[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10032-10050]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     FRAUD ENFORCEMENT AND RECOVERY ACT OF 2009--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will proceed to S. 386, which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to consider S. 386, a bill to improve 
     enforcement of mortgage fraud, securities fraud, financial 
     institution fraud, and other frauds related to federal 
     assistance and relief programs, for the recovery of funds 
     lost to these frauds, and for other purposes.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, how much time is there on S. 386?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Vermont has 87 
minutes.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, under the normal circumstances, I would 
speak as chairman of the Judiciary Committee and as the chief sponsor 
of this bill. Then we would go, by normal protocol, to either the 
Republican ranking member or the senior Republican who is cosponsor, 
which I assume will be done.
  I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Delaware, Mr. Kaufman, 
be recognized next. I ask further unanimous consent that at the 
completion of my statement, if there is no member of the Republican 
party seeking recognition, Senator Kaufman be recognized; if there is a 
member of the Republican party seeking recognition on this bill, that, 
of course, they be recognized first, and then the next person to be 
recognized be Senator Kaufman.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, this afternoon we begin consideration of 
the bipartisan Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act. What this does is to 
strengthen the Federal Government's capacity to investigate and 
prosecute the kinds of financial frauds that have so severely 
undermined our economy; that not only undermined our economy, they have 
hurt so many people in this country.
  It is going to give the resources and the legal tools needed to 
police and deter fraud. We have massive recovery efforts now being 
implemented. But if we do not go after those who are committing fraud 
against people in this country, much of that effort is going to be 
wasted.
  I commend the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley, our lead cosponsor, 
for his contributions to this package, and his dedication to protecting 
taxpayer funds by deterring, investigating, and prosecuting fraud. He 
worked with me to write this bill. He has been a leader on this 
legislation every step of the way.
  I thank our many cosponsors for their steadfast support for this 
effort. Senator Schumer has not only supported this measure but has 
also introduced additional legislative proposals with Senator Shelby. 
Senator Kaufman is an original cosponsor and has been a strong ally. He 
has spoken and written about the need for fraud enforcement all year. 
Senator Klobuchar has participated throughout the course of Judiciary 
Committee consideration of this bill. As former prosecutors, she and I 
both know how important it is to have sufficient resources on the 
ground committed to deterring and discovering these devastating crimes. 
More recently, we have been joined in our efforts by the ranking 
Republican on the Judiciary Committee, another former prosecutor and 
friend, Senator Specter, and by Senators Snowe, Harkin, Levin, Dorgan, 
Whitehouse, Bayh, Shaheen, and Murray.
  It is a bipartisan effort. And, actually, if you are going to go 
after people committing crimes and fraud, you should not consider it a 
Democratic or a Republican effort; this is a bipartisan effort. And we 
ought to be able to do it, because those who are committing the frauds 
did not ask if the person they are going to defraud is a Republican or 
Democrat, they want to defraud them. But what we want to do is to stop 
them. So whether one supported the economic recovery efforts proposed 
by President Bush and President Obama or not, I think we can all agree 
no one wants that money squandered by fraud.
  Whether we want to help homeowners in hard times or people who have 
lost their jobs or were lured into subprime mortgages--some may think 
it may be their fault they were lured into their subprime mortgages. 
But if you had people involved in mortgage fraud, they should be held 
accountable.
  I thank the majority leader for moving to proceed to this measure. It 
is my hope we can get to a time agreement without being filibustered. I 
hope we will not have to spend a lot of time in a filibuster before we 
consider antifraud efforts on behalf of the American people. Everybody 
I talk to, whether it is in Vermont or any other State, says those who 
are involved in mortgage fraud, those who are involved in stealing the 
money, especially at a time of economic downturn, ought to be 
prosecuted.
  Frankly, as a former prosecutor, I can tell you nothing so focuses 
the minds of those who want to commit fraud as if they think they might 
actually be arrested, convicted, and sent to prison.
  We are returning from the Easter recess. During these first months of 
the year, the Judiciary Committee has concentrated on what it can do to 
assist in the economic recovery. We have already considered and 
reported this fraud enforcement bill, we considered and reported a 
patent reform bill, and we also put law enforcement assistance

[[Page 10033]]

in the economic recovery legislation. The President's efforts are 
beginning to show dividends. As he said last week at Georgetown 
University, this administration has responded to an extraordinary set 
of economic challenges with extraordinary action, action that has been 
unprecedented both in terms of its scale and its speed.
  We have seen the recovery plan enacted, the bank capitalization 
program, the housing plan, the strengthening of the nonbank credit 
market, the auto plan, and the work with the G-20. Those are signs 
intended to generate economic progress. That is good. That is 
necessary. I agree with that. But it is not enough. We have to make 
sure when we send public money, taxpayers' money, that it is going to 
what it is supposed to go to, it is not being stolen, it is not being 
dissipated by fraud, it is not going to the hands of people whom nobody 
in this Chamber, Republican or Democrat, would want it to go to.
  We need to ensure those responsible for the downturn through 
fraudulent acts of financial markets and in the housing market are held 
to account. That is why we have to enact the Fraud Enforcement and 
Recovery Act. We have to make every effort to ensure accountability, 
and this bill will do that. It will build our Nation's capacity to 
investigate and prosecute financial fraud.
  Take a look at this chart. These are the reports of mortgage fraud. 
This is at near epidemic levels. Look at the number of reports in 1998. 
Look at them now. In 1998, 2,269. Last year, 65,049. Frauds are up 682 
percent over the past 5 years and more than 2,800 percent in the past 
decade.
  Some would estimate that we are losing $4 billion each year in 
mortgage fraud alone. Then you have massive new corporate frauds, such 
as the $65 billion Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Bernard Madoff. These 
are being uncovered. How many more are there?
  In the past 2 weeks alone, the Justice Department announced 
prosecutions in mortgage and security scams involving more than $200 
million in fraud. This kind of fraud has even touched my own State of 
Vermont. We are a very small State. We are the second smallest State in 
the Union, 650,000 people. But last fall, Federal authorities uncovered 
a $26 million mortgage scam involving more than 50 properties being run 
out of the small town of Highgate, VT. It is affecting everybody. Let's 
go after these people. Let's prosecute them. Let's throw them in jail. 
Because, otherwise, if you simply give them a fine, it is a cost of 
doing business and nobody is deterred by it.
  The victims of these frauds must be protected now more than ever. 
They are homeowners who have been fleeced by unscrupulous mortgage 
brokers or so-called foreclosure experts who promise to help. Instead 
of helping them, they leave them unable to keep their homes and in 
further debt than before.
  We have retirees who have lost their life savings with stock scams 
and Ponzi schemes. These have come to light only when the markets and 
corporations have collapsed. They also include the American taxpayers 
who have invested billions of dollars to restore our economy and 
support our banking system, and they assume that taxpayers' dollars are 
going to be there to support our industries, that taxpayer dollars are 
going to be there to help bail out our economy, that somebody is not 
going to steal it.
  As the economic crisis worsened last fall, I called upon Federal law 
enforcement to track down and punish those who were responsible for the 
corporate and mortgage frauds that helped make the economic downturn 
far worse than anyone predicted. This year, as Congress reconvened, I 
joined with Senator Grassley to draft and introduce the Fraud 
Enforcement and Recovery Act, the legislation we consider today, which 
will provide the new tools and resources needed by law enforcement to 
carry out this effort. Now, I call on all Senators to support and 
promptly pass this bill, so we can make sure that those responsible for 
these frauds are held fully accountable and that the many millions, 
likely even billions, of dollars lost will be recovered for fraud 
victims and for the American taxpayer.
  Federal law enforcement needs this legislation now to combat fraud 
effectively. In the last 3 years, the number of criminal mortgage fraud 
investigations opened by the Federal Bureau of Investigation--FBI--has 
more than doubled, and the FBI anticipates that number may double yet 
again. Despite this increase, the FBI currently has fewer than 250 
special agents nationwide assigned to financial fraud cases, which is 
only a quarter of the number the Bureau had more than a decade ago at 
the time of the savings and loan crisis. At current levels, the FBI 
cannot even begin to investigate the more than 5000 mortgage fraud 
allegations referred by the Treasury Department each month.
  In the late 1980s and early 1990s, we faced a similar financial 
crisis with the collapse of the federally insured savings and loan 
industry. At the time, Congress responded by passing legislation to 
hire prosecutors and agents similar to the bill we consider today, and 
that effort resulted in more than 600 fraud convictions nationwide and 
recovery of more than $130 million in ordered restitution. But the 
savings and loan collapse is dwarfed in scale by the current crisis, as 
financial institutions have lost more than $1 trillion in assets in the 
past year, compared to only $160 billion in assets lost during the 
entire savings and loan era. Clearly, we must respond at least as 
strongly as we have in the past.
  Two decades ago we responded during the savings and loan crisis by 
hiring more agents, analysts and prosecutors and allocating the 
resources needed to catch those who took advantage to profit through 
fraud. We need to do so, again.
  At a February 11, 2009, Judiciary Committee hearing, we heard from 
the FBI, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief 
Program, TARP, and the Justice Department. All witnesses testified 
concerning the need for this legislation and these additional law 
enforcement resources.
  Deputy Director Pistole of the FBI testified that the number of 
mortgage fraud cases opened by the FBI had more than doubled in the 
past 3 years, with 721 cases open in 2005, and more than 1,800 open at 
the end of 2008. He warned that the losses in this economic crisis 
dwarf those of the savings and loan debacle, and the need for more 
enforcement is even greater now than it was then.
  Special Inspector General Barofsky described how law enforcement 
resources had understandably been diverted from traditional white 
collar crime to terrorism following the attacks on September 11, 2001. 
This trend left the Justice Department's capacity to respond to 
financial and securities fraud significantly weakened, and with the 
recent trends shifting even more resources to mortgage frauds, other 
white collar efforts were even further ``underfunded and 
underprosecuted.'' He warned that with trillions of dollars being spent 
under TARP and other associated programs, ``it is essential that the 
appropriate resources be dedicated to meet the challenges of both 
deterring and prosecuting fraud.'' I agree.
  Acting Assistant Attorney General Glavin of the Justice Department 
testified that our bill would provide the Justice Department with 
needed tools ``to aggressively fight fraud in the current economic 
climate'' and ``provide key statutory enhancements that will assist in 
ensuring that those who have committed fraud are held accountable.''
  The committee also received written testimony supporting this 
enforcement effort from the inspector general for the Department of 
Housing and Urban Development, and from the Acting Chief Postal 
Inspector.
  We all know about Bernard Madoff's infamous $65 billion Ponzi scheme 
that went undetected for years. And every month we learn of more and 
more kinds of schemes. We have to clean this up.
  This would allow the FBI, the Justice Department, other agencies, to 
respond to the crisis. In total, the bill authorizes $245 million a 
year over the next two years to hire more than 300 Federal agents, more 
than 200 prosecutors, and another 200 forensic analysts and support 
staff to rebuild our nation's

[[Page 10034]]

``white collar'' fraud enforcement efforts. While the number of fraud 
cases is now skyrocketing, we need to remember that resources were 
shifted away from fraud investigations after 
9/11. Because today the ranks of fraud investigators, of prosecutors, 
are drastically understocked.
  Some have said, well, we cannot afford to authorize additional money 
for fraud investigations. I think that is a bad mistake. The only way 
you are going to stop it is to show you are going to stop it. The only 
way you are going to deter it is if you act to deter it, if you 
investigate the people, if you go after them, if you make them pay, and 
if we recover money for American taxpayers.
  I see the distinguished senior Senator from Minnesota on the floor. 
She is a former prosecutor. She knows that the way you go after these 
people is to really go after them. If fraud goes unprosecuted and 
unpunished, then victims across America lose money. In many cases, 
American taxpayers take the loss directly. For example, in the case of 
many mortgage frauds where the Federal Government has guaranteed the 
loans, and when the fraud remains hidden, American taxpayers, as well 
as the victim, lose out. If we don't take action to investigate and 
prosecute this kind of fraud, Americans will lose far more money than 
this bill costs.
  In fact, fraud enforcement is an excellent investment for the 
American taxpayers. According to recent data provided by the Justice 
Department, the Government recovers, on average, $32 for every dollar 
spent on criminal fraud litigation. Think about that. If you are an 
investor, you would love to invest and get that kind of return. We 
spend $1 on criminal fraud litigation, we get back $32. The nonpartisan 
group, Taxpayers Against Fraud, has found that in civil fraud cases, 
the Government recovers $15 for every dollar spent in civil fraud 
cases.
  Last year the Justice Department recovered nearly $2 billion in civil 
false claims settlements, and in criminal cases, the courts ordered 
nearly $3 billion in restitution and recovery. That is why we should 
pass this and pass it quickly.
  I do not want, 8 months from now, when suddenly we find here another 
hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, taken from 
American taxpayers in fraud and theft that we could have stopped, but 
to say: Gosh, if only that bill had passed.
  The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act also makes a number of 
straightforward, important improvements to fraud and money laundering 
statutes to strengthen prosecutors' ability to combat this growing wave 
of fraud. Specifically, the bill amends the definition of ``financial 
institution'' in the criminal code in order to extend Federal fraud 
laws to mortgage lending businesses that are not directly regulated or 
insured by the Federal Government. These companies were responsible for 
nearly half the residential mortgage market before the economic 
collapse, yet they remain largely unregulated and outside the scope of 
traditional Federal fraud statutes. This change will apply the Federal 
fraud laws to private mortgage businesses like Countrywide Home Loans 
and GMAC Mortgage, just as they apply to federally insured and 
regulated banks.
  The bill would also amend the major fraud statute to protect funds 
expended under the Troubled Assets Relief Program and the economic 
stimulus package, including any government purchases of preferred stock 
in financial institutions. The U.S. Government has provided 
extraordinary economic support to our banking system, and we need to 
make sure that none of those funds are subject to fraud or abuse. This 
change will give Federal prosecutors and investigators the explicit 
authority they need to protect taxpayer funds.
  This bill will also strengthen one of the core offenses in so many 
fraud cases--money laundering--which was significantly weakened by a 
recent Supreme Court case. In United States v. Santos, the Supreme 
Court misinterpreted the money laundering statutes, limiting their 
scope to only the ``profits'' of crimes, rather than the ``proceeds'' 
of the offenses. The Court's mistaken decision was contrary to 
congressional intent and will lead to financial criminals escaping 
culpability simply by claiming their illegal scams did not make a 
profit. Indeed, Ponzi schemes like the $50 billion fraud perpetrated by 
Bernard Madoff, which by definition turn no profit, are exempt from 
money laundering charges under this formulation. This erroneous 
decision must be corrected immediately, as dozens of money laundering 
cases have already been dismissed.
  The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act also strengthens one of the 
most potent civil tools we have for rooting out fraud in government--
the False Claims Act. The Federal Government has recovered more than 
$11 billion using the False Claims Act since it was modernized through 
the work of Senator Grassley in 1986, but the statute still can be more 
effective. Recent court decisions and changes in government--
contracting practices have limited the effectiveness of the False 
Claims Act. As we did in the last Congress, Senator Grassley and I have 
joined together to update and restore the False Claims Act to protect 
the American taxpayer.
  Some may argue that the legal fixes in this bill constitute 
overreaching by the Federal Government, In fact, this bill does not 
over-federalize or over-criminalize, as we took great care in crafting 
it to avoid those kinds of excesses. The bill creates no new statutes 
and no new sentences. Instead, it focuses on modernizing existing 
statutes to reach unregulated conduct and on addressing flawed court 
decisions interpreting those laws.
  This bill has broad bipartisan support. It has the strong backing of 
the Justice Department and the Obama administration, along with Senator 
Grassley and Senator Specter, the ranking Republican member of the 
Judiciary Committee. We have Senator Snowe joining us as a cosponsor. 
They have joined with Senators Kaufman, Schumer, Klobuchar, Levin, 
Harkin, Dorgan, Whitehouse, Bayh, Shaheen, and Murray who have 
cosponsored this bill.
  The Justice Department sent us a letter. They said:

       The Department strongly supports enactment of [the bill]. 
     The provisions of the legislation would provide Federal 
     investigators and prosecutors with significant new tools and 
     resources . . . to combat mortgage fraud, securities and 
     commodities fraud.

