Senator from Rhode Island, does this not also suggest 
that when the health insurance companies threaten they are going to 
raise premiums, we ought to take them seriously? They have the power to 
do it, and they certainly have a long, rich history of doing that. So 
when they say: If you pass health care reform, we are going to raise 
premiums, count on it; they are going to do it.
  If we do not create the competition of a not-for-profit public option 
health insurance company, they literally will not face competition.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Yes, exactly correct. Unless they are involved in 
boycott or coercion, they can fix prices, carve up territories, do 
innumerable anticompetitive things that any other industry in America 
would have to answer for in a court of law. They get a pass on it 
because of the McCarran-Ferguson Act. But it shows, as the Senator from 
Illinois is pointing out, how vitally important competition is because 
that public option, I doubt it is going to sit down with private 
insurance industry and fix prices or carve up territories. It will have 
a public purpose and a public function, and it will be serving the 
people rather than the shareholders of the insurance company.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Madam President, I say to Senator 
Whitehouse, let me join in here with him and Senator Durbin because the 
thing he pointed out--and that is the crux of this argument, right here 
on this chart--that when we talk about a public option--and the Senator 
has hit it over and over again and Senator Durbin mentioned it--it is 
competitiveness. That is what we want to see, competitiveness. We are 
not talking about a government takeover. We are not talking about 
single payer. We are not talking about all these things our friends on 
the other side of the aisle say about this reform. We are talking about 
making the system more competitive.
  People may not realize that in many of our States, when you talk 
about insurance company monopolies, there are States where more than 75 
percent are covered by just two insurers. So we have the State of 
Montana with two insurers, more than 75 percent of the market. Look at 
Minnesota, Iowa, all these darker States, Maine. These States have very 
little competition going on.
  What the Senator talked about is, No. 1, the Federal Government 
cannot move in. I don't know if Senator Durbin heard this. But at the 
beginning, there was a big national news article that said the 
insurance companies are getting ready to raise the rates because they 
know reform is coming, and there is not a single thing the Federal 
Government can do about it. We have a great antitrust unit over in the 
Justice Department, but they cannot do anything about it because we 
have these laws in place.
  This is, once again, what we are going to see. This is the pattern in 
the past: Skyrocketing insurance premiums, sky-high insurance company 
profits. In the last 7 years, a 428-percent increase, and all that is 
going on

[[Page 25910]]

while these 47 million Americans are without insurance, premiums 
doubled in 9 years, and these huge CEO salaries.
  I think the public option is the key to bringing competitiveness to 
this market. I am glad the Senator from Rhode Island and the Senator 
from Illinois are working in committee to see that our antitrust units 
may be able to get involved in these kinds of situations in the future.
  (Mr. BENNET assumed the chair.)
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If the distinguished Senator will yield, the way this 
works out in individual people's lives--it is important for us as 
policymakers to understand what the Senator from New Mexico pointed 
out; that is, a 428-percent increase in insurance company profits in 
just 7 years, while they are turning people down and pushing them off 
coverage, even 47 million Americans uninsured, denying their claims, 
while the profits are going up like that. That is a very important 
story.
  But then you get down to the actual people who get tangled up in this 
and what it does to their lives. Nicole from Providence, RI, wrote to 
me. In 2008, her doctor prescribed a number of tests she needed to take 
because she was experiencing stomach problems. Similar to many 
Americans who have gotten into these nightmares, they come in thinking 
they are all set, they have good health insurance.
  Nicole thought she had good health insurance. She never imagined she 
would have any problem covering her medical costs. But the insurance 
company, once it started getting the bills, went scurrying around 
through its files and started to look for a way to get out of having to 
pay. Sure enough, they decided that her condition was ``preexisting.'' 
The magic word so they don't have to pay. Sure enough, they denied 
thousands of dollars of Nicole's claims.
  So now there is Nicole. She thought she had insurance. She thought 
everything was fine. She had this stomach illness. She had to take 
these tests. She sends in the bills to the insurance company and they 
say: No, sorry, that is preexisting. So she is scrambling to pay off 
thousands and thousands in debt. That starts you off into the whole set 
of other problems, those administrative costs I was talking about. 
Those administrative costs are spent fighting patients, fighting their 
clients.
  Here is Nicole constantly on the phone trying to get the correct 
documentation from her doctor to the insurance company, trying to get 
it to match up, and it never does and the bills keep coming. It is not 
only that she did not get the health care she needed and the company 
would not pay for it, it is when she tries to sort it out, she gets 
into this bureaucratic nightmare with that bureaucracy that grew 109 
percent just in this decade arming up to fight people such as Nicole.
  Here is what she concluded. This is a regular person from Providence, 
RI, snarled in the health insurance system. She says:

       I have a full-time job with a good salary. I own a home. I 
     have health insurance. I am a middle-class American doing 
     everything I think I should. And yet I am now saddled with 
     thousands of dollars in medical bills that I cannot afford to 
     pay.

  The stories go on and on of people in this system. Coreen from 
Cranston, RI, wrote me. She has health insurance through her employer, 
but the insurance company jacked up its premiums so high this year that 
her husband's employer was forced to switch to a high-deductible plan. 
She has a deductible of $2,000. So now Coreen and her husband take 
turns who is going to see the doctor, depending on which one of them 
they think is the most ill. The healthier one doesn't go and lets the 
one they think is sicker go. Do they know? Of course not, they are not 
experts, they are not doctors, but they have to make this decision 
because they have had this limitation put on their policy.
  She wrote to me:

       We have no other option but to be held hostage by our 
     insurer. In our current system, people come second and 
     profits come first.

  For all the big picture stuff we are talking about, it is important 
to remember that all these big pictures come down to homes and families 
and people and workers all across this country, all of whom find that 
this health care system is a nightmare for them under the private 
health insurance regime.
  Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator will yield, I would like to note that I 
received a similar letter from a man in Illinois who had a $5,000 
deductible because he had a history of illness. So in order to buy 
health insurance he could afford, he had to be willing to first put out 
$5,000 in cash out before they would cover the first dollar. He was 
told by his doctor, because of an examination, that he would need a 
colonoscopy, which is rather common and certainly a thoughtful thing to 
do when there is an indication. But he found it would cost him $3,000 
out-of-pocket for a colonoscopy, and he would have to pay that because 
the insurance plan didn't cover it. He didn't have the $3,000.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. May I inquire back if the insurance company, to the 
Senator's knowledge, actually checked to see if by taking the $3,000 
colonoscopy they might find out something about his health so that in 
the long run everybody would save money because they did the test at 
the right time?
  Mr. DURBIN. Well, I don't know the answer to that, but I would 
suspect that they did not because the concern for that insurance 
company is the bottom line for that quarter. They are not concerned, as 
they should be, about the long-term health of this man. If there is an 
indication that leads to a colonoscopy, it makes common sense that you 
would do it because things discovered early can often be treated 
successfully, and things that you don't treat can turn into very 
expensive and deadly diseases.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The public option, therefore, might be much more 
adept and likely at making that investment in the constituent's health 
because it is worth spending $3,000 for a colonoscopy if it will help 
prevent a catastrophic illness later on.
  Mr. DURBIN. That is the key word, ``prevent.'' We have to move toward 
a new mindset that health insurance companies don't think about--
wellness and prevention. If we put a little money into those, we can 
keep people healthier and keep costs down.
  I am sure the Senator from Rhode Island and the Senator from New 
Mexico will recall the visit we had from the CEO of a major grocery 
store chain--Safeway/Dominix--and how they decided for their management 
to try to do preventive care. I recall the CEO telling us that because 
of preventive care, they have been able to keep their health insurance, 
which is a self-insured plan, even for 3 straight years without 
increases.
  So prevention and wellness not only keep people healthier but reduce 
cost. But if you were trying to drive the bottom line and just said no 
to people who need a colonoscopy or need a mammogram or prostate cancer 
treatment, diabetes maintenance--if you are saying no to all of those 
things and those people--the ultimate cost in human life and in dollars 
goes through the roof.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. If the Senator will yield, the Senator from 
Illinois has hit on an example that comes home to me because I had a 
gentleman write to me from a small community in New Mexico--Pena 
Blanca--about his wife. He said his wife had reached the age of 50, and 
she wanted to do what she could in preventive care, which is what we 
want to encourage, as the Senator is talking about, to get out in front 
of illnesses and try to do that preventive care. So she wanted a 
colonoscopy, and she went to the insurance company that said: Well, it 
is going to cost you $3,000. They didn't have $3,000, so she had to 
forgo the colonoscopy. That was when she was 50 years of age.
  At 54 years of age, she was diagnosed with colon cancer. So he writes 
to me saying that his wife is dying and he is in this situation now 
where he realizes if they had had that kind of preventive care, he 
would have his wife with him and would have her with him a lot longer.
  It demonstrates what the Senator has just said, that if we reorient 
our

[[Page 25911]]