  Look what the Director of the FBI said:

       FERA [referring to our bill,] will be tremendously helpful 
     in giving us the tools to investigate . . . to help 
     prosecutors prosecute, and finally to obtain the convictions 
     and jail sentences that are the deterrent to this activity 
     taking place in the future.

  Remember, we certainly want to recover money. Certainly we want those 
forfeitures. Certainly we want those fines. But I want people to go to 
jail for this. Because if you think if you are going to defraud someone 
or groups defraud people of $100 million, you might get a $10 million 
fine, that is 10 percent of your cost of doing business. But if you 
think you might go to jail, then you are going to think twice.
  That is why we received this support of the Fraternal Order of 
Police, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the National 
Association of Assistant United States Attorneys, the Association of 
Certified Tax Examiners, and Taxpayers Against Fraud.
  The current epidemic of fraud went hand in hand with the greed and 
neglect that poisoned our economy in recent years. As banks and private 
mortgage companies relaxed their standards for loans, approving ever 
riskier mortgages with less and less due diligence, they created an 
environment that invited fraud. Private mortgage brokers and lending 
businesses came to dominate the home housing market, and these 
companies were not subject to the kind of banking oversight and 
internal regulations that had traditionally helped to prevent fraud. We 
are now seeing the results of this lax supervision and lack of 
accountability.
  The problem spread as home mortgages were packaged together and 
turned into securities that were bought and sold in largely unregulated 
markets on Wall Street. Here again, the

[[Page 10035]]

environment invited fraud. As the value of the mortgages started to 
decline with falling housing prices, Wall Street financiers began to 
see these mortgage-backed securities unravel. Some were not honest 
about these securities, leading to even more fraud, and victimizing 
investors nationwide.
  Only by reinvigorating our antifraud measures and giving law 
enforcement agencies the tools and resources they need to root out 
fraud can we ensure that fraud can never again place our financial 
system at risk and victimize so many Americans. Taxpayers, who bear the 
burden of this financial downturn, deserve to know that the government 
is doing all it can to hold responsible those who committed crimes in 
the run-up to this collapse.
  There should be strong support for this. The Justice Department 
supports it. The FBI supports it. The Secret Service supports it. The 
Postal Inspection Service supports it, the HUD Inspector General 
supports it, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset 
Relief Program supports it, on and on and on.
  And, most importantly, some of the most thoughtful members of this 
body, Republican and Democratic Members alike, support it. So let's go 
as quickly as we can. Let's have a decent time agreement on this bill.
  Let's get it passed. Let's get it through the other body. Let's get 
it on the President's desk. Then let's go and investigate and lock up 
the people who cost the American taxpayers hundreds of millions, even 
billions of dollars.
  I see the distinguished cosponsor, the Senator from Iowa. I yield the 
floor and withhold the remainder of my time.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Would the Chair please inform me as to the time 
allotted on this side?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The minority has 95 minutes.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Vermont for his leadership in 
this area. I very much enjoy working with him. We may come from 
different political parties, but he has been very cooperative in a lot 
of the efforts I wanted to make on individual pieces of legislation. On 
this one, he and I are working together very closely. I thank him for 
the opportunity to work with him and thank him very much for including 
within this legislation some things both he and I have an interest in 
dealing with the False Claims Act.
  I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of the Fraud Enforcement 
Recovery Act. This is a timely piece of legislation, given the current 
economic downturn and the unprecedented amount of taxpayer dollars that 
are being expended to shore up banks and financial institutions, 
corporations, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, et cetera. When taxpayer money 
is being injected into these corporations, there is more opportunity 
for fraud, and we ought to stay on top of it. We have a responsibility 
as Senators, as guardians of taxpayer money, to make sure fraud does 
not occur anytime but, more importantly, when there is taxpayer money 
keeping a lot of these organizations afloat that would not otherwise be 
there.
  There can be honest differences between Senators about whether this 
taxpayer money should have been used in the first place. Some of that I 
have voted against using. But the fact is, we were in the minority. The 
money is being used to sustain some of these institutions and 
corporations and, consequently, we have every responsibility to make 
sure taxpayer money is protected. That is what this piece of 
legislation is all about.
  For instance, the economic stimulus package handed out nearly $1 
trillion in new spending. Whether a Member supported or opposed these 
expenditures, he or she must agree we simply cannot allow unscrupulous 
individuals defrauding the Government and ripping off the taxpayers. 
This legislation ensures that our law enforcement officials as well as 
prosecutors have the tools necessary to enforce our laws and also the 
resources to hunt down bad actors. It makes minor revisions to our 
criminal fraud laws to ensure that bad actors are not outside the scope 
of Federal jurisdiction. Further, it amends the civil False Claims Act 
to ensure that taxpayer money lost to fraud, waste, and abuse can be 
recovered. These changes will deter potential defrauders from 
attempting to scam the Government. In addition, this legislation will 
help instill confidence back into the housing and financial markets.
  Over the last few years, unscrupulous individuals found housing and 
financial markets that were lax in oversight enforcement and 
regulation. As a result, it was easy for these unscrupulous individuals 
to commit fraud against homeowners, lenders, and businesses across the 
country. For example, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, 
referred to as FinCEN, released an updated report outlining filing 
trends in mortgage loan fraud suspicious activity reports. This report 
showed that SARs have continued to increase and for the last year 
ending in June 2008, there were more than 62,000 suspicious activity 
reports, SARs, filed related to mortgage fraud alone.
  While this raw data simply represents investigative leads, it 
represents a 44-percent increase in suspicious activity from the 
preceding year. We need to act now to stamp out new fraud claims, to 
send a message that American taxpayers will not be taken for a ride.
  This rise in the number of suspicious activity reports has also 
increased the need to investigate leads that come in these reports. As 
a result, we need to make sure there are resources available so that 
law enforcement agencies can follow these leads.
  During the height of the savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s 
and early 1990s, the FBI had over 1,000 agents and experts working 
mortgage fraud cases. Today, it is a lot less, compared to a much 
bigger amount of money that is at stake. Today the FBI has 180 agents 
dedicated to mortgage fraud investigations, a significant decrease 
compared to the 1,000 agents and experts during the S&L crisis.
  While this number represents an effort to combat fraud, it is a 
significant decrease when we consider the hundreds of millions of 
dollars in write-downs during the S&L crisis--in other words, small--
compared to the estimated $1 trillion in write-downs that may occur as 
a result of the financial and housing crisis. This bill enables law 
enforcement agencies, including the FBI, Secret Service, the Housing 
and Urban Development inspector general, and the Postal Inspection 
Service to procure the funding necessary to make sure this fraud 
doesn't happen because you need this sort of joint effort to combat 
what will be complex financial crimes.
  It is important to note this bill recognizes the important work of a 
number of Federal law enforcement agencies that work to combat and 
prevent financial crimes.
  You don't often think of the Secret Service when you think of 
mortgage fraud, but the dedicated men and women at the Secret Service 
have been on the front lines in combating mortgage fraud since the S&L 
crisis and continue to unravel complex financial crimes. The Postal 
Inspection Service and the inspector general of the Department of 
Housing and Urban Development also continue to make significant 
contributions to stamping out mortgage fraud that abuses Federal 
Government programs and utilizes the mail to commit this fraud.
  In addition to authorizing funding for law enforcement prosecutors so 
we get the number of people to get the job done, the bill also makes 
some necessary changes in Federal criminal law. The bill redefines 
``financial institution'' to include mortgage lending businesses, a 
category currently missing in that definition. It also amends the 
statute to make it illegal to make false statements on mortgage 
applications and appraisals. It might surprise Members since common 
sense ought to dictate that, but common sense has not prevailed in that 
instance, so we will make that a crime.
  Further, it ensures that economic relief funds and TARP funds are 
included in criminal laws prohibiting fraud against the Government. It 
adds commodities futures to the securities fraud

[[Page 10036]]

statute. The bill also makes two important clarifications to the 
antimoney laundering laws; first, by defining the term ``proceeds'' so 
that a recent Supreme Court decision doesn't limit the ability to go 
after criminals and drug dealers who launder the proceeds of their ill-
gotten gain. This is an incredibly important provision, especially 
given the recent concerns about the outbound bulk cash smuggling going 
across the border with Mexico.
  Second, the bill amends the international money laundering statute to 
make it a crime to transport or transfer money out of the country to 
evade taxes. This provision is also timely given the recent efforts by 
the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service to clamp down 
on tax cheats and evaders who move money offshore for the sole purpose 
of avoiding paying taxes with no economic rationale behind it.
  Finally and most importantly, the legislation makes important changes 
to the Federal False Claims Act. The False Claims Act is the 
Government's premier tool to recover Government money lost to fraud and 
abuse. The Government has used the False Claims Act to recover over $22 
billion since 1986 when I introduced legislation that amended the 
previous False Claims Act. This legislation will ensure that the law 
adheres to the original intent of the False Claims Act.
  I think I have some expertise in that area, being the author of this 
legislation and finding the Supreme Court's ruling contrary to 
congressional intent, albeit their motivation may be to interpret the 
law and that is the way they interpret it, but it does not keep us from 
going back to what we think is the original intent and saying to the 
courts: You got it wrong.
  Specifically, these amendments address a loophole that was created in 
the False Claims Act by the Supreme Court decision in the Allison 
Engine case which could be used by fraudfeasors to evade liability by 
hiring subcontractors to perform work on Government contracts. Some 
defendants are already filing briefs in court seeking to have the false 
claims cases dismissed because of that decision. It needs to be 
addressed to protect taxpayer dollars.
  This legislation could not come at a more important time. It will 
send a message to those who have defrauded homeowners and mortgage 
lenders and will send an even stronger message to those thinking about 
committing a future crime. I hope my colleagues will join in supporting 
the legislation to make sure that taxpayer dollars are protected.
  I want to add a little editorial comment outside of this piece of 
legislation we have before us. There will be a lot of new Members 
coming to the Senate, maybe not understanding the motivation behind the 
False Claims Act of 1986. There was tremendous fraud, particularly in 
defense contracting, that caused me at that time, as a first-term 
Senator, to be concerned about it. We got proper amendments to the 
False Claims Act to protect whistleblowers and to use the information 
that whistleblowers give us to bring cases.
  The motivation behind the False Claims Act is that maybe for 
philosophical reasons, the Justice Department might want to pursue 
something or maybe their workload is such that a certain case might 
have a lower priority. It gives the individual citizen in qui tam type 
suits the ability to bring cases in a sense as a citizen prosecutor. Of 
course, if a person is not a lawyer, they will have to hire lawyers to 
do that for them. But as a motivation for doing it, they get a percent 
of what is recovered.
  Remember, $22 billion has been recovered since this law was passed. 
That may not be a lot of money over the period of years, but it sure is 
one big hunk of money that we wouldn't have access to if it wasn't for 
whistleblowers and people who were willing to pursue it to the nth 
degree to make sure that the case is made and to bring back the 
taxpayer money at the same time.
  Consequently, I am sure somebody is going to try to make a case that 
when some whistleblower gets $1 million, well, isn't that an awful lot 
of money for information that has brought back maybe tens of millions 
of dollars or maybe hundreds of millions of dollars? But the point is, 
we would not have the case if it was not for the information from the 
whistleblower.
  A lot of people will make a judgment: Well, if you are a public 
employee or connected to a government program, it is your duty to 
report that. Well, that is exactly what a lot of people have done 
without even knowing the false claims law exists. A lot of people whom 
I have met as whistleblowers have brought to the attention of people 
higher up in the Government attempts at fraud or actual fraud and got 
nowhere, and then everybody assumes the only reason they brought it up 
is because they knew: Well, I can make a case out of this, and I can 
get a large award for bringing this to people's attention. Most of the 
whistleblowers whom I know about did not even know about whistleblower 
protection laws, did not even know about false claims laws until they 
got into it. Then they find out there is some law that protects them, 
there is some law that encourages them to move forward.
  The point I am trying to make is that when Government cannot do its 
job of recovering fraud or does not know about it, it seems to me both 
the $22 billion that has come back to the Federal Treasury as well as 
the nature of preventing fraud that is behind it--and that probably 
does much more good, but you cannot measure it, than what is evidenced 
by the $22 billion--should not be challenged.
  Defense contractors during the late 1980s into the 1990s tried to gut 
this legislation through amendments on appropriations bills or through 
other attempts. When the defense contractors could not do it, they got 
people in the health care industry to front for them to try to gut it. 
In almost every respect, in 20 years, we have stopped various special 
interests in this town from gutting this legislation. But as we brought 
this bill forward with Senator Leahy, we have found those people kind 
of coming to the surface once again.
  I say to my colleagues--and particularly I would like my new 
colleagues to be aware of this--you are going to find those same 
special interests that have been around for over a period of the last 
20 years trying to gut this legislation because it is one of the most 
effective tools against fraud. You are going to find them surfacing, 
not necessarily in amendments that are very transparent that there is a 
special interest behind it. But let me tell you from the experience I 
have had defending this legislation over the last 20 years, they are 
there. They do not like the False Claims Act. I do not mean these 
interests are about doing fraud, but they do not want the overseer the 
False Claims Act is, and they do not want the encouragement to 
whistleblowers that if something is wrong, it might be reported.
  I hope my colleagues--as the False Claims Act provisions of this bill 
might be countered by some of our colleagues--think in terms of this 
not being a new attack, this is just a return of a constant attack this 
legislation had on it from maybe 1986 for about 10 years. I have not 
heard it surface a whole lot since then. But it is there.
  Remember, this was a piece of legislation that was originally 
intended to go after military contract fraud. But let me tell you, now 
it is one of the best tools to get at health care fraud. That is 
sometimes the impetus for some of these crippling amendments. So please 
keep that in the back of your mind as we consider this legislation, or 
at least this part of this bill dealing with the False Claims Act.
  I surely thank Senator Leahy for including this in the bill, bringing 
this back to its original intent, so it can be even a more forceful 
tool to be used against false claims, since it has been weakened by 
some court decisions. It will help us ferret out fraud. I am sure happy 
we have a President who is also interested in doing that.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following my