health care system to prevention, to wellness, if we use the public 
option--we use the nonprofit method--we will then be moving in the 
direction of getting way out in front of these illnesses rather than 
having tragedies such as this gentleman from the small town of Pena 
Blanca, NM, describes. It is a crying shame to see that kind of thing 
happen to a family.
  As Senator Whitehouse has said, we talk about all these things--
skyrocketing premiums and profits and everything--but it comes down to 
families and individuals with serious health care problems. In many 
cases, those problems are not being dealt with in our health care 
system.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The story the Senator just told, reminds me of one. I 
do regular community dinners around Rhode Island. I go to a community, 
and we put out nothing fancy--pasta and meatballs, a salad and punch, 
and we invite people to come in and just have a general discussion 
about the issues that concern them.
  At one of my recent community dinners, a lady spoke about some 
difficult run-ins with the health care system. The worst part of it was 
about her sister, who had the same situation as the Senator's 
constituent. She did not have health coverage and she missed an 
appointment with the doctor. She didn't want to put out the money, so 
she went without. By the time she actually did go to the doctor, the 
condition had worsened.
  The doctor told the woman at my dinner: Your sister's condition, if 
she had come in earlier, we could have cured her. But as advanced as it 
is now, I don't think there is much we can do about it. They tried what 
they could, and it was very expensive, obviously, but ultimately they 
could not save her.
  So when we don't get this right, and when people forgo health care 
because they can't afford it, and because our system is set up to not 
pay for things that are essential preventive care, people lose their 
lives. It is a matter of statistics and it is a matter of cost and it 
is a matter of tragedy, but ultimately it is also a matter, for many 
people, of life and death.
  Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator would yield once again, I would like to 
make note for the record that we are on the Senate floor this evening, 
and we have time to speak on this important issue because the 
Republicans are blocking our efforts to pass a bill that sends 
unemployment compensation to literally hundreds of thousands of 
Americans who have been out of work for a long time and need these 
checks to keep their families together. They have now resisted us for 
21 days to extend unemployment benefits to these people across America. 
I am sure in each of our States, as I found in Illinois, many of these 
unemployed people have also lost their health insurance as a result of 
losing their jobs.
  I would like to ask either or both of the Senators to comment on what 
this health care reform proposal that we are talking about would do for 
a person who has either lost a job or is in a low-income category; 
someone who is scraping by with a low-wage job, hoping for something 
better, or maybe that is the best they can come up with.
  Would either of the Senators like to respond as to what this 
legislation, our health care reform bill, is proposing?
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Well, Mr. President, to talk a little about 
that situation, I think it is important to understand, first of all, 
that we have so many people out there who are uninsured--absolutely 
uninsured. As Senator Durbin has described, many times they lose their 
job and they lose their insurance, and that is what this reform is all 
about. We are not going to have that connection any longer. We are 
going to say to Americans: You are going to have your health care 
coverage, and if you go from job to job, you are going to be able to 
continue your health care coverage. If you are unemployed, you are 
going to be able to continue your health care coverage.
  That is a big new step for us, to take people who didn't have 
insurance, who were subject to the vagaries of existence out there, and 
point the way to where they are going to get insurance. They are going 
to get help for their families, and I would just say that we are at the 
right place at the right time. Things have aligned.
  We have President Obama, we have a Democratic Senate, we have a 
Democratic House, and we need to get this done in this time period. We 
know we are going to be opposed. Our friends on the other side are 
going to do the same thing the Senator mentioned on unemployment 
benefits. They are going to stand up and use every trick in the book. 
They are going to use all these filibuster rules, and they are going to 
make us file everything. But we will stay here long nights, we will 
stay through to the end so that we can help the individuals like those 
we have been talking about to get insurance regardless of what their 
personal circumstances are, regardless of things such as preexisting 
conditions and serious illnesses and getting dropped by insurance 
companies.
  Senator Whitehouse.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I would add another element in responding to Senator 
Durbin's question. They may very well be eligible for Medicaid or 
Medicare, in which case they would go on to those programs. But, if 
not, they would very likely be eligible under this health care reform 
for a significant subsidy to help them pay for health insurance.
  What is interesting about the way that works is that they do not have 
to go into a government program to get the subsidy. We are trying to 
make health insurance more available to more middle-class families. So 
what they do is go to the health insurance exchange, which is like a 
market for health insurance or, if they work for a big company or the 
State or county or Federal Government, there is a period where they go 
and sign up for the health insurance they want.
  Your H.R. person says: OK, now is the time to choose your policy for 
the coming year. They give you your choices and you select from your 
choices. You have a labor agreement or a contract agreement or a 
statutory provision that lets you know how much your employer is going 
to contribute, but you get to choose, just like the Federal Employees 
Health Benefits Plan we are in--that all Federal employees are in.
  That is the model, so that somebody who can't afford the insurance 
they want will get their stipend from the government and then they will 
go to the exchange and be able to choose. That is why it is called the 
public option. If there is a public option in that State, they will be 
able to choose the public option. If they do not like the public 
option, they can choose Aetna or Blue Cross or Wellpoint or Cigna or 
whoever is doing business in that State and buy through the exchange.
  So for people in the circumstance the Senator talks about, who are in 
economic straits, this will be an easier way to buy health insurance. 
It will be a way they can afford health insurance, and it is a way that 
leaves the choice up to them. That is where the public option comes in 
because when they have that choice, I think for a lot of Americans 
looking at the way costs are going and looking at the way they get 
treated by the health insurance companies, they are going to say: The 
choice between all those for-profit health insurers, that is no choice 
at all. That is, which enemy do you have to sign up for? I use the word 
``enemy'' because I have had people tell me the terrible thing about 
getting ill in this country is that they have to, on the one hand, 
fight the disease and, on the other hand, fight the insurance company. 
And they do see them, when they get involved in that, as the enemy.
  When they have a choice between a whole bunch of insurance companies 
and they all share the purpose of trying to throw them off coverage if 
they are sick, trying to deny them coverage when they get sick, trying 
to deny the claims their doctor puts in, trying to interfere with what 
their doctor wants them to do to get better, if those are all their 
choices, that is not much of a choice.
  That is where the public option can provide a real choice to people 
when they come in. They will have the dignity of being able to make 
that choice for themselves and their family through this program in our 
reform.

[[Page 25912]]

  I see we are joined by the distinguished Senator from Colorado, Mr. 
Bennet.
  (Mr. UDALL of New Mexico assumed the chair.)
  Mr. BENNET. I have been listening to the debate, and I wanted to join 
in and respond to Senator Durbin's question about people leaving their 
insurance carrier and going on Medicare and Medicaid today, if they are 
eligible; and if they are not eligible, they are just out of luck. I 
think it is important, as we think about what this reform will bring, 
to remind people about what is happening with the status quo as it 
exists right now.
  We are having all this debate about whether a public option is a good 
idea, whether the other insurance reforms are a good idea, accusations 
that this is just a government takeover of health care. What people are 
ignoring is what is happening right before our eyes.
  In my State, median family income has actually declined by over $800 
over the last 10 years. That is before this recession we are in right 
now. In the country it has gone down $300. In my State, the cost of 
health premiums over that same period of time went up 97 percent--it 
doubled. We are saying to working families, you are going to earn less 
but the cost of health insurance is going to go up by twice. Not only 
that, but the cost of higher education is going to go up 50 percent. 
Working families are getting squeezed.
  What is happening is--because they are having double-digit cost 
increases every year, because small businesses are spending 18 percent 
more than large businesses to cover their employees--we are seeing 
already fewer and fewer people getting insurance from their employer. 
The number of people who are insured by employers in my State is 
dropping like a stone. The number of small businesses that are able to 
offer insurance anymore to their employees is dropping like a stone, 
which is heartbreaking to a lot of people because a lot of these 
businesses are family businesses where they pride themselves on having 
offered insurance for many years.
  Where do these people end up in this debate we are having right now 
about a public option versus not? If they are poor enough, they end up 
on Medicaid, a government program. If they are not, they end up going 
to the emergency room where they get uncompensated care that we all pay 
for as taxpayers.
  In the case of my city, in Denver, we have an excellent public 
hospital. They did a study 3 years ago that showed that in 1 year they 
spent $180 million treating people who were uncompensated, who were 
employed by small businesses. These are people working for a living 
every day but who do not have insurance. Who pays that bill? We, the 
taxpayers.
  What I would say to people on the other side, or even on our side who 
are saying this is a bad idea, to give people more choice, more option, 
is that the system we have right now is landing people in public 
government options or landing them in the emergency room where the 
taxpayers are having to cover them with uncompensated care. We are just 
doing it in the least intentional way possible. We are doing it in the 
least thoughtful way possible and in many respects doing it in the most 
expensive way possible. People are not getting the kind of preventive 
care they ought to be getting, the screenings they ought to be getting 
on the front end so they don't show up in the hospital emergency room 
when they are dreadfully sick.
  When I hear the objections to this and I realize how painful the 
status quo is right now for working families and small businesses--in 
the State of Colorado, but I also know in other States as well--I 
wonder sometimes what people are fighting against. What we are fighting 
for is a much more intentional approach to coverage, a much more 
intentional approach to quality, a much more intentional and rational 
approach to how we finance all of this.
  It has been a pleasure to hear you tonight. I wanted to come and be 
part of the discussion.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Of course, anybody in the situation Senator Bennet 
described, if they don't like the idea of a public option under this 
legislation they are completely free to not sign up for it. Nobody in 
America will be forced into the public option. We don't even connect 
the subsidy, the stipend that makes health care affordable for American 
families, to the public option. We give it at the exchange in this 
legislation.
  If you want to spend your government stipend to help make health care 
more affordable on Blue Cross, on Aetna, on Cigna, on whoever does 
business in your home State, you are welcome to do that. The public 
option is an absolute free choice. There is not a single person in this 
room, not a single person in the United States who, if the public 
option passes and they choose not to participate, has any adverse 
consequence at all.
  The one thing they may have happen to them if the public option is 
successful is--if it is not sucking profits out of the system, if it is 
not building that huge administrative superstructure to fight with the 
doctors and hospitals so that they have to build a matching one to 
fight back from, if they are actually investing in, as you say, 
prevention and quality improvement and electronic health records and 
paying doctors in a sensible way so they don't have to run up 
procedures to get paid--if they do all that successfully, they will 
drive down the cost. Because it is competitive, those private insurance 
companies will have to follow. What you may get if you do not like the 
public option is you will get your stipend just like anybody else, if 
you are in the right income category. You will say I don't like the 
public option. I have no business with anything to do with the 
government health care, I don't want any part of it, I am going to the 
private sector--and you can buy that. You may in that circumstance 
actually see your private sector insurance rates come down because of 
nothing you did but because of the public option being out there and 
being competitive.
  If the public option is uncompetitive and its rates go up, that is 
not going to hurt you. You are still in that private insurance company 
anyway. It is a ``heads I win, tails you lose'' situation for you; you 
are the winner on both sides.
  Mr. BENNET. If the Senator will yield, there is one other important 
component to this that people in my State have been talking to me about 
a lot over the last 6 weeks or so. It has become clear that as part of 
this reform, because this is the way insurance needs to work if you are 
going to cover everything, as part of this reform there is a 
requirement that everybody have insurance.
  People are saying to me: Michael, I want you to make sure you give me 
as many options as possible. If you are going to make a requirement as 
part of this, I want to maximize my choice. I want to be able to look 
at everything, whatever you call it--whether it is private insurance or 
public option, nonprofit plans--I want to be able, they say, to make 
the best decision that is in the interest of my family or make the best 
decisions in the interests of my business.
  I don't know why we would want to say on the one hand we are going to 
require you to have insurance and on the other hand say we are going to 
constrain the range of choices that you can make on behalf of your 
family. We should not be making those choices here in Washington. Those 
are choices our families should be making for themselves.
  Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator from Rhode Island will yield, on his chart 
on national health expenditures, I have heard my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle, the Republican side, come to the floor many 
times and decry this whole effort because it was going to cost $1 
trillion. We are not sure if that will be the exact number, but take it 
as an example. We are talking about $1 trillion over the next 10 years. 
If you accumulate the cost of health care in America over the next 10 
years, starting this year at $2.5 trillion, and assuming it goes up to 
at least $3 trillion, maybe $3.5 trillion, it seems to me we are 
dealing, over that period of time, with an accumulated cost of health 
care in America over 10 years of $30 to $35 trillion, I think, is 
probably a fair estimate.