[[Page 10037]]

remarks, Senator Klobuchar be recognized and then Senator Inhofe.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, just for 
clarification purposes, generally, we go back and forth on both sides, 
but it is fine with me to do it this way so Senator Klobuchar can 
follow the Senator. Does the Senator think the two of you will be more 
than 30 minutes all together?
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. I say to Senator Inhofe, we will not be. I will only 
go 10 minutes.
  Mr. INHOFE. That is fine. Thank you very much. I do not object. I 
further ask unanimous consent that following Senator Klobuchar, I have 
at least 30 minutes. I believe that is the time that is allotted me.
  Mr. KAUFMAN. I thank the Senator.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I am proud to join with Chairman Leahy 
and Senator Grassley in sponsoring the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery 
Act.
  I applaud their leadership on this issue. I also want to note the 
significant contributions of Senators Schumer and Klobuchar, who have 
joined us on this bill and have improved it in important ways.
  Today's economic crisis has many causes, from serious regulatory 
failures to recklessness and greed. While we are learning more each day 
about what happened, one thing is certain right now: financial fraud 
contributed mightily to this economic collapse.
  It is the job of law enforcement to ferret out the behavior that was 
criminal as opposed to merely reckless or foolish or unethical.
  Yet I am certain that in the complex web of systemic failures that 
have caused devastating harm to so many Americans, law enforcement will 
uncover a continuum of behavior and requisite blame. At one end will be 
those responsible bankers and mortgage brokers who never engaged in 
unduly risky behavior.
  There will also be those on the continuum who were merely reckless 
and based their business plans on the false assumption that housing 
values would always increase.
  But the continuum will be anchored on the other end by mortgage 
brokers who promoted fraud, and by bankers and financiers who 
deliberately ignored excessive risk in designing mortgage-related 
products, and then hid those risks from investors while self-dealing 
and lining their own pockets. Those people, in my view, should be 
targets of the FBI.
  If we want to restore the public's faith in our financial markets and 
in the rule of law, then we must identify, prosecute, and send to 
prison those individuals who broke the law. Their fraudulent conduct 
has severely damaged our economy and harmed countless hard-working 
Americans.
  The public needs to know that when mortgage brokers or credit raters 
or Wall Street bankers break the law, they will be treated like the 
criminals they are. We can't have one set of rules for people who rob 
banks and another set of rules for banks who rob people.
  Unfortunately, our law enforcement agencies do not have the resources 
they need to do the job. Right after September 11, Federal law 
enforcement resources were shifted dramatically, and understandably, to 
counterterrorism. Regrettably, they have not been replaced.
  As a result, our capacity to investigate and prosecute financial 
crimes has been severely depleted. At the height of the savings and 
loan crisis, as many as 1,000 FBI agents were investigating financial 
fraud. As of last month, there were fewer than 250. And no one doubts 
that the scope of the problem today is far greater than it was during 
the S & L crisis.
  That is why the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act begins by 
providing the resources necessary to rebuild the Nation's white collar 
enforcement program. Building this capacity is doubly important today, 
given the substantial Federal funds being spent in connection with 
bailout and recovery programs.
  We need the investigators and analysts in place as soon as possible, 
not only to uncover and prosecute crimes that have already occurred, 
but also to deter future crimes.
  Prosecuting bad people won't put an end to bad behavior. But it will 
have an impact on those people in the mortgage industry, on the trading 
desks, and in the board rooms, who might be tempted to put greed ahead 
of the law.
  The bill authorizes $165 million a year for hiring fraud 
investigators and prosecutors at the Department of Justice for fiscal 
years 2010 and 2011. That includes $75 million in 2010 and $65 million 
in 2011 for the FBI to add 190 agents and 200 professional staff and 
forensic analysts.
  The bill also includes $50 million a year for U.S. Attorneys' 
Offices, where much of the financial crime prosecution takes place, and 
$40 million for the criminal, civil, and tax divisions at Main Justice, 
to provide special litigation and investigative support.
  Finally, the bill authorizes $80 million a year over the next 2 years 
for investigators and analysts at the Postal Inspection Service, the 
Secret Service, and the inspector general at HUD, all to combat fraud.
  This authorization, $490 million over the next 2 fiscal years, is 
actually quite modest, given the work that needs to be done. It is also 
an investment. History tells us that funds spent on fraud enforcement 
net money for the Government, at a rate of about $15 recovered for 
every $1 spent. In so many ways, this is an investment we can't afford 
not to make.
  Beyond providing resources, this bill modernizes several critical 
areas of Federal fraud law, ensuring that prosecutors have the tools 
necessary to combat past and future financial fraud.
  Chairman Leahy has spelled out these changes in some detail. I want 
to highlight a couple of points.
  First, the bill updates the definition of ``financial institution'' 
in Federal fraud statutes to cover mortgage lending businesses that are 
not directly regulated or insured by the Federal Government. These are 
businesses that were responsible for close to half of the residential 
mortgage market before the economic collapse. Just last month, FBI 
Director Mueller stated that this single change would be ``tremendously 
helpful'' in the fight against mortgage fraud.
  The bill also amends Federal fraud law to protect funds expended 
under both the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the Economic Recovery 
Act. The Federal Government has provided extraordinary financial 
support to our banking system, and we need to protect those funds 
against fraud and abuse.
  Finally, I note that the bill provides narrow but important fixes to 
ill-considered Supreme Court decisions in the areas of money laundering 
and the False Claims Act. Here, as in the rest of the bill, we have 
taken an approach that is both carefully considered and precisely 
targeted. We are not creating new crimes, or establishing entirely new 
paths to recovering ill-gotten gains. Instead, we have focused on 
making narrow changes that make sure lawbreakers don't slip through the 
gaps in existing law.
  Complex and sophisticated crimes demand a broad-based and 
sophisticated response.
  In terms of crimes already committed, we can't afford to let the 
trail get cold.
  In terms of future crimes, we must provide both the legal tools and 
the law enforcement resources necessary to make would-be criminals 
think twice before allowing their greed to do such terrible damage.
  This is not about vengeance or politics. In our haste to target 
wrongdoers, we should not paint the entire banking industry with a 
broad brush. Banks struggling to make loans during a deep recession are 
not bad actors. Indeed, those who avoided the subprime market, avoided 
securitized pools of subprime mortgages, and never traded in credit 
default swaps were, in hindsight, models of discipline and prudential 
management during an era when many lost their heads to greed. Those 
banks should be applauded and supported, as they continue to work their

[[Page 10038]]

way through difficult times and a very challenging real estate market.
  The wrongdoers will be known by their deeds and held accountable to 
the law by a jury, not by the need to scapegoat an entire industry or a 
few sacrificial lambs to satisfy popular anger.
  There will be tell-tale signs for law enforcement to investigate: To 
find those who used inside information to bail out early while failing 
to disclose material information; to investigate traders who hid and 
distorted their trading books until they cashed out a huge bonus; to 
target mortgage brokers who repeatedly and fraudulently induced 
mortgage loans which they could quickly package and sell without any 
responsibility for the ticking time bombs that became weapons of mass 
financial destruction.
  Frauds of the sort addressed by this bill attack the heart of our 
financial system. For our economy to work for every American, we must 
restore the public's faith that no one, from Main Street to Wall 
Street, is above the law.
  Speaking of Main Street, the people I talk to are very patient as we 
work hard to get the financial system and the economy back on track. 
They understand this will be a long process and that we cannot expect 
immediate returns on the significant Federal investments made in recent 
months. At the same time, they rightly expect the Federal Government to 
spend the time and money necessary to bring to justice the criminals 
who helped create the crisis in the first place. The authorization of 
this bill--$490 million over the next 2 years--is very modest in light 
of the enormity of the crisis. The American public will not understand 
if we refuse to make this small investment in order to restore public 
confidence, both in the markets and in the rule of law.
  I again thank Chairman Leahy and Senator Grassley for their 
leadership on this issue, and I urge my colleagues to support this 
bill.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Minnesota is 
recognized.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, how much time is remaining on the 30 
minutes on our side?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Twelve minutes.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Thank you very much.
  Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Oklahoma for being so 
gracious to allow me to speak at this time. I am speaking today in 
support of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act which I believe is an 
important and timely piece of legislation that I cosponsored and helped 
to vote out of our Judiciary Committee. I also thank Senators Leahy, 
Grassley, and Kaufman, all of whom spoke this afternoon, for their 
leadership and their work on this bill. I believe this bill will 
greatly increase our ability to prosecute and prevent financial crime.
  I also note that the President and the administration have come out 
with their statement on administration policy on this bill and it is 
very positive, and they are supportive of this bill.
  Unfortunately, the need for this legislation could never have been 
clearer. The Madoff scandal is only one big example of why we need this 
bill. Because of one man--one man--$65 billion has been lost in this 
country. It has been a loss to investors, a loss to people who have 
nothing left, a loss to some of the charities and charitable 
organizations in this country that are trying to help people in need 
during this difficult time. In my home State of Minnesota, literally 
dozens and dozens of people have lost significant sums of money, and 
our charities are suffering. This isn't right.
  After years of lax oversight and investigation, we are beginning to 
see many financial crimes come to light as the victims of financial 
fraud have emerged to tell their stories.
  During a recent Judiciary Committee hearing on fraud enforcement, the 
Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the 
Justice Department said that as the economy has declined:

       What we may be starting to see [are] . . . these sorts of 
     Ponzy schemes that were able to go along for a little while. 
     And then all of a sudden, there's a rush by the victims of 
     schemes who don't know they're victims yet. And then the 
     money's not there when they go to get the money out.

  In other words, as we would say in Minnesota, the chickens are coming 
home to roost.
  All of this reminds me of a famous passage about embezzlement in John 
Kenneth Galbraith's classic book, ``The Great Crash 1929.'' I remember 
this because I would often use it as a prosecutor in Minnesota when I 
would address the legislature about the need to focus on white-collar 
crimes, especially in times of economic difficulty, and this is what he 
said:

       In goods times, people are relaxed, trusting, and money is 
     plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are 
     always many people who need more. Under these circumstances 
     the rate of embezzlement grows [and] the rate of discovery 
     falls off. In depression, all this is reversed. Money is 
     watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it 
     is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. 
     Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is 
     enormously improved.

  This may be an almost perfect description of our own time. As 
Galbraith suggested, our bad economy is now exposing financial crimes 
that have been concealed for many years.
  In the past 3 years, the number of criminal mortgage fraud 
investigations opened by the FBI, as Senator Leahy explained, has 
doubled. And in the past 6 years, there has been a nearly tenfold 
increase in the number of reports filed with the Treasury Department 
alleging mortgage fraud.
  I fear this is the tip of the iceberg. As our economy has declined, 
crime will be on the rise. And with billions of dollars going out the 
door to stimulate the economy--important job-creating investments in 
transportation infrastructure and broadband networks and much more--we 
know there are going to be people trying to bilk the system, whether it 
is for that or the TARP money, and steal money for their own personal 
profit.
  So it is critical that we have a Justice Department and an FBI that 
will hold accountable the people who are getting government funds, that 
will watch over the taxpayers' money, and that will make sure people 
such as Bernie Madoff are prosecuted and brought to justice. In order 
to do that, we need to make sure law enforcement has the tools and the 
resources they need to effectively fight, investigate, and prosecute 
these crimes.
  Before entering the Senate, I served as the chief prosecutor for 
Hennepin County in Minnesota, which consists of Minneapolis and 45 
suburban communities. We worked extensively with the U.S. Attorney's 
Office and the FBI and other Federal agencies on white-collar crime. I 
remember it well because after the tragedy on 9/11, a number of the 
white-collar cases that were previously being prosecuted by the U.S. 
Attorney's Office came to our office since we were the largest 
prosecutor's office in the State. We took both cases on. We got the 
people in place to handle them. But I saw then how resource intensive 
these cases can be.
  Most prosecutors have a simple saying about financial fraud cases: 
``Follow the money and you will find the crooks.'' Of course, in 
reality, it is often very hard to do that. It is very time consuming 
and very expensive to look through thousands and thousands of boxes of 
documents and computer files to find that money trail and to follow it 
to where it goes to mortgage fraud and financial fraud. In fact, many 
white-collar crimes require complex investigations and significant 
resources to catch the crooks and prosecute them. They often require 
special--and expensive--expertise such as individual skills in 
accounting or computer forensics.
  Although it is hard and more complex to catch white-collar criminals, 
it is no less important. For the sake of our economy, for the sake of 
justice, we must hold people accountable for their crimes, whether it 
is robbing a convenience store or using a computer to bilk investors 
out of millions of dollars.
  Prosecuting financial crimes also has a ripple effect. Increased 
enforcement acts as a deterrent, sending a clear

[[Page 10039]]

message to those who might want to commit financial fraud that 
wrongdoers will be prosecuted and subject to the full extent of the 
law. So oftentimes these white-collar criminals somehow see themselves 
above the law because they have a good job and because they know people 
in town. I can say that once we started prosecuting these people, a lot 
of people started turning money in. My favorite was when we started 
prosecuting nine commercial airline pilots for not paying taxes to the 
Minnesota Revenue Department. We suddenly got millions of dollars into 
the coffers of the revenue department in the State of Minnesota because 
it turned out other people were also maybe opening up post office boxes 
in other States and pretending to live there instead of in our State. 
So there can be a great deterrent effect and bring money in from people 
who haven't been paying their taxes or actually committing fraud.
  Unfortunately, in the last 8 years on the Federal level, I believe 
there hasn't been enough of this, partly because we haven't had the 
resources and partly because some of the regulatory agencies have been 
basically asleep at the wheel.
  After the attacks on September 11, the FBI understandably reduced its 
criminal investigator work to expand its national security role, 
shifting more than 1,800 agents--or nearly one-third of all agents who 
were in criminal programs--to terrorism and intelligence duties. 
Current and former officials say that the cutbacks have left the FBI 
seriously exposed in investigating an area such as white-collar crime. 
Right now, the FBI doesn't have enough staff to investigate or even 
review the 5,000-plus fraud allegations that the Treasury Department 
receives every month.
  Make no mistake, this is having an effect on our economy. In addition 
to the many families losing their hard-earned money and their homes, 
fraud has contributed to the collapse in the mortgage-backed securities 
market. In the past year, banks and financial institutions in our 
country lost more than $500 billion because of the subprime mortgage 
industry.
  That is why the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act is so important. 
The bill authorizes $165 million a year for the Justice Department to 
hire fraud prosecutors and investigators, including funds for the FBI 
to bring on an additional 190 special agents and more than 200 
professional staff and forensic analysts to rebuild its white-collar 
investigation program. Additionally, the bill will provide resources 
for the FBI to double the number of mortgage fraud task forces 
nationwide that target fraud in the hardest hit areas of our country. I 
am a big believer in these task forces as a way of bringing local and 
Federal law enforcement together. We have seen it work effectively in a 
number of areas across the country.
  In addition to making sure law enforcement has the resources it 
needs, this legislation also makes sure they have the tools needed to 
crack down on financial crime. This bill makes it easier to prosecute 
mortgage lending businesses for fraud--the predatory lenders. These 
companies were responsible for nearly half of the residential mortgage 
market before the economic collapse. Yet they currently remain largely 
unregulated and outside the scope of traditional Federal fraud 
statutes. This makes no sense. By amending the criminal code, we can 
hold unregulated mortgage businesses responsible for their actions. 
Federal fraud laws should apply to private mortgage businesses such as 
Countrywide Home Loans and GMAC Mortgage, just as they apply to 
federally insured and regulated banks. I know we have a lot of very 
healthy banks in Minnesota and they have been fighting for this for 
years.
  Why should they be held to a different standard? Why should some of 
these mortgage companies not be held to the same fiduciary duty as 
these banks? As a former prosecutor, I know firsthand how challenging 
it can be to go after these financial crimes, but I also know how 
important it is. If we are going to get our economy back on track, we 
have to restore trust in our financial system. That starts with 
stopping fraud and crime. The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act will 
give our law enforcement agencies the tools and resources they need to 
do this.
  I strongly urge my colleagues to support this bill and to support 
this incredibly important piece of legislation. The time is right. We 
not only have the fraud we are already seeing come to light but we also 
know there are a number of possibilities for fraud as we have seen in 
the past when government funds go out. There has to be the policeman on 
the corner. That is our FBI, that is our task forces with local law 
enforcement, and that is our prosecutors watching what happens so we 
don't let another Bernie Madoff slip through the cracks.
  Thank you very much, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma is 
recognized.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, it was my understanding earlier that I had 
about 15 more minutes than the 30 minutes that I understand are 
allotted me now. So if there is time at the end of my main message, I 
wish to address the problem of the David Hamilton nomination. In fact, 
I will announce that I will filibuster that nomination. The EPA 
endangerment findings, the Obama gun control, and then the DHS report 
that is very damaging to our veterans.