[[Page 25913]]


  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I agree.
  Mr. DURBIN. One trillion dollars as a percent of that comes out to 
less than 3 percent of the overall cost of the system and the savings 
we are trying to build into this approach, by trying to find ways to 
reduce costs, to reduce the fraud and waste that is part of health care 
today, to give people options so that they have more competition, 
bringing down the cost of premiums--I would say to my friends on the 
other side of the aisle arguing that $1 trillion is a huge sum, 
certainly when you deal with $1 trillion it is, but in comparison to 
the overall cost of health care over the next 10 years it is less than 
3 percent of what we anticipate. And it is largely made up of savings 
within the current system. I think that is the point they miss when 
they use that figure on the floor so frequently.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I think the Senator has made a very good point. I add 
to it by going back to the figures from the President's Council of 
Economic Advisers that suggest we could save $700 billion every year 
out of this health care system if we could wring the excess costs out 
of it--the unnecessary MRIs because you don't have an electronic health 
record and you have to go out and replicate it because you don't have 
the file with you; the totally unnecessary staff fighting with each 
other over who should get paid and who should not get paid; the $60,000 
it requires, on average, when you get a hospital-acquired infection in 
the intensive care unit. If you could prevent it, you save. Those are 
the kinds of numbers that add up to these numbers. If you could save 
$700 billion a year--I am not saying you could do it, but it is a big 
target out there--investing $1 trillion over 10 years to get a piece of 
that back only makes sense. It is plain business sense.
  If you were in the manufacturing sector and if you had an assembly 
line and that assembly line was creating costs like this, so the price 
of your product had to go up and up and you were having all those 
casualties, people were getting their hands caught in the machine and 
mangled and it was lighting up on fire because it was running out of 
oil, and you were having all these problems with the system, somebody 
would come in and say: You know what, you ought to spend a little money 
upfront to get a good system put in to fix up your assembly line 
because you will save costs in the long run. That is all we are 
expecting to do right now, is get those. There are so many disasters in 
the health care system right now, and to get that cleaned up and put a 
little money down for that, that is only good common business sense, 
particularly when there is a big target such as that $700 billion a 
year savings and, as you said, the cost of the next 10 years will be 
well north of $30 trillion if we do not do anything about this.
  (Mr. BENNET assumed the Chair.)
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, the example on the savings is 
right there, in the examples before us. We just talked about Medicaid. 
Medicaid has a 3-percent administrative cost. We are talking about a 
program, when I go into my townhall meetings and visit with people, 
people say they like Medicaid, they like what they have. Here is a 
program that is running with 3 percent administrative costs.
  When we talk about the insurance companies, because of what the 
Senator mentioned, how they fight the claims and you have to get all 
these people in the doctor's office trying to prove claims, and then 
back and forth--doctor's offices many times told me 50 percent of the 
people in the office are there doing this administrative work because 
of what the insurance companies have created.
  When you ask the big question to insurance companies, how much is 
your administrative cost on the health insurance industry--30 percent. 
I think there is enormous room for improvement when we are talking 
about the hundreds of billions of dollars that are out there, from 3 
percent in Medicare to 30 percent or more in the health insurance 
industry.
  There is no doubt that the savings can be squeezed out of this 
system. That is what the public option does. That is what we have been 
tonight talking about, night after night. I am so thankful that Senator 
Whitehouse, in the HELP Committee, his service in the HELP Committee, 
volunteered to write the public option for that health bill. That 
contributed so much to this debate. It gave us the outside parameters 
for what we are debating right now, and our leader, Senator Reid, has 
now stepped forward and said he wants a public option with this opt-out 
provision.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If I may step in----
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Please.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. It was a team effort. I want to make sure that 
Senator Brown of Ohio, our friend Sherrod Brown gets recognized. He had 
a very important role in it. As the Senator knows, he is very committed 
on this issue and fights very hard to protect the interests of 
consumers. Senator Kay Hagan, our friend from North Carolina, also was 
extremely helpful. Because she has a more conservative perspective than 
we do, there was a wide range of views that were brought together. I 
think that is reflected in the fact that when the so-called Blue Dogs, 
the conservative Democrats over in the House, wanted to work out a 
public option, the public option they signed off on was the Senate HELP 
public option.
  I think it has good appeal for conservative Democrats as well as 
progressive Democrats, that it reaches across the whole aisle. I hope 
by the time the dust settles, reasonable Senators of the other party 
will also join us in this because it only makes sense. If, as the 
President's Council of Economic Advisers says, it is ``possible to cut 
total health expenditures by about 30 percent without worsening 
outcomes,'' if there is 30 percent of waste and fighting you are 
talking about, and it adds up to $700 billion as the President's 
Council of Economic Advisers said, and if you add up the numbers from 
the Lewin Group, this here--they actually anticipate bigger savings, 
they anticipate $1 trillion a year in potential savings if--you could 
get all the excess costs out--it is $1 trillion a year--it is a 
phenomenal target to shoot for.
  That is why making the public option competitive is such a good idea.
  With this cost we cannot keep doing the same old thing and 
subsidizing. We have to change the direction of the health care system 
and the public option will do that.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. We are near the end of our hour right here. 
I wish to read one more letter and then Senator Whitehouse may have 
some concluding remarks. But I think this letter drives home what we 
have been talking about all night. I received a letter from a man in 
Carlsbad, NM. This man's wife was denied insurance benefits after she 
fell at the school where she is a teacher. And here is what he said:

       Her orthopedic surgeon told us that her fall aggravated her 
     degenerative condition in her knees and spine. He felt he 
     could no longer treat her without surgery and recommended 
     that she have both knees replaced. She had one knee replaced 
     . . . , but before she could have the other knee replaced or 
     her back treated, she was summoned to Albuquerque where she 
     had to appear before a panel of three doctors.
       The lead doctor on this panel rules that she needed no 
     further treatment of any kind. One of the doctors wrote a 
     dissenting opinion, but her coverage was cut off. The 
     dissenting doctor later apologized to my wife, stating that 
     he hated serving on those panels because the lead doctor 
     always ruled in favor of the insurance company and against 
     the patient.
       The health insurance industry cannot be trusted. Without 
     the public option the American people will not have the 
     choice they deserve. The public option would bring needed 
     competition to the industry. I strongly urge you to support 
     the public option.

  That is my constituent writing me. He has really hit it on the head. 
I think the gentleman from Carlsbad said it best when he said: The 
public option would bring needed competition to the industry.
  You saw this chart earlier here about the lack of competition and how 
we have these insurance companies with a monopoly. Right now health 
insurance companies are basically monopolies or duopolies, at best. In 
New Mexico, we have two companies that hold 65 percent of the market. 
This kind of control means there is no incentive for

[[Page 25914]]

competition. There is no incentive to drive down those costs. A public 
option would insert that competition back into the market and it would 
keep those insurance companies honest.
  I thank Senator Whitehouse, Senator Durbin, Senator Bennet from 
Colorado, for being down here. We have been doing this for weeks now 
and we are going to continue this. I do not know if you have any 
concluding remarks. But I think this has been a very productive 
session. I hope we will continue until we get health care reform done 
and with a public option as part of it.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Only to thank the Senator for organizing this time so 
we could engage in this colloquy on a matter that is so important to 
Americans on a matter where so much of what has been said has been so 
misleading and unhelpful.
  The chance we have to talk about the actual public option as it is in 
real life, not some overheated imaginary public option that has been 
cooked up by the other side for the purpose of knocking it down, I 
think is very helpful to help the American people understand the 
direction we are trying to go. The Senator's role in getting this done 
is very much appreciated.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              Afghanistan

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I have just returned from Afghanistan. 
I was there over the weekend. I wanted to take a moment and share a few 
impressions. I traveled with Senator Burr, who is a colleague of mine 
on the Intelligence Committee, and with Senator LeMieux of Florida. We 
visited Kabul, Jalalabad, and a military location further out in the 
field.
  It was my third trip to Afghanistan. That makes me no expert. But I 
do hope my observations might be of some interest or use to my 
colleagues. Before I begin, our colleagues should know the perception 
in Kabul of how extremely valuable the efforts of our colleague Senator 
Kerry have been. It was clear the resolution that we saw to the 
election dilemma could not have happened without Senator Kerry.
  The more our officials in Afghanistan knew about that situation, the 
stronger their views were about Senator Kerry's irreplaceable role. 
Even President Karzai commented on it in our meeting with him. So a 
well earned ``well done'' to our colleague and friend.
  While the situation in Afghanistan is obviously complex and 
difficult, the best news for us is that the Taliban remains very 
unpopular. The Taliban's strength comes from the fact, not 
unreasonably, that many Afghans are terrified of them.
  If the Taliban are willing to ride into town and cut off the ears of 
the village elder's son in front of the whole village, it requires 
considerable courage and confidence on their part in us and the Afghan 
Government for that village to stand up to those Taliban.
  The Afghan people do not lack courage. Indeed, their courage and 
resistance in standing up to the Soviet invasion are among the reasons 
the Cold War is over, and why America is largely out of the shadow of 
that nuclear threat. When we think of our role in Afghanistan, it is 
worth considering our obligations in the light of what their struggle 
against the Soviet Union has meant for our country, our safety and our 
liberty. So courage is not something that Afghans lack.
  But there is a compelling need for the Afghan people to feel 
confidence in their government and confidence in us. The best avenue to 
increasing Afghani confidence in their government will be reducing 
government corruption. It is a pernicious cancer throughout much of the 
Afghan Government.
  Once this election is settled--and I will assume that President 
Karzai will emerge victorious--President Karzai can then turn his 
attention to his new administration. And then I think it is vital--and 
it is unanimously seen to be vital by the officials I spoke to--that 
vigorous efforts against corruption be a leading part of President 
Karzai's commitment to the Afghan people.
  Confidence in us is equally important, but confidence in us must be 
measured against its counterweight, which is dependence on us. 
President Karzai, his ministers, and his challenger, Dr. Abdullah, are 
extremely grateful for the sacrifice that America has made for the 
benefit of their people, and they do not hesitate to say so. But at the 
same time, it is a realistic human impulse to be pleased if someone 
else will do something for you that you would otherwise have had to do 
yourself.
  So, on the one hand, assuring the Afghan people of our reliable and 
enduring commitment to their struggle, while, on the other hand, 
ensuring that the Afghan Government meets its responsibilities, rather 
than just relying on us to fight their war, is the difficult balance we 
must achieve.
  The more President Karzai--after this election is settled--can assume 
the mantle of a wartime President and accept responsibility that he is 
the military leader of this struggle, as well as the newly elected 
leader of Afghanistan, the better it will be. But it also seems to me 
that a strategic agreement with the Afghan Government, a strategic 
agreement that more clearly lays out the responsibilities and the 
commitments on either side, would be a good vehicle to set that 
balance.
  The confidence of the Afghan people in our steadfastness is necessary 
to their willingness to fight this enemy, and the Afghan Government 
stepping up clearly to its responsibilities is necessary to our 
willingness to fight this enemy. Together, where those goals intersect, 
we can win. Divided, we cannot.
  Sorting this out will not be easy. For too many years, we have been 
``muddling through'' in Afghanistan. President Obama's appointee, 
General McChrystal, has now called for a new strategy. I think the 
President is wise and patient to think this through carefully as he 
leads us out of the muddle and develops a winning strategy.
  No one I spoke to in Afghanistan thought the need for new troops was 
immediate. The 21,000 additional troops President Obama sent are still 
being absorbed. Winter is coming with its seasonal lull in the 
violence. Questions about Pakistan's role supporting the Taliban in 
Afghanistan are unresolved, questions whose answers will make our 
challenge in Afghanistan either far more easy or far more difficult. 
This is not simple and should not suddenly be rushed now, after years 
of muddling.
  In evaluating the decision that President Obama faces, it is worth 
considering the actual report that General McChrystal provided. We have 
heard a lot about it, and most of it has had to do with the immediate 
deployment of troops.
  The report, if you look at it, has a slightly different cast. In his 
report, General McChrystal identified ``two fundamental changes''--that 
is his quote--``two fundamental changes'' that are required.
  One is this--and I quote--

       ISAF must focus on getting the basics right.

  ISAF is International Security Assistance Force. It is the 
international force that America leads in Afghanistan. Here is one: 
``ISAF must focus on getting the basics right.''
  Two:

       ISAF must also adopt a new strategy.

  Those are his one and two points--``getting the basics right'' and 
``adopt a new strategy.''
  To continue quoting General McChrystal's report:

       The key take away from this assessment is the major need 
     for a systematic change to our strategy and the way we think 
     and operate.

  Let me quote that again:

       The key--

  This is the McChrystal report quoted verbatim--

       The key take away from this assessment is the major need 
     for a systematic change to

[[Page 25915]]

     our strategy and the way we think and operate.

  That is the task on which the President has embarked, and after years 
of muddling, I think he is entitled to a reasonable time to get it 
right.
  I would like to highlight three of the areas that General McChrystal 
emphasized in his report.
  I will quote again. One:

       Tour lengths should be long enough to build continuity and 
     ownership of success.