                          Obama Defense Budget

  First of all, the main reason I am here is to speak out about a great 
concern that we are now heading down a very dangerous road leading to 
the gutting of our military and settling for adequacy as opposed to 
supremacy. I first made my concerns known on a YouTube video that I did 
when I was in Afghanistan immediately following the announcement by the 
Obama administration. My concerns drew an interesting reaction from the 
left. Not only did they say I was wrong to say that there were proposed 
cuts to the budget, they actually said the Obama administration 
proposed to increase the budget. I must confess it is a rare day when 
liberals actually claim to support increasing our Nation's military.
  MSNBC was so outraged with my video that three of their prime time 
hosts took aim at my comments from Afghanistan that very same night. 
MSNBC host Ed Schultz featured my video as part of his regular feature 
``Psycho Talk'' and called my concerns ``absolutely false'' and said I 
was joining Cheney and Giuliani.
  Keith Olbermann said I should ``do the math'' and his guest, the very 
unbiased Speaker Pelosi, said my criticism of the Obama defense budget 
was simply ``desperation'' and that we are going to be spending more on 
defense than in 2009.
  Not to be left out, Rachel Maddow repeated the same talking points 
and said once again the budget was actually going to increase. Then she 
brought on a guest, Eugene Robinson, an associate editor and columnist 
with the Washington Post, who went so far as to say I was making stuff 
up and lying.
  Not to be outdone, CNN's Rich Sanchez said he was doing a ``fact 
check.'' He called my words ``ridiculous'' and brought on a liberal 
think tank policy wonk, whom Sanchez referred to as a ``moderate,'' to 
defend his claims. It is interesting that all of the liberal 
journalists were jumping on and assailing me but not the moderate ones.
  I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my remarks, this 
editorial from the Wall Street Journal be printed in the Record.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. INHOFE. The problem is that the left is focused on one number, 
one piece of military spending, when they need to look at the total 
defense budget--what DOD actually spends on military operations, and 
how that money is used to maintain our military capabilities.
  In actuality, thanks to the Obama administration, our overall defense 
spending has been cut by $10.7 billion

[[Page 10040]]

in fiscal 2009 and then cut again in 2010. You might say fiscal 2009 
was from the previous administration. But the second part of the 
emergency supplemental is where the cuts came in, and that was done by 
the Obama administration.
  We have reached a crossroads where we will choose to either invest in 
modernization and readiness of our military or mistakenly ``kick the 
can down the road,'' which we have been doing.
  Based on the projected defense budget for the next 10 years, it looks 
as if this administration is taking us down a path that leads to a 
weaker military that is poorly equipped. Two weeks ago, on April 6, 
Secretary Gates announced a broad plan of cuts and adjustments in the 
fiscal year 2010 DOD budget. His plan intends to ``reshape the 
priorities of America's defense establishment'' and ``profoundly reform 
how the DOD does business.''
  However, the programs and systems he intends to cut will severely 
affect the ongoing effort to rebuild and modernize our military. I was 
in Afghanistan when this decision was announced. Most of the liberal 
journalists responded.
  This plan comes at a time in our history when we have dramatically 
increased domestic spending by trillions of dollars under the umbrella 
of ``emergency bailouts'' and ``stimulus packages.''
  Think about it. I think that $700 billion, quite frankly, was thrown 
away. It was supposed to be used for damaged assets and it was used to 
bail out friendly banks. I will defend Paulson a little, because it was 
Tim Geithner who was the architect behind all of this. I will elaborate 
on that later.
  If you want to stimulate the economy, there are three ways to do it. 
One would be for military spending, defense spending; another is 
infrastructure investment--highways, construction, bridges--and another 
is tax cuts.
  Sadly, this President is on track to grow the country's obligations 
to 22 percent of our GDP, while he is shrinking defense spending in 
relation to GDP to 3 percent in 2019.
  This chart shows that during the Clinton administration, in the 
1990s, we took a holiday from the procurement of new weapons and 
modernizing the aging weapons systems. This black line is what he 
inherited in the beginning. If you add inflation to it, that is what it 
would have been. This line was the Clinton budget--$412 billion less 
than what normal inflation would be. It looks like that is where we are 
going from this point on.
  Many of us in the Senate and in the House repeatedly spoke on the 
floor during the 1990s. We were concerned about the dangers of the 
massive cuts in personnel and procurement that were taking shape. With 
very few exceptions, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines have 
been using the same weapons systems while fighting a two-fronted war on 
terror for 8 years. They are weapons and weapons systems designed and 
produced during the Cold War--weapons used repeatedly over the past two 
decades around the globe--weapons and weapon systems still in use 
today.
  We have been unsuccessful in trying to get past a bow wave created in 
the 1990s, when the military budget was cut $412 billion and 
acquisition programs and research and development were pushed to the 
right--delayed.
  The cost of kicking our military modernization down the road is a 
twofold increase in our cost to modernize--an increase to develop and 
field new weapons and weapon systems, and an increased cost to operate 
and maintain our aging equipment.
  It is also forcing the military to accept more risk as they decide 
how to operate with less equipment, how to fight with equipment 
increasingly difficult to maintain, and what to do when weapon systems 
reach the end of their service life without an operational replacement.
  The major combat systems that our troops use today are those 
developed and procured during the 1980s and, in some cases, going back 
to the 1950s.
  The Reagan administration was handed a military that was a hollow 
force in many respects--low morale, low pay, outdated equipment, and 
unable to maintain the equipment it possessed. Ronald Reagan expanded 
the military budget, increased troop size, reenergized weapons 
procurement, and revived our intelligence capabilities, returning this 
country to its superpower status. He guaranteed the superiority of the 
U.S. military's weapon systems and capabilities through long-term 
investment and ensuring that our troops were provided with the most 
advanced equipment available.
  As Secretary Gates said in January 2009, our military must be 
prepared for a ``full spectrum'' of operations, including the type of 
combat we are facing in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as large-scale 
threats that we face in places such as North Korea and Iran.
  By the way, I don't blame Secretary Gates for all of this. He had to 
use the numbers that the Obama White House gave him.
  Far too often we have learned the hard way that we don't have a 
crystal ball to precisely predict what types of national security 
threats the Nation will face. During a hearing in the House Armed 
Services Committee--this happened when I was on that committee in 1994. 
We had somebody testify who said that in 10 years we will no longer 
need ground troops. Look at this. After 7 years engaged in the war on 
terror, we know he was wrong. The strategic environment has become 
increasingly complex, dynamic, lethal, and uncertain.
  Today, our military is fighting with equipment that is decades old 
and a force structure that is 40 percent less than what we had in the 
1980s.
  The Air Force has 2,500 fewer aircraft. The Navy cut its fleet size 
in half; that is down to 300 ships. The Army reduced its force to half 
the number of divisions it had during the first gulf war.
  For the past 17 years, our military has been asked to do more with 
much less and older equipment. It is taking a toll on our troops. 
Unfortunately, what took less than a decade to field in the 1980s will 
now take us multiple decades to field. A case in point: The KC-X, which 
will take up to 30 years to replace. We are using KC-135s for these 
capabilities. The KC-X program would have modernized that. In the case 
of the KC-135s, some are 50 years old. It gets to the point where the 
maintenance is more than buying something new.
  The United States will have to build and sustain military 
capabilities required to respond to possible future threats across the 
spectrum of conflict, and there are numerous potential threats that 
could impact our national security.
  The next war will not be like the last one. We cannot predict. You 
can talk to smart generals and ask what do we have to pay for 20 years 
from now, and they are smart, but they will be wrong, just like the 
guys who said we would no longer need ground troops in 10 years. We 
don't know.
  In February of 2009, a marine general wrote to one of the young 
marines:

       You say the next conflict will be a guerrilla conflict. I 
     say, it depends. In my lifetime, we have been in five big 
     fights and a bunch of little ones. In only one of those five 
     big ones (Desert Storm) had we prepared for the type of war 
     we wound up having to fight. It is one thing to say that a 
     certain type of fight is more or less likely; it is quite 
     another to say it is certain to be one or the other. In war, 
     the only thing that is certain is uncertainty.

  We weren't able to predict the fall of the Soviet Union, the rapid 
growth of the ballistic missile capability of North Korea, or the rise 
in asymmetric warfare. We were wrong in all of that. It doesn't matter 
how great our military leaders or intelligence are, our strategic 
thinking will always be imperfect.
  In order to provide stability, America must be able to deter or 
defeat any threat, be it an insurgency or a challenge from a near-peer 
competitor.
  We can no longer afford to fool ourselves that we are sending our 
kids out with the best of equipment. Quite often, I talk to people who 
are really not into this. They are working hard and paying taxes for 
all this fun we are having up here. When you tell them that our kids 
are going out there without the very best of equipment, they are 
outraged. They cannot believe it. Unfortunately, that is the case.

[[Page 10041]]

  Let's do the math that they are so critical of. As I said, we need to 
look at the total defense budget, everything DOD spends. This includes 
national defense funds, DOD funds, DOE funds for nuclear ships and 
weapons, and other defense-related items, such as selective service 
system, plus the wartime supplemental.
  First, there is a net loss in defense spending in 2009 of $10.7 
billion. President Bush increased the total defense budget in 2009 by 
$37.2 billion. He also approved $65.9 billion in supplemental funds for 
the first part of fiscal 2009.
  President Obama's supplemental request for defense spending is only 
$75.5 billion to cover an increase of 21,000 troops in Afghanistan, 
increased operations in Afghanistan, continued operations in Iraq, and 
then withdrawing from Iraq. A GOP report on the cost of Iraq withdrawal 
said it will be a ``massive and expensive effort''--that costs would 
more often increase in the near term. What they are saying is that 
these things were not included in Obama's budget, but we will pay for 
them anyway. So he comes out with a figure that he says is going to be 
more costly.
  They went on to say that the cost of equipment repairs, replacements, 
closing and turning over 283 military installations in Iraq and moving 
troops and equipment ``will likely be significant.'' This is what we 
call the cost of withdrawal.
  Let's compare 2009 to 2010, where I have been accused of not being 
able to do the math. Defense spending does increase from 2009 to 2010 
by $14.9 billion. But according to President Obama's letter to Speaker 
Pelosi on April 9, there will be no more supplementals.
  That would mean DOD would have to fund all wartime operations out of 
the hide of DOD to the tune of about $100 billion plus.
  However, President Obama does fence off $130 billion for overseas 
contingency funds, which could be used for getting out of Iraq and 
increased operations in Afghanistan.
  Even adding the entire $130 billion to defense spending, which is 
never the case with supplemental funding, the overall increase in 
defense spending for 2010 is $3.5 billion.
  If we estimate 2 percent inflation for cost growth of just the 
defense budget, defense spending actually decreases by $7.3 billion.
  Now, add in the accelerated growth of the Army and Marine Corps--a 
65,000 and 22,000 increase, respectively, which will cost approximately 
$13 billion to cover pay and health care costs, and you start to see 
the beginnings of how our military modernization gets gutted.
  DOD must pay for personnel, operations and maintenance, ongoing 
wartime and contingency operations. With a zero supplemental fund, the 
money to pay for these ``must pays''--the things we have to buy--has to 
be taken from DOD's base budget, and the areas that are always hit are 
R&D and acquisition.
  Look at what is being cut. If you question what I am saying here in 
terms of dropping down the costs, look at the programs we have to have 
that they are cutting. They are eliminating future combat systems. This 
is something we started putting together 8 years ago--the first 
transformation of ground operations and capabilities in probably 30 
years. The C-17s--we need more of them. They have cut the additional C-
17s. And the F-22--I am proud that we finally bit the bullet and 
realized we want to send our kids out in strike vehicles that are 
better than the ones they are making in Russia. That is the F-22, the 
fifth generation. They have stopped that.
  Originally, we were going to have some 750 F-22s. Now they are 
stopping it in this budget at 187. So historical defense spending as a 
percentage of GDP has been 3 percent during the Clinton drawdown; 4.6 
percent during the gulf war; 6 percent during the Reagan buildup; 8.9 
percent during the Vietnam war; 11.7 percent during the Korean war; and 
about 35 percent during World War II.
  When compared to a sustained annual defense investment of 4 percent 
of the GDP to recapitalize and modernize our military, the 10-year 
proposed Obama defense budget is $1.3 trillion in the red.
  We have a similar chart that we had here during the Clinton 
administration. One thing the Obama defense budget guarantees is that 
the oldest military in the history of the Nation will get older and 
more expensive to maintain and operate.
  Ships currently average 18 years; Naval aircraft averages 18 years; 
Marine Corps aircraft, 21 years. Refueling tankers are over 44 years 
old; Air Force fighter aircraft, 19 years old; special operations 
aircraft, over 27 years old; and bomber aircraft, over 33 years old.
  In order to keep 40-year-old KC-135s, as I mentioned a minute ago, in 
the air, DOD has to reprogram almost $3 billion from the KC-X program 
to repair KC-135s. That means the program that was there to pay for 
modernizing, to buy new aircraft--the KC-X it is termed--now we are 
drawing down from that just to repair the old, ancient KC-135s.
  In the Army, the current fleet of combat vehicles was developed and 
procured 30 to 60 years ago and is aging at an increasingly rapid rate. 
The M1 Abrams tank developed in the 1970s and fielded in the eighties 
is currently on its third iteration and update and being used 
extensively on the battlefield.
  The M2 Bradley fighting vehicle, also developed over 25 years ago, is 
on its third significant modification and has been crucial in defending 
our troops against IED and RPG threats in Iraq.
  Both of these combat-proven vehicles continue to undergo fleetwide 
reset programs because of their rate of use in the war on terror.
  The oldest combat vehicle in the Army inventory is the Paladin 
Howitzer. This is kind of interesting because this is part of the FCS 
and is the furthest along right now in its development. The Paladin 
technology is World War II technology. Every time you fire it, you have 
to get out and swab the breech. There are now five countries, including 
South Africa, that make a better cannon than our kids are using.
  Over 19,000 artillery rounds were shot from the Paladins in Iraq in 
2008; over 27,000 were shot in 2007. Despite some parochial criticism 
in the media and in this Congress, the fact remains that the U.S. Army 
is using a system developed over 50 years ago.
  By the way, people accuse me of doing something that is parochial. If 
we look at the footprint that was given by the lead systems integrator, 
it shows Oklahoma in the bottom 20 in terms of getting funding for the 
FCS program.
  Our artillery soldiers are using this system that has a chassis 
design that is a half century old and slated to undergo its seventh 
modification. Let me say at this point that I believe the defense 
budget should at the very least continue the PIM Program--the Paladin 
Integrated Management Program--just to keep those vehicles going. We 
should keep the FCS on track but don't dump the PIM Program with the 
FCS Program.
  Even with the implementation of the PIM update, the Army expects to 
keep the Paladin in use until 2060. That is 100 years on the 
battlefield. Our Army is long overdue a thorough and comprehensive 
modernization program instead of throwing billions of dollars toward 
updating and maintaining decades-old vehicle platforms.
  The proposed defense budget would cancel the manned vehicle portion 
of the Army's Future Combat System, the modernization program intended 
to replace the Paladin, Abrams, and the Bradley over the next 25 years.
  The FCS vehicles would bring improved armor, a state-of-the-art 
communications network. These are life-and-death issues. These are our 
troops on the ground being able to have something that is actually 
better than our prospective enemies. That is what we are losing in this 
defense budget.
  The Air Force: For nearly two decades, our U.S. Air Force has 
dominated the skies to ensure our superiority around the world. 
However, the most recent GAO study stated that the Air Sovereignty 
Alert Operations--the post-9/11 operations that protect our homeland--
are at risk during aging aircraft and insufficient procurement.

[[Page 10042]]

  The Air Force grounded 259 of its 441 F-15 Eagles in November to 
January while it looked into the breakup of an F-15C.
  Last May, the service parked all 500 of its T-38 trainers. Last 
October, the Air Force ordered more than half of the 356 A-10 fighters 
to stay put because of cracks in the wings.
  While we have enjoyed the benefit of the investment during the 1980s 
of the F-15, F-16, A-10, and the F-117s, the F-117 is now retired and 
the Air Force will be retiring 137 of the F-15s, 177 of the F-16s, and 
several of the A-10s.
  What we are saying is, we are already shutting down and the only way 
to replace them, if we are going to have a fifth generation strike 
vehicle, is with the F-22. We are supposed to have 750 of these F-22s. 
This budget stops the line at 187. That means if something comes along 
and we have a more responsible, defense-oriented administration coming 
in, they would have to start up the line, and it will cost much more.
  This is being done at a time when Secretary Gates told reporters that 
the intelligence he has seen indicates a Russian fifth generation 
fighter could become operational about 2016, and previous estimates by 
the Pentagon on China's J-12 fifth generation fighter could be fielded 
by 2020.
  Increasing the number of F-35s is not going to do it; the functions 
are different; their missions are different.
  The Navy: At a time when it is being called on to project a presence 
in more parts of the world than ever before, Secretary Gates has 
recommended the Navy shrink its carrier fleet to 10 aircraft carriers 
by 2012 and delay the acquisition of other portions of the fleet.
  This reduction of the aircraft carriers goes further below the 
previous QDR. That is the Quadrennial Defense Review. They stated 20 
carriers would be required for moderate risk. When they use ``moderate 
risk,'' we are talking about lives of our soldiers, sailors, and 
airmen.
  In the last 3 weeks, we have seen how relevant and important the Navy 
is while watching the various pirate activities off Somalia and some of 
those activities that are going on now. We did not realize we needed to 
do that prior to that time. It shows how fluid this is in terms of our 
expectations and our needs.
  China, Japan, Australia, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, 
Singapore, Bangladesh, South and North Korea either now have or are 
planning to acquire submarines to compete with ours.
  In all, the Navy would be left with less than 300 ships, and that is 
about half of what it was during the eighties.
  Missile defense: I am going to run out of time. I should have had 
this on before. On February 3, we all know, Iran launched a satellite 
on the 30th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, demonstrating 
key technologies for propulsion, staging, and so forth.
  Two weeks ago, North Korea furthered their missile and nuclear 
development by launching the Taepodong 2 missile in the South China 
Sea, despite widespread world condemnation. Despite this, the 
administration has recommended a 16-percent cut in missile defense. It 
is interesting, this would come along right at the time of the 26th 
anniversary when Ronald Reagan put SDI together, recognizing, so 
prophetically when we were going to have a system, the technology to 
hit a bullet with a bullet. We have it now.
  We told the Czech Republic and Poland that we will be supporting 
them, putting together a radar and launch system. Now they don't know 
what we want because that also has either been delayed or canceled. I 
suggest it has been canceled.
  By the way, if Iran develops the capability of doing something from 
Iran and aiming toward Western Europe, this is the only safeguard we 
would have. The Czech Republic and Poland have gone along with us, and 
now we are pulling the rug out from under them.
  The last point I wish to make is on the Airborne Laser Program. I 
wish there was time to explain this program. There are three phases. 
You have the launch phase, midcourse phase, and terminal phase. These 
phases are necessary for a national missile defense system.
  I agree we need to do something on the acquisition processes. We have 
been trying to do it for a long period of time. However, acquisition 
reform should be done in conjunction with, not in lieu of, modernizing 
and properly equipping our Armed Forces to dominate across the full 
spectrum of warfare.
  I have stated many times in this Chamber that the greatest trust 
placed in Congress by the American people is to provide for their 
security by maintaining a strong national defense. We can avoid this 
far too frequent debate on defense budgeting by assuring a minimal 
level of funding for our military.
  I believe when you talk to the average man on the street as to what 
is the primary function of Government, that function should be to 
defend America, and that is the threat we are facing now. Somehow this 
has taken a back seat to what we are supposed to be doing.
  As the Congress considers the administration's budget recommendations 
in the coming weeks, we have to ask several questions: Are the forces 
being provided to our commanders in the field postured to counter the 
full spectrum of threats? Are we providing our troops with the best and 
most capable equipment available? Certainly we are not today. And can 
we afford to kick the can down the road further? The answer is a 
resounding no.
  Finally, the total cost for 2010 to reach this expectation would 
require an increase of $28 billion in 2010. With the Obama budget of 
social welfare that will triple the public debt in 10 years, we have 
already spent almost $2 trillion. Mr. President, the $700 billion of a 
bank bailout we now know is Tim Geithner's plan to start with, and in 
October of 2008, we gave $700 billion to an unelected bureaucrat to do 
with as he wished with no oversight whatsoever.
  I have to say this is the time when we look at the amount of money 
that is being spent on all the social welfare programs and say: Why not 
defend America? Clearly, that is not the primary goal of this 
administration.
  I think my fellow Oklahoma Congressman, Tom Cole, said it best. He 
said: President Obama's charm and eloquence is no substitute for a 
strong national defense.
  I believe that is right. I hope we have a chance to relook at this 
and make adjustments.
  I also remind the administration, you can come out with all these 
cuts, cutting the F-22s and the Future Combat System and the C-17s and 
the national missile defense system, but that still has to go through. 
And thank God we have three branches of Government so we will be able 
to get the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services 
Committee to review this and try to put America back in a position 
where its primary goal is to defend America. That is what this is all 
about.


                        EPA Endangerment Finding

  I am very troubled by the EPA proposed endangerment finding that will 
unleash a torrent of regulations that will destroy jobs, harm 
consumers, and extend the Agency's reach into every corner of American 
life. Despite enormous expense and hardship for the American economy, 
these regulations will have virtually no effect on climate change.
  It now appears EPA's regulatory reach will find its way into schools, 
hospitals, assisted living facilities, and just about any activity that 
meets minimum thresholds in the Clean Air Act. Representative John 
Dingell was right: the endangerment finding will produce a ``glorious 
mess.'' ``It is worth noting that the solution to this ``glorious 
mess'' is not for Congress to pass cap-and-trade legislation, which 
replaces one very bad approach with another.
  Congress should pass a simple, narrowly targeted bill that stops EPA 
in its tracks.


                           gun treaty support

  Next, we discovered that President Obama, in his announcement last 
week, plans to urge the Senate to ratify the Inter-American Convention

[[Page 10043]]

Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, 
Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials, known by the 
acronym CIFTA.
  The idea that American-manufactured firearms are responsible for the 
growing violence in Mexico is not grounded in reality, but the Obama 
administration is using this violence as justification to require 
stricter licensing requirements and markings on firearms by U.S. 
manufacturers. The majority of the gun violence that is occurring in 
the drug wars in Mexico is the result of assault weapons, including 
fully automatic versions, which are not even available for sale in the 
United States. Many of these weapons are coming from other countries in 
Central and South America and deserters from the Mexican military.
  I am strongly opposed to placing more stringent requirements on U.S. 
gun manufacturers, especially when the evidence shows that they are not 
the problem. This is an instance of the Obama administration using 
alternative means to place greater regulations on the manufacture and 
sale of legal firearms in the United States. I believe that my 
colleagues in the Senate understand this to be the case and will do as 
they have for the last 10 years and not ratify this treaty.


       Letter to DHS Expressing Outrage over Controversial Report

  I was shocked to learn of a new report by the Department of Homeland 
Security entitled ``Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political 
Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment'' which 
classifies the brave men and women returning home from combat and 
operational deployments around the globe, who have been honorably 
defending our country, as potential terrorists.
  As a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I am 
especially proud of our soldiers returning home, and I find it 
extremely regretful that they have been subjected to such an insult by 
this report. Furthermore, I find it reprehensible that within this 
report Americans who hold certain beliefs regarding issues such as 
immigration, the second amendment, and abortion fall under the report's 
broad generalization of rightwing extremists, and are, therefore, 
considered a potential threat. I believe this report to be very 
offensive to many Americans.
  As a result, I joined Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, David Vitter 
of Louisiana, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, 
Richard Burr of North Carolina, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to send a 
letter to Secretary Janet Napolitano expressing concerns.


                             david hamilton

  Mr. President, I am not impressed with President Obama's judiciary 
and Department of Justice nominees. Eric Holder, David Ogden, Dawn 
Johnsen, Elena Kagan, and Thomas Perelli are all extreme liberals in 
their views on everything from the second amendment to abortion to 
pornography and obscenity. I applauded when President Obama kept 
Secretary Gates on as his Defense Secretary, and I really hoped that he 
would choose other individuals who were at least moderate in their 
political ideology, but that just has not been the case.
  Just prior to recess, my colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee 
boycotted the nomination hearing of David Hamilton to sit on the 
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. A hearing was scheduled a mere 2 
weeks after the announcement of his nomination. Senator Specter and 
seven of my other Republican colleagues requested another hearing after 
the spring recess, citing a Senate rule that allows a majority of the 
minority side of the committee to request a followup. Many remember 
David Hamilton because of his 2005 decision as a Federal district court 
judge presiding over the case Hinrichs v. Bosmah, in which he enjoined 
the Speaker of Indiana's House of Representatives from permitting 
``sectarian'' prayers to be offered as part of that body's official 
proceedings, meaning that the chaplain or whomever opened the 
proceedings with prayer could not invoke the name of Jesus Christ. In 
his conclusion, Hamilton wrote: ``If the Speaker chooses to continue 
any form of legislative prayer, he shall advise persons offering such a 
prayer (a) that it must be nonsectarian and must not be used to 
proselytize or advance any one faith or belief or to disparage any 
other faith or belief, and (b) that they should refrain from using 
Christ's name or title or any other denominational appeal.'' Further, 
ruling on a postjudgment motion, Hamilton stated that invoking the name 
of ``Allah'' would not advance a particular religion or disparage 
another. So, praying to Allah would be perfectly acceptable. I find 
this line of reasoning to be insane. Who in this body would not 
identify the name of ``Allah'' with the religion of Islam any less than 
they would identify the name of Jesus with Christianity? But I believe 
these are the kind of opinions we may see coming from the Seventh 
Circuit if David Hamilton is confirmed. I understand that Judge 
Hamilton's nomination is still pending before the Judiciary Committee, 
but I had to come to the floor to speak so that the American people, 
who are very concerned about this nomination, will know that I and my 
Republican colleagues on the Judiciary Committee are taking interest 
and are not just going to let this nomination sail through. In fact I 
will filibuster David Hamilton.
  I would also like to speak for a moment on a couple of the nominees 
that we will be voting on this evening. Tony West, the nominee for 
Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division served as cocounsel 
for John Walker Lindh. As you all know, Lindh joined the Taliban and 
fought against our very own American soldiers in the liberation of 
Afghanistan. Lindh is a traitor and terrorist, but after a plea deal 
that Mr. West helped obtain, he is only serving 20 years in prison.
  Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General nominee for the Criminal 
Division, helped obtain a great plea deal for Sandy Berger, who 
admitted to stealing classified documents from the National Archives. 
He received a $50,000 fine, probation, and community service. I 
understand that every criminal defendant is entitled to representation 
and that it was the duty of these men to vigorously represent their 
clients' interests, but it is also the choice of this administration 
who they nominate to these positions, and I truly believe that better 
choices could have been made.

                               Exhibit 1

                     The Pentagon's New Priorities

       Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a man not known for having 
     his head in the stars, announced his strategic Pentagon 
     blueprint this week, saying his proposals ``will profoundly 
     reform how this department does business.'' We hope he 
     informed Congress, home to 535 procurers in chief.
       The Defense procurement system is a mess, and previous 
     Pentagon reforms have faltered thanks mostly to the 
     micromanagers on Capitol Hill who are often more interested 
     in funneling money to their home states than in spending 
     dollars most effectively. Democrats and Republicans both 
     belly up to this bar, usually while castigating the executive 
     branch for failing to make ``tough choices.''
       So give the Defense Secretary an A for optimistic effort, 
     even if we have our disagreements with some of his strategic 
     choices. In announcing his spending priorities, Mr. Gates 
     said he wants to focus on the current wars in Iraq and 
     Afghanistan, rather than on the unknown wars of the future. 
     Among his cuts are the Army's Future Combat Systems and a 
     gold-plated new Presidential helicopter that is late and way 
     over budget. Meanwhile, he added money for unmanned aerial 
     vehicles, increased the number of special forces and 
     announced plans to recruit more cyberwarfare experts.
       These seem like reasonable judgment calls, and the focus on 
     combating asymmetrical threats will help the U.S. in Iraq and 
     Afghanistan. But it's worth remembering that the reason our 
     enemies have resorted to terrorism and insurgency is because 
     U.S. conventional forces overwhelmingly dominate on the 
     ground, in the sea and in the air.
       That's not an advantage we can take for granted as the 
     Clinton Administration did in the 1990s, when it slashed 
     defense spending to 3% from nearly 5% of GDP. China and 
     Russia are upgrading their conventional forces, and China in 
     particular is aiming to build a navy that can neutralize U.S. 
     forces in the Western Pacific.
       Mr. Gate's strategy implies a shrinking Navy with fewer 
     ships and perhaps one fewer carrier group. It's good that he 
     wants to build more Littoral Combat Ships, which are handy 
     for operations such as tracing pirates.