  Afghan society is deeply complex, personal, and it is governed by 
codes of conduct and honor. Our decisionmakers on the ground need to 
know the social terrain to be effective. That message has been loud and 
clear from my trips to that country. But the conclusion from the 
general is that ``Tour lengths should be long enough to build 
continuity and ownership of success.'' This will be hard on our troops 
and their families, and it will also be hard on the back-office 
bureaucracies that have to accommodate this. But that is what he said. 
There it is.
  This is another quote. Two:

       ISAF must operate differently. Preoccupied with force 
     protection, ISAF has operated in a manner that distances 
     itself, both physically and psychologically, from the people 
     they seek to protect.

  An example of this is that the reconstruction of a bridge or a school 
is good and important and valuable, but if the convoy of MRAPs ran 
everybody off the road in all the villages that they went through on 
the way to that school or bridge, the signal that we are there to help 
is lost.
  This is a hard point that General McChrystal has made: reducing the 
cocoon of force protection around our civilian and military personnel 
creates greater exposure to casualties. General McChrystal has faced 
this point squarely.
  Third, and somewhat amazingly--I will quote again--

       Major insurgent groups outperform GIROA and ISAF at 
     information operations.

  Again, ISAF is the International Security Assistance Force. GIROA is 
the acronym for the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. 
So I plug that into the quote and it says: Major insurgent groups 
outperform the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and 
the International Security Assistance Force at information operations.
  I will tell you, for a country that invented Madison Avenue 
advertising and public relations, this is a bitter pill. And this was 
confirmed during our trip. Although we saw a few areas that gave us 
hope, overall, officials acknowledged that information operations 
appear to be operating with far less sophistication and energy than 
tactical military operations.
  I have the impression that for too long this function has been seen 
really as information supply rather than information combat. Everybody 
in this Chamber has gotten here--or at least almost everybody has 
gotten here--after having won an election in which they had to engage 
in prolonged information combat against the other side to get their 
message across. Our information operations do need to be improved in 
Afghanistan, and it is commendable that General McChrystal has 
recognized it.
  Let me be clear. This is not propaganda. This is not making up a lot 
of spin. This is getting the facts out faster and better. As General 
McChrystal noted in his report--and I quote again--``this is `a deeds-
based' information environment,'' but we do have the deeds. We have 
villages peaceful. We have markets opened. We have Taliban fighters 
turning in their guns to seek reconciliation.
  We have, on the negative side, horrific Taliban atrocities that 
offend Afghan culture as well as our own--so that we can tell a winning 
and truthful story to the Afghan people, but, as General McChrystal has 
acknowledged, we have to get better at this.
  I will conclude with an expression of gratitude and a final 
observation. We should be extraordinarily grateful to our Americans 
serving in Afghanistan, not just for their courage and sacrifice, which 
are remarkable in themselves, but also for their skill to fight an 
enemy of lunatics, criminals, and fanatics for whom no brutality is too 
offensive, while, at the same time, protecting the civilian population 
within which the enemy operates--all while protecting the values we 
Americans hold dear. That is no small trick.
  The men and women who have developed this to an unprecedented level 
of competence--even mastery--deserve our commendation: the Rangers, on 
long and arduous patrols through harsh terrain; the special operations 
teams, working by night to disable enemy leaders; the interrogators, 
working far from home to develop intelligence about this enemy, well 
within the bounds of decency and the norms of military conduct, and 
very successfully; the analysts, at work 24/7, processing that 
intelligence to maintain nearly immediate situational awareness for our 
forces; the pilots, delivering goods and personnel wherever and 
whenever required; and the vast support structure that keeps those 
aircraft operational in one of the harshest environments on Earth; the 
marines, clearing and rebuilding villages in Helmand Province, not just 
rebuilding villages but rebuilding trust and security for those 
families; our silent services, whose only reward is their success and 
the respect of their peers; the reconstruction teams, working to bridge 
barriers of culture and language, and our own bureaucratic barriers, to 
rebuild the infrastructure of civilized life: schools for girls, roads 
to market--that is all just a slice of the courage, devotion, and skill 
that Americans are bringing to this challenge.
  My final observation is this: Wherever I have been on three visits 
now, American soldiers of all ranks have a tangible respect and 
affection for their Afghan counterparts. The Afghan soldier could be 
centuries behind us technologically, but he comes from a martial 
tradition lasting thousands of years, producing men who are brave, 
resourceful, hardy, principled, and willing to fight.
  I remember a bearded special forces officer telling me about the 
commandoes he was training, that when he went out on patrol with them, 
he had no hesitation. They called each other brothers. And he said 
there was not a man in his group who would not lay down his life to 
protect him. For all the difficulties we will face--and this is not 
easy--I think this aspect provides a platform for some optimism about 
growing an effective Afghan national military and police to assume its 
necessary role protecting Afghanistan's security and sovereignty and 
speeding our return home.
  I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor, and I note the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________