[[Page 10044]]

     Even so, the Navy is left with a fleet of fewer than 300 
     ships, which strikes us as perilously small. When a U.S.-
     flagged container ship was briefly taken by pirates off 
     Somalia this week, the Navy's nearest vessel was hours away.
       Mr. Gates's decision to kill the stealthy F-22 fighter jet, 
     which outclasses everything in the sky, is also troubling. We 
     already have 183 F-22s--original plans called for 750--and 
     Mr. Gates wants to order just four more before shutting down 
     the production line. His proposal to double the number of F-
     35 Joint Strike Fighters and Pentagon buys next year--to 30 
     from 14 in 2009--is no quid pro quo. The F-35 is a cheaper, 
     more multipurpose plane but it can't begin to compete with 
     the F-22 as a fighter jet.
       Pentagon spending is now about 4% of GDP and is expected to 
     decline, which means too little investment against potential 
     threats. In particular, Mr. Gates's budget priorities give no 
     indication of how the Pentagon will ensure that U.S. military 
     dominance extends to the battlefield of the future, outer 
     space. President Obama has said he opposes the 
     ``militarization of space,'' but space is already a crucial 
     area of operations and China is looking for advantages there.
       The $1.4 billion in cuts to missile defense are especially 
     worrisome, with losers including the Airborne Laser, designed 
     to shoot down ballistic missiles in the boost phase, and 
     additional interceptors planned for the ground-based system 
     in Alaska. Instead, Mr. Gates favors theater defenses for 
     soldiers on the battlefield with $700 million more in 
     funding, arguing that this will address the near-term threat 
     of short-range missiles. But as North Korea's weekend launch 
     showed, rogue regimes aren't far away from securing long-
     range missiles that could reach the U.S.
       Mr. Gates shrewdly made no budget recommendations on 
     nuclear forces, except to say that he'll defer judgment until 
     after the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review. Perhaps he's 
     counting on being able to change President Obama's mind on 
     the need for updating U.S. strategic weapons and going 
     forward with the Reliable Replacement Warhead for America's 
     aging nuclear arsenal.
       Mr. Gates's budget proposals now go to Congress. Since the 
     end of World War II there have been more than 130 studies on 
     procurement reform. Good luck.

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence 
of a quorum. I ask unanimous consent that the time in a quorum call be 
equally divided between both sides.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I wish to speak about S. 386, the Fraud 
Enforcement and Recovery Act, which Senator Leahy and others will bring 
to the floor of the Senate. It is astounding to me that a piece of 
legislation that provides and strengthens the Justice Department and 
investigative agencies with the ability to go after fraud and recovery 
with respect to this financial collapse--even something that is 
bipartisan and is so fundamental--is now subject to a filibuster.
  Think of it: You can't do anything around here without there being a 
filibuster. We have to file a cloture petition and ask that it ripen 
for 2 days and then do 30 hours postcloture. It is unbelievable. It 
demonstrates, unfortunately, an inability of the majority to get things 
done because of a minority deciding it wants to filibuster everything.
  But look, this legislation authorizes substantial funding to 
strengthen the ability of the Justice Department, the FBI, and other 
investigative agencies to fight fraud.
  This money, well spent, will recapture that amount of money many 
times over in the pursuit of financial fraud. If anyone who is reading 
the papers and watching television and seeing what is happening in the 
financial crisis in this country believes that there ought not be 
substantial, enhanced investigative capabilities by the Justice 
Department to go after fraud and to prosecute where they find fraud, 
they must be living on a different planet. This reforms the statutes 
that deal with fraud and with money laundering.
  Senator Leahy and others have put together a bill that I believe will 
substantially improve the capability to prosecute financial crimes. I 
think most Americans will be surprised to learn that taxpayers' funds 
expended under what is called the TARP funds in the economic stimulus 
package are not necessarily protected under the Federal fraud statutes. 
By the same token, Federal fraud statutes presently do not include 
mortgage lending businesses that are not directly regulated or insured 
by the Federal Government. These companies, by the way, were 
responsible for nearly half of the residential mortgages before the 
economic collapse. Yet they remain largely unregulated. This piece of 
legislation would begin to address that.
  Let me give some examples of what has happened and what continues to 
happen. This is something that is on the Internet today. You see all 
the financial collapse we have had in this country caused by bad 
mortgages, subprime mortgages. You can go to the Internet and find 
this:

       CC&G Financial Group, working together to build your 
     dreams. You have bad credit, poor credit, good credit, we can 
     get you into your dream home.

  They are advertising: If you have bad credit, we will loan you some 
money and get you a dream home. It is unbelievable.
  They say:

       With the fantastic values that are available today due to 
     foreclosures and short sales, now is the time to get into 
     your own home. Come to us, we will get you some money.

  It is exactly the same thing that steered this country into a ditch 
in the first place.
  This on the Internet today, called ``Speedy Bad Credit Loans.'' Is 
that unbelievable? That is unbelievable to me, a company called Speedy 
Bad Credit Loans. Shame on them.
  This says:

       Bad credit mortgage--bad credit? OK. No credit? OK. 
     Bankruptcy? No problem. No downpayments, no delays.

  Shame on them.
  But it is not just these fly-by-night fleabags that are running these 
schemes. What was the biggest mortgage company in the country? 
Countrywide--Countrywide mortgage, the biggest mortgage company in 
America. Here is what they said in the middle of the subprime scandal:

       Do you have less than perfect credit? Do you have late 
     mortgage payments? Have you been denied by other lenders? 
     Call us.

  ``Call us,'' they said--the biggest mortgage lender in the country.
  There were mortgage companies willing to lend you money with no 
principal payment. You just pay interest; or if you can't pay interest 
and no principal, then just part of the interest and they will put the 
rest of it on the back of the loan; or no principal and just part of 
the interest, but you don't have to pay anything for the first 12 
months because they will make the first 12 months' payments for you.
  If you want to get a loan without having to document your income--
they call it a ``no doc'' loan, a no-documentation loan--you don't have 
to document what your income is. By the way, don't worry about making 
payments anytime soon because we will give you a loan no matter what. 
Then if it doesn't work out, your home value is going to increase and 
you can sell it off for a profit. Good for you.
  This is a shameful display of what is going on in the marketplace. 
Countrywide, of course, went belly-up. The folks who ran it got off 
with a couple hundred million dollars, we are told. In the meantime, go 
to the Internet and see if it is still going on.
  This legislation being brought to the floor of the Senate is 
bipartisan legislation that reforms the statutes that deal with some of 
these issues, to say: Stop it. You cannot do this stuff anymore.
  There is a lot of work to do in investigating and cracking down on 
financial fraud, including mortgage fraud. The bill we are considering 
this week is going to go a long way toward that effort. This bill is 
going to give law enforcement the investigators they need, the 
prosecutors the resources they need. It is supported by the National 
Fraternal Order of Police, Taxpayers Against Fraud, Federal Law 
Enforcement Officers Association, National

[[Page 10045]]

Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys, and the National Association 
of Certified Fraud Examiners.
  Finally, let me just say that I am going to be talking to the 
chairman of the committee. I have a couple of suggestions for 
amendments. One will be a sense of the Senate to establish an economic 
or financial crisis task force in the Justice Department, a multiagency 
task force that goes after these kinds of crimes. Second, I want to 
talk to the chairman of the committee and with my colleagues as well 
about a Senate select committee to investigate the cause of the 
economic crisis. That is a piece of legislation I introduced with 
Senator McCain a couple of months ago. I want to visit with my 
colleagues, Senator Dodd, the chairman of the Banking Committee on 
this, and Senator Reid, of course, and Senator Leahy. I think all of 
these things need to be discussed.
  I especially wanted to say that the underlying bill brought to the 
floor of the Senate has great merit. I hope this week we will be able 
to finish work on this bill. It will make this country a better place 
by holding accountable those who have been engaged, in my judgment, in 
some cases, in some high crimes. The American people have paid a very 
stiff price for that activity. I think it needs to be investigated and 
prosecuted aggressively.
  I yield the floor.


                     north dakota natural disasters

  Mr. CONRAD. Madam President, I would like to take a few minutes to 
speak on the unfolding crisis in my State with respect to record 
flooding all across North Dakota.
  We are facing something unseen in recorded history in the State of 
North Dakota. From east to west, from north to south, there is massive 
flooding, never seen before in all of recorded history. The eyes of the 
Nation have been on our State.
  As I have said many times in North Dakota, people across the country 
have liked what they have seen about the response of the people of 
North Dakota. In Fargo, a town of 90,000, the mayor said we have 80,000 
volunteers. That is exactly what it has been like--all across the 
State, thousands of people coming out, neighbors helping neighbors, 
helping to protect their homes, helping to protect the community. There 
was an outpouring of volunteer effort I have never seen before.
  Several weeks ago, I was home with General Walsh, who is the 
commandant of the Mississippi River Division of the Corps of Engineers, 
the chief flood fighter for that part of the country. We walked into 
the FARGODOME, which is a place where NDSU--North Dakota State 
University--plays its football games, and there were thousands of 
volunteers filling sandbags. There were 3 million sandbags made in just 
a few days--3 million sandbags--by tens of thousands of volunteers 
working around the clock. I went into that FARGODOME, and it was 
inspirational to see the efforts of people to protect their homes and 
their community.
  By the way, it was not just in Fargo, it was every town up and down 
the Red River Valley, every town up and down the Cheyenne River Valley, 
every town up and down the James River Valley, every town up and down 
the Missouri River Valley, every town up and down the Souris River 
Valley, because this was flooding on a scale never seen before.
  In the midst of it all, in my hometown, here was the newspaper 
headline: ``A Double Shot of Blizzard and Flooding.'' These two people 
you can perhaps see here are wading knee-deep through ice and water. 
This is very close to where I grew up. Ultimately, they had demolition 
teams come in and blow up the ice because logjams were forming and 
water was being forced into the southern part of my hometown, which is 
the capital city of North Dakota.
  Well, that was Bismarck, ND. Here is the headline from the Fargo 
Forum at about the same time: ``Race Against Time Spring Flood 2009.''
  This is a shot of water completely surrounding this particular home 
and volunteers using shovels to keep the sand moving into funnels to 
fill the sandbags around the clock in Fargo, ND.
  This is the headline from Grand Fork, ND, that was so badly flooded 
in 1997. There we had a 100-year flood, perhaps a 200-year flood. You 
will recall that was the flood that was fought in the midst of a 
blizzard after the worst winter storm in 50 years. This is from Fargo, 
with the headline: ``Fear Is Setting In.''
  This shows people in winter garb placing sandbags on top of 
snowbanks. This is the kind of conditions that people were confronting, 
fighting massive flooding days in the midst of some of the biggest snow 
storms in our State's history.
  Here are some of the headlines that appeared: ``Records Fall in Snow 
Storm;'' ``Minot Sets December Snowfall Record, 24 Inches in One 
Month;'' ``Looks Like A Record December In Grand Forks, 90-Year-Old 
Record Broken There With 29 Inches of Snow;'' ``December 2008, Snowiest 
Month on Books In Fargo-Moorehead;'' ``Fargo Nears Record December 
Snowfall.''
  This is the news from one end of our State to another. So many people 
have asked me: How did this happen? How could it be that you have 
flooding unprecedented in recorded history?
  Well, as we try to reconstruct events this past fall, precipitation 
in the eastern part of the State was 2 to 300 percent of average, 
resulting in the wettest fall on record.
  Soil observations taken just prior to the freeze-up revealed nearly 
saturated moisture levels in the upper 8 inches of soil across the Red 
River Valley. Then the onset of winter came very abruptly. The quick, 
hard freeze occurring with minimal snow cover and saturated soil 
moisture conditions allowed the frost to quickly penetrate the ground 
to a level of 2 feet.
  Then, in December, the cities from west to east across the State had 
record snowfalls. Over the past 2 months, areas of North Dakota have 
had 150 to 300 percent of normal precipitation. In fact, the city of 
Fargo saw both record rainfall and record snowfall in the month of 
March.
  Who could have believed it? I was in the little town of Linton, ND. I 
was with the mayor; I was with the sheriff. They told me they were 
expecting pretty much normal flooding. Then they got hit by 2 inches of 
rain. That 2 inches of rain brought that snow off the hills surrounding 
the town, flooded 50 of the homes of people who lived on largely fixed 
incomes, who have been devastated by these developments. And it is not 
just in the Red River Valley; as I have indicated earlier, it is all 
across North Dakota in a way that is unprecedented. In my adult life I 
have never seen anything like it.
  This is the little town of Pembina, ND. I landed there last week. I 
landed on an airstrip completely surrounded by water--completely 
surrounded by water. The only thing that was not covered by water was 
the airstrip itself, and the people I was with, as they were landing, 
said to the pilot: Boy, it gives you an eerie sense. It feels as if you 
are landing in the middle of the ocean. That is really what it felt 
like.
  That is Pembina. But we have seen it in town after town. Here in 
Valley City, the sewer system failed. The sewer system, under this 
incredible water pressure, broke down. Here is the headline: ``Shutdown 
Continues. Nonessential Businesses Ordered Closed. Porta-Potties Dot 
The City.''
  Well, part of this has a humorous note to it. But I tell you, not if 
you are in that town and you have been asked to shut down, if you are a 
nonessential business, the mayor has asked thousands of people to do a 
voluntary evacuation because of a catastrophic breakdown in the 
sanitary sewer system on Friday morning. That is this last Friday.
  I just talked to the mayor, Mayor Mary Lee Nielson, by the way, who 
has provided outstanding leadership in that community. But you talk 
about a community that has been dealt a tough hand. You can see work 
crews out from the public works department, National Guardsmen out 
trying to contain the damage, and they have done an outstanding job. 
But now the mayor has said to stop using water in that community, stop 
using water. ``Valley City Sanitary Sewer System Has Failed.''

[[Page 10046]]

Basements are filling with sewage. The newspaper has had sewage come 
into its location, the police station as well.
  But I can tell you, this is when you really measure the character of 
people, and the people of my State are proving their grit and their 
determination because they keep on fighting and they have just done an 
incredible job of taking on this crisis.
  We have so many communities that have been hit. Here the headline is: 
``Valley City Residents Urged To Get Out.'' This is a town of 8,000 or 
9,000 people. You can imagine having to make the decision to ask people 
to leave.
  Here is a little town, the town of Kathryn. It had to be cleared out, 
completely evacuated, a small town, less than 100 people. It had to be 
evacuated because a dam above the town was getting ready to break. To 
watch what they have done to fight this effort is absolutely 
fascinating because they brought in not regular sandbags, they have 
brought in 1-ton sandbags, sandbags bigger than anything I have ever 
seen before.
  Here is a picture of the helicopter. These sandbags are 1-ton 
sandbags, each of them weighing 2,000 pounds. They were used to drop 
into this failing dam. That is the kind of effort that has been 
underway here. This is an eight-bag sling load that was destined for 
Clausen Springs, which is the dam that threatened the entire community 
of Kathryn, ND.
  Not only have people and homes and communities been so adversely 
affected, farm families in many cases cannot get out. Here is a 
farmstead, and you can see it is completely surrounded by water. Here 
is a big tractor coming out to try to help these people, and you can 
see their place is completely surrounded by water.
  Again, it is certainly families and communities, but it is also 
livestock. The estimates are now that we have lost nearly 100,000 head 
of livestock in North Dakota; 100,000 cows and calves have died. They 
think 80 percent of the deaths are young calves. This is calving 
season. I talked to one rancher. He was beside himself. He just came 
back from the fields, digging through snow banks trying to rescue 
little calves.
  Here are cows from one farmstead. You see them trying to swim against 
the current. Some were able to make it, some not. As we indicated, some 
100,000 head of livestock has been lost, and 80 percent of the calves. 
This looks like a calf right here. And you can imagine, look at the 
power of that current. These cattle are trapped, in many cases, in a 
way that there was no place to escape.
  I bring this to the attention of the Senate because already 
tremendous assistance has been extended to my State. The President 
declared an emergency in record time. He has also provided individual 
assistance, which has already helped hundreds and hundreds of families 
in our State. Many more will need assistance. The roads, bridges, and 
highways in my State have been devastated by this flooding; again, the 
worst in recorded history. And what is most stunning about it is the 
extent of it.
  Typically, flooding in my State has been up and down the Red River. 
But this time every river system in our State--the Cheyenne, the Red, 
the Souris, the James, the Missouri, all of them--has been badly hit. 
Thousands and thousands of people are adversely affected, thousands of 
people forced from their homes, and hundreds and hundreds of homes 
lost, devastated, destroyed.
  North Dakota is an agricultural State. This is the time normally you 
would be planting crops to be harvested in the fall. But, obviously, 
when the farmland is flooded you cannot plant. So we are going to see 
this unfolding disaster continue to hurt the people of my State, 
certainly the economy of my State, because we are not going to plant.
  In many parts of the State perhaps you cannot get a crop at all this 
year. The ground is going to simply be too wet. So we are going to need 
continuing assistance. That is one reason I am glad in the last farm 
bill we provided for permanent disaster assistance for circumstances 
just like this one.
  I also want to thank the thousands of volunteers across North Dakota 
who came out to help in this crisis--the National Guard, thousands of 
soldiers deployed all across our State. I thank them for their 
incredible performance. I thank the Corps of Engineers for building 
hundreds and hundreds of miles of dikes that have so far saved 
community after community across North Dakota.
  Thanks to FEMA for being there and setting up disaster assistance 
that has already provided substantial sums to individual families who 
have been hard hit. Thanks to the local officials who have headed up 
the flood fight, and the mayors, the county commissioners all across 
North Dakota who have performed so admirably. Thanks to the State 
leadership for what they have done to coordinate the flood fight and do 
so effectively.
  This is a disaster that is still unfolding. We pray for the families 
who are affected. They are very much in our hearts and minds, and we 
are thinking about what can be done to help them; first, win the fight, 
and then recover from these series of disasters.
  I thank the Chair, I thank my colleagues for the many who have called 
me and written me and spoken to me in the halls and pledged that they 
would be willing to help our people at a time of such need. I thank the 
Members of the House of Representatives who similarly have reached out 
to us, and thanks certainly to the Obama administration. I want to 
thank Janet Napolitano, the head of Homeland Security who has been so 
responsive. Thanks to Rahm Emanuel, the President's Chief of Staff. I 
want to thank the President himself for meeting with us to get a 
firsthand report and for again turning around disaster aid in record 
time at a time when our State really needed it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee is recognized.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I would say to the Senator from North Dakota that all 
of us have noticed the courage of his constituents, the citizens of 
North Dakota, and we admire that courage and their resilience in the 
face of such adversity.
  Senator Corker and I saw this same thing in the faces of the men and 
women in Murfreesboro, TN, who were suddenly hit with a tornado in the 
springtime. While the size of the disaster was not comparable to the 
size of the disaster in North Dakota, it was to those families of that 
kind of disaster. So I appreciate his comments and our thoughts and 
prayers go out to the families in North Dakota.


                  Association of American Universities

  About 1 hour ago I spoke to the Association of American Universities, 
which is a group which includes many of our finest public and private 
research universities, some of them in the State of North Carolina, I 
might note.
  I would like to say to my colleagues on the Senate floor and to our 
country what I said to them in a private meeting. I told them that not 
long ago a few of us in the Senate had supper in the majority leader's 
office with former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who 
was completing a year as a scholar-in-residence at the Library of 
Congress.
  One of us asked Dr. Cardoso what memory he would take back to Brazil 
about his time in the United States.
  He replied unhesitatingly:

       The American university. The greatness and the autonomy of 
     the American university. There is nothing in the world quite 
     like it.

  The United States doesn't only have the best universities in the 
world, it has almost all the best universities in the world. A recent 
ranking by Jiao Tong University in Shanghai ranks 35 universities among 
the top 50 in the world, 8 among the top 10. Higher education, says 
commentator Fareed Zakaria, is America's best industry. Along with our 
national laboratories, managed by the Department of Education, our 
research universities have been our secret weapon in developing many of 
the competitive advantages that make possible the high American 
standard of living. In the midst of our

[[Page 10047]]

pride about our universities, I suggest we remember the warning George 
Romney, then president of American Motors, gave Detroit's automakers a 
half century ago:

       Nothing is more vulnerable than entrenched success.

  At that time, the big three automakers didn't just make the best cars 
in the world, they made almost all the best cars. But the automakers 
didn't listen to George Romney. We know the rest of the story. The 
Japanese and others perfected smaller, fuel-efficient cars, and today 
we are bailing out the automakers that didn't listen. American higher 
education today would do well to heed George Romney's warning of 50 
years ago, and so should the rest of us, since our country's success 
depends so much upon the quality of our colleges and universities as 
well as upon our access to them. I suggest, therefore, we begin by 
addressing our research universities. I propose that the national 
academies assemble a distinguished group of Americans to assess the 
competitive position of American research universities, both public and 
private, and then respond to the following question: What are the top 
10 actions, in priority order, that Congress, State governments, and 
the universities themselves could take to assure the ability of the 
American research university to maintain the excellence needed to help 
the United States compete, prosper, and be secure in the global 
community of the 21st century?
  I hope this proposal sounds familiar. It is a narrower version of the 
request I, along with a bipartisan group of Senators and Congressmen, 
made in 2005, when we asked the national academies to respond to this 
question: What are the top 10 actions, in priority order, that Federal 
policymakers could take to enhance the science and technology 
enterprise so the United States can successfully compete, prosper, and 
be secure in the global community of the 21st century?
  The academies responded to that request by creating a distinguished 
commission, headed by Norman Augustine, which reported within 10 weeks 
from its first gathering a list of 20 recommendations, along with 
strategies to achieve them. That report was entitled ``Rising Above the 
Gathering Storm.'' After a great deal of bipartisan work in this 
Chamber and in the House, Congress and the President produced the 
America COMPETES Act of 2007, which included many of the Augustine 
Commission recommendations and established a blueprint for maintaining 
America's competitive position.
  That blueprint provided a helpful basis for additional funding that 
became available earlier this year.
  I can still remember the afternoon in the spring of 2005, when I sat 
through a long Senate Budget Committee meeting. What was bothering me 
most and what I heard that day was that the uncontrolled growth of 
entitlement programs--mainly Medicare and Medicaid--would squeeze out 
essential investments in education and research critical to the 
Nation's prosperity. I had seen this as well during the 1980s, when I 
was Governor of Tennessee, as I struggled, as has almost every Governor 
since, to pay the growing cost of Medicaid, as well as prisons and 
public schools, and still have funds left to support quality in higher 
education. Those struggles have become a losing battle for public 
universities.
  My own research shows that over 6 years, between 2000 and 2006, total 
State higher education funding has gone up 17 percent, while average 
tuition at public 4-year institutions has gone up 63 percent, and State 
funding for Medicaid has gone up 62 percent.
  In a 2003 study of funding of public universities, Thomas J. Kane and 
Peter Orszag, now Director of the Office of Management and Budget in 
the Obama administration--and he spoke to this same group of university 
presidents this morning--suggested the quality of students and the 
compensation of faculty has declined significantly at public 
universities relative to private universities. They concluded:

       Taken together, the results suggest a startling and 
     troubling deterioration of the relative quality of public 
     universities. The most recent set of state budget cutbacks, 
     if anything, will accelerate this trend . . . as a result, 
     the traditional model of higher education finance in the 
     [United States] with large state subsidies to public higher 
     education and modest means tests grants and loans from the 
     federal government is becoming increasingly untenable.

  The recent stimulus package with support for higher education offers 
some relief but only temporary. Here is how Tennessee Gov. Phil 
Bredesen described the situation in his budget address on March 23. The 
Governor said:

       Higher education presents a challenge. Under the rules we 
     have been given, they are getting a lot of the Tennessee 
     stimulus money;

  He means higher education.

       they not only won't have to make cuts, but cuts they have 
     already taken in Tennessee have been restored; about $100 
     million extra in this fiscal year. Yet when this money ends 
     21 months from now, our campuses will suddenly need to begin 
     operating with about $180 million less in state funding than 
     they had this year. More than most other areas, higher 
     education has dodged a bullet and [they have] bought some 
     time, but there is a great deal of work to be done to 
     recognize and streamline for a much leaner future . . .

  That was about 2 weeks ago. I considered asking that this new 
national academies report be only about the pressures on public 
research universities, but that would have set up competing 
recommendations and presented an incomplete picture. Private 
universities have their challenges, too, especially during this 
recession. But the changing role of State support for public research 
universities and its impact on quality deserves special attention in 
the report I am suggesting. I also believe a portion of the academies' 
assessment should include the relationship or lack of relationship of 
our research universities to our 17 Department of Energy national 
laboratories, which employ more than 30,000 scientists. These labs, 
three of which were founded during the Manhattan Project in World War 
II, are also secret weapons in our Nation's strive for competitiveness. 
I have seen firsthand how the alliance between the University of 
Tennessee Knoxville and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has produced 
joint professorships, distinguished scientists, centers of excellence, 
and a thriving science alliance between the two campuses.
  During the next few days, I will meet with National Academy of 
Sciences President Ralph Cicerone and discuss with him creating a 
formal bipartisan letter of request to the national academies and how 
the academies will respond to that request.
  One way Congress could improve the quality of higher education is to 
stop overregulating. I voted against the new higher education bill 
enacted by Congress last summer because, after 3 years of work, the 
Senate spewed forth a well-intentioned contraption of unnecessary rules 
and regulations that wastes time and money that ought to be spent 
instead on students and improving quality. At the close of the debate, 
I carried onto the Senate floor--to be accurate, I asked my staff to 
bring on the floor and some of the pages--a stack of boxes as tall as I 
am that contained the rules and regulations for the 6,000 higher 
education institutions that accept Federal grants and loans. Senator 
Mikulski, who has agreed to work with me to try to reduce the number of 
these regulations, came over and stood by the stack, and the stack was 
a foot taller than she.
  The former president of Stanford has estimated that these regulations 
cost institutions--from Harvard to the University of North Carolina to 
Duke to Vanderbilt to the University of Tennessee and the Nashville 
Auto Diesel College--7 cents for each Federal dollar to do the busy 
work to fill out paperwork to comply with the regulations. The bad news 
is, the new law we passed doubles the rules and regulations with 24 new 
categories and 100 new reporting requirements. These new requirements 
include a total of 54 so-called college watch lists, which I believe 
will be too confusing for families to understand, and complicated rules 
involving textbooks which will only prove that Members of Congress have 
no idea how faculty members prepare courses.
  Most of these complications of rules, including graduation rates in 
48 different categories, disaggregation of

[[Page 10048]]

student-reported data by 14 racial, ethnic, and income subgroups, and 
employment rates of graduates of institutions, will leave college 
administrators scratching their heads and create thousands of new jobs 
for people to fill out forms. All this will be put on the Web, and most 
of it will be shipped to Washington, DC, for someone to read. Having 
once been the Secretary of Education myself, I do not know who will 
read all these reports and all these new regulations, and I don't know 
what they would do about them if they did read them.
  The academies, in the report I am suggesting, may also suggest that 
Congress and States make changes in the way we fund and regulate 
research universities, but much of the heavy lifting will have to be 
done by the universities themselves. They are the ones who should be 
most concerned about George Romney's warning:

       There is nothing more vulnerable than entrenched success.

  I guarantee that if some of the recommendations are going to have to 
do with additional funding, Members of Congress and State legislators 
are going to be asking what universities are doing to reduce costs, 
especially the cost of attending university.
  At the American Council on Education meeting in February, I said that 
what I hear in Congress every time the issue comes up is, every time we 
increase Pell grants, colleges raise tuition. That is what my 
colleagues say to me. That is one reason why, in exasperation, 
Congressmen and Senators pile new rules on already overregulated 
colleges. I suggested in February that university administrators might 
want to be ready with a concrete explanation of what they are doing to 
reduce costs before asking for more money. I offered two suggestions: 
One, that colleges offer some--not all, but some--well-prepared 
students the option of a 3-year baccalaureate degree, cutting one-third 
the time and one-fourth the cost from a college education; and, two, 
that community college be free for well-prepared students.
  I cited to them a group of Tennessee counties and businesses in 
northeast Tennessee that make up the difference between the cost of the 
community college and Federal and State scholarships for qualified 
local students.
  Two weeks ago, I visited a university president in Nashville who 
actually listened to what I had to say in February. On April 13, Randy 
Lowry, at Lipscomb University in Nashville, announced a new 3-year 
option for some qualified students, a plan for veterans to attend 
tuition free, and a plan to make it easier and cheaper for community 
college students to attend Lipscomb. Taking into account the student 
earnings during the year that he or she is in the workforce instead of 
attending the university, President Lowry estimates that a Lipscomb 
graduate with a 3-year degree might avoid up to $50,000 in debt. In 
offering a 3-year option, Lipscomb has good company in Hartwick College 
in New York, Judson College in Alabama, Bates College in Maine, and 
Valparaiso in Indiana. In February, the State of Rhode Island decided 
to create a pilot program for a 3-year degree model.
  It may seem like a simple, even inconsequential request to ask the 
national academies to tell us the top 10 actions Congress, States, and 
research universities need to take to maintain university excellence, 
but my experience is that most ideas fail in Washington for lack of the 
idea. We have plenty of planners, publicists, and politicians to run 
with a good idea. I look forward to the idea: the recommendations in 
priority order--one set for Congress, one set for the States, one set 
for the research universities themselves.
  There is no reason these recommendations should not have the same 
impact the ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm'' report had and 
continues to have. And remembering George Romney's warning of a half 
century ago, there is nothing more vulnerable than entrenched success. 
We should all hope this new report from the National Academies does 
have that impact.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, today I rise in support of the Fraud 
Enforcement and Recovery Act. I am pleased to be a cosponsor of this 
legislation, and I thank Senators Leahy and Grassley and the members of 
the Judiciary Committee for their critical work on this very important 
effort to increase our capacity to investigate and prosecute the 
fraudulent activity that has severely weakened our economy and hurt the 
taxpayer.
  Fraudulent lending contributed to the collapse of the mortgage-backed 
securities market, sending our economy into a tailspin and putting 
taxpayers on the hook for a huge Wall Street bailout. Taxpayers deserve 
to know that those fraudulent lenders are being held accountable. And 
we need to send a message to those who would commit fraud in the future 
they will also be held accountable.
  With their current resources, however, Federal agencies are not able 
to properly investigate claims of mortgage fraud, which have increased 
more than 10 times in the past 6 years. With the funding authorized in 
this bill, the Department of Justice will be able to hire more 
prosecutors and the FBI will be able to nearly double its mortgage and 
financial fraud program.
  The bill would also allow the Department of Justice to prosecute 
fraud committed by all mortgage lenders, not just those who are 
regulated by the Federal Government. Under current law, Federal fraud 
laws do not apply to nondepository mortgage lenders, which made nearly 
half of residential mortgages before the housing market collapsed. 
Including these businesses in the fraud statute will allow the 
Department of Justice to properly investigate and prosecute fraud in 
the entire mortgage market.
  Last month, I offered an amendment to the budget to expand the 
capacity of the Housing and Urban Development inspector general to 
fight mortgage fraud. I was pleased to have the Senate agree with that 
amendment. Now we have an opportunity to follow up with an explicit 
authorization of funds to protect vital HUD programs.
  The Federal Housing Administration, which a few years ago insured 
only 2 percent of all new mortgages, now insures roughly a third. Yet 
the HUD inspector general's office has not expanded. We need to make 
sure HUD has the resources to properly investigate and remove 
fraudulent lenders.
  With the sharp decline in private mortgage lending, programs such as 
FHA insurance make home ownership a reality for millions of Americans. 
By providing HUD with the resources it needs to fight fraud, we will 
protect FHA's long-term vitality while preventing the taxpayer from 
footing the bill for another bailout.
  Fraud in the financial system greatly contributed to this economic 
collapse we are experiencing. Every day, taxpayers in New Hampshire and 
across the country bear the burden of fraudulent activity. I am 
confident this legislation will help protect those taxpayers by 
providing the resources and legal tools we need to root out fraud.
  I hope my colleagues will join me in support of this bill.
  Madam 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. SPECTER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Executive Calendar

  Mr. SPECTER. Madam President, I have sought recognition to comment on 
the three nominees whose votes are scheduled a little later this 
afternoon. All three of these nominees were voted out of the Judiciary 
Committee on a voice vote. All three have outstanding

[[Page 10049]]

credentials for the positions for which they have been nominated.


                         Christine Anne Varney

  Ms. Christine Varney is the nominee for Assistant Attorney General in 
the Antitrust Division. She has an outstanding academic record, having 
graduated magna cum laude at Syracuse University in 1978 and having 
received her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.
  She served as a Commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission from 
1994 to 1997, and has been a partner in the firm of Hogan & Hartson for 
the past 12 years.
  I believe her tenure on the Federal Trade Commission gives her a good 
background beyond being an antitrust lawyer in private practice for 
this job. We discussed quite a number of legal issues in a private 
meeting I had with her.
  I consider the Antitrust position to be of unique importance. They 
are all important in the Department of Justice. But I believe she will 
bring a vigor to the job which I think is most appropriate.


                            Lanny A. Breuer

  The nominee for Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division 
is Lanny A. Breuer, who also has a fine academic background: a 
bachelor's degree from Columbia and a law degree from Columbia in 1985 
and was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. I am impressed with his resume 
generally but especially the fact that he was an assistant district 
attorney in the Manhattan DA's Office from 1985 to 1989. I am 
especially partial to people who have been assistant district 
attorneys.
  One further comment about Mr. Breuer. I emphasize the importance of 
seeking jail sentences in appropriate cases. Too often, criminal 
prosecutions result in fines which turn out in the context of the case 
to be really a license to do business. White-collar crime especially is 
an area where there can be effective deterrence, and his commitment on 
that subject was reassuring.


                               Tony West

  The nominee for Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division is 
Derek Anthony West, who also has a fine academic record: Harvard 
bachelor's degree, was publisher of the Harvard Political Review--that 
might be a more important document than the Harvard Law Review; might 
be--a law degree from Stanford in 1992, president of the Stanford Law 
Review, so he covered them both. Again, he has an outstanding resume 
professionally. Of particular interest to me is having been assistant 
U.S. attorney, Northern District of California, for 5 years, from 1994 
to 1999, and was adjunct faculty member of the Lincoln Law School of 
San Jose, which I think is significant, and has been a partner at 
Morrison & Foerster for the last 8 years.
  I ask unanimous consent to have these resumes printed in the 
Congressional Record following my brief statement.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. SPECTER. Madam President, I think this is an appropriate time to 
point out a few factors on the confirmation process.
  The first is that Senators are being afforded less time to review the 
records of almost all of President Obama's nominees than they were for 
President Bush's nominees. The Judiciary Committee has held hearings 
for 8 of the 11 Department of Justice nominees faster than it held 
hearings for President Bush's first nominees to the same positions. The 
committee has held hearings, on an average, 22 days earlier for these 
eight nominees. The Senate is confirming almost all of President 
Obama's Department of Justice nominees faster than it confirmed 
President Bush's first nominees to the same positions. Assuming that 
the three nominees scheduled for votes today are confirmed, of the 
eight Department of Justice nominees who have been confirmed, only two 
took more time to confirm than President Bush's first nominee to the 
same position. Attorney General Eric Holder was confirmed 63 days after 
his nomination. John Ashcroft was confirmed 42 days after his 
nomination. Lanny Breuer will be confirmed 56 days after his 
nomination. Michael Chertoff, 24 days. The other six nominees who have 
been confirmed this year have been confirmed, on average, 44 days 
faster than President Bush's nominees to the same position.
  So I offer these statistical points to counter the contention that 
there is a slowdown here. The facts simply do not support it. 
Acknowledging that a little more time was taken with a couple of the 
nominees, it was for good cause. But as a generalization, the 
processing has been more expeditious now than under President Bush.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

                               Exhibit 1

                          Christine A. Varney


             Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division

       Birth: 1955, Washington, DC.
       Legal Residence: Washington, DC.
       Education: B.A.: The State University of New York, 
     University of Albany, 1977; M.P.A., Magna Cum Laude, Syracuse 
     University, 1978; J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 
     1986.
       Employment: Associate, Pierson, Semmes & Finley, 1986-1989; 
     General Counsel, Democratic National Committee, 1989-1992; 
     Chief Counsel, Clinton Gore Campaign, 1991; General Counsel, 
     1992 Presidential Inaugural Committee, 1992; Associate, Hogan 
     & Hartson, 1991-1993; Cabinet Secretary, Executive Office of 
     the President, 1993-1994; Commissioner, Federal Trade 
     Commission, 1994-1997; Partner, Hogan & Hartson, 1997-
     present; Personnel Counsel, Obama-Biden Transition Project, 
     Nov. 2008-Jan. 2009.
       Selected Activities and Honors: Award, Washington, DC, 
     Super Lawyers, 2008; Award, Chambers USA Competition and 
     Antitrust, 2004-2008 (lists top lawyers); Award, Chambers USA 
     Privacy and Data Security, 2007-2008; Director, Ryder System 
     Inc. (delivery trucking company), 1998-present; Director, 
     Parity Communications Inc. (technology company), 1997-
     present; Director and Chairperson, TRUSTe (internet privacy 
     dispute resolver), 1998-2007; Director, NDN (progressive 
     think tank and advocacy organization), 2003; Advisory Board 
     Member, 2002-2005; Director, Enterasys Networks (technology 
     company), 2001-2002; Director, CommonPlaces LLC (technology 
     company), 1999-2000; Director, Exclusive Resorts LLC (luxury 
     destination club), 2000-present; Member, American Bar 
     Association, 1986-present: Member and Chair, Election Law 
     Committee, Member, Antitrust Section; Advisory Board Member, 
     Aveo Inc. (technology company), 2000; Advisory Board Member, 
     The Industry Standard (technology magazine), 2000; Advisory 
     Board Member, RealNames (technology company), 1999 
     Chairperson, Online Privacy Alliance, 1998-1999; Technology 
     Advisory Council, Earthlink Network Inc. (internet service 
     provider), 1998-1999.
                                  ____


                            Lanny A. Breuer


       Nominee for Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division

       Birth: August 5, 1958, New York, NY.
       Legal Residence: Washington, DC.
       Education: B.A., Columbia College, Columbia University, 
     1980; J.D., Columbia University Law School, 1985: Harlan 
     Fiske Stone Scholar, 1985.
       Employment: Assistant District Attorney, Manhattan District 
     Attorney's Office, 1985-1989; Associate, Covington & Burling 
     LLP, 1989-1995: Partner, 1995-1997. Special Counsel to the 
     President of the United States, 1997-1999; Partner, Covington 
     & Burling LLP, 1999-present.
       Selected Activities: Member, American Bar Association, 
     1987-present; Member, United States Holocaust Memorial 
     Council: Member, Committee on Conscience, 2000-present; 
     Member, Executive Committee, 2000-2002; Member, Development 
     Committee, 2001-2002. Member, Board of Trustees, Aufbau 
     (newspaper), 2001-2005; Fellow, American College of Trial 
     Lawyers, 2006-present; Director, Executive Committee, 
     Columbia College Alumni Association, 2007-present.
                                  ____


                      Derek Anthony ``Tony'' West


               Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division

       Birth: August 12, 1965, San Francisco, California.
       Residence: Oakland, California.
       Education: A.B., with honors, Harvard University, 1987: 
     Publisher, Harvard Political Review. J.D., Stanford 
     University Law School, 1992: President, Stanford Law Review.
       Employment: Chief of Staff to Treasurer, Dukakis for 
     President, 1987-1988; Finance Director, Democratic Governors' 
     Association, 1988-1989; Chief of Staff to Finance Chairman, 
     California Democratic Party, 1992-1993; Associate, Bingham 
     McCutchen, 1992-1993; Special Assistant to the Deputy 
     Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, 1993-1994; 
     Assistant U.S. Attorney, Northern District of California, 
     1994-1999; Adjunct Faculty Member, Lincoln Law School of San 
     Jose, 1997-1999; Special Assistant Attorney General, 
     California Office of the Attorney General, 1999-2001; 
     Partner, Morrison & Foerster, 2001-present.

[[Page 10050]]

       Selected Activities: Co-Chair, Obama for America, 
     California Finance Committee, 2007-2008; Member, Obama 
     California Leadership Circle, 2007-2008; Member, NAACP, 1995-
     present; Member, ACLU of Northern California, 1995-present; 
     Recipient, Leading Lawyer in America, Lawdragon Magazine, 
     2008; Recipient, Northern California [Top 100] ``Super 
     Lawyers,'' 2006, 2007, 2008; Recipient, California's ``Top 20 
     Lawyers Under 40,'' The Daily Journal, 2004; Recipient, 
     Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys Director's Award, 1998; 
     Recipient, Bill Key Memorial Victim/Witness Assistance Award, 
     1998; Member, Board of Governors, No. California Assoc. of 
     Business Trial Lawyers, 2004-present; Lawyer Representative 
     (unpaid), Northern District of California, Ninth Circuit, 
     2005-2008; Member, American Bar Association, 2002-present; 
     Board Member, Alameda County Democratic Lawyers Club, 2004-
     present; Member, Board of Directors, U.C. Hastings College of 
     the Law, 2004-present.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 
up to 3 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I rise to lend my support to the three 
nominees with the Justice Department that are pending today and to give 
my support to Tony West for Assistant Attorney General of the Civil 
Division, Lanny Breuer for Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal 
Division, and Christine Varney for Assistant Attorney General of the 
Antitrust Division. I have documents I wish to submit for the Record 
for all three.
  I wish to speak for a moment about Lanny Breuer, a friend and someone 
whom I know somewhat socially through actually children's activities, 
but I have known of him and his reputation for quite some time. I 
wanted to come to the floor to say how pleased I am that the committee 
has seen fit to pass his nomination on to us. I believe the ranking 
member and the chairman have outlined his phenomenal credentials, but I 
would just add that, having been a graduate of one of the most 
prestigious law schools in the country--Columbia Law School--he began 
his career as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York City, which is a 
good place to begin to really cut your teeth and learn the ropes, if 
you will, a place that they say: If you can make it there, you can make 
it anywhere. And this is true of the work he has undertaken for his 
life.
  He served as a White House counsel, the Office of Special Counsel 
for, of course, President Clinton. I think most notable to me and to 
many of my colleagues is the endorsements he has received not just from 
Democrats but from Republicans as well, people such as Michael 
Chertoff, who worked with him. He led the Criminal Division at the 
Department of Justice during the Bush administration. He said Mr. 
Breuer has ``exceptionally broad legal experience as a former 
prosecutor and defense attorney.'' He has ``outstanding judgment, a 
keen sense of fairness, high integrity and an even temperament.'' For 
the job we have called him to do, he is going to need all of those 
qualities and qualifications. Brad Berenson, a veteran of the Bush 
administration's White House Counsel's Office, writes that Mr. Breuer 
is ``everything one could hope for in a leader of the Criminal 
Division.'' So he comes with not just great academic credentials, great 
life experience, tremendous qualifications for this post, but from his 
peers--both Democrats and Republicans--who believe he is the right 
person for this job.
  So I am pleased to come to the floor for a few minutes today to lend 
my support to this outstanding nominee, and I look forward to working 
with him and these other nominees as we build a stronger justice system 
in the city of New Orleans, south Louisiana, and parts of the gulf 
coast that still remain, as my colleagues know, in a rebuilding mode 
from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. What people don't realize, it is not 
just houses and schools, but the criminal justice system was hard-hit 
in terms of jail space, the sheriff's office, the district attorneys. 
So we have an extra responsibility to work with this team in Washington 
to make sure they keep their eyes on our people down in the gulf coast 
as we rebuild that great region of this country. I know this team will, 
and I am happy to support Lanny Breuer for Assistant Attorney General.
  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. 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.

                          ____________